Monday, November 27, 2006

Oaxaca, Mexcio: Guerrillas threaten to attack, M in M looks for hole in which to crawl.


Well, well, well. Now comes forth yet another guerrilla "army" which has threatened not only to "enter the fight" by committing "armed attacks" but also to swallow APPO. This is a very interesting development and has Mark in Mexico searching for a hole into which he might crawl and pull it in after him.

This is some tough translation here so please bear with me.

This new group calls itself "La Tendencia Democrática Revolucionaria-Ejército del Pueblo", TDR-EP in Spanish. And here I thought that "tendencia" meant the excise tax you paid to get your plates renewed -- which hardly anybody bothers to pay in Oaxaca. Oops. That's "tenencia". No, "tenencia" is janitorial services. Oh, well, I'll try. As best I can translate it, one of the following would be an apt English version of the name for the gorillas in this guerrilla army:

The Army of the People with a Revolutionary Democratic Bent - APRDB
The Army of the People Tending Towards Revolutionary Democracy - APTTRD
The Army of the People Bending Democracy in a Revolutionary Manner - APBDRM
The Army of the People Whose Druthers are Democratically Revolutionary - APWDDR

You see where this is heading.

Since "pueblo" can also be translated as "village", we could have:

The Army of the Leaning Village of Democratic Revolution - ALVDR
The Village's Army Whose Predilection is Towards Revolution, Democratically Speaking, of Course - VAWPTRDSOC
The Village People - VP's

More seriously, this part of the guerrillas's declaration is very curious: the guerrilla communique said that it would be forming a new group called APPM, Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de México, into which would "flow" the EZLN (the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas), APPO, right here in our dear city, and the Convención Nacional Democrática, which is AMLO's new group.

My oh my. AMLO? I'm not convinced that AMLO wants to don cammos and traipse around in the jungle hauling a cheap, Chinese-made AK-47 . . . too many bugs and snakes. If AMLO is smart, which he's not . . . let me reword that, keeping it all in the subjunctive, ie conditional, mood; If AMLO were smart, which he's not, he would avoid this group like the plague.

And there's another problem, or curiosity, with this communique. Knowing Comandante Marcos, the voice and figurehead of the Zapatistas, as I do, he's not going to be overjoyed to hear that he's been relegated to mere division command status in an army as opposed to being the whole enchilada. So I think that the bit about AMLO and the Zapatistas is crap. And I certainly doubt that APPO is happily ceding control to a shadowy guerrilla army that may or may not even exist. However, in APPO's case, they may have no choice in light of the drubbings they have taken in the past couple of weeks.

The guerilla communique identifies its armed wing as the Comando Magonista de Liberación (Magon Command of Liberation, or CML, I guess) and says that it will begin armed attacks shortly. It blames those attacks-to-be on the presence of the PFP and "holds the elites and political leaders responsible for the escalation that will occur in the next few days."

The communique states that the - let's see if I can get this right - the CML of the TDR-EP "has been holding itself back from the fight for 6 months" and
is respectful of the popular movement and the peaceful pursuit of liberty that is happening in our lands, but that it cannot remain aloof from the acts of repression that the federal and state governments are manifesting on the people of Oaxaca.

Until now, we have merely remained ready and in a state of alert in order to avoid that the popular movement led by APPO would be suppressed on the pretext of being an armed revolutionary group, but the brutality of the neoliberal federal and state governments obliges us to raise our voices and make use of arms to contain and disuade the neoliberal offensive that cannot be tolerated by any revolutionary group.

We disassociate any and all of the social movements in Oaxaca from the politico-military actions that our Magon Command will undertake in the state until Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and his cabinet leave the government and are punished for their crimes against humanity.

And we call upon all of the different revolutionary forces in Oaxaca to fulfill their vows and take up their weapons against this common enemy."
The communique also demanded that the press stop "masking" the repression in Oaxaca. The communique ended thusly:
We advise the elites in power that, having blocked all legal and peaceful means of carrying on the fight in our country, they will be the ones responsible for the escalation of the current social and political conflict as well as the revolutionaries' military response.


Please visit the Pale Horse Galleries online store
for art, gifts and collectibles -- all hand made
by Mexican indigenous artists.
Thanks!

TAGS: , , ,

No comments: