Perspective on what the Wealthy Ruling Elite does in Mexico

[FreakinDJ]

The Wealthy Ruling Elite do a pretty good job of suppressing the Working Peasant Class of that country and certainly doesn't need any help from the US

Face to Face With the Military in Chiapas, Mexico

Over the New Year's holiday, my spouse and I traveled to Chiapas in southern Mexico to help build a school, to learn more about what is happening in that country, and to take a stance for peace and justice. We found ourselves, however, in a politically tense and militarized situation which threatened to explode at any moment. For me, this experience brought back strong memories of being 23 years old and driving over landmined roads in northern Nicaragua singing Dire Straits songs to myself to keep from going loopy. This is the story of what happened to us.

On December 22, 1997, paramilitary troops massacred 45 Tzotzil-Maya Indians in Acteal, Chenalhó, in the same general area where we would be traveling. Several dozen gunmen affiliated with and supported by the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (the PRI) spent over four hours hunting down and killing men, women, and children. In total, 16 children and 21 women were killed, 25 were seriously injured, and about a dozen were disappeared. Survivors reported that the gunmen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, listened for crying babies in the brush, hunted them down, and killed entire families.

On December 30, a week after the massacre at Acteal, we traveled to the community of Polhó where the survivors of the massacre were gathered in refugee camps. We delivered humanitarian aid and spent hours listening to testimonies about the massacre and other human rights abuses. The stories were all depressingly similar. Paramilitary forces supported by the ruling Mexican government party (the PRI) came in and shot, raped, and killed sons, daughters, mothers, and sisters. It gave me a sense of deja vu listening to the stories of survivors describing the horrors of contra attacks in Nicaragua in the 1980s

We returned to where the army troops were stationed. We stood in a silent vigil demanding that the troops withdraw from the area. The air was tense as a soldier dropped the tailgate on their truck. What was their plan? Were they going to arrest us and throw us on the truck? Were they going to shoot us and throw our dead bodies in the truck? We held our ground. The truck rolled backwards toward our line. The soldiers slowly climbed into the truck and drove away. We cheered! We had gone face to face with the Mexican army and won! The next day the news media reported this event as an appropriate civilian response to a highly charged and militarized situation.

http://www.yachana.org/reports/chiapas/postam.html