During the following nights to that June 14, when police were defeated by teachers in Oaxaca centre (Zocalo), every night police forces and paramilitary used to go round the city in a drive-by shooting convoy.
convoy of death video
In addition Barrita was in charge of repressing APPO supporters; his men illegally detained, tortured and killed people. We have to remember that during walking out demonstrations some people got shoot by snipers that turned out to belong to police. Also, in an everyday environment Barrita was the guy who ordered who was to be arrested, kidnapped and killed. For that I don’t feel sorry for him. But do I feel happy? NO, of course not.
And the reason is that from this moment on I believe repression is going to a different level. I support the hypothesis that this is another provocation. That what is at stake is something bigger than a social revolt in Oaxaca. My personal belief is that Oaxaca is acting as a smoke curtain or more precisely as a blood curtain to something bigger. What could it be?
Mexico now is at the very edge of transferring its petroleum to multinational firms. This is an old project, perhaps as old as its nationalisation in the late 1930s. Right after general Cardenas nationalised petroleum there was pressure to give it back to those multinational firms. Every Mexican president after General Cardenas had to make it clear, not to privatise the energy sector. With Calderon, and actually this started back with Salinas in 1988, Zedillo 1994, and Fox 2000, the intention is to sell it.
Of course the discourse has been from light opposition based on nationalism (Salinas, 1988-1994), to prone attitude towards openness by introducing private investments in the sector, little by little, of course, with Zedillo (1994-2000). Then those tricks Zedillo used to privatise were further extended by Fox, with also a huge increment in both corruption practices and the amount of money drained in corrupted practices.
Calderon’s job is only that: to privatise the energy sector. He was appointed president by a handful of powerful people because he was the only one with the right attitude towards doing business. More precisely he has the attitude for multinationals to make profits out of Mexican petroleum. But then how to do it? And here is where hypothesis come.
Hypothesis one: the smooth transition.
It is well-known that Mexican ordinary people is highly biased against selling PEMEX (Mexican petroleum firm). And there are some reasons; being the principal the fact that PEMEX has a special tax status. It means that most of profits go straight to federal budget to support government current spending in education health and anti-poverty programmes. So, asking people to support such an initiative is out of the question.
Instead, it is possible to have some leading opinions in favour or at least not obstructing those plans. That could be done by bribing some leftists threatening others and in general generating the appropriate environment for the necessary changes to go forward.
All in all this should be smoothly as only few notorious persons would feel violence, and hence the vast majority of Mexicans would not even notice. This is assuming that the mass media does its job by creating soup operas and enough distracters so that people keeps busy wondering about why such artist did that, and why those others do that. Of course in case of emergency we have our narcotics gangs whose could display something so people apart from being busy are afraid of going out.
Another hypothesis would point to a tenser scenario
All of the above but with the inconvenient of facing a well organised social movement that opposes privatisation. How to break it down?
The basics are: to carry on with the bribing, threatening and so on and so forth plus the creation of some focal points to diversify attention and/or to prevent a social movement to get stronger.
It would mean to create conflicts in Oaxaca, Atenco, Michoacan, Veracruz, Coahuila, and many more. These conflicts would be noisy enough so that they generate fear in peoples mind. And the very least, those people would be very busy fighting for their survival and that would prevent them to join a national movement.
Finally a bleeding strategy would imply to carry on from the beginning with scenario two. It all the same but with further provocations of violence among civilians so that government could easily justify repression and even assassination without having to worry for future prosecutions like Pinochet or the military argentineans or Echeverria in Mexico.
My personal opinion is that we are entering now in a ‘bleeding strategy’ and that Oaxaca and the assassination of police chiefs is but a provocation to blame on APPO so that Ulises could justify further repression.
Some days ago, Ulises met with the new appointed (illegally as he is not even Mexican) Juan Camilo Mourinho Terrazo or Juan camote. Mexican media rushed to say that it was a talk off by camote to Ulises. I disagree. I very much see that they met to agree in a new turn that could give federal government more space to carry on with the selling.
The first consequence would be this killing. And I think this is so due to the fact that APPO has endured brutal repression and yet they kept their position of being a peaceful movement but Ulises and federal government desperately need APPO to be blame for something. Government and rightish from ‘pan’ (political party) have labelled APPO as violent, killers and so on. All that is propaganda as it is demonstrated that the dead belong to APPO (except this one).
So what is next? Further repression more killings until the sell is completed. I am afraid future for Oaxacans and Mexicans alike is not good. (Comment by wet_ahuizote)
+++++++++this is from noticias de Oaxaca,...
Un comando armado ejecutó esta mañana, en el parque el Tequio, al director de la Policía Auxiliar, Bancaria, Industrial y Comercial (PABIC), Alejandro Barrita Ortiz. En el atentado murieron en el lugar otros dos civiles hasta el momento no identificados; y camino al hospital, víctima de las lesiones, falleció la promotora deportiva, Vicky Galán.
El ataque se registró alrededor de las 7:15 horas, cuando el jefe policíaco realizaba su rutina diaria de ejercicios matutinos en este lugar conocido como el Flechador del Sol, cuando desde la carretera que comunica a la avenida Símbolos Patrios con el boulevard Guadalupe Hinojosa, el grupo de sicarios disparo desde un vehículo en movimiento, según las primeras hipótesis de la Policía Ministerial.
En el lugar, se encontraron esparcidos casquillos de arma 9 milímetros,
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por lo que se presume que en la ejecución fueron utilizadas rifles de asalto AK-47, conocidos como “cuernos de chivo”, según reportes policíacos testigos de los hechos no han querido declarar por temor a represalias, por lo que desconoce las características del vehículos en que viajaban los matones y hacia que rumbo huyeron.El lugar del atentado ya fue acordonado por elementos del Ejército Mexicano, y también se encuentran los directores de la Policía Ministerial, Daniel Camarena Flores; y de la Policía Preventiva Estatal, Pedro Díaz Laredo, para apoyar las primeras investigaciones.
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Cabe mencionar que el pasado viernes la Policía Municipal de Oaxaca de Juárez detuvo a cuatro porros que supuestamente portaban armas de fuego –entre ellos el conocido “Dragón”- que pretendían violentar la elección de director de la Facultad de Derecho, los sedimentes estudiantes habrían sido entregados a Barrita Ortiz, a petición del mismo jefe policíaco, sin embargo momentos después sin explicación alguna fueron liberados, a pesar de contar con varias órdenes de aprehensión.
El ex jefe policíaco también ha sido señalado como uno de los principales represores del movimiento social de 2006 y de encabezar grupos parapolicíacos en contra de los dirigentes de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca, por lo que era investigado por la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación.
Asimismo, era el único jefe policíaco que se encuentra en activo en Oaxaca, de los que participaron en los llamados “convoyes de la muerte”, el resto emigró a otros estados como el ex director de la Policía Preventiva, Manuel Vera Salinas; y de la Policía Ministerial, Manuel Moreno Rivas, mientras que Aristeo López Martínez, recientemente fue relevado del cargo de coordinador de Seguridad Pública Municipal.
