Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Ciudad Juárez


Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos en Ciudad Juárez
Luis Hernández Navarro
C
iudad Juárez es el epicentro del temblor de horror que sacude México; también lo es de la resistencia ciudadana a la insensata guerra contra las drogas de Felipe Calderón. Temor y esperanza, amnesia y memoria, parálisis y acción atraviesan y forman parte de la vida cotidiana de los habitantes de Juaritos.
Mujeres desaparecidas, defensores de derechos humanos asesinados, jóvenes detenidos arbitrariamente por la policía y el Ejército, trabajadores de la maquila despedidos por reclamar condiciones de trabajo humanas son el pan nuestro de cada día en la ciudad. También lo son los reclamos enérgicos de las madres de víctimas, la organización para la defensa de los intereses, la documentación valiente de las tropelías y los abusos de la autoridad.
Ciudad Juárez ejemplifica los males del libre comercio salvaje que azotan a todo el país. El modelo de desarrollo maquilador, depredador de recursos humanos y ambientales, ha florecido allí sin políticas de amortiguamiento social. La destrucción del medio ambiente es proverbial, como lo es la descomposición del tejido social.
Un ejército de niños y jóvenes, muchos de ellos hijos de madres solteras que laboran de obreras de la planta de ensamble, crecen en viviendas sin equipamiento urbano suficiente y sin lugares para recreación, sin más futuro que sobrevivir integrándose a las bandas. Urbe fronteriza, es zona de paso de mano de obra indocumentada y de estupefacientes. La producción maicera del estado y las familias que viven de ella, están cercadas por las importaciones desleales del cereal estadunidense. En una historia de horror sin fin, más de 300 mujeres han sido asesinadas, después de ser secuestradas, torturadas, violadas y mutiladas.
Pero en Juaritos está sembrada también la semilla de la indignación. Los jóvenes se niegan a que el miedo paralice sus vidas. Toman las calles para protestar y para divertirse. Los familiares de las víctimas nombran a sus muertos y exigen justicia. En amplias capas de la sociedad se demanda poner fin a la militarización del país.
El último episodio de esa resistencia se celebrará este 27, 28 y 29 de mayo. Durante esos días se efectuará en Juárez la audiencia inicial del Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos (TPP), sección México, que lleva por título Libre comercio, violencia, impunidad y derechos de los pueblos, 2011-2014. Aunque en la reunión se documentará y analizará lo que sucede en todo el país, los juarenses son los anfitriones del acto.
Asistirán delegados de todo México. Una parte de ellos llegará hasta aquella ciudad como parte de una caravana que partirá de la ciudad de México el 24 de mayo. Durante el trayecto, a bordo de varios camiones, los delegados participarán en debates y reuniones en Atenco, Tlaxcala, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Saltillo y Chihuahua, para discutir la problemática que se abordará en Juárez.
En la urbe fronteriza, seis jurados escucharán denuncias de las siete audiencias temáticas que conforman el TPP: 1) guerra sucia como violencia, impunidad y falta de acceso a la justicia; 2) migración, refugio y desplazamiento forzado; 3) feminicidiosy violencia de género; 4) violencia contra los trabajadores; 5) violencia contra el maíz, la soberanía alimentaria y a autonomía, y 7) desinformación, censura y violencia contra los comunicadores.
Los jurados internacionales que analizarán las denuncias, muchos de ellos destacados juristas, provienen de países como Francia, Brasil, España, Australia y Argentina, y tienen una larga historia en la labor de documentar arbitrariedades de los estados. Es el caso de la francesa Mireille Fanon Mendes France, hija del célebre siquiatra y revolucionario Franz Fanon, que es presidente de la Fondation Frantz Fanon, integrante de la International Association of Democratic Lawyers, y ha sido nombrada miembro del Grupo de trabajo de expertos sobre afrodescendientes de Naciones Unidas. Y de Gill Boheringer, que fue decano de la Macquarie Law School de la Macquarie University de Sydney, Australia, director del Center for the Critical and Historical Study of the Common Law, y miembro del comité editorial de la Alternative Law Journal (Australia) y del Editorial Boards of theAustralian Journal of Law and Society.
Algunos de los jurados tienen larga trayectoria como defensores de derechos humanos. Por ejemplo, la argentina Nora Cortiñas es titular de la cátedra de poder económico y derechos humanos y doctora honoris causa por la Universidad Libre de Bruselas, Bélgica, y de la Universidad de Salta, por su trayectoria en defensa de los derechos económicos y sociales de la población argentina. También el de su paisano, el abogado Alejandro Teitelbaum, representante desde 1985 hasta 2006 ante los organismos de las Naciones Unidas con sede en Ginebra, de la Federación Internacional de Derechos Humanos y de la Asociación Americana de Juristas.
Aunque no estará presente en esta ocasión en Juárez, como jurado del TPP participa también un mexicano excepcional: Luis Villoro. Con mucho uno de los pensadores críticos más brillantes y comprometidos del país, el académico mexicano es filósofo, investigador y catedrático, y ha sido diplomático.
Ellos, junto al brasileño Eder Ferreira, al español Antoni Pigrau Sol y la argentina Graciela Daleo, escucharán los horrores que cotidianamente se viven en Ciudad Juárez y en el resto del país, que han conducido al Estado mexicano a ser sentado en el banquillo de los acusados de este tribunal ético.
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Monday, May 7, 2012


Stand for Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Renounce the 'Doctrine of Discovery'

Posted: 05/06/2012 6:49 pm
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When the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues convenes on May 7th in New York, native peoples around the world will turn their eyes to the most important effort to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery, a 15th century Papal bull that has been exploited for five centuries to deny the human rights of hundreds of millions of people who continue to be subject to its power.
The Doctrine got its first expression in 1452, when pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull to Portuguese King Alfonso V authorizing the King to "invade, capture, vanquish and subdue ... all Saracens and pagans, and other enemies of Christ ... to reduce such persons to perpetual slavery" and further "to take away all their possessions and property." This bull was issued as Portuguese ships began colonizing areas of Africa occupied by millions of indigenous non-Christian peoples.
Forty years later, soon after Christopher Columbus' voyage across the Atlantic ignited an imperialist rush by European powers to control the so-called New World, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Cetera, a new Papal bull that granted those European monarchs the right to claim sovereignty over these newly "discovered" lands occupied by non-Christian "barbarous nations." Those non-Christians were what we now call American Indians, including my ancestors in the Onondaga Nation, part of the confederacy of Indian nations we call Haudenosaunee, and Americans and Canadians call the Iroquois.
It didn't matter to the Christian invaders that we had lived here for millennia, or that 500 years earlier, our forebearers ended generations of war by creating a peaceful confederacy that became a model for the United States government. All that mattered was that we -- along with hundreds of millions of other indigenous peoples living in non-Christian lands across the globe -- were living on land that the conquerors, and the colonists that followed, wanted for their own.
It has been a long path to get the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to confront the racist underpinnings of the Doctrine of Discovery, in part because the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican's representative to the UN, has claimed it is ancient history and no longer relevant.
But as recently as 2005, the United States Supreme Court, relying on a series of Indian law cases going back to 1823, specifically cited the Doctrine in its decision denying the right of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York to restore its right of sovereignty over land it owned within the footprint of territory set aside for the Nation under treaties dating back to the 18th century.
"Under the Doctrine of Discovery ... fee title to the land occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign -- first the discovering European nation and later the original States and the United States," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the 2005 decision.
It is glaring who is left out of that formulation -- the people who lived her for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived.
In fact, the Doctrine of Discovery is the basis for all Indian land law in this country, and it has imposed similar burdens on indigenous peoples all over the world -- in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in Africa, in Latin America and in the island nations of the Caribbean and Oceania. More than 500 million indigenous peoples around the globe live today with the effects of the Doctrine's oppressive racism.
We are encouraged that people of faith in this country and around the world have joined in the call for the Catholic Church to formally renounce the Doctrine to help heal the grievous injuries that its promulgation has released. Most recently, the World Council of Churches, at is meeting this past February in Switzerland, denounced the Doctrine "as fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and as a violation of the inherent human rights that all individuals and peoples have received from God." The World Council went on to urge governments "to dismantle the legal structures and policies based on the Doctrine of Discovery and dominance, so as to empower and enable Indigenous Peoples to identify their own aspirations and issues of concern."
This is not ancient history to Indians in this country, or to indigenous peoples around the world. It is a living insult to our rights as citizens of the world and must be renounced. We are on the Earth to heal the world. This wound must be healed.

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Saturday, May 5, 2012


La Mordida

How the Supreme Court Lost Its Moral Authority With Latinos

by RODOLFO ACUÑA
Direct forms of political control are easy to figure out. For a time, laws and police agencies can keep things together. However, most institutions and societies depend on social control to deceive people into thinking that they live in a democracy. They use processes that socialize them into believing that those in control have moral authority.
Belief systems exert a greater control on behavior than laws. For example, religion maintains control through laws. Nevertheless, institutions such as the Catholic Church maintain control more through their moral authority than their laws. A society does not stay together for a long period of time through the use of coercive powers alone.
Historical events such as the Black Plague in the first part of the 14thCentury shook the Church’s moral authority and two centuries later the Protestant Revolt ended the hegemony of Catholicism in Europe. No one can predict what effect the Church’s pedophile scandal will have. One thing for sure is that the scandal has reduced the moral authority of the Church Fathers and their interpretation of what god wants.
In the similar vein, government has suffered a loss of moral authority. This is good and bad; one thing is for sure it is leading to a divided society. Although the number of southern states passing anti-immigrant laws has grown to over a half dozen and they are flushed with emotion, it must be remembered that California and New York alone dwarf the population numbers and wealth of the red states.
Much has been written about the growth of the Latino population and its voting power. But truth be told, Latinos are growing increasingly disaffected with government and most are cynical about its fairness.
The institution that has taken the hardest hit in the past dozen years is the Supreme Court.
To put things in perspective: when I was growing up we understood that Mexico had problems, which was obvious because we were here. My relatives talked about the political and moral corruption of the Mexican government and uttered sighs of relief that we lived in the United States.
There was racism and inequality. Yet in comparison to what was happening in Mexico or what we thought was happening there, U.S. institutions appeared to be free of corruption. This was true as long as we did not read the newspapers – the radio did not carry that kind of news.
Even when it came to the sex lives of elected officials, we believed that the Mexicans were the only ones who cheated on their wives.
That is not true today. The lives of our elected officials are soap operas. The affairs of past Mexican presidents are boring in comparison to the Anglo-American versions.
My grandfather, more cynical than the rest of the family, would often correct us about our misconceptions. He would say that the gringos always did things on a grander scale. They did not take small bribes. It was only the public officials at the bottom who were regulated.
What we did not know was that what those on the top stole affected us; we just did not see it. We lived in another universe.
Thanks to cable news or better still, cable opinion, we know corruption is ubiquitous – it is at the federal, state and local levels. So much so that it seems as if all elected officials are corrupt. I would not call them whores because I don’t want to give the word a bad name.
You look at the Republican and a majority of the Democrats in Congress and they are bought – pure and simple. The entire state of Arizona has been purchased. Lady Justice is dead.
Talking to my students in general they are cynical about the courts. It was once evident that justice depended on the size of your wallet. The rich could hire rich attorneys and get away with murder. The poor especially if they were minorities were left at the whim of the court.
The Supreme Court is currently listening to arguments in Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation. If the Court rules for Arizona the decision will give legs to every racist legislator in the nation who will repeat that it (racism) is the law of the land.
They can say whatever they want but that does not make it right or less corrupt. Only the most naive and ill-informed person would make the case that Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and John Roberts are not corrupt. Well documented articles prove the same. Thomas and Scalia have family members who are feeding at the corporate trough.
I do not want to call these justices partisan – it would be giving partisanship a bad name.
Frankly, we are not going to be able to do much about Gore v. Bush (2000) that gave George W. the presidency. At the time we shrugged our shoulders and the Democrats rolled over. In Citizens United (2010), the Court delivered the presidency to corporate interests.
Now healthcare will probably be dismantled and the anti-immigrant legislation will be upheld. Racism will be legal in the United States.
When and if this happens the moral authority of the Court will be irreparable. The Supreme Court might as well be honest and set up shop on K Street.
I don’t want to sound cynical but the worst thing that could happen to you when I was growing up was que te vieran la cara de pendejo(literally meaning that they took you for a fool or a punk).
Six degrees of separation is the notion that everyone on earth is on average approximately six steps away from any other person. If this is so, we should accept that only one degree separates our justices from the Mexican border guard and his grubby mordida (kickback).
My grandfather was right – the border guard took five pesos. Our elected officials are higher paid (escorts). Who does more damage to democracy?
RODOLFO ACUÑA, a professor emeritus at California State University Northridge, has published 20 books and over 200 public and scholarly articles. He is the founding chair of the first Chicano Studies Dept which today offers 166 sections per semester in Chicano Studies. His history book Occupied America has been banned in Arizona. In solidarity with Mexican Americans in Tucson, he has organized fundraisers and support groups to ground zero and written over two dozen articles exposing efforts there to nullify the U.S. Constitution. 
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Tuesday, May 1, 2012




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Albert R. Parsons





The life of Lucy Parsons and the struggles for peace and justice she engaged provide remarkable insight about the history of the American labor movement and the anarchist struggles of the time. Born in Texas, 1853, probably as a slave, Lucy Parsons was an African-, Native- and Mexican-American anarchist labor activist who fought against the injustices of poverty, racism, capitalism and the state her entire life. After moving to Chicago with her husband, Albert, in 1873, she began organizing workers and led thousands of them out on strike protesting poor working conditions, long hours and abuses of capitalism. After Albert, along with seven other anarchists, were eventually imprisoned or hung by the state for their beliefs in anarchism, Lucy Parsons achieved international fame in their defense and as a powerful orator and activist in her own right. The impact of Lucy Parsons on the history of the American anarchist and labor movements has served as an inspiration spanning now three centuries of social movements.
While most people remember Lucy Parsons in relation to the events surrounding her husband, Albert Parsons, and their comrades' executions (known as the Haymarket affair), Lucy's own legacy and passions have a long and courageous life history all their own. Lucy was known for her writings, her courage as a dissident woman of color, her unbending commitment to social justice, and, most of all, her powerful, fiery public speeches. She led tens of thousands of workers into the streets in mass protests, drew enormous crowds wherever she spoke and was considered a dangerous, explosive and robust threat to authorities across the United States. For over 30 years her lectures were shut down by the police, often arresting her before she ever reached the podium. Hearing Lucy speak at all was a rare opportunity that sparked a passion for rebellion in working and poor people from coast to coast. The Chicago police labeled Lucy Parsons "more dangerous than a thousand rioters."
Lucy made her living as a dress maker, spending the remainder of her time raising her 2 children and constantly working on behalf of a plethora of social justice causes. Much of her time was devoted to free speech fights by default, as her own ability to speak, like her executed husband, was always at stake. She also dedicated herself to the struggles of African-Americans, as in the case of the Scottsboro Eight in Alabama, and wrote articles condemning lynchings in the south. As a woman of color standing up during times of extreme racism and gender oppression, she earned the mark of a prominent feminist and early civil rights pioneer. Her later work included defense of other anarchists and labor activists on trial for false charges, such as Sacco and Vanzetti and Tom Mooney and Warren Billings. Lucy spent her later years working with the International Labor Defense (a broad-based, but communist-founded, class war prisoners' support group, which has led to a historic fallacy that Lucy was a member of the Communist Party - she was not) and speaking at May Day events and rallies.
Lucy's biggest commitment as an activist was always with the anarchist labor movement, as she spent most of her energy engaging in anarcho-syndicalist struggles against capitalism and employers. Her outlook was grounded firmly in class analysis, and believed that issues such as racism were primarily the product of class inequalities. Alongside militant anarchist labor activists of the day she believed superficial divisions among workers must be put aside so that workers around the world could join together, strike and overthrow their corporate, and thus government, masters. Lucy was a member of the Knights of Labor, one of the first serious labor federations in the country, and a founding member of the International Working People's Association, an early anarcho-syndicalist labor organization. In 1905 she helped found the Industrial Workers of the World, which advanced some of the basic ideas of the IWPA, expanded them and led a wave of massive strikes and labor actions for decades.
Lucy Parsons' commitment to her causes, her fame surrounding the Haymarket affair, and her powerful orations had an enormous influence in world history in general and US labor history in particular. While today she is hardly remembered and ignored by conventional histories of the United States, the legacy of her struggles and her influence within these movements have left a trail of inspiration and passion that merits further attention by all those interested in human freedom, equality and social justice.

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