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Insumisión: Refusing Fear, Choosing Resistance

Originally published to It’s Going Down
By Scott Campbell

It’s been several weeks since the last Insumisión. Apologies for the break, but now we’re back at it and as always there’s a lot of ground to cover. Before diving in, I’d like to share that in the next couple of months, an It’s Going Down contributor will be spending a chunk of time in Mexico with the goal of producing lots of original content. If you value the work we do here at IGD and would like to see it continue to grow, please consider contributing to the trip fundraiser or making a donation in general. We also recently published a call for translators to help put out even more content from Mexico. If you’re interested, get in touch! And now let’s take a look at the latest from Mexico…

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Update and Letters from Anarchist Prisoners on Hunger Strike in Mexico

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Mexico: Anarchist Prisoners End Hunger Strike but Remain Fasting
From Anarchist Black Cross – Mexico
Translated by Scott Campbell

Day 15 of the anarchist prisoners’ hunger strike.

After two weeks on hunger strike, due to the health of some and in order to avoid serious complications, anarchist prisoners Fernando Bárcenas, Luis Fernando Sotelo and Abraham Cortés, as well as activist Jesse Montaño, have decided to continue their collective struggle inside the prison with indefinite fasts and have ended the hunger strike.

We are reposting the text signed by Fernando Bárcenas.

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Combative October 2: On the Institutionalization and Autonomy of Social Protest

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Originally posted to It’s Going Down
From Radio Zapote
Translated by Scott Campbell

Forty-eight years after the Tlatelolco massacre we continue demanding justice for the murdered, disappeared, persecuted, tortured, defamed, and imprisoned, as even though the killers and masterminds have not been tried and punished, those compañeros who fell in the militant struggle remain present in the popular and social struggles today as part of our memory, solidarity, guidance, dignity, strength, inspiration, rage and courage. Today, no one doubts that IT WAS THE MEXICAN STATE who planned and carried out that mass murder, just as it did with the disappearance of 43 teaching college students on September 26, 2014, as from Tlatelolco to Ayotzinapa one can trace a historical continuity that affirms the totalitarian character of the state that today we can characterize as “narco and terrorist.”

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Mexico: Anarchist Prisoners on Hunger Strike in Solidarity with US Prison Strike

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From Noticias de Abajo and Anarchist Black Cross – Mexico
Translated by Scott Campbell

During a press conference on September 28, anarchist prisoners announced the beginning of an indefinite hunger strike. They are compañeros Fernando Bárcenas and Abraham Cortés, prisoners in North Prison, Luis Fernando Sotelo, prisoner in South Prison in Mexico City, and Miguel Peralta, prisoner in Cuicatlán Prison in Oaxaca. The strike is in rejection of the 33 year and five month sentence given to Luis Fernando Sotelo, to mark three years since the arrest of compañero Abraham Cortés on October 2, 2013, and in solidarity with the prison strike underway in the United States against the exploitation of prisoners’ labor and in support of the revolts against the killings of African-Americans by police in the U.S.

The three compas in Mexico City have gone on hunger strike, while Miguel will go on fasts.

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Insumisión: It Was the State

Originally posted to It’s Going Down
September 29, 2016
By Scott Campbell

Several significant events have unfolded during the past couple weeks in Mexico, from an end the teachers’ strike to the commemoration of major key dates for the resistance. As ever, the repression and impunity with which the Mexican state operates has continued unabated. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump right in.

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Protests in Chilpancingo, Guerrero on September 25.

Protests in Chilpancingo, Guerrero on September 25.

On September 26, 2014, students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero were traveling to Mexico City to participate in the annual mobilization marking the October 2, 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. They were intercepted by state forces in Iguala, Guerrero, where police opened fire, killing six – three students and three passersby. Forty-three other students were disappeared and to this day their location and fate remain unknown.

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Mexico: Let the Storm Begin! Luis Fernando Sotelo Sentenced to 33 Years

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Originally posted to It’s Going Down
From Anarchist Black Cross – Mexico
Translated by Scott Campbell

On Tuesday, September 20, after one year and nine months of proceedings, our compañero Luis Fernando Sotelo Zambrano was given a sentence of 33 years and five months in prison and a fine of 519,815.25 pesos, for the crimes of attacks on public thoroughfares, first-degree attacks on public order, and first-degree destruction of private property.

This sentence is in line with the Mexican state’s policies of repression and criminalization, starting with Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, who sought to condemn our compañero without any evidence and to place a ridiculous and disproportionate sentence on him.

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Insumisión: Cracks in the Resistance as the Teachers’ Strike Wanes

Music on the highway blockade in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca.

Music on the highway blockade in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca.

Originally posted to It’s Going Down
By Scott Campbell

As the teachers’ strike in Mexico continued into the start of the school year, the last Insumisión column noted the tense situation developing, particularly in Oaxaca, with the break down of negotiations between the teachers union and the government and the arrival of hundreds of more federal forces to the state. While there was a show of force by the Oaxaca state government before dawn on Sunday, September 11, the feared widespread repression did not occur. Instead, the struggle against the neoliberal educational reform and structural reforms in general has lost some of its consistency and coherency as various state sections of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) take different approaches following the start of the school year.

Initially, the CNTE seemed to be holding to its stance that the strike would continue until the educational reform was repealed. When classes were to start on August 22, teachers in Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán and parts of Mexico City remained on strike. Instead of classrooms opening, mass marches and blockades inaugurated the school year in Chiapas and Oaxaca. Teachers installed 25 highway blockades in Oaxaca that they held for 48 hours, except in Nochixtlán, which lasted for four days. In Chiapas, teachers blockaded four entry points into the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez for two days, not allowing trucks belonging to transnational corporations to pass.

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Mexico: Radio Zapote Condemns Government Theft of its Equipment

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Originally published on It’s Going Down
From Radio Zapote
September 2, 2016
Translated by Scott Campbell

On Thursday, August 18 of this year, at 11am, Alejo Reyes Ramírez, Ricardo Joaquín Ruiz, Daniel Rodríguez Agonizantes, Mario Antonio Esquivel Medina, Benjamín Quintero Ramos, José Meza Acosta, Adunay Vega Estrada, and Raúl Leonel Muhia Arzaluzlos, who identified themselves as inspectors from the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT); seized the equipment of Radio Zapote, a community, popular, and student radio station.

The officials went to the site where the transmission equipment was located. There they handed to the compañero who received them a document dated August 17, 2016, which indicated that the inspectors were charged with inspecting/checking the broadcast equipment transmitting on the 102.1 MHz frequency. In addition, they intimidated the compañero by threatening to take away his home if he didn’t let them in. Faced with this threat, the compañero let the inspectors in. The equipment removed by the federal inspectors were: a low-power frequency modulation transmitter, a circularly polarized antenna, and a transmission line (RG8 coaxial cable).

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Insumisión: Amidst the Barricades, Building a Movement for the Long Run

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Fists raised at the Teachers-Peoples Guelaguetza as the names of the fallen from Nochixtlán are read.

Originally posted to It’s Going Down
By Scott Campbell

Next week, teachers in Mexico belonging to the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) will mark three months on strike. Three months without pay, of sleeping in encampments far from home, of funerals, arrests, disappearances, beatings, fear, uncertainty, and endless hours of marching. Yet the union has remained steadfast in its demand for the repeal of the educational reform and by doing so has created space for a much larger movement to emerge alongside it. What appeared at first as solidarity is increasingly moving toward coherent unity, as the people see their demands reflected in those of the teachers and vice versa. This mutual identification is rooted in an understanding that the forces responsible for creating the innumerable injustices occurring in Mexico can be traced back to neoliberal capitalism as deployed by a corrupt narcostate operating with impunity.

While events in Mexico haven’t been making headlines in the past couple of weeks, the struggle is still on. Along with mobilizing effective displays of its vitality, the movement has been using the decline in repression after the Nochixtlán massacre and the ongoing negotiations with the government to build sturdier foundations for the inevitable confrontations that lie ahead – be they during this phase of resistance or ones that will follow.

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Members of Okupa Che Beaten, Hospitalized, and Arrested

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AUGUST 2 UPDATE: The Anarchist Black Cross – Mexico reports their lawyer says that the compas will be released shortly as they were not charged within the 48 hour time frame required. However, this does not mean that the legal process is over, as they have 15 days to pay the damages UNAM claims to have suffered (approximately 40,000 pesos). If it is not paid, the compas could be charged. As such, it is important to continue raising funds to pay this amount. For more information, write to cna.mex@gmail.com.

From Okupa Che
Translated by Scott Campbell

To our fellow compañerxs, to those in the struggle, to the independent media and the community in general:

On Sunday, July 31, at midday, four compañeros who are members of Okupa Che were near the university pool when they were surrounded by National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Security, who in an excessive operation began to attack them.

For no apparent reason other than to terrify them, nearly all the members of this repressive force began to beat them, throwing some compañerxs on the ground and jumping on their bodies and skulls, along with sexually assaulting compañera Andrea. At the first call for help, two other compañerxs went to see what was happening and immediately began receiving the same treatment from UNAM Security. The end result was that our compañerxs received several blows to their bodies and faces and at least two of them have broken bones and serious injuries.

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