Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1999 08:55:00 -0500 (CDT) From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu> Subject: AUT: Zapatistas Await Attack in Morelia (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 12:44:19 -0700 From: irlandesa <irlandesa-AT-compuserve.com> Reply-To: chiapas-l-AT-burn.ucsd.edu To: Multiple recipients of list <chiapas-l-AT-burn.ucsd.edu> Subject: Zapatistas Await Attack in Morelia Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada ______________________ Translated by irlandesa La Jornada Saturday, September 4, 1999. Zapatistas Note Imminent Attack by Military Forces, Aguascalientes of Morelia, In Order to Prevent It, They Block Accesses With Rocks and Logs Juan Balboa, correspondent. Morelia, Municipality of Altamirano, Chiapas September 3. Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) sympathizers tightened security around the Aguascalientes of the Morelia ejido, in response, they said, to the threat of an imminent attack by the Mexican Army and by State Public Security Police against one of the rebel movement's most important political-cultural centers. The highway that leads to the Canada of Altamirano was blocked with logs and rocks in order to prevent the movement of military or police vehicles. At the main entrance to the Aguascalientes, a hundred tojolabal indigenous were keeping alert to every movement by the PRIs. A human wall, made up of women, was organized inside, in order to defend the facilities of one of the five Aguascalientes built by the zapatistas in 1995. Some 500 men from approximately 15 tojolabal communities were keeping guard in the nearby mountains. They are supervising every day the wire fencing that protects the EZLN political cultural center. They are gathered about, impatiently, close to the auditorium, expecting the inevitable to happen "at any moment." "We will defend it even with our lives," Gabriel tells the journalists. He is one of the leaders of the zapatista 17 de Noviembre Autonomous Municipality. Along with three other members of the rebel council, Gabriel warned that any military attempt to take and destroy the Aguascalientes will be met with a response by the zapatista indigenous. "If the Mexican Army comes in, they will meet resistance." The leaders of the zapatista 17 de Noviembre Autonomous Municipality reported that residents have detected military and police movement on the outskirts of the Morelia ejido, and they did not hesitate to point out that the federal and state governments "have been making plans for quite some time." For the second consecutive day, the EZLN sympathizers blocked the Canada highway, and they decided, at a popular assembly, to not allow the building of highways or to allow municipal, state or federal transportation units through. The situation is tense in Morelia. Noise from the helicopters alerts the hundreds of sympathizers who are protecting the zapatista facilities. The house where the Civil Peace Camp was located is abandoned, its occupants were threatened, and they left it in order to avoid an attack. The zapatista 17 de Noviembre municipal offices, located in the town center, were looted by PRI militants. "The attacks have been constant. The PRIs and the government want us to fall into the provocations, and to confront our indigenous brothers, that isn't going to happen. What we are not going to allow is for the army and the state police to destroy the Aguascalientes," they reaffirmed. They accuse Juan Villafuerte - one of the officials of Roberto Albores Guillen's interim government, and identified as an advisor to the Anti-Zapatista Indigenous Revolutionary Movement (MIRA) - of giving money to several PRIs so that they would allow the intervention of the Mexican Army in the Morelia ejido. --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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