In case you hadn't noticed, there was a large
police/villager confrontation in San Salvador Atenco on 3 May. You may
remember when this town in the State of México, north of the Federal
District (México City), was selected as the site for a new airport to serve
the Capitol City. At that time, the federal government displayed their
propensity for abysmal communications with the people. They simply said that
here is the deal. We will pay so much for your land (initially very low) and
you move out. Period.
The people (mainly poor substance farmers), working poor soil, balked.
Then the Federal administration blinked and offered, by degrees, more money.
This emboldened the villagers but mistrust of government in general for not
living up to promises was strong. The escalation continued. The villagers,
armed with machetes, took over the village hall and took hostages. Finally a
group of police were taken hostage. It also became a lightning rod to
various dissident groups and roadblocks by the villagers started. To break
the siege, the DF blinked big time . . . they gave in and abandoned the
grand plan for a new airport.
Now back to Atenco on 3 May. Local police were in a dispute concerning
the removal eight flower vendors on a street in the village. And knowing how
police generally act in México, they were probably high handed. By the next
day the confrontation led to taking hostages and a brief take over the
village hall. 3,000 state and federal police joined the fray and first
reports told of one dead, and 200 arrested. There were also reports that
during the hostage taking, 6 police were severely beaten and one was rescued
just before he was beaten to death. But findings of a number of human rights
groups including the national human rights commission puts another face on
this episode with possible national consequences. The first comment by the
top cop of the State of México was "These are phony reports of those that
try to make the police look bad". Yeah, just like when then mayor Andres
Manuel López Obrador said of the one million-person march in the DF to
protest the kidnapping plague last year.
The fatality was a 14 year-old boy. The police said that "an explosive
device of some kind" killed him. There was a hole in his head from a
38-caliber bullet. Witnesses saw a policeman shoot the boy, who was on the
ground when shot. 7 actual rapes by police were reported. Numerous women
reported (many with torn dresses) of sexual abuse such as groping. Three of
these were foreign students living in the village. They were promptly
deported (one way to keep them quiet).
There were wide indiscriminate beatings by the police. Some of the
worst beaten were simply taken away and reported as "disappeared". Police
entered many homes and simply beat any one that they found. They looted
homes. There was a news photo of a foreign student taken away to jail and
deportation. Her shirt and pants were torn (from heavy groping) and her face
was covered with blood on one side. She reported that her pants had been
pulled down and her shirt had been pulled up over her head. Her face had
been held down by a police boot into a pool of someone else's blood.
Of the arrested, 144 will be eligible for bail while awaiting trial. 28
are under confinement until trial. 17 others have had the charges dropped.
Police charged or arrested . . . zero, two weeks after the event. Prospects
of any meaningful investigation, nil.
Respected observers in México say that up to 60% of all crime in
México is either by the police or with police complicity. This includes
involvement in kidnapping and outright theft.
This, of course, is not to condone vigilante action. But it does give
an inkling of what the citizenry think of the legal/enforcement system in
México. And every once in a while, when things really get out of hand,
citizens lynch police. Remember the two cops who were set on fire and
incinerated in a town on the South side of the DF last year? The television
crew got there in time to film the whole thing. It took the police a couple
of hours to get there. Were the police afraid of the people there? Probably.
That event was triggered by the belief by townspeople that police were going
to kidnap some children.
It is one thing to legally arrest wrongdoers in a village, but to turn
it into a rape and pillage event is beyond the pale.
Welcome to law and order is in México. This is also what no politician
running for office seems to want to address.
On the other hand, the police should remember that there are more of
"them" than police.
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Richard N. Baldwin T., a HispanicVista.com (http://www.hispanicvista.com/)
contributing columnist, lives in Tlalnepantla, Edo de México. E-mail at:
R1041643422@aol.com
By
Richard N. Baldwin T. /HispanicVista.com