October 2 -- A Sad Day to Remember
2 October protest marches remembering the "1968 massacre, a day on which Mexican soldiers violently repressed a rally organized by the student-led National Strike Commission (CNH) in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco district of Mexico City. The exact number of victims left by the massacre is still unknown, although social organizations estimate that around 300 people were killed."
“43 years after the Tlatelolco massacre, the behavior of the Mexican State has been the constant repression against those who raise their voice for justice and access to a dignified life. The policies of the government are the exploitation and robbery of natural resources to benefit capitalist interests, leaving thousands of peoples and communities impoverished.”
Today I heard a crowd chanting and I ran out to catch a protest march of the students. I walked with them and shot photos and video as we made our way from the big indigenous market to the center of the city. Many of the young adults wore scarves or balaclavas, Zapatista style, to hide their identity.
Here is a rough translation that I did online of a flyer a boy handed to me:
As FNLS, we have been on indefinite sit from the August 25 without any response to our just demands require a halt to the violence of state, halt to the systematic violation of human rights, freedom of political prisoners, not more extrajudicial killings, halt to the entry of transnational corporations, halt the plundering of our natural resources and minerals, for the defense of the free and public education, etc. Denounce all the atrocities committed by the traders associations in turn against the Mexican people, it is a necessity and a duty of all.
It is already fulfils the six years of Felipe Calderon and Juan Sabines, both with a policy of repression, mass and selective. At the national level, with the pretext of the war against organized crime and drug trafficking have been massacred to the worker, more than 100 thousand extrajudicial killings, 40 thousand disappeared detainees by political and social grounds, 100 thousand prisoners and political prisoners, who are in the prisons of maximum and medium security serving a sentence without reasons, crimes that the state has perpetrated by the only decent and just done to defend a livelihood by this, we have been crossed out of criminals.
Your explicit permission as Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría, Calos Salinas, Ernesto Cedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderon, etc. , and now Enrique Peña Nieto in the presidency of Mexico and Manuel Velasco Coello in the governorship of Chiapas have been and will be the representatives of the tireless business interests national and international, always defend the interests of the oligarchy, following in the footsteps of the foot of the letter the mandates of imperialist countries such as the United States, claiming as the sole objective in combat while people organized and unorganized to be mobilised by so much misery that there is to the length and breadth of the country.
***The massacres perpetrated against students on 2 October 1968, in the plaza de las tres Culturas, Tlatelolco, on June 10, 1971, El Bosque, Aguas Blancas, El Charco, Acetal, Wolonchan, Viejo Velasco, Chinkultik, have side the responses to the demands of the Mexican people. The militarization and paramilitarization is seen with increase in Chiapas ***
The paramilitary bands do the dirty work of the government and gangraping disappearing to peasant men and women, the military patrols in the peasant and indigenous communities, in every street in the cities, intimidating, stopping and disappearing to men and women of different ages by their physical appearance, by being poor, humble by his clothes, labeling us as potential offenders, suspects, criminalizing popular protest and poverty. We demand the end to the harassment, imprisonment, the repression and aggression toward our comrades in the different communities that comprise the FNLS, by the military and paramilitary bands organized and financed by Juan Sabines and Felipe Calderon.
Punishment to the works of the violent eviction from our comrades in the Cologne popular Miguel Hidalgo in Ocosingo, by the paramilitary group of the ORCAO members, the aggression of companions of the OCEZ -- House of the people in Venustiano Carranza by the paramilitary group led and financed by Jesus Orantes.
Presentation with life of Edmundo Reyes Amaya, Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sanchez, Francisco Paredes Ruiz and of all the missing people on political and social grounds!
For workers' unity, canpesina, indigenous and popular!
National Front in the Struggle for Socialism (FNLS)