The community of El Charco marches in commemoration of the massacre [Source: CNDH “Tlachinollan”]
June 6 and 7 marked the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the massacre at El Charco, Guerrero, an indigenous mixteca community within the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres.On June 7, 1998, 11 people were killed while sleeping in the local school, Caritino Maldonado alter having participated in a meeting on community projects. Among those killed was a student from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México) and, according to the Revolutionary Insurgent People’s Army (ERPI, Ejército Revolucionario del Publo Insurgente), 4 were members of their organization.
In 1999, the survivors of the massacre were interviewed by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the United Nations, Asma Jahangir, who later in her report stated, “the Special Rapporteur does not have the conditions to determine all of the details of the incident.”
Currently the community is demanding that the ex-president Ernesto Zedillo, the ex-governor (and current senator) Ángel Aguirre Rivero and General Juan Alfredo Oropeza Garnica (who has also been identified as one of the principle repressors in Oaxaca against the APPO, according to Ericka Zamora Prado, a UNAMstudent and survivor of the massacre) be brought to justice.
Within the framework of the anniversary, the Organization of the Indigenous Me Phaa People (OPIM, Organización del Pueblo Indígena Me Phaa) demanded reparations for the 42 orphans of the massacre, the release of political prisoners and a cease to the militarization of the state. Efrén Cortés, another survivor of the massacre, remarked that the state of Guerrero “has been converted into a laboratory of low intensity warfare against indigenous peoples…” and that currently there are 15 thousand soldiers in the Montaña and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero.
The anniversary began on the night of June 6 with an offering for those killed and a candlelight vigil in the school where the massacre took place.Saturday included a march to the Caritino Maldonado school which was made up of survivors, family members, widows, orphans and other members of the community.They carried with them a banner which read: “10 years after the massacre we are building the power of the people and resisting militarization.”
For more information:
Guerrero: Important Dates (SIPAZ, 09/06/2008)
Guerrero: A Mosaic of Hope on a Wall of Impunity (SIPAZ, 06/2005)
For more information in Spanish:
Admite el ERPI que en El Charco murieron un líder y tres milicianos (La Jornada, 07/06/2008)
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[…] because of reported human rights abuses committed by the military. In 1998 Mexican soldiers massacred 11 people in a schoolhouse in the indigenous community of Charco near Aytula, in search of members of the […]