THE CAPTURE OF MIRELES SHOWS THAT THE GOVERNMENT SEEKS CONTROL OF THE NARCO: SICILIA

José Manuel Mireles (left) and Javier Sicilia (right)

[The disaster that Michoacán experiences is because the government has not even investigated punishing the authorities that are in collusion with organized crime, the poet Javier Sicilia (right) points out. In left image on the left, José Manuel Mireles during his visit to the Autonomous University of Mexico City, last May 29. Photo: María Meléndrez Parada and María Luisa Severiano]

By: Rubicela Morelos Cruz y Ulises Gutiérrez Ruelas, Correspondents

The arrest of José Manuel Mireles, ex spokesperson of the Michoacán self-defense groups (autodefensas), demonstrates that the federal government the PRI member Enrique Peña Nieto heads, is on the side of the criminals and that the only thing that it seeks with the alleged combat against organized crime “is to harmonize and again control the drug trafficking networks” in the country, asserted Javier Sicilia, leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity.

At the same time, he called on intellectuals and organizations to demand his liberation, and demanded the removal of Alfredo Castillo, federal commissioner for the peace and development of Michoacán, “who has betrayed the citizens.”

He asserted that: “the disaster that Michoacán lives” is because the federal government has not even investigated punishing the authorities that are in collusion with organized crime; as of now it has not arrested La Tuta, leader of Los caballeros templarios, nor has it investigated ex governor Fausto Vallejo.

“Castillo has lied, has betrayed and has played against the citizens of that state, and is no longer functioning; it seems that he is on the criminals’ side. If Peña Nieto is really working for the people he ought to remove him (Castillo) and do deep investigations, starting with Vallejo.

In Cuernavaca, Morelos, Sicilia called on the intellectual class, organizations and the country’s social strugglers to jointly demand the liberation of Mireles, because “the only crime that he has committed, just like other social strugglers, has been to demonstrate against the State’s inefficiencies and corruptions.” He reiterated that the government criminalizes Mireles and treats him as a criminal, but in the future it can be any other social struggler or any Mexican that criticizes corruption.

Michoacán, he said, represents what the whole country is suffering: insecurity, violence and the operation of drug cartels with or without support from the authorities, because of which he requested coherence from the federal government, concretely the Attorney General of the Republic. “One cannot put Pancho Villa in prison and leave Vallejo without facing charges.”

Meanwhile, in Hermosillo, Sonora, Tomás Rojo Valencia, spokesperson for members of the Yaqui tribe that oppose the operation of the Independencia Aqueduct, visited Hermosillo to report on the conditions of Mireles’ seclusion in Federal Prison Number 11 (Cefereso), on the outskirts of the Sonoran capital.

He said that as social strugglers, many members of the Yaqui tribe identify with him (Mireles), because he confronts an attack from the spheres of power similar to   what they have confronted for years: “a constant struggle to defend the rights of the population.”

He said that after gathering information about the case of the leader of the autodefensas, he will take the data to the government organs of the Yaqui people, and in a few days it will announce the position of that ethnicity about the criminal case that he confronts, for the alleged possession of weapons for the exclusive use of the Army.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Translation: Chiapas Support Committee

Thursday, July 3, 2014

En español: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2014/07/03/politica/004n1pol

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