“Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away…” I used to think these were just the lyrics to a song. But Mexican authorities — El Presidente Vicente Fox in particular — take flying very seriously, and have just sentenced three poor bastards to ridiculously long terms as punishment for successfully stopping the construction of an airport in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico. The three — Ignacio del Valle, Felipe Álvarez and Héctor Galindo — are leaders of the Frente del Pueblo en Defensa de La Tierra or People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT). The Mexican Government says ‘kidnapping’ is the crime, but not even they believe it (Eduardo Alonso, Atenco leaders get 67 years, El Universal, May 6, 2007). See also ‘Who Can Imprison the Fury of a Volcano?’, a letter from del Valle, May 4, 2007; People’s Front in Defense of the Land communiqué, May 7, 2007:
To the People of Mexico:
Those who have heard the lies of Televisa, TV Azteca, and all the other (dis)information media, we ask that you now know the voice of the people of Atenco:
We must put a stop to this treacherous, lying, corrupt, and killer government. If we, those from below, don’t do it – nobody will.
In the Pasta de Conchos mine, in the state of Coahuila, today are forgotten the bodies of 65 miners, whose deaths were caused by the negligence of the government and the union bosses, and by the inhumane conditions in which they labored, also endured by millions of workers throughout the country to this day.
After this crime, the PANista government of Vicente Fox, together with the PRDista administration in (the state of) Michoacán, led by Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, used their armed police to assassinate at least 2 other miners in (the steel factory) Sicartsa, and wounded many others with bullets, in the Lázaro Cárdenas port, where, for years, hundreds of workers maintain a strong fight for the democratization of their union and for the defense of the rights of the people, marginalized by the interests of false “leaders of the miners”; the union bosses Napoleón Gómez Urrutia and Elías Morales, who fight amongst themselves for the benefit of their own mafias, not for the working miners…
