B. DEATH SQUADS AND POLITICAL POLARIZATION IN MEXICO

Human rights violations in Chiapas

LaRouchian meddling in Chiapas--news reports

LaRouchian propaganda re Chiapas, 1994

LaRouchian propaganda re Chiapas, 1995-2001

The LaRouchians in national Mexican politics: smear artists and dirty tricksters

What LaRouche really thinks about Mexico and Mexicans

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN CHIAPAS

"Ten years after Acteal, Mexico's 'mal gobierno' is trying to change the story--as new massacres impend," by John Ross, The Undercurrent (Fresno, Cal.), Dec. 17, 2007. "The shooters advanced downhill, firing their weapons as they pushed forward....At the bottom of the hill, the dead were spread around a wood plank chapel when they had been fasting and praying....Most were women, their dead children still clinging to them. The shooters continued down the ravine, taking their time, killing their victims slowly, slicing them open with machetes. Four of the women were pregnant. Marcela Capote, the wife of the catechist, was nearly at full term and they hacked open her womb and yanked out the baby inside and dashed its skull against the rocks."

"Acteal: Between Mourning and Struggle" (Executive Summary), December 1998. Report of the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Center (San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico) on the Dec. 22, 1997 massacre at Acteal. Lays blame at door of the government and criticizes its attempts to institute a coverup. Describes the psychological impact of this horrific event on the families of those killed and the social impact on the thousands who fled in fear from the surrounding communities and ended up in refugee camps.

The Mexican Army's October 1994 plan for crushing the Zapatistas, Proceso (Jan. 4, 1998). Journalist Darrin Wood analyses the strategy produced by Gen. Antonio Riviello Bazan, then Secretary of National Defense, and Gen. Jose Ruben Rivas Pena to save Mexico's "sovereignty" from the threat of indigenous peoples who supposedly have a "genetic" tendency to make trouble and thus wish to dismember Mexico and create a new Central American state of their own. (Actually, the EZLN has advocated local autonomy, not a separate nation.) The plan directs the Army to (a) support civilian paramilitary groups and (b) displace indigenous people from their homes and farms to order to deprive the EZLN of a support base. (Both of these schemes would in fact be carried out.) There are a number of elements in the thinking underlying this plan--including the laying of heavy blame on the local Catholic diocese and foreign anthropologists, and the fear that foreign powers might interfere to destroy the nation--that appear remarkably similar to passages in EIR's The Plot to Annihilate the Armed Forces and the Nations of Ibero-America. The EIR book was completed in 1993 and thus includes no mention of any EZLN threat, although EIR would become obsessed with the EZLN as soon as the uprising occurred in January 1994 (see below). And it's unlikely that the book reflects a pre-existing Mexican military policy (the uprising caught the Mexican Army by surprise and Mexican intelligence units had very little information about the enemy--indeed, didn't even have analysts who could speak the tribal languages--according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reports at the time). Thus I think it is likely the LaRouchian book (which the Mexican military reprinted in an edition of their own), as well as other EIR propaganda that focussed specifically on the EZLN and the Catholic church in Chiapas, had some degree of influence on the Mexican government's murderous strategy concocted in the midst of the church-led peace talks--talks that the government would later sabotage.

LAROUCHIAN MEDDLING IN CHIAPAS - NEWS REPORTS

English translation of Darrin Wood's "Lyndon LaRouche and the Chiapas paramilitaries" (Nuevo Amanecer Press report, 1996). Wood, who earlier worked on the story of LaRouche's relationship to Spain's GAL death squads, here explores how LaRouchian activities helped to encourage a death-squad mentality in Chiapas in the wake of the 1994 Zapatista uprising. Introduction and footnotes by Dennis King update this article and provide in-depth background for those unfamiliar with recent Mexican/Latin American politics. (Click here for the original Spanish language version.)

"LaRouche is behind attacks on Ruiz," Bill Coleman, National Catholic Reporter (June 3, 1994). Describes LaRouchian propaganda against Bishop Samuel Ruiz and the Chiapas peace process.

"Threats target Jesuits, Ruiz as Mexican fight for power moves to polls," Patty Coleman, National Catholic Reporter (Aug. 26, 1994). Article reports on how clerics were targeted by smears, death threats and harassment in the Chiapas uprising's wake--and suggests the LaRouche organization was heavily involved along with at least one other far-right group.

"Embattled Bishop Ruiz comes face to face with adversaries," Patty Coleman, National Catholic Reporter (Oct. 7, 1994). Describes angry anti-Zapatista demonstration at church in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, calling Bishop Samuel Ruiz the "Antichrist." Placards supplied by LaRouche's MSIA "depicted Ruiz as a treacherous snake and called upon him to flee for his life." (Enterprising Mayan women, however, were selling Zapatista dolls to tourists nearby.)

LAROUCHIAN PROPAGANDA RE CHIAPAS, 1994

Racist rant against Mayans and other Amerindians (Chap. 11 of EIR's The Plot to Annihilate the Armed Forces and the Nations of Ibero-America, 1994). This book was finished prior to the Jan. 1994 Chiapas uprising and was widely circulated over the next few years among Mexican military officers. Chapter 11 is filled with artfully worded racist descriptions of indigenous peoples in Central America and the Amazon basin. Claims the Maya represent a "failed" civilization that was "saved" from the consequences of its failure by the arrival of the enlightened Conquistadores. Suggests (shades of Mein Kampf) that the ungrateful wretches are now plotting to stab the nation-states of the region in the back and dismember them. Says that some Mayan leaders today are also attempting to promote a "bestial concept of 'Indian religion.'" Calls Brazil's Yanomami reserve a "zoo," and expresses indignation that a British museum with the backing of the Human Genome Organization intends to preserve frozen samples of the tribe's gene pool. The key question is: Did this book help de-humanize indigenous people in the minds of Mexican military officers so they would be more inclined to look the other way while the Chiapas paramilitaries engaged in murders, rapes and massacres?

"Will the narco-terrorist insurrection in Chiapas be Mexico's 'Sarajevo'?", Carlos Cota Meza, EIR (March 11, 1994). Compares the brief uprising in Chiapas to the actions of Slobodan Milosevic and Rodovan Karadzic in the Balkans, falsely claiming that the indigenous minority in Chiapas (about 25 percent of the population) was trying to conduct ethnic cleansing against the state's majority (in fact, most of the killings and land evictions over the next 14 years would be directed against indigenous people). Cota Meza alleges that the Zapatistas want to "dismember" Mexico and "expunge the precept that the family is the basis of society and represents Western Christian tradition." He supports the Chiapas cattle ranchers who allegedly had requested a military crackdown through "public advertisements" [did LaRouche's operatives help write these ads, just as they helped write publicity for "wise use" ranchers in the United States during the same decade?]. Cota Meza also supports the actions of an "enraged crowd" in Altamirano which supposedly ran out of town the president of the National Human Rights Commission after he "arrived...to defend the 'human rights' of 10 nuns belonging to the Order of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, accused by the town of being EZLN members." [Did leaflets or other literature from LaRouche's MSIA help to whip up this crowd?]

"Negotiations with the Zapatistas: a Camacho coup d'etat in Mexico," Hugo Lopez Ochoa, EIR (March 18, 1994). Two months after the Zapatista (EZLN) uprising, the LaRouche organization was already voicing fierce opposition to any cease-fire agreement and any negotiations over partial autonomy for indigenous peoples. Lopez Ochoa's article slams Catholic bishop Samuel Ruiz, calling him the "theology of liberation bishop" and the "real chieftain" of the EZLN "narco-terrorists." Alleges that the EZLN is being protected by "Anglo-American intelligence" and "powerful groups of speculators and financiers" (e.g., George Soros) with the aim of splitting Mexico in two (leaving a mestizo nation and "an Indian one") and "dismantling" the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which according to Lopez Ochoa has a fifth column within its ranks. The article calls on President Salinas to break with the evil international bankers as the precondition for launching a "successful military offensive against the Zapatistas." Essentially this article favors a Guatemala-style army offensive in Chiapas even though the EZLN had ended its military activities and was negotiating in good faith. (In the 14 years since, the EZLN has not relaunched its armed struggle even in the face of brutal provocations by PRI-backed paramilitaries.)

"Will Colosio's British assassins kill Mexico, too?" Gretchen Small, EIR (April 8, 1994). When Luis Donaldo Colosio, the presidential candidate of the ruling PRI, was killed by a lone assassin, the LaRouchians attempted to use the event to whip up the military brass and PRI 's leaders for a crackdown on the Zapatistas. (Note: Although many Mexicans believe that Colosio's rivals in the PRI were behind his death, there was no evidence then, and none has emerged in the years since, that the Zapatistas--or the Jesuits or the Jews--had anything to do with it.)

"Rebellion in Chiapas and the Mexican Military," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 109. Summary of U.S. intelligence documents re Chiapas released under the Freedom of Information Act that may shed light on the LaRouche organization's relationship to the Mexican military. Defense Intelligence Agency cable dated Jan. 27, 1994 says "[t]he Mexican military is trying through a variety of means to show that the EZLN force it now combats is a bigger than life underground group of vast international connections. A good portion of the Defensa claims to substantiate that image have been patently incorrect..." Another late January cable reports that the Mexican military had "asked through many channels--including non-governmental sources--for contributions of names of suspected or possible members, supporters or contacts of EZLN" and had obtained lists that included virtually all the priests, friars and nuns in the Chiapas diocese from 1959 to the present. Cable says "these names are now on the Mexican military's list of known EZLN members" although "we have been told that the military has no way of knowing whether or not most of the people...are, in fact, in any way involved or connected [with EZLN]." A Dec. 5 DIA report notes that retired Argentinian officers apparently were working as advisors to the Mexican military (is this yet another example of the carapintada-LaRouche alliance to save the armed forces and nations of Ibero-America from "annihilation"?).

LAROUCHIAN PROPAGANDA RE CHIAPAS, 1995-2001

EIR "dossier" (1995) on the Zapatistas (the EZLN) falsely names many individuals and over 100 Mexican and foreign organizations as supporters of terrorism. Since LaRouche's literature circulated widely at the time among PRI caciques and paramilitary leaders in Chiapas, as well as within the Mexican military, these accusations were no laughing matter. The dossier especially attacks the Catholic church in Chiapas, claiming that Bishop Samuel Ruiz is the secret leader of the EZLN (under the code name "The Mayan Prince") and that "8,000 catechists" in the Bishop's network "operate as organizers and coordinators for the EZLN." Two years later, 45 members of Ruiz's flock--most of them from the pacifist lay organization Las Abejas--were massacred, along with four unborn infants, in the village of Acteal by members of PRI-linked paramilitaries (see above).

EIR "dossier" (1995) on the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Over the first five years after its founding in 1989, hundreds of members of the PRD--one of the three major parties in Mexico--had been murdered by PRI thugs. In the midst of the Chiapas crisis, EIR adds fuel to the anti-PRD fire by alleging that the party supports terrorism and provokes violence against police, PRI members and oil installations. Says it's a "coalition of communist fiefdoms" and includes "activists with narco-terrorist backgrounds" trained in Moscow, North Korea, etc. Claims the PRD "has led the defense of the EZLN's 'human rights' and is currently its electoral arm." (Regarding PRI-instigated attacks on PRD members in Chiapas and elsewhere, click here.)

"London's terrorism support apparatus: environmentalism, indigenism, and NGOs," Joseph Brewda, EIR (Nov. 10, 1995). According to Brewda, a member of LaRouche's security staff who has since left the organization, the Zapatista uprising was part of a "British" plot by way of "an international network" of narco-terrorists with "cover" being provided by human rights groups. (Note that EIR puts the term "human rights" in special quotation marks, thus implying that indigenous people either don't have such rights or simply don't need "protecting"--another word EIR puts in quotes.) Article scorns all efforts by the World Bank, the United Nations, the International Red Cross, Oxfam, the Nobel Committee and evil, evil anthropologists to protect indigenous peoples in Chiapas and elsewhere in Latin America. Not surprisingly, the top "British" plotters are Jews--George Soros and Teddy Goldsmith.

"London's irregular warfare vs. nations of the Americas," Dennis and Gretchen Small, EIR (Nov. 10, 1995), with point-by-point rebuttal by Dennis King. The Smalls claim that "Fidel Castro's assets are working overtime to create a a new narco-terrorist force." But behind Castro is the "London-centered" oligarchy which (the article quotes LaRouche as saying) is "at the extremes of hysteria, in its determination to destroy existing nation states." Article cites book by a Nazi war-hero friend of LaRouche's on how to fight irregular warfare, but complains that the puppet governments of Argentina, Mexico, etc. are "purging from their ranks, and those of their armed forces, any officer or civilian who sees the danger and wishes to fight." Depicts the EZLN in Chiapas as a giant danger that is being protected by an international network of "feminists, environmentalists, gays, indigenists, human rights activists" and, of course, the "liberal media." If it weren't for these groups, backed by London and Washington, "the Mexican government and military could have wiped out the EZLN long ago. The same hold true for every country of Ibero-America." Hmmm…wipe 'em all out? Just how many tens of thousands of peasants' lives are you talking about, Mr. and Mrs. Small?"

"The 'apostles of hypocrisy' in Chiapas," Carlos Cota Meza, EIR (July 24, 1998). Article is an all-out attack on clerics who support the peace process and social justice for the Mayans. Calls Bishop Ruiz an "apostate" and says he's the "real commander of the Zapatistas" (in my opinion, the latter phrase amounts to urging the Chiapas paramilitaries to kill him). The author expresses great indignation about the alleged "deviant homosexual passions" of one of Ruiz's Jesuit allies, but makes no mention of the death-squad massacre six months earlier of 45 unarmed Mayan peasants (mostly women and children) at a Catholic chapel in the village of Acteal.

"EZLN Coup in Mexico Sets Stage for Dismembering Mexico," Gretchen and Dennis Small, EIR (April 13, 2001). More special pleading for an all-out offensive in Chiapas. The authors argue that the "very existence" of the Mexican nation is at stake since if the indigenous Mayans are allowed any autonomy they will inevitably set up their own country. The Smalls link this to a larger plot, claiming that "narco-terrorist armies are expanding over great swaths of territory" and all of Ibero-America is at risk. In a typical Orwellian trick--apparently motivated by the need to provide cover for LaRouche's new recruitment efforts among left-leaning students on U.S. college campuses--EIR now calls the Zapatistas in Chiapas "fascists." Presumably this also transforms into "antifascists" LaRouche's allies in the Chiapas paramilitaries--the groups responsible for the Acteal massacre. And similar semantic trickery--as I interpret it--is also used re the Chiapas Mayans: If they were to accept a subordinate role in Mexico without autonomy they could be welcomed into the fold as partners of Western Christian civilization. If they persist, however, in demanding autonomy (and land to grow coffee beans or set up eco-tourists lodges) then they will be allowing themselves to be transformed by the Jesuits, the anthropologists, the Jews, etc. into a separate cultural "subspecies" with all the consequences that flow therefrom. This type of thinking is rather like that of the Spanish Inquisition in its war against religious heretics--only this time it's a matter of killing culture-heretics to save their cognitive potential (LaRouche doesn't really believe in an immortal soul) from being blocked, and their brains from remaining in, or falling back into, the hideous condition of subspecies-hood.

"The 'Anti-Globalization' Zapatistas' New Globalism," Ruben Cota Meza, EIR (May 25, 2001). Cota Meza alleges a plot by Rothschild cousin Teddy Goldsmith--who is identified as a "Franco-British magnate," i.e., a cosmopolitan (wink, wink)--to promote "radical pluri-cultural ecologism" by way of Zapatista "terrorism." The author is especially incensed over the promotion in Chiapas of cooperatives for small indigenous coffee growers (at the expense, presumably, of corporate agrobusinesses and the ranchers who had supported PRI and the paramilitaries). Complains that Starbucks is buying coffee from the cooperatives as a result of "terrorist-like methods of pressure and blackmail."

THE LAROUCHIANS IN NATIONAL MEXICAN POLITICS: SMEAR ARTISTS AND DIRTY TRICKSTERS

"Behind Mexico's big narcotics bust," Josefina Menendez, EIR (Nov. 27, 1984). This article is a smear of the right-of-center National Action Party (PAN)--the chief rival of the then-ruling PRI. Article calls the PAN the "party of drugs" (as if the PRI had clean hands!) and boasts that the Mexican Party of Labor (the name used by the LaRouche organization at that time) had passed out 300,000 leaflets linking the PAN to gun running and the "international drug mafia." Claims that the PAN promotes "Nazi policies" but also that it is backed by "the Sinarquist international network," i.e., the Jews. Boasts that the leaflet was "reproduced in a majority of the state newspapers in the north, center and south of Mexico, as well as by radio and even on television." The aim? "[W]ithdrawal of the PAN's registration as a political party." (LaRouche's minions have used such smear tactics and dirty tricks in the country's politics since the 1970s. It's widely believed that for most of this period they've been in the pay of the PRI--the huge and famously corrupt party that controlled Mexico in a quasi-authoritarian fashion for over 70 years, losing the presidency to the PAN's Vicente Fox in 2000 but remaining extremely powerful throughout the country.)

The Big Smear. Front and back cover of the English language translation (1985) of book by LaRouche's Mexican Party of Labor devoted mostly to attacking the PAN. Typical headings in the table of contents: "The Nazi-Communist Conspiracy," "The Controllers of the PAN in the U.S.," "Gnosticism, the Religion of the PAN," and "Why the PAN Hates Benito Juarez."

"Mexico's LaRouche Youth Make Castanaeda Crawl," EIR (Sept. 26, 2003). Boasts of the LaRouche youth group's harassment of Presidential hopeful Jorge Castaneda, who is Jewish, in the period leading up to the 2004 elections. Note that the headline refers to the "LaRouche Youth" (like the "Hitler Youth"), although the text of the article refers to the LYM. What's the real message of the headline? That a reborn Hitler Youth made a Jew crawl in the dirt?

WHAT LAROUCHE REALLY THINKS ABOUT MEXICO AND MEXICANS

LaRouche: "We do not regard all cultures and nations as equally deserving of sovereignty or survival." The page image that includes this statement is from LaRouche's prescription for fascism in the United States (The Case of Walter Lippmann, 1977). Note that LaRouche's two examples of the undeserving are (a) native Americans and (b) the nation of Mexico at the time of the Mexican-American War of 1848. The propaganda LaRouche and his minions aimed at the Mexican military in the 1990s--in an attempt to persuade them to launch a bloody crackdown on indigenous peasants in Chiapas--emphasized the first example but was understandably silent about the second one.