YALE PROFESSOR/EX MEXICAN PRESIDENT ERNESTO ZEDILLO CHARGED WITH CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

A HAPPY FORMER PRESIDENT ZEDILLO FROM
AS PICTURED ON THE PAGE OF THE YALE
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF GLOBALIZATION

Related to the above post we have this concerning attempts by some to hold former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, now living in Connecticut and teaching at Yale, for crimes against humanity. The charges are related to a December 1997 massacre in Chiapas of forty five indigenous persons  which were carried out by paramilitaries against members of the Civil Society Orrganization Las Abejas.  The complainants, a group of ten persons who survived the massacre say Zedillo was complicit and must be held accountable. It is believed by many human rights organizations that the Zedillo government trained and backed the paramilitaries in their "war" with the EZLN, its supporters and others.

"[W]ithout doubt, in Zedillo there was complicity or [guilt by] omission for the tragic events in Acteal," former legislator Jaime Martínez Veloz told the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada. Martínez Veloz had been a member of the Concord and Peacemaking Commission (COCOPA), a multi-party congressional commission sent by the federal government to negotiate with the EZLN starting in 1994. "Ultimately, Acteal is the most brutal expression of the failure to comply with the San Andrés Accords," he said, referring to an agreement COCOPA worked out providing more autonomy for indigenous communities in Chiapas. Zedillo's government rejected the accords, leaving the conflicts unresolved.

The following is from NACLA.

Ex-President Zedillo Faces Charges for Overseeing 

State Violence in Mexico

Fred Rosen

Mexico, Bewildered and Contested

January 10, 2012

On New Year’s Day of 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) seized four towns in the southern state of Chiapas and declared them to be liberated not only from the rule of the Mexican state, but from the global economy as well. The EZLN rebellion was a reaction to the severe poverty and state-sponsored violence long suffered by Mexico’s indigenous communities—state violence that increased ten-fold in the wake of the uprising, as police, soldiers, and civilian paramilitaries engaged in a vicious crackdown on communities thought to be under Zapatista influence.

This past September 19, in a federal civil cWomen of Acteal (Credit: La Jornada)ourt in Hartford, Connecticut, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo—now a resident of Connecticut and an economics professor at Yale—was charged with crimes against humanity for the 1997 killing of 45 unarmed members of the Tzotzil Maya ethnic group, in the Chiapas village of Acteal. Ten survivors of the massacre filed the charges under a U.S. law that permits foreign citizens to seek compensation from former foreign functionaries guilty of various kinds of abuse, now residing in the United States. Zedillo was president of Mexico from 1994 through 2000. After a 1998 investigation, Amnesty International reported that "compelling evidence shows that the authorities facilitated the arming of paramilitaries who carried out the killings and failed to intervene as the savage attack continued for hours."

While narco violence continues to overshadow state violence in Mexico, mostly for its deliberately garish brutality, state violence is never far from view—especially in rural areas. The lawsuit reminds us of that sad fact of life. It also reminds us that resistance, on many fronts, is possible.

Last week, Zedillo appeared in court and claimed that, as a former president of a sovereign country, he was immune from judgment. He also argued that he was not responsible for the killings. The plaintiffs, however, argued that Zedillo refused to enter into a serious dialogue with the insurgents and instead opted for a violent response to the uprising, targeting not only armed guerrillas, but also their nonviolent indigenous supporters. The plaintiffs also argued that the president conspired with local and state officials to hide his role in the crackdown. They are seeking $50 million in damages.

However, not all the victims’ supporters are happy with the suit. Some see it as an attempt to receive blood money, rather than justice. Bishop Raúl Vera López, a long-time supporter of Chiapas’s indigenous communities, told the daily paper La Jornada, that while the former president may well be guilty of crimes against humanity, the plaintiffs don’t represent the majority of those affected by the Acteal massacre, but rather a small group that had split off from the self-governed community. The majority, he said, “do not agree with a civil demand. Some of them have told me they don’t agree because ‘they are negotiating with the blood of our dead, and what we want is that the crime not be repeated. We want to find the guilty, and to judge them, but so that this crime cannot be repeated.’ ”

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For more from Fred Rosen's blog, "Mexico, Bewildered and Contested," visitnacla.org/blog/mexico-bewildered-contested.