Community blames police
Zapatista dies in Tijuana jail
By Bob
McCubbin
Tijuana, Mexico
An activist in the Zapatista movement here died in police
custody Oct. 3. Friends and relatives suspect the authorities
murdered him.
The Zapatista movement in Mexico supports the armed rebels
in the state of Chiapas who have successfully held off the
U.S.-supported Mexican army since 1994. The Zapatistas are
fighting for justice for Mexico's millions of poor people,
especially the Mayan Indians of southern Mexico.
Cosme Damián Sastreé Sánchez was a
militant activist of the Frente Zapatista de Liberación
Nacional-Tijuana. He had been selected as a representative to
attend an upcoming national Zapatista conference.
On the evening of Oct. 2 Cosme Damián and six of his
neighbors were arrested outside their homes. These unprovoked
mass arrests are a frequent occurrence in the poor
neighborhoods of Tijuana. The others were able to pay a fine
and were released within a few hours.
Damián could not pay the fine, but he called his
family and told them not to worry, that he would be released
too. But the following morning the prison authorities announced
that he had used his tee shirt during the night to commit
suicide.
Cosme Damián's family and comrades dispute this. They
have no doubt that the authorities killed him when they were
able to identify him as a Zapatista militant. On Oct. 8 Tijuana
activists stormed the Tijuana city hall shouting "Asesinos!
Asesinos!" (Killers! Killers!) One longtime activist told this
reporter that nothing like the city hall demonstration had ever
happened before.
Clearly the young Tijuana militants will not let this brutal
killing stop them from challenging government repression. On
Oct. 9 a long funeral procession wound its way from a church to
the rock-strewn hillside where poor Tijuanans bury their loved
ones. The mourners held banners proclaiming that Damián
had been killed by the fascist government of Tijuana and
promising that the struggle would continue.
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