Guerrilla Band Wages War In Mexico
When I was living in Oaxaca during the teacher strike in 2006, people would often speculate about whether the EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army) in Guerrero was also operating in Oaxaca. At the height of the rebellion, when we were expecting the Federal Preventive Police to descend on the city, there would sometimes be rumors that the EPR was coming in. Most people doubted it. No one seemed to know. But then during the rebellion that lasted from June until the “hard hand” of the federal police came down on November 25, 2006, very few ever really knew exactly what was going on behind the scene.
Now that the APPO (Popular Assembly) consisting of thousands of teachers, activists, Unions etc have moved it’s activities from Oaxaca City to the pueblos around the state, it would seem that if the EPR is in Oaxaca, it is a significant development. It is also significant to the U.S. where the bombings of the pipelines pushed up the price of oil futures in New York.
Eduardo Verdugo / AP
The national oil and gas company’s pipelines were bombed this summer in attacks by leftist guerrillas that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses. The rebels are seeking the return of two missing militants. A rebel group responsible for costly attacks on pipelines accuses the government of having a role in disappearances.
By Héctor Tobar, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 20, 2007
MEXICO CITY — — Edmundo Reyes is a slight, unassuming man of 55 who loves baseball and children’s literature. Until recently, he sold candy and soft drinks from his family’s corner grocery store in this city’s Nezahualcoyotl district.
In May, he left to visit relatives in the state of Oaxaca and never returned. His disappearance might have gone unnoticed but for the fact that it has set off a small war that has twice shut down a sizable chunk of the Mexican economy.
Unbeknownst to family and friends, Reyes was conducting a double life: He was a leader of a group calling itself the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR in Spanish. His comrades are convinced that he has been captured by “the enemy.”
To get back Reyes and another EPR militant said to have disappeared with him, the Popular Revolutionary Army has started bombing the pipelines of Pemex, Mexico’s national oil and gas company.
The attacks are the most spectacular campaign by a guerrilla army in Mexico since the 1994 uprising of the Zapatistas in the southern state of Chiapas.
Unlike the Zapatistas, the EPR has struck at a critical element of Mexico’s economic infrastructure: the pipelines that transport petroleum products from the Gulf of Mexico to the interior of the country and elsewhere.
The attacks on 10 pipelines in July and this month forced the temporary closure of some of Mexico’s largest factories, caused fuel shortages for millions of people and pushed up the price of oil futures in New York. The economic losses caused by the bombings total hundreds of millions of dollars, according to business groups here.
Yet the EPR is an “army” probably consisting of fewer than 100 people, including several members of five extended families with roots in Oaxaca, analysts and Mexican officials say.
Intelligence reports leaked to the Mexican media say the mild-mannered Reyes was an EPR leader.
“I’m not convinced that all the things they say about him are true,” said Nadin Reyes Maldonado, Reyes’ 25-year-old daughter, who is a nursery school teacher. “But when he appears again there are some things he’s going to have to explain to us.”
The story of the EPR harks back to another chapter of Latin American history, when leftist urban guerrillas inspired by Cuba’s Fidel Castro went underground to wage war against dictatorial governments. Some alleged EPR members are said to have been operating clandestinely for many years, though their struggle went largely unnoticed until the Pemex bombings.
“It’s been 17 years since I’ve seen my parents,” said Francisco Cerezo Contreras, a 33-year-old Mexico City resident whose father and mother are said to be EPR leaders.
“I have no idea where they went. They just left.”
The EPR launched itself publicly in 1996 in Guerrero, a Pacific Coast state with long traditions of armed resistance to the Mexican government. As many as 100 masked EPR members armed with assault rifles marched into the town of Aguas Blancas as residents were gathering to commemorate the killings a year earlier of 17 members of a peasants rights group by state police.
Mexico was by then well into its transition from a one-party state to a multiparty democracy. But to the EPR, Mexico remained a country of political impunity ruled on behalf of a wealthy few.
“Our political constitution is . . . a dead letter,” read the first EPR communique, explaining the group’s decision to take up arms. “Individual rights are violated every day, and the people are left out of the economic and political decisions of the country.”
Since then, the rebel group has split several times. It now appears to be rooted in the adjacent state of Oaxaca, whose social inequities and heavy-handed governing style have fed several militant movements.
Oaxaca remains one of the poorest states of Mexico: 68% of its residents live below the government’s poverty line, with monthly income less than $90. And more than one-third of the population is living in “extreme poverty,” according to government statistics.
On Tuesday, a little more than a week after its most recent bombings, the EPR issued a new communique denying widespread speculation that the group was linked to foreign rebels, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Tags: EPR, Mexico, Oaxaca
Zoe
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