Mexico: Armed siege of steel mill reveals escalating class war
Mexico: Armed siege of steel mill reveals escalating class war
by repost Wednesday, Apr. 26, 2006 at 8:11 AM
The killing of two young metalworkers in a military siege against strikers at a steel mill in Mexico signals a sharp escalation in the class struggle in Mexico.
Two young workers were shot to death, and more than 30 others were injured on Thursday, April 20, following an armed assault by Mexican security forces seeking to put an end to a strike at the Sicartsa steel mill in the city of Lazaro Cardenas, in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan.
Workers who spoke to the Mexican Daily La Jornada described the attack as a wanton assault in which state and federal security forces — one thousand strong — fired indiscriminately on picketing miners, who resisted fiercely.
Eyewitnesses reported that after killing the first worker, 19-year-old Mario Alberto Castillo, a cop put his boot on Mario’s bleeding head and dared the strikers to rescue him. A second worker, Hector Alvarez, 36, was killed shortly thereafter. The New York Times and a Mexican daily, La Crisis, reported that a third person may have been run over and killed by a police vehicle.
Two of the injured miners — Cirilio Quiñones and Luis Alberto Vargas — are listed in very serious condition and were transported to a Mexico City trauma center.
The military-style assault began at 7 a.m. and lasted until 1 p.m. It was initiated by Michoacan State police with the support of the Federal Preventive Police. Initial reports also suggested that a heavily armed elite squad — the Grupo Aereo de Reaccion Inmediata (The Immediate Reaction Airborne Group, GARI) — fired at the pickets from helicopters. This operation was well prepared; while most of the police units appear to have been armed only with tear gas canisters and truncheons, a disciplined squad, armed with AR-15s, AK-47s (two kinds of assault rifles) and 9 mm pistols, was assigned the task of shooting at the workers. GARI is an elite commando unit normally used to combat terrorist and drug-gang activity. Following the confrontation, the strikers discovered scores of spent rifle shells littering the floor of the plant. The entire operation brings to mind the attacks on students and workers during Mexico’s dirty war in the 1970s
Though Sicartsa management denied complicity with the military assault on the strikers, Michoacan’s government secretary Enrique Bautista said that the company had demanded the workers’ eviction after a government arbitration panel declared the strike illegal. The Michoacan government, controlled by the left- nationalist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), did not hesitate in joining the repression.
Two Michoacan officials, Public Security Secretary Gabriel Jimenez and police chief Jaime Liera Alvarez, resigned in the wake of the incident. Liera admitted that some of the Michoacan cops were armed with assault rifles, allegedly to fire at the workers’ feet, if it became necessary. Michoacan Governor Lazaro Cardenas Batel insists that he had ordered that his police not be armed and has called for an investigation. President Vicente Fox did not clarify his role in the operation, but declared that he was “distressed.”
Link Here
by repost Wednesday, Apr. 26, 2006 at 8:11 AM
The killing of two young metalworkers in a military siege against strikers at a steel mill in Mexico signals a sharp escalation in the class struggle in Mexico.
Two young workers were shot to death, and more than 30 others were injured on Thursday, April 20, following an armed assault by Mexican security forces seeking to put an end to a strike at the Sicartsa steel mill in the city of Lazaro Cardenas, in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan.
Workers who spoke to the Mexican Daily La Jornada described the attack as a wanton assault in which state and federal security forces — one thousand strong — fired indiscriminately on picketing miners, who resisted fiercely.
Eyewitnesses reported that after killing the first worker, 19-year-old Mario Alberto Castillo, a cop put his boot on Mario’s bleeding head and dared the strikers to rescue him. A second worker, Hector Alvarez, 36, was killed shortly thereafter. The New York Times and a Mexican daily, La Crisis, reported that a third person may have been run over and killed by a police vehicle.
Two of the injured miners — Cirilio Quiñones and Luis Alberto Vargas — are listed in very serious condition and were transported to a Mexico City trauma center.
The military-style assault began at 7 a.m. and lasted until 1 p.m. It was initiated by Michoacan State police with the support of the Federal Preventive Police. Initial reports also suggested that a heavily armed elite squad — the Grupo Aereo de Reaccion Inmediata (The Immediate Reaction Airborne Group, GARI) — fired at the pickets from helicopters. This operation was well prepared; while most of the police units appear to have been armed only with tear gas canisters and truncheons, a disciplined squad, armed with AR-15s, AK-47s (two kinds of assault rifles) and 9 mm pistols, was assigned the task of shooting at the workers. GARI is an elite commando unit normally used to combat terrorist and drug-gang activity. Following the confrontation, the strikers discovered scores of spent rifle shells littering the floor of the plant. The entire operation brings to mind the attacks on students and workers during Mexico’s dirty war in the 1970s
Though Sicartsa management denied complicity with the military assault on the strikers, Michoacan’s government secretary Enrique Bautista said that the company had demanded the workers’ eviction after a government arbitration panel declared the strike illegal. The Michoacan government, controlled by the left- nationalist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), did not hesitate in joining the repression.
Two Michoacan officials, Public Security Secretary Gabriel Jimenez and police chief Jaime Liera Alvarez, resigned in the wake of the incident. Liera admitted that some of the Michoacan cops were armed with assault rifles, allegedly to fire at the workers’ feet, if it became necessary. Michoacan Governor Lazaro Cardenas Batel insists that he had ordered that his police not be armed and has called for an investigation. President Vicente Fox did not clarify his role in the operation, but declared that he was “distressed.”
Link Here
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