On September 8, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez said “when terrorists start feeling weak, they immediately send their spokesmen to talk about human rights.” He said while some human rights groups were “respectable”, others were “political agitators in the service of terrorism, cowards who wrap themselves in the banner of human rights, in order to win back for Colombian terrorism the space which the armed forces and the public have taken from it.”
Month: September 2003
From Aguascalientes to Caracoles
http://www.zcommunications.org/from-aguascalientes-to-caracoles-by-justin-podur
For some 10 years, the Zapatistas have inspired people all over the world. The Zapatistas’ ‘Autonomous Municipalities’, in particular, have been models of community organization and democratic self-governance. These municipalities managed to provide not only better basic services (health, education, culture, infrastructure) than the Mexican state ever had, but they did so in spite of violent opposition by the (US-backed) state and the paramilitary auxiliaries it employed.