FEATURE-Peasants in rural Mexico claim army brutality
18 Nov 2003 02:06:16 GMT
By Lorraine Orlandi AYUTLA DE LOS LIBRES, Mexico, Nov 18 (Reuters) - A month before her eighth birthday, Noemi Prisciliano watched three Mexican soldiers push into her dirt-floor home. She saw them point their guns at her mother and force her to the ground. "When they finished stripping her, one soldier unbuckled his pants and pulled down the zipper. He hit my mother with his hand," the child, now nine, said in legal testimony. Noemi grabbed her three younger siblings and ran to her grandfather's house. He was afraid to interfere with the army so they waited in silence. When the children went home they found their mother crying. She said she had been raped. Indian peasants of Mexico's rural hinterlands, once a hotbed of guerrilla activity, tell of daily harassment and frequent brutality at the hands of the military. "We don't speak much Spanish and that's why they abuse us," said Ocotlan Sierra, secretary for a tiny village in Guerrero state where a teenage mother charged she was raped by soldiers last year in another of several such cases in the region. "We don't know how to defend ourselves." More concerned with domestic security than foreign threats, Mexico's army has increasingly taken on policing duties -- with 30,000 troops deployed in the drug war every day -- at a cost to human rights, experts say. "Soldiers have raped, tortured, and killed people during crop eradication campaigns or drug trafficking investigations. That's one of the risks of using the army as a police force," said Laurie Freeman of the Washington Office on Latin America, a non-governmental organisation. "The Mexican army doesn't take alleged abuses seriously and often denies any wrongdoing at all," she said. In rural enclaves, especially in conflict-ridden Guerrero, Chiapas and Oaxaca states, local leaders say the social fabric unravels in the face of an intimidating military presence. Children stay away from school, men avoid working the fields, neighbours and even spouses turn against each other. Human rights groups say some women refuse to tell even their own families when they suffer sexual abuse from soldiers for fear they will be abandoned. President Vicente Fox took office in 2000, ending seven decades of single-party rule and pledging to punish past state crimes and end impunity for high-ranking public officials. Although the investigations have moved slowly, Fox claimed in a recent speech that the army has changed and "the respect for human rights is bolstered in every aspect of its activities." SOLDIERS IN DRUG WAR Residents here say life here has become tougher under Fox. Economic crisis had led some poor farmers to plant drug crops, drawing more military force down on communities. "Instead of sending aid, he sent more soldiers," Sierra said. Ines Fernandez, 27, said 11 soldiers from a nearby army barracks appeared in her yard one afternoon in March last year, where meat from a freshly slaughtered cow was curing. Three came into her adobe house, asking repeatedly, "Where did your husband steal the meat?" she said. A delicate Tlapaneca Indian who speaks little Spanish, she kept her mouth shut. Her children, including Noemi, the oldest, were with her. One soldier ordered her to the floor of her cramped kitchen and raped her, she said, adding that the soldiers took some 220 lb (100 kg) of fresh meat when they left. Her husband, Fortunato Prisciliano, supports her bid to press criminal charges against the military but the draining legal process can drive a wedge into families and he admits he was angry with his wife at first. "I was angry at everyone," he said softly, cradling the couple's newborn boy. The army denies the charges. Military officials were unavailable for comment despite several requests by Reuters. Although never associated with the brutality of other Latin American military governments, Mexico's army is blamed for a "dirty war" against suspected leftists in the 1960s and 1970s, waged largely in the countryside. Abuses have continued, even if at a slower pace. Eleven people were killed in a 1998 massacre in El Charco, not far from Fernandez' village. Peasant leaders say their communities are still targeted in a counter-insurgency campaign by the military that intimidates poor, mainly indigenous civilians. Mexico's rights ombudsman has documented a series of civilian deaths at the hands of soldiers in the past three years. Among them, a 14-year-old Guerrero buy bled to death after being shot in the leg, and a man died in the western state of Colima when soldiers fired on an outdoor meeting of recovering alcoholics. The army says it is fighting drug trafficking in remote regions like these lush Guerrero mountains, where marijuana and poppies are widely grown.
