“Freedom for Political Prisoners!” Calls Marcos, Giving El Grito in Atenco

State and Federal Governments are Trying to Reinitiate the Airport Plan, Warn Speakers

By Javier Salinas
La Jornada

September 16, 2006

SAN SALVADOR ATENCO, MEXICO, September 15: In Saturday’s first minutes, with the call “freedom for political prisoners,” Subcomandante Marcos led the Grito de Independencia (the anniversary celebration of the initiation of Mexico’s Independence) ceremony in San Salvador Atenco’s central plaza, accompanied by hundreds of campesinos from the organization Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land.

With chants denouncing the Mexico state government, headed by Enrique Peña Nieto, and president of the republic Vicente Fox Quesada, tens of social organizations adherent to the ‘Other Campaign’ celebrated the night of el Grito.

Previously, various speakers, among them women from Atenco, offered a series of testimonies of the [violations and abuse] suffered this past May 4th when federal and state police took the town.

In the midst of the “old guard of combatants,” made up of many of the elder citizens of Atenco, “Delegate Zero” called for the freedom of the 29 prisoners being held the Santiaguito and Las Palmas jails, arrested during the police action.

One of the testimonies narrated the rape of one of the women presently incarcerated who, from jail in Santiaguito, made a call to the country’s social organizations to participate in the mobilizations being realized by the Other Campaign as well as the People’s Front in Defense of the Land.

Also read was a message recorded by América del Valle and doña Trinidad, daughter and wife, respectively, of Ignacio Del Valle, the leader of the movement in Atenco, who is currently incarcerated.

Likewise, the Atenco townsfolk called for people to be alert in the face of the reinstatement of charges levied against them, and the recently renewed arrest warrants, which date back to the resistance to the construction of an alternate airport to that of Mexico City in Texcoco.

They warned of the intentions of state and federal governments to reinitiate the airport project on their farm lands.

Last night in the central plaza of San Salvador Atenco there were two Gritos de Independencia; one by Subcomandante Marcos and another, moments before, in front of the municipal palace in a ceremony organized by the town council.

Brandishing their traditional machetes, the people of Atenco passed a long night of social activism.

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