Second Forum at Lomas del Poleo is Blocked
Gang
members hired by the Grupo Zaragoza block
access to the Second Forum at Lomas del Poleo.
by PDS
Juárez, Chih.—SIX
WEEKS AGO the residents of Lomas del Poleo in Ciudad
Juárez
invited grass-roots organizations from
both sides of the border to a
human rights forum at an elementary school inside their besieged
community but the groups were stopped at the gate by armed paramilitary
"guards" hired by the Grupo Zaragoza. That day the
colonos—who
were
not allowed outside the fence—and their supporters from
“la
sociedad civil” held the forum
across the barbed wire.
On Saturday (December 1, 2007) they
planned to hold the second
“cultural - political” forum to denounce the state
of siege
of Lomas del Poleo on a small farm on the desert mesa just outside the
barbed-wire fence. The Zaragoza group blocked them again, but this time
about a quarter of a mile away from the colonia.
The
colonos had set up a tent with a stage and a microphone for the
participating speakers, poets and musicians from Juárez and
El
Paso planning to arrive that morning, but a
group of thugs hired by the
Zaragoza family carrying sticks,  bats and other concealed
weapons
planted themselves on the only access road to Lomas del Poleo and
stopped several automobiles and a bus full of forum participants from
going through. The Zaragoza guards, led by a point man holding a
menacing pit bull on a chain, were backed by several dozen
counter-demonstrators holding signs telling the binational civil
and
human rights to go home.
The counter-demonstration crowd was made up of mostly people recruited
from the neighboring Anapra zone by Faustino Olivares, a local ward
boss belonging to the PRI party who has allied himself with the
Zaragozas in their efforts to relocate the residents of Lomas del
Poleo. They also included the guard’s girlfriends
and several of the reubicados— “the relocated
ones.”
One of the women
helping the Zaragoza-hired gang members block the road held a
sign with one hand and a baseball bat with the other. Her son
also
carried a plastic toy bat. Other men wielding baseball bats and
walkie-talkies stood by on a hill overlooking the standoff. A group of
adolescents watching beside them made comments about how
“chingón” it would be
to “shoot some bullets
into the crowd.” The municipal police showed up and parked
themselves two blocks away from the Zaragoza guard blockade.
 Several
residents and forum organizers approached the ranking police
officer in charge of the Lomas del Poleo sector, Mario Moraz
to ask him
to escort the forum participants to the top of the mesa. When
asked whether they could lift the illegal blockade of a public access
road Moraz responded, “No I can’t clear
the
road, my commanding officer is not here. I’m waiting
for el
capitán to arrive.” When a Catholic community
worker asked
when Moraz’s commanding officer would arrive or if there was
someone else around who “could enforce the law before someone
gets hurt” the Juárez cop responded,
“The
captain is far away from here, but he also needs instructions from his
superiors.”
After waiting in vain for about half and hour
for the police to clear the road and escort the forum participants to
the scheduled site, the
organizers brought out plastic chairs and decided to hold the
forum at
the spot of the roadblock.
Several poets began to read their poems in
the middle of the road but the counter-demonstrators
jeered and blared
their car radios to drown them out. In order to avoid a violent confrontation
in a situation that could easily get out of
hand,
the forum was moved two blocks down to the
area in front of the
Tonanzin Women’s Center at the bottom of the mesa. Once the
forum
participants moved away, many of the Anapra and relocated people
recruited by Faustino Oliveres and the
Grupo Zaragoza
representatives
lined up at the guard gate for “despensas”
— bags
full of free groceries — as their pay-off for participating
in
the day's counter-demonstration and road block.
The Second Forum at
Lomas del Poleo took place in its improvised location below the mesa,
yet participants were still being watched by Zaragoza guards mounted on
horseback on top of the
mesa. Lomas del Poleo residents took the microphone and
denounced the human rights abuses they've suffered at the
hands of the Zaragoza family, powerful Juárez land
developers
who own transnational businesses throughout Mexico, the U.S.
and
South America. They have been waging
low-intensity warfare against the residents of
Lomas del Poleo for several years to
strip them of their land that sits in the middle of a future
binational crossing between Sunland
Park and Anapra. [Several
members of the Zaragoza family have been investigated in the past for
money laundering and narcotrafficking by both the U.S. and Mexican
government.]
Author Selfa Chew of the Paso Del Sur group talked about the binational
connection between some of the powerful families from Juárez
and
Chihuahua belonging to the Paso Del Norte Group who are behind the
future demolition of the heart of the Segundo Barrio. On the other side
of the line, American
developers such as William Sanders along with New Mexico and El Paso
politicians share complicity with what is happening in Lomas
del
Poleo.
Dr. Neil Harvey, of New Mexico State University, pointed out that
these binational plans are affecting even his
own community in Las
Cruces. The Verde Group is currently asking to control tax-dollars
paid by Dona Ana county citizens to
subsidize his mega development project,
the “master-planned
binational
cities of Santa
Teresa-San Jéronimo that will drain water and resources from our
border cities and only serve the financial interests of the
trans-national corporations."
During
the day-long cultural-political event, poets declaimed and
musicians
sang songs about injustice and resistance. Towards the end
of the day a
young woman danced a Polynesian dance barefoot in the middle of
the unpaved road simply to celebrate the fact that the
community of Lomas del
Poleo, despite everything, is still alive.
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