Torn from the World Page 14

  Rabasa analyzes the writings of different kinds of colonial administrators. What about, in 2017 as I work on the English-language edition of this book, the writing of anti-colonial insurgents? What about a writing that quite explicitly takes sides and seeks to “instruct in techniques and to set an example” not for police or torturers, but for insurgents, people and communities in struggle? As a writer quite conscientiously and openly taking a combative stance against colonial, capitalist, racist, and patriarchal violence, I ask myself Rabasa’s question: “To what extent can one write about violence without perpetuating it?”21 This question haunted me both as I spoke with and interviewed Tzompaxtle, as I sought a way of writing about his torture and forced disappearance, and as I translated and revised this book, always from my particular location in “the colonial matrix of power.”22

  Tzompaxtle told me several times that his knowledge, values, and strength did not come from books. He said this with pride and defiance. Considering that books were used as instruments of exclusion and violence against his ancestors, him, and his community, saying that he achieved what he did—surviving what he once described to me as “being pinned beneath a microscope of human cruelty”—without a “classical” education based in book learning, itself is a manner of rising up against cultural and epistemological exclusion, an affirmation of his culture, knowledge, and intelligence. Why would he need to affirm all that? Because we live in a world that continues to deny and attack it.

  And yet Tzompaxtle was always reading. Every time I saw him he had a book with him. And we talked at length about those and other books: works of history, novels, and essays. It was clear that Tzompaxtle not only reads a lot, but that he reads with passion and devotion. That is, even though he did not form himself through book learning as a child and young man, he has added book learning to his ongoing self-formation. He confirmed what many have said and shown before: A guerrilla often has a book amongst the essential tools in his or her backpack.

  Though alphabetic writing and the printed book have a horrid and murderous colonial history, they also have a beautiful, inspiring, and alive history of struggle. I am grateful beyond words for the books—the teachings, the sharing, the brilliance, the beauty, and the company—of so many fierce, unflinching, generous, and committed writers.

  I aspire to join a long and ongoing movement to decolonize books, writing, and reading, to oppose all pretenses of cultural superiority and thinking that true, deep, or legitimate knowledge is transmitted through the written, printed, and bound word alone.

  And with this book specifically—its reporting and research, its narrative structure, its writing and translation—I seek to build and offer a kind of embrace—an insurgent embrace—for words spoken and written in the literatures of struggle.

  THE SOCIAL WORKER AND THE LAWYER

  IN MARCH 1997, THE “FRAY Francisco de Vitoria” Human Rights Center in Mexico City filed a written complaint with the Mexican National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), a federal governmental ombudsman of sorts, denouncing the forced disappearance of Andrés Tzompaxtle Tecpile. The Fray Vitoria Center was the only nongovernmental human rights organization to become directly involved in the case. I visited the organization’s office in Mexico City and submitted a number of written requests to view the organization’s archive on the case, but never received an answer. I was, however, able to interview a social worker, Balbina Flores, and a lawyer, Adriana Carmona, who worked for the Fray Vitoria in the 1990s. Together they wrote the complaint and worked on the case of Tzompaxtle’s disappearance and the obligation of the State to investigate. At the time of this writing, Balbina Flores is the Mexico director of Reporters Without Borders. Adriana Carmona is a practicing lawyer and professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico City.

  I interviewed Balbina Flores on July 18, 2013, in her office. Flores showed little interest in my questions and repeatedly said, toward the end of our conversation, that this “was a strange case,” clarifying when I questioned her that by “strange” she meant that Tzompaxtle’s testimony seemed suspicious to her. Also, toward the end of the conversation, while she typed on her computer and I waited for her to continue telling me about a report that the Fray Vitoria Center put out in the 1990s about forced disappearances in Mexico, she said, out of nowhere, “And what is more, since his last name was so strange.”

  I was disturbed, to put it politely, to hear someone, much less a career human rights defender, utter such a racist trope. The last name Tzompaxtle Tecpile is a name native to the very patch of earth where we were sitting in that instant, that is, to Mexico City, a last name that existed in these lands long before the violent colonial arrival of Spanish last names like, for example, Flores. In 2007, Mexican writer Carlos Montemayor coordinated a dictionary of Náhuatl words used in Mexican Spanish.1 The book, expanded and reprinted in 2009, was published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Mexico Federal District Government. It contains 163 pages of single-word entries, eighty-eight pages of placename entries, and thirty-nine pages of phrases. Náhuatl words such as tamales (plural), chocolate, nene, mole, molcajete, metate, mezcal, huapango, chingar, chipotle, chile, chicle, cacao, cacahuate, atole, apapachar, aguacate, peyote, popote, pulque, pozole, talacha, chamaco and chamaca, tequila, and tomate are essential to everyday spoken Spanish in Mexico, and many of these words, like chocolate, are now part of languages spoken all over the world. The greater Mexico City metropolitan area, not to mention the entire country, has thousands of names—municipalities, streets, neighborhoods, parks, and metro stations—in Náhuatl and scores of other indigenous languages. It is impossible to traverse the city—or the country—without speaking Náhuatl names and words. Here are only a few examples: Tlalpan, Chapultepec, Juanacatlán, Acapulco, Oaxaca, Azcapotzalco, Xochimilco, Tlatelolco, Cuauhtémoc, Nezahualcóyotl, Ecatepec, Teotihuacán, Chilpancingo, Coyoacán, Tenochtitlan, Mazatlán, Popcatépetl, and Tláhuac. And then, of course, there is the ubiquitous name of the country, the city, and the surrounding state: México, a Náhuatl word meaning, the place of the Mexica. So what precisely could be “strange” about the last name Tzompaxtle Tecpile? Unless the word “strange” serves to distance, denigrate, and deny; that is, to perpetrate colonial violence.

  But before Flores said that, when I had just entered her office, I asked her if she would share with me what she remembered about the disappearance of Andrés Tzompaxtle Tecpile and her working on the case for the Fray Vitoria Center. She spoke for just over seven minutes. This is what she said:

  Well, at that time, around 1996, ’97, I think it was, the Zapatista uprising had already happened. So with the atmosphere of the Zapatista uprising, the appearance of the EPR in Guerrero obviously, the political atmosphere was quite tense. Especially for the organizations working in human rights, like the Vitoria Center, and those of us who were there.

  So, yes, there was a certain atmosphere of fear amongst social leaders and organizations, relative to the State’s perception of certain people. Also around that time the Mesino family was arrested, if I’m not mistaken. There were other disappearances. Rafael’s wasn’t the only one. Later, years later, other EPR leaders were arrested.

  So, obviously the EPR’s emergence, which I think was in 1996, if I’m not mistaken, in Aguas Blancas, attracted attention, beyond Chiapas, also to Guerrero and to what was forming there, what was happening there. In this political context of everything that was going on, the case came to us, though I don’t remember exactly how it came to us. I don’t remember who brought it to us; I don’t remember who called us or how it happened. The point is that a forced disappearance case showed up at the Vitoria Center. And, if I’m not mistaken, at the Vitoria Center we should have been working on a report. No. Not should have. We wrote a report, a short report about disappearances in Mexico. We took a couple of cases to talk about the issue, and one of the cases we took up was this one. How it happened, how they arrested him and after . . . I think in fact that the report was rel
eased by the Vitoria Center while he was still not free. I don’t remember if he was disappeared for one or two years.

  We never had direct contact with him after he appeared. I think we must have had contact with someone close to him, and that was how we learned about the events. With some relative or some close friend of his, that was how we knew about the case, about the disappearance and that he was a leader. And afterward, we submitted a complaint to the CNDH. The CNDH investigates, but obviously in doing so they sent the case file to SEDENA, the National Defense Secretariat. And I don’t understand why, but SEDENA decides to subpoena us. The lawyer and I, who were the ones working closely on the case.

  It was perhaps even a pretty dramatic affair, because in that era for civilians to go before a military tribunal as material witnesses in a case that you present as a human rights organization, well, it was quite unusual. We didn’t know if it was really a part of the investigation or part of a pressure tactic to see whether or not we had direct links to him. At the end of the day what they wanted to know was where he was, if anyone knew that. Obviously, we did not know.

  And so it was kind of traumatic in that sense, going to a tribunal and appearing as a witness in front of soldiers. I don’t even remember where the appearance was. I don’t know. I don’t remember if it was at the Army base, or some Army office, I think near Polanco.

  And, well, we went accompanied by our lawyer. What I remember is that the questions were in this line: if we knew him directly, how had we learned about the case, and how we got information about the disappearance.

  We had sought legal counsel before going, and we didn’t go into any details. Nor did we really have much to tell. The truth is that it happened and was public. The Center decided to go public with our subpoena then because of all that it implied for human rights defenders to be called before a military tribunal about an investigation concerning human rights.

  I don’t remember if after that we kept . . . I don’t know if we closed the case with the CNDH or if the investigation stayed open. What is certain is that he later appeared in a strange way. He appeared, I think, in the State of Mexico and made public the way in which he was able to escape from an Army base. I think it was an Army base near Teotihuacán, in the State of Mexico.

  What I do remember is that he . . . gave a press conference and narrated how he was able to escape from the Army base. I don’t recall his having established communication with us after he was able to escape. I understand that he went into hiding again on his own decision. And that was that.

  Our appearance before the military tribunal was just an appearance, nothing more. We were witnesses and that’s it. I don’t have any more information.

  I interviewed Adriana Carmona on two occasions at a café in Mexico City, first on June 19, 2013, and then on July 10, 2013. I asked her if she would share with me what she remembered about the forced disappearance of Andrés Tzompaxtle Tecpile and about her experiences working on the case. In the first interview, Carmona told me the following:

  I started working at the Fray Francisco de Vitoria Human Rights Center in 1993 and it was my first experience with human rights work. Before that I had worked on other issues. And back then there weren’t so many human rights organizations; it wasn’t such a well-known area. I came across the Vitoria Center by sheer accident, through some nuns who put me in touch with the organization to take a workshop there. I went to the workshop and that put me in touch with the compañeros at the Vitoria Center. And I recall that at first I started collaborating with them on several agrarian issues that they had at the time.

  Once I became a staff member at the Center, I learned its history of supporting Salvadoran immigrants fleeing harassment from the Salvadoran government for having participated in guerrilla movements, for having fought in the war in El Salvador. The Vitoria Center was founded by Benjamín Cuéllar, Monsignor Romero’s lawyer. At first it was called Legal Aid (Socorro Jurídico).

  The Center’s work consisted in supporting the immigrants, bringing them here, and helping with their applications for refugee status with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Balbina Flores was the Center’s social worker at that time, and she had a lot of experience working with those kinds of cases. When I started working at the Center, we worked on a case involving a Salvadoran person who was somewhat related to guerrilla activity and was interned in the November 20 Hospital here in Mexico City. That was my first contact, my first experience with . . . We went to speak with the person in the hospital to document the case, and as we left federal government agents started following us.

  And, well, I didn’t know anything about that kind of thing, but you quickly get used to being followed, having your phone tapped, and hearing those strange sounds on the phone line. So, we had some experience with that kind of harassment for working on human rights cases. And at that time, human rights work wasn’t as well known as it is now. In fact, they called us, “people from human resources.”

  So I started working with the Center in 1993. And then [the Zapatista uprising in] 1994 was a new experience for all of us in human rights. We started working on case documentation. And also in 1994, international organizations start working in Mexico, which hadn’t really happened before. International organizations hadn’t been very interested in the human rights situation in Mexico before that. Before then, Mexico had a good image internationally as a country that respects human rights. In 1994 that image was fractured, despite the then-recent creation of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). The truth is that the international human rights organizations turned to look at Mexico after the Zapatista uprising.

  And so we started documenting cases of arbitrary executions, working closely with the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center. A number of organizations also founded a network of human rights organizations called the Human Rights Network All Rights For All. At the time almost all the human rights organizations in the country had some relation with the church. That’s why we organized brigades to Chiapas and the human-shield peace missions [cinturones de la paz], and case documentation all in collaboration with other organizations. Around that time the first cases against Mexico for human rights violations were taken before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, with the legal aid of the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights. Physicians for Human Rights started coming to Mexico. This contact with international organizations helped us with tools and experience in human rights defense.

  And it was in this context that we got the case. Though, wait, before that: After 1994 there started being problems in Guerrero and Oaxaca. These issues weren’t as well documented. At the Vitoria Center we published annual reports on the human rights situation in Mexico. Through this analysis we saw that there was a human rights crisis in Mexico with torture, abuse, arbitrary detentions, and those kinds of cases. These were the kinds of cases we were taking on: torture, abuse, and arbitrary detention.

  And so it was in this context, and working on those types of cases, that we received a sealed envelop with Andrés’s case, to give it a name. A sealed envelope arrived at the most visible human rights organizations of the time, the strongest, which were the Comisión Mexicana with Mariclaire Acosta, the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center with David Fernández, and us at the Vitoria Center. As I recall, the envelope—it was large, legal-document size, yellow—arrived at those three organizations. Someone left the envelope for us at the Cultural Center.* When someone brought the envelope up to us, we had no idea what it was about. But, well, when Marisol López, Balbina Flores, and I opened it, we were in charge of the legal department, we had a lot of discussions, including other people at the Center, about what we should do with that envelope.

  We were facing a serious challenge considering that the issue was directly and openly related to the guerrillas and involved investigating the Army. But what we were concerned about was how to respond to an action that we considered a serious violation of human ri
ghts. That is, it didn’t matter if he was or wasn’t a guerrilla. The issue was arbitrary detention and, most of all, disappearance, where the man’s life was at risk. We had a very intense discussion about all this. We argued a lot about this with Mariclaire and David, I recall. Because this wasn’t like the typical case with Zapatismo where people detained and tortured formed parts of solidarity committees and didn’t have anything to do with the armed movement. This case did involve an armed movement. And that sparked a serious discussion about whether we should take the case on or not.

  I remember now that Amnesty International had the policy, which they still do, that political prisoners couldn’t have anything to do with armed movements. So Amnesty International didn’t take cases like this, by its own statutes. Amnesty International will never recognize a political prisoner, or a case of human rights violations when the person is involved with armed movements.

  At first we tried to promote all three human rights organizations carrying out initial inquiries. We put out a press release signed by the three organizations. But when it came time to submit the complaint before the National Human Rights Commission, the other two organizations didn’t want to participate. So we once again discussed the issue inside the Vitoria, and decided that we could submit the complaint appealing to the National Human Rights Commission’s obligation to investigate and to protect the personal information of those who submit the complaint. That gave us some protection, so to speak, to go before them and request that they investigate the issue.

  So we started to document the case and we sent what we had along with what had been sent to us, all the information we had while Andrés was still disappeared. When he was able to escape and sent the video with his testimony, we added all that information to the complaint before the National Commission. But during the whole time of documentation after we submitted the complaint, we kept getting calls and letters from the National Commission requesting that we take the person named in the complaint to them, that we introduce them to the people who had given us the information. We repeatedly informed them that we did not have any contact beside the written information we had received. Obviously, we were afraid that they would try to link us to the armed movement. And we had to make it very clear that our role was exclusively as human rights defenders, and that we didn’t have anything to do with armed movements. But . . . the National Human Rights Commission always takes a long time to investigate, but they were also hesitant to make a recommendation against SEDENA. Even after Andrés escaped and gave his testimony about where he was detained and held and how he was tortured, the CNDH’s hesitancy to really investigate was quite remarkable.