Mexico’s Special Investigative Sup-Prosecutor for Organized Delinquency (SIEDO) says it is probing plans by the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) to kidnap high federal government officials and bomb foreign embassies. The plans were supposedly revealed by Hermenegildo Torres Cruz, a member of the Democratic Popular Left (IDP), under interrogation after being detained as a “witness” by the Public Ministry. (La Jornada, Sept. 16) Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) has released a statement denying any connection to Arturo Duque Alvarado, arrested by Guerrero state police on charges of being a leader of the organization Aug. 26 in the community of Camacua de Michelena, Coyuca de CatalĂĄn municipality. The statement also protested the “disappearance” of supposed EPR militants Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto de la Cruz Sanchez as part of a “campaign of state terror,” calling them “prisoners of war in the military installations of the Mexican narco-state.” The statement explicitly did not make any judgment for or against the recent EPR attacks on oil pipelines in Veracruz. (El Universal, Sept. 12; La Jornada, Aug. 26)
Ex-guerilla and IDP spokesman Felipe Edgardo Canseco Ruiz said the Veracruz attacks are “a clear message” that the EPR “will keep acting” until Reyes Amaya and Cruz SĂĄnchez are returned alive. He said if the government of President Felipe Calderon thinks it can annihilate the EPR, “they are totally mistaken. Their structures have many years of antiquity and clandestinity; they were constructed and designed to survive decades of repression, since their origins in the years of the ’70s.” (La Jornada, Sept. 13)
See our last posts on Mexico and the guerilla movement.
EPR Declassification Project
This summer, Keith Yearman posted this on the Narcosphere:
NYT revisits Mexican guerilla movement
Reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Antonio Betancourt write for the New York Times Sept. 26 (our annotation to follow):
We only wish to take issue with a few small points this time:
1. It is, of course, contested by the left opposition that their candidate AndrĂ©s Manuel LĂłpez Obrador did in fact lose last year’s presidential race.
2. While PROCUP did engage in some unfortunate gunplay directed against fellow leftists, it might be overstated to call it a “campaign.”
3. While the Sierra del Sur, spanning the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, appears to be the EPR’s heartland, their roots are probably deeper in Guerrero. McKinley and Betancourt make only oblique references to the 1960s insurgency of Lucio Cabañas in the mountains of Guerrero, which seems to have been the kernel of the contemporary EPR. And the government’s claimed “strides in dismantling” the EPR in the ’90s were as much in Guerrero as Oaxaca.
4. Whatever the Mexican authorities may say, it is unlikely the EPR’s “main base of operations” is now the slums of Mexico City rather than the mountains of Guerrero and Oaxaca.
5. It is not quite accurate that the EPR’s “splinter groups continued to carry out bombings.” The most significant splinter group, the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) has carried out no bombings, and functions more as a peasant self-defense group. Last November’s Mexico City bombings were apparently carried out by a joint cell of five armed organizations led by the the Revolutionary Democratic Tendency-Army of the People (TDR-EP), which is an EPR splinter group. But the last (and largely bungled) attempted bombings before that, in August 2001, were apparently carried out by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP)âan urban organization not believed to be an EPR splinter group. This hardly adds up to a campaign of bombings, less one by EPR splinter groups.
6. Finally, just to clarify my own quote: while I did say it appeared the EPR had effectively factionalized itself out of existence, I certainly never meant to imply that Mexico’s guerilla movement as a whole “was finished.”
We do give the Times credit for finally mentioning the names of the “disappeared” Gabriel Alberto Cruz SĂĄnchez and Edmundo Reyes Amayaâwhich ups the pressure on the Mexican government to produce them alive.
See our last deconstruction of the Times’ coverage of the Mexican guerilla movement.
Mexico: dialogue with EPR rebels?
Mexico’s Senate Commission on Public Security is considering legislation to establish a committee that will seek dialogue with the EPR guerillas. Sen. Ulises Ramirez Nuñez of the ruling National Action Party (PAN) said it was necessary to acknowledge that the group has “just demands.” (La Jornada, Sept. 20)