Four clandestine armed groups in Mexico issued a communique Sept. 27 calling for a "common front" to "recuperate the fatherland," which they say has been hijacked by a "rightist usurping minority." The statement also called for the reappearance alive of the two "disappeared" presumed followers of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sánchez and Edmundo Reyes Amaya. The statement was jointly issued by the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency-Army of the People (TDR-EP), the Lucio Cabañas Barrientos Revolutionary Movement (MR-LCB), the May 1 Insurgent Organization (OI-1M) and the December 2 Execution Brigade (BA-2D). Among the presumed authors of the statement is Comandante José Arturo, one of the founders of the EPR.

"We call upon all the armed political organizations to deepen and extend their work of organization, strengthen the popular self-defense and increase the number of their effective fighters, in the face of the ultra-right offensive," the statement read. It called the government of President Felipe Calderón "repressive and illegitimate."

The statement called for the development of "all forms of struggle, including the right to self-defense and armed resistance, as a front before the obstruction of the path of democracy and the repressive action which the rightist minority in the federal government has intensified." Drawing on examples from Mexican history, it invoked the "humanist, fraternal and libertarian spirit that animated the independentistas, the anti-imperialist liberals of the Reform, and the agrarians and syndicalists of the Revolution. We must also recuperate the communitarian roots and the dignified example of the indigenous peoples, afro-mestizos and mestizos of our country... to orient the forseeable outbreak of revolutionary violence on the part of the entire [Mexican] people, who have been once again defrauded...by the usurping rightist government." (Proceso, Sept. 27)

See our last post on Mexico and the guerilla movement.