From Mexico's El Universal, June 21, via Chiapas95:

Arrest warrants issued for 23 officers

A top State of Mexico judge issued arrest warrants for 23 police officers who stand accused of abuse and use of excessive force during unrest in San Salvador Atenco last month.

This Reuters story that ran in the Washington Post June 19 (online at Chiapas95) is typical of the hegemonic mainstream media line (north of the border, at least) that the Zapatistas have shot their wad and are forgotten. (Amazing that we periodically have to be reminded like this that they are forgotten.) Cynically, the piece mentions nothing about the conflict over San Salvador Atenco or the labor unrest in Oaxaca—struggles which have assumed center stage in Mexico, and have been thoroughly integrated into the demands and mobilizations of the Zapatistas' national tour, the "Other Campaign." Contrary to this story's implication, the Zapatistas' "demands" were never just about indigenous autonomy. That was but the first of several "dialogue tables" planned in the long-stalled peace process. The government's intransigence in approving these first accords (on indigenous autonomy), meant that the subsequent "tables"—on agrarian reform, education, labor and general democratic rights—have languished for nearly ten years now. Nor were the accords on indigenous autonomy only about Chiapas state—they were meant to apply throughout Mexico. The piece does, however, raise the important point that, while the Zapatistas now occupy the public eye in Mexico City, their stronghold of southern, impoverished Chiapas has been paradoxically forgotten—even as violence escalates there.

This online debate between John Ross and Al Giordano, two veteran alterno-journalists who have long covered the Zapatista movement in Mexico, is a bit incestuous (and certainly long-winded), as well as self-important and catty. But it does shed some interesting light on the political questions surrounding the Zapatistas' "Other Campaign," the rebels' latest and most ambitious effort to launch a national civil revolutionary movement. It also raises some important questions about the role of alternative media in general. From Giordano's Narco News Bulletin, June 19:

Some 500 people, mostly students, marched in Asuncion, Paraguay, on June 17 to protest the presence of US troops in the country. The protesters marched along the Avenida Mariscal Lopez; they tried to reach the US embassy but were blocked by some 100 riot police. The marchers instead rallied at the intersection of two avenues, where they burned US flags and an effigy of US president George W. Bush and demanded the departure of US troops from Paraguay and Latin America. The protesters held signs reading "Yankees tapeho," meaning "Yankees go home" in Guarani, the main indigenous language of Paraguay. Protests against the US troops are held on the 17th of every month; the June action was larger than usual because it coincided with the final day of the Paraguayan session of the Bolivarian People's Congress, which began in Asuncion on June 13.

Some 2,000 Wichi, Toba and Mocovi indigenous people from throughout the northern Argentine province of Chaco arrived on June 6 in the provincial capital, Resistencia, and began camping out in front of the provincial government building after an effort to dialogue with governor Roy Nikisch broke down. On June 8 the indigenous protesters blockaded streets in the center of the city. The indigenous communities want to send 100 delegates to meet with Nikisch over demands including the return of thousands of hectares of land illegally appropriated to others; the removal from office of Lorenzo Heffner, mayor of Villa Rio Bermejito; and increased funding for the Chaqueno Chaco Indigenous Institute (IDACh). Nikisch says he will only meet with IDACh's directors, who are elected by the indigenous communities. The IDACh directors refuse to meet with Nikisch unless the community delegates can participate.

Our occasional contributor Michael I. Niman writes for his June 15 "Getting a Grip" column in ArtVoice, the alternative weekly in Buffalo, NY:

Anti-Casino or Anti-Indian?

Those of us in Western New York who oppose war need to start paying attention to our own backyard. where community activists and developers are fanning the flames in the US and Canada's ceaselessly rekindling war against the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Six Nations) Confederacy. Flareups are now occurring throughout Haudenosaunee territory. In the north, armed Ontario government forces are engaged in a standoff with residents and supporters of the Six Nations Grand River Reserve on contested land where a local developer is attempting to build a subdivision in the municipality of Caledonia. The three-month-old standoff is moving toward a violent climax as Ontario officials, responding to complaints from non-native residents, are threatening force to remove native protestors.

Bush's declaration of a national monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands is being hailed by world environmentalists, and certainly impresses by its sheer size—1,400 miles long and 100 miles wide. "To put this area in context, this national monument is more than 100 times larger than Yosemite Park," Bush said. "It's larger than 46 of our 50 states, and more than seven times larger than all our national marine sanctuaries combined. This is a big deal."

From the New York Daily News, June 21:

Schoolgirl killed by SUV

A 5-year-old Brooklyn girl running to catch her school bus was rammed and killed by an SUV yesterday after darting out from behind two parked cars, police said.