by ARMANDO CARMONA
PHOTO/Aldo Santiago – Agencia Subversiones
The Caravana 43 has emerged as a strategy to circulate struggle, disrupt misinformation, and create a context for a deeper discussion on how state violence and repression in Mexico has become systematic in Mexico and in other parts of the world. The Caravana 43 has traveled throughout the United States, Canada, several countries in Europe and most recently has crossed through Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. In each of their appearances, they begin by situating their struggle to find the 43 forcibly disappeared students in the context of a systematic effort in Mexico to normalize violence against indigenous people, campesinos, political activists and of course, students. They share their word with the hopes that people will listen and support the struggles currently underway in Mexico.
The Caravana 43 in South America is particularly significant because of the region’s similar history in regards to state violence, repression and forced disappearances. During Argentina’s Dirty War, thousands of alleged political dissidents were illegally taken, detained, tortured and many times killed in clandestine detention centers. The group Madres de la Plaza de Mayo were formed by women who met each other in their search for their missing sons and daughters. In Uruguay, thousands gather each year in the annual March of Silence to commemorate those that where “disappeared” by the country’s dictatorship. In both of these instances, as well as in other South American countries, there are documents that detail the United States’ complicity in Operation Condor which was a coordinated campaign led by various Latin American governments to crack down on leftist activists and intellectuals.
Here are testimonies from some of those in the Caravana 43 traveling throughout South America:
“The Mexican Government has continually lied to us. As of this date, there is no scientific evidence to support the government’s claim that any of the 43 are dead. The independent forensic team from Argentina has provided alternative accounts, and refutes the Mexican government’s claim. We know they took them, this is why they’ve stopped searching for them. They took them alive, we want them back alive… and we will not stop until they are home” – Hilda Vargas, mother of Jorge Antonio Tizapa, one of the 43 that were forcibly disappeared by Mexican Federal Police.
“We first thought it was 43 that were disappeared; now we realize that there are thousands, all throughout Latin America.” – Francisco Sanchez Nava, survivor of the attacks on Ayotzinapa on September 26, 2014.
In Brazil, state repression, police violence, killings and forced disappearances have continued throughout the military dictatorship and have arguably worsened under the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores), a center left political party that was widely supported by left wing social movements throughout the country. A study by a Brazilian non-governmental organization found that of the amount of homicides, no less than 50,806, an estimated 2,212 of those people died at the hands of Brazilian police in 2013. There have been a total of 11,197 similar killings in the hands of police since 2009.
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