Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

May 31, 2013

Israel-Mexico: Military Cooperation to Crush Zapatistas

Israel-Mexico: Military Cooperation to Crush Zapatistas Liberation Movement

By and • May 31, 2013 
Shared from Intercontinental Cry Magazine


Excerpt:
Trained by Israel
According to declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents [PDF] obtained via a freedom of information request, Israeli personnel were discreetly sent into Chiapas in response to the 1994 Zapatista uprising for the purpose of “providing training to Mexican military and police forces.”
The Mexican government also made use of the Arava aircraft to deploy its Airborne Special Forces Group (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE). GAFE commandos were themselves trained by Israel and the US. Several would later desert the GAFE and go on to create “Los Zetas,” currently Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug cartel (“Los Zetas and Mexico’s Transnational Drug War,” World Politics Review, 25 December 2009).
Mexico was surprised by the Zapatistas, who rose up the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The Mexican government found itself needing to respond to the dictates of foreign investors, as a famously-leaked Chase-Manhattan Bank memo revealed: “While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy.”
READ ARTICLE: 
http://intercontinentalcry.org/israel-mexico-military-cooperation-to-crush-zapatistas-liberation-movement-19560/
Linda Quiquivix is a critical geographer. She can be reached at www.quiqui.org.
Jimmy Johnson is an organizer in Detroit. He can be reached at johnson [dot] jimmy [at] gmail [dot] com.

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