Tag Archives: nestora salgado

News from the Freedom for Nestora Salgado campaign

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nestora posterOn March 7, the Mexico City Committee to Free Nestora will hold a press conference at which Nestora’s sister, Clotilde Salgado will speak. It will be broadcast live at 10:00am Mexico City time from the portal CENCOS (www.cencos.wordpress.com). It will be followed by a public forum at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and by a demonstration supported by a number of unions that have endorsed the campaign. They will all address the case of Nestora, and the plight of the community police in Guerrero and in Michoacán.The Mexican National Human Rights Commission has dispatched a team of investigators to look into the circumstances of Nestora’s arrest and incarceration to determine if they violate her civil and political rights. More on this when additional facts are available.

It has been six months since Nestora Salgado, a U.S. citizen and resident of Renton, Washington, was abducted from her hometown of Olinalá, Mexico and transported to a federal maximum security prison hundreds of miles away. She remains imprisoned today on trumped up charges related to her role as the elected leader of the indigenous police force in Olinalá, a force which defended the community against violent drug cartels and corrupt officials. Six months of inaction on her behalf by the U.S. government has resulted in grave hardship and deprivation for her and her family.

As her imprisonment and the arrest of other community police continues, the international campaign to free Nestora and her comrades is growing. Thus far it has encompassed a hunger strike by her husband Jose; an online petition campaign that has over 6300 signers; endorsements by over 120 organizations and prominent individuals; legal petitions filed with the U.N. and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; and a multi-city, multinational day of protest and picketing on International Human Rights Day, December 10. Protests took place at Mexican consulates in five U.S. cities and government offices in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. There were also other actions in Australia, France and Argentina. Dozens of TV and radio interviews, as well as numerous newspaper articles in the U.S. and Mexico, have covered Nestora’s plight and the campaign to free her. Univision, the largest Spanish language TV network in the U.S., produced a short news report on her story.

Carrying out this campaign has entailed considerable expense for picket signs, photos, banners, informational flyers and transportation. Donations are urgently needed and gladly accepted to expand this campaign, please see below for more on how to make a donation. A shout out goes to the Frente de Resistencia por México which held a successful fundraising event in Los Angeles on February 22.

The Freedom for Nestora organizing committee and her family are keeping up a pressure campaign on members of the Washington State congressional delegation. As of yet, they have not acted on our request to urge Secretary of State John Kerry to intervene on Nestora’s behalf. Instead they have tried working through the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara with minimal results. Only after numerous visits by consulate staff was Nestora allowed to receive, but not make, international phone calls with her family. Additionally, after months of letting Nestora see only her sister, one of her daughters has recently been allowed visits. That and clean drinking water are all that the U.S. intervention have produced.

nestora poster

A critical situation

Prison officials continue to deny Nestora medical attention and the drugs needed to control the pain she suffers due to neuropathy. She is still barred from daily exercise (part of the treatment for her condition) and is restricted to her cell for all but an hour a week. Not surprisingly, she has lost considerable weight. Her sense of isolation is intensified by prison rules that forbid her contact with other inmates, even her cellmate.

The failure of Nestora’s congressional representatives and the U.S. State Department to aggressively intervene to free her has made her situation more difficult. Their lack of action has given a green light to increasingly punitive and exaggerated charges being brought against her by Mexican prosecutors. Six counts of kidnapping suddenly became 50 counts; coordinating legitimate community policing activities is now called leading a “criminal conspiracy”; and allowing community police officers to lawfully arm themselves with single shot rifles and machetes has become “weapons trafficking”.

Forcing Nestora to expend a great deal of the time and money to answer all these bogus charges is part of the Mexican government’s strategy to drain Nestora’s limited resources. Just getting copies of the files related to the plethora of charges against her will cost hundreds of dollars. This is on top of the heavy expenses involved in traveling hundreds of miles to and from the prison to visit Nestora.

Clearly federal and state prosecutors have been sabotaging Nestora’s right to effective legal representation. Government representatives have interfered not only with her right to see an attorney, but also with her choice of attorneys. The court refused to recognize her original lawyer who worked for a well-respected human rights organization and who had experience representing political prisoners. This delay tactic led the family in Guerrero to hire another attorney out of desperation. Unfortunately, he did not have the requisite qualifications to take on a political case like this. Only recently they secured a highly qualified law firm in Mexico City to represent her. But as of this writing–and six months after her arrest–she has still not seen an attorney.

Exciting news on the organizing front in Mexico

On January 17, a demonstration in the capital city of Guerrero demanded Nestora’s release along with other indigenous political prisoners. The Freedom for Nestora campaign issued a statement of solidarity that was widely publicized in the press in Mexico,including the two major newspapers in Guerrero. Two weeks later, on February 2, Nestora’s daughter Sayra spoke before a thousand supporters in Mexico City with the help of Partido Obrero Socialista (POS).

Other solidarity actions included a campaign kicked off by POS to produce and put up 2000 posters to raise public awareness of the case in Mexico. POS members were also instrumental in getting teachers in Oaxaca who belong to the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) to endorse the solidarity campaign.

Labor and people of color organizations in the U.S. call for Nestora’s release

The Freedom for Nestora-Seattle campaign was highly visible at the January march and rally in Seattle commemorating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. King County Council Member Larry Gossett promoted the campaign and invited Nestora’s husband Jose Avila and her daughter Grisel Rodriguez to address the crowd of several thousand. The MLK Day Celebration Committee also passed a resolution calling on the Congressional Black Caucus to urge the State Department to take immediate action to secure Nestora’s release from custody.

The Freedom for Nestora campaign has been endorsed by an impressive list of labor organizations within the last month. They include: the Washington State Labor Council – AFL-CIO; Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters; Seattle/King County Building & Construction Trades Council; International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 77; Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 8; Washington Federation of State Employees Local 843; Puget Sound Coalition of Labor Union Women; and Puget Sound Coalition of Black Trade Unionists.

International Women’s Day celebrations keep up the fight

Nestora’s campaign will be featured prominently in International Women’s Day events not only in Mexico City but in New York City, where members of YoSoy132, Nueva York will be on a panel on March 15. In Seattle, members of Nestora’s family will be speak at the annual celebration on March 14. On March 23 Nestora’s case will be one of several examples of repression against women leaders and activists discussed as part of a Bay Area IWD tribute.

As we learn of other events, we will let you know. ¡La lucha continua!

HELP FREE NESTORA! MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

If you haven’t already, now is the time to sign the online Free Nestora Campaign Facebook page to volunteer and to check for new developments, meetings and activities.

This report was prepared by members of the Freedom for Nestora Committee– Seattle, Washington, U.S. Su Docekal, Coordinator
FreeNestora.Seattle@gmail.com
206-953-5601

WSLC joins campaign to release Renton woman from Mexican prison

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salgado-nestora(Feb. 25, 2014) — At the direction of the Washington State Labor Council’s Executive Board, WSLC President Jeff Johnson has written U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to urge him to press for the release of a Nestora Salgado, a Renton woman who has been imprisoned in Mexico since Aug. 21, 2013.

According to a Seattle Weekly report on her arrest, Salgado, a naturalized U.S. citizen, “got swept up in the movement to fight violence, organized crime and what many believe is government corruption” in Olinalá, the remote, impoverished town where she was born.

Mexico’s federal law, and that of the state of Guerrero, gives indigenous people the right to form their own police force… many such community police forces have sprung up across the country. Olinalá’s even had the backing of Guerrero governor… Salgado, who had started spending months at a time in Olinalá, was elected leader of the that force. The governor might not have anticipated that Olinalá’s militia would arrest the town sheriff. (Sources say) the sheriff had been called upon to investigate the double-homicide of a father and son. Instead, they say, the town official tampered with the evidence at the crime scene and tried to steal the dead men’s belongings, including a cow.

Read more at TheStand.org >>

La lucha por los derechos de los indígenas no conoce fronteras

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La campaña para liberar a Nestora Salgado de la cárcel mexicana recibe apoyo internacional

Cuando la líder indígena Nestora Salgado, residente del estado de Washington y ciudadana naturalizada de EEUU, viajó al sur de la frontera de EEUU y México el año pasado, no esperaba acabar como prisionera política. El propósito de sus primeros viajes a su pueblo natal de Olinalá, Guerrero, fue llevar ayuda a los desesperadamente pobres residentes. Pero encontró al pueblo dominado por pandillas criminales y por traficantes de drogas, los cuales aterrorizan y asesinan a la población, violan a las niñas y difunden la prostitución y la adición a las drogas.

Cuando denunció la colusión entre los funcionarios mexicanos y estos rufianes, se encontró en la prisión, con falsos cargos de secuestro.

Seguir leyendo en socialism.com >>

Solidarity Statement from the Freedom for Nestora – Seattle Committee

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The Freedom for Nestora – Seattle Committee issued a Solidarity Statement on January 17, 2014 to a demonstration in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero standing with the demonstrators demanding freedom for all political prisoners in Mexico.

Read the statement here.

Resolution Endorsing Campaign to Free Nestora Salgado

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On January 7th, Seattle City Council member and Chairman of the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee Larry Gossett signed a Resolution Endorsing the Campaign to Free Nestora Salgado.

Click here to view the resolution.

Photos from the Free Nestora Salgado Protests on 12/10/2013

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Coordinated Freedom for Nestora protests were held at the Mexican Consulates on Dec. 10, 2013 in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Actions were also seen internationally in Melbourne and Costa Rica.

Stephen Durham and others leaflet before the protest

Nestora’s daughter Grisel speaks to the press.

Protest signs at the Seattle rally.

Radical Women’s Ann Rodgers, Nestora’s daughter Ruby and her husband, José at the Seattle protest.

Protesters at the NYC rally.

Protesters in Melbourne speak up for Nestora and other female political prisoners.

Protester speaking at the San Francisco rally.

Protesters at the Los Angeles rally.

A protester performs at the Los Angeles rally.

Video of the Freedom for Nestora Protests – 12/10/2013

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Video of the Freedom for Nestora Protest in Seattle, WA on Dec. 10, 2013. Speeches by her husband, José Luis Avila, and daughter, Grisel Rodriguez, along with other supporters of the campaign.

More speeches from the Seattle Protest

Speeches from the protest in NYC.

Protesters descend on Mexican Consulates to voice support for jailed indigenous leader Nestora Salgado

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This article originally appeared on socialism.com.

“Free Nestora Salgado” solidarity rallies were held in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Seattle; New York City; Portland, Oregon; Mexico City; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and Melbourne, Australia.

Supporters of naturalized U.S. citizen Nestora Salgado held protests at Mexican Consulates to mark International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2013. Over the last four years, Salgado, a grandmother, has made numerous trips from her residence in Renton, Washington, to deliver clothing and supplies to the desperately poor residents of her hometown of Olinalá, Guerrero. Seeing the need to organize against economic and social injustice, she instilled in the women of Olinalá confidence in their ability to lead such a struggle. As a result, she was elected coordinator of a local armed indigenous police force officially authorized by the Mexican Constitution and Guerrero state law 701. Crime rates plummeted and killings stopped with the inauguration of the community police.

But, as Angie Galindo of YoSoy132 Nueva York said at a rally on the sidewalk outside New York City’s Mexican Consulate, Nestora’s “only act of defiance was exposing the connection between the government officials of Olinalá and organized crime.” On August 21, local officials retaliated by arranging Salgado’s arrest on trumped up kidnapping charges and sending her hundreds of miles away to a federal prison in Tepic, Nayarit. Since her arrest, the federal government has maintained a military occupation of Olinalá to intimidate other residents and punish those who protest Salgado’s imprisonment.

Just before Thanksgiving, one of Salgado’s attorneys, Thomas Antkowiak, an Associate Law Professor at Seattle University and an expert in international human rights law, filed a petition to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on Ms. Salgado’s behalf. He is requesting that the Working Group declare that Ms. Salgado’s detention is unlawful and that she be freed.

At the December 10 rallies, protestors presented consulate staff with letters to Enrique Peña Nieto, president of Mexico, demanding Ms. Salgado’s release and the release of other community police who are also the victims of a political witchhunt. They delivered a list of over 80 individual and organizational endorsers of the campaign to “Free Nestora.” Endorsers included: the Seattle Human Rights Commission; National Lawyers Guild; Núcleo por un Partido Revolucionario Internacionalista, Dominican Republic; Partido Obrero Socialista, Mexico; Indigenous Social Justice Association, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia; M.E.Ch.A de Portland State University, Oregon; and Central Puget Sound Carpenters Local 30.

Standing outside the Seattle consulate, Ms. Salgado’s husband, José Avila, shared the story of Salgado’s work in the Olinalá community and the harsh conditions of her captivity in Mexico. Her daughter, Grisel Rodriguez, described the use of military-style torture on Nestora, including keeping bright lights on in her cell 24 hours a day to cause disorientation and sleep deprivation.

Seattle Freedom Socialist Party organizer Su Docekal noted that among those calling for Salgado’s release are: Nancy Shippentower, Puyallup tribal elder; Cecile Hanson, chairwoman of the Duwamish tribe; and Moonanum James of the United American Indians of New England. Ms. Docekal compared indigenous people’s struggle against mining companies in Mexico to the struggle of Native Americans against proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest and First Nations Peoples’ fight to preserve their water and way of life in the face of hydraulic fracturing and tar sands oil extraction in Canada.

Chippewa feminist and Seattle Radical Women spokeswoman Ann Rogers called Ms. Salgado’s detention a “horrible injustice” and told the crowd, “Just because you are an indigenous woman doesn’t make you a second-class citizen.”

Hortensia Colorado, from the Coatlicue Theatre Company in New York, is an indigenous immigrant woman from Mexico. She spoke about the Mexican government’s orchestrated plan to drive the poor and indigenous people off their land in order to hand it over to large-scale international mining corporations to extract gold, silver and other natural resources. She called it a continuation of the destruction of indigenous people and their land base that has gone on, unabated, for over 500 years.

Stephen Durham spoke at the New York City rally in the name of the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR). He noted that Nestora captures in her own story the international solidarity and bravery which is critical to survival, not just of indigenous people, but to the poor and working classes of Mexico, of the U.S. and throughout our hemisphere. He noted that CRIR had played a pivotal role in getting the International Human Rights Day protests off the ground in four countries.

The international aspect of the gathering in New York was especially notable with the presence of attendees from Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Ecuador. Calls for Salgado’s freedom were also raised as part of an International Human Rights Day speak out in Melborne, Australia.

Professor Ana Fisher, a member of American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 who teaches at City College of San Francisco, spoke about how crucial women leaders are to the struggles of workers and the poor in Mexico, pointing out that they are targets of the government precisely because they are fighting the hardest. Michelle Mundt, with Occupy Portland, was struck by the democratic process of electing a community police force as opposed to one being imposed on a community by the state.

In the Northwest corner of the U.S., Stop the Checkpoints, a community immigrant rights defense group in Port Angeles, Washington, held a protest on December 7 in support of Ms. Salgado’s release. Protesters there linked the struggles to defend indigenous rights in Mexico with standing up for undocumented workers in the U.S.

Marvelia Alpizar, reporter from La Opinion, and Guadalupe Lizárraga of the Los Ángeles Press attended the Los Angeles committee’s press conference and were addressed by Andy Diaz, American Indian Changing Spirits; Juan Rodriguez, Frente de Resistencia por México; Guillermo Torres, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, and others.

The demonstrations attracted considerable other media attention: a New York City-based reporter for La Reforma, one of Mexico’s major daily newspapers; Radio Marginal, a Mexican Internet radio station; a photographer from the New York Times web site; and representatives from “La Voz Latina,” WBAI Pacifica radio station. In Portland, KBOO radio and Indymedia covered the action. Univisión/Channel 14 and Bay Area Indymedia were on hand to cover the event in San Francisco. Seattle press included Univisión, radio stationsKPLU (Pacific Lutheran University), KUOW (National Public Radio) and KBCS (Bellevue College), the Seattle Weekly, and the Westside Weekly. La Raza NW newspaper interviewed the family and Seattle attorney prior to the event along with KDNA, a Spanish language radio station from Eastern Washington. La Jornada Guerrero newspaper ran a large photo of the Seattle protest on its front page, under a heading that translates as “A cause that goes beyond borders.”

The protests were sponsored by Libertad para Nestora/Freedom for Nestora Committees in the various cities. If you would like to interview a member of the Salgado family or their attorney Thomas Antkowiak, or to join the movement for Libertad para Nestora/Freedom for Nestora, please call 206-708-5161 or email FreeNestora.Seattle@gmail.com.