Since the 13th of february 2003 the CCU was attending a picket in front of the municipality palace because of corruption of the administration of the PRI-ist Arming Sanchez Ruíz, because of the lack of attention by the federal and national government given the violence and because of the repression by paramilitaries against the people.


Unión Hidalgo is a community of about 15 000 inhabitants, who are attached to the zapoteca culture and is located to the south of the isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca.
The conflict in this community goes back to 1964 when a presidential resolution legitimizes the possession of land to the members of the community of Union Hidalgo and Chicapa de Castro. Another resolution from 1970 grants the possession of the same land to the settlers of San Dionisio del Mar.
In 2001 the conflict worsens when the company Camarón Real del Pacífico SSS
tries to install a shrimp farm near communal land, the civil association Asociación Civil Gubiña XXI denounced the project before the Federal Office for the Protection of the Environment (Procuraduría Federal de Protección del Ambiente, PROFEPA) and the company was fined because of having deforested the land and more than ever not having carried out a study of environmental impact.
In 2003, Unión Hidalgo asked the President of the municipality, Sanchez Ruíz, again for a solution of the conflict, but he ignored the member of the community and, on the contrary, put them under pressure instead, so to accept alongside with the Ejidatarios of San Dionisio the privatization of the land.Only the latter accepted and the conflict still continues.


It has to be mentioned that Armando Sánchez Ruíz, as president of the municipality, has sold and bought the land of the municipality in an illegal manner in favour of the shrimp farming company whose president and treasurer he is.
And according to the citizens information of Unión Hidalgo nearly all municipal councillors are partners of the company.

Since then the community, who is organising around the Council of the Oldest and the CCU, coordinates the autonomy of the village. Therefore it is explicable, that they have to suffer under the systematic violence of the municipal government, which has lately intensified their aggressions, on the 7th of april it was wildly beating Jacobo Cruz and on the 11th it killed Manuel Posada.
Thereupon Amnesty International made recommendations like e.g. to write protest letters to the government of Oaxaca to attempt to guarantee the security of the members of the citizen council Unihidalguense.


Last April, the 20th 7 members of CCU started a hunger strike, two days later another citizen joined, because of the declining political possibilities in Unión Hidalgo and the increase of violence by the municipal authority towards the community.
On the 29th, eight days after the start of the hunger strike, the CCU decided to suspend the abstinence, at the request of the local representatives so not to vote for a negative opinion in regards to the starvation.

In addition the federal government had committed to set up a table of dialogue, but no agreement could be reached.
The crimes of the government are still unpunished and the members of the community are in resistance.



Disappearing Power

Oaxaca is one of the states, in which the indigenous communities have to live daily with the way of organisation imposed violently by the government. The conflict of Unión Hidalgo is exactly one of the cases, in which the people fight for their autonomy.

According to the free and independant group Binni Cubi (Grupo Libre e Independiente Binni Cubi) out of the 570 municipalities forming the state of Oaxaca, there is hardly any which hasn't got any problems because of the governmental power wether they are situated at the coast, in the valley, in the Mixteca, in the Cañada, in Papaloapan, in the Sierra Norte and in the Sierra Sur and naturally in the isthmus.

Our Solidarity and admiration towards the struggle of all these people/towns (pueblos):
"Nowhere a tyran got ditched to be replaced with another one, but rather to construct a more just society, a society in which we all find a place without the necessity that some are positioned above the other."


More information on Union Hidalgo and other conflicts in the state of Oaxaca:  http://www.mexico.indymedia.org/oaxaca

 http://mexico.indymedia.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/01/1739249