The system. "The torturer is a functionary. The dictator is a functionary.
Armed bureaucrats who lose their jobs if they don't perform their tasks efficiently.
That’s all. Nothing more.
They’re not extraordinary monsters.
We won’t give them the benefit of such grandeur."
Eduardo Galeano

Mexico, August 31, 2007. One day they dragged them out of their house illegally without a search warrant. The Cerezo brothers were tortured and then were subjected to a gigantic media montage and thrown into maximum security prisons. The news media and bureaucratic inertia found them guilty although none of the charges against them have ever been proved and all the evidence has vanished.

Their case is not part of an anti-totalitarian novel by Kafka or George Orwell or Bradbury of Farenheit 451 fame. It’s a real case, something that happened in Mexico six years ago. Since then such scenes are once again common in Mexico (some say they never ceased), a reality imposed by the governing class.

The commission of crimes against humanity by governmental authorities these days against people who owe them nothing and have nothing to fear has become a systematic practice, a strategy of social control. The series of elections with an extremely low participation rate and repeated electoral fraud have turned these illegal instruments of repression into everyday administrative practices revealing a total lack of social legitimacy.

We believe that repression is far from inevitable and that people’s organization is first and foremost.

Here is Hector Cerezo’s letter, taken from the web page of the Cerezo Committee for Human Rights:

LETTER FROM HECTOR CEREZO AFTER SIX YEARS IN PRISON

TO MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE CEREZO COMMITTEE
TO ALL THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS AND PEOPLE WHO HAVE OFFERED US THEIR SOLIDARITY AND SUPPPORT

I want to begin this letter by sending you a warm, affectionate greeting, a big hug, and my most sincere admiration and respect.

Six years have gone by since we were illegally arrested, tortured and imprisoned by members of the federal police and the army, six years since we began a tenacious, courageous, difficult, and unwavering struggle to regain our freedom that was snatched from us by those who exploit and oppress the people from their positions of power. Six years of resistance, of struggling day by day, of nourishing our hopes, of receiving solidarity from a people that keeps on struggling and never forgets. Six years in which you have gone through untold vicissitudes of sorrow and joy, just as we have.

This has been a time marked by the systematic violation of the human rights of those of us who are locked up in different prisons––these monstrous monuments of infamy, abuse and impunity. A time marked by ongoing threats of death and rape, by harassment and surveillance from the security forces of the federal government to whom some dare to denounce human rights violations.

Our small story is only one of so many human tragedies experienced daily by the families that are victims of brutal repression. We’ve always been clear that we’re not the first or the last people to be held prisoners for political motives. The compañeros from Atenco, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Veracruz and Hidalgo are always in our hearts and minds. Even though their circumstances are just as bad, or worse, than our own, they resist imprisonment with dignity.

We’re clear that the PAN and PRI governments have opted for repression, illegal arrests, beatings, torture, murder, imprisonment, and forced disappearance in their efforts to contain and eliminate the social discontent brought about by the neo-liberal policies they themselves have imposed. But we’re also conscious that we can’t cease to raise the banner of human rights; this is not only a necessity, an unavoidable task, but above all, a duty for all of us who aspire to be part of a truly just, fair, democratic, free society.

That’s why we can’t stop demanding the freedom of ALL political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in the country, the live presentation of ALL those who are detained / disappeared, and an end to the persecution or harassment of ALL human rights defenders and social activists in the country.

Mexico is going through hard times. Human rights have been termed an obstacle by the federal government, so the Cerezo Committee’s work in defense of human rights takes on new importance, as does the solidarity, courage, and integrity its members have shown all this time. Our resistance cannot be broadened without a long, arduous struggle of ALL the members of the Committee, of ALL the people who have acted in solidarity with it. Not being alone is something concrete, something tangible; we feel it in every act of denunciation, every protest, every signature, every letter, every greeting, every space made available to us.

Our thanks go out to all of you who have made our struggle for freedom your own. Rest assured that we will never give up, that we will never surrender, that we will never go back on our principles and ideals. Now, after six years of being locked up, we can say that our convictions are as firm as ever and that our will to keep on struggling for the freedom of our people is unbreakable.

Tomorrow, in that tomorrow so long awaited and demanded, we will be there with you, happy and proud to be struggling together, now and forever.

Here goes a strong embrace, an “until then,” and a “now and forever”––we will win.

Affectionately yours,
Héctor Cerezo
Pd1: Prisoners today, forever free!
August 13, 2007
Extermination Center #1 Altiplano