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on the border line between the US and Mexico
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Monday, May 25, 2015

Recovering Paradise: The Struggle of Mexicans Against Drug Trafficking



What would happen if a community rebelled against organized crime?

Translated by Valor for Borderland Beat

In January 2014, in the state of Michoacán, Mexico, a conflict known as the rising up of the autodefensas breaks out.  Citizens, farmers, and civil professionals tired of the abuses from drug traffickers and the obvious complicity of government structures, decide to take up arms and form a community police in order to address the problem directly.  A group of them decided to move towards the coast, but they are not alone, they are accompanied by two independent journalists, Rafael Prime (México) and Nicolás Tapia (Chile).  Everything that happened during those turbulent days were recorded on their cameras and now they take form in “Recuperando el Paraíso”, a documentary that seeks independent support through crowd funding in order to finalize their project.

El Ciudadano spoke with Rafael and Nicolás, who gave them more details about this incredible story.

Where did the idea of making this documentary come from?

Nicolás: It actually all happened a bit by chance.  We met covering the protests of the teachers in the Federal District (Capital of Mexico) in 2013, trying to prevent a photographer colleague from being taken away by the police, we didn’t manage to avoid his arrest, but that event led us to know each other and establish a relationship of mutual trust.  From there, I started to participate more actively in the movement of the free media in Mexico, that’s what they call the community press here, and when the armed uprising of the autodefensas in Michoacán broke out, Rafael and I didn’t think much of it and we headed towards the conflict zone in order to cover the conflict from a community perspective.

Rafael: Yeah, truth is, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, I already knew of similar experiences of armed uprisings against the narcos and the political parties, I am referring to Cherán, but not on the scale of what was happening at that time in Michoacán.  In order to tell this story, we have to start from a premise, Mexico is tough and the media is silent, or they are silenced by lead.  Drug trafficking has long since ceased to devote itself exclusively to the drug trade.  Over the years, the economic and firepower that the drug cartels have accumulated is alarming, a power that not only puts the people at its feet, but also the political class throughout the country.  In Chile, it’s the ruthless businesspeople that finance the political parties, but in Mexico, it’s the narco; this translates into the constant slaughter of the people that goes completely unpunished.

Nicolás: That’s why we headed towards Michoacán, because we knew that something was up but the press didn’t make clear about what was going on.  As free media we said: well, it’s a chance to break the information blockade, we can’t just let the primary media cover what is happening there.  We were joined by two comrades, we borrowed a car, a phone number of another colleague to receive us over there and we left.
 
"These lands used to be untouchable"



What did you find over there?


Rafael:  Well, the only thing we knew was that we didn’t want to put the cameras where those of Televisa and TV Azteca were, we wanted to get our stories, our own characters, that’s how we managed to contact a group who were exiled by the narco from the community of Santa María Ostula, who were clandestinely in the region of the sierra asking for support from the other communities in order to liberate the coast, the whole area where the Nahua indigenous communities live.  They trusted us and let us join their uprising along the coast.  Once we arrived, the testimonies we started collecting were heartbreaking.

Nicolás: Michoacán is a fertile land, for generations, its people have dedicated themselves to agriculture because nature is bountiful there, but gradually, the criminals began to look to these lucrative businesses and applied extortions against the producers of avocado, blackberry, lemons, strawberries, papaya, and mango.  In practice, this means that the “Caballeros Templarios” require a payment from the farmers for the sole fact of working, and as if that weren’t enough, they also controlled the sale price.  They forced them to sell the produce to themselves, to the criminals who were extorting the producers, who ultimately are responsible for exporting it abroad, mainly to the US market, all before the passive complicity of the government, the police and the military.

Rafael: The clear extortion begins with “the quotas” for those who work the land, but then they are followed by the rapes and beheadings for any trifle.  On the coast of Michoacán, it was common to be recruited by force to be illegal loggers, people who would take out the “sangualica”, a type of very thin wood that is abundant in the land of the Nahua communities.  The indigenous communities saw how their forests were disappearing at the hands of organized crime, which used the machines of the municipality to transport timber to the port of Lázaro Cárdenas where it was to be sent to China even though it is illegal to transport the “sangualica” because it is in danger of extinction.

Ostula: The Power of the People

How is this involved in the struggle of Santa María Ostula?

Nicolás: The community of Santa María Ostula was the main area affected with the looting of its natural resources, exactly with who we made contact to reach the area.  This is how we were becoming more involved with them, and during the nights of vigilance, we learned that we weren’t participating in the first armed uprising in the area.  In 2009, they had formed their community police to recover lands that were being used by organized crime for their clandestine operations.  Throughout a short period of time, they were able to expel the drug traffickers from the area and founded a new town, Xayakalan, but the response was brutal.  32 people were killed during 2010 and many others had to flee for their lives.

Rafael: It was precisely with them who we were sharing those days with, those who had fled but now they were taking advantage of the uprising of the autodefensas in order to return to their community from the hands of the drug traffickers.  That’s when we decided that we couldn’t just stay in a coverage that we were doing, we had to tell the whole story, we had to make a documentary about Ostula.

How did you continue to develop the production of the documentary?  Have you returned to the area?

Nicolás: When we ran out of money, we had to return to Mexico City.  But we the adrenaline from the experience did not go down, so we started to collect information about what happened in Ostula in 2009.  Because of these life’s coincidences, José Arteaga, who was friends with both of us, and who had also participated with us in the coverage of the teacher’s protests, he had already been in the coast during those years; he had recorded the founding of Xayakalan and knew its history by heart.

Rafael: Yeah, so to speak, we made the perfect combination-hahaha.

Nicolás: Yeah, Rafael and I both had very good material, but the story was not complete without what José had recorded five years ago.  From there on, we had a fall-back plan.  We organized three or four more trips to the area, we initiated a direct relationship with the community and its assembly, which accepted our proposal and gave us the green light to carry out the documentary.

Why a crowd funding campaign?

Rafael: As we mentioned earlier, Mexico’s tough.  There are plenty of abuses and violations towards the communities.  But at the same time, there are many worthy struggles for survival and that are constantly invisible and denied by the mainstream media.  We want to make a documentary that brings to light at least one of these struggles; we are doing this independently because the mainstream media and the film industry are complicit in this silence.  Getting financed within the Mexican audiovisual industry or with government programs does not seem right because at the end of the day, they are linked to those in power that control drug trafficking, the film industry has always been very accommodating with the Mexican political system.

Nicolás: That’s why we decided to start a crowd funding campaign for Recuperando el Paraíso, we believe that it is the most coherent and respectful to the history that the community of Ostula has lived through.  We started all of this independently and want to end the same way, we don’t want money stained with the blood of Mexicans.


For more information, contact them at: recuperandoelparaiso@gmail.com

To DONATE or For additional information visit their campaign Here

Source: El Ciudadano 

17 comments:

  1. Great! I will give them some dollars on payday if they haven't reached their goal

    ReplyDelete
  2. The problem with the concept of "the struggle of Mexicans against drug trafficking" is that an overwhelming percentage of Mexicans do not want drug trafficking to end. Consider the region in Sinaloa where thousands of citizens protested the arrest of El Chapo. Unless they personally have relatives who have been killed, many people like that don't see drug trafficking as a plague to the country; they see it as a means to make a living and bolster the economy of their entire community, and as a source of wealthy criminals to marry their daughters.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have to love idiots! like this. So you live in Mexico right? Your some type of expert on Mexico & drug trafficking? Stop watching Fox news/Right wing news & all US mainstream news they all talk sh1t about every other country that isn't the US, stereotyping everyone that is not the US. Here's a few small examples stereotypes (France) french are rude,hate Americans,they stink,women don't shave. (Canada) always winter,words like aboot,Socialists Or Even Democrats,Health Care Is Totally Free.
      Have you been to other countries? Yet these two are superpowers with nuclear weapons & in the top 10 economies. (NO I'm not French or Canadian I'm a MERIKKKAN like some of you say/But when it comes time for cinco de mayo hear in Merikkka everyone is happy celebrating Mexican culture & their victory against France at the time the best army in the world.

      Delete
    2. U r a real ignorant that have no idea about Mexico. There is a small elite benefitting tremdenously from drug trafficking. Some of them also share some of their illicit gains with the communitites in which they live or where they come from (most dont though).

      Additionally there are communities that live directly from drug production and trafficking. Hence there are some communities gaining from drug trafficking.

      The vast majority of Mexicans suffer directly and indirectly from drug trafficking and want it to go away or rather they want the problems with drug trafficking to go away.

      Hence, if drugs were legalized the vast majority of Mexcians would be happy, but the small corrupt elite making huge amounts of money from the illicit drug trade do NOT want drug to become legalized since it would deprive them of their main source of income.

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  3. Definitely going to keep an eye on this documentary. Mexico is very beautiful country, just that cartels and the government stop the people from living a peaceful life. And it is heart wrenching to see this.

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  4. Theres only 1 pancho villa and 1 emiliano zapata los heroes de mexico los demas pura imitacion pero hay ban

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  5. God bless those people who live an honest life, who want to raise their children in peace. I hope everyone involved in organized crime die a slow miserable death.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Parent who left MexicoMay 26, 2015 at 6:38 AM

    Probably good reporting sounds like Leftist if they are connected with the Teachers union. Teachers in Mexico go to work when they feel like it. Brought my kids to the US got a better Education in the Public System. Did not have Money to send them to a Private School

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  7. The question in the 1st picture, What would happen if a community rebelled against organized crime? Well the answer is obvious. Just look at what happend to Mireles, n even if the community didnt rebel ala the 43 students just look what happend to them, even worse is what happend in Jalisco the community didnt try to rebel there and organzied crime still wages war on the real authorities some imagine if the community just tried to rebel, organized crime will prevail.

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  8. Valor...I hope many readers view this. Did you ever try contacting the film makers?

    BTW the other documentary Cartel land is a rolling stone mag top 10 to see this summer.

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  9. I tried to view the donation page in indegogo but I have been bumped off each time I try. I am trying from within Mexico. I find it interesting that I can get into almost any other site. I hope this is not an intervention from within Mexico.

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  10. It will never work because the same shit happened in Colombia with the guerrillas. Look at the documentary of Pablo Escobar. History repeats itself. There is too much love for money and greed. Mexico will never change. Period.

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  11. Bla bla bla nothing will change. You know why? Because foreigners still run Mexico. So until that gets changed, nothing else will. Mexico isn't Africa or Haiti or the Philippines, but damn if it ain't a country run by fucking foreign vermin scum, sucking it dry.

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    Replies
    1. Seriously? You don't live in Mexico do you? This cartel of a government has such a strangle hold on everything here you can't accomplish anything without being on the inner circle of chilangos.

      Delete
  12. I was going to give, but when I saw they would list my name in the credits I decided that would not be a good idea since I live in Mexico, have and English name and would be easy to locate. I went to the web page.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I was going to give, but when I saw they would list my name in the credits I decided that would not be a good idea since I live in Mexico, have and English name and would be easy to locate. I went to the web page.

    ReplyDelete
  14. You are so cool! I don't believe I've read a single
    thing like that before. So nice to discover somebody with a few
    genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously..
    thank you for starting this up. This website is something that's needed on the
    internet, someone with some originality!

    ReplyDelete

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