Giordano: Testimonies of Rape by Police in the Aftermath of Atenco
May 17, 2006
Please Distribute Widely
Al Giordano continues to investigate accusations against Mexican police of systematic sexual abuse during the repression
in Atenco and Texcoco earlier this month. Giordano reports from Mexico:
"Mexican presidential candidate Felipe Calderón - of president Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN, in its Spanish
initials) - told reporters last weekend that he doesn't believe the reports that police raped and sexually abused women
detained May 3 and 4 in Texcoco and San Salvador Atenco.
"The candidate - who is advised by two gringo political consultants, Dick Morris and Rob Allyn, on how to handle
questions from the press - said that an accusation of rape, 'is so delicate that it requires clear elements of proof.'
Calderón went so far as to accuse Fox's own National Commissioner of Human Rights, José Soberanes, who furnished hard
evidence of at least 23 rapes of Mexican women while under arrest, of 'speaking badly against the country and I totally
rebuke him.'"
In the face of such constant stonewalling from various representatives of the Mexican government, Giordano presents
translations of several testimonies women gave of rapes and other crimes to the human rights group Comite Cerezo. "Again
and again," writes Giordano, "they corroborate the testimonies of the four foreign women who were deported to their home
countries of Spain, Chile and Germany after their arbitrary arrests and sexual torture in Atenco. Such as the testimony
of Catalonian Maria Sostres, who told the daily El Pais in Spain: 'They stuck objects, fingers and keys in their
vaginas. They forced one girl to say Cowboy! Cowboy! while a police officer smacked her ass.'
"Her testimony is corroborated - and deepened, sadly - by the political prisoner who Sostres witnessed being sexually
abused in that instant, according to the Comite Cerezo's case file. That prisoner, Italia Méndez, is known to Narco News
as a serious, committed, and honest single mom. She works with La Kinta Brigada, a collective that, among other
projects, works with goat herders in San Luis Potosí's desert regions. An intelligent, coherent, soft-spoken, dignified
person, we interviewed her about sunnier matters last summer during a meeting of Non-Governmental Organizations and
collectives in the Lacandon Jungle..."
Read the full story, here:
From somewhere in a country called América,
Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin