News Round-up 9/11/07

"At least" six oil and natural gas pipelines were attacked on opposite ends of the Mexican state of Veracruz on Monday night. The pipelines were all operated by the Mexican state oil monopoly, Petroeleos Mexicanos, or PEMEX. An unexploded bomb in the town of Antigua was found with the message, "Alive they took them, alive we want them. EPR." This signifies the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario, or Popular Revolutionary Army.

The EPR first attracted attention by targeting military and police in a series of attacks in Mexico's Guerrero state in the 1990s. In 1996, over 100 men and women affiliated with EPR and armed with semi-automatic weapons attacked police stations and army barracks in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero. Guerrero is a poverty-wracked state notorious for drug smuggling (including opium poppy cultivation) and abuses against indigenous Mexicans by the military and police. EPR are also active in Oaxaca and the Mexico City region.

It is extremely difficult to differentiate actions by the EPR from actions by other guerilla groups and by local gangs and criminal elements, as the government usually blames the EPR or other guerillas for all acts of violence by unknown perpetrators. EPR have been blamed, for example, for the incitement of a mob to lynch two police officers in a southern Mexico City neighborhood in November 2004; encouraging violence during the Oaxaca teachers' strike in summer 2006;
and five bombings in Mexico City (in which no one was injured or killed) in November 2006.

Then, on July 5th and July 1oth, 2007, there were eight bombings of three separate pipelines in Guanajuato and Queretero operated by PEMEX, which EPR reportedly took credit for. According to the McClatchy Wire Service, the bombings were done using "sophisticated European-style plastic explosives," leading some to doubt that the EPR were not really responsible. Media reports described flames shooting 100 feet in the air, and the fire burning were 36 hours, although no one was injured. In a subsequent communique, EPR was reported (emphasis on "reported") to have said that they were engaged in a "national campaign of harassment against the interests of the oligarchy and of this illegitimate government that has been put in motion." The phrase "illegitimate" obviously reflects the view many Mexicans have of Felipe Calderon, who, like Bush in 2000, is believed to have stolen a very close election. EPR also "said" that the bombings would continue until the government released two members captured in Oaxaca in 2006. The bombings caused the temporary closure of several plants: auto (Nissan, Honda, and General Motors), and food processing (Hershey's and Kellog's). The result was millions of dollars in lost production time. Meanwhile, the flow of natural gas from Mexico City to Guadelajara was disrupted, as were pipelines serving Veracruz and Guanajuato.

The tactic of bombing pipelines has been practiced hundreds of times by FARC in Columbia, and some have suggested that poverty and oppression in Mexico are producing a Columbia-like situation of endless, low-intensity warfare between the state and non-state actors allied with and against the state. It has also been pointed out that the nature of the attacks suggest substantial knowledge of Mexico's energy infrastructure.

Then, on August 31st, a car laden with explosives was found in the parking garage of Mexico City's highest office tower, and 11,000 employees were evacuated. A few days later, the Mexican web site cedema.org posted a message attributed (again, with unknowable accuracy) to the EPR, which supposedly took credit for the car bomb and called Felipe Calderon a "fawning fascist who insists on destroying Mexico."

And now this. As in Nigeria, Columbia, Ecuador, Indonesia and elsewhere, we see that raw materials cannot be easily extracted from a country while its population is left to rot by the state and multinationals.