Triqui women in the Oaxaca zocalo. Photo: D.R. 2006 Nancy Davies.

Bulletin of the Center for Community Support Working Together (Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos “CACTUS”)

Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca--Around the community of Llano Juárez in the Triqui zone, two announcers for the Community Radio of the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala "The voice that breaks the silence" were ambushed and murdered. In the attack, four other persons were hurt, among them two minors by age.

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Around the community of Llano Juárez in the Triqui zone, two announcers for the Community Radio of the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala "The voice that breaks the silence" were ambushed and murdered. In the attack, four other persons were hurt, among them two minors by age.

The preceding was reported through the Center for Community Support Working Together (Centro de Apoyo Comunitario Trabajando Unidos “CACTUS”), who let it be known that the young community announcers murdered in this ambush responded to the names of Felicitas Martínez Sánchez and Teresa Bautista Merino, between sixteen and eighteen years.

Following information obtained by this Civil Association, the ambush occurred at the point of two in the afternoon, when the members of the Community Radio brought about their own radio acitivities, "we don't know exactly if they were coming or going", what we [they?] know is that they left at one in the afternoon for San Juan Copala and they had no more information at press time, other than that the bodies of the announcers were found in Putla de Guerrero and the members of the autonomous municipality were soliciting their transfer to Juxtlahuaca.

The members of CACTUS A.C. condemned this act and demanded that the appropriate authorities investigate and that those responsible for this underhanded crime, against youth whose only act had been community work for indigenous communications, be punished.

It's important to mention that this radio began functioning on the twentieth of January, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the autonomous municipality of Copala and the ninth and tenth of the present [month?] participated in the state encounter for the defence of the rights of the peoples of Oaxaca, in which "The Voice that Breaks the Silence" coordinated the work table about Community Radio, because- they said- they developed this work fulfilling a community mission "and, today were secretly murdered".

Finally, the members of CACTUS affirmed that this act comes to add to the insecurity that exists in the state and to the repression exerted by the state against the community radios that exercise their right to communication, stipulated in agreement 169 of the International Organisation of Workers (Organización Internacional del trabajo “OIT”).

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