Santa Gertrudis, Sierra Juarez, Oaxaca - The 4th annual Zapotec Feria of the Cornfield - Globalization and the Natural Resources - was held in Santa Gertrudis, Sierra Juarez on February 7-8. Organized by the Union of Social Organizations of the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO), this year´s event was attended by representatives of UNOSJO´s 24 affiliated communities, participants from all over Mexico, along with a large international presence of activists from Uruguay to Wales, Turkey to the United States, as well as a 15-strong delegation of German Organic farmers.

Abraham Ramírez Vásquez, Juventino García Cruz and Noel García Cruz, the first political prisoners of the Ulises Ruiz regime in Oaxaca, are from the Zapotec town of Santiago Xanica. The three members of the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (CODEDI) and the Popular Anti-neoliberal Oaxacan Magonista Coordinating Body (COMPA) were arrested on January 15, 2005, after hundreds of preventive and judicial police opened a crossfire on a group of 80 men, women, children and old people who were unloading bricks from a truck as part of a community work project.

Militarisation presents an extreme technique in which the state legitimates and exercises its power. It is a form of controlling the people, a strategy of national security and of counterinsurgency; a tactic to control the streets; demonstrating the violence which is naturally produced in a capitalist system. It is one of the ways this system can ensure its dominance and reproduce systematic orders which violate and subordinate the population in general but in particular, women. It is a further manifestation of patriarchitism. The consequences of militarization for women are multiple and complicated. Sexual abuse, physical and psychological violence and forced displacement present just a small number of them.

Communique from the Committee of Liberation 25 of November: On February 18, at approximately 10:15 a.m. Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno was granted freedom. Juan Manuel was sentenced to prison for 16 months, unjustly accused for the murder of U.S. journalist Brad Will.