Native Peoples in the U.S., Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico Border Communities are Neither Hispanics Nor Latinos

Lipan Apache Women Defense, Intervention on Human Rights, Indigenous Women, Families & Militarization

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Eighth Session
May 19-29, 2009

Presented by Margo Támez, Co-Founder, Lipan Apache Women’s Defense,
Nádasi’né’ nde' isdzáné begoz'aahi' shimaa shini' gokal
Gową goshjaa ha’áná’idiłí texas-nakaiyé godesdzog
[El Calaboz Ranchería, U.S.-Mexico Border;
subregion: Texas, U.S.-Tamaulipas, MX]

Agenda Item 4:
Follow Up on the Recommendations of the Permanent Forum
“Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Militarization and the Texas-Mexico Border Wall”
(a) Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Women and Children

(b) Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people and other special rapporteurs

Thank you Madame Chair, Permanent Forum Members, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, Member States, UN Agencies and Our Indigenous Delegates, brothers and sisters all:
Dagotee’. My name is Margo Tamez, and I am the Co-Founder, with my mother, Eloisa García Tamez, of Lipan Apache Women Defense, located in El Calaboz Ranchería.
I speak today with the consent and consultation of my mother and lineal clans of Lipan Apache ranchería peoples of El Calaboz Ranchería, those of the Jumano-Apache, all traditional Ndé communities along the Texas-Mexico border whose customary lands are on both sides of the border.
In 2006 under the Bush Administration, the U.S. government implemented the Secure Fence Act, providing for the construction of the border wall and security, surveillance, infrastructural and technological barriers across hundreds of miles of indigenous lands. The U.S. waived 37 Federal laws in order to construct the border wall across tribal, municipal, National Park lands, and binationally revered sites. The U.S. obstructed numerous civil, constitutional, treaty, and international human rights of indigenous peoples spanning the 2000 miles of the border.
Our organization has been diligent to research and document the devastation and indigenous peoples’ responses to the travesty and injustice of the U.S.’ Border Wall Construction Mega-Security Project. I am deeply grieved to report to the Permanent Forum, that at the sub-regional level— our elders and our families are in severe mental, psychological, emotional, spiritual and physical crisis. We connect this pandemic human response to the crisis unfolding as a direct negative consequence of the corporate-driven. Lipan Apaches, and Lipan Apache women and children, are disproportionately impacted by the U.S.’ unilateral waiver of thirty-seven (37) U.S. Federal laws obstructing Civil and Constitutional protections for impacted communities.
Documentation and research necessary to launch intensive litigations, and in that regard, is costly and strenuous, depleting the already impoverished resources of indigenous communities. Our organization emerged to answer this need in the Lower Rio Grande region, of South Texas, in Cameron County. Please take note, that Cameron County is, per the U.S. Census, the poorest county in the entire United States on several important international social-economic indicators.
We mobilized a federal law case in the U.S. 5th District, and 5th Circuit; our International effort at the Inter-American Commission/OAS has been welcomed by the IAS. The Lipan Apache impacted lands are now divided by the 18th foot high steel and concrete wall, leaving cemeteries, sacred sites, biological resources, and subsistence grazing lands sealed off from bi-national access to community members who depend upon their grazing lands to the south of the wall, now a permanent barrier.
The Law Working Group of the University of Texas, in collaboration with the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, analyzed and documented, in 5 briefing papers, a series of human rights violations taking place against Indigenous peoples of the Texas-Mexico border section, specifically. The briefing papers address issues relative to human rights violations which constitute breaches of the United States’ obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, interpreted in the American Convention on Human Rights. These are documented and available on our website.

On October 31, 2008, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, stated in a press release:
“During another hearing, the Commission received troubling information about the impact that the construction of a wall in Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, has on the human rights of area residents, in particular its discriminatory effects. The information received indicates that its construction would disproportionately affect people who are poor, with a low level of education, […] as well as indigenous communities on both sides of the border.”

Madame Chairwoman and Special Rapporteur Anaya,

We denounce the United States’ untenable position of deploying “the war on terrorism”, “war on drugs”, and the “war on illegal immigration” because they are, from an indigenous standpoint, extensions of the global corporation’s use of militarization to further enslave Indigenous Peoples and Mother Earth— globally, and locally. States’ militarization historically accompanies the overthrow of indigenous law systems and governing systems.
We denounce the United States’ border wall contracts with the Secure Border Initiative Network, and its use of U.S. taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars in the harshest economic financial crash in U.S. History, and the deepened indebting of U.S. citizens to private corporations to construct the border wall. We denounce the following corporations whose boards, CEO’s, and stockholders, increased their personal and private financial wealth on the border wall construction. These include, though are not limited to Lockheed Martin, Texas Divisions of Raytheon, L-C Communications, Northrup Grummen, BAE Systems, America’s Border Security Group-Erriccson, Inc., NASDAQ, Fluor Corporations, MTC Technologies, Boeing, and Kellog Brown & Root-Halliburton.
We urgently recommend that the PF request S. James Anaya, the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, in coordination with the Permanent Forum’s members, and in coordination with local indigenous leaders, work decisively to schedule site visits to the impacted indigenous communities of El Calaboz and El Polvo on the Texas-Mexico border.
We earnestly recommend that the Rapporteur establish local community meetings in which local elders, families and Indigenous organizations can participate to the fullest extent to begin the process of a border-wide investigation into the border wall and its impacts on women, children, elders, families, community health and displacement.
We earnestly recommend the Special Rapporteur investigate ACLU’s analysis of the U.S.-Mexico Border as a “No Constitution Zone”, and the implications for Indigenous women’s, children’s, families’, and communities’ rights to access their mothers, families, communities, education, health education, shelter, livelihoods and spiritual practice in militarized zones.
We earnestly recommend that the Permanent Forum commit to the key concepts: “Militarization, Borders, Customary-Use, Indigenous Peoples, & Gender” as a prioritized framework for the Forum’s 9th Session in 2010.

Thank you for your attention to these serious matters.

Margo Tamez
Co-Founder
Lipan Apache Women Defense
Sumalhepa.nde.defense@gmail.com

Signatories:
Brave Heart Society (South Dakota)
Lipan Apache Band of Texas, Daniel Castro Romero, Jr. Chairman
CORE, the Centre for Organisation Research and Education
Native Women’s Association of Canada

Human Rights Violations Texas-Mexico Border Wall

As we prepare to submit our intervention, tomorrow, on the issues of Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Militarization and the Texas-Mexico border wall at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,

We warmly invite you, our sisters, brothers, and allies, to review the papers on these issues as they pertain to our case at this site, here.


Ahe'he'e

Margo Tamez

Lipan Apache Women Defense an Indigenous Peoples' Organization (United Nations)

Today we are representing the community concerns of human rights violations at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

See the video of Global Indigenous Women Caucus, in which the Lipan Apache Women Defense has participated in dialogues, discussions and debates related to customary title, aboriginal title, cultural resource management, social and economic issues, and human rights related to the the issues confronting Indigenous Women in a local, regional, national, international and global context.

UPDATE: TAMEZ & BENAVIDEZ CASE & DOCUMENTS

Your support is very important to the critical examination of the U.S. law system as it pertains to indigenous peoples whose customary and traditional lands are within the U.S. political boundaries, and at U.S. international borders.

Thanks to all who have been holding vigils for the Benavidez and Tamez extended clans on the El Calaboz side, and the Premont and Redford sides of the impacted families. Ahe'he'e to all the Nde' who are faithfully keeping watch.

There are too many to thank, so if you are reading this and are familiar with the efforts since 2006 of the elders of El Calaboz to retain customary and traditional rights to the lands in El Calaboz Rancheria, and you have been supporting this effort, then... at some point along the way you came to respond to this collective work even on your very busy path. You have helped us to support the wishes of the elders of El Calaboz in their legal, spiritual, political and social movement. El Calaboz Rancheria has a long and consistent history of indigenous peoples taking up issues of injustice, and the periodic rise of state violence in their lands.

Even if not directly, your work is making a difference in our lives and in the steady progress of this case--in the United States and in the international spheres.

The last 36 hours have been tough, grueling, as well as full of revelations, as they were back in 2006, when the government armed personnel attempted to take possession of customary and traditional lands along the last 70 miles of the Texas-Mexico border through the use of armed force and intimidation of the elders.

This was the famous 'waiver' period--when the Customs Border Patrol and DHS agents attempted to force community members to surrender their lands on the spot using a piece of paper, and forcing them to sign--in violation of constitutional and international law.

The last 24 hours has been focused on a temporary restraining order, the Judge's response to that order, and preparing the affected landowners (TAMEZ, BENAVIDES, et al)due to the fact that the United States, in direct violation of the condemnation and possessionorder, plowed ahead and built the wall on our elders' lands.

The Garcia, Cavazos and the Benavides lands are traditionally used for pastoralist goat and cattle herding, subsistence only, by the families also known as 'originarios'--First Peoples.

The wall went up in approximately 24 hours on both Garcia/Cavazos lands (Eloisa Garcia Tamez) and the Benavidez lands. Please reference Kevin Sieff's story in the Brownsville Herald.

As we continue to demand that the United States adhere to Judge Hanen's order to consult the families prior to building the wall (NOT a mute point), we are also looking ahead to the still-scheduled jury trial in October on the issues of compensation. Please recall that the United States government argues that the impact to the future generations of this possession and condemnation is $5000.

After the jury trial in October, we will then pick up the process of the 5th Circuit appeal, which will be led again by our attorney, Peter Schey (Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law) who on a conference call yesterday, faithfully committed to our elders to continue to challenge the gross violations of the constitution and civil rights.

One step at a time...this morning will be a challenge for effected landowners of the traditional and customary rancheria of El Calaboz. They are being represented by civil rights attorney, Corinna Spencer-Scheurich,a Texas attorney, who is standing in for the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, who could not be present at the hearing on consultation violations, called less than 24 hours ago.

The last 36 hours and the work products which we completed and compiled to educate the government about 'consultation' for our community ("Consultation...", Temporary Restraining Order, Research Poster, Briefing on Indigenous Peoples by UT Law Working Group, and other supporting docs ) could not have come to existence without the tireless work of the following individuals: Attorneys Peter Schey and Chris Scherer; Dr. Jeff Sheperd--UT El Paso; Professor of Law, Denise Gilman, UT-Austin; Lipan Apache Band of Texas, Council Chair, Daniel Castro Romero, Jr.; Dr. Enrique Maestas; Erik K. Hrabovsky, and of course, the Benavidez elders and Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez.

Dagotee' gozhoole' (Beauty all around...)
Margo Tamez
Co-Founder, Lipan Apache Women Defense

REPORT: NOW PUBLIC--CROWD POWERED MEDIA

Pentagon warns of US military intervention in Mexico’s drug war

Mexico drug gangs threaten cops on radio, kill them
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican drug gangs near the U.S. border are breaking into police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war. "You're next, bastard ... We're going to get you," an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman.Robin Emmott
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE51558E20090206Violence spills over into the US
Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States. U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.ALICIA A. CALDWELL
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090209/ap_on_re_us/border_spillover_violenceEscalation, Escalation, Escalation.... something has to give (or be taken). -Seems to be playing out nicely.

GNN Reports: The United States Joint Forces Command issued a report last November to the effect that, in the very near future, Mexico is going to need the same kind of “help” as Pakistan.

USDFC Reports
The United States Joint Forces Command (USJFC), charged with anticipating global threats to US imperialism, issued a report last November entitled “Joint Operating Environment 2008 naming Pakistan and Mexico as the nations whose governments are most likely to undergo what it termed “rapid collapse.” This term goes largely undefined, beyond the assertion that it “usually comes as a surprise, has a rapid onset, and poses acute problems.”

Ominously, the study concludes: “Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.” The immense implications of this statement become clear when one considers that the USJFC—one of the nine branches of the Department of Defense—controls nearly all conventional military forces based in the continental United States—a force of 1.6 million.--Kevin Kearney

TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER WALL HEARING: INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION--ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES

TEXAS-MEXICO BORDER WALL HEARING AT THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION--ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS WORKING GROUP AND RAPOPORT CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE (SEE BRIEFING PAPERS).