Letter from David Venegas Reyes. 

Political prisoner in the Central Penitentiary of Oaxaca. 

Santa María Ixcotel Penitentiary 

April 17, 2007 I’m a prisoner in the Santa Maria Ixcotel prison in my city, Oaxaca. I was brought here on trumped up charges of narcotics possession. I was beaten by the police who arrested me and tried to forcibly photograph me holding the drugs, something they couldn’t do. After two long days in the holding cells of the Attorney General’s Small Drug Sales Unit, I was transferred to this prison where I am now charged with a new count of sedition and other offenses against the Oaxacan society such as burning down the state Courthouse on November 25.

I don’t need to tell the courageous, dignified people of Oaxaca that all these charges are false. We all know how far the government will go to get revenge against all of us who are struggling for a just society full of dignity and camaraderie. During the time I’ve been here, my jailers haven’t had the satisfaction of seeing me suffer. All of you on the outside have sustained me. I know about the actions you’ve carried out to win my freedom and that of the other comrades, political prisoners of the APPO and other struggles. I am deeply greatful for this, and in these moments I see that we’re in a new phase of the Oaxacan commune.

Camaraderie and solidarity soar beyond the walls of these prisons. I feel it here, a closeness with everyone, my family and friends and this great people, great for its heart, its hopes, its intelligence. I can’t find the words to express all that your support and your protests have meant to me in these difficult days, but if I could, I’d give all of you a warm hug, and maybe the closeness we’d feel in our hearts would speak louder than words of my gratitude and love. I feel an enormous sense of joy upon learning that the mobilizations are continuing and will continue.

We must keep struggling without hating those who want to keep us down. If we’re doing the right thing we don’t need to dig through the ruins of a heart shattered by hatred to find motives to keep on struggling. In each elderly face, in each chant, in each graffiti that appears in the still of the night, in each child, in each banner, and in each one of us prisoners, our brother and sisterhood motivates us to keep struggling. I urge you never to abandon this struggle. Never.

Just as nobody else but the mother knows what’s best for a child, each individual, each collective, each people, each city, each neighborhood know what it needs to live better. We hold our destiny in our own hands. My imprisonment shows the crude reality of the lengths to which the government is now going to keep systematically repressing the Oaxacan movement, but in the face of the repression, there’s mobilization. We must never let the tiredness of our legs and throats be greater than our demand for justice and liberty for everyone on the outside and the inside.

Let me say that the chance to communicate with you Oaxacans, so dignified and rebellious, moves me deeply and tells me that the walls of this prison have only locked up my body, but my spirit is still there with yours, creating a robust morale of rebellion, emancipation and autonomy. I want you to know that the music of the chants I had the opportunity to hear during the days I’ve been locked up are deeply engraved in my heart.

May my conviction to struggle reach you, not like a cat creeping furtively over the walls, but like a giant that brings them down and treads over them because I know this conviction is just and will win out in the end. David Venegas Reyes “Alebrije ” FOR THE POLITICAL PRISONERS OF YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW