La Vía Campesina
International farmers movement – North America
Movimiento campesino internacional – Norte América
April 11, 2007
Baldemar Velázquez
President
Farm Labor Organizing Committee
Toledo, Ohio
In the name of the member organizations of the La Vía Campesina North America, we send you a fraternal message of solidarity for the hideous assassination of Santiago Rafael Cruz, office manager of the FLOC in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and join together in the general demand for a quick and honest investigation to expose this terrible act and for the punishment of the true culprits.
The assassination of Santiago links to a chain of aggressions and attacks against the FLOC for its relentless defense of Mexican agricultural workers’ rights in the agricultural fields of the United States. But this condemnable act forms in addition part of the unleashed offensive against migrant agricultural workers and the campesinos who fight against poverty, marginalization, and exploitation in the countryside. In this way the assassination is also an attack against our movement.
We are ready to offer the support and solidarity that is necessary so that this crime against the FLOC does not go unpunished and to stop any attempt to destabilize its just struggle for the rights of men, women, and child farm worker members of the FLOC.
The coordination, together with the La Vía Campesina North American Region will be attentive to the investigation carried out by the mexican authorities, and we will continue communication with you in order to determine actions in solidarity and the necessary support so that justice is served and that attacks against the FLOC are stopped.
G lobalize the struggle, globalize hope!
Co-Coordinators of the La Vía Campesina North America,
Dena Hoff
National Family Farm Coalition,
Unión Nacional de Organizaciones
USA
Alberto Gómez
Regionales Campesinas Autónomas
México
Protest the Murder of Farm Labor Organizing Committee Organizer
FLOC ORGANIZER MURDERED
Against the Current
Santiago Rafael Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) based in Toledo, Ohio, was found murdered in the union’s office in Monterrey, Mexico on the morning of April 9. He had been bound hand and foot and beaten to death. Circumstances suggest labor contractors may have had him killed.
Cruz, 29, had worked for FLOC in the United States for four years organizing immigrant agricultural workers. For less than a month working for the FLOC in the Monterrey office that was set up in 2005 to help process H2A visa workers whose employers were under FLOC contracts.
FLOC has asked the AFL-CIO and Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s (D-Ohio) to request that the U.S. State Department press the Mexican government to conduct a thorough and speedy investigation to bring the killers to justice. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, has called on the Mexican and U.S. governments to ensure that there is a “thorough and professional investigation” of the murder.
URGENT ACTION
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee asks that you send a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights requesting (not demanding) that they take on the murder of Santiago Rafael Cruz as an official case. In your letter you might express your awareness that FLOC’s contract was protecting workers and eliminating the extortion of illegal fees from workers, your outrage at this political murder, and your request that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights take on the Cruz murder case.
It is important to send your fax today, Friday, April 13, 2007 to:
Executive Secretary
Dr. Santiago A. Canton
Inter-american Commission on Human Rights
1889 F. St. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006
Phone 202-458-5062
FAX 202-458-6215
Please also write to the Mexican Ambassador expressing your outrage at the murder of Santiago Rafael Cruz and demanding a rapid, thorough and professional investigation of his murder.
Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan
Mexican Embassy
1911 Pennsylvania AV, NW, Washington D.C. 20006
Tel: (202) 728 1600