Oaxaca: Ex-director of Section 22 is murdered

On 24 December, Rafael Rodríguez Vicente, ex-director of Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (1995-8), was murdered in the municipality of Santa Lucía del Camino, Oaxaca.  The directorship of Section 22 released a communiqué that called on governor Gabino Cué quickly to clarify the crime and demanded better security conditions for the members of the popular movement.  The authorities are not dismissing any lines of inquiry.  Regardless, there are two hypotheses: one due to political conflicts resulting from his charge of assessor of the indigenous community of Santa María Zoquitlán and another related with his work as a docent.

Rodríguez Enriquez was an activist with the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca and presently had acted as director of the Broad Front of Marginalized Indigenous Communities.  He had been arrested in June 2002 presumably for having belonged to the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) and participating in the kidnapping of the relative of the director of merchants Gonzalo Rodríguez.