O'odham Ofelia Rivas Imprisoned in Mexico

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Photo: Tapachula prison in Chiapas near Guatemalan border.

TUCSON
-- O'odham human rights activist Ofelia Rivas was imprisoned in
southern Chiapas for four days and crossed safely onto O'odham lands
Wednesday night.
"There are inhumane border policies all across the
world. My personal experience at home dealing with the Border Patrol
helped me deal with confinement in the prison cell," Rivas said after
crossing the border to her home.
Rivas was imprisoned in the
Tapachula Immigration Prison in southern Chiapas near the Guatemalan
border on false charges of crossing the border of Guatemala without
documents. Rivas, however, had not crossed into Guatemala.
"Throughout
our travel, by plane and bus, federal authorities reviewed my documents
and allowed me to pass without problems. The federal police in
Tapachula saw that an American was traveling with an Indigenous woman
and arrested us.
"They wouldn't talk to me directly because I don't speak Spanish," said Rivas, who speaks O'odham and English.
Rivas
was not provided with a translator when charged or during the four days
she was imprisoned. "I signed papers without a translator when I was
released. I still don't know what I was charged with."
"I was not
read any rights," Rivas said. "When they were doing the paperwork, they
said we were not being arrested. When we got to the detention center,
they said 'You're not being arrested, you're not in handcuffs.'"
However,
she had been arrested. She was taken to her cell, which she shared with
a family from Colombia, which included a four-month-old baby and
nine-month-old baby. They had been there for two months.
"What
struck me was the powerful Somalian women that had walked across
Central America and were in prison for two months in Panama. They have
been waiting in Chiapas for two months for refugee status to be
released to the United States. One Somalian woman said, 'I lost all my
family, my mother, my father, my brothers, my sisters, all killed in
front of me. I only know of one uncle who survived.'"
"The strength
of those women, everyday they sat together and sang their songs and
told their stories, and it kept us all together. We were a community.
We all took care of the babies and watched out for the rest of the
children to make sure they ate when it was time to eat."
Rivas
became ill from the chemicals used for cleaning the prison, which was
done at night when she was locked in her cell. One morning, she felt
too ill to get out of bed.
"I couldn't get up, but the women insisted that I get up and go eat."
The women's and men's cells were separated only by partitions and the noise was loud throughout the night.
At
night, she could hear a man screaming in English and rattling his cell
gate, "Get me out of here! Get me out of here!" he would scream,
yelling for a bathroom.
"It was the jungle by the sea, so it was hot and sticky and there were mosquitoes."
"Everyone is sitting there waiting for papers. Someone somewhere is delaying those everyday."
After
four days of imprisonment, and the intervention of the American Embassy
in Mexico City and family members in the United States, Rivas and her
traveling companion were released.
"We cancelled the rest of our
trip and came directly home, since we don't know what we signed." "This
severe enforcement of borders is because of the militarization of the
Zapatista communities which continue to face threats."
"My entire
trip was to build solidarity with the Zapatistas and to tell the story
of the O'odham on the border. We were received with great respect and
were honored to be invited to the communities to share our story. They
made a statement to acknowledge our story and that our struggles are
the same. They said they were honored to hear from the traditional
O'odham people."
Ofelia Rivas is founder of O'odham Voice Against
the Wall. She lives on Tohono O'odham land on the US/Mexico border and
exposes the human rights abuses of the US Border Patrol and ongoing
militarization of the border and O'odham land. She exposed the digging
up of O'odham ancestors' graves by Boeing during construction of the
border wall in Arizona. She has been held at gunpoint, harassed,
threatened and detained by the US Border Patrol on O'odham land in
Arizona.