The paramilitaries who invaded San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, this past July 30 have since abandoned the autonomous municipality's town hall. They didn't go far, however, and near-daily shootings from the paramilitary sharpshooters stationed around the town keep San Juan Copala under a state of siege.

I was asked to write a piece about people of color organizing to attend the 2009 SOA Watch vigil and about our plans for 2010. I believe everything happens for a reason. I am writing this from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

––When did you find out you were getting out of prison, don Ignacio? ––We’ve always known we’d get out, from the very first moment. ––Was that due to your trust in the people to free you? ––It had more to do with our rage. A rage we’ve stored up inside us. Maybe at first we felt fear. Anguish, along with troubles, uncertainty, rage, impotence. All that transcends pain. It overcomes suffering.

Four years have gone by since that vicious attack by the federal and state governments against our honorable, rebellious people in San Salvador Atenco. Since those savage beatings of men, women and children; the search and destroy of our homes; the murders of Alexis Benhumea and Javier Cortés; the imprisonment of more than 200 comrades; the humiliation and rape of dozens of our women comrades on the way to prison; the deportation from the country of our Chilean, German and Spanish friends who witnessed and suffered the repression. All this at the hands of state, federal and municipal police. All ordered, directed and personally supervised from a spot just a few feet away by State of Mexico governor Enrique Peña Nieto. All this set in motion by the President of the country to make us pay for the affront of having stopped him from grabbing our lands to close the biggest business deal of his regime: the inauguration of a new airport with a deluxe commercial corridor extending for several miles.