Tag: Mexico

Mexico
ocosingo

Mexico: Zapatista community attacked in Chiapas

A communal coffee warehouse in one of the rebel Zapatista base communities in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas was burned down in an attack by a rival campesino group that operates a paramilitary force in the area. The New Dawn of the Rainbow Commercial Center, maintained by small coffee cultivators loyal to the Zapatista rebel movement, was attacked by followers of the Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers (ORCAO), according to a statement from the National Indigenous Congress. In response to the attack, a group of prominent Mexican cultural and intellectual figures, including popular singer Julieta Venegas, issued a聽statement, protesting: “This new aggression is part of the intensification of the war of attrition in the state of Chiapas, characterized by an increase in violence by paramilitary groups and organized crime.” (Photo via EspoirChiapas)

Mexico
Yaqui

Mexico creates justice commission for Yaqui people

Mexican President Andr茅s Manuel L贸pez Obrador聽signed a decree that sets up a Justice Commission for the Yaqui People, seeking to resolve problems of land, water, health, education and infrastructure faced by the indigenous group. The decree was signed during a visit by L贸pez Obrador to the Yaqui community of V铆cam, in Sonora state. The decree seeks to redress a long history of oppression, massacres, slavery and land theft faced by the Yaqui. L贸pez Obrador said that the Yaqui are Mexico’s most persecuted indigenous group, stating, “All the original inhabitants suffered robbery, but no people suffered as much as the Yaqui.” The president also said that he had agreed to modify the route of the planned Guaymas-El Oro gas pipeline that was supposed to run through Yaqui territory.聽(Photo via Articulo 19)

Mexico
guardianacional

Mexico: narco-dystopia amid Trump-AMLO schmooze

Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador met with Trump at the White House to inaugurate the new trade treaty that replaces NAFTA. Embarrassingly, the meeting was punctuated by horrific new outbursts of narco-violence in Mexico. And the country’s promised cannabis legalization鈥攎andated by the high court and looked to as a de-escalation of the dystopian drug war鈥攊s stalled by a paralyzed Congress. (Photo:聽Secretar铆a de Seguridad y Protecci贸n Ciudadana)

Mexico
oaxaca

Mexico: comuneros massacred in Oaxaca

An attack by armed men on local comuneros in San Mateo del Mar, in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca state, left at least 15 dead, with several more wounded or reported as “disappeared.” The confrontation began when residents of the outlying community of Huazantl谩n del R铆o attempted to gather for a public meeting and were blocked by gunmen. Some of the slain were bludgeoned to death, and several appear to have been burned, mutilated or tortured. Huazantl谩n residents claim聽municipal police were backing up the gunmen in the attack, ostensibly because the gathering violated COVID-19 restrictions. Municipal authorities in turn accuse the Huazantl谩n residents of being involved in criminal gangs, and are calling on state authorities to investigate. (Image: FreeWorldMaps.net)

Mexico
guadalajara protest

Guadalajara protest over Mexico’s ‘George Floyd’

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets and clashed with riot police in Guadalajara one month after the killing of a construction worker at the hands of local law enforcement. The rally climaxed with the storming of the Jalisco state government palace, where protesters smashed down the front door and left graffiti on the exterior walls. Police cars were also set on fire. Bricklayer Giovanni L贸pez, 30, was beaten to death by municipal police in the town of Ixtlahuac谩n de los Membrillos after being stopped for failure to wear a face-mask, in violation of mandatory measures to contain COVID-19. State authorities failed to act on the case for a month; it was only after the explosion of anger on the streets of Guadalajara that Jalisco’s Prosecutor General announced the arrest of聽three police officers involved in the incident. (Photo: Notimex via聽Yucatan Times)

Mexico
Ad谩n Vez Lira

Mining opponent assassinated in Veracruz, Mexico

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has condemned the assassination of Mexican environmental activist Ad谩n Vez Lira, who was shot while riding his motorcyle in the municipality of Actopan, Veracruz. Vez Lira worked with the Veracruz Assembly for Environmental Defense Initiatives (LAVIDA) to oppose mining operations that threaten local water sources. Gold and silver exploitation by the Canadian-based Almaden Minerals and Candelaria Mining are encoraching on the borders of La Mancha Ecological Reserve and contaminating springs and wells in nearby villages. (Photo via: El Imparcial)

Mexico
desaparecidos

Mexico: arrest orders issued for Ayotzinapa investigators

A Mexican judge issued an arrest warrant for Tomas Zer贸n, former head of criminal investigations for the Prosecutor General’s Office, and five other former officials for alleged violations in the investigation of the case of 43 college students who disappeared in 2014. The students from the rural teacher’s college at Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, were determined to have been seized by police in September of that year. Although DNA testing only successfully identified one missing student from unearthed remains, officials presumed in 2015 that all 43 were dead. Several suspects arrested in the case were later released, and claimed they had been tortured by police or the military. The investigation was widely criticized, and the current administration pledged to re-open the case. (Photo: WikiMedia)

Mexico
travel ban protest

SCOTUS lets stand ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

Some 60,000 asylum-seekers sent back by the United States to Mexico until their claims can be heard in US courts face a longer wait in Mexican limbo after the US Supreme Court issued an order that allowed a controversial anti-immigration policy to stand. An appeals court in San Francisco had ruled that the policy鈥攐fficially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, but known as “Remain in Mexico”鈥攚as unlawful in the two border states under its jurisdiction: Arizona and California. The new order means asylum-seekers must now pin their hopes on the outcome of an expected formal appeal by the Trump聽administration鈥攂ut that might not play out through the courts until early 2021. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Central Asia
Kyrgyzstan women's march

Women’s Day march attacked in Mexico, Kyrgyzstan

Police in Kyrgyzstan detained dozens of women’s rights activists鈥攕hortly after the International Women’s Day march was attacked by masked men. That same day, the women’s march in Mexico City was set upon by anti-abortion protesters, overwhelmingly men, some of whom gave the Nazi salute. There were scuffles between the two groups, and some marchers hurled Molotov cocktails over police lines toward the presidential palace. The following day, tens of thousands of women across Mexico walked off their jobs in protest of the government’s lack of action regarding the ongoing wave of femicide.聽(Photo via Twitter)

Mexico
Mexico army

Mexico: drug war dystopia unabated

Mexican lawmakers are predicting legal cannabis by month’s end, and portraying it as a key to de-escalating the endemic narco-violence. But national headlines are full of nightmarish cartel violence鈥攎aking all too clear how big the challenge will be. A cannabis industry in the hands of agribusiness, with the campesinos excluded and marginalized, is unlikely to bring peace to Mexico’s conflicted countryside.聽(Photo: La Opci贸n de Chihuahua)

Mexico
Mexico police

Mexico: crisis, militarization on both borders

There were scenes of chaos in Mexico’s northern border towns in response to rulings in rapid succession by a US federal appeals court on the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which聽forces migrants and refugees seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their claims are reviewed. Asylum-seekers who had been camped out for weeks in Matamoros, Ciudad Ju谩rez, Nogales and Tijuana immediately amassed at the border crossings as the policy was struck down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.聽But the crossings were closed, and hours later, the Ninth Circuit granted an emergency stay on the injunction, as requested by the administration. The gathered migrants were dispersed by Mexican security forces.聽Mexico has meanwhile deployed its new National Guard force to the southern border with Guatemala, to halt the flow of migrants though its territory, under pressure from the White House. (Photo:聽Mexico News Daily)

Mexico
Boquilla Dam

Mexican farmers protest water diversion to US

More than 3,000 farmers and residents of four rural municipalities in Mexico’s northern state of Chihuahua clashed with Mexican National Guard troops聽in a protest over the federal government’s plan to divert water from a dam into the Rio Grande for the use in the United States. Protesters from the municipalities of Camargo, La Cruz, Delicias and San Francisco de Conchos confronted troops guarding La Boquilla Dam on the Rio Conchos with the aim of occupying the facility and preventing the water diversion. The National Water Commission intends to open the sluices of the dam to divert hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water to the Rio Grande, in order to comply with a 1944 Water Treaty between Mexico and the US. Mexico has a 220-million-cubic-meter “water debt” to the US, but farmers say that the massive diversion will leave them with insufficient water.聽(Photo: Opci贸n de Chihuahua)