Mexican human rights activists filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court calling for an investigation into possible crimes against humanity by the security forces under President Felipe Calder贸n’s campaign against the drug cartels.
The AFL-CIO presented its 2011 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to Napole贸n G贸mez Urrutia, general secretary of the Mexican mineworkers union, now living in exile in Vancouver.
The discovery of a drug tunnel linking San Diego and Tijuana warehouses led to the seizure of some 17 tons of cannabis as well as a large grow operation in the industrial area of Otay Mesa east of San Diego.
The decapitated and mutilated body of an unidentified man was found in Nuevo Laredo. A message left under the decapitated head named the man as 鈥淓l Rascatripas”, a moderator for a website where citizens anonymously report narco-violence.
The Mexican Senate has called on the government of President Felipe Calder贸n to start criminal proceedings against US officials involved in two programs that let firearms enter Mexico illegally.
Mexican Governance Secretary Francisco Blake Mora was killed when his helicopter crashed near Chalco鈥攐ne week after a memorial ceremony for Juan Camilo Mouri帽o, his predecessor who had been killed in a plane crash three years earlier.
After 40 days without food, 10 prisoners in Mexico’s Chiapas state ended a hunger strike, citing the threat to their health and the lack of any response to their demands. Supporters launched a protest vigil outside one prison, and blocked a nearby highway.
Mexico’s military and police commit widespread rights violations with “near total impunity,” Human Rights Watch says, documenting of numerous cases of torture, “disappearance” and extrajudicial killings since President Calder贸n took office.
Residents of San Jos茅 del Progreso, Oaxaca, say they are continuing their three-year struggle against a mine operated by Toronto-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. The struggle is documented in the new film Minas y Mentiras (“Mines and Lies”).
A scandal involving US law enforcement programs to let guns “walk” into Mexico has now widened to include the 2001-2008 administration of former president George W. Bush鈥攁fter Republican politicians have used the scandal to attack Obama.
Mexican officials are having to deny that US agencies were violating Mexican sovereignty by carrying out undercover operations aimed at Mexican drug cartels.
Mexico’s former President Vicente Fox again spoke out for drug legalization, telling a Washington DC meeting of the right-libertarian Cato Institute that prohibition bears responsibility for the horrific toll in his country’s cartel wars
