Mexican environmental activists Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista were reportedly still alive two weeks after their Dec. 7 kidnapping from a bus in the southwestern state of Guerrero.
Mexican ex-officials work as informants for the US DEA, which turns out to be laundering money for the cartels as part of the “war on drugs”; meanwhile, the murders of peace activists continue.
Two Mexican students were killed by police gunfire around as police agents and soldiers attempted to disperse protesters blocking the Mexico City-Acapulco highway near the capital of Guerrero.
“Narco-banners” hung from Nuevo Laredo overpasses and signed in the name of Los Zetas declared: “We are not terrorists or guerrillas. We concentrate on our work and the last thing we want is to have problems with any government.”
Ayman Joumaa AKA “Junior,” a Lebanese drug kingpin with alleged connections to both Hezbollah and Mexico’s Zetas drug cartel, was charged with drug trafficking and money laundering, the Justice Department and DEA announced.
Norma Andrade, a critical voice demanding justice in the long string of “femicides” in Ciudad Juárez is stable condition after being shot twice Dec. 2, as she drove home from her job as a teacher in the violent Mexican border city.
Poverty decreased in most of Latin America—only Honduras and Mexico showed an increase in poverty rates, 1.7% for Honduras and 1.5% for Mexico.
Unknown assailants gunned down Mexican activist Nepomuceno Moreno in Hermosillo, Sonora. Moreno had opposed the government’s “war on drugs”; local officials suggested he was a criminal himself.
Private contractors are now bidding for US-funded “drug war” operations, including training for Mexican soldiers and police.
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 Calderón’s campaign against the drug cartels.
The AFL-CIO presented its 2011 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to Napoleón Gómez 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.
