Tag: Mexico

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 Huazantlán del Río 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. Huazantlán residents claim municipal police were backing up the gunmen in the attack, ostensibly because the gathering violated COVID-19 restrictions. Municipal authorities in turn accuse the Huazantlán 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 López, 30, was beaten to death by municipal police in the town of Ixtlahuacán 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 three police officers involved in the incident. (Photo: Notimex via Yucatan Times)

Mexico
Adán 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 Adán 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 Zerón, 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—officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, but known as “Remain in Mexico”—was 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 administration—but 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—shortly 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. (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—making 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. (Photo: La Opción 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 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 Juárez, Nogales and Tijuana immediately amassed at the border crossings as the policy was struck down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. 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. 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: 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 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. (Photo: Opción de Chihuahua)

Mexico

Butterfly conservationist disappears in Mexico

The State Human Rights Commission in Mexico’s west-central state of Michoacán is exhorting authorities to intensify their search for a campesino ecologist and advocate for protection of the world-famous monarch butterfly habitat, who has “disappeared.” Homero Gómez González went missing one day after he posted a video of himself on Twitter standing amid a swarm of butterflies at their wintering grounds in the Michoacán highlands. He has long served as administrator of Ejido El Rosario, an agrarian community of the Mazahua indigenous people in Ocampo municipality, which overlaps with the UNESCO-recognized Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve. The Michoacán prosecutor’s office says that 53 police officers from the municipalities of Ocampo and Angangueo have been detained in relation to the disappearance. Family members say Gómez González told authorities that he had received threats from local organized crime networks. (Photo: La Voz de Michoacán)

Mexico
desaparecidos

Mexico: 60,000 ‘disappeared’ in drug war

Mexican authorities announced that an estimated 61,637 people have disappeared amid the country’s drug war. A previous analysis in April 2018 put the figure at just 40,000. The new figure was calculated based on analysis of data from state prosecutors. While the cases analyzed date back as early as the 1960s, more than 97% of the cases have occurred since 2006, when then-president Felipe Calderón began a military crackdown on drug traffickers. More than 5,000 people disappeared last year, according to Karla Quintana, head of Mexico’s National Search Commission. (Photo: WikiMedia)

Mexico
narcotanks

Corporate cannabis targets bleeding Mexico

There is a discomforting sense that Mexico is perpetually on the eve of cannabis legalization, as the country’s Congress wins a six-month extension from the Supreme Court to pass a law freeing the herb. But foreign capital is already eyeing Mexico’s emergent legal cannabis sector—even amid a terrifying escalation in the bloody cartel wars. When authorities attempted to arrest the son of “Chapo” Guzmán in Culiacán, the troops were surrounded by Cartel gunmen riding in trucks mounted with big machine-guns, and even what appeared to be improvised armored vehicles. The younger Guzmán escaped, and the Sinaloa Cartel proved it has the firepower to effectively challenge the state—at least on its home turf. (Photo via The Drive)