A “peace caravan,” which has spent a week travelling through Mexico to protest against drug-related violence and the “war on drugs,” crossed into the US at El Paso, where protest leader Javier Sicilia called for a halt to the Merida Initiative.
Soldiers patroling the Mexican border town of Ciudad Camargo discovered a warehouse where two armor-plated “tanks” were being constructed. Authorities have intercepted 100 such “narco-tanks,” which the press has dubbed “The Monsters.”
Mexican soldiers raided the home of casino magnate and centrist politician Jorge Hank Rhon and claimed to find a large arsenal, possibly intended for the drug cartels.
Two undocumented migrants being held at a jail in the border town of Tapachula in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state were hospitalized after 21 days on hunger strike—despite a new law that supposedly protects migrants’ rights.
Some 500 people marched in Guadalajara to demand that the federal and state governments honor their commitments to protect land that is sacred to the Wixárika (Huichol) indigenous group.
The Mexican government is violating its own laws on genetically modified organisms (GMO) in the way it handles experimental corn crops, according to a complaint by Greenpeace.
Nine indigenous Mixe residents at the politically divided Oaxaca municipality of Santiago Choápam were killed and some 20 wounded when they were ambushed on a mountain road on their way to a election rally.
QuetzalcĂłatl Leija Herrera, a prominent Guerrero LGBT activist, was found dead near the main plaza in Chilpancingo, the state capital. He had been beaten to death, in what prosecutors call “a homophobic hate crime.”
Tens of thousands of people participated in a silent “March for Peace With Justice and Dignity” in Mexico City to call for an end to the US-backed militarization of the fight against drug trafficking.
Rescue crews recovered the last of 14 bodies from the Pozo 3 coal mine hit by a gas explosion in Mexico’s northern Coahuila state, which labor leaders charge was operating “outside of the law.”
As momentum builds for the May 8 protest against violence and impunity in Mexico, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) announced its support for the movement started by poet Javier Sicilia.
A leading Mexican feminist, Marcela Lagarde, says President Felipe CalderĂłn’s militarization of the fight against drug trafficking has increased the level of violence against women.
