Mexico’s lower House of Deputies voted to open an investigation into accusations that Government Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño improperly helped his family win contracts from the state oil monopoly Pemex. The accusations stem from contracts Mourino signed between 2000 and… Read moreMexico: Pemex scandal hits CalderĂłn administration
At a Feb. 29 press conference in Mexico City, researchers from the Economic Investigations Institute (IIEC) of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) gave a generally negative assessment of the economic impact of the 14-year-old North American Free Trade… Read moreMexico: NAFTA under fire from all sides
Jacobo Silva Nogales (Comandante Antonio) and Gloria Arenas AgĂs (Coronela Aurora), convicted as leaders of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), had their sentences reduced from 46 years and three months to 14 years and two months. AndrĂ©s… Read moreMexico: guerilla convicts’ sentences reduced
The family of New York IMC reporter Brad Will, killed Oct. 27, 2006—presumably at the hands of municipal police in Santa LucĂa del Camino, Oaxaca—called upon Mexico’s Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) to follow the “logical” line of investigation… Read moreBrad Will family protest Oaxaca investigation
The Chontal Maya community of Villa Vicente Guerrero, in Centla municipality of Mexico’s oil-rich Gulf Coast state of Tabasco, has declared itself an “autonomous municipality” in a letter to the Sixth Commission, civil wing of the Zapatista rebel movement in… Read moreTabasco Maya community joins Zapatista movement
The brothers Antonio and Mariano Pucuj were sentenced to 26 years in prison late last month for their participation in the December 1997 massacre of 45 Tzotzil indigenous people at Acteal hamlet in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state. They were also… Read moreChiapas: two more sentenced in Acteal massacre
Fourteen Toztzil and Tzeltal Maya prisoners at Social Readaption Center Number 14, known as El Amate, in Cintalapa, Chiapas, went on hunger strike Feb. 28, in protest of harsh conditions and to demand recognition as political prisoners. Eight are followers… Read moreChiapas: prisoners on hunger strike; land conflicts continue
A tense strike and occupation at the Universidad AutĂłnoma Metropolitana (UAM) in the southeast of Mexico City entered its 31st day March 2—despite the picket line being attacked by hostile students. Students—themselves divided by pro-strike and anti-strike factions—have also interrupted… Read moreViolence at university workers strike in Mexico City
Lawmakers in Mexico’s lower-house Chamber of Deputies Feb. 26 removed a draconian measure from their plan to reform the country’s judicial system that would have given police the power to enter homes without first obtaining a warrant in emergencies and… Read moreMexico’s “gestapo law” defeated
In a communique made public on Feb. 21, Mexico’s rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) denied any connection to the Jan. 30 shooting death of police director Alejandro Barrita Ortiz, a bodyguard and two civilians in the southern state of Oaxaca…. Read moreMexico: EPR guerillas deny Oaxaca attack
The anti-immigration blog VDare (who get creds for being bilingual) approvingly note from a persual of Monterrey’s daily El Porvenir that the Monterrey suburb of San Nicolas is planning to build a security fence on its border with the neighboring… Read moreSecurity fences go up —within Mexico
