After meeting with UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced Feb. 6 that he would gradually remove army troops from drug enforcement duty, replacing them with newly-trained police units. Use of the military in Mexico’s war… Read moreCalderón to demilitarize Mexican drug war?
As of Jan. 29 Mexican officials and representatives of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM) said they had agreed on a “no aggression” pact and were ready to negotiate starting on Jan. 30…. Read moreMexico: mine union set to deal?
Mexico formally protested use of tear gas by the US Border Patrol, the Exterior Secretariat sending a letter to the US Embassy requesting a probe of an incident last month in which Cristian Saldana, 15, was struck in the nose… Read moreMexico protests US tear gas attacks
In a “megamarcha” against the dropping of trade barriers under the terms of NAFTA, thousands of small farmers filled the streets of Mexico City’s historic district Jan. 31. A caravan of 100 tractors that traveled 2,000 kilometers from Ciudad Juarez… Read moreMexico City “mega-march” against NAFTA
Mexico’s federal Public Security Secretariat (SSP) announced the detention of 13 “delinquents” at Rancho San Isidro, in San Andrés Larráinzar, a highland municipality in conflicted Chiapas state Jan. 30. The SSP said 45 stolen vehicles were confiscated, as well as… Read moreCrime, water wars rock Chiapas Highlands
On Jan. 25, seven adherents of the People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) from the central Mexican village of San Salvador Atenco were liberated from the Mexico State prison at Molino de Flores, after a federal judge cleared… Read moreMexico: Atenco activists freed
Hundreds of Mexican campesinos, accompanied by 40 tractors, marched in Ciudad Juarez, in the northern state of Chihuahua, on Jan. 18 to launch the “Chamizal to the Zocalo” caravan, a 2,000-km ride to protest the elimination of tariffs on staples… Read moreMexico: NAFTA protests continue
Thousands of members of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM) participated in an eight-hour national strike on Jan. 16 in support of workers at Grupo Mexico’s giant copper mine at Cananea, in the… Read moreMexico: miners strike, teachers march
Mexican federal police backed up by the army’s elite Airborne Special Forces Group (GAFES) detained at least six municipal police in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in a surprise pre-dawn raid on their headquarters Jan. 19. Nuevo Laredo… Read moreNuevo Laredo: federales arrest local police
Tijuana Cartel gunmen and fought a three-hour battle with Mexican federal police and army troops in the border city Jan. 17, using machine guns and grenades and firing on a helicopter. One gunman was killed and four police officers were… Read moreCartel wars rock Tijuana
Local Oaxaca activist Simon Sedillo in a Jan. 15 report that appears on the Enemigo Comun blog: On January 15th, 2007, before the beginning of a youth march for the liberation of political prisoners, Urban Paramilitaries (porros) initiated a series… Read moreOaxaca: paramilitaries attack university
Refuting widespread media portrayal of the “erosion” (desgaste) of the rebel Zapatista movement, Jorge Santiago, director of the local group Economic and Social Development of the Indigenous Mexicans (DESMI), which has been working with Maya communities in the Highlands of… Read moreChiapas: Zapatistas “stronger” —despite paramilitary backlash
