Diego Arcos Meneses, an indigenous Chol Maya campesino, has been arrested by Chiapas state police and charged with murder in connection with November’s massacre at the rainforest settlement of Viejo Velasco. The Chol campesino organization Xinich protests his innocence. The… Read moreChiapas: charges in jungle massacre; land conflicts escalate
As Umberto Eco said about Salman Rushdie, “A death sentence is a rather harsh review.” From AP via the San Diego Union-Tibune, Feb. 19: MEXICO CITY – Gunmen shot to death four men identified as members of a musical group… Read moreMexico: narco gangs kill musicians
Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon visited a small village outside the Rosario monarch butterly reserve in Michoacan state to announce a “zero tolerance” policy against illegal logging, and pledged to mobilize army troops to protected areas. (Scientific American, Feb. 26) The… Read moreMexico: Calderon sends army against illegal logging
Women from the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) blocked roads at various locations across Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, in protest of the "anti-national and pro-imperialist" government of President Felipe Calderon. They also demanded lower electricity rates. Traffic… Read moreWomen block roads in Chiapas
In recognition of International Mother Language Day, lawmakers in southern Mexico’s Chiapas state proposed Feb. 21 a reform to the state constitution recognizing the existence of the indigenous tongues of Jacalteco, Chuj and Kanjobal, which are threatened with extinction. Articel… Read moreMexico: call to save threatened indigenous languages
On Feb. 15, Raúl Lucas Lucía of the Independent Organization of the Mixtec People was wounded in an ambush by unknown gunmen on a mountain road near his village of Coapinola, Ayutla municipality, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero…. Read moreZapatista supporters attacked in Guerrero, Jalisco
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her Canadian and Mexican counterparts Peter MacKay and Patricia Espinosa in Ottawa Feb. 23 for a summit of the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative (NASPI, or ASPAN by its Spanish acronym),… Read moreNAFTA security summit held in Ottawa
Thousands of Mexican miners held a one-day strike Feb. 19, marking the one-year anniversary of the underground blast that killed 65 at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in northern Coahuila state. Relatives of the victims celebrated a Mass and… Read moreMexico: strike and scandal on anniversary of mine disaster
We have noted repteated claims and denials that veterans of the feared Guatemalan counter-insurgency troops known as the Kaibiles are active in Chiapas and collaborating with Mexico’s narco-mafias. But these Kaibiles, caught in the new Chiapas immigration sweeps, seem to… Read moreGuatemalan commandos arrested in Chiapas migration sweep?
Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced Feb. 18 that he is dispatching some 3,300 army troops and federal police to combat narco-traffickers in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, two states that border Texas. Nuevo Leon capital Monterrey and the Tamaulipas border town… Read moreCalderón sends troops to border states —but narco-mafia rules
The evangelical Journal Chretién features a commentary Feb. 12 on religious violence in Mexico’s conflicted southern state of Chiapas which is rife with dangerous distortions, and smacks of a propaganda job against the Zapatista rebels. Although writer Aloys Evina begins… Read moreChiapas: evangelicals exploit religious violence for propaganda against EZLN
In a new communique, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) denounces Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s escalated campiagn against narco-trafficking as a “farce” and a “mere pretext to augment the already disproportionate militarization of rural Chiapas.” The communique, signed by Subcommander… Read moreChiapas: Zapatistas protest narco-militarization
