Some 60 masked and mostly armed men, including “porros” (provocaterus) and municipal police, took over the local office of the Oaxaca daily newspaper Noticias in the town of Santa Cruz Amilpas Aug. 20. The municipal government is in the hands… Read moreOaxaca: general strike, paramilitary backlash
Another escalation is reported in the struggle of Maya campesinos in Yucatan state to hold their communial (ejidal) lands that the government seeks to expropriate for a new airport, part of the “Metropolisur” regional development plan. An Aug. 18 communique… Read moreMexico: repression in Yucatan
Ricardo Lopez Espinosa, a community leader in the conflicted central Mexican village of San Salvador Atenco and a member of the local People’s Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) was freed from jail in Molino de Flores Aug. 17… Read moreMexico: repression in Atenco, Puebla, Queretaro
From EFE, Aug. 14 via Chiapas95 (our translation): MEXICO — Mexico’s Federal Preventative Police (PFP) today used blows and tear gas to break up a group of legislators who support leftist candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador at one of the gates… Read moreMexico: police attack PRD legislators
Unrepentant about the wall his own country is building on the West Bank, Uza Dayan wisely warns the US against emulating Israeli strategies in Occupied Aztlan. From Newsday, Aug. 16: JERUSALEM — Six years ago, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak… Read moreEx-Israeli security chief on US-Mexico border wall: “Don’t build it!”
They’ve been after this guy for a long time. But if similar busts in the past are any indicator, his demise will merely set off a violent succession struggle—and do absolutely nothing to to reduce the flow of drugs into… Read moreUS nabs Tijuana cartel kingpin
We noted one year ago a heart-rending case of indigenous peasants in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas dying after eating a stew of apparently poisonous mushrooms. The peasants were driven by hunger and failed harvests to gather wild mushrooms (which… Read moreChiapas mushroom poisonings point to ecological crisis
From La Jornada, Aug. 10 via Chiapas95 (our translation, links added): Iguala, Guerrero — During the term of Vicente Fox, the Mexican government has not complied with recommendations of the UN to instate consitutional reforms on the rights of indigenous… Read moreUN: Mexico does not comply on indigenous rights
Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the left-populist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) raised the stakes in Mexico’s electoral standoff July 26 by declaring himself “the president of Mexico.” Cesar Nava, a spokesman for candidate Felipe Calderón of the ruling National Action… Read moreMexico awaits ruling on vote; dissidents threatened
From Mexico’s La Jornada, July 24, via Chiapas95, our translation: The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the narco-traffic in Chiapas “are factors that affect the national security,” says an internal document of Superior Center of Naval Studies (CESNAV) of… Read moreMexico: Naval intelligence calls EZLN “national security threat”
From La Jornada, July 15, translation via Chiapas95: In a large and violent operation – according to witnesses – the police of Yucatan arrested last Thursday in the community of Caucel more than 40 Maya ejidatarios [communal farmers], who were protesting… Read moreYucatan: police attack peasant protesters
Marking their completion of 10 ten years in prison, the two accused Zapatista collaborators being held at the state prison in Tacotalpa, Tabasco, began an indefinite hunger strike July 10 to demand their liberation. The prisoners, Angel Concepcion Perez Vazquez… Read moreZapatista political prisoners launch hunger strike
