Mexico

Mexico: Election Violence, Boycott & Military Mobilizing ‘For Democracy’

June 8, 2015 Erin Gallagher, www.revolution-news.com Resist! boycott, Elections, Mexico, Politics, Violence, Wars and Militarism

By Erin Gallagher in Revolution News - Midterm elections are scheduled for tomorrow, Sunday June 7, in Mexico. Mexican citizens will be voting for 500 federal congressmen, 9 governors, and several hundred mayors and local legislators. Protests to boycott the vote have been taking place across Mexico. Police forces and military descended upon the state of Oaxaca last night to reinforce voting stations and “ensure democratic elections” take place tomorrow. As of June 4, 19 people had died who were connected with the electoral process in Mexico. Reports yesterday initially indicated that state police had beat to death magisterial leader, member of the Popular Guerrero (MPG) and activist, Juan Tenorio, in Tlapa, Guerrero. CETEG members (Coordinadora Estatal de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guerrero) and MPG were demonstrating to demand justice for the Ayotzinapa case and to promote the electoral boycott in the state.

Attack On Normalistas En Route To Support CNTE Teachers Protest

June 4, 2015 Jennifer Baker, www.revolution-news.com Resist! Freedom of Expression, Mexico, police brutality, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Jennifer Baker in Revolution News - Normalistas, student teachers of Ayotzinapa and their family members were attacked by a large group composed of State riot police, Federal police and Military police in the tunnel leading to the community of Tixtla today. The forces launched tear gas inside the beltway tunnel where they had blocked the progression of thenormalistas vehicles. An effort to injure and stop the advance of the normalisats that are heading towards the community of Chilpancingo to march in support with striking teachers of CNTE union. The resulting resistance has left 4 policemen injured, and at least 2 normalistas beaten. For over a year the CNTE teachers union has been protesting education reforms that are to be voted on Sunday. CNTE carried out a direct action yesterday to overtake electoral offices and burn election ballots.

Mexican Farmworkers Reach Agreement After 2-month Strike

May 21, 2015 Ashoka Jegroo, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Farmworkers, Food and Agriculture, Mexico, Worker Rights and Jobs

After two months of striking, marching and blocking roads, farmworkers in Baja California, Mexico have finally reached an agreement with the Mexican government that may end their current struggle for better wages and working conditions. Mexican government officials and farmworker leaders held an 18-hour meeting in Ensenada, Mexico starting on May 13 that ended the next day with the government agreeing to meet several demands of the striking workers. Among the demands being met by the government are requirements that companies get certification ensuring that they’re not using child labor, social security benefits for retired farmworkers, equal rights and pay for women, housing built for laborers, recognition of the farmworkers’ union, and healthcare for workers.

Federal Police Implicated In Apatzingán Massacre (Graphic Images)

April 21, 2015 Erin Gallagher, www.revolution-news.com Educate! Mexico, police brutality

An investigation by journalist, Laura Castellanos and published simultaneously by Aristegui Noticias, Proceso and Univision reveals new evidence that federal police committed a massacre of civilians on January 6 in Apatzingán, Michoacan. Testimonies, photos, videos, radio transmissions and death certificates cast new doubt on the official version regarding civilian deaths. The official version of events as given previously by Alfredo Castillo, Commissioner for Security, who at the time was the highest federal authority in the chain of command, told the press that from two separate events on January 6, the death toll was nine people, that the dead were members of Los Viagras, said to be a new cartel in the state of Michoacan.

Important Strike In Mexico: Farm Workers Paralyze Baja Farms

April 3, 2015 Dan La Botz, www.socialistproject.ca Resist! Farmworkers, Food and Agriculture, Mexico

Thousands of farmworkers in the San Quintín Valley of Baja California, just 185 miles south of the U.S. border, struck some 230 farms, including the twelve largest that dominate production in the region, on March 17 interrupting the picking, packing, and shipping of zucchini, tomatoes, berries and other products to stores and restaurants in the United States. The strikers, acting at the peak of the harvest, were demanding higher wages and other benefits to which they are legally entitled such as membership in the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), the public health system. While there have over the last two decades been several large scale protests by workers in San Quintín, usually riots over the employers failure to pay their employees on time, this is the first attempt by workers to carry out a such strategic strike.

Grassroots Movement Blocks Water Privatization In Mexico

March 30, 2015 Alfredo Acedo, www.cipamericas.org Resist! Mexico, Privatization, Water

The ruling party (PRI) and its allies, the National Action Party (PAN), the Partido Verde and New Alliance, were forced to back down in the Chamber of Deputies. The privatization offensive launched this time against water, will have to wait for another day—preferably for its promoters, not around elections. The procedure to rule on the proposed General Water Act, scheduled for Tuesday, March 10, was deferred indefinitely. A news report recorded the aggressive response of PRI deputy Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who bared his disappointment in no uncertain terms. The fact is that faced with this imminent heist of public goods, the citizenry reacted immediately. The Union of Concerned Scientists in Mexico demanded a public discussion of the initiative and issued a statement that in a few hours garnered over ten thousand signatures.

Four Court Victories Uphold GMO Ban In Mexico

March 20, 2015 Devon G. Pena, www.ejfood.blogspot.com Resist! Food and Agriculture, Mexico, Monsanto

The legal battles over the existing ban on the planting of transgenic maize in Mexico continue to unfold with a string of four important court victories by anti-GMO activists. On February 28, 2015, the collective of social movement organizations known asAcción Colectiva del Maíz announced that they had secured four more favorable court decisions involving amparo (shelter) corporate challenges seeking to end the GMO corn ban in Mexico. These are pivotal victories but the group explains that more administrative and judicial reviews remain to be adjudicated, including five by Monsanto and Syngenta against the use of precautionary measures to manage the biosafety risks posed by transgenic corn.

Whistleblowers Wanted: Mexican Journalists Seek Tips

March 18, 2015 Jo Tuckman, www.theguardian.com Resist! Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Press, Journalism, Mexico

In a country rife with corruption, criminality and abuse – and where saying the wrong thing in earshot of the wrong people can get you killed – Mexican journalists can have a hard time obtaining the kind of solid information required to sort out rumour from reality. Now an alliance of eight Mexican media outlets and civil society groups is courting potential whistleblowers with a new digital platform that promises to protect the anonymity of sources with the help of sophisticated encryption software. Mexicoleaks describes its mission as the construction of a “Transparent Mexico”, and participants say they hope it will help them document political corruption, human rights abuses and other misuses of institutional and economic power.

Veracruz: Lumbering & Gas Extraction Threaten Ancient Forests

March 11, 2015 Hermann Bellinghausen, translated Esther Buddenhagen, www.mexicovoices.blogspot.mx Educate! Environment, Food and Agriculture, Mexico

“Those trees have been there forever,” says Cristano Lechuga, the man in charge of guarding the radio and telephone antennas planted on the highest mountain in Huayacocotla, Veracruz, as he points to a deeply green peak, the highest on the rim around the Sierra Madre Occidental. This area in the mountains of northern Veracruz (and Puebla) is threatened today on all sides, not just with the killing off of its proverbial forests. For many, this is only a prelude to the true devastation to come. The imminent extraction of gas and oil will be brutal (and intensive, thanks to Enrique Peña Nieto’s so-called energy reform). It will take place in the northern-most mountains of Veracruz (and also of Puebla) and the always-coveted lowlands of the Huastecas.

Industry Presses Feds To Keep Atlantic Drilling On The Table

February 11, 2015 Jennifer A. Dlouhy, www.fuelfix.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Mexico, Oil & Gas

Oil industry leaders on Monday beseeched the Obama administration to sell drilling rights in East Coast waters before 2022, even as environmentalists asked that the territory be closed to the activity. The widely ranging views came as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management kicked off coast-to-coast hearings on its draft plan to sell offshore oil and gas leases from 2017 to 2022. The proposal, unveiled last month, paves the way for 14 sales of offshore drilling leases: 10 in the Gulf of Mexico, three off the coast of Alaska and one for territory along mid- and south-Atlantic states.

150 People Reported Disappeared In Piedras Negras, Mexico

February 9, 2015 teleSur, www.telesurtv.net Educate! Criminal Justice, Mexico

Over 150 people have been reported disappeared in the small city of Piedras Negras in the northern border Mexican state of Coahuila in the last 18 months, of which at least 60 have been attributed to elite police forces, according to a lawyer overseeing the cases. Families of victims and their lawyers accused state government of creating special forces that have carried out arbitrary detentions, tortures and enforced disappearances across Coahuila during the last six years. The creation of elite police forces, which in the past have been sent to the U.S. for special training by the FBI, is not new in Mexico. These types of forces have been accused of acting as death squads for the government and have sometimes carried out assassinations ordered by organized crime gangs.

Ayotzinapa: The Aftermath Of A Drama

February 5, 2015 Merel de Buck, www.roarmag.org Educate! Ayotzinapa, Human Rights, Mexico

The disappearances of 43 students in the southern Mexican city of Iguala have shaken the country to the core. A radical movement of teachers and students sees this drama as the paragon of the Mexican political system marred by impunity, corruption and extreme institutionalized violence. The movement makes history when it sets fire on the gates of the national palace, an unprecedented action since the Mexican revolution in the beginning of the nineteenth century. But although the movement is unwavering and the international media attention unabated, some things in Mexico seem unshakable. A present-day visit to Iguala tells us that nothing has changed. The entangled power of drugs cartels and local politics carry on like never before.

Report: The First Worldwide Festival of Resistance

January 8, 2015 By, Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Capitalism, Festival of Resistance, Mexico, Zapatistas

Some 2,600 people from 48 countries (2,050 from Mexico and 550 from other countries) gathered for the first Worldwide Festival of Resistances Against Capitalism. The festival took place all over Mexico and the majority of participants travelled together in a mass caravan of buses (not without mechanical problems and police interference) to the different regions to share and listen stories and strategies of resistance, to strengthen their cultures of resistance, and to build lasting networks locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. Thanks to the excellent organizing by EZLN and CNI the impacts of the festival will reverberate amongst the participants and their resistance communities for years to come. During the festival of resistance we learned about the inevitable horrors of ongoing capitalism, the destruction of remaining ecosystems, the continued genocide of indigenous peoples, about global state violence against people. We also learned that people everywhere are fighting back, even when it means putting our lives on the line. One of the most common responses to speakers was a chant from the crowd that they are not alone. That we are all in this together and are fighting the same fight. And, as the relatives of the Ayotzinapa massacred say, we cannot sleep until we defeat these evils. ¡La Lucha Sigue! The Fight Goes On!

US Cities Organize To End Plan Mexico

January 6, 2015 Nidia Bautista, www.cipamericas.org Resist! Ayotzinapa, Mexico, Violence

For over three months, Mexicans have organized demonstrations in the country’s cities and towns, demanding justice for the disappeared college students from Iguala, Guerrero. Yet since October, protestors have not only called for the appearance of the 43 disappeared students (now presumably 42 since the remains of one student were identified among ashes found near the scene of the crime), but also the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto and justice for the tens of thousands of disappeared and hundreds of femicides nationwide that have occurred, especially since the war on drugs was launched in December 2006. At the core of their criticisms is the impunity and corruption at local, state and federal levels. While protestors in Mexico have amplified their demands, multiple protests have been organized abroad in more than fifty countries. One of the largest and most notable is in United States, known by the hashtag #USTired2.

Zapatistas Host World Festival Of Resistance And Rebellion

December 23, 2014 Leonidas Oikonomakis, www.roarmag.org Resist! Capitalism, Mexico, Zapatistas

This month, the Zapatistas are organizing a major international meeting in Chiapas: the World Festival of Resistance and Rebellion Against Capitalism. They don’t say “how are you?” Instead, they prefer to ask “what does your heart say?” If you are well, you respond “jun ko’on” (my heart is united). If not, you have to respond that your heart is in pieces (“chkat ko’on“). And you have to be honest. The verb “to struggle” does not exist in their language. Instead, they use the phrase “to form the word.” If one wants to understand the Zapatista struggle, it is important that first you understand their language. They are the tsotsiles Zapatistas of the Los Altos region and the Caracol II of Oventik, and they are getting ready to host the first World Festival of Resistance and Rebellion against Capitalism.

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