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Mexico

US Cities Organize To End Plan Mexico

January 6, 2015 Nidia Bautista, www.cipamericas.org , ,
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 , ,
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.

Violence In Mexico, The US Connection & The New Mexican Revolution

December 20, 2014 Jim Cohen, www.truth-out.org , , ,
The disappearance and likely massacre of 43 students from the rural teachers' school of Ayotzinapa in Mexico September 26 has provoked shock and outrage internationally. Within Mexico, in addition to unprecedented levels of public anger, it has raised serious doubts about the sustainability of President Enrique Peña Nieto's mode of government, with its aggressively neoliberal economic program and levels of violence as high or higher than under his predecessor, Felipe Calderón, who initiated the drug war in 2006 with US collaboration. Professor of law and political science at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, John Ackerman explores the sources of growing dissatisfaction in Mexico and sheds light on how the US connection perpetuates Mexico's social inequalities, endemic violence and authoritarian government.

Mexican Federal Police Involved In Ayotzinapa Disappearances

December 19, 2014 Geoff Ramsey, www.thepanamericanpost.com , ,
On Sunday, Proceso magazine published an investigative report that directly contradicts the official account of the disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa. The investigation, which is based on leaked government documents and a Guerrero state report on the events leading up to the September 26 disappearances, implicates federal police officials in the crime. According to Proceso, the Guerrero report shows that federal forces were aware of the students’ protests in Iguala that day and were watching them closely. The magazine claims the report clearly shows that federal police joined in the repression of the student demonstration, in which officers and unknown gunmen shot and killed at least six people.

Mexican Activists Crucify Themselves, Sew Lips In Protest (VIDEO)

December 13, 2014 RT, www.rt.com ,
Three protesters crucified themselves in front of the State Congress building in Mexico's Cintalapa on Friday, demanding the release of an activist charged with cattle rustling who was defending the rights of the indigenous population. The activists of the 'Peasant Front Ricardo Flores Magon' anarchist movement, Lucirelia Gomez Sanchez, Juana Gomez Gomez and Asuncion Rodriguez Gomez, were tied to wooden crosses while five other protesters sewed up their own lips to mark the beginning of a 15-day hunger strike. Activist Lucirelia Gomez Sanchez was taken to a local hospital with health problems. The protest was organized in support of the fellow activist Florentino Gomez Giron, who has been imprisoned for six months on charges of cattle rustling.

The Mexican Crisis Deepens

December 2, 2014 Dan La Botz, www.newpol.org , , ,
The Mexican government confronts a major political crisis on two fronts. The first is as a result of the massacre and kidnapping that took place on September 26 when police and other assailants in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero killed six, wounded twenty-five, and kidnapped 43 students. Since the massacre and kidnapping took place, there have been demonstrations in Guerrero, Mexico City, and several other states, some of them massive and some violent. Mexicans are appalled at the abduction of these young people and indignant at both the involvement of local officials and police and the national government’s failure to deal with the issue. hen, in early November, the media discovered that, in a flagrant conflict of interest, President Enrique Peña Nieto and his wife Angélica Rivera had a $7 million home in the exclusive Lomas neighborhood—the president’s wife call it “their real home”—a modern house that belonged to a subsidiary of Grupo Higa, a company that had done hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the State of Mexico when Peña Nieto was governor and which had just signed a contract on November 3 with a Chinese-led consortium to build a $3.7 billion high-speed railroad between Mexico City and Queretaro.

11 Protesters Released After International Outcry

December 1, 2014 Tracy Wilkinson, www.latimes.com , ,
Eleven people arrested in recent anti-government demonstrations and sent to maximum-security prisons have been released without charges after their detention created an international uproar. A 12th person arrested separately in connection with the same case was also freed, and publicly denounced what he described as beatings and threats by state security services. Mostly peaceful marches against the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto have become a mainstay since the Sept. 26 kidnapping and likely massacre of 43 college students in Iguala in the state of Guerrero. The students were attacked by local police working with a drug cartel in cahoots with the mayor of Iguala and his wife, the government says.

We Are Tired Of Supporting Militarized Police At Home & Abroad

November 29, 2014 Staff, www.ustired2.com , , , ,
The #USTired2 Campaign Demonstrates How The Us Is Not Only Supporting Militarized Police In Ferguson and Across the United States, but Around The World As Well. This December 7th Join In Protested the Killing of 43 Students In Mexico, a Crime in Which the US is Complicit For many in these United States, images of mass graves in Mexico or stories like that of the 43 missing Normalista students of Ayotzinapa are disturbing, but far away. For others of us, Mexico is not just a “foreign policy issue.” Mexico es familia. Inspired by our friends, family and loved ones in Mexico, #UStired2 is a nationwide effort involving students, local Mexican and Latino and other communities, immigrant rights activists, religious organizations, concerned scholars and many others from across the entire United States. Our effort has one goal: working in the United States to promote peace as an alternative to the catastrophically failed drug war that has left more than 100,000 dead and 25,000 people disappeared in Mexico. More than 43 cities in the United States—one for each student disappeared in Ayotzinapa—have joined our effort—all in less than a week after the call to action was made.

Fear And Justice In The Battle For Mexico’s Future

November 23, 2014 Peter Stanchev, www.roarmag.org , , ,
I woke up in fear, and for the rest of the day it controlled my life the way fear tends to control people’s lives. It dominated my thoughts the way it dominates people’s thoughts and actions, paralyzes them until they are deprived from all hope and the very basic human capacity to change the world around them. My fear was provoked by a nightmare, not one I saw in my dreams, but rather a nightmare I have been unfortunate enough to observe with my own eyes and come to know intimately. It was the fear of waking up and realizing my friends have disappeared at night; lifted from their beds by men in uniforms, leaving friends and family behind who from that day on can only guess after the fate of their loved ones. This fear is not imaginary. This is the fear I struggled to understand when talking to my friends and fellow students when I lived and studied in Mexico. It is a fear that is incomprehensible for someone who has not lived in a country where more than 100.000 have been killed and disappeared in less than ten years.

Protests Against State Violence Go Worldwide

November 23, 2014 , , , , , , ,
Mexican activists were joined yesterday by solidarity protests in the United States and around the word. Under the banner of “Todos Somos Ayotzinapa – Todos Somos Ferguson,” a number of demonstrations in the States were intended to stand with Mexican organizers and the 43 students abducted, along with the U.S. community of Ferguson, Mo. Any day, a grand jury there is expected to decide whether or not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. At a rally in New York’s Union Square last Sunday, protesters held signs in Spanish saying, “Your son could be number 44” — eerily reminiscent of an earlier rallying cry: “I Am Trayvon Martin.” Protesters also called attention to the role of U.S. policy and trade agreements — including the proposed and controversial “Plan Mexico” — in fueling the drug war that has terrorized the country over the last several years, and was accelerated under the presidency of Felipe Calderon, beginning in 2006. Simultaneous protests for Ayotzinapa were held in France, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries.

Mexico’s Military & Political Class In The Eye of Ayotzinapa Storm

November 22, 2014 Ted Lewis, www.huffingtonpost.com , ,
Mexico's political class and governing institutions are suddenly under attack and discredited on a scale not seen for generations. The poor, angry, politically savvy and mostly rural families of the murdered and disappeared students are at the lead of a fast growing dissident movement that has the attention and sympathy of tens of millions of Mexicans. It should have the attention of the U.S. public and foreign policy decision makers as well. A confrontation looms. Last week the families of the 43 disappeared students rejected the findings of the Mexican Attorney General who declared the students dead. His findings were based on the confessions of alleged participants, who described mass slaughter and the burning of corpses at a garbage dump. Instead, the families announced that three caravans would simultaneously crisscross the country to gather allies in the continued fight for their children. Their organized fury represents a genuine threat to the image-dependent, investor-friendly regime of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who brought the notorious PRI back to power just two years ago.

The Rebel Spirit Driving Mexico’s Protests Has Deep Roots

November 21, 2014 Alfonso Serrano, www.america.aljazeera.com , ,
More than a hundred years ago, peasants in northern Mexico rose up under the leadership of Francisco “Pancho” Villa. In the south, the legendary Emiliano Zapata led a revolt of indigenous people to reclaim ancestral lands. It’s in Zapata’s erstwhile domain that the Ayotzinapa Normal School, which the missing students attended, was built in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution as part of a teachers’ college system inspired by a radical social vision dedicated to promoting knowledge and social mobility among its mostly poor and indigenous student body. Today’s revolutionaries are well aware of how deeply the history of the Mexican Revolution still resonates. In 1994, Subcomandante Marcos laid claim to that symbolism when, not far from Ayotzinapa, he launched a rebel movement on New Year’s Day as leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

International Day Of Protest For Ayotzinapa 43

November 21, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org , ,
Mexico has a very deep wound right now after the disappearance of the 43 students in Ayotzinapa. On September 26, dozens of students took several buses to Iguala, and after a violent encounter with the police, 43 of them were allegedly taken to the police headquarters and never heard from them again. The government claimed the students where there to boycott a political event, but the students claim they were there to raise funds for their school. Mexican authorities eventually declared the students dead after weeks of investigation, but the people of Mexico are not letting this one go so easily. They’ve had enough with the government, and this atrocious act was the last straw, which detonated a series of protests around the whole country.

Mobilization For Peace In Mexico, 43 US Cities, Dec. 3rd

November 20, 2014 Latino Rebels, www.latinorebels.com , ,
Created as a tribute to Mexico’s #YaMeCansé global movement, a #USTired2 mobilization calling for peace in Mexico launched this morning, campaign organizers told Latino Rebels. The group has identified December 3, 2014 as the day of demonstrations and rallies in at least 43 US cities to represent the 43 Ayotzinapa students. Organizers said that their focus will be to call more national attention to “Plan Mexico” (also known as the Mérida Initiative). The U.S. State Department reports that the “U.S. Congress has appropriated $2.1 billion since the Merida Initiative began in Fiscal Year 2008.” Critics of Plan Mexico insist that such a policy has been tragic for Mexico. To many, Ayotzinapa is just the latest example of such a failed policy. Follow #USTired2 for the latest updates.

This Isn’t The Mass Grave You’ve Been Looking For

November 20, 2014 Greg Grandin, www.thenation.com , ,
They have found many mass graves. Just not the mass grave they have been looking for. The forty-three student activists were disappeared on September 26, after being attacked by police in the town of Iguala, in the Mexican state of Guerrero. A week later, I set up an alert for “fosa clandestina”—Spanish for clandestine grave—on Google News. Here’s what has come back: On October 4, the state prosecutor of Guerrero announced that twenty-eight bodies were found in five clandestine mass graves. None of them were the missing forty-three. On October 9, three more graves. None of them contained the missing forty-three. The use of the passive tense on the part of government officials and in news reports is endemic. Graves were discovered. Massacres were committed.
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