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Mexico

Tens Of Thousands Protest Over Missing Students

November 7, 2014 Associated Press, www.cbc.ca , ,
Tens of thousands of people marched down Mexico City's main boulevard Wednesday evening to protest the disappearance of 43 young people in the southern part of the country and demand the government find them. The largely young crowd carried Mexican flags with black mourning bands replacing the red and green stripes, counting off the numbers from one to 43. Protesters also chanted: "They took them away alive, and alive we want them back." In Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, groups of protesters angry about the government's inability to find the missing used hijacked trucks to block all three highways leading into the city for several hours. The missing youths were enrolled at a rural teachers college in Guerrero. They had been taken away by police after a confrontation in the city of Iguala on Sept. 26.

Ayotzinapa Vive! A Month With Mexico’s Student Protesters

November 6, 2014 Manuel Rueda, www.fusion.net , ,
Twenty thousand people are currently missing in Mexico. But the disappearance of 43 students has struck a nerve in this country like few other crimes in its recent history. Protest happening almost on a daily basis are pressuring the government to find the missing students and end the kind of systematic corruption, and narco-infiltrations that many believe led to the tragedy. The missing students were attacked by municipal policemen from Iguala on Sept. 26, after they had commandeered three buses in a protest. Investigators believe that policemen turned the students over to a drug-trafficking gang that had ties to Iguala’s mayor.

The Ugly Update: Search For 43 Missing Mexican Students

November 1, 2014 Charlotte Alfred, www.huffingtonpost.com , ,
The students -- men in their late teens and early 20s -- were studying to become teachers in rural Mexico at a college with a history of radical leftist activism, the BBC reported. That Friday, they went out to demonstrate against hiring discrimination and solicit funds for an upcoming protest march. Witnesses have said that the students were in Iguala, a city in southern Mexico, when they came under fire from police. By the end of the night, six people were left dead. The body of one student was laterfound with his face skinned and eyes gouged out, the New Yorker reported, "the signature of a Mexican organized-crime assassination." Some of the students escaped Iguala, but 43 of them have not been seen since that night.

‘We Want Them Alive:’ Search For Mexico 43

October 21, 2014 Andalusia Knoll, www.wagingnonviolence.org , ,
The flames started to engulf the municipal palace of Chilpancingo in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero as the rage built within the students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College who, for over two weeks, have received no answers concerning the whereabouts of 43 of their fellow students. The last time the group of missing students were seen was in the custody of Mexican municipal police forces, who detained them after opening fire on their caravan in an attack that killed six people and injured dozens more. This massacre and subsequent disappearance of the students, known as “normalistas,” has sparked an international movement demanding that the 43 students be found alive. But it has also called into question the deep ties between drug cartels and Mexican politicians. To understand the political significance of the Ayotzinapa case, it’s important to understand who the students are.

Mexican Activist Killed On Air During Radio Show In Mazatlan

October 20, 2014 Associated Press in Mexico, www.theguardian.com , , , ,
Two gunmen walked into a radio station and killed a local activist while he was presenting his weekly radio programme, prosecutors in the northern Mexico state of Sinaloa said. It was the first on-air killing in recent memory in Mexico. The victim, Atilano Román Tirado, headed a group of about 800 farm families whose lands were flooded by dam construction several years ago. His group, the Displaced Persons of Picachos – named after the dam – has been demanding compensation for the land. Román Tirado had a weekly variety programme on Fiesta Mexicana,a local radio station in the Pacific port of Mazatlan. In past years the Picachos movement had staged blockades and protest marches, which had resulted in arrests. Sinaloa state prosecutors said two men walked into the station on Saturday and asked for Román Tirado. The station is in a building that also houses the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlan.

Ayotzinapa: They Were The Best And The Brightest

October 18, 2014 The Mex Files, www.mexfiles.net , ,
I honestly don’t know what to say about the disappearance of the 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Normal School. Sin Embargo has an overview of the situation as of this morning, focusing on the investigation and the political aspects of the situation. The foreign media, as expected, has seen this as somehow related to the narcotics export trade (which, of course, would not exist without the huge buyer’s market in the United States). That the alleged head of the alleged gang that allegedly kidnapped the students allegedly committed suicide and that PAN is now demanding the PRD state government resign, while the Peña Nieto administration worries about the economic fallout from reportage on this, raise the kinds of questions that the historian in me wonders whether they even need to be asked at this time, or if they can only be addressed when there is more information.

Mexico Universities Call Strike In Solidarity With Missing Students

October 17, 2014 Renee Lewis & Débora Poo Soto, www.america.aljazeera.com , , ,
Students from major Mexico City universities have called a two-day strike and were set to hold a rally Wednesday at the national attorney general’s office to call for the safe return of dozens of rural students who disappeared after clashes with police in Guerrero state last month, leading to public outrage. "We are on strike for 48 hours in support of the disappeared students in Guerrero," Silvia Caballero, a 21-year-old student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told Al Jazeera. Survivors of the Sept. 26 violence joined Mexico City protesters in informal campus activities and rallies demanding justice for their missing classmates. Several other universities joined the UNAM strike on Tuesday and Wednesday. Family members of the missing students were to attend the protest at the attorney general's office in the capital, organizers said.

Fear And Fair Cannot Coexist…

October 16, 2014 Coalition of Immokalee Workers, www.ciw-online.org , , ,
For the sake of Mexico’s workers, one can only hope that last month’s massacre sparks a social movement equal to that of the Civil Rights movement in this country that can challenge the rule of corruption and end the senseless violence of the decade-old drug wars. But until then, Mexican farmworkers will remain powerless to address the abuse and exploitation they face in the fields, and Florida tomatoes will be the only truly fair product on the market. Ultimately, it was the economic power of tourism that dragged Florida into the 20th century. The competition for the country’s growing tourist dollars in the 1960s was enough that Florida could no longer abide the shame of “Florida Terror” headlines in northern papers. Let’s hope that competition from the Fair Food Program likewise helps prod Mexico’s tomato industry to realize that the country’s violence and corruption is holding it back, and that real, sustainable economic growth can only come with peace, transparency, and lasting social justice.

Mexican Students Hijack Buses, Trucks Amid Escalating Protests

October 14, 2014 Manuel Rueda, www.fusion.net , , ,
CHILPANCINGO, Mexico —Protests against the disappearance of 43 students in southern Mexico intensified on Saturday when a group of masked youths blocked a main highway and hijacked four trucks and four buses. The group, students from the Ayotzinapa rural teacher’s college, blocked the highway connecting the state capital to Mexico City at around 4 p.m. With rocks in hand and faces covered with t-shirts and bandanas, the students forced the trucks and buses to pull over and commandeered the vehicles. The students have been protesting the disappearance of 43 students who vanished on Sept. 26, after they were attacked by police in the city of Iguala.

Zapatistas March For Murdered Students

October 12, 2014 Orsetta Bellani, www.cipamericas.org , , ,
Some ten thousand members of the bases of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation marched briskly through San Cristobal de las Casas on October 8. They gathered on the outskirts of the city, under a blue sky stained with clouds that threateend rain and then walked in long, orderly lines toward the central plaza of the city. The long river of Zapatistas moved fluidly and silently; the only sound was the steps of their shoes and boots. They carried signs that read “Your rage is ours”, “Your pain is our pain” and “You are not alone”. The message was for the students of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero and for the families that found out that on on Sept. 26-27 their sons were killed or kidnapped as they traveled by bus, at the hands of municipal police in complicity with the drug trafficking organization Guerreros Unidos. Two weeks from the attacks there are 6 dead and 43 disappeared.

Massacres Destroying Democracy In Mexico

October 9, 2014 John M. Ackerman, www.huffingtonpost.com ,
The Mexican "drug war" has taken a turn for the worse. Since the return of the old guard Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) to the presidency in 2012, violence has expanded and increasingly targeted political activists, journalists and human rights defenders. And two recent massacres committed by government officials indicate that the country may be headed towards a rerun of the "dirty wars" of the 1970s, in which the government hunted down and killed or jailed thousands of activists. It is time for international public opinion to shift Mexico from the "democratic" to the "authoritarian" column. The upcoming Senate hearings on President Barack Obama´s nomination for the new US Ambassador to Mexico, Maria Echaveste, present an excellent opportunity to take a hard look at the crude reality south of the Rio Grande.

San Fernando Migrant Massacre: Governments Share Responsibility

October 8, 2014 Camilo Perez Bustillo and Azadeh N. Shahshahani, www.truth-out.org , , , ,
The jury concluded that the US and Mexican governments are jointly responsible for a generalized pattern of grave human rights violations committed against migrants in transit on Mexican territory, on their way to the United States, between 2010 and 2014. The jury also concluded that the massacre was the predictable and thus preventable result of actions and omissions by Mexican authorities responsible for systematic, egregious and recurrent human rights violations against migrants in transit. These violations include the Mexican government's failure to protect migrants in transit from death or injury due to serious abuses committed by drug traffickers and human traffickers in complicity with Mexican authorities.

Mexican Students Block Highway, Demand Justice For 43 Missing

October 6, 2014 TeleSurTV, www.telesurtv.net , , ,
Hundreds of students of the Teacher Training College of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, are blocking the Mexico-Acapulco highway to demand justice for their 43 colleagues who last week were allegedly kidnapped by local police and gunmen. The highway is a key road, linking Mexico City with Acapulco Port, one of the most frequented destinations for both domestic and international tourists. According to several media reports, the students are now allowing all cars to pass through Palo Blanco tollbooth for free. The students are joined by relatives from the 43 youth who have been missing since Friday September 26, when police agents from Iguala, Guerrero, along with unidentified gunmen shot at several buses being used by the students, and kidnapped 43 of them.

Mexico: Mass Student Strike Over Curriculum Changes

September 26, 2014 Revolution News, www.revolution-news.com , ,
About 15,000 Students or more from the National Polytechnic Institute marched on the Interior Circuit northbound to the Zacatenco unit, to address the Directorate General of IPN. On Thursday, the Unity Professional Interdisciplinary Engineering and Social and Administrative Sciences ( UPIICSA ) joined the strike along with the College of Engineering and Architecture (ESIA ). From an early hour, students from different campuses CECYT concentrated outside various schools to join the mobilization. These are the demands by the College of Engineering and Architecture Zacatenco: 1)Repeal of the 2014 curriculum and immediate implementation of Curriculum 2004 for all new students, regardless of the extraordinary changes that the administrative part of the ESIA-UZ have to perform without the school term care have to extended during the month of December.

Mining Spill Closes 88 Schools, Pollutes Water

August 20, 2014 Ari Phillips, www.thinkprogress.org , , ,
An acid spill from a large copper mine in northern Mexico is keeping 88 schools closed starting Monday due to uncertainty over the safety of drinking water. The 12-day-old spill, which sent 10 million gallons (40,000 cubic meters) of toxic wastewater into portions of the Bacanuchi and Sonora rivers, may keep schools closed for over a week according to the Associated Press. The Buenavista copper mine, one of the largest copper mines in the world, is located in Cananea, Sonora, about 25 miles south of the U.S. border near Nogales, Arizona. The mine is operated by Grupo Mexico, one of the world’s largest copper producers. Grupo Mexico’s American subsidiary, Asarco, is nearing a deal to gain full ownership of the Silver Bell copper mine across the U.S. border in Marana, Arizona and has been subject to major environmental misconduct charges in the past relating to its mining operations. Mine officials have been criticized for not reporting the massive acid spill to authorities for around 24 hours, with residents downstream detecting the spill the next day as it turned dozens of miles of river orange.
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