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Mexico

The World Stands In Solidarity With Zapatistas

May 23, 2014 Marta Molina, www.wagingnonviolence.org , ,
On May 18, solidarity actions were held in New York City and in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, to protest the recent assassination of Zapatista José Luis Solís López, better known as Galeano, who was murdered by paramilitary forces earlier this month. Within Mexico, organizers announced that solidarity caravans will travel to La Realidad to “hug the family members of Galeano and the Zapatista grassroots.” Meanwhile, more than 75 communiques from various organizations and individuals expressed their condemnation of the paramilitary attacks, including writers and activists such as Arundathi Roy, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Immanuel Wallerstein, Ivon LeBot, Kristinn Hrafnsson, Manuel Castells, Michael Hardt, Gustavo Esteva and Pierre Beaucage. The National Indigenous Congress explained: “It is an aggression against all of us who are learning from the many Zapatista teachers who continue teaching us what the face of liberty looks like.” The group demanded “an end to the war against our Zapatista brothers and sisters, and punishment for the intellectual and material authors” of the murder.

Rethinking Cinco De Mayo

May 5, 2014 Sudie Hofmann, www.zinnedproject.org ,
I recently came across a flier in an old backpack of my daughter’s:Wanted: Committee Chairs for this Spring’s Cinco de Mayo All School Celebration. The flier was replete with cultural props including a sombrero, cactus tree, donkey, taco, maracas, and chili peppers. Seeing this again brought back the moment when, years earlier, my daughter had handed the flier to me, and I’d thought, “Oh, no.” The local K-6 elementary school’s Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) was sponsoring a stereotypical Mexican American event. There were no Chicana/o students, parents, or staff members who I was aware of in the school community and I was concerned about the event’s authenticity. I presumed the PTSA meant well, and was attempting to provide a multicultural experience for students and families, but it seemed they were likely to get it wrong. After making some inquiries, I was told the school wanted to celebrate Cinco de Mayo because it was Mexico’s Independence Day. However, Cinco de Mayo is actually Battle of Puebla Day, commemorating the defeat of Napoleon III in 1862. Mexico’s Independence Day is Sept. 16. I wrote the school and asked if they might consider canceling the event. I was concerned that the stereotypes associated with Chicana/os, such as fast-food items, piñatas, sombreros, and serapes would be central to the event. Unfortunately, I was correct.

Mexican Landowners Challenge Goldcorp On Eve Of Annual General Meeting

May 2, 2014 MiningWatch Canada, www.youtube.com ,
On the eve of Goldcorp's Annual General Meeting in Vancouver, Mexican landowners are challenging company assertions that it is "expeditiously" seeking to renew a land use agreement in order to restart operations at its Los Filos mine in Guerrero, Mexico. The peaceful blockade in Carrizalillo, Guerrero, on community lands in front of the Los Filos mine site, began on the morning of April 1st. The first talks since the mine was shut down did not take place until April 24th, and ended in frustration over the company's apparent lack of interest or preparation to negotiate. The community is seeking better conditions in their land use contract including economic, health and environmental issues arising from the massive open-pit gold and silver operation less than a kilometre from where they live.

Mexico: A Global Call For Freedom From Attacks On Speech

April 21, 2014 Contra El Silencio, www.revolution-news.com ,
Enrique Peña Nieto seeks an end to community media in Mexico along with the indigenous radio stations and also wants to create “quiet zones” which would force telecoms to cut any signal; telephone, internet and radio during demonstrations, rallies and during situations considered threatening to national security. This new law threatening net neutrality, the ability to have a universal and diverse network, since the proposal aims to give telecommunications service providers the ability to discriminate content and protocols in telecommunication networks. Can you imagine internet like pay per view? Neither do we. THIS IS CONTROL AND CENSORSHIP. This is an attack on free speech. This law seems to be directed to what has been the main headache of President Peña Nieto since he began his regime, social networks and how we organize with them. This law also brings back the Televisa news group, lost for decades, it was the main ally of the PRI, the party that owns Peña Nieto, and now they are back and seem to want to have absolute power again.

Izzy Award & IF Stone Hall of Fame Honor Scahill, Greenwald, Turse & Carlos Frey

April 11, 2014 David Maley, www.ithaca.edu , , , ,
Four acclaimed journalists will speak at Ithaca College on Monday, April 28, as they accept national honors. Glenn Greenwald will appear via a pre-taped video, while Jeremy Scahill, John Carlos Frey andNick Turse will appear in person. The Izzy Award and I.F. Stone Hall of Fame ceremony, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled for 7 p.m. in Park Hall Auditorium. Sponsored by the Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM), both the award and the hall of fame are named in memory of legendary journalist I.F. “Izzy” Stone, who published “I.F. Stone’s Weekly” from 1953 to 1971 and exposed official deception while championing civil liberties. Also participating in the ceremony will be Izzy Stone’s son Jeremy Stone and biographer Myra MacPherson, author of “All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone.”

Reproductive Justice Denied to Indigenous Women

March 14, 2014 Juliana, www.feministing.com , , , ,
In October of last year, Irma Lopez Aurelio arrived at a state health clinic in Oaxaca, Mexico, in labor with her third child. The doctors at the clinic told her to come back, that her labor was not advanced enough and no doctor was available to help her. Irma, who is indigenous, spoke little Spanish and was unable to communicate how advanced her labor was to the monolingual doctors. After hours of waiting, Irma gave birth on the lawn outside of the clinic. In the past nine months, seven indigenous women in Mexico have been documented having their babies in the yard, waiting rooms, or front steps of state clinics. The vast majority have occurred in Oaxaca, the third poorest state, with the largest indigenous population in the country.

65,000 Protest TPP In Mexico, See Repeat Of NAFTA Mistakes

February 3, 2014 Karen Hansen-Kuhn, , www.iatp.org , , ,
More than 65,000 people rallied at Mexico’s Monument to the Revolution and marched to the historic Zocalo Square to demand a new economy that puts equality, justice and human rights first. Farmers, union, environmental and women’s activists gathered in Mexico City last week to take stock of the lessons from NAFTA and plan strategies to confront the next big threat: the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). One of the earliest lessons from the NAFTA experience was that people and environments in all three countries were affected. The stories from Mexico, Canada and the U.S. were remarkably similar: environmental destruction, threats to union and community organizing, and, in all sectors, a marked increase in corporate concentration as companies gained new abilities to move different aspects of production across borders in search of lower costs and higher profits.

Farmers Block Bridge At US Border To Protest 20 Years Of NAFTA

January 3, 2014 Staff, www.sinembargo.mx , , ,
The National Association of Producers' Enterprises (ANEC) makes this day a lock on the international bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, to protest the plight of farmers live 20 years after the entry into force of the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Through a statement read in mobilizing the peasant organization criticizes the consequences of two decades of neglect of the field by the federal government. "We are not poor, impoverished us NAFTA and policies of contempt, neglect, dispossession and exclusion", denounced the peasants. Moreover, ANEC said that organized "autonomous mobilizations and fair prices for our crops of corn, coffee, sugarcane, beans, rice, sorghum and wheat among others, in defense of our lands and our territory, and all struggling because we recognize that we are productive subjects and individual and collective subjects of law. " Farmers charge that NAFTA is "an ocean of lies and broken promises" because two decades ago the federal government promised that Mexico would be a first world country. "We reject NAFTA and now the Trans (TPP) Treaty being negotiated in secret, without our participation and equal or worse than NAFTA. Also know the call Energy Reform for not having consulted and therefore lack legitimacy, "said the peasant organization.

Don’t Move, Occupy! Social Movement Vs Social Arrest

November 5, 2013 Mehmet Döşemeci, www.roarmag.org , , , , , , , ,
Regardless of their final present political fate, the global uprisings since 2011 have already established mass continuous occupation of public space as the dominant form of political struggle in the early 21st century: the coming together of people who have both withdrawn their consent to be governed by the existing order and, equally importantly, discovered the responsibility, dignity, difficulty, and — above all — joy of instituting a society outside of it. In so doing, they have challenged the periodization that separated a mass political uprising from the democracy that may follow it. The common feature of all these occupations was the creation of democratic forms within the space and time of the uprising itself. This was made possible not through a politics predicated on movement, but rather one of arrest, of occupation, in order to create sites for the collective restructuring of social relations and space.

Roads Remain Blocked in Guanajuato, Mexico; Farmers Warn they Will Block More

October 19, 2013 Chernandez, www.revoluciontrespuntocero.com
Industrial roads remain blocked after they were taken by thousands of dissatisfied protestors before the price drop in corn and grain. They are demanding that the Governor, Miguel Márquez Márqu, provide a solution. As of Wednesday morning about one hundred farmers are still blocking the passage to motorists on Salamanca-Celaya road as well as four lanes of Irapuato-Abasolo. Farmers spent the night in the roads and warned they will continue their presence there until they get an answer from the state governor. Traffic has become chaos, causing immense rows of vehicles from the junction Cueramaro from federal highway 45 to Center of Abastos de Irapuato.

At the UN, A Latin American Rebellion

October 12, 2013 Laura Carlsen, www.fpif.org , , , , , , , ,
Without a doubt, the 68th UN General Assembly will be remembered as a watershed. Nations reached an agreement on control of chemical weapons that could avoid a global war in Syria. The volatile stalemate on the Iran nuclear program came a step closer to diplomacy. What failed to make the headlines, however, could have the longest-term significance of all: the Latin American rebellion. For Latin American leaders, this year’s UN general debate became a forum for widespread dissent and anger at U.S. policies that seek to control a hemisphere that has clear aspirations for greater independence. In a region long considered the United States’ primary zone of influence, Washington’s relations with many Latin American nations have gone from bad to worse under the Bush II and Obama administrations.

NSA ‘Spied On Communications’ Of Brazil, Mexico Presidents

September 2, 2013 Staff, www.reuters.com , ,
The National Security Agency spied on the communications of the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, a Brazilian news program reported, a revelation that could strain US relations with the two biggest countries in Latin America. The documents were part of an NSA case study showing how data could be "intelligently" filtered, Fantastico said. Justice minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo told the O Globo newspaper that the contents of the documents, if confirmed, "should be considered very serious and constitute a clear violation of Brazilian sovereignty." "This [spying] hits not only Brazil, but the sovereignty of several countries that could have been violated in a way totally contrary to what international law establishes," Cardozo said.

Thousands Protest Energy Reform In Mexico

September 1, 2013 lalag, www.allvoices.com , ,
According to police, the demonstration began with around 2000 participants, later joined by many other people. Their protest was against the opening of the energy sector. Among other things, the state oil company Pemex will in future may make joint business with private companies. "In defense of oil and electricity we do not deviate one step back," Cardenas said at the closing rally. His father Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized as president in 1938, the Mexican oil industry. In recent days there had been numerous demonstrations against the reform plans of the government again in Mexico. In the city center since about two weeks camped thousands of teachers who are protesting against the recent education reform.

Zapatistas Celebrate 10 Years of Autonomy with ‘Escuelita’

August 7, 2013 Leonidas Oikonomakis, www.roarmag.org ,
It was 10 years ago, on January 1, 2003, when — having exhausted the road of dialogue with the government as well the one of a “big R” Revolution that would overthrow the Mexican state — the Zapatistas of Chiapas decided to “abandon the politics of demands, and with it, all contact with the state.” Instead, they chose to concentrate on building their own autonomous, horizontal forms of self-government within their own territories and with their own means. In other words, to ignore the state as an institution and “act as if they had already won”, comrade ‘Bruce Lee’ of the CCRI in San Cristobal declared during the commemoration of the 1994 uprising that “we don’t have to ask the government’s permission to be autonomous.”
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