Mexico

August 2, 2011
A week and a half ago, a group of activists and immigrants began a trek from various locations in Guatemala and Mexico’s southern border to Mexico City. Among them were anguished mothers and fathers carrying portraits of their missing sons and daughters. The mothers, in particular, looked, talked, and mourned like any other “mothers of the disappeared”—decades ago in Argentina and Chile; more recently in Guatemala and El Salvador—only this time their sons and daughters were not disappeared for being radical activists, but for being undocumented migrants trying to make their way northward.
July 26, 2011
One step forward: Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled on July 12 that members of the military could not be covered by military immunity (fuero) in cases involving the violation of civilian rights. The court ruled unanimously that military personnel accused of crimes against civilians must be tried by civilians, not by their fellow soldiers. The military, ruled the Court, must be held accountable to civilian authority.
July 24, 2011
In the most recent issue of NACLA, anthropologist Howard Campbell examines how Ciudad Juárez became the world’s most violent city after Mexican President Felipe Calderón deployed thousands of soldiers and federal police to fight the cartels. Campbell, a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso spoke with NACLA to further explain the political, social, and economic forces that led to this hyper-violence in Mexico.
July 21, 2011
NACLA

In the most recent issue of NACLA, anthropologist Howard Campbell examines how Ciudad Juárez became the world’s most violent city after Mexican President Felipe Calderón deployed thousands of soldiers and federal police to fight the cartels. Campbell, a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso spoke with NACLA to further explain the political, social, and economic forces that led to this hyper-violence in Mexico.

July 20, 2011
Michael Fox

On July 20, a caravan of over 100 people crossed the U.S.-Mexican border, carrying 100 tons of humanitarian aid on its way to Cuba. This is the 22nd aid caravan to Cuba organized by the interreligious organization Pastors for Peace, which brings humanitarian aid to Cuba each year in defiance of the U.S. economic embargo and travel ban.

July 19, 2011
Mexico’s Secretary of the Treasury, Ernesto Cordero, recently provoked some outrage when he announced that Mexico “was no longer a poor country.” Mexico, he tweeted to the press, echoing the line of the ruling National Action Party (PAN), “is now a middle income country.”
July 12, 2011
NACLA

“The roots of the War on Drugs go deep in Mexico. In fact, in some ways, they are deeper there than in the United States,” explains historian Isaac Campos in the most recent issue of NACLA. In order to better understand the forces behind drug prohibition in Mexico, NACLA spoke with Campos, who discussed the recent NACLA article, his forthcoming book, and his experience covering marijuana, prohibition, and drug culture in Mexico and the United States.

July 12, 2011
“For some,” writes Javier Sicilia, responding to critics within his own fledgling movement, “to dialogue is to capitulate.” If you haven’t humiliated your adversary, you have failed. But to change the dynamic of the violence that has beset the country over, especially, the past five years, he argues, it is necessary to change the discourse of violence. “Since March 28,” he writes, “when the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity began its work, there began a change in the language of war and pain.”
July 3, 2011
By Clayton Conn

Since April 15th, members of the P’urhépecha indigenous community of Cherán, Michoacán have self-organized community defense committees to protect themselves from violence amidst Mexico’s drug war. On June 26th a small caravan set off from Cuernavaca, Morelos to bring food supplies to Cherán, to show support for the community, which is both suffering from and resisting the drug war model imposed by Mexican president Felipe Calderón soon after he took office in 2006.

June 11, 2011
On June 10, a new movement was born in Mexico. A peace caravan of hundreds of people from all over the country arrived to the border city of Ciudad Juárez to sign a national social pact with the goal of ending the militarized drug war in Mexico. This drug war has killed approximately 40,000 people since Mexican president Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006. This pact was appropriately signed in brutalized Ciudad Juárez, an epicenter of drug war-related violence, where 7,000 of these killings have taken place.

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