Mexico Week In Review: 12.18-12.24

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 12.18-12.24
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Published since 1994, 'Mexico Week In Review' is a service of the
Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS).  CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas.  CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.

To view newsletter archives, visit:
http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/mexico-week/

"Para Todos, Todo; Para Nosotros Nada"
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Happy Holidays to all our readers!

CHIAPAS: ZAPATISTAS MARCH FOR OAXACA

About 5,000 Zapatistas, many in black ski masks, gathered in the
village of Oventic to show their support for protesters in the
historic city of Oaxaca who are trying to oust the state governor.
The meeting signals a strengthening of ties between the Zapatistas,
who staged an armed uprising in the state of Chiapas in 1994, and the
Oaxaca protesters, who took over the center of their city for five
months this year, building barricades and chasing out police.

Zapatista Comandante Hortensia, an Indian woman bearing a black ski
mask, said the Mexican government uses repression against the Oaxaca
protesters. "In Oaxaca, women have been tortured, sexually abused and
imprisoned," she said.

Source: Associated Press: 12/23
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CHIAPAS: ACTEAL MASSACRE COMMEMORATED

The bishops of San Cristobal de las Casas, Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel
(titular), Enrique Diaz Diaz (auxiliary) and Samuel Ruiz Garcia
(emeritus) officiated at a mass in the Chiapas Highland village of
Chenalho Dec. 22 in memory of the victims of the Dec. 22, 1997
massacre at Chenalho's outlying hamlet of Acteal, in which 45 unarmed
Tzotzil Maya were slain. In an emotional ceremony that mixed Catholic
and Maya rituals, the gathering prayed at the grave of the victims,
who belonged to the civil indigenous organization Las Abejas (the
Bees).

A statement released by survivors of the massacre protested that the
case languished "in official oblivion, while the intellectual authors
remain free." Charging that the author of the attacks was ultimately
the Mexican state, the communiqué read: "The plans for the massacre
were designed by the President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) and
overseen by the then general of the Seventh Military Region, Enrique
Cervantes Aguirre... Today...the crimes continue with impunity
because those who are investigating are the same who planned the
massacre, and the intellectual authors remain free."  Agustin Vazquez
Ruiz, president of Las Abejas, added: "During the six years of the
administration of Vicente Fox, there has been no advance for justice.
There are 27 arrest orders outstanding against the material authors,
and the intellectual authors have never been punished."

Source: ww4report.com: 12/23
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CALDERON APPOINTS NEW INDIAN AFFAIRS HEAD

Mexican President Felipe Calderon named a single commander for two
federal police agencies and appointed a former peace negotiator with
the Zapatista rebels as head of Indian affairs. The preventative
force is largely used to police riots and for routine patrols, while
the investigative force probes and puts together criminal cases. Many
experts argue it would be better to have a single agency that does
both.

Luis H. Alvarez will lead the National Commission for the Development
of Indigenous Peoples. But unlike the previous head - Xochitl Galvez,
who resigned Dec. 6 after complaining about apparent agency budget
cuts - Alvarez is not one of Mexico's approximately 12.5 million
Indians. In his previous position, Alvarez sought to establish talks
with the leftist Zapatista rebels, who staged a brief armed uprising
in January 1994 in Chiapas state to demand greater Indian rights.
Despite an uneasy truce since then, Alvarez had little success in
talking to the Zapatistas, who still reject the federal government's
authority since the government reneged on a signed peace agreement.

Source: Associated Press: 12/17
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DIRTY WAR UPDATE: REPORT CITES FORMER PRESIDENT

The judge who ordered the recent arrest of former President Luis
Echeverria had determined that there was probable cause to believe he
was directly linked to the 1968 deaths of student protesters,
according to a federal court report. The report - published by El
Universal newspaper and confirmed by Echeverria's attorney - details
the findings on which Judge Ricardo Paredes based his decision to
start the trial process against the ailing 84-year-old Echeverria,
who has been under house arrest and has denied any wrongdoing.

Decades-old official reports said 25 people were killed when gunmen
opened fire on a huge student demonstration in Mexico City's
Tlatelolco plaza shortly before the 1968 Olympic Games. Human rights
activists, however, say as many as 350 people were killed. According
to the report, then President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz and other
high-ranking officials participated in planning the attack to
undermine the opposition. But it said Echeverria - then interior
secretary - apparently gave the order without any justification or
threat against national security. The report said the nation's
leaders aimed to destroy a "national group" of dissent that included
the student movement.

Echeverria's lawyer, Juan Velazquez, confirmed the contents of the
document but said there was no proof that Echeverria orchestrated the
massacre and insisted the protesters were killed in the crossfire
from "sharpshooters and authorities." Echeverria, who was president
from 1970 to 1976, is the only former Mexican leader to face criminal
charges. A special prosecutor's office, formed under former President
Vicente Fox, the first opposition president in 71 years, initiated
the criminal case in 2001.

Source: Associated Press: 12/19
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"VIOLATED TWICE:" MEXICAN RAPE VICTIMS ARE REGULARLY DENIED ABORTIONS

By Kari Lydersen

After a year of being raped by her father on a weekly basis in hotel
rooms, 16-year-old Graciela Hernandez (not her real name) became
pregnant. When she and her mother reported the rapes and resulting
pregnancy to authorities in their home state of Guanajuato, Mexico in
2002, investigators were abusive and skeptical and suggested that the
sex was consensual. Hernandez told them repeatedly that she did not
want to have the baby, that she could not love it since it was her
father's and the result of rape. She wanted an abortion, which is a
legal right for women who have been raped in Mexico. Aside from a
nationwide exemption for rape and several other exemptions on a
state-by-state basis, abortion is illegal throughout Mexico and women
can be jailed for having an abortion.

State officials convinced Hernandez to change her story to say that
she and her father had consensual sex, so he would not go to jail.
However incest is not considered rape in Mexico, but rather a
two-party "crime against the family," and under-age victims face the
same criminal penalties including possible jail time as their adult
attackers. Since incest is not considered rape, Hernandez was not
allowed to have an abortion. She delivered the baby, and still lives
with her parents and child, according to researchers with Human
Rights Watch who documented her case and those of other rape victims
in Mexico for a 2006 report.

Hernandez got support from Las Libres, a Guanajuato women's rights
group founded by Veronica Cruz, who recently received Human Rights
Watch's annual award for "International Defenders of Social Justice."
Cruz founded Las Libres five years ago to help women access their
legal right to abortion after rape in Guanajuato, which is considered
to have the country's most restrictive state anti-abortion laws. In
the time the organization has existed, Cruz said, the government has
failed to provide even one abortion to a rape victim. Women with
enough resources can legally pay for an abortion from a private
clinic if they are raped, but low-income women have nowhere to turn.
Las Libres provides legal aid and funding for abortions along with
peer counseling and other services; so far this year they have helped
10 rape victims get abortions. The group also works to combat the
overall sexism and impunity that usually allows rapists to escape
unpunished and puts women through a "second rape" if they try to
report the crime and receive medical treatment or an abortion.

"They say women are liars and are inventing the rape to get an
abortion," said Cruz. "Or they say they invited the rape, that
they're easy. They say how were you dressed, did you like him or not.
In Mexico women are treated as sexual objects, not people. If a woman
is walking alone in the street, anyone can insult her or touch her
body. Even in her own house, she can be raped and abused." She said
that rape victims who become pregnant are legally supposed to have
three options " to keep the baby, put it up for adoption or terminate
the pregnancy. "But in reality there are only two options," Cruz
said. "The third one doesn't really exist."

In fact, a 2003 study found 74 percent of low-income women weren't
aware rape victims are legally entitled to abortion. Human Rights
Watch found that many doctors are also not aware of this right; and
doctors regularly try to dissuade women from having abortions -- one
doctor told a patient to bring a hearse and coffin for the fetus.
Hence many women " rape victims and otherwise " turn to illegal
abortions and suffer serious health consequences including infection,
hemorrhaging and even death as a result.

Even if a rape victim does decide to bear the child and put it up for
adoption, Cruz said hospital staff and patients will pressure her to
keep the baby. "They say she's not a good mother, she's not a real
woman," said Cruz. And in some states, a woman is required to keep a
baby for six months before putting it up for adoption. If she
doesn't, she can be charged with the crime of child abandonment.
"Women are always supposed to be mothers, it is supposed to be the
highest priority in our lives according to society, especially to the
men in power," said Cruz.

Women who try to seek abortions have not only been harassed and
intimidated, but bounced from one agency to another in a bureaucratic
maze that is expensive and lengthy to navigate. Abortions are not
allowed after three months in Guanajuato, so in many cases the delay
alone prevents women from getting one. This was the case for a young
mentally disabled woman who was raped and impregnated by a neighbor
in Guanajuato. Her mother helped her seek an abortion, pleading that
she couldn't afford to feed another mouth and that "this child will
keep reminding (her daughter) of what happened," according to the
Human Rights Watch report. But the public prosecutor told the mother
"abortion is a crime," and the pregnancy was beyond three months
before she could obtain an abortion. The Guanajuato attorney general
told Human Rights Watch researchers that in five years no rape victim
had requested an abortion, even though Las Libres had worked with
numerous women who had indeed reported a rape and sought an abortion.

Though there are no reliable statistics, rape is thought to be
exceedingly common in Mexico. It is estimated that at most, one in 10
victims report the crime. Government officials have reported an
estimated incidence of about 120,000 to 130,000 rapes per year; but
Human Rights Watch women's rights advocacy director Marianne Mollmann
said the real number is probably closer to one million. In many
states sex with a minor is only a crime if the child is "honest" and
"chaste," and in many states the age of consent is 12, 13, 14 or "at
puberty" regardless of age. And the criminalizing of incest victims
means that incest cases are rarely prosecuted. In 2005, for example,
the state of Guanajuato investigated a woman for incest after her
father, who had been molesting her since age six, reported her to
authorities. The woman's husband told Human Rights Watch that the
local public prosecutor threatened to arrest his wife on incest
charges.

Women generally have little control of their bodies and sexuality;
they are expected to submit unquestioningly to their husbands" sexual
demands. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that men could force their
wives to have sex for the purpose of procreation. This ruling wasn't
overturned until 2005. The massive increase in immigration,
meanwhile, has meant many women are infected with HIV or other
sexually transmitted diseases when their husbands come home after
working in the U.S. and having unprotected sex with prostitutes or
others. "A woman can't ask her husband to use a condom, because that
would be like saying she had been with someone else," said Mollmann.
"The ABCs of HIV prevention " abstinence, being faithful, using
condoms " don't apply for these married women because they can't be
abstinent, they are being faithful and they can't force their
husbands to use condoms."

A 2003 government study found that one in 10 Mexican women suffer
physical abuse at the hands of their partners, and 46 percent of
women over 15 suffer some kind of abuse (physical or emotional) in
their home.

Mollmann noted that outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose
home state is Guanajuato, had promised the country would improve rape
victims' access to abortion through, among other things, designing
and enforcing clear procedures for victims. Currently, only three of
32 judicial districts have clear procedures for providing abortion to
rape victims. But, Mollmann said, it remains to be seen what incoming
president Felipe Calderon will do about the issue. "It's the state's
obligation, even though it was the old administration that made the
promises," said Mollmann. "The international community needs to
pressure the new government to make sure they follow through." And
Cruz said the larger battle is changing social attitudes, including
attitudes among women themselves. "The church and the government
control women's bodies, but women have no control over their own
bodies," said Cruz. "Abortion is a right, not a crime. We need to
make it a socially legitimate option for women.

Kari Lydersen is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the
Washington Post, In These Times, LiP Magazine, Clamor, and The New
Standard.

Source: Infoshop News: 11/09


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The above articles were originally published and copyrighted by the
listed sources. These articles are offered for educational purposes
which CIS maintains is  'fair use' of copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

end: Mexico Week In Review: 12.18-12.24
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