Mexico Week In Review: 03.25-04.01

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 03.25-04.01
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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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BORDER NEWS I:  US AGENT KILLS MIGRANT

On Mar. 26, a Border Patrol shot and killed a man who allegedly 
threatened him with a rock in Calexico, California, on the border 
with Mexico. The agent fired an M-4 assault rifle at the man, who was 
apparently trying to evade arrest and run back to Mexico. The man was 
pronounced dead from one bullet wound at El Centro Regional Medical 
Center. Pablo Arnaud Carreno, Mexico's consul in Calexico, said the 
victim appeared to be a Mexican man who had entered the US without 
permission. His name was not released. The Mexican government has 
asked US authorities for a thorough investigation. "It seems unjust 
to shoot someone who is unarmed," Arnaud Carreno said on Mar. 27.

Border Patrol spokesperson David Kim said agents saw seven people 
climb a border fence, run to the All-American Canal and attempt to 
cross the waterway in rafts. The victim was in a raft that had turned 
back toward Mexico. Kim said the agent fired after seeing the man's 
arm cocked back with a rock in the hand. Other people continued to 
throw rocks at the agents, Kim said.

Enrique Lozano, a spokesperson for the Border Patrol's El Centro 
sector office, gave a different version of events. He said agents 
searching a truck lot just north of the All-American Canal caught six 
immigrants out of a group of seven suspected of having crossed the 
border without permission. The seventh jumped into the canal, swam 
across and ran south back toward the border with agents in pursuit, 
Lozano said. As the man ran toward the border fence, about five or 
six people on the Mexican side of the fence in Mexicali scaled the 
fence, jumped onto the US side and started throwing rocks at the 
pursuing agents, Lozano said. "They were just flinging rocks all over 
the place," said Lozano. They also lit and threw a Molotov cocktail 
at the agents, Lozano claimed. The homemade bomb landed near the 
agents, but failed to explode, he said. According to Lozano, as 
agents closed in on the man being pursued, he picked up a large rock 
and turned toward them with his arm cocked back to throw it. "He was 
face-to-face with the agents, just feet away," Lozano said. At that 
point, one of the agents fired one shot from his M-4 rifle, hitting 
the man. The group that jumped the fence and attacked the agents with 
rocks eventually ran back into Mexico, Lozano said, while five of the 
six people caught in the truck lot were allowed to voluntarily return 
to Mexico. The sixth was found to have a misdemeanor warrant pending 
against him and was turned over to Imperial County sheriff's 
deputies, said Lozano. The FBI is investigating the incident and the 
Imperial County coroner's office was performing an autopsy. The 
Border Patrol declined to identify the agent involved.

Source: Immigration News Briefs: 03/30
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BORDER NEWS II:  TWO DEAD IN ATTACK ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

Gunmen ambushed a pickup truck carrying nearly two dozen suspected 
illegal immigrants and several smugglers killing two of the 
passengers and leaving at least one other person wounded, authorities 
said. The truck, which was carrying 23 illegal immigrants believed to 
be members of at least three families from the Mexican state of 
Chiapas, came under attack about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of 
Tucson, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said. Three of the 
passengers were children.

Members of the group described bullets cutting into the rear of the 
pickup as the driver tried to flee. Authorities did not know if the 
assailants were in another vehicle or on foot when they sprang the 
ambush. A man and a woman were confirmed killed in the incident, and 
one person was hospitalized for wounds in the upper torso and an 
ankle, Criminal Investigations Chief Richard Kastigar said.

The migrants had crossed the U.S.-Mexican border on foot and were 
picked up by the smugglers late Thursday (03/30), authorities said, 
adding that one of the two or three smugglers in the truck is thought 
to have been wounded in the hand, but none of them were caught. 
Dupnik said that because it was dark when the attack occurred, none 
of the occupants in the truck could describe the assailants. 
Investigators were still interviewing the victims.

Attacks on migrants making their way into Arizona have become 
increasingly common in recent years, and several incidents have been 
reported this year. Rival smugglers often try to take migrants to 
hold for ransom or to steal their cash. A similar incident on Feb. 8 
left three dead and two others wounded northwest of Tucson, and no 
arrests have been made. There are no suspects in Friday's shooting 
either.

Source: Associated Press: 03/30
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ZAPATISTAS: CAPITALISM PROVOKING WORLD WAR 4

Speaking to supporters and the press at the opening of the second 
phase of the Zapatistas' "Other Campaign" in the Chiapas highland 
city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Subcomandante Marcos said that 
capitalism is provoking a "fourth world war" for control of the 
resource-rich lands of poor countries. He said global capitalism has 
entered a new phase, seeking total market control over lands, waters 
and even genetic resources. He cited as an example the struggle over 
Cerro Huitepec , a hill just outside San Cristobal where the 
developers of a soft-drink plant hope to mine water, with no benefit 
to the inhabitants of the city. He said that in the new order 
"national governments are mere managers, and a manager is not a 
director." Marcos emphasized that "Latin America is one of the new 
theaters of this war of reconquest, and the indigenous peoples of the 
Americas will have, as for the last 500 years, a protagonist's role 
in the resistance." He warned that without a strong alliance between 
indigenous peoples, workers and peasants, the struggle could end in 
"a final rout." Said Marcos: "With the exceptions of Cuba, the 
growing rebellion in Venezuela, and the specificity still being 
defined in Bolivia," the governments of Latin America, regardless of 
ideology, have become "capitals of reconquest."

Source: http://www.ww4report.com/node/3487: 03/20
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GOVERNMENT TRIES SWAPPING XBOXES FOR GUNS IN DRUG FIGHT

Police who have raided vice-ridden Mexico City neighborhoods in a 
push against drug violence hope to take guns off the streets by 
offering to swap them for computers and Xbox video game consoles. 
Launching the program in the notorious inner-city barrio of Tepito, 
which police stormed last month, city police chief Joel Ortega said 
anyone who turns in a high-caliber weapon like a machine gun will get 
a computer. Owners can swap smaller guns for cash or Microsoft's Xbox 
video game consoles under the plan.

Newly elected Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has moved quickly to restore order 
to the chaotic capital by going after well-known crime dens and 
clearing the city's narrow streets of informal vendors whose stalls 
have blocked sidewalks for years. Organizers say they have 100 
computers ready for the first wave of the program, each worth 8,500 
pesos ($769) and equipped with software donated by Microsoft. On the 
first day, Olayo said the city received 17 guns, including 12 from 
Tepito. If successful, the program will be extended to Iztapalapa, 
another area targeted by police where last week 800 officers 
expropriated a six-block neighborhood filled with stores selling 
parts torn from stolen cars. Guns that are handed over will be 
destroyed by the army. The city promised to protect their owners' 
anonymity.

Source: Reuters: 03/27
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BRAD WILL UPDATE: RELATIVES SUSPECT STATE INVOLVEMENT IN KILLING

The brother of slain journalist-activist Bradley Roland Will said 
state officials were likely involved in his killing and asked that 
federal investigators take over the case. In a news conference 
wrapping up his family's weeklong visit to Mexico City and Oaxaca, 
where Will was killed on Oct. 27, Craig Will said federal officials 
have agreed to look over the evidence after the family raised 
concerns about the state prosecutors' handling of the investigation. 
However, the federal Attorney General's Office hasn't yet officially 
taken over the inquiry.

Will, 38, said new witnesses gave testimony to federal officials, 
recounting how his brother was shot while filming amid violent 
protests against the state government in Oaxaca, 350 kilometers (220 
miles) southeast of Mexico City. He added that some had been 
pressured and intimidated, but he refused to give details. For a 
month before his death, the 36-year-old journalist recorded video and 
wrote dispatches about the protests for indymedia.org, a Web site run 
by a network of small, nonprofit media centers. "We noted that the 
state prosecutors throughout November were leaping to conclusions 
that were, in many cases, illogical and irrational," Craig Will said. 
"They also were ignoring many, many elements of evidence."

His parents, Kathy and Howard Will, were in Oaxaca on Friday to 
attend a re-creation of the crime scene by federal investigators. 
They have blamed police henchmen for their son's death. "The 
re-enactment was very therapeutic and it's certainly helping us with 
our grief," Kathy Will said in a telephone interview from Oaxaca. 
Craig Will, who lives in Tokyo and runs a software company, said 
several allegedly government-hired gunmen in plainclothes were seen 
in the area the day his brother died. "The most probable hypothesis 
has always been and continues to be that state authorities were 
involved," he said.

Members of the Will family met on Tuesday with U.S. Ambassador Tony 
Garza. "(The embassy) ensured us they will do everything within their 
power to keep the pressure on but we're hoping that the federal 
government will show us good faith and open a thorough and unbiased 
investigation," Kathy Will said. State investigators last year 
arrested two town officials in the killing but later released them 
after state Attorney General Lizbeth Cana suggested Will may have 
been shot by a protester. Craig Will criticized the decision to 
release those suspects, saying suggestions they were too far away to 
have killed his brother "did not make sense."

State investigators have suggested Bradley Will's second wound came 
sometime after he was loaded into a Volkswagen with a doctor and five 
anti-government protesters. Craig Will said news photos widely 
published in Mexico show his brother with two bullet wounds shortly 
after falling to the ground and that ballistic evidence does not 
support the government theory. Cana has said she will hand over all 
case evidence and statements to federal officials, and it is up to 
them to decide on the matter. At least eight others were killed last 
year during violent protests in Oaxaca, a once-tranquil tourist city 
whose downtown was seized by protesters demanding the resignation of 
Gov. Ulises Ruiz because of alleged electoral fraud. Thousands of 
federal police pushed the protesters out of the city in October and 
November.

Source: Associated Press: 03/23
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5 TO STAND TRIAL IN MINE BLAST DEATHS

A judge in Mexico's northern state of Coahuila ordered five mine 
officials to stand trial on negligent homicide charges in the deaths 
of 65 coal miners killed in a gas explosion last year. Coahuila state 
Judge Sergio Tamez said lawyers for the five Industrial Minera Mexico 
employees will have 20 days to present evidence in their favor. He 
did not name the employees, who obtained an injunction against being 
sent to jail from a separate court.

Oscar Kaufmann, a spokesman for Industrial Minera Mexico, said the 
company has confidence the trial will be fair and said the defendants 
are still working for the mining company. Coahuila state prosecutor 
Jorge Rios, who asked the judge to issue the arrest orders, said he 
had found that managers and inspectors at Pasta de Conchos did not 
correct unsafe conditions detected eight months before the blast.

The explosion on Feb. 19, 2006, at the mine in San Juan de Sabinas 
reached temperatures as high as 1,110 degrees. Rescuers have found 
the bodies of two miners but tons of wood, rock and metal, as well as 
toxic gas, have hindered the recovery of the others. Industrial 
Minera Mexico is owned by Grupo Mexico SA de CV, a railroad and 
mining giant with operations in Mexico, Peru, and the United States. 
Grupo Mexico has insisted the mine met all safety standards and 
denies that safety precautions were ignored. The company, which has 
promised to work as long as it takes to recover the remains, does not 
plan to reopen the mine once recovery efforts conclude.

Source: Associated Press: 03/30

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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: 03.25-04.01
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