Mexico Week In Review: 08.06-08.12

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 08.06-08.12
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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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CALDERON: US CONGRESS 'INSENSITIVE' TO IMMIGRANTS

Mexican President Felipe Calderon called the US Congress
"insensitive" to the dignity of Mexican migrant workers. Calderon
demanded "full respect for the dignity of our migrants." "We demand
that the (US) government and the Congress understand this social and
economic aspect of migration: that it cannot be stopped so long as
there is this unequal development between the United States and
Mexico," Calderon said.

"The migration problem can be resolved neither with walls nor with
political exclusion," he said, referring to a 1,200-kilometer
(750-mile) wall the Congress has authorized for the southwestern US
border. "The insensitivity of US members of Congress for us is no
more than a spur to redouble our struggle for full recognition of the
enormous contribution we make to the US economy," he added. "Many in
the Congress turn their backs on this fact: that the US economy could
not grow without Mexican labor," Calderon said during the handover of
aid for projects in Mexican emigrants' hometowns. The Mexican
president reported that he has said as much to his US counterpart,
George W. Bush.

Source: Agence France Presse: 08/10
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JOURNALISTS DETAINED BY ARMY ARE RELEASED

The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of four
Mexican journalists who had been detained on Tuesday night by the
army while covering a drug raid. Charges of possession of a firearm
and marijuana are still pending against them. The reporters told
their lawyer that the weapon and drugs were planted and that the
soldiers had beaten them. "The allegation that soldiers abused these
reporters and planted evidence is extremely disturbing," said CPJ
Executive Director Joel Simon. "We urge authorities to investigate
the soldiers involved in this incident."

At 12:30 p.m. today (08/10), Mexican reporters Manolo Acosta and
Sinhué Samaniego Osoria from the Monclova-based daily Zócalo; Jesús
Meza Gonzalez from the Monclova daily La Voz de Coahuila; and Alberto
Rodriguez Reyes from the local television station Canal 4, were
released on bail, their lawyer Luis Humberto Rodriguez Sáenz told
CPJ. The journalists had been held since Tuesday night by Mexican
authorities in the northern state of Coahuila. The charges against
them are still pending, an official at the office of the Special
Prosecutor for Crimes against the Press told CPJ. The four
journalists said they were detained around 10 p.m. Tuesday by
soldiers from the Mexican army while covering a routine drug raid,
said Rodriguez. Armed soldiers asked the reporters to step out of
their vehicles and into the back of a pick-up truck. According to the
reporters' account, they were driven around the city facing down with
their faces covered, while soldiers kicked them in the chest and
stomach. The soldiers repeatedly asked the journalists if they were
members of the illegal paramilitary group Los Zetas, who allegedly
employ spotters to monitor the movements of the military. The four
journalists were carrying vests with the name of their media outlets,
and the three vehicles they were traveling in were visibly identified
with press logos, Rodriguez told CPJ.

At 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the reporters were transferred into the
custody of the attorney general's office in Coahuila, where they were
charged with possession of a firearm and marijuana, Rodriguez told
CPJ.  Drug trafficking and organized crime have turned Mexico into
one of the most hazardous places for journalists in Latin America,
CPJ research shows. Since the war between powerful drug cartels
intensified two years ago, scores of reporters have fallen silent
because authorities are unable to provide even minimal protection.

CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that
works to safeguard press freedom around the world.

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists: 08/10
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CRITICIZES MEXICO

Amnesty International criticized Mexico's human rights policy as
"schizophrenic," saying the country vigorously promotes rights abroad
but fails to uphold them within its own borders. "Mexico is a very
prominent champion of human rights internationally," Amnesty
secretary-general Irene Khan told a news conference after meeting
with President Felipe Calderon. "But within Mexico, serious abuses of
human rights continue, including torture, arbitrary detention and
unfair trials." Khan said the organization wants the administration
of Calderon, who took office Dec. 1, to clarify its willingness to
"put an end to this schizophrenic approach."

The president's office said in a statement that during their meeting
he had stressed "Mexico's policy of total openness to examination by,
and cooperation with, international human rights organizations." It
also said he "reiterated the government's commitment to the promotion
and protection of the fundamental human rights and freedoms of all
Mexicans." Calderon's office said Mexico has made progress on press
freedom, public access to government information and judicial
reforms, working to "guarantee public safety and combat organized
crime while maintaining a firm commitment to human rights."

Khan acknowledged that Mexico's record has improved in recent
decades, but said it still needs to advance in critical areas such as
police accountability, judicial process and treatment of suspected
criminals. "The real test will be how the president reflects and
implements human rights in his forthcoming legislative and policy
reforms," Khan said.

Source: Associated Press: 08/07
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BORDER NEWS: U.S. BORDER AGENT CHARGED WITH MURDERING MEXICAN

A U.S. Border Patrol agent must stand trial for murder in the
shooting of a Mexican man trying to enter the United States, an
Arizona judge ruled in a case that drew criticism from Mexico. Agent
Nicholas Corbett was charged in April with four counts of homicide in
the January 12 shooting of Francisco Dominguez Rivera shortly after
he crossed the border illegally on a stretch of desert between
Douglas and Naco. Cochise County Justice of the Peace David Morales
ruled the evidence supported lesser charges of second-degree murder,
but threw out charges of first-degree murder, which supposes
premeditation. The ruling followed a preliminary hearing that heard
evidence from three illegal immigrants present at the shooting, a
pathologist, county sheriff's detectives and two Border Patrol
supervisors. No date was set for Corbett's arraignment.

Following the killing, Mexico's Foreign Ministry complained of
"disproportionate violence" and instructed the Mexican Embassy in
Washington to investigate the circumstances. Last year, border police
captured 1.1 million undocumented immigrants crossing over the border
from Mexico and recorded a soaring number of attacks on agents.
Lawyers for Corbett argue he shot Dominguez Rivera in self-defense
after he was threatened with a rock. An agent representing the local
chapter of the Border Patrol's union said he believed the charges
against Corbett would not hold up at trial. "I don't think the
prosecution has a good case, and the defense will absolutely beat
it," Brandon Judd said after the hearing.

Last year, two Border Patrol agents were prosecuted in Texas for
shooting an unarmed Mexican drug smuggler in the buttocks. They were
convicted and sentenced to more than 10 years in jail, becoming a
cause celebre among some conservatives and anti-illegal immigration
hard-liners.

Source: Reuters: 08/07
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U.S. ANTI-DRUG AID WOULD TARGET MEXICAN CARTELS

The Bush administration is close to sealing a major, multiyear aid
deal to combat drug cartels in Mexico that would be the biggest U.S.
anti-narcotics effort abroad since a seven-year, $5 billion program
in Colombia, according to U.S. lawmakers, congressional aides and
Mexican authorities. Negotiators for Mexico and the United States
have made significant progress toward agreement on an aid plan that
would include telephone tapping equipment, radar to track
traffickers' shipments by air, aircraft to transport Mexican
anti-drug teams and assorted training, sources said. Delicate
questions remain -- primarily regarding Mexican sensitivities about
the level of U.S. activity on Mexican soil -- but confidence is
running high that a deal will be struck soon.

"I'm sure that it's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars,"
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) said in an interview. "If we're going to
be successful in cutting out this cancer over there, we're going to
have to invest a large amount." Cuellar, who has already proposed
legislation to increase aid to Mexico, predicted that an announcement
could be made as soon as Aug. 20, when President Bush is scheduled to
meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime
Minister Stephen Harper in Quebec. A Mexican government source
cautioned against projecting an exact timetable despite "advances" in
the talks.

The plans are being discussed at a time when Mexico is struggling to
contain a war among major drug cartels that has cost more than 3,000
lives in the past year and has horrified Mexicans with images of
beheadings and videotaped assassinations. Calderon has impressed U.S.
officials by extraditing a record number of drug suspects to the
United States and by dispatching more than 20,000 federal police
officers and soldiers to fight the trafficking organizations, but
that effort has failed to stop the violence.

The anti-drug aid package would represent a major shift in relations
after years of tension and mutual suspicion among law enforcement
agencies on both sides of the border. "It's astonishing and a sea
change," said a senior Republican aide who works on drug policy
issues. "It's a real recognition that Calderon has a problem. And his
success or failure will impact us. The days of the finger-pointing
are over." The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he
believes the program will be well received in Washington once it's
unveiled.

In Mexico, authorities have shied from talking publicly about the
plan, concerned that the country's inherent suspicion of American
meddling will prompt widespread rejection among Mexicans. The Bush
administration has been developing the proposal quietly, so quietly
that some people in Congress are beginning to complain about an aura
of secrecy. "Who would Congress be providing assistance to, under
what terms and conditions, and how would Congress know the support is
not going to the very people who are engaged in this type of criminal
activity?" asked Tim Rieser, a senior foreign policy aide for Sen.
Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations
subcommittee on foreign operations. "There is bipartisan concern
about the Bush administration's lack of meaningful consultation with
Congress. They see Congress as their personal ATM machine, not as an
equal branch of government." Persuading fellow legislators that the
aid is vital and won't fall into the wrong hands, Cuellar said, is
"going to be a marketing endeavor, or let me put it this way, an
educational endeavor." Republican and Democratic aides said it is
unclear whether the Bush administration will try to push for an
emergency supplemental appropriation for next year's foreign aid
budget or wait another year.

Mexico already appears to be laying the groundwork to frame the plan
not so much as an aid package but as the United States facing up to
problems that are a consequence of American drug consumption.
Calderon, often a cautious public speaker, has sternly called for the
United States to pay more to combat the cartels. "The language that
they're using is that the U.S. has a large responsibility for this
problem," said Ana María Salazar, a former high-ranking Clinton
administration drug official who was involved in implementing the
U.S.-funded program for Bogota, known as Plan Colombia.

U.S. lawmakers, who stressed that the initiative for Mexico is not
modeled on Plan Colombia, have been traveling to Mexico to meet with
legislators here in hopes of easing concerns. "We're seeing a Mexican
Congress that's more engaged, that's willing and able for the first
time in history to be a partner with the [U.S.] administration, and
they're asking the questions about what the president's policies are,
what the authorities need, and what are the implications of working
closely with the U.S.," Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) said in an
interview. "We've been neighbors and allies but this takes that
relationship to a new level."

In an interview, Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for the
Western Hemisphere, declined to discuss details of the plan. But he
noted that Bush has recently met with Calderon and Central America
leaders to discuss ways to work together to fight against drug
traffickers and gangs that have besieged the region. Central America
is a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine that arrives by
sea; Mexican cartels funnel tons of cocaine, marijuana and
methamphetamine across the border into the United States. "All three
of us, the United States, Mexico and the Central American countries,
had to find a way to coordinate our activities and work better
together and develop a regional strategy to combat the problems that
we face," Shannon said.

The Mexican government cringes at comparisons with Colombia, which
unlike Mexico is locked in a 40-year-old guerrilla war and also is
the world's largest cocaine producer. As part of Plan Colombia, which
began in 2000, the United States provided Black Hawk helicopters,
sensitive intelligence-gathering technology, military, police and
intelligence training, and a fleet of crop-dusters to help the
Colombian government push back Marxist guerrillas and eradicate drug
crops. Though that program helped President Álvaro Uribe curtail
violence, critics have said it fell far short in its initial
objective of delivering a mortal blow to the cocaine business.

Mexican authorities are leery of allowing the U.S. military into the
country, even for training purposes, because of historical wounds
that date to the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Maureen Meyer, a
policy analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America, a
Washington policy group, said Mexican anti-drug police have a history
of receiving low-key training from American specialists. But
large-scale training on Mexican soil would be another matter, she
said. "That would be the most contentious point, with the Mexican
Congress and Mexicans in general," she said. That hesitance could
block American specialists from going to Mexico to conduct training
for troops and police, as well as for prosecutors and judges. Many
U.S. officials say that such flexibility would be critical to the
plan. "How do we provide assistance without making the Mexicans too
uncomfortable?" Cuellar asked. "That's going to be tightrope we have
to walk."

Source: The Washington Post: 08/07
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CARDINAL QUIZZED IN ABUSE SUIT

Mexico's most prominent cardinal was deposed in a U.S. lawsuit
accusing him of complicity in the alleged rape of a child by a
Mexican priest. Cardinal Norberto Rivera and his lawyers rushed past
reporters and photographers waiting outside archdiocese offices in
Mexico City without speaking. Later, archdiocese spokesman Rev. Hugo
Valdemar Romero said Rivera gave his statement voluntarily. Roman
Catholic Church officials here have argued that a Los Angeles court
should not be handling a case involving Mexican clergy and an alleged
victim in Mexico.

Joaquin Aguilar Mendez filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court
in September, alleging that he was raped by priest Nicolas Aguilar in
Mexico City in 1994 when he was 13. The priest had fled to Mexico
from California, where he is charged with 19 felony counts of
committing lewd acts on a child. Los Angeles police suspect Aguilar
molested as many as 26 altar boys in two Los Angeles parishes in 1987
and 1988.

The suit alleges that Rivera conspired with Los Angeles Cardinal
Roger M. Mahony to protect Nicolas Aguilar. It accuses Rivera and
Mahony of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress,
civil conspiracy and sexual battery, and charges Aguilar with sexual
battery.

The victim's attorney, Jeffrey Anderson, said Mahony settled with
Aguilar Mendez privately last month around the time the archdiocese
reached its record-breaking $660-million settlement with alleged
abuse victims. He said Aguilar Mendez's case was handled separately
and that the amount was "modest" compared with the average $1.3
million for other victims. Anderson said Rivera's attorneys in Los
Angeles had sought to limit the scope of the deposition and prevent
the plaintiff from videotaping it and filing a transcript with the
Los Angeles Superior Court. Judge Elihu Berle denied their motions.
The lawsuit alleges that Rivera, who was a bishop in Puebla state,
transferred Nicolas Aguilar to Los Angeles in 1988 for nine months,
despite knowing of allegations of abuse against the priest.

Source: Los Angeles Times: 08/09

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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: 08.06-08.12
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