Mexico Week In Review: 02.05-02.11

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 02.05-02.11
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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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NEW LOW-COST FOOD SUPPLY NETWORK ANNOUNCED

Mexico's National Farming and Fishing Council has announced it will
begin its Supply Network program on February 10th, to provide the
population with agricultural products of good quality at reasonable
prices. According to Prensa Latina news agency, Council President
Andres Cosetl said the project will begin in the states of Morelos,
Puebla, Queretaro, and some municipalities of the Federal District.

As noted by Cosetl, over 5,000 fishing and agricultural growers will
initially be included in the supply network in different communities
of the country. They will not only provide agricultural products, but
also fish and seafood at low prices. In addition, he explained that
farmers and fishermen are trying to show the Federal Government that
it is possible to offer low-cost basic products to all localities
that need them. The leader urged Mexican political forces to assume
their responsibility with the farmers, who suffer poverty,
unemployment, underdevelopment, and a serious crisis that endangers
the survival of millions of people.

Source: Radio Havana Cuba: 02/06
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ACAPULCO: GUNMEN KILL SEVEN ON POLICE STATION RAID

Gunmen disguised as soldiers launched brazen attacks on police
stations and killed seven people in the violent Mexican resort of
Acapulco, defying a military crackdown against drug gangs. The state
prosecutor's office said men dressed in khaki uniforms and wearing
red berets bluffed their way into two stations saying they were
soldiers visiting to check police weapons.

The group, accompanied by men filming the attacks, opened fire with
assault rifles at one station, killing three policemen. The hit men
also attacked another station, stripped several agents of their guns
and started shooting, killing a secretary, two police officers and a
public prosecutor. "They pretended to check police guns. That's how
they disarmed the guys and once they were disarmed, took their
lives," a spokesman at the prosecutor's office said. Police later
found vehicles and arms they said were used in the shootings.

Acapulco's mayor, who has received frequent death threats from drug
gangs, sounded desperate. "I don't want any more violence, I don't
want us to go through this any more," he told Mexican radio.
President Felipe Calderon called an emergency meeting with his
security cabinet to discuss the latest attacks. Calderon, who took
office on December 1, has sent thousands of troops to violent regions
of Mexico to tackle drug gangs who killed 2,000 people in a feud last
year.

Two main groups, one from northwestern Mexico and the other from the
northeast, are fighting for control of trading routes. Suspected drug
gang hit men shot dead a senior policeman in the northwestern city of
Culiacan, regarded as the territory of Mexico's most wanted man
Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, head of one of the two rival gangs.

Police also hit back at the cartels, capturing alleged major
financial operator and money launderer Alejandro Rodriguez Meza in
the border city of Ciudad Juarez, along with a host of associates, a
stash of U.S. dollars and several vehicles. As part of the government
clampdown, soldiers have been investigating local police forces for
connections with the cartels. In the rowdy border city of Tijuana,
just south of San Diego the army confiscated all the city police's
guns. In January, almost 8,000 troops and federal police were sent to
the region around Acapulco to clamp down on rival gangs at war for
control of lucrative drug plantations and smuggling routes. Despite
the crackdown, there were 190 drug gang-related deaths in Mexico in
January, just a handful less than a year ago.

Source: Reuters: 02/06
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BORDER NEWS: MEXICO DEMANDS U.S. INQUIRY INTO MIGRANT SHOOTINGS

Mexico sought a full investigation by U.S. authorities into a
shooting on the U.S. border that left three illegal migrants dead and
two injured. Mexico's Foreign Ministry said it had told the Mexican
consulate in Tucson, Arizona, to ask local U.S. authorities to probe
the attack by unknown gunmen, which took place on a back road often
used by migrant traffickers. The ministry requested "an exhaustive
investigation" into the incident, it said in a statement.

Armed men stopped a bus full of people on the remote desert track
near Tucson and began shooting at it, the ministry said. Police say
the gunmen may have been bandits. The nationality of the three dead
men is still unknown, although the consulate in Tucson has identified
the two injured as a Guatemalan woman and a Mexican man. U.S. police
officers found two of the dead bodies in a pickup truck in the desert
some 20 miles (32-km) from Tucson and the body of a third man on a
roadside nearby.

U.S.-Mexico relations over their 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border have
been tense since U.S. activists who call themselves Minutemen began
staking out the border area in 2005 to track down illegal Mexican and
Central American immigrants. More than 1 million undocumented
immigrants trek over the U.S. border from Mexico each year to search
for work in a journey fraught with danger. Last year more than 400
people died making the trip. Most of the fatalities were due to
dehydration, drowning or vehicle rollovers, although attacks, rapes
and robberies are common in the borderlands.

Arizona's Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano said the incident
underscored the need for U.S. immigration reform. "Without
immigration reform and a commitment by both countries to have a
strong and secure border that facilitates the lawful trade and
commerce that must go on between us, we will have incidents like
this," she told reporters in Mexico City, where she was visiting
President Felipe Calderon.

Source: Reuters: 02/09
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THREE MILLION CHILDREN LABOR THROUGHOUT MEXICO

Three million children are currently working in Mexico at the most
dissimilar jobs, most of them illiterate and with characteristics of
the indigenous populations, according to Labor Office reports.
Televisa network news announced the official numbers, and considered
extensive child labor a national shame that must be resolved.

The news said two million of all the working children are between
12-14 years of age, and a large number of them do not go to school.
Many adolescents are employed selling informally and in agriculture,
with hours between 10-12 hours a day, including weekends, according
to the most recent data. An average 2,000 children work regularly in
12 of the main Mexican cities.

Source: Prensa Latina: 02/07
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CITES SERIOUS FLAWS IN COURTS

Amnesty International (AI) presented a report highlighting serious
flaws in Mexico's judicial system and called on the new Congress and
the Calderon administration to address them. The report, accompanied
by a documentary film produced by the human rights organization,
examines a series of real life cases of the system's inadequacies -
from the imprisonment of activists on shaky grounds to the use of
torture and a lack of transparency.

One of the most flagrant deficiencies, said Esteban Beltran of
Amnesty International Spain, is the accusatory system that assumes
suspects are guilty and weighs them with the burden of proving their
innocence. "Mexico has a system based in the 19th century, while in
the last 100 years, the world's knowledge in the area has advanced
considerably," Beltran said. "But it would seem Mexico hasn't
noticed." He added the justice system was structured so that "the
whole world is guilty, especially if you're poor," citing the
Byzantine bureaucracy associated with defending a case and a shortage
of public defenders, many of whom he called unqualified. Beltran has
studied Mexican justice in the states of Oaxaca and Jalisco over the
last two years.

The documentary, narrated by Mexican actor Gael Garcia, displayed a
number of human rights cases that have received international media
coverage in recent years, such as the hundreds of murdered women in
Ciudad Juarez and the detention of rural farmers in the Guerrero
highlands who challenged powerful logging interests. Mary Robinson, a
representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in
Mexico, praised the report and called for the implementation of oral
trials and reforms to guarantee due process. A recent U.N.-sponsored
report on the justice system in five states highlighted problems such
as overcrowded jails and non-existent budgets for the restitution of
victims of crimes.

Source: The Herald Mexico/El Universal: 02/08
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CHIAPAS: AMLO DEFENDS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

Opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reaffirmed his
commitment to defending the rights of the indigenous people, because
they are the poorest and forgotten ones in the country, during a
visit to Zapatista territory, in the state of Chiapas. On the second
day of a tour of Chiapas, Lopez Obrador warned that Mexico would not
overcome backwardness if the movement of true change boosted by
millions of people throughout the country does not triumph. He added
that poverty and marginalization are escalating, and only a minority
enjoys privileges, so he ratified his struggle for a homeland for the
poor and the humiliated, not for only few people.

During his visit to Sabanilla, Chiapas´ second poorest municipality,
Lopez Obrador asked for support for the municipal presidential
candidates for the Frente Amplio Progresista, made up of the
Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), the Labor Party and the
Convergence Party. Eight months before the elections for the state's
mayors, Lopez Obrador urged the people of Sabanilla and Chiapas not
to sell or trade their votes. The people demand justice, they don't
want charity, he said, referring to the distribution of supplies,
construction materials and cash during the election campaigns.

Source: Prensa Latina: 02/10
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58% APPROVE OF CALDERON

A majority of Mexicans approve of President Felipe Calderon's first
two months in office, according to a recent poll. A pro-business
conservative, Calderon won office last year with just 35.9 percent of
the vote- a hair ahead of his leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador, with 35.3 percent.

But in the poll published in El Universal newspaper, 58 percent of
Mexicans said Calderon has done a good job so far. Calderon took
office on Dec. 1 with promises to tackle the country's widespread
poverty and expand social programs, the foundation of Lopez Obrador's
platform. He also has sent thousands of federal troops into several
states to fight mounting drug violence. The poll did not shed much
light on which of his policies is popular with the public, however.

In the one policy area addressed in the survey - rising tortilla
prices - Calderon fared poorly, with just a third of respondents
saying he had taken effective action. The price of tortillas, a
staple of the Mexican diet especially among the poor, surged 14
percent in 2006 and has continued to rise in the first weeks of 2007.
The poll surveyed 1,030 adults nationwide Jan. 25 to 31 and had a
margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Source: Associated Press: 02/07

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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: 02.05-02.11
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