Mexico Week In Review: 06.18-06.24

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 06.18-06.24
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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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CHIAPAS: WHOOPING COUGH EPIDEMIC?

Leaders of the Section 50 health workers union in Mexico's conflicted
and impoverished southern state of Chiapas issued an urgent call to
state and federal authorities to establish dialogue with the
Zapatista Nation Liberation Army's regional authorities at the
highland village of Oventic to exchange information about an outbreak
of whooping cough. However, state authorities denied claims of 11
deaths from whooping cough in the Highland region.

Source: http://ww4report.com/node/4104:  06/21
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MOVE TO SEND EX-GOVERNOR TO U.S. ON DRUG CHARGES

Mexico took the first steps toward extraditing the former governor of
Quintana Roo to the United States, where he is wanted in New York
City on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and
racketeering. The extradition would continue a trend under President
Felipe Calderon, who has shipped 21 people accused as part of the
drug trade, including four high-level cartel leaders, to the United
States this year. If a Mexican judge approves the extradition, the
former governor, Mario Villanueva Madrid, would become the
highest-ranking former elected official from Mexico to stand trial in
the United States on drug-trafficking charges. It would be a major
break from the longstanding tradition here of immunity for current
and former politicians.

Mr. Villanueva is accused of taking millions of dollars in payoffs
from the Juárez cartel during the 1990s in return for helping it ship
about 200 tons of cocaine from South America through the Yucatan. He
is also accused of having ordered the state police to provide
protection to traffickers. Law enforcement officials said bringing
Mr. Villanueva to trial in New York would be a major achievement,
because he is thought to have extensive knowledge of the cartel and
might also provide evidence about it in return for a reduced sentence.

Mr. Villanueva went underground in April 1999, just before his term
as governor ended and, with it, his immunity from prosecution. The
federal police here finally tracked him down and arrested him in May
2001 near Cancún, the resort in his home state. Since then, he has
been in a Mexican maximum security prison, serving time for a single
money-laundering conviction. But around 1 a.m. on Thursday, he
finished his sentence and walked out of the Altiplano prison, just
outside Mexico City. As his family looked on, a dozen masked federal
agents immediately seized him again, this time at the request of the
United States. Prosecutors said he was being held pending an
extradition hearing. "They are kidnapping me! Help!" the former
governor said as he was seized, according to the newspaper El
Universal.

According to two indictments in Manhattan Federal Court, the former
governor took millions of dollars from members of the Juárez cartel,
among them Alcides Ramón Magaña, from 1994 to 1999. The indictments
say that the cartel paid Mr. Villanueva about $500,000 for each
shipment and that he laundered at least $11 million with the help of
an investment manager at Lehman Brothers in New York. In return for
the payoffs, the former governor let the cartel bring at least 200
tons of cocaine into Cancún by boat, then store it until it could be
shipped north to the border town of Reynosa, where the cartel
smuggled it into the United States and hauled it to New York and
other cities, the indictments say. State police officers escorted the
shipments and worked as enforcers for the traffickers, investigators
said. "At that time in Cancún, the police worked for the cartel,"
said one former law enforcement official who worked on the case, but
did not want to be named because it could jeopardize his career.
"There was just no question about it."

Mr. Villanueva's deep involvement with drug traffickers underscores
for many Mexicans the extent of official corruption in their country.
United States drug enforcement officials estimate that the three
major cartels bring more than $10 billion in cash into the country
from sales in American cities and have used that money to bribe
officials at all levels of government, from police officers to
governors. President Calderon has aggressively attacked the influence
of cartels, sending troops into towns and states where they had
control of local governments to re-establish order. He has also begun
extraditing more and more drug cartel leaders to stand trial north of
the Rio Grande, where they face stiffer sentences and find it
difficult to control their networks from prison, as they do in
Mexico. In January, the government sent 11 high-level drug
traffickers to the United States in one night.

Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney's
office in Manhattan, declined to comment on the extradition request,
as did officials at the American Embassy here. A lawyer for Mr.
Villanueva, Horacio García, confirmed that the United States had
requested the former governor's arrest in a diplomatic note but had
yet to present evidence against him. President Calderon's aides said
the Mexican government would go ahead with the extradition as soon as
a judge ruled it was warranted, though they warned that the process
could take weeks.

Source: New York Times: 06/22
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OAXACA UPDATE: STATE GOVERNMENT APOLOGIZES

The government of the southern state of Oaxaca apologized for the
first time for a police raid on protesters last year that led to the
country's worst political unrest in years. Oaxaca Interior Secretary
Manuel Garcia Corpus said he lamented the results of the June 14,
2006 raid aimed at clearing striking teachers from a protest camp
they had set up weeks earlier in Oaxaca City's main square.

He said he was speaking on behalf of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whose refusal
to negotiate with protesters sparked a five-month takeover of the
capital city by teachers and leftist activists angered by what they
claimed was police brutality and corruption. "The government of
Ulises Ruiz gives the people of Oaxaca a public apology for the
events that arose after the 14th (of June)," Garcia Corpus told the
government news agency Notimex. Garcia Corpus' office confirmed the
remarks.

What began as a nearly annual teachers' strike in May grew into a
bloody conflict after strikers were injured during the raid. The
teachers later drew on leftist allies, took over the city, erected
barricades and chased out police. Tourists - the city's lifeblood -
were scared away and vehicles were burned by protesters demanding
Ruiz's resignation. A dozen people were killed in the conflict,
mostly protesters shot by gunmen, including Bradley Roland Will, a
36-year-old journalist-activist from New York who was killed while
filming a clash between demonstrators and gunmen. Soon after Will's
Oct. 27 death, then-President Vicente Fox sent federal troops to
evict protesters from the city center.

Source: Associated Press: 06/15
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LATIN AMERICA:  BLACK WOMEN ON THE BOTTOM RUNG

There are at least 75 million black women in Latin America and the
Caribbean, but those who occupy high-level political or public
administration posts number less than 50. As activists pointed out to
IPS this week, black women are at the very bottom of the social
ladder in this region. "The inequality suffered by Afro-descendants
is plain to see. There are few or no spaces where we are
decision-makers. Our situation is one of the worst," said Dorotea
Wilson, head of the Red de Mujeres Afrolatinoamericanas,
Afrocaribeñas y de la Diáspora (Network of Afro-Caribbean and
Afro-Latino Women), made up of groups of black women activists from
33 countries. Poor black women "must make a huge effort against
discrimination and xenophobia," said Wilson, a former mayor and
legislator from Nicaragua who is also the head of the
non-governmental organization Voces del Caribe (Caribbean Voices).
Wilson spoke to IPS by telephone from Panama, where she participated
along with 30 other women in the Inter-generational Conference of
Afro-descendant Women of Latin America, sponsored by the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Latin America's 150 million Afro-descendants have failed to make
inroads against the marginalization and segregation that they have
historically suffered, and have not gained a significant role in
politics or the public administration. By contrast, indigenous people
in the region, who number around 40 million, have become increasingly
organized in countries like Ecuador and Bolivia, where they have
begun to gain political representation. According to the Network of
Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latino Women, there are less than 50 black
women in political decision-making positions in the entire region.

Wilson said the conference in Panama was aimed at networking,
strengthening ties and defining a shared agenda for black women, "who
have been dispersed." The participants plan to present a common
position at the 10th Regional Conference on Women in Latin America
and the Caribbean, to be organized Aug. 6-9 in Quito, Ecuador by the
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ÉCLAT). "We
must urgently come together as Afro-descendant women, because we are
separated and have not even gotten our governments to count exactly
how many of us there are in the region," said Wilson.

At the August regional conference in Quito, one of the central
focuses will be the question of female domestic service. Half of the
region's domestic employees work more than 48 hours a week, receive
inadequate pay and have no access to social security coverage, ÉCLAT
reports. In fact, there are millions of domestics who are not even
paid. A large part of the region's domestics are black or indigenous
women. Studies show that more than 90 percent of people of African
descent in the region are poor, only have access to the worst paid
jobs, and have a low level of education.

In Brazil, for example, 71 percent of black women work in the
informal sector of the economy, compared to 65 percent of black men,
61 percent of white women and 48 percent of white men. And whites in
Brazil are 2.5 times richer than blacks on average. In Colombia,
meanwhile, 80 percent of blacks live in extreme poverty. And in Cuba,
the only socialist country in the region, people of African descent
live in the worst housing and have the lowest-paid jobs. "It is very
difficult to be black in our region, and even more so if you are a
woman," said Wilson. "I know that because I myself have often had to
suffer degrading humiliations." Wilson is from Puerto Cabezas in
Nicaragua's North Atlantic Autonomous Region. "My father worked as a
miner for over 48 years. My mother was a homemaker and raised nine
children. It was hard for us -- six girls and three boys -- to make
it in this society, but we fought and we did it," she said.
In 1975, as a nun and missionary, Wilson joined the Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN) and later took part in the leftist
group's armed struggle, which overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in
1979. That year, she became the first female mayor of Puerto Cabezas
and was later elected to parliament, representing the Caribbean
coastal region. She remains a member of the FSLN, which, after losing
the 1990 elections, returned to power this year under President
Daniel Ortega. (END/2007)

Source: IPS: 06/19

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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: 06.18-06.24
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