Mexico Week In Review: 01.14-01.20

[cisdc]

>Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:00:36 -0500
>To: cis-dc-info at lists.mutualaid.org
>From: Milt Shapiro <mshapiro at zzapp.org>
>Subject: Mexico Week In Review: 01.14-01.20
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>Mexico Week In Review: 01.14-01.20
>=================================================================
>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"
>=================================================================
>
>EPR SAYS WILL WARN BEFORE NEW ATTACKS
>
>A rebel group that bombed oil and natural-gas pipelines in Mexico 
>last year, disrupting service to 2,500 companies, said it would warn 
>the government moments before any new attacks to avoid killing 
>bystanders.
>
>The Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) said it would continue attacks 
>until the government allows two of its members to be released from 
>custody, according to a statement attributed to the group posted on 
>a Web site run by the Center for Documentation of Armed Movements. 
>The government says it isn't holding the men and denies ever having 
>arrested them. "Moments before any action, the government will be 
>told of our action to avoid human losses," the group said in the 
>statement. The group, which attacked pipelines in July and September 
>last year run by the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, accused 
>President Felipe Calderon of waging a dirty war by refusing to 
>release two its members. The EPR was founded in 1996 in the southern 
>states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, two years after the Zapatista Army 
>for National Liberation had an uprising in the state of Chiapas.
>
>Source: Bloomberg: 01/16
>====
>
>CATHOLICS PLAY VITAL ROLE IN HELPING MIGRANTS TO U.S
>
>At a Catholic-run shelter just across the border from Laredo, Texas, 
>dozens of Latin American migrants say grace and tuck into a hearty 
>meal of sausages, beans and rice, before trying to swim across the 
>Rio Grande into the United States. Weary migrants on their journey 
>north often recharge their batteries at a network of similar 
>shelters run by the Roman Catholic Church -- a lifeline sanctioned 
>by the Vatican, despite increased U.S. efforts to keep out illegal 
>immigrants. "Migration is a human right and migrants are some of the 
>world's most vulnerable people. It is the church's obligation to 
>help them," said the Rev. Francisco Pellizzari, an Italian-Argentine 
>missionary who runs the Nazareth migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo.
>
>After long treks to the border, often from as far away as Central 
>America, men, women and children at the shelter swap their torn 
>clothes for fresh ones, heal their injuries and telephone family 
>members for cash for their crossing. The Nuevo Laredo shelter has 
>been granted a papal blessing in a Vatican certificate that hangs 
>proudly on the wall. Many Catholic Churches in the United States 
>have welcomed Hispanics, with some seeing their congregations double 
>in size. They set up soup kitchens and offer support to families hit 
>by workplace raids and deportations. "It is time for some compassion 
>in the immigration debate," said Sister Christine Feagan, who 
>ministers to Hispanics at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Iowa. 
>"Welcome the stranger." But in a U.S. election year with illegal 
>immigration one of the most passionate issues, some candidates have 
>a tough message for undocumented immigrants.
>
>Among the Republican candidates who take a tough line on 
>immigration, one of the most outspoken is Mike Huckabee, a Baptist 
>preacher who has drawn strong support from evangelicals. Many 
>religious conservatives in the United States take a sharply 
>contrasting view of immigration from that of the Catholic Church. 
>Some are angry that the Catholic Church helps people who break the 
>law. Others accuse it of using support for immigration as a way to 
>win back members as the church loses ground to evangelicals and 
>secularism in Latin America. "The Roman Catholic Church is aiding 
>and abetting the criminal invasion of America from Mexico," wrote 
>Ralph Ovadal, pastor of the Pilgrims Covenant Church in Wisconsin, 
>in a booklet sold on the church's Web site.
>
>Without the shelters in Mexico, most migrants would be forced to beg 
>for food, sleep on streets, in the hot sun and freezing cold of the 
>desert or on the muddy banks of the Rio Grande before attempting to 
>cross. "I'm extremely grateful for this shelter, but even without 
>it, I would still try to get across," said 19-year-old Guatemalan 
>coffee picker Raul Mintis, looking at a map of the United States in 
>the Nuevo Laredo shelter.
>
>The church denies any wrongdoing and says it is stepping in to fill 
>the void created by the lack of a U.S. immigration policy and the 
>failure of Latin American countries to create more jobs for their 
>people. "While the governments of the United States and Latin 
>America fail to provide workable policies, the church will do what 
>it must to help the migrant," said Rafael Romo, Archbishop of 
>Tijuana on Mexico's border with California. "We can't let these 
>people be treated like animals."
>
>Source: Reuters: 01/11
>====
>
>STRIKING MINERS GET INJUNCTION
>
>On Jan. 12 Mexican sixth district labor judge Maximo Torres Quevedo 
>granted an injunction allowing miners at the huge Cananea copper 
>mine in the northwestern state of Sonora to continue their 
>five-month-old strike. The Federal Conciliation and Arbitration 
>Council (JFCA) had ruled the strike a wildcat on Jan. 10 and ordered 
>the miners to return to work within 24 hours. The next morning, some 
>800 police agents drove the strikers out of the mine, in a 
>confrontation that resulted in some 40 injuries and five arrests. It 
>was not clear whether the union, Section 65 of the National Union of 
>Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM), would 
>reoccupy the mine.
>
>This was the second major police attack on SNTMMRM strikers in the 
>past two years; two steelworkers were killed in an operation at 
>Lazaro Cardenas, Micahoacan, on Apr. 20, 2006. The Mexican 
>Electricity Workers Union (SME) immediately expressed solidarity 
>with the mineworkers, and on Jan. 12 activists protested outside the 
>Mexican consulate in New York in a solidarity action organized by 
>the leftist Internationalist Group.
>
>In other news, on the morning of Jan. 10 some 200 members of the 
>farmers' group El Barzon Popular took over the toll booths on the 
>privately owned Mexico City-Toluca highway and allowed motorists to 
>ride for free for about three hours. El Barzon director Crescencio 
>Morales said this was a continuation of protests against the 
>elimination of tariffs on corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk that 
>took effect Jan. 1 under the North American Free Trade Agreement 
>(NAFTA). He said there would be more protests, with the next one on 
>the Mexico City-Queretaro highway. Some 7,500 vehicles took 
>advantage of the toll-free ride, costing the owners more than 
>$30,000, the toll booth administrator said.
>
>Source: Mexico Solidarity Network Weekly News Summary: 01/13
>====
>
>ANOTHER FOLK MUSICIAN MURDERED IN MEXICO
>
>A Mexican singer has been shot dead in the northern state of 
>Sinaloa, the latest in what appeared to be a growing list of folk 
>musician slayings by organized crime gangs, local government 
>officials said. Sinaloa's justice department said Jorge Antonio 
>Sepulveda, 20, was found dead in the early hours of Tuesday on a 
>road near the city of Guasave, 102 miles northwest of the state 
>capital Culiacan. Sepulveda, who was not well-known nationally, had 
>been shot at least a dozen times with high-caliber guns. A nearby 
>car that authorities believe belonged to him was burnt to a shell.
>
>Authorities could not immediately comment on the motive for the 
>killing, which bore the trademarks of the dozens of gangland-style 
>murders that take place in Mexico each week. President Felipe 
>Calderon launched a nationwide war a year ago on the drug cartels 
>which control most of Mexico's organized crime. Drug-related 
>killings surpassed 2,500 last year and this year began with a spate 
>of shootings.
>
>Around half a dozen Mexican musicians have been killed over the past 
>two years as hitmen who once targeted performers of "narcocorridos," 
>or ballads about drug kingpins, broadened their aim to include more 
>mainstream folk singers. Valentin Elizalde was killed by drug hitmen 
>in 2006. Last month, Sergio Gomez, front man of the popular band 
>K-Paz de la Sierra, was abducted and strangled to death in the 
>western state of Michoacan. Two other who died last month were Jose 
>Luis Aquino, a trumpet player found beaten to death with a plastic 
>bag over his head, and Zayda Pena, who was shot in a motel room. The 
>killers followed her to the hospital and finished her off with two 
>more bullets as she lay in bed. Suspected drug gunmen killed eight 
>people including three senior policemen and a 3-year-old boy in the 
>Mexican border city of Tijuana, a week after the government beefed 
>up security against drug gangs, police said. Calderon has deployed 
>more than 25,000 troops and federal police in his crackdown on 
>organized crime.
>
>Source: Reuters: 01/15
>====
>
>CALDERON NAMES U.S.-EDUCATED, SPANISH-BORN INTERIOR SECRETARY
>
>President Felipe Calderon replaced his domestic security chief with 
>a young, Spanish-born and U.S.-educated aide who led his 2006 
>campaign effort. Juan Camilo Mourino took over as interior 
>secretary, replacing Francisco Ramirez Acuna, who stepped down amid 
>an upsurge in drug-fueled killings and criticism that he has cracked 
>down on opposition protests. He said he was resigning to "pursue 
>personal activities." The Cabinet switch, the third since Calderon 
>took office just over a year ago, also came as his administration 
>pushes major reforms that could lead to private investment in the 
>country's state-run oil sector and revamp the slow, 
>corruption-plagued criminal justice system.
>
>The interior secretary has traditionally acted as the president's 
>chief negotiator with the legislative branch, opposition groups and 
>state officials. While Calderon has been able to get a number of 
>bills through Congress, others - including the judicial reform and 
>plans to widen private-sector participation in oil drilling - face 
>stiff challenges. Calderon said Mourino would press "reforms that 
>will make the country's economy advance more quickly toward 
>development."
>
>Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, is seeing a 
>decline in production and reserves but it faces strict legal limits 
>on using private-sector help for deep-water exploration for new 
>reserves. The company also was hit by a series of rebel bomb attacks 
>on its natural gas pipelines in mid-2007.
>
>Born in Spain, Mourino studied economics at the University of Tampa, 
>Fla., and holds a graduate degree in accounting and finance from a 
>university in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Campeche. He became a 
>Mexican citizen almost two decades ago, served as a federal 
>legislator and went on to become Calderon's closest adviser as head 
>of the Office of the Presidency. At 36, he is one of the youngest 
>men to have held the politically sensitive post of interior 
>secretary. Mourino's family has business interests in southern 
>Mexico, and Spanish firms have recently made major inroads in 
>Mexico's telecommunications and banking sector, drawing criticism 
>from some Mexicans who resent the influence of the country's former 
>colonial master.
>
>Additionally, Calderon named former Treasury Department official 
>Ernesto Cordero as social development secretary, the top 
>anti-poverty post. In September, he tapped Salvador Vega to head the 
>federal comptroller's office.
>
>Source: Associated Press: 01/16
>====
>
>CHURCH RESTORES INDEPENDENCE HERO
>
>Mexico learned that the father of the nation's independence movement 
>did not die excommunicated nearly 200 years ago, clearing a stain 
>from his legacy ahead of the 2010 bicentennial celebrations. Roman 
>Catholic investigators announced that the excommunication of priest 
>and independence hero Miguel Hidalgo was annulled when he confessed 
>his sins shortly before being shot by a Spanish firing squad. 
>Hidalgo, a Catholic priest, was expelled by the church on Sept. 24, 
>1810, nine days after he issued the first call for Mexicans to take 
>up arms against the Spanish colonial government. Mexico commemorates 
>his historic "grito," or cry of independence, each September with a 
>national holiday.
>
>However, priest Gustavo Watson said that a special investigative 
>commission found evidence that Hidalgo received confession from a 
>fellow priest shortly before he was executed. Under church law, 
>Watson said, his confession automatically voided the excommunication 
>order. "Hidalgo died within the church, reconciled with the church," 
>Watson said. Mexican legislators had asked Catholic officials to 
>examine the cases of Hidalgo and another priest, Jose Maria Morelos, 
>ahead of celebrations of the 200-year anniversary of the start of 
>Mexico's war for independence. Their excommunication has long been 
>considered an insult to the memories of the two independence heroes. 
>Officials said they were still investigating Morelos' case, although 
>they suspected he also confessed. Many people have claimed Hidalgo 
>was excommunicated in retaliation for calling for independence, but 
>Watson said church documents show it was for violence against other 
>priests.
>
>Source: Associated Press: 10/17/07
>
>====
>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: 01.14-01.20
>--
>


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