Mexico Week In Review: 01.21-01.27

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 01.21-01.27
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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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HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICIAL SAYS ARMY TORTURED, RAPED

Mexican soldiers tortured, raped and murdered civilians last year
while fighting a war across the country against violent drug gangs,
the nation's top human rights official told lawmakers. The army and
navy, which play a leading role in President Felipe Calderon's
campaign against organized crime, should be withdrawn to their
barracks, said Jose Luis Soberanes, head of the country's human
rights commission. "Individuals belonging to the armed forces
committed grave abuses," he told Mexico's Congress. "In 2007, we
widely documented cases of torture, rape and homicide."

For example, 19 soldiers face a military trial for shooting dead two
women and three children in June at a roadblock in the state of
Sinaloa, a hotspot in the drug conflict. In another case, soldiers
have been accused of sexually assaulting four girls in the western
state of Michoacan.

More than 25,000 federal police, soldiers and marines are hunting
drug gangs near the U.S. border and in other troubled areas around
the country. They search cars along highways, raid suspected criminal
hideouts and often skirmish with heavily armed hitmen. Soberanes said
the military should be withdrawn gradually and replaced with a beefed
up federal police force. There was no official response from defense
officials but Soberanes said the army had been responsive to some of
his suggestions.

Washington is keeping an eye on human rights issues in Mexico's drug
crackdown, as the U.S. Congress debates a proposal to fund $550
million of surveillance equipment as the first tranche of $1.4
billion pledged by President George W. Bush last year under the
so-called Merida Initiative. However, the U.S. Assistant Secretary
for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
David Johnson said he did not see pressure to put human rights
monitors on the ground.

Source: Reuters: 01/23
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TOP DRUG SUSPECT ARRESTED

Mexican special forces have captured a man suspected of being a
senior member of the powerful Sinaloa drugs cartel. Alfredo Beltran
Leyva was detained in the north-western city of Culiacan along with
three other people, an army spokesman said. They were allegedly
carrying $900,000 (£460,000) in cash in two suitcases and a
Kalashnikov rifle. Dressed in jeans, a dark jacket and boots, the
handcuffed Mr. Beltran Leyva was shown off to reporters before being
flown to an unknown destination by the military.

Prosecutors say he is a close associate of Mexico's most wanted man,
Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, head of the Sinaloa cartel. He was allegedly
in charge of transporting drugs, bribing officials and laundering
money for the cartel. He is also said to have commanded teams of
sicarios, or hitmen

Source: BBC News: 01/21
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HALLIBURTON TO DRILL IN MEXICO

Halliburton won a $683 million three-year contract from Petroleos
Mexicanos to manage drilling and completion of 58 oil wells in
southern Mexico. Halliburton said the land wells range in depth from
11,500 feet to 21,300 feet but didn't say where the wells were.

Pemex, as Mexico's government-owned oil monopoly is known, is trying
to make up for a decline in production at its offshore oil field
Cantarell with drilling activity in Chicontepec, an oil field in
rugged, mountainous terrain in southern Mexico.

Source: Washington Post: 01/22
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COUNTERINSURGENCY IN CHIAPAS

Around 3 p.m. on Jan. 2, nine shots were fired into the air. The
perpetrators withdrew, leaving behind a button-down shirt with the
cuffs tied to two lone trees in the cornfield. Machetes had hacked
the shirt and cut a thick cross into one of the tree trunks at chest
height. A bullet case was embedded at the center of the cross. "This
is an example of what they want to do to us," says José Morales, a
22-year-old Tzeltal Indian who used a pseudonym to protect his
identity. "Grab us and hang us from the trees." Morales is a member
of the Zapatista community of Bolon Ajaw, one of dozens of Zapatista
communities across the southern state of Chiapas facing almost daily
attacks, land invasions and death threats. After hearing the
gunshots, Pedro Alvarez, another member of the community who also
preferred to use a pseudonym, had run down the mile-long path from
the cornfield where he was cutting wood, to Bolon Ajaw's center, a
cluster of houses made of old boards, corrugated tin roofs, and dirt
floors and none with electricity or running water. Alvarez then led
the authorities and five observers back to the cornfield where they
found the hanging shirt and the cross freshly cut into the tree.

Since early 2007, aggressions against scores of communities,
affecting 800 families and threatening more than 12,000 hectares of
Zapatista-controlled territory, have taken place, reports the Center
for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Investigation
(CAPISE), which is based in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas.
"This is clearly a systematic counterinsurgency strategy," says
Ernesto Ledesma, director of CAPISE. "We haven't seen an offensive
this intense for at least 10 years."

During the last half of 2007, Ledesma and a handful of CAPISE staff
and volunteers have released an average of three reports a month
documenting the new "government onslaught" against the Zapatista
indigenous communities. "The Mexican state has re-activated
paramilitary groups," says Ledesma. "They are doing what the
Spaniards did during the conquest and what the ranchers and local
mafias did after the Mexican Revolution: They are dispossessing once
again the indigenous peoples from their lands, from their territory."

In 1994, when the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) rose
up in arms in Chiapas, indigenous insurgents forced the ranchers from
the land and became collective owners of the very fields they worked
as slaves for hundreds of years. Since then, the EZLN has resettled
thousands of landless people on former haciendas, a process the
Zapatistas call "recuperating the land." In 1996, the Mexican
government signed the San Andres Accords with the EZLN, recognizing
indigenous regional autonomy. But the government then balked after
signing and never implemented the accords.

On Dec. 22, 1997, 45 Tzotzil indigenous people in Acteal, 2 hours
north of San Cristobal, were massacred by the paramilitary group,
Peace and Justice (Paz y Justicia), and the impunity that followed
led the EZLN to suspend all dialogue with the government. Then, five
years later, the government passed a gutted version of the accords
that rejected indigenous regional autonomy and instead further
subjected Mexico's estimated 10 million indigenous citizens to
federal authority by defining them as "entities of public interest,"
in the text of the law. As a result, the EZLN cut off communication
with the government and set about implementing the accords on its
own, creating autonomous municipalities and regional governance
structures based on rotating councils of local villagers elected in
open assemblies. Road signs throughout Chiapas announce to travelers:
"You are now entering autonomous, rebel territory."

Throughout his six-year term (2000-2006), former Mexican President
Vicente Fox built on the previous administrations' attempts to divide
Zapatista communities by using handouts and governmental assistance
programs. Fox, like his predecessors, also tried to create and train
anti-Zapatista paramilitary groups to masquerade as rural indigenous
rights organizations, such as the Organization for the Defense of
Indigenous and Peasant Peoples (OPDDIC). Now, with many communities
divided between pro- and anti-Zapatista, organizations like OPDDIC
are using government aid programs to get land grants to Zapatista
territories. Once the government provides the grants, OPDDIC would
have a "legal" pretext to dispossess the Zapatista families from
their lands.

The Zapatistas, in turn, refuse to enter into government aid
programs, and they refuse to leave the land. "We spilled our blood
for the land, not for a government handout," says one member of the
Zapatista autonomous municipality of San Manuel, which is also under
threat. Meanwhile, the Mexican army has built 56 military bases in
Zapatista regions, surrounding communities that support the EZLN, and
often providing aid to OPDDIC and other anti-Zapatista organizations.

Morales of Bolon Ajaw says that the aggressions began in 2006 when
OPDDIC began to recruit among government sympathizers in the area.
"They are not doing this alone," he says, "they come on behalf of the
government. Whenever there is a problem, the helicopters and police
come right away, as if they already knew what was going to happen."
Over the past four months, according to CAPISE reports and local
press accounts, in Bolon Ajaw alone, the OPDDIC has ambushed
Zapatista villagers with guns and machetes, badly beating four
people. In response to attacks in late November, CAPISE organized
observation brigades to camp out in Bolon Ajaw and other communities
to document aggression and threats against the Zapatistas. "This is a
new onslaught of the Mexican state, with all levels of government
participating," says CAPISE's Ledesma. "They are going for the land.
They are going for territory and all the natural resources therein.
But now there is an entire movement and indigenous peoples opposed to
their project and, moreover, developing another, alternative project,
autonomous and their own."

Source: In These Times: 01/23
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MEXICO CITY STARTS GROPE-FREE BUSES FOR WOMEN

Mexico City has started a women-only bus service to protect female
passengers from groping and verbal abuse common on the city's packed
public transportation system. Millions of people cram into subway
trains and buses in the Mexican capital, one of the world's largest
cities, and women have long complained of abuse from men taking
advantage of overcrowding to sneak in an inappropriate grab. "One
time a man stuck his hand up my skirt. They grab your butt ... It's
gross," said 27-year-old office assistant Lourdes Zendejas, who
waited 20 minutes during the evening rush hour to catch one of the
new buses.

The special buses pull up at ordinary stops but have large pink
"women only" signs on the front and side. They were added to two busy
routes last week and the city government plans to expand the program
to 15 other routes by April. Mexico City's transport system, which
also includes hundreds of privately operated "micro" buses, carries
twice as many riders as New York's. "We were constantly receiving
complaints of women being leered at, kissed or followed," said Carlos
Cervantes, spokesman for the city's public bus system. Mexico City
already had reserved the first three cars in subway trains for women
and children but this is the first time the model has been tried in
buses.

Women using the new service had space to sit down and giggled as the
driver turned away men at the door. "This is wonderful. Men never
give up their seat for us old people, no one is a gentleman," said
73-year-old Beatriz Perez, whose bulging shopping bags were tucked
under her seat. But not everyone was convinced that having only women
would make the ride more pleasant. "Women can be aggressive too,"
said telephone operator Rosa Maria Vargas, 42, traveling with her
9-year-old son. "When it gets really crowded, I've been pushed and
punched before by men and women."

Source: Reuters: 01/22
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WOMEN LOSE IN MEXICO INDIAN RIGHTS GAIN

Women in this Indian village high in the pine-clad mountains of
Oaxaca rise each morning at 4 a.m. to gather firewood, grind corn,
prepare the day's food, care for the children and clean the house.
But they aren't allowed to vote in local elections, because - the men
say - they don't do enough work. It was here, in a village that has
struggled for centuries to preserve its Zapotec traditions, that
Eufrosina Cruz, 27, decided to become the first woman to run for
mayor - despite the fact that women aren't allowed to attend town
assemblies, much less run for office. The all-male town board tore up
ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a
woman, she wasn't a "citizen" of the town. "That is the custom here,
that only the citizens vote, not the women," said Valeriano Lopez,
the town's deputy mayor.

Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious,
national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government,
known as "use and customs," which were given full legal status in
Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping
across Latin America. "For me, it's more like 'abuse and customs,'"
Cruz said as she submitted her complaint in December to the National
Human Rights Commission. "I am demanding that we, the women of the
mountains, have the right to decide our lives, to vote and run for
office, because the constitution says we have these rights."

Lopez acknowledged that votes for Cruz were nullified, but claims
they added up to only 8 ballots of about 100 cast in this largely
unpaved village of about 1,500 people. Cruz says she was winning -
and wants the election to be annulled and held again, this time with
women voting. But the male leaders are refusing to budge. "We live
differently here, senor, than people in the city. Here, women are
dedicated to their homes, and men work the fields," Apolonio Mendoza,
the secretary of the all-male town council, told a visiting reporter.

Cruz has received some support from older men, who by village law
lose their political rights when they turn 60. Some younger men also
say the system must change and give women more rights. At a recent
meeting of several dozen Cruz supporters, most of them voteless,
women in traditional gray shawls recalled being turned down for
government aid programs because they weren't accompanied by a man.
Martina Cruz Moreno, 19, said that when her widowed mother sought
government-provided building materials to improve her dirt-floor,
tin-roofed wooden home, village authorities told her, "Go get
yourself a husband."

As a woman, Eufrosina Cruz is not only barred from being mayor, but
from participating in the "community labor" that qualifies male
villagers as "citizens." Those tasks include repairing roads, herding
cattle, cleaning streets and raising crops. "I'd like to see the men
here make tortillas, just for one day, and then tell me that's not
work," said Cruz, describing the hours-long process of cleaning,
soaking, cooking and milling the corn, shaping the flour into flat
disks, and collecting the firewood to heat the clay and brick hearths
on which most women cook. During all-important village festivals,
women are expected to cook for all the male guests. But instead of
joining them at the table, Cruz says, they are relegated to straw
mats on the floor. Clothes are washed by hand, and while most homes
have some form of running water, it's often only a single spigot.

Cruz decided to escape that life after she saw her 12-year-old sister
given to an older man in a marriage arranged by her father. The
sister had her first child at 13, and has since borne seven more.
Cruz was 11 and "I didn't even know what a bus was then." She
traveled to the nearest city to enroll in school, live with relatives
and support herself through odd jobs, eventually graduating from
college with a degree in accounting. She is single, and in a village
culture where most women wear skirts, she wears pants. Because her
village has no formal jobs for women, she works as a school director
in a nearby town, and returns to Quiegolani most weekends. That,
authorities say, disqualified her from running for mayor because she
wasn't a full-time resident. But the man who won the race also works
outside the town, and there are questions about how much time he
actually spends here. Cruz views the residency issue as a pretext,
noting that authorities have also banned female candidates and
anybody with a college degree from running. She said she has followed
the use and custom rules as much as she was allowed to, carefully
fulfilling lower-level duties that function as a means of testing
people's devotion to their village. For four years, she "carried the
Virgin" in a religious procession through the town, and has helped
fund or organize other festivities. Cruz figured her case for
annulling the elections was solid - after all, Mexico's constitution
guarantees both men and women the right to vote. She went first to
the Oaxaca state electoral council, then to the state congress. After
both upheld the election, she took her fight to the commission in
Mexico City. "I am not asking anything for myself. I am asking on
behalf of Indian women, so that never again will the laws allow
political segregation," Cruz wrote to the commissioners, who may take
months to investigate the case, and who could recommend that state
authorities protect women's rights to vote or hold office. She says
she'll go higher, to federal electoral authorities, if necessary.

In Mexico, many local governance rules date to before the Spanish
conquest and weren't given national legal recognition until a 2001
Indian rights reform was enacted in the wake of the Zapatista rebel
uprising in Chiapas. The law states that Indian townships may "apply
their own normative systems ... as long as they obey the general
principles of the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals,
human rights, and particularly the dignity and well-being of women."
Despite this specific protection, about a fourth of the Indian
villages operating under the law don't let women vote, putting human
rights groups in a dilemma: Most actively supported recognition for
Indian governance systems, and few have therefore taken up the
women's cause.

Cruz now travels alone from one government office to another, always
carrying an armful of calla lilies. "This flower grows a lot in the
village. Even though we don't water or care for it much, it flowers,"
she explained. "It is a symbol for us Indian women." "The congress
upheld the vote out of sheer laziness, to avoid stirring up the
village or causing a conflict there," said Rep. Perla Woolrich, a
Oaxaca state legislator who supported Cruz's cause. "In the past, use
and customs represented something positive, but by now it violates
people's constitutional rights. Use and customs have to be reviewed,
and those practices that violate rights have to be thrown out." Cruz
says she isn't against all customs in her village. She prefers its
bipartisanship to political party rivalry because it encourages
close-knit Indian communities to stick together and underpins their
survival. "There are really beautiful things in use and customs, if
they are applied as they should be," she said. "Up there in the
mountains, unfortunately, nobody listens to us," she says. "If
nothing is done, we'll go on the same way for another century in
Quiegolani."

Source: Associated Press: 01/27
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ARREST IN CARDINAL'S 1993 MURDER

An alleged drug cartel hit man who is among the suspects in the 1993
slaying of a Mexican cardinal was arrested in the border city of
Tijuana, authorities announced. Alfredo Araujo Avila, also known as
"Popeye," allegedly worked for the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug
cartel for more than two decades, Gen. German Redondo, commander of
the local army base, told reporters.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo was riddled with
bullets on May 24, 1993, while he was sitting in his car at the
airport in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city. Investigators
concluded that gunmen working for the Arellano Felix cartel mistook
the cardinal's luxury vehicle for that of a rival drug trafficker
whom they were targeting for assassination - and whose own security
forces were at the scene and returned fire. But Church authorities
have long disputed the official version of events, arguing that
Posadas Ocampo was killed because he knew about alleged relationships
between drug dealers and government officials.

Six people besides the cardinal were also killed. Twelve people have
since been convicted and imprisoned in the attack, most recently
ex-police commander Humberto Rodriguez Banuelos in 2005. Redondo said
that Araujo Avila is also suspected in the 1997 shooting of Tijuana
journalist Jesus Blancornelas, who survived and died of natural
causes at age 70 in 2006. Araujo Avila was detained at a house in
Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California, on outstanding
warrants. Redondo said he is also wanted on charges in the United
States, but did not elaborate. The general said the suspect holds
American citizenship, but U.S. consular authorities were not
immediately available to confirm that. A pistol and a police
identification card were found in the house.

Source: Associated Press: 01/27

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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: 01.21-01.27
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