Mexico Week In Review: 05.12-05.18

[cisdc]

Mexico Week In Review: 05.12-05.18
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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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EPR REJECT DIRECT TALKS WITH GOVERNMENT

The Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, that bombed energy pipelines 
last year rejected direct talks with the government but left open the 
possibility of negotiations through a group of mediators. President 
Felipe Calderon's conservative government agreed last month to talks 
with the EPR, which disrupted oil and gas supplies last July and 
September, if the group agreed to swear off future violence. "The 
conditions simply don't exist to sit down face to face," the EPR said 
in a statement, adding that the government was backed by right-wing 
extremists in Mexico as well as U.S. President George W. Bush.

The group is demanding the return of two missing activists it says 
are being held and tortured by authorities, an accusation the 
government denies. Calderon condemned the EPR's decision. "To me this 
is deplorable. However, the Mexican government, my government, will 
always be open to dialogue," he told a news conference. But the 
rebels said they were optimistic about the recent formation of a 
five-member panel that it said could mediate talks. The panel is 
mainly made up of left-leaning public figures and it is not clear if 
the government would back its mediation efforts. The mediators 
include the writer Carlos Montemayor, who is the commission's 
spokesperson; anthropologist Gilberto Lopez y Rivas; Samuel Ruiz 
Garcia, bishop emeritus of San Cristobal de las Casas in the 
southeastern state of Chiapas; and human rights activist Rosario 
Ibarra de Piedra, a senator for the center-left Party of the 
Democratic Revolution (PRD). At a press conference in Mexico City on 
May 9, Montemayor said the commission planned meetings with the 
government in the near future and would communicate with the rebels 
through the media, which he called "the red telephone with all the 
sides involved."

The EPR burst into public view in the 1990s during a rally in the 
poor southern state of Guerrero. It claims hundreds of members across 
Mexico but after lethal ambushes on rural police and army bases, the 
group remained quiet for nearly a decade. The rebels returned to the 
spotlight in 2007 with the pipeline attacks directed at state-owned 
oil monopoly Pemex.

Sources: Reuters: 05/12; Weekly News Update- Nicaragua Solidarity 
Network Of Greater New York: 05/11
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THOUSANDS PROTEST DRUG VIOLENCE

Thousands of white-clad people marched silently to protest a surge of 
drug-related violence in a Mexican city across from Texas where the 
No. 2 police officer was shot dead. The crowd of several thousand 
students, church leaders, businessmen and politicians walked for 
about four miles (six kilometers) across Ciudad Juarez to a park near 
a border crossing, breaking the silence in a burst of speeches, 
dancing and singing.

More than 200 people have been killed so far this year in Ciudad 
Juarez. The city of 1.3 million across the border from El Paso, 
Texas, is home base for the powerful Juarez drug cartel. The 
assassination of police director Juan Antonio Roman Garcia came 
despite the deployment of more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police 
to the city and surrounding Chihuahua state in March. "We need to 
unite against this," said Julian Ochoa, an architecture student at 
the march. "I hope we achieve something."

An increase in drug-related homicides, shootouts, kidnappings and car 
thefts near the border prompted U.S. State Department to warn 
Americans last month of rising violence in the region, though it 
stopped short of advising against travel here. Last week, police 
arrested six suspected gang members after a gunfight in the northern 
state of Sinaloa. One of the six, Alfonso Gutierrez Loera, 25, 
identified himself as a cousin of suspected Sinaloa cartel chief 
Joaquin Guzman, according the Public Safety Department. Gutierrez 
Loera and another suspect were wounded in the shootout.

Source: Associated Press: 05/11
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EFFORTS TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN STYMIED BY MACHO CULTURE

Martha couldn't take the beatings anymore. She visited local police 
three times last year to report that her husband was punching her in 
the stomach so hard she could barely breathe. Each time, the police 
told her they could do nothing unless she returned with cuts and 
bruises. Discouraged and fearful, Martha, 43, who asked that her last 
name not be published for fear of retribution from her husband, in 
March packed some clothes and left. She's lived with three different 
relatives since. "There were times I didn't want to wake up," she 
said, crying. "I wanted it to stop. I wanted to die."

Every day thousands of Mexican women suffer physical and 
psychological abuse at the hands of their spouses, despite a federal 
law passed over a year ago to protect them. Nearly one-third of the 
country's 31 states still haven't adopted the law, which requires 
Mexican law enforcement to punish acts of violence against women. 
Even where the law has been adopted, it's not being applied, say 
legislators and activists. That's because, despite an official push 
to move beyond the cliche image of macho, Mexico is still very much a 
man's world when it comes to violence against women. Mexico City's 
Commission on Human Rights recently reported that complaints by women 
against Mexico City law enforcement agencies for failing to respond 
to complaints increased more than 12 percent after the law's passage. 
"We are enormously concerned about complaints that the justice system 
isn't working," Emilio Alvarez Icaza , the president of the 
commission, told Mexico City's legislators during his April 24 
presentation of the report. But progress is hard to come by in a 
country where just a few years ago the punishment for killing a cow 
in some states was greater than for killing a woman. A rapist in 
Mexico can still escape punishment in 21 states by claiming he was 
seeking to satisfy an erotic fantasy. He can escape punishment in 19 
states if he later marries the victim.

The law mandating enforcement on women's complaints of violence, 
passed in February 2007, was meant to show that the government was 
taking the problem seriously. Legislators have allocated millions for 
federal and state law enforcement, a special prosecutor has been 
appointed and some states have adopted the federal law. But activists 
and government officials say they can count few real successes. 
Public administrators, police and sometimes even judges are ignoring 
the law, they said. "One thing is having a law; it's another thing to 
enforce it," said Marisela Contreras Julian, president of the 
Commission on Fairness and Gender in Mexico's lower house of 
Congress. Contreras said women who report crimes are turned away or 
persuaded not to file charges. "They say, 'You're going to forgive 
your husband, aren't you?' " she said. "It's the culture. ...And some 
of these men are abusers themselves. Therefore, they look for a way 
to justify the actions."

Six out of 10 Mexican women have suffered some form of violence 
inflicted by their spouses or partners, according to government 
studies. In 2006, more than 80 percent of women who were murdered 
were killed in their own homes. The National Institute for Women in 
Mexico reports that twice as many Mexican women suffer abuse than the 
worldwide average. "The problem is violence against women is 
ingrained in our culture," said Liliana Rojero Luevano, the 
institute's executive secretary. "It's considered natural." The issue 
gained worldwide attention after the violent deaths of more than 400 
women and girls in Ciudad Juarez beginning in the early 1990s. Rojero 
said the Juarez murders, while isolated, are emblematic of the 
problems throughout Mexico. Many of the cases remain unsolved, she 
said, because people don't consider violence against women a priority.

Margarita Guille Tamayo, director of the National Network, a women's 
shelter, answered the phone in March when Martha called asking for 
help. "She was crying and hysterical," Guille said. "She kept talking 
about how the police would not help her. She didn't know what to do." 
Martha was worried that her husband would beat her 10-year-old son if 
she left. She agreed to leave the house only after Guille persuaded 
her that she needed to save herself first, and then they could work 
to rescue her son. Martha said her husband beat and raped her almost 
weekly. He would hit her with a broom or pull her to the ground, or 
to the bed, by her hair. He would tell her it was her obligation to 
have sex with him "no matter whether I worked all day or was tired." 
She asked him for a divorce, but he refused. Insulted, he increased 
the intensity of the beatings, she said. The state of Mexico, where 
Martha lives, shares the record with Jalisco as the Mexican state 
with the highest rate of violence against women. But the state hasn't 
passed the federal law. Police never arrested her husband or even 
brought him in for questioning. "I did what I thought I was supposed 
to do," Martha said. "I asked for help, but they didn't do anything."

Source: McClatchy Newspapers: 05/13
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U.S. CONGRESS TRIMS BUSH ANTI-DRUG PLAN FOR MEXICO

The House of Representatives voted to scale back President George W. 
Bush's plan to aid Mexico in its increasingly deadly war on illegal 
drug cartels. The so-called Merida initiative -- which Bush proposed 
last October as a three-year $1.4 billion package providing aircraft, 
equipment and training -- initially was to offer Mexico $500 million 
in this fiscal year that ends September 30. But lawmakers reduced 
this year's segment to $400 million in a 256-166 vote on legislation 
that also expanded benefits for U.S. veterans of the Iraq and 
Afghanistan wars and lengthened unemployment benefits for U.S. 
workers.

The Democratic-controlled chamber sought to restrict support for the 
Mexican military, while increasing resources for social institutions 
including the country's judiciary. But analysts said the cutback was 
less than expected and described the vote as an important U.S. 
gesture toward Mexico. More than 1,100 people have been killed in 
Mexico this year as drug gangs fight each other and security forces. 
Across Capitol Hill, the Senate Appropriations Committee set Mexico's 
funding level at $350 million. Full Senate debate of the measure 
could come next week.

The House increased a part of the Merida initiative to fight drug 
trafficking in Central America, to $61.5 million from the $50 million 
the White House sought. Lawmakers also added the Caribbean nations of 
Haiti and the Dominican Republic to share the funds. The Senate panel 
set aside $100 million for Central America, Haiti and the Dominican 
Republic. The Bush administration had urged Congress to avoid large 
cutbacks that could embarrass the government of Mexican President 
Felipe Calderon as Washington is pressing for closer security ties 
between the two countries. The Merida initiative would not give 
Mexico money outright, but would provide equipment such as 
helicopters, planes and inspection scanners as well as training for 
police, prosecutors and judges.

"Though the amount is reduced, the vote conveys to the Calderon 
government and the Mexican people that both the U.S. administration 
and Congress are interested in supporting institutions and 
strengthening law enforcement," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup of the 
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. On 
Wednesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee authorized Congress to 
spend up to $1.6 billion on the Merida initiative overall. But the 
panel's bill, which sets out policy but does not provide the funding, 
said the program should be geared more heavily toward supporting the 
rule of law, with less assistance for the Mexican military partly 
because of concerns of human rights abuse allegations.

Source: Reuters: 05/15

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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: 05.12-05.18
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