Frontera NorteSur Apr - Jun 2008

Mexican Journalists Still Under Siege in 2008

Despite the creation of a special federal prosecutor and protests from virtually all international press organizations, new attacks against journalists in Mexico continue to mount while old ones go unpunished. Two young radio announcers from the southern state of Oaxaca are the latest journalists to suffer violent deaths.  Felicitas Martinez, 22,  and Teresa Bautista , 24,  were shot to death in an ambush April 7 while on their way to cover a state meeting of indigenous peoples. Four other persons were wounded in the attack, including two young children aged 2 and 3.  As of April 19, no suspects had been arrested for the crimes.

Indigenous Triquis, Martinez and Bautista were announcers for the “The Voice that Breaks the Silence” community radio station in San Juan Copala,  a town which has enjoyed autonomous status since early 2007. Outspoken commentators in a region riddled with social conflicts, Martinez and Bautista allegedly suffered threats before their murders. “ Some people think we are very young to know, but they should know we are very young to die,” Martinez and Bautista reportedly said on the air shortly before their  deaths.

Alfonso Ortiz, radio station coordinator, blamed a group connected with the PRI state government of Ulises Ruiz for the killings of his colleagues. Ortiz also accused the state government of attempting to bribe family members of Martinez and Bautista into silence. Oaxaca State Secretary Manuel  Garcia Corpus, who earlier met with the victims’ survivors, said a truce was necessary between warring political factions in the region.

Oaxaca State Attorney General Evencio Martinez ( no known relation to the victim) said the radio announcers were in the wrong place at the wrong time. “What’s clear from the preliminary investigation is that the attack wasn’t against them, but against the person who was driving the vehicle,” Martinez said. The presumed target of the attack, in the state attorney general’s view, was Faustino Vasquez, a local government employee who was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to his left arm.

Earlier, the San Juan Copala radio station demanded that Mexico’s Office of the Federal Attorney General take over the murder investigation.  

The Martinez-Bautista murders were condemned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),  the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mexican Episcopal Conference and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters  (AMARC), among other organizations.

AMARC representative Aleida Calleja  said Mexico was already  dangerous territory for communicators but that the murders of the two young indigenous women “added to it.” In a statement, the UN’s  human rights ombudsman  contended that “only through the effective clarification” of the Martinez-Bautista slayings will similar attacks  against journalists and social communicators be prevented.

Mexico´s official human rights commission is investigating the Oaxaca murders, while the AMARC has announced it will dispatch an international investigative delegation to the country between April 21-25.

In northern Mexico, another media outlet has also suffered aggressions. Readers of the daily El Cinco newspaper in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, have had a difficult time  getting the news lately because of an escalating wave of intimidation that culminated April 16 in the kidnapping of the paper’s pressman by alleged members of the Tamaulipas state police force.   Quoted in the Apro news service,  El Cinco’s  management added that other workers were threatened with guns. Copies of the paper which managed to make it onto the streets were then reportedly bought out by unnamed individuals offering higher-than- normal prices to vendors. There was no immediate word of the fate of the kidnapped pressman. Prior to the armed invasion of the printing facility,  editions of the newspaper had  allegedly been confiscated by state policemen at different intersections in Ciudad Victoria.

In the northern Mexican border community of Agua Prieta, Sonora, meanwhile, about 60 friends and relatives of murdered journalist Saul Noe Martinez staged a protest last week on the first anniversary of his killing, which like the vast majority of murders of journalists in Mexico remains unsolved. The editor of Interdiario, Martinez was kidnapped from an Agua Prieta police station by armed gunmen; his body was later found in the neighboring state of Chihuahua.  Demonstrators demanded the speeding up of the murder investigation, and that Martinez’s name be cleared of allegations that cocaine was found along with his body. According to Martinez’s supporters, the substance in question was rat poison.

Speaking out  on the Oaxaca murders, UNESCO General Director Koichiro Matsuura called the killings of journalists “an odious crime that causes great damage to society, since it suffocates the democratic right of the citizens to debate issues of common interest…”

Mexican Navy Operation Against Migrants Investigated  

A high-ranking Mexican military official has acknowledged that Mexican marines could have violated institutional procedures and used violence against a group of Central American migrants in the southern state of Oaxaca on March 31. Admiral Ramon Morales Gutierrez, naval inspector general, said he will compile a report of the alleged attack and other irregularities for his superiors. The Mexican navy does not condone or permit human rights violations, Morales said. The admiral added that he could not confirm a report that  a marine raped a woman detainee. 

The March 31 incident came to public light after Mexican media ran photos that appeared to show Corporal Raul Trinidad Hernandez  striking a detainee. Denying he used violence,  the marine said he was only trying to protect himself from insults and threats. Dozens of marines helped Nacional Migration Institute  agents raid a train passing through the community of Las Palmas from Chiapas late last month.  The train is frequently used by undocumented Central American  on their journeys north to the United States. Chasing migrants into homes in Las Palmas,  Mexican marines reportedly arrested 91 persons.  Detained individuals were allegedly beat up in front of
children.

A resident of Las Palmas, Teresa Ramirez, said a group of youths that escaped detention asked her for water and a place to rest after their encounter with marines. Ramirez and other Las Palmas said  contact with migrants was a commonplace occurrence with few problems, but scenes of military and immigration agency personnel chasing migrants through the streets were very unusual, they added.

At  a seminar held in Chiapas last weekend, Hayman Vazquez Medina, director of a non-governmental migrant center in Arriaga, Chiapas, informed Nacional Human Rights Commission President Jose Luis Soberanes of the Las Palmas incident. Mexico’s  official human rights commission has also dispatched two investigators to look into the matter.

The Las Palmas operation is another instance of how Mexican military personnel are increasingly  delegated  the task of  enforcing  civilian laws. Besides enforcing anti-organized crime and immigration laws, soldiers and marines are involved in campaigns against illegal tree harvesting and in patrols to protect commerical cruise ship passengers.

Sources: La Jornada, April 9, 2008. Article by Jesús Aranda and Hiram Moreno. El Universal, April 7, 2008. Article by Maria de la Luz Gonzalez.

National Protest Grows over Assassination of Chihuahua Farm Leader

The assassination of Chihuahua rural protest leader Armando Villareal Martha last March 14 outside his home in Nuevo Casas Grandes is now a national issue. On Tuesday, March 25, the Mexican Senate passed a resolution that demands the government of President Felipe Calderon quickly get to the bottom of Villareal´s murder. The resolution was brought before the high chamber of Mexico’s Congress by
 Senator Heladio Ramirez, a former governor of Oaxaca who represents the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The next day, March 26, hundreds of members of the National Committee for the Improvement of Agriculture, an organization with which Villareal was once affiliated,
blocked highways and held protests in two different regions of Mexico to repudiate
the Nuevo Casas Grandes murder.  Employing tractors, farmers staged actions in Irapuato, Guanajuato, as well along the Leon-Silao and Mexico-Nuevo Laredo highways. Led by Gustavo Guerrero Velazquez, a former elected official from the National Action Party (PAN), farmers who took over the Leon-Silao highway in the state of Guanajuato passed out pamphlets to motorists.

In Villareal’s home state of Chihuahua, several agricultural organizations are planning a mass protest for Monday, March 31, in Chihuahua City. Supported by El Barzon, the National Campesino Confederation, National Agrodynamic and the Democratic Campesino Front, organizers of the action said they will form a human chain between the state and federal justice departments located in the Chihuahua state capital.

The broad range of organizations speaking out on the Villareal murder reflects the slain activist’s long history in a variety of causes and political movements. Thousands of enraged farmers and others attended his funeral. At one time or another, Villareal had been involved with the PRI, PRD and Convergencia parties. Best known for leading militant protests against National Electricity Commission (CFE) rates charged to well-using farmers, Villareal was also involved in protests against the extraction of groundwater near the New Mexico border and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

At the time of his death, the Chihuahua activist and former self-proclaimed political prisoner, was targeting the national Pemex oil company to protest the dismantlement of petrochemical operations and the high cost of fertilizers. According to PRD Senator Yeidckol Polevnsky,  not long before his death Villareal denounced that Pemex  had purchased worthless equipment valued at more than $55 million. Mexico´s national oil giant is currently at the center of a growing national political storm concerning its future as a state-owned entity.

Meanwhile, conflicts between the CFE and an estimated 2,200 Chihuahua farmers participating in a payment strike are still unresolved. On March 26, Mexican federal law enforcement officials detained four farmers from the Aldama ejido near Chihuahua City on charges of  illegally using electricity and preventing CFE workers from cutting off the power supply to wells.

In response, about 200 farmers blockaded CFE offices in Chihuahua City March 27 to demand the release of the four men. Prior to the action, Aldama ejido leader Luis Carlos Nieto said he and other farmers also had outstanding federal arrest warrants. “We can’t live with this terror,” Nieto said. “We don’t know if they are going to arrest us or kill us.” After a three-hour blockade, Nieto said his group and CFE officials reached a preliminary agreement to release the four farmers, suspend power cut-offs  and form a new negotiating committee involving Chihuahua state legislators. Farmers, however, would remain active until their grievances are satisfied and Villareal’s murder is clarified, Nieto added.   

Sources: El Heraldo de Chihuahua, March 26, 27 and 28, 2008. Articles by Dora Villalobos Mendoza, Ever Haro Guillen and news services. La Jornada, March 15, 26, 27, 28, 2008. Articles by Miroslava Breach Velducea, Andrea Becerril and Ruben Villalpando. 

Femicide Resurfaces in Chihuahua City

Once again, the spectre of femicide is haunting Chihuahua City. The  murder of high school student Paulina Elizabeth Lujan Morales sparked outbreaks of “collective psychosis” and triggered youth protests this month. On Monday, March 17, hundreds of high school students marched through downtown Chihuahua City carrying placards and chanting the familiar slogan “Not One More.” Halting at city government offices, the young people were nevertheless greeted with silence since officials were away on vacation.

A 16-year-old student at Chihuahua City’s Cobach 2 school, Paulina Lujan was last seen leaving classes early on the evening of Monday, March 10. Her sexually assaulted and severely beaten body was discovered on Thursday, March 13 off the highway that leads from the Chihuahua state capital to the nearby town of Aldama. The young woman’s shoes were located in a nearby arroyo.

Lujan’s body was discovered in the same area where the corpses of other femicide victims were found in the past, including 16-year-old ECCO computer school student Paloma Angelica Escobar, who disappeared in 2002 under similar circumstances as Lujan did and  almost six years to the day of the latest victim’s murder.  The Chihuahua-Aldama highway zone is near the headquarters of the Chihuahua state police.

The Lujan slaying  bore resemblances to other women’s killings that struck Chihuahua City between 1999-2003. Besides having the same physical, age and occupational profile of other victims, Paulina Lujan was described as a tranquil, reserved young person by her mother, “(Paulina) was a model student who didn’t have behavior problems,” Patricia Morales Rodríguez. said. 

“Let there be no doubt, we will get the murderers of Paulina,” vowed Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza, adding that authorities would not fabricate scapegoats in the murder case.

According to PGJE spokesman Rene Medrano, 18 persons have rendered declarations in connection with the Lujan crime. A young man who’s been mentioned as a posible suspect, Alexis Garcia, complained that presumed friends and family members of Lujan  have unfairly harassed him.  Garcia said he had “nothing to do with the crime.” Early press accounts of the Lujan murder mention the possibility that the victim could have met her killer via an Internet blog and e-mail.

Paulina Lujan was the fourth women murdered in Chihuahua City since last November. The other victims have been identified as Angelica Lopez Cruz, Claudia Janeth Llana Moreno and Irene Pena Monje. Lujan’s disappearance occurred two days after Internacional Women’s Day, an anniversary which was marked in the borderlands this year by a protest rally in Ciudad Juarez staged by relatives of femicide victims from the border city  and Chihuahua City.  Only days earlier, victims’ relatives were met with a police response in the Chihuahua State Legislature  during an unsuccessful attempt to convince state lawmakers to renew a special commission dedicated to investigating the women’s murders.

Additionally, the Lujan crime occurred within a broader context of escalating violence in the region involving organized crime gangs and Mexican security forces. Two days prior to Lujan’s disappearance,  Mexican soldiers and suspected members of the Sinaloa drug cartel engaged in a bloody Chihuahua City shootout  that left one army officer and six gunmen dead.

Youths, meanwhile, demanded greater security for Chihuahua City’s  schools.  Students said they were concerned about loud strangers hanging around Paulina Lujan’s  school at dismissal time.

Sources: El Heraldo de Chihuahua, March 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 2008. Articles by Jorge Armendáriz, Ever Haro Guillen, Octavio Marquez, E. Fernandez, Ernesto Topete,  Jose Hernandez Berrios, David Pinon Balderrama, and Manuel Ruiz. La Jornada, March 15, 2008. Article by Miroslava Breach B. Lapolaka.com, March 13, 2008. Cimacnoticias.com, March 6, 2008. Article by Dora Villalobos Mendoza.

The “Silent” Side of Mexico’s Narco War  

The unearthing of at least 48 murder victims from three properties in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua City during recent weeks, grimly refocused attention on the persistence of torture and forced disappearance in Mexico. Since many-if not most-of the victims were presumably associated with illegal drug trafficking and other criminal activities, the popular wisdom is that common citizens who keep their noses out of trouble shouldn’t be overly concerned by the discovery of mass horrors like the latest narco graves.

But victims’ relatives have another message for society: human rights are universal. Contending that authorities are ignoring their pleas for justice, relatives and friends of victims of forced disappearance are increasingly taking their plight to the media and to the public. In the Baja California state capital of Mexicali, members of the Esperanza Association Against the Forced Disappearance of Persons set up a protest encampment earlier this month outside state government offices. Members of the organization charged that 300 cases of disappeared people in five municipalities of Baja California remain unsolved.

In the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo, meanwhile, the Committee of Friends and Relatives of Murdered, Disappeared and Kidnapped Persons, contended that Guerrero Governor Zeferino Torreblanca and State Attorney General Eduardo Murueta have closed their doors to family members of missing persons presumably kidnapped by organized criminal elements.

“Not a single state official has faced down the violence that this place is going through,” charged Filiberto Ceron  Radilla , father of disappeared architect Jorge Gabriel Ceron Silva. “It is as if they want to oblige the citizenry to accept a reality that we are not ready to tolerate.” There was no immediate comment from either Governor Torreblanca or State Attorney General Murueta.

The Guerrero relatives’ committee has documented the cases of 107 people who disappeared in the state from December 2006 to January 2008. Additionally, the group reported at least 20 similar disappearances in the first two months of this year. Although violence has diminished somewhat from last year and 2006, high-profile disappearances and murders suspected of being carried out by organized criminal gangs continue on a fairly regular basis. In one of the latest cases to hit the press, Edgar Calvillo Roux, the director of the Acapulco police department’s intelligence center, was reportedly kidnapped by armed men on March 5. Until now, no information about Calvillo’s fate has come to light. 

Condemned by all human rights organizations, forced disappearance constitutes the silent side of Mexico’s narco war. Much more visible, of course, are the inner city shoot-outs, streetside body dumpings and public executions that have jarred entire regions of the country.  In Ciudad Juarez, for example, 9 people were reported slain gangland style on Monday, March 17, including one man who was shot to death inside the popular Willy’s dance club in the city’s Pronaf district. Since the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office on December 1, 2006 more than 3,000 people have been murdered in gangland fashion. As of March 14 of this year, the victims included 2,811 men and 197 women. Added together with similar statistics from 2006, more than 5,000 people have been killed in narco-tainted violence in the last two years. The body count is significantly higher than the total number of US soldiers killed during the first five years of the Iraq war.

Sources: El Diario de Juarez, March 18, 2008. Article by Martin Orquiz. Norte, March 18, 2008. Article by Arturo Chacon. Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2008.
Article by Marla Dickerson and Richard Marosi. La Jornada de Guerrero, March 15, 2008. Article by Marlen Castro.  La Jornada, March 10, 2008. Article by
Antonio Heras. El Sur, March 1, 8, 15, 16, 2008. Articles by Ezequiel Flores Contreras, Aurora Harrison, editorial staff and the Agencia Reforma news service. 

Activists Take Aim at Merida Initiative, Trade Pacts

Promising $1.4 billion in new funding to fight the drug war over the next three years, the Bush White House's Merida Initiative is a strategic cornerstone of the outgoing administration's envisioned future relationship with Mexico and Central America. Thomas Shannon, US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, has called the assistance package a "new paradigm" of regional security cooperation.

Still awaiting approval by the US Congress, the Merida Initiative, which some  compare with Plan Colombia, would significantly increase assistance to the Mexican military, aid Mexico with high-tech communications and surveillance equipment and increase the training of Mexican security forces. According to US State Department anti-narcotics official David Johnson, Washington trained 4,627 Mexican police in 2007 and plans to train an additional 5,800 in 2008.
 
The Merida Initiative is expected to be a major topic of discussion when US Department of Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff and Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Maurino meet in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, later this week.

Politically, the Merida Initiative is under consideration at a time when the Mexican army, the principal force in President Felipe Calderon's offensive against organized crime, is coming under renewed fire for alleged human rights abuses. Two incidents reported in northern Tamaulipas state this month exemplify the mounting controversy. 

In the first case, hundreds of residents of the border city of Reynosa held a protest earlier this month against the shooting death of Sergio Meza by Mexican soldiers in Matamoros.  Meza and his brother-in-law, US citizen and Reynosa resident Jose Antonio Barbosa, reportedly attempted to evade a Mexican army patrol because they had been drinking and using illegal drugs. The National Human Rights Commission opened an investigation of the shooting.

In the second incident, Guadalupe Barbosa Cruz, a Roman Catholic priest from San Fernando, Tamaulipas, was allegedly beaten along with three associates by soldiers at an army checkpoint. Matamoros Bishop Faustino Armendariz Jimenez charged that the priest and his companions were also robbed of their personal possessions.

According to the Matamoros Diocese, the beatings went on "for a long time" until soldiers realized that one of the men in their custody was a priest. The incident drew a condemnation from the Mexican Episcopal Conference: "The fight against organized crime does not justify crimes against innocent citizens by those who should be looking out for their safety."

In the United States, meanwhile, labor and human rights activists demand that the Bush Administration's proposed security aid program for Mexico and Central America be rejected outright or at least have stringent rights guarantees placed on it.

Helping galvanize the opposition is the still-unpunished murder of US journalist Brad Will in Oaxaca during the 2006 uprising against the state government of Ulises Ruiz. Although Mexican police were clearly identified in photos and by witnesses as the shooters who killed Will, none of the perpetrators has been arrested for the crime. Twice since last fall, the activist group Friends of Brad Will has disrupted US congressional hearings on the Merida Initiative.

Although some of Will's supporters were removed from the sessions by police, the group took credit for broadening the security debate to encompass human rights issues. On Friday, February 23, Friends of Brad Will helped organize a forum and cultural event on the Merida Initiative at the City University of New York. Last week, the group also relayed its concerns to New York Senator Charles Schumer.  
 
Another big issue spurring opposition to the Merida Initiative is the Mexican government's breaking of a strike over safety conditions at the Cananea copper mine near the Arizona border last month. Armed with an order from the country's Labor Ministry that declared the strike illegal, Mexican federal police-reportedly aided by soldiers-forcibly removed strikers from the Grupo Mexico-owned mine. However, the Mexican Union of Mine, Metal and Allied Workers, which is led by the exiled Napoleon Gomez, quickly won a legal victory when a court ruled the strike was indeed legal. 

An important ally of the Mexican miners, the United Steelworkers (USW) of the United States and Canada, demanded this month that the Merida Initiative be suspended until US congressional hearings are held on the Cananea strike. In mid-February, a group of USW and Mexican union leaders met with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Hispanic Caucus on Capitol Hill.

"Mexico cannot be permitted to violate the rights of workers with impunity under the pretext of securing the borders and combating drug trafficking," said USW President Leo Gerard.

On their Washington visit, Mexican labor activists also protested the cancelled recovery of the bodies of 63 miners killed in the 2006 Pasta de Conchos explosion, and the shooting deaths of two workers by police at  Lazaro Cardenas steel works in Michoacan also in 2006. 

"We want to make sure that in the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States, where issues such as the Merida Initiative are on the table,   money won't be used against the people of Mexico and the workers, like what happened at Lazaro Cardenas," said Jose Luis Hernandez, a leader Gomez's union from Coahuila state.

The USW's demands surrounding the Merida Initiative should be viewed as part of a bigger challenge that the union is launching against other existing or proposed international agreements. For instance, the USW is lobbying the US Congress to reject the proposed US-Colombia free trade agreement due to massive labor and human rights violations allegedly committed by the Colombian government. According to the USW, 2,283 labor leaders have been killed in Colombia since 1991; more than four hundred of the murders have occurred during the six-year-old administration of current President Alvaro Uribe.

In a recent statement, the USW criticized the Uribe government`s Peace and Justice Law for opening the legal door to light prison sentences for paramilitary gunmen convicted of killing trade unionists. "In the meantime, death threats against trade unionists in Colombia persist, with more than 200 occurring last year," the union said.

The USW formed part of a delegation of international trade unionists from North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland that traveled to Colombia to meet with Colombian union and political leaders this month. Claiming 850,000 members in the US and Canada, the USW is certain to have an influential voice during a US election year, especially one in which Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are stating that trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), deserve a second look.

Not all the activists' fire is directed at governments in the south. Some US-based immigrant rights activists, for example, are urging the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon to forego signing any new security, anti-drug or economic development agreements with Washington until the United States implements an immigration reform that benefits undocumented workers and their families.

On his US tour this month, President Calderon was read a letter from activist Flor Crisostomo that proposed conditioning Mexico-US cooperation on a satisfactory resolution of the immigration question. Taking the torch from Elvira Arellano, Crisostomo, an undocumented immigrant, is defying deportation from the sanctuary of a Methodist church in Chicago, Illinois. In her letter, Crisostomo also urged Calderon to revisit NAFTA. 

"We call on the Mexican government to renegotiate NAFTA, because for 14 years it has been the principal propeller of migration and the separation of families in Mexico," Crisostomo wrote the Mexican president. "And we are seen and treated like criminals in this country," she added. 

Taken together, the emerging waves of activism that link trade and security agreements to outstanding immigration, labor and human rights issues are not all that surprising in view of the parameters which were laid down for NAFTA and other bilateral agreements between Mexico and the US. In the run-up to NAFTA more than 15 years ago, labor and human rights advocates unsuccessfully appealed for the inclusion of strong human rights and immigration provisions in the trade pact. But unlike the European Union's trade regime, which includes democratic, human rights and immigration guarantees, broader social concerns were largely excluded from the deal hatched by NAFTA's negotiators.

Sources: Enlineadirecta.info, February 19, 2008. Article by Hugo Reyna. Proceso/Apro, February 16, 2008. Article by Jose Gil Olmos. Cimacnoticias.com, February 13, 2008. La Jornada, November 15, 2007; February 14, 19 and 21, 2008. Articles by David Brooks, Jose Antonio Roman and editorial staff. United Steelworkers, February 11, 2008. Press statement. Friendsofbradwill.org

Cotton Field Murder Prosecution Falters as Violence Escalates  

In a sharp blow to the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General (PGJE), state Judge Catalina Ochoa Contreras declared innocent on February 6 a suspect charged with killing one of the eight women found murdered in a Ciudad Juarez cotton field in 2001. The defense of Edgar Alvarez Cruz had long contended that the charges against the young man were based on lies, pressured statements and questionable or non-existent evidence.

Alvarez’s defense also presented proof that their client was in the United States at the time of many of the disappearances and slayings of the victims found in the cotton field. Another inconsistency was the single murder charge against Alvarez, who was formally accused of killing 17-year-old Mayra Juliana Reyes Solis, but not tried for the murders of the other victims who were discovered on the same site and at the same time as Reyes.

The PGJE appealed Judge Ochoa’s verdict, but made no immediate public comment on the ruling.  

"The exoneration of the innocent man adds to the list of scapegoats detained by the state prosecutor as serial killers and then freed for lack of proof to incriminate them," editorialized Ciudad Juarez's Lapolaka news site. Upon hearing news of the sentence, Alvarez thanked the court for absolving him of the Reyes slaying but added, “it should’ve been done within the first 72 hours.” 

Alvarez still faces charges in the 1998 killing of teenager Silvia Garbiela Laguna Cruz, a murder he also vehemently denies committing.

If Alvarez’s legal victory is upheld, it would mark the third time Chihuahua state and federal cases against suspected cotton field killers have wound up in tatters. Previous investigations unraveled amid revelations of tortured suspects, extracted confessions, wild stories, mismatched bodies and other irregularities.

Although questions swirled around Alvarez’s August 2006 detention from the very beginning, Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez and representatives her office repeatedly told the press that additional evidence against Alvarez and two other accused men would be forthcoming. In the end, however, none materialized.

What distinguished the Alvarez affair against the prior cotton field cases was the key role played by the United States. Alvarez was living as an undocumented worker in Denver, Colorado, when he was arrested based on a confession made by Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz to the Texas Rangers. Held on an unrelated charge, Granados tied Alvarez to the cotton field killings. Later revelations seriously questioned Granados' credibility as a witness, painting instead a picture of a disturbed, drug-abusing individual who was prone to delusions.

Despite the flimsiness of the Alvarez case, as well as the previous use of torture in the cotton field investigations, the US government quickly deported Alvarez to Mexico to face trial. He has sat in jail ever since.  At the time of Alvarez's arrest, US Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza hailed a major breakthrough in solving the Ciudad Juarez femicides.

While the US-Mexico investigation of the cotton field killings verges on collapse, three of the victims' mothers are taking their quest for justice to an international legal body. Last December, the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights notified lawyers for the women that it has accepted their case for review.

The cases were originally pursued in the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)  by the mothers of victims Esmeralda Herrera Monreal,  Laura Berenice Ramos Monarrez and Claudia Ivete Gonzalez.  Transfer of the case to the Inter-American Court means that the Mexican government did not follow the IACHR’s  recommendations it earlier issued to ensure justice for victims' relatives. In a separate report late last month, Mexico’s official National Human Rights Commission criticized all three levels of the Mexican government for not following its own justice recommendations related to the Ciudad Juarez women’s murders.

Karla Michel Salas Ramirez, an attorney for the three mothers and a member of Mexico's National Association of Democratic Lawyers, said the Costa Rica case could set a legal precedent for other femicide cases. The Mothers' lawyers will argue that Mexico is in violation of the Belen Do Para Convention, an international agreement which obliges states to protect women from gender violence. The plaintiffs also seek sanctions against Chihuahua state government officials who were responsible for handling the cotton field investigation.  Unlike the advisory nature of the IACHR’S recommendations, rulings from the Costa Rica court are obligatory for member states.

On another international note, the Ciudad Juarez femicides drew a sharp comment from United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, who was on an official visit to Mexico this week.

"In Mexico, the issue of impunity is the greatest challenge that has to be confronted and overcome," Arbour said. "The case of the femicides, in which the justice system doesn't protect women, is worrisome."

In Ciudad Juarez, meanwhile, media outlets, business groups, human rights organizations and just plain ordinary citizens are all alarmed at the escalating homicide rates for both men and women since the beginning of the year. Nine women and girls have been killed for different reasons since January 1. Also last month, a woman's skeleton was recovered from an area frequently used as a dumping ground for both male and female murder victims.

Additionally, a 15-year-old high school student, Adriana Enriquez Sarmiento, was reported missing from downtown Ciudad Juarez on January 18. The young girl had attended the private Ignacio Allende Preparatory, the same institution three previous femicide victims, including Laura Berenice Ramos, had also attended,

In a blog entry this week, El Paso author and longtime femicide researcher
Diana Washington Valdez reported that a female Allende Prep student was accosted outside the school January 31 by a man who exposed himself to the girl. According to the journalist, an intervention by prominent Ciudad Juarez labor rights activist Cipriana Jurado, who just happened to be in the vicinity of the school at the time of the incident,  prompted the man to run away before police could detain him.

Sources: Lapolaka.com, February 6 and 7, 2008. El Diario de Juarez,
February 7, 2008. Article by Gabriela Minjares. Norte, January 30 and February 7, 2008. Articles by Nohemi Barraza and Antonio Rebolledo. La Jornada, January 30, 2008 and February 6, 2008. Articles by Victor Ballinas and Ruben Villalpando. Cimacnoticias.com, December 26, 2007 and January 24, 2008. Articles by Sara Lovera Lopez and Lourdes Godinez Leal.  Proceso/Apro, January 29, 2008. Article by Jose Gil Olmos. Dianawashingtonvaldez.blogspot.com/

Suspect in Cross-Border Femicide Indicted

A 37-year-old El Paso man has been indicted in a December 2007 murder case that spans the US-Mexico border. According to a January 28 criminal complaint filed by the Otero County District Attorney's Office in New Mexico District Court,  Guillermo Ruiz killed 20-year-old Anabel Calzada Alvarado on Mescalero Apache tribal land in New Mexico last December 17 or 18,  drove the victims' body across southern New Mexico to El Paso and then headed to Ciudad Juarez. Calzada’s two-year-old son allegedly was in the back seat of Ruiz’s vehicle during the murder flight.

Once in Mexico, Ruiz went to a familiar area near the state prison on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, where he dumped Calzada's body on a vacant lot and then set it afire, according to case documents. Tipped by residents, Mexican authorities discovered the smoldering body early on the morning of December 19 at the intersections of Francisco Villa and Sergio Dominguez streets in the January 6 neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez.
At some point, Ruiz abandoned Calzada’s son to the cold of the night.

"Crimes have in fact been committed in Mexico, Texas, New Mexico and the Mescalero Indian reservation," said Otero County District Attorney Scot Key in an interview with Frontera NorteSur. "Any crimes that occurred in Mexico pale in comparison to the murder and the kidnapping of the child."

Because of the international nature of the Calzada crime, the New Mexico State Police, FBI, Ruidoso Police Department, Chihuahua State Attorney General's Office and El Paso Police Department were involved in different aspects of the investigation.

The Calzada slaying reportedly happened in the vicinity of the Mescalero Apaches' popular gaming resort that draws many customers from El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in addition to southern New Mexico.

Key said Ruiz has been indicted in New Mexico on an open charge of murder as well as on additional counts of false imprisonment, child abuse and evidence tampering. The murder suspect could face a capital murder trial, Key added. A one-million dollar bond, without the right to a 10 percent payment, has been established for Ruiz.

The suspect is currently jailed in El Paso on an evidence tampering charge. Ruiz was arrested by El Paso police just days after Calzada’s murder for making a phony car-jacking report and burning his vehicle in an alleged attempt to get rid of incriminating evidence.

Key said his office is now negotiating with El Paso officials to move Ruiz to New Mexico for prosecution. No court date for Ruiz has been set, the Otero County prosecutor said.

Coming only one week before Christmas, the timing and brutality of the Calzada killing drew both widespread public attention and condemnation. Calzada’s son, two-year-old Bryan Alexis, was found by a woman who saw him wandering alone in downtown Ciudad Juarez early on the freezing morning of December 19. She turned the child over to members of the city's fire department. Key confirmed the two-year-old is now safely in the care of other family members.  

Ruiz confessed to the Calzada homicide to the El Paso Police Department detectives and Mexican officials after he was detained last month for making the false car-jacking report and trying to destroy his vehicle. Informed that he would be deported to Mexico for murder, Ruiz quickly told investigators that he had killed Calzada in New Mexico

In a case affidavit, Carl Christiansen, an investigator for the New Mexico State Police and FBI, recounted Ruiz's story how the suspect killed Calzada in the US and got rid of her body in Mexico. According to the affidavit, Ruiz, first became acquainted with Calzada, a resident of Ruidoso, shortly before the murder. He later met up with the woman and her son at the Casino Apache Travel Center outside Ruidoso. Ruiz ended up stabbing the woman the woman to death after he became angered over a rejection of his sexual advances. Supposedly, Calzada's son stayed asleep in the back seat of Ruiz’s jeep as a struggle ensued between the suspect and the young New Mexican.

According to Christiansen, Ruiz drove the victim's body to his mother's home in El Paso, parked the jeep in the drive-way, with the boy and his dead mother inside the vehicle, and then attempted to clean up any blood that might be on his body. In Christiansen’s account, the accused killer said he drove across the border to discard Calzada's body so blame "don't come back to me."

On multiple occasions during the last 15 years, the burned bodies of other murdered women have been discovered in Ciudad Juarez. Calzada's physical profile was similar to many previous victims, and the initial Mexican press reports of her murder identified the victim as a teenager.

In his affidavit, Christiansen stated that he later encountered physical evidence at the crime scene described by Ruiz. New Mexico law enforcement authorities now have a video-tape that shows Ruiz's vehicle in and around the Casino Apache Travel Center "on the dates and times concerned with the crime.” Calzada's Mexican voter identification card was recovered by police investigators from the spot where the knifing allegedly occurred.  The weapon used to kill Calzada  was later allegedly tossed along railroad tracks in Ciudad Juarez.   

"We've settled the murder scene. There was evidence at the murder scene consistent with what the defendant told us" Key said. "Had we not found the murder scene, (the investigation) would've been complicated."

A former resident of Ciudad Juarez,  Calzada moved to Ruidoso two years ago. At Calzada's funeral in Ciudad Juarez last month, relatives described the high school graduate as a peaceful, serious young woman who only wanted the best for her son and to get ahead in life.

Additional sources:  El Paso Times, December 24 and 26, 2007. Articles by Louie Gilot. El Diario de Juarez, December 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 2007. Articles by Armando Rodriguez and Gabriela Minjares, Nancy Gonzalez, J. Saucedo, and editorial staff.  Lapolaka.com, December 19 and 24, 2007. Cimacnoticias.com, December 21, 2007. Article by Jonathan Padilla.

Still No Justice for a Tijuana School Girl

Two years have passed since 15-year-old Sara Benazir Chavolla Ruiz met a horrible fate. Tossed bound from a moving vehicle in front of a property associated with former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, Benazir was then run over by a taxi driver who claimed he could not stop in time to prevent an accident. The high school student lingered in a coma for six days until she succumbed from her injuries on December 13, 2005. On the second anniversary of the young girl's death, family members planned a quiet mass in her honor.

In the two years since Benazir's passing, her case has become another symbol of the gender violence, legal injustices and impunity that characterize the times. The prime suspect in the crime, 22-year-old Fernando Emmanuel Valencia Perez, was briefly detained by police, but was just as quickly released.  DNA tests of hair fibers found in Valencia's vehicle identified the samples as belonging to Benazir.
 
However, another key piece of evidence, Benazir's body, literally went up in smoke. Initially assured by then-Assistant State Attorney General Maria Teresa Valadez that the case was "resolved," Benazir's parents quickly cremated their daughter's body.

"It was on that day that the irregularities began," recalled Benazir's mother,
Sara Elena Ruiz Meza. "The authorities argued there was not enough sufficient evidence, and from then on began the intimidations, jokes and the lack of justice."  According to Benazir’s parents, an arrest warrant for Valencia is gathering dust. A second suspect who allegedly was with Valencia when Benazir was thrown from the vehicle, Carlos Jesus Soto Ocio, has not faced the legal music either. Valencia is a nephew of Adrian Humberto Murillo Gonzalez, a member of Baja California's judiciary, and his wife, Claudia Valencia, an advisor to the director of a state land title commission.

Benazir's parents haven't let the violent death of their beloved daughter become another cold, forgotten statistic. The victim's mother waged a hunger strike for justice, and the family filed a complaint with the Baja California State Attorney General for Human Rights. The official state agency issued recommendation 8/2006 to the administration of former Governor Elorduy Walther which, among other measures, urged the conduct of prosecutors in the case be investigated; the recommendation was rejected. In Mexico City, Benazir's parents found the doors of the National Human Rights Commission closed. With the assistance of Baja California and national human rights organizations, the couple began preparing a complaint to the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Benazir's parents and their supporters suspect state authorities of falling prey to "influence peddling," and they accuse law enforcement officials of smearing the teenager's reputation as a promiscuous substance abuser.

"We believe there was an agreement made at the highest level," said Benazir's father, Jose Manuel Chavolla Flores. "The authorities never had the will to clarify the case, and the only thing we seek is justice. We want the guilt or innocence of (Valencia) demonstrated. That's all we ask."

In Tijuana, a cross marks the spot where Benzair landed on the pavement. Her family has acquired a crypt in the new Tijuana cathedral where the deceased adolescent's ashes that were carried during numerous public protests by her mother will be deposited. And Benazir's mother won't let up in her quest for justice.

"The last time I saw the (former) state attorney general, Antonio Martinez Luna- thank God he's gone- was October 17 at a lawyers' dinner," Ruiz  said. "I went to hold him accountable, and when he saw me it seemed like he saw the devil." Ruiz is cautiously optimistic the new Baja California state administration will take some action. A new assistant state attorney general for Tijuana, Salvador Juan Ortiz Morales, was appointed this week. "I now believe they will remove some of the people who were blocking the investigations-at least some of them," she said. 

Sources: Frontera, December 5 and 12, 2007. Articles by Manuel Villegas and Fausto Ovalle. La Jornada, November 17, 2007. Article by Agustin Salgado. Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. August 29, 2007. Press bulletin. Zeta, July 19, 2007. Article by Tania Navarro Camacho.

Mexico-Japan Sex Trade Exposed

Mexican federal officials are beginning to look at the export of "sex slaves" to Japan. Reports from the International Organization for Migration, the Organization of American States (OAS) and other agencies indicate that at least three thousand Mexican women could be in Japan working involuntarily in the sex industry. In a recent interview with the Mexican press, Susana Chiarotti, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights, said the victims are deceived by employment ads in Mexico, kidnapped by human traffickers and then sold to the Yauzka, the Japanese mafia.

"They are lured with glamorous-sounding employment offers connected to the entertainment industry, to work in a bar or in an artistic production," Chiarotti said. "(Women) are promised very high salaries and never told what is really going on: their passports are taken from them and they pass hours and hours enclosed in a room where they have sex with dozens of persons." 

Ads promising grants for study abroad or work in the entertainment industry in Japan or Australia are commonly posted on the streets of Mexico City, especially in the youth-popular Condesa and Zona Rosa districts. Chiarotti charged that the human trafficking network could not flourish without the connivance of some officials in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

"We didn't realize it, but (Japan) is especially demanding Latin women, particularly Mexicans," said Sadot Sanchez Carreno, coordinator for the National Human Rights Commission's human trafficking program. According to Sanchez, his agency has signed an agreement with the United Nations to document the intercontinental sex trade, while the Federal Public Security Ministry has opened a legal investigation.

The Japanese government, meanwhile, is turning a blind eye to the international sex trade that's centered on its shores, contended two Japanese researchers. "Japanese authorities refuse to recognize the greater part of trafficking cases, because the victims don't report this crime to the police or because if they do they risk being processed as illegal foreigners and deported," said Kanane Tsutsumu of the Women's University of Kysuhu and Sumiko Honda of Fukuoka's Asian Feminine Center. 

In a report on human trafficking in Latin America, the OAS noted that the Japanese government grants 120,000 entertainment visas every year, especially to women. An estimated 1,700 women from Mexico and other Latin American countries are kidnapped annually for the Japanese sex industry, according to figures compiled by the OAS and other international organizations. 

Source: Milenio.com (Monterrery), November 18, 2007. Article by Alberto Najar.

OAS to Probe US Immigrant Detentions

Investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States will examine conditions in detention facilities for immigrants held in the United States. The news was announced by IACHR President Florentin Melendez following testimony by both immigrant rights advocates and representatives of the US government in Washington last week. At a hearing held by the IACHR, immigrant advocates and their legal representatives accused the US government of   violating the human rights of immigrant detainees.
 
Representatives of the Women's Commission for Refugees and Children and the Rights Working Group charged that substandard medical care, physical and psychological mistreatment and even sexual abuses were part of an overall set of bad conditions faced by immigrant detainees. According to the immigrant advocates, lack of access to lawyers is another common problem. Forced to don prison garb, immigrant detainees are being treated like common criminals, the advocates charged.  Representing the Women's Commission, attorney Christopher Nugent accused the US government of traumatizing detained immigrant children. Nugent said that 80,000 Mexican children are arrested and deported to Mexico every year.

Countering that immigrant detainees "receive the best human treatment possible," Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Gary Mead insisted that Washington seeks to resolve individual cases of detainees as rapidly as possibly. Mead acknowledged that 66 people have died while in the hands of ICE during the last four years, but added that the number of deaths is still low since "more than one million people have passed through our custody on this period." Mead said that Washington spends $100 million annually on medical and dental treatment for detained immigrants. 

Unconvinced by the testimony presented by either side, IACHR President Melendez and his fellow commission members decided that more information, including a first-hand look at US detention facilities, was necessary in order to assess the human rights complaints filed by immigrant advocates. Melendez said that the U.S. Department of State has agreed to allow the IACHR personnel access to immigrant detention centers in this country.  The official human rights arm of the Organization of American States, the IACHR issues reports, orders protective measures and makes recommendations to member governments.

Source: Cimacnoticias.com, October 16, 2007. Article by Leticia Puente Bersford.

Femicide Cases Unravel

Legal charges in the murder cases of several women and young girls in Ciudad Juarez began falling apart in recent days. Even as Mexican authorities stepped up a campaign to convince international public opinion that the justice tide was turning in favor of female victims of gender violence, multiple defendants walked free or were not charged with crimes.

In a major setback to the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General (PGJE), a state judge dismissed a murder charge against Alejandro Delgado Valles, or "El Cala," who was accused in the 1998 killing of teenager Silvia Gabriela Laguna Cruz. In response, Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez said that her office would retain the option of reviving the case against Delgado. The young man's lawyer, Abraham Hinojos Rubio, declared he would demand state restitution for alleged "moral damages" that the PGJE caused his client.

Officially implicated in another case in which the bodies of 8 murdered women were discovered in the same Ciudad Juarez cotton field in 2001, Delgado was presented by the PGJE as a "protected witness" against two men accused of the killings.

Publicly recanting earlier this year, Delgado charged that he had been pressured into making false statements by state policemen. Ciudad Juarez media, human rights activists and even former government officials have all criticized the latest cotton field case as lacking the same type of credibility that characterized two previous ones against suspects who were eventually cleared. Relatives of Edgar Alvarez Cruz, a suspect jailed in the cotton field case who insists on his innocence, are calling on Chihuahua's high court to review the charges.

In a separate development on October 3, new Chihuahua State Supreme Court President Rodolfo Acosta Munoz ordered two men freed from prison who were earlier convicted in the brutal 2005 sexual assault and murder of 7-year-old Airis Estrella Enriquez Pando, whose remains were found stuffed in a barrel at a pig farm on the edge of Ciudad Juarez.  Ruling on an appeal, Judge Acosta found there was insufficient evidence to connect Eustacio Aleman Zendejas and Juan Manuel Alvarado Saenz to Airis' murder. Two other men, including prime suspect Luis Garcia Villalbazo, are serving long prison sentences for the crime. 

Airis' parents, Rubi Pando and Jose Cesar Enriquez, were outraged by the court's action. "We were hoping that (the suspects) would serve their sentences, because we were almost sure that they were the guilty ones,"
Pando said. Maintaining his innocence, Zendejas blamed his misfortune on the alleged lies of convicted co-defendant Garcia, who has also been connected to the sexual assaults of three other young girls. Surviving 3 prison riots which left 17 dead inmates, Zendejas added that he could seek restitution from the state for moral and psychological damages.
 
Two other recent cases also cast doubt on women's prospects for justice in Ciudad Juarez. In late September, state Judge Neza Zuniga decided that there wasn't enough evidence to charge Rafael Pineda Delgado with murder.  Pineda claimed that last month’s shooting death of his 20-year-old wife, Karla Ivonne Quiroz Bernal, was accidental.

"It happened when I was playing a joke on her," Pineda said. "I pointed at her the pistol which I had removed the bullets from for cleaning, but a projectile got stuck in the magazine and caused her death."  Quiroz left behind two young children.

Eyebrows were also raised in the city-even within the ranks of the PGJE- when a commander for the State Investigations Agency (AEI), the police department long responsible for investigating women's homicides, was ordered to undergo therapy instead of criminal prosecution for allegedly trying to strangle his girlfriend before attempting suicide. Jesus Eduardo Aleman Medina previously served in different posts in Palomas, Villa Ahumada and the Juarez Valley, but now reportedly is assigned to the AEI's special anti-kidnapping squad.

The legal developments in Ciudad Juarez came amid an October 4 visit by German parliamentarians to the border city. Sponsored by the Chihuahua state government, the objective of the tour was to show the German lawmakers the supposed progress authorities are making in prosecuting crimes against women.

Prior to leaving Mexico, German Deputy Jurgen Klimke, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, was quoted as saying he felt deceived by victims' mothers who charge authorities with fostering impunity. Klimke said that it was important to get to the truth about the Ciudad Juarez femicides because a measure had been introduced in the Bundestag to advise German companies not to invest in Mexico.

While Klimke was departing Mexico, the PGJE announced that it had tentatively identified the remains of a suspected female murder victim discovered last month in the desert outside Ciudad Juarez. Press accounts reported that the remains likely belong to Irma Isabel Vargas, a 16-year-old employee of a Tres Hermanos shoe store who vanished in downtown Ciudad Juarez in 2005. Like Vargas, several other femicide victims worked or shopped in downtown shoe stores. No suspects have been publicly named in the Vargas case.

“This was a terrible blow to the family, because we all hoped that she was going to be found alive,” said Vargas’ aunt, Leticia Moreno Gallegos.

Meanwhile, other relatives of Ciudad Juarez femicide victims and their supporters, spent Sunday, October 7, painting the familiar pink crosses on posts along the Camino Real highway that was recently opened on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez. 

“This activity keeps alive the memories of our daughters and is a message to our authorities that we continue seeking justice,” said Paula Flores, mother of 1998 murder victim Sagrario Gonzalez. 

Sources: Norte, October 6 and 8, 2007. Articles by Carlos Huerta, Jorge Chairez Daniel and Felix Gonzalez. Frontenet.com, October 4 and 6, 2007. El Universal, October 5, 2007. Article by Luis Carlos Cano. El Diario de Juarez, September 25 and 30, 2007; October 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 2007. Articles by Pedro Sanchez Briones, Armando Rodriguez and editorial staff. La Jornada, September 30, 2007. Article by Ruben Villalpando.     

Justice for Journalists?

In the eyes of Mexico's official National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), it's now up to Chihuahua Governor Jose Reyes Baeza to ensure that justice is delivered to a group of Ciudad Juarez journalists. Issuing Recommendation 33/2007, the CNDH urged that the executive branch of Chihuahua's state government probe the conduct of the Chihuahua Office of the Attorney General (PGJE) in relation to the beatings and robberies suffered by three Ciudad Juarez journalists last year. Allegedly, the aggressors included officers from the State Investigations Agency (AEI), which previously was known the Chihuahua State Judicial Police, as well as members of the Aztecas street gang.

In last year's incident, two reporters from the afternoon PM daily, Eugenia
Cicero Rivera and Aurelio Sanchez Nunez, and a photographer from the El Diario de Juarez newspaper, Jaime Murrieta Briones, were attacked while attempting to cover a loud drinking party on a public street that involved members of the AEI and the Aztecas.  Enraged at the reporters' presence, attackers shot up the journalists' two vehicles, beat up the victims and took away cameras. Manuel del Castillo Escalante, president of the Ciudad Juarez Journalists Association, later filed a complaint with the CNDH on behalf of the journalists.

Legal charges stemming from the assault have been brewing against AEI agents Jose Abelardo Torres Bernal and Jorge Manuel Villegas Esparza.  Civilians Ruben Antonio Martinez Olivares, Ricardo Barrios Simental and Carlos Alberto Hernandez Luna are accused of physical assault, robbery and possession of weapons reserved for exclusive use of the army.

The CNDH recommended to Governor Reyes Baeza that his government investigate the involvement of the AEI in the assaults, clarify the conduct of the district attorney's office for its alleged omissions and irregularities in the preliminary investigation and determine why the PGJE did not respond to information requests about the case made by the national human rights agency. Additionally, the CNDH recommended that the PGJE move forward with the legal case against the suspects.

There was no immediate comment from Governor Reyes Baeza about the CNDH’s
recommendation. Accompanied by a group of indigenous Tarahumara dancers, Governor Reyes Baeza was in New York City for a parade and meetings with potential investors this week. While in the Big Apple, Governor Reyes Baeza touted Chihuahua’s advantages in the mineral, maquiladora and emerging aerospace economic sectors.

Though the CNDH's recommendations are purely advisory, the commission’s investigations are widely viewed as enjoying a certain moral authority. Citing the gravity of the 2006 Ciudad Juarez incident, the CNDH declared that the freedom of expression,  personal security and legal rights of the three journalists were violated by members of the AEI.

In other news concerning Mexican journalists, a judge absolved four Coahuila journalists of weapons and drug charges after the federal attorney general’s office failed to prove the government’s case this week.  Arrested in Coahuila by Mexican soldiers and federal police last month, the reporters were initially held incommunicado and allegedly tortured.    
 

Sources: El Diario de Juarez, September 17 and 18, 2007. Lapolaka.com, September 18, 2007. Frontenet.com, September 18, 2007. La Jornada, September 19, 2007. Article by Leopoldo Ramos.

Youth Curfews, Opposition Spread 

In northern Mexico, local governments are turning to youth curfews as one answer to the public security crisis. First unveiled in Ciudad Juarez more than two months ago, youth curfews have since been enacted in cities in Sonora, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas states. While curfews are spreading, so is the opposition to the new laws.

"The government wants to use the curfew in Ciudad Juarez as a pilot plan to extend it elsewhere and, above all, to condition society to these sorts of authoritarian measures," contended Juan Carlos Martinez Prado, a spokesman for the pro-Zapatista Other Campaign in Ciudad Juarez.

Charging that the curfew discriminates against poor youth and violates the right of free transit as guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution, Martinez and other critics worry that curfews, together with random police searches of public schools for illegal drugs and student drug-testing programs, represent a step backwards from Mexico's quest for a more democratic, participatory society.

Hundreds of young people and adults attended an all-night gathering at the Benito Juarez Monument in Ciudad Juarez's downtown to protest the curfew earlier this month. Featuring rock bands and speakers, the event was sponsored by the Popular Independent Organization, Paso del Norte Human Rights Organization, Companeros Program, College of Sociologists and other groups.

Separately, outgoing Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector "Teto" Murguia announced that he was partially scaling back the curfew hour from 10 pm to 11 pm. Claiming that "90 percent" of Ciudad Juarez's population supports the curfew, Mayor Murguia announced the new policy after meeting with young skaters at an extreme sports park. “It’s good to have contact with the young people of Juarez,” he said.

The newest curfew regulations prohibit children 10 or younger from being outdoors without the accompaniment of an adult after 10 pm,  while unaccompanied young people aged 11-17 must be at home after 11 pm.  In neighboring El Paso, Texas, youths below 17 must remain off the streets between 11 pm and 6 am if they are not accompanied by adults. El Paso violators are ticketed by police.

Mayor Murguia's new policy was rolled out after the Chihuahua State Human Rights Commission, a purely advisory body, assumed what some view as a contradictory posture on the curfew question. Ruling on citizen complaints, the CEDH declared that the law was unconstitutional but that it could be improved.

Curfew opponents contend that the CEDH missed two key points. "The CEDH has a legalistic view of reality, but it doesn't analyze (the curfew) as an authoritarian policy that goes beyond the constitutional issue," said Martinez in an interview with Frontera NorteSur. "Certainly, it violates the fundamental rights of human beings to travel freely at any hour in this country. The Constitution guarantees this."

In response to the CEDH, the Ciudad Juarez municipal police department drew up with a 29-point protocol to guide officers who detain and release curfew violators. The enforcement policies require officers to not keep detained youths in police campers for more than 45 minutes, emphasize releasing youths to parents as soon as possible and prohibit mixing detainees with the opposite sex or with adult and juvenile prisoners held on criminal charges.

As controversy brewed in Ciudad Juarez, a youth curfew was ordered in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas in mid-August.  The measure is aimed at youths below 18 in 20 low-income neighborhoods considered particularly troublesome. Under the new ordinance, parents of curfew violators will be fined about $50.

"We are going to send to court as a suspect anyone we encounter on the streets or on the corners after ten in the evening and who can't justify his presence," vowed Juan Martin Reyna Garcia, operational director of the Matamoros public safety department. Reyna said that 10 pm was chosen as zero hour because "only those that have no job or purpose are out wandering around on the streets."

Both the official Tamaulipas State Human Rights Commission and the Tamaulipas Youth Institute immediately protested the curfew on constitutional and human rights grounds.

"We have to ask the authorities to do their work with a high degree of responsibility, because they should understand that it doesn't mean that a young person who is in the street after ten in the evening is a delinquent," said Omar Masso Quintana, youth institute coordinator. "People are leaving work and getting off public transport at this hour," Masso added. "They are good, productive people who have no reason to be detained by our police. Just the fact that someone is a young person doesn't mean that he is a delinquent."

In Ciudad Juarez, some residents complain that police patrolling low-income, working-class neighborhoods harass law-abiding youths but allow real troublemakers to operate unchecked. In neighborhoods like Colinas del Norte, the streets are alive with young people during the hot summer months. Children playing street soccer, talking with friends and running errands are everywhere as the sun sets down. Lacking air-conditioning, residents must crank up fans-and their utility bills-just to keep tolerably cool in the stifling heat.

Veronica Arzola, coordinator of the Aldea community organization in Colinas del Norte, told Frontera NorteSur that city patrols have recently targeted youths sitting in front of their homes or going to the store. A 12-year-old boy was picked up and kicked a couple times by unidentified officers before his mother intervened, Arzola charged. A 65-year-old neighbor, Josefina Moreno, contended that she is constantly harassed by name-calling, rock-throwing teenage gang members, so-called "cholos," who terrorize her neighborhood with impunity. Moreno is worried that flying missiles will soon cause real damage. "I'm afraid they'll hit the gas tank and blow me away," she lamented. Complaints to the authorities have gone unheeded, Moreno added. “Nobody pays attention to me,” she said.

Community activist Arzola cited another curfew-related concern that is widely shared by Ciudad Juarez's human rights and women's organizations: reports that members of the city's police force have been involved in the disappearances and killings of young girls and women. "We're afraid the (police) will pick girls up and they won't get to the police stations," Arzola said.

With new city governments scheduled to take office in both Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros in the coming months, it's unclear if the curfew laws in the two cities will survive the political transitions. The Ciudad Juarez curfew overcame a key legal hurdle this month when a federal judge refused to grant a protective order to the sons of a lawyer who had been detained while playing a baseball park after 10 pm. The teens' father, attorney Jose de Jesus Duron Gomez, said he will appeal the decision.

Meantime, the Other Campaign's Juan Carlos Martinez said his group will set up informational tables in Ciudad Juarez's low-income neighborhoods for the purpose of gathering documentation on alleged curfew enforcement abuses and educating the public about the constitutional, human rights and political issues connected to the controversy.

Additional Sources: El Paso Times, August 20, 2007. Article by Tammy Fonce-Olivas. El Universal, August 19, 2007. Article by Rocio Tapia. Lapolaka.com, August 15 and 16, 2007. El Diario de El Paso, August 17, 2007. Article by Araly Castanon. El Diario de Juarez, August 9, 13, 15, 19, 2007. La Jornada, August 15, 17, 18, 2007. Articles by Julia Antonieta Le Duc, Ruben Villalpando and Martin Sanchez Trevino. 

Journalists Face New Wave of Attacks

Despite the Mexican government's repeated commitment to respect freedom of expression, violence and other aggressions against journalists continue to mount. In fact, government officials are implicated in many recent attacks. For instance, four young reporters who were attempting to cover raids against street-level drug dealers in the city of Monclova, Coahuila, were detained, blindfolded, held incommunicado overnight and allegedly tortured by the Mexican army last week. 
 
The four arrested journalists were Manolo Acosta and Sinhue Samaniego of the Grupo Zocalo print and radio news company, Jesus Meza Gonzalez of La Voz de Monclova and Adalberto Rodriguez of the local Channel 4 television station.

"They were held out of view and beaten while the (soldiers) asked them if they were halcones (lookouts for the Gulf drug cartel)," charged Luis Humberto Rodriguez Saenz,  a lawyer for Acosta and Samaniego.
 
Genaro Maciel, a Coahuila agent for the Federal Office of the Attorney General (PGR), confirmed that the reporters had been arrested on charges of possessing weapons and drugs.  Family members and colleagues immediately challenged the accusations.  

"If they had really been carrying bags of guns and drugs in their vehicles, which were surely planted, they would not have been tailing the operation," said Channel 4 journalist Karina Borrego, wife of Manolo Acosta. "My husband is not a drug addict and he would never carry a weapon."

Borrego pointed to "revenge" as the motive behind the detentions of her husband and his fellow journalists. Borrego and Acosta covered the beatings of workers and the rapes of 14 sex workers by soldiers at clubs in the nearby red-light zone of Castanos last year.

Verdicts are expected next week in the cases of eight soldiers who are currently on trial for the attacks. Additionally, Jose Luis Soberanes, the president of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has announced that he will send a non-binding recommendation about the Castanos incident to the army next month.

Two days prior to the Castanos attacks, Coahuila journalist Rafael Ortiz disappeared. More than one year later, he remains missing.

Informed about the August 7 detentions of their colleagues in Monclova, dozens of journalists rapidly organized a protest the next day outside the local PGR office. Bishop Raul Vera of Saltillo joined other prominent voices in condemning the detentions. Finally, the four arrested journalists were released August 10 after each one posted about $1,000 in bail. Prior to their release, the men met with a representative of the CNDH, which could pursue a new case against the Mexican army. 

Contending that the state's case was riveted with holes, defense attorney Rodriguez said he expected the charges against his clients would be dismissed. The lawyer added that he might press torture charges against the soldiers involved in the detentions. 
 
The Monclova Four were not the only Coahuila journalists who experienced trouble with the government last week.  On August 6, five journalists were allegedly detained in the state capital of Saltillo by the same group of soldiers which arrested the Monclova reporters the next day.  On August 8, the day after the Monclova journalists were detained, reporter Brenda Rodriguez of La Prensa de Monclova was reportedly harassed by local police. 

As Frontera NorteSur was headed to print, neither the Mexican Defense Ministry (Sedena) nor the PGR, which regularly issues press bulletins about drug-related arrests, had officially commented about the Coahuila events. 

On August 1, the Sedena released a summary report of human rights training given to members of the military since 2000. Carried out in collaboration with the CNDH, the training has become an integral part of military programs, according to the statement. 
A special session covering the human rights of women was attended by 1,033 military personnel. All members of the army and air force have copies of documents pertaining to human rights, the press bulletin stated.

"By means of these types of actions, the Ministry of Defense strengthens and consolidates a culture of respect for human rights on the part of its members, in all and each one of the activities they realize inside and outside the military environment..," the statement noted.

In other developments, journalists in Oaxaca and Chihuahua were the targets of new violence and threats. Alfredo Fernandez Portilla, director of the Semanario newspaper was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant early on the morning of August 5 in the port city of Salina Cruz- just hours before the Oaxaca state election. Fernandez, who was accosted outside his home, was transported to a local hospital. The shooting coincided with the well-publicized visit of Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan to Mexico. Fernandez’s colleague, Edwin Meneses Santiago of the Noticias newspaper, has reportedly received threats.  An estimated forty journalists protested the attacks in a  demonstration held in Salina Cruz this past weekend.   

In Chihuahua, meanwhile, a state journalists' association has demanded that authorities protect reporter Cecilia Granados Montes of the El Sol newspaper. Granados filed criminal charges against businessman Jose Talamas and two Jimenez municipal police officers for illegal privation of freedom and threats after Talamas and the policemen allegedly confronted the journalist July 21 over articles about a kidnapping Talamas supposedly suffered. Granados, who denies being the author of the stories, accused Talamas of nearly pulling a pistol on her before he was calmed down by Jimenez's police chief.

"We have been warning for some time that we are putting ourselves at risk because of the activity of organized crime," said Alejandro Salmon Aguilera, president of College of Chihuahua Journalists. "That's why we have asked for guarantees from the authorities, not life insurance policies, for those who cover the riskiest beats."

Jimenez Mayor Amador Moreno Lujan and District Attorney Sandra Salas promised to thoroughly investigate Grandados' complaint.

When pressed about murders and other attacks against journalists in recent years, many Mexican officials blame organized crime. What's striking about many of the latest incidents is the alleged involvement of government officials.

Completed before the latest cases in Coahuila, Oaxaca and Chihuahua, a review of 170 attacks against Mexican journalists by a special commission of the federal Chamber of Deputies revealed a significant number of incidents linked to government officials. According to federal Deputy  Rocio de Carmen Morgan Franco, only 23 percent of the cases were traced to organized crime, while 20 percent of the aggressions came from municipal, state and federal authorities. Deputy Morgan blamed the remaining attacks on individuals. 

Sources: El Universal, August 11, 2007. Article by Hilda Fernandez. Frontera/EFE, August 9, 2007. Proceso/Apro, August 8, 10 and 11, 2007. Articles by Arturo Rodriguez Garcia. El Zocalo (Monclova), August 11, 2007. Article by Alberto Rojas. La Jornada, July 24, 2007;  August 8, 11 and 12, 2007. Articles by Javier Valdez Cardenas, Leopoldo Ramos, Roberto Garduno, Hiram Moreno, and editorial staff. El Diario de Juarez,  August 6, 2007. Cimacnoticias, July 25 and August 9, 2007. Articles by Patricia Mayorga and Soledad Jarquin Edgar. Sedena.gob.mx. PGR.gob.mx.

Women's/Human Rights News

The Showdown over the European Parliament's Femicide Resolution

An alliance of Spanish, Polish and German legislators is watering down a resolution in the European Parliament that proposes tougher actions against femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and Central America. Moving behind the scenes, the lawmakers have introduced more than killing 100 amendments to the strongly-worded document.

Sponsored by Green/European Free Alliance Deputy Raul Romeva Rueda, the original resolution would create a femicide coordinator; elevate women's murders to a priority status between governments; monitor the treatment of women employees of transnational companies in Latin America; require an annual report to the gender commission of the European Parliament; and carry out a review femicide cases prior to the 2008 Euro-Latin American summit scheduled for Lima, Peru.

"This has more weight than any other international recommendation," said Humberto Guerrero of the Mexico City-based Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, a non-governmental organization which has been active in raising the profile of the women's murders on the world stage.

In addition to the credibility of international treaties, the growing commercial relationships between Mexico and the European Union (EU) are at stake in the femicide resolution debate. Unlike the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1997 EU-Mexico Agreement contains  democracy and human rights provisions. Conceivably, Mexico could lose out on new European investments and trade if the women’s murders and other human rights violations remain unpunished.

According to the Mexican Senate, economic transactions between Mexico and the EU jumped 103 percent from 1999 to 2005, reaching at least $37 billion. In the six-year period studied,  Mexican exports to the EU soared by 123 percent. Currently, about 25 percent of foreign investment monies in Mexico come from Europe.

While Romeva's resolution awaits action, new economic initiatives like the Latin American Institute of Biotechnology planned for the state of Nuevo Leon are in the works between Mexico and the EU. The project also involves the Nuevo Leon state government, the privately-owned Technological University of Monterrey, the Monsanto company and other organizations.  

The Murder of a Dutch Woman

Although some EU legislators condemn all the femicides, the 1998 killing of Dutch citizen Hester van Nierop in Ciudad Juarez helped place the issue on the inter-continental political agenda. The 28-year-old victim was found semi-nude,  strangled and stuffed underneath a bed in a seedy downtown Juarez hotel. Van Nierop was traveling alone to the United States after a long vacation with her family in Mexico when she was slain.

A squad of state police officers from the Chihuahua Office of the State Attorney General (PGJE) headed by Antonio Navarrete was assigned to investigate van Nierop's murder. Navarette was earlier involved in the controversial arrest of the late Egyptian national Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif,  who was accused of multiple women's murders but widely regarded as the first scapegoat in a long line of slayings.  

Navarette and other agents involved in the van Nierop case were among officers named  for possible criminal negligence and omission in a 2004 report by former federal Special Prosecutor Maria Lopez Urbina. Several possible suspects in the van Nierop slaying emerged, including an escaped serial killer, Pedro Padilla Flores, but no arrests were ever made.

While on trip to Ciudad Juarez and El Paso in 2004, van Nierop's outraged parents discovered that the investigation of their daughter's murder was paralyzed.  Meeting in late 2005, European non-governmental organizations vowed to escalate their campaign against the Ciudad Juarez femicides by pressuring the transnational Philips company, which operated maquiladora plants in Ciudad Juarez where several victims had once worked, and by lobbying for the triggering of the democratic and human rights clause of the EU-Mexico Agreement. In this context, Romeva's resolution set off alarm bells in Mexico.

Meet Mexico’s New Crisis Manager

Last April, Romeva traveled to Mexico City for meetings with  Special Prosecutor for Women’s Homicides Alicia Perez Duarte, Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez and other officials. According to Romeva, Mexican officials expressed concern that his resolution "would damage the image of Mexico."

The day before Romeva's trip, the Mexican Senate gave approval to the Calderon administration’s appointment of Sandra Fuentes-Berain as Mexico’s new ambassador to the European Union. In her new position, Fuentes-Berain would be the chief troubleshooter in charge of smoothing over thorny matters like the femicide resolution.

A 57-year-old native of Mexico City, Fuentes-Berain, began her career with the Ministry of Foreign Relations (SRE) as a young woman in 1971, the same year government-supported paramilitaries mowed down students in Mexico City in the infamous Jueves de Corpus massacre.

Fuentes-Berain has served as Mexican ambassador in several countries, including a stint in Holland during the Hester van Nierop controversy. The career diplomat is credited with negotiating the North American Free Agreement with Canada, and with greasing the wheels of Mexico's entry into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation pact. Ratifying the seasoned deal-maker as EU ambassador, the Mexican Senate noted Fuentes-Berain’s  talent at encouraging "strategic alliances between foreign and Mexican companies, especially in the automotive, energy, banking and agro-industrial sectors."

Holding an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, Fuentes-Berain has generally enjoyed a non-controversial record of service. An exception came during the 2000 presidential election when she was criticized for allegedly using her government position to promote the candidate of the  Institutional Revolutionary Party, Francisco Labastida, whose campaign later came under fire for receiving millions of dollars in public money from the Pemex state oil company.

Fire and Brimstone in the European Parliament  

On June 25, European legislators gathered for a lively debate of Romeva's femicide resolution. Ambassador Fuentes-Berain and Chihuahua State Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez were on hand for the session. Chihuahua’s top cop assured the lawmakers that the administration of Governor Jose Reyes Baeza was making steady progress in chipping away at impunity.

According to Gonzalez’s data, of 413 female homicide cases opened from January 21, 1993 to May 18, 2007, fully 264 were in some process of resolution; 8 of the cases were determined to have been suicides. According to the PGJE’s statistics, only 139 cases were still under investigation.

Spanish parliamentarian Ignacio Salafranca of the conservative Popular European Party was among the deputies who spoke out against Romeva’s resolution. In 2006, Deputy Salafranca headed a controversial EU observer delegation that gave a quick stamp of approval to the Mexican presidential election even as doubts about the official results mushroomed amid accusations of fraud, widespread irregularities and massive street protests.  Mexican SRE official Lorena Larios, who collaborated with Salafranca while she was assigned to the European Parliament, coordinated Deputy Romeva's April 2007 official meetings in Mexico.

In the debate, Salafranca emphasized that violence against women was a "planetary" and “universal,” phenomenon, and that it was unfair to single out Mexico. Turning to Romeva, he said, "Before you set out to save the world, you should first look at your own house." Salafranca compared the Ciudad Juarez femicides to gender violence in Spain, where "150,000 complaints of physical mistreatment of women" were registered this year alone. Declaring that the European Parliament is not a tribunal to judge others, Salafranca urged a spirit of cooperation with Mexico.   

Left Deputy Eva-Britt Svenson responded: "The fact that this is a world problem doesn't mean that one is not going to investigate in a certain region or country. We are not a tribunal, of course, but our responsibility is to investigate what goes on (in Mexico), a country with which we have a signed a democratic clause, but it doesn't seem to be enough in this case." 

Introduced by Salafranca, German socialist Deputy Erika Mann,  Polish Deputy Ana Zaborska and other deputies, amendments to Romeva's resolution propose nixing a femicide coordinator; foregoing any monitoring of transnational companies; eschewing the reform of Mexico's legal system; and not requiring a review of the van Nierop murder and other femicides before the 2008 Peruvian summit. Another amendment praises Mexico’s federal government for its “efforts realized in terms of (achieving) no discrimination between men and women.”   

The amendments, which can be voted up or down, are expected to be considered by the European Parliament's gender commission next month;  the femicide resolution will likely be heard by the political institution's plenary in October. Mexican human rights activist Humberto Guerrero is dismayed by the latest developments. "One cannot be very optimistic" he said.

Despite the existence of the democratic clause in the EU-Mexico accord, some critics have long accused the EU of practicing having a double standard when it comes to human rights. In a 2005 article, Tobias Pfluger, a deputy for the United Left/Norwegian Greens, criticized the president of the European Parliament's Mexico delegation, Erika Mann, for allegedly being more interested in free trade than in human rights.

While Mexican human rights violations languished in impunity, Pfluger contended that the EU was abandoning principled action for economic gain.  The EU was most interested in pressuring Mexico to open up 14 additional investment opportunities in the electricity, education, water and other sectors, Pfluger charged.   

Sources: Cimacnoticias.com, August 3, 2007. Article by Lourdes Godinez Leal. Proceso/Apro, December 25, 2005 and August 2, 2007. Articles by Marco Appel and Tobias Pfluger. La Jornada, November 25, 2006. Article by Claudia Herrera Beltran. Senado.gob.mx. Conocimientoenlinea.com. Bones in the Desert, Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez. Editoral Anagrama, 2002. Harvest of Women, Diana Washington Valdez. Oceana, 2005.

Ciudad Juarez Police Criticized for Migrant Detentions
 
As in the United States, the involvement of local police and military forces in enforcing immigration law is a question of hot debate and growing conflict in Mexico. A report from Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has criticized the Ciudad Juarez municipal police force for detaining migrants, mainly Central Americans, and turning them over to the National Immigration Institute (INM) for possible deportation.

Mauricio Farah Gebrara, an immigrant rights investigator for the Mexico City-based CNDH, said that Ciudad Juarez police do not have the legal authority deliver migrants to the INM unless specifically requested to do so by the federal agency. The CNDH official contended that the current practice of routinely turning over migrants to the INM violates the Mexican constitution.

According to Farah, the local police are responsible for approximately 26 percent of the detentions of undocumented migrants in the border city. In many cases, migrants have accused police officers of physical abuse and theft, Farah said. Farah added that legal authority for detaining migrants bases solely on their immigration status rests with the INM or the Federal Preventive Police, which is currently being merged with the Federal Agency of Investigations to form one, unified federal police force. Nonetheless, the Mexican army also detains migrants based on immigration reasons.

In the southern border of state of Chiapas, several Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan migrants have filed three formal complaints with the CNDH this year against Mexican soldiers for robbery, physical aggression and improper searches of women. A Chiapas-based human rights organization, the Fray Matias de Cordova Center, charged that the complaints have not progressed because the CNDH demands "evidence" that the undocumented immigrants entered Mexico. 

Despite the CNDH's Ciudad Juarez report, local police officers, especially agents assigned to the downtown sector, have been recently spotted demanding documents from individuals with migrant-like physical characteristics.  Human rights investigator Farah said that he expects to visit Ciudad Juarez within the next several weeks to investigate the issue.

Sources: La Jornada, July 23, 2007. Article by Angeles Mariscal. Lapolaka.com, July 23, 2007. El Diario de Juarez, July 20, 2007.

Youth Curfews Spread

In northern Mexico, youth curfews are spreading. Following the lead of Ciudad Juarez,
the municipality of San Nicolas in the border state of Nuevo Leon implemented a youth curfew in the late June. The measure, which applies to minors under 18 years of age and other vaguely-defined young people, was ordered by the city government to address public alarm over growing insecurity. Even though Mayor Zeferino Salgado Almaguer refused to call the measure  a curfew, the new law enforcement provision allows police to detain minors and other young people after 11 pm if the youths cannot show good cause for being away from home.

In the first days of the curfew, at least 27 youths were briefly detained. Camilo Ramirez Puente, San Nicolas’ chief of public safety,  rated the curfew a success. Ramirez said that  crime initially fell by 80 percent, with only 6 businesses and 3 private homes robbed in the initial phase of the new law. In addition to suffering on-going bouts of street crime, San Nicolas has been a battleground between the warring Sinaloa and Gulf drug cartels. In the last two weeks, 24 “halcones,” or look-outs for the Gulf Cartel,  have been detained  by federal police in San Nicolas. Reportedly, several of the “halcones” were former local and state police officers.

Alleging that the curfew is  a violation of  constitutional rights of freedom of movement as well as an abuse of authority by the executive branch of the municipal government,  San Nicolas’s new law has drawn opposition from human rights activists. On July 6,  Gregorio Vanegas Garza, the president of the non-governmental organization Agapito Trevino, filed a petition with the Nuevo Leon State Legislature that calls for the impeachment of Mayor Salgado.

“If the political will existed, the mayor would be impeached,” Vanegas said. “Any one should know that he is flagrantly violating the constitution. He’s inventing laws with the curfew. What are the state legislators waiting for to remove him from power?”

In response to critics,  Mayor Salgado convened a popular referendum July 8 to test citizen reaction to the curfew. Eligible voters, who included minors and residents of other municipalities, were asked whether they approved of the new law and how it should be applied. In an exercise  monitored  by the Nuevo Leon State Human Rights Commission and two other non-governmental groups, not including Agapito Trevino, less than 10,000 of San Nicolas’s estimated 470,000 residents turned out to vote. Of the San Nicolas voters, only 308 voted against the curfew. Initial reports indicated that nearly 2,000 residents of other municipalities also cast votes in the referendum.

Commenting on the vote, Mayor Salgado said that the curfew would continue in operation.However, statements made by the mayor prior to the referendum anticipated a positive   vote.  

“We will continue being criticized for a project that is approved by the people of San Nicolas,”  Mayor Salgado said, “and it will be (the people) who decide if we continue with it or not.”
     
Youth curfews in northern Mexico are gaining appeal across the political spectrum. In Ciudad Juarez, a city-wide curfew was put into effect June 15  by the city’s Institutional Revolutionary Party-led government, while in San Nicolas, the curfew was initiated by a National Action Party-led administration.

Sources: El Heraldo (Aguascalientes)/Agencia Reforma, July 11, 2007. El Universal, July 9, 2007. Article by Juan Cedillo. Proceso/Apro, July 6, 2007.

Sonora Press under Siege

Journalists in the northern Mexican state of Sonora are reeling after two attacks this week. On Tuesday evening, April 17, an unknown assailant or assailants tossed a
grenade onto the grounds of the Cambio Sonora newspaper offices in the state capital of Hermosillo. The newspaper is part of the Mexican Editorial Organization national chain. No injuries resulted from an explosion but minor property damage was reported. As in numerous grenade attacks in Mexico during the last two years, the make and origin of the grenade was not publicly revealed by authorities.

Roberto Gutierrez Torres, director of Cambio Sonora, slammed the attack as a threat to journalism.

"I believe that this a message directed against the entire media, because we are not currently doing any investigative journalism that would make criminal bands uncomfortable," Gutierrez said.

Susana Saldana, president of the Sonora state legislature, labeled the grenade attack an act of "terrorism." Sonora's chief of public security, Francisco Figueroa Souquet, pledged greater police protection for the news media. Together with murders of Sonora police officers, Figueroa characterized the grenade attack as part of
a "destabilization" campaign waged by organized crime. Like other states, Sonora has been recently shaken by escalating violence tied to drug traffickers and organized
crime.

The grenade explosion almost immediately followed a silent march staged by 30 journalists in Hermosillo to protest attacks on communicators, including the apparent kidnapping of journalist Saul Noe Martinez Ortega in the border town of Agua Prieta on April 16. A reporter and editor for Agua Prieta's Diario de Agua Prieta, Martinez was snatched by four or five men in front of the town's police station.

Martinez was the sixth Mexican journalists to have been reported disappeared since 2000, according to figures maintained by the Latin American Journalists Federation
(Felap). In a recent Mexico City press conference, the group affirmed that 67 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 1987, with almost half the number, 33, killed during the administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon since 2000.

"In the Fox era, Mexico became first in the world in the number attacks against journalists in a place without a belligerent conflict, only after Iraq, a country that
suffers from a war of intervention," said Teodoro Rentaria Arroyave, vice-president of the Felap.

Amado Ramirez, a nationally-known correspondent for the Televisa network, became the most recent murder victim when he was slain outside an Acapulco radio station this month while the resort city was packed with tourists for the Holy Week and Easter holidays.

Before it left office last year, the Fox Administration established a special prosecutor's office for journalists' homicides. On a visit to Mexico earlier this month,
Santiago Canton, executive secretary of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, praised the Mexican Congress' recent passage of a national law that decriminalizes libel and defamation charges, but lamented the lack of progress in stemming violent attacks against journalists. Insisting that the state might not bear direct responsibility for murders of journalists, Canton contended that the government does hold blame for allowing impunity.

Meanwhile, new legal wrangling has emerged in the case of Sonora journalist Benjamin Flores Gonzalez, the director of San Luis Colorado's La Prensa newspaper, who was shot to death in 1997. The suspected mastermind in Flores' killing, Gabriel Gonzalez Gutierrez, was extradited from the United States to Sonora, where he awaits trial. Former La Prensa reporters who witnessed the murder complain that they are being pressured by lawyers to give new testimony. According to Jesus Barraza Zavala, director of the Internet daily Regidores.com, the witnesses maintain that their original declarations are sufficient and that there is no reason to render new ones.

Sources: Cambio Sonora, April 19, 2007. Articles by Oralia Acosta G. and editorial staff. El Universal/Notimex, April 18, 2007. La Jornada/Notimex, April 17 and 18, 2007. Proceso/Apro, April 14, 2007. Frontera/PH/EFE, April 13 and 18, 2007.

Migrant Labor Activist Murdered

Family members of Rafael Santiago Cruz are expected to bury their loved one inMexico City sometime over the coming weekend.  A staff member of the US-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), the 28-year-old activist was found dead in a union office located in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on April 9.  Amado Medina, public safety chief for Monterrey, was initially quoted in the Mexican press as saying that no signs of violence or forced entry were detected at the scene of Cruz’s apparent murder. But FLOC members tell a different story. “He was tied up and beaten to death,” said Leticia Zavala, the FLOC’s international vice-president. “If that’s not violence, I don’t know what violence is.”

In a telephone interview with Frontera NorteSur, Zavala said that Cruz arrived in Monterrey about one month ago to help administer the FLOC’s campaign with Mexican H-2A guest workers who are recruited for contract labor in US agriculture. According to Zavala, the FLOC has a contract that covers upwards of 7,400 H-2A workers who are employed in 27 crops in North Carolina, principally in tobacco, sweet potatoes, cucumber and Christmas trees. Most of the guest workers hail from the Mexican states of Hidalgo, San Luis Potosi, Nayarit and Durango, Zavala said, adding that the temporary field hands travel to Monterrey, where a US consulate is located, in order to obtain legal work documents.

A native of southern Oaxaca state, Cruz first became active with the FLOC while he was working in the United States ten years ago, Zavala said. “He was a lively person. He loved music,” Zavala recalled. “He was a good Christian. He was working to support his mom and his younger brothers.” Although the union has not seen a police report about Cruz’s death, Zavala affirmed that the FLOC’s cross-border organizing work had ruffled the feathers of migrant traffickers and others. She said that the FLOC has experienced previous episodes of harassment and office break-ins in Mexico, but that the overall situation had been quiet during the past two months.
 
Union members are concerned that the larger climate of violence and impunity in the Monterrey region could impede an investigation of Cruz’s murder, the FLOC leader said.  Gangland-style executions have left at least 48 people dead in Monterrey since the beginning of the year. On April 12, the Mexican army engaged in a shoot-out with possible drug traffickers that left one person dead and two arrested in Marin, a municipality located about 30 miles northeast of Monterrey.

FLOC members are urging that the Nuevo Leon Office of the State Attorney General conduct a thorough investigation of Cruz’s murder.  According to Zavala, the union is receiving backing from the US AFL-CIO and Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur to prompt the US Department of State to get involved in the Cruz case.  Mexican non-governmental organizations are also speaking out on the FLOC’s behalf.

“There are very few organizations like FLOC that defend the dignity and rights of workers who have seen the necessity of emigrating to the United States, and that’s why we regard an injury to them as an injury to the entire society,” said Consuelo Morales of Citizens in Support of Human Rights.  “We show our support for the rest of the members of the FLOC who work in any part of the republic and in the United States, and we make a firm call to the authorities of all levels to take the measures within their power to guarantee the integrity of these worker defenders and their families.”   

Additional sources: Proceso/Cimac, April 12, 2007. La Jornada, April 10 and 12, 2007.Articles by David Carrizales and the Notimex news agency. El Universal, April 9, 11 and 12, 2007. Articles by Juan Cedillo and the Notimex news agency

FNS Special Report: From Chihuahua to Chiapas : Chronicles of Mexico 's Dirty War

Editor's Note: Late on November 17, at the start of a 3-day holiday weekend, a long-awaited report from Mexico 's Office of the Federal Attorney General was released. Compiled by the staff of Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, special prosecutor for crimes against social and political movements of the past, the report officially reveals the Mexican government's practice of torturing, disappearing and executing guerrilla and other opponents from the 1960s to the early 1980s. According to the report, the Mexican government was responsible for 645 forced disappearances, 99 extrajudicial murders and more than 2,000 incidents of torture. Carrillo lays the blame for Mexico 's Dirty War on three presidents: Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverria and Jose Lopez Portillo.

Interestingly, Carrillo has a personal connection to this history. He is a relative of Denise Prieto Stock, a 19-year-old woman of Mexican-North American parentage who was killed by the Mexican army in 1974. Prieto was a member of the National Liberation Forces (FLN), the predecessor group of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. During a speech in Nuevo Leon on November 17, the Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos rendered tribute to Prieto and other fallen FLN militants.

Early in his term, outgoing President Vicente Fox pledged to bring to justice those responsible for going above the law and carrying out political repression. Special Prosecutor Carrillo filed legal charges against Echeverria, the sole surviving president named in his final report, and other high officials, but Mexican courts blocked the prosecutions. One of the allegedly responsible officials, General Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, was reported to have died suddenly on November 19, only two days after the Dirty War report was released.

No official will have been punished for the Dirty War when Vicente Fox leaves office on December 1. Kate Doyle, a researcher with the Washington-based National Security Archive which has posted the Spanish-language report on its website ( www.nsarchive.org), said it will be up to new President Felipe Calderon to act on the information in the report.

Still, the more than 800 page report authored by Carrillo's office is quite unprecedented for Mexican government disclosures. In certain ways, it is Mexico 's equivalent of the truncated Church Committee CIA investigations of the 1970s and the Iran-Contra probes of the 1980s.

As a November 24 report from the United Nations Committee Against Torture on recent police abuses in Mexico also underscores, Carrillo's report has special relevance today, when the major elements of Mexico 's previous Dirty War -popular revolt, state repression and guerrilla insurgency- are resurfacing in Oaxaca and elsewhere in the country. The following article is based largely on excerpts from the Dirty War report, and is the first in an occasional series.

Kent Paterson, FNS editor

Revolt, Repression and Resistance in Chihuahua : Part One

On May 23, 1962, Mexican soldiers under the command of Captain Jose Martinez kidnapped Ruben Jaramillo and his family from their Morelos home. Carting off the campesino leader and his family, the soldiers filled their prisoners with bullets near the pre-colonial ruins of Xochicalco. As a teenager, Jaramillo had served as an officer in Emiliano Zapata's insurgent army. From the 1920s to the time of his assassination, Jaramillo kept Zapatismo alive in Morelos and much of central and southern Mexico .

Alternating between armed revolt and participation in electoral politics, Jaramillo spearheaded large peasant mobilizations that evoked Zapata's dreams of land, liberty and justice. Eventually, President Adolfo Lopez Mateos ordered the army to get rid of this pesky reminder of the still-born 1910 Revolution. Murdered along with Jaramillo were his pregnant wife and three adopted sons.

The cold-blooded killing of Jaramillo did not end the campesino revolt. Hundreds of miles to the north in the border state of Chihuahua , the old battleground of Pancho Villa, resistance was simmering. In the early 1960s, Chihuahua was fertile ground for renewed campesino risings. Nearly one-third of the state's land base of more than 50 million acres was in the hands of 300 landowners like Luis Terrazas, who alone held more than 2 million acres. Logging and cattle companies also controlled a large chunk of Chihuahua 's real estate. In 1963, 50,000 landless men wandered Chihuahua 's landscape. Discontent with the status quo was boiling over on the small ranches and in the growing cities.

In the countryside, the Ibarra family of Madera other rural strongmen known as caciques were accused of burning out small ranchers and unleashing their pistoleros on protesting campesinos, who were routinely slain with impunity. Local agrarian authorities routinely blocked presidential resolutions favoring land rights petitions, while in the state capital of Chihuahua City , officials turned a deaf ear to the protests. Collaborating with the caciques, the Chihuahua State Judicial Police (PJE) often served as the enforcement agency for the bosses. The northwestern Chihuahuan sierra bordering Sonora state was considered a "lawless land" of misery, desolation, land theft, and abandonment.

Land invasions, student protests and strikes swept Chihuahua during the early 1960s. Involving thousands of people, the protests united campesinos, students, pulp mill workers, and urban dwellers. Armed self-defense groups began forming in response to the violence of rural white guards deployed by caciques like Jose Ibarra. Politically, many of the Chihuahua activist leaders had been influenced by the national General Union of Workers and Campesinos of Mexico (UGOCM), the Mexican Communist Party, the Popular Socialist Party (usually the loyal opposition of the ruling PRI party), and the National Liberation Movement of former President Lazaro Cardenas del Rio.

School teacher Arturo Gamiz and Dr. Pablo Gomez were two of the most important movement leaders to emerge in Chihuahua . Also an educator, Dr. Gomez was the father of former Chihuahua state legislator and prominent women's activist Alma Gomez. In September 1963, the Chihuahua protests reached Mexico City , when the UGOCM conducted a public protest in the capital city. A month later, Gamiz and Dr. Gomez held a meeting with President Diaz Ordaz about their grievances but walked away empty-handed.

In 1964, Gamiz, Dr. Gomez and others took up arms. Launching the Popular Guerrilla Group (GPG), they directed their first actions against the caciques. The new guerrilla group burned down the Ibarra home in Madera , destroyed other properties that belonged to the family, including a radio station in Mineral de Dolores, and executed Florentino Ibarra, who was blamed for killing an indigenous Pima man, Carlos Rios Torres.

In response to the guerrilla offensive, the Mexican army sent soldiers into the northwestern Sierra and began torturing campesinos. Residents-even children- were hanged from trees for hours and dangled from helicopters in a unsuccessful bid to extract information about the insurgent cell.

Counterattacking, the GPG overran a PJE post that was commanded by Rito Caldera, an ex-Ibarra gunman. Once again on the trail of the insurgent group, soldiers and police left behind them a path of destroyed homes, stolen animals, uprooted crops, and more tortured victims. By 1965, the GPG, now counting two rural columns in Chihuahua , was engaging soldiers and white guards in armed clashes; the group's biggest strike was brewing.

Although the GPG grew out of a specific, rural struggle in northern Mexico , the organization did not represent an isolated, armed peasant uprising with localized demands. Influenced by the Cuban Revolution, the group called for a socialist Mexico . While pushing the armed struggle, the GPG still supported electoral politics and mass struggles as vital components of the revolution. A third GPG cell was active in Mexico City , and contacts were made with revolutionary-minded organizations and individuals throughout the country.

In the Mexico City area, the GPG got its military training from a supposed former Mexican officer, Lorenzo Cardenas Barajas. Connected to the PRI and trained at the US Army's School of the Americas , Cardenas Barajas was in fact a spy for the Mexican army. However, Cardenas ' acquaintanceship with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara gave the infiltrator a certain credibility in leftist circles.

By the fall of 1965, the GPG was preparing to launch its biggest action to date: the assault on the Mexican army barracks in Madera , Chihuahua . A force of more than 40 guerrillas was supposed to participate in the raid, but logistical complications and organizational foul-ups left a reduced contingent of 15 men outside the barracks on the morning of September 23, 1965. Underestimating the number of soldiers inside the military installation, the 15 guerrillas unleashed their attack against a reinforced garrison which had been tipped off by spy Cardenas Barajas' intelligence that something big was in the works somewhere.

When the shooting was over, 17 people were dead: 8 guerrillas, 7 soldiers and 2 civilians caught in cross-fire. 8 civilians and 7 soldiers were also wounded. Arturo Gamiz and Dr. Pablo Gomez, two of the three principal Chihuahua leaders of the GPG, died in the combat. In a ghoulish warning to the population, the bodies of Gamiz, Dr. Gomez and the other guerrillas were publicly exhibited in a truck parked in the center of Madera . Seven of the eight fallen insurgents were then hastily buried in a common grave.

In a famous statement, Chihuahua Gov. General Giner Duran said, "They wanted land, so let them eat dirt." Though an official information blockade was erected around Madera , word of the attack still leaked out to the national press.

Madera and the nearby mountains were militarized, and all the homes in the town of about 12,000 people were thoroughly searched; dozens of people were arbitrarily detained and interrogated. Troops were parachuted into the mountains, and at least one civilian, Rodolfo Dominguez Galaviz, was killed by soldiers as he attempted to speak with General Gonzalo Bazan Guzman. More than 100 people were rounded up and transported to the Madera military base, where they were held on the floor of a building hog-tied and naked. The region was under military siege.

On the Day of the Dead 1965, 500 people defied the blanket of repression in Madera and gathered at the grave of the guerrillas to lay wreaths and pay homage. Decades later, hundreds would still periodically gather for a memorial in Madera on the anniversary of the attack. Scattering in the wind, the GPG survivors of the Madera assault regrouped in Mexico City . Plans were already being hatched to move forward with the revolution that for some began in the Chihuahua mountains on September 23, 1965.

Sources: pgr.gob.mx. nsarchive.org. Proceso/Apro, November 21, 2006. El Diario de Juarez, November 24, 2006. La Jornada, November 19, 2006. The Arms of Dawn, Carlos Montemayor. (Joaquin Moritz/Planeta, 2003)

Mayors Mobilize Against Border Walls

Mayors in Texas and the northern Mexican border state of Coahuila are mobilizing their opposition to the new series of border walls planned by the Bush Administration. Supported by Mexican mayors and representatives of non-governmental organizations, a 3-day march against the walls commenced November 7 in the Coahuila border city of Ciudad Acuna . Evaristo Lenin Perez Rivera, the mayor of Ciudad Acuna, said the action was directed against both Washington and Mexico City because of the two national governments' "incapacity to resolve common problems while trying to divide a community of neighbors with a mud wall."

Drawing the support of Coahuila state labor, educational and commercial groups like the Canacintra and Canaco business associations, the march is expected to culminate at a November 10 rally in Piedras Negras, which is also on the Mexico-US border. The Coahuila anti-border wall march moved forward as incoming Mexican President Felipe Calderon flew to Washington this week for meetings with US Latino leaders and President Bush. A critic of the border wall plan, Calderon has called for "bridges for progress and not walls that isolate and divide."

Back on the protest march, meanwhile, Mayor Perez, who was joined by Mayor Francisco Trujillo of Jimenez, Coahuila, said he was uplifted by the results of the November 7 election in the United States that saw President Bush's Republican Party lose control of Congress. Mayor Perez said he was confident the new US Congress would cut the budget for the planned series of walls that will extend 700 miles along Mexico 's northern border.

On the US side of the border, Richard F. Cortez, the mayor of McAllen, Texas, said in a recent interview with the Mexican press that he and other Texas mayors from "El Paso to Brownsville" hope to meet soon in Laredo, Texas, with United States Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in order to convey their rejection of the fencing plans.

" Washington politicians should understand that for us, the citizens of Texas , crossing the Rio Grande is like crossing the Potomac . We have friends and cousins on the other side.." Cortez said. "The people of the United States are uninformed. They think that immigrants come to carry out crimes."

While criticizing Washington , Mayor Cortez also scored Mexico City for not doing enough to curb emigration. Calling on both countries to seek the "path" of dialogue, Mayor Cortez said that the Texas border economy depends on the dollars spent by Mexican consumers who shop in McAllen and other cities. "Between 35-45 percent of the sales of businesses in McAllen depend on Mexican customers," Mayor Cortez added. "This is a very serious situation," Mayor Cortez said. "As neighboring countries we should not be just cousins," he added. We should get along as brothers."

Sources: Zocalo.com.mx, November 9, 2006. Article by Enrique Gonzalez Correa. El Universal, November 6, 2006. Articles by Juan Cedillo and Hilda Fernandez Valverde. Albuquerque Journal/Associated Press, November 9, 2006. Article by George Gedda.

Fresh Violence Hits the Press

Physical attacks against Mexican journalists and press institutions continue to take their toll. Veteran Chihuahua journalist Enrique Perea became the latest victim when he disappeared on August 7. Perea's tortured and bullet-riddled body was found two days later outside Chihuahua City . A well-known crime reporter who had worked for El Heraldo newspaper of Chihuahua City and other press outlets, Perea had founded a new magazine dedicated to covering organized crime themes. In its last issues, Perea's magazine criticized the Chihuahua state government for the high rates of violent crime in the border state.

Perea was the 25th Mexican journalist murdered since 1995. Three other journalists are missing. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Mexico is now second only to Colombia in the number of journalists murdered in the Western Hemisphere during the last 11 years.

In southern Mexico , two attackers, one of whom was armed with an Israeli-style Uzi submachine gun, assaulted the offices of the Noticias daily in Oaxaca City also on August 9. Six persons were wounded in the shooting, including newspaper vendors Isabel Cruz and Adrian Cervantes. Noticias is Oaxaca state's largest circulation daily and a vocal opponent of the state government run by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The newspaper has had a long-running battle with business and political sectors connected to the PRI. After violent attacks were directed against Noticias in 2004, the IACHR ordered the implementation of protective measures.

Far from isolated incidents, the most recent attacks against the press should be viewed as part and parcel of a landscape of criminal and political violence. Gangland-style executions like the Perea killing are almost a daily occurrence in Chihuahua state. In the