Seventeen people, including children, were taken from their homes by a group of armed men in the community of Cerro Verde in the southern state of Guerrero. The mass abduction occurred in the early hours of December 11th but has only recently become public after a relative decided to file a police report in a district outside of the one in which the crime occurred.

Those kidnapped belong to three families linked to a regional environmental movement known as the Organization of Ecologist Farmers. Two leaders of this organization, Eva Alarcon and Marcial Bautista, were abducted earlier this month as they traveled aboard a passenger bus on their way to a meeting in Mexico City.

The daughters of the two kidnapped organizers held a press conference in Mexico City Tuesday begging the kidnappers to negotiate and to return their parents alive.

Twenty four local police and four state level detectives have been arrested in connection to the federal investigation into the case.

The whereabouts of the abducted environmental activists and their relatives remains unknown.

Two students from the “Isidro Burgos” rural teaching academy in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero were shot dead during a protest in southern Mexico yesterday. Around 500 students from the school blocked part of the Autopista del Sol highway to demand a meeting with the Governor Angel Aguirre Rivero. By the time police took control of the highway, two students were lying dead on the asphalt.

The victims were identified as 20 year-old Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús and 21 year-old Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino. The student organization behind the protests stated a third student, Edgar David Espíritu, died Monday night. However, at the time of this writing, Espíritu is reportedly alive but in a coma.

State authorities initially denied police shot at protesters, but a video released by Milenio TV shows a man in plainclothes firing a high caliber rifle from a police line in the direction of the protests. The police in video made no attempt to stop or apprehend the gunman.

La Jornada published a photo today showing plainclothes police with high caliber rifles at the scene of protest in Chilpancingo. El Universal also published video of plain clothes police armed with rifles.

Students mobilized on Monday to pressure the governor to appear at a budget negotiation meeting that had been cancelled and postponed for months.

In addition to the killings, at least 20 people were arrested. At least one has been released with serious facial bruising. The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, which is providing legal counsel to some of the detained, stated a 19 year-old claimed he was tortured into making a false confession about firing a rifle during the protest.

Tuesday afternoon, Guerrero’s governor announced the dismissals of the state attorney general and the state police chief and his deputy.

Mexico’s system of rural academies (the Normales Rurales) was set up to train children of marginalized small farmers to become teachers in rural communities. The schools have been hard hit by budget cuts and reduced enrolment opportunities over the past 10 years.

Papers with names of the murdered and disappeared on a wall in Oaxaca City

Much of the news of Mexico’s Drug War focuses on the shootouts, massacres and abductions which have killed tens of thousands of people in the north. Violence in the south takes on a different form and generally receives less attention.

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The southern states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas share certain characteristics. They are Mexico’s poorest states, are rich in natural resources, have large indigenous populations and long traditions of social movements.

In parts of southern Mexico, the legacy of the decades-long Dirty War against political dissidents has dovetailed with the climate of violence and impunity of the ongoing Drug War.

MICAELA CABAÑAS: “Desde hace mas de 40 años que tenemos en esta lucha…(fade under, reporter interprets)

Such is the case of Micaela Cabañas, who joined the caravan in her home state of Guerrero. Her father, the iconic guerrilla leader and rural teacher, Lucio Cabañas, died during an army siege in the mid ’70s. Her mother and aunt, Isabel and Reyna Anaya, were assassinated just over two months ago while leaving a church. Just hours after the crime, Micaela Cabañas received a death threat from the cell phone that had been stolen from her murdered mother.

MICAELA CABAÑAS (voiceover): “We have to continue the struggle. We have to continue planting seeds – seeds that send down firm roots steeped in education and culture – to continue on this path towards the light.”

A historic grievance in this corner of Mexico has been indigenous control over ancestral territory. Conflicts over land can take many forms; from outright paramilitary displacement campaigns sponsored by powerful regional land bosses…to rifts within a community over religion or politics. Exploitation of inter-communal divisions are sometimes fueled by outside forces.

One of the deadliest recent rural conflicts in Oaxaca occurred last year in the town of San Juan Copala. Armed men forced supporters of

Caravan event in the main plaza of Oaxaca City

a local self-governance model to flee the town after a 10 month long siege. The displaced say their aggressors received resources from what was then the state’s ruling party to keep the town under siege and crush the indigenous autonomy project.

Macario Garcia Merino spoke to the caravan during one of its stops in Oaxaca.

MACARIO GARCIA MERINO (voiceover):“It’s not just the situation in San Juan Copala and it’s not specific to the state of Oaxaca. We’ve come to realize that this situation, this war of extermination, is throughout the entire country. This is why we need all need to band together and walk together to find justice.”

San Juan Copala, like other areas experiencing forced displacements, is believed to contain significant mineral wealth.

(SPEECH/AMBI – Monte Alban ceremony)

The issue of conflict and indigenous control over their mineral-rich lands was acknowledged specifically during a ceremony for caravan participants at the Monte Alban archaeological site.

Amada Puentes, whose son has been missing since he was taken from the streets of Monterrey by policemen more than 2 years ago, said the ceremony for peace had a profound impact.

Banner with written messages next to caravan bus

AMADA PUENTES: “Cuando iniciamos la caravana, yo todavía traía en mi corazón deseos de venganza, ya no tanto de justicia, de venganza. En esta ceremonia creanme que me cambió la manera de pensar “(fade under, reporter interprets)

Puentes says even at the start of the caravan her heart yearned for revenge; not so much for justice any more, but revenge. But she says the ceremony at Monte Alban changed her way of thinking.

PUENTES (voiceover):“I now feel calmer than at the start of this journey. And I know now that it was worth it because I felt connected and I could see that I’m not alone. Even with all the people at the start of this trip, I felt isolated. After such an amazing moment [in the ceremony], my way of thinking and feeling changed. Even though I continue to cry on the inside, I now feel strong. I feel accompanied. And I feel hopeful that I’ll find my son soon.”

From Oaxaca, the caravan continued on to Chiapas, where a delegation met with the indigenous pacifist community Las Abejas and the leadership of a Zapatista base community.

The caravan also focused attention on the relatively under-covered dangers faced by undocumented migrants and their advocates in southern Mexico.

Sunday night, the bus loads of drug war victims, human rights activists, observers and journalists received a welcome by thousands ofpeople in Xalapa, the state capital of Veracruz – a city which has recently begun to experience the shoot outs and spike in missing persons cases that have plagued the north.

(Julian LeBaron tape – fade under, reporter interprets)

In Xalapa’s main plaza, Julian LeBaron, a home builder who has lost a brother and a brother in law to the violence in his home state of Chihuahua, told the crowds of people who have lost loved ones that the house that is best protected isn’t the one with the most police guarding it, but rather the one with the most organized residents.

(Julian LeBaron continues, reporter interprets)

LeBaron said that while he is a victim of crime, members of the the movement need to stop viewing themselves as victims and become the agents of the change they want to see.

 (This report was produced for the September 19, 2011 broadcast of Free Speech Radio News. The audio is downloadable here.)

Members of Mexico’s peace movement set out on a multi-stop caravan today to bring visibility to the impacts of drug war-related violence in the country’s southern states. Hundreds of people aboard 14 buses set out from Mexico City’s main plaza this morning on an eleven day journey to seven states. The caravan’s figurehead is Javier Sicilia, the poet who became a peace activist and prominent critic of the government’s drug war strategy after the murder of his son in March.

Earlier this summer, Sicilia led a caravan through northern Mexico to bring attention to the on-the-ground situation in the states hardest hit by “narco-killings”. The southbound caravan will visit Mexico’s poorest states, which are home to large indigenous populations and significant expanses of natural wealth.

The drug war in southern Mexico takes on a different form from the large-scale shoot outs and massacres that have made civilian life difficult in the northern states. The shared border with Guatemala has become a hot spot for the shipment of drugs stored in Central America. Years ago, organized criminals muscled into the smuggling, trafficking and kidnapping of migrants who cross Mexico without visas on their way to the border with the United States.

The caravan is likely to focus public attention on the more hidden aspects of violence and impunity in the southern states; the displacement of indigenous communities, land grabs in resource-rich areas, rural para-militarism and politically-motivated attacks targeted at indigenous autonomy and social movements.

The caravan passed through Morelos today and will visit Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz and Puebla over the coming days before returning to Mexico City on September 19th.

The widow of guerilla leader Lucio Cabañas was shot dead yesterday (July 3rd) along with her sister in the community of Xaltianguis in the state of Guerrero.

According to a police report, Isabel Anaya Nava and her older sister Reyna were gunned down at approximately 1pm on Sunday while leaving a church where they were selling food. Armed men opened fire on the sisters and then stole their cellular phones before fleeing in a blue vehicle.

Micaela Cabañas Anaya, the daughter of Isabel Anaya Nava and Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, received a threat via phone at 5pm from her murdered mother’s cellular number. Micaela Cabañas is part a group known as “Nacidos en la Tempestad“, an organization of children of people killed or disappeared during Mexico’s “Dirty War” against leftists in the 1960s and ’70s.

After Lucio Cabañas died in a military action in Guerrero’s mountains in late 1974, his teenage wife and newborn daughter were “disappeared” and held in Mexico’s military base Number One, along with members of the Cabañas family. They were released in mid-1976.

Micaela Cabañas wrote in an article that she and her mother only told those close to them of their relation to the famous guerilla leader who founded the “Partido de los Pobres”.

Two of Isabel Anaya’s sisters were killed in early 2011. Human rights groups warn that the theft of Isabel and Reyna Anaya’s telephones indicate their contacts may now be at risk.

Guerrero is one of Mexico’s poorest states. Decades of counter-insurgency against leftist campesino groups has dovetailed with a more recent explosion of drug war-related violence.