This comes in the wake of a corruption scandal in which prison guards in Gómez Palacios, Durango allegedly released and armed convicts to carry out mass murder in Torreón, Chihuahua. The two sister cities are one metropolitan area separated by a river which marks the state line.

Federal police investigators dropped this bombshell in a weekend press conference after looking into the July 18th massacre of 17 people at a birthday in a hotel. Eighteen people were wounded in the same attack. This was the third such massacre this year thought to have been committed by inmates released from the state penitentiary in Gómez Palacios. Crime scene shell casings were traced to assault rifles used by guards at the prison.

The four missing journalists aren’t the only victims in the scandal’s immediate fall out. A prison guard has been killed and 8 human heads have been found around the city of Durango, capital of the state of the same name.

Federal authorities allege that not only were dangerous criminals released from their cells, but that prison guards lent them high-caliber firearms and official vehicles. Investigators traced the weapons back to the prison from crime scene shell casings. The same weapons were allegedly used in at least 2 other massacres this year.

This isn’t the first time prison officials in the state of Durango have been accused of colluding with inmates tied to the region’s powerful drug trafficking interests. Four prison officials are currently under investigation.

Many of Mexico’s overcrowded prisons are microcosms of the drug violence that has claimed more than 24 thousand lives here since President Felipe Calderón launched his military approach to the Drug War in December of 2006.

A prominent Mexican activist has emerged from more than four years in hiding to seek asylum. América del Valle arrived at the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico City Wednesday to ask the South American nation to take her in as a political refugee. Del Valle – along with other members of her family – gained national recognition for leading a fight against land expropriation for the construction of an international airport in the town of San Salvador Atenco. The battle played out in both the streets and in the courts and became a symbolic victory for the power of popular organization in Mexico. But in May of 2006, federal, state, and local police cracked down on the town and its land defense activists – arresting more than 200 people and killing 2 others.

América del Valle was the only leader of Atenco’s land defense movement to evade capture and has been living underground ever since, facing the same “kidnapping” charges that resulted in a 112 year prison sentence for her father, Ignacio del Valle. While she has not made any public appearance, América del Valle has periodically sent letters and audio recordings like this one recently played at a rally to demand a favorable Supreme Court ruling for the 12 Atenco activists who remain in prison.

“The freedom for Atenco and all social movements and fighters is in a decisive moment. Finally, after 4 years on a torturous judicial path, the case of our twelve brothers is before the Supreme Court who can rule on their upcoming release. And what comes out of this case will affect other political prisoners and other social fighters also accused of kidnapping for being in the crosshairs of the oppressors.”

América del Valle’s mother, Trinidad Ramírez went to see her daughter yesterday in the Venezuelan Embassy and described the experience in this morning’s edition of the Mexican newscast, “Hoy por Hoy”.

“She told me she was no longer willing to continue living in the situation she’s been living in for more than 4 years – in hiding and with the uncertainty of knowing that she could be detained at any moment. And she told me ‘I’ve made this decision, mama and the only thing I’m asking right now’ – and she said this with tears in her eyes – ‘is that you support me and that you support this decision because otherwise, I won’t feel good about it’. She went on to explain her situation to me and of course, of course I support my daughter. And well, I was finally able to hug her and I was so happy in that moment. We were able to cry together and to speak a little about the many things that we haven’t been able to say to each other in more than 4 years.”

In a letter released yesterday, América del Valle said that while she’s leaving, she not giving up. She also thanked the people who protected and hid her over the years, saying “I don’t have anything to pay you with except my struggle and my strength”. The government of Venezuela is expected to need some time to decide on her petition for asylum.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s Supreme Court is due to issue a ruling on the fate of the 12 Atenco prisoners by the end of the month.

Public school teachers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca mobilized today as part of ongoing labor negotiations and to commemorate the anniversary of a police action that sparked a popular uprising 4 years ago today.

(sound: barricade bottle rockets and chants)

The day of action kicked off at 4am local time with chants, bottle rockets, and barricades around the central plaza of Oaxaca City. While this has become an annual occurrence here, this year’s protests come just 3 weeks ahead of the elections to replace the governor the 2006 movement tried to oust.

During a pre-dawn rally in the central plaza, union representative Jose Alfredo Martinez, stopped short of calling for a punishment vote against the ruling party, but said the teachers’ union must continue to demand accountability for the political murders committed during the 2006 conflict.

Jose Alfredo Martinez: “We have to push for the political trial and imprisonment of the assassin of the people of Oaxaca. And we have to tell our rank and file membership regardless of whoever wins the state gubernatorial race, if we teachers of Oaxaca can’t deliver on our list of demands, the absence of accountible government will continue.”

(sound: mega-march chants)

The mega-march called by the teachers union today was miles long and drew at least 100,000 people. Due to its strength, the teachers’ union has the support of many of the state’s social and activist organizations. But the movement also has its critics.

An estimated 1.4 million schoolchildren miss class whenever the teachers mobilize en masse. Another common complaint is the vehicular chaos provoked by the frequent marches and blockades. Businesses in the downtown area often report losses whenever the teachers set up protest encampments in the central square.

Mr. Fernando, who runs a small sandwich stall in the center of the plaza says that his sales have declined by 30 percent since the protest encampment began 2 weeks ago. He just wants both sides to reach an agreement so he can recover economically.

Mr. Fernando: “We ask the authorities and the government to resolve this quickly. This always ends in an arrangement, but it always comes after they’ve been here awhile and they get tired or after the government says ‘fine, we’ll give you this much’ and they pick up their things and leave. So, why not do all this beforehand without dragging this all out and waiting for each side to wear down before negotiating?”

But negotiations between the teachers’ union and the state and federal government have stagnated. The teachers have announced they will triple the size of their protest encampment in the city center as of Tuesday morning.

The call for the second aid caravan to the town of San Juan Copala came just days after paramilitaries opened fire on a convoy of human rights defenders, teachers, activists, international observers, and reporters. The April 27th ambush killed a prominent Mexican activist and a Finnish observer.

A second aid caravan to San Juan Copala is due to leave Mexico City on Monday evening. Organizers say 350 people have signed up to participate and deliver 13 tons of donated aid.

The paramilitary group accused of perpetrating the April attack has been linked to the PRI, the party that has ruled Oaxaca without interruption for the past 80 years. Survivors of the first caravan say no police investigators have contacted them for their eyewitness accounts of the ambush.

Members of the European Parliament have called on the government of Mexico to guarantee the safety of next week’s caravan. A leading Congressman who is planning to participate says requests for security guarantees made to the Oaxaca state government have gone unanswered.

Mexico City legalized 1st term abortions back in April of 2007, becoming the only place in Latin America outside of Cuba where women can choose to end an unwanted pregnancy. The Supreme Court later ruled that states and the federal district could decide whether or not to permit abortions within their jurisdictions. This sparked a flurry of state-level constitutional amendments to protect life from the moment of conception.

The language of the reformed amendments did not take into account the exceptions made in federal law for pregnancies resulting from rape or those that present life-threatening risks to the woman. That was the essence of the challenge brought before the court by the state of Jalisco, known as a bastion of conservative Catholicism. Seventeen other states must now revisit their reformed constitution to allow rape victims the choice of terminating their pregnancies.

Related background story at http://www.fsrn.org/audio/mexico-city-marks-three-years-legalized-abortion-women-outside-still-face-risks/6627

In Mexico, a “municipality” has the same political status as a county seat. Yosoyuxi is located within the territory of the 3 year-old self-declared autonomous municipality.

Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez and his wife, Cleriberta Castro, ran a small store in the front portion of their home. According to a press release from the autonomous municipal authorities, eyewitnesses saw men in a 3-ton truck pull up to the store front run by the couple under the guise of selling merchandise. Ramírez and Castro were found dead later by a neighbour.

San Juan Copala has been blockaded by paramilitaries since November of 2009. Teachers were refused re-entry into the town in January. On April 27, paramilitaries opened fire on an international humanitarian aid caravan travelling to the besieged area. Two people died and at least 3 others suffered gunshot wounds.

Members of the Triqui autonomy movement (MULT-I) have been camped out in Mexico City’s main square since May 3rd, calling for an end to the paramilitary blockade of San Juan Copala and for official action against the perpetrators of violent crimes against supporters of the autonomy movement. They are calling for a march in Mexico City this afternoon and have announced a second humanitarian caravan scheduled to arrive in San Juan Copala on June 8th.

Francisco López Bárcenas, an academic who has written extensively about Triqui history, traces the current crisis back to the 1940s when the government withdrew recognition of San Juan Copala’s status as a county seat municipality – Mexico’s only political district with a distinctly Triqui identity.

“The municipal county seat is the base upon which the political structure of Mexican society is organized” explains López Bárcenas. “They were divided among 4 districts and dismembered politically, but that’s not all. The army was sent in and stayed from 1940 to about 1999″.

The military campaign aganst the Triquis was particularly harsh and included an aerial bombardment of their territory in 1956. Francisco López Bárcenas says it’s the only bombardment he’s aware of in post-revolutionary Mexico prior to the Zapatista uprising of 1994.

The division of the Triqui Nation among 4 political districts has also reduced Triqui control over their territory’s natural wealth, including forests, rich farmlands, water, and minerals.

The author says that in the past few decades the state government has created organizations to dominate the Triquis; “One of them is the organization accused of perpetrating the ambush, The Union for the Social Well-Being of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) which was created in 1994″. The UBISORT paramilitary group was founded some months after Mayan rebels in the neighbouring state of Chiapas launched an uprising for indigenous self-determination.

Another major player in the Triqui conflict is the MULT; the Movement for the Unification of the Triqui Struggle. The group formed to resist local political bosses and landlords but repeated assassinations of its leadership has weakened the organization. Fighting turned inward with MULT and UBISORT mutually accused of murdering each other’s members.

It was in this context that the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala was born. Residents of the town include former members of both adversarial groups who decided to form a new organization and focus on self-determination and autonomy. The reaction has been violent, with targeted assassinations of Copala residents and a physical blockade of the town, home to at least 700 people.

Daniel Arellano, a Oaxaca City activist who survived last week’s ambush with minor injuries, says the purpose of the caravan was to break the siege and document the situation. “For the past 5 months the community of San Juan Copala has been held incommunicado, under siege by paramilitaries, without clean water, without electricity, without teachers – because they had to leave, without a doctor – because he abandoned them” says Arellano, “Every night paramilitaries fire shots into the town and this situation persists because people don’t understand or have information about what is happening there”.

Demonstrations to protest the paramilitary ambush on the aid caravan and to demand justice for the two dead were held over the weekend in Oaxaca, Mexico City, and in several European and US cities.

“We ask that all the attention awakened by the murder of our two friends be shifted to the situation of grave humanitarian crisis in San Juan Copala” says ambush survivor David Venegas. He hid in the bush for two days after the attack with two journalists and a wounded friend. While all persons who went missing in the attack have been accounted for, Venegas says the town of San Juan Copala remains surrounded by paramilitaries. Another survivor of the attack, Gabriela Jimenez, said the armed men who captured her bragged of having protection from the state governor.

Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz publicly denies having ties to the UBISORT paramilitaries or that the ambush was an incident of electoral violence. In an impromptu press conference this weekend, he said the conflict in the Triqui region “has been going on for more than 40 years” and that it’s “an issue that goes beyond elections”. The governor has also called into question why international observers were in the region and asked that the National Immigration Institute investigate foreigners who “come here to cause problems”.

The PRI ruling party has dominated state politics for 80 years and has fired up the formidable party machinery in favor of its gubernatorial candidate, Eviel Perez Magaña. A number of political opponents and their family members have already met violent deaths this election season in the Northern Cuenca region and along the Pacific Coast.

The April 27th attack on a caravan carrying human rights defenders, activists, international observers, and journalists has prompted concern that even more extreme incidents could occur ahead of the July 4th elections.

They had run into a canyon and hid with Oaxacan activists David Venegas and Noe Bautista. The two activists emerged Thursday afternoon with videotaped evidence that the reporters had not been killed in the hail of bullets that riddled both sides of their car.

An official search and rescue operation found the reporters not far from the crime scene. Both reporters are receiving treatment for dehydration. David Cilia also has two gunshot wounds.

Human rights organizations and pro-autonomy activists are marching this afternoon in Oaxaca City to call world attention to the situation in San Juan Copala, the town where the aid caravan was headed.

The indigenous town has been harassed by paramilitary forces since it declared autonomy more than 3 years ago. More recently the paramilitaries sealed the town off completely, blockading the only access road and severing communication and electrical lines. Paramilitaries who briefly held caravan survivors hostage expressed they were ready to move into the town and take it over with violence.