Download audio file (symp3.mp3)

This most recent spate of violence targeting activists started on November 28th when Nepomuceno Moreno was gunned down in his truck at an intersection in Hermosillo, not far from the state government palace. Moreno had spent more than a year searching for a son who was kidnapped – allegedly by state police.

The spokesperson for the Sonora state attorney general’s office suggested the murder may have been linked more to organized than to Moreno’s activism.

Then, on November 30th, Norma Andrade, the co-founder of a recognized anti-femicide organization in Ciudad Juarez was shot five times as she left her home. Investigators described the crime as a car-jacking gone wrong. Andrade, who narrowly survived the attack, said it was attempted murder – noting that her vehicle is 20 years old and that the gunman made no demands before discharging his weapon.

On December 6th, a dozen members of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity traveled to the Ostula, Michoacan in western Mexico to observe a community consultation to petition the government for security forces. The delegation was traveling with Trinidad de la Cruz Crisóstomo; a community elder. “Don Trino” as he was known, was the town’s representative in talks with the government.

(Hernandez speaks, reporter interprets)

Citlali Hernandez, who participated in the observation trip, says once within the territory of Ostula, four armed men in ski masks blocked road. They boarded the delegation’s bus and took it to a foot path. She says Don Trino was identified and everyone was forced off the bus and told to lie face down on the ground.

HERNANDEZ (voiceover): “They took away our cell phones. They spoke repeatedly of massacring all of us. During this, they were beating Don Trino. We could hear his cries. From what we could hear, it sounded like they were stabbing him because of his screams and what they were saying.”

Hernandez says the armed men ordered the group to get back on the bus and go directly to the city of Lazaro Cardenas. Don Trino remained in the custody of the attackers.

The next day, the 73 year-old community leader was found dead – his body bearing signs of torture. Don Trino became the 28th community member killed since indigenous residents of Ostula took several hundred acres of farmland back from powerful local landbosses in mid-2009. Pedro Leyva, also a community leader from Ostula and a member of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity was killed in October.

Attorney David Peña, who acts as legal counsel for the community, says the government is at least partially responsible for the crime for allowing armed groups to operate in the area unchecked, despite local requests for security patrols – specifically from a nearby Marine base.

PEÑA (voiceover): “This serious occurence cannot be viewed as an isolated incident committed by organized criminals operating in the area. It’s not an isolated incident and the state shares responsibility because it knows that these groups are operating and how they’re operating. We’ve told them about it as well as what specific measures to take and they’ve done nothing.”

About 5000 people live in the community of Ostula, WHICH is made up of small enclaves and a core population center. It lies along a highway near the port city of Lazaro Cardenas.

(Judisman speaks, reporter interprets)

Clara Judisman of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity says the area around Lazaro Cardenas is a key route for the drug trade. It’s home to one of Latin America’s major sea ports and control of territory in and around the port is fundamental to organized crime operations.

Judisman says indigenous groups who are defending their territories and rights are being attacked and divided as criminals co-opt some residents to create internal strife. She says the case of Ostula demonstrates the concrete local effects of the global drug market on a community which wants to control its traditional territory.

Hours after Don Trino’s kidnapping, two other members of the Movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity were taken off of a bus in the neighboring state of Guerrero. Marcial Bautista are Eva Alarcón are long time leaders of an environmental movement of small farmers in the state. They were on their way to a meeting in Mexico City when the passenger bus in which they were traveling was boarded by armed men who witnesses say asked for the activists by name.

At the time of this report, their whereabouts remains unknown.

At a press conference held in aftermath of the attack in Ostula and the abductions in Guerrero – and with last week’s murder of Nepomuceno Moreno and the shooting of Norma Andrade still fresh in the collective memory, Araceli Rodiriguez – mother of a kidnapped federal policeman – voice a question that seems to be on the minds of many…

(Rodriguez speaks, reporter interprets)

Who’s next? – she asked. Who of those who have come forward to tell the stories of and experiences of Mexico’s drug war victims will be murdered before the eyes of an authority which – she says – has ignored petitions for protection.

Rodriguez confessed that she is scared and plans to examine security measures, but she does not plan to allow the environment of fear and intimidation silence the movement’s demands for justice.

(Originally aired December 9, 2011 on FSRN )

sign and flowers from a recent march against violence

The following is a transcript of a documentary produced for FSRN which aired November 25, 2011. The audio is available for download here .

The so-called Drug War has drastically altered life in Mexico. More than 40,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive in December 2006 against the country’s powerful organized crime groups. Drug war-related violence has become increasingly brutal – and public. Criminals have branched into activities like extortion and kidnapping. The military has taken over civilian law enforcement in many parts of the country. At least a quarter million people have been displaced. The end result is a traumatic strain on Mexico’s social fabric.

Download audio file (20111125hifi.mp3)
In today’s special documentary, FSRN’s Shannon Young brings us “Mexico’s Drug War in Context”. Stay tuned.

Militarized prohibition and its current effects on-the-ground in Mexico

Much of what is visible about the drug war to people outside of Mexico comes in the form of news reports about massacres, political scandals and military aid packages.

Deaths are measured in the tens of thousands, military spending in the hundreds of millions, and drug revenues are estimated in the tens of billions of dollars…but some of the most profound changes on the ground in Mexico have occurred in the details of day-to-day life.

Sanjuana Martinez is an investigative journalist based in Monterrey. The northern industrial city once associated with economic prosperity has become the center of a violent tug-of-war between various criminal organizations.

SANJUANA MARTINEZ (female VO):“People hardly go out anymore, the plazas are empty, nightlife has ended. Violence is generalized; mass murders, shootouts, massacres have become routine…people left hanging from bridges, beheaded, cut into pieces, femicide made invisible by the drug war. This is all part of a panorama of barbarity, of butchery which has created a change in the social fabric as well.”

While many parts of Mexico have experienced a spike in violence, overall the hardest hit areas are in the north along the border with Texas.

[REYNOSA SHOOTOUT AUDIO]

Shootouts, like this one in the manufacturing hub of Reynosa, can occur without warning and in broad daylight.

Another border city, Ciudad Juarez has become a so-called “world murder capital”. But when it comes to statistical murder rates, or documented homicides per 100,000 residents, the border area’s rural communities have been hardest hit. Such is the case with the Juarez Valley, an agricultural region east of of Ciudad Juarez.

One family’s experience in a small border town devastated by murder

One town in the valley, Guadalupe, has suffered more drug war homicides per capita, than anywhere else in Mexico, according to government data released in January.

Among the murder victims are 6 members of the Reyes Salazar family.

(Olga Reyes Salazar speaks – reporter interprets)

Olga Reyes Salazar says the border town was once a nice place which drew binational visitors. She recalls how people in Guadalupe and other nearby towns would host dances on the weekends in which residents from both sides of the border would get to know each other. She says it’s a way of life that’s now sorely missed.

Olga’s sister, Marisela Reyes Salazar says daily life changed dramatically with the militarization of the region.

MARISELA REYES SALAZAR (female VO): “The military would come to the towns and go into homes without any kind of warrant, groping and hitting people, even stealing groceries from small farmers and maquiladora workers who worked hard all week to provide for their families. That’s when people started to be afraid to go outside to the store, to visit the plaza, to go out for an ice cream or what have you. It started with the militarization of Ciudad Juarez and the Juarez Valley.”

Their sister, Josefina Reyes Salazar, became outspoken about alleged military abuses. In 2008, Josefina’s oldest son, Miguel Angel, was picked up by soldiers, accused of ties to criminals and later released.

Months later, another of Josefina’s sons – Julio Cesar – was assassinated at a wedding party attended by hundreds of townspeople. In January of 2010, Josefina herself was murdered, shortly after passing through a military checkpoint. Since then, three of Josefina’s siblings and a sister-in-law have been killed. The extended family has since fled the Juarez Valley.

A US Embassy cable on Josefina Reyes Salazar’s murder downplayed her activism and suggested the killing may have been related to her oldest son’s alleged ties to organized crime. Miguel Angel Reyes was detained a second time in 2009 and has yet to go to trial.

(Marisela Reyes Salazar speaks – reporter translates)

Marisela Reyes Salazar says the family has always been open to an investigation into the allegations. She says authorities have held her nephew for years without pressing formal charges.

MARISELA REYES SALAZAR (female VO):“We’ve always held our heads high and we are no longer willing to allow anyone to humiliate us, to kill us again. We’re going to struggle. We’re not willing to shed another drop of our blood.”

Historical context of the drug trafficking industry in Mexico

The industry based on the trafficking of illicit substances has been present along many parts of the US/Mexico border since the enactment of drug and alcohol prohibition nearly a century ago. But Mexico has never before experienced the current level of bloodshed related specifically to the control of a black market economy.

Sociologist and prominent organized crime researcher, Luis Astorga says the industry shifted when Mexico’s political system transitioned away from a one-party state.

(LuisAstorga speaks – reporter interprets)

While drug trafficking emerged in Mexico at the start of the 20th century, the groups involved were subordinate to state power. Astorga says this subordinate role began to change along with Mexico’s political system and that the dissolution of the one-party state’s centralized policing institution in the mid 1980s not only altered the government’s ability to contain the political opposition, but also to contain and control the strongest criminal organizations.

 Astorga says the one-party system hegemony at the federal, state, and local levels gave it the leverage and control necessary to act as a de-facto referee among criminal groups, but the rise of other political forces changed the rules.

 Like merchants and traders centuries ago, cartels have used a strategic corridor which runs through Ciudad Juarez. It’s located at a point to either avoid or enter the Rocky Mountains and is mid-way between the Pacific and Gulf coasts.

 (Julian Contreras speaks – reporter interprets)

Long-time resident Julian Contreras says violence associated with the drug trade in Ciudad Juarez used to be contained to those who had a stake in it, but that murders targeting civilians increased in 2007. Contreras says this made residents desperate for order. The government response was to send thousands of soldiers…after which, the murder rate spiked.

During a visit to Washington DC earlier this year, President Felipe Calderon told an audience that some sectors within Mexican politics disagreed with a frontal attack against organized crime groups and urged him to continue with the tacit tolerance of the past.

FELIPE CALDERON: “My perception is that that is not possible, or at least is not possible anymore with the new business of the criminals because either you allow them to do anything they want in your whole territory – so the best you can do is to give them the key of your house – or you combat them directly and with the full force of the state. There is no other option.”

US MILITARY AID, MERIDA INITIATIVE, AND ILLEGAL FIREARMS TRAFFICKING

 Receptions in Washington have been warm for Calderon. US officials, including President Barack Obama, have recognized that bilateral cooperation between the US and Mexican governments is far closer now than what IT had been under the conservative nationalist PRI party which ruled Mexico for more than 70 years.

BARACK OBAMA: I have nothing but admiration for President Calderon in his willingness to take this on. The easy thing to do would be for him to ignore the corrosive, corrupting influence of these drug cartels within Mexico. That would be the easy thing to do. He’s taking the hard path and he’s shown great courage and great risk in doing so and the United States will support him in any ways that we can to help him achieve his goals because his goals are our goals as well and they should be the goals of the Mexican people.

Past US interventions in Mexico have made the Mexican public wary of close military ties between the two countries. But the militarization of the drug war and a 1.6 billion dollar military aid and training package known as the Merida Initiative has given the US government unprecedented access to Mexico’s armed forces and intelligence apparatus. The Merida Initiative was originally announced in 2007 as a 3 year program but there’s no clear end in sight.

Mexico City-based political analyst Laura Carlsen has been tracking Merida spending.

LAURA CARLSEN:“Most of it is going to private contractors. Now, there we have a real problem to track it because public information is scarce on this. But with the amount of outsourcing that we know that the State Dept and the Defense Dept does and some of the contracts that we’ve been able to see, we know that a lot of this money is going to contractors – and the military equipment, of course. That’s easier to track. So, they’re a huge lobbying force within Congress to say ‘Let’s ramp up the drug war in Mexico; this is good business’. And that’s exactly what’s happening.”

The Merida Initiative is often compared to Plan Colombia and the two US-funded drug war programs are beginning to merge with US-trained Colombian special forces training their Mexican counterparts, a measure outlined by Congress member Connie Mack and Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield in a recent congressional hearing.

CONNIE MACK: A lot of people say ‘Why don’t we put our military down there?’. You and I know what the sovereignty issues…uh, the gringo can’t go down there. But I think the Colombian special forces can assimilate better from a cultural standpoint and it was an intriguing idea that we heard on that trip that we thought could provide some assistance.

WILLIAM BROWNFIELD: Mr. Chairman, I not only think it’s an intriguing idea, I think it is an excellent idea. It would probably not surprise you to learn that I am a great fan and admirer of what the Colombian people and their government and their institutions have accomplished over the last 11 or 12 years. I think they are now quite capable of exporting some of those capabilities through training and support elsewhere in the region.

But US-funded military aid hasn’t been the only source of firepower to flow into Mexico in recent years. Many weapons found at crimes scenes in Mexico have been traced back to Texas, where thousands of licensed firearms dealers do business…and where weapons can be purchased without background checks at regularly-held gun shows.

[GUN SHOW AMBIENT TONE]

At a gun show in Houston, firearms instructor Gary Burris explains the process for purchasing an AR-15 on display.

SY:This says right here private sale. What does that mean?

GB:Private sale means that an individual owns this gun and he’s selling it privately, meaning that there’s no tax, that there’s no paperwork involved. So, for instance, you can come and buy this gun and walk out the door with it.

SY:What’s the difference between having to do paperwork and ‘no paperwork’?

GB: To submit the paperwork to the ATF.In other words, you don’t have to show identification to prove you’re whatever. This is actually the gun show loophole that they’ve been talking about for a long time. Good, bad or indifferent, that’s a possibility that a bad guy could get it that way.

In addition to purchases made through the gun show loophole, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms knowingly allowed thousands of guns to cross into Mexico under operations “Fast and Furious” and “Wide Receiver”.

Victims push back against stigmatization and organize a movement

The concrete results of allowing weapons to flow from the US into Mexico are difficult, if not impossible, to measure. But other patterns are recognizable. Magazine reporter Marcela Turati, who grew up in the northern state of Chihuahua, began to notice changes in social behaviors in response to the violence.

MARCELA TURATI (female VO):“First, there’s a phenomenon that’s visible in many cities and that’s fear. People will spontaneously start building ever higher walls around their neighborhoods because they feel unprotected. People will stop using public spaces, stop greeting their neighbors. Whereas a funeral used to draw a crowd, people will stay away out of fear that the person murdered was up to something and the killers may show up at the funeral parlor and kill those who have come to pay their respects. The first thing lost in an area is the community bond.”

The fear of attending funerals was fueled by the perception, supported by official statements, that the vast majority of those killed were involved in criminal activities.

This perception began to shift in the wake of the January 2010 Villas del Salvarcar massacre in which 15 people, mostly high school students, were gunned down at a neighborhood birthday party in Ciudad Juarez. President Calderon, who was visiting Japan at the time, told the international media the victims were gang members. Although he later retracted his statement, residents were infuriated.

[Luz Maria Davila confronts Calderon]

During an official event, Luz Maria Davila, who lost her both of her children in the massacre confronted Calderon before the lens of the national news media. It was the first time relatives of stigmatized murder victims seeking to clear the names of their loved ones received widespread media attention.

Another important shift in public perception of drug war victims came in March of 2011 after the massacre of seven young men in Cuernavaca. One of them was the son of recognized poet Javier Sicilia. Within a week, Sicilia was helping to lead a nationwide protest movement that criticized both cartel violence and the government’s militarized strategy.

[public reading of the 'Estamos Hasta la Madre' open letter]

The movement provided a space in which those who had lost loved ones were able to come forward and tell their stories without stigma.

Disappearances, displacements, opportunistic crime, and impunity

Marches and other public events also brought attention to what had been a less visible crime; the disappearance of thousands of people across the country. Angel Bautista, whose brother Sergio disappeared in 2008, described the search process.

ANGEL BAUTISTA (male VO): “It started out with putting up posters, going to the morgues trying to find a trace of my brother. Then we filed a police report and we’ve received zero results. When mass graves were discovered, we gave DNA samples to see if there was a possibility that my brother was in one of them. But we’ve been constantly ignored, which is why we’re now mobilizing.”

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has documented more than 5,000cases of persons considered “disappeared”. Some non-governmental organizations say the number is much higher and exceeds 10 thousand. A United Nations fact-finding mission called for the creation of a database to track disappearances, but this has yet to happen.

Some relatives of the disappeared say police have refused to take their reports or will insist on categorizing armed abductions as missing persons cases.

(Marcela_Turati speaks – reporter interprets)

Journalist Marcela Turati says people will sometimes carry out their own investigations when police institutions refuse or fail to act. She’s seen how women whose daughters disappeared many years ago in Ciudad Juarez are now sharing the investigative skills they learned with women whose sons have disappeared in the context of the drug war.

Lack of public faith in government institutions is no secret…and impunity is a well-documented reality.

Poet and activist Javier Sicilia voiced this concern both in a famous letter penned after his son’s murder, as well as during face-to-face talks with President Calderon.

JAVIER SICILIA (male VO):“The problem Mr. President is that you think the bad guys are on the outside and good are on the inside. The problem Mr. President is that you launched a war with institutions that are rotten, with institutions that don’t bring the nation security, institutions with high rates of impunity.”

Academic and government-funded studies vary slightly, but the most commonly cited statistic puts the successful prosecution rate for crimes at only 2 percent. Again, Laura Carlsen.

LAURA CARLSEN:“That means 98 percent of crimes that are committed are not ever punished. When you have a situation like that, then it’s easy to branch out into other areas of crime. It’s easy for common criminals to feel bolder about committing homicides and crimes because they figure it’ll just be chalked up to the drug war now with blood flowing in the streets, practically another one isn’t going to make much difference, so we’re seeing what’s called ‘opportunistic crime’ as well.”

Opportunistic crime can take on many forms; from predatory rape-murders to illegal logging of protected forests to forced displacement campaigns funded by regional land bosses.

[CHANTS FROM A MARCH OF INDIGENOUS DISPLACED PERSONS]

Some indigenous communities have organized their own efforts to push back against criminals and corrupt officials operating within their resource-rich territories. But these community organized efforts are up against well-armed opponents and the apparent indifference of government institutions.

Lack of access to justice and the rise of para-militarism

(Loretta Ortiz speaks – reporter interprets)

Law professor Loretta Ortiz says the institutional abandonment and lack of political will to punish those responsible for crimes creates scenarios which have already started to emerge: para-militarism, lynchings, and the eye for an eye use of vigilante armed force.

Privately-funded armed groups have existed for decades in rural Mexico, particularly in areas marked by land disputes, but another force has surfaced in the context of the drug war; so-called narco-paramilitaries.

[MATA-ZETAS VIDEO COMMUNIQUE]

A group calling itself the Mata-Zetas or “Zeta Killers” went public this summer by posting a video communique to YouTube. The group expressed support for the government of Veracruz and admiration for the armed forces. It claimed to be affiliated with the New Generation of Jalisco Cartel and said its aim is to wipe out members of the Zetas, a criminal organization which itself was founded by defectors from an elite military unit.

Many aspects of Mexico’s drug war can be predicted by observing what has already occurred in Colombia. Paramilitary groups have been responsible for some of the most gruesome crimes in Colombia in recent decades. Victims there have included labor leaders, small landowners, and members of the political opposition.

Proposed counterinsurgency designation and its politics

Plan Colombia, like the Merida Initiative, was originally a counter-narcotics military aid package. But in 2002, Congress approved a provision that expanded the scope of authorized activities to include counterinsurgency strategies.

Some US congress members are pushing for a counterinsurgency designation for the drug war strategy in Mexico. Among them is Florida Republican Connie Mack.

CONNIE MACK: “The counterinsurgency measures must include; 1) An all US agency plan including the treasury dept, dept of justice, CIA, US immigration and customs enforcement, the state dept and others to aggressively attack and dismantle the criminal networks in the US and Mexico. 2) Once and for all, we must secure the border between the Unites States and Mexico, doubling Border Patrol agents, fully funding and delivering on the needed border protection equipment such as the unmanned aerial vehicles and the completion of double-layered security fence in urban, hard to enforce areas of the border. 3) We must take key steps to ensure local populations support the government and the rule of law over the cartels, such as by promoting culture of lawfulness programs.”

Mexican officials – and some US government officials – have objected to the use of the term “insurgency” to describe the activities of organized crime. The counterinsurgency strategy implemented in Colombia was mainly directed at the country’s leftist guerrillas while right-wing paramilitaries continued to operate or were demobilized under an amnesty deal.

Questioning prohibition, maintaining the status quo, and other possible paths

Sociologist and researcher Luis Astorga says that while it would be a mistake to negotiate with organized crime, the war on drugs itself is un-winnable.

LUIS ASTORGA (male VO): “It’s an un-winnable fight because there’s an anthropological constant which has shown that human consumption of psychoactive substances is as old as humankind itself. Therefore to act like one can gain control over these types of substances – or even wipe these substances off the face of the earth – is to not understand these types of historical and cultural processes.”

Even President Calderon has started to question prohibition in veiled references to “market alternatives”.

FELIPE CALDERON (male VO): “That’s a debate that needs to happen on an international level…What economists say is that market alternatives reduce the inflated prices paid on the black market…The price of drugs on the black market are not determined by Mexico, but rather by the American market which is why if alternatives are to be explored, they must be done so from there.”

The drug war in Mexico is using military force, with the support of a superpower, to enforce a policy of prohibition against against the fundamental economic laws of supply and demand. Yet, policies that alter the confrontation of these two forces are considered politically taboo.

Sociologist Luis Astorga explains the possible scenarios moving forward.

LUIS ASTORGA (male VO): “What we could aspire to without modifying the rules of the game as far as anti-drug policy goes is either to have institutions as solid as the advanced democracies or the other scenario, which hopefully no one supports, and that is to return to an authoritarian system. Otherwise, the rules would need to be changed on an international level as quickly as possible and that’s not on the short-term horizon. No one at the United Nations assembly is proposing this.”

While a United Nations convention signed in 1961 greatly influenced the adoption of prohibitionist policies among member nations, the United States remains a key player in upholding the policy…and in theory, US civil society could play a central role in repealing prohibition.

But the geopolitics may seem distant and abstract to the very real consequences experienced on the ground by countless people, including Olga Reyes Salazar..who, after fleeing her hometown with her extended family has joined a movement of drug war victims in Mexico.

OLGA REYES SALAZAR (female VO):“I’d like for everyone to get together and really stop this war. What we’ve been though has been awful. To lose 6 relatives in less than 3 years is very sad and very ugly. It wouldn’t want it for anyone else to have to go through it, not even my worst enemy. Much less having to leave your home without knowing where you’re going or which path you’ll take. More than anything, I’d like to see people unite and become aware of what is happening so that they won’t have to go through the same – if they haven’t already.”

This sentiment – a combined cry for help and warning to others – started coming from Ciudad Juarez nearly two decades ago in reaction to the unpunished murders of young women. It intensified with drug war related violence…which, like femicide crime, has since spread far beyond the city where it had been most concentrated.

Journalist Sanjuana Martinez says the damage already caused by violence and impunity will have lasting effects.

SANJUANA MARTINEZ (female VO): “It’s going to be very hard to heal the wounds. We have Colombia as a reference where there were more than a million deaths, paramilitary groups, drug cartels, state violence…and they are wounds that are still open twenty years later. I think it’s going to be very difficult to recover from this. It’s an enormous nationwide tragedy. The drug war is a delusional, failed policy because it’s against a nebulous enemy; an enemy which attempts to buy off and corrupt all of the state’s forces, which it has shown itself able to do. And the wounds caused by this are major. There’s a lot of bitterness and hate and all of this bitterness and hate is causing more violence.”

Although this prediction may sound grim – it’s a likely scenario – especially if policies on both sides of the border, including militarism and prohibition, remain as unchanged as the demand and consumption rates in the United States; the world’s largest drug market.

[CLOSING CREDITS]

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.

Download audio file (20110919sy.mp3)

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.)

The meeting, which changed location to Chapultepec Castle on short notice, represented the first time a large group of victims told their stories directly to the Mexican officials driving and carrying out domestic Drug War policy.

The format of the “dialogue” resembled that of a city council meeting, with most victims facing time limits on their public comments and officials giving lengthy responses.

President Felipe Calderon says he would like to be “remembered for promoting education, hospitals and unprecedented road infrastructure”, but recognizes the Drug War will probably be his administration’s most lasting legacy. He defended his policy as a tough decision that had to be made and a necessary step to root out entrenched organized crime.

When questioned about widespread impunity in concrete cases, like that of the siege of San Juan Copala, Calderon blamed local and state level governments for not adequately prosecuting crimes within their jurisdictions.

Poet Javier Sicilia told the president it was a mistake to fight cartels with institutions that are themselves “rotten from the inside out”.

While the talks don’t appear likely to bring about any major policy shift, the president and the poet agreed to give continuity to the talks and meet again in three months.

sign and flowers from a recent march against violence

The Milenio newspaper’s independent count of drug war-related deaths finds 1,402 victims were reported in the month of April. That makes last month the deadliest since the start of the four and a half year-old military offensive against organized crime.

Nearly a quarter of April’s documented deaths were found in mass graves. The largest discoveries were in the states of Tamaulipas and Durango, where dozens of mass graves have yielded some 300 victims…and those deaths may only be the tip of the iceberg.

News of the mass graves prompted families of missing persons to come forward en masse. The Mexican attorney general’s office now acknowledges the number of people who have disappeared since 2007 may number more than 6 thousand.

The steadily rising death toll has also sparked a national movement critical of both the president’s militarization strategy and the targeting of civilians by organized crime networks. The “No More Blood” movement plans to carry out a series of actions this upcoming weekend, including a four-day march on foot from Cuernavaca to Mexico City.

The marches come at the behest of well-known writer, Javier Sicilia, whose son and close friends were found dead last week. In a press conference in the city of Cuernavaca, Sicilia slammed the government for its Drug War polices and criticized the drug cartels for abandoning the codes that, in the past, made civilians off-limits to attacks. Sicilia called on people to attend in large numbers to overcome fear and create a safe space for dissent against the Drug War. Marches will take place in some of the hardest-hit cities in the north – including Ciudad Juarez, Reynosa, and Monterrey.

Deaths and disappearances in the spotlight

A day of quickly-planned marches in dozens of cities would have been hard to predict even just a couple of weeks ago, but the death of Sicilia’s son sparked discontent that has been brewing for years. The human cost of the Drug War has also been receiving the attention of national and international organizations recently.

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission has documented nearly 5,400 cases of people who are “missing or absent” since 2006. The governmental body’s new data marks a sharp increase from its prior figure of less than 300. It also comes on the heels of a 2 week fact-finding mission by a United Nations working group on forced disappearances.

The UN working group made headlines on Friday for its recommendation that the Mexican government consider withdrawing the military from police work, which is a line that has been blurred by the current administration’s Drug War strategy.

Victim stigmatization

Independent human rights organizations have performed the bulk of the documentation of forced disappearances in recent years, as victims’ families often distrust the authorities. Families who do come forward sometimes face the stigma of allegations that their missing loved ones were involved in criminal activity.

There have also been cases in which homicides have been linked to organized crime under suspicious circumstances. When three members of the outspoken Reyes Salazar family were kidnapped in February, surviving relatives immediately began carrying out non-violent actions to pressure the authorities to act. When the missing people’s bodies were dumped on a road in the Juarez Valley, security forces said a note was found at the scene linking the activist family to organized crime. Supporters of the family called the note a cover-up. Since then, there’s been no apparent investigation into the triple homicide and most of the family has fled the state of Chihuahua.

Initial reports indicated a message from the Gulf Cartel was found at the scene. where the bodies of Juan Francisco Sicilia and his friends discovered.  While murders accompanied by such notes are rarely investigated, the Sicilia case had grabbed national attention. On Tuesday, the Morelos State Attorney General reportedly told sources close to the case that active duty soldiers may be linked to the multi-homicide.

Impunity has become the norm for the cases of murders and massacres linked to the ongoing Drug War. Statements from an international summit taking place currently in Cancun indicate the US government sees success in the militarized strategy. Others, however, see the war as unwinnable.

Some hail it as a necessary code of ethics in an media environment that often sensationalizes violent news stories. Others condemn it for further restricting a press that already practices a significant amount of self-censorship.

Among the rules are the requirements that reporters take a position against violence perpetrated by organized crime, not allow themselves to become “involuntary spokespersons” for the cartels, and “not interfere in the combat against crime” by publishing information that could put an investigation or operation at risk.

Only four major national media outlets have not signed onto the pact; 2 newspapers (La Jornada and Reforma), the weekly investigative news magazine Proceso, and the MVS broadcasting company. Another notable exception is the Diario de Juárez, the leading newspaper in the city known as ground zero for the militarized offensive against organized crime. But even those outlets may face pressure to conform to the new guidelines.

Mexican senators have indicated they’ll move a proposal as early as next week to make the voluntary reporting guidelines law.

It’s gotten to the point that massacres have become near daily events in Mexico…and behind each of those massacres are the stories of the people who died and their families. These back stories are what investigative reporter Marcela Turati has documented in her new book, “Fuego Cruzado” – or “Crossfire” in English.

Download audio file (MarcelaTurati_lofi.mp3)

Turati sat down with South Notes recently to discuss these stories that go uncovered in a media landscape that can barely keep up with registering the daily death toll. The audio is in Spanish.

In a militarized Drug War that has claimed more than 35,000 Mexican lives since December of 2006, no city has paid as high a price as Ciudad Juárez. However, criticizing the government’s militarization strategy can be dangerous.

The homes of 2 vocal activists were set on fire this week. Both had become active as a result of seeking justice for murdered family members.

One is Sara Salazar, who has lost three relatives to violence since 2009. First her grandson went missing, presumably after being taken into military custody, in 2009. Her daughter, Josefina Reyes, became an outspoken critic of the president’s militarization strategy in the wake of her son’s disappearance. In Mexico, the military is largely shielded from prosecution for crimes committed against civilians by something known as “fuero militar”.

Josefina Reyes was herself murdered January 3rd of 2010. Her brother, Rubén Reyes Salazar, was killed on August 18, 2010. Both murders have gone unpunished.

Then on February 7th 2011, an armed commando abducted Malena and Elías Reyes Salazar – a daughter and son of Sara Salazar – along with Elías’ wife, Luisa Ornelas. Sara Salazar was in the vehicle, but separated from the kidnapping victims, as was her grandaughter, Yarima.

Some surviving family members began a hunger strike and protest camp in front of a special prosecutor’s office in Ciudad Juárez to press for action on the case. Sara Salazar was at the protest camp when she received word on the night of Tuesday, February 15th, that her house had been set on fire. Her house is located 100 yards from a military checkpoint in the Valle de Juárez, a rural area outside of Ciudad Juárez.

Anti-femicide activist Malú García Andrade visited the protest camp the next day. She reported her house was burned down that night. García Andrade was no longer living in the house due to death threats which she links to her activism in the cases of unpunished murders of young women, including that of her sister. Days later, García announced she is leaving Ciudad Juárez because she fears for her safety and that of her family. This week marks the anniversary of the brutal murder of her sister, Lilia Alejandra García Andrade, who was abducted, tortured, gang raped and killed over the course of the days between February 14th to the 21st of 2001. That murder has also gone unpunished.

Ciudad Juárez has registered over 8 thousand murders since President Felipe Calderón launched a militarized offensive against Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations. The border city is a key entry point into the world’s most lucrative drug market; the United States.

More than 300 have been killed in Ciudad Juárez since the start of 2011. Some predict the city’s death toll will reach 5,000 by the end of the year.

Many from Ciudad Mier have fled to nearby Ciudad Miguel Alemán, where city officials have set up what is apparently Mexico’s first temporary shelter for civilians fleeing Drug War violence. The building, which in the past has acted as a hurricane shelter, is reportedly now housing around 300 people. Authorities on the Texas side of the border have not made public any plans or intentions to provide emergency shelter to the displaced.

The exodus comes on the heels of a major shootout in Matamoros last Friday which killed the acting boss of the Gulf Cartel. The Zetas were formerly the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, but have spent much of this year at war with their former employers. Some security analysts warn the kingpin’s death will spark a harder and stronger push by the Zetas to consolidate control over territory in northeastern Mexico.