Posted on 20 November 2010 by admin
Protest Graffitti - Oaxaca City - Sept. 2010
Across Mexico today, celebrations to mark the 100 year anniversary of the start of the Mexican Revolution. Amongst other things, the revolution was considered a victory for the country’s rural poor, who won land rights away from the wealthy elite.
While Mexico today is preoccupied with with the bloody Drug War in the country’s north, small farmers are facing a new fight over land rights in the south.
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[Chants from Oaxaca City march for Copala]
Women march through the streets of Oaxaca City to call attention to the situation in the farming village of San Juan Copala.
Most of these women fled the town this summer during a violent paramilitary offensive that killed about 20 residents.
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Posted on 10 November 2010 by admin
Gun store in Eagle Pass, Texas just blocks from border
It’s no secret many of the firearms used by Mexican drug trafficking organizations are purchased in the US. The Department of Justice launched “Project Gunrunner” in 2005 to crack down on weapons smuggling to Mexico. At the forefront of the effort is the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – or ATF.
The 138-page report released Tuesday by the Department of Justice Inspector General has found that “significant weaknesses in ATF’s implementation of Project Gunrunner undermine its effectiveness.” These weaknesses include a low level of intelligence sharing between the ATF and other US and Mexican law enforcement agencies, an emphasis on investigating small-time “straw purchasers” over large trafficking networks, and the bureau’s failure to expand its gun tracing program in Mexico.
The report also found that the lack of reporting requirements for rifle sales has hindered investigations.
The Justice Department made 15 specific recommendations to the ATF for improving Project Gunrunner. Among them, strengthening the crime gun tracing initiative that is supposedly the cornerstone of the operation.
Posted on 29 October 2010 by admin
The level of violence in Mexico’s Drug War reached unprecedented levels this week with 6 massacres in the span of 7 days. The incidents have killed a combined total of more than 60 people and left dozens more injured.
The mass murders started last Friday when gunmen killed 15 young people at a house party in Ciudad Juarez. On Sunday, 13 people were shot to death in a Tijuana drug rehabilitation center. Another 13 died in an armed attack on a car wash in Tepic, Nayarit on Wednesday.
Thursday morning brought two mass killings. Six youths were gunned down on a street corner in Mexico City. An attack near Ciudad Juarez targeted 3 buses of maquiladora workers, leaving 5 women dead and another 14 wounded.
Thursday afternoon, an ambush of a police convoy killed nine policemen in the state of Jalisco.
Other incidents this week include the discovery of a 4 person “narco-grave” near Oaxaca City and the explosion of two fragmentation grenades in Jalisco which injured 5 people – including 2 small children.
Nearly 30,000 Mexicans have died since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country’s powerful cartels four years ago.
Posted on 26 October 2010 by admin
An online video implicating a former Mexican state attorney general in political assassinations and corruption has created a new scandal of collusion between officials and Mexican drug cartels.
In a video posted to YouTube on Monday, a man identified as the brother of former Chihuahua state attorney general Patricia Gonzalez sits in a chair surrounded by masked men in camouflage. The former official’s brother was reportedly kidnapped last week. With rifles pointed at him, the brother says Gonzalez took bribes from the Juarez cartel, covered up crimes and ordered others, including the deaths of two local journalists.
Just last week, the Chihuahua state legislature passed a bill that includes a mandatory sentence of life in prison for those convicted of murdering journalists. The former state attorney general says she recognizes the backdrop in the video as a cubicle in a government office and suspects police are tied to her brother’s kidnapping and video interrogation.
The scandal comes in the wake of a particularly gruesome weekend along the border. Thirteen youths were massacred at a birthday party in Ciudad Juarez (in Chihuahua state) and another 13 recovering drug addicts were gunned down in a Tijuana rehab.
Nearly 30 thousand Mexicans have died in drug war related violence since President Felipe Calderon began his frontal military strategy against the country’s powerful cartels 4 years ago.
Posted on 20 October 2010 by admin
(Report originally produced for The World and available for download here)
A gabion along a creek traps soil rushing downhill
Residents of the Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca are still digging out from a rash of late summer landslides. The disasters killed dozens of people, destroyed homes and blocked rural highways. The landslides were blamed on unusually heavy rains and bad mountain roads… but deforestation and poor agricultural practices have made erosion a chronic problem in the region. Now some local residents are trying to address the problem by experimenting with low-tech traditional practices. Shannon Young reports.
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REPORTER: Back-to-back storms have drenched Oaxaca and three neighboring states in this busy hurricane season. Much of this rain has hit remote mountainous regions that are already prone to landslides . Storm-related damage to roads has left some towns unreachable by car for weeks.
Forest management consultant Jose Rodriguez says the Mexican government hasn’t provided much help in cleaning up, so the task has largely fallen to unpaid locals with their own shovels.
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