Mexico

November 17, 2013, marked the 30th anniversary of the formation of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), and on January 1, 2014 they will celebrate 20 years since their first public appearance. As a form of tribute to the men and women who made that cry of ENOUGH (YA BASTA) echo worldwide, today we start a series of installments which try to look at the history of the actors who linked together to give rise to the EZLN.

[…]

On November 30 a caravan of some 43 mothers of disappeared Central American migrants left Guatemala City for Mexico in search of their missing loved ones, some whom have been missing for nearly 30 years. The Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, and Honduran mothers are making their ninth trip through the Mexican Republic for a two-week, 4,000-kilometer journey that will follow migrants’ routes through 15 states.

[…]

In a historic move, Mexican congress members have voted to open the state-controlled energy sector to foreign investment for the first time in 75 years. The legislation will alter several articles of Mexico’s Constitution, allowing private multinationals to develop the country’s oil and natural gas resources for the first time since 1938, and is poised to become the nation’s most significant economic reform since the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement.

[…]

The Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL), which according to organizers is the largest Spanish language literary event in the world, opened amid controversy this year. It isn’t books that are the source of the conflict, but rather who the organizers chose as the country of honor: Israel.

[…]

October 27th marked seven years of Brad Will living in the memory of Oaxacans, as well as those other fallen 26 from 2006. It marks seven years of demanding justice for them all. Every year hundreds of people mobilize and leave flowers and offerings at the Calicanto barricade. Some people bring food, coffee and bread to share with those participating in the activities and to the rhythm of son de la barricada [a popular protest song of the uprising].

[…]

What is happening today with regards to the drug war in Mexico has important precedent elsewhere in the hemisphere, namely, in Colombia. There is a legitimate focus on how events in Colombia preceded what is taking place in the “drug war” in Mexico. Key to the importance of Colombia from 2000 onwards in understanding Mexico today is Plan Colombia and the multi-billion-dollar investment the US government made in the war on drugs there.

[…]

In the chilly town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, perched in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication was held from October 7-13, 2013.

[…]

“Although the rulers do not like it, we will continue defending our territory because this is where we come from, and we are not leaving despite their repression and corruption” say the ejidatarios of San Sebastián Bachajón, who denounce the murder with impunity of their leader Juan Vázquez Guzmán, and request the intervention of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to protect their rights and the integrity of their territory.

[…]

Every Tuesday, 76-year-old Miguel Díaz spends the better part of the day outside the House of Representatives in Mexico City. Díaz went to the United States in 1960s as a bracero, a contracted guestworker. Upon returning to Mexico, he and millions of other braceros were never paid the 10 percent of their earnings that had been withheld and sent to the Mexican government in an attempt to ensure braceros’ temporary status.

[…]

Increasingly migrants are forced to travel via the dangerous La Bestia, the freight train that traverses Mexico, which earned its name because it has taken the lives of so many of its passengers. Death recently struck again, when La Bestia derailed in Huimanguillo, Tabasco, close to the Guatemalan border.

[…]