“We need to be the ones to provide the answers to the questions of our times, because we are the main victims of the voracious policies of capitalism,” says Alexis Jiménez, a 23-year-old ethnologist who has spent the last two months camping out in front of the Mexico City Stock Exchange. […]
The war in Mexico, often called a “war on drugs,” launched in late 2006, resulted in increased violence and militarization that has spread to municipalities and rural areas all over the country. Since 2008, more than 9,000 people have been murdered in the city of Juarez alone, and massacres against unarmed civilians have taken place across the state. But in some areas, like Madera, it appears the militarization that’s taken place on the pretext of the drug war has worked in favour of the extractive industries.
Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, 20, and Jorge Alexis Herrera, 21, paid a high price for taking part in student protests in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero: they were killed when police tried to break up their roadblock. The deaths of the student protesters occurred in the midst of a spate of murders of human rights defenders.
In October, U.S. anti-drug czar and former ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield testified about what he called “Merida Part II,” before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. Brownfield highlighted strengthening Mexican institutions and the “rule of law” as well as promoting civil society participation in anti-crime initiatives as key areas of U.S. Mexico cooperation.
The Mexican Peace Movement, founded by poet Javier Sicilia, has demanded justice following the murder of one of its members. Nepomuceno Moreno Nuñez was shot to death around Midday on Monday in the town of Hermosillo, Sonora. […]
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is a United Nations program meant to fight climate change. It will be put into effect after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and it includes forests on the Carbon Credit market. As such, it purports to combat global warming without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and without putting the capitalist system and its excesses—the real causes of environmental disaster—on the table.
Since April, the indigenous town of Cherán, Mexico has been sealed off in a bid to protect its future. Local and federal authorities are not welcome, politicians even less so. Barricades at the entrance to the town are manned 24-hours a day and members of the community keep vigil around fires in the street.
In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a group of activists from various organizations, collectives and political persuasions got together and decided that they too would organize in response to the call from Occupy Wall Street, under the name Indignadxs de Juarez.* They held two events to coincide with the call on October 15th, but were unable to set up a permanent, occupy-style camp.
Education in these schools is free and is open to all ages and all people, regardless of whether they are Zapatistas. There is no competition; learning is a shared experience. The schools are staffed by education promoters, based on the belief that education is a collective experience.
Inspired by the October 15 Unite for Global Change movement, some Mexican citizens have decided to take action. Those protesting in Mexico City have so far not faced any outside challenges to their movement. Protesters in other areas of Mexico have not been so lucky. Police beat and arrested marchers in Juarez, while other areas of Mexico are just too violent to spend the night on the street.
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