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The changes to the farming sector in Mexico unleashed by NAFTA represent more than a trend of people eating hamburgers and fries instead of tacos and drinking Pepsi instead of a traditional Jamaica juice. Along with changes in Mexico’s food system, NAFTA has caused a series of shocks to the Mexican countryside, forcing many farm workers to abandon their lands and look for work in cities or in the US or elsewhere. It has turned Mexico into a food dependent country, which is no longer able to feed its population without imports.

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Marking international women’s day, mothers and families of disappeared and murdered women marched in Mexico City’s center to demand justice for the victims and an end to the systemic roots of femicide. The country has suffered a contagious effect over the last several years, with femicides and violence toward women rapidly spreading to regions that had previously never seen such violence.

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Indignant over the police and government’s inability or unwillingness to reduce violent drug-related crimes, citizens in Mexico’s rural, mostly indigenous, southwestern state of Guerrero have (once again) organized armed self-defense groups to ensure their own public safety and security. The spark that ignited the recent wave of dozens of communities to declare the formation of their own policing groups occurred on January 6, 2013 with the kidnapping of a local community leader in the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres, in the region known as the Costa Chica.

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