In late August, Mexican authorities found the bodies of 72 migrants from Central and South America. They had been kidnapped on their way to the United States, brutally shot and left to die in a remote, abandoned ranch near a small town in northeastern Mexico.
Eighteen-year-old Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla was one of two survivors of the massacre who managed to escape and lead authorities to the crime scene. He claimed he and his fellow US-bound migrants were kidnapped by the Zetas drug cartel and told they would either have to pay a ransom or work as drug couriers and hit men.
Mexico
Six US banks control 60% of GDP
鈥淭hey are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. They have assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product.
鈥淎nd to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers, had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20 percent of the gross national product.鈥
鈥淭he Adelitas have arrived/To defend our oil/Whoever wants to give it to the foreigners/ Will get the shit kicked out of him!鈥 yodelled the brigades of women pouring onto the esplanade of the Mexican senate. The demonstration was to protest a petroleum privatisation measure President Felipe Calderon insists is not a petroleum privatisation measure 鈥 and which he sent onto the Senate for fast-track ratification at the tag end of the session this April.
Although slated to run on July 20-28, the Zapatista 聯Intergalactica聰 gathering really began on July 19 in Tuxtla Gutierrez, with an event in the main square in support of the People in Defence of the Land. Several busloads of Zapatistas from Mexico City arrived to join those already there in demanding indigenous land rights.
Launching the second phase of La Otra Campana (The Other Campaign) on March 25, Subcomandante Marcos, the best-known spokesperson for the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), denounced 鈥渢he current stage of capitalism鈥 as a 鈥渘ew war of conquest鈥. He argued that 鈥渁nother world is possible, but only on top of the corpse of capitalism, the dominant system鈥.
For more than six months, the people of Oaxaca in southern Mexico have been mobilising to oust the hated state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. The repression of the uprising has been severe, with ongoing savage attacks 聴 including killings 聴 on movement activists by the military-style Federal Preventative Police.
While turmoil in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca has been in the headlines for weeks, little media coverage has noted that at its centre is a crusading newspaper, Noticias (The News). The daily聮蝉 sportswriter is now a leading spokesperson for the teachers, doctors, nurses, newspaper workers and others who have joined together to call for greater democracy, and a new direction for the state聮蝉 economy. David Bacon interviewed Noticias聮蝉 Jaime Medina in northern Mexico, where the writer was seeking support from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras.
A five-kilometre-long 鈥渕ega-march鈥 of hundreds of thousands of protesters took place in the state of Oaxaca on November 5. It demanded the resignation of the hated state governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (known as URO). Only a few days earlier, on November 2, there was a battle to keep control of Benito Juarez University from federal troops that occupied the city of Oaxaca, the state鈥檚 capital, on October 29. These were just the latest events in a popular revolt in the southern Mexican state aimed at ousting the governor after he used savage repression to curb a teachers鈥 strike in July.
As fellow media makers and artists, we are writing to honor the memory of independent journalist, filmmaker, and respected activist Brad Will, who was brutally murdered while filming the grassroots popular movement in Oaxaca, Mexico.
On October 16, the Mexico聮蝉 national ombudsman, Jose Luis Soberanes Fernandez, delivered the recommendations of his report into the killing of two young men and the detention of another 207 people by municipal, state and federal security forces on May 3 and 4 in the municipalities of Texcoco and San Salvador Atenco. The clashes were sparked by attempts to remove flower venders without licences from a market.
The popular movement in the southern state of Oaxaca has called for solidarity, fearing a massive wave of repression because of a recent step-up in numbers of police and military in the state. Since a strike by Local 22 of the National Teachers Union began in May, the conflict has escalated to a national issue. At its centre is governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, whose repressive methods have sparked a movement to remove him.
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