June 6th – Mexicans protesting a military crackdown on drug cartels launched a convoy protest Saturday that will travel through some of Mexico’s bloodiest towns on its way to the US border. This dispatch was done for AFP. You can see it here on their YouTube channel.
Some images from today’s ‘March for Peace’ in Mexico City protesting President Felipe Calderon’s ‘war’ again Mexico’s drug cartels and organized crime networks
I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it into work this morning. Not because of Mexico’s overloaded public transport system, but because U.S President Barack Obama was expected to arrive on his first visit to Mexico here in the country’s capital.
Mexico City’s Museo de la Ciudad is playing host to a photojournalism exhibition — Expofotoperiodismo — that features nearly 50 photos from 2008.
Violence against journalists in Mexico is nothing new but “Voces Silenciadas” broadens the debate around the persecution of journalists to encompass the bigger issues of media ownership and the relationship between the media and Mexico’s political powers.
February 6 2009 – Carmen Aristegui, one of Mexico’s most prominent journalists, disappeared from the Mexican radio airwaves last year in a cloud of controversy.
As Reed Johnson reported in January 2008, “Aristegui’s departure from W Radio set off a flurry of op-ed commentary in Mexico City newspapers. Several commentators have denounced the incident as an act of censorship and harassment by media and governmental interests.”
Now Aristegui’s back with a new radio news show –- this time on a different network. The journalist, who continued to host her nightly television news show on CNN Español during her radio hiatus, returns to the Mexican airwaves from 6 – 10 every weekday morning on MVS Radio.
Young animal rights activists took to the streets in central Mexico City on Sunday in protest against the hundreds of bullfights that take place here in Mexico.
Activists and rights groups marched in remembrance of Brad Will yesterday in the state of Oaxaca, marking the second anniversary of the fatal shooting of the U.S videographer.
Traffic, protesters and street vendors are some of the biggest daily headaches for Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard.
Two members of the protest movement that activist and videographer Brad Will was covering when he was shot dead more than two years ago have been arrested in connection with his murder.
Thousands of Mexicans took to the streets yesterday to demand justice for the victims of a mass-killing by Government troops on the night of October 2nd forty years ago. But the protests in Mexico City had a bitter end.
Hundreds of students and other Mexicans congregated on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma, Thursday at 3pm, to march in memory of the hundreds who died that night 40 years ago.
Today, people of all ages will march in memory of a massacre that took place forty years ago in Mexico City – an event that remains one of the darkest in the country’s recent and bloody history.
A girl wielded a photo of Monica Alejandrina, who was kidnapped in 2004, during this Saturday’s march for peace across Mexico.
Tens of thousands of people of all social classes and ages marched across Mexico Saturday (August 30th 2008) in protest against high crime levels and rising kidnappings.
President Calderon on Friday welcomed the U.S. Congress’ approval of the Merida Initiative a day earlier, an aid injection from the United States which is aimed at helping Mexico in its fight against powerful drug cartels.
The bill has dropped a controversial requirement that Mexico meet certain human rights standards in order to receive the aid. Mexicans had objected to the human rights provision, saying that it amounted to outside meddling by the United States in Mexican affairs. But dropping the human rights requirements seems certain to anger numerous opposition groups to the aid package – see this La Plaza post on the issue.
Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico have been strong on promoting human rights internationally and in supporting the UN human rights machinery during 2007.
But unless the gap between their policies internationally and their performance at home is closed their credibility as human rights champions will be challenged, according to this week’s report from Amnesty International on human rights around the world.
You can access the report here and click on the links at the top for specific country reports.
You can hear me and my fellow Frontline Club bloggers Anita in Zimbabwe and Kyle talking about what we blog about.
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission is to investigate all of the reported cases of aggression against the emo youth subculture in Mexico, following a spate of violence and hostility across the country directed at the group.
According to El Universal, the Commission called for tolerance yesterday and voiced concern that attacks against emos violate the right to freedom of expression, equality, freedom of expression and the right to association.
The Mexico City Government called a meeting today for the coming Tuesday between the city’s ‘urban tribes’ to try to put an end to the increasing violence and animosity against emos that is currently sweeping Mexico – see Daniel Hernandez’s blog here for an excellent synopisis of the current situation.
Since the first attack against the group of youths who identify themselves as ‘emos’ happened in Queretero at the beginning of the month, animosity has been growing amongst those who resent the ‘emo’ look and attitude.
Human Rights Watch released a damning report today, calling Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission ‘ineffective’ and ‘disappointing’.
‘When it comes to actually securing remedies and promoting reforms to improve Mexico’s dismal human rights record, the CNDH’s performance has been disappointing,’ reads the report, which also points out that the Commission’s failures hasn’t been due to a lack of funding.
The Supreme Court judges who voted that the rights of Lydia Cacho were not violated enough when she was arrested, detained and tortured by Puebla’s police under the orders of Governor Mario Marin were paid off by Marin’s lawyers, according to the journalist.
Cacho made the accusation, which if true promises to scandalize Mexico’s Supreme Court, in a conference last night during which she launched her new book ‘Memorias de una infamia’.
In her latest publication, Cacho documents her maltreatment at the hands of Marin, local businessmen Kamel Nacif, Jean Succar Kuri and other Mexicans that she implicated in a pedophile ring in Cancun in her book, ‘Demonios del Eden’.
Yesterday hundreds of tractors and thousands of people from rural Mexico came to Mexico City to protest against the lifting of trade restrictions on agricultural commodities like corn, rice and oats. The farmers say lifting these restrictions will put them out of work, because they won’t be able to compete with powerful U.S. agri-businesses, and they’re pressuring Mexico’s government to renegotiate portions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada.
Pictures from this week’s protest in Mexico City against NAFTA – more details to come.
There is something odd about entering a modern, brilliantly choreographed and beautifully presented exhibition created in memory of one of the darkest episodes in a country’s modern history. Odd because the tragedy of Tlatelolco, depicted in such rich and excellently executed multi-media form here at at Mexico City’s Centro Cultural Universitario, has yet to be seriously investigated by the Mexican administration even after nearly forty years, and remains a painful scar for those that survived that terrible night and the families of those that didn’t.
January 19 2008 – Los Angeles Times: Supporters of journalist Carmen Aristegui say the cancellation of her radio program poses a threat to the country’s move toward greater democracy.
Writers, journalists and non-governmental organisations have called the Supreme Court’s decision at the end of last week a ‘disgrace’. The Court ruled that the rights of journalist Lydia Cacho’s had not been sufficiently violated to warrant legal action against Puebla State Governor Mario Marin.
In a show of solidarity for the journalist, twenty of the country’s writers signed a brief declaration in Guadalajara over the weekend that says that the Supreme Court’s decision last week not to investigate the alleged human rights abuses against Cacho has disgraced the country, according to reports in today’s newspapers.
In addition, a number of the country’s NGOs that work in issues of press freedom and freedom of expression today issued a statement saying that the Supreme Court decision violates human rights.
El Movimiento de los 400 Pueblos has been protesting naked in Mexico City since 2002. At least 300 men dance naked in some of the citys major squares and streets to draw attention to their cause, whilst the women from the movement collect money from passers-by and give out pamphlets detailing their cause.
Univision: Young angels in Juarez battle the city’s demons
AFP: Mexico City struggles with waste disposal
AFP: Activists under fire in Mexico
AFP: Ambulance attacked in Ciudad Juarez
Time: Evidence of Killings and Disappearances by Mexico’s Security Forces
AFP: Mexicans honor drug war victims on Day of the Dead