Mexico

It isn’t news that journalists around the world risk their safety and security everyday to cover the stories that keep us informed and hold the powers that be accountable, but many people are surprised to learn that neighboring Mexico is an increasingly hostile environment for reporters. Press freedom watchdog International Press Institute (IPI) recently ranked Mexico as the most dangerous country for journalists and media personnel in the world so far this year.

They did it again. Despite the fact that not a single soldier responsible for human rights violations has been held accountable by civilian authorities in the years since the onset of the Merida Initiative, the State Department released its second report on September 2nd  affirming that the Mexican government has met the Merida Initiative’s human rights requirements. This report not only recommends the release of roughly $36 million in Merida funds that had been previously withheld from the 2009 and 2010 budgets, but also sends the wrong message to Mexico on human rights.

Persistence, local organizing, effective advocacy and international pressure have ultimately won out in bringing justice to Raúl Hernández Abundio, an indigenous rights defender from Guerrero, Mexico who was targeted by authorities and unjustly imprisoned. Since we wrote about his case in July, international and local human rights groups have been working tirelessly to clear his name of the murder charges for his exposure of abuses committed by soldiers and local authorities.

Run, don’t walk, to your computer to check out Presumed Guilty (Presunto Culpable in Spanish), an incredibly powerful and insightful documentary on the injustices in Mexico’s criminal justice system.  You can see the film in its entirety on the PBS/Point of View website through August 4th.  To watch it online, click here.

In their work to promote and defend indigenous peoples’ rights in the Costa Chica region of Mexico, a highly militarized zone in the state of Guerrero, members of the Me’phaa Indigenous People’s Organization (OPIM) and their partner organizations have had to overcome repeated harassment, threats, and even murders of leading members. Now add imprisonments and baseless prosecutions by the government to that list.

In April 2008, Raúl Hernández and four fellow OPIM members were arbitrarily arrested and charged with the murder of a suspected army informant—a murder which Mr. Hernández did not commit. The other four human rights defenders were released due to lack of evidence.  But even though the only witness that directly identified Mr. Hernández as having taken part in the murder was found to have lied, he has remained in prison for over two years.  

Human rights organizations are joining together to condemn and call for urgent action following the horrific attacks against an international human rights caravan in Oaxaca earlier this week. 

On Tuesday, April 27th a caravan of 25 human rights observers, reporters and teachers was ambushed by an armed group of paramilitaries in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Two members of the delegation were killed in this attack, Betty Alberta Cariño, the director of Center for Community Support Working Together (CACTUS) along with Tyri Antero Jaakkola, a human rights observer from Finland, with 15 more reported injured.  

“How many years has this been going on? Why didn't they change the way they investigate everything?”  These are the questions that linger on the mind of Irma Monreal after nearly nine years of struggling to find a semblance of justice after her daughter, Esmeralda, was raped, tortured and murdered in Ciudad Juárez in 2001. 

Charles Bowden’s Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields is an unflinching look at the violence on the U.S.-Mexico border and the failing solutions by both countries to address it.  With an intense sympathy for the many victims but also a degree of understanding even for a contract killer who finds God, the author doesn’t let the reader find comfort in anything.  The book, just published by Nation Books (New York: 2010), can be found at your local bookstore or online distributors.  Here are a few selections from this devastating catalog of violence.

Working to protect human rights in the heavily militarized mountain region of Guerrero, Mexico is never easy; and threats and harassment are not new for the Mexican human rights defenders who work for the Organization of the Me’phaa Indigenous People (OPIM) and the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights. But we have been alarmed to see a rise in threats against them because of their outspoken advocacy, including their accompaniment of two indigenous women, Inés Fernández Ortega y Valentina Rosendo Cantú, who were raped and tortured by soldiers in 2002.

As we mark International Women’s Day, we remember Esther Chávez Cano, a powerful champion for women’s rights who struggled to eradicate gender-based violence and whose efforts raised worldwide attention to the ever-growing toll of unresolved murders of women and girls in Ciudad Juárez.