18 Women Who Were Sexually Exploited in Chiapas are Freed (Spanish)

Proceso, 3/22/2013

State Police forces and the National Migration Institute (INM) dismantled a prostitution network  in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, where 18 women, five Central American migrants and the rest from Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Chiapas,  were forced into prostitution.

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SEGOB is Asked to Recognize Indigenous Women Working in Community Policing (Spanish)

Proceso, 3/7/2013

The president of the Indigenous and Peasant Unit Force (Unidad de la Fuerza Indígena y Campesina) (UFIC), Rocío Pérez Miranda, asked the head of the Ministry of the Interior , Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, to officially recognize indigenous women who serve as police Community their localities.

According to Miranda Perez, Chiapas, Guerrero, Morelos, State of Mexico and Michoacan are states where community policing entities have successfully provided the security that should  be commissioned by the State.

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Zapatistas break silence to slam Mexico elite

Al Jazeera, 2/15/2013

After years of silence, secluded in their base communities in Mexico’s impoverished south, indigenous Zapatista rebels have re-emerged with a series of public statements in recent weeks, attempting to reignite passions for their demands of “land, liberty, work and peace”.

In December, 40,000 Zapatista supporters marched through villages in Chiapas, re-asserting their presence. In January and February, Subcomandate Marcos – the Zapatistas’ pipe-smoking, non-indigenous spokesman and an international media darling – issued a series of communiques slamming the government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which assumed power in December.

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Mexico’s housing development where poor people won’t live (Video)

The Guardian, 2/12/2013

More than 78% of people in Chiapas, a state in southern Mexico, are considered poor and more than 30% live in extreme poverty. Yet even though the state provided new houses, they are abandoned. People do not want to live in the dilapidated homes with cracks in the wall, which cannot withstand the wind and rain. A House Without Dignity shows how policies to improve the lives of the poorest people can fail if locals are not fully involved in the decision-making process. Participate, which is seeking to get the voices of the poorest into post-2015 debates, worked with indigenous people to document their views.

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Disease Kills 5 Babies in Southern Mexico

ABC News, 1/7/2013

Authorities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas say a bacterial disease has killed five babies and sickened 41 others in a remote indigenous community that is experiencing a wave of intense cold and rains. Chiapas’ health department said Sunday in a statement that residents of Emiliano Zapata in the municipality of Yajalon have been urged to stay in their homes and avoid contact with others to prevent the spread of the bacteria that is causing the infection, which is characterized by coughing and fever. Authorities are looking into whether it is whooping cough.

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Zapatistas can still change the rules of Mexico’s politics

Guardian, 12/31/2012

21 December 2012 was supposed to be the doomsday that ended the Mayan calendar cycle, but instead it marked the resurgence of the indigenous Zapatistas of south-east Mexico. After more than a year and a half without a public statement, the rebel Mayans of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) marched in total silence along the streets of five cities in the state of Chiapas.

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Mexico’s Ernesto Zedillo May Be Immune from US Lawsuit over Massacre

Fox News, 9/9/12

Former President Zedillo participated in the panel

The U.S. State Department argues that  former president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, should be granted immunity from a  lawsuit filed in Connecticut over the 1997 massacre of 45 people in a Mexican  village.Zedillo, who is now an international studies professor at Yale University,  had argued that his status as a former national leader gave him immunity from  the lawsuit. He has denied the allegations that he bears responsibility for the  massacre by paramilitary groups in Acteal, in the southern state of Chiapas.

A State Department legal adviser, Harold Hongju Koh, wrote in a letter Friday  that Zedillo is entitled to immunity because the lawsuit centers on actions  taken in his capacity as president. He noted also that the Mexican government  had requested a determination of immunity

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The trials of Ernesto Zedillo

The Economist, 9/1/2012

Former President Zedillo

By the time the shooting had finished, 45 men, women and children lay dead or dying deep in the jungle. The massacre at Acteal, a hamlet in Chiapas, was the worst single act of violence during the unrest that shook Mexico’s far south in the 1990s. Zapatista guerrillas had declared war on the federal government on New Year’s Day, 1994. The fighting was brief, but sympathisers on each side then used the conflict to settle differences over land, religion and much else. The government’s supposed ties to the killers who on December 22nd 1997 opened fire on Acteal, a place mainly sympathetic to the Zapatistas, have never been fully established.

Nearly 15 years later, the Acteal murders could be tried in a court 2,000 miles away in Connecticut. Ernesto Zedillo, who was Mexico’s president from 1994 to 2000, is now a professor at Yale University. His residence in the state has given ten Tzotzil-speaking Indians, who claim to be survivors of the 1997 massacre, an opportunity to sue him in a civil court in the United States. They are seeking about $50m and a declaration of guilt against Mr Zedillo.

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Without birth documentation in Mexico, illegal immigrants struggle to live normal lives in US

The Washington Post, 07/10/2012

She was born in Mexico and lives in the United States, but Laura Rocio Ordonez does not officially exist in any country.

It’s unclear how many immigrants living illegally in the United States fall into that category, but it’s estimated that one in seven Mexicans lacks proof of birth. The numbers are high enough that Mexican officials recently traveled to New York to try help dozens of immigrants get IDs.

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Mexico mass grave was ‘ancient cemetery’ in Chiapas

BBC News, 3/11/12

Anthropologists in Mexico say the remains of 167 bodies found in a cave in the southern state of Chiapas were part of an ancient burial ground.

The National Anthropology Institute said tests showed the remains dated back to the eighth century.Scientists hope pottery found in the cave will help them determine the community those buried belonged to. It was first feared the bodies could belong to victims of the decades-long civil war in neighbouring Guatemala.

Farmers had found the bodies in a cave on the Nuevo Ojo de Agua ranch, some 20km (11 miles) from the Guatemalan border, and alerted the authorities.

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