Mexico

NOVANEWS by LAURA CARLSEN Since the beginning of the war on drugs, launched by former president Felipe Calderon in December of 2006, an alarming number of young Mexicans have been killed in a context of almost total impunity. The massacres of Ayotzinapa and Tlatlaya, which together represent the death or disappearance of 70 youth at the hands of security forces in just two incidents, are evidence of the national emergency that affects youth throughout the country The War on Drugs, a Strategy of Social Control The war on drugs, designed in the seventies by then-president Richard Nixon and intensified by Ronald Reagan, from its beginning sought to repress rebellious youth. Nixon came to power with serious challenges. There were massive socal protests in the streets, especially in the ...

NOVANEWS This was the weekend of Dia De Los Muertos and of All Souls Day. I missed the events at the Northwest Detention Center commemorating the deaths of millions of displaced immigrants who risk, and sometimes lose their lives crossing the US-Mexico border. I was stuck at work, where as a nurse, I try to care (within the limitations of this role) for patients encountering death and illness. “Trauma season” is over, we say at work, and it is the period for different kinds of mishaps to be dominant — Tuberculosis, pneumonia, flu and the like. Even illnesses claim their monopolies.And in the cold, bland Foxconn factories in Shenzhen, China, suicide claims its territory over this subcontractor of Apple products. In 2010 alone, 18 workers — migrant and youthful — attempted suicide. 14 peopl...

NOVANEWS "The City of Lost Girls" (2003) Journalist Diana Washington Valdez has come to a chilling conclusion about the epidemic of murders of women In Juarez. The killings are tolerated because the perpetrators are locally prominent men who are politically connected. Evidence is overlooked and fall guys get arrested, but the crimes continue. Juarez is right across the border from Texas. How is this not news in the US? -     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJxVl64p4Iw#t=385

NOVANEWS Compare and Contrast: Human Rights Watch on Mexico and Ecuador By Joe Emersberger Global Research HRW statements about Ecuador’s policing are out of proportion compared to their statements about the disappeared students in Mexico. The following two headlines are from news releases by Human Rights Watch (HRW) about two incidents that took place in September: 1)            Mexico: Delays, Cover-Up Mar Atrocities Response 2)            Ecuador: Police Rampage at Protests The headlines suggest very similar events are described, but that’s not the case at all. In Mexico, police fired on student protesters, killing three, and then disappeared 43 others by handing them over to a gang. Those basic facts are not disputed by anyone. In Ecuador, the allegations are vastly less se...

NOVANEWS Posted By: Sammi Ibrahem, Sr By Karla Reyes This week, tens of thousands of people have protested and marched across Mexico in an act of solidarity with the 43 abducted students from Iguala, the third largest city in the state of Guerrero. In late September, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, a teacher’s college in Iguala, seemingly disappeared, which has sparked outrage across the country. As Maria de los Angeles Pineda, wife of Iguala mayor, Jose Luis Abarca, delivered a speech, the students took buses from the local bus station in order to travel to Mexico City and commemorate the October 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco. Bus fares have been rising and students received permission from the bus drivers to take the buses. Suddenly, the student activists were attacked...

NOVANEWS by ANDREW SMOLSKI “There was a time of the truly poor, the poor, the so-so poor, and the doing ok, but now there are just the poor.” – Luz* The poet and writer Pablo Neruda once wrote, “I traveled around Mexico for entire years from market to market. Because, Mexico is in the markets”. The markets Pablo Neruda refers to continue to be a feature of daily life for los chilangos, children of El Monstruo, defeños after John Ross’s heart. The public markets, as Neruda describes them, are places where people congregate to buy their staples; where people construct community as vendors and customers meet; where my mother-in-law’s neighbors are seen and stopped for a chat; a place to hear the butcher’s call, “¡Güero! ¡Güero! ¿Qué te vendo?” [White boy! White boy! What do I sell you?] The...

NOVANEWS There's Little Mystery to This Mass Grave by LAURA CARLSEN Many countries prohibit deploying their military for domestic law enforcement: it’s a recipe for violent authoritarian abuse. But the Obama administration’s prohibitionist drug war is funding and encouraging abuse and brutal, corrupt, mass-grave-level murders throughout Mexico and Central America – enough that even drug-war apologists admit that the appalling increase in human-rights abuses are a result of sending the military and police into communities in the name of anti-trafficking. In just nine years, the drug war waged by the US and Mexico has created a climate of violence that has claimed more than 100,000 lives throughout the country, many young people – including two horrific massacres and a mass disappeara...

NOVANEWS Mexico is an "assassin state," charges human rights activist, saying Iguala tragedy is "not isolated." by: Lauren McCauley The faces of the 43 students declared missing after a local Mexican police force opened fire on buses carrying the group to their leftist school. (Photo via Guerrero, Gobierno del Estado) Responding to the discovery of a mass grave thought to contain the bodies of dozens of students who were attacked by local police last month, Mexican federal agents on Monday were dispatched to the city of Iguala in southern Guerrero state to investigate the scene. On September 26, two busloads of students from a local teachers college, the Raúl Isidro Burgos Ayotzinapa Normal School, were attacked. According to surviving students who were intervi...

NOVANEWS  Pancho Villa, The Mexican Revolution and Marijuana … by  Ian Greenhalgh Pancho Villa – in his working clothes [ Editor's Note:  Ian has brought us a fabulous piece on the infamous Pancho Villa. It is a little longer than we normally like for our rushed VT readers, whom we know like to try to keep up on a lot. But from time to time, the long ones are so good, we like to feature them. I spent some time on Google this morning pulling a large image folder together. The man did like to have his photo taken, and press and movie people did latch onto him and can create some archives for us. It is a shame that the two movies made of him, with Pancho starring, have been lost. A full magazine layout is a fair piece of labor which cuts into our busy juggling schedule, but this is what...