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Committee of Indigenous Solidarity (CIS). CIS is a Washington, D.C.
based activist group committed to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous
peoples in the Americas. CIS is actively supporting the struggles
of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico while simultaneously combating
related structures of oppression within our own communities.
To view newsletter archives, visit:
http://lists.mutualaid.org/pipermail/mexico-week/
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BORDER NEWS I: US AGENT KILLS MIGRANT
On Mar. 26, a Border Patrol shot and killed a man who allegedly
threatened him with a rock in Calexico, California, on the border
with Mexico. The agent fired an M-4 assault rifle at the man, who was
apparently trying to evade arrest and run back to Mexico. The man was
pronounced dead from one bullet wound at El Centro Regional Medical
Center. Pablo Arnaud Carreno, Mexico's consul in Calexico, said the
victim appeared to be a Mexican man who had entered the US without
permission. His name was not released. The Mexican government has
asked US authorities for a thorough investigation. "It seems unjust
to shoot someone who is unarmed," Arnaud Carreno said on Mar. 27.
Border Patrol spokesperson David Kim said agents saw seven people
climb a border fence, run to the All-American Canal and attempt to
cross the waterway in rafts. The victim was in a raft that had turned
back toward Mexico. Kim said the agent fired after seeing the man's
arm cocked back with a rock in the hand. Other people continued to
throw rocks at the agents, Kim said.
Enrique Lozano, a spokesperson for the Border Patrol's El Centro
sector office, gave a different version of events. He said agents
searching a truck lot just north of the All-American Canal caught six
immigrants out of a group of seven suspected of having crossed the
border without permission. The seventh jumped into the canal, swam
across and ran south back toward the border with agents in pursuit,
Lozano said. As the man ran toward the border fence, about five or
six people on the Mexican side of the fence in Mexicali scaled the
fence, jumped onto the US side and started throwing rocks at the
pursuing agents, Lozano said. "They were just flinging rocks all over
the place," said Lozano. They also lit and threw a Molotov cocktail
at the agents, Lozano claimed. The homemade bomb landed near the
agents, but failed to explode, he said. According to Lozano, as
agents closed in on the man being pursued, he picked up a large rock
and turned toward them with his arm cocked back to throw it. "He was
face-to-face with the agents, just feet away," Lozano said. At that
point, one of the agents fired one shot from his M-4 rifle, hitting
the man. The group that jumped the fence and attacked the agents with
rocks eventually ran back into Mexico, Lozano said, while five of the
six people caught in the truck lot were allowed to voluntarily return
to Mexico. The sixth was found to have a misdemeanor warrant pending
against him and was turned over to Imperial County sheriff's
deputies, said Lozano. The FBI is investigating the incident and the
Imperial County coroner's office was performing an autopsy. The
Border Patrol declined to identify the agent involved.
Source: Immigration News Briefs: 03/30
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BORDER NEWS II: TWO DEAD IN ATTACK ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Gunmen ambushed a pickup truck carrying nearly two dozen suspected
illegal immigrants and several smugglers killing two of the
passengers and leaving at least one other person wounded, authorities
said. The truck, which was carrying 23 illegal immigrants believed to
be members of at least three families from the Mexican state of
Chiapas, came under attack about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of
Tucson, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said. Three of the
passengers were children.
Members of the group described bullets cutting into the rear of the
pickup as the driver tried to flee. Authorities did not know if the
assailants were in another vehicle or on foot when they sprang the
ambush. A man and a woman were confirmed killed in the incident, and
one person was hospitalized for wounds in the upper torso and an
ankle, Criminal Investigations Chief Richard Kastigar said.
The migrants had crossed the U.S.-Mexican border on foot and were
picked up by the smugglers late Thursday (03/30), authorities said,
adding that one of the two or three smugglers in the truck is thought
to have been wounded in the hand, but none of them were caught.
Dupnik said that because it was dark when the attack occurred, none
of the occupants in the truck could describe the assailants.
Investigators were still interviewing the victims.
Attacks on migrants making their way into Arizona have become
increasingly common in recent years, and several incidents have been
reported this year. Rival smugglers often try to take migrants to
hold for ransom or to steal their cash. A similar incident on Feb. 8
left three dead and two others wounded northwest of Tucson, and no
arrests have been made. There are no suspects in Friday's shooting
either.
Source: Associated Press: 03/30
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ZAPATISTAS: CAPITALISM PROVOKING WORLD WAR 4
Speaking to supporters and the press at the opening of the second
phase of the Zapatistas' "Other Campaign" in the Chiapas highland
city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Subcomandante Marcos said that
capitalism is provoking a "fourth world war" for control of the
resource-rich lands of poor countries. He said global capitalism has
entered a new phase, seeking total market control over lands, waters
and even genetic resources. He cited as an example the struggle over
Cerro Huitepec , a hill just outside San Cristobal where the
developers of a soft-drink plant hope to mine water, with no benefit
to the inhabitants of the city. He said that in the new order
"national governments are mere managers, and a manager is not a
director." Marcos emphasized that "Latin America is one of the new
theaters of this war of reconquest, and the indigenous peoples of the
Americas will have, as for the last 500 years, a protagonist's role
in the resistance." He warned that without a strong alliance between
indigenous peoples, workers and peasants, the struggle could end in
"a final rout." Said Marcos: "With the exceptions of Cuba, the
growing rebellion in Venezuela, and the specificity still being
defined in Bolivia," the governments of Latin America, regardless of
ideology, have become "capitals of reconquest."
Source: http://www.ww4report.com/node/3487: 03/20
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GOVERNMENT TRIES SWAPPING XBOXES FOR GUNS IN DRUG FIGHT
Police who have raided vice-ridden Mexico City neighborhoods in a
push against drug violence hope to take guns off the streets by
offering to swap them for computers and Xbox video game consoles.
Launching the program in the notorious inner-city barrio of Tepito,
which police stormed last month, city police chief Joel Ortega said
anyone who turns in a high-caliber weapon like a machine gun will get
a computer. Owners can swap smaller guns for cash or Microsoft's Xbox
video game consoles under the plan.
Newly elected Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has moved quickly to restore order
to the chaotic capital by going after well-known crime dens and
clearing the city's narrow streets of informal vendors whose stalls
have blocked sidewalks for years. Organizers say they have 100
computers ready for the first wave of the program, each worth 8,500
pesos ($769) and equipped with software donated by Microsoft. On the
first day, Olayo said the city received 17 guns, including 12 from
Tepito. If successful, the program will be extended to Iztapalapa,
another area targeted by police where last week 800 officers
expropriated a six-block neighborhood filled with stores selling
parts torn from stolen cars. Guns that are handed over will be
destroyed by the army. The city promised to protect their owners'
anonymity.
Source: Reuters: 03/27
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BRAD WILL UPDATE: RELATIVES SUSPECT STATE INVOLVEMENT IN KILLING
The brother of slain journalist-activist Bradley Roland Will said
state officials were likely involved in his killing and asked that
federal investigators take over the case. In a news conference
wrapping up his family's weeklong visit to Mexico City and Oaxaca,
where Will was killed on Oct. 27, Craig Will said federal officials
have agreed to look over the evidence after the family raised
concerns about the state prosecutors' handling of the investigation.
However, the federal Attorney General's Office hasn't yet officially
taken over the inquiry.
Will, 38, said new witnesses gave testimony to federal officials,
recounting how his brother was shot while filming amid violent
protests against the state government in Oaxaca, 350 kilometers (220
miles) southeast of Mexico City. He added that some had been
pressured and intimidated, but he refused to give details. For a
month before his death, the 36-year-old journalist recorded video and
wrote dispatches about the protests for indymedia.org, a Web site run
by a network of small, nonprofit media centers. "We noted that the
state prosecutors throughout November were leaping to conclusions
that were, in many cases, illogical and irrational," Craig Will said.
"They also were ignoring many, many elements of evidence."
His parents, Kathy and Howard Will, were in Oaxaca on Friday to
attend a re-creation of the crime scene by federal investigators.
They have blamed police henchmen for their son's death. "The
re-enactment was very therapeutic and it's certainly helping us with
our grief," Kathy Will said in a telephone interview from Oaxaca.
Craig Will, who lives in Tokyo and runs a software company, said
several allegedly government-hired gunmen in plainclothes were seen
in the area the day his brother died. "The most probable hypothesis
has always been and continues to be that state authorities were
involved," he said.
Members of the Will family met on Tuesday with U.S. Ambassador Tony
Garza. "(The embassy) ensured us they will do everything within their
power to keep the pressure on but we're hoping that the federal
government will show us good faith and open a thorough and unbiased
investigation," Kathy Will said. State investigators last year
arrested two town officials in the killing but later released them
after state Attorney General Lizbeth Cana suggested Will may have
been shot by a protester. Craig Will criticized the decision to
release those suspects, saying suggestions they were too far away to
have killed his brother "did not make sense."
State investigators have suggested Bradley Will's second wound came
sometime after he was loaded into a Volkswagen with a doctor and five
anti-government protesters. Craig Will said news photos widely
published in Mexico show his brother with two bullet wounds shortly
after falling to the ground and that ballistic evidence does not
support the government theory. Cana has said she will hand over all
case evidence and statements to federal officials, and it is up to
them to decide on the matter. At least eight others were killed last
year during violent protests in Oaxaca, a once-tranquil tourist city
whose downtown was seized by protesters demanding the resignation of
Gov. Ulises Ruiz because of alleged electoral fraud. Thousands of
federal police pushed the protesters out of the city in October and
November.
Source: Associated Press: 03/23
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5 TO STAND TRIAL IN MINE BLAST DEATHS
A judge in Mexico's northern state of Coahuila ordered five mine
officials to stand trial on negligent homicide charges in the deaths
of 65 coal miners killed in a gas explosion last year. Coahuila state
Judge Sergio Tamez said lawyers for the five Industrial Minera Mexico
employees will have 20 days to present evidence in their favor. He
did not name the employees, who obtained an injunction against being
sent to jail from a separate court.
Oscar Kaufmann, a spokesman for Industrial Minera Mexico, said the
company has confidence the trial will be fair and said the defendants
are still working for the mining company. Coahuila state prosecutor
Jorge Rios, who asked the judge to issue the arrest orders, said he
had found that managers and inspectors at Pasta de Conchos did not
correct unsafe conditions detected eight months before the blast.
The explosion on Feb. 19, 2006, at the mine in San Juan de Sabinas
reached temperatures as high as 1,110 degrees. Rescuers have found
the bodies of two miners but tons of wood, rock and metal, as well as
toxic gas, have hindered the recovery of the others. Industrial
Minera Mexico is owned by Grupo Mexico SA de CV, a railroad and
mining giant with operations in Mexico, Peru, and the United States.
Grupo Mexico has insisted the mine met all safety standards and
denies that safety precautions were ignored. The company, which has
promised to work as long as it takes to recover the remains, does not
plan to reopen the mine once recovery efforts conclude.
Source: Associated Press: 03/30
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listed sources. These articles are offered for educational purposes
which CIS maintains is 'fair use' of copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
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