Despite recurrent pronouncements of death by some U.S. and Mexican officials, high-profile organized crime groups continue operating and shedding blood south of the border. Tijuana, where control of both the local and export drug business is the prize of contention, figures once again as a significant flashpoint of violence.
The report of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) charged with investigating the assassinations of six people and the forced disappearance of 43 students of the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa concludes that the version of events presented by the Mexican government is false.
On the official front, a flurry of activity surrounding Nohemi’s death has unfolded in several nations.
The victims of this extraterritorial policy are Central American migrants who cross every day, seeking to save their lives and their families from the violence and hunger plaguing their countries.
Members of the US Congress have once again called on the Obama administration to stop funding Honduras’ security forces due to massive human rights violations. Will Kerry listen?
The Salvadoran state has closed off all possibility of any kind of negotiation with the gangs. The constitutional court’s August ruling, which stated that gang members will be considered as terrorists under Salvadoran law, will also affect the thousands of people who work with the gangs, all the way from family members to taxi drivers.
No one can understand Guatemalan society without looking at the consequences of state orchestrated oppression. These consequences include women being treated as spoils of war. The Report on the Recuperation of Historical Memory and other documents, like the ones produced by Jesuit anthropologist Ricardo Falla, document the violations of women’s human rights.
The federal government’s plan to expel the Munduruku from their ancestral lands goes against the constitution because the displacement of indigenous people is prohibited under Article 231. Article 231 recognizes the right of indigenous people to live permanently on their traditional territories.
Paradoxically, from their status of limited mobility—both as unauthorized migrants and as individuals with injuries—the members of AMIREDIS demand the rights of human mobility, the right to cross borders with dignity, and the right of all to live with dignity in their homeland.
The School of Americas Watch and the Center for Justice and Accountability are spearheading an international campaign for justice in the execution of Chilean folksinger, poet and activist Victor Jara. Please sign the petition and send the letters listed below. Our voices may not be as eloquent as Victor’s, but there is no more powerful expression than the demand for justice shared by thousands.
