Category: Human Rights

Pacific Resistance in la Puya: Arbitration as a pressure mechanism against Guatemala

June 3, 2023

Peaceful Resistance La Puya Celebrates 11 Years of Community Organization in Defense of Territory, Water, and Life, at a critical moment for the future of the organization and its communities. After successfully suspending the Progreso VII Derivada mining project, it now faces a lawsuit of over 400 million dollars filed by the mining company Kappes, Cassiday, and Associates, based in Nevada, USA, against the Guatemalan State.

El Salvador registers human rights violations, suspension of freedoms under “state of exception”

March 8, 2023

The pro-government deputies approved in early January the tenth extension of martial law that allows the government, among other things, to hide information on public spending. The exception regime includes the suspension of the constitutional guarantees of Salvadorans and the use of the military in public security.

Let’s talk about militarization

January 9, 2023

Militarization, now institutionalized in the Constitution and in practice, extended for the next six years and quite possibly forever, is not just the latest bone of contention between political parties. It is an issue that has profound implications for Mexican society, democracy, security, gender equality and human rights. It has to be analyzed within the framework of these considerations, beyond the false and hypocritical positions of the political parties.

THE BRIDGE OF STONES: A MIGRANT CHRISTMAS STORY

January 9, 2023

Carefully treading a crossing of slippery stones strung across the shallow Rio Grande between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, trickles of migrants climbed up the embankment on the U.S. side.

Joining with others who had crossed from down river, the asylum seekers waited peacefully to surrender to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. Watching the evolving ritual were a gaggle of Mexican journalists and local residents. A young man from Venezuela with one leg hopped around on crutches while a pair of municipal cops observed the drama from a parked truck. Standing atop the Mexican embankment, a young girl gazed across the narrow river at the forming line of asylum seekers of all ages, tears welling up in her sad eyes.

RIFLELANDIA: On the Massacre in Uvalde, Texas

July 5, 2022

No country identifies itself more closely with the rifle than the United States. A short tour of the Hollywood version of its history is proof enough:

Mexico got rid of the DEA’s most elite unit. Now it should get rid of the DEA.

May 30, 2022

The news that the Mexican government had shut down operations of the elite DEA team in the country – the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) – provoked an avalanche of articles in the press, most of them defending the DEA in order to criticize the president. Hardly any of them spoke about the disastrous history of the Unit, much less about the perverse history and actions of the DEA in Mexico –and in all of Latin America. The agency has left a bloody trail of failures, incompliance with regulations, complicities and corruption in its mission to export the war on drugs as an instrument of social control and U.S. hegemony.

At midpoint in the AMLO administration, Mexico urgently needs a dignified and sovereign migration policy

May 30, 2022

It’s a well-known scene throughout the world: migrant families marching in the streets to demand their rights and seek a better life are brutally repressed by state forces. Police wield billy clubs to attack men, women and children and enforce the message migrants and refugees have heard everywhere: “You are not welcome here”.

Search for missing persons goes international

May 23, 2022

“The eyes don’t lie” repeats Ruth, a Salvadoran woman looking for her son in the city of Tijuana. She holds a large photograph of son Rafael, as two homeless men on the street watch her closely, searching their memories for a recollection of the face of the disappeared son. “He might have changed over the years, but the eyes don’t lie,” says the mother.

In the Search for the Disappeared, the Seeds of a New Society

March 7, 2022

The brigades have unearthed hundreds of human remains and clues to the whereabouts of their loved ones, disappeared throughout Mexico. Their goal is to find them and return them to their families, and that in a context where the state and a large part of society have buried their very existence.

Senate Investigation on COVID handling bad news for Bolsonaro re-election bid

January 12, 2022

The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) that investigated president Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the Covid 19 pandemic presented its report in October 2021. The conclusions of the investigation are bad news for the Brazilian president. The Covid CPI calls for the indictment of the president for at least nine crimes, among them crimes against humanity.