National/International: UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Visits Mexico

Michelle Bachelet (@CINU)

At the end of her official visit to Mexico, which took place between April 5th and 9th, the United Nations Organization High Commissioner of the for Human Rights (UN-DH), Michelle Bachelet, said she was surprised by the levels of violence and the dimension of the human rights crisis in the country. “It was a surprise to me what I found. Without a doubt, the case of Ayotzinapa is well known by the press, but the 40 thousand disappeared was not something that was so clear, of the 26 thousand bodies without identification (in the forensic services). Or ten women murdered a day. I knew very well about the violence, but I had no idea of ​​the dimension (…) The data are terrifying.” She pointed out that Mexico has figures for violent deaths equivalent to a country at war: 252,538,000 since 2006.

She highlighted outstanding human rights issues in different areas, in particular regarding forced disappearances, femicides, violence against defenders and journalists, torture, abuses against migrants, as well as high poverty rates -especially in indigenous communities- and the need to carry out consultations in accordance with international standards, among others, in order to undertake megaprojects.

The High Commissioner also signed a collaboration agreement on the National Guard and another on the collaboration of the agency in charge of the investigation of the forced disappearance of the 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa (Guerrero, 2014).

The former president of Chile stressed that the new authorities of the country “have recognized that Mexico has a human rights crisis,” that there is political will to move forward with the pending issues and that “President Lopez Obrador has expressed his willingness to implement a change of paradigm.” She stressed that in the case of the National Guard, the Mexican government is talking about “accountability, transparency, human rights indicators that allow us to see if the National Guard is indeed going in the right direction or is deviating.” “The office will not hesitate to raise the alarm if it sees that there is any type of situation that does not correspond to the spirit of what is sought and the spirit of the agreement”, she said.

In the Ayotzinapa case, she said: “My office will be an ally that will not hesitate to contribute to progress and at the same time will raise the alarm in case of non-compliance. We request to know the whereabouts of the boys”, she added.

For more information in Spanish:

Enfrentar las desapariciones forzadas es el problema central en México, insta Michelle Bachelet (ONU México, 9 de abril de 2019)

México tiene cifras de muertes violentas propias de un país en guerra: Bachelet (Proceso, 9 de abril de 2019)

La ACNUDH asesorará la creación de la Guardia Nacional (Proceso, 9 de abril de 2019)

Bachelet defiende a la sociedad civil: Es importante para la democracia, le dice al gobierno de México (Animal Político, 9 de abril de 2019)

Bachelet se va desolada de tanto horror en México: “No sabía de todo lo que me he encontrado…” (Sin Embargo, 9 de abril de 2019)

Bachelet: como una guerra, las muertes violentas en México (La Jornada, 10 de abril de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

National: Consultative Council on Mechanism for Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists (April 11, 2019)

National: Chamber of Deputies Approves Law that Creates National Guard after Three Months of Debate and Negotiation (March 9, 2019)

National / International: UN-DH denounces that 10 Human Rights Defenders have been murdered in Mexico until now in 2018

September 21, 2018

National / International: UN-DH denounces that 10 Human Rights Defenders have been murdered in Mexico until now in 2018 (September 21, 2018)

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National: CNI Spokesperson Marichuy Says Asking Spain for Apology is “Simulation”

Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez, Marichuy (@SIPAZ)

In the framework of her visit to the mountain communities of Chihuahua at the end of March, the spokesperson for the National Indigenous Council (CNI in its Spanish acronym) and former candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez, Marichuy, said that the request for an apology from Spain by the President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) for the grievances to the indigenous peoples during the Conquest of Mexico, is a “simulation.”

She affirmed that with this approach the federal government deceives the citizenship because meanwhile it continues the dispossession and displacement of the indigenous peoples to seize their territories and impose megaprojects on them. Marichuy Patricio Martinez said that the peoples will not stop fighting and will seek an organization from below, against the destructive actions of the megaprojects.

At the beginning of March, in the context of its third Assembly, the CNI stated that “the neoliberal government led by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has its sights set on our peoples and territories, where, with the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, a network of cooptation and disorganization, which opens the way to a war that has an industrial name, made of projects and violence, which, together with the other wars and networks of war, spread a dark web of death among the native peoples of the country.”

In the immediate term, the publication of the letter sent by AMLO to Spain has sparked controversy both in Mexico and in Spain with expressions of both support and rejection of the proposal.

For more information in Spanish:

Pedir perdón a España, una simulación, mejor detengan el despojo a comunidades: Marichuy (Proceso, 26 de marzo de 2019)

Lo que AMLO tiene que hacer “es dejar de despojar de la tierra a las comunidades”: Marichuy (Desinformémonos, 27 de marzo de 2019)

Marichuy en desacuerdo con AMLO sobre petición a España (Regeneración, 27 de marzo de 2019)

Marichuy, Vargas Llosa, Pérez-Reverte… llueven críticas a perdón que pide AMLO (ADN Político, 27 de marzo de 2019)

Marichuy a AMLO: carta a España es simulación, mejor detenga despojo (Político.Mx, 27 de marzo de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

National: Second National and International Encounter of Women Held in Mexico City (March 26, 2019)

National: CNI, EZLN and Indigenous Organizations Announce “Zapata Lives, Samir Lives, The Struggle Continues” (March 21, 2019)

National: Third Assembly of National Indigenous Congress and Indigenous Council of Government (CNI-CIG) in Mexico City (March 14, 2019)

National: Controversy between EZLN and AMLO Supporters Floods Social Networks    (January 18, 2019)

National: Second National and International Encounter of Women Held in Mexico City

On March 8th, 9th and 10th, 2018, the Encounter of Women Who Struggle was held in the Morelia Caracol, official municipality of Altamirano, convened by the Zapatista women in the context of the International Women’s Day. It is estimated that some 10,000 women from different Zapatista caracoles arrived from the state of Chiapas as well as women from 27 states of the Republic and from at least 34 countries of the world. One of the final agreements was to hold a Second Encounter of Women in Zapatista territory in March 2019. However, in a communiqué in February, Zapatista women announced that this possibility was canceled, among other reasons, given the risk that implies its fight against the “megaprojects” of the new government: “The truth is that they go for everything against the original peoples, their communities, their lands, their mountains, their rivers, their animals, their plants and even their stones. That is, not only are the Zapatistas against us, but against all the women who call themselves indigenous. And therefore also against men.” Their letter concluded with the question: “Where is your little light that we gave you?”

The organization of several women’s encounters during the days of March planned for the original event was the response that several women tried to give to that question. In particular, on March 16th and 17th, 2019 around 1,300 women participated in the National and International Women who Struggle that took place in Mexico City in coordination with other meetings of women in different parts of the republic. Several activities were carried out simultaneously including “artistic, productive, personal defense workshops, even music, embroidery, natural medicine, dance, performance, painting, capoeira, sexual health, stencil, in addition to various spaces to share the pain and rage, facing them the experiences of struggle and resistance (Crack).” It was organized in this way as “more than massive events, the approach was based on dialogue and construction on a small scale.”

Among the most popular events was the discussion on the defense of territory with Councilors Bettina Cruz and Marichuy Patricio Martinez. Marichuy explained that, “we have to agree on how to strengthen our struggles, how to strengthen among us all so that they do not impose those death projects on us”, “the struggle will be built between all, men and women.”

For more information in Spanish:

“No están solas. No estamos solas”. Luces para las zapatistas (Radio zapatista, 20 de marzo de 2019)

“Aquí está la luz que nos dieron”: Encuentro Nacional e Internacional de mujeres que luchan (Grieta, 20 de marzo de 2019)

Encuentro nacional e internacional de las mujeres que luchan (Audios, Huelga Radio, 19 de marzo de 2019)

Inicia el Segundo Encuentro Nacional e Internacional de Mujeres que Luchan (plumas atómicas, 16 de marzo de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

International/National/Chiapas: Women of the World Express their Support for Zapatista Women  (March 5th, 2019)

Chiapas: Second Encounter in Zapatista Territory of Women who Struggle Cancelled (February 13th, 2019)

Chiapas: First International Gathering for Politics, Art, Sport and Culture for Women in Struggle (March 27, 2018)

Oaxaca: Fourth Encounter of Women Activists and Human Rights Defenders in Oaxaca (June 23, 2017)

Chiapas: 30th Anniversary of “Frayba”

Photo @ SIPAZ

On March 19th, the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Center for Human Rights (CDHFBC in its Spanish acronym, better known as Frayba) presented on its 30th anniversary the report “Facing Violence, the Spiral of Struggles and esistance”. The report gives a historical perspective of the journey of Frayba and the panorama of struggle of the peoples in Chiapas in defense of their human rights. It details among other topics the serious situation of violence against women, the process of defending the Zoque territory and the municipality of Chicomuselo, and a systematization on the subject of torture.

“To the women and men who, with their path, have flooded life with dignity, and given meaning of the path of Frayba, that next to/beside you, pulsates the earth, with its resistances that make the light and the rebellions that summon us not to desist from the new world that is emerging,” Frayba recalled.

Frayba was created in 1989, at the invitation of the then bishop of the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Samuel Ruiz García, and with the passage of time became an indespensable reference for the defense of human rights, in particular indigenous peoples, not only locally, but nationally and internationally.

On the 27th and 28th of this month, as part of the anniversary, a “Festival of Human Rights” will also take place in San Cristobal de Las Casas.

For more information in Spanish:

Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas cumple 30 años en defensa de pueblos y comunidades indígenas (Chiapas Paralelo, 19 de marzo de 2019)

Frente a la violencia, la espiral de luchas y resistencias: Informe Frayba (Frayba, 19 de marzo de 2019)

Festejan en Chiapas los 30 años del Frayba; clérigos resaltan legado de Samuel Ruiz García (Proceso, 19 de marzo de 2019)

Frayba entrega informe de derechos humanos (Cuarto Poder, 20 de marzo de 2019)

Crisis de derechos humanos, legado de Peña y Velasco en Chiapas: Frayba (La Jornada, 20 de marzo de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Chiapas: Frayba Presents its Annual Report “Paths of Resistance” (December 28, 2016)

Chiapas: 25-year anniversary of “Frayba” (March 30, 2014)

National: Presentation of ‘Emergent Plan to Guarantee the Integrity, Security and Life of Women and Girls in Mexico”

On March 6th, the ‘Emergent Plan to Guarantee the Integrity, Safety and Life of Women and Girls in Mexico’ was presented, which outlines the main strategies that the new government intends to implement towards prevention, attention, sanction and eradication of violence against this sector of the population.

The Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sanchez, said that this plan will be the starting point to intervene “in a decisive and prompt way in the fight against any practice of violence that threatens the rights, integrity and life of women.” “All of them are united by a common factor: the lack of timely and diligent intervention of the Mexican State to preserve its integrity and to ensure their lives,” she said.

Among the main actions proposed by the Plan are: seeking greater coordination between the different levels of the Republic and the states that can play a role in the prevention, attention, sanction and eradication of violence; making modifications to the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence in order to prevent, investigate, punish and repair the damage to victims to make it effective; implementing campaigns on the right of women to a life free of violence; monitoring the incidence of crime and acts of violence, mainly disappearances, sexual violence, family violence and femicides; promoting safe cities and spaces free of violence, and creating mobile applications and Web pages to identify high-risk areas; sanctions to those who are omitted or act with negligence; establish a unique penal code to homologize femicide throughout the country, among others.

Some of the actions mentioned will be implemented immediately while others could take up to six months to implement due to their complexity, said the director of Inmujeres, Nadine Gasman.

In this regard, Maria de la Luz Estrada, president of the National Citizen Observatory of Femicides, stressed the importance that the federal government has recognized that violence against women is a state problem and that, to date, the authorities “have not been able guarantee a life free of violence.” Of the gaps she warned that, “You have to know how, you have to have risk maps and still need to know what the zones, the municipalities, are where they will be carried out.” “In the country they have tried to take actions to face the increase in crimes committed against women for reasons of gender, without achieving satisfactory results since 2012, because most of the strategies have not focused on concrete actions or have not been able to be evaluated because of the lack of a methodology to do it”, she explained.

For its part, the director of the National Network of Refugees (RNR in its Spanish acronym), Wendy Figueroa, warned that the plan presented by the government and Inmujeres lacks objectives and even measurements for evaluation, so it is necessary to review it in depth.

According to the authorities themselves, in Mexico 66 of every 100 women suffer some kind of gender violence; and on average, every day,nine women are murdered.

For more information in Spanish:

Plan Emergente para garantizar la integridad, la seguridad y la vida de las mujeres y las niñas (Inmujeres)

Ven insuficiente y poco claro el plan de protección a mujeres (Pie de Página, 7 de marzo de 2019)

El plan para atender a las mujeres víctimas de violencia tardará meses (La Jornada, 7 de marzo de 2019)

Presentan plan emergente para seguridad de las mujeres; continuarán refugios, afirma presidente (lopezobrador.org.mx, 6 de marzo de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Nacional : OSC denuncian omisiones en investigación y combate a feminicidios (August 16th 2018)

National: the Mexican government does not comply with the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (June 23rd, 2014)

Chiapas/National: Femicides on the Rise (May 24th, 2018)

International/National/Chiapas: Women of the World Express their Support for Zapatista Women

“Forward Women of the World”, Morelia Caracol (@SIPAZ)

On February 11th, nearly 900 organizations, collectives, networks and people from Mexico and other countries sent a letter to the women of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN in its Spanish acronym) who had just announced that they canceled the “Second International Meeting of Women who Struggle” in Zapatista territories, which was planned for the month of March, due to the risks of dispossession of their lands and territories by megaprojects.

Those in solidarity with them warned that they would not allow “bad governments to strip them of their territories that give root, heartbeat and direction to what they are and what they dream. And we are going to protest in different ways, so that the resistance practices of the peoples are not used to folklorize the ancestral cultures, to justify the initiatives of death and illness that the patriarchal capitalist system is.”

In the letter, the signatories repudiated “from the multiple geographies to which we belong, the concession, extraction and exploitation practices of our Mother Earth”. They ratified that “against the interests of earning more and more money, we are going to fight for the life of the people and the living beings that inhabit the territories.” They committed themselves to continue “with the light that you shared with us in our meeting, with the light that you are for us. We continue to take care of that little light to be, walk and fight together.”

For more information in Spanish:

Colectivos expresan apoyo a mujeres del EZLN contra megaproyectos (La Jornada, 13 de febrero de 2019)

“No vamos a permitir que los malos gobiernos las despojen de sus territorios”: mujeres del mundo a las zapatistas (Desinformémonos, 11 de febrero de 2019)

CARTA A LAS MUJERES ZAPATISTAS DE LAS MUJERES QUE LUCHAMOS EN MÉXICO Y EL MUNDO (11 de febrero de 2019)

For more information from SIPAZ: 

Chiapas: Second Encounter in Zapatista Territory of Women who Struggle Cancelled
(February 13th, 2019)

Chiapas: First International Gathering for Politics, Art, Sport and Culture for Women in Struggle (March 27, 2018)

Oaxaca: Fourth Encounter of Women Activists and Human Rights Defenders in Oaxaca (June 23, 2017)

 

Guerrero: Disappearance of Obtilia Eugenio Manuel and Hilario Cornelio Castro Indigenous Activists and Members of OPIM Reported

Obtilia Eugenio Manuel @ E-Consulta

On February 12th, the leaders Obtilia Eugenio Manuel and Hilario Cornelio Castro, members of the Organization of Me’ Phaa Indigenous Peoples (OPIM in its Spanish acronym), were disappeared.

Activist Ericka Zamora Pardo posted on her Facebook page that they disappeared “at approximately 7:40 am on the Tierra Colorada road stretch – El Ocotito, Guerrero.” Obtilia Eugenio is a member of the Council of Community Authorities of Ayutla and has been receiving death threats for several years.

According to the newspaper Sin Embargo, Obtilia Eugenio denounced threats last November “against her and two members of the Municipal Council of Ayutla, of which she is a member of the Justice Commission.”

Since January 14th, 2005, the defender has precautionary measures by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), as a result of threats and harassment that she has suffered due to her role in the defense of the cases of Ines Fernandez Ortega and Valentina Rosendo Cantu. The measures were put in place for the first time in September 2007.

For more information in Spanish:

Solalinde denuncia desaparición de dos activistas; una defendió a indígenas abusadas por militares (El Proceso, 13 de febrero de 2019)

La amenazan a ella y a otros integrantes del Concejo Municipal de Ayutla: Obtilia Eugenio (Sur de Acapulco, 19 de noviembre de 2018)

El padre Solalinde denuncia el secuestro de dos activistas indígenas en carretera de Guerrero (Sin Embargo, 13 de febrero de 2019)

Respuesta de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos a la demanda interpuesta por la Comisión lnteramericana de Derechos Humanos y al escrito de solicitudes, argumentos y pruebas presentado por los peticionarios, respecto al Caso 12.580 Inés Fernández Ortega. (COidh, 13 de diciembre de 2009)

INFORME Nº 94/06 (Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, 21 de octubre de 2006)

For more information from SIPAZ:

Guerrero: Impunity prevails against human-rights defenders (December 18, 2013)

Guerrero: death-threats directed against Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, president of the OPIM (February 26, 2013)

Guerrero: Andrea Eugenio Manuel, indigenous activist and sister to Obtilia, is threatened with death (March 26, 2010)

Guerrero: New Threats against Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, President of the OPIM and Witness in the Inés Fernández Ortega vs. Mexico case (March 17, 2010)