| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2008 
Ciudad Juarez NGOs Demand Mexican Army Leave Town
 Kent Paterson - Newspaper Tree
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| | A man looks at crosses claiming for justice painted in rocks, in allusion to those deaths sowed by the drug cartels' struggle for control in Ciudad Juarez, state of Chihuahua, north Mexico, in May. Eight US citizens were killed and five wounded in attacks in the volatile northern Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez in August, according to the US consul there. (AFP/Alfredo Estrella | | |
Ostensibly deployed to control the warring gangs that have further bloodied an already violence-wracked city, the Mexican army is under increasing criticism for its alleged conduct on the border and in other parts of the state of Chihuahua.
Gathered at Lopez Mateos and Paseo del Triunfo de la Republica on the afternoon of Aug. 23, the protestors couldn’t have asked for a better cue. Passing by the Golden Arches and rival Burger King that compete for Fast Food Lord of Intersection, three jeeps full of soldiers equipped with large caliber machine-guns drove by the crowd, eliciting jeers and shouts that the army should leave Ciudad Juarez. "Soldiers: Thieves!" read a placard visible in the group of demonstrators who included scores of activists associated with labor, rural and human rights organizations.
Ostensibly deployed to control the warring gangs that have further bloodied an already violence-wracked city, the Mexican army is under increasing criticism for its alleged conduct on the border and in other parts of the state of Chihuahua. Activists accuse soldiers of committing common crimes and human rights violations, while serving as the shock force of a government campaign designed to silence critics.
"When the soldiers arrived because of the executions, they had an eighty percent rate of acceptance," said Cipriana Jurado, director of the Worker Research and Solidarity Center and a well-known women’s rights activist. "But during the months from April until now it has dropped to fifty or sixty percent. Now the people don’t support them, because they search homes due to anonymous calls. They come, arrest and torture people, rob homes, and violate all kinds of individual rights."
Last April, just as the Mexican army operation was getting underway, Jurado was suddenly arrested on federal charges dating back to a 2005 demonstration on the Santa Fe Bridge against US-Mexico border policies that was sponsored by the Albuquerque-based Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. The charges against Jurado were recently dismissed, but her supporters charged that the detention was meant as a chilling signal to activists.
Enrique Torres, the president of the Huizopa ejido in northwestern Chihuahua, also participated in the August 23 Ciudad Juarez rally and march against the army’s presence. The rural leader charged that soldiers and federal police were being used for political purposes instead of going after organized crime as declared.
Torres’ ejido is locked in a months-long battle with the Canada-based Minefinders Corporation, which operates the Dolores gold and silver mine, over land encroachment and environmental contamination issues.
Last May, Torres was briefly detained by soldiers and federal police who whisked him to Chihuahua City, where he was released without charges being filed. Since then, the conflict has simmered, with Torres charging the federal government for continued intimidation and Minefinders Corporation blaming ejido members for interfering with mining operations. In a statement this month, the company accused unnamed protestors of "intermittently blockading the Dolores Mine or threatening violence against the company’s employees and contractors."
On Aug. 13, a group of men stormed a school in nearby and roughed up Dante Valdez, a teacher who supports the collective landowners. In response to the incident, Amnesty International issued an urgent action about the situation in Huizopa this month.
The Huizopa ejido grew out of the historic land struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, which were punctuated by armed confrontations between leftist guerrillas and the Mexican government. Forty years later, ejido members are determined to protect their patrimony and environment, Torres stressed. "These lands were won by the spilled blood of those social fighters, and we are disposed to defend them whatever the cost," Torres vowed.
Another flashpoint for alleged human rights abuses is in the Juarez Valley south of the city, a place notorious for drug-running and immigrant smuggling activities. Numerous executions and "levantones," or forced disappearances, have taken place in the Juarez Valley in recent months.
Josefina Reyes, a resident of the Valley town of Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, charged during the Ciudad Juarez protest that Mexican soldiers detained and disappeared her nephew Luis Enrique on August 21 and then searched her mother’s home the following day. Reyes said soldiers took books about the Cuban Revolution from the family home, causing the family to fear the government will try to link them to an armed revolutionary group, she said. Overall, 15 people from the Valley are counted as disappeared, and human rights violations widespread, Reyes asserted.
"We know there are problems with drug trafficking, but the soldiers don’t have any smarts. Why do they come and search four to five homes in a single block just so they could hit and torture people?" she questioned. "Yesterday, a person from (Guadalupe Distrito Bravos) was detained and tortured for two-and-a-half hours. They put mineral water up his nose, hit him and dragged him. His back was injured, and they let him go like nothing had happened. But what about his injuries?" |
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