Nestora is Finally Free

FNS News: After spending two years and seven months behind bars, Mexican community police commander Nestora Salgado was freed on Friday, March 18. Surrounded by family members, community police comrades, parents of the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa college students and other supporters, an elated and defiant Salgado emerged from the infirmary of the Tepepan women’s prison in Mexico City dressed in the uniform of Guerrero’s CRAC police force.

Suddenly holding up a rifle, Salgado proclaimed, “I am free and it is the freedom of the people. We are not going to allow them to continue stepping all over us, and so they don’t continue repressing us, we will use this if necessary.”

Brutal cartels fight over Mexico's 'conflict-free' gold revenues

Reuters: Heroin traffickers linked to the abduction and disappearance of 43 students a year ago are battling over millions of dollars paid by Canadian mining giant Goldcorp to a village in Mexico's southern gold belt, leading to a wave of murders.

As a signatory to a Conflict-Free Gold Standard drawn up by the World Gold Council industry group, Goldcorp (G.TO) commits to extracting the precious metal in a manner that "does not fuel unlawful armed conflict or contribute to serious human rights abuses." Read more. 

Serving as a bloodhound to find your own son’s grave in Guerrero

El Daily Post (Originally in Spanish on Animal Political): Back in the ’70s, when he was younger, Guadalupe Contreras learned the profession he still practices today — tomb-building, grave-digging and the manufacturing and installation of headstones.

But starting about a year ago, Guadalupe has taken a day off from his graveside pursuits to become something else — related, but very different.

Every Sunday, Don Lupe, as his friends refer to him, grabs a machete, a hammer and a hat and goes out to the hills around Iguala to look for graves.

He’s not looking for the kinds of graves he normally works with — with headstones, crosses or the name of the deceased. The kind he’s hunting for are usually found in clandestine growing fields, in gaps in the terrain, in brushy areas or abandoned sites. They’re graves, in other words, where many of the disappeared victims of organized crime are buried. Read more.

Indigenous Community Police Look Back, Look Forward

FNS News: Twenty years ago, a revolution in policing and community justice broke out in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.  Fed up with constant robberies and sexual assaults, Indigenous communities in the Costa Rica and La Montana regions of Guerrero formed armed community police forces that grew into the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC).

Taking root in scores of Mixtec, Nahua and other communities, the CRAC was widely credited with significantly curbing criminal activities. Concomitant with a volunteer policing concept, the CRAC implemented a popular justice system of reeducation and community work.

Young Hands in Mexico Feed Growing U.S. Demand for Heroin

NY Times: With her nimble hands, tiny feet and low center of gravity, Angelica Guerrero Ortega makes an excellent opium harvester.

Deployed along the Sierra Madre del Sur, where a record poppy crop covers the mountainsides in strokes of green, pink and purple, she navigates the inclines with the deftness of a ballerina. Read more. 

Activist in search for missing students killed in Mexico

AP: Miguel Angel Jimenez, a political activist who played a prominent early role in the search for 43 students and other missing people in southern Mexico, was slain over the weekend, an associate said Monday.

The bullet-ridden body of Jimenez, a member of the Union of Towns and Organizations, or UPOEG for its initials in Spanish, was found in a car near a town where he had helped found a community police program. Read more. 

Pre-Election Day Violence Spikes in Mexico

Frontera NorteSur: Less than two weeks before Mexicans are scheduled to go to the polls in mid-term Congressional, municipal and state elections, violence is on the upswing. The most affected regions include the border city of Tijuana, the Chihuahua-Sinaloa borderlands, and the states of Tamaulipas, Guerrero, Michoacan and Jalisco.

Tijuana killings between groups of street-level drug dealers apparently connected to the Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) and Arellano Felix cartels, the last group repeatedly declared finished by U.S. and Mexican authorities, recalls the bloodletting of the past decade when the city was considered one of the most violent in the country.

Later touted for its presumed public safety, Tijuana recently has been replete with narco banners threatening individuals displayed in public, executions in broad daylight and the dumping of victims’ severed heads on public streets.

Mexico Police Launch Manhunt for Owner of Crematorium

TeleSur: The Guerrero State Attorney General’s office officially confirmed that 60 bodies were found late Thursday evening in an abandoned crematorium in the Llano Largo neighborhood of the Mexican beach resort city of Acapulco.

Officials revised earlier reports that 61 or more corpses were recovered at the site. Read more. 

Mexico Tortured Police For Confessions In 43 Students Case: Report

Huffington Post: An investigative report published Sunday by the Mexican magazine Proceso accuses Mexican authorities of beating and torturing municipal police officers in an effort to force confessions in the case of the missing 43 students whose disappearances have led to mass protests across the country.

Based on documents obtained from Mexico’s office of the attorney general and interviews with the police officers’ families, the article, by journalists Anabel Hernández and Steve Fisher, casts doubts on the state's official explanation for what happened to the missing students, and suggests that the use of torture may have compromised the prosecution. Read more. 

More mass graves found in Mexico’s state of Guerrero

NOTE: This explanatory video actually describes more the night of the Ayotzinapa attacks than the recent discovery of more bodies. It incorporates the information provided by the Hernández/Fisher report. Remember that there is still no physical evidence of the delivery of the bodies to Guerreros Unidos. Not that it didn't happen, just to be sure to continue to separate what is known from what is speculated. There are confessions from members of the cartel but several of these were obtained under torture according to complaints filed and the word of the arrested cartel members should be considered as suspect until confirmed by outside sources. LC

Watch Reuters video

Headless corpses found in troubled southern Mexico

AFP: At least 10 decapitated bodies and 11 heads have been discovered in unmarked graves in violence-plagued Guerrero state in southern Mexico, authorities said.

The hands and feet on the corpses had been tied and the victims had clearly been tortured, officials said Tuesday. Read more. 

21 injured in clashes with police in Mexican state

AP:  Clashes between federal police and protesters organizing a concert in solidarity with 43 missing college students left at least 21 people injured and several cars in flames Sunday in the southern state of Guerrero.

A police official told The Associated Press that eight officers were injured, including five who were run over by a vehicle. Three others were beaten by protesting teachers, leaving one officer with "severe brain damage." The official was not authorized to talk to the press and spoke on condition of anonymity. Read more.

Families of Missing Students Claim Harassment by Mexican Authorities

Latin American Herald Tribune: Families of the 43 students who went missing more than two months ago in southern Mexico have claimed the government is harassing organizations supporting them in their quest for justice.

At a press conference Thursday, the families blamed the authorities for this week’s attempted kidnapping and beating of a student who was also threatened for taking part in protests demanding that the missing students be returned alive. Read more. 

A Growing Political Insurgency due to Deaths and Disappearances in Mexico

Frontera NorteSur: In a little more than two months, the movement for justice for the murdered and disappeared students of the Ayotzinapa rural teaching college in Mexico has transformed from protest into a growing political insurgency.

In some regions of Guerrero state, where the students were attacked by police last September 26, the residents are forming citizen assemblies with an eye toward replacing local administrations they accuse of corruption and collusion with organized crime. while, in turn, laying the groundwork for new forms of governance without the country’s political parties. Read more. 

Mexico's Civic Insurgency

Frontera NorteSur: Editor’s Note: Our continuing coverage of the crisis in Mexico sparked by the government killings and disappearances of students and civilians in Iguala, Guerrero, last September.

In a little more than two months, the movement for justice for the murdered and disappeared students of the Ayotizinapa rural teaching college in Mexico has transformed from protest into a growing political insurgency.

In some regions of Guerrero state, where the students were attacked by police last September 26, the residents are forming citizen assemblies with an eye toward replacing local administrations they accuse of corruption and collusion with organized crime while, in turn, laying the groundwork for new forms of governance without the country’s political parties.

Federal Police assume municipal security in Guerrero: Rubido

Translated by Americas Program
Excelsior:  National Security commissioner, Monte Alejandro Rubido García announced a security crackdown in Tierra Caliente, where he said the federal olice will assume control  over several municipalities in Guerrero.

As of today, federal police and members of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), will assume control of Tierra Caliente, Acapulco and Guerrero.

The untold story of Ayotzinapa and Rural Normal

Forbes Mexico: "Most of our rural communities offers, among numerous shortcomings, the almost total disorganization, which places them in the broader underdevelopment. Their economic, social and cultural levels are barely noticeable. Many lack of arable land, water and other communications in almost all. The causes are scattered, "said Raúl Isidro Burgos generation students 1964-1970 Normal Teachers Ayotzinapa an afternoon of August 1970.

The reality portrayed academic, which gives its name to the Rural Normal of Guerrero, closely resembles the conditions that still prevail in most of the country. More than 46% of the Mexican population lives in poverty, while 11% live in extreme poverty, according to the latest data from the National Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval). Read more. 

Organized crime has overrun Guerrero

Milenio (Translation by Mexico News Daily): Iguala has brought out many truths about Mexico, some of them ugly, many of them previously known. But it is only now that the extent of the infiltration of organized crime is being revealed: federal intelligence efforts carried out since Iguala indicate that cartels have a presence in 62 of the state’s 81 municipalities.

The Milenio news service reported this morning that the state has balkanized into a mosaic of criminal organizations: it’s a toxic mix of five of the country’s major cartels plus local bands and guerilla movements.

The state’s official spokesman said 11 municipalities had been infiltrated, while former Gov. Angel Aguirre said criminals had penetrated most of the state’s municipal police. Then last week it was revealed that 12 municipal mayors were suspected of organized crime links.The killings and kidnappings in Iguala on September 26 have provided evidence of how closely linked the state can become with criminal groups, of the depth of collusion that can exist between the two. Not long after the horrors of that long night in Iguala, there were hints that the cancer was widespread. Read more. 

Enough! Mexico Is Ready to Explode

Huffington Post: Mexico has been profoundly shaken by atrocities and high-level corruption in Guerrero. The earthquake's epicenter is Iguala, the state's third largest city.

Fifty thousand marchers thronged Mexico City's main avenues last Wednesday, and demonstrations took place all over the country. More than 80 delegates to the Inter-University Assembly have called for a nationwide halt to all educational activities on Nov. 5, and are asking other social groups to join them. Protesters set fire to state headquarters in Chilpancingo, Guerrero's capital, and are sacking supermarkets and shopping centers. Read more. 

Behind Mexico’s latest massacre: Authorities were warned but didn’t listen

The Hill: The U.S. government-funded Merida Initiative was supposed to bolster Mexican government efforts to promote the rule of law and human rights. The accountability failures exposed by the Iguala atrocity suggest that it’s time to take a closer look, to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money is part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Yet so far, Mexico’s government has long treated Guerrero’s civil society as a threat rather than as a partner – jailing its leaders – like Nestora Salgado, a migrant who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in the state of Washington. She returned to her hometown of Olinala to lead the community police, taking on rapists and murderers. Her “crime” was to challenge her local government’s collaboration with organized crime, naming names. She remains in federal prison even though a court dismissed the charges – and her daughter has recently received death threats. Read more.