Mexico's new (and still-contested) President Felipe Calderon, touring Chiapas on Dec. 14, announced new steps to beef up border control and fight organized crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration. Accompanied by Public Security Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna and Chiapas Gov. Juan Sabines, Calderon spoke before a gathering in the town of Tuxtla Chico on the Guatemalan border. "Along with overcoming poverty and creating jobs, I'm convinced that the government has the obligation and the ability to achieve a secure border while guaranteeing human rights for everybody," said Calderon. "I see no contradiction in that." Specific measures will include the creation of a new border security force consisting of state and federal enforcement officers, and a guest worker program that will grant temporary visas to Guatemalan agricultural workers. Calderon also indicated that the federal government will crack down on Central Americans living illegally in Chiapas. "Beginning next month, a program will be put into operation that will review the migratory status of those who are already in the zone," he said. (El Universal, Dec. 15)

John Mohawk, a leading scholar and spokesman for the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee), died at his home in Buffalo, NY, on Dec. 12. Mohawk was an international voice for the soveriegn and territorial rights of the Iroquois Confederacy, a functioning system of government that predates the founding of the United States by some 600 years, and for the cultural survival of indigenous peoples worldwide.

The Mexican federal government has announced some moves to de-escalate the situation in Oaxaca, including the "gradual" withdrawal of Federal Preventative Police from the state capital's central plaza, which they have occupied since Oct. 29. Some 140 arrested protesters who have been detained at a federal prison in distant Nayarit state are also to be transferred to facilities in Oaxaca, and some released. The state's Gov. Ulises Ruiz, for his part, announced the resignation of his governance secretary (and state leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party), Heliodoro Diaz Escarraga, who has been identified by the protest movement as the mastermind of the "death squads" which have claimed several lives in the conflicted state over the past six months. He will be replaced by Teofilo Manuel Garcia Corpus, former leader of the Agrarian Reform Commission in the state House of Deputies. However, no progress is reported on the central demand of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca: the resignation of Gov. Ruiz. (Proceso, Dec. 11 via Chiapas95)

From AP, Dec. 14 via Chiapas95:

MEXICO CITY -- A group of about 300 Mazahua Indians briefly seized a water treatment plant on Mexico City's western outskirts Wednesday and temporarily cut off one of the main sources of water for the metropolis of 18 million people, the National Water Commission said.

Another turn of the screw. From AlJazeera, Dec. 13, emphasis added:

A Guantanamo prisoner who won a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in June lost his bid to challenge his detention when a federal judge dismissed the case because of a new anti-terrorism law signed by George Bush, the US president.

Another sign of de-escalation in Oaxaca? From AP, Dec. 11:

OAXACA - A labor group allied with the government of the southern state of Oaxaca announced on Monday that it was ending a controversial, 1 1/2-year blockade of the offices of Noticias, a newspaper frequently critical of state authorities.

From The Guardian, Dec. 13:

Bushmen forced out of the Kalahari desert by Botswana's government won a landmark legal victory today as the country's high court ruled they had been illegally removed and should be allowed to return.

Hermann Bellinghausen noted some salient comments in his report from Zapatista Subcommander Marcos' tour stop at Bagdad Beach (on the Rio Grande, just outside Matamoros) for La Jornada, Nov. 24. Via Chiapas95:

BAGDAD, Tamaulipas - December 1, the day that Felipe Calderon takes office, will be "the beginning of the end for a political system that, since the Mexican Revolution, became deformed and began to cheat generation after generation, until this one arrived and said, 'Enough,'" warned Subcomandante Marcos during a press conference. Calderon, he added, "will begin to fall from his first day."