Refuting widespread media portrayal of the "erosion" (desgaste) of the rebel Zapatista movement, Jorge Santiago, director of the local group Economic and Social Development of the Indigenous Mexicans (DESMI), which has been working with Maya communities in the Highlands of Chiapas for 35 years, told Blanche Petrich of the Mexican daily La Jornada that 14 years after the armed uprising, "we are stronger, because we are linked" with social struggles across Mexico. "Our word has to do with the words of others. The people are beginning to have confidence in themselves as builders of relations, with the local base." He especially credits the Zapatistas' maintenance of the moral high ground—"The decision not to instigate confrontations with the local enemies, in spite of harassment and the onslaught on their territory." (La Jornada, Jan. 6)

On the morning of Jan. 10 some 200 members of the farmers' group El Barzón Popular took over the toll booths on the privately owned Mexico City-Toluca highway and allowed motorists to ride for free for about three hours. El Barzón director Crescencio Morales said this was a continuation of protests against the elimination of tariffs on corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk that took effect Jan. 1 under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He said there would be more protests, with the next one on the Mexico City-Queretaro highway. Some 7,500 vehicles took advantage of the toll-free ride, costing the owners more than $30,000, the toll booth administrator said. (La Jornada, Jan. 12)

Thousands of Mexican army troops and federal police have been mobilized to the Texas border in a new offensive against the "Zetas," paramilitary wing of the powerful Gulf Cartel. Authorities pledge to hunt down the Zetas and raid their safe-houses. "Since the first of January we have changed our operations," said Patricio Patiño Arias, deputy minister for intelligence and strategy at Mexico's Public Security Ministry. "It's no longer just patrolling, but rather a direct fight, a direct fight against specific objects, against specific targets that has grown out of important intelligence work."

Police and striking miners clashed at Grupo Mexico's Cananea copper mine in Sonora state Jan. 11 after Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) declared a five-month-long strike there "non-existent" (illegal) and announced a provisional suspension of the National Syndicate of Mine, Metal and Similar Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM). Police called in to break up a picket line at the mine gate fired tear gas at workers who were trying to block the entrance with heavy machinery. Company spokesman Juan Rebolledo told Reuters: "They threw machinery at the police and that is why the tear gas was fired." SNTMMSRM leader Napoleon Gomez, now in Canada to avoid corruption charges in Mexico, said that state and federal police were trying to occupy the mine. "They are violating both the constitution and labor law," Napoleon told Reuters.

On the morning of Jan. 3 a unit of 15 masked people armed with AK-47 rifles set fire to three backhoes belonging to the Constructora Torreblanca, a construction company building a highway in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. "No to the gas price increase!" and "Join the armed struggle!" were some of the slogans the group painted at the site, in Tixtla municipality, about 15 kilometers from Chilpancingo, the state capital. The company had the slogans removed, and news of the incident didn't become public until Jan. 5. No group took responsibility for the action, although the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) and other rebel groups have been active in Guerrero in the past. (La Jornada, Jan. 6) [It is not clear from news sources whether the company is linked to Guerrero governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo.]

Zapatista women at La Garrucha

To celebrate the 14th anniversary of their New Years Day uprising, Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) hosted a Women's Encuentro ("encounter" or "meeting") at the jungle settlement of La Garrucha, Chiapas state. Officially dubbed the "Encuentro of the Indigenous Zapatista Women with the Women of the World," the meeting brought together women from throughout Mexico and several other countries around the globe. In a case of self-conscious role reversal, men at the gathering were confined to cooking and cleaning, while women did all the talking. Accounts and images are online at Chiapas IMC.

Two masked men forced their way into the Catholic diocese's Human Rights Center in Saltillo, in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, on the evening of Dec. 20. The men struck Mariana Villarreal, who works in the center's legal and educational programs, and kept her locked in a bathroom while they rummaged through the center's files, according to Bishop Raul Vera, who was in the southeastern state of Chiapas at the time, attending commemorations of the 10th anniversary of the massacre of 45 campesinos in the community of Acteal by rightwing paramilitaries. Two weeks earlier Villarreal received an anonymous phone call saying her sister, who heads the center's legal department, had been killed in an accident. The sister hadn't been harmed; Vera called the message "psychological warfare."

On Dec. 28 a number of Mexican campesino organizations announced plans for protests starting on Jan. 1, when tariffs will be eliminated on the importation of corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk from Canada and the US under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Labor and human rights organizations in both Mexico and the US plan to support the demonstrations, saying the free flow of government-subsidized US agricultural products will continue the deterioration of Mexican rural production.