Mexico Theater
Mexico: WikiLeaks cables treat "drug war," FARC links
The left-of-center Mexican daily La Jornada announced on Feb. 10 that it had received some 3,000 US diplomatic cables from Sunshine Press Productions, which is presided over by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The cables deal with Mexican issues and provide "a window on the background and the tone of the bilateral relation between Mexico and the US," La Jornada's editors wrote. The paper said it "has taken on the task of reading, systematizing and treating [the material] journalistically." (LJ, Feb. 10)
Mexico: US holds murdered activist's son and granddaughter
Friends of the Women of Juárez, an organization based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has written US Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to call for the release of three-year-old Mexican national Heidi Barraza Frayre and her uncle, Juan Manuel Frayre, to the care of relatives in El Paso, Texas. The granddaughter of slain Mexican activist Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, Heidi Frayre is in US custody while the government investigates whether her El Paso relatives will be able to care for her. She has been staying in a Houston shelter for immigrant children run by a Catholic charity. Juan Manuel Frayre, one of Escobedo's sons, is in immigration detention in Chaparral, New México.
Don Samuel Ruíz, bishop who brokered Zapatista peace talks, dead at 86
Don Samuel Ruíz García, bishop emeritus of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the Chiapas highlands, died in Mexico City on Jan. 24 at the age of 86. Known to his flock as Don Samuel or Tatic—"father" in the Maya tongue—Bishop Ruíz was long an advocate for the poor in marginalized Chiapas state, and came to national prominence when he brokered peace talks with the Zapatista rebels in 1994. The day after his passing, thousands of indigenous campesinos from throughout Chiapas filed past the coffin at a memorial mass in the San Cristóbal cathedral that also commemorated the 51st anniversary of his ordination there. Bishop Raúl Vera López of Saltillo, who served as Bishop Ruíz's coadjutor in Chiapas from 1995 to 1999, presided over a memorial mass in Mexico City. The Vatican issued a message hailing him as the "bishop of the poor." Even President Felipe Calderón—on the opposite side of political battles with Bishop Ruíz in life—said his death "constitutes a great loss for Mexico." (Upside Down World, Feb. 9; NYT, El Universal, Jan. 26; Catholic News Service, Jan. 25)
US army high official invokes "insurgency" in Mexico
Speaking at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics on Feb. 7, US Army Undersecretary Joseph Westphal—the army's second highest ranking civilian official—invoked an "insurgency" mounting in Mexico. His talk focused on the Middle East and South Asia, but in response to a student's question about strategic blind spots in US foreign policy, Westphal said: "One of them in particular for me is Latin America and in particular Mexico. As all of you know, there is a form of insurgency in Mexico with the drug cartels that’s right on our border."
Mexico: labor calls for Calderón's ouster
Thousands of unionists and campesinos marched in Mexico City on Jan. 31 in what has become a traditional annual protest against the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the federal government's neoliberal economic policies. This year about 40,000 people participated, according to the organizers; the Mexico City police estimated 22, 000. Martín Esparza, general secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), called for driving President Felipe Calderón out of office, even though his term ends in less than two years. "This government only has a few months left," Esparza told the marchers, "but we should overthrow it, the way they did in Tunisia and the way it's being done in Egypt. We need to raise up a civil and peaceful insurgency throughout the country." (La Jornada, Feb. 1)
Mexico: rights group pins killings on military
There were at least eight killings last year in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León "that evidence indicates were the result of unlawful use of lethal force by army and navy officers," according to a Feb. 3 press release from the New York-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch (HRW). A recent fact-finding mission by the group to Nuevo León also "documented more than a dozen enforced disappearances in which the evidence points to the involvement of the army, navy, and police," HRW said.
Mexico: narcos escalate war on security apparatus
The security chief at Topo Chico prison in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey was assassinated Feb. 5, his mutilated body found in a plastic box in an abandoned car near the facility. Francisco Martínez Ramírez, who had worked there for three decades and was nearing retirement, had been abducted from his home the previous day. He is the third employee to be murdered in recent months at the prison, which has also been the target of a series of grenade attacks. (Diario de Coahuila, Feb. 6; BBC News, Feb. 5)
Mexico: US agents have access to detained immigrants, WikiLeaks reveals
A secret US diplomatic cable released by the WikiLeaks group and published by the Spanish daily El País on Jan. 23 reveals that the main Mexican intelligence agency, the Center for Investigations and National Security (CISEN), "has allowed USG [US government] officers to interview foreign nationals detained at Mexican immigration detention centers dispersed around the country for potential CT [counterterrorist] information of interest." The May 16, 2008 cable—described as a "scene setter for the visit to Mexico of FBI deputy director John S. Pistole"—also reported that "senior migration officials" in Mexico "are sympathetic to our concerns" and are working with the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency to locate terrorism suspects. El País noted that "Mexico is a very nationalist country where the intervention of third parties causes political and social frictions."

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