The Federal Government Cut Power to San Cristobal's Water Pumps Because the City Owed Money


On March 11, most of San Cristobal de las Casas' 200,000 residents bathed themselves out of buckets and left the dishes to pile up in the sink as they have all week.  For most of them, it was their sixth day without running water.  For some, it's been over a month.

2009 funding for Plan Mexico passed the Senate today, tucked away in the same $410 billion Omnibus spending bill as the House version.  It does not appear that the Senate made any changes to the House version, which dedicated $410 million to Plan Mexico.  President Obama has said he will sign the bill into law, reports the Washington Post.

Calderon and the Military Become Heroes; Social Organizers and the Poor are Demonized


On February 9, 2009, several hundred young people with their faces covered blocked major highways in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, in a series of highly coordinated actions, paralyzing the city of 1.1 million people.  The protesters returned almost every day for over a week, their actions allegedly coordinated by young men on Nextel cell phones.  Each time the protesters came back to block the highways, more women with young children in their arms accompanied them.

Despite the  "Largest and Hardest Hitting Operation to Ever Target" the Sinaloa Cartel, the DEA is Merely Treading Water in the War on Drugs

On February 25, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) held a press conference celebrating the culmination of Operation Xcellerator, which it says resulted in the arrests of 755 Sinaloa cartel members in the United States and Mexico.  Law enforcement agencies arrested the last 52 suspects the day of the press conference, which the DoJ  held on the same day the House of Representatives voted on 2009 funding for Plan Mexico.  Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative, is the US government's estimated $1.6 billion military and law enforcement aid package to support the Mexican government's increasingly violent war on drugs.

Yesterday the House Passed 2009 Plan Mexico Funding Despite Mexico's Failure to Comply with the 2008 Funding's Human Rights Conditions

The US House of Representatives passed the "omnibus" spending bill yesterday, which reportedly increases federal domestic spending by 8%.  Democrats celebrated the bill as having "reversed the Bush cuts on domestic priorities."  The bill will now head to the Senate.

Military Leaders Are Against UN Recommendations and Plan Mexico Human Rights Conditions

Secretary of Defense Guillermo Galván Galván used his speech on Mexican "Military Day" to rally the nation against proposals that members of the military who are accused of human rights violations be investigated by civilian officials and tried in civilian courts.  Currently, the military investigates its own members and tries them in military tribunals under what is known as "Military Jurisdiction."

Herran Salvatti boasts a public service career allegedly filled with embezzlement, drug money, human rights violations, and impunity

On January 24, the Chiapas state government arrested former federal drug tsar Mariano Herran Salvatti for embezzlement.  Additional charges and accusations--ranging from links to drug cartels to torture of political prisoners--continue to pile up.

John Gibler's first book, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, recently hit book stores.  Gibler's book is drawn from two years of on-the-ground reporting in Mexico.  Narco News' Kristin Bricker interviewed Gibler about his new book as he prepared to embark on a West Coast book tour in the US.

Narco News: What was the inspiration for this book?

John Gibler: The idea was born of the experience of covering the [Zapatistas'] Other Campaign[1] during the first four months of 2006.  When the Zapatistas issued the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and announced the sixth-month listening tour that would be the first phase of the Other Campaign, they made a special call out to the alternative media to accompany this tour and use that as a way into all the untold stories of Mexico's struggling peoples, of Mexico's underdogs--los de abajo in Spanish.

A little over a year ago in Mexico City, John Gibler and I were having drinks and talking about work with a handful of other journalists.  John told us that he'd recently watched a documentary about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle with Mexican activists.  He said that during the scenes where police beat protesters who offered no resistance, he and the Mexicans exclaimed, "Why don't they fight back?!"

In the United States, where grabbing the billy club that a police office is using to beat you is almost universally considered to be "assaulting an officer" (a felony crime) rather than "self-defense," it probably did not occur to most people who watched that documentary that fighting back was even a possibility.

In Mexico, fighting back is a daily reality.

Many US ex-pats living in Mexico have spent long hours pondering the same question both amongst ourselves and with Mexican friends and colleagues: Why aren't Mexican activists afraid to defend themselves?

Gibler has finally figured out the answer in his new book, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt.

Una persona desconocida apuñaló al activista Rubén Valencia Nuñez en un café después de gritar insultos sobre la APPO

por Kristin Bricker
traducido por Sevastopol

El 10 de enero, una persona desconocida atacó el activista Oaxaqueño y que ha sido consejero de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), Rubén Valencia Núñez en un café público en la ciudad de Oaxaca. La tentativa contra la vida de Valencia sigue otros ataques recientes en contra de los activistas Oaxaqueños, particularmente al espacio Voces Oaxaqueñas Construyendo Autonomía y Libertad (VOCAL), de lo cual Valencia es integrante.