Silent traumas grip a growing number of families in Mexico. Not knowing where a loved one is, relatives comb jails, hospitals, morgues and common graves. Digging into the earth, their shovels probe for bodies or remains–fragments of a human being who once warmed their lives.
Since last spring, an estimated 13,000 Haitians and other foreign nationals have arrived in Baja California, with varying estimates of anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 more on the way.
The marchers have turned out by the thousands to tell the government of Enrique Peña Nieto that the forced disappearance of the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Teachers College on September 26, 2014 continues to be a rallying cry for a people who are fed up with the violence and lack of justice in the county.
It has been two years to the day since the crime of Ayotzinapa. A moment of soul-searching for Mexico.
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and Attorney General Thelma Aldana arrived in Washington to convince aid and lending agencies of Guatemala’s commitment to rule of law just a day after their government arrested its most prominent human rights prosecutor.
Mexican law and the country’s an official adherence to international standards uphold the rights to freedom of union association and collective bargaining. But for Mexican electronics workers, the right to freely unionize doesn’t exist in practice.
Six months after the murder of Berta Caceres, far from forgetting, people throughout the world demanded justice and vowed to continue her organizing work in defense of land and territory locally, regionally and internationally.
Some fifty major Honduran human rights organizations wrote a letter to the New York Times expressing their conviction that US aid is perpetuating violations of human rights in their country.
Clayton Beverly is among teachers and activists who gathered last month outside the Mexican Consulate in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The protesters demanded a halt to government attacks against Mexican teachers, an immediate dialogue with the striking National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) and the release of jailed union leaders.
On June 21, 2015 the London-based Guardian newspaper published an article describing the testimony of a soldier who says he deserted the army after his unit was given an order to kill activists whose names appeared on two lists. The second list contained the name of Lenca indigenous leader Berta Caceres, murdered last March.
