Noticias
Madres marchan en el DF
Mothers of women and men missing in Mexico embarked May 8 on a nationalmarch/caravan that will culminate in protests and meetings in the nation’s capital this week. Like last year’s caravans organized by poet Javier Sicilia and other relatives of violence victims, the mobilizations will remind Mexicans of the deep emotional wounds and unhealed psychological scars that devour families of forcibly disappeared persons.
Named the “March of National Dignity: Mothers Looking for their Sons and Daughters and Searching for Justice,” the protest is led by 300 women demanding clarification of the fates of between 600 and 700 relatives who went missing during the administration of outgoing President Felipe Calderon.
“For some it has been years, for others months or days, of walking alone,of clamoring in the desert of the hallways of indolent and irresponsible authorities, many of them directly responsible for (disappearances) or complicit with those who took (loved ones) away,” the mothers’group said in a communiqué.
Among the many organizations supporting and/or endorsing the march are the Network of Human Rights Defenders and Families of the Disappeared, Women’s Human Rights Center, Justice for Our Daughters, Paso del Norte Human Rights Center, United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Saltillo. Solidarity actions, including protests at Mexican embassies, are planned this week in the United States, Canada, Honduras and El Salvador.
March contingents will depart from the northern border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, wind their way through the Mexican heartland of the Bajio and arrive in Mexico City as Mother’s Day celebrations get underway. The Mexico City activities include a May 10 march to the Angel of Independence monument, where the names and stories of the disappeared will be made public.
Senator Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, a pioneering human rights activist who organized Mexican mothers into the Eureka Committee to demand the return of children forcibly disappeared by government forces during the DirtyWar of the 1970s, has been invited to address the Mexico City protest.
On Mother’s Day 2012, many Mexican mothers have “nothing to celebrate,” stressed Norma Ledezma, co-founder of Justice for Our Daughters in Chihuahua City. “As families, we want to take this occasion to tell society not to forget that in Mexico there is home with a plate and aseat empty…”
Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon have been among the hardest-hit places in the violence that has steadily gnawed away at the fabric of Mexicansociety. In all three states, so-called narco-violence, femicides andthreats and attacks against Central American immigrants passing throughMexico to the United States have registered extremely high volumes.Recent headlines include the discovery of at least 12 murdered youngwomen outside Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, and the revelation that nearly800 skeletal remains collected in the state of Chihuahua since 2007,mostly of men, remain unidentified by authorities.
The Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office lists 213 women missing in thestate since 1993, with about 123 cases in Ciudad Juarez alone. Butnon-governmental organizations estimate a higher number. A review of theofficial list reveals a spike in cases after 2008, the year whenwidespread narco-violence broke out and thousands of army troops andfederal police were deployed in Joint Operation Chihuahua and itssuccessors.
While the international press usually homes in on stories about Ciudad Juarez, which borders the United States, alarming episodes of violencehave increased in the state capital of Chihuahua City in recent weeks. In addition to a familiar pattern of disappearances, women’s murders andconstant homicides, violence has erupted in very public places, even in broad daylight. Recent incidents include shoot-outs and/or mass slayings outside a Wal-Mart, inside an Applebee’s restaurant and at the Colorado Bar, where 15 people were gunned down on the evening of April 20. A suspect, Javier Arturo Hernandez Najera, is reportedly in custody for acrime committed by multiple shooters.
Three members of a ‘60s-style rock combo that regularly performed at the Colorado Bar were among the victims of the massacre. Relatives of the ill-fated members of “Freddy’s Friends” described the musicians ashard-working men who held day jobs, were devoted husbands and fathers and uninvolved with the intrigues of organized crime.
“It isn’t easy to deal with how this came down,” the son and daughter of guitarist Juan Luis Vazquez were quoted. “You get used to hearing about the violence, four dead over there, 13 over here, and you get used to it even though it touches you. It’s ugly but you get used to it. Now we ask ourselves: Why them?”
Across Mexico, thousands and thousands of people are asking the same question.
Alma Garcia, representative of United Forces for Our Disappeared inCoahuila, told the press that the mother’s march will insist on getting answers to pressing questions. Garcia said the caravan will demand that Mexican government officials comply with United Nations recommendations on forced disappearance, create a “program of internal attention” and, above all, undertake “immediate searches for the disappeared.” Garcia’s movement also demands the creation of a national data base of disappeared persons, the formulation of investigative protocols and the appointment of a special prosecutor for disappeared persons.
Since the 1970s, mothers and their supporters have launched distinct movements related to forced disappearance in various parts of Mexico-with minimal results.
In Ciudad Juarez /El Paso, the International Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons pressured the Zedillo and Fox administrations into successively naming several special prosecutors charged with uncovering the truth about nearly 200 disappeared people,mainly men, who vanished in the Mexican border city during the 1990s. On another front, the Fox administration created a special office within the federal attorney generals’ office to investigate and prosecute Dirty War disappearances.
A central player in both the Dirty War and narco-war chapters who was widely said to have first-hand knowledge of the whereabouts of victims offorced disappearance, retired army General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, was shot dead in Mexico City last month. The former military official was assassinated as a truth commission assembled by the Guerrero state government began forming to investigate the Dirty War disappearances.
After 1997, victims’ relatives and women’s activists succeeded in getting first the Chihuahua state government and then the Mexican federal government to establish special law enforcement divisions officially dedicated to probing femicides and women’s disappearances in Ciudad Juarez. Fifteen years later, the cases have passed through the hands of almost as many prosecutors.
In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights handed down a judgment ordering Mexico to thoroughly investigate the disappearances of young women. As a signatory to the Court, the Mexican government is obliged to follow the verdict.
Despite a slew of measures arising from civil society pressure over the decades, few cases of forced disappearance have been cleared up and no credible prosecutions have ensued.
As old cases piled up, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission documented 5,400 new cases of disappeared persons- both men and women-from 2006 to 2011, though non-governmental organizations speak of10,000 or more people forcibly disappeared during the same timeframe.
A recent report from the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances contended that not all the latest cases could be attributed to organized crime operating alone. “On the contrary, state participation in forced disappearances is also present in the country,”the report stated.
Last year, Javier Zuniga of Amnesty International compared forced disappearance in Mexico with the situation that prevailed under the military dictatorships of South America during the 1970s.
“We have walked alone in the middle of stares and stigmatizing commentaries, and we have been treated like lepers, marginalized and condemned to the worst pain a human being could live: not knowing the whereabouts of our sons and daughters,” the new mother’s movement declared. “But now we are not alone. We have found hundreds of mothers and we unite our clamor and our love to recover our loved ones and bring them home.”
Additional sources: El Diario de Chihuahua, May 8, 2012. El Heraldo deChihuahua, May 7, 2012. Cimacnoticias.com, May 7, 2012. Articles byPatricia Mayorga and Gladis Torres Ruiz La Jornada, May 5 and 8, 2012.Articles by Leopoldo Ramos, Lilia Ovalle and Luis Hernandez Navarro.
La Jornada (Guerrero edition), May 4, 2012. Article by Rodolfo ValadezLuviano. El Paso Times, May 2 and 6, 2012. Articles by AlejandroMartinez-Cabrera and Lourdes Cardenas. Frontenet.com, May 5, 2012.Cronicadechihuahua.com, April 30, 2012. Proceso/Apro, April 28, 2012 andMay 7, 2012. Articles by Marcela Turati and Juan Alberto Cedillo.
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Chimalapas: La Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación pospone decisión, poniendo en riesgo la paz social, la integridad territorial zoque anp’pon y los invaluables Bienes Naturales Comunes de la región más Biodiversa de México y Mesoamérica
COMITÉ NACIONAL PARA LA DEFENSA
Y CONSERVACIÓN DE LOS CHIMALAPAS
Avenida Patriotismo 751 – 5; Colonia San Juan Mixcoac; México DF
c.p. 03910; Tel/Fax: (52) 55 – 56153756; cel. (52) 55 – 55085585
c.e.: comitechimalapas@gmail.com
COMUNICADO PÚBLICO
Chimalapas: La Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación pospone decisión, poniendo en riesgo la paz social, la integridad territorial zoque anp’pon y los invaluables Bienes Naturales Comunes de la región más Biodiversa de México y Mesoamérica
Ciudad de México, mayo 3, 2012
A la Opinión Pública Nacional e internacional
A las redes, grupos e instituciones Defensoras de los Derechos Humanos
A las redes, grupos e instituciones Defensores de los Derechos de la Naturaleza
El día de ayer, la Segunda Sala de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN) desechó –sin analizar ni discutir el fondo del asunto y amparándose únicamente en el supuesto jurídico de que tal asunto sería facultad del Senado de la República- la solicitud de admitir las Controversias Constitucionales presentadas por los municipios indígenas zoques an’pon de San Miguel y Santa María Chimalapa, Oaxaca, en protesta por la flagrante invasión de su territorio ancestral y la violación a sus inalienables Derechos a la consulta y al consentimiento previo, libre e informado, que significa la ilegítima creación del municipio chiapaneco “Belisario Domínguez”.
Como red de la sociedad civil mexicana, encabezada por las autoridades comunales chimalapas, e integrada por un centenar de grupos ecologistas, conservacionistas, académicos y artistas, hoy respaldados por los más de ciento cincuenta firmantes de la Declaración Final y del Pronunciamiento público, emitido por el FORO NACIONAL E INTERNACIONAL “POR LA CONSERVACIÓN Y LA INTEGRIDAD DEL TERRITORIO ZOQUE CHIMALAPA: LA REGIÓN MÁS BIODIVERSA DE MÉXICO” (Ciudad de México, 26 y 27 de abril, 2012) vemos con suma preocupación e indignación la insensibilidad política, social –y ahora también ecológica- que priva en la más alta Tribuna de justicia de nuestro país.
Sin ser expertos juristas, sabemos por un lado, que con esta in-decisión, tomada ayer por la SCJN, los Ministros sólo aplazan momentáneamente la discusión de fondo del asunto, puesto que recientemente ha sido aprobada por el Congreso de la Unión (Cámaras de Senadores y de Diputados), la reforma constitucional, mediante la cual,” Artículo 46 . . . la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación conocerá, sustanciará y resolverá con carácter de inatacable, las controversias sobre límites territoriales que se susciten entre las entidades federativas, en los términos de la fracción I del artículo 105 de esta Constitución.”, faltando únicamente que el 50% más uno de los congresos estatales aprueben dicha reforma, para que esta entre en vigor.
Por otro, estamos claros que legalmente, una cosa son los límites estatales de Oaxaca y los límites de los municipios de San Miguel y Santa María, y la invasión de los mismos por parte del gobierno chiapaneco -respaldando y brindando impune cobertura a ilegítimos intereses madereros, ganaderos y privatizadores de los Bienes Naturales-, y otra muy distinta, los límites del ancestral territorio comunal chimalapa, mismo que tiene carácter federal y que ha sido reconocido, tanto por la Corona española (marzo de 1687) y por el México Independiente (1850), como por las Resoluciones Presidenciales de Reconocimiento y Titulación de Bienes Comunales, emitidas en marzo de 1967, en base a las cuales, las autoridades comunales de San Miguel y Santa María Chimalapa, han ganado dos recientes amparos de carácter federal, que mantiene la prohibición al gobierno del estado de Chiapas, de efectuar cualquier acción jurídica, administrativa ó de inversión en territorio comunal.
Sin embargo, hoy día nos preocupa que, alentados por esta insensible in-decisión de la Suprema Corte, el gobierno de Chiapas y los ilegítimos intereses que éste respalda, profundicen su campaña de agresiones y provocaciones a las comunidades chimas, así como aceleren sus acciones depredadoras, poniendo en riesgo –una vez más- la paz social, la integridad territorial zoque anp’pon y los invaluables Bienes Naturales Comunes de la región más Biodiversa de México y Mesoamérica.
En este contexto, reiteramos nuestro público y urgente llamado tanto a la sociedad mexicana en su conjunto, como a todas las instancias y niveles del Estado y gobierno mexicano, a intervenir de forma urgente, honesta y responsable, en pro de una solución definitiva -apegada a la justicia y al derecho- al añejo y doble problema de invasión (agraria y estatal) y de depredación y privatización de Bienes Naturales, existentes en el territorio indígena An’pon de Los Chimalapas.
¡¡LA MADRE TIERRA NO SE VENDE, SE TRABAJA, SE CUIDA Y SE DEFIENDE!!
A T E N T A M E N T E
LUIS BUSTAMANTE VALENCIA MIGUEL ANGEL GARCIA A.
COORDINADOR NACIONAL COORDINADOR REGIONAL
Ccp.- A las Comunidades de Santa María y San Miguel Chimalapa
Ccp.- Lic. Felipe Calderón Hinojosa – Presidente de México
Ccp.- Lic.Alejandro Poiré.- Secretario de Gobernación
Ccp.- Lic. Rafael Elvira Quezada.- Secretario de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT)
Ccp.- Agr. Abelardo Escobar Prieto.- Secretario de la Reforma Agraria (SRA)
Ccp.- Dr. Raúl Plascencia Villanueva.- Presidente de la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH)
Ccp.- Lic. Gabino Cué Monteagudo.- Gobernador de Oaxaca
Ccp.- Lic. Juan Sabines Guerrero.- Gobernador de Chiapas
Ccp.- Senadora Rosario Ibarra – Presidenta de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos del Senado de la República
Ccp.- Navanethem Pillay.- Alta Comisionada de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos.- Ginebra, Suiza
Ccp.- Representación en México de la Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos
Ccp.- Sr. Santiago Cantón.- Secretario Ejecutivo de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos.- Washington, EUA
Ccp.- Oficina para México de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT)(Convenio 169)
Ccp.- Observatorio para la Protección de los Defensores de Derechos Humanos (FIDH)
Ccp.- Ana Hurt.- Programa Regional para América, Secretariado Internacional de Amnistía Internacional
Ccp.- Alberto Herrera.- Dirección ejecutiva de Amnistía internacional México
Ccp.- Redes y Organismos Nacionales e internacionales, Defensores de Derechos Humanos
Ccp.- Redes y Organismos Nacionales e internacionales, Defensores de la Naturaleza
Ccp.- Comisión Estatal de Derechos Humanos de Oaxaca.
Ccp.- Consejo Estatal de Derechos Humanos de Chiapas.
Ccp.- CP Jesús Martínez Álvarez .- Secretario general de Gobierno del estado de Oaxaca
Ccp.- Lic. Noé Castañón.- Secretario general de Gobierno del estado de Chiapas
Ccp.- Lic. Adelfo Regino.- Secretario de Asuntos Indígenas del estado de Oaxaca
Ccp.- Secretaria de Pueblos y Culturas Indígenas del estado de Chiapas
Ccp.-A Organizaciones, académicos, artistas y ciudadanos integrantes del CNDyCCh y a firmantes de la Declaración del Foro
Ccp.- A medios de comunicación, nacionales e internacionales.