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1. 21 years after NAFTA went into effect, neoliberalism is still making inroads (is alive and well) in Mexico. Over the last year or so, structural reforms were passed, which largely favor corporate interests and privatization of public goods. During that same time, torture, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and harassment have increased. Is there any connection between the reforms and this repression? If you look at the Mexican states with the most land concessions to foreign (...)

Mexico City
May 30th, 2015
As members of the National Campaign Against Forced Disappearances in Mexico, drivers from four years of the necessity of a general law against forced disappearance ago, we externalize our positioning around the initiatives presented by various political parties in the Chamber of Deputies, with the intention to pay the drafting of a General law on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Forced Disappearance of Persons in accordance with international (...)

“This is a problem that has been dragging on in Mexico since the beginning of President Pena Nieto’s administration,” said Hector Cerezo, one of the founders of the human rights group. “It´s almost as if the government is trying to scare people from attending protests.”
Human rights groups are stepping up efforts to monitor police activity during protests in Mexico, as demonstrations over the disappearance of 43 students continue across the country, often ending in violent clashes and dozens (...)

After listening the press conference given by the Solicitor General of the Republic, his refusal to admit the Ayotzinapa case as a State crime made evident to us that the severe human rights violation against the Ayozinapa normalistas students will not be –as they have not been- treated as their exceptional gravity requires.
The conference, far from being informative, is part of an impunity mechanism whose aim is to demobilize the outrage of the civil society about this STATE CRIME. The (...)

“Defenders of human rights are being threatened, harassed because of the work they are doing in Mexico in their fight against mega projects and structural reforms. The state is generating a climate of criminalization, beating, threatening unofficial executions and enforced disappearances,” said Francisco Cerezo, member of the Comité Cerezo México.
Protests and actions supporting the normalistas of Ayotzinapa have not stopped since September 26. News of the forced disappearance of 43 student (...)

The attack, the illegal execution and forced disappearance perpetrated in Iguala against the Ayotzinapa normalistas students are neither the result of the State’s absence nor an isolated fact nor the outcome of bad functionaries. By no means it can be ascribed to the infiltration of the drug traders into the State structure. Instead, it is the result of a systematic policy of human rights violation against all Mexican people, and a blatant example of repression against the organized social (...)

MEXICO CITY, Oct 17 2014 (IPS) - The images filled the front pages of Mexico’s newspapers: 61 half-dressed state policemen kneeling, with their hands tied, in the main square of the town of Tepatepec in the central state of Hidalgo, while local residents threatened to burn them alive.
It was Feb. 19, 2000. The reason the townspeople were furious was the police occupation of the Normal Rural Luis Villarreal rural teachers college in the town of El Mexe, and the arrest of 176 of the students, (...)

by Maggie Ervin
Felipe Calderón, president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012, had a way a talking that sounded a bit like George W. Bush, which is to say unapologetically bellicose. As soon as his term started, he declared a War on Drug Trafficking, and quickly put it into full military action. By the end of his term, the results were staggeringly tragic: more than 60,000 Mexicans dead, more than 20,000 disappeared, more than 150,000 displaced, and still plenty of drugs flowing to the U.S. and (...)

On August 30, the Report “Defending human rights in Mexico: A struggle against impunity (from June 2013 to May 2014)” was presented in Mexico City. It’s based on the work of documentation of Urgent Action for the Defense of Human Rights (ACUDDEH AC), Comité Cerezo Mexico and the National Campaign Against Enforced Disappearances.
The report recorded that since the beginning of Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) Presidency, 669 arbitrary political arrests were registered, of which 412 were documented in (...)

This October, Witness for Peace Upper Midwest hosted Mexican human rights defender Francisco Cerezo of Comité Cerezo México for a Speaker’s Tour throughout the region. In numerous universities, churches, and community groups throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, Francisco spoke to over 2,500 people about the effects of U.S. Policy in Mexico.
Francisco presentingto "Advocates for Human Rights. This 1.6 billion dollar package, the great majority of which comes in the form (...)