WUNRN
MEXICO – THOUSANDS PROTEST OVER STUDENT MASSACRE,
WIDESPREAD CORRUPTION, DRUG CARTELS, +
THE MISSING STUDENTS – SO MUCH SADNESS FOR MOTHERS, SISTERS,
FAMILIES
· Over time the focus of the protests has
moved from demands for the return of the students to spasms of disbelief in the
government. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP
·
Jo Tuckman in Mexico City - 20 November
2014
Mexico is facing an escalating political crisis amid
growing fury over a mansion built for the presidential family and the
disappearance and probable massacre of 43 student teachers.
The two apparently unrelated issues have fed the
widespread perception that unbridled political corruption is the underlying
cause of the country’s many problems – ranging from stunted economic growth to
a breakdown of law and order that has left parts of the country at the mercy of
murderous drug cartels.
“The drama of Mexico is about impunity,” said leading
political commentator Jesús Silva Herzog. “This is not about the popularity or
unpopularity of the president, that is irrelevant. It is about credibility and
trust and, at its root, it is about legitimacy.”
Thousands gathered in Mexico City on Thursday ahead of
what was expected to be the largest demonstration so far over the students’
forced disappearance by municipal police in collusion with a local drug gang in
the southern city of Iguala.
Classmates of the missing students have spent the past
week traveling the country in an effort to start unifying the diverse protest
movement around clear goals for future change. On Thursday night, three groups
of students are due to lead separate marches which will converge at the
capital’s main Zócalo plaza around nightfall.
“Beyond the lies of the government, we have the
possibility to start moving an entire country towards change,” student Omar
Garcia told MVS Radio in the morning.
Protests were also planned in other major Mexican cities
and around the world.
Preparations for the march dominated social media in
Mexico with Twitter users posting slogans such as “There will not be a mass
grave big enough to shut us all up.”
Twitter was also abuzz with warnings that provocateurs
could infiltrate the protest, fed by photographs of army vehicles filled with young people in
civilian clothing.
A large, peaceful march in Mexico City on 8 November
ended in violence with masked youths torching the wooden door of the ceremonial
presidential palace. Many protestors claimed the assault was provoked and
circulated photographs and videos showing alleged government agents who had
participated in it but later slipped behind police lines.
Ahead of the main demonstration, an attempt to blockade
Mexico City’s airport by a few hundred protestors was abandoned after a large
contingent of riot police blocked their way.
While the focus of the protests is indignation over the
government’s handling of the disappearance of the 43 students, there is also
significant anger over its clumsy efforts to dismiss serious allegations of a
conflict of interests involving President Enrique Peña Nieto himself.
Late on Tuesday night first lady Angélica Rivera
attempted to mitigate the scandal over a multimillion-dollar minimalist white
residence built to measure for her andPeña Nieto in one of Mexico City’s most
exclusive barrios.
The house is still owned by a subsidiary of a company
with a long history of obtaining lucrative contracts from Peña Nieto
administrations, dating back to his term as governor of the state of Mexico.
In her address, Rivera, a former telenovela star, said she was going to sell her interests in the house,
but vehemently insisted there had never been any strings attached.
“I don’t want this to continue to be a pretext for
offending and defaming my family,” she said.
Rivera said she had been paying for the house from the
fruits of her labour earned during a 25-year-long career within TV giant
Televisa that ended in 2010 with the payment of 88.6 million pesos ($6.5m) and
the transference of property of another luxurious residence that backs onto the
controversial new mansion.
She said she had already paid about a third of the cost
of the new home worth 54 million pesos ($4m), in accordance with a contract
signed with the company over eight years.
She said she had met the company’s owner, who also
happens to be a personal friend of the president, “like I meet many
businessmen, professionals and artists”.
The existence of the house was revealed 10 days ago by the website of leading Mexican journalist Carmen
Aristegui.
But the first lady’s attempt to turn the page of the
scandal was met with widespread skepticism.
“There have always been rumours, but we have never before
had documents that suggest that a president in office has participated in
illegal operations,” commentator Silva Herzog said, adding that he expected the
unanswered key question to further fuel public skepticism and anger.
“This is the worst possible moment for a scandal of this
kind.”
On Wednesday night, President Peña Nieto showered praise
on his wife’s “bravery” in revealing details of her personal accounts despite
not being legally obliged to do so.
He then announced he would be doing the same because “I
value the trust of Mexicans more than the right to confidentiality that I could
obtain as a public servant,” he said. The assets, uploaded later on the
presidential website, include four houses and an apartment.
These attempts to shake off the suggestion of wrongdoing
came after the president adopted a new combative stance in the face of intensifying protests triggered by the disappearance of
the 43 students in the southern city of Iguala on 26 September.
The students went missing after being arrested by
municipal police who also participated in a series of attacks during the night
that left six people dead.
The disappearance of the students has sparked numerous
demonstrations in many parts of the country. Over time the focus of the
protests has moved from demands for the return of the students alive, to
disbelief at the government’s failure to crack down on widespread collusion
between law enforcement agencies and drug mafias.
These latest demonstrations have been much more
widespread than the protests prompted by allegations of fraud in Peña Nieto’s
electoral victory in 2012.
Unlike during the previous wave of dissent, the current
protests have expressed anger at perceptions of corruption across the entire
political class that is viewed as corrupt, not just Peña Nieto.
The president had previously adopted a conciliatory tone,
expressing sympathy for the victims’ families and promising a full and thorough
investigation, but on Tuesday he used a speech to denounce violent outbreaks in
some of the numerous demonstrations in recent weeks.
The violence, he said, “appears to respond to a general
interest to destabilise and, above all, attack the national project that we are
pushing forward”.
The harder line echoes some calls in the national press
by commentators such as Ricardo Alemán, who has begun regularly urging
politicians to discard their “fear of governing” and crack down radical
elements in the demonstrations.
Other analysts, however, detect a menacing tone in the
president’s words.
Silva Herzog drew parallels with the language used by
President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, who governed at the time of the watershed 1968
Tlatelolco massacre in which scores – and possibly hundreds – of pro-democracy
students were killed by government forces in Mexico City.
“It is dangerous because it polarises the climate,” he
said. “The solution has to start by recognising the legitimate foundations of
the collective irritation. The country has good reason to be angry.”
With Thursday’s key demonstration approaching on the
104th anniversary of the Mexican revolution, the authorities announced the
cancellation of the a military parade that usually fills the capital’s central
streets on that day.
Global Fund for Women - http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/impact/success-stories/62-general/2030-missing-but-not-forgotten\
AND LEST WE FORGEST THE MISSING & MURDERED WOMEN
GIRLS OF JUAREZ, MEXICO
It’s 5 a.m. in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Young women in their late teens and early twenties are on their way to work at
assembly plants, or maquilas. Unfortunately, some of them won’t make it,
because they will have been tortured, murdered, and abandoned on the way to
work….or on the way home. Hundreds have simply “vanished” yet Mexican
authorities have done essential nothing to solve.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1.