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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2001Column: Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
Mexican rights abuses
Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera were released from prison in Guerrero state
by decree of Mexican President Vicente Fox on Nov. 8. The men had been framed by
the Mexican army on phony drug and weapons charges after they protested illegal
logging operations by corporations with government backing which were destroying
the forests of Guerrero.Pressure on Fox came in the wake of the assassination of Digna Ochoa, the two
men's lawyer, a month earlier. Ochoa, a prominent human rights activist, had
been kidnapped, tortured and threatened in the past for defending peasant
activists as well as Zapatistas. Her murderers shot her in the face and left a
message threatening other human rights activists, many of whom see a link with
Ochoa's killers and the military. Fox did not speak out against Digna Ochoa's murder for three days, and his
record thus far on human rights in Mexico is nonexistent. Despite campaign
promises, he has not set up a truth commission to investigate past state abuses,
including the 1968 student massacre. More alarming, Fox appointed Rafael Macedo,
a former general, as attorney general. This is an appointment which curries
favor with U.S. drug war officials rather than focusing on military, police and
court abuses within Mexico. Cabrera and Montiel, a founding member of the Organization of Campesino
Environmentalists, were tortured by the army after their arrest in May 1999.
Neither man has been declared innocent or pardoned, and their coerced false
confessions and phony charges still stand. |
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