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NEWS & LETTERS,
August-September 2002
OUR LIFE AND TIMES by Kevin A. Barry
Mexican airport protest
More than 1,000 Mexican peasants seized government
hostages, in July, as part of a protest against airport construction on their
land. After several days, as support demonstrations mounted across the country,
the Vicente Fox government agreed to free jailed peasant leaders, to increase
compensation for confiscated land, and to provide new jobs and land to the
peasants. During these events, peasants recalled before TV cameras how their
grandparents, then part of a movement led by Emiliano Zapata, had seized the
land from the wealthy few during the Mexican Revolution. In recent weeks, the government finally began to honor promises to open some files of the Federal Security Directorate, the dreaded secret police. Working together with the military and the CIA, the secret police repressed student, labor, and peasant activists, often sending them to their deaths after horrible torture. The most notorious case was the massacre of hundreds of student protesters in Mexico City in 1968. Human rights activists have deplored the fact that swift prosecutions of those responsible, many of them still alive, are not on the agenda. However, pressure for action may build as citizens begin to examine the police files. |
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