GUERRERO: IMPORTANT DATES

In this timeline, we do not claim to cover the entire history of Guerrero, but instead intend to discuss some key elements that may facilitate a better understanding of recent developments. Since the 1960s, the state of Guerrero has been characterized by high indexes of poverty, social disintegration, organized crime, corruption, repression and impunity. During this time, the state of law was constantly violated and state crimes were committed that have still not been punished. We decided to take this watershed moment of the 1960s and the so-called “Dirty War” and focus on the problems, consequences and responses by the population throughout the various state administrations dominated by the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) until 2005.

1/04/1957 => 4/01/1961: GOVERNOR RAÚL CABALLERO ABURTO (PRI)

In the 1960s, Guerrero was in a situation of structural violence. The long-standing rule of repressive local leaders (caciques), abuse, corruption, crime, violations, poverty, disease, and the unequal distribution of wealth are some of the factors that the rural (campesino) and indigenous populations of Guerrero faced daily.

In 1959, the teacher Genaro Vázquez Rojas founded the Guerrero Civic Association (ACG) to struggle against the low prices that North American companies were paying for copra (the marrow of coconut from which oil is extracted) and other agricultural products. Soon after, Genaro Vázquez Rojas created the Independent Campesino Center (an agrarian organization on the national level) and the National Revolutionary Civic Action (ACNR).

4/01/1961 => 31/03/1963: GOVERNOR ARTURO MARTÍNEZ ADAME (PRI)

1/04/1963 => 31/03/1969: GOVERNOR RAYMUNDO ABARCA ALARCÓN (PRI)

On November 11, 1966, Genaro Vázquez Rojas was detained by the Guerrero police, at the doorway of the Independent Campesino Center in Mexico City and taken to Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero. He was accused of organizing a student movement against the government

Another teacher, Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, tried to politically organize the people of Atoyac, Costa Grande, through the Party of the Poor (PDLP), a student and farm workers’ organization that struggled against landholders who exploited local farmers.

In his classes, the rural teacher exhorted to his students the creation of a new system in which the rich were not in control and the factories were re-appropriated and put into the hands of workers. He also proposed financial, judicial, educational and social reforms focused on the well-being of workers, rural farmers and women, as well as a change to Mexico’s policy of dependency towards the United States. All of this led to his expulsion from the state to a school in Durango; later he was reinstated in Guerrero, thanks to pressure from his students.

On May 18, 1967, the staff and families of students at a school in Atoyac, led by Lucio Cabañas, organized a protest to demand the withdrawal of teachers who were dividing the school. The protestors decided to occupy the school. The government strongly cracked down on the protest: the state judicial police and thugs hired by the caciques of the region fired at the protesters, leaving five dead and dozens wounded. From that day forward, Lucio Cabañas Barrientos went underground to struggle against the government. In the following years, Lucio Cabañas Barrientos was based out of the Guerrero Coast, his Rural Justice Brigades attacked Mexican Army battalions and police units, robbed banks, and held hacienda owners, ranchers and businessmen hostage, always in protest against the local government. He became one of the government’s main enemies and the Mexican Army was engaged in a constant search for him. On April 22, 1968, Genaro Vázquez Rojas was freed from jail by an armed group of his supporters. From this date forward, he continued an underground and armed struggle against the government.

1/04/1969 => 20/04/1971: GOVERNOR CARITINO MALDONADO PEREZ (PRI)

The governor died on April 17, 1971; Roberto Rodriguez Marcado filled his position for an interim of 3 days, until April 20, 1971.

20/04/1971 => 31/01/1975: GOVERNOR ISRAEL NOGUEDA OTERO (PRI)

On February 2, 1972, Genaro Vázquez Rojas died in a car accident during a high speed pursuit on the Mexico-Morelia highway. He was 35 years old.

On May 30, 1974, the Party of the Poor of Lucio Cabañas Barrientos held hostage the PRI senator and candidate for governor Rubén Figueroa Figueroa to pressure the government. They freed him 100 days later on the 8th of September after the handing over of 50 million pesos.

Soon after, Lucio Cabañas Barrientos and his men took refuge in the municipality of Tecpan de Galeana. The then Secretary of National Defense, Hermenegildo Cuenca Díaz carried out an attack against them with a force of more than 5,000 soldiers. The first confrontation with the soldiers took place on October 11, 1974 on Achotla Montaña , from which Lucio managed to escape with three wounds in his left leg. The Mexican army lost track of him for several weeks. On November 30, thanks to an informant, the soldiers found the rebels again. Seventeen of Lucio’s men were killed, but he succeeded in escaping once again with three of his guerrillas.

However, the commander of the XXVIII Military Zone, General Eliseo Jimenez Ruiz, took 4 girls between the ages of 16 and 20 years old hostage from the town of Guayabito and threatened to torture, rape and kill them unless someone provided information on the whereabouts of the rebel. The following day, the commissioner of the municipality of Guayabito revealed Lucio’s location to the general.

On December 2, Special Forces troops surrounded Lucio at El Ototal and killed him with a bullet to the face and several other shots in the back.

In total, during the “Dirty War” of the 1960s and 1970s, more than 400 people disappeared in the region of Atoyac, mostly due to the military, with a total of 1,300 disappearances in the whole country. Many of the disappeared did not have any links to armed groups. The government justified the presence of the Army in the state as protection for the execution of a “social project” (of development), meanwhile this facilitated the movement and permanent settlement of troops in marginalized zones. The politics of physical repression implemented by the Mexican state during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s against activists in opposition to the regime continues to be and open wound in Mexican society because those responsible for the crimes against humanity have maintained complete impunity.

The Party of the Poor, created by Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, would survive until 1989, at which point its members combined with other clandestine groups that in 1995 became the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), the Revolutionary Insurgent People’s Army (ERPI) and the Peoples’ Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARP).

From February 1 to March 31, 1975, Javier Olea Muñoz was the provisional governor of the state.

1/04/1975 => 31/03/1981: GOVERNOR RUBEN FIGUEROA FIGUEROA (PRI)

The senator held hostage by the Party of the Poor, Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, was subsequently elected governor of the state of Guerrero. The governor maintained close ties with Miguel Nazar Haro, who in 1976 served as the head of the Federal Office of Security (DFS), a federal organization that has cited for employing inhumane methods of police work and carrying out forced disappearances, genocide and torture. Nazar Haro is considered the founder of the paramilitary group known as the White Brigade or Special Brigade; the group was comprised of soldiers and agents from various agencies engaged in combating guerrilla movements in Mexico in the 1970s and early 1980s through methods of torture, detentions, disappearances, and executions. In a report released by the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) about the “Dirty War,” Nazar Haro appears as one of the most relentless figures in the combat against guerrillas. Human rights organizations and groups of families of the disappeared implicate the White Brigade in the disappearance of 1,200 people in Mexico. Nazar Haro along with General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro (State Director of Police and Transit in Guerrero, as well as a member of DFS and the White Brigade) are the main figures indicated in accusations of forced disappearances, torture, and summary executions in the state of Guerrero.

In 1979, Professor Othón Salazar, candidate for the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), won the municipal leadership of Alconzauca de Guerrero, a marginalized indigenous municipality in the state’s Montaña region. This is the first municipal opposition government in all of Mexico, made legendary given the context of a constant persecution of opposition groups. The communists began the work of organizing the people of the Montaña region, calling for the constitution of the Council of the Peoples of Montaña (CPM). The region became known as “Red Mountain.” Today, Alconzuaca has had 35 years of opposition government, first with the PCM and later with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

1/04/1981 => 31/03/1987: GOVERNOR ALEJANDRO CERVANTES DELGADO - PRI

1/04/1987 => 31/03/1993: GOVERNOR JOSÉ FRANCISCO RUIZ MASSIEU - PRI

In 1989, the PRD was established in the state of Guerrero through 10 district assemblies in areas where various opposition groups and organizations existed. From this point on, the PRD received increasing numbers of votes and steadily won control of more municipalities.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the indigenous movement in Guerrero was growing stronger. On October 21, 1990, the Council of Nahua Peoples in Alto Balsas (CPNAB) was established, bringing together a large group of village authorities, municipal commissioners and leaders responsible for communal lands in the Alto Balsas region. The heads of the council visited with indigenous communities throughout the state and solicited support from various sectors of Mexican society.

In September of 1991, the Guerrero Council on 500 Years of Indigenous, Black, and Popular Resistance (CG500ARI) was founded with the goal of coordinating a continental campaign to oppose the celebration of 500 years of conquest. This campaign involved creating Indigenous Councils in many states throughout Mexico, but the Guerrero council was the only that continue in existence after the counter-celebration activities were over.

Members of the CPNAB then approached the CG500ARI to organize a coordinated civil resistance movement against the San Juan Tetelcingo hydro-electric dam project. The dammed waters from the proposed project would flood lands and homes, and would negatively impact the environment, culture, and lives of 56,000 people in 22 Nahua communities in the Alto Balsas region. The groups staged various actions, such as hunger strikes, marches and caravans to Chilpancingo and Mexico City, and calls for national and international solidarity.

In 1992, the parish of Santa Cruz El Rincón, in the municipality of Malinaltepec in the Montaña region, called a meeting of communities to analyze the conditions and needs of the indigenous peoples in the Montaña and Coastal regions. A group consisting of municipal authorities, church leaders such as cantors and sextons, and community leaders met over the course of the following year. These meetings led to the creation, three years later, of the Community Police. Father Mario Campos Hernández, priest of Santa Cruz El Rincón, was one of the driving forces behind the project.

The “March for the Dignity and Resistance of Indigenous Peoples” from Chilpancingo (the capital of Guerrero) to the central plaza of Mexico City took place from October 2-12, 1992. The march was organized within the framework of various movements opposing the 500-year anniversary celebration of the so-called “Encounter Between Two Worlds,” and to celebrating instead 500 years of Indigenous Resistance. On October 13, 1992, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed a document approving the suspension of the San Juan Tetelcingo hydro-electric project. This signified a victory for the resistance movement organized by the CPNAB and CG500ARI.

During the administration of José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, from 1987 to 1993, 200 supporters of the PRD were assassinated. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH) presented claims of violations of human dignity against the administration’s civil security and military corps, highlighting in particular the actions of General Heriberto Salinas Altés, commander of the 9th Military Regiment based out of Acapulco.

The final days of the José Francisco Ruiz Massieu administration and the first days of the subsequent administration of Rubén Figueroa Alcocer were particularly violent. On February 9, 1993, 24 farmers were killed by high-powered weapons near the community of Huautla, in the Montaña region of Guerrero. The government claimed that the mass murder was the result of ongoing family disputes over drug trafficking. Four months later, on June 5, 1993, 170 judicial police officers entered the community of Yolotla, which has a population of about 300 inhabitants, to apprehend those allegedly responsible for the February 9th massacre. The police provoked a standoff that lasted more than 6 hours, during which two community members were killed, many community members – both male and female – were hit and injured by bullets, houses were robbed and burned, and 14 people were arrested. Ten farmers were sentenced to 30 years in prison, despite having proven that they had not been at the scene of these events..

1/04/1993 => 12/03/1996: GOVERNOR RUBEN FIGUEROA ALCOCER - PRI

During the administration of Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, politically-motivated assassinations increased. The municipal elections in October 1993 were particularly violent, with six people killed and four disappeared. All of the victims had strong ties to the PRD. In all cases, the government presented the victims as delinquents, guerillas, drug traffickers, or claimed that the murders were the result of personal arguments or family problems.

Early in 1994, as a result of the armed uprising in Chiapas, the state of Guerrero was militarized: the Judicial and Federal Police installed several roadblocks and carried out helicopter surveillance to search for guerrilla groups. The CG500ARI organized marches in support of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, or EZLN).

On September 28, 1994, ex-governor José Francisco Ruiz Massieu was assassinated. Raúl Carlos Salinas de Gortari, brother of the ex-president and brother-in-law of the victim, would be convicted for the murder.

The organizing forces of the indigenous movement in Guerrero had faced many obstacles along the way. In 1994, father Mario Campos Hernández, the driving force behind the establishment of the Community Police, was attacked while traveling. The State Department attributed the attack to a “gang of hijackers,” but community members confirmed that it had been the Commissioner of Santa Cruz El Rincón himself who paid the “assailants.”

On June 28, 1995, the Massacre of Aguas Blancas occurred in Costa Grande. Farmers associated with the Farmers’ Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS) traveling to Atoyac for a demonstration were attacked en route by members of various police forces. Seventeen members of the group died and 21 were seriously injured. The police placed firearms amongst the dead to claim that their deaths were the result of an armed confrontation.

The National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) investigated the case and concluded that the farmers were not carrying firearms and that the killings were not the result of a confrontation but a massacre. The Commission found twenty state government officials responsible for the massacre and guilty of obscuring evidence in the investigation; the officials responsible included Guerrero’s Secretary of State, Rubén Robles Catalán, and State Attorney General, Antonio Alcocer Salazar. Soon thereafter, the Special Counsel assigned to the case exonerated the governor and his closest collaborators, keeping up the appearance of justice by arresting 20 police officers and 23 public officials.

On October 15, 1995, the Community Police was founded. In response to increasing violence and state and federal police corruption, 52 communities in the municipalities of Luis Acatlán, Malinaltepec, Copanatoyac, Atlamajalcingo del Monte and Metlatónoc, in the Montaña region of Guerrero, organized to create their own police, exercising their right to self-governance recognized by the International Labor Organization (OIT, in Spanish) in Treaty 169. In the following years, they put into action their own system of administering justice, in accordance with their own community systems.

Under constant social pressure, Rubén Figueroa Alcocer resigned as governor on March 12, 1996, halfway through his term, claiming that he “wanted to help with the Aguas Blancas investigation being carried out by the Supreme Court (SCJN).”

12/03/1996 => 31/03/1999: GOVERNOR ANGEL AGUIRRE RIVERO - PRI

Angel Aguirre Rivero replaced Rubén Figueroa Alcocer as governor of Guerrero. On April 12, 1996, the Supreme Court presented its report on the Aguas Blancas massacre, in which it confirmed the responsibility of the ex-governor, the ex-Secretary of State, and the ex-Attorney General, among others. However neither the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) nor the Superior Justice Tribunal (TSP) followed through on the Supreme Court’s findings. On June 14, the State Attorney General of Guerrero declared that eh ex-governor and his principal collaborators “did not participate in a directly, indirectly, or in the planning of the crimes committed.”

On June 29, 1996, an armed group known as the Popular Revolutionary Army (Ejército Popular Revolucionario, or EPR) was created in commemoration of the Aguas Blancas massacre. About one hundred armed and masked men and women made public their “Manifesto of Aguas Blancas,” in which they declared that “institutionalized violence” was as present as it was when Lucio Cabañas Barrientos and Genaro Vázquez Rojas took up arms against exploitation and oppression: “In the face of institutionalized violence, armed struggle is a legitimate and necessary recourse for the people to reclaim their sovereignty and re-establish their rights guaranteed by the State.” One of the EPR’s principal demands was justice. On June 28, during the night, an armed confrontation took place between a group of EPR members and state judicial police in Zumpango del Río. Three police officers were wounded.

The EPR was involved in various armed conflicts in Guerrero. The group disseminated the aims of its movement through visits to communities, opening up direct dialogue with community members. The federal government responded to the appearance of the EPR by persecuting members of social and political organizations (particularly the OCSS and the PRD). The government decided to fight the EPR with the Army, changing the principal military commands in Guerrero in order to bring back generals who had been involved in the persecution of the guerrilla movement during the 1970s in the state. The level of militarization increased visibly.

On December 22, 1996, Army troops disarmed two groups of Community Police in San Luis Acatlán.

On February 25, 1997, two indigenous people who were apprehended in Tlacoachistlahuaca, Costa Chica were disappeared by members of the State Judicial Police. Representatives of human rights organizations formed a “Peace Observers Brigade.”

In April of 1997, indigenous Nahua from the community of Atlixtac, in the Montaña region of Guerrero, accused soldiers from the 50th Infantry Battalion of an illegal execution, intimidation, arbitrary detentions, disruption of community life and military siege.

At the end of May, 1997, the two largest confrontations to date between the Mexican Army and the EPR took place: one on the highway to Chilapa, in the Montaña region, in which two guerrillas and two soldiers were killed and 20 soldiers were injured; the other took place in the Sierra de Atoyac, and consisted of more than seven hours of combat, resulting in two guerrillas and three soldiers killed and multiple wounded. In the face of this violence, social and political organizations called for dialogue and peace talks.

On December 3, 1997, members of the Army raped two indigenous Tlapaneca women in the region of Tlacolcingo, in the municipality of Atlixtac. One month later, in another community in the same municipality, 6 indigenous people were kidnapped by members of the Army, taken to a field sown with opium poppies, and photographed, with the aim being to portray them as drug traffickers.

On January 8, 1998, a group of guerrillas split from the EPR to create the Revolutionary Insurgent People’s Army (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente, or ERPI). The ERPI included the most important group of militants and EPR leaders within Guerrero. The ERPI engaged in military actions and political activity, and is the armed group closest ideologically to the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN).

On February 22, 1998, on the Costa Grande, members of the Organization of Rural Campesino Ecologists from the Sierra of Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP) organized a “Lumber Strike.” For a month, they blocked all of the roads to the mountains in order to stop the illegal extraction of wood from the region, a joint business venture being carried out by the transnational corporation Boise Cascade and local authorities and plantation owners. Boise Cascade would pull out of the region later on, due to “difficult situations for business.”

On June 7, 1998, just two years after the massacre at Aguas Blancas, another massacre took place in El Charco on the Costa Chica. The previous day, indigenous Mixteco farmers from nearby communities had held an organizing assembly, in which members of the ERPI took part. As the meeting ended late, the ERPI members decided to spend the night in the community. At dawn, members of the 27th Infantry Battalion executed 11 people and arrested 22, accusing them of being members of the EPR. The prisoners were tortured and transferred illegally to military installations. Of the 22 arrested, five were minors and two were students (Ericka Zamora Pardo and Efrén Cortés Chávez). The Army spread the story that the alleged EPR members had attacked the troops and soldiers “responded to this aggression.” Members of organizations such as the Independent Organization of Mixteco and Tlapaneco Peoples (OIPMT) and members of the PRD immediately contested this version, and spoke out about massacre.

On June 10, the ERPI released its first public communiqué in which it acknowledged that one of its units had been attacked by surprise by military troops. The ERPI responded with two armed attacks, one against the Army on June 22^nd (the Ninth Military Region said there were three soldiers killed, while the ERPI claimed to have “annihilated the platoon”), and another against the State Judicial Police on July 4 (resulting in 2 police officers killed and one wounded).

On February 7, 1999, PRI candidate René Juarez Cisneros won the gubernatorial election. On February 22, 25,000 people marched in Acapulco claiming that there had been electoral fraud in the elections for governor and asking for an elections committee to review the results.

1/04/1999 => 31/03/2005: GOVERNOR RENE JUÁREZ CISNEROS - PRI

On April 14, 1999, rural and social organizations, the state leadership of the PRD and the State Commission on Human Rights (CODDEHUM) protested to re-open the case of the Aguas Blancas massacre.

On April 20-21, soldiers killed two indigenous Mixtecos (one of whom was a child) and raped two Mixteca women in the neighborhood of Nuevo San José, and killed another member of a neighboring indigenous community, in the municipality of Tlacoachistlahuaca, Costa Chica.

On May 2, 1999, the Mexican Army the illegally arrested, tortured, transferred to military installations the farmer-ecologists Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera García from the Organization of Rural Ecologists from the Sierra of Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP), whose cases were then processed with fabricated documents. Another farmer, Salomé Sánchez Ortiz, was executed. One year later, the CNDH issued Recommendation 8/2000 in which the commission indicates that the Army violated the human rights of the ecologists by torturing them, placing weapons and narcotics on them, and maintaining them illegally under Army control for at least two and a half days.

On May 3, 1999, the Indigenous Organization of Mixteco and Tlapaneco Peoples (OIPMT) from Ayutla (Costa Chica) registered a complaint against the state health services of forced sterilization of indigenous men and women through deception (promises and threats to take away economic aid if they did not agree to undergo the operation).

On September 23, 1999, the ERPI attacked a military convoy close to Ayutla, wounding three soldiers.

On March 26, 2000, soldiers from the 49th Infantry Battalion disarmed members of the Community Police in Pueblo Hidalgo, in the municipality of San Luis Acatlán. On July 9, Father Mario Campos Hernández, adviser to the organization, was detained by the Judicial State Police with a “search of the premises” charge. Facing heavy pressure to release him from the communities in which Father Campos Hernández worked, the police withdrew their charges.

On August 3, 2000, in Xochistlahuaca (Costa Chica), the Council of the Amuzga Nation received intimidations, threats and aggressions by PRI members, in response to their protest against the municipal president Aceadeth Rocha who did not respect their system of community norms and traditional customs.

En August of 2000, despite the recommendation by the CNDH and international pressure, the farmer-ecologist Rodolfo Montiel was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison for the crimes of planting marijuana, illegally carrying firearms without a license, and carrying firearms exclusively permitted for military use. Teodoro Cabrera was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the crime of carrying firearms exclusively permitted for military use.

On September 16, 2000, Father Mario Campos Hernández was attacked by a group of armed assailants. The parish priest attributed the attack, in addition to other intimidations and death threats, to his role in the struggle on behalf of marginalized populations, work that affected the political and economic interests of the PRI-affiliated plantation owners in the region. Two days later, agents of the Guerrero State Judicial Police (PJEG) detained Bruno Plácido Valerio, adviser to the Community Police, accusing him of raping four Mixteca women. The accusation is denied by the alleged victims. The Center for Human Rights of the Montaña Tlachinollan and the Guerrero Council on 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance denounced the campaign against the Community Police and demanded the immediate release of Bruno Plácido Valerio. On October 20, the police arrested Agustín Barrera Cosme, chief commander of the Community Police. Upon finding no evidence to bring against him, he is released after a while.

On January 8, 2001 the indigenous Amuzgos who took over the Municipal Offices of Xochistlahuaca to demand that the municipal president resign were violently removed.

In February of 2001, Peace Brigades International (PBI), a non-governmental organization, began to accompany threatened human rights defenders in the state. PBI became the first international NGO with a permanent presence in Guerrero.

On March 5, 2001, the Mexican government accepted the recommendation by CIDH to re-open the Aguas Blancas case, and demand a serious, impartial and effective investigation of the facts as well as the presumed participation of Rubén Figueroa Alcocer and his principal collaborators, who were exonerated in the first investigation.

The Zapatista march arrived in Iguala on March 8, 2001. The march was met by 7,000 people. On June 13, 2001, various indigenous organizations mobilized to call on the state Congress to reject the “Indigenous Law” proposed by the national Congress. They blockaded the congressional building for two days. Warrants were issued for various indigenous leaders for having participated in this blockade.

In October of 2001, international organizations presented the case of the farmer-ecologists before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (CIDH). On November 9, President Fox, facing serious national and international pressure, ordered the release of Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera from prison for "humanitarian reasons." This amnesty did not recognize their innocence, nor did it clarify who had been responsible for planning and carrying out the incidents.

On February 16, 2002 Valentina Rosendo Cantú, an indigenous Tlapaneca, was interrogated, threatened, beaten and raped by members of the 41st Infantry Battalion in Barranca Bejuco, Montaña.

On March 14, 2002 the State Commission of Human Rights (CODDEHUM) released recommendation 019/2002, which covered nine recent cases of forced disappearance. The report implicated 21 members of the Judicial Police as responsible, including various commanders and state directors of the State Judicial Police.

On March 23, 2002 4,000 indigenous people from the Costa-Montaña region and 700 community police officers marched in support of the Community Police of San Luis Acatlán four days after the expiration of the term imposed by the state government and the Army for the disappearance of the Community Police.

On March 25, 2002 another indigenous Tlapaneca woman, Inés Fernández Ortega, was raped by members of the 41st Infantry Batallion in Barranca Tecuani, Costa Chica.

On May 31, 2002, after four years of imprisonment, political prisoners Erika Zamora and Efrén Cortés, detained during the El Charco Massacre, were released from prison. They had been imprisoned under the accusation of belonging to the EPR.

In November of 2002, indigenous Amuzgos of Xochistlahuaca created an autonomous municipality. Given the complete loss of trust in government institutions and political parties, and the conviction that they will never be able to resolve through institutional channels their primary necessities and the conflicts that today fragment their communities, they decided to re-institute the form of government of their forefathers and to invest in an autonomous governing project without any relationship to political parties or the state authorities of Guerrero.

On May 13, 2003, militants from the PRI-affiliated organizations Campesino Torch and The Revolutionary Agrarian League of the South Emiliano Zapata (LARSEZ) engaged in a violent confrontation in Zapotitlán Tablas for political reasons. The confrontation left four dead, 42 wounded and nine disappeared.

On June 5, 2003, four indigenous people were murdered in Barranca Guadalupe, Montaña. According to a leader of the Organization of the Me'phaa Indigenous Peoples (OPIM), the victims had ties to a group of paramilitaries.

On January 14, 2004, municipal police officers from Zapotitlán Tablas (Montaña) tortured and killed 18-year-old Sócrates Tolentino González Genaro. They took advantage of the fact that the mother of the victim is indigenous and cannot read, having her sign a letter that stating that her son committed suicide.

In May of 2004, 15 warrants for arrest issued against leaders and members of the Organization of Campesino Ecologists from the Sierra of Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP) – for the death of the son of lumber baron Bernardino Bautista Valle, which occurred on May 30, 1998 – were rescinded. There were various irregularities in the criminal process which allowed for the claim that the arrest orders were an act of political persecution against OCESP. On November 3, Felipe Arreaga Sánchez, one of the OCESP leaders facing an arrest order, was detained. Despite decisive proof of his innocence, he remains imprisoned in Zihuatanejo. (see Urgent Action)

On December 2, and the days following, Marco Antonio Suástegui Muñoz – a distinguished member of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to La Parota (CECOP), which opposes the construction of the La Parota hydroelectric dam in the municipality of Acapulco – received death threats.

On December 3 and 4, 2004 the Human Rights Center of Tlachinollan Montaña convoked the forum "Against Silence and Forgetting: The Voice of the Indigenous Peoples of Mexico," which gave led to the writing of a state-wide agenda for the integral and autonomous development of the indigenous peoples of Guerrero.

On December 9, 2004, Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, member of the Organization of the Tlapaneco Indigenous People, Civil Association (OPIT) and translator for Inés Fernández Ortega (raped by soldiers in 2002) received death threats against her and her family for the speech she gave at the forum held during the previous days. A month later, at the request of various organizations, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) will recommend that the Mexican government take precautionary measures to protect the human rights defender and her family.

On December 20, 2004, the autonomous municipality of Xochsitlahuaca inaugurated the community radio station Radio Ñomndaa (The Word of the Water), the first radio station to broadcast in the Amuzga language, for the municipality and surrounding communities. One month later, the traditional authorities denounced intimidations and repressive actions carried out against the community station.

On February 6, 2005, PRD candidate Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo won the election for governor of Guerrero with 55% of the vote. The PRI candidate took 42% of the vote, and the PAN candidate only 1%. This marked the end of 80 years of PRI domination in the state..

1/04/2005: GOVERNOR ZEFERINO TORREBLANCA GALINDO - PRD

In April the new governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo named ex-soldier Heriberto Salinas Altés the Secretary of Public Security. This general was the commander of the 9th Military Region in the era of greatest repression against PRD party members during the government of Ruiz Massieu (1987-1993) and was named in a CIDH report on human rights abuses. Civil organizations expressed their disagreement with the appointment of a soldier to the cabinet. They also pointed to the fact that the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) recommended that Mexico not involve members of the Army in public posts, and demilitarize communities.

On July 6, 2005, José Rubén Robles Catalán, Secretary of State during the administration of Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, was killed during an attack in Acapulco. José Rubén Robles Catalán was named as one of those principally responsible for the Aguas Blancas massacre. The following day The Homeland Comes First Popular Revolutionary Command, an unknown armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack against Robles Catalán. The group declared that it "had judged and condemned to the maximum penalty those intellectually responsible for the Aguas Blancas massacre." The group has threatened to kill the three other individuals responsible for the slaughter (ex-governor Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, ex-Attorney General Antonio Alcocer Salazar, and the former director of the Judicial Police, Héctor Vicario Castrejón) if the new government does not seek justice in the Aguas Blancas case.

On August 9th, environmental organizations and human rights defenders awarded the Chico Mendes Prize to Felipe Arreaga while still in Zihuatanejo prison. Arreaga was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. On September 15th, after 10 months of incarceration, he was released. According to the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights, “this decision confirms that he was persecuted for his environmental activism.”

On the 23rd of August, a community assembly was held in San Marcos to approve or reject La Parota project and a second assembly on the 27th of November in Dos Arroyos, in which denouncements were made against irregularities such as the buying of votes and physically obstructing collective landholders labeled as the opposition. Furthermore, the state and municipal preventative police took control of the area and, according to testimonies, began to provoke the opposition. Finally, another collective landholders assembly was held in los Huajes on the 27th of December. The assembly was held outside of the collectively owned land and in the presence of police forces. Denouncements were made, calling the session illegal and that insufficient votes were cast.

In September of 2005, Miguel Ángel Mesino Mesino, former political prisoner connected to the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) and brother to the leader of the Farmer’s Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS), Rocío Mesino, was assassinated by gunfire in the center of Atoyac. The OCSS became known outside of Guerrero after the massacre in Aguas Blancas on June 28, 1995, when police killed 17 farmers and left another 14 wounded, the majority of who were OCSS militants.

2006

On January 19^th, the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal in Acapulco, Guerrero, resolved to cancel the San Marcos Assembly that was held on August 23, 2005, because of evident irregularities found. One, among other irregularities stressed, was the apparent absence of notification announcing the assembly, a violation of the Agrarian Law. On the 1^st of March, collective-land assemblies from Dos Arroyos, La Palma and Los Huajes demanded that the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal (TUA) annul decisions guaranteeing the expropriation of their lands in relation to La Parota Hydroelectric Project.

In April, the Other Campaign (La Otra Campaña) headed by Delegate Zero (Delegado Zero) visited Guerrero. The caravan visited historical cites of the struggle and resistance in Guerrero. Subcomander Marcos offered the support of the Zapatista communities and the EZLN to the movement in opposition to La Parota.

On the 9^th of May, the state governor, Zeferino Torreblanca Galinda, headed a march with various townspeople in favor of the hydroelectric dam project, La Parota. About 2,000 people, the majority members of the Council for Collective-Land and Communities in Opposition to La Parota (CECOP), responded with another march on May 14th in order to show that they were not the minority, as well as, denounce that the governor does not have a neutral position in regards to the project.

The farmer environmentalist Felipe Arreaga denounced that on the 29^th of May he was the victim of abuses carried out by military soldiers that were part of a revision checkpoint in the community of La Botella, located in the Sierra of Petatlán. On June 5th, President Vicente Fox awarded him with the Environmental Merit Award in Chihuahua.

Abuse of authority, violations of labor rights, arbitrary detentions, and the refusal of the right of education, were the most reoccurring human rights violations in accordance with the 12^th report from the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights, presented by the center in the beginning of June.

In between the 10th and 13^th of August, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous peoples, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, visited Guerrero. He indicated that the government has ”the obligation to protect the human rights of the inhabitants who are in opposition to the La Parota project.” He also managed to obtain testimonies of indigenous peoples who have denounced violations against human rights. The cases are related to extra-judicial killings, sexual abuse by military personnel, land evictions, and a shortage of public services.

On September 27^th, workers from the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) involved in the construction of La Parota, were suspended by order of a Third District judge, as well as, the processes to expropriate the land in the agricultural nuclei of La Palma, Los Huajes and Dos Arroyos, which together with Cacahuatepec, represent 67% of the surface land falling within the boundaries of the hydroelectric dam.

On the 1^st of October the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal (TUA) with headquarters in Acapulco, declared that the community assembly of Los Huajes was valid, in which landholders informed the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to begin the process of expropriating their lands, permitting the construction of La Parota. The decision was based on the argument that the opposition’s statements were “contradictions.” The Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights stated that there were “incongruencies and partialness” in the conclusions of the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal and that it acted on “political pressures rather than legal criteria.” Nonetheless, on October 17^th the Tribunal ruled a third time, favoring in behalf of the agricultural collective of Dos Arroyos, opposers of the hydroelectric project, La Parota.

In October, authorities and inhabitants of Barranca de Guadalupe in the municipality of Ayutla, and the Me’Phaa Indigenous Organization denounced that troops entered their community, established camp on a parcel of land, destroyed the hose that supplies the community’s water, and cut and ate corn belonging to the community. The Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights also denounced the increasing presence of military in indigenous communities of La Montaña and la Costa Chica. Denouncements made by Me’Paa indigenous peoples concerning the presence of troops, the damage they caused, the sexual harassment and threats to which they fell victims in the communities of Progreso and Barranca de Guadelupe, the municipality of Ayutla, and the denouncements made by the Community Police in regards to the military occupation of their territory, particularly in San Luis Acatlán, form part of this trend.

On October 1^st, a minimum of 30 grass-roots organizations and trade unions established the Popular Assembly of the People of Guerrero (APPG).

On October 25^th, opposers to the La Parota dam and sympathizers of the project came close to blows in El Limón, on the road leading to the community of San José Cacahuatepec, due to a blockade set up by those in favor of constructing the dam.

Of 155 violent murders against women that have occurred in Guerrero during the last three years, the State Attorney General (PGJE) has only initiated preliminary investigations into 24 of those cases, the majority of which face “discrimination”, informed the Guerrero Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations in November. The network pointed out that between 2001 and 2006, 863 homicides of young women and adult women, 1,431 sexual assaults, 416 childbirth deaths, and 1,503 incidences of family-related violence, have been registered.
December 6^th, Mexican president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, stated in his first tour through Guerrero that, “beyond colors and parties”, there is only one Mexico “that is drowned in poverty and marginalization, and demand political actors get to work on these issues.” Governor Torreblanca (PRD) accompanied him during the tour. He recognized “the responsibility, the hospitality, and consistency of the State Governor Zeferino Torreblanaca,” guaranteeing him: “You can count on me, Mr. Governor, undoubtedly in this government.”

Calderón Hinojosa led the initiation of the Strategy for Integral and Economic Municipal Development, a program directing resources to the country’s most marginalized municipalities. At the same time, cutbacks in resources for the State of Guerrero that appear in the 2007 expenditure proposal report sent by President Felipe Calderón, were rejected unanimously by members of the State Congress on December 7^th, because they could detain state development, and instead put at risk the very stability of the state. Calderón proposes a reduction of 25% for the Program to Support Federal Entities (PAFEF), which would lead to a drastic reduction of resources for the State of Guerrero.

In December, opposers of La Parota and Tlachinollan denounced that Governor Zeferino Torreblanca approved the construction of roads Dos Arroyos-Agua de Perro and Tunzingo behind closed doors and with resources of the CFE, in places where the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal prohibited this. They showed with this that the governor, along with the state apparatus, violated the law and are provoking a confrontation between community members. The State Secretary General, Armando Chavarría Barrera, denied these accusations.

The State Secretary General informed on December 11th that the army, marines, state and investigative police (PIM) have been patrolling the region of Tierra Caliente and Costa Grande in order to avoid narcotraffickers seeking refuge in Guerrero as a result of Operation Team Michoacán, to be carried out in the neighboring state.

2007

On the 6^th of January, David Salgado Aranda, from the municipality of Tlapa, died when struck down by a tractor while picking tomatoes in fields run by the company Agrícola Paredes together with the rest of his family members. According to the Center for Human Rights of Montaña, the company has denied to indemnify the family. This death has refueled the issue of child labor in Mexico, as well as, called attention of public opinion over the conditions under which thousands of day laborers in the country work.

On the 8^th of January, collective landowners of Carrizalillo in the municipality of Eduardo Neri (Zumpango), blocked the main accesses to the Canadian mine located on their lands, demanding a better price for the renting of the mines and to secure that the company fulfills with the public work projects they promised to the community.

The three detained in the Acapulco prison, accused of killing local Congress member José Jorge Bajos Valverde (PAN), were “tortured”, concluded the exams conducted by the State Commission for the Defense of Human Rights in Guerrero (CODEHUM). Tlachinollan pointed out that these denouncements were added to a list of more than 10 torture cases documented between 1997 and 2002 by the organization. All have been treated with impunity.

On January 25^th, a hundred state and municipal preventative police of Zumpango violently displaced those responsible for the blockade in Carrizalillo. During four hours about 70 collective landholders, among them women and children, were deprived of their freedom. Two women resulted with injuries.

In February, 7,600 army, marine, Federal Preventative Police, and the Federal Investigation Agency personnel came together for the federal program “Operation Team Guerrero”, an operation that sought to combat narcotraffic.

Although “Operation Team Guerrero” was underway, on the 5^th of February, four policemen, a public ministry agent, and two secretaries were executed in two attacks of Investigative Police (PIM) facilities.

A day after the Canadian Mining Company Luismin called President Felipe Calderón and Governor Zeferino Torreblanca calling for the protection of State Rights in the face of the blockade sustained by the collective landholders of Carrizalillo on the main accesses to the mines, the Mexican army installed, on the 22^nd of February, a checkpoint at least three kilometers from were the protest was being held.

On the 23^rd of February, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants, Jorge Bustamante, referring to the death of David Salgado (child day laborer) stated that the Mexican government has demonstrated indifference towards child labor that prevails in agricultural fields.

On March 20^th, human rights civil organizations and Mexican activists, along with 16 other nations, called on President Felipe Calderón, Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, and the Secretary of Public Security, Juan Heriberto Salinas, to abstain using public force in clearing the blockade in Carrizalillo. Those behind the blockade, now organized in the Permanent Assembly of Collective Landholders Carrizalillo, reinforced their determination to maintain the blockade of Luismin Mines until they obtain a comprehensive response to their demands.

On March 30^th, the Unitary Agrarian Tribunal (TUA) in Acapulco annulled the actions of the August 2005 Assembly in which the peasant farmers of Cacahuatepec authorized the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to expropriate lands and ruled in favor of the Peasant Farmers of Bienes Comunales of Cachuatepec, opposers to La Parota.

On the 1^st of April, an agreement was reached between the “Permanent Assembly of Collective Landholders and Workers of Carrizalillo” and the mining company Luismin. The agreement promises to construct a more equitable relationship between the company and the landholders with an increase in rent prices for the use of the land, the installing of potable water services, the pavement of the road to Carrizalillo, and the construction of a community hospital. The company also promised to withdraw all legal accusations against those in resistance.

Three gunshot wounds killed Amado Ramírez Dillanes, Guerrero journalist and correspondent for Televisa in Alcapulco, on April 7^th. The magazine “Proceso” referred to the first months of 2007 as the “spring of death” for journalists in Mexico.

Montaña Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights celebrated its thirteenth anniversary with the state forum “Through the Roads of Resistance” on the 15^th and 16^th of June, in which over 400 individuals belonging to 17 grass-roots organizations and representatives of 40 communities participated in sharing their methods of resistance in defense of land in hopes of creating respect for their fundamental rights as individuals and communities.

A conflict over 456 hectares of agricultural land between Moyotepec indigenous communities and El Capulín intensified on the 17^th of June when three peasant farmers of Moyotepec were killed in a shoot-out.

On the 30^th of June, the husband of Inés Fernández (Me’Phaa Indian from the community of Barranca Tecoani, raped by military soldiers in 2002), Fortunato Prisciliano Sierra, was beaten and to date remains threatened by persons identified as paramilitaries by community members, and at the service of the 48^th Infantry Battalion with headquarters in Cruz Grande. These are the same persons who have also threatened Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, member of the Me’Phaa Indigneous Community Organization, for whom the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) has requested security measures. On August 27^th, Portunato Prisciliano Sierra denounced being battered by military soldiers. According to the Montaña Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights, the presumption exists that the army and the Mexican government intimidate Fortunato Prisciliano in order to impede or inhibit the denouncement of his wife in front of the CIDH.

August 9^th, David Valtierra, coordinator for community radio Ñomndaa (word for water) in Xochistlahuaca was detained by ministerial police in the city of Ometepec. David Valtierra is known for his struggle in support of the autonomous municipality of Sulja and radio Ñomndaa that gives voice to the Amuzogs Indigenous peoples. He had denounced various actions by the mayor Aceadeth Rocha in the municipality of Xochistlahuaca. He was released on bail on August 10^th.

Inhabitants of Temalacatzingo and Tlaquilcingo demanded the removal of the military, agents from the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), and Investigative Police (PIM) from their communities for fear that they would continue committing grave violations of their human rights.

Starting August 30^th, opposers of La Parota dam project declared themselves in permanent resistance to impede the construction of the hydroelectric dam. The decision was based on the events of August 12th when in Cacahuatepec more than 3,000 attendees unanimously voted in favor of canceling the construction.

In August 2007, Rocío Mesino Mesino, official of the PRD in Atoyac presented a denouncement of attempted murder by the mayor Pedro Brito García, of the same party in Atoyac, against her. Rocío Mesino, sister of Miguel Angel Mesino Mesino, who was murdered in September 2005, is one of the leaders of the Farmers Organization of Southern Sierra (OCSS). Mayor Brito García distanced himself from the accusations.

25 August: Arturo Duque Alvarado was arrested and accused of being a member of the Insurgent Revolutionary People’s Army (ERPI, Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente), for terrorist crimes and arms stockpiling. In a communiqué released on 10 September the ERPI stated, “we reject the accusation that Arturo Duque Alvarado is active in or participates in any part of our organization’s structure, and that an arsenal that dangerous could belong to us”..The Collective Against Torture and Impunity denounced the two weeks of torture to which Duque Alvarado was subjected by the Guerrero Judicial Police and his later transportation to a safe house attached to the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR, Procuraduria General de la Republica) in Mexico City. There he was held in arraigo (administrative detention) and later held in seclusion in the maximum security detention facility, El Altiplano. Duque Alvarado was eventually released on 18 December after posting bail.

5 September: Fortunato Prisciliano Sierra denounced having received threats, harassment and aggression by members of the 48th Battalion of the Mexican Army. These threats came shortly before the hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), where his wife was due to provide testimony of being raped at the hands of military personnel in 2002. The Commission asked that the Mexican government implement urgent measures for the protection of Prisciliano Sierra and his family.

28 September: The director of the Regional Council for the Development of the Pueblo Me’phaa (Consejo Regional Para el Desarrollo del Pueblo Me’phaa) of the linguistic family Bathaa, Cándido Félix Santiago, was detained in Tlapa by agents of the Judicial Investigative Police (PIM, Policía Investigadora Ministerial) for disturbing the peace. Santiago is accused of interrupting a parade presided over by Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo which commemorated the birth of Vicente Guerrero on 9 August. He was arrested once again on 19 October by the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI, Agencia Federal de Investigaciones) agents, accused of disrupting transportation routes. He was released 20 hours later after posting bail.

8 October: The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE, Comisión Federal de Electricidad) stated that the State-sponsored company will not reverse its plans for the construction of the hydroelectric dam project La Parota, in Acapulco, Guerrero.

13 October: The founder and current councilor of the Community Police (Policía Comunitaria) and the Regional Coordinator of Communitarian Authorities (CRAC, Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias), Cirino Placido Valerio, was detained by judicial police agents. The arrest took place just two days before the anniversary of the Community Police on 15 October. Placido Valerio was released that same day.

15 October: The brother of Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo, Alberto Torreblanca Galindo, sued the newspaper El Sur and five journalists for “moral damage”. The journalists had divulged that Torreblanca Galindo had benefited from no-bid contracts on public works for the Guerrero Secretariat of Public Education (SEP). The plaintiff is demanding 10 million pesos in damages from the newspaper and the reporters.

22 October: Indigenous delegates from 28 communities in the Tlapaneco municipalities of Atlamajaltcingo del Monte, Metlatónoc and Tlapa, occupied the Guerrero Congress facilities and formed an indigenous parliament, demanding bilingual teachers for their communities as well as the cancellation of arrest warrants open for 17 indigenous leaders. They also demanded an end to the repression against social justice activists.

7 November: The Eighth Judge of the Acapulco District rejected the defense put forward by residents of Cacahuatepec in opposition to the hydroelectric dam project La Parota. Prior to this decision, the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to La Parota (CECOP, Consejo de Ejidos y Comunidades Opositores a La Parota) and the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Montaña pointed out that the court’s decision does not imply the final authorization needed by the CFE to begin the construction of the dam. The two organizations support their claim by referring to the previous court decisions made in favor of the CECOP on the basis of agrarian trials.

7 November: Manuel Olivares Hernández, director of the “José María Morelos y Pavón” Regional Human Rights Center (Centro Regional de Derechos Humanos “José María Morelos y Pavón”), and 15 others engaged in protest were detained by police in the Municipality of Chilapa. Manuel Olivares was arrested while documenting human rights violations during the protest. On 9 November the detainees were each released on a four thousand peso bail, with the exception of Manuel Olivares who was released on a ten thousand peso bail.

14 November: More than one hundred State Preventative Police agents (PPE, Policía Preventiva Estatal), in addition to Guerrero Government agents in civilian clothing, forcibly removed some 800 students who were protesting outside of the Guerrero State Congress in support of students and graduates from the Normal Rural School “Raúl Isidro Burgos” of Ayotzinapa (Escuela Normal Rural “Raúl Isidro Burgos” de Ayotzinapa). The school was founded 80 years ago, and trained for 81 classes of teachers, among them Lucio Cabañas Barrientos and Genaro Vázquez Rojas. The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Montaña reported 250 people wounded, one of whom was in a serious condition.

30 November: According to reports from various human rights organizations, a protest of graduates from the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa was violently repressed at the toll booths of the Autopista del Sol by agents of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP, Policía Federal Preventiva) and the Guerrero State Police.

2 December: The Federal Prosecutor’s Office stated that the official committal to detention and trial for 18 of the 57 students of the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa (see 30 November). The students were accused of disturbing the peace, disrupting transportation routes, and “appropriation of property” belonging to the buses they had “hijacked”.

4 December: The UN Special Rapporteurs on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples (Rodolfo Stavenhagen) and Adequate Housing (Miloon Kothari) conducted an unofficial visit to communities that would be affected by the construction of the hydroelectric dam La Parota and interviewed the Guerrero state authorities as well as those from the CFE. Miloon Kothari made an urgent call for the recognition of the economic and social rights of these communities.

7 December: The joint sitting of the House of Deputies urged the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP, Secretaría de Educación Pública) and Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo to consider the demands of the graduate teachers of the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa and find an acceptable solution to the students’ requests.

10 December: The Committee of Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared, Kidnapped and Assassinated of Guerrero (El Comité de Familiares y Amigos de Desaparecidos, Secuestrados y Asesinados de Guerrero) demanded the safe return of eight individuals who were forcibly disappeared between February and June 2007, and accused the Zeferino Torreblanco Galindo government of lack of respect for human rights.

11 December: Representatives of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Guerrero (APPG, Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Guerrero) and Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo agreed to the revision of 43 cases of incarcerated social justice activists.

2008

January 7: Residents of the communities of Atoyaquillo and Pasto Real, including widows, mothers and survivors of the Aguas Blancas massacre, protested in front of the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR, Procuraduría General de la República). They demanded an explanation for the lack of results in the investigation initiated in 2002 by the now defunct Office of the Special Prosecutor for Past Social and Political Movements (Femospp, Fiscalía Especial para Movimientos Sociales y Políticos del Pasado). However, the attorney general refused to receive them and the protestors were met by a lower ranking official.

January 8: Following the recommendation made by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH, Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos), the Guerrero Health Secretary Luis Barrera Ríos announced that the Guerrero State Government would provide compensation to 14 Mixteco people of the El Camalote community, in the Municipality of Ayutla de los Libres. The indigenous people of the aforementioned community were forcibly sterilized in 1998.

January 10: Graduates of the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa blocked access to the Guerrero State Congress, forcing the cancellation of the first session of 2008. The graduates demanded that the deputies and Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo cancel the arrest warrants which were handed down against the 28 graduates of the school, who were detained during their forcible removal from tollbooths on the Autopista del Sol.

January 15: Some 300 members of the Community Defense Committee of the People of Xochipala (Comité Comunitario en Defensa del Pueblo de Xochipala) blocked access to the mines of Los Filos, El Bermejal and La Unidad Nukay, located in the community of Mezcala, Municipality of Eduardo Neri. The mines are the property of the Canadian company Luismin; the protest was conducted to demand the payment of 2.6 million pesos in compensation for environmental damage affecting their lands, and was held in solidarity with the miners’ strike in Cananea, Sonora.

January 16: Fourteen Tlapaneco indigenous people demanded that Governor Zeferino Torreblanco Galindo comply with recommendation 066/2007 of the National Human Rights Commission. It requests that the state government compensate the Tlapanecos, who were mislead into accepting sterilization operations by brigades of the State Health Secretariat between April 15, 1998, and July 11, 2001.

January 22: Members of the Community Defense Committee of the People of Xochipala repeated their action of January 16, blocking access to three Canadian-owned mines to demand compensation for environmental damage.

January 31: The Guerrero attorney general’s office was accused of illegally detaining the bodyguard of Rocío Mesino, Atoyac councillor and leader of the Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS, Organización Campesina Sierra del Sur) for a period of one month. The office denied the arrest and the ongoing detention.

February 6: The Secretary of Public Functioning (SFP) declared that it would initiate administrative proceedings against civil servants who worked in Office of the Special Prosecutor for Past Social and Political Movements.

February 7: During the Guerrero visit of Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, social and indigenous organizations presented an extensive list of denunciations. One of these reports maintained that PRD Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo had “criminalized social dissent.” Arbour responded that in Guerrero, “as in other places, there has been a long history of exclusion, poverty, and human rights violations.”

February 10: Lorenzo Fernández Ortega, militant of the Organization of the Me’phaa Indigenous Peoples (OPIM, Organización del Pueblo Indígena Me’phaa), was found dead (with the body showing signs of torture) in the town of Ayutla de los Libres. He had been kidnapped on February 9, and was the brother of Inés Fernández Ortega. The latter was raped by Mexican Army soldiers in March 2002.

February 11: Sergio Magaña Mier, commander of the Ninth Military Region, informed the public that the military presence in Guerrero would continue. Principally taking the form of checkpoints and searches, troops had been deployed to the regions of the Montaña, Costa Chica and Costa Grande with the aim of combating drug plantations. Magaña Mier denied that the Mexican Army’s activities violated the human rights of the local indigenous communities.

February 13: The former payroll manager of the Guerrero State Government, Hortensia Galeana Ruiz, and her husband Aarón Morales Atkinson, were taken to the Office of the State Attorney General on charges of qualified robbery, irregular conduct in a public function and illicit negotiations. These charges refer to the possible misappropriation of 7 million pesos.

February 28: The vice attorney general for Guerrero, Jesús Alemán del Carmen, publicly recognized that an investigation was underway against six ministerial police officers, accused of torturing the alleged murderers of journalist Amado Ramírez to force them to provide a confession.

March 5: The State Front Against Repression and Impunity was created in Guerrero. The organizations united in the front will demand that the state government reopen investigations in the cases of forcibly disappeared people, as well as cases related to the massacres in El Charco and Aguas Blancas.

March 12: The government of Guerrero accepted the United Nations’ request to not carry out work on the hydroelectric project La Parota, as long as internal division among the ejido residents remains unresolved.

March 14: The Special Rapporteurs to the United Nations for Human Rights and the Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, and for Adequate Housing, Miloon Khotari, recommended to the federal government that construction of La Parota dam be suspended since respect for the basic guarantees of those affected could not be guaranteed.

March 24: In the Montaña region of Guerrero, dozens of indigenous people announced their participation in the Revolutionary Army of Insurgent Peoples (ERPI, Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente), and warned: “we won’t wait until 2010 to build a revolution in Guerrero; here in the Montaña we’re already doing so. From here we will defend our oil and natural resources. With combative actions we will demand teachers, doctors and hospitals, as we no longer believe the political parties, the Governor Zeferino Torreblanca or [President] Felipe Calderón.”

April 1: The OPIM reported that police violently entered the home of organization member Óscar Moreno, in the community of Cruz Quemada, municipality of Tecoanapa, on Guerrero’s Costa Chica. The report claimed that the police planned to detain Moreno and subsequently connect him with the ambush in the community of El Salto, municipality of Ayutla de los Libres, where five people lost their lives, among them four municipal police.

April 2: According to Amnesty International, Miguel Ángel Tornez Hernández was detained and tortured by the state judicial police in the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres. This occurred as part of an investigation into the robbery and murder of four police officers and one civilian. One day before his detention, several members of Tornéz Hernández’s family were detained and one of his sisters was tortured.

April 3: Approximately 20 human rights organizations presented to the Guerrero Collegiate Court a document prepared by the organization Amicus Curiae to support the petition for legal protection in the case of the La Parota dam. This brief would halt the construction of the dam by arguing that it violates international human rights and environmental norms.

April 4: Members of the OPIM denounced the existence of paramilitary groups in the Costa Chica of Guerrero. The organization attributes to these groups the executions of members of the opposition and more than 10 assaults conducted in the previous weeks, apparently with the protection of the Mexican Army and the PRD mayor of Ayutla de los Libres, Homero Lorenzo Ríos.

April 5: The Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS) denounced the presence of paramilitary groups in the Costa Grande, particularly in the municipalities of Petatlán, Atoyac de Álvarez and Coyuca de Benítez.

April 7: Family members of Miguel Ángel Tornez Hernández presented a complaint to Guerrero’s Human Rights Defense Commission (CODDEHUM, Comisión de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos) against various state entities for the “detention and torture” they suffered on April 1 (see above).

April 10: Abad Flores Herrera was illegally detained in Marquelia. Flores Herrera is a former commissioner and current councilor of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC, Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias).

April 15: Authorities of the Me’phaa indigenous community in Colombia de Guadalupe, municipality of Malinaltepec, reported that they had been intimidated during joint operatives conducted by the Army, the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI, Agencia Federal de Investigaciones), and state police forces on the pretext of dismantling a gang of kidnappers.

April 18: Five members of the OPIM were detained in the locality of Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero. They were interrogated and accused of the assassination of a man committed on January 1. In addition, arrest warrants have been issued for 10 more prominent members of the OPIM, including its president Cuauhtémoc Ramírez.

April 28: The CRAC demanded that the Mexican Army, the Federal Investigation Agency and investigative police leave the communities of Ayutla, and warned Governor Zeferino Torreblanca that the OPIM is not alone, but receives “the complete support of the Community Police.”

May 13: In a demonstration carried out in front of the capital buildings in Chilpancingo, relatives and victims of the dirty war demanded proof of life in the cases of 80 individuals from the Costa Grande region of the state who were disappeared in 1970 and 1974. The State Minister of Interior, Guillermo Ramírez Ramos, responded to those demonstrating by ensuring that the government would take the necessary steps to attend to their demands.

June 4: Hundreds of members of the Front of Ejidos, Communities and Social Organizations from the State of Guerrero (Frente de Ejidos, Comunidades y Organizaciones Sociales del Estado de Guerrero) occupied the offices of the Secretary of Agrarian Reform, the Secretary of Communication and Transport and the  Agrarian Attorney General, demanding a response to their petitions for a series of public works including drainage systems, potable water, transportation as well as a solution to 10 separate agrarian conflicts.

July 7: Experts from the Federal Attorney General Expertos (PGR, Procuraduría General de la República) and the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF, Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense) began excavations in the ex military barracas located in Atoyac de Álvarez (Costa Grande), where it is presumed that the bodies of disappeared individuals were buried during the dirty war. The decision to initiate the excavations was made under pressure from the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared of Mexico (AFADEM, Asociación de Familiares de Desaparecidos de México) and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, among others. Relatives of the victims were present during the process.

July 10: Agents from the Federal Investigations Agency (AFI, Agencia Federal de Investigaciones) entered the offices of Radio Ñomdaa, located in the community of Xochistlahuaca, with the intention of dismantling their transmitting equipment. Members of the independent community radio station along with residents of the community were able to prevent the agents from causing any major damage and remove them from the community. 

July 11: A federal judge accepted an appeal from the Na’savi (Mixteca) community of Mini Numa, located in the municipality of Metlatónoc (one of the poorest municipalities in the country). The appeal is in regards to a petition for federal judicial protections made by the community on November 9, 2007 for the violation of their health right. For some time the community has been requesting the construction of a health center, a doctor to be assigned to the community as well as a supply of medicines.  As a direct consequence of the government’s lack of response between 2005 and 2007, 6 deaths were registered in the community, including 4 children. According to the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Montaña (CDHM Tlachinollan) “It is extraordinary that the judge found in his analysis that the state authorities violated article 4 of the constitution which protects the health rights for all people, and it is even more important that it is made clear to the government of Guerrero that they cannot claim a lack of funds in order to avoid complying with their constitutional obligations.” Three communities from the Montaña region (Los Llanos, Yuvinani and Atzompa) joined the struggle for the right to health initiated by Mini Numa.

July 31: The Office of the State Secretary of Health compensated the 14 indigenous people from El Camalote in the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres, which were sterilized in 1998 and 2001. The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Montaña (CDHM Tlachinollan) reiterated the need to guarantee the presence of a doctor as well as sufficient medical equipment at the health center which was installed in the community.  They also noted the urgency of a legal action in the case of the health workers who pressured the victims to allow for the sterilization.

August 9: In the community of La Mesa, in the Tierra Caliente region of the state, an agent from the Judicial Investigative Police (PIM, Policía Investigadora Ministerial) was killed and two others were injured in a confrontation between police and a group of individuals headed by Monje Solís, who is supposedly connected to the Revolutionary Army of Insurgent Peoples (ERPI, Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente). 

August 17: Members of CECOP along with other social organizations met in Acapulco to reject the statement made on July 31 by Secretary of Government, Juan Camillo Mouriño, which stated that the project, La Parota, would continue “with different actors”.

September 1: Teachers blocked the entrance to the Government Palace in Chilpancingo in protest of the Alliance for Educational Quality (ACE), an agreement between Felipe Calderón and the leader of the National Education Workers´ Union  (SNTE), Elba Esther Gordillo.

September 5: Teachers took control of 5 radios for one hour, 4 in Chilpancingo and 1 in Tixtla in order to state their demands: the cancelation of the Alliance for Educational Quality (ACE), and an audience with the governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galdino.

September 17: More than a thousand teachers occupied the offices of the PRD and the local Congress in Chilpancingo. The governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo expressed his opposition to holding a consultation to discuss the ACE, but he recognized that there were some parts of the document that were not favorable to teachers in Guerrero.

September 23: Almost two months after a confrontation between an armed group headed by Pascual Monje Solís and the police, the government of Guerrero stated that the dead body of Monje Solis had been found of the shore of the Balsas river in the municipality Zirándaro, in the region Tierra Caliente. Monje Solís was an ex-military member; and the government linked him to Omar Guerrero Solís, commander Ramiro, of the Revolutionary Army of Insurgent Peoples (EPRI).

September 30: About five thousand teachers of the State Coordinating Committee of Education Workers of Guerrero (CETEG) and the State Union of Public Servants (SUSPEG) occupied various government offices, among them the office of the Secretary of Education.

October 5: The PRI won the majority of the local elections in most of the regions of Guerrero. It also won the municipal presidencies of both Acapulco and the capital, Chilpancingo. In addition the party won 11 districts alone, and 3 more in alliance with the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), with which it has a majority in the local congress.

October 15: During the celebration of its 13th anniversary, the Community Police and the Regional Committee of Community Authorities (CRAC) declared that they had eliminated narco-trafficking in the 72 communities where they are present. Eleven more communities of the municipalities of Ayutla de los Libres and Marquelia requested to be incorporated in the CRAC.

October 15: The Eigth District Judge seated in Acapulco, Livia Lizbeth Larumbe Radilla, granted an appeal to 4 of the 5 members of the Indigenous Me´phaa People´s Organization (OPIM) incarcerated in Ayutla de los Libres.

October 28: The government of Guerrero refused to meet with members of the German Coordination for Human Rights in Mexico to discuss the case of the 5 incarcerated members of Indigenous Me´phaa People´s Organization (OPIM).

November 5: More than two thousand teachers occupied the local Congress and stated that they would remain there until they were given an adequate response to their demands.

November 8: The Popular Meeting “Water, Energy, and Alternative Energies” took place from November 6 through 8, in the community of Aguacaliente, Communal Lands of Cacahuatepec, in the municipality of Acapulco. Community members from the states of Guerrero, Campeche, Chiapas, Chihuahua, the Federal District, the State of Mexico, Jalisco, Nayarit, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, and Veracruz participated. The final declaration emphasized the importance of the unification of struggles against mega-projects producing electrical energy as well as mining exploitation all over the country; so that the impacts of these projects like forced evictions of entire communities, environmental damage, and the destruction of the social fabric might be stopped in the affected regions.

November 14: The Organization of Ecologists of the Sierra of Petatlán and Cotuca de Benítez denounced that 200 members of the military entered the community of La Morena and searched 4 houses in which there were only women and children, who they humiliated, hit, and threatened to kill. The military were looking for the brothers Felipe, Javier, and Alejandro Torres Cruz, without stating accusation, and telling their wives that if they did not reveal the whereabouts of their husbands things would be very bad for them.

November 11: Amnesty International Mexico published a press release in which they called for the unconditional liberation of the 5 members of the OPIM. It emphasized that the Federal Attorney General´s Office had overturned an appeal, which a federal judge had granted to 4 of the 5 detainees in October, without presenting new evidence against them. The investigator for Amnesty International in Mexico, Rupert Knox, commented that “This story demonstrates a common pattern of human rights abuses in Guerrero”.

November 18: Fifteen thousand teachers marched from the coastal town of Miguel Alemán to the center of Acapulco, where a commission began dialogue with the state governor, Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo.

December 10: Máximo Mojica, member of the social organization Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty), his wife María Ángeles Hernández Flores, and his nephew Santiago Nazario Lezma were accused of kidnapping and homicide. They had been detained on December 3. The Collective Against Torture and Impunity denounced that all three had admitted guilt after being tortured.

December 11: Teachers from Michoacán and Guerrero held various protests, including the occupation of public buildings, in protest of the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE).

January 14: The head of the Secretary of Education of Guerrero, José Luis González de la Vega, renounced the agreements made between the government of Guerrero and the State Coordination of Education Workers (CETEG), which were signed on November 21.

January 22: The five incarcerated members of the Indigenous Me’phaa Peoples Organization (OPIM), accused of killing Alegandro Feliciano on January 1 of last year, filed for a new appeal of their case.

February 17: Teachers of the State Coordination of Education Workers of Guerrero (CETEG) returned to the streets to protest against the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE).

February 23: The bodies of two mixteco human rights defenders, Raúl Lucas Lucía and Manuel Ponce Rosas, president and secretary of the Organiztion for the Future of the Mixteco People (OFPM), were found. On February 13, they had been abducted by armed men in a car without license plates. Their bodies were found with signs of torture and execution. It was denounced as a “crime of the state” by various human rights organizations including the CDHM Tlachinollan.

February 25: The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR), the office of the UN High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR), and Amnesty International (AI) condemned the killing of the mixteco leaders and demanded an impartial and exhaustive investigation.

February 27: Hundreds of people demonstrated in Acapulco for the freedom the 5 jailed members of the OPIM.

March 3: The governor of Guerrero approved a proposal to set up a special investigation into the extrajudicial execution of the two mixteco leaders on February 13.

March 13: The Ministerial Investigative Police (PIM) of Guerrero announced that they had identified those responsible for the killing of the two mixteco leaders on February 13.

March 19: Four of the 5 jailed members of the OPIM were liberated by way of an appeal. One still remains in prison and there are still arrest warrants active for 10 other members of the organization.

SOURCES :

• Contra el silencio y el olvido, the Tenth Report of the Human Rights Center of the Tlachinollan Montaña , Civil Association, June 2004-May 2004.
• “Violencia en Guerrero,” Maribel Gutiérrez, La Jornada editions, November 1998
• Newspapers: El Sur, La Jornada, Universal Online