2014

Mid-January: Members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop) undertake the proceedings to form a Communal Police in the commons of Cacahuatepec.

January 28: civil human-rights organizations and parishes denounce that “one year after the communities and peoples of the Costa Chica and central regions of the state of Guerrero organized themselves to re-establish security and peace in their communities, they now face harassment, intimidation, and abuse of authority on the part of the Mexican Army and the federal and state police.”

January 28: María Magdalena López Paulino and Ericka Zamora Pardo, members of the Solidarity Network Decade against Impunity, are intimidated just days before the visit they were planning to Guerrero as part of a Civil Observation Mission that seeks to document the human-rights violations of social activists in the state.

January 28: the human-rights defender Pilar Noriega García and the ex-guerrillero Nicomedes Fuentes García, both of them members of the Truth Commission (Comverdad) are subjected to an attack on the outskirts of Chilapancingo.

February 4: more than a thousand indigenous persons from 13 municipalities of the Mountain region of Guerrero carry out a march in Tlapa de Comomfort, as organized by the Council of Victimized Communities of the Mountain of Guerrero; the action was named the “Hunger Pilgrimage.”

February 9 to 11: the caravan “A light against impunity” led by the bishop of Saltillo, Raúl López Vera, visits various municipalities of Guerrero.

February 19: the Council of Victim Communities from the Mountain region of Guerrero succeeds in coming to an agreement with state and federal authorities to implement a program to supply basic grains for more than 20,000 families from nearly 200 communities in 12 municipalities affected by the September 2013 storms that struck the state.

February 27: units from the Army and the federal, state, ministerial, and municipal police invade the community of Concepción, the site of a sit-in maintained by the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop).

March 9: the Regional Coordination of Communal Authorities (CRAC) approves the integration of 48 communities in Acapulco pertaining to the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop).

March 19: a police operation carried out by federal and state units taxes place in the municipal head of Tixtla. with the objective of observing five search-orders and several arrest-orders against members of the Regional Coordination of Communal Authorities-Communal Police (CRAC-PC) from the El Paraíso Justice House, Ayutla de los Libres municipality.

April 4: at least five persons are injured during an ambush by armed civilians acting in the interests of gravel companies against communal police associated with the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop).

Mid-April: the movement of ejidatarios from Carrizalillo, Eduardo Neri municipality, agrees to demand before the Agrarian Tribunal the return of their lands from the Canadian mining company Gold Corp, which has been carrying out extractive work in the region since 2007.

April 21: the journalist Brenda Escobar, a correspondent for the daily El Sur publicly denounces that security personnel for Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero had beaten her upon her approach to the governor to record the collective interview he was giving at that time.

Beginning of June: Over 250 people leave three communities from Tierra Caliente of the Sierra Madre del Sur, municipality of San Miguel Totolapan, fleeing the violent actions of drug trafficking groups in the region.

Beginning of June: Organizations and human rights organizations denounce the harassment, insults, and aggressions suffered by feminist groups, activists, and government agencies that have positioned themselves in favor of the proposed initiative to decriminalize abortion in the state of Guerrero. This initiative was sent by Governor Angel Aguirre to the local Congress in May.

June 2: the body of Jorge Torres Palacios, journalist and coordinator of Social Communication at the General Directorate on Health in Acapulco, Guerrero, is found dead in the community Plan de Amates. It presents signs of having been tortured.

June 17: in the city of Acapulco, state ministerial police arrest the spokesperson for the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop), Marco Antonio Suástegui Muñoz.

July 13: members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop) and at least 14 other social organizations from Guerrero hold a march on the Acapulco-Pinotepa national highway to demand the release of the Cecop spokesperson, Marco Antonio Suástegui Muñoz.

July 25 and 26: In Tlapa de Comofort, the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights celebrated its XX anniversary

July 29: One day after the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop), three Cecop members are arrested, including a coordinator who had succeeded the former spokesperson Marco Antonio Suástegui, who in turn was arrested in mid-June.

August 3: soldiers, marines and policemen burst into the La Concepción Community, where the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to La Parota Dam (Cecop) had just finished their weekly assembly.

August 13: the Center for Human Rights Tlachinollan denounces that the transfer of the leader of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop), Marco Antonio Muñoz Suástegui to the Federal Center for Social Rehabilitation of Tepic, Nayarit was “illegal“.

August 14: female activists, journalists, students, academics, social activists, and women in solidarity announce the founding of the Women’s committee #FreeNestora to demand the release of Nestora Salgado García, a commander of the Communal Police in Olinalá, Guerrero

August 15: thousands of campesinos march in Acapulco together with members of national and state social organizations, making for a mobilization in which nearly 3000 persons participated. The principal demand of the protesters is the release of one of Cecop’s spokespeople, Marco Antonio Suástegui Muñoz.

August 15: the Proceso magazine denounces that a presumed representative of the Agency of the Public Military Ministry, which is contained within the Secretary for National Defense (SEDENA), attempted to hand over a summons to appear to its correspondent in Guerrero, Ezequiel Flores Contreras.

September 4: a press-conference is held in Mexico City as part of the activities of the Women’s Committee #FreeNestora which seeks the liberation of Nestora Salgado and other prisoners belonging to the Communal Police of the Regional Coordination of Communal Authorities (CRAC-PC) in Guerrero.

September 13: A year after tropical storm Manuel and hurricane Ingrid pummeled the state of Guerrero, indigenous communities from the Mountain region organize a march of between 3,000 and 4,000 people in Tlapa de Comonfort to denounce that, more than ten months after the announcement of the New Guerrero Plan (PNG), roads, schools, health clinics, and homes have not yet been repaired.

September 26 and 27: municipal police from Iguala, Guerrero, together with an armed commando group that has yet to be identified, open fire in several coordinated events against students and other civilians, leaving six dead, 25 injured, and 43 normalist students of Ayotzinapa disappeared.

October 6: María de la Cruz Dorantes Zamora, member of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop), is arrested on the charge of qualified robbery following the denunciation submitted by Humberto Marín Molina, owner of the gravel-company Kimbar.  This charge is also one of the five charges presented against Cecop spokesperson Marco Antonio Suástegui Muñoz.

October 8: in at least 25 states of the Mexican Republic and in different cities of the U.S. and Europe, millions of persons march to demand the appearance with life of the 43 disappeared normalist students of Ayotzinapa, and to demand justice for the 6 who were murdered and more than 20 who were injured during the events of 26 and 27 September.

October 9: Saira Rodríguez Salgado, daughter to Nestora Salgado García (a communal police commander from Olinalá who is incarcerated in a high-security prison in Tepic, Nayarit), is threatened with death by telephone.

Mid-October: The protests organized to demand the appearance with life of the 43 disappeared normalist students of Ayotzinapa are increasingly radicalized in Guerrero.

October 19: civil organizations denounce impunity in the case of Rocio Mesino Mesino, the leader of the Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS), who was murdered in October 2013 in the Mexcaltepec community, Atoyac de Álvarez municipality, in Guerrero state.

October 19: the personal vehicle of journalist Brenda Nava Mancilla, editor of La Noticia en La Montaña in the municipality of Tlapa de Comonfort is burned in an arson attack.

October 22: the protest-day “A light for Ayotzinapa” is held in dozens of cities in Mexico and abroad.  In Mexico City itself, 50,000 participate in the march.

October 23: following weeks of calls to this end from all standpoints, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, governor of Guerrero, publicly announces his resignation before the state congress over the Iguala case.

October 23: nine new mass-gravesites are located in the La Parota zone near Iguala by communards who are members of the Union of Peoples and Organizations from Guerrero State (UPOEG).

October 23: the European Parliament approves a resolution condemning the events in Iguala, Guerrero.

October 27: Saira Rodríguez Salgado, daughter of Nestora Salgado García (a communal police commander from Olinalá) reports that she will exile in the US due to the death threats she has received in recent months.

October 29: relatives of the students from Ayotzinapa meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto, stressing the lack of results from investigations.  Some of them publicly declare that two weeks after the disappearance of the students, the Guerrero state government offered 100,000 pesos per student to the parents, so that maintain silence and cease their searches.

Beginning of November: civil organizations express their concern for the accusation of the interim governor Rogelio Ortega Martínez, who called into question the work of the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights, and due to the report of the Mexican intelligence report that was leaked by media, which accuses the technical secretary of the Guerrero Network of having ties with a guerrilla group.

November 3: the interim governor of Guerrero, Rogelio Ortega Martínez, assures before media that he had sought out closeness with the relatives of the students from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, but he opines that “radical” groups like the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights and the State Coordination of Educational Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) have inhibited this dialogue.  

November 4: the former mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca, and his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda are arrested in Mexico City.  They are considered to be the intellectual authors in the case.

November 7: Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam reports that the 43 disappeared normalist students from Ayotzinapa were presumed to have been incinerated and their remains thrown into the Cocula river, in accordance with information provided by three members of the “United Warriors” drug cartel. “We do not accept” the PGR’s conclusions, as it “is attempting to close the case” of the 43 disappeared students, claimed parents of of the students.

November 8 and 9: in the framework of the 19th anniversary of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities – Community Police (CRAC -PC) of the La Montaña and Costa Chica regions, about 400 people participate in a “Meeting of Indigenous Peoples ” in the community of Yoloxóchitl , municipality of San Luis Acatlán.

November 11: Guerrero state polices beat the journalist Carlos Navarrete Rubio from the Diario El Sur, beyond physically and verbally attacking at least 10 journalists who were documenting the violent displacement of at least 500 teachers from the State Coordination of Educational Workers in Guerrero (CETEG) at the state offices of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Chilpancingo.  These teachers were protesting the disappearance of the 43 normalist students from Ayotzinapa.

November 12: in Ayotzinapa, relatives of the disappeared students and the student committee report on the activities of the National Brigade regarding the presentation with life of the 43 disappeared normalist students from Ayotzinapa. The brigade is organized into three branches, one towards the north ; one toward the south, and another state brigade in Guerrero.

November 15: members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop) are attacked by armed men.  The assault leaves five dead and seven women injured in the community of La Concepción.  

November 20: in observance of the Day for Global Action for Ayotzinapa, protests are held in solidarity with the relatives of the disappeared students from Ayotzinapa in many cities throughout the world.

November 27: at least 11 burned and decapitated bodies are found on a path by the community of Ayahualulco in Chilapa.

November 28: the team of the Workshop for Communal Development (TADECO) is threatened by a note that was left on the automobile belonging to director Javier Monroy Hernández outside his home in Chilpancingo.

Beginning of December: The parents and relatives of the disappeared normalist students reject the version presented by the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) that the youth were burned and reduced to ashes in the garbage-dump of Cocula, Guerrero.  The families affirm that the remains of Alexander Mora Venancio, the only one of the 43 students who has been identified, were provided by the government to maintain the “official” version. It is also reported that the Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN), associated with the Secretary of Governance, has qualified members of the Tlachinollan Mountain Center for Human Rights as a “danger for governance”.

December 14: confrontations in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, leave 22 injured.  The events take place when a group of students who were preparing a rock concert “A light in the darkness” were attacked with stones, beatings, and tear-gas by police.

December 15: Vicente Suástegui Muñoz, brother of spokesperson of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the La Parota Dam (Cecop), who has been imprisoned since June, publicly denounces that on 13 December, marines attempted to arrest him outside his home in Ciudad Renacimiento.  

December 25: the body of priest Gregorio López Gorostieta is found in the village Colonia Juárez, Tlapehuala municipality, Tierra Caliente region of Guerrero. He had been kidnapped on December 21.