2016

January 10 and 11 : Agrarian authorities, communities and NGO participate in the Caravan of Civil Observation and Solidarity for Chimilapasto San Francisco de La Paz community, in the municipality of Santa Maria Chimilapa, Oaxaca.

January 29 : The community of San Dionisio del Mar on the Tehuantepec Isthmus, Oaxaca, marks four years of resistance in its struggle against the installation of a wind farm on its territory.

January 29 and 30 : Representatives of 48 communities, 30 social organizations, two research centers, and three community radio stations take part in the State Encounter of Communities and Organizations against Mining, in Cerro de Las Huertas community, in the municipality of Ejutla de Crespo.

April 22: Mauro Vásquez Ramírez, a former leader of the Union of Social Welfare for the Triqui Region (Ubisort), is arrested as alleged perpetrator of the death of human rights defender Bety Cariño Trujillo and Finnish defender Jyri Antero Jaakkola. This detention took place a day before the state’s governor, Gabino Cué Monteagudo, met with their families.

April 24 and 25: Social organizations as well as municipal and communal authorities of the Sierra Juárez region gather in the community of Santa Maria Zoogochí, municipality of Ixtlán de Juárez where they carry out the Regional Forum “Mining in Oaxaca. Social and environmental impacts “.

April 26 : Apolonio Hernandez Gonzalez, broadcaster of one of Ejutla de Crespo’s radio stations, ismurdered inside his home with a bladed weapon.

May 14: Members of the Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT) and the Center for Human Rights of the Peoples of Southern Veracruz Bety Cariño AC, report that the municipal police of Juchitán “and bodyguards of the PAN-PRD candidate Gloria Sánchez López”, threatened to evacuate members of the Community Police and the Community Cabildo of Álvaro Obregón “with armed people”.

May 15 : Teachers’ Day, teachers opposing education reform and the evaluation of teachers call an indefinite strike.

May 17 : The Oaxaca Truth Commission (CVO) presents its final report, titled “We already know! No more impunity in Oaxaca”, on the events that led to the violations of human rights against the Oaxacan people during the disturbances of 2006 and 2007.

May 23 : Alberto Donis Rodríguez, coordinator of the migrant shelter “Hermanos en el Camino” in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, and Leyssa Palomino Arjona, a volunteer there, are attacked when they visited the Chahuites Humanitarian Aid Center.

June 5: The PRI recovers the governorship of Oaxaca when Alexander Murat Hinojosa wins the elections.

June 11: Police forces evict the teachers from Section 22’s sit-in at the Oaxaca State Institute of Public Education (IEEPO). This sit-in was installed in protest over the arrest of teachers leaders, Francisco Villalobos and Rubén Núñez. Both were detained in previous days and transferred to the Federal Center for Social Readaptation (Cefereso) of Hermosillo, Sonora, accused of the theft of free textbooks from the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) and money laundering.

June 19 : Around 800 elements of the police violently repress teachers and organized civil society in opposition of the education reform causing the death of at least six people, the apprehension and/or disappearance of 22, and 45 left with gunshot wounds between Nochixtlán and Hacienda Blanca.

June 19: The journalist of El Sur newspaper, Elidio Ramos Zárate and the brother of the director of the newspaper Punto Crítico de Juchitán, Manuel Cano Lopez are executed when they were going to cover the blockade that the the teachers maintained in Juchitán.

June 20: Adelfo Regino Montes, Secretary of Indigenous Affairs in Oaxaca, presents his resignation to protest against the attack against the community of Asunción Nochixtlán.

June 26: Salvador Olmos García, speaker of the community radio Tu Un Ñuu Savi is murdered. According to the Free Media Center, he “was tortured, run over and killed by the municipal police of Huajuapan, while (…) he was attending a call to strengthen the Tu Tu uuu Savi Radio that had been under harassment of people in unidentified vehicles the previous nights.”

July 5 : The teacher Jose Caballero Julian dies as a result of a brain injury he received from a blow of a stone to the head during the eviction in front of the Oaxaca State Institute of Public Education (IEEPO), carried out by the state police on June 11.

July 8 : Various civil society organizations present the “Preliminary Report on Violations of Human Rights on June 19 in Oaxaca”.

July 12: The Ministry of the Interior (Segob) and the members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) reach a first general agreement through which three parallel negotiation tables will be set up.

July 17: About 500 inhabitants of Ixtepec in the region of the Tehuantepec Isthmus march with the slogan “no to mining and yes to life and territory” in protest over mining activities in their region.

July 22 : In the framework of World Day Against Opencast Mining, groups in the Isthmus region take part in the forum for “Strategies of Struggle for the Defense of Mother Earth and Territory” in the capital of Oaxaca.

August 22: Official date to go back to school. The CNTE chooses to maintain its strike and blockade actions on bridges and highways, as well as in commercial centers and areas

August 27: Representatives of the wind power company of Italian origin, Enel Green Power, inform that they won’t invest in the installation of a series of wind turbines in lands that are located in the limits of Juchitán and Santa María Xadani.

August 29 to September 7: Two representatives of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights make an official visit to Mexico, including Oaxaca.

September 3: The home of the photojournalist Pablo Ramos in Mexico City is raided. Article 19 informs that “Unknown subjects stole, among several things, his work equipment where the coverage of the events in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, was stored, including testimonies and evidence of the human rights violations committed by state and federal police”.

September 7: Section 22 teachers begin the 2016-2017 school year, after four months of work stoppage to demand the repeal of the education reform bill, passed in 2013.

September 15:  In the state capital, the governor, Cué Monteagudo, does his sixth and last “Grito” from the balcony of the government palace amid shouts of “murderer” and “traitor”. According to Educa, “elements of the State Police prevented the entry of teachers from Section 22 into the square to give their alternative ‘Grito’ with teargas, sparking a confrontation”. At least 20 people sustained minor injuries.

September : Consorcio Oaxaca informs that they have recorded “500 femicides during the administration of Gabino Cue Monteagudo”, while during the previous administration 283 violent deaths of women were counted.

October 6 : John Macario Bautista Ramirez is arrested in Brownsville, Texas, United States, and is deported by immigration authorities. He is identified as one of those responsible for the death of activists Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola, who were participating in a humanitarian convoy bound for San Juan Copala and who were ambushed in the Triqui region of Oaxaca, on April 27, 2010. This arrest makes five the number of people detained for the events.

October 10: At the end of a meeting held in San Pedro Tapanatepec, more than 500 people from seven municipalities of the Tehuantepec Isthmus declare themselves against open pit mining that Canadian companies intend to install in 30,000 hectares of the eastern part of the Isthmus, including 19 thousand hectares of forest in Chimalapas. They unanimously agree to form a Regional Defense Committee Against Mining.

October 26: Civil organizations make an urgent appeal regarding the escalation of harassment against Rubi Jasmine Cortes Salazar, human rights defender of the Nuu Savi nation in the Mixteca. Rubi is a human rights defender, a feminist of Mixtec origin and member of the Multicultural Alliance of Originary and Radical Women in Tlaxiaco (AMMOR).

November 15: Indigenous and campesino communities, civil and social organizations of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec gather in Ciudad Ixtepec, in order to articulate themselves against mining, hydro-electric or wind-farm megaprojects. They announce that they will start a collection of signatures to found collective constitutional claims (amparos) against the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) corresponding to the area.

December 1 : In the early morning and in an alternate location, Alejandro Murat Hinojosa (of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) takes office as the new governor of Oaxaca. The event takes place in an alternate venue to the Congress facilities, which were taken over by teachers from Section 22 of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), who had also organized 37 road blocks in several parts of the state in the same context.

December 14 : The report Arbitrary and Illegal Detentions – Criminalization: a State Policy to Inhibit the Defense of Human Rights in Mexico, jointly prepared by 11 Mexican and international civil society organizations, is launched in Oaxaca.