2018

January 7: Members of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities – Community Police (CRAC-PC) of the town of La Concepción, municipality of Acapulco, were ambushed by unknown armed individuals. Two community policemen and six of the attackers were killed in the confrontation. Hours later, the government of Guerrero mounted an operation of more than 100 security personnel made up of ministerial and state police, as well as the army who was deployed in surrounding communities in order to search the houses of members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to La Parota Dam (CECOP), without any legal order issued by proper authority. 38 members of CRAC-C and CECOP were arrested.

9 January: 35 European parliamentarians issued a letter to express their deep concern about the situation of human rights defenders in Mexico.

4 February: Two priests, Iván Añorve Jaimes of the Archdiocese of Acapulco, and Germaín Muñiz García of the Diocese of Chilpancingo Chilapa, were assassinated.

February 5: Journalist and blogger Leslie Ann Pamela Montenegro of Real alias Nana Pelucas was murdered in Acapulco. Since December 2016, the victim had been threatened through narco-blankets.

February 6 and 7: Members of the IACHR Special Follow-Up Mechanism in the Ayotzinapa case met with the parents of the 43 disappeared students and federal government officials as part of their 5th official visit.

February 15 to 23: The parents of the 43 disappeared students from Ayotzinapa take part in the caravan “Breaking Silence and Forgetting.”

March 6: Maria Luisa Ortiz Arenas, age 42 and member of the State Network of Feminist Activists, is found murdered in the community of Mezcaltepec, municipality of Taxco.

March 15: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights presented the report “Double Injustice,” which analyzes the human rights violations committed in the investigations of the Ayotzinapa case. 129 people were arrested. The UN-DH analyzed 34 cases and found “strong elements of conviction regarding torture, arbitrary detentions, and other human rights violations” during and after the detentions.

April 11: Members of the Human Rights Observation Mission that took place in Chilapa and Chilpancingo last September presented a report on their findings.

April 20: The “Jornada en el Corazón 43 X 43” began 43 months after the disappearance of the 43 students of the rural teachers school of Ayotzinapa.

April 20: Unknown individuals raided the office of the news agency Quadratín Guerrero, in Acapulco, from which they stole a hard drive, two computers, and documents.

May 8: During the 168th Session of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), relatives of the 43 Ayotzinapa students who disappeared in 2014 and their legal representatives warned that the federal government intends to shelve the investigation because of the change of the president of Mexico this year.

May 12: Six community policemen from the House of Justice in El Paraíso were acquitted after 5 years of criminal proceedings after being detained by the Army and Navy and accused of kidnapping.

May 28: Community Development Workshop (TADECO) received telephone threats.

June 1: A 19-year sentence was handed down against two military personnel for rape and torture, which occurred in Guerrero in 2002 against the indigenous woman me´phaa, Valentina Rosendo Cantú, who was a minor at the time.

June 4: The Guerrero Association Against Violence Against Women reported that from January to May of this year, 108 women have been murdered with the presumption of femicide, despite the fact that more than 11 months have passed since the issuance of the Gender Violence Alert (AVG) in nine of the most violent municipalities in Guerrero.

June 4: A federal court, based in Tamaulipas, ordered the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) to reopen the Ayotzinapa case and create a Truth Commission to re-investigate the forced disappearance of the 43 students of the Rual Teachers School. This was done by ruling that the previous inquiry “was not prompt, effective, independent, nor impartial”.

June 7: The 20th anniversary of the El Charco massacre, Ayutla municipality. A call is made for the unity of the victims and the peoples of the area to continue to demand justice. Since last year there has been a division among the 10 widows and survivors, a result of the federal and state governments offering compensation and other benefits, on condition that they stop their demand for justice before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

12 June: A federal judge ordered the release of four people allegedly linked to the case of the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, pointing out the lack of evidence against them.

June 18: The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) reported that the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) and the Federal Police illegally detained a man named Erick Uriel Sandoval Rodríguez in relation to the Ayotzinapa case.

July 1: Mexico held its largest elections ever, with 3,400 public officials elected, including the president of the Mexican Republic. Several cases of violence occurred in Guerrero.

July 25: Relatives of the 43 students from the Rural Teachers School of Ayotzinapa who disappeared in Iguala in September 2014, demanded that the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) act with impartiality and autonomy when deciding whether or not there should be a truth commission into the case.

July 27: The reform to article 14 of the Constitution that addresses the rights of indigenous peoples in Guerrero was approved. It eliminates the words “community and rural police officers” from the constitutional article, police officers that were being governed under Law 701 of the recognition of Indigenous Rights and Culture. It was established that the resolutions issued by the community justice systems will have to be in accordance with the current legal order and be validated by judges of the state Judicial Branch.

July 28: The 15th anniversary of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to La Parota Dam (CECOP) was celebrated in the community of Huamuchitos. Its members asked President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador for the definitive cancellation of the project and the release of political prisoners, among other demands.

August 5: The Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC), civil and social organizations positioned themselves before the recent reform of Article 14 of the Constitution in the matter of indigenous rights and culture in Guerrero: “from the bottom up they ignored our conquered rights.”

August 24: Nine of the 25 detainees in the community of La Concepción were released after a confrontation on January 7 that left 11 dead and 38 detained.

August 29: After protesting as a federal senator for the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the former community police commander of Olinalá, Guerrero, Nestora Salgado, announced the beginning of a campaign for the release of all political prisoners in the country. He declared that there are currently 500 Guerrero prisoners among them.

September 3: The First Report of the Special Follow-Up Mechanism of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the Iguala case was presented at the Rural Teachers School of Ayotzinapa.

September 14: A new and unprecedented persecution and criminalization has been unleashed against the members of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the Parota Dam (CECOP) and the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities – Community Police (CRAC-PC), reported the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center. “The Attorney General’s Office has released more than 50 arrest warrants against an equal number of members of the CECOP, whose crime has been to defend their lands and natural resources,” Tlachinollan reported.

September 25: Some 100 Navy personnel backed by 250 soldiers, state, and ministerial police took over the Ministry of Public Security (SSP) of Acapulco, disarmed more than 500 municipal police, and arrested two police officers accused of homicide, who have since been moved to the prison in Iguala.

September 26: On September 26th, four years after the forced disappearance of 43 students from the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa in Iguala, Guerrero, in which six people – three of them student teachers – were also deprived of their lives and where dozens more were injured, thousands of citizens took to the streets in several cities of the Republic to demand justice in the case.

October 5: Members of the organizations Services and Advisories for Peace (Serapaz) representing the Space of Civil Society Organizations for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists (Espacio OSC) and International Service for Peace (Sipaz) visited 16 of the 18 prisoners of the Council of Ejidos and Communities Opposed to the Parota Dam (CECOP) and the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities – Community Police (CRAC PC), who have been in custody since January 7, in Las Cruces prison in Acapulco.

October 6: To commemorate its 24th anniversary, the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center presented its annual report “Mountain: Spring of Resistance, Whirlwind of Hope” after celebrating mass in the cathedral of Tlapa de Comonfort.

October 24: Gabriel Soriano Kuri, broadcaster and worker of the Guerrero Radio and Television (RTG) state news system, died after being shot while riding in the company’s truck. He was returning from the report of Governor Hector Astudillo for his third year in office, which took place in the Diamond Zone of Acapulco.

October 28: The organization for freedom of speech Article 19 called for an investigation into possible political motivations in the murder of Gabriel Soriano Kuri when “a day after the murder of Soriano, a dismembered body was found in the La Poza neighborhood, located in the Diamond Zone of Acapulco with a message that (…) reads as follows: “Here I am respected by the f**king government of Acapulco, they continue to have dealings with the Cida (Independent Cartel of Acapulco) and thus they will all end, be journalists and government.

November 16, 17 and 18: As part of its 15 years of resistance, the 13th Meeting of the Mexican Movement of People Affected by Dams and in Defense of Rivers (MAPDER) was held in the community of Salsipuesdes, in the Communal Lands of Cacahuatepec, near Acapulco.

November 17: When around 1,800 displaced people from 11 communities of Leonardo Bravo and Eduardo Neri de la Sierra de Guerrero attempted to return in caravan to their homes, they were attacked by gunfire near the community of Los Morros.

November 18: Red Cross paramedics and state police were attacked in the community of San Juan Tenería, Taxco, when they were delivering humanitarian aid to that community.

November 25: Based on statistics from the National Public Security System of the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB), the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center declared the state of Guerrero “First place in violent deaths of women with presumption of femicide.

November 27: Three days after the end of Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) presented recommendation 15VG/2018 on the events that occurred in September 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero, which led to the forced disappearance of 43 students of the Rural Teachers School of Ayotzinapa, the death of 6 people, and the injury of 42 more.

November 29: Between 50 to 100 people, mostly women and children from the community of Los Morros, municipality of Leonardo Bravo, left their homes for the second time in 3 weeks due to the extreme violence in the region.

December 3: In one of his first acts as president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) signed a decree that establishes the creation of a Truth Commission to resolve the case of the forced disappearance of 43 students from the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa.

December 5: Proceso magazine denounced the “climate of harassment, threats, and intimidation that prevails in Guerrero against independent journalism” and particularly against its correspondent, Ezequiel Flores Contreras.

December 19-26: Parents of the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers School in Iguala, Guerrero, in September 2014, carried out the 43rd caravan, La Esperanza Renace, within the framework of Global Action 51, which began in Tixtla, Guerrero, passed through Morelos, and ended in the Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City.