2008

7 January 2008: Residents of the communities of Atoyaquillo and Pasto Real, including widows, mothers and survivors of the Aguas Blancas massacre, protest in front of the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR, Procuraduría General de la República). They demand 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 refuses to receive them and the protesters are met by a lower ranking official.

8 January 2008: Following the recommendation made by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), the Guerrero Health Secretary Luis Barrera Ríos announces that the Guerrero State Government will 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.

10 January 2008: Graduates of the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa block access to the Guerrero State Congress, forcing the cancellation of the first session of 2008. The graduates demand that the local 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.

15 January 2008: Some 300 members of the Community Defense Committee of the People of Xochipala block the 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. They demand the payment of 2.6 million pesos in compensation for environmental damage affecting their lands, and express their solidarity with the miners’ strike in Cananea, Sonora.

7 February 2008: During the Guerrero visit of Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, social and indigenous organizations present an extensive list of denunciations. One of these reports maintains that PRD Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo ” has criminalized social dissent”. Arbour acknowledges that in Guerrero, “as in other places, there has been a long history of exclusion, poverty, and human rights violations”.

10 February 2008: Lorenzo Fernández Ortega, militant of the Organization of the Me’phaa Indigenous Peoples (OPIM), is found dead (his 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, indigenous woman raped by Mexican Army soldiers in March 2002.

11 February 2008: Sergio Magaña Mier, commander of the Ninth Military Region, informs the public that the military presence in Guerrero will continue. Principally taking the form of checkpoints and searches, troops have been deployed to the regions of the Montaña, Costa Chica and Costa Grande with the aim of combating drug plantations. Magaña Mier denies that the Mexican Army’s activities violate the human rights of the local indigenous communities.

22 February 2008: The vice attorney general for Guerrero, Jesús Alemán del Carmen, publicly recognizes that an investigation is underway against six ministerial police officers, accused of torturing the alleged murderers of journalist Amado Ramírez to force them to provide a confession.

5 March 2008: The State Front Against Repression and Impunity is created in Guerrero. The organizations united in this 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.

14 March 2008: 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, recommend to the federal government that construction of La Parota dam be suspended since respect for the basic guarantees of those affected cannot be guaranteed.

24 March 2008: In the Montaña region of Guerrero, dozens of indigenous people announce their participation in the Revolutionary Army of Insurgent Peoples (ERPI), and warn: “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.”

1 April 2008: The OPIM reports 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 claims 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.

2 April 2008: Miguel Ángel Tornez Hernández is 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.

3 April 2008: Approximately 20 human rights organizations present to the Guerrero Collegiate Court a document prepared by the organization of an “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.

4 April 2008: Members of the OPIM denounce 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.

5 April 2008: The Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS) denounces the presence of paramilitary groups in the Costa Grande, particularly in the municipalities of Petatlán, Atoyac de Álvarez and Coyuca de Benítez.

7 April 2008: Family members of Miguel Ángel Tornez Hernández presents a complaint to Guerrero’s Human Rights Defense Commission (CODDEHUM) against various state entities for the “detention and torture” they suffered on April 1 (see above).

10 April 2008: Abad Flores Herrera is illegally detained in Marquelia. Flores Herrera is a former commissioner and current councilor of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC).

15 April 2008: Authorities of the Me’phaa indigenous community in Colombia de Guadalupe, municipality of Malinaltepec, report that they have been intimidated during joint operatives conducted by the Army, the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), and state police forces on the pretext of dismantling a gang of kidnappers.

18 April 2008: Five members of the OPIM are detained in the locality of Ayutla de los Libres. They are interrogated and accused of the assassination of a man committed on January 1. In addition, arrest warrants are issued for 10 more prominent members of the OPIM, including its president Cuauhtémoc Ramírez.

28 April 2008: The CRAC demands 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.”

13 May 2008: In a demonstration carried out in front of the capital buildings in Chilpancingo, relatives and victims of the dirty war demand 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, responds to those demonstrating by ensuring that the government would take the necessary steps to attend to their demands.

4 June 2008: Hundreds of members of the Front of Ejidos, Communities and Social Organizations from the State of Guerrero occupy 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.

7 July 2008: Experts from the Federal Attorney General (PGR) and from the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) begin excavations in the ex military barracks 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) and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, among others. Relatives of the victims are present during the process.

10 July 2008: Agents from the Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) enter 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 are able to prevent the agents from causing any major damage and remove them from the community.

11 July 2008: A federal judge accepts 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. Three communities from the Montaña region (Los Llanos, Yuvinani and Atzompa) join the struggle for the right to health initiated by Mini Numa.

31 July 2008: The Office of the State Secretary of Health compensates the 14 indigenous people from El Camalote in the municipality of Ayutla de los Libres, who were sterilized in 1998 and 2001. The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of the Montaña (CDHM Tlachinollan) reiterates 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 notes the urgency of a legal action in the case of the health workers who pressured the victims to allow for the sterilization.

9 August 2008: In the community of La Mesa, in the Tierra Caliente region of the state, an agent from the Judicial Investigative Police (PIM) is killed and two others are 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).

17 August 2008: Members of CECOP along with other social organizations meet in Acapulco to reject the statement made on July 31 by Secretary of Government, Juan Camillo Mouriño, which mentionned that the project, La Parota, would continue “with different actors”.

1 September 2008: Teachers block 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.

5 September 2008: Teachers take control of 5 radios for one hour, 4 in Chilpancingo and 1 in Tuxtla in order to state their demands: the cancellation of the Alliance for Educational Quality (ACE), and an audience with the governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galdino.

17 September 2008: More than a thousand teachers occupy the offices of the PRD and the local Congress in Chilpancingo. The governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo expresses his opposition to holding a consultation to discuss the ACE, but he recognizes that there were some parts of the document that were not favorable to teachers in Guerrero.

23 September 2008: Almost two months after a confrontation between an armed group headed by Pascual Monje Solís and the police, the government of Guerrero states that the dead body of Monje Solis had been found on 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).

30 September 2008: About five thousand teachers of the State Coordinating Committee of Education Workers of Guerrero (CETEG) and the State Union of Public Servants (SUSPEG) occupy various government offices, among them the office of the Secretary of Education.

5 October 2008: The PRI wins the majority of the local elections in most of the regions of Guerrero. It also wins the municipal presidencies of both Acapulco and the capital, Chilpancingo. In addition the party wins 11 districts alone, and 3 more in alliance with the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM), with which it gets a majority in the local congress.

15 October 2008: During the celebration of its 13th anniversary, the Community Police and the Regional Committee of Community Authorities (CRAC) declares that they have eliminated narco-trafficking in the 72 communities where they are present. Eleven more communities of the municipalities of Ayutla de los Libres and Marquelia request to be incorporated in the CRAC.

15 October 2008: an appeal is granted to 4 of the 5 members of the Indigenous Me´phaa People´s Organization (OPIM) incarcerated in Ayutla de los Libres.

28 October 2008: The government of Guerrero refuses 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).

5 November 2008: More than two thousand teachers occupy the local Congress and state that they will remain there until they are given an adequate response to their demands.

8 November 2008: The Popular Meeting “Water, Energy, and Alternative Energies” takes 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 participate. The final declaration emphasizes 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.

14 November 2008: The Organization of Ecologists of the Sierra of Petatlán and Cotuca de Benítez denounces 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 that would be very bad for them.

18 November 2008: Fifteen thousand teachers march from the coastal town of Miguel Alemán to the center of Acapulco, where a commission begins dialogue with the state governor, Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo.

10 December 2008: 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 are accused of kidnapping and homicide. They had been detained on December 3. The Collective Against Torture and Impunity denounces that all three had admitted guilt after being tortured.