http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/mexico/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Fri, 13 May 2005 08:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2093/light_and_solidarity/ Susan Plum is challenging the Mexican government’s massive failure to effectively investigate and halt the killing spree in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which has taken the lives of more than 370 women in the past 12 years. Plum, an artist who lives and works in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, has decided to shed light on the mysterious string of female abductions and murders—one candle at a time. Last summer she began circulating via e-mail the idea for “Luz y Solidaridad” (“Light and Solidarity”), an art project that calls for people everywhere to help her “bring light to Juárez, especially to the mothers and the families of the young women and girls who have been murdered.” The installation exhibit and performance,… gender north america David Sirota Wed, 26 Jul 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2747/mexican_vote_count_still_in_question/ San Simón, Mexico--"We're going to win," said Alfredo Gonzalez from underneath a shade tree at this town's only polling place on July 2, election day. Like many pulling for a leftist candidate to win Mexico's presidency, he'd been waiting a long time for this. Three tense days later, Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) released this news: right-wing presidential candidate Felipe Calderón from the ruling PAN party received 243,934 more votes than leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a 42-million-vote race. The difference amounted to 0.58 percent of the total, or fewer than 2 votes per polling place. Obrador denounced the count and the election before the independent IFE was through counting ballots. Many of his followers jumped to one conclusion:… Mexico Elections Voting International Affairs David Sirota Mon, 21 Aug 2006 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2795/teacher_rebellion_in_oaxaca/ Thousands of protestors have forced the Oaxaca state government into a bizarre sort of roaming exile, floating between luxury hotels on the outskirts of the capital. Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz worked from the guarded Hacienda Los Laureles Hotel before he went underground. No one knows where he is now. The dispossessed state senators declared the elite Hotel Misión San Felipe as its "alternate headquarters," only to be booted after protesters warned the hotel management that they would "peacefully take over the hotel" if the senators were allowed to hold sessions there. Oaxaca is a city under siege, but strangely so. In Oaxaca's occupied town center, tourists browse through hand-woven skirts, wool blankets and painted wooden turtles as they walk amidst… Mexico activism social justice David Sirota Fri, 06 Oct 2006 06:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2840/cola_wars_in_mexico/ Thousands of candles flicker in the dim chamber. The air is thick with the smoke from copal incense. On the altar, men in black wool tunics and white knee-length pants play solemn music on drums and gourds. Below them, a score of Tzotzil Indians chant in small circles on the pine needle-covered floor. In the center of each circle are candles, eggs, copal and pox--fermented corn mash--in an old glass container, stopped with a corn cob. And next to the pox is a half-liter bottle of Coca-Cola or Pepsi. In the 484-year-old Church of St. John the Baptist, in Chamula, a town of 60,000 in Chiapas, Mexico, those bottles indicate the intersection of religion, politics, water and consumer markets. In… Corporations Mexico Religion and Spirituality Environment David Sirota Wed, 01 Nov 2006 06:00:01 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2878/oaxaca_in_crisis/ It appeared as if the conflict in Oaxaca would come to an anti-climactic end. After a week of heated internal debate, on Thursday, Oct. 26, the Oaxaca local Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers voted to end their five-month strike and return to classes the following Monday. ( See "Teacher Rebellion in Oaxaca," August 21) With the teachers committed to head back to their communities, the protesters' camps in the town square and surrounding government buildings would have thinned dramatically. Many of the farmers and indigenous organizations that make up the Oaxaca People's Popular Assembly (APPO) were discussing ways to continue their struggle without trying to hold the camps against an imminent police attack. Without the teachers,… Mexico Activism Social Justice David Sirota Wed, 27 Dec 2006 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2970/street_battles_in_oaxaca/ At 8 a.m. on November 2, police came to remove the last barricade. After clearing away the rubble and city buses used to block the major Cinco Señores intersection, several hundred riot police and special forces from the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) took positions along University Avenue on either side of the Autonomous State University of Oaxaca. Two groups of police forces armed with submachine guns, tear gas grenades, riot shields and batons prepared to advance, with military helicopters circling overhead and anti-riot tanks gunning their motors behind. Only the charred skeleton of an old bus, stretched across University Avenue halfway between the two police lines, remained. The commander of the federal police, who would not give his name, said… activism mexico David Sirota Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3236/militarizing_mexicos_drug_war/ "In the helicopter is where they began to beat us," recalls Sara, a 17-year-old who was released on May 16 after a week in military detention. (Her name has been changed to protect her identity.) "They threw me really hard into the helicopter," she says. "They kicked me all over my body. Then one got on top of me; I could hear the other girls screaming. The soldiers said that this would take the whore out of us, that we were going to hell, that they were the law." Seven months ago, President Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party took office and declared war on drug traffickers, ordering 20,000 troops into the streets to put an end to… drugs mexico military David Sirota Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3493/portrait_of_the_awkward_artist/ If Pablo Helguera's The Boy Inside the Letter (Jorge Pinto Books, 2007) had adopted a subtitle, it would have to be "Longing: The Making of an Artist." As it stands, the title is enigmatic, never hinting at the great waves of yearning inside. It suggests youth and writing--but there's something vaguely uncomfortable about it. Is the "letter" a correspondence, a nod to a young man whose true self is hidden in some sort of written exchange? Or is the boy inside an alphabetic letter, a mysterious glyph to be deciphered? As it turns out, it's both. It's a correspondence that Helguera writes as a young man to his older self--a symbolic universe itself to be decoded and appreciated by both… art culture books mexico David Sirota Thu, 29 May 2008 06:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3693/mexicos_ghost_towns/ Cerrito del Agua, population 3,000, has no paved roads -- either leading to it or within it. No restaurants, no movie theaters, no shopping malls. In fact, the small town located in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas has no middle schools, high schools or colleges; no cell phone service, no hospital. Its surrounding fields are dry and untended. The streets are empty. The explosion of emigration to the United States over the past 15 years has emptied much of central Mexico, even reaching into southernmost states like Chiapas and Yucatan. But it has simply devastated Zacatecas, a dry, rolling agricultural region located about 400 miles northwest of Mexico City. A little more than half of Zacatecas' population -- about… mexico emigration David Sirota Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4195/in_mexico_resistance_is_futile/ For anyone who has felt confused, confounded, disappointed, disturbed and yet still enchanted by Mexico, John Gibler's Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt (City Lights, January) offers some relief. Gibler, an independent journalist who has lived in Mexico since December 2005, starts by deconstructing the idea that Mexico's history is a tale of total conquest by Spanish conquistadors or succeeding waves of military, political and economic invaders. Instead, he describes a country never fully vanquished, albeit one still affected by colonization in the last half century--through trade policies and economic pressure rather than military might. "If the conquest is still ongoing," Gibler writes, "there are people and places that remain unconquered." Gibler has been present during defining moments in… books Mexico social justice David Sirota Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:00:14 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4883/canada_tightens_border/ While Mexican visitors have faced growing difficulty crossing U.S. borders, Canada has traditionally been more welcoming. Until this summer, that is. On July 13, the Canadian government announced that henceforth, citizens of Mexico and the Czech Republic could no longer enter Canada without a visa. More than a quarter-million Mexicans visit Canada each year. Even if a Mexican or Czech citizen wants only to catch fish on an Alberta lake, visit relatives in Ontario or consult a Quebec client, he or she must now obtain a Temporary Resident Visa. Imposition of the visa policy was a "function of the growing number of refugee claims," says Guillermo Rishchynski, Canada's Ambassador to Mexico. Illegitimate claims, he says, have become an "unsustainable burden."… David Sirota