“Mexico: Dozens of bodies found dumped on roadside”

Taken from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/05/dozens-of-bodies-dumped-roadside-in-mexico.html#more

May 13, 2012

Mexican authorities responding to an anonymous tip on Sunday discovered about 50 mostly mutilated bodies dumped on the side of a highway between Monterrey, Mexico’s wealthiest city, and the U.S. border.

The bodies of at least 43 men and half a dozen women were found in plastic garbage bags near the town of Cadereyta Jimenez, the location of a large state-run oil refinery, officials in the state prosecutor’s office told The Times. The exact number of dead was being sorted out, confused by the condition of the bodies.

Army and police troops descended on the site and temporarily closed the highway, a major thoroughfare from Monterrey to the border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Sunday’s discovery apparently was linked to a string of increasingly violent attacks as rival drug-trafficking gangs battle for control of the lucrative northeastern corridor of Mexico. Gangs often leave their victims in public venues as a warning to their enemies.

Earlier this month, 15 bodies were discovered on the road to Chapala, Mexico, a popular retirement community for U.S. citizens in Jalisco state. And on May 4, 23 bodies — nine hanging from a highway overpass and the other 14 decapitated — were discovered in Nuevo Laredo.

More than 50,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led assault on powerful drug cartels in December 2006. Mexicans on July 1 will vote for Calderon’s replacement. Election news has largely eclipsed reports on drug-war violence, but in recent weeks the mounting death toll has once again earned front-page coverage.

The fight among drug cartels has boiled down largely to a battle between the Sinaloa group, the oldest and largest drug-trafficking network in Mexico, and the vicious Zetas paramilitary force. The Zetas once controlled much of northeastern Mexico, but Sinaloa loyalists have steadily moved into the region.

Also over the weekend, gunmen attacked the offices of a newspaper in Nuevo Laredo. No one was hurt in the Friday evening assault; the newspaper, El Manaña, long ago stopped reporting on cartel violence out of fear.

Four current and former journalists were killed in a week’s time this month in the coastal state of Veracruz, including a well-respected investigative reporter who specialized in writing about police corruption and drug-trafficking.

“Undocumented student publishes how-to guide for peers on finding jobs after college”

Taken from: http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/06/undocumented-student-publishes-how-to-guide-for-peers-on-finding-jobs-after-college/?hpt=us_c2

April 6, 2012

A California doctoral student who’s an undocumented immigrant has published a free how-to guide on the Internet instructing similar immigrants on finding employment after college and maintaining good health “living in the shadows.”

The inspiration for the book came from her family, she said. ”My father has always told me look for solutions instead of the problems,” says Iliana Guadalupe Perez, an immigrant since the age of 8 when her parents brought her to the United States from Mexico. ”I always try to find the solution to the problem, if this door closed, what can I do so it opens to me?”

Perez’s immigration status has been her biggest problem: she is part of the millions of undocumented students around the country. But she is also a college graduate, and yet her legal status still stands in the way of her job prospects. It’s to the point where she wonders if doors won’t open, could there be a window?

Perez graduated from California State University, Fresno, in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in science and mathematics and a minor in economics. Even after she had a diploma in her hand, she heard the whispers that her legal status would still prevent her from pursuing a career. Questions about why her parents would bring her to an unfamiliar place – illegally – stuck with her. Seeing the many opportunities afforded to legal residents, Perez says she knew she couldn’t give up on her future. ”I was optimistic,” she says, “I knew I could find a job because I have an education and a degree.”

That feeling of frustration motivated Perez, now a first-year education doctorate student at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, to publish a 73-page guide called “Life After College: A Guide for Undocumented Students.” ”This guide is not only for undocumented students but for all students,” Perez said. “This guide gives them options and it’s not a guide intended to do something illegal in the system. ”Everything in the guide is legal. The options I give exist out there,” she said.

The guide focuses on different topics from how to open up your own business legally, pay for postgraduate studies, obtain a job abroad, stay motivated and work in the United States legally as an independent contractor, among other topics. The document offers tips for undocumented students who have faced the same challenges Perez has but who are also living in the shadow of illegal immigration. Perez said she wanted to give students hope and let them know success is achievable. ”The idea of the guide was based on my own personal experiences after graduating from the university and then trying to get into a master’s or doctorate program,” she says, “it was difficult, so I decided to take an internship to help me.”

She interned for the “Educators for Fair Consideration,” a non-profit organization that was established in 2006 in San Francisco and focuses on helping low-income, minority youth and undocumented students continue to higher education. ”The mission of our organization is help and support undocumented students,” said Jose Arreola, outreach manager for the group. “We offer scholarships, legal services and educational guides because of the lack of information and resources that is not available out there to help these students.”

Arreola said Perez’s guide is necessary to help undocumented students. The free, online document is “a guide to give solutions because many of these students were asking us what are we going to do after we graduate?  They don’t know the many options out there,” Arreola said. Educators for Fair Consideration sponsored Perez’s guide and put her in contact with experts, resources and students who are undocumented. “Life After College” contains tips, information and resources to help undocumented students navigate life after graduation. ”Life After College” contains tips, information and resources to help undocumented students navigate life after graduation. Said Perez: “It may seem undocumented students have limited options upon graduating from college. That’s not true. This guide gives students options and hope.” She said the guide can’t guarantee a job, but she hopes that it will benefit graduates and expose them to opportunities.

“Candidacy tests Mexico’s culture of machismo”

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/candidacy-tests-mexicos-culture-machismo-215143891.html

February 7, 2012

Mexico’s conservative ruling party is gambling that this country known for machismo is ready for a female president and have chosen a devout Roman Catholic and popular former congresswoman who says she sympathizes with the causes of the poor.

Josefina Vazquez Mota, a 51-year-old economist, became the first female presidential candidate from any of Mexico’s major parties late Sunday when she convincingly won the National Action Party’s primary.

Her victory marks a milestone for women in Mexico, a country where they were not allowed to vote until 1953. The first female governor did not take office until 1989. Only a handful have been elected since.

National Action hopes Mexico is ready to follow in the footsteps of Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile and other Latin American countries that have elected female leaders recently.

Vazquez Mota, who is still married to her high school sweetheart, won national attention after publishing a 1999 book titled “God, Please Make Me A Widow,” which is described as a call to women to stop being afraid of developing their potential. She has said she wrote the book based on her own experience of being a woman who chose to work over staying at home to raise her three daughters, defying the role she was expected to fulfill.

Vazquez Mota told El Universal newspaper in an interview published Monday that she has experienced Mexico’s machismo first hand during her campaign. ”One of the hardest questions I have been asked is ‘How will you manage the army if you are having menstrual cramps?’” she told the newspaper. “I have also been asked if I will have the courage to face criminals. My answer is that courage is not a matter of gender.”

Born in Mexico City on Jan. 20, 1961, Vazquez Mota was educated at some of the country’s more costly private universities and graduate schools, then worked as a financial consultant and business columnist for several years. The fourth of seven siblings born to a paint store franchise owner and a housewife, she grew up in a middle class, traditional family. She is married to businessman Sergio Ocampo, who was her first boyfriend. A religious woman, she asked PAN members to go to church first Sunday and then go vote for her. But she is not a typical conservative.

Vazquez Mota told Univision in an interview last year that although she didn’t support abortion rights, she doesn’t think the practice should be criminalized. She also told the network she believed marriage was between a man and a woman but that gay couples deserve respect. She told El Universal that she is sympathetic with Liberation Theology, which advocates activism on behalf of the poor, and admires slain Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, whose fight for the poor during El Salvador’s bloody civil war made him a national hero.

Vazquez Mota formally jumped into politics when she was elected to Congress in 2000, part of a wave of political change that rolled across Mexico as Vicente Fox of her National Action Party captured the presidency and ended the 71-year hold on power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. After only three months as a legislator, Vazquez Mota was pulled into Fox’s Cabinet to head the Social Development Department, the first woman to hold the post.

She continued to build her political skills and reputation within her party by managing Felipe Calderon’s successful 2006 presidential race, then serving as his education secretary after being elected to Congress for a second time. She supposedly had a falling out with Calderon after she was removed from Education Department.

But the affable candidate with a permanent smile faces an uphill battle against former Mexico State Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto, the PRI candidate who leads in all recent polls. Many voters have grown disillusioned with National Action after 12 years in power, and due to growing frustration with a drug war in which more than 47,000 people have died over the past five years. ”She is offering to combat corruption, but Fox first offered that and after 12 years nothing has happened,” said political analyst Jose Antonio Crespo. “Why would people believe her now?” Besides ending corruption and improving education, she has said little about what direction she would take the country.

She won the nomination even though most analysts considered rival Ernesto Cordero, the former finance secretary, as the top choice of Calderon and the party establishment. For Crespo, her victory was thanks to the support of PAN members displeased with Calderon’s administration. The fact that she is seen as an outsider in Calderon’s camp will help her, said Andrew Selee, director of the Washington-based Mexico Institute. ”One thing that benefits her is that she has a certain amount of distance from President Calderon,” Selee said. “I think she will try to project a sense of openness to new ideas … but that may not be enough to overcome people’s desire to entirely change direction.”

Vazquez Mota, who was elected to the lower house of Congress for a second time in 2009 and became speaker of the house, is known as a good negotiator. She could attract independent voters because many of them “might be reluctant on supporting the PRI because of its past authoritarian record or PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) because of his past radicalism,” the U.S.-based Eurasia Group consulting firm wrote in a research note Monday. Lopez Obrador is the candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, best remembered for narrowly losing against Calderon in 2006.

Though she has said she won’t use gender as an issue during her campaign, the married mother of three, has used her family life on the campaign trail to garner the support of Mexican mothers and young voters. ”She is playing the gender card,” said Soledad Loaeza, a political science professor in Colegio de Mexico who has studied the evolution of the PAN. “What I don’t know is if that card will help her.” ”She is a serious, hard working woman,” Loaeza added. “Her main virtue was surrounding herself with experts.”

“Calif. Investigates Skin-Lighteners for Dangerous Mercury”

What saddens me the most is the common idea that the whiter one’s skin, the more beautiful/handsome one is. In cultures all across the world, people with lighter skin are deemed more refined, have more access to resources and opportunities, able to more easily find a husband/mate, are considered more superior to everyone else. This obsession with looking “whiter” or “more pale” or “lighter” has created a market for creams, many of which can possess incredibly harmful ingredients that have been known to cause cancer, skin lesions, discoloration, health risks, and the like, especially the cheaper ones. 

Taken from: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=7ab8e2c53bb231f2faf1d1d35b79148f

January 27, 2012

There could be a dark side to skin-lightening creams often found in stores that cater to ethnic communities.

Starting next week, California health officials will collect and test a sampling of skin-lightening products in the Bay Area for possible mercury contamination. Health officials launched the investigation in response to a spate of mercury poisoning cases linked to the tainted face creams that are made outside the United States.

A handful of cases emerged in the mid ‘90s, but it was a 2010 case involving a 39-year-old Latina and her family in Alameda County that spurred the state to action.  Coordinators of a health study found the East Bay resident with dangerously-high mercury levels, and notified state health officials. An investigation traced the source of her mercury poisoning to an unlabeled jar of face cream, which relatives from Virginia had brought back from Mexico and given to her.

State health officials, working with their Virginia counterparts, identified in total 22 people who were exposed to mercury through similar face creams, including extended family and friends. The case was highlighted last week in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). “This is one of the first investigations of the problem within California,” said Dr. Rapali Das, chief of the Environmental Health Investigations Branch of the state Department of Public Health and co-author of the MMWR report. “Why [we’re focusing] attention on the issue now — these cases have come to our attention here, we think it’s enough of a problem to address it.”

Last year, the state documented a dozen cases of mercury poisoning from tainted skin lighteners, Das says, and have anecdotal reports of at least another four cases.

Health problems from mercury exposure include “mental and neurological” symptoms, according to Dr. Mark Miller, director of the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit at UCSF and co-author of the MMWR report, which noted that some of those who were exposed to mercury experienced “numbness, tingling, dizziness, forgetfulness, headaches, and depression.” Encountering high enough levels or chronic exposure can also harm the kidneys, Miller says.

The people profiled in the MMWR report said they used the face cream for “skin-lightening, fading freckles, and treating acne.” Mercury, a metal, is a highly effective skin lightener, because it blocks melanin, which gives hair and skin pigmentation.  “It’s effective. It’s just dangerous for you,” said Miller, adding that the FDA does not allow any mercury in products sold in the United States. He said all the products with dangerous mercury levels are here “illegally.”

Nationwide, state health departments are coming across scores of cases of mercury poisoning through skin-lightening products brought into the country from someplace else. Health officials in Texas, New York, and Minnesota have recently carried out investigations of skin-lighteners, and alerted the public about possible mercury contamination.

In 2010, the Chicago Tribune carried out an investigation of skin-lighteners sold in local stores and on the Internet, and found that out of 50 face creams, six contained “mercury levels banned by federal law.” The six products were made in “Lebanon, China, India, Pakistan and Taiwan.”

California health officials will begin to collect and test a sampling of skin-lightening products from store shelves in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, said Lori Copan with the state health department. She says they will target ethnic stories and swap meets, catering to three “priority groups,” including Chinese, Filipino, and Latino.

In the cases documented last year by California health officials, most involved products that were brought into the state through people’s “personal luggage,” Copan said. The extended family profiled in the MMWR report brought the skin-lightening cream back from Mexico, while two other households bought them in local stores. The products were also made in Mexico.

Copan says the state health department issued alerts about mercury-laced skin-lighteners in 2010, and will be working with a statewide network of “promotoras” — peer health educators — to get information into hard-to-reach communities. “It is very important. Ladies using the cream not only put it in her face, but using in [sic] her whole body,” said Vicky Avila, health educator with Vision y Compromiso in Redwood City, Calif. “They put the cream on babies…it’s a big problem for them.”

The case that prompted California health officials to issue a health alert in 2010 involved unlabeled products in white jars. Other state health departments have issued alerts about products made in Mexico with dangerous levels of mercury, including Crema de Belleza–Manning and Crema AguaMary.

Last year, researchers from UC Berkeley and UCSF, conducting a health study, found a Latina in San Francisco with high mercury levels, the source of which was eventually traced to her face cream. In that case, the cream was a U.S. brand name product that was purchased and likely adulterated in Mexico.

Copan with the state health department emphasized that any skin-lightening product purchased abroad could be tainted, including U.S. brand name products. “If it was purchased outside of the United States, it could have mercury in it,” she said.
California’s health department advised consumers to avoid buying products that list “mercury,” “mercurio,” or “calomel” (mercurous chloride) on the label as well as unlabeled beauty products.

Health worker Avila says many of the women she sees prefer to buy products they are familiar with from their home countries, especially new immigrants who want to feel connected to their “roots” and culture. Avila says the women load up on products when they travel to Tijuana or they may shop for them at local Latino stores in California. Often times, the products may not be displayed on shelves, but carried in a backroom, so they must ask for them specifically.  “Women don’t like to talk about it,” Avila said. “They don’t like to say where they bought it.”

“Mexicans confront racism with white, black doll video”

Taken from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/mexico-racism-video-children-debate-race.html#more

December 30, 2011

Is Mexico’s an inherently racist society? Does the culture overwhelmingly favor those with light skin over those with dark skin? And if so, is that a legacy of European colonialism or present-day images in television and advertising?

These are among the thorny questions emerging in online forums in Mexico since a government agency began circulating a “viral video” showing schoolchildren in a taped social experiment on race. The kids are seated at a table before a white doll and a black doll, and are asked to pick the “good doll” or the doll that most resembled them. The children, mostly brown-skinned, almost uniformly say the white doll was better or most resembled them.

One child in the video with mixed-race features says the white doll resembled him “in the ears.”

“Which doll is the good doll?” a woman’s voice asks the child.

“I am not afraid of whites,” he responds, pointing to the white doll. “I have more trust.”

Mexico’s National Council to Prevent Discrimination, or Conapred, in mid-December began circulating the video, modeled on the 1940s Clark experiments in the United States. The children who appear in it are mostly mestizos, or half-Spanish, half-Indian, and a message said they were taped with the consent of their parents and told to respond as freely as they could.

Mexicans who saw the video said online that they were dismayed but not surprised by its results, and also offered some criticism for the agency that produced it.

Commenters have noted that the options were “very limiting” by offering only black and white, or good and bad, when in Mexico the majority of the population is mixed-race, mostly European and indigenous, and to a lesser extent African and Asian backgrounds. ”It is a poorly formulated question, it is pretentious,” one user said on the website VivirMexico (link in Spanish). Yet many also said the video reveals a deep-seated prejudice that is taught to children in Mexico from an early age.

In 2010, the Televisa network was criticized for showing actors in black face during the World Cup in South Africa. In May, the case of a black man who died after a confrontation with police in Mexico City led to protests against Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.

Wilner Metelus, a sociology professor and leader of a committee advocating for Afro-Mexicans and black immigrants, said the doll video shows how far the country must go to recognize the prevalence of racism and the need to educate young people. ”The Mexican state still does not officially recognize Afro-Mexicans. There are few texts that talk about the presence of Africans in Mexico,” Metelus said. “We need a project in the schools to show that the dark children are just the same as them, as the lighter children. And not only in schools; it is also necessary in Mexican families.”

On Friday, the daily La Jornada published a report saying black immigrants in Mexico and the Afro-Mexican minority still suffer racism and discrimination that is not adequately acknowledged by the government (link in Spanish). ”[Dark] skin color is still associated with foreignness,” Luz Maria Martinez, a leading anthropologist on Afro-Mexican culture, told the newspaper. “We do not know how to value the indigenous culture, which is very rich, or the African culture, which is as great as any in the world.”

“Mexican Rights Activists Seek ICC Investigation of President, Others”

This man has guts. It’s thanks to people like him that we can hope that “never again” is not an empty promise.

Taken from: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/americas/Mexican_Rights_Activists_Seek_ICC_Investigation_of_President_Others.html

November 25, 2011

A Mexican human rights lawyer has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court accusing President Felipe Calderon, other top Mexican officials and drug traffickers of crimes against humanity. Netzai Sandoval filed the complaint Friday with the court in The Hague, calling for an investigation into the deaths of hundreds of people at the hands of the Mexican military and drug traffickers.  More than 20,000 Mexican citizens signed the document.

The prosecutor’s office said it had received the complaint and that a decision on the request will be made “in due course.” Mexico’s government denies the accusations listed in the complaint.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch released a report accusing the Mexican military and police of widespread human rights violations in efforts to combat organized crime.  The group’s Americas director, Jose Miguel Vivanco, has said that instead of reducing violence, Mexico’s “war on drugs” has led to a dramatic increase in killings, torture and other appalling abuses by security forces.  He said this makes the climate of lawlessness and fear worse in many parts of the country.

An estimated 45,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Calderon took office in late 2006 and began a crackdown on the cartels.

“Mexican Teachers Strike, Protest Over Test-Driven Education”

Taken from:  http://labornotes.org/2011/05/mexican-teachers-strike-protest-over-test-driven-education

May 31, 2011

Seventy thousand teachers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca struck May 23, 2011, demanding better funding for their students. The strike began with a march from four different points to the city’s square, where the educators rallied and then spread out to put pressure on both government and business.

Teachers blockaded government offices and private companies, closed major intersections, and “liberated” the toll booths on the privately owned highway to Mexico City. They also attempted to shut down the airport.

Oaxaca is a stronghold of a longstanding opposition caucus within the teachers union and while the strike is over local issues, it also demonstrates the teachers’ opposition to union president Elba Esther Gordillo.

She recently signed a new agreement which will reward educators for teaching to a new national test, which teachers in some areas have protested and refused to administer.

The Oaxaca teachers are making no new wage demands. They insist, however, that the Oaxaca state government install computers in all elementary schools and pay the schools’ electric bills. According to union spokespeople utility bills are currently paid by parents.

The state governor claims he’s offered about $128 million to settle the dispute, while the union says the offer was only about $59 million. The governor says the state can afford no more and asked the union to keep the strike “as brief as possible.” Strikes in Oaxaca have taken place virtually every year since the mid-1970s and have sometimes lasted for months. Azael Santiago Chepi, a union leader, said the government’s offers were “minimal and insufficient.”

In 2006, then-Governor Ulises Ruíz turned out the police to attack striking teachers as they slept in Oaxaca’s main square, and many believe that he also created death squads that killed more than 20 teachers and their supporters during protracted strikes and protests.

This month’s actions are the strongest since that year’s “Oaxaca Rebellion,” when citizens took over radio stations, set up barricades, and created a dual power situation in the city. Ruíz was defeated in a re-election bid last year.

Other teacher locals in Chiapas, Michoacan, Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Baja California Sur, and the Federal District could join the Oaxacan teachers in striking over local and national issues.

New Ed Pact

The Oaxaca strike comes as Mexican President Felipe Calderón signed an agreement May 26 with Gordillo, the teachers union head. The pact is intended to transform Mexican education by rewarding teachers for their students’ success in passing national achievement tests.

When students score high, the agreement will reward their teachers with more points on their evaluations. Fifty points out of 100 in teachers’ annual evaluations will be based on student achievement. Until now student stores on the exam represented only 20 points on the evaluation, but now they’ll be 40. Teachers receive just 10 points for their years of service.

Teachers whose students score highest on the test will receive a $1,725 bonus. Some outstanding teachers will be rewarded with houses.

President Calderón and union leader Gordillo say the changes will modernize Mexico’s school system, improve education for students, and provide a fairer career path for teachers.

Rank-and-File Dissent

The teachers opposition caucus rejected the national achievement test, the new teacher evaluation system, and the broader education overhaul that Calderon has argued for since his term began in 2006. The teachers say test-driven education is bad for both students and teachers, and that linking bonuses and prizes to test scores will encourage fraud.

Gordillo, an ally of Calderón, was elected at meetings that violated the union’s statutes. Oppositionists argue she has no standing to negotiate a pact on behalf of the teachers, but the government refuses to act on dissident demands to investigate and remove her.

The test measures students’ “acceptance and adaptation to the system,” said Sergio Espinal, leader of the opposition caucus, at a press conference. “It is the final point in the application and justification of business discourse. It measures their familiarity and competence in the market.”

Another opposition caucus founder and leader, José González Figueroa, said that instead of spending resources for these programs, money should go to “resolve the chaos in Mexico’s education system, and to open school breakfast centers for students, and to repair the schools.”

The caucus represents a majority of teachers in several states, and leaders promised to demonstrate in Mexico City and elsewhere as they build toward a general strike by teachers against the new testing scheme.

***

To me, test-driven education is not a solution to our education system’s woes. While teachers and students are spending more time learning how to take tests, the passion for learning disappears. Standardized tests can be used as a form of assessment, but I do not believe that it should be able to dictate who gets what benefits, and who gets tossed into the margins.