MEXICO: DAYS OF VIOLENCE AND SILENCE IN VARIOUS MEXICAN CITIES
Confrontations between groups of organized crime and federal forces left at least 54 people dead, wounded and disappeared in various cities Mexico. The violence that occurred between Aug. 1 and 4 devastated Zacatecas (central Mexico) and the cities of Reynosa (in north eastern Mexico) and Culiacan (in the northwest), was not covered by the country’s official media channels.
Authorities remained silent with respect to the violent confrontations that left a score of victims. The bodies of the victims in Zacatecas were removed by their respective indigenous groups. No official news source reported on the events, including various local newspapers.

This last February, various news media signed an agreement called “For Our Image” —a move by the PRI government of Mexico to “improve the perception” of their country. The media agreed not to publish on the front page information or photographs of the confrontations between groups of organized crime, criminal acts or homicides. Social websites such as Facebook have reported on each attack with contributions from local citizens.

CHILE: THE STRUGGLE OF THE MAPUCHES GAINS FORCE
The United Nations urged Chile to stop applying an anti-terrorism law against its Mapuche indigenous people, who are fighting to recover their ancestral lands. “Chile is not confronting any terrorist threat,” assured Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. He asked that ordinary criminal laws be used in the dozens of current trials of 85 indigenous peoples. He stated that, as of yet, the anti-terrorism law has been applied in a discriminatory and confusing fashion.
Decreed in 1984 under the General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship the anti-terrorism law was meant to confront and punish resistance groups with severe penalties aiming to put a halt to homicides, kidnappings, fires and detonations of explosive devices. After the return of democracy in 1990, the law was applied in all cases against Mapuche activists who were protecting their sacred lands, rights to their water and demanding the restitution of their territories stripped from them by force of the Chilean government.

During his 14 day visit of Chile, Emmerson asked for a constitutional recognition of the Mapuche’s right to exist as indigenous people within the State of Chile and called for the creation of a “national strategy” to resolve this conflict. The Special Rapporteur of the United Nations asked that there be an end to the use of excessive force on behalf of the police in the Mapuche communities. He stressed the need to address these injustices against the indigenous people.