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In October of last year, Irma Lopez Aurelio arrived at a state health clinic in Oaxaca, Mexico, in labor with her third child. The doctors at the clinic told her to come back, that her labor was not advanced enough and no doctor was available to help her. Irma, who is Indigenous, spoke little Spanish and was unable to communicate how advanced her labor…

In the early months of 2012, two members of the Coordinator of the United Peoples of Ocotlán Valley—Bernardo Vázquez Sánchez and Bernardo Méndez Vázquez—were murdered after participating in seven year of opposition to the presence of the Cuzcatlán-Fortuna Silver Mines Company. Concerned about the growth in the conflict, different civil society organizations held a civilian observation and human rights mission…

On 15 February, Eva Lucero Rivero Ortiz, a human-rights defender and spokesperson for the Democratic Civic Union of Neighborhoods Colonies and Communities (UCIDEBACC), received two death-threats to her cell phone after having participated in a meeting with Oaxaca state officials. The previous day, other members of UCIDEBACC, María Dolores Merino Ortiz, Reina Clavel Tapia, Cinthia Narciso Bernal, and a minor,…

The papers on every news kiosk in Mexico City in late August, 2013, blared denunciations: "Imagine - Mexico Without Soccer!" screamed one newspaper. Pictures of crying children stuck outside of a stadium clutching the colors of their favorite team were plastered on the front page of another paper. The target of the media's ire was the National Coordinator of Education…

In the early hours of 28 January 2014, the protest camp of the Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Juchitán – APPJ (Popular Assembly of Juchitán), located in communal territories of Juchitán de Zaragoza on the Tehuantepec Isthmus, Oaxaca, was razed to the ground for a second time by unknown persons. The razing by fire is the latest incident in a…

Early in the morning of Thursday 5 December, two residents of the small Zapotec town San José del Progreso, located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, disappeared. It is presumed they were detained by federal agents, reports local NGO the Oaxacan Collective in Defence of Territories. The detainees are identified as Olegario Víctor Ruiz Martínez and his wife Salomé García López. They…