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The images for this photo essay were taken by Jonathan Treat in three Zapotec communities in different regions of Oaxaca, united through their ongoing work to find new, shared strategies for defending their territories. Exhibits of these photos have been one of those tools. Nearly 80% of the land in Oaxaca is communally owned, mostly by indigenous people, and the…

6 May, 2014 On April 27, 2010, while Jyri Jaakkola and Bety Cariño were setting up a humanitarian and human rights convoy in the vicinity of the indigenous community of San Juan Copala, they were fatally attacked by a paramilitary group known as UBISORT. Their murders generated national and international outrage. For the first time in the history of Mexico,…

On 27 April, four years passed since the murder of Bety Cariño and Jyri Jaakkola when they were participating in a humanitarian-aid caravan destined for San Juan Copala.  Members of the European Parliament and relatives affirmed that the cases could have been resolved within two months, but that the authorities have not demonstrated the necessary political will to do so.…

Mexico. — The whereabouts remain “uncertain” of the more than 300 migrants arrested on 30 April in an “impressive” operation mounted by Mexico’s Migration Institute (INM), the Federal Police (PF) and Tabasco State Police according to Marta Sánchez of the Mesoamerican Migrants’ Movement (MMM). “We think that they might have them in the Acayucán, Veracruz detention center but there are…

The film-maker Alfonso Cuarón, riding high after winning this year's best director Oscar, has launched into political activism in his Mexican homeland by throwing down the gauntlet to the president. The London-based director of Gravity published a full-page advertisement in Mexican newspapers on Monday addressed to President Enrique Peña Nieto and demanding answers to 10 questions about the country's controversial…

The fight against genetically modified corn in Mexico began in the communities, leaped to the streets, spread to the  printed page and now is being carried on in the courtroom. It is an uneven dispute in which the federal government has sided with the transnational corporation and against the majority of Mexican farmers and consumers. But in the latest battle…

The Mexican Network of Mining-Affected Peoples (REMA, for its initials in Spanish) and the Mesoamerican Movement against the Mining Extractive Model (M4) organized a three-day nationwide encounter in the Northern Sierra of Puebla where hundreds of mining-affected community members from numerous states participated in talks and workshops where experiences, strategies for the defense of the territory, and socio-environmental impacts were…