Background

Along with Chiapas and Oaxaca, Guerrero is one of the poorest states in the Mexican Republic. It has the highest percentage of houses with earth floors (57.5%), the highest percentage of dwellings of poor or very poor quality (69%), the highest number of illiterate fathers (53.4%) and illiterate mothers (54.7%), and the highest percentage of severe infant malnutrition (32.4%). In indigenous communities the level of severe malnutrition in children under the age of five is 58.3%.

Guerrilla groups such as the EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army) and the ERPI (Insurgent People's Revolutionary Army) have emerged in recent years in protest at the historic lack of commitment by state and federal governments to the sustainable development of the region. The official response to these groups has been repressive rather than conciliatory. Security operations to detain presumed guerrilla members have also been illegal and arbitrary in the sense that army incursions have been carried out in numerous indigenous communities without the existence of prior police investigations. Security forces have been involved in two massacres in recent years: on June 28, 1995, when the state security police murdered 17 peasant farmers at Aguas Blancas, and on June 7, 1998, when the Federal Army killed 11 indigenous people at El Charco. Political violence has also been directed towards opposition parties. One hundred and ninety eight activists of the center-left PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) were murdered and eight more disappeared between 1989 and 1997, according to the Cronica de la Violencia Politica: Guerrero, a report published by the PRD and Fundacion Ovando y Gil.

Opposition gains ground in Guerrero

In February this year, the PRI governor, René Juarez Cisneros, won a narrow victory over his closest rival, PRD Senator Felix Salgado. National and international observers declared that the elections, which were won by a margin of only two percent, should have been annulled due to the widespread incidence of vote buying and other irregularities. On October 3rd of this year, the opposition alliance led by PRD candidate, Zeferino Torreblanca, won the Acapulco Municipal Presidency from the PRI for the first time. The opposition victory, however, has provoked a wave of repressive activity against groups that oppose the PRI's policies in Guerrero. In recent weeks, state and federal security forces have been implicated or directly involved in assassinations, illegal arbitrary detentions and torture against PRD activists, indigenous leaders, and individuals supposedly linked to the two main insurgent groups.

National and local human rights groups fear that the increase in activity by the Federal Army and state police forces in Guerrero is part of a strategy to halt recent gains by the PRI's political opponents. Extreme poverty and narco-trafficking are endemic in the state, while the violence and other illegal acts perpetrated by the security forces enjoy extremely high levels of impunity. The State Attorney General, Carlos Vega Memije, and the state governor, René Juarez Cisneros, have not responded to recent events, giving the impression that state and federal laws do not apply to acts committed by PRI militants, the Federal Army, or the police.

Meanwhile, there has been a clear tendency on the part of the PRI in Guerrero, the State Attorney General, and the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) to justify the increase in violence against members of the PRD by connecting them with guerrilla groups operating in the state.

The state attorney general, along with various district judges in charge of cases involving the detention of political activists and members of indigenous organizations are upholding confessions extracted under torture to justify their privation of liberty. Information obtained under torture is also being used to identify other activists and make further arrests. Meanwhile, the state authorities are insisting that many cases remain within state jurisdiction to prevent federal investigations from taking place, thus guaranteeing greater impunity for those involved. The most prominent pending cases from the recent wave of violence involve federal crimes, such as supposed violations of the Firearms and Explosives Law, and should consequently be tried at the federal level.

Member organizations of the Guerrero Human Rights Network have accused the Juarez Cisneros administration of trying to destabilize Guerrero in order to undermine support for the opposition. They also fear that the defamation campaign against the PRD and its members is being used to legitimize the increase in illegal military and police incursions into indigenous communities. In the process of carrying out these operations in indigenous communities, the Federal Army has repeatedly violated Article 1, 11, 14, 16, and 129 of the Mexican Constitution. It is important to note that before this recent crisis, the harassment of indigenous communities, including the systematic abuse of human rights by the security forces, was already at an extremely high level.

Local non-government organizations fear that political violence will soon extend to human rights groups in Guerrero that are monitoring the ongoing situation. The Mexico City based human rights organization, Miguel Agustín Pro Juarez, (PRODH), has already experienced systematic harassment and intimidation, including the kidnapping of key personnel, office break-ins, psychological torture, telephone espionage and death threats, in recent months.

The head of the PRODH's legal section, Digna Ochoa, who is responsible for much of the legal case work against army and police personnel in Guerrero, has been kidnapped twice within the last three months. The latest incident took place on October 28th when she was over-powered in her home by two unidentified men who interrogated her for nine hours about her connections with guerrilla groups in Guerrero. Ms Ochoa was left tied to her bed with the gas turned on. Members of local human rights groups have already experienced harassment and illegal interrogation by members of the security forces. Human rights offices are reporting the effects of telephone espionage.

Specific acts of violence against PRI opponents in recent weeks

The following is an overview of specific cases of assassination, torture, and illegal detention that have occurred since the PRD victory in Acapulco last month, as well as specific information that describes the level of impunity that exists in Guerrero for the police, Mexican Army, and PRI militants:

• PRD councilor elect Marco Antonio Lopez Garcia, his wife Kenia Hernandez Sotelo, and their son Marco Antonio Lopez Hernandez, were attacked by a group armed with AK-47 assault weapons. The attack took place as they left their house to attend the victory celebration of Zeferino Torreblanca. During the attack Lopez Garcia's son was killed, and Lopez Garcia was seriously wounded. The official police report stated that 19 shots fired from the AK-47s were found in the body of Lopez Garcia's car.

  Lopez Garcia has since testified that the former PRI councilor and PRI militant, Antonio Valdez Andrade, was allegedly responsible for the attack. State authorities have not only refused to investigate Valdez's involvement in the murder, but have used the incident as a pretext for arresting other local PRD members.

• PRD activist Angel Guillermo Martinez Gonzalez was apprehended by police on the night of October 8th. Family, friends and other PRD members were unable to locate him in the days following his detention as state and local police denied their involvement in his disappearance. Various news media sources reported that it is likely that Angel Guillermo Martinez Gonzalez was detained due to his political activism and the assistance he offered to Lopez Garcia and his family in the wake of the attack.

  Although Gonzalez was later found imprisoned in Acapulco after the intervention of PRD senator Felix Salgado, the police justified Gonzalez's detention on the basis that he was a suspect in the murder of Lopez Garcia's son. He is now being formally held on charges that he was both involved in the attack on the Lopez Garcia family and is a member of the ERPI. Gonzalez was forced to sign an admission of guilt under torture.

• On October 11th, deputy elect Juan Garcia Costilla and his son Amilcar Garcia, a medical student, were apprehended by the police. Although they have since been released, family members were unable to locate them in the days that followed their detention due to denials by the police that they were involved in their disappearance. Local residents estimated that 500 police were used in this illegal operation. The state attorney general has since tried to implicate Costilla in the attack on Lopez Garcia.

• On October 11th, the wife of Angel Guillermo Martinez Gonzalez, Virginia Montes, also a member of the local PRD, was detained and tortured by army personnel. During the torture she was forced to sign an admission of guilt that implicated her in the attack on Lopez Garcia as well as membership in the ERPI. Although the charges connected with her involvement in the Lopez Garcia attack have been dropped, she is now being held under charges of illegally possessing weapons that the security forces supposedly found at her house.

• On October 20th and 21st, the 48th battalion of the Mexican Federal Army invaded the municipality of Ayutla in search of "members of armed groups". Members of the community reported numerous illegal detentions, interrogations, and threats of physical harm in the wake of the incursion. Although human rights organizations, including the Human Rights Center of the Mountain "Tlachinollan", have officially denounced these incursions, they doubt that required state and federal investigations will take place.

• On October 22nd, four alleged members of the ERPI were detained and arrested by members of federal and state police forces. Two of the four who were detained have already been sentenced to prison, despite numerous irregularities relating to their place of detainment, the number of people originally arrested, the interrogation process, and documentation of supposed confessions. Furthermore, although federal authorities reported that Felicitas Padilla Nava was one of the four people detained during this operation, her whereabouts remained unknown until weeks after the original arrest.

• On October 23rd, religious clergy from the community of Ayutla de los Libres, including Father Heraclio Perez Garcia, and a nun by the name of Ana Maria Koppel Escobar, were detained and aggressively interrogated by members of the Federal Army. The Federal Army was in the process of stopping and reviewing all of the travelers and vehicles that passed by their military camp when they encountered Perez Garcia and Koppel Escobar. Both Perez Garcia and Koppel Escobar were questioned about their identity, their right to be working in the Ayutla de los Libres, their work in the community, their place of origin, and if they knew of armed groups in the area. Arbitrary detentions and interrogations by the Federal Army are a violation of article 11 of the Mexican Constitution.

• On October 26th, human rights worker Vidulfo Rosales Sierra was detained at a military check point on the road between Mexico City and Tlapa, Guerrero. Members of the Federal Army aggressively interrogated Rosales Sierra after they found documents from the PRODH in his personal belongings. Vidulfo Sierra is a member of the José Maria Morelos y Pavon Human Rights Center in Chilapa. Two days later Digna Ochoa of the PRODH was kidnapped and interrogated in her home in Mexico City.

• On October 28th, bilingual professor Higinio Altamirano de Aquino was detained and tortured for two hours by state police due to his participation in a teachers' union.

• Between October 25th and 28th, two cases of random interrogation and torture were reported by community members in the municipality of Atoyac by members of a Mixed Operations Base consisting of members of the state police and Federal Army. Police and army personnel claim that they were looking for members of local guerrilla groups.

• On November 7th, the Federal Army detained Carlos Lopez Mesino, member of the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS), in the community of Mezcaltepec in Coyuca de Benitez. Soldiers beat Lopez Mesino and gave him electric shocks in order to extract information implicating the organization's leader, Rocio Mesino Mesino, with the ERPI.

• The Human Rights Center of the Mountain (Tlachinollan), located in Tlapa Guerrero, has recently reported that the National Commission for Human Right (CNDH) has not fully investigated at least 20 cases of human rights violations committed by the Federal Army in Guerrero based on information provided by non-governmental organizations. Furthermore, Tlachinollan has officially denounced more than 60 cases of human rights violations in the mountain region of Guerrero committed by police and/or military personnel that have yet to receive a response from the CNDH. The CNDH has limited its role to making recommendations without proposing a concrete plan of action to punish those implicated in the crimes.

Conclusion

Recent events in Guerrero are a worrisome sign that the state government, in coordination with the federal government, Seguridad Publica, the Federal Preventive Police and the Federal Army are attempting to repress the fragile democratic transition in the state. The authorities are resisting political reform and social change by launching an illegal counterinsurgency campaign that aims to neutralize the activities of political parties and popular peasant organizations. The Federal Army and other security forces, including the newly formed PFP, have carried out incursions, detentions and interrogations in violation of key articles of the Mexican Federal Constitution. Article 129, for example, expressly prohibits the Armed Forces from performing tasks that are the exclusive responsibility of civilian authorities (such as the police).

Global Exchange is calling for a halt to the recent security operations and incursions by the security forces that have resulted in a rise in the number of serious human rights violations in recent weeks. Global Exchange also fears that the counterinsurgency campaign will prove counterproductive in terms of imposing a situation of peace and stability in Guerrero where political violence is rooted in the chronic poverty, impunity and social decomposition of the state. Armed groups such as the EPR and ERPI, along with an estimated 20 other guerrilla groups in Guerrero, are likely to be strengthened by the recent wave of repression as poor and marginalized sectors of the population lose faith in the democratic process. The experience in other conflictive states such as Chiapas has proven that support for armed revolutionary movements in Guerrero is likely to grow if the results of a legitimate political process are not respected. Guerrero's long history of political violence will only come to end once the state and federal governments accept and support the democratic transition of the state and make stringent efforts to end the endemic poverty and state of impunity that has plagued the region for so long.

Recommendations

1. That the state and federal authorities call an immediate halt to illegal detentions and interrogations of opposition activists;
2. That the Federal Army cease its incursions into indigenous communities and abide by Article 129 of the Mexican Constitution;
3. That suspects of political violence be investigated according to due legal process by the competent civilian authorities, fully respecting their civil and human rights under Mexican and international law;
4. That the judicial authorities in Guerrero thoroughly investigate and prosecute human rights violators operating in their jurisdictions;
5. That the CNDH fulfill its function as Mexico's human rights watch-dog by properly investigating human rights complaints filed by NGOs, while also insisting on a timely and concrete plan of action by state authorities to end the alarming level of abuse and impunity in Guerrero.