Andrew Clem home
Andrew Clem banner

Blog post


Monthly archives
(all categories)


September 4, 2008 [LINK / comment]

Mexicans protest violence

For the past few years, Mexico has been plagued by a wave of brutal murders and assassinations of public officials perpetrated by the narco-mafia. For example, twelve decapitated bodies were discovered last week outside the city of Merida camera, in the Yucatan peninsula. Most of them had criminal records, and it seems to be part of a war among rival drug gangs. It is thus a very encouraging sign that thousands of Mexican people have organized to protest this violence. At least 50,000 marched in Mexico City, demanding that the government of Felipe Calderon do more to fight the crime wave. See CNN.com. Calderon is well aware of the urgent need to fight the mafia, but he is handicapped by corruption in the police forces and continued political in-fighting, as the rival leftist PRD and centrist PRI parties resist his policy reform agenda. If he can't accomplish much more progress in the next few months, however, his conservative National Action Party (PAN) will suffer a defeat at the polls when the mid-term congressional elections are held next year.

Colombian rebels quit

Meanwhile, there is more progress toward pacification in Colombia, as another group of rebels has surrendered. The Guevarista Revolutionary Army (ERG), a faction of the National Liberation Army (the smaller of the two main rebel armies), agreed to demobilize. See BBC.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 04 Sep 2008, 2: 39 PM

(unformatted URL)
      .



This post is over a week old, so comments are closed.


© Andrew G. Clem. All rights reserved. Your use of this material signifies your acceptance of the Terms of use.


Hits on this page (single blog post) since July 2, 2007:

Category archives:
(all years)



This (or that) year's
blog highlights

Blog highlights have been compiled for the years 2010-2012 thus far, and eventually will be compiled for earlier years, back to 2002.


Explanation

The "home made" blog organization system that I created was instituted on November 1, 2004, followed by several functional enhancements in subsequent years. I make no more than one blog post per day on any one category, so some posts may cover multiple news items or issues. Blog posts appear in the following (reverse alphabetical) order, which may differ from the chronological order in which the posts were originally made:

  1. Wild birds (LAST)
  2. War
  3. Science & Technology
  4. Politics
  5. Latin America
  6. Culture & Travel
  7. Canaries ("Home birds")
  8. Baseball (FIRST)