Veracruz: police raid peasant land occupation

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Tue, 06/19/2007 - 01:20.

Veracruz state police detained 47 members of local campesino group "Los Dorados de Villa" at the community of Ixhuatlán de Madero, in the mountainous Huasteca region. The campesinos, adherents of the Zapatista "Other Campaign," had been peacefully occupying a 513-hectare piece of land at Lomas del Dorado, from which they say they had been illegally evicted by the army 23 years ago. They say the occupation was undertaken after a generation of fruitless petitions for redress. An observer at the scene from the local United Human Rights Network (RUDH) is said to have been "disappeared." (La Jornada, June 16; LIMEDDH, June 15)

Meanwhile in Veracruz City, some 2,000 residents dressed in ritual white held a march in support of the federal police and army presence in the state, calling for military forces to be permanently stationed to combat increasingly violent narco gangs. Hundreds of local police joined the march. (La Jornada, June 18)

See our last posts on Mexico, Veracruz and the narco crisis.