Mexico City Legalizes Gay Marriage

You can also read this article on the Al Jazeera English website here.

Judith Vazquez and Lolkin Castañeda are preparing for their wedding. The two academics and gay rights activists have been living together for 6 years and are now enjoying a landmark decision that has given Mexico Citys gay population the right to marry, with all the legal benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy. They will be able to open a joint bank account, inherit property from each other and adopt children together. Judith believes that it is a defining moment.

“It is a triumph for those of us who believe that society and the world can change, for those that have the certainty that things can be different tomorrow, if you get involved. It’s a huge step forward.”

For some it is a step too far. Since the leftist government of Mexico City voted in the law in December, it has proved polemic. The nations ruling political party PAN has headed the opposition. Mariana Gomez del Campo, party coordinator in the Mexico City Legislative Assembly, claims that marriage should be reserved exclusively for heterosexual couples.

“It’s an institution for a man and woman for mutual help and procreation, those are the two reasons to marry, that’s what our laws say and our constitution.”

The fact that the law will give gay couples the right to adopt children has proved an inflammatory issue. The Catholic church has entered the debate, with the top Mexican cleric Norberto Rivera arguing that the law violates the rights of children.

“The government should be the first to respect the need for children to have a father and a mother.”

The official Catholic newspaper of Mexico City, “Desde La Fe” or “From the Faith”, calls the law “Immoral, unacceptable and reprehensible”. José Martín Rabágo, Archbishop of the central state of Leon, goes further, questioning whether the recent natural disasters are a divine response to “Legal initiatives which affect the base of society; the family”.

Even the Federal Attorney General has launched a legal counterattack against the law, citing an article in the constitution that makes reference to “protecting the family”. The Supreme Court is still reviewing this challenge which, if successful, could eventually overturn the measure.

Many gay activists are unsurprised by the strong reaction from these powerful institutions, saying that Mexico remains a macho society in which homophobia is prevalent. The capital is noticeably one of the more liberal, cosmopolitan areas, in which gay couples walk down the main avenue, Paseo Reforma, hand in hand and areas such as Zona Rosa are famous for gay cafes and bars.

Now the battle seems to be for the rest of the country, where the law does not apply. Some gay couples from other states plan to travel to Mexico City to marry and then return to their homes and attempt to force the state authorities to recognize their union.

Others are pushing directly for the law to be expanded into other states. 22 gay couples celebrated a “symbolic” marriage ceremony in Tlaxcala on 26th February to highlight the issue.

Their opponents will be equally determined to prevent the reform from spreading. The conservative states of Jalisco, Baja California, Sonora, Guanajuato, Morelos and Tlaxcala have already had consitutional challenges against the law in Mexico City rejected by the supreme court. They would put up a stiff resistance to it moving outside of the capital.

When the first couples in Mexico marry in the middle of March, Judith Vazquez and Lolkin Castañeda will be among those tying the knot. It is part of a growing trend in Latin America which saw the first gay wedding in Argentina at the end of December and gay couples in Uruguay granted the right of adoption in September. For Judith and Lolkin, it is the end of a long struggle to be recognized as any other married couple.

Church Authorities Hide Peadophile Priests in Mexico

You can also read this article at Al jazeera English website here.

14/04/10 Mexico City- Alberto Athie, a former Mexican priest, took the difficult decision to leave the Roman Catholic Church following his investigations into a high-profile paedophile priest.

He holds up the letter he wrote 13 years ago to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. It details senior Mexican priest Marcial Maciel’s sexual abuse of young boys.

As the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Maciel was one of the most influential of world Catholic figures before his death in 2008.

When Athie tried to deliver the letter to the Vatican, he was told that Cardinal Ratzinger was too busy to see him. Ratzinger’s staff told him to show no one else the contents of the correspondence.

In his relentless efforts to get the Vatican to investigate the sex abuse cases, Athie persuaded his friend, Mexican Bishop Carlos Talavera, to take the letter to Ratzinger. Talavera later informed him of Ratzinger’s response:

“I am sorry but this case cannot be investigated because Father Maciel is a great friend of the Holy Father and has done much good for the church. I am sorry but it isn’t prudent.”

A charismatic figure, Maciel brought priests and other material benefits to the church and was repeatedly honoured, despite allegations of child abuse and drug addiction.

He enjoyed a close relationship with Pope John Paul II, who described him in 1994 as a model for the young.

However after years of dodging complaints, Maciel was finally investigated by the Vatican in 2004. Two years later Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, banished Maciel from the ministry – nine years after the initial complaint.

It later emerged that Maciel had abused victims during four decades and fathered three children. Two of his sons say Maciel also sexually abused them.

On the move

Athie maintains that the Marciel was not the only paedophile priest in Mexico that the Vatican decided to ignore. He claims that the church has a long history of moving priests accused of sexual abuse from one parish to another to avoid controversy.

He says that the strategy has helped church leaders keep one step ahead of complaints, and has allowed them to continue abusing new victims.

Maciel allegedly abused some 200 young seminarians and children over four decades

Cardinal Norberto Rivera, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, recently declared that “the Archdiocese of Mexico will not defend or tolerate delinquents, but will make sure that the civil authorities act with the full force of the law”.

However, Rivera himself wrote a letter of good conduct allowing Nicolas Aguilar, accused of being one of the most notorious child abusers in the Mexican priesthood, to escape to the United States.

Aguilar has repeatedly found new places to continue working as a priest, on a journey of abuse that took him from Mexico City to Los Angeles, and then to Puebla, where he was still preaching in small villages in 2006, despite 19 legal complaints of lewd acts committed against US minors.

While Aguilar was protected from prosecution, one of his victims was treated quite differently.

Joaquin Mendez says he was a 13-year-old altar boy when Aguilar raped him. He went to the home of the local bishop to complain, but got no support.

“They put me in a room in the district Chapultepec to the side of the bishop’s house. There were four priests in the room with me. They led out my father and mother. They sat me down and interrogated me. They went out and told my father that it wasn’t clear what had happened to me and that they weren’t going to do anything.”

Athie believes the pope is the only person who can restore the church’s moral credibility, though he is the same man who ignored his pleas for justice 13 years ago.

“What will Ratzinger do? Will he deny this and delegitimize the complaints of society, regarding them as gossip and taunts without reason, as he is trying to do, or will he take the responsibility as head of the church and make sure that this never happens? This is his dilemma.”

It’s a dilemma that appears to becoming increasingly complicated as new cases of sexual abuses perpetrated by priests continue to emerge.

Drought Threatens Mexican Farmers

You can also read this story on the Al Jazeera English website here.

Sotero Palencia holds the withered corncob in his hand. It is all that’s left of his crop for this year and the result of the harshest Mexican drought inover six decades. Gesturing to the rest of the withered maize plants in the field, he tells us that what he has grown will only be sufficient to feed his few farm animals, not enough for his family to trade, or even eat.

His story is typical of the rural parts of San Luis Potosi, in the North West of the country. In Temascalito, Sotero’s village, many farmers didn’t even sow the fields for fear of wasting the seed.

313 000 hectares of crops were lost throughout the country in the months of July and August, according to Alberto Cardenas, the Secretary of Agriculture.  As a result, many small scale farmers have now left their communities to search for work. For farmers like Sotero this has proved a fruitless pursuit.

“You just get told ‘No we’re already full up, come back tomorrow, come back next week’.  You wander around spending the last cent you have in transport and come back with your family waiting for you and you have nothing.”

In the past the community could rely on money from relatives in the US during difficult times. Now, with the crisis North of the border, this has dried up and they are left with no source of income. State and Federal authorities have arrived to help as Gerardo Mendez, a government contract worker, explains.

“We are implementing state and federal government programs that include reforestisation, planting shrubs for grazing animals and creating more places to store water.”

Despite these plans, locals claim that the government will not address the principal water problems they face. In Temascalito the two local reservoirs are so full of soil that, even when it rains, not enough water can be stored for the needs of local families.  According to Beatriz Benavente, State Congresswoman, this is indicative of a government which has not prioritized rural areas.

“The former government of San luis Potosi was more concerned with dealing with business, generating an ornamental type of infrastucture with museums and convention centres. That resource never arrived at the countryside. I think if it had got there, we would have been able to save the crops of many small farmers.”

Now the drought has robbed them of their crops, many young men are leaving rural areas for the city or even for the US, aggravating an already existent rural exodus which has left rural Mexico with 50% of its inhabitants over 50 years old., according to figures from the Secretary of Agriculture. With Winter fast arriving and no food or jobs, the future of entire rural communities seems to be at stake.

Danger on The Tracks; Passing Migrants Prey to Mexican Gangs and Police

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Susanah squats down by the side of the train tracks in Tultitlan , Central Mexico. The 32 year old Honduran is one of the many central Americans passing through Mexico on freight trains to get to the US. However, the trip has become an increasingly dangerous journey.

“There are police that want to rob you. They take you and say, get out everything you’ve got. Because it happened to me in Orizaba, they took everything from me. ”

It is not only the police that seek to take advantage of the undocumented, and thus invisible population traveling through Mexico. Influential Mexican newspaper “El Universal” says that there is increasing sex trafficking by drug linked gangs who are taking advantage of the Guatemalan and Honduran women and children passing through. Frequently they are hauled off the trains and sold for as little as 40 dollars into sex slavery. At present there are 20 000 prostitutes from central America in Mexican brothels according to this Mexican daily. Susan says that the young girls are especially at risk.

“There are girls that travel of 15, 16 years old, and those are the ones most at danger of being abused.”

Even the Mexicans migrants contract to guide them or “Polleros” are not to be trusted. Many turn their charges over to be kidnapped by gangs who then beat them to obtain phone numbers of family in the states. Once they have the numbers they call these relatives to extract a ransom.

Mexican police are the last people the migrants can turn to for help as Javier Melendez, of the Commision for Human Rights in the state of Mexico, underlines.

“The migrants can be subject to extorsion by the police, the robbery of their things, beatings and other things, probably even kidnappings, which would be the worst case scenario.”

For a nation with a long history of migration, it seems surprising to many that Mexico should be so unforgiving to those traveling with the same objective. Paty Camarena is a local volunteer who provides food for the central American migrants.

“I love my country but there is a double moral standard here. We should learn how to treat our migrating neighbours to the South so that our neighbor to the North treats us with respect and produce more guarantees that reform migration as well.”

The growing antipathy towards migrants seems due to the many who do not complete their journey to the states and stay in Mexico. The economic crisis has fuelled this phenomenon as relatives in the US suddenly stop sending the money that migrants need to continue their journey North.

The mayor of Tultitlan, Marco Antonio Calzada Arroyo, says they then frequently turn to illegal activities to survive.

“Now they have become mixed with people from organized crime. With gangs that recruit them and get them to rob or commit crimes.”

He did not, however, produce any figures to back up this statement.

Grupo Beta, a government agency set up by the Mexican government to help migrants, has recorded a total of 75 migrants injured whilst crossing the country. The real number seems to be much higher, as Mexico presents increasingly hostile territory for those passing through.

Canadian Mine Threatens to Wipe Out Mexican Village

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Armando Mendoza points to the huge cracks in the walls of his house in San Pedro, Mexico. Gesturing to the ceiling that recently fell in, he shows the damage caused by the daily explosions from the Canadian owned mine San Xavier, which crouches over this small village.

Armando is one of the town residents who opposed the mine when it was proposed by New Gold in 1996. The community has been bitterly split over the project, which has brought jobs to some, but also razed the hill behind this former touristic attraction and begun to expand aggressively, breaking apart buildings, including the colonial era church, with daily explosions.

Now wire fences have been erected around the roads, marking off the green spaces within the village.  Armando says they were errected by local authorities in complicity with the mine.

“The fences have been put up the mine to get us out, so that we don’t have space to move. That is the ambition of this company, that we leave the village.”

San Xavier is owned by the Corporation New Gold, one of several Canadian mining companies attracted to Mexico by low royalty payments, an accommodating government and easy access to the minerals under relaxed Mexican laws.

Opponents to the mine claim that it has already wreaked irreversible environmental damage on the region, introducing cyanide into the water system that serves the state capital. The zone, with its rare species of cactus and fauna, was in the process of becoming a protected environmental site.  Now the area exploited by the mine resembles a lunar crater.

For its part, the mine says that it constantly monitors subterranean water to check contamination levels and that it has rescued more than 23,330 cactus from five protected species, as well as pursuing a reforestation plan.

Local lawyer Hector Barrí heads the legal opposition to the mine. He has obtained three federal tribunal orders to cease its operation on environmental grounds. However, the Mexican Environmental Secretary SEMARNAT has so far failed to enforce the sentence, allowing the mine to continue operating. With the latest court order against the mine, decreed this October, he feels the government will now be forced to act.

“ The Mexican Environmental Secretary cannot give a third permission (to Mina San Xavier) because it would be obvious that it had sold itself to a transnational company.”

Both SEMARNAT and the mine San Xavier declined the opportunity to interview.

Resistance to the mines can be a dangerous occupation. Enrique Rivera Sierra, a lawyer and protestor was badly beaten whilst handing out literature against the San Xavier mine. Fellow activists say that the case against the two attackers has been shelved indefinitely by the local authorities.

In other parts of the country the government has intervened against anti mine protesters. This August in Chiapas, Southern Mexico, activist Mariano Abarca was herded into an unmarked van by gunmen in and then held for three days without contact with his family. Later reports indicated that the capture was actually an arrest by undercover state police.

Claims that the mines bring economic revival and employment opportunities to local communities are qualified by Valeria Scorza of Mexican NGO PRODESC. She says that the jobs are fleeting and that the environmental and eventual economical cost is high.

“The life of a mine on average is between 15 and 20 years. Obviously if it is an open pit mine it causes ecological devastation and enormous health problems. Also the local town economy and investment becomes linked to the mining industry. So there is no development of other economical activities which can be sustainable in the long-term future. That’s why you see phantom villages where the mine has closed, there’s no economy for people to work in and there is a large amount of migration.”

It is unlikely that Canadian groups will stop their rush for precious metals in Mexico with important new discoveries still being made. The poor Southern States of Oaxaca and Chiapas appear first on the list with 72 mining concessions already granted in Chiapas alone between 2003 and 2006, according to Mandeep dhillon’s report ‘Made in Canada Violence: Mining in Mexico’. With little help from the Mexican government, it will be left to those local communities to fight alone for their water, their livelihoods and their land.