Con Amor ~Esther Chavez dies at 76; activist decried murders of women in Ciudad Juarez

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-esther-chavez27-2009dec27,0,2288127.story

or http://bit.ly/7EziFz

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Related Links ~
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/26/world/AP-LT-Mexico-Obit-Esther-Chavez.html

http://www.dailypress.com/news/world/sns-ap-lt-mexico-obit-esther-chavez,0,3512959.story

http://stxc.blogspot.com/2009/12/rip-esther-chavez.html

http://www.lannan.org/lf/bios/detail/esther-chavez-cano/

Gracias Hermana Sandra ~ Once in a great while we mere mortals are blessed with
a humane being's great maternal love and heartfelt compassion that renews our inner faith in humanity, our faith in goodness upon Mother Earth and our undying faith in our own capacity to bring about conscious change!

One committed loving soul can make a key difference in the long realm of human history. She was truly a liberated woman who sought the liberation of others, especially innocent women caught by male evildoers who should and will be sternly corrected by the long strong arms of justice.

Her struggle is our struggle. We will protect the innocents, the invisible, all those
hungry souls oppressed by armed evil doers.

The struggle for liberation for all of us goes on.

BE strong hearted as Hermana Esther was for all of us. Faint weak hearts never win decisive battles. Earth's cry, Heaven's smile! Never tire, never relent, never quit!

Venceremos Unidos! Education for Liberation!

Peter S. López, Jr. aka~Peta

Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com 

http://twitter.com/Peta_de_Aztlan

 

HumanE-Liberation-Party~http://help-matrix.ning.com/ 

c/s

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From: Sandra Sunshine Williams <ulisandra.paz@verizon.net>
To: NetworkAztlan_Action@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, December 27, 2009 9:49:14 AM
Subject: [NetworkAztlan_Action] Esther Chavez dies at 76; activist decried murders of women in Ciudad Juarez

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-esther-chavez27-2009dec27,0,2288127.story

latimes.com

OBITUARIES

Esther Chavez dies at 76; activist decried murders of women in Ciudad Juarez

Chavez drew attention to the 1990s killings of several hundred women, which were largely ignored by Mexican authorities, and founded her region's first rape crisis center.

By Tracy Wilkinson

December 27, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City

Esther Chavez, a vocal champion of human rights who against enormous odds drew attention to the killings and rapes of hundreds of women in the violent border city of Juarez, has died. She was 76.

Chavez died early Christmas morning of cancer, her hometown newspaper El Diario reported Saturday on its website.

Chavez is widely acknowledged as a pioneer, the first activist to document and decry the 1990s murders of several hundred women. Most were young, poor workers in U.S.-owned assembly plants in the border city whose deaths were largely ignored by authorities.

A former accountant for an American food-processing company, Chavez began compiling files in 1993 on women whose bloodied, battered bodies kept turning up in the harsh desert surrounding Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. She badgered officials, pressured police, comforted victims' families, led street demonstrations and, in 1999, founded the first rape crisis center in the region.

Juarez politicians were dismissive; they didn't want to do anything that might damage business with the maquiladoras, or assembly plants clustered mainly along the border, and their U.S. and Japanese owners. Police, notoriously corrupt, were uninterested. Most of the dead women were migrants from other parts of Mexico, so they had no local family to advocate on their behalf. They had only Chavez.

Early in her activism, Chavez speculated that the tendency of the maquiladoras to hire women (smaller hands were better for the assembly work, it was argued by the companies) may have contributed to a macho backlash that explains some of the killings.

"Women are occupying the space of men in a culture of absolute dominance of men over women," she told The Times in 1999. "This has to provoke misogyny."

For years, it seemed in Ciudad Juarez that men could snatch young women from the streets with impunity, rape and kill them and suffer no consequence. The phenomenon came to be known as "femicide" -- woman-killing. Thanks largely to Chavez and a few other activists, a handful of arrests were made over the years. But the killing never really stopped, and most cases went unsolved.

Petite and persistent, Chavez opened Casa Amiga in 1999 for rape victims, and it later developed into a center for women suffering from domestic abuse. She remained highly critical of the complicity or inefficiency of police and other authorities.

In 2008, Chavez won Mexico's National Human Rights Award, and just a few months ago she blasted the decision of President Felipe Calderon to name Arturo Chavez Chavez as national attorney general. Arturo Chavez Chavez had served as state prosecutor overseeing Ciudad Juarez at the height of the killings.

Early this month, in what may have felt like vindication for Esther Chavez, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Mexico violated human rights conventions by failing to adequately investigate the murders of three women in Ciudad Juarez in 2001. The court ordered Mexico to pay more than $200,000 to each of the victims' families.

Lydia Cacho, a journalist and activist who has gained fame denouncing pedophile and human-trafficking rings, said Chavez was a "nurturing and loving mother" for a generation of human rights defenders, and an "international beacon" shedding light on the brutalities of Ciudad Juarez.

"She was the one who showed us the way," Cacho wrote Saturday in El Universal newspaper. "It was Esther who intuited that the symbolic sewers [of Mexico] were not underground, under the streets, but were the institutions of the Mexican state -- men capable of murdering for pleasure and for power."

Chavez was the model for a character in "El Traspatio," a movie about the killings of women in Juarez that is Mexico's Academy Award entry this year. In the movie, a middle-aged social worker hounds the city police, showing up periodically with boxes full of photos of dead women and meticulous reports on their lives and deaths.

Chavez was born in 1933 in the city of Chihuahua, in the state of Chihuahua where Ciudad Juarez is also located. She moved to Juarez in the 1980s.

On the Casa Amiga website, Chavez wrote about her decision to fight on behalf of women.

"The voice of the woman is a reflection of her condition on Earth," she wrote. "Air echoes in a chest that is smaller, vibrates vocal cords that are smaller and that produce a higher, thinner sound. It requires twice the energy, twice the intensity of a man's voice" to be heard.

"This is why I learned to shout for those who couldn't . . . and to cry so many times for and with so many women, girls and boys whose voices and whose lives have been crushed by the impunity of our state and our nation."

Survivors include a brother. A memorial service was held Saturday and another will take place today in the offices of Casa Amiga. Chavez will be cremated today, El Diario reported.

wilkinson@latimes. com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

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Pacific Coast: First Signs of Civilization

http://bit.ly/53dA0M

« 4 Venus / 4 Rabbit in the Mayan Aztec Calendar | Main | 5 Water in the Mayan Azteca Calendar »

12/25/2009

Pacific Coast: First Signs of Civilization

These seven locations - Paso de la Amada and Izapa in Chiapas; La Blanca, El Mesak, Ocós, and Monte Alto in Guatemala; and Chalchuapa in El Salvador - appear to be the first higher culture villages in Mesoamerica. They showed signs of the impending explosion of cultures that began at about 1400 BC, with the Mayans (Mirador and Chiapa de Corzo), the Olmecs (San Lorenzo), the Zapotecs (San José Mogote), and the central Mexicans (Tlapacoya). The main cultural indicator found by archeologists are the ceramic shards, dating from 1800 BC or before, of the type that later symbolized the Olmec and early Pre-Classic Mayan era.

While previously the Olmecs of the Gulf Coast of Mexico were seen as the 'mother culture' of Mesoamerica, now historians paint a more complicated picture of multiple early cultures mutually influencing each other. In fact two early Mayan area sites had ceremonial architecture prior to any built in the Olmec area: a ballcourt built at Paso de la Amada at about 1400 BC and a temple structure at Mirador in the northern Petén of Guatemala at about the same time. In addition, the large sculptured heads at Monte Alto seem to pre-date those in the Olmec area and likely were the inspiration for the famous Olmec sculptures.

It is not known if this early Pacific coast culture spoke a proto Mayan language or a Mixe-Zoquean language like that spoken 500 years ago along the Chiapas coast and spoken by the Zapotecs in Oaxaca and, likely, the Olmecs. By 1400 BC this part of the Pacific coast would have major trade and relationships with both the Mayan interior, including Mirador, and the Zapotecs and Olmecs.

Two scientific discoveries allowed the early Pacific Coast people to begin to flourish and a third discovery would cause a revolution throughout Mesoamerica between 1500 and 1400 BC. The first discovery, somewhere between 1800 BC and 1500 BC, was that of tracking the tides and recognizing a pattern in the tides that repeated every 13 days. This allowed these early people to concentrate on hunting and agriculture on those days that the fishing and crabbing would be bad due to slack tides. This, in turn, allowed for greater population density, specialization of tasks, the creation of local hierarchies, and surplus time to devote to trade, more science, and entertainment (ball games).

Soon thereafter, they noticed a longer tidal pattern that lasted about 170 to 175 days. Every 170 days or so, there would be a period of slack tides that would last for nearly 50 consecutive days. This realization allowed these people to begin to take longer trade journeys to places as distant as Mirador, the Oaxaca highlands, or to the Olmec coast. It is about 265 miles from Chalchuapa to El Mirador, for example. Averaging 15 miles per day, one could travel there and back, allowing for a five day stay at Mirador, in 40 days, returning in time for the next set of days with high tides and good fishing.

The tracking of the tides also led to a number system with rocks and sticks, and, more than a thousand years later, a writing system. Later they also correlated the slack tides with the lunar and solar eclipses, giving a strong pretense to their sun-based religion.

The second discovery was not so much of a discovery as an accomplishment, that is, to become adept ocean voyagers. The peoples of Central America and Mexico were likely using dug-out canoes for hundreds or thousands of years before this on rivers and inland lakes. But given the spacing of villages in the map above, it becomes clear that a primary mode of travel became by ocean. If not, the expansion of culture would have continued from the Izapa - La Blanca area in an overland fashion. The skip in high culture to dis-contiguous points further southeast - Monte Alto and Chalchuapa - indicates the use of coastal canoe voyages at about this time. The ocean-going canoes became a key in the long-distance trade which began in earnest by 1400 BC.

The third discovery was the most important. But before going forward it will be necessary to go much further back. And pick up a copy of Jared Diamond on the way.

Posted at 03:53 PM in Archeological Sites, Beginnings of Civilization, Geography, Maps, Pre-Classic Maya, Tides | Permalink

Technorati Tags: canoe, Chalchuapa, civilization, eclipse, Izapa, Mayan, Monte Alto, Olmec, tide

| Reblog

http://inclusivebusiness.typepad.com/indigenous_elsalvador/2009/12/pacific-coast-first-signs-of-civilization.html

 

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Venceremos Unidos! Education for Liberation!

Peter S. López, Jr. aka~Peta

Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com 

http://twitter.com/Peta_de_Aztlan

 

HumanE-Liberation-Party~http://help-matrix.ning.com/ 

c/s

Flashback: Online Link to ICE Endgame Strategic Plan

Google 'endgame'

 
Online Link to ICE Endgame Strategic Plan
http://www.thenyic.org/images/uploads/ICE_Endgame_Strategic_Plan.pdf

Related Article

http://americanbadass607.wordpress.com/2006/12/31/the-endgame-homeland-security%E2%80%99s-detention-plan-and-pnac%E2%80%99s-role-in-all-this/

The Endgame, Homeland Security's Detention Plan, and PNAC's Role in all this.

2006 December 31

by americanbadass607

A plan devised by Homeland Security for the detainment of thousands of people that the government would have declared Enemy Combatants, along with Illegal Aliens and other such types will start to take place according to their own documents.

A plan named Endgame is going to be into place in a ten-year period near the completion of the building and refurbishing FEMA Internment Camps. These camps are in a multi-million dollar contract awarded to KBR (Kellogg, Browning, and Root) a subsidiary of Halliburton. In addition, Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff, said that the 2007 budget would contain 400 million dollars for that project.
Article

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budget would allocate over $400 million to add 6,700 additional detention beds (an increase of 32 percent over 2006). This $400 million allocation is more than a four-fold increase over the FY 2006 budget, which provided only $90 million for the same purpose.

In post 9-11-2001, the Bush administration has been seeking ways of using strict measures against those who they deem to be Enemy Combatants. We have seen such measures put into place with the ill-advised passage of the Patriot Act, The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, and the latest passage of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) 2006. This administration is slowly destroying the rights of the American people, and the people are letting them as they hide under their beds shouting stop the Boogieman. In the days and months to come, they will do just that by placing them in a Civilian Inmate Labor Program.

Before you all start yelling that I am wearing a tinfoil hat, you need to checkout the recently unclassified report entitled Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This is the official Military Document.

With programs such as these it lead one to wonder if there would ever be the need for a mandatory draft. With the army stretched thin, and the call by George W. Bush to up recruitment to 200,000 more troops on U.S. soil, and the plan to send 30 to 50 thousand more to the Middle East, there would almost have to be a draft of some kind. However not with these two plans.

Another interesting look at what is happening with these laws and plans that are being drawn up comes from a site I stumbled upon. Free Vision

Of course, all we have to do is look at the history books to know that this is how it works. As a matter of fact, according to the latest survey, it is already working. It was reported, just yesterday, two weeks after the nation-wide protests, that the rate of Hispanic military enlistments has gone up. Coincidence? Not at all. Anyone with any brains about this should realize that the majority of those enlistments are upon the condition that illegal immigrants be permitted citizenship for military service, rather than be faced with deportation. Heck, just because the media isn't reporting it doesn't mean it isn't happening. Things like this DO happen in the USA, believe it or not.

Keeping in mind that General Tommy Franks has said that after the next attack on the soil of the United States the Constitution will not survive , but will be replaced by Martial Law. However, he does not specify the size of this attack. Would it have to be the magnitude of 9-11, or would a smaller attack suffice? There are so many things that this administration is capable of doing and have already done, it is hard to say what will happen next, but you can bet it will happen.

What if prisoners are given "The Dirty Dozen" type choice, where they could choose to fight for the country, or face life in prison, or the Death Penalty. That would alleviate the prison over population, and bring the administration closer to meeting their unrealistic goal of 200 thousand more new recruits without using a mandatory draft.

For those to young to remember "The Dirty Dozen" is a movie that was made in 1967.The plot was, A US Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead them into a mass assassination mission of German officers in World War II. The cast included, Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, Donald Southerland, and many other stars of the day.

To see the trailer of the original go to Dirty Dozen

To me, the way the administration is headed is a dangerous one for the country and the citizenry. However, I am not so naive as to believe that it has not been planed out for a number of years. If you look back through the last decades, you can see it building. It is a slow and deliberate process that has not yet reached its "Endgame".

I am not sure, but with the execution of Saddam Hussein this morning, we could see a major escalation in violence both in Iraq and on U.S. soil. The perfect scenario for Martial Law. I do not write this to be a fear monger or to play the role of the profit of doom. I write of this to warn of the chance that is there for those who would use this as an excuse, possibly inside our own government.

Time and time again I listen to the argument that our government had something to do with the attack on 9-11-2001, or at least knew of the impending attack. In my research, I have found the latter to be true. The Bush administration was given information that would have stopped the attacks from being completed, yet chose to ignore these warnings. I am drawn back to the statement in the PNAC agenda that says that another Pearl Harbor is needed to sway the people's opinion, on the Middle East. (the PNAC website has been reformatted, and certain controversial statements have been removed. However it seems that they must be proud of the most controversial statement found in "Rebuilding America's Defenses"

Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor.

as I have pointed out in my diaries before, President Bush has followed their recommendations to the tee. In the amount of funding they have said was needed, to the number of troops. In past months, the PNAC members have tended to turn from the Commander and Chief, allowing him to take the total fall for their failed plan. But has it failed?

They have really achieved their objective, by causing chaos in the Middle East, and strengthening Israel, they have seemed to achieve most of what was needed in the plan. With George W. Bush calling for the rebuilding of the military, and the deployment of more troops to the Middle East, it seems all they need is another war to complete being able to sustain wars on multiple fronts.

ABA

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Venceremos Unidos! Education for Liberation!

Peter S. López, Jr. aka~Peta

Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com 

http://twitter.com/Peta_de_Aztlan

 

HumanE-Liberation-Party~http://help-matrix.ning.com/ 

c/s

US Prosecutes More Illegal Immigrants: Sarah Buduson ~ Reporter, KPHO.com

http://bit.ly/6HS765

US Prosecutes More Illegal Immigrants

Sarah Buduson ~ Reporter, KPHO.com

UPDATED: 8:30 am MST December 24, 2009

 

PHOENIX -- Federal prosecutions of immigration cases surged 16 percent in fiscal year 2009, according to Department of Justice data analyzed by a Syracuse University research center.

 

Prosecutors filed 91,899 immigration cases between October 2008 and September 2009, according to researchers.

 

Most cases involve illegal immigrants who agreed to return to Mexico to avoid jail time.

 

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said the federal government is going too easy on people who cross the border illegally.

 

"You want to be tough on illegal immigration," he said. "You prosecute people that do that and put them in jail."

 

"You tell everybody, 'You cross that border, you're going to jail. Period,'" said Arpaio.

 

He said the federal government should also work more closely with the Mexican government to help develop its economy so Mexican citizens have more opportunities for work.

 

Arpaio also said the federal government should also put more pressure on the Mexican government help U.S. efforts to reduce illegal immigration.

 

Valley immigration lawyers agree that the rise in federal prosecutions is an ineffective way to tackle the illegal immigration problem.

 

"These types of prosecutions that are flooding our federal immigration courts involved extremely low level, not major, criminals," said Gerald Burns, who heads the Arizona chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, "Not rapists, not murderers, not drug pushers and peddlers."

 

Burns is also concerned the quick plea deals reached by prosecutors could be violating illegal immigrants' rights.

 

"Federal immigration laws does provide for due process and there's a real concern that people are being kind railroaded out of the country," he said.

c/s

Sheriff Arapoo Answers Immigration Questions
http://www.kpho.com/video/22051548/index.html


http://www.kpho.com/news/22050919/detail.html#

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Comment: Prosecutors filed 91,899 immigration cases between October 2008 and September 2009, according to researchers. In the short term, only a logical humane immigration policy will give justice to all immigrants. In the long run, a global democratic revolution is the ultimate solution! Reform will never be enough. It just gives many false hopes!

Venceremos Unidos! Education for Liberation!

Peter S. López, Jr. aka~Peta

Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com 

http://twitter.com/Peta_de_Aztlan

 

HumanE-Liberation-Party~http://help-matrix.ning.com/ 

c/s