Click to enlarge — Yuri Cortez/AFP
Like Gambia, Syria, Sri Lanka and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico is a country whose government uses enforced disappearance to silence their critics and instil fear…
On August 27, Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, presented a report to mark International Day of the Disappeared, which reveals that since 2007 — i.e., during the administrations of Felipe Calderón [2006-2012] and Enrique Peña Nieto [2012- ] — almost 25,000 people have disappeared in Mexico.
AI reported that almost half the disappearances, 12,500, have occurred during the current administration…
In listing emblematic cases of enforced disappearance, Amnesty International cited the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students as a case with great impact worldwide. The AI report states…”Even with the world’s attention on the case, Mexican authorities have failed to properly investigate all aspects of the case, especially the disturbing criticism regarding complicity of the armed forces.”
AI is organizing a campaign of letters urging the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, to investigate these disappearances. The end of this article has a sample of the letter in English and a link to the same in Spanish.
Eideard 
“Mexico and the World: Need to Retake Democracy Captured by Economic Interests.” http://mexicovoices.blogspot.com/2015/09/mexico-and-world-need-to-retake.html
“…Both nationally and globally, our inability to face national and civilizational challenges, from corruption to climate change, originates from major economic interests capturing democratic regimes, corporations and powerful groups, both illegal and legal, capturing democracy. It could be argued that the national and international situations are proof of democracy’s failure. However, it is precisely the lack of democracy that has pushed the crisis to the extreme: the imposition of private interests over public ones. This dynamic ranges from the attempt and capture of some UN bodies, imposing trade agreements and their authority over human rights, to the capture of national executive branches and legislatures
When we talk about democracy, we aren’t thinking of electoral democracy, of choosing a candidate we don’t know guided by marketing. This has to do with democracy as an expression of collective interest, social control, rule of law, social justice, human rights, as a basis for political exercise. This is democracy that maintains channels of communication for citizen control of power.
Not only do we see it to be difficult to get out of the national situation in which we live, it seems increasingly impossible to prevent climate change from reaching irreversible extremes. Also, we are witnessing a deteriorating global economy with concentrations of wealth, rising inequalities, migration and the revival of racism in powerful areas…”
Alejandro Calvillo, Director of the Mexican civil association Consumer Power, member of the Council of Consumers of PROFECO [Federal Prosecutor for Consumer Protection] and Consumers International.
“Mexico’s ghost towns : Residents seeking asylum in US fear returning to deadly Juárez Valley” http://projects.aljazeera.com/2015/09/mexico-invisible-cartel/ “…Martín Huéramo, 48, served as one of six members of the Guadalupe City Council. He and hundreds of other Juárez Valley inhabitants have found refuge in Fabens, Texas, while the United States decides if they should be granted political asylum, which is rarely given to Mexicans. They are all convinced that the terror in their hometown has nothing to do with a supposed turf war among drug cartels, as the government and mainstream media attest. Instead, they believe, the massive violence was provoked by the government itself, at the behest of a handful of powerful investors. In the abandoned and burned-out remains of Guadalupe, former residents see a scorched-earth policy: The state colluded with capitalists and criminals, they say, to empty the area of both residents and industry so that large binational groups could swoop in and develop huge infrastructure projects on valuable borderlands rich in natural resources.”