The Politics of Mexico Drug War in Michoacan: #LiberenaMireles - Free Jose Mireles Luis Hernandez Navarro - La Jornada
go to original July 1, 2014

On their knees, hands tied behind their backs, surrounded by masked soldiers and police, the Michoacán self-defense forces that did not submit to the government were not only apprehended, but humiliated. In order to make clear the exemplary nature of their punishment, several were transferred to a prison in Nayarit.

Their leader, Dr. José Manuel Mireles, was taken even farther away. As if he were one of the criminals he pursued, he was sent to the Federal Maximum Security Prison Number 11 on the outskirts of the Sonoran capital [Hermosillo].

On the Michoacán Coast, community police officers, many of them indigenous Nahua, responded to insult by blocking the highway connecting Michoacán to the neighboring states of Guerrero and Colima. Several hundred citizens mobilized in Morelia and other cities around the state to demand the physician's release.

Simultaneously, Mireles' arrest set off a new firmness between social networks and a majority of the communications media, both written and electronic. Tens of thousands of Tweets with the tag #LiberenaMireles expressed public outrage against the arrest, while a furious press campaign demonized the self-defense movement's [former] spokesperson.

Read the rest at Mexico Voices

Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx.

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