On 25 May 2019 PBI organised a meeting between representatives from the international community and organisations that are dedicated to the defence of land and territory rights in Mexico. Two organisations that PBI accompanies attended, Servicios para una Educación Alternativa A.C (EDUCA) from Oaxaca and the Alianza Sierra Madre A.C (ASMAC) from Chihuahua, as well as the Red de Defensores y Defensores Comunitarios de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Redcom). Additionally, the Australian, Canadian, Spanish, British and Swiss embassies joined the discussion.

On 21 August 2019, at the Universidad Autonoma de México, Comité Cerezo, the National Campaign Against Forced Disappearances (Campaña Nacional Contra la Desaparición Forzada) and Urgent Action for Human Rights Defenders (Acción Urgente para Defensores de Derechos Humanos) presented their 8th report, “Defending human rights in Mexico, The end of impunity?”.

On June 22, 2019, PBI accompanied EDUCA (Servicios para una Educación Alternativa) at Oaxaca’s first ever “Guelaguetza” against mining, in the municipality San Martín de los Cansecos. Various communities from the Valles Centrales in Oaxaca joined together to commemorate the state’s annual “Rebellion Against Mining Day” and to reaffirm “¡Sí a la vida, no a la minería!”(Yes to life, no to mining!)

In July 2019, PBI accompanied the seventh revision of the Contingency Plan’s working tables, which is a preventive strategy. The report “Turning the Tide on Impunity”, published by WOLA and PBI, values this public policy as an advance of the Federal Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.

In the north of the country, in the city of Chihuahua, you will find Uno de Siete Migrando (One Out of Seven Migrating) an organisation that provides advice and accompaniment to migrants, refugees and displaced people in the state of Chihuahua.

Enclaved between the Sierra Madre del Sur and the Costa Grande, in the state of Guerrero lies the Atoyac de Álvarez municipality, a place where wounds from the “Dirty War” of the 70s have still not healed.

Between 25 and 27 March, 2019, by request of Tita Radilla, PBI accompanied the Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos, Desaparecidos y Víctimas de Violaciones a los Derechos Humanos en México (AFADEM), as the sixth stage of excavations commenced in the search of numerous disappeared persons.

The accompaniment provided by PBI in 2018 benefited to more than 50 civil society organisations and 341 defenders, of whom 65% were women. The work carried out by these people benefits at least 146,351 people and promotes human rights across the whole country.

2018 has been a year of struggle, of resistance, and of extraordinary bravery from those who, on a daily basis, put their lives at risk to defend human rights.

See our new Global Report about the work of all PBI entities across the world in 2018.  Find out about our project work in Latin America, Africa and Asia as well as stories from the human rights defenders we accompany.  Also see our financial summary, information about where our volunteers come from and the donors who make our work possible.

Atoyac de Álvarez is a municipality in the State of Guerrero between the Sierra Madre del Sur and the Costa Grande, and as with many regions in Latin America, its veins remain open.  It´s history, throughout the so-called “Dirty War” in the 70s, is paradigmatic of the history of State violence in Mexico: human rights violations through the militarisation of the area, forced disappearances and killings.  If democracy fears remembering, and we become ill with amnesia, family members of disappeared people have incessantly sought their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sist

After two decades of struggle, the Rarámuri community of Choréachi in the Sierra Tarahumara mountain range achieved an important sentence in late 2018. The sentence dictates that the boundaries delineating their ancestral territory must be respected and that the logging permits that were illegally granted to a non-indigenous agrarian community, are invalid.