In the year 2000, at a time when there was still no international presence in the state of Guerrero, PBI began its first accompaniments to local human rights organisations. Five years had already passed since the first petitions for accompaniment were made to International Service for Peace (SIPAZ), located in Chiapas since the Zapatista uprising in 1994.
Obtilia Eugenio Manuel defends the rights of the Tlapanec people in the state of Guerrero and founded the Organisation of the Me’phaa Indigenous People (Organización del Pueblo Indígena Me’phaa, OPIM). In November 2019 she received Mexico’s National Human Rights Prize in recognition of her “significant trajectory in effectively promoting and defending” basic human rights. PBI accompanied Manuel between 2005 and 2011.
How and when did you start defending human rights?
On 26th November 2019 Tita Radilla travelled to the Mexican capital to attend an event commemorating the 10 year anniversary of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ sentence in the “Radilla Pacheco v Mexico” case. On the 23 November 2009 the Mexican state was condemned for grave human rights violations in which the military was signalled as responsible for the forced dissapearance of Rosendo Radilla, Tita’s father.
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
There are brave and extraordinary women throughout the world, fighting against the patriarchy that in many countries has women silenced, marginalised, threatened and harassed. PBI has the priviledge of accompanying women human rights defenders that fight for a fairer world, a world where rights are the same for everyone and a world where social justice is a reality.
The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center (CDHM Tlachinollan) is a human rights organization which has worked in the state of Guerrero since 1993. They promote and defend the rights of the ñuu savi, me’phaa, nauas, nn’anncue and mestizo peoples of the Montaña and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero; among them the collective rights of indigenous peoples; economic, social, cultural and environmental rights; and women’s rights.
The mountainous region of the State of Guerrero is an unstoppable source of resistance. Abel Barrera Hernández, director and founder of the Human Rights Center of the Mountain Tlachinollan, expressed this on the 24th anniversary of the organisations, celebrated on the 6th October in the municipalit
As we commemorate 4 years from the disappearance of the 43 students from the rural college of Ayotzinapa (Guerrero), PBI stands in solidarity with all those searching for their family members, coming up against unbearable impunity with strength and inspiring dignity.
Photo: “The industrialisation of the countryside”, mural by Grace Greenwood in the Abelardo Rodriguez market, Mexico City
Valentina Rosendo Cantú, indigenous me´phaa woman, originally from the community of Caxitepec, municipality of Acatepec in the high mountains of Guerrero, was victim of sexual torture by military members in 2002, a case in which the responsability of the Mexican State was decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in August 2010.