Document #1089750
IRB – Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (Author)
Reports on major student strikes in Mexico
during the requested timeframe found among the sources currently
available to the IRBDC are listed below and attached to this
response. These include a report on a strike by several thousand
students protesting in February 1983 against the planned closure of
a public teacher-training college and the government's economic
policies. The students are reported to have been violently
dispersed by riot police on motorcycles and firetrucks, resulting
in approximately 150 people injured (see Keesing's Record of
World Events, p. 33395). Hunger strikes to pressure the
government on the cases of hundreds of political prisoners and
disappeared reportedly took place in 1983 and 1984, but specific
references to students are not included in the available report
(Keesing's, p. 33397).
Please find attached an Amnesty
International Urgent Action bulletin (listed below)
reporting cases of students being arrested in the weeks following
demonstrations in Mexico City on Labour Day (1 May) of 1984.
For reports on a strike and demonstration
by students of the UNAM in 1987, described as the largest since the
1968 demonstrations which resulted in hundreds of student deaths,
please find attached three articles. The student unrest, as
described in these articles, started in late-1986 as a result of a
reform programme which included higher fees and tougher admission
and academic standards. The unrest reportedly included sit-ins,
boycotts and occupations before the strike, which is reported to
have ended peacefully.
Very few detailed reports on human rights
abuses in Mexico can be found among the current IRBDC resources.
Americas Watch indicates in its most recent report on that country
(Human Rights in Mexico: A Policy of Impunity; Washington,
D.C.: Americas Watch, June 1990) that "many obstacles to accurate
reporting and adequate investigation of human rights abuses remain
[in Mexico]" (p. 4).
Although a recent Americas Watch report on
Mexico (Human Rights in Mexico: A Policy of Impunity) states
the following:
"[t]he Federal; Judicial Police, and
particularly its anti-narcotics trafficking division, are
implicated in many of the worst reports of torture and
extra-judicial killing",
specific references to judicial police involvement in quelling
student unrest and disappearance of students could not be found
among the sources currently available to the IRBDC. The quoted
Americas Watch report states in page 15 that after the collapse of
the Federal District Attorney General's headquarters in Mexico City
during the 1985 earthquake, many bodies of prisoners showing signs
of torture were unearthed, including that of an accounting student
from the UNAM.
Various sources, including some of the
attached documents, report cases of torture and disappearance in
Mexico, but few identify victims. The report Amnesty
International's Concerns in Mexico (London: Amnesty
International, 1986), indicates that 13 students and teachers
disappeared between 1978 and 1982, while in its Amnesty Report
1988 (London, 1988) Amnesty International reported that by the
end of 1987 the organization was "working on 52 cases of people who
disappeared between 1972 and 1983"
(p. 124). The latter report includes no specific references of
students. The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for
1987, (Washington: U.S. Department of State, 1988), as well as
the next year's edition, report in their chapters on Mexico that
over 500 persons remained "disappeared" in Mexico both in 1987 and
1988. The Country Reports for 1987 (p. 541) quotes a local
group's claim that during De La Madrid's administration, up to
1987, the number of disappeared whose whereabouts remained unknown
was 24. According to the same group, as quoted in the Country
Reports for 1988 (p. 633), by 1988 the number of disappeared
with unknown fate during the De La Madrid administration rose to
34. Neither one of the reports indicates whether students were
included in those numbers.
Please find attached an article ("Former
mexican soldier describes...", listed below") which states that a
United Nations group investigating disappearances "listed 194
unexplained disappearances in Mexico as of 1988". The same 1989
article indicates that Amnesty International had last received
reports of disappearances in Mexico in 1983 or 1984. The source
adds that Amnesty International didn't consider the disappearance
and extra-judicial killings in Mexico as the work of a "death
squad" named as such, but regarded them as cases of "military
acting under higher orders".
Pages 47 and 48 of the abovequoted Americas
Watch report state that "[d]isappearances continued on a smaller
scale during the de la Madrid presidency (1982-1988)" and add that
these "followed a pattern similar to that in other countries of
Latin America in the same years". The abductors were reportedly
armed forces' personnel or policemen, "including a clandestine
police unit known as the Brigada Blanca (White Brigade)" composed
of agents from the Federal Security Directorate and the Federal
Judicial Police.
The response to your information request
6690 also contains some information regarding cases of
disappearance during the De La Madrid administration, with
references to students and teachers. Please find attached some
pages of the abovequoted Americas Watch report which contain some
general information on human rights reporting, disappearance,
torture and extra-judicial killing, as well as other abuses by some
branches of the police in Mexico. A copy of Amnesty International
Reports of recent years should be available through Amnesty
International offices. A copy of the complete Americas Watch report
on Mexico quoted above is available through Americas Watch
(telephone, fax number and address shown in the cover sheet
attached) at a cost of approximately US$10.00. The IRBDC cannot
provide full copies of documents published by other institutions
unless specifically authorized by them.
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