Justice for all? In rural Mexico, the army continues to operate under its own supervision. (Spotlight).

Few vehicles traverse the narrow dirt road to Barranca Bejuco, an indigenous Tlapaneco community high in the mountains of southern Guerrero. But one April morning a small convoy of visitors did arrive.

Representatives from human rights organizations, including Amnesty International USA and Global Exchange, visited the town to hear testimony from Valentina Rosendo Cantu, an indigenous woman who claims to have been raped by Mexican soldiers last Feb. 16.

Valentina told her tragic tale to the female members of the human rights delegation. A 17-year-old mother, Valentina says she was washing clothes 200 meters from her house when soldiers appeared asking about suspected guerrillas in the area. She was questioned, beaten and raped by two of the soldiers, she said.

Her story is not unique in the mountains of Guerrero. Inez Hernandez Ortega, a Tlapaneca mother of four from nearby Barranca Tecuani, claims to have been sexually assaulted in her home on Mar. 22 by three soldiers.

MODUS OPERANDI 

Throughout the region, campesinos report frequent rights abuses and harassment by military personnel involved in drug eradication and counter-insurgency.

"Army patrols, roadblocks and arbitrary searches are not uncommon in these rural communities," says Abel Barrera Hernandez, director of the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center. "This is a campaign to intimidate and control indigenous campesinos, to prevent them from organizing politically. In Barranca Bejuco there is no electricity, no potable water and, except for the military presence, practically no government services."

The recent human rights violations in the state of Guerrero are not isolated incidents. According to the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center, in May 1999, two campesino environmental activists, Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia, were arrested by soldiers of the 40th Infantry Battalion and subsequently tortured into confessions of crimes they did not commit. Pardoned and released by President Vicente Fox for humanitarian reasons on Nov. 8, 2001, they have yet to be declared innocent, and the perpetrators of their allegedly unjust incarceration and torture have not been prosecuted.

It was only after the murder of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa y Placido, who represented Montiel and Cabrera, that the two Guerrero activists were freed. Meanwhile, Ochoa's murder remains unsolved after more than six months. The Mexico City Attorney General's Office (PGJDF) has now begun to focus much of its investigation on whether or not she might have committed suicide, even though Ochoa, a former Dominican nun, received two gunshot wounds--one in the leg and one in the head. Ochoa, many of whose cases involved human rights violations by military personnel, had received numerous death threats, and was kidnapped twice in 1999.

OFFICIAL IMPUNITY

In the last three years there have been nine cases of disappearances involving the police or military in Guerrero. Top police officials have submitted sworn eyewitness testimony of torture by their colleagues. All of these cases have been documented by local activists and the state human rights commission in Chilpancingo, Guerrero.

But these cases rarely end in arrests, given that no independent agency exists to prosecute human rights abuses by state government officials or military personnel. The national and state human rights commissions can only write reports and submit recommendations.

"As long as military crimes against civilians are tried in military courts, and as long as the only recourse for human rights cases is the National Human Rights Commission, which is a toothless entity, then the chances for justice will be slim," said Craig Adair of the San Francisco-based human rights organization Global Exchange.

Mitch Deacon is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.