Luz María González Armenta, leader of Defense and Promotion of Human Rights-Emiliano Zapata (DEPRODHEZAC), is free but still facing charges after being arbitrarily arrested March 30 at a protest vigil outside the municipal presidency office in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. The vigil was demanding the return alive of José Rafael Sánchez Martínez, a local youth who has been "disappeared" since a confrontation with the city police Jan. 30. González reports via e-mail that she was released after ten hours in the "pestilential cells" of Barandilla municipal jail. In her latest communication April 5, González writes:

My release was under the conditions of the law. This means that the prosecutor can at any moment activate a process against me. The public functionary who attacked me and the other women protesters—we were six in total, including a baby of three months—accused me of menacing and attempting to physically attack him... Yesterday we were in the prosecutor's office, where he continued threatening me, as well as the family of José Rafael, the youth disappeared by the Preventative Police on Jan. 30...

For our part, I have also filed a complaint against him for abuse of authority... We are especially demanding that he be penalized for injuries he caused to one of the protesters.

More information is available on the website of La Otra Campaña en Tamaulipas.

See our last posts on Mexico and the Luz María González case.