The National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) in the western Mexican state of Michoacán issued a statement demanding the "presentation with life" of Francisco Paredes Ruiz, a comunero (communal farmer) from Zirahuén and former member of the Armed Revolutionary Movement (MAR), a guerilla group from the '70s, who "disappeared" Sept. 26 in the city of Morelia. Two days after his disappearance, Paredes' car was found abandoned on a Morelia street. "The last to speak with him were his daughters on the day of his disappearance," said FNLS spokesman Leonel Calderón Villegas.

In response to the disappearance, Gerardo Rodríguez González, spokesman of another Michoacán group, the Peasant, Indigenous and Popular Organization, said that since the resurgence of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), the government has returned to a "dirty war" against all social struggles of the left. (La Jornada, Oct. 4)

The disappearance of Francisco Paredes Ruiz comes in the wake of a report from the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) on rights violations by the Mexican army in Michoacán.

Meanwhile, Guillermo Valdés Castellanos, the head of Mexico's central intelligence agency, the Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN), meeting with the Bicameral Commission on National Security of the Mexican Congress, pledged to open an investigation into the two disappeared presumed EPR militants, Gabriel Cruz Sánchez and Edmundo Reyes Amaya. He said it is "the priority of the federal government to attend to any situation of apparent violations of fundamental rights, without regard to ideology." (La Jornada, Oct. 3)

See our last post on Mexico, the human rights crisis the guerilla movement, and the struggle in Michoacán.