The bodies of three activists in the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD [3]) were found on June 3 beside a road in the southwestern state of Guerrero. One of the victims, Arturo Hernández Cardona, was the leader of the Popular Union (UP) in the city of Iguala; the other two, Félix Rafael Bandera Román and Ángel Román Ramírez, were members of the organization. The men were last seen on May 30 when they blocked a tollbooth on the Mexico City-Acapulco highway to demand that Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez, also a PRD member, provide fertilizers for campesinos. Media reports suggest that the killings might have been a common crime, since drug gangs are active in Guerrero. But Sofía Lorena Mendoza Martínez, Hernández Cardona's widow, insisted the motivation was political. "[W]e are never going to accept that [the victims] could be linked to organized crime," said Mendoza Martínez, who is a local rural development official. Some 1,000 people attended the three activists' funeral on June 4. (BBC News [4], June 3, La Jornada [5], Mexico, June 5)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas [6], June 9.
