Police killing of Giovanni Lpez sparks protests, political crisis in Mexico
By Evan Winters
8 June 2020
Protests erupted late last week in Guadalajara and Mexico City over the brutal police murder of 30-year-old bricklayer Giovanni López in early May of this year after a video of his arrest surfaced on social media. All factions of the Mexican bourgeois establishment are scrambling to save face as scenes of brutal police repression in the state of Jalisco, led by the right-wing Citizens Movement (MC), are now circulating on social media.
The demonstrations have deepened the political crisis confronting the Movement of National Regeneration (Morena), the national ruling party led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The protests demonstrate growing international opposition to police violence triggered by the police murder of George Floyd and also reflect broad social anger over the Mexican government’s criminally negligent response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting massive economic fallout.
Footage of the May 4 arrest in López’s hometown of Ixtlahuacán, about 30 kilometers from Guadalajara, released last week, shows a crowd of roughly ten police arresting a non-violent López as bystanders explain that he is being arrested for not wearing a face mask. López died in the hospital the next day of a traumatic brain injury. Relatives confirmed signs of torture on his body.
López’s brother claims the family initially did not release the video because they were approached by an intermediary for Ixtlahuacán Mayor Eduardo Cervantes Aguilar (Party of the Institutional Revolution—PRI), who offered them 200,000 pesos (about $9,000 US dollars) in hush money and threatened them with death if they released the video. Cervantes Aguilar refused to appear for a state hearing on Friday and his whereabouts are unknown.
More:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/08/mexi-j08.html
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Giovanni López: The death of a man in police custody outrages Mexico | Society
By Carlos Christian -June 5, 2020
Giovanni López was arrested on May 4 by the municipal police of Ixtlahuacán de Los Membrillos, a town 40 kilometers from Guadalajara, the capital of the State of Jalisco. The next day, when his family went to look for him at the police station, Giovanni had died. The medical report indicates that he died of traumatic brain injury, a brain dysfunction caused by a violent blow to the head. In this case, while in police custody. The family denounces that the body had other injuries and a bullet in the left foot. López, who was 30 years old, was allegedly arrested for not using a face mask on public roads. His death – and the video of his forcibly detaining at least 10 uniformed men – was released a month later, after the family reported that the authorities had not launched an investigation.
“Look how they bring it! I was sitting here because he doesn’t have a mask on,” a woman yells desperately as the police officers load López into a municipal police van. Giovanni’s brother Christian López films the arrest while crossing insults with one of the uniformed men. Her video went viral on Wednesday, amid the global echo of protests in the United States over the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man who died in the State of Minneapolis after being suffocated by a police officer. The death of Giovanni López has outraged Mexico, which, like its northern neighbor, has a long and dark history of police abuse.
On Thursday afternoon, a group of protesters gathered in the Parque Revolución, in the center of Guadalajara, to march towards the headquarters of the State Government in protest at the death of López. In front of the building, some of the assistants set fire to at least two police vehicles and painted graffiti on the facade of the Government Palace with complaints against state authorities and law enforcement. The police dispersed the protesters with tear gas bombs when a group attempted to enter the government headquarters by force.
A month after the events, the authorities have not yet clarified the reason for López’s arrest and the police officers involved have not been dismissed or called to testify, as reported by the state government. Jalisco’s attorney general, Gerardo Solís Gómez, has ruled out the thesis that López was detained for not wearing a mask because this reason is not listed in police reports. “[Los reportes] they only refer to the administrative detention of an aggressive person, ”Solís Gómez said Wednesday night at a press conference. “The first thing would be to establish clearly that there is a report that makes the difference in how the acts were carried out.”
More:
https://theunionjournal.com/giovanni-lopez-the-death-of-a-man-in-police-custody-outrages-mexico-society/
