Mexico

30/04/1998 1 Conscription

conscription exists

Conscription is enshrined in the art. 31 of the Constitution, which states: "The obligations of Mexicans are.... (II) To be present on the days and hours designated by the municipality in which they reside, to receive civic and military instruction whcih will equip them in the exercise of their rights as citizens, give them skill in the handling of arms, and acquaint them with military discipline.

"Death Without Weeping: Daily Life in Northeast Brazil" is the theme of the April 1994 The New Internationalist. Based on the book Death Without Weeping (600 pages, 1992, University of California Press) by anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the lives of slum women and their children in Brazil's poverty-stricken Northeast are shocking and moving by turns. The exploitation, by sugar cane plantations, is endless and gives rise both to desperation and resistance.

Hear My Testimony by María Teresa Tula (1994, 224 pages, $14).

At 4:30 pm on June 4th, a group of approximately 30 soldiers of the Mexican Federal Army (MFA) raped three young Tseltal

indigenous women from Santa Rosita Sibaquil (in the municipality of Altamirano). The rapes took place at a military roadblock outside of Altamirano, where the soldiers were on duty.

The young women had sold their farm produce in the town of

Altamirano and were returning with their mother when they

Brazilian women won the right to vote in 1932. Today, women represent 5 percent of the House of Deputies and .24 percent of the Senate.

Some 20 percent of Brazil's 35 million families are now headed by women. Most are poor and live with inadequate sanitation: over 90 percent of children under a year old in the Northeast live in homes with inadequate sewage systems.

Women in Brazil earn, on the average, 52 percent of what men do.