On May 7, 2018, thugs entered the home of prominent labor leaders Dr. Arturo Villalobos and Patricia Méndez in Oaxaca, Mexico where they tortured and beat the couple’s adolescent son Nizván, leaving him unconscious. Dr. Villalobos is an opposition leader among health workers and recently was a leader of a two-month work stoppage by Oaxaca medical personnel against the Mexican government’s privatizing “reform” of the public health system. Dr. Villalobos has repeatedly been the object of threats of repression and arrest orders ever since leading the action of doctors and other health workers who defied a government cordon to bring medical assistance to the over 100 surviving victims of the June 19, 2016 police massacre in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca during a hard-fought teachers strike.

From the 2014 “disappearance” of 43 teachers college students of Ayotzinapa to the massacre of residents of Nochixtlán to this latest attack on a teenager, behind it all one can see the hand of the Mexican government. Arturo Villalobos is a prominent spokesman in Oaxaca for the Grupo Internacionalista, which has been the object of physical aggression for its opposition to all parties of the bosses, particularly during the current election campaign.

IATSE Local 28 joins with trade-unionists, left and social activists and defenders of democratic rights in denouncing the vile crime perpetrated against 16-year-old Nizván Villalobos Méndez, and declares our solidarity with Dr. Arturo Villalobos and Patricia Méndez.  An injury to one is an injury to all!