Category Archives: Americas

Mexico bars candidate accused of rape from running on technical grounds

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Decision drew the wrath of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has defended candidate Félix Salgado

Mexico’s elections agency has withdrawn ballot registration for a ruling-party state candidate who was nominated despite accusations of rape against him – but the move was made on technical grounds and not because of the allegations.

The decision drew the wrath of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has defended candidate Félix Salgado and criticized women’s groups who objected to his candidacy.

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Toronto: fare-beating beaver wandering in station disrupts morning commute

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‘Rascal’ or ‘Nickel’ who ended up in station after straying from a nearby marsh was captured and released safely

Lost and confused passengers are a common sight on the Toronto metro system, but a puzzled, fare-evading beaver wandering a subway station is probably a first for the city.

An underground station in Canada’s largest city was shut down on Thursday after a beaver unwittingly ended up on its terrazzo tile floors after straying from a nearby marsh.

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Haiti deportations soar as Biden administration deploys Trump-era health order

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There have been more ‘Title 42’ expulsions in the space of a few weeks than during an entire year of Trump’s administration, report says

The Biden administration has so far deported more Haitians in a few weeks than the Trump administration did in a whole year, with the use of a highly controversial Trump-era public health order denying asylum seekers basic legal rights, according to a new report.

The report, The Invisible Wall, due to be published on Thursday by a coalition of immigrant rights groups, focuses on Title 42, part of the 1944 Public Health Service Act invoked a year ago by the Trump administration as grounds for summary expulsion of migrants because of the supposed health risk they posed during the Covid pandemic.

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‘The Yanomami could disappear’ – photographer Claudia Andujar on a people under threat in Brazil

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Andujar lived with the tribe and fights for them. A timely show of her images comes to London soon


It is more than 50 years since Claudia Andujar began photographing the Yanomami, the people of the Amazon rainforest near Brazil’s border with Venezuela. Now 89, she is using her archive to increase their visibility, at a time when their survival is under renewed threat.

“The question of indigenous people should be more respected, more widely known. This is very important as it’s the only way the present [Brazilian] government will come to recognise their rights as human beings to occupy their land,” says Andujar, speaking from São Paulo. “This government isn’t interested in their rights.”

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‘Saddest March of our lives’: Brazilians lament Covid devastation as critics decry Bolsonaro

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As country reaches 300,000 fatalities, doctors condemn ‘politics of death’ but pledge to fight on

Like so many on Brazil’s left, Pedro Carvalho was certain Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency would prove a nightmare: for human rights, for the environment and for the national health system the 41-year-old doctor cherishes and serves.

“I felt this profound sadness, just utter, personal sadness,” Carvalho remembered of the fateful moment in October 2018 that the far-right populist was confirmed as his country’s new leader.

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Abandoned: gangs in Guatemala replace families – photo essay

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Decades of migration to the US left generations of children behind for whom gangs are substitute families

Photographs and text by Ignacio Marin

Since she arrived in Guatemala City a few decades ago, she has lived in the same humble home. Between bare concrete walls and under a tin roof, she raised three children. Now Berenice is raising her 15-year-old grandson since his mother left for the US and his father was murdered.

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The US has been silent on Honduras’s drug problem, but that might be about to change

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Analysis: The Biden administration is expected to take a cooler approach to President Hernández than Donald Trump did

For the US, this is a painfully embarrassing fortnight to count Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández as a key ally in Central America.

On Monday he was named in a New York federal courtroom as a co-conspirator in the conviction of his associate, Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, for smuggling tons of cocaine into the US, and receiving a $250,000 bribe from Fuentes, an alleged drug kingpin.

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‘She’s representing all of us’: the story behind Deb Haaland’s swearing-in dress

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The skirt, a traditional Native garment, outshone everything in the Eisenhower building – and there is a story of empowerment and survival behind it

It was a dress that triggered a flood of headlines. Standing in front of Vice-President Kamala Harris with her right hand raised, Deb Haaland was sworn in last week as the secretary of the interior dressed in a long rainbow ribbon skirt adorned with a corn stalk, butterflies and stars.

Related: Making history in style: Deb Haaland wears Indigenous dress at swearing-in

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Joe Biden strikes new tone but Mexico remains US’s wall against migrants

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As senior US officials arrive in Mexico for talks experts say deal to send Covid vaccine shows that migrants are still a bargaining chip

Joe Biden took office promising to put a friendlier face on US immigration policy. He put an end to a scheme requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, promised to restore the US asylum system and pledged to spend $4bn on addressing the root causes of migration in Central America.

But as ever-increasing numbers of unaccompanied minors arrive at the US southern border and create a domestic political crisis for the US president, he is turning to a tactic used by his predecessors – including Donald Trump: outsourcing immigration enforcement to Mexico.

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Scathing report lambasts Canada police for handling of Indigenous man’s killing

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  • Police told Colten Boushie’s grieving mother to ‘get over it’
  • Officers accused of discrimination in 2016 case

Police in Canada told a grieving Indigenous mother to “get over it” after delivering news that her son had been killed, according to a scathing watchdog report that accused officers of discrimination and inflaming racial tensions during their investigation.

Colten Boushie, 22, was shot and killed in August 2016 after he and four friends drove on to a farm looking for help with their flat tyre. Nearly two years later, an all-white jury found Gerald Stanley, 56, not guilty of second-degree murder amid racial tensions in the Canadian prairies and deficiencies in the justice system.

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Canadian Michael Kovrig goes on trial in China

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Canadian official is denied court access as former diplomat faces accusations of espionage in case described by Ottawa as ‘hostage diplomacy’

The second of two Canadians detained in China for more than two years, Michael Kovrig, has gone on trial on espionage charges, days after the United States raised its concerns over the cases during tense US-China talks in Alaska.

One senior Canadian diplomat said he had been denied access to the court in Beijing on Monday, echoing the scenes on Friday, when Michael Spavor was tried in secret in a court process that lasted only a few hours.

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Olympic surfing hopeful Katherine Diaz killed by lightning while training

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  • Twenty-two year-old killed near home in El Salvador
  • Diaz was preparing for ISA World Surf Games

El Salvador’s top surfer, who had been preparing fo the sport’s Olympic debut this summer, has been struck and killed by lightning during a training session.

“A great athlete who has represented our country has left us,” the Salvadoran Surf Federation said in a post paying tribute to Katherine Diaz on social media. “See you soon, great warrior. El Salvador is in mourning.”

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Canadian Conservative party votes not to recognize climate crisis as real

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  • Delegates vote 54%-46% against policy change request
  • Leader O’Toole has sought ambitious climate change agenda

Canada’s main opposition Conservative Party members have voted down a proposal to recognize the climate crisis as real, in a blow to their new leader’s efforts to embrace environmentally friendly policies before a likely federal election this year.

Related: 'Climate facts are back': EPA brings science back to website after Trump purge

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‘Blindsided’: Biden faces tough test in reversing Trump’s cruel border legacy

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As unaccompanied children reach the US, Republicans seek political gain. The White House has a fight on its hands

Lauded for his human touch, Joe Biden is facing an early political and moral test over how his government treats thousands of migrant children who make the dangerous journey to America alone.

Related: Is there a crisis at the border? Advocates in Texas say it's 'political manipulation'

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Trudeau condemns closed-door espionage trial of Canadian in China

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Michael Spavor has been detained in China since 2018 in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a Huawei executive

Justin Trudeau has reacted angrily to the closed-door trial of a Canadian man detained in China for more than two years on espionage charges, dismissing it as “completely unacceptable”.

Businessman Michael Spavor, whose hearing finished after less than three hours on Friday, is one of two Canadians detained, in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest on a US extradition warrant of the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, and formally charged last June with spying.

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‘Things are desperate’: Brazil’s Covid intensive care units are almost all at capacity

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The country’s sceptic president and his allies continue to downplay the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 287,000

Brazil’s healthcare system has been plunged into the most severe crisis in its history, with doctors overwhelmed and patients dying while they wait for intensive care beds as the country’s Covid-sceptic president, Jair Bolsonaro, continued to spurn calls for a lockdown that would save lives.

As the daily number of infections and deaths soared to new heights this week, researchers from Brazil’s leading healthcare institute, Fiocruz, said South America’s biggest country faced an unparalleled “catastrophe”.

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Mexico ambush: 13 state police killed in attack on convoy

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Attacks on police have become routine as the country fights drug cartels and organised crime

Thirteen Mexican police officers and investigators have been killed in an ambush as they travelled through a rural region – marking the latest attack on law enforcement by brazen criminal groups.

Eight state police officers and five members of the state’s investigative police force died in the ambush in the municipality of Coatepec Harinas, 125km (78 miles) south-west of Mexico City in Mexico state on Thursday afternoon, according to officials.

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US to send 4m AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Mexico and Canada

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Biden administration has come under pressure to share vaccine, which has been authorized in other countries but not yet in US

The United States plans to send roughly 4m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine that it is not using to Mexico and Canada in loan deals with the two countries.

Mexico will receive 2.5m doses of the vaccine and Canada will receive 1.5m doses, the official said.

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‘Judith never came home’: deadly fate of ‘disappeared’ women in Peru

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Policeman accused of sex trafficking, while 12,000 women and girls vanish in ‘shadow pandemic’

Judith Machaca was last seen on her way home from work in her home town of Tacna in southern Peru. The environmental engineering student had been working part-time at a mobile phone shop and would always send a message if she was going to be late.

The last text message from her phone was sent at 11pm on 28 November and the next day her distraught father reported the 20-year-old’s disappearance to the police. They sent him away, saying that she was probably with a boyfriend and would show up soon enough.

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Activists demand sexual violence against Argentina’s indigenous people be classified a hate crime

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The attacks are common in northern Argentina against women and children – including one victim who was just four years old

Ana* was on her way home from school with her young cousin when it happened. “She managed to run away, but I didn’t,” she said, her voice trembling. “They put me in a car. They were white men. And they raped me.”

Ana’s ordeal wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a horrific pattern of brutal sexual violence inflicted on indigenous children and women in northern Argentina by non-indigenous men, often in groups.

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