Category Archives: Americas

‘They’re culpable’: the countries supplying the guns that kill Mexico’s journalists

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Many of the weapons used in the murders of 119 journalists were imported – and Mexico’s laws and culture make tracing them impossible

It was around daybreak when Mexican crime reporter Luis Vallejo received a call from a local police officer telling him that a bag of human remains had been found in the city of Salamanca where he lives.

Vallejo had become accustomed to calls like this: in recent years, violence in Guanajuato, the surrounding region, has spiraled to unprecedented levels amid bloody turf wars between rival cartels.

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Argentina moves closer to historic abortion legalisation

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A pro-abortion movement, symbolized by a green handkerchief, has swept through Latin America, where abortion is punishable by law

Belén ended up in jail after suffering a spontaneous miscarriage. Unaware that she was pregnant, the 25-year-old went to seek medical care at a hospital in Argentina’s northern province of Tucumán when she suffered abdominal pain.

In accordance with Argentina’s stringent anti-abortion legislation, Belén (not her real name) was reported by the hospital to the authorities and sentenced to eight years in prison for homicide. She did not regain her freedom until almost three years later, in 2017, after a feminist lawyer who took up her case convinced the Tucumán supreme court to overturn her conviction.

“There are many Beléns in Argentina and this madness will continue until abortion is legalized,” said Ana Correa, pro-abortion campaigner and author of the book Somos Belén (We Are Belén).

That long-awaited moment may be about to arrive.

Argentina is expected to move one step away from becoming the first major Latin American nation to legalize abortion on Thursday, when the lower house of congress votes on a legal abortion bill sponsored by president Alberto Fernández. The president holds a majority in the lower house, and a government source said the senate could vote the move into law as soon as next week.

The push for reform in Argentina is part of a pro-abortion “green wave” sweeping through Latin America, symbolized by the green handkerchief that has become the campaign’s instantly-recognizable flag across the entire region.

“The women of Argentina now enjoy the encouragement of all Latin America, where the green handkerchief is being raised up high from north to south,” said Claudia Piñeiro, an Argentinian author who has spent years campaigning for legal abortion.

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Revealed: how Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel has created a global network to rule the fentanyl trade

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Drugs bust in India sheds light on how adaptable cartels have come to dominate the lucrative trade in the powerful synthetic opioid

Carlos is a Mexican businessman employed by an import-export company that specializes in the trade of tequila and agricultural and chemical products. But in January 2016, he was a long way from his home in Culiacán, capital of Sinaloa state.

Two associates accompanied him as he travelled from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Japan, and finally, India.

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Killing of two girls stokes outrage over Brazil’s horrific toll of black lives

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Shooting of cousins aged just four and seven, allegedly by police, heightens calls for national reckoning over ‘genocide’

The shooting of two young black girls – who had between them enjoyed fewer than 11 years of life – has sparked outrage in Brazil and intensified the debate over police violence and structural racism in a country still grappling with the legacy of slavery.

Emily Victoria Moreira dos Santos and Rebeca Beatriz Rodrigues Santos, cousins aged four and seven, were killed on Friday night as they played outside their grandmother’s home in Barro Vermelho, a redbrick favela on Rio’s rundown northern fringe.

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Maduro tightens grip over Venezuela with win in boycotted congress vote

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National assembly was only institution not commanded by ruling Socialist party

Nicolás Maduro tightened his grip over Venezuela on Sunday in legislative elections that some believe effectively marked the end of Juan Guaidó’s US-backed campaign to topple the South American strongman.

The bulk of Venezuela’s beleaguered opposition boycotted the contest for the 277-seat national assembly, calling it a sham designed to lend Maduro’s authoritarian regime an air of democratic legitimacy.

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Murder in Mexico: journalists caught in the crosshairs

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The 2012 killing of Regina Martínez, who was investigating links between organised crime and politics, began a wave of violence in the most dangerous country to be a reporter

Regina Martínez Pérez was considered an enemy of the state. The 48-year-old journalist had made powerful foes investigating allegations of collusion between political leaders, security forces and narcotraffickers in the Mexican region of Veracruz.

She was a source of irritation for four consecutive state governors, highlighting violence, abuses of power and cover-ups in the pages of Mexico’s foremost investigative news magazine, Proceso.

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Havana syndrome: ‘directed’ radio frequency likely cause of illness – report

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First official explanation of illness that affected US diplomats in Cuba says ‘pulsed’ energy may have led to unexplained symptoms

The mysterious symptoms that have afflicted American diplomats stationed in Cuba, puzzling scientists and intelligence agencies alike, are most likely to have been caused by “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy”, according to a report commissioned by the US government.

Those suffering from Havana syndrome, as the condition has become known, have complained of headaches, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision and other ailments.

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Alex Wheatle: ‘I have nightmarish moments where my past comes back and hits me’

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The prize-winning author’s life is now an episode of Steve McQueen’s hit series Small Axe. He talks about working on the project and his latest novel, based on a Jamaican slave uprising

Amid the brunchtime clatter of a busy south London cafe, Alex Wheatle is talking about how, lately, he has been considering 1970s pop culture and the way it has shaped and warped his perception of self. “I grew up with Tarzan on TV; Tarzan beating up all the black guys he came across and being able to talk to the animals while the black people couldn’t,” he says. “And I hate to admit it, but when I was 10 or 11, I actually cheered for Tarzan when he was fighting with a so-called ‘savage’. It was only later that I thought: ‘I think I’ve got that wrong.’”

In many ways, Wheatle’s 20-year writing career has been about correcting that wrong. Because if the focus of the author’s extraordinary early years was on mistruths around his heritage – about its history, its value, its implicit inferiority to a loin-clothed white saviour – then the intervening period has been all about creating the depictions of nuanced black heroism he was denied as a child.

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The Guardian view on Amazonian cave art: a story about the environment, too | Editorial

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Astonishing rock paintings discovered in Colombia hold a lesson for today’s rainforest

In the past week, remarkable images of ancient cave art have hit the headlines: rock paintings made in South America around 12,000 years ago. The art, created on rock faces in the Serranía de la Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, is a riot of ochre-coloured geometrical pattern, handprints, and images of animals and humans. Until recent excavations, the works of art had been unknown to the international community. Their exuberant creativity will soon be revealed to a broad audience in the UK thanks to the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.

The people who made these works of art were, it is believed, among the earliest humans to occupy the region, after migrations across what is now the Bering Strait some 25,000 years ago. Preliminary study of the iconography of the art has led scholars to speculate that among the deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, serpents, turtles and porcupines, long-extinct megafauna are also represented: mastodons, American ice-age horses, giant sloths, camelids.

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India summons Canada envoy as row deepens over Trudeau’s protest remarks

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  • India condemns ‘unacceptable interference’ from Canadian PM
  • Trudeau called clashes between police and farmers ‘concerning’

India has summoned Canada’s top diplomat to protest at comments by Justin Trudeau on recent mass protests by farmers in the country. Indian officials warned that continued “interference” in domestic affairs could harm relations between the two countries.

Related: Indian farmers march on Delhi in protest against agriculture laws

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US in talks to resolve case of arrested Huawei finance chief

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  • Meng Wanzhou held in Canada on bank fraud charges
  • Case has put US-China-Canada relations under strain

US prosecutors are discussing a deal with lawyers for the Huawei finance chief, Meng Wanzhou, to resolve criminal charges against her, a person familiar with the matter said, signaling a potential end to a case that has strained ties between the United States, China and Canada.

Negotiations between Meng’s attorneys and the US justice department picked up after the US presidential election a month ago, the person said, but it is still unclear what kind of deal could be struck.

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‘I’m stealing Christmas to keep you safe,’ says Canadian provincial premier – video

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Brian Pallister, the premier of Manitoba, has urged people not to get together this Christmas, as lockdowns in the province continue amid a surge in coronavirus cases. Speaking to the press on Thursday, he said: ‘I’m the guy who’s stealing Christmas to keep you safe because you need to do this now.’ Pallister has repeatedly faced criticism during the pandemic, reportedly vacationing in Costa Rica during the early stages and being accused of rushing to reopen Manitoba’s economy

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Vancouver plan to decriminalize street drugs sets up battle with Ottawa

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The city’s plan to reduce overdose deaths needs support from Canada’s government – but Justin Trudeau is likely to be reluctant

Vancouver has set the stage for a showdown with Canada’s federal government by moving to become the first city in the country to decriminalize street drugs – setting itself on a collision course with Justin Trudeau, who has so far declined to pursue the option.

The city’s council voted unanimously last week to ask the federal government in Ottawa for an exemption to the country’s criminal code, which, if granted, would remove the threat of criminal sanctions for possessing small amounts of street drugs for personal use within a city.

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Murder Me, Monster review – a grisly mystery that stays boldly unsolvable

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This convention-defying horror has Guillermo del Toro’s vision and David Lynch’s dreamlike logic. But what does it all mean?

Internal affairs takes on new meaning in this distinctively involuted Argentine thriller about a spate of gruesome decapitations in an Andes backwater. Police officer Cruz (Victor Lopez) is already on the case when his lover Francisca (Tania Casciani) becomes the next to have her head apparently chewed off, a mysterious green goo smeared on the stump. Her hollow-eyed husband David (Esteban Bigliardi) is suspect numero uno: he is found naked in the vicinity of the victims and, after later being carted off to an asylum, testifies to a strange voice in his head that whispers: “Murder me, monster.”

Related: My streaming gem: why you should watch The Distinguished Citizen

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Anything for Jackson review – grieving grandparents do a deal with the devil

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In a riotously gory inversion of the Christmas story, an older couple plan to channel the ghost of their dead grandson into an unborn child

There’s something deliciously subversive about the backstory to this offbeat horror film, which was made in Canada. Director Justin G Dyck and screenwriter Keith Cooper have collaborated on a long list of treacly, holiday-themed, made-for-TV movies with titles such as A Very Country Christmas, Christmas With a View and A Christmas Village. Anything for Jackson, however, is a riotously gory, impish inversion of all things yuletide, in that it stars sweet-featured elderly character actors Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings as grieving grandparents Audrey and Henry Walsh, who kidnap pregnant Shannon Becker (Konstantina Mantelos) in order to perform a satanic ritual on her. It’s as if Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, the little old couple who lived next door in Rosemary’s Baby, got to be the stars of their own movie.

Audrey and Henry’s goal is to channel the ghost of their dead grandson, Jackson, into Becker’s unborn child; but, wouldn’t you know it, deals with the devil have a way of going wrong – or having nasty consequences in the fine print, such as bringing forth demons and ghosts with murderous instincts of their own. Plus, their main adviser on matters demonological is a bitter “incel”-type (Josh Cruddas) who lives with his mother and is prone to bitching about the leadership at their satanic church, an outfit quietly run out of the local community centre where members bring home-baked goods for breaktime.

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Photography campaign shows the grim aftermath of logging in Canada’s fragile forests

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Ancient Forest Alliance’s project underscores the preventions that are needed to protect old-growth trees in areas such as the Caycuse watershed

When TJ Watt first stood at the base of a towering western red cedar on Canada’s Pacific coast, the ancient giant was surrounded by thick moss and ferns, and the sounds of a vibrant forest ecosystem.

When he returned a few months later, all that remained was a massive stump, set against a landscape that was unrecognizable. “To come back and see a place that was so magnificent and complex just completely and utterly destroyed is just gut-wrenching,” he said.

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Last-ditch attempt to stop Home Office deportation flight to Jamaica fails

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Two children brought the case on behalf of their father ahead of flight scheduled on Wednesday

A last-ditch legal attempt by two children to prevent a Home Office deportation flight to Jamaica from taking off on Wednesday has failed, just hours before the charter plane is expected to depart.

The children, two siblings, who brought the case on behalf of their father, argued that current deportation policy was unlawful because the Home Office has failed to properly assess the best interests of children whose parents it seeks to deport.

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Brazil: armed robbers raid banks in Criciúma leaving streets littered with banknotes – video

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Bank robbers armed with military-grade weapons have laid siege to a city in southern Brazil, torching vehicles, kidnapping government workers, blowing up a bank and engaging in a two-hour gun battle as the mayor begged residents to stay indoors.

Mobile phone footage taken by terrified residents showed gunmen patrolling the streets of Criciúma as gunfire echoed across the city. After the ordeal, which lasted over two hours, the group made off, leaving hundreds of thousands of reais in banknotes littering the streets.

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Owner of French restaurant in Mexico City murdered ‘while delivering fine wine’

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Police investigating claims killers of Baptiste Lormand stole bottles worth £20,000

The grisly killing of a prominent French restaurateur has shaken Mexico City’s foreign community and raised fresh questions over a nationwide murder crisis that has already claimed more than 29,000 lives this year.

Baptiste Lormand, a 45-year-old Parisian, disappeared last Thursday evening in Polanco, an upmarket corner of Mexico’s capital that is home to many of its best eateries as well as many foreign diplomats, businesspeople and journalists.

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Plastic in paradise: Goldman prize winner’s fight to protect Bahamas

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Kristal Ambrose had to beat prejudices about class and race to change mindsets on the islands

When the latest Goldman prize winner, Kristal Ambrose, began campaigning against plastic waste in the Bahamas, one of the first obstacles she had to overcome was prejudice about class and race.

“You have been around white people too long. We always use plastic bags,” she recalls being told by neighbours in Eleuthera, one of the 30 inhabited islands in the ocean state. “I had to challenge the mindset that only a certain class of people get to care about this stuff. I told them it is not just for tourists. It’s my island and I want to protect it.”

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