Category Archives: Americas

Mexico: women’s groups dismayed after judges dodge abortion decision

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  • Supreme court votes against proposal on technical grounds
  • Plan could have opened path towards decriminalization

Mexican women’s groups have expressed deep disappointment after the supreme court dodged a ruling on a proposal which could have opened a legal path towards decriminalizing abortion.

In a 4-1 decision, the court voted on Wednesday against the proposal for technical reasons – without addressing arguments that restrictions on abortion violated women’s rights and contravened international treaties to which Mexico is a signatory.

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A dollar for sex: Venezuela’s women tricked and trafficked

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Women attempting to flee the country’s economic collapse are in desperate straits, stranded at borders and forced into sex work, say NGOs

The family had nothing at home, says mother of six Luisa Hernández, 30, from Zulia state, Venezuela. “To see your children grow up without food, without anything, is unbearable.

“Eating from rubbish bins to survive was no life, so we left. But, now with the pandemic, we are in limbo, we are stuck in Colombia, and hungry again. We have gone from one crisis to another.”

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Again Once Again review – elegant meditation on the pains of motherhood

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This engaging, philosophical film unpicks the challenges faced by a young mother trying to reconnect with the life she had before her son’s birth

A woman leaves her boyfriend to visit her mum in Buenos Aires, taking their three-year-old son with her – not sure yet if it’s a holiday or a breakup. She hasn’t worked since her son was born and is having an emotional and intellectual crisis. She feels almost non-existent. “I don’t see myself. Who am I?”

This is an elegant, elusive debut from the Argentinian playwright Romina Paula, who picks away at the fantasy that motherhood leads to instant fulfilment. Her film is like an arthouse version of the sitcoms Motherland and Catastrophe, with fewer laughs and more philosophical introspection. It has the feel of a feminist essay that has been semi-dramatised for screen – with Paula starring as a fictional version of herself and her real-life mum and son Ramón playing themselves.

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Mexico’s activists brace for landmark supreme court abortion ruling

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The ruling could set a precedent; in states that have restrictive regulations, injunctions could be granted to allow the procedure

Activists on both sides of Mexico’s abortion debate are bracing for a potentially historic supreme court hearing on Wednesday, which could lead to decriminalisation across the country.

The case before the five judges of the high court’s first bench involves an injunction granted in the eastern state of Veracruz, which ordered the local legislature to remove articles from its criminal code pertaining to abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

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Record 212 land and environment activists killed last year

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Global Witness campaigners warn of risk of further killings during Covid-19 lockdowns

A record number of people were killed last year for defending their land and environment, according to research that highlights the routine murder of activists who oppose extractive industries driving the climate crisis and the destruction of nature.

More than four defenders were killed every week in 2019, according to an annual death toll compiled by the independent watchdog Global Witness, amid growing evidence of opportunistic killings during the Covid-19 lockdown in which activists were left as “sitting ducks” in their own homes.

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Top Mexican drug kingpin El Mencho reportedly builds own private hospital

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Secretive leader of Jalisco New Generation cartel, who seeks treatment for kidney disease, currently seen as ‘public enemy No 1’

One of Mexico’s most wanted drug lords, El Mencho, is reported to have built his own private hospital in the western state of Jalisco.

Related: 'The only two powerful cartels left': rivals clash in Mexico's murder capital

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Investors drop Brazil meat giant JBS

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Top investment house delists world biggest meat producer over lack of commitment to sustainability issues

The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund, according to Eric Pedersen, its head of responsible investments.

The decision was taken about a month ago, over the meat giant’s links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation, its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, past corruption scandals, and frustrations over engagement with the company on such issues. “The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it is from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,” Pedersen said.

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Alarm over discovery of hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels near Galápagos Islands

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The fleet, found just outside a protected zone, raises the prospect of damage to the marine ecosystem

Ecuador has sounded the alarm after its navy discovered a huge fishing fleet of mostly Chinese-flagged vessels some 200 miles from the Galápagos Islands, the archipelago which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

About 260 ships are currently in international waters just outside a 188-mile wide exclusive economic zone around the island, but their presence has already raised the prospect of serious damage to the delicate marine ecosystem, said former environment minister Yolanda Kakabadse.

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Meng Wanzhou lawyers say documents will prove Canada plotted with FBI

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  • Huawei CFO is fighting extradition to US
  • Lawyers demand release of unredacted spy service documents

Lawyers for the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou have demanded the release of unredacted Canadian spy service documents they say would reveal a plot between the FBI and Canada to “trick” their client.

Meng, the Chinese telecom giant’s chief financial officer, was arrested on a US warrant in December 2018 during a stopover in Vancouver. She is charged with violating US sanctions against Iran, and has been fighting extradition ever since.

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Revealed: new evidence links Brazil meat giant JBS to Amazon deforestation

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Photographs by employee appear to show company trucks being used to transport cattle from allegedly prohibited cattle farm

New evidence appears to connect JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, to cattle supplied from a farm in the Brazilian Amazon which is under sanction for illegal deforestation.

This is the fifth time in a year that allegations have surfaced connecting the company to Amazon farmers linked with illegal deforestation.

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Tsunami of fake news hurts Latin America’s effort to fight coronavirus

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More than 160,000 people have died but from Mexico to Brazil, social networks are awash with quack cures and conspiracies

For months Gustavo Andrade has been battling to convince his parishioners to take Covid-19 seriously.

Related: Desperate Bolivians seek out toxic bleach falsely touted as Covid-19 cure

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‘Not safe’: Niagara Falls tour boats show US and Canada’s different responses to Covid-19 – video

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Footage of Niagara Falls tour boats highlights the stark differences in physical distancing between Canadian and US-managed companies. 

Canadian tour company Hornblower Niagara Cruises's ships can carry up to 700 people but Ontario’s strict rules to prevent the spread of coronavirus have permitted them to carry only six passengers at a time.

In contrast, the US-owned Maid of the Mist boats, which usually carry around 500 people, are operating at 50% capacity

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Mexico’s neglect of Covid-19 testing mystifies experts as cases surge

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The country performs just three tests per 100,000 people, with explanations ranging from cost-cutting to a push for herd immunity

Before travelling to Washington to meet Donald Trump earlier this month, the Mexican president took a coronavirus test.

Until then, Andrés Manuel López Obrador had never been tested, arguing that there was no need for it – even though several cabinet members had become infected with Covid-19.

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Niagara Falls tour boats highlight US and Canada’s stark Covid-19 divide

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New York state boats have ferried many more tourists than their Ontarian counterparts, where distancing has been far stricter

Every day, Mory DiMaurizio looks out his window at Niagara Falls and sighs in frustration.

Not at the sight of the falls – one of the most stunning natural wonders of the world – but rather at the prospect of US tour boats with blue-ponchoed Americans.

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Calls for investigation into mysterious death of Italian UN monitor in Colombia

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  • Doubts over claim that Mario Paciolla, 33, killed himself
  • Mayor of Naples joins calls for truth and justice

The mayor of Naples has joined human rights groups in calling for “truth and justice” following the death of an Italian United Nations volunteer who had been on a peace mission in Colombia.

Mario Paciolla, 33, from Naples, was found dead on 15 July at his home in San Vicente de Caguán, a town in Colombia’s southern jungle long used as a strategic rearguard for rebel groups and drug traffickers.

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Fears growing for five indigenous Garifuna men abducted in Honduras

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The Triunfo de la Cruz region has been embroiled in a struggle to save their ancestral land from developers and drug traffickers

Fears are growing for the safety of five black indigenous men in Honduras who were abducted from their homes last weekend by heavily armed gunmen in police uniforms.

The victims are Garifuna fishermen from the town Triunfo de la Cruz on the north coast – a region where communities are embroiled in a longstanding struggle to save their ancestral land from drug traffickers, palm oil magnates and tourism developers aided by corrupt officials and institutions.

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‘They killed him’: widow confronts Peru’s president over Covid-19 deaths

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Martín Vizcarra announced emergency decree putting health ministry in charge of system after Celia Capira chased his truck

As the presidential motorcade pulled away from the main hospital in Peru’s second city – fleeing an angry protest by medical staff and relatives of Covid-19 patients – one woman broke away from the crowd.

Celia Capira ran sobbing after the truck carrying the president, Martín Vizcarra, yelling for him to go and see for himself the grim conditions at the hospital, where her husband was fighting for his life.

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Bolivia elections in doubt as police find bodies of hundreds of Covid-19 victims

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Unit recovers 420 bodies across La Paz and Santa Cruz, with most believed to have had virus

Bolivia’s plan to hold elections in September is increasingly in doubt amid rising coronavirus deaths, and reports that police have recovered the bodies of hundreds of suspected Covid-19 victims.

In the past five days, a special police unit had found 420 bodies in streets, vehicles and homes in the capital, La Paz, and in Bolivia’s biggest city, Santa Cruz, authorities said on Tuesday. Between 80% and 90% of them are believed to have had the virus.

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Newly excavated tools suggest humans lived in North America at least 30,000 years ago

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Artefacts from central Mexico cave are strong evidence humans lived on continent 15,000 years earlier than previously thought

Tools excavated from a cave in central Mexico are strong evidence that humans were living in North America at least 30,000 years ago, some 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists said on Wednesday.

The artefacts, including 1,900 stone tools, showed human occupation of the high-altitude Chiquihuite cave over a 20,000-year period, they reported in two studies published in the journal Nature.

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Once There Was Brasília review – sci-fi odyssey into Brazil’s murky politics

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An intergalactic refugee travels through time to modern-day Brazil in an eerie tale that has real-life corruption at its heart

Brazilian director Adirley Queirós here cobbles together something comparable, though far more lo-fi, to Wong Kar-wai’s 2046: a haunted, backwards-looking sci-fi assembled from textures of the past, which encourages you to pick through the wreckage of political ideology it strews in its wake. Wellington Abreu plays WA4, a Mad Max-style refugee from outer space who, as punishment for an illegal land occupation on his own planet, is sent to Earth to assassinate the real-life former Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek on the inauguration day of the capital city, Brasília, in 1961. But his ship crash-lands in the present day, in the satellite city of Ceilândia, an overflow enclave for the dispossessed that represents how the country’s utopia has been thwarted.

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