Lorenza Cano seized by gunmen in Guanajuato state after her husband and son shot dead in attack
A Mexican woman who spent five years looking for her disappeared brother has herself been abducted in an attack in which her husband and son were shot dead.
Lorenza Cano, one of Mexico’s many volunteer searchers trying to find the country’s 114,000 desaparecidos, was seized late on Monday by a group of gunmen who burst into her home in the northern city of Salamanca.
Continue reading...Criminal group charged $20-$30 a month to about 5,000 people as gangs diversify into sectors other than the drug trade
A cartel in the embattled central Mexico state of Michoacán set up its own makeshift internet antennas and told locals they had to pay to use its wifi service or they would be killed, according to prosecutors.
Dubbed “narco-antennas” by local media, the cartel’s system involved internet antennas set up in various towns built with stolen equipment.
Continue reading...Murguía, who voiced titular character in Oscar-winning animated Pixar film, appeared in more than 100 roles spanning cinema, stage and television
Ana Ofelia Murguía, the Mexican actor who voiced the titular character of Disney and Pixar film Coco, has died aged 90.
Her death was announced “with deep sadness” on social media by Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, which said Murguía’s “artistic career was vital for the performing arts of Mexico”. Her cause of death was not given.
Continue reading...A group of 10 orcas has been seen leaping into the air to catch prey, delighting watchers and experts for the past two weeks
Experts and whale watchers have been dazzled by a series of orca sightings off the southern California coast that are being described as “extremely rare”.
A group of 10 whales – including a calf just a few months old – has been spotted for the past two weeks off the coast of southern California, between Oxnard and San Diego. Images from social media show the giant creatures leaping into the air to catch dolphins and coming within feet of boats full of eager viewers.
Continue reading...Two countries agree to enhance efforts to tackle human smuggling, poverty and violence and promote legal ‘pathways’
US and Mexican officials have hailed the success of talks held on Wednesday aimed at curbing historically high unauthorized immigration across their shared, 2,000-mile border that risks becoming a humanitarian disaster and an election year political crisis for Joe Biden.
After the closed-door meeting between the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Mexican foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, hailed what he described as “important agreements”.
Continue reading...Farmers in Texcaltitlán in central Mexico, tired of being extorted, chased down gang members and killed 10 earlier this month
A drug cartel in central Mexico has kidnapped 14 local residents, including four children, in apparent retaliation for an uprising by angry farmers earlier this month that killed 10 cartel gunmen, officials said.
Farmers in the village of Texcaltitlán and a neighboring hamlet had apparently grown tired of cartel extortions. Armed only with sickles and hunting rifles, they chased down suspected gang members amid bursts of automatic gunfire on 8 December, hacking, shooting and burning them. Four villagers also died in the clash.
Continue reading...Activists say the review of 113,000 missing people in Mexico is a ploy to reduce the number ahead of the presidential election
When the Mexican government announced it would review the official register of “disappeared” people, it was presented as an effort to eliminate false entries. But with little transparency over how it was being done, activists suspected a ploy to reduce the number ahead of the 2024 election.
The government has now announced it was able to confirm just 12,377 of the more than 113,000 cases of disappeared people.
Continue reading...Two officers suspected of theft have been killed, prosecutors say, along with at least three others
A recent killing spree in the Mexican border city of Tijuana could have been lifted from a TV script: enraged drug lords hunting down corrupt police officers who stole a drug shipment.
Two of the officers suspected of the theft have been killed, prosecutors say. But so have at least three other officers, according to the city’s former police chief, suggesting the cartel believed to have owned the drugs may have launched a generalized retribution.
Continue reading...Video of fight shows villagers with sickles and rifles chasing down suspected gang members amid gunfire
A clash between gunmen from a criminal gang and residents of a small farming community in central Mexico left 14 people dead and seven injured, local authorities said on Saturday.
Dramatic video of the fight on Friday posted on social media showed villagers in cowboy hats with sickles and hunting rifles chasing down suspected gang members amid bursts of automatic gunfire.
Continue reading...Four photojournalists shot in Guerrero state and reporter in Michoacán, where battles between cartels and local gangs rage
Five Mexican journalists have been shot and wounded in a single day, in the worst day of violence against the country’s press in more than 10 years.
In one of the attacks on Tuesday, four photojournalists were shot near a military barracks in the southern Guerrero state after they returned from a crime scene. They had been covering one of the many homicides that occur on a near-daily basis in the city of Chilpancingo. State prosecutors said they consider it a case of attempted murder.
Continue reading...Silvia Arce and Alberto Sánchez, who were kidnapped on Wednesday, freed unharmed
Two of three journalists recently kidnapped in southern Mexico have been freed unharmed, the journalists’ international free-speech group Article 19 said in a statement on Saturday.
Silvia Arce and Alberto Sánchez, who lead the digital RedSiete platform, were released during the early hours of the morning, the organisation said.
Continue reading...Pollution has tamped population density by 99.5%, but scientists think cultural icon could aid in tissue repair and cancer recovery
Ecologists from Mexico’s National Autonomous University on Friday relaunched a fundraising campaign to bolster conservation efforts for axolotls, a native, endangered fish-like type of salamander.
The campaign, called Adoptaxolotl, asks people for as little as 600 pesos (about $35) to virtually adopt one of the tiny “water monsters”. Virtual adoption comes with live updates on your axolotl’s health. For less money, donors can buy a virtual dinner for one of the creatures, which are relatively popular pets in the US.
Continue reading...Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas provided protection for sons of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and allegedly fed rivals to pet Bengal tigers
The US president, Joe Biden, and his top justice department official have welcomed the arrest in Mexico of Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, known as “El Nini”, allegedly the notorious head of security – and assassination – for the Chapitos wing of the Sinaloa cartel.
The security chief is accused of leaving a trail of murder and torture, including feeding rivals to pet Bengal tigers, and running a security operation known as Los Ninis, “a particularly violent group of security personnel for the Chapitos”, according to the US government, whose members “received military-style training in multiple areas of combat, including urban warfare, special weapons and tactics, and sniper proficiency”.
Continue reading...Correspondence taken from 130 captured ships reveal details of the stories of seafarers and their families in the 1700s
A letter from a reproachful wife to the husband who seemingly abandoned her after travelling to the Americas, which remained unopened for nearly 300 years, is among thousands of papers from 18th-century Spanish ships captured by the British that are now being made available online.
Francisca Muñoz in Seville wrote to her husband, Miguel Atocha, in Mexico on 22 January 1747. The letter was among 100 others from Spanish women to their husbands detailing the emotional and economic challenges faced in their partners’ absences, and found on La Ninfa, a registered ship trading between Cádiz and Veracruz, Mexico that was captured by the notorious British privateer squadron known as the “Royal Family”.
Continue reading...‘Momentous’ breakthrough as trial finds treatment for nail infections to be highly effective for neglected tropical disease
A cheap and easily taken drug used to treat fungal nail infections has been found to work against a devastating flesh and bone-eating disease found across Africa, Asia and the Americas.
Researchers say the breakthrough offers hope to thousands of patients who have suffered decades of neglect and can face amputations if the disease is left untreated.
Continue reading...Adolfo Enríquez shot dead in Guanajuato city of León, which has third highest number of homicides in Mexico
An activist who documented murders in one of Mexico’s deadliest cities has himself been shot dead.
Adolfo Enríquez was killed in the city of León, in north-central Guanajuato state. The city has the third-highest number of homicides in Mexico, trailing only the border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez.
Continue reading...Body of Ismael Villagómez found in a car as the Committee to Protect Journalists calls for the killing to be investigated
A photographer for a newspaper in the notoriously violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez was found shot dead in the driver’s seat of a car, prosecutors said, in the fifth killing of a journalist in the country so far in 2023.
The body of Ismael Villagómez was found just after midnight Thursday. The newspaper he worked for, the Heraldo de Juarez, said the news photographer was found dead in a car that he had registered to use for work for a ride-hailing app. In Mexico, many journalists take work outside the profession to pay the bills.
Continue reading...Amlo’s pension program helped boost his approval rating, but critics point to his various shortcomings as his term nears its end
Life isn’t easy for Teodila Faustino, who shares a cinder-block home with her husband, five children and several grandchildren on the outskirts of Mexico City. At 69, she has retired from the restaurant where she made about $50 (£46) a week, and her employer left her no pension.
Other than selling tacos occasionally on the street, Faustino’s only lifeline is a state pension through which she receives about $280 (£224) every two months. This, in part, explains her undying gratitude to the man who launched the program: Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Continue reading...Queer activists protest after first non-binary magistrate in nation Jesús Ociel Baena and partner found dead in home
Against the bland, beige backdrop of Mexico’s electoral courtrooms, Jesús Ociel Baena was radiant. The non-binary magistrate paired a shirt and tie with colorful skirts, high heels and bright red lipstick. In the heat of Aguascalientes state, Baena, who used they/their pronouns, would theatrically brandish a rainbow fan to cool down.
Proudly out in the courtroom, the classroom and on social media, Baena was a beacon for Mexico’s queer population, and their death this week has sent shock waves through an embattled community.
Continue reading...Authorities look into Jesús Ociel Baena’s cause of death as activists urge full investigation into gender identity-related threats
Mexico’s first openly non-binary magistrate and a prominent LGBTQ+ activist has been found dead at home in the central state of Aguascalientes.
Jesús Ociel Baena, who used they/them pronouns, was celebrated across Latin America for their work to advance the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
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