Based on the prize-winning book by Fernanda Melchor, film depicts brutality stemming from ‘war on drugs’ that began in 2006
A group of children find a body in the river: the village witch, her throat slit, writhing with snakes.
The opening scene of Hurricane Season, a new Netflix movie based on Mexican novelist Fernanda Melchor’s book, plunges the viewer straight into a tropical, lawless, superstitious version of rural Veracruz, Melchor’s home state.
Continue reading...Politicians have long sought to silence the genre, but previous clampdowns have only boosted its popularity
A typical song by Peso Pluma, one of Mexico’s most popular singers, might start with a guitar and a trumpet, sounding like something for the older crowd – but then come the lyrics telling of drug shipments, stacks of cash and diamond-encrusted pistols.
Peso Pluma has produced some of the most notorious recent examples of narcocorridos – ballads celebrating the exploits of the Mexican underworld that are hugely popular not just at home but across Latin America and the US.
Continue reading...Majority of migrants rescued in Matehuala were from Central and South America and included 34 children
Authorities have found 123 people from Central and South America trapped in a trailer in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosí, the country’s immigration agency said on Thursday.
Officials from the state attorney general’s office found the people in Matehuala, a city on the border of Nuevo Leon, on Wednesday after a local reported hearing cries for help from a locked trailer box.
Continue reading...Mexico’s Pacific coast was battered by 165mph winds and torrential rain on 25 October. Thousands lost their homes and many now have too little food or water to survive
In the small hours of Wednesday 25 October, Josefina Maldonado, a grandmother of two in her 60s who lives in the Renacimiento district of Acapulco, watched as the corrugated metal roof of her home flew into the sky, ripped off by 165mph (270km/h) winds. The family home and everything and everyone in it, including two terrified small children, were prey to the torrential rain and the horrors of the hurricane. Most of the furniture, including the beds, was swept away.
“It wasn’t that the wind or the water was stronger. Both were working together,” Maldonado says. “We were up all night trying to save what we could, and the children screamed and cried for hours.”
Continue reading...Governor of Guerrero state says 45 confirmed dead and 47 others missing after ferocious storm hit Mexican city on Wednesday
The number of people dead and missing due to Hurricane Otis, a category 5 storm which hammered the Mexican Pacific resort city of Acapulco last week, has risen to close to 100.
Otis battered Acapulco with winds of 165mph (266km/h) on Wednesday, flooding the city, tearing roofs from homes, hotels and other businesses, submerging vehicles and severing communications as well as road and air connections.
Continue reading...Guerrero state governor says officials assessing damage after unprecedented 165mph storm hit Mexico’s Pacific coast
The death toll from a devastating hurricane that hit the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco last week has risen to 43, the governor of Guerrero state has said.
Evelyn Salgado added that electricity had been restored to 58% of Acapulco and that officials had visited 10,000 families there and the nearby city of Coyuca de Benitez for a census to evaluate damages.
Continue reading...Category 5 storm struck Acapulco and leveled homes, hotels and cut off communications as military called in to help with aid efforts
At least 27 people were killed and four remain missing after Hurricane Otis ripped through the beach resort city of Acapulco, leveling homes and hotels, submerging cars and cutting off communications.
The extent of the damage from the category 5 storm, which struck Mexico on Thursday with winds of 165mph, has started to become clear as thousands of first responders and military officers began to assess the damages. Nearly 8,400 members of Mexico’s army, air force and national guard were deployed to assist in cleanup efforts, the defense ministry said.
Continue reading...The resort city of Acapulco was devastated by the category 5 hurricane, with hundreds of windows blown out and electricity cut
At least 27 people died due to Hurricane Otis and four others were still missing, Mexico’s government said after one of the most powerful storms to hit the country smashed into the Pacific resort city of Acapulco a day before.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the government was working to re-establish power and clean up the devastation wrought by the category 5 hurricane that tore through the southern state of Guerrero, and left Acapulco incommunicado.
Continue reading...Powerful category 5 storm hits Mexico’s coast leaving trail of destruction, though full scale of damage remains unclear
Hurricane Otis has smashed through the Mexican resort city of Acapulco as a category 5 storm, wrecking homes, hotels and hospitals, and leaving a trail of destruction, but with communications to the city still severed the full scale of the devastation remained unclear.
As dawn broke on Wednesday, photos and videos posted online showed wrecked buildings and cars partially submerged in floodwaters as authorities in the southern state of Guerrero attempted to take a measure of the damage.
Continue reading...Hurricane Otis is forecast to make landfall near the Mexican resort of Acapulco, with the US National Hurricane Center warning of ‘nightmare scenario’
Hurricane Otis strengthened from a tropical storm to a dangerous Category 5 hurricane in a matter of hours on Tuesday as it approached Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, with the president urging residents to seek shelter.
The storm was forecast to make landfall near the resort of Acapulco early on Wednesday and the US National Hurricane Center warned it will cause catastrophic damage.
Continue reading...Footballer says becoming champions was ‘the only way that we had left to be heard, respected and valued’
The Spanish footballer Jenni Hermoso has said Spain’s World Cup win was part of a “more human, more transcendent” battle for equality in her first public remarks since her team’s triumph was overshadowed by an unsolicited kiss.
The speech was made as part of an event in Mexico, where Hermoso plays for the football club Pachuca, and which featured a tribute to the world champion. The 33-year-old began by describing her emotions as she lifted the World Cup trophy alongside her teammates.
Continue reading...‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, which forces people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while US claims are processed, set to be revived
The Mexican supreme court is poised to give new life to a controversial US-Mexico border policy at a time when both countries are looking for ways to slow the flow of migrants heading north.
The “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, is a Trump-era policy that forced people seeking asylum in the US to wait out their legal proceedings in Mexico for months or even years. The government of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador accepted the arrangement and allowed thousands of asylum seekers to be sent back to the country from the US.
Continue reading...Joaquin Castro urged fellow House members to reject Republican calls for US military action to stem flow of fentanyl from Mexico
A progressive US congressman from Texas has asked his legislative colleagues to join him in condemning some American conservatives’ calls to invade Mexico – ostensibly to do battle with drug cartels there.
Joaquin Castro says he intends to file a resolution in the US House as soon as Friday reaffirming the federal government’s “commitment to respecting the sovereignty of Mexico and condemning calls for military action without Mexico’s consent and congressional authorization”.
Continue reading...A ‘structural failure’ during Sunday service trapped dozens in Santa Cruz church in Gulf coast city of Ciudad Madero
The roof of a church has collapsed in northern Mexico during a Sunday mass, killing at least 10 people and injuring about 60, authorities said as searchers probed the wreckage late into the night looking for survivors and other victims.
Approximately 30 parishioners were believed to have been trapped in the rubble when the roof caved in, officials said. Searchers crawled under the roof slabs and officials brought in dogs to help search for possible survivors.
Continue reading...Silvia Macías was celebrating 15th birthday of son Santiago when bear appeared and gulped down tacos
A woman in Mexico shielded her son after a bear leaped on to a picnic table, inches from his face, and devoured the tacos and enchiladas meant for his birthday dinner.
Silvia Macías of Mexico City had travelled to the Chipinque Park on the outskirts of the northern city of Monterrey to celebrate the 15th birthday of her son, Santiago, who has Down’s syndrome.
Continue reading...Officials react defensively to Heroico, which has been compared to Full Metal Jacket for its scenes of physical and psychological abuse
Mexico’s national guard has been urging its troops to go to see Héroes, a rousingly patriotic film about a 19th-century US invasion, in an apparent attempt to drown out the similarly named Heroico – a film which paints a much less flattering picture of the armed forces.
Héroes tells the story of the Battle of Chapultepec during the 1846-48 Mexican-American war and the “Child Heroes” – six cadets who refused to retreat and instead fought to the death. The last of them supposedly leapt from the ramparts holding the Mexican flag, to prevent its capture.
Continue reading...Organized crime groups have about 175,000 members and authors say the best way to reduce violence is to cut membership
Organised crime groups in Mexico have about 175,000 members – making them the fifth-biggest employer in the country, according to new research published in the journal Science.
Using a decade of data on homicides, missing persons and incarcerations, as well as information about interactions between rival factions, the paper published on Thursday mathematically modeled overall cartel membership, and how levels of violence would respond to a range of policies.
Continue reading...The United Nations general assembly liveblog is now closed, but please see the following stories to stay on top of the day’s news:
Guterres says countries such as Russia are creating a “world of insecurity” for everyone following its invasion of Ukraine, which he says has “unleashed the next phase of our lives: historic human rights abuse, families torn apart, children traumatised, hopes and dreams shattered.”
The war in Ukraine has “serious implications” for the world beyond Kyiv, he says, pointing to the collapse of the Black Sea grain initiative.
The world badly needs Ukrainian food and Russian food and fertilisers to stabilise markets and guarantee food security.
Sudan is descending into full scale civil war. Millions have fled and the country risks splitting apart.
In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, millions are displaced and gender based violence is a horrific daily reality in a country that suffered centuries of colonial exploitation, is today overwhelmed by gang violence and still awaits international support.
Authoritarianism is on the march, inequalities are growing, and hate speech is on the rise.
What we need is determination and determination which is in the DNA of our United Nations, summoning gods with the first words of the charter.
We the peoples of the United Nations, determined, determined to end the scourge of war, determined to reaffirm faith in human rights, determined to uphold justice and respect international law and determined to promote social progress and better lives for all people.
Continue reading...Merrick Garland, the attorney general, confirmed the extradition, calling it an effort to attack ‘every aspect’ of the cartel’s operations
Ovidio Guzman, son of incarcerated Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has been extradited to the US, where he is wanted on fentanyl trafficking charges, Mexican and US authorities said on Friday.
Attorney general Merrick Garland said Ovidio had been extradited, calling it the latest step in US efforts to attack “every aspect” of the drug trafficking operations run by the Sinaloa cartel associated with the Guzman family.
Continue reading...Alleged remains of ‘non-human’ mummies presented at hearing, in country’s first official event on UFOs
Mexican senators have heard testimony that “we are not alone” in the universe and been presented with the alleged remains of “non-human” mummies, in the country’s first official event on extraterrestrial life.
At a senate hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers were shown two shriveled bodies with shrunken heads – alongside video footage of “unexplained anomalous phenomena” – by Jaime Maussan, a sports journalist turned UFO enthusiast.
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