Category Archives: Mexico

Monkey shot dead as Mexican cartels’ passion for exotic pets leaves bloody toll

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Spider monkey dressed up as gang mascot killed in shootout, and man dies in Michoacán after trying to pet captive tiger

Mexican narcos’ fascination with exotic animals has been on display this week after a spider monkey dressed up as a drug gang mascot was killed in a shootout, a 200kg tiger wandered the streets in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, and a man died after trying to pet a captive tiger in a cartel-dominated area of western Michoacán state.

Eleven suspected gang members died in the shootout on Tuesday in the state of Mexico, which surrounds the capital. Photos from the scene showed a small monkey dressed in a tiny camouflage jacket and a tiny “bulletproof” vest sprawled across the body of a dead gunman.

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Mexican megachurch leader jailed in US for more than 16 years for child sexual abuse

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La Luz del Mundo ‘apostle’ Naasón Joaquín García sentenced after admitting three abuse charges in Californian court

The leader of the Mexican megachurch La Luz del Mundo was sentenced on Wednesday to more than 16 years in a California prison for sexually abusing young female followers.

Naasón Joaquín García, 53, pleaded guilty last week in Los Angeles superior court to three felonies on the eve of a long-awaited trial.

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Dozens tumble as Mexican footbridge collapses during opening ceremony

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Mayor of Cuernavaca was inaugurating structure when it gave way, injuring eight people, many with broken bones

The mayor of the Mexican city of Cuernavaca was proudly inaugurating a footbridge over a scenic stream on Tuesday when the bridge collapsed, sending him and about two dozen other people plunging into a gully.

The hanging bridge made of wooden boards and metal chains had recently been remodeled. Video of the collapse suggested the boards separated from the chains supporting them.

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Up to 15,000 people expected to walk length of Mexico in giant caravan to US

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Largest ever migrant caravan, huddled together for protection, moves north as global leaders gather for Biden’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles

Liozanys Comeja credits her survival to her teacup chihuahua, Mia. Originally from Venezuela, Comeja moved to Colombia five years ago, but decided to leave her new life behind this month due to the rising cost of living. She crossed the Darien Gap, a notorious stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama, with Mia tucked in her backpack, eventually making her way across eight countries. Now, Comeja is hoping the dog will help her make it through the grueling final leg of their journey.

Comeja has joined about 11,000 others who on Monday will leave Tapachula, a sweltering city on the Mexico-Guatemala border, and head north for the United States. It will depart as leaders from across the hemisphere gather in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas.

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Mexico police arrest alleged serial killer who lured women with job offers

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At least seven young women believed to have been killed after responding to ads on Facebook

Authorities in Mexico have arrested a suspected serial killer accused of luring at least seven young women on Facebook with false job offers.

Surveillance camera footage from two states showed the man meeting with the victims in public places, and in one case driving a victim away on a motorbike, officials said.

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Deaths amid flooding and mudslides as Hurricane Agatha hits Mexico

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Oaxaca state counts cost of strongest hurricane ever to come ashore in May during eastern Pacific hurricane season

Hurricane Agatha caused flooding and mudslides that killed at least 10 people and left 20 missing, the governor of the southern state of Oaxaca said on Tuesday.

Alejando Murat said rivers overflowed their banks and swept away people in homes, while other victims were buried under mud and rocks.

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First hurricane of 2022 season makes landfall in Mexico

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Analysis: Hurricane Agatha kicks off what is forecast to be another busy period of Atlantic storms

The first hurricane of 2022 for the eastern Pacific has made landfall in southern Mexico. Agatha has been slowly moving north towards the Mexican Pacific coast, strengthening before making landfall late on Monday. The storm has produced damaging tropical-force winds and heavy rain.

Winds are easing but heavy rain will continue through Tuesday as the storm moves inland. It is forecast to cause flash flooding and mudslides that could pose a threat to life.

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Archaeologists discover ancient Mayan city at Mexico construction site

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Researchers estimate the city, which features the Mayan Puuc style of architecture, to have been occupied from AD600 to 900

Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city filled with palaces, pyramids and plazas on a construction site of what will become an industrial park near Mérida, on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.

The site, called Xiol, has features of the Mayan Puuc style of architecture, archaeologists said, which is common in the southern Yucatán peninsula but rare near Mérida.

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World’s most violent cities: Medellín crime surge helps Latin America top list

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Region has two-thirds of world’s most dangerous cities, with Bogotá, Rio, Mexico City and San Salvador also named in study

When police found the body of Marcela Graciano, a 31-year-old Colombian DJ, last Thursday, the brutality of the crime shocked even them. Her body, found in a house in a suburb of Medellín – Colombia’s second city – revealed signs of torture and her hands had been tied behind her back.

“The body was in an advanced state of decomposition,” the local police chief, Col Rolfy Mauricio Jiménez, said. The Valle de Aburrá municipality has had 11 murders this year, authorities said.

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Monarch butterflies bounce back in Mexico wintering grounds

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Experts say 35% rise in acreage covered by migratory insects my reflect adaptation to changing climate

Mexican experts have said that 35% more monarch
butterflies arrived this year to spend the winter in mountaintop forests, compared with the previous season.

Experts say the rise may reflect the butterflies’ ability to adapt to more extreme bouts of heat or drought by varying the date when they leave Mexico.

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Mexico’s migrant checks on buses and highways ruled racist and illegal

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Landmark ruling follows case of three young Indigenous Mexicans detained and abused on suspicion of being Guatemalan migrants

Mexican immigration agents can no longer conduct stop and search operations on buses and highways after the country’s supreme court ruled that such checks are racist, discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.

The landmark ruling, handed down in Mexico City on Wednesday, found in favour of three young Indigenous Mexicans who were detained and abused by immigration (INM) officials in 2015 during a US-backed crackdown.

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Mexican farmers demand redress for illegal mining and violence on their land

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Owners of community land bought shares to join annual meeting of Fresnillo, a Mexican FTSE 100 company

Mexican farmers have travelled to London to demand that a FTSE 100 company compensates them for illegal mining on their land and explain violence against anti-mining activists.

Penmont mining, a subsidiary of Fresnillo, was ordered by an agrarian court in Mexico in 2013 to pay members of El Bajío community, co-owners of common land in Sonora, north-west Mexico, for the gold extracted and to restore the land to its original state.

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Madrid show explores graphic art’s role as tool of resistance in Latin America

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Graphic Turn: Like the Ivy on a Wall at Reina Sofía looks at calls for social justice and responses to repression

Forty-three kites bearing 43 black-and-white faces hang from the ceiling of the Reina Sofía, each one a mute appeal for answers, remembrance and justice.

Close by, T-shirts and posters clamour for equality, a forest of placards commemorates the detained, disappeared and dead of Uruguay’s military dictatorship, and an icon of the struggle for Peruvian independence undergoes a queer, pop art makeover.

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Two slain in Mexico are the latest in unrelenting slaughter of journalists

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The president has been accused of failing to address the wave of violence and has been incessant with his attacks on reporters

The unrelenting slaughter of Mexican journalists has continued after two more newspeople were gunned down by unidentified assassins – taking the 2022 death toll to 11 in what is the deadliest country for media professionals outside a warzone.

Yesenia Mollinedo Falconi and Sheila Johana García Olivera were murdered in the town of Cosoleacaque, about 350 miles east of the capital Mexico City, around 3pm on Monday.

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Ninth journalist killed in Mexico this year as violence against media soars

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Murder of veteran Luis Enrique Ramírez – found in bag beside road – brings estimated death toll of journalists in president’s term to 34

A Mexican journalist has been found dead in Sinaloa state, authorities say, marking the ninth death of a media worker in a unprecedentedly bloody year for the country which has drawn international scrutiny.

Luis Enrique Ramírez, a veteran journalist and columnist at El Debate, was found dead on the side of a highway, the state’s attorney general said on Twitter.

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Esper book details Trump rage at Pence and proposal to hit Mexico with missiles

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Memoir from ex-defense chief Mark Esper details extraordinary outbursts he says he helped to defuse

In the heated summer of 2020, thwarted in his desire for a violent crackdown on protesters for racial justice, Donald Trump included his vice-president in a complaint that senior advisers were “losers”.

Trump’s second defense secretary, Mark Esper, details the Oval Office outburst in a new book. A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

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Vaquita porpoise could survive … but only if illegal fishing stops immediately

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DNA study finds rarest cetacean, only found in Gulf of California, has enough genetic diversity to recover – if gillnet ban is enforced


Scientists studying the DNA of the world’s smallest cetacean and rarest marine mammal, the vaquita porpoise, have made a surprising and bittersweet discovery.

With a tiny population of fewer than 10 individuals left, the mammal was assumed by conservationists to be at a similar risk of harmful mutations and inbreeding as other species with small gene pools.

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Ukrainian refugees waiting at Mexico camp urge US to open doors

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Fifty to 100 people arriving at camp every day as some told at US border in Tijuana they would no longer be admitted

On a dusty field on the east side of Mexico’s sprawling capital, about 500 Ukrainian refugees are waiting in large tents under a searing sun for the United States government to tell them they can come.

The camp has only been open a week and 50 to 100 people are arriving every day. Some have already been to the US border in Tijuana where they were told they would no longer be admitted. Others arrived at airports in Mexico City or Cancún, anywhere they could find a ticket from Europe.

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‘They left her hanging’: details emerge of woman’s death at US-Mexico border

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Griselda Verduzco Armenta was trying to get over the barrier with the help of coyotes to find a more secure future for her daughters


As she’d done before, Griselda Verduzco Armenta tried to cross Mexico’s border with the US earlier this week with dreams of being able to better provide for her two young daughters.

But the 32-year-old’s journey ended in tragedy when authorities say she fell from atop the US border wall in Arizona, accidentally became entangled in a climbing harness that she had used to scale the barrier, and was choked to death while upside down.

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‘A senseless tragedy’: woman dies after bid to climb US border wall

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Border patrol officials and the Cochise county sheriff’s office investigating cause of death of the 32-year-old woman

A Mexican woman attempting to climb the US border wall in eastern Arizona died after her leg became trapped in a climbing harness and she was left hanging upside down, authorities said.

Border patrol officials and the Cochise county sheriff’s office said they were investigating the cause of death of the 32-year-old on a section of the wall near Douglas, Arizona. The sheriff’s office said her foot and leg became entangled as she tried to maneuver down the US side of the wall and that she hung upside down “a significant amount of time”.

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