Category Archives: Mexico

Archaeologists discover ancient Mayan city at Mexico construction site

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Monarch butterflies bounce back in Mexico wintering grounds

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Ukrainian refugees waiting at Mexico camp urge US to open doors

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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”.

Continue reading...

Mexican truckers blockade border crossings over Texas inspection delays

Posted on by

Business groups warn of supply chain disruptions after Governor Greg Abbott orders checks for people and contraband smuggling

Mexican truck drivers have blockaded bridges at the border with the United States for a second day to protest against an order by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, to increase safety inspections that has snarled traffic at ports of entry and led business groups to warn of supply chain disruptions.

“Yesterday it took me 17 hours to cross into the United States and return,” said Raymundo Galicia, a Mexican driver participating in a protest at the Santa Teresa bridge connecting San Jerónimo, Chihuahua, to Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

Continue reading...

Organized crime and corrupt officials responsible for Mexico’s disappearances, UN says

Posted on by

Number of young people disappeared is increasing as total number of cases exceeds 95,000, very few of which are solved

Corrupt state officials and organized crime factions are to blame for Mexico’s soaring number of enforced disappearances, whose victims increasingly include children – some as young as 12, according to a new UN investigation.

Just over 95,000 people were registered as disappeared at the end of November 2021. Of those, 40,000 were added in the past five years, according to the new report by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.

Continue reading...

Mexico president López Obrador wins recall referendum amid low turnout

Posted on by

Nine in 10 voters back leader to stay in office in poll viewed as foregone conclusion by critics and supporters

Nine in 10 Mexicans voting in an unprecedented recall election engineered by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador have backed him to stay in office, underlining his domination of a polarised political agenda.

Critics and supporters had viewed his victory as a foregone conclusion in a ballot that had fed speculation it could open the door to extending presidential term limits, now limited to a single six-year period.

Continue reading...

Stay or go? Mexicans vote on Amlo’s performance in historic recall election

Posted on by

Despite Covid deaths and enduring drug violence, voters look poised to keep president in office in referendum he supports

Maria de Lourdes loves her leader and is desperate for him to stay.

“He’s the best president we’ve had in 70 years,” the retiree enthused this week as she prepared to bombard her phone contacts with calls urging them to back him on Sunday, when Mexico goes to the polls.

Continue reading...

Attacks on press in Mexico hit record level during López Obrador’s presidency

Posted on by

Report paints bleak picture of journalist safety under leader who often criticises media and downplays violence against reporters

Attacks against the press in Mexico have increased by 85% since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office, making it the most deadly period for journalists since records began, according to a new report.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists with 1,945 attacks – including 33 murders – between 2019 and 2021, according to the press freedom group Article 19. Another eight have been killed so far this year.

Continue reading...

Mexico armed forces knew fate of 43 disappeared students from day one

Posted on by

Military hid evidence that student teachers who went missing in 2014 were kidnapped by criminals, independent report finds

Mexico’s armed forces knew that 43 student teachers who disappeared in 2014 were being kidnapped by criminals, then hid evidence that could have helped locate them, according to a report released on Monday by a special investigation.

A former Colombian prosecutor, Angela Buitrago, said the group of independent experts found evidence that authorities withheld or falsified evidence from the start of the search.

Continue reading...

Massacre at cockfight in Mexico leaves 20 dead

Posted on by

Gunmen with assault rifles burst into event in western state of Michoacán long plagued by violence between drug cartels

Mexican authorities have confirmed that 20 people were killed when a group of gunmen stormed a cockfight, in a small town in the western state of Michoacán.

Officials and witnesses described a choreographed massacre in which assailants in military uniforms arrived just after 10.30pm on Sunday night and opened fire with assault rifles at the crowds of primarily middle-aged men.

Continue reading...