Category Archives: Mexico

Mexican truckers blockade border crossings over Texas inspection delays

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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.

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

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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.

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Mexico president López Obrador wins recall referendum amid low turnout

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Massacre at cockfight in Mexico leaves 20 dead

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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.

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Violence in Mexico and Central America driving large waves of migration

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Biden administration will institute expedited processing – and sometimes removal – of asylum seekers to clear backlog

Waves of migration through Mexico and Central America, and people who go missing, will increase in 2022 due to high levels of violence in the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

“In many countries, violence is wreaking more and more havoc, and that’s why there are more and more migrants,” ICRC representative Jordi Raich told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. “And it’s not a situation that is going to improve or slow down, not even in the years to come.“

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Equality was key to ancient Mexican city’s success, study suggests

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At its peak Monte Albán was home to 17,000 people, despite a lack of water supplies or fertile land

Greater equality than that experienced in other Mesoamerican cities may have been key to the successes of an ancient Zapotec community in Mexico which survived far longer than any contemporaneous metropolis, a new study suggests.

The ruins of Monte Albán – which include pyramids, canals and a ballgame court – sit on a semi-arid hilltop above the city of Oaxaca. At its peak the city, founded in 500BC, was the administrative and religious capital for the Zapotec people, and home to 17,000 people, despite a lack of water supplies or fertile land.

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Eighth Mexican journalist to be killed in 2022 is shot outside his home

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Armando Linares López gunned down six weeks after mourning the murder of a colleague in the same city in Michoacán state

The murder crisis gripping Mexican journalism has claimed another life after a journalist was gunned down in the conflict-stricken state of Michoacán just six weeks after he announced the murder of a colleague.

Armando Linares López, the director of a news website called Michoacán Monitor, was reportedly shot at least eight times on Tuesday afternoon outside his home in the city of Zitácuro. He is the eighth Mexican journalist to be killed in 2022, compared with nine in the whole of last year.

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Mexican president lashes out at EU ‘lies’ over his media-bashing rhetoric

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador was urged to tone down his rhetoric by MEPs after a spate of journalist murders – he did the opposite

Mexico’s government has lashed out at the “corruption, lies and hypocrisy” of the European parliament after its members urged its populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to rein in his media-bashing rhetoric after the murders of at least six Mexican journalists.

Mexico’s press corps has been plunged into mourning this year by a succession of killings targeting media workers in what was already one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.

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‘Traumatised and terrified, with nowhere else to go’: huge numbers of people stuck at US border

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Title 42, enacted under Trump and kept in place by Biden, has led to hundreds of thousands being denied their right to asylum since the start of the pandemic

When Henry Ruiz* and Raquel Hernandez boarded a bus heading north to America with their two young children, they knew there would be no going back.

It was June 2021, and a few weeks earlier Ruiz, a 28-year-old banana farmer from central Mexico, had been abducted by a group of armed men and taken to an isolated ranch where 15 others – 13 men and two women – were being held.

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‘We fight, therefore we exist’: what lay behind Mexico’s brutal football riot?

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Three people were left critically injured after violence at Querétaro v Atlas. But many observers said the scenes could have been prevented

The scenes that shocked Mexico and horrified the world of soccer on Saturday were caught on shaky cell phone videos: men wearing the red and black jerseys of the Liga MX champions, Atlas, lay prone while others in the blue and black of Gallos del Querétaro beat and stripped them. Hundreds of raging fans descended on the pitch in Querétaro’s Corregidora Stadium, chasing their rivals, who sought refuge in the Atlas players’ locker room. Many Atlas fans ripped off their shirts to avoid being attacked.

The riot that broke out during the match between the two teams from central Mexico left 26 injured, three in a critical condition, the governor of the state of Querétaro, Mauricio Kuri, told reporters at a press conference on Sunday. Kuri also denied reports that there had been fatalities.

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Liga MX suspended as Fifa condemns ‘barbaric’ riot that leaves dozens injured in Mexico

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  • Three confirmed as critically injured after riot
  • Players were forced to flee from pitch during violence

At least 26 people were injured, including three critically, on Saturday when fans brawled during a football game in central Mexico.

The Liga MX match between the hosts Queretaro and Atlas from Guadalajara was suspended in the 62nd minute when fights broke out in the stands. Security personnel opened the gates to the field so that fans, including women and children, could escape the stands.

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Reporter killed in Mexico to become seventh journalist killing this year

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Juan Carlos Muñiz, who covered crime for Testigo Minero, killed in Fresnillo as website says ‘this social breakdown …is out of control’

A journalist has been killed in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, becoming the seventh killed in the country so far this year.

Juan Carlos Muñiz, who covered crime for the online news site Testigo Minero in Fresnillo, was killed on Friday, according to the state governor David Monreal.

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More rights defenders murdered in 2021, with 138 activists killed just in Colombia

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Most of 358 victims worked on land, environmental and indigenous rights, with more killed in Mexico, India and among Afghan women


A Colombian conservationist who saved a rare species of parrot from extinction, a young feminist activist in Afghanistan, and two poets in Myanmar who used words to protest against the military coup were among 358 human rights defenders murdered in 35 countries last year, analysis has found.

The environmentalist Gonzalo Cardona Molina, 55; Frozan Safi, a 29-year-old Afghan economics lecturer; and K Za Win and Khet Thi, two of several poets to be killed, were among those targeted because of their “peaceful and powerful” work, according to a global analysis of threats and attacks faced by human rights activists compiled by Front Line Defenders (FLD) and the Human Rights Defenders Memorial.

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Bodies missing after Mexican drug cartel massacre caught on video

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Prosecutors say they cannot determine how many were killed because attackers cleaned up the scene and removed any bodies

Mexicans have been left wondering what happened to about a dozen men who disappeared after they were seen lined up against a wall by drug cartel gunmen.

In a video apparently filmed by a resident of the town San José de Gracia in the western state of Michoacán and posted on social media, bursts of gunfire broke out and smoke covered the scene.

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‘Showing respect’: revival of Japanese technique that promises fish a better way to die

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Fishermen in Mexico are using the ike jime method, which aims to reduce fish trauma, to improve the quality of catches and help sustainability

Every morning, hundreds of small white fishing boats dot the dark blue waters of Veracruz’s coastline on the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the crews, many of whose families have been fishing for generations, employ traditional methods – using nets to catch large numbers of fish, which then slowly asphyxiate once out of the water.

But a few of the fishermen are doing something different, using a technique that emerged in Japan several centuries ago. It is a method for slaughtering fish that emulates a process called ike jime, which is based on a simple scientific principle: the less trauma the fish experiences, the longer the flesh remains fresh.

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Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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Journalist shot dead in southern Mexico, taking toll to five this year

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Heber López, director of the online news site Noticias Web, was killed in the port city of Salina Cruz in Oaxaca state

A journalist has been shot dead in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, the fifth killed in the country this year, state authorities said.

Heber López, director of the online news site Noticias Web, was killed leaving a recording studio in the port city of Salina Cruz, said an official with the Oaxaca state security agency, who requested anonymity.

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