Category Archives: Mexico

Gangsters use vehicles to ram into Mexico prison and free nine inmates

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The armed group broke into the jail in Tula and opened fire, injuring a guard and a police officer

Mexican gangsters used a convoy of vehicles – including a truck with homemade armour-plating – to ram their way into a prison before opening fire at guards and rescuing nine inmates.

Several other vehicles were also set on fire in the spectacular plot targeting the jail in the central city of Tula. The escapees include José Artemio Maldonado Mejía, alias “El Michoacano”, the leader of a local crime organisation known as Pueblos Unidos.

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El Chapo’s wife Emma Coronel Aispuro sentenced to three years in US prison

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Coronel admitted to acting as a courier between Joaquín Guzmán and other members of the Sinaloa cartel while he was in prison

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of the imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has been sentenced to three years in a US prison, after she pleaded guilty to helping the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Before her sentencing in a federal court in Washington, Coronel, 32, pleaded with US District Judge Rudolph Contreras to show her mercy.

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The world is watching: TV hits around the globe

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A Spanish trans woman’s memoirs, a Mumbai gangster drama, Israeli sisters in trouble… the Covid era is a rich moment for TV drama. Critics from Spain to South Korea tell us about the biggest shows in their countries

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Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest, survey finds

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Survey also finds adults aged 18-24 and women more concerned about personal finances than other groups

Young people and women have taken the hardest psychological and financial hit from the pandemic, a YouGov survey has found – but few people anywhere are considering changing their lives as a result of it.

The annual YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project found that in many of the 27 countries surveyed, young people were consistently more likely than their elders to feel the Covid crisis had made their financial and mental health concerns worse.

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Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

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Mexican environmental campaigner missing after attack on villagers

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Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the Mixtec people, was defending indigenous lands from illegal logging

A Mexican environmental campaigner has been declared missing barely a week after a savage attack on indigenous villagers displaced from the lands she was defending against illegal logging.

Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the indigenous Mixtec (ñuù savi) people who worked to protect forests in southern Oaxaca state, was last heard from on 27 October. She was scheduled to attend a virtual meeting so she could join a state mechanism for protecting journalists and defenders, but did not attend, according to Rosi Bustamante, a US-based activist who had been in close contact with Galindo.

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At least 19 killed as truck smashes into cars at toll booth in Mexico

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The crash sparked an inferno that also injured at least three people on the highway between Mexico City and Puebla state

A transport truck has smashed into a toll booth and six other vehicles on a highway in central Mexico, leaving at least 19 people dead and three injured, authorities said.

The brakes on the truck apparently failed before it crashed into the toll booth and then the vehicles on Saturday, igniting a large fire on the highway connecting Mexico City with Puebla state.

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Tourists in Mexico shelter after armed gang storms Cancún beach – video

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Staff and tourists near the Mexican resort city of Cancún have been sent rushing for shelter after a group of armed men entered the beach outside a luxury hotel and opened fire. Two men were killed on Thursday in what state officials described as a confrontation between drug dealers at the Hyatt Ziva in Puerto Morelos, just south of Cancún

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Ancient Maya canoe found in Mexico could be more than 1,000 years old

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Boat was discovered in freshwater pool during construction of a tourist train to the ruins of Maya city

A wooden canoe used by the ancient Maya and believed to be more than 1,000 years old has turned up in southern Mexico almost completely intact, officials have said.

The extremely rare canoe was found submerged in a freshwater pool known as a cenote, thousands of which dot Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, near the ruins of Chichén Itzá, once a major Maya city featuring elaborately carved temples and towering pyramids.

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Holy bikini-clad Batwoman! Archive saves Mexico’s scorned popular films

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Permanencia Voluntaria has rescued hundreds of films and is seeking to challenge attitudes towards its legacy

From demons, ghosts and vampires to Martians, mad scientists and spurned lovers, the heroes and heroines of 20th-century Mexican popular cinema faced more than their share of enemies.

Few foes, however, have proved quite as formidable as the combined adversaries of time, critical snottiness and oblivion – not to mention the odd earthquake.

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Regulating indigenous medicine in Mexico ‘could violate rights’

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Academics and traditional medical groups warn against proposed legislation to grant state authority to control practice

Proposed legislation that would grant the Mexican state authority to regulate and control the practice of indigenous medicine could violate the country’s constitution and international conventions on the rights of ancestral communities, academics and traditional medical groups have warned.

The bill, introduced by the governing Morena party and unanimously voted through by the lower house in April, sets out to regulate and standardise traditional and complementary healthcare.

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Californian blogger among two tourists killed in shootout at Mexico’s Tulum

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The two women killed and three tourists injured were believed to have been caught in crossfire of clash between drug gangs

A Californian travel blogger was one of two foreign tourists killed at a restaurant in Mexico’s Caribbean beach resort of Tulum during a shootout between suspected gang members.

The two women killed were identified as Anjali Ryot, an Indian national who lived in San Jose, and German national Jennifer Henzold, though no hometown was immediately available for her. Two German men and a Dutch woman were also injured during the shootout late on Wednesday, the district attorney’s office in Quintana Roo state said.

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US to reopen land borders with Canada and Mexico in November

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The United States’ neighbours have been pressing it to ease restrictions on nonessential travel that have separated families during the pandemic

The US will reopen its land borders to nonessential travel in November, ending a 19-month freeze due to the Covid-19 pandemic as the country moves to require all international visitors to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Vehicle, rail and ferry travel between the US and Canada and Mexico has been largely restricted to essential travel, such as trade, since the earliest days of the pandemic.

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Mexico City to replace Columbus statue with pre-Hispanic sculpture of woman

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The statue is a replica of a mysterious carving of an Indigenous figure unearthed in January known as the Young Woman of Amajac

A replica of a mysterious pre-Hispanic sculpture of an Indigenous woman has been chosen to replace a statue of Christopher Columbus on Mexico City’s most prominent boulevard.

The statue was unearthed in January in the Huasteca region, near Mexico’s Gulf coast. It’s known as the Young Woman of Amajac, after the village where she was found buried in a field. But nobody really knows who the stone sculpture was supposed to depict.

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Mexico police intercept 652 Central American migrants in three cargo trucks

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Discovery is one of biggest of US-bound migrants, with 90% Guatemalans and nearly 200 unaccompanied minors

Police in northern Mexico have discovered more than 600 Central American migrants hiding in three long cargo trucks headed to the United States, in one of the biggest roundups of US-bound migrants by Mexican authorities in years.

Video released by police showed officers prying off a lock from a truck’s rear door late on Thursday, and opening it to find migrants in heavy coats and hoods huddled close together on the floor, nearly all of them wearing face masks.

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‘We are fearful’: Indigenous Mexicans dread new military buildup on ancestral land

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As the Tzeltal people resist huge infrastructure projects across Chiapas state, the new national guard barracks springing up are alarming many

Micaela* always stops to kiss a cross at the base of three hills, a lush swath of land in the indigenous ejido of San Sebastián Bachajón, Chiapas. Her ejido, meaning communal land, is shared among more than 5,000 Tzeltal inhabitants. But soon, they will also have to share it with Mexico’s national guard.

The national guard has built 165 barracks in Mexico since it was created only two years ago by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to replace the federal police, which he said was corrupt. Micaela’s community is leading the first lawsuit against one of 500 or so barracks planned across the country.

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Madrid leader takes issue with pope’s apology for ‘painful errors’ in Mexico

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Spain brought Catholicism, civilisation and freedom to Americas, says Isabel Díaz Ayuso

The rightwing president of the Madrid region has taken issue with the pope’s recent apology for the church’s “very painful errors” in Mexico, and said Spanish conquistadors brought Catholicism, civilisation and freedom to Latin America.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, touted as a possible future leader of Spain’s conservative People’s party, has a history of provocative pronouncements.

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Biden is treating migrants little better than Trump did. That’s shameful | Xochitl Oseguera

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We thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrong

We thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrong.

Most of us were shaken and horrified, and the country rightfully embarrassed, by images of US border patrol agents on horseback attacking asylum seekers, including at least one child, in Texas. Thankfully, that has been stopped and an investigation is now underway. We need more than an investigation, though: we need to know that nothing like that will ever happen again.

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Haiti deportations justified because of Covid, Biden homeland secretary says

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The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send thousands of Haitians to a home country they fled because of natural disasters and political turmoil.

Related: White House criticizes border agents who rounded up migrants on horseback

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