In a country where indigenous people are increasingly displaced and journalists are killed at an alarming rate, a courageous new voice has emerged: Lupita, a Tzotzil-Maya woman at the forefront of a Mexican indigenous movement. Twenty years after Lupita lost her family in the Acteal massacre in southern Mexico, she has become a spokesperson for her people and for a new generation of Mayan activists. She balances the demands of motherhood with her high-stakes efforts to re-educate and restore justice to the world
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Lupita: the powerful voice of one indigenous woman leading a movement
Film-maker Monica Wise talks about making her documentary on Mexican indigenous resistance
Our latest Guardian documentary tells the story of Lupita, a courageous young Tzotzil-Maya woman at the forefront of a Mexican indigenous movement. Over twenty years after Lupita lost her family in the Acteal massacre in southern Mexico, she has become a spokesperson for her people and for a new generation of Mayan activists. She balances the demands of motherhood with her high-stakes efforts to re-educate and restore justice to the world. The film-maker Monica Wise talks to us about her experience making the film.
Continue reading...Mexico security forces’ seizures of fentanyl rise by 486% this year
- Officials say synthetic opioids easier to produce and smuggle
- Drug labs have doubled from 91 last year to 175 in 2020
Seizures of the synthetic opioid fentanyl by Mexican security forces have increased by at least 486% in 2020, the country’s defence secretary has announced.
Mexico’s military and police forces seized an estimated 1.3 tons of the synthetic opioid this year, compared to 222 kilograms in 2019.
Continue reading...Covid fatalities soar in Mexico as president condemned for inaction
As the crisis worsens, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government has hardly changed its minimal restrictions
When Rufino Pacheco arrived at the hospital, his breath jagged and his legs buckling, a doctor thrust papers at his stepdaughter, asking for her approval to put him on a ventilator. But the elderly patient balked.
Less than 12 hours later, Pacheco died, hooked up to an oxygen tank in his bedroom, as his wife cried out, “Don’t leave me, old man.” Days later, she too fell sick with Covid-19, along with her adult son.
Continue reading...Mexico: assassin shoots former state governor in restaurant bathroom
Aristóteles Sandoval was shot in the back in bathroom in Puerto Vallarta, and died soon afterwards at local hospital
The former governor of Mexico’s violence-wracked western state of Jalisco has been shot dead in a restaurant bathroom in the popular beach resort of Puerto Vallarta.
Aristóteles Sandoval was dining with four others when at around 1.40 on Friday he got up from the table and went to the toilet, where the killer shot him in the back, said the state attorney general, Gerardo Octavio Solís.
Continue reading...Mexico: new security law strips diplomatic immunity from DEA agents
Law also requires foreign officials in the country to share any intelligence they have obtained with Mexican officials
Mexico’s congress has approved a new national security law restricting the activities of foreign law enforcement officers, in a move which critics say will endanger intelligence sources and threaten the future of international anti-narcotics operations.
The law passed on Tuesday strips foreign agents of diplomatic immunity and requires foreign officials in the country to share any intelligence they have obtained with Mexican officials.
Continue reading...Tower of human skulls reveals grisly scale to archaeologists in Mexico City
New sections of the tower at the capital’s Templo Mayor Aztec site include 119 skulls of men, women and children
Archaeologists have unearthed new sections of an Aztec tower of human skulls dating back to the 1400s beneath the center of Mexico City.
The team has uncovered the facade and eastern side of the tower, as well as 119 human skulls of men, women and children, adding to hundreds previously found, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (Inah) announced on Friday.
Continue reading...Mexican photojournalist killed after taking photos of bodies along a road
Jaime Castaño Zacarías is ninth journalist killed in Mexico this year after he was pursued by gunmen
A Mexican photojournalist has been killed after taking pictures of dead bodies left alongside a road, bringing Mexico’s death toll of journalists to nine this year.
Jaime Castaño Zacarías happened upon the dead bodies with their hands bound in northern Zacatecas state on Wednesday morning, following a clash between drug cartels in the city of Jerez, according to media reports.
Continue reading...‘They’re culpable’: the countries supplying the guns that kill Mexico’s journalists
Many of the weapons used in the murders of 119 journalists were imported – and Mexico’s laws and culture make tracing them impossible
It was around daybreak when Mexican crime reporter Luis Vallejo received a call from a local police officer telling him that a bag of human remains had been found in the city of Salamanca where he lives.
Vallejo had become accustomed to calls like this: in recent years, violence in Guanajuato, the surrounding region, has spiraled to unprecedented levels amid bloody turf wars between rival cartels.
Continue reading...Revealed: how Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel has created a global network to rule the fentanyl trade
Drugs bust in India sheds light on how adaptable cartels have come to dominate the lucrative trade in the powerful synthetic opioid
Carlos is a Mexican businessman employed by an import-export company that specializes in the trade of tequila and agricultural and chemical products. But in January 2016, he was a long way from his home in Culiacán, capital of Sinaloa state.
Two associates accompanied him as he travelled from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Japan, and finally, India.
Continue reading...Murder in Mexico: journalists caught in the crosshairs
The 2012 killing of Regina Martínez, who was investigating links between organised crime and politics, began a wave of violence in the most dangerous country to be a reporter
Regina Martínez Pérez was considered an enemy of the state. The 48-year-old journalist had made powerful foes investigating allegations of collusion between political leaders, security forces and narcotraffickers in the Mexican region of Veracruz.
She was a source of irritation for four consecutive state governors, highlighting violence, abuses of power and cover-ups in the pages of Mexico’s foremost investigative news magazine, Proceso.
Continue reading...Owner of French restaurant in Mexico City murdered ‘while delivering fine wine’
Police investigating claims killers of Baptiste Lormand stole bottles worth £20,000
The grisly killing of a prominent French restaurateur has shaken Mexico City’s foreign community and raised fresh questions over a nationwide murder crisis that has already claimed more than 29,000 lives this year.
Baptiste Lormand, a 45-year-old Parisian, disappeared last Thursday evening in Polanco, an upmarket corner of Mexico’s capital that is home to many of its best eateries as well as many foreign diplomats, businesspeople and journalists.
Continue reading...Surprise at US move to drop drug charges against ex-Mexican minister
Decision seen as reward from Trump to Mexican counterpart for election support
A shock US decision to drop charges against a former Mexican defence minister accused of drug trafficking and money laundering has sparked celebration, consternation and bewilderment.
Gen Salvador Cienfuegos was arrested at Los Angeles airport last month and accused of being at the heart of a multimillion dollar conspiracy to smuggle huge shipments of drugs into the US.
Continue reading...Guerrero at war: chronicling southern Mexico’s forgotten conflict – photo essay
Alfredo Bosco came to Guerrero on assignment to document southern Mexican villages emptied out by conflict. Over repeated visits he documents the region’s story
Life in Guerrero seems to hover at the edge of violence. The threat is pervasive: in the armed men at roadblocks, the empty nighttime streets, the kindling of street protests. Then it erupts, in a brief convulsion. What endures is the wreckage left behind.
Continue reading...Killing of reporter adds to grim toll of violence against Mexican journalists
Israel Vázquez became the third journalist to be murdered in two weeks – and the eighth this year – while reporting on Monday
Early on Monday morning, Israel Vázquez, a crime reporter in the Mexican city of Salamanca, received a tip that a plastic bag full of human remains had been dumped at the side of a street.
He reached the scene before the police, but as he prepared to broadcast on Facebook live, gunmen opened fire from a passing car, and shot him eight times. He died of his injuries later in the day.
Continue reading...End of Trump era deals heavy blow to rightwing populist leaders worldwide
As Biden’s victory sinks in across Brazil, Hungary and elsewhere, dreams of a rightwing global crusade appear to be fading
As the Donald Trump era draws to a close, many world leaders are breathing a sigh of relief. But Trump’s ideological kindred spirits – rightwing populists in office in Brazil, Hungary, Slovenia and elsewhere – are instead taking a sharp breath.
The end of the Trump presidency may not mean the beginning of their demise, but it certainly strips them of a powerful motivational factor, and also alters the global political atmosphere, which in recent years had seemed to be slowly tilting in their favour, at least until the onset of coronavirus. The momentous US election result is further evidence that the much-talked-about “populist wave” of recent years may be subsiding.
Continue reading...Mexico police open fire on femicide protest in Cancún
- Four journalists injured in clashes in Caribbean city
- Murder of 20-year-old woman was latest gender-based killing
Human rights activists in Mexico have expressed indignation after police opened fire on protesters who tried to force their way into Cancún city hall during a demonstration against the country’s femicide crisis.
Four journalists were injured in the incident late on Monday, including two who suffered bullet wounds. Eight protesters were reportedly detained after the shooting.
Continue reading...Mexico’s president won’t congratulate Biden on election win until legal challenges over
Andrés Manuel López Obrador will wait for courts to rule on Trump lawsuits in bid to avoid friction
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Saturday he would not congratulate a winner of the US presidential election until legal challenges are concluded, in an apparent bid to avoid friction with Washington during the transition.
Democrat Joe Biden won the election on Saturday after a victory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania put him over the threshold of 270 electoral college votes.
Continue reading...Mexicans celebrate restricted Day of the Dead amid coronavirus upheaval
With tens of thousands dead, the commemoration of lost family members has rarely been more relevant as rituals of mourning have been disrupted
José Porfirio Martínez Castro and his wife Nery Urioles Nájera were tidying up their family tomb at the municipal graveyard in Morelia. They built a small altar for two of José’s siblings and adorned it with marigolds, sugar skulls and tiny bottles of Coca-Cola – his sister’s favourite drink.
Normally, they would spend the night of 1 November here, lighting candles and remembering their loved ones. But this year the cemetery will be closed because of Covid-19 restrictions, so they made their visit a few days early.
Continue reading...Hurricane Zeta kills at least six as 100mph winds race through south
More than 2.6 million without power in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, with life-threatening weather to continue
More than 2.6 million customers were without power on Thursday morning across several southern states and at least six people had been killed after Hurricane Zeta howled ashore in Louisiana with winds over 100mph then weakened to a tropical storm and raced through the region.
According to the website PowerOutage.us, shortly after dawn at least 2 million were without electricity in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, and the number grew from there. Georgia has the most outages, with more than 800,000 people in the dark.
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