Scientists using an aerial remote-sensing method have discovered the largest and oldest-known structure built by the ancient Maya civilization – a colossal rectangular elevated platform built between 1000 and 800BC in Mexico’s Tabasco state.
Related: Into the light: how lidar is replacing radar as the archaeologist’s map tool of choice
Continue reading...Carmen Arestegui’s battle to stay on the airwaves is the subject of a film highlighting the risks of exposing corruption and crime
When Mexican news anchor Carmen Aristegui was fired from a popular radio show after revealing a presidential scandal on air, it sparked an outpouring of anger and protests.
For millions of listeners Aristegui is a trusted voice cutting through government spin and corruption, and her absence left a void.
Continue reading...The president says the pandemic has been tamed but experts, and those who must bury the dead, fear an alarming rise in cases
Four generations of Enrique Ruvalcaba’s family have worked at the Mezquitán cemetery in the Mexican city of Guadalajara. None of them ever saw anything like this.
Before the coronavirus, the burial ground was open to the public, and the deceased were honoured by flower-carrying mourners and mariachis. Now the dead arrive in silence and alone.
Continue reading...Research found 8,000 more death certificates have been issued so far this year than the four-year average
This year, Mexico City has issued 8,072 more death certificates than the average for the same period in the past four years, according to a new study that suggests the country’s coronavirus death toll could be significantly higher than the official figure of nearly 7,400.
Research published in the Mexican magazine Nexos on Monday used information from the capital’s 52 civil registries to estimate the number of death certificates created between 1 January and 20 May.
Continue reading...Archaeologists face surfeit of mammoths after bones found at airport under construction north of Mexico City
Archaeologists have found the bones of about 60 mammoths at an airport under construction just north of Mexico City, near human-built “traps” where more than a dozen mammoths were found last year.
Both discoveries reveal how appealing the area – once a shallow lake – was for the mammoths, and how erroneous was the classic vision of groups of fur-clad hunters with spears chasing mammoths across a plain.
Continue reading...In San Luis Potosí, cases of Covid-19 are rising, but not everyone is taking lockdown seriously. Photographer Mauricio Palos looks at how the outbreak has affected his home town
In San Luis Potosí, a city in central Mexico, some people believe the coronavirus is an invention by the government. They are sharing memes, videos and recordings with misinformation, in which people tell you that in the hospitals they drain the fluid from your knees and planes spray the city with the virus at night.
Continue reading...Mexico and Peru struggle to contain outbreaks while deaths in Spain fall to two-month low
Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy and are surging in Mexico and Peru as Latin America struggles to contain its fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.
Spain announced that 87 people had died there in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, the first time the figure has been below 100 in more than two months and a sign the virus is being contained in western Europe as it continues to spread aggressively in Russia, India and parts of Africa.
Continue reading...Authorities have struggled to enforce social distancing at the trading centres. At one Lima market, 79% of vendors had coronavirus
Four out of five merchants at a major fruit market in Peru have tested positive for coronavirus, revealing shocking levels of infection – and prompting fears that Latin America’s traditional trading centres may have helped spread Covid-19 across the region.
Seventy-nine per cent of stall-holders in Lima’s wholesale fruit market tested positive for Covid-19, while spot tests at five other large fresh food markets in the city revealed at least half were carrying the virus.
Continue reading...More than 100 Mexicans have died from drinking adulterated alcohol over the past month in a string of mass poisonings which followed a ban on the sale of liquor during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deaths from unsafe alcohol have been reported in at least four states. On Thursday, health officials in the central state of Puebla said the death toll there had reached 51 after a batch of moonshine was tainted with methanol – a wood alcohol which can cause blindness and kidney damage.
Continue reading...An escaped tiger has been captured by a lasso after three men gave chase to the animal on the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico. The tiger escaped from a local house.
Continue reading...President says he doesn’t want to speak to counterpart Xi; Brazil passes 200,000 infections; Baltic travel ‘bubble’ begins
An escalation of rhetoric between Donald Trump and China over the coronavirus pandemic has sparked concerns that a trade deal between the nations is in peril, as Chinese state media dismissed as “lunacy” a suggestion by the US president that he could “cut off relations” with Beijing.
The US president said he was very disappointed with China’s failure to contain Covid-19 in an interview with Fox Business news. Trump said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment.
Continue reading...It is unclear if poisonings were related to coronavirus lockdowns as beer production was halted more than a month ago
At least 35 people have died in Mexico after drinking methanol, the latest in a series of mass bad-alcohol poisonings since the country banned beer sales and many towns banned the sale of liquor.
At least 20 people died of presumed methanol poisoning in the town of Chiconcuautla in the central state of Puebla. State authorities said they had closed the stores where the suspect liquor had been sold, and seized about 50 gallons (200 liters) of it.
Continue reading...Coronavirus may never be eradicated, warns WHO as Spanish study reveals 5% of the population has antibodies
We’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:
Donald Trump has ratcheted up his “Obamagate” conspiracy theory to implicate Joe Biden and other former White House officials in what critics say is a desperate attempt to distract from the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Trump deepens 'Obamagate' conspiracy theory with Biden unmasking move
Continue reading...Human rights groups concerned over expanding the role of the armed forces as the country’s homicide rate reaches new high
Human rights groups in Mexico have expressed disquiet over a presidential decree expanding the role of the armed forces in public security – a reflection of the country’s worsening violence and the failure to properly prepare and equip a police force able to take on powerful criminal organisations.
The decree, published on Monday by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, demonstrates an ongoing dependency on the army and navy for public security work – even though soldiers and marines have been frequently accused of human rights violations.
Continue reading...Authorities in Nogales, Sonora, are hoping to reduce chances of bringing the virus over from Arizona, one of the states most affected
Fears of foreigners bringing infectious disease into the country. Enhanced border checkpoints. And the use of disinfectant spray to sanitize human beings.
These aren’t notes from one of Donald Trump’s freewheeling press conferences. The United States’ troubled response to the coronavirus pandemic is such that the Mexican border city of Nogales, Sonora, has set up “sanitizing tunnels” to disinfect people leaving the US through Nogales, Arizona.
Continue reading...Doctors and nurses have been assaulted, thrown off buses and barred from their homes, accused of spreading coronavirus
Jovanna was walking home after a morning of hospital consultations when she heard a shout behind her. As she turned to look, she felt something wet in her face. Within seconds, her vision went cloudy and she smelled bleach.
“They picked me out because I was wearing scrubs,” said the ear, nose and throat doctor from the Mexican city of Guadalajara, as she described the attack which left her with conjunctivitis and burns on her skin. “I didn’t see anything – I don’t know who it was, but I know they attacked another doctor on the same day.”
Continue reading...Families struggle to maintain coronavirus restrictions as they seek to stay afloat: ‘My fear is my children going hungry’
Leaders across Latin America have ordered their citizens indoors as they struggle to tame the coronavirus.
But for Liliana Pérez, an Argentinian single mother of six, staying at home is a pipe dream.
Continue reading...Close to 200 active criminal groups act as guardians and protectors of communities while using extortion, kidnapping, and violence
Men with assault rifles stand guard as their colleagues hand out plastic bags of groceries from a pick-up truck to a crowd of mostly older women.
Off-screen, the man recording the mobile phone footage announces that the aid packages come from a local crime boss “who runs things here”, in the city of Apatzingán in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán.
Continue reading...The bloody battle broke out in the border state of Chihuahua, where the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels have been at war
A major shootout between rival drug gangs has killed 19 people in the northern Mexico border state of Chihuahua, officials say.
The state prosecutors’ office said on Saturday that 18 corpses, two grenades, vehicles and guns were found at the scene of the clash in the hamlet of Chuchuichupa the township of Madera.
Continue reading...Mexico’s homicide rate raced to a new record in March, as violence raged even as Covid-19 spread across the country and authorities urged the population to stay home and practise social distancing.
Mexico registered 2,585 homicides in March – the highest monthly figure since records began in 1997 – putting 2020 on track to break last year’s record total for murders.
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