Category Archives: Mexico

Critic accidentally destroys $20,000 artwork at Mexico fair

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Avelina Lésper said it was almost as if Gabriel Rico’s piece knew how much she disliked it

An art critic has destroyed a contemporary piece at Mexico’s premiere art fair, sparking a debate about what constitutes art.

Critic Avelina Lésper said she accidentally shattered the installation on Saturday at the Zona Maco art fair in Mexico City when she placed an empty soda can near it to express her disdain for the piece: a sheet of glass with a stone, soccer ball and other random objects suspended inside.

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Fear in Mexico as twin deaths expose threat to monarch butterflies and their defenders

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The deaths of two butterfly conservationists have drawn focus to a troubling tangle of disputes, resentments and violence

The annual migration of monarch butterflies from the US and Canada is one of the most resplendent sights in the natural world – a rippling orange-and-black wave containing millions of butterflies fluttering instinctively southward to escape the winter cold.

The spectacle when they reach their destination in central Mexico is perhaps even more astonishing. Patches of alpine forest turn from green to orange as the monarchs roost in the fir trees, the sheer weight of butterflies causing branches to sag to the point of snapping. Tens of thousands of the insects bounce haphazardly overhead, searching replenishment from nearby plants.

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El Chapo’s daughter is married at majestic Mexican cathedral

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Ostentatious wedding to groom with underworld links is seen as reminder of bride’s family’s power

It was the society wedding of the year in Mexico’s drug cartel heartland: Alejandrina Gisselle Guzmán, daughter of the convicted kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, tied the knot with the kin of another member of Mexico’s underworld.

And in the ostentatious style of a family accustomed to getting its way, they were married in a closed-door ceremony in the cathedral of Culiacán – the city at the centre of the Sinaloa cartel’s criminal empire.

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Mexico: defender of monarch butterflies found dead two weeks after he vanished

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  • Homero Gómez González was found floating in a well
  • Activists say death could be over illegal logging disputes

A Mexican environmental activist who fought to protect the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly has been found dead in the western state of Michoacán, two weeks after he disappeared.

Homero Gómez González, a former logger who managed El Rosario butterfly reserve, vanished on 13 January. His body was found floating in a well on Wednesday, reportedly showing signs of torture.

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Trump border wall between US and Mexico blows over in high winds

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Steel panels being installed between Calexico and Mexicali are part of the US president’s attempt to enhance the border barrier

A section of Donald Trump’s much-vaunted border wall between the United States and Mexico has blown over in high winds, US border patrol officers have been reported as saying.

The steel panels, more than nine metres (30ft) high, began to lean at a sharp angle on the border between the Californian town of Calexico and Mexicali in Mexico amid gusts on Wednesday.

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Hundreds of Central American migrants rounded up by guardsmen at Mexico border – video

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National guardsmen in riot gear have blocked the path of hundreds of Central Americans near the town of Frontera Hidalgo in southern Mexico. 

Security forces corralled the migrants and hauled them on to buses, as Mexico continues with efforts to contain mass migration under pressure from the Trump administration.


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Central American migrants meet with armed guardsmen at Mexico border

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Mexico continues with efforts to contain the procession under pressure from the Trump administration

National guardsmen in riot gear have corralled hundreds of Central Americans and hauled them on to buses as Mexico continues with efforts to contain mass migration, under pressure from the Trump administration.

Security forces blocked the migrants’ path near the town of Frontera Hidalgo on Thursday afternoon, after hundreds had swept into Mexico across the Suchiate River that divides the country from Guatemala.

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American Dirt: why critics are calling Oprah’s book club pick exploitative and divisive

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Latino writers say Jeanine Cummins’ novel uses stereotypes and exploits the suffering of Mexican immigrants

American Dirt, the third novel by Jeanine Cummins, begins with a group of assassins opening fire on a quinceañera cookout. We watch Lydia’s entire family get killed, one by one. Only Lydia and her eight-year-old survive.

The scene is one of many depictions of graphic violence in American Dirt and it has sparked an intense conversation about “pity porn” and writing about the Mexican immigrant experience.

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Scuffles erupt between migrants and troops at Guatemala-Mexico border – video report

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Scuffles have broken out between hundreds of Central American migrants and National Guard agents at the border between Guatemala and Mexico. The troops formed a barrier to stop the migrants from entering deeper into Mexico as they attempted to cross into the US

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Mexico: Amlo sought to sell presidential jet, but nobody wanted it

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Luxurious plane will be returned to Mexico after a year on sale in the US where it piled up $1.5m in maintenance costs

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has made selling off the luxurious presidential jet a centerpiece of his austerity program, but there’s just one problem: nobody wants to buy the white elephant.

López Obrador said on Tuesday the Boeing Dreamliner will be returned to Mexico after a year on sale in the United States, where it piled up about $1.5m in maintenance costs.

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More than 300 human rights activists were killed in 2019, report reveals

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Colombia was the bloodiest nation with 103 murders and the Philippines was second, followed by Brazil, Honduras and Mexico

More than 300 human rights defenders working to protect the environment, free speech, LGBTQ rights and indigenous lands in 31 countries were killed in 2019, a new report reveals.

Two thirds of the total killings took place in Latin America where impunity from prosecution is the norm.

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More than 60,000 people are missing amid Mexico’s drug war, officials say

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Mexican authorities admit the number is far higher than previously estimated as murders continue to rise

The devastating human toll of Mexico’s security crisis was laid bare on Monday as authorities admitted nearly 62,000 people had vanished since the start of its catastrophic war on drugs in 2006.

The figure – far higher than a previous estimate of about 40,000 – spoke to the scale of the challenge facing Mexico’s leftist leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took power in December 2018 vowing to pacify his country.

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US sends asylum seekers to Mexico to await hearings held 350 miles away

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Authorities are expanding the Remain in Mexico program, which critics say puts migrants into dangerous border towns

The US government has started sending asylum seekers back to Nogales, Mexico, to await court hearings that will be scheduled roughly 350 miles (563 kilometers) away in Ciudad Juárez.

Authorities are expanding a program known as Remain in Mexico that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait out their immigration court hearings in Mexico. Until this week, the government was driving some asylum seekers from Nogales, Arizona, to El Paso, Texas, so they could be returned to Juárez.

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Mexico’s Amlo says El Chapo ‘had the same power’ as past presidents

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López Obrador took a blow at his predecessors while claiming Mexico’s era of corruption is ‘gone to the garbage dump of history’

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, closed out 2019 with a parting shot at his predecessors, saying the imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera had once wielded the same power as the country’s president.

In a video message from the southern city of Palenque on Wednesday, López Obrador recounted his administration’s successes in its first year and highlighted its challenges foremost surging violence.

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Spain orders Bolivian trio to leave as diplomatic row deepens

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Government in tit-for-tat retort after Jeanine Añez said she would expel diplomats over alleged plan to extract former Morales aide

The Spanish government has declared three Bolivian diplomats “personae non gratae” in a tit-for-tat move as a diplomatic spat deepened with Madrid’s former colony.

Related: Latin America's tumultuous year turns expectations on their head

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Are Mexican avocados the world’s new conflict commodity?

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The fruit’s global surge in popularity has fuelled exports and attracted violent cartels to the trade in ‘green gold’

The 19 mutilated bodies, nine hanging semi-naked from a bridge in the Mexican city of Uruapan, were initially thought to be the result of a clash between rival drug gangs. But the Jalisco New Generation cartel, which claimed the murders in August, is believed to be fighting for more than drugs. It wants dominance over the local avocado trade.

Mexico is the world’s biggest producer of avocados. Exports of the “green gold” from the state of Michoacán, which produces most of Mexico’s avocados, were worth $2.4bn last year.

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Mexican president Amlo calls on Bolivia to stop harassing diplomats

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Comments further stoked diplomatic row between Mexico and Bolivia, which has descended into personal insults

Mexico’s president has called on police in Bolivia to stop harrassing diplomats at his country’s embassy in La Paz and allow nine former officials holed up there – all allies of former leader Evo Morales – to seek asylum.

“The right to asylum has to be guaranteed,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at his daily press conference on Friday. “We hope they act sensibly and they don’t invade our diplomatic representation in Bolivia. Not even Pinochet did that.”

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Mexican police chief arrested in connection to Mormon family killings

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Nine women and children of US-Mexican origin were shot dead by suspected drug cartel hitmen last month

Mexican authorities have arrested a municipal police chief for his suspected links to the killing of three women and six children of US-Mexican origin in northern Mexico last month, local media and an official said on Friday.

Suspected drug cartel hitmen shot dead the nine women and children from families of Mormon origin in Sonora state on 4 November, sparking outrage in Mexico and the United States.

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Archaeologists discover remains of vast Mayan palace in Mexico

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Ancient building found 100 miles west of Cancùn estimated to be more than 1,000 years old

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered the remains of a vast Mayan palace over 1,000 years old in an ancient city about 100 miles west of the tourist hotspot of Cancún.

The building in Kulubá is 55 metres long, 15 metres wide and six metres high, and appears to have been made up of six rooms, said Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

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