Mexico experts say body parts dumped in well come from 41 individuals

  • Tests continue on contents of 119 plastic bags found in Jalisco
  • Clandestine burial sites have become common during drug war

Forensic examiners in western Mexico have pieced together 41 bodies from bags full of body parts found in a well earlier this month.

The examiners in the western state of Jalisco said tests were continuing on the grisly contents of 119 plastic bags dumped in a well near the city of Guadalajara. Authorities had to call in backhoes to fully excavate the pit.

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Reclaimed lakes and giant airports: how Mexico City might have looked

The Mexican capital was founded by Aztecs on an island in a vast lake. No wonder water flows through so many of its unbuilt projects

Ever since Mexico City was founded on an island in the lake of Texcoco its inhabitants have dreamed of water: containing it, draining it and now retaining it.

Nezahualcoyotl, the illustrious lord of Texcoco, made his name constructing a dyke shielding Mexico City’s Aztec predecessor city of Tenochtitlan from flooding. The gravest threat to Mexico City’s existence came from a five-year flood starting in 1629, almost causing the city to be abandoned. Ironically now its surrounding lake system has been drained, the greatest threat to the city’s existence is probably the rapid decline of its overstressed aquifers.

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Cockpit coffee spill caused transatlantic flight diversion – AAIB

Control panel was damaged during Condor flight after captain put cup on tray table

A pilot spilling coffee in the cockpit of a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean forced it to turn back and land in Ireland.

The hot coffee damaged an audio control panel, which gave off an electrical burning smell and smoke, an accident report found. It created significant communication difficulty for the pilots flying the Airbus A330, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said.

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Mexico boasts of crackdown but smugglers say migrant flow continues

President Amlo says his new immigration plan is working, but huge numbers still travel north – aided by smugglers’ bribes

Mario Rosales is organising travel arrangements for his latest clients, a Honduran woman and her two primary school-aged children hoping to reach the United States.

Rosales, 47, a coyote, or people smuggler, sends their photos via WhatsApp to his contact in the Mexican National Immigration Institute (INM) in order to obtain fake identity cards – all part of the family’s travel package, which costs $1,800 per person to traverse about half (1,750km) of the region’s most dangerous migration route.

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Mexico’s president seeks inquiry into botched investigation of 43 missing students

López Obrador makes announcement following release of alleged leader of local drug gang believed to have killed the students

Mexico’s president has promised to investigate the botched investigation into the abduction and disappearance of 43 teacher trainees in 2014 – one of the country’s most notorious crimes and an atrocity the then government tried to downplay as a minor local matter.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador made the announcement on Wednesday following the release of an alleged leader of the local drug gang believed to have killed the missing students who were abducted by corrupt police officers in the town of Iguala.

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More Cubans seek asylum in Mexico amid clampdown on legal path to US

US-bound Cubans used to encounter far fewer obstacles on the migration passage, but that’s changed due to crackdowns

Yatsel Jerez Ramón has been in Mexico for six weeks, and so far, nothing has gone well for the Cuban migrant trying to reach the United States.

On his first night in Tenosique, a small city in the southern border state of Tabasco, Jerez, 37, narrowly escaped a police raid at his hotel. The following day, a man posing as a state lawyer convinced him to handover $500 to obtain a humanitarian visa with which, Jerez was told, he’d be able to safely continue his passage north.

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Mexico uncovers 3,000 secret graves hiding bodies of drug war victims

  • New data reveals nearly 5,000 bodies found across the country
  • Disappearances common amid extreme drug-related violence

More than 3,000 secret graves containing victims of Mexico’s raging drug wars have been found across the country, according to the first ever official tally of the phenomenon.

A total of 4,874 bodies were found at 3,025 sites, and many of the victims have yet to be identified, said Karla Quintana, the head of the National Search Committee, which was set up last year to help desperate families find relatives who have gone missing.

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‘People have had enough’: Mexican town that lynched alleged kidnappers

Shocking act in Tepexco is just one example of wider malady blighting countries from Bolivia to Brazil

Socorro Muñoz fled indoors as the laurel-lined square outside her shop became a public execution ground one sunny afternoon in early August.

“I didn’t want to see,” the 62-year-old storekeeper explained as she relived the moment a tide of Latin American lynchings swept into Tepexco’s picturesque Plaza de la Constitución, leaving seven alleged kidnappers dead.

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‘It can happen again’: America’s long history of attacks against Latinos

Last year marked a century since another Texas massacre, part of a legacy of racist violence leading up to El Paso

“It can happen again.” That’s what Arlinda Valencia said last year, at a ceremony in Texas marking the 100th anniversary of the massacre of 15 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans by a group of white men.

Valencia’s great-grandfather was one of the 15 unarmed men and boys who were woken up in the middle of the night in Porvenir, Texas, in 1918, taken outside, and shot to death. The slaughter, which was carried out by white Texas Rangers, US soldiers, and local vigilantes, was justified by labeling the Mexican American families “bandits” and criminals.

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Mexico cartel hangs bodies from city bridge in grisly show of force

  • Jalisco New Generation cartel claims 19 deaths in Uruapan
  • Drug gangs believed to be fighting for control of avocado trade

The merciless dogfight between Mexican drug cartels has produced its latest macabre spectacle with the discovery of 19 mutilated corpses – nine of them hung semi-naked from a bridge – in a city to the west of the capital.

Related: 'Can't fight evil with evil': life in Mexico's most murderous town

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Thieves strike gold after taking $2.5m in coins from open vault at Mexican mint

The brazen theft of more than 1,500 ‘centenarios’ in Mexico City comes amid alarm at rising crime

Armed robbers have stolen more than $2m worth of gold coins from a vault that had been left open at a mint in Mexico City.

The daylight robbery was the latest high-profile crime to hit the capital city amid record levels of lawlessness across the country.

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Mexican media call for more protection after three killings in a week

Journalists say blame lies in ‘grey zone’ between organised crime and authorities

Journalists in Mexico have said the new government is failing to protect them after three reporters were murdered in less than a week.

Jorge Ruiz Vázquez, a reporter with the Gráfico de Xalapa newspaper, was the latest victim, shot dead late on Friday night in Actopan, in Veracruz state. He was supposed to have received protection from state security forces but this was missing on the night of the killing.

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Third Mexican journalist killed in a week amid record murder rate

A journalist shot in his own home despite being offered official protection reflects Mexico’s struggle with rising violence

An investigation has been launched into the death of a reporter in the Mexican state of Veracruz after he became the third journalist to be murdered in a week.

As the country grapples with a record murder rate, Mexican officials in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz where Jorge Ruiz Vazquez worked for the Grafico de Xalapa newspaper in Veracruz’s capital, said the investigation would examine why procedures to protect him failed.

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Fewer than 19 vaquita porpoises left – study

Calls for Mexico to crackdown on use of illegal fishing nets after further decline of species

There are fewer than 19 vaquita porpoises thought to be left, according to a study.

In 2016, estimates of the vaquita population stood at just 30, but research published in Royal Society Open Science suggests the figure has fallen further.

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US border wall seesaws allow children on each side to play together – video

The architect and anti-border wall campaigner Ronald Rael has installed three pink seesaws on the US-Mexico border to allow families on each side to ‘meaningfully connect’ with each other and highlight the bond between the two countries. Rael says the seesaws have turned the wall into a ‘literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations’

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Mexico president accused of hypocrisy for backing tough anti-protest laws

Andrés Manuel López Obrador – who made his name as a protester – backs laws that could see activists jailed for 20 years

Mexico’s president – a man who made his name blockading Pemex petroleum installations in southeastern Tabasco state – has been criticised over his support for a state law prohibiting protests.

On Monday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s partisans in Tabasco approved legislation that metes out stiff punishment for protests, including prison sentences of up to 20 years for blocking access to businesses and 13 years for impeding work on public works projects.

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Fear, confusion, despair: the everyday cruelty of a border immigration court

At a federal immigration court in El Paso asylum seekers wait in limbo as a result of Trump’s policies

Judge Sunita Mahtabfar, presiding over the El Paso immigration court in south-west Texas, kicked off the hearing by asking the 16 asylum seekers a question.

“Is anyone here afraid to return to Mexico?” she said.

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