Category Archives: Mexico

‘US creates monsters’: Trump talk of war on Mexico cartels echoes past failures

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After the massacre of a US family, the president offered to help ‘cleaning out these monsters’ but previous interventions have brought little peace

After nine members of a Mormon family with US/Mexican citizenship were slaughtered by gunmen, Donald Trump reacted by urging his Mexican counterpart to let him sort out the drug cartels.

“If Mexico needs or requests help cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” the US president tweeted on Tuesday, after news broke of the massacre – the latest in a series of extremely violent events across the country.

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How an isolated group of Mormons got caught up in Mexico’s cartel wars

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The deaths of nine women and children has thrust into focus a small religious community and their long history in a remote corner of northern Mexico

Amid the scrubby foothills of Sonora’s Sierra Madre mountains, they farmed pomegranates and pistachios, raised large families and preached a fundamentalist Mormon faith.

Related: Child survivors of massacred family spent 10 hours hiding in Mexican hills

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Mexico: hymns and tears as victims of attack on Mormon families are buried

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  • Dozens of vehicles from US travel to La Mora to mourn victims
  • Mayor of La Mora in Sonora state says violence has worsened

With Mexican soldiers standing guard, a mother and two sons were carried to the grave in hand-hewn pine coffins on Thursday at the first funeral for the victims of a drug cartel ambush that left nine Mexican American women and children dead.

Clad in shirtsleeves, suits or modest dresses, about 500 mourners embraced in grief under white tents erected in La Mora, a hamlet of about 300 people who consider themselves Mormon but are not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some wept, and some sang hymns.

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‘The disappeared’: searching for 40,000 missing victims of Mexico’s drug wars

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José Barajas, who was snatched from his home, joins the ever-swelling ranks of thousands of desaparecidos, victims of the drug conflict that shows no sign of easing

As he set off into the wilderness under a punishing midday sun, Jesse Barajas clutched an orange-handled machete and the dream of finding his little brother, José.

“He’s not alive, no. They don’t leave people alive,” the 62-year-old said as he slalomed through the parched scrubland of tumbleweed and cacti where they had played as kids. “Once they take someone they don’t let you live.”

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The Guardian view on Amlo and Mexico’s murders: no quick fix | Editorial

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Poverty and aggressive anti-kingpin tactics have fuelled the violence, as the president has recognised – but there is no easy solution

Gunmen massacred up to nine members of a family, most of them believed to be children, in Mexico on Monday. These victims’ ages, and reported US citizenship, propelled the story into the headlines. But this is a country where nearly 100 people are murdered each day, one every 15 minutes, and many deaths go unmarked.

Donald Trump, via Twitter, called on Mexico to “wage WAR on the drug cartels”. That disastrous strategy, first unleashed in 2006 in response to an explosion of violence, only exacerbated the problem – fracturing cartels into smaller factions battling for power. Two hundred thousand deaths later, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, took power vowing to use “hugs not bullets” to bring peace.

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Mexico: up to nine members of US Mormon family killed in ambush

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LeBaron family relatives say nine victims, mainly children, dead in attack on dirt road between Chihuahua and Sonora states

Cartel gunmen in northern Mexico have killed at least six children and three women in an ambush that left six other children wounded, one baby unharmed and reports that another child was still missing.

Victims and survivors of the attack near the border between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua all belong to a well-known Mormon family that is based in Mexico but has dual US/Mexican citizenship and deep roots on both sides of the frontier.

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Cowed and outgunned: why Mexico’s police ‘don’t stand a chance’ against drug cartels

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The 14 October massacre that left 13 state police dead was just one extreme episode of violence in a recent litany of horrors

At first glance, the human skull lying beside the road looked like a piece of rubbish. Once spotted, it was impossible to ignore: charred, broken and punched through with a bullet hole.

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Moving stories: inside the book buses changing children’s lives

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Around the world, mobile library programmes are taking books, educational support and even counselling to communities in serious and urgent need

Every week, two converted blue buses stocked with children’s books carefully navigate the streets of Kabul, avoiding areas where deadly explosions are common. These travelling libraries stop off at schools in different parts of the city, delivering a wealth of reading material directly to youngsters who have limited access to books.

“A lot of schools in our city don’t have access to something as basic as a library,” says Freshta Karim, a 27-year-old Oxford University graduate who was inspired to start Charmaghz, a non-profit, in her home city having grown up without many books herself. “We were trying to understand what we could do to promote critical thinking in our country.”

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Bloody Tijuana: a week in the life of Mexico’s murderous border city

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In a country with nearly 100 murders a day President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed to tackle the social roots of crime but change is slow to come

Brianna Rojas seemed her usual breezy self as she set off for work.

“I’ll see you later!” friends remember the 20-year-old calling out as she headed to her insurance company’s bright yellow offices on Tijuana’s Calle del Carmen.

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US effort to curb fentanyl behind brief arrest of El Chapo’s son, says minister

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  • Ovidio Guzmán was wanted on allegations of smuggling drug
  • Sinaloa cartel appears to have moved into production of opioid

US efforts to curb the opioid fentanyl were behind the brief arrest of a son of imprisoned kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán last month, Mexico’s security minister has said.

After the US requested his extradition, Ovidio Guzmán was briefly arrested, then freed by outnumbered officials who feared a bloody confrontation with cartel henchmen.

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Footage reveals foiled raid against El Chapo’s son – video

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Mexico's government released dramatic video footage of the moment its forces briefly captured a son of kingpin Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán before they were ordered to release the suspected trafficker to avoid any potential bloodshed. A compound holding Ovidio Guzmán was raided by the military. Guzmán's supporters responded with gun battles, prompting him to phone them to call off the attack. Mexico's government later called off the operation after a show of strength from the cartel.

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‘Call it off, please’: video shows how operation against El Chapo’s son fell apart

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Government report on failed operation shows soldiers pushing Ovidio Guzmán López to tell brothers to call off rescue attempt

Mexican soldiers who detained a son of the jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán forced him to telephone his brothers in a desperate effort to call off a rescue attempt by cartel gunmen.

Instead, the call triggered a fresh onslaught in the northern city of Culiacán as the Sinaloa cartel mounted a terrifying show of strength that eventually prompted the outnumbered soldiers to free the capo’s son in exchange for their lives.

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Mexico’s Day of the Dead festival rises from the graveyard and into pop culture

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Mexico City’s parade has grown bigger each year as the holiday becomes a part of Halloween festivities outside of Mexico

The models welcoming guests to an exclusive nightclub for a party to launch Mexico’s annual Formula One race, were tall, mostly blonde and non-Mexican.

Each one had her face painted with the boney features of La Calavera Catrina, the elegant female skeleton once used to mock the rich Mexicans who aspired to be Europeans, but increasingly seen as the personification of the Day of the Dead – and a symbol of Mexican cool.

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Mexico: 27 drugs suspects released a week after El Chapo’s son freed after gun battle

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Suspects had been arrested after drugs, money and rocket launchers seized in Mexico City

Twenty-seven of 31 suspected drugs cartel members arrested this week in a Mexico City raid have been freed by a judge, marking the government’s second high-profile blow on policing the drugs war in as many weeks.

The suspects were nabbed by security forces in a central district of the capital on Tuesday after authorities seized two laboratories used to produce synthetic drugs, 50 kg (110 pounds) of chemical precursors, more than two tonnes of marijuana and 20 kg of cocaine, as well as an unspecified amount of money, rocket launchers and grenades.

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Donald Trump falsely claims he’s building a wall in Colorado – video

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Donald Trump on Wednesday talked about the construction of a wall in states that border Mexico, but included Colorado, which is 400 miles away from the frontier. The US president later said on Twitter he had been kidding and added that he had been referring to people in states that weren't on the border, saying they would still benefit from the wall

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The lost river: Mexicans fight for mighty waterway taken by the US

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The Colorado River serves over 35 million Americans before reaching Mexico – but it is dammed at the border, leaving locals on the other side with a dry delta

The temperature is rising toward 45C (113F) as young brothers Daniel and Dilan Rodríguez skip towards a bridge over the Colorado River in the Mexican border town of San Luis Río Colorado. But there is no water flowing through the channel of one of the world’s mightiest waterways. The pair run down the river bank and cheerfully splash through stagnant puddles dotted about the riverbed.

“We wish we had a river, so we could swim, and jump and sail my cousin’s boat,” said Daniel, 12. “At least we have puddles to make mud balls, that can be fun.”

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Obrador and Trump speak in aftermath of shootout over El Chapo’s son

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Mexico’s foreign minister said on Saturday that the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Donald Trump had agreed to take swift action to stem the flow of illegal weapons from the US into Mexico.

Related: 'We do not want war': Mexico president defends release of El Chapo’s son

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Violent clashes erupt between cartel gunmen and police in Mexico – video report

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Intense fighting has erupted in the Mexican city of Culiacán, where masked gunmen threw up burning barricades and traded gunfire with security forces after authorities arrested one of the sons of the jailed former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán. The chaotic scenes in Culiacán, a long-time stronghold for the Guzmáns' cartel, have increased pressure on President López Obrador, who took office in December promising to pacify a country weary after more than a decade of drug-war fighting.

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‘We do not want war’: Mexico president defends release of El Chapo’s son

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador said security forces saved lives by releasing jailed kingpin’s son after his brief capture in Culiacán

Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has insisted that his government was right to release one of the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a day after his brief capture by the army sparked a wave of attacks by cartel gunmen who took soldiers hostage and paralyzed the northern city of Culiacán.

“This decision was taken to protect citizens. You cannot fight fire with fire,” López Obrador said in his daily press conference on Friday morning. “We do not want deaths. We do not want war.”

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El Chapo: gun battles erupt in Mexican city amid reports of son’s arrest

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In Culiacán, masked men exchange gunfire with security forces and erect burning barricades as armed trucks patrol

Intense fighting has erupted in the Mexican city of Culiacán, where masked gunmen threw up burning barricades and traded gunfire with security forces amid rumours that one of the sons of the jailed former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán had been arrested.

Images shared on social media showed trucks with mounted heavy machine guns patrolling the city streets; another clip showed a gunman with an assault rifle shooting at an unknown target against a soundtrack of continuous gunfire.

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