Category Archives: Mexico

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Third Mexican journalist killed in a week amid record murder rate

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Fewer than 19 vaquita porpoises left – study

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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’

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

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

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Now El Chapo’s back in jail, hunt is on for the Mexican drug baron’s money

Posted on by
$12,666,181,704 … that’s the Sinaloa cartel boss’s sales in the US. Now he’s in jail, prosecutors want to seize his vast riches

It’s a favourite current joke in Mexico: “No más túneles!” – no more tunnels. There’s little chance of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera repeating his famous escapes from Mexican prisons in the US jail where he was sent after being given a life sentence last week by a court in Brooklyn.

So now that El Chapo is removed from the scene, what next? The pillar of the US “Kingpin” strategy against narco-traffic is that the trade is weakened when its leaders are caught and jailed.

Continue reading...

El Chapo: Mexican drug lord sentenced to life in prison

Posted on by

US district judge imposed life sentence plus 30 years at hearing in federal Brooklyn court

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Mexican drug lord found guilty of running a murderous criminal enterprise that smuggled tons of drugs into the United States, was sentenced by a US judge on Wednesday to spend the rest of his life in prison.

US District Judge Brian Cogan imposed the sentence of life plus 30 years, which was mandatory under the law, at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn.

Continue reading...

One year on from pivotal win for Mexico’s left, Amlo is still campaigning

Posted on by

López Obrador remains broadly popular, likely due to success at upending a political system most voters perceived as riddled with corruption

His government has just signed off on a new trade deal with Canada and the US, and his diplomats managed to fend off punitive US tariffs, but Andrés Manuel López Obrador has long showed a crushing lack of interest in foreign affairs.

So instead of hobnobbing with other G20 leaders in Japan, the president known popularly as “Amlo” was in Mexico City, preparing to address thousands of supporters in the city’s central square on Monday.

Continue reading...

Children at the border: the crisis that America wasn’t prepared for

Posted on by

Despite fears stoked by Trump, fewer migrants are arriving at the border than in past years – but most are now children headed to facilities that are ill-equipped to receive them

At a border patrol processing facility in McAllen, Texas on 11 June, a group of lawyers and doctors met a 17-year-old girl from Guatemala. She was in a wheelchair and she held her tiny one-month-old daughter, who was swaddled in a gray sweatshirt so dirty it was almost black.

Related: ‘People with no names’: the drowned migrants buried in pauper’s graves

Continue reading...

Seaweed invasion threatens tourism in Mexico’s beaches as problem worsens

Posted on by

Hotel occupancy rates have dropped as concern grows that the seaweed is threatening key industry in the Mayan Riviera

Trying to ignore the rotten-eggs whiff drifting in from the shoreline, a team of municipal workers was scooping up wads of rotting brown seaweed from the beach of this Mexican beach town 40km (25 miles) south of Cancún.

But almost as fast as they could be cleared away, more clumps of algae were washing ashore, forming foul-smelling mounds across the white sands of the beach.

Continue reading...

Is it wrong to look at the harrowing photo of a drowned father and daughter? | Peter Beaumont

Posted on by

In an age when social media has undermined our ability to engage with pictures, Julia le Duc’s tragic image raises tough questions

Warning: graphic images

Julia le Duc’s image of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, lying drowned on a muddy shoreline after an attempted crossing of Rio Grande into the US appears like a summation of all the arguments about the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.

The pair look as though they could be locked in a sleeping embrace, the child’s head tucked inside her father’s T-shirt, where she’d been placed by him for safety as he swam, protecting their last dignity.

Continue reading...

‘The river is treacherous’: the migrant tragedy one photo can’t capture

Posted on by

The father and his toddler daughter pictured face down in the river were two of dozens who drowned this year while crossing the border to seek asylum

Under a hot sun beating down on the US border, a family of five can be seen mid-river, struggling against a cruel current of greenish-grey water threatening to sweep them off their feet. It appears to be a couple and their three children, risking their lives in the treacherous Rio Grande that divides Mexico from Texas.

The father clutches a black backpack in his hand, the family’s only luggage. On his back he’s carrying a small boy wearing a rainbow-striped T-shirt. A little girl is on the woman’s back, small arms clasped tightly around her mother’s neck.

Continue reading...

US border: photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants’ peril – video report

Posted on by

Searing photographs showing a man and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down in shallow water along the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande near the US border highlight the perils of the latest migration crisis involving mostly Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty.

Continue reading...

‘They wanted the American dream’: reporter reveals story behind tragic photo

Posted on by

Julia Le Duc gives details of the father and his toddler daughter who died trying to cross the Rio Grande Warning: graphic images

Julia Le Duc is a reporter for La Jornada in Matamoros, the Mexican city directly across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.

Her shocking photographs showing the bodies of Salvadoran migrant Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria cast a fresh spotlight on the migration crisis at America’s southern border. Here she describes how the images came into being.

Continue reading...

Shocking photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants’ border peril

Posted on by

The toddler’s arm was still draped around her father’s neck after bodies were found in the Rio Grande as they sought asylum

  • Warning: contains graphic images

The grim reality of the migration crisis unfolding on America’s southern border has been captured in photographs showing the lifeless bodies of a Salvadoran father and his daughter who drowned as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande into Texas.

The images, taken on Monday , show Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 26, and his daughter Valeria, lying face down in shallow water. The 23-month-old toddler’s arm is draped around her father’s neck, suggesting that she was clinging to him in her final moments.

Continue reading...

Mexico immigration chief vows to cut number of people migrating by 60%

Posted on by

Newly appointed chief, Francisco Garduño, said he hoped to prevent hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the country each year

Mexico’s immigration chief has vowed to slash the number of migrants entering his country by 60% and prevent Mexico from being used as “a trampoline” to the United States, as the Mexican government scrambles to satisfy Donald Trump’s demands to curb migration.

Trump has given Mexico a 45-day deadline – which ends on 22 July – to reduce the flow of undocumented Central American migrants to the United States’ southern border, leaving the Mexican government racing to meet those demands and avert the threat of tariffs.

Continue reading...

‘I’ll never have another child’: the mothers failed by Mexico’s hospitals

Posted on by

In one of Mexico’s poorest states, women from minority backgrounds are increasingly at risk of abusive treatment during pregnancy and childbirth

Nancy Martínez was 17 when she went into labour. Though her age meant she was considered a high-risk pregnancy, she was left alone for several hours without monitoring or pain medication.

Nurses told Martínez to be quiet and put up with the pain, while doctors mocked her mother, Nancy Ceron Diaz, denying her information about her daughter’s condition.

Continue reading...