Category Archives: Mexico

A sweet tale: the son who reinvented sugar to help diabetic dad

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The natural substitute helps diabetics, combats obesity and tackles climate change

Javier Larragoiti was 18 when his father was diagnosed with diabetes. The teenager had just started a degree in chemical engineering in Mexico City. So he dedicated his studies to a side project: creating an acceptable alternative to help his father and millions of Mexicans like him avoid sugar.

“It’s only when you know someone with this sickness that you realise how common it is and how sugar intake plays a huge role,” he says. “My dad tried to use stevia and sucralose, just hated the taste, and kept cheating on his diet.”

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Man dies on Aeromexico flight after swallowing 246 packets of cocaine

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Japanese national flying from Bogota to Tokyo is declared dead from an overdose

A Japanese man with 246 packets of cocaine in his stomach and intestines died mid-flight on his way from Bogota to Tokyo, authorities have said in northern Mexico where the plane made an emergency landing.

The 42-year-old man, identified only as Udo N, began having a seizure after the commercial flight from the Colombian capital made a stopover in Mexico City, the prosecutor’s office for the state of Sonora said. “Flight attendants noticed a person suffering convulsions and requested permission to make an emergency landing in Hermosillo, Sonora,” it said.

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Mexico sells off cars from corrupt rich to give to the poor

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Funds from auction of 82 cars worth total of £1m will go to deprived communities

Dozens of luxury cars seized from sticky-fingered politicians and mobsters will go under the hammer this weekend as part of a populist anti-corruption crusade being waged by Mexico’s leftist president.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has vowed that proceeds from Sunday’s auction will be channelled into social programmes and deprived communities.

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Trump cools trade war by lifting North American metal tariffs

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  • Steel and aluminium imports from Mexico and Canada affected
  • Trump pauses implementation of auto tariffs on EU and Japan

The Trump administration moved to cool the simmering trade war with its major trading partners on Friday, ending tariffs on metal imports from Canada and Mexico and announcing a pause on planned tariffs on cars and car parts.

“I’m pleased to announce we’ve just reached agreement with Canada and Mexico,” Donald Trump said. “We’ll be selling our product into those countries without the imposition of tariffs.”

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Easy prey to the middleman: the immigrants toiling in US fields

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For Mexican farmworkers, seasonal employment in the US is an opportunity to earn more – but those who make the journey can be easily exploited by recruiters

The sun is rising and a line of workers dressed in jeans and hoodies is already snaking its way around the block. A few of them started gathering outside the US consulate building as early as 4am.

Monterrey, the third largest city in Mexico, is a little over 100 miles from the US border, and a hub for farmworkers applying for temporary work visas.

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Mexico: President Amlo’s criticism of national newspaper sparks death threats

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to protect the press, but his barbs have resulted in journalists being harassed

Andrés Manuel López Obrador swept the Mexican left into power with promises of respecting the press and ending the killing of journalists.

Related: 'They went to execute him': fourth Mexican journalist killed so far in 2018

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Mercedes production delays push Daimler’s quarterly profits down by 16%

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Sales of Mercedes-Benz cars fell 7%, partly because of manufacturing bottlenecks

Daimler’s quarterly operating profit has fallen by 16% as a €718m (£620m) one-off gain failed to offset the impact of falling sales in China and production delays at three Mercedes-Benz factories.

Sales of Mercedes-Benz cars fell 7% in the first quarter 0f 2019, partly because of manufacturing bottlenecks for the A-Class compact car in Aguascalientes, Mexico, the Mercedes-Benz van in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Mercedes-Benz GLE SUV in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

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‘Don’t mess with our beers’: outrage in Mexico over motion to ban sale of cold beer

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A lawmaker in Mexico City proposed outlawing the sale of the cold drink in a bid to reduce public and underage drinking

Mexico City residents may have to slake their thirsts with warm beer after a local lawmaker introduced a motion on Wednesday to ban the sale of the cold beverage in convenience stores.

The motion – met with incredulity on social media – would modify Mexico City’s commerce laws to ban selling beer or beverages of 7% or less alcohol content, which are “refrigerated or in different conditions than the ambient temperature.”

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His wife died in combat. His daughter is American. And yet Ice targeted him

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Gonzalez Carranza was once permitted to live and work in the US but his future is uncertain as Trump pushes to deport non-criminal immigrants like him

On a warm April morning in the Arizona desert, Jose Gonzalez Carranza, a thickset man with a slight lisp, a crooked smile and an intricate tattoo of a hundred-dollar bill creeping across his left hand, sits at his kitchen table trying to unpack what’s happened to him.

Gonzalez Carranza, 30, the Gold Star immigrant dad who made national news when he was briefly and mistakenly deported to Mexico in early April, has seen his life spiral out of control.

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Member of armed militia who detained migrants faced similar charges in 2006

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  • Larry Mitchell Hopkins held on Saturday in Texas
  • Earlier arrest involved impersonating a police officer

A member of an armed civilian group that has detained migrants near the US-Mexico border who was arrested on Saturday reportedly faced similar charges in Oregon 13 years ago.

Related: Videos appear to show armed militia detaining migrants at US-Mexico border

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Mexico battles over legacy of revolutionary Emilano Zapata

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As country marks centennial of Zapata’s death, government’s agenda makes ‘mockery’ of insurgent’s ideals, grandson says

Sitting back in the shade of a sapodilla tree, Jorge Zapata González takes a slow drag on his cigarette and tells a cautionary tale of revolution and betrayal.

His grandfather, the Mexican insurgent Emiliano Zapata, rallied poor campesinos under the battle cry “land and liberty” a century ago – only to be double-crossed by a former ally and murdered.

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Trump plans to cut Central America aid, blaming countries for migrant caravans

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The US president accused Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador of ‘arranging’ exodus of migrants

The US has confirmed its intention to cut more than $450 million in aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, as Donald Trump accused the three Central American countries of “arranging” migrant caravans to the US.

Trump relented on his earlier vow to close the entire southern border with Mexico, claiming that the security forces there had begun arresting “a lot of people” in response to his closure threat. But he warned that if the Mexican authorities did not “keep it up” he would seal the frontier, no matter what the economic cost to the US.

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Latin Americans fear precedent set by legal justification for Syria intervention

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Countries fear that legal standard of states being ‘unwilling or unable’ to deal with terrorism could be used in Latin America

Latin American states are mounting a challenge to the acceptance of a legal standard promoted by the US, UK and their allies to justify military operations in the Middle East, fearing the same standard could eventually be used to justify intervention in their own hemisphere.

The Mexican government is spearheading an effort at the UN to bring greater transparency to the formal legal justifications presented by western powers for military operations in Syria and elsewhere.

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Trump shutting Mexico border would ‘cripple’ El Paso, Republican mayor says

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Dee Margo warned Donald Trump that closing the border would have a ‘detrimental, almost draconian’ impact on the region

The Republican mayor of El Paso, the largest American city on the US border with Mexico, has warned Donald Trump that if he goes ahead this week with his threat to close the border it would have a “detrimental, almost draconian” impact on the entire region.

“It would be a critical killer to us, frankly”, the mayor, Dee Margo, said.

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US will run out of avocados in three weeks if Trump closes Mexico border

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President says there is a ‘good likelihood’ he will close border this week if Mexico does not stop immigrants from reaching US

US consumers would run out of avocados in three weeks if Donald Trump makes good on his threat to close down the US–Mexico border.

Trump said on Friday that there was a “very good likelihood” he would close the border this week if Mexico did not stop immigrants from reaching the United States.

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Mulvaney: only ‘something dramatic’ will stop Trump closing Mexico border

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  • Move could have severe consequences for US economy
  • US citizens who cross border for work or family fear hardship

The Trump administration reiterated on Sunday the president’s threat to close the border with Mexico, regardless of potentially severe consequences for the US economy.

Related: Under the bridge: migrants held in El Paso tell of dust, cold and hunger

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New migrant caravan receives cooler welcome in Mexico

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  • 2,500-strong group mainly from Central America and Cuba
  • Activists say government is trying to stop migrants reaching US

A new migrant caravan of about 2,500 people is making its way through southern Mexico, headed for the US border, facing greater heat – and a much cooler welcome – than last year’s caravans.

The caravan walked past the city of Huixtla in the southern state of Chiapas on Monday, but police were lined up to keep them moving along a highway outside the town, and did not let them enter – a contrast to last year, when caravans were allowed to stay in the city center.

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Widow of murdered Mexico journalist was surveillance target days after death

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  • Government-linked spyware sent to Griselda Triana’s phone
  • Husband Javier Valdez was murdered only 10 days previously

Even in a country long-used to violence, the cowardly 2017 murder of the Mexican journalist Javier Valdez prompted outrage: reporters held protests, news outlets stopped publishing for a day and the then president, Enrique Peña Nieto, promised that the crime would not go unpunished.

But barely 10 days after Valdez was pulled from his car and shot dead, his widow Griselda Triana was targeted for surveillance with spyware which had been purchased by the Mexican government.

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El Norte review: an epic and timely history of Hispanic North America

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Carrie Gibson has written an exhaustive corrective to historians who seek to whitewash a story of settlement and conflict

The subtitle of Carrie Gibson’s book is The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America. El Norte lives up to it.

Related: These Truths review: Jill Lepore's Lincolnian American history

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‘Dead on arrival’: Democrats dismiss Trump budget plan with $8.6bn for wall

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President’s 2020 plan signals intent to reignite a political fight that has already led to a record 35-day partial government shutdown

Donald Trump’s latest budget request, which demands billions of dollars for a border wall at the expense of social safety nets and environmental protections, was dismissed on Monday as “dead on arrival” and “breathtaking in its degree of cruelty”.

Related: Fox News condemns host Jeanine Pirro's attack on Ilhan Omar – live

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