Archive for May, 2008
Latin America promotes but doesn’t respect human rights
Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico have been strong on promoting human rights internationally and in supporting the UN human rights machinery during 2007.
But unless the gap between their policies internationally and their performance at home is closed their credibility as human rights champions will be challenged, according to this week’s report from Amnesty International on human rights around the world.
You can access the report here and click on the links at the top for specific country reports.
Video: Illegal Border Crossing for tourists
La Caminata Nocturna is a night-hike for tourists in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico that gives them a taste of the illegal immigrant experience. Watch the video here.
Illegal border crossing – for tourists.
Panting for breath, I waded through cow-pat flavoured mud, struggling to keep myself from slipping in the dark. “Vamanos, vamanos, vamanos!” urged my coyote, the Spanish name for people who smuggle migrants across the border into the United States.
The sound of La Migra’s sirens – also known as United States Border Patrol – sounded out behind me. Hands shaking, I stopped to catch my breath and watched the faces of the other migrants crouched in the dark, breathing heavily.
“We know you’re there,” boomed a crackling voice in English, tinged with a Mexican accent, over the loudspeaker. Gun shots rang out.
“What you’re doing is illegal. We have food and water. We can help you get back home.”
Video: Shakira aims to help poor kids
Last Thursday, Colombian popstar Shakira got a group of Latin American stars and businessmen together in the Mexican capital to launch ALAS (meaning “WINGS”), a Latin American initiative aimed at aiding the development of young children in the region.
Shakira, who recently got together with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, has been running her own foundation to help the poor since she was 18.
No. 2 police officer gunned down in Juarez: police death count rising
The attacks on police officers, detailed here, continued over the weekend.
The No. 2 police officer in this border city across from El Paso was shot to death Saturday, the latest high-ranking official killed in an onslaught of attacks blamed on gangs resisting a crackdown on drug trafficking. Associated Press.
Guns on buses and slain police officers
This week, Mexico City has been living up to its bad boy reputation. Heading down Paseo de Reforma after a trip to the LATimes office on Thursday, I crossed over the main traffic artery and waited for the bus. The sun was hot and high in the sky and I was wilting in my jeans.
I noticed sluggishly that the police had cut off the road just ahead of the bus stop, but that traffic was dripping through slowly in their direction. so I got on the next pesero.
But as the bus waited in line, a young police man came round the side of the police car blocking the traffic, his pistol drawn. I was astonished. He jogged up Reforma, past the side of my vehicle, his dark eyes scanning the traffic and the sidewalk. He was looking for someone. His colleagues back at the patrol car were shouting things and waving their hands, and the bus got beckoned forward.
Video: Leonora Carrington on Paseo de Reforma
Phantoms come, phantoms go. They swirl around Leonora Carrington, a tiny woman of 91 with a tart intellect and a posh British accent, as she sips Earl Grey tea at her kitchen table. They rise like black vapors from the pavement of Avenue Reforma in the Mexican capital, where a menagerie of Carringtons nightmarishly enigmatic sculptures startle pedestrians and spook passing cars….
This video was made to go with with this Los Angeles Times piece by Reed Johnson.
New study contrasts native and immigrant Latinas in U.S
Fascinating statistics released yesterday on the demographic makeup of the female Latina community in the United States show some striking, if unsurprising, differences between non-Latina and Latina women, as well as the native-born and immigrant female Latina communities.
Leonora Carrington on Mexico City’s Paseo de Reforma
Leonora Carrington is a British surrealist artist from Lancashire who left Europe during the Second World War, on the run from the Nazis.
She finally settled in Mexico, and has produced an impressive body of work, some of which is currently on display on one of Mexico’s main thoroughfares – Paseo de Reforma.
