The Mexican government has launched a military crackdown in the state of Veracruz following more than 80 killings in the tourist port in the last few weeks.
Mexico’s march for peace, led by Catholic poet Javier Sicilia, crossed over from Ciudad Juarez – the violent epicenter of the country’s drug war – into El Paso, Texas Saturday. They were joined by hundreds of Americans in their demands for a change in strategy from both the Mexican and US governments. This [...]
At first glance, “Los Bastardos” seems a surprising film for a Mexican director to make.
This is a longer version of an edited interview with the director Christiane Burkhard about her documentary film project, “Tracing Aleida”.
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists reports on journalists working in the northern border town of Ciudad Juarez.
What happened here last week was a sheer massacre.
This week MexicoReporter.com is publishing a series of extracts from David Lida’s book “First Stop in the New World,” which has just come out in paperback. The book is divided between long chapters that deal with topics of great importance in Mexico City (crime, inequality, food, sex and even shopping), and shorter chapters that provide [...]
The installation was designed as an educational tool for military personnel who have been tasked with fighting Mexico’s narco-trafficantes and organized crime networks.
Reporters Without Borders issued an appeal to the international community today to provide asylum for journalists fleeing Mexican cities such a Ciudad Juarez.
Two explosions during Mexican Independence Day celebrations in the western state of Michoacan killed eight people Monday night and injured dozens more, we reported yesterday.
The developments in the Lydia Cacho case and her revelations yesterday come in a week when violence against journalists surged again. Last year four reporters were murdered and three disappeared, and 2008 is promising to be as equally violent for members of the profession.
The pueblo of Santa Maria Aztahuacan in the sprawling working class municipality of Iztapalapa, Mexico City, got Semana Santa off to a rousing start this Saturday afternoon with dancing in the streets, tacos, tequila – and random gunfire.
The festival, which began this weekend, will run for the next month. MexicoReporter.com went along to get a taste of the action.
There is something odd about entering a modern, brilliantly choreographed and beautifully presented exhibition created in memory of one of the darkest episodes in a country’s modern history. Odd because the tragedy of Tlatelolco, depicted in such rich and excellently executed multi-media form here at at Mexico City’s Centro Cultural Universitario, has yet to be seriously investigated by the Mexican administration even after nearly forty years, and remains a painful scar for those that survived that terrible night and the families of those that didn’t.
My folks just flew back last night after a month-long stay in Mexico. Amongst the places they visited, either with me or alone, were Oaxaca, Puebla and Acapulco.
‘I don’t understand it,’ my father kept telling me.
‘I mean you read all this stuff about violence in Mexico, and yet they seem like such a gentle, nice, kind people,’ was his assessment after a couple of weeks living in Distrito Federal, just off Reforma.
Just the ramblings of an average, non-Spanish speaking tourist, but I couldn’t help but appreciate the irony of this words as we walked along the street past a newspaper stand, where on at least three of the front pages I could see gory photographs of deaths by shootings that had happened over the last 24 hours.
Browsing through my feeds this morning, I came across this story on the Los Angeles Times which documents well the experiences many journalists working in Mexico covering the drug trade experience.
Although studies have found that violence against journalists stems as much from Government officials as it does from narco-traffic, Hector’s piece really gives some insight into the reality for many in the profession.
Read the story here:
A local reporter, who covered agriculture and occasionally crime in the western Mexican state of Michoacán, was shot dead on Saturday night. Gerardo Israel García Pimentel, who wrote for the daily La Opinión de Michoacán, was found in the stairway of the car park of the hotel in which he lived. He had been shot [...]
This story has been updated Puebla state authorities have been found guilty by the Commission of the Supreme Court in Mexico of violating the rights of investigative journalist Lydia Cacho, who was arrested by Puebla police in December 2005 after publishing a book about a pedophile ring in Cancun. The report finding it a vindication [...]
An article published in this weekend’s Washington Post, called “Oaxaca: One Year Later”, has prompted heavy criticism from people living in the southern Mexican state which this time last year was the scene of huge civil unrest and what one critic describes as ‘some of the worst human rights abuses in recent Mexican history; detaining, torturing, and raping men, women, and children who had taken to the streets demanding social and economic justice.’ (Please see comments below for a response from the author).
The writer takes the reader to a number of local restaurants and businesses in Oaxaca, whilst attempting to trace the events of last year, which culminated in the deaths of reportedly as many as 23 people.
José Antonio García Apac (pictured), editor of the regional weekly Ecos de la Cuenca, based in the state of Michoacán was last seen on this day last year. He was on his way home to his wife and seven children when he disappeared.
Since that date, the culprits for his disappearance have not been presented by the Mexican Government and its dedicated arm, the Special Prosecution Office for the Investigation of Crimes Against Journalists (FEADP).
Of all Mexicans that one might have known prior to arriving here, SubCommandante Marcos – or Delegado Cero as he now prefers to be known – is definitely one of them. His image abroad as the mask-wearing, pipe-smoking mestizo who fights for the indigenous cause rivals that of another Latin American icon – Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.
Groups demanding justice for the murder of U.S journalist Brad Will, who was shot dead in Oaxaca, Mexico on this day last year, are opposing the $1.4 billion security proposal put forward by President George Bush this week as part of an initiative to help the country fight its illegal drugs trafficking problem.
‘The Mexican Government is one of the main perpetrators of violence against journalists in the country and complicit in its continuance,’ according to one of the country’s leading freedom of expression organisations.
Mexico has become the western hemisphere’s deadliest country for the press, according to Reporters Without Borders. A total of 32 journalists have been murdered and seven disappeared since 2000. With nine journalists murdered in 2006, it ranked second only to Iraq worldwide.
Univision: Young angels in Juarez battle the city’s demons
AFP: Mexico City struggles with waste disposal
AFP: Activists under fire in Mexico
AFP: Ambulance attacked in Ciudad Juarez
Time: Evidence of Killings and Disappearances by Mexico’s Security Forces
AFP: Mexicans honor drug war victims on Day of the Dead