First Stop in the New World: Taxi Ride

This is the final in our 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 [...]

BorderReporter: God’s Gonna Cut You Down

What happened here last week was a sheer massacre.

First Stop in the New World: the Reality of Crime

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 [...]

Fiction series on Mara Salvatrucha wins Webby Award

“The Ten Commandments of la Vida Loca, ” received the Webby Award for best drama series during a weekend ceremony in New York.

Training Day

May 30 2009 – My breath is tearing out of my lungs and my leg muscles are screaming for a reprieve. I just scaled a 60-degree hill coated in thorny brambles and poisonous plants whilst being pounded by rain. In the dark. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but it did. Later that night, my fellow journalists and I were kidnapped by masked guerillas who jumped onto our bus.

Mexican journalists put through their survival paces

May 29 2009 – A couple of non-profits got together and ran a course just outside Mexico City this month for 18 journalists living and working here.

Military’s drug museum shows narco tactics

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.

Video: Killer women prepare for U.S. debut

The blood-soaked drama is about to hit U.S. TV screens, and the first episode of the first series goes out April 23 on Univision.

‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in Iztapalapa, Mexico

It wasn’t hard to imagine what the real crucifixion of Christ might have been like if you were anywhere near the populous, working-class neighborhood of Iztapalapa in Mexico City last Friday.

‘La Vida Loca’ captures daily reality of El Salvador’s gangs, or maras

“La Vida Loca” reflects a depressing and hopeless reality. The documentary follows some of the members of ”la dieciocho,” the so-called 18th Street gang in a poor San Salvador neighborhood.

Talking violence in Texas

Last week, I was invited to speak at the University of Texas Pan America about MexicoReporter.com, violence against journalists, the drug war coverage and how new technologies are contributing to the journalism beast. So I went.

Peter Gabriel asks for end impunity over Ciudad Juarez’s dead women

Peter Gabriel implored President Calderon to show “real political will, muscle and budget” in investigating the hundreds of unsolved murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez.

Video: Narcocorridos inspire Mexico City mural

After writing a song for los Tigres Del Norte about the controversial 670-mile fence project along the U.S.-Mexico border, Cristina Rubalcava got to listening to some of the band’s narcocorridos and created a mural that illustrates phrases from them.

Photojournalism show explains 2008 in Mexico

Mexico City’s Museo de la Ciudad is playing host to a photojournalism exhibition — Expofotoperiodismo — that features nearly 50 photos from 2008.

Mexico’s media under scrutiny in documentary

Violence against journalists in Mexico is nothing new but “Voces Silenciadas” broadens the debate around the persecution of journalists to encompass the bigger issues of media ownership and the relationship between the media and Mexico’s political powers.

Violence against journalists continues in Latin America

We keep our eye on the frequent press-freedom reports that come out, given the high levels of violence against journalists in Mexico. Tuesday’s release by the Committee to Protect Journalists, sadly, held no surprises.

Carmen Aristegui talks about the reality for journalists in Mexico

February 6 2009 – Carmen Aristegui, one of Mexico’s most prominent journalists, disappeared from the Mexican radio airwaves last year in a cloud of controversy.

As Reed Johnson reported in January 2008, “Aristegui’s departure from W Radio set off a flurry of op-ed commentary in Mexico City newspapers. Several commentators have denounced the incident as an act of censorship and harassment by media and governmental interests.”

Now Aristegui’s back with a new radio news show –- this time on a different network. The journalist, who continued to host her nightly television news show on CNN Español during her radio hiatus, returns to the Mexican airwaves from 6 – 10 every weekday morning on MVS Radio.

Carmen Aristegui habla sobre la realidad en México para los periodistas

Febrero 6 2009 – Para ver la entrevista completa (40 minutos), haz click aquí.

Video: Youth protest against bullfighting in Mexico City

Young animal rights activists took to the streets in central Mexico City on Sunday in protest against the hundreds of bullfights that take place here in Mexico.

Lydia Cacho publishes manual for parents on detecting child abuse

Lydia Cacho’s celebrity was apparent from the get-go last Thursday night in the trendy Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, where the journalist launched her new book “Not With My Child” (Con Mi Hij@ No).

Media advertising campaign targets violence against journalists

A television, radio and print advertising campaign is to launch here in Mexico in an attempt by press freedom groups to raise public awareness about violence against journalists.

45 journalists killed in Mexico since 2000; rights body appeals for end to impunity

Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights appealed to authorities over the weekend to investigate thoroughly the recent killings of a number of journalists here, and to put an end to the impunity for those who murder members of the profession.

Media non-profit appeals for asylum for journalists escaping Mexico

Reporters Without Borders issued an appeal to the international community today to provide asylum for journalists fleeing Mexican cities such a Ciudad Juarez.

Journalist flees Ciudad Juarez to the U.S

Jorge Luis Aguirre, director of the news website “La Polaka,” has fled Mexico with his family to the United States after receiving death threats in his home city of Ciudad Juárez, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.

Newspaper offices in Northern Mexico attacked with grenades

Reports are surfacing this morning that the offices of the Culiacán newspaper El Debate were attacked with two grenades early Monday.

Crime reporter shot to death in Ciudad Juarez

Veteran Mexican crime reporter Armando Rodríguez was shot to death yesterday morning while in his car in the border city of Ciudad Juárez.

More than half of Mexicans surveyed suspect foul play in plane crash

November 6 2008 – Mexicans don’t have much faith in the word of their government. The natural reaction of many here in Mexico following a plane crash last week that killed Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño has been suspicion.

Plane crash “an accident”, says Mexico government

November 6 2008 – The Mexico Government maintains that there is no sign of foul play surrounding the plane crash on Tuesday night here in Mexico City that killed interior minister Juan Camilo Mouriño.

Two years on, dead U.S journalist remembered on both sides of the border

Activists and rights groups marched in remembrance of Brad Will yesterday in the state of Oaxaca, marking the second anniversary of the fatal shooting of the U.S videographer.

Activists arrested for the murder of Brad Will

Two members of the protest movement that activist and videographer Brad Will was covering when he was shot dead more than two years ago have been arrested in connection with his murder.

Bajo Juarez campaigns for the dead women of Ciudad Juarez

Lilia Alejandra is one of the 370 women who have disappeared in Mexico’s Chihuahua state since 1993. Her story is the main focus of Bajo Juárez, a documentary film that was five years in the making and opened here in Mexico this weekend.

Mexico memory march turns violent

Thousands of Mexicans took to the streets yesterday to demand justice for the victims of a mass-killing by Government troops on the night of October 2nd forty years ago. But the protests in Mexico City had a bitter end.

Marchers remember the dead of October 2nd 1968

Hundreds of students and other Mexicans congregated on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma, Thursday at 3pm, to march in memory of the hundreds who died that night 40 years ago.

Mexico to remember massacre 40 years later

Today, people of all ages will march in memory of a massacre that took place forty years ago in Mexico City – an event that remains one of the darkest in the country’s recent and bloody history.

Arrests made in Mexico grenade attack raise questions

The arrests pose as many questions as they provide answers.

Morelia: informality characterizes bombing investigation

The most important thing that occurred to me as I’ve perused other media’s coverage, my own, and the scene itself, is how frighteningly informal the attitude of the authorities is to the crime scene itself.

Mexico Bomb Victim Tells His Story

Rafael Bucio, a 30 year old car-parking attendant, was out with his wife and two small children in Morelia, Mexico on Monday night enjoying the Independence celebrations when two grenades went off.

Morelia bomb victim speaks, blood still on the streets

Rafael Bucio was waiting for his mother on the corner of the streets Madero and Quintana Roo in Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico Monday night. Behind him, his wife Gloria Alvarez stood in the street with their three-month old child in her arms. They didn’t know that their lives were about to change forever.

“Lots of ambulances and patrol cars started to pass by going to the center – to the cathedral,” explained Bucio Wednesday afternoon from a hospital bed, broken bones in his arm and leg held together by pins. Blood seeped through the bandages onto the white cotton sheet covering the bed.

He was moving closer to his wife, away from the street corner, when he heard a thump.

Morelia: the aftermath.

Yesterday, the public paid their respects at a shrine to the side of the city’s main plaza in Morelia, remembering the seven people killed in Monday night’s bomb attack.

Mexico’s Military Marches as Citizens React to Bombings

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.