To all of those in Mexico and around the world, I thought you might be interested in this post on my generic TheVideoReporter.com site about a documentary film by filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan making into the final for the Rory Peck Awards.
Change, once again, is afoot.
Back in May 2008, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials rounded up 389 undocumented workers in the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The raid was the largest in U.S history. Two weeks later, filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan started filming “In the Shadow of the Raid,” a documentary film showing at [...]
Most Mexicans think their lives would be better in the United States, and one in three said they’d move to the U.S. if they could, according to the latest findings on Mexican attitudes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
The killing of documentary maker Christian Poveda represents a sad loss for a region much in need of greater understanding.
For those of you who read the account of my trip to the Yucatan and my experiences with Mexico’s military checkpoints, I thought that you might find this op-ed column in the New York Times of related interest. Written by Kelly M. Phillips, a petty officer third class in the United States Coast Guard, it [...]
It was disconcerting to see the age of the soldiers executing Calderon’s stop and search policy.
The Dart Center, a Colombia University project for journalists who cover violence, got in touch with me after I published a video report on survival training for journalists in Mexico earlier this year.
The Canadian Embassy in Mexico City’s posh Polanco neighbourhood has been descended upon by thousands of Mexicans since the Canadian government announced on Monday that Mexican nationals now need a visa to travel to Canada.
How will you vote this Sunday? Jorge Flores-Oliver, Blumpi (1978). Mexican freelance illustrator, cartoonist and writer. Contributes for Milenio Semanal, La Tempestad and Tierra Adentro. Member of the board of Replicante magazine. http://www.flickr.com/photos/blumpi/ http://brutalblumpi.blogspot.com/
The money that Mexicans living abroad send home to their families here in Mexico fell again in May, in what the Associated Press calls the biggest monthly decline on record. “Money sent home by Mexicans working abroad fell by 19.9 percent in May, the biggest monthly decline on record as the U.S. recession slashed jobs. [...]
It’s not often you see something in the press that makes you think, Yes! I KNOW! But sometimes it happens, and there were two pieces in the media this morning that gave me that sense. The first was this column in the Guardian by George Monbiot, who came back to an issue we touched on [...]
For those of you who follow other bloggers here in Mexico City, or are a regular visitor to my links, you will know Daniel Hernandez, creator of Intersections, and an author and journalist living here in Mexico City. Daniel is currently in Los Angeles where he is going to be speaking at MOCA as part [...]
For the hardcore Cafe Tacuba fans out there, here is the uncut material from the interview that I did with two of the band members.
Only four of the original 14 people rehired by Grupo Mac to man the News, Mexico City’s struggling English-language newspaper, remain at the title.
During that period, 9,758 migrants were deprived of their liberty. More than 60 percent of kidnappings involved groups of migrants travelling together. The majority of those kidnapped were from Honduras (67 %). ¡8% oer the victims were from El Salvador and 13% from Guatemala.
This is probably the least exciting location from which I have filed a dispatch. My sofa, in my third-floor apartment, my snowball-like foot propped up on a couple of cushions as I look out onto the cloudy Mexico City panorama this morning. What happened? Well, it’s all Cafe Tacuba’s fault really. I interviewed two of [...]
The most recently appointed editor at the English language newspaper here in Mexico City the News has left the title after just a week in the job.
I wanted to add more details to the dispatch I filed today for the Los Angeles Times and MexicoReporter.com on the changes at the News. There were some details that didn’t seem worth including for the LATimes readers, but I wanted to share them with you here.
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.
We had an earthquake last Friday. It was the second in a month also blighted by a new strain of influenza and economic recession – but that’s what life’s currently like here in Mexico.
If you’ve spent any time in Mexico, especially Mexico City, then you’ll be acquainted with Mexicans’ love of conspiracy theory.
The Internet really comes into its own during these times of swine flu. Here in Mexico, as many people sit out the crisis at home the Web is where many of them turn to express their feelings and stay in touch with what’s going on in the real world.
Julia Cooke writes — But I worried this morning as I reached for the glass of water on my nightstand. I can’t tell my mother that my throat hurts, because she’ll think it means that she has to buy me a ticket home immediately.
Over the course of the last three days I have been to five hospitals. I was expecting to find lines of people, all of them coughing into their government-issued face masks, winding around the block. Not so.
then Mexico gets hit by a 6.0 earthquake!
I was out shooting all day in downtown Mexico City Sunday, trying to get a sense of how the swine flu outbreak is affecting local businesses.
I at least expected to see fashionable versions of the blue face masks being combined with the latest clothes labels, but it wasn’t so.
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.
The bar was beautiful, and so was she. Utterly Los Angeles, she wore a knee length dress with a low-cut top, allowing her audience to enjoy her full breasts framed by a fake fur coat that hung off her shoulders.
The Beverly Hills hotel bar was comfortably full of what its image suggests is the normal fare: gorgeous women being pampered by old, wrinkled men in expensive suits; one or two famous actors; wide-eyed tourists; and young men and women sharking the crowd.
‘I prefer my boring life,’ she said after discovering I live in Mexico City. Boring is preferable to being kidnapped was what she meant, after finding out where I make my home. Mexico City gets a lot of bad press.
A release this morning says that Proceso, one of Mexico’s most well-respected an critical titles, has apparently been barred from covering tours by President Felipe Calderon due to its consitently critical tone.
The Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET) issued this statement this morning following last week’s publication of Proceso, in which it said that its journalists have not been included in a Presidential tour since March last year.
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:
Although one hates to be a pessimist, the coming year is still looking grim for journalists in Mexico.
Despite the fact that the numbers of murdered journalists declined last year, levels of violence against them are on the rise and the Government is showing no increase in willingness to investigate cases of murder, violence and intimidation against members of the profession.
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
Time: In Veracruz, the troops move in and tourists stay away