I was delighted to see that some (full disclosure) friends of mine – filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan - have been nominated for a documentary that we featured more than a year ago, called “In the Shadow of the Raid“.

Here’s what we wrote about the documentary in September last year:

The tone of the documentary is observational rather than preachy, in the same vein as other recent works such as “Los Que Se Quedan / Those Who Remain.” The filmmakers try to reflect some of the realities that contribute to why so many Central Americans and Mexicans head to the United States. But there are no ICE officials interviewed, no legal redresses sought. Brosnan and Szymaszek focus on the people affected by the raid, and the resulting film is a photographic testament to a sad reality.

Good luck to them and all the finalists. Ad if you’re in London, it promises to be a great event.

I arrived here in July 2007, and after 6 months I got a gig with the Los Angeles Times here in Mexico City. It was a great time of opportunity during which I learned how to shoot video, and got to work alongside some of the best foreign correspondents out there, adding video to their written reports.

MexicoReporter.com has always been part hobby, part porfolio, and part potential business idea. The business idea hasn’t worked out yet, and now I’ve got another new gig, this time with the Financial Times as a video producer. I’ll be working here in Mexico in the coming weeks, and posting here, but will eventually be moving back to London to work from their HQ there. So for a while at least, I’ll be leaving Mexico.

BUT I’ll be back and MexicoReporter.com will continue, although in what form I’m yet to figure out. All those enterprising freelancers out there wanting exposure for their work get in touch.

But at the end of this era, and on the cusp of another big life change, I’d like to take this chance to thank you all for reading, watching and commenting.

Hasta pronto.

Deborah Bonello

Founder, MexicoReporter.com

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 the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. A 15-minute edit of the film was recently broadcast on PBS “Frontline’s” website.

“In the Shadow of the Raid” delves into the consequences of the ICE raid for Postville and for some of the the migrants who were arrested and deported back to their homes in two rural villages in Guatemala.

Following the closure of the meatpacking plant, Postville businesses failed and livelihoods were destroyed.

In Guatemala, migrant Willian Toj returned to his wife and parents. Awaiting him was a massive debt that he accrued from his trip to the U.S. He had been working in the Postville plant for 20 minutes before the ICE raid.

Toj can barely earn enough to pay the monthly interest on the $7,000 debt, let alone get the funds to treat his mother’s worsening cancer.

The tone of the documentary is observational rather than preachy, in the same vein as other recent works such as “Los Que Se Quedan / Those Who Remain.” The filmmakers try to reflect some of the realities that contribute to why so many Central Americans and Mexicans head to the United States. But there are no ICE officials interviewed, no legal redresses sought. Brosnan and Szymaszek focus on the people affected by the raid, and the resulting film is a photographic testament to a sad reality.

Watch the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Video: An interview with Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan, directors of “In the Shadow of the Raid.” All non-interview material courtesy of Szymaszek and Brosnan. Video interview by Deborah Bonello.

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.

Half of those who said they’d migrate north of the border said they would do so without permission, although recent data on immigration suggests that the flow of Mexicans north is slowing.

President Felipe Calderon’s military-led campaign against the country’s drug lords and organized-crime networks is “overwhelmingly endorsed” by the majority of Mexicans, although large majorities describe crime (81%) and illegal drugs (73%) as very big problems, according to the study.

Calderon’s offensive against organized crime is now in its third year amid rising drug-related violence, but the Pew project reports that most Mexicans believe those anti-crime efforts are effective.

A hefty majority, 66%, say the army is making progress against the traffickers, while only 15% think it is losing ground. Calderon also is well regarded.

The popularity of the tough stance against drug gangs seems to be bolstering support for Calderon. Roughly two-thirds (68%) have a favorable opinion of the president, while only 29% express an unfavorable view.

You can read the report in its entirety on the project’s website or download it.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,000 adults in Mexico between May 26 and June 2, 2009, for the Pew report.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Mexico City’s central plaza, or Zocalo. Credit: Deborah Bonello / For The Times

The first, last and only time that I met the French-born filmmaker and photographer Christian Poveda was on 1 April of this year, when I interviewed him in an apartment he was renting in Mexico City while doing promotion for his film, La Vida Loca.

I’d seen the documentary the night before at a screening attended by Poveda, who fielded questions on why he chose to spend 16 months following members of El Salvador’s notoriously violent 18th Street gang with a video camera. It is a film that could well have brought him to his violent end.

Poveda was shot dead on Wednesday 4 September just outside San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, where he lived. Sources say that the night before he was killed, Poveda confessed to being afraid and worried that the gangs were taking a turn for the worse, with a new crop of ever-more vicious leaders coming to the fore.

La Vida Loca is a groundbreaking documentary that shines a light onto the bleak lives of El Salvador’s Mara gangs. Poveda achieved unprecedented, long-term access to certain branches of the gangs and their daily lives in the capital.

I’m not one to speculate on who might be responsible for his death — the disorder, impunity and lawlessness in El Salvador means we might never know. But his murder is a terrible loss, not only to his friends, family and colleagues, but to the journalistic community in Latin America, which already suffers some of the highest rates of aggression and intimidation against members of the trade.

To Poveda, the young people who join las Maras were “victims of society”. He approached the gangs as a documentary filmmaker with an open mind and a lack of moral judgment.

As he said to me during our interview, he was of the opinion that “the majority are young boys that were abandoned at a very young age, and the fact that someone would come from another continent to spend time with them on a daily basis, filming and listening to them, for them that was something very important, that someone was paying attention.”

Many would disagree with Poveda’s assessment of the gangs that stretch across Central America to the United States. Poveda worked as a photojournalist in El Salvador during and after the 12-year-long civil war, which began in 1980. But the gangs really took on their current strength and size in the United States.

Gangs were formed by Salvadorans living on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s, many of who went to the US to escape the civil war ravaging El Salvador. When the peace accords that ended the war were signed in El Salvador in the early 1990s, huge numbers of gang members returned to the country, some of them by choice but most of them through deportation by US authorities. Many were sent back after completing prison sentences.

Although gangs did exist on a small scale in El Salvador before the mass return of migrants from the US, they only grew into the super-gangs they are today after the end of the civil war. The brutally violent groups have been connected with organized crime and other illegal activities across the Americas.

But however you view the gangs, Poveda did what good journalists do — he broadened the discussion, taking a new visual and journalistic angle on an issue that has become so black and white. As the United States continues to sweep the issue of immigration reform under the carpet and turn a blind eye to the repercussions of some of its policies on its smaller, poorer, weaker neighbours, Poveda put some of those realities up on cinema screens on both sides of the Atlantic for all to see.

Tragically, he paid the highest price for doing so.

La Vida Loca, which has been showing on the international film festival circuit, is coming up for commercial release in Mexico and France over the next two months. But the day after Poveda’s death, his producer Gustavo Angel was still trying to negotiate a US release for the film.

I can’t help feeling that if La Vida Loca isn’t seen by audiences within the United States, many of whom have never traveled south of the border, let alone as far south as Central America, we will miss an opportunity to advance the discussion surrounding America’s gang and immigration problems — issues that are inextricably linked.

Deborah Bonello is a blogger and video journalist MexicoReporter.com

www.MexicoReporter.com

This article was written for Index on Censorship.

Written by Kelly M. Phillips, a petty officer third class in the United States Coast Guard, it tells a sorry tale of the state of economic support Mexico’s military personnel receive.

“In November 2005, we moved into a house on base infested with cockroaches. They spilled out of holes in the walls and watched us from the tops of the door frames. We paid for the fumigation ourselves and then for curtains for the bare windows. The kitchen had only a sink and one counter, so we bought our own stove and refrigerator. We paid for utilities — which included space heaters in the winter and gas tanks that lasted a month and ran out midshower, and we spent a fortune on phone cards for the pay phone down the street. In the summer, we just opened the windows for a breeze. A green mold grew all over our clothing in the closets, and a black mold grew on the concrete walls.

“Members of the Mexican military do not receive the housing allowance that troops get in the United States, where electricity, water and heating in military housing are also mostly paid for by the government.”

Read the rest of that Op-Ed here.

At the end of last month, my partner Ulises and I were lucky enough to hit the road for a week’s break here in Mexico, and headed down to Tulum on the Caribbean.

I was a loooooooong drive that, in retrospect, we won’t do again unless we have more time.

President Felipe Calderon’s military campaign against Mexico’s narcos is much more obvious once you leave the confines of Mexico City.

We drove through a number of states including Tabasco, Veracruz and Campeche and encountered at least 10 military checkpoints along the way, all of which were furnished by signs in both English and Spanish as to their purpose.

“The Mexican Army is carrying out President Felipe Calderon’s campaign against Mexico’s drug traffickers…..,” and they even invited complaints and recommendations from people passing through.

Oh, if only.

Complaints of human rights abuses by the Mexican military have surged since Calderon started this campaign in 2006. So much so that money for the Merida Initiative, the cash injection from the U.S intended to help fund the fight against Mexico’s organized crime industry, could be held off until Mexico cleans up its human rights record.

When a kid with a machine gun in the middle of nowhere (Mexico’s long, straight highways, or carreteras, are pretty isolated) asks for permission to search your car, it never seems like a good idea to say no.

Which brings me to my main point. The soldiers who are on at least part of the frontline of this military campaign are extremely young. The vast majority of the military personnel that we encountered at the checkpoints, standing in the tropical heat, sweating into their combats with machine guns strapped onto their shoulders, were only just out of their teens.

On the way to the Yucatan, heading out of Mexico City to the coast, we weren’t stopped once. Ulises thinks that because I’m a ‘güera’ (a term that refers to light-skinned or light-haired people, although I don’t regard myself as either of those) that they waved us through.

Not so on the way back, disproving that theory. We were stopped four times by different checkpoints. There didn’t seem much point in trying to explain to the 18-year-old searching our trunk the second, third and fourth time that we’d just been searched in the neighboring state.

The logic goes that if we’re on our way back from the coast, or the coastal states, we could well be bringing something back that we picked up via sea.

It was disconcerting to see the age of the soldiers executing Calderon’s stop and search policy. How much experience could they have gained in the field before now? Older soldiers may be as likely to mess up as their younger counterparts, but it’s easy to see how situations might get out of control when those directing them are fresh out of the barracks.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for MexicoReporter.com

Image: On the road in Veracruz. Deborah Bonello / MexicoReporter.com

The Dart Center, a Columbia 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 Dart Center’s reason for being is laid out on its site:

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is dedicated to informed, innovative and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict and tragedy.

Whether the topic is street crime, family violence, natural disaster, war or human rights, effective news reporting on traumatic events demands knowledge, skill and support. The Dart Center provides journalists around the world with the resources necessary to meet this challenge, drawing on a global, interdisciplinary network of news professionals, mental health experts, educators and researchers.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that the situation for journalists in Mexico, which has now been in decline for some years, caught their attention. Read the article here.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for MexicoReporter.com

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.

Since Tuesday, Mexicans from Mexico City and states outside of the Federal District (another name for the capital) have been lining up around the block clutching envelopes and bundles of documents that they need to apply for the new visa. It’s up to the officials at the Canadian embassy to decide who qualifies and who doesn’t.

Much like the visa process Mexicans who want to visit the United States have to go through, they need to convince embassy officials that they only plan to visit, that they have enough money to do so, and that they won’t overstay their approved period of time in the country.

I spoke to many of the people lining around the block yesterday morning. They were, generally speaking, a very well-heeled, middle class bunch. All of those that I spoke to had already booked their flights when the Canadian government introduced the new visa restrictions.

The Canadian government explained on Monday that the new visa restrictions were in response to a surge in refugee applications from Mexican nationals. Reading between the lines, the new visa restrictions were in response to an increase in what they judge to be fraudulent refugee applications from Mexican nationals. As the news release stated:

In 2008, more than 9,400 claims filed in Canada came from Mexican nationals, representing 25 per cent of all claims received. Of the Mexican claims reviewed and finalized in 2008 by the Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent administrative tribunal, only 11 per cent were accepted.

The Canadian authorities have their reasons, but what still seems odd to me is that they should announce the new visa restrictions just two days before they came into force, throwing thousands of Mexican travelers into panic and dumping an enormous workload onto the embassy staff here in Mexico City. The usual working hours for visa issues is 8am to 1pm but staff have been working into the early evening over the last few days to cater to the demand for the new visa.

Watch the video for more on how Mexicans feel about the new visas.

Video by Deborah Bonello, created for the Los Angeles Times.

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/