February 6th 2012 – In Ciudad Juarez, the violence is a constant, human suffering a given, and trying to understand why the city has so many problems depends on who you ask. The people who live there are justifiably weary of the violence and the near-blanket impunity enjoyed by those who perpetrate it. But then, [...]
November 11 2011 – The grieving families of six men who disappeared from a Mexican night club speak to TIME. Their story is among 170 cases of killing, torture and disappearances documented in a new Human Rights Watch report. This report was produced for Time Magazine by Deborah Bonello. Watch the video on Time’s website [...]
November 2 2011 – Day of the Dead in Mexico is usually a time for celebrating and remembering lost loved ones. But in the context of a brutal drug war that has cost 40,000 lives, the commemoration of the dead has taken on a more sombre tone this year. Below, other video edits from the [...]
October 25 2011 – A dispatch for Time from a recent trip to Veracruz: In touristy Veracruz, Mexico, drug-related violence has spiked. After a recent wave of 80 killings, the federal government sent troops to patrol the city. But many still don’t feel safe See the video here on Time.com
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.
Daniel Dominguez, one of the hard-worked crime reporters on El Diario, the biggest newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, was kind enough to let me spend the day with him last week. Here’s the report I produced for AFP, which you can also see here on YouTube. The same video is also embedded below, in case of [...]
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 [...]
June 6th 2011 – Since Javier Sicilia’s son was killed by gunmen in March, the left-leaning Catholic poet has become the voice for those left dead or grieving by drug-related violence in Mexico. Some 37,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon launched his assault against the country’s drug cartels and organized crime networks in [...]
A recent visit by the UN Working Group on involuntary or forced disappearances questioned the Mexican army’s current role in President Felipe Calderon’s “war” against organized crime and drug gangs.
No Mas Sangre (No More Blood), a social protest group that began life as a cartoon, took to the streets of Mexico City on a recent weekend. They were in protesting what they see as a failed policy – President Felipe Calderon’s campaign against the country’s drug cartels and organized crime. But how representative are they of the Mexican people?
February 25th 2011 – Mexico’s migrant monarch butterflies in the state of Michoacan see less visitors as tourists are put off by press reports of narco violence. After being fired for asking Mexico President Felipe Calderon to respond to rumors that he has an alcohol problem, outspoken broadcaster and journalist Carmen Aristegui returned to the airwaves. And drug-related violence for the first time claimed the life of a US security agent – we ask what it means for US/Mexico relations.
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.
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.
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 [...]
Broadcast live on Ustream, June 24th 2009 Moderator: Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News Panel:Ed Vulliamy, Guardian and Observer journalist and writer Alex Tweddle
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.
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.
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.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it into work this morning. Not because of Mexico’s overloaded public transport system, but because U.S President Barack Obama was expected to arrive on his first visit to Mexico here in the country’s capital.
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.
Mexico City’s Museo de la Ciudad is playing host to a photojournalism exhibition — Expofotoperiodismo — that features nearly 50 photos from 2008.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What do Mexicans think of their police force?
Following last week’s filming session in the Zócalo, where I was denied the chance to film closeup to the military whilst they were raising the ntaional flag, I managed to edit the move into a decent summary of the ritual.
“TJ? Really?” was the response from most people last week when they learned I was heading down south of San Diego for a research trip.
They were right to be cautious. I live in Mexico City — one of the biggest, baddest towns around — but still gave Tijuana a second thought. The world’s most famous border city has been getting some bad press of late due to the drug-related violence playing out on its streets.
But what struck me more during my brief trip was the border itself and how it is littered with evidence of its own casualties and conflicts, past and present. The wall is at the center of the current national debate on immigration, and I wanted to see it for myself.
Threats to reporters from government and criminals are making investigative journalism impossible, writes Deborah Bonello
In February this year, the car of Mexican journalist Estrada Zamora was found empty on the side of the road in the southern state of Michoacán with its engine running. Zamora was not inside and has not been seen since.
Click on the link above to read the full article, published today by Index on Censorship.
There is a great Leader in this Sunday’s Observer which makes a point I’ve often debated – how cocaine takers in Britain and the US, which provide the demand for the illegal drug industries in Latin America, tend not to think too hard about the impact their weekend drug habits might be having on other people.
If they did, given the trend for ethical shopping that is sweeping the Western World, demand would surely drop.
Mexico remains the deadliest country in the Americas for journalists with two murders in less than a month, and three disappearances, according to today’s annual report from Reporters Without Borders. Three journalists were murdered last year, and three media workers were shot dead.
Those levels are an improvement on 2006, when nine journalists were killed, but 2008 is looking grim if the stats are to be believed. As many journalists were killed last week than in the whole of last year.
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.
Drug-fuelled violence against the press in Mexico is spreading. A report released yesterday by the Committee to Protect Journalists says more journalists are being killed or persecuted whilst covering the drug trade and the powerful Gulf and Sinaloa cartels in the country. But the research from the NGO fails to address the high levels of [...]
Brad Will was shot by an assailant (s) just 50 centimeters away, and not from a distance of 30 meters as originally thought, according to the latest findings of the investigation of the Attorney General on the case in Mexico.
Results from the investigation into the death of the American IndyMedia journalist, shot dead in Oaxaca just over a year ago, suggest that he could have been killed by fellow protesters or members of the People’s Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), as well as government agents or infiltrators, according to newspaper reports in Mexico last week.
‘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 City’s Military March – Independence Weekend
Mexico celebrated the anniversary of its independence this weekend. It was the first time that Felipe Calderon, the country’s current president, oversaw the celebrations since he took office in December last year following controversial elections.
Observers said that the military presence surrounding the annual event was much higher than past years, and the volume of the music being played by the enormous speakers around the square was painful to the ears.
Stalls and celebrations in Mexico City’s Zocalo. The country is preparing to celebrate its Independence Day. This will be the first Independence Day to be presided over by the country’s current president Felipe Calderon, who took office in December last year following controversial elections.
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
