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.
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.
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.
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?
The New York Times has a great piece online today about how just regular citizens are reacting to the drug war.
A girl wielded a photo of Monica Alejandrina, who was kidnapped in 2004, during this Saturday’s march for peace across Mexico.
Tens of thousands of people of all social classes and ages marched across Mexico Saturday (August 30th 2008) in protest against high crime levels and rising kidnappings.
Following the detention of Brian Conley, founder of Alive in Baghdad, and some of his colleagues on August 21st in Beijing, news emerged today that he and his companions have been released and are expected to arrive in Los Angeles on Monday morning.
Brian Conley, who runs the award-winning video blog Alive in Baghdad, has been detained in Beijing whilst documenting pro-Tibet protests in the city running alongside the Olypmics.
Last week’s condemnation of the mini-skirt by the Mexican Catholic Church has enraged some Mexican women, who say that church’s statement that women should wear less provocative clothing makes it easier to justify rape and other forms of violence against them.
The number of kidnappings in Mexico grew by 9.1 percent in the first five months of the year, according to figures published this week.
A Mexican university has banned miniskirts and other “provocative clothing” in an effort to stop “provoking” violent attacks against women.
On Tuesday, I waited for a man to die. Even though several people die every minute of every day, I’ve never known the name of the person that I knew was going to die; neither have I ever known so closely when they were going to die and how. But yesterday I knew.
The man’s name was Jose Ernesto Medellin, and now he is dead. On Tuesday, he was due to die at 6pm at the hands of the Texan government for the brutal rape and murder of two teenage girls in 1993.
A bitter debate on how to rescue Mexico’s troubled state-owned oil company went directly to the people on Sunday as capital residents voted on President Felipe Calderon’s plan to open some portions of Mexico’s nationalized petroleum industry to outsiders.
This video went with this Los Angeles Times report.
“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.
A story emerged here in Mexico today surrounding the emergence of a couple of videos which apparently depict the Mexican police, in the city of Leon, being instructed in the art of “torture” by an unidentified, English-speaking foreigner.
The videos are posted below – some viewers might find them offensive.
President Calderon on Friday welcomed the U.S. Congress’ approval of the Merida Initiative a day earlier, an aid injection from the United States which is aimed at helping Mexico in its fight against powerful drug cartels.
The bill has dropped a controversial requirement that Mexico meet certain human rights standards in order to receive the aid. Mexicans had objected to the human rights provision, saying that it amounted to outside meddling by the United States in Mexican affairs. But dropping the human rights requirements seems certain to anger numerous opposition groups to the aid package – see this La Plaza post on the issue.
The police commander who led a botched raid on a Mexico City nightclub will be charged with 12 counts of homicide, one for each person who died in the crush at the bar’s entrance, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The Associated Press reports this morning City Atty. Gen. Rodolfo Felix Cardenas said his office was bringing the charges against precinct commander Guillermo Zayas for failing to halt Friday’s mismanaged raid, in which one group of police tried to force youths out of the club while another blocked the exit to prevent them from leaving.
Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico have been strong on promoting human rights internationally and in supporting the UN human rights machinery during 2007.
But unless the gap between their policies internationally and their performance at home is closed their credibility as human rights champions will be challenged, according to this week’s report from Amnesty International on human rights around the world.
You can access the report here and click on the links at the top for specific country reports.
La Caminata Nocturna is a night-hike for tourists in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico that gives them a taste of the illegal immigrant experience. Watch the video here.
In the year ending September 2007, the U.S embassy in Mexico processed applications for 1,300,000 non-immigrant visas (visitor, student, temporary work, and other categories) according to this page on the site of the U.S Embassy in Mexico. This year the embassy is projecting more than 1,600,000 applications – and projections are generally overtaken by actual applications, as the graph at the bottom of this page shows.
I called the Embassy myself this week to find out how many of the 1,300,000 non-immigrant visas processed last year were actually granted, but was told that information is not available. Then I emailed a press and information officer at the Department of Home Security and was directed to this page.
A good friend of mine, Juan, was denied a tourist visa to the United States this week. It’s technically known as a B-2 visa. Juan’s girlfriend is from the U.S, and he wanted to travel with her to her home state later this year to attend her sister’s wedding and to meet her parents for the first time.
A home-owner (he bought the house thanks to a finance scheme through the Government) and Mexico City Government employee for the last five years, he did things the way that the United States want Mexicans who want to come to the U.S to do things.
Warrants for the arrest of five public employees involved in the illegal detention of journalist Lydia Cacho (pictured) have been issued in Mexico after the nation’s Supreme Court decided at the end of last year not to pursue legal proceedings against those involved in the case.
The fact that there exist official statistics on the amount and size of bribes paid in Mexico is perhaps indicative of the level to which corruption and the ‘informal economy’ is ingrained in Mexican Society.
The latest figures from Transperencia Mexico show that Mexicans spent 42% more on bribes last year than in 2005, splashing out a massive $2.6 billion. That’s an average of more than $24 for each of Mexico’s 105 million people.
A brief survey of friends shows that some have paid up to 500 pesos to policemen to get out of parking/ speeding and drinking infractions. But the best bribe story has to be a friend who got stopped for having a dodgy back-light, and gave the policeman such a hard time he eventually got off with just giving him a piece of gum as his payoff. Nice work.
April is shaping up to be a bad month for journalists in Mexico.
It’s been a full week since the eruption of fury over the Absolut advertising campaign that ran in Mexico. Since we broke the story it has gone international, appearing on the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP , the Independent, Radio Five Live and other major media outlets, not to mention thousands of blogs around the world.
Spleens have been vented, apologies have been made, and a counter-PR move by rival SkYY vodka was made today. Here’s the latest.
The latest advertising campaign in Mexico from Swedish vodka maker Absolut seemed to push all the right buttons south of the U.S. border, but it ruffled a few feathers in El Norte. Here’s an update with some more detail about the fallout, and Absolut have tried to address the mountain of complaints rolling in about the ad
The latest advertising campaign in Mexico from Swedish vodka maker Absolut promises to push all the right buttons south of the U.S. border, but it could ruffle a few feathers in El Norte.
Please go to the blog post here to read the complete version.
You can hear me and my fellow Frontline Club bloggers Anita in Zimbabwe and Kyle talking about what we blog about.
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission is to investigate all of the reported cases of aggression against the emo youth subculture in Mexico, following a spate of violence and hostility across the country directed at the group.
According to El Universal, the Commission called for tolerance yesterday and voiced concern that attacks against emos violate the right to freedom of expression, equality, freedom of expression and the right to association.
The Mexico City Government called a meeting today for the coming Tuesday between the city’s ‘urban tribes’ to try to put an end to the increasing violence and animosity against emos that is currently sweeping Mexico – see Daniel Hernandez’s blog here for an excellent synopisis of the current situation.
Since the first attack against the group of youths who identify themselves as ‘emos’ happened in Queretero at the beginning of the month, animosity has been growing amongst those who resent the ‘emo’ look and attitude.
At around 10pm on Tuesday night of this week, Auricela Castro García, the publisher of El Mundo de Orizaba, a daily based in Orizaba in the southeastern state of Veracruz, received a phonecall.
Identifying himself as José Sánchez, the caller asked to speak to the publisher “for personal reasons.” The call was transferred to the editor, who said Castro was in a meeting and unavailable. The caller replied: “Tell her she has information, she knows what I am talking about, and if she publishes it, she will be killed.”
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.
While traveling home through Pánuco, Veracruz with his 16 year old son in late January this year, Octavio Soto Torres, journalist and director of the Mexican daily Voces de Veracruz, was shot at by four masked gunmen. This was just the latest in the ongoing litany of attacks against journalists in Mexico. Torres, who escaped alive, is known for his harsh criticism of local authorities.
Sweeping overhauls to Mexico’s criminal trial system announced last week could bring the country into the modern world, according to the Financial Times. People suspected of crimes will be presumed innocent until proved guilty, according to the reforms backed by President Felipe Calderon.
‘For the first time – and assuming that a majority of the country’s 31 local legislatures approves the constitutional change – defendants will be presumed innocent until proved guilty. Trials will become open and more transparent, with judges and lawyers having to work in public and under the scrutiny of the media.’
amnesty.gifBut according to human rights groups, some of the elements of the reforms threaten to undermine human rights by allowing prosecutors to enforce house-arrest on suspects or to put suspects in jail before they’re charged.
Alberto Herrera, executive director of , said: “We want the judicial system to be efficient but this can mean permission to violate human rights.”
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.
The limited attempts of the Mexican Government to tackle the high levels of violence against journalists testifies ‘to the inability or unwillingness of the Mexican authorities to make the fight against impunity,’ according to Article19, the freedom of expression NGO.
Dr. Agnes Callamard, executive director of the group, said in a statement that the impunity enjoyed by those responsible for violence against journalists is ‘one of the most alarming characteristics of the overall human rights situation in Mexico’.
Mexico is still the deadliest country in the Americas for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Kathy and Hardy Will, parents of the Indymedia journalist Brad Will who was shot dead in Oaxaca more than a year ago, have branded the Mexican investigation into the journalist’s death “frustrating and disappointing” for its failure to find those responsible.
Will was shot dead by plain-clothed armed men on October 27th 2006 whilst covering the social disturbances in Oaxaca surrounding a teacher’s strike. The killing brought the death-toll of journalists in Mexico in 2006 to nine – the county is experiencing increasingly high levels of violence against journalists. It was purported to be the second most dangerous place to work in the world as a journalist after Iraq in 2006.
An investigation at the end of last year by the Attorney General on the case suggested that Will had been shot at close range. But Kathy and Hardy Will dismissed those findings as “illogical and irrational” and have announced that the American non-governmental organisation Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) will conduct an independent investigation.
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.
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