Mexico
Mexican President wants to ease tension between Ecuador and Columbia
President Calderon of Mexico telephoned his counterparts in Ecuador and Columbia this week – Rafael Correa and Ãlvaro Uribe – to discuss the increasingly tense situation between the two countries since Columbia strayed onto Ecuadorean soil over the weekend and killed ‘the second-highest-ranking leader in Colombia’s largest leftist guerrilla group,’ the FARC and 16 other […]
Talk of ‘illegals’ in Beverly Hills
Hollywood, Los Angeles, February 2008The 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 […]
Video: Exhibition Remembers the Dead
Even today there is no definitive count of how many pro-democracy demonstrators were slaughtered by Mexican army troops in the Tlatelolco zone of this capital on Oct. 2, 1968. Was the death toll a few dozen, as the government claimed? Or closer to 300, as some intrepid journalists reported? Did President Gustavo DÃaz Ordaz approve […]
Mexican Human Rights Commission is ineffective, says report
Human Rights Watch released a damning report today, calling Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission ‘ineffective’ and ‘disappointing’. ‘When it comes to actually securing remedies and promoting reforms to improve Mexico’s dismal human rights record, the CNDH’s performance has been disappointing,’ reads the report, which also points out that the Commission’s failures hasn’t been due to […]
Knifepoint on Valentine’s Day
La Marquesa is a sprawling national park and forest out in the mountains between Mexico City and Toluca, and seemed like the perfect place for me and my man to get some time alone today, the day for lovers. As it turns out, it wasn’t such nice place to be alone.
Mexico still deadliest country in the Americas for journalists, says RWB
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, […]
Violence against journalists surged this week
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.
Supreme Court Judges Were Bribed, says Cacho
The Supreme Court judges who voted that the rights of Lydia Cacho were not violated enough when she was arrested, detained and tortured by Puebla’s police under the orders of Governor Mario Marin were paid off by Marin’s lawyers, according to the journalist. Cacho made the accusation, which if true promises to scandalize Mexico’s Supreme […]
Video: tequila, gun-fire and dancing in the streets
The pueblo of Santa Maria Aztahuacan in the sprawling working class municipality of Iztapalapa, Mexico City, got Semana Santa off to a rousing start this Saturday afternoon with dancing in the streets, tacos, tequila – and random gunfire. The festival, which began this weekend, will run for the next month. MexicoReporter.com went along to get […]
NAFTA Protestors Bring the Country to the City: Video
Yesterday hundreds of tractors and thousands of people from rural Mexico came to Mexico City to protest against the lifting of trade restrictions on agricultural commodities like corn, rice and oats. The farmers say lifting these restrictions will put them out of work, because they won’t be able to compete with powerful U.S. agri-businesses, and […]
Filmstar Bárbara Mori gets Ugly: Video
Mexican actress Bárbara Mori wants to be more than a pretty face, and she has the fake buck teeth and fat suit to prove it. The Los Angeles Times covered her new movie launch, and we provided the video interview to match. Please see here for the story and here for the video.
Mexican Farmers Hit the Streets of Mexico City to Protest NAFTA
Pictures from yesterday’s protest in Mexico City – more details to come.
Tlatelolco Memorial Exhibition – why now?
There is something odd about entering a modern, brilliantly choreographed and beautifully presented exhibition created in memory of one of the darkest episodes in a country’s modern history. Odd because the tragedy of Tlatelolco, depicted in such rich and excellently executed multi-media form here at at Mexico City’s Centro Cultural Universitario, has yet to be […]
Media independence in Mexico?
The concept of media independence in Mexico is complex. Much of the media is financially dependent on the Government, therefore those media that are considered ‘independent’ are those that do not rely on the state for the lion’s share of their income. The concept of independence in terms of editorial objectivity is another issue, but […]
You know you’re breaking new ground…
…when situations arise for which there are no rules. Whilst editing my latest video the Los Angeles Times last week, we contacted CNN Espanol for some footage of Carmen Aristegui, the focus of our video report. They agreed to send over some shots, but in return the producer wanted some of our material on the […]
Loss of news talk show dismays Mexicans
Supporters of journalist Carmen Aristegui say the cancellation of her radio program poses a threat to the country’s move toward greater democracy. Please click here for the news story and its complementing video, courtesy of Mexico Reporter.com [video:bliptv:615272]
What the tourists miss
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 […]
Mexico, narco traffick and journalists
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 […]
New Year, Old Problems for Journalists in Mexico
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 […]
Mexicans On Ice
Another commission from the Los Angeles Times, this time their first video blog news item on the ice rink in the Zocalo, Mexico. Click here to watch the movie.
MexicoReporter on the LATimes Blog
MexicoReporter.com produced a film for the LATimes blog here in Mexico City this week about the celebrations surrounding Dia de la Virgen. See the post and movie here: Every year, on the north side of Mexico City, a remarkable sight begins to materialize around mid-December. Thousands of worshippers of the Virgen de Guadalupe converge on […]
Video: Mexico’s Faithful Make Annual Pilgrimage On Dia de la Virgen
Wooden crosses bearing the bloodied effigy of Jesus and huge framed pictures of the la Virgen de Guadalupe are quite literally walking down Mexico City’s Calzada de Guadalupe. Boys with gelled hair labor with crosses strapped to their backs and middle-aged women lumber along the tree-lined avenue with enormous pictures roped to their shoulders in […]
Local reporter shot dead in Northern Mexico
A local reporter, who covered agriculture and occasionally crime in the western Mexican state of Michoacán, was shot dead on Saturday night. Gerardo Israel GarcÃa Pimentel, who wrote for the daily La Opinión de Michoacán, was found in the stairway of the car park of the hotel in which he lived. He had been shot […]
Writers and NGOs: Supreme Court Ruling is a ‘Disgrace’
Writers, journalists and non-governmental organisations have called the Supreme Court’s decision at the end of last week a ‘disgrace’. The Court ruled that the rights of journalist Lydia Cacho’s had not been sufficiently violated to warrant legal action against Puebla State Governor Mario Marin. In a show of solidarity for the journalist, twenty of the […]
Supreme Court Decides Cacho’s Rights Not Violated Enough
The fight for press freedom in Mexico was dealt a serious blow this week after the country’s Supreme Court found that the rights of journalist Lydia Cacho were not violated enough by the state governor of Puebla, Mario Marin, for action to be taken against him. The Court rejected a report by its own Commission […]
Naked Protest on the Streets of Mexico City
[video:bliptv:516829] El Movimiento de los 400 Pueblos has been protesting naked in Mexico City since 2002. At least 300 men dance naked in some of the city’s major squares and streets to draw attention to their cause, whilst the women from the movement collect money from passers-by and give out pamphlets detailing their cause. One […]
Supreme Court Finds Govenor Guilty of Violating Journalist’s Rights
Puebla state authorities have been found guilty by the Supreme Court in Mexico of violating the rights of investigative journalist Lydia Cacho, who was arrested by Puebla police in December 2005 after publishing a book about a pedophile ring in Cancun. The judgment is a victory for Mexican journalists and those campaigning for freedom of […]
Spreading the media word across the Mexican border
This story appeared in Campaign Magazine: the website requires a subscription. English-language titles in Mexico have failed to establish a sturdy web presence. Have they missed a trick? Immigration between Mexico and the US makes headlines around the world. Thousands of Mexicans cross the frontier dividing the two countries every day – illegally and legally. […]
Washington Post article on Oaxaca gets a beating
An article published in this weekend’s Washington Post, called “Oaxaca: One Year Laterâ€, has prompted heavy criticism from people living in the southern Mexican state which this time last year was the scene of huge civil unrest and what one critic describes as ‘some of the worst human rights abuses in recent Mexican history; detaining, […]
Press Freedom Report Paints Grim Picture for Latin America
Journalists in Latin America continue to be the victims of murders, threats and harassment when investigating sensitive subjects such as corruption and drug trafficking, according to the latest report from the World Association of Newspapers, and media in Mexico remains a target of violent attacks. The report mentions the three media workers shot dead in […]