I spoke to journalist Nathaniel Parish Flannery about how criminals target vanilla growers in Mexico.
El crimen organizado ahoga al consumidor indefenso y dispara la inflación
I spoke El País about supply chain extortion and inflation in Mexico.
Mexican gangs go on rampage, challenging president’s security strategy
I spoke to the Wall Street Journal about recent criminal blockades and violence in Mexico (behind paywall).
Miners are going to extremes to stop those who are trying to protest
An environmental activist lives in constant fear in northern Mexico. An Indigenous leader is stabbed to death and tossed in a river in the Brazilian jungle. A regional governor is given a six-year prison sentence by a court in Peru. Separate fates tied by a single thread: all three had opposed mining projects.
The extractive industries – and their devastating impact on the environment – will be on the agenda when officials convene for the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference in December in Spain, under the presidency of the government of Chile. But outside diplomatic circles, publicly discussing mining activities has become a perilous task in Latin America.
According to Global Witness, an environmental watchdog, mining was the deadliest sector for land defenders in 2018: 43 people were murdered after standing up to mining interests, and 11 of those killings occurred in Latin America.
Read the complete article at Index on Censorship
Posted in Crime
Tagged Brazil, environmentalism, Mexico, mining, organized crime, Peru, violence against activists
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The Mormon family massacre could make the bloody drug war in Mexico worse
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Mexican officials are struggling to adopt a coherent response in the aftermath of the deadliest attack on U.S. citizens in the country’s recent history. And that could create an opening for President Trump.
The massacre of three women and six children, including babies, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora on Monday has sent shockwaves through Mexico and once again turned the world’s attention to the country’s brutal drug war.
The deepening security crisis puts Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is already under pressure for last month’s botched arrest of Ovidio Guzman, the son of former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, back on his heels.
Read the complete article at Vice News
Mexico missing: The city where ‘you can feel the fear’
The only hint that anything is wrong in La Estancia, a leafy suburb of the Mexican city of Guadalajara, are the dozens of “for sale” signs posted outside the houses.
People started leaving in May, when police found a decomposed body in a home on a quiet side street.
Last month, a kidnap victim escaped and directed police to another address on the same road. Inside, they found a corpse and three severed heads.
So far this year, more than 15 murder and burial sites – some holding dozens of dead bodies – have been found within homes in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state.
Read the complete article at BBC News
Posted in Crime
Tagged CJNG, disappeared, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Jalisco New Generation, Mexico
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Meth, murder, and malandros in Guadalajara
On April 19 last year, the body of the 42-year-old Mexican rapper Mr. Yosie Locote was dumped in an empty lot in the western city of Guadalajara. A note claiming he had been killed because of a connection to an enemy of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was pinned to his chest with a screwdriver. In a separate case three days later, authorities arrested another local hip-hop star, the 24-year-old Christian Palma, known as Qba, who confessed to dissolving the dead bodies of three film students in sulfuric acid on the orders of that same organization.
Both artists were pioneers of rap malandro (thug rap), a style of hip-hop the Mexican press has cast as the soundtrack to the country’s drug war. With performers rapping about meth abuse and massacres, the media blames the music itself for perpetuating gangland violence. But defenders of the genre argue that rap provides youngsters from poor urban areas with an attractive alternative to drug cartel recruitment.
Young people have taken to this music with enthusiasm in Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco and Mexico’s second-largest city. Although Jalisco is better known for tequila and mariachi, Guadalajara’s low-income Oblatos sector has become a mecca for the country’s hip-hop scene, spawning numerous stars including Mr. Yosie Locote and Qba.
Read the complete article at The Outline
Trump has already created a crisis for Mexico’s new president
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, rose to power on the promise that he would tackle the country’s rampant corruption and violence.
That will have to wait, as he faces a more urgent matter: the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Thousands of migrants have arrived in the northern city of Tijuana in recent weeks, having trekked through Mexico as part of the caravans from Central America that began forming in October. Most of them have crowded into dirty makeshift shelters. Local officials have complained that they are unable to cover the cost, and humanitarian groups have warned of deteriorating conditions. Last week, UNICEF said it was “deeply concerned for the safety and wellbeing” of more than 1,000 migrant children in Mexico.
Read the complete article at Vice News
Posted in News
Tagged Amlo, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, migrants, Trump
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Mexico: All aboard the Tequila Express!
I’m offered my first tequila cocktail before the train has even departed from Guadalajara station. It’s the first of many drinks served on the Jose Cuervo Express to Tequila, the colonial town that gave its name to Mexico’s national beverage.
The train, a mock-19th-century-railcar, comes to life and slices along the tracks. Past Guadalajara’s gridlocked main avenues and featureless outer districts, we enter greener terrains that slide by soothingly.
Distant cattle graze in wide, beige fields, and all sorts of alien contraptions loom into view: vast water tanks that look like spaceships, maize harvesters from Mars and other spindly structures that have landed from beyond.
Read the complete article at Travel Mag
The Mexican Labyrinth 