Rex Tillerson, US secretary of state, struck a conciliatory tone during a visit to Mexico, saying the neighbouring countries had an opportunity to upgrade their economic relationship.
Read the complete article at The Financial Times
BBC interview about the fireworks explosion in Tultepec, Mexico
Interview for the BBC radio show “Good Morning Scotland.”
Five Mexicans to watch in 2017
The past year was a rough one for many Mexicans.
The list of difficulties and indignities was long, from the rise to the US presidency of confirmed enemy Donald Trump to the end-of-year shock of gasoline prices soaring by as much as 20 percent. The political and economic outlook will have many Mexicans bracing for another hard year ahead. Yet international and local instability also present opportunities for change, both politically and culturally.
Faced with a difficult climate, here are five Mexicans looking to make a real impact in 2017.
Politics
Margarita Zavala
The Mexico City lawyer and politician has already announced her desire to become Mexico’s first female president. Zavala, who is the wife of former President Felipe Calderon, hopes to become the candidate for the conservative National Action Party (PAN).
Yet as Hillary Clinton discovered in 2016, experience as a former first lady can be as much of a hindrance as a help. Zavala will need to run a well-considered campaign if she is to distance herself from the bloodshed that was unleashed as a result of her husband’s military strategy against drug cartels.
During her visit to last November’s Guadalajara International Book Fair, a protestor whose father had been murdered in 2007 appeared at her side with a placard reading: “Your husband took the life of my father, do you want to take mine?”
The presidential hopeful took the protestor’s cellphone number and offered to speak to him at a later date, showing she can think on her feet. Yet the incident also demonstrated that she needs to take full advantage of 2017 if she is to distance herself from the past and position herself for the presidency.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
No other figure in Mexican politics divides opinion as much as former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. To many, the leader of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) is Mexico’s fut
ure savior. To others, he is a demagogue, hell-bent on importing the kind of economic and social chaos that has ravaged Venezuela. Antonio Garza, the former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico may have been closest to the truth, when he described him in 2006 as a left-leaning centrist who had little in common with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Lopez Obrador has already run two failed campaigns for the presidency, in 2006 and 2012. Yet Peña Nieto’s historically low favorability ratings are likely to take another tumble in 2017. His meeting with Trump earlier this year was a grave mishandling of the situation, viewed by some Mexicans as borderline treason. Soaring petrol prices triggered by his energy reforms are likely to encourage Mexicans to look to a figure outside of the political establishment.
The next presidential election is not until 2018, but opinion polls suggest that Lopez Obrador will start with an advantage. With Trump in the White House, and Peña Nieto on the back foot, this year will offer important opportunities for Lopez Obrador to portray himself as an agent of badly-needed change.
Entertainment
Kate del Castillo
The soap opera and film star Kate del Castillo started 2016 in very hot water. The actor, who is known for playing a female drug kingpin in the Queen of the South series, found herself under investigation for her connection to captured cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and was forced to file an injunction against her arrest.
Del Castillo was thrust into the international spotlight after she arranged a meeting between the fugitive drug boss and the actor Sean Penn. She is now accused of accepting illegal funds from Guzman for her tequila company.
While the actor cannot currently travel to Mexico, she is finding success from Los Angeles, by starring in the political drama Ingobernable (Ungovernable) which is due for release on Netflix in March. Del Castillo plays Irene Urzua, the headstrong wife of Mexico’s president, who is closely based on Angelica Rivera, the current first lady.
Long associated with Televisa, the Mexican television channel that heavily promoted Peña Nieto when he was a candidate in 2012, the series represents a departure for Del Castillo. It is a chance to simultaneously take aim at the president, the government and her former employers, all from the comfort of exile.
Jonas Cuaron
The young director is up for an Academy Award for best foreign-language picture in 2016, for his second feature Desierto, a thriller about a group of migrants stalked by a racist sniper at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Jonas Cuaron, whose previous work includes co-writing his father Alfonso’s space odyssey Gravity, has explicitly linked his film to Trump’s negative rhetoric about migrants.
The film’s international trailer features Trump’s infamous speech about Mexican migrants as the voice-over for a massacre. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” Trump says, as the vigilante takes aim at border-crossers in the desert.
While the film received a mixed critical reception, the director’s publicity campaign in the lead-up to its release has helped increase his profile. At a press conference, Cuaron encouraged Mexicans to upload ironic photos of themselves to Facebook and Instagram, holding placards with Trump’s descriptions: “rapist,” “criminal,” “I’m bringing drugs.” He promised to print them and send them to Trump’s offices.
Literature
Valeria Luiselli
The 33-year-old Mexican author had a hugely successful 2016. She won the Los Angeles Times Prize for Best Fiction for her second novel The Story of My Teeth, – her critically acclaimed tale of an eccentric protagonist searching for 
new teeth. She appeared frequently in the Guardian and the New York Times and was featured in Vogue along with her husband, the Mexican writer Alvaro Enrigue.
Her latest non-fiction title, Los niños perdidos (The Lost Children), is scheduled for release next year. The project arose from her experience working as a translator for child migrants in the immigration courts of New York.
The book takes its structure from a 40-question survey that serves as the basis for the legal proceedings determining whether the children are allowed to stay in the United States. Through these questions, Luiselli explores the present legal difficulties and the violent pasts of youngsters who have undertaken the perilous journey north.
“The children interviewed say reticent words” writes Luiselli. “Words full of mistrust; born of buried fear and constant humiliation.”
Twitter: @Stephentwoodman
Posted in Culture
Tagged Amlo, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Jonas Cuaron, Kate del Castillo, Margarita Zavala, Netflix, Valeria Luiselli
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Mexicans face new year shock at petrol pumps
Mexico’s government has announced the biggest increases in petrol prices in almost two decades in a move that risks a backlash against its efforts to liberalise the country’s energy market.
Read the complete article at The Financial Times
Women fall victim to violence in Mexico’s decade-old war on drugs
MEXICO CITY, Dec 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Denisse Velasco has been suffering from acute anxiety since spring, when she narrowly escaped being abducted from a busy street in Guadalajara, Mexico.
She was waiting at a bus stop one morning when a man jumped out of a taxi and tried to force her inside. Velasco suspects it was a drug trafficker intent on kidnapping her for ransom.
Read the complete article at The Thomson Reuters Foundation
Narco y futbol en Michoacán
En la dramática tanda de penaltis, Eduardo, el portero de Morelia, anotó desde los once pasos y atajó uno más para que su equipo se coronara campeón en un torneo juvenil en el estado de Michoacán, México.
Eduardo tiene 15 años y es bajito para su edad. A pesar de su talento, su estatura podría significar una barrera para que logre convertirse en futbolista profesional. Pero él sueña en grande y espera algún día huir de Michoacán, estado plagado por conflictos violentos.
“Existe mucha inseguridad aquí”, dice Eduardo. “Ya no puedes estar tanto tiempo en la calle por las cosas que pasan”.
Como es común en la mayoría de los michoacanos, Eduardo se reserva cuando habla de violencia y espera más preguntas para contar los detalles. “La semana pasada secuestraron a un amigo mío”, dice rápidamente.
Seguir leyendo en Vice Sports
Mexico’s drug war as seen through the eyes of children
Guadalajara, Mexico – One image captures a fierce shoot-out between rival drug cartels, with several lifeless bodies slumped on the street in pools of their own blood. Another shows a gang member hurling a grenade at a police officer. A third features a collection of Kalashnikov and Armalite assault rifles, the weapons of choice for Mexico’s cartel hitmen.
These are not photographs, but children’s drawings depicting the harsh realities of Mexico’s decade-long drug war. They uncover the mental scars borne by a generation exposed to extreme violence, many of whom distrust government forces and admire narco-culture.
Elementary school students produced the drawings as part of an investigation into the effects of the conflict on children in northern Jalisco, an impoverished area plagued by violent crime.
Read the complete article at Al Jazeera English
Tepoztlan: The mystic mountain village
After a childhood spent in a grey London satellite town, I am wide open to the enticements of more exotic climes. Mexico, with its stunning diversity of landscapes, beliefs and traditions, was always going to be somewhere that fired my imagination. Sign me up for mountain shamans, prophetic visions and Aztec serpent gods.
The village of Tepoztlan in central Mexico attracts a steady stream of visitors who are drawn by its reputation for mysticism and spirituality. A healing energy is attributed to the town, owing to the legend that it is the birthplace of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. As a result, in recent years, Tepoztlan has attracted followers of a multitude of spiritual practices: from meditation and yoga, to ayahuasca and crystal healing.
Read the complete article at Travel Mag
‘I tracked down my mother in the Amazon rainforest’
My parents had a very unconventional marriage: my father is an American anthropologist and my mother is a member of the Yanomami tribe living in a remote corner of the Amazon. They were betrothed according to the Yanomami system in 1979, while my dad was living with the group in Venezuela.
Read the complete article at The Financial Times
The Mexican Labyrinth 