Mexico

Around midnight on February 2 Manuel Farfan Carriola was slain on his way home from work. His four bodyguards were also killed, and several police officers were wounded in a gunfight with the assailants. Early blame for the murder of Carriola, a retired general and recently appointed police chief of Nuevo Laredo, is going to […]

Last Friday US Border Patrol observed Mexican smugglers using a catapult to hurl pot from across a small part of the Sonora Desert that included the international border with Arizona. USBP contacted their Mexican colleagues who promptly broke up the operation. In all, law enforcement seized 35 pounds in marijuana, a 10-foot tall catapult, and […]

London’s Tate Modern is one of the most renowned art museums in the world. And right now Tate is exhibiting the work of Gabriel Orozco, a 48-year-old Mexican artist. Orozco garnered international acclaim in 1993 when he reconfigured a junked Citroen by carving the icon of French industry into three parts, making the vehicle appear […]

Mexico produced a record 25 million tons of tortillas last year. But given that tortillas are a staple of Mexican diet the country is still reliant on imports. Spikes in global corn and fuel prices, not to mention rising electricity prices in Mexico, have many worried about pass-on price hikes. So far, the increases have […]

In case you missed it on the Latin America blog, Rich just posted on Mexico: International headlines focused on Mexico yesterday as an attempt at stealing oil from one of PEMEX’s pipelines resulted in 28 deaths and a town being covered in petrol and flames.According to sources, an organised gang made an attempt at stealing […]

A top leader of La Familia drug syndicate, Nazario Moreno González, better known by the media and public as “the craziest one,” was shot dead in a gunfight with Mexican officials on Thursday. The death is being hailed as a sign of progress in the Calderón administration’s war against Mexico’s drug traffickers. But the day-to-day […]

World Politics Review: How would you characterize economic relations between Brazil and Mexico?? Sean Goforth: In a word: vacuous. Each nation has liberalized its economy over the past 20 years, in recognition of the benefits of international trade, but they have largely kept their backs turned toward one another. Mexico has looked outside of Latin […]

Mexico will host a climate change conference in Cancun from November 29-December 10. In preparation of the UN-backed talks, Mexico is urging the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters to make serious commitments toward curbing anthropogenic climate change. In particular, Mexico’s Environment Secretary Juan Elvira Quesada is pressing on China and India. Both countries have shirked […]

Tomorrow voters in California will decide whether or not to approve Proposition 19, legalizing marijuana in the state. The Atlantic magazine just published a transcript in which they ask five Mexico experts what they think the result might be on Mexico. Initially, the respondents’ opine on the parallel between Colombia and Mexico. Robert Bonner, former […]

Mudslides in the southern Mexico have killed at least 32 in recent days. In the worst disaster, on Wednesday a landslide killed 16 in the state of Chiapas. On Thursday, subsequent mudslides in rural highlands of Oaxaca state killed 11, including a pregnant woman and children. Other casualties are being reported. In recent weeks Mexico […]

From the Global Organized Crime Blog: Wordplay is an important skill for politicians and diplomats, who routinely solve dilemmas by substituting one phrase for another, replacing ‘hot-button’ words with language that may not change reality, but which invariably gives players the ‘wiggle-room’ they need to back-off, rethink, renegotiate, regroup, or retreat from battles plainly lost. […]

President Calderón’s PAN party is in a tough spot. Drug violence dominates media headlines, with many Mexican newspapers publishing extended obits of victims. For the most part, Mexico’s president explains the surging violence as proof-positive that the government’s crackdown is working. Regardless, many Mexicans care more about jobs and the economy than the drug gangs. […]