Recently in Mexico Category

Members of the Mexican peace movement march in the north of the country
Photograph: Tyler Stringfellow

As the Mexican peace movement gets on the road again and heads south to Guatemala, Monina Morris, a Colombian anthropologist, speaks about her experience of living with violence and how she sees Mexico's march for justice.

People with the Mexican peace movement march in protest against violence
Photograph: Tyler Stringfellow

This week's attack on a casino killing 52 people in Monterrey, Mexico was shocking even by Mexican standards of violence. Ceser Manjarrez, a freelance cameraman and scriptwriter writes about his recent experience in the city he grew up in.

A man with his face covered takes part in a demonstration in the town of Cherán, Mexico.

Photograph: Clayton Conn

Since April this year the Mexican town of Cherán has been defending itself against illegal loggers backed by a local drug cartel. Increasingly isolated and running out of supplies townspeople opened up the town on 26 June to welcome Javier Sicilia's caravan of peace

Where the Mexican media is failing to report on drug related crime a new blog is filling the gap. Not for the fainthearted, , The corpses lie twisted at the foot of a shrine. Their bodies slashed with a Z, Zeta the name of the drug cartel they once belonged to. Part of a leg is hanging from fairy lights draped along the roof. A statue of Jesus looks straight ahead, a cluster of heads at its feet. Welcome to Blog del Narco where photos of headless corpses is standard.

The leader of one of Mexico's largest and most profitable drug trafficking cartels is in close contact with his police and army pursuers, by phone and email - which ixplains why he has remained at liberty for years.
Nearly 10 years ago Joaquín Guzmán aka El Chapo or Shorty, escaped from a maximum-security prison after hiding in a laundry cart.
It now turns out that the very people who are supposed to be pursuing him are apparently on his staff.
Internal documents recovered by the Mexican authorities from an associate of Guzmán, show that he has a sophisticated spy network and routinely buys off top police officers and soldiers with his ample drug profits.
[Forbes' famed "rich list" of the world's billionaires contains a lot of the usual suspects like Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, as well as one controversial addition - 54-year-old Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. On the list, his industry is listed as "Shipping." "El Chapo's" spot at #701.]

                                                      Flicker photo 

Mexico is slipping into a quagmire of drug-fueled violence where there is so much rumour and misinformation that the authorities are turning to social media networks to calm what Mexican officials call a 'mass psychosis of fear'.

Crime reporters and local media have been so intimidated by drug organizations that their reports can no longer be relied upon and many are paid to report what the crime syndicates want. Grisly YouTube videos of multiple murders are now part of the gangs armoury of psychological weapons being used against their enemy - civil society and rival gangs.

Now the authorities are using Twitter to post warnings about "situations of risk" and to calm nerves as Mexico acquires the trappings of a failed state.

In a characteristically vivid report by William Booth of the Washington Posts reports that: "Juan Triana Marquez, a director of the Reynosa city government, decided to start tweeting updates about military operations, gun battles and narco-barricades, warning people to stay away from certain neighborhoods or intersections. The government now has almost 1,800 followers on Twitter, including CNN en Español."
"We are attempting to confront the misinformation and simply inform the people of the current risks," said Triana, who along with two assistants keeps the tweets coming 18 hours a day. He is as anxious as many here about the jump in violence. "There is absolutely no strategy from the federal government. They just throw the army at the bad guys, and they clash in our streets," he said.

Of the drug cartels he says: "They would rather kill a person than step on a cockroach," Triana said, "because a cockroach might soil their boots."

By Ela Stapley, photography, Javier Lomeli Ponce

Mexican president, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, is blaming organised crime for attacks on the media, instead of recognising the part his government plays in restricting free speech, says a report by anti-censorship group, Article 19, and the National Centre for Social Communication, Censos, a Mexican NGO.

Their report found that 244 threats were made against journalists in 2009 with over 65 per cent of threats being made by government officials. Organised crime accounted for only 6 per cent, it said.

Despite this, the Mexican government has insisted, both to the Mexican public and to international audiences that, the biggest problem facing free speech in Mexico is organised crime, the report stated.

An extraordinary investigation by Mike O'Connor, the Committee to Protect Journalists representative in Mexico City, uncovers unsavory accusations against a murdered journalist In the course of investigating the December 22 murder of newspaper owner José Alberto Velázquez López, CPJ discovered allegations of corruption that often hover over crimes against journalists in Mexico. The first thing I heard was that the authorities in the town where Velázquez worked had ordered his murder. In Mexico, officials are often seen as lethal adversaries of the press. And, sometimes they are. But then a second common feature began to emerge: Rumors that the victim was somehow sleazy, maybe even involved in illegal activities. Yes, the victim was a journalist, but with something to hide. That, also, can be the case in Mexico--as well as complicate the search for the true motive for the crime.

Newspaper readers across the Americas have been asked to join the Inter American Press Association (IAPA)'s campaign to demand justice in the cases of murdered journalists. A growing list of newspapers is participating in this online banner campaign to focus attention on killings that go unpunished in the region. Just this past week, several journalists and their families have been fatally targeted in three countries.