Salon.com > Mexico http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 11:27:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Obama will pitch immigration overhaul in Mexico http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/obama_will_pitch_immigration_overhaul_in_mexico_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/obama_will_pitch_immigration_overhaul_in_mexico_ap/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 15:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287686 WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama has his domestic ambition at the top of his travel agenda as he travels to Mexico on Thursday. To sell his immigration overhaul back home, he needs a growing economy in Mexico and a Mexican president willing to help him secure the border.

Obama was to fly to Mexico City on Thursday to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, eager to promote Mexico's economic success and the neighboring country's place as the second largest export market for U.S. goods and services. Mexicans will be hanging on the president's words, but Obama also has in mind an important audience back in the United States.

Though the role played by Latino voters in last year's U.S. presidential election gets much credit for the current momentum for changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, another reason for the change in attitudes is that stronger border protections and the recession have been disincentives to cross into the U.S. As a result, illegal immigration has declined.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/obama_will_pitch_immigration_overhaul_in_mexico_ap/feed/ 1 “Post Tenebras Lux”: A perverse, dreamlike masterpiece http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/post_tenebras_lux_a_perverse_dreamlike_masterpiece/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/post_tenebras_lux_a_perverse_dreamlike_masterpiece/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 15:15:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13286687 A mesmerizing combination of opaque art-house cinema, personal reflection and class-based rural thriller, Mexican director Carlos Reygadas’ “Post Tenebras Lux” casts a strange and powerful spell. While this is certainly a challenging film on many levels, and one rooted in observation of the natural world, it isn’t one of those drifty contemplative Terrence Malick spectacles where nothing much happens. It’s just that many of the events are puzzling and disconnected, and you have to work out for yourself the allusive or subterranean relationship between them. There’s a neon-red animated demon who invades a family’s home at night, a shooting, a hilarious and heartbreaking rural A.A. meeting, a visit to a perverted sex club and a guilt-ridden killer who commits suicide in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. It’s as if we were sometimes in the world of David Lynch, sometimes in the world of Stanley Kubrick and a whole lot of the time in the world of Andrei Tarkovsky, with the complicated social tragedy of Mexico ladled on top.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/01/post_tenebras_lux_a_perverse_dreamlike_masterpiece/feed/ 6 American hospitals deporting unconscious patients http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/american_hospitals_deporting_unconscious_patients_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/american_hospitals_deporting_unconscious_patients_ap/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:45:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13279596 DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Days after they were badly hurt in a car accident, Jacinto Cruz and Jose Rodriguez-Saldana lay unconscious in an Iowa hospital while the American health care system weighed what to do with the two immigrants from Mexico.

The men had health insurance from jobs at one of the nation’s largest pork producers. But neither had legal permission to live in the U.S., nor was it clear whether their insurance would pay for the long-term rehabilitation they needed.

So Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines took matters into its own hands: After consulting with the patients’ families, it quietly loaded the two comatose men onto a private jet that flew them back to Mexico, effectively deporting them without consulting any court or federal agency.

When the men awoke, they were more than 1,800 miles away in a hospital in Veracruz, on the Mexican Gulf Coast.

Hundreds of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally have taken similar journeys through a little-known removal system run not by the federal government trying to enforce laws but by hospitals seeking to curb high costs. A recent report compiled by immigrant advocacy groups made a rare attempt to determine how many people are sent home, concluding that at least 600 immigrants were removed over a five-year period, though there were likely many more.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/american_hospitals_deporting_unconscious_patients_ap/feed/ 10 Immigration reform’s hidden border-crossing charge http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/immigration_reforms_hidden_border_crossing_charge_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/immigration_reforms_hidden_border_crossing_charge_partner/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:20:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13278865 International Business Times If the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has its way, Congress may soon authorize the study of a fee to be collected at all land crossings with Canada and Mexico.

The contentious issue was buried deep within the department’s proposed 2014 budget, released last week by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. It may have gone relatively unnoticed if U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., hadn’t sounded the alarm late Friday.

Higgins, who's a member of the House Committees on Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs and serves on the U.S.-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Group, said he would “fight to put the breaks on this shortsighted fee.”

“Putting up barriers to regional and bi-national commerce is the absolute last thing we should be doing if we want to grow the economies of Western New York and the U.S.,” he said.

Higgins also suggested that the fee along the 5,530-mile (8,900-kilometer) Canada-U.S. border would unfairly “subsidize” the more challenging and expensive southwestern border with Mexico.

According to Section 544 of the budget proposal, the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection should “conduct a study assessing the feasibility and cost relating to establishing and collecting a land border crossing fee for both land border pedestrians and passenger vehicles along the northern and southwest borders of the United States.”

Currently, travelers aren't charged fees for crossing the border by car, bus or train. Some crossings in cities such as Detroit and Buffalo occur on toll bridges, but the money collected goes to the bridge operators, not DHS.

Under the proposal, the Commissioner would look at the feasibility of collecting fees from these existing operators as well.

The study will also explore any legal and regulatory impediments to establishing and collecting land border crossing fees, and it would need to be complete within nine months of the enactment of the budget proposal.

It remains unclear whether the fee would focus on those entering or exiting the U.S., or both. How much each crossing may cost travelers has yet to be determined.

Canadians took 2.8 million same-day car trips to the U.S. in February -- many of which entailed shopping, Statistics Canada notes. Eager to protect this vital trade, politicians in northern U.S. states have successfully blocked previous proposals to generate more income along the northern border.

Canadians also sounded off about the prospect of a border toll over the weekend.

The Canadian Snowbird Association, a nonprofit group that calls itself “the voice of traveling Canadians,” labeled the proposal a ploy to get Canadians to help ease the U.S.’ “desperate financial situation.”

“While we appreciate the fiscal challenges faced by our friends in the United States, we would prefer the U.S. government focus on ways to reduce obstacles at the border that hinder trade and tourism,” Michael MacKenzie, executive director, said.

MacKenzie noted that the Canada-U.S. economic relationship is one of the largest in the world, with trade in goods and services between the two countries at some 128 ports of entry totaling $645 billion in 2010, or more than $1.7 billion each day.

Transport of many commercial goods and agricultural products already entails fees at the U.S.-Canada border. Moreover, any additional fees are unlikely to help the new bilateral “Beyond the Border” plan to ease traffic and promote trade.

“It’s important to note that this is simply a study at this point,” Chris Plunkett, a spokesman at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, told Buffalo News.

“But we’re confident that any study would conclude that the considerable economic damage any fee would do would greatly outweigh any revenue generated.”

In a statement about the proposed budget, Napolitano said Homeland Security needed to find new revenue streams through fees to hire more border guards and support the increasingly expensive operations at U.S. borders.

“Processing the more than 350 million travelers annually provides nearly $150 billion in economic stimulus, yet the fees that support these operations have not been adjusted in many cases for more than a decade,” she said.

“As the complexity of our operations continues to expand, the gap between fee collections and the operations they support is growing, and the number of workforce hours fees support decreases each year.”

More International Business Times

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/immigration_reforms_hidden_border_crossing_charge_partner/feed/ 0 Passport-wielding, chihuahua-bearing Mexican Barbie sparks outrage http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/passport_wielding_chihuahua_bearing_mexican_barbie_sparks_outrage_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/passport_wielding_chihuahua_bearing_mexican_barbie_sparks_outrage_partner/#comments Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:34:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13269270 International Business Times A new Mexican Barbie in Mattel’s “Dolls of the World” series has sparked outrage for what opponents argue is an offensive depiction of Mexican culture.

According to Fox News Latino, the new line of Barbie dolls was launched to appeal to a more “diverse generation” of customers and boasts a number of dolls from Latin America. But the Mexican Barbie, its newest addition, sparked a particular backlash when journalist Laura Martinez mocked it on her blog, writing, “The folks over at Mattel are so smart, that not only they have come up with a Mexican Barbie, but they have given her all the possible tools to go around the U.S. the world undisturbed [sic].”

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/passport_wielding_chihuahua_bearing_mexican_barbie_sparks_outrage_partner/feed/ 41 Mexican vigilantes take over town http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/mexican_vigilantes_take_over_town_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/mexican_vigilantes_take_over_town_ap/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:07:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13254803 Hundreds of armed vigilantes have taken control of a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes after one of their leaders was killed. Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week.

Members of the area's self-described "community police" say more than 1,500 members of the force were stopping traffic on Wednesday at improvised checkpoints in the town of Tierra Colorado, which sits on the highway connecting Mexico City to Acapulco. They arrested 12 police and the former director of public security in the town after a leader of the state's vigilante movement was slain on Monday.

A tourist heading to the beach with relatives was slightly wounded on Tuesday after they refused to stop at a roadblock and vigilantes fired shots at their car, officials said.

The vigilantes accuse the ex-security director of participating in the killing of their leader Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal, 28, on behalf of local organised crime groups and dumping his body in a nearby town on Monday.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/28/mexican_vigilantes_take_over_town_ap/feed/ 6 Wal-Mart expects bribery probe to hurt stock http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/wal_mart_expects_bribery_probe_to_hurt_stock_ap/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/wal_mart_expects_bribery_probe_to_hurt_stock_ap/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:10:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13253350 NEW YORK (AP) — The world's biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., says it is likely that it will incur a loss from bribery probes into its operations in Mexico and other countries.

The company has been dealing with allegations that surfaced last April that it failed to notify law enforcement that company officials authorized millions of dollars in payments in Mexico to speed up getting building permits and gain other favors. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act forbids American companies from bribing foreign officials.

The company has launched its own investigation and is working with government officials in the U.S. and Mexico. In November, the retailer said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was looking into potential U.S. bribery law violations in Brazil, China and India.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/wal_mart_expects_bribery_probe_to_hurt_stock_ap/feed/ 3 Beware of the latest Craigslist job scam http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/beware_of_the_latest_craigslist_job_scam_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/beware_of_the_latest_craigslist_job_scam_partner/#comments Sat, 23 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249349 With phony job offers on Craigslist, scammers are enticing young people to Mexico, where gangs of criminals wait to strip the victims’ car and maybe worse.
The Daily Dot

U-T San Diego tells the story of 18-year-old Nate Dirkmaat, who was on a semester break from Brigham Young University when he came across an ad on Craigslist that sounded like a great gig. Habitat for Humanity — the charity that builds affordable housing around the world — was paying $21.50 an hour for drivers. Dirkmaat could earn some cash and help people out at the same time.

On March 2nd, he set up a meeting at a coffee shop in Mission Valley, Calif., with the man who posted the ad. The man told Dirkmaat he'd have to go on a "tour" in Mexico first before getting hired. At that point Dirkmaat — who'd already handed over copies of his social security card, birth certificate, driver’s license and vehicle registration — got suspicious. He left the meeting and told his parents about it.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/beware_of_the_latest_craigslist_job_scam_partner/feed/ 4 Secrets of the right-wing conspiracy playbook http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/secrets_of_the_right_wing_conspiracy_playbook/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/secrets_of_the_right_wing_conspiracy_playbook/#comments Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13248493 The extremist right in America has always fed on real grievances that go either unaddressed or are mishandled by the mainstream system—by government, and in particular the federal government. In the 1980s and ’90s, they channeled discontent with badly malfunctioning federal farming and land-use policies in rural America into uprisings like the Posse Comitatus and Patriot/militia movements and their various offshoots, such as the Montana Freemen. This led to armed standoffs with federal agents and varying waves of domestic terrorism, all of it emanating from the American heartland.

What these extremists always tell their audiences is that there are simple reasons for their current miseries—inevitably, it is a combination of a secret cabal of elite conspirators running society like a puppet show at the top, crushing the middle-class working man from above, while a parasitic underclass saps his strength from below. This usually plays out, in the worldview of right-wing extremists, as being part of a secret conspiracy to enslave ordinary working people and destroy America.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/secrets_of_the_right_wing_conspiracy_playbook/feed/ 40 America’s drug war of attrition http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/americas_drug_war_of_attrition_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/americas_drug_war_of_attrition_partner/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:05:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13229685 Global Post BOSTON — The global drug war is arguably America’s longest armed conflict, declared 42 years ago and still raging at a pace that would startle many citizens.

It is waged daily, on farmland and streets from Colombia to Mexico to Detroit. It has put millions of people behind bars,  and has dramatically influenced our culture and worldview.

By some estimates, it has cost the nation more than $2 trillion dollars.

Ironically, the drug war was nearly stillborn.

Less than a year after he fired the first salvos, Nixon's Republican-led Shafer commission sought to calm Americans and temper the president’s claims.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/americas_drug_war_of_attrition_partner/feed/ 18 How the Sinaloa cartel “won” Mexico’s drug war http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/how_the_sinaloa_cartel_won_mexicos_drug_war_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/how_the_sinaloa_cartel_won_mexicos_drug_war_partner/#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:48:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13214772 Global Post BADIRAGUATO, Mexico — Neat, freshly painted buildings and a renovated church line the central square. Shiny SUVs rest curbside. Some lack license plates, as if the law doesn’t apply. Mansions crown the surrounding hills.

Badiraguato, a town of 7,000 in Sinaloa state, shouldn’t have such wealth. It’s among the poorest municipalities in Mexico. But you’re better off not asking questions here.

This is a secretive place, hot and quiet in the Sierra Madre foothills. There’s an army barracks, but soldiers mostly stay inside.

It’s the heart of drug country, home to Mexico's most powerful criminal syndicate: the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

For well over a century, local farmers have harvested marijuana and opium in the rugged mountains surrounding Badiraguato. Since the 1980s, the Sinaloa cartel has acted as their Wal-Mart, transporting the mind-bending cargo north with quasi-corporate efficiency, and distributing it to a narcotics-craving United States market.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/how_the_sinaloa_cartel_won_mexicos_drug_war_partner/feed/ 5 Mexican authorities blame parents of 9-year-old mom http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/mexican_authorities_blame_parents_of_9_year_old_who_gave_birth_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/mexican_authorities_blame_parents_of_9_year_old_who_gave_birth_partner/#comments Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:21:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13195178 Global Post GUADALAJARA, Mexico – A senior health official in Mexico has criticized the parents of a nine-year-old girl, who gave birth last month, for not reporting her pregnancy as soon as they became aware of their daughter’s situation.

Jose Antonio Munoz Serrano, secretary of health for the western state of Jalisco, where the girl lives, said the parents knew their daughter was pregnant for months and did not notify authorities despite her young age, El Universal reported.

Munoz Serrano said authorities were concerned about the girl’s family, with whom she is living with her baby girl, CNN Mexico reported.

“We are worried that the girl’s parents didn’t notify the health sector about their daughter’s pregnancy so that she could receive medical attention during her pregnancy,” he said.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/mexican_authorities_blame_parents_of_9_year_old_who_gave_birth_partner/feed/ 4 25 killed in explosion at Mexico’s state oil company headquarters http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/25_killed_in_explosion_at_mexicos_state_oil_company_headquarters_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/25_killed_in_explosion_at_mexicos_state_oil_company_headquarters_partner/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2013 12:18:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13187796 Global Post At least 25 are dead and more than 100 injured after an explosion in one of Mexico's tallest buildings, the headquarters of Petroleos Mexicanos — or Pemex — the Mexican state oil company.

There were reports of many more still trapped at the 51-story tower in Mexico City, according to MyFoxLA.com.

According to the Associated Press, the cause of the blast is still unclear. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto urged people not to speculate about what my have caused it. Some theories include an electrical fire, faulty air conditioning and a possible attack.

"We will work exhaustively to investigate exactly what took place, and if there are people responsible, to apply the force of the law on them," Pena Nieto told reporters, Reuters reported.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/25_killed_in_explosion_at_mexicos_state_oil_company_headquarters_partner/feed/ 0 U.S. polluting water it may someday drink http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/u_s_polluting_water_it_may_someday_drink/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/u_s_polluting_water_it_may_someday_drink/#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:59:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13184367 ProPublica Mexico City plans to draw drinking water from a mile-deep aquifer, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The Mexican effort challenges a key tenet of U.S. clean water policy: that water far underground can be intentionally polluted because it will never be used.

U.S. environmental regulators have long assumed that reservoirs located thousands of feet underground will be too expensive to tap. So even as population increases, temperatures rise, and traditional water supplies dry up, American scientists and policy-makers often exempt these deep aquifers from clean water protections and allow energy and mining companies to inject pollutants directly into them.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/u_s_polluting_water_it_may_someday_drink/feed/ 8 Former Wired editor’s perverse defense for outsourcing jobs http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/the_new_york_times_perverse_defense_for_outsourcing_jobs/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/the_new_york_times_perverse_defense_for_outsourcing_jobs/#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2013 19:46:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13184176 The story of Chris Anderson's conversion from talented technology journalist to executive at a company that mass markets surveillance drones is cartoonish enough to be somewhat interesting (read: depressing) unto itself. It would, in fact, be a perfect hard-hitting exposé for Anderson's old magazine, Wired. But it is nothing compared to the story of him becoming a political activist echoing now-standard corporate talking points that call for more American jobs to be outsourced -- or in his sanitized, Tom Friedman-esque portmanteau, "quicksourced."

This is the subject of Anderson's New York Times Op-Ed this weekend about how his San Diego-based company is shifting its production production to Tijuana, Mexico.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/the_new_york_times_perverse_defense_for_outsourcing_jobs/feed/ 23 Never stop crossing borders http://www.salon.com/2013/01/27/never_stop_crossing_borders_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/27/never_stop_crossing_borders_partner/#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:59:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13182646 Los
Angeles Review of Books IN 1993, EIGHT YEARS AFTER Reyna Grande immigrated as a young child to the United States, Luis Rodriguez’s memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. was published. Like Grande, Rodriguez came to the US with his family as a very young boy, and he was drawn into the gang life. He wrote that he and his family “never stopped crossing borders.” Even when living here, they “kept jumping hurdles [...] It was a metaphor to fill our lives.” Conditions had not significantly improved since he was a young man in the 1970s, he claimed; too many hurdles still existed for young people, leading them to give up, marginalized, with no jobs or future, viewed by society as expendable, as not worth investing in. The result was far too many lives destroyed and lost.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/27/never_stop_crossing_borders_partner/feed/ 1 Who will claim the bodies of unknown immigrants? http://www.salon.com/2013/01/13/whose_body_is_this/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/13/whose_body_is_this/#comments Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13169359 Pacific Standard At the bottom of a freshly opened grave, two young women use brushes and dustpans to sweep the last traces of powdery south Texas soil off the coffin. It’s a little before 8 a.m. on a cloudless May morning, and the punishing sun will soon push the temperature into the 90s. Up on ground level, the excavation’s super​visor, a sprightly forensic archaeologist named Lori Baker, snaps photos of the work. All around them, granite headstones display the names of the dead buried here in the city of Del Rio’s Westlawn Cemetery—Connor, Pennington, Ramirez. Baker has come here from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, to determine the identity of the others, the ones without headstones or whose resting places bear a single word: Unknown. Many of them, she believes, are illegal immigrants who drowned in the Rio Grande or died from heat exhaustion—and whose families have no idea what became of them. “It doesn’t matter if they disappeared in the 1990s,” Baker says. “People don’t stop searching.”

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/13/whose_body_is_this/feed/ 0 Mexicans protest dog detentions http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/mexicans_protest_dog_detentions_tests_negative/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/mexicans_protest_dog_detentions_tests_negative/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 22:30:00 +0000 http://http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/mexicans_protest_dog_detentions_tests_negative/ MEXICO CITY (AP) — Dozens of protesters chanting "Free the dogs, arrest the criminals!" demonstrated outside Mexico City police headquarters Friday, demanding the release of 57 stray dogs seized over five suspected mauling deaths in recent weeks.

The protesters said the dogs are innocent, and many claimed the victims were probably killed by humans. They acknowledged the famished dogs that live in a hilltop park in an east-side slum where the bodies were found may have bitten the corpses after they were already dead.

"Dog friends, the people are with you!" the protesters chanted, as well as, "The dogs aren't criminals, the police are inept!"

"We are completely certain ... the dogs are innocent," said Nominis de Esparza, an animal activist who has adopted 30 cats.

Autopsies determined that the three women, a teenage boy and a baby found in the park since mid-December died of loss of blood due to bites from multiple dogs.

But those findings have been met with widespread skepticism in a country where drug gangs frequently dump bodies of their victims in public spaces, and prosecutors seldom thoroughly investigate such crimes. The idea has taken hold among many that killers dumped the bodies in the park, hoping that packs of stray dogs would destroy the evidence.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/mexicans_protest_dog_detentions_tests_negative/feed/ 3 Mexican traffickers grow pot in U.S. national forests http://www.salon.com/2012/12/28/mexican_traffickers_grow_pot_in_u_s_national_forests/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/28/mexican_traffickers_grow_pot_in_u_s_national_forests/#comments Fri, 28 Dec 2012 19:09:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13156720 the fixMexico's drug traffickers are continuing to expand their marijuana operations, by stepping up cultivation of the plant in national forests across the US. According to a report by USA Today's Judy Keen, traffickers are increasingly planting illicit crops on public land, at the detriment of the natural habitat, while creating risks for hunters and other parkgoers. The practice has been documented as far back as the mid-1990s, but it has now spread to 67 national forests in 20 states. David Ferrell, the Forest Service's law enforcement and investigations director, says that undocumented immigrants tended 1,607 cultivation sites in national forests between 2005-2010. "It's a growing problem—literally," says Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. "They're finding that it's easier and easier...to grow within this country." Federal officials are now starting to crack down on the problem. Last August, Operation Mountain Sweep targeted public lands in seven Western states including California, eradicating 578,000 marijuana plants with a street value of $1 billion. Benjamin Wagner, the US attorney for the Eastern District of California, confirms that most of those arrested were "illegal aliens from Mexico or people here of Mexican extraction." The problem isn't confined to the green West coast: a raid this past August of Wisconsin's Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest resulted in the seizure of more than 8,000 marijuana plants and seven arrests, at least six of which were tied to Mexico. Mass seizures of marijuana plants in national forests have also been reported in Ohio and Michigan.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/28/mexican_traffickers_grow_pot_in_u_s_national_forests/feed/ 8 Mexico’s newspapers shy from covering drug gangs http://www.salon.com/2012/12/15/mexicos_newspapers_shy_from_covering_drug_gangs/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/15/mexicos_newspapers_shy_from_covering_drug_gangs/#comments Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13125734 ProPublica Mexico's regional newspapers are publishing more stories about murders linked to the drug trade, but they remain reluctant to write what they know about the organizations responsible for the killings.

A new study by our colleagues at Fundación MEPI, an investigative journalism center in Mexico City, reviewed daily coverage in 14 of 31 Mexican states. It found a significant increase in the number of stories on organized crime groups. But the study says that only two newspapers, El Norte in Monterrey and El Informador in Guadalajara "provided context to the violence, identified the victims and did follow-ups," according to the review, which can be read in English here and in Spanish here.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/15/mexicos_newspapers_shy_from_covering_drug_gangs/feed/ 3