...hers of lost sons gather and pray that each new day may bring a resurrection of peace. This is not a distant snapshot, but a reality close to home. Welcome to the world of narcocultura. Welcome to Mexico. Stretched across the Mexican landscape is a complex and diverse tapestry of rival drug lords and organizations pitched in constant war over drugs and profits. For decades, these cartels served as a middleman for the international illicit drug ma...
...ection of what writer Mario Vargas Llosa once described as the “perfect dictatorship.” We shall always “forgive, but not forget”, because a country that forgets its history is condemned to repeat it. Nearly a week before the Mexican July 1st elections take place, as the vote divides between giving an opportunity the left or handing back power to those that abused it, I am afraid Mexicans are voting for the latter. After two terms lacking signifi...
...as like to organize the first independent student run presidential debate in the history of Mexico ahead of the July 1 election. Valeria is a 22-year-old law student at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México born into a Mexican and German family of university professors. She is an alumna of the United World College of South East Asia in Singapore and a spokesperson for the organization in Mexico. Valeria has lived in Germany, India, Argenti...
...unched a mud-slinging campaign that has shocked the international community with its anti-Semitic and homophobic attacks. I predict a Chávez win; the system is simply stacked too high against Capriles. Enrique Peña Nieto Wins Mexican Presidency Widespread resentment over Mexican President Felipe Calderón’shandling of the drug war in Northern Mexico has inflamed public opinion against his National Action Party (PAN). PAN broke the Institutional Re...
...o poor nations to feed hungry populations at affordable prices. 19% of US corn production in 2006 was exported, representing two thirds of the world’s corn exports. Exported corn generates its own problems: after NAFTA opened Mexican markets to American corn, subsidized production allowed US corn growers to undercut domestic Mexican corn prices, forcing smaller Mexican corn growers to slash their profits. The reliance on US imports of corn meant...
.... Indeed, it seems that the assassination plot was part of a larger deal to traffic Costco-sized quantities of opium into the US. In fact, one of the suspects was arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas which is just hours from the Mexican border. While the connection between the Middle East and Latin America is old news (a camaraderie based on the shared resentment of American “hegemony” and the penchant for trafficking illicit drugs), what stands out...
...ell to their lowest level in a year. Local businesses have also begun operating with more confidence, but many people remain skeptic. The gangs’ reach extends far beyond the Salvadorian economy – they also have strong ties to Mexican cartels and people-smugglers. There is little hope that the truce will last if it endangers these two activities. Though the truce has represented a real improvement in term of homicides, there is little evidence tha...
Illustration by Nicci Yin In March 2010, Angel Francisco Castro Torres was riding his bike down a municipal road in Smyrna, Georgia, when he was pulled over by two police officers. They claimed the incident was nothing but a routine traffic stop procedure, but the stop was anything but ordinary. The officers demanded that Torres – a Mexican-American immigrant – show proof of his immigration status. When Torres failed to immediately produce adeq...
In the 2012 election, an overwhelming majority of first-generation Americans voted in favor of Democratic candidates over Republican ones, bringing the issue of immigration reform to the forefront of governance. With 71 percent of Latinos having voted for President Barack Obama, many Republican politicians, including Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, both from Florida, have voiced concerns that their party needs to change its stance on immigration po...
...an rights, the members of the Council do not really care about human rights: they care about vilifying Israel. Watching this speech via YouTube (it has been viewed at least 200,000 times), one can see the rage building within Mexican Council President Luis Alfonso de Alba. For the first time, de Alba, his arms tightly crossed, did not express the token thanks for a representative’s remarks. “I am sorry that I’m not in a position to thank you for...
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