I didn’t get to make small talk with these two to ask, or was too afraid to do so, but they have all the earmarks of being members or former members of Mara Salvatrucha aka MS-13, a criminal gang originating in Los Angeles and made up predominantly of Salvadorans. During one of the 400 pueblos […]
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The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) warns that due to low world economic growth, the end of the basic commodities super cycle, greater inflationary pressure and a reduction in the capacity to create employment, ¨poverty reduction in the region has stalled since 2012 and destitution shows signs of a […]
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The mood on Latin America Focus has been somewhat sombre of late with the focus being on the missing Ayotzinapa 43, the commemorative march for the student massacres of 1968 and a trip down memory lane way back to 1520 and la noche triste in the lotería mexicana series. With that in mind I thought that it was time […]
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I wrote the last edition of this series – la bandera – on Mexican Independence Day. Of course, the major event which led to a craving for Mexican independence in the first place was the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas and the subsequent colonisation of the territory that we today call Mexico but in colonial […]
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Every year on October 2, thousands march from la plaza de las tres culturas (square of three cultures) in Tlatelolco to the zócalo in the historic centre of Mexico City. The march commemorates the victims of a student massacre in 1968. The committee of 1968 led the march followed by parents of the missing, presumed dead, […]
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September 26 2015 marked one year since the disappearance of the 43 teaching students from the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa. Thousands of people, led by the families of the disappeared, took to the streets of the Mexican capital in a mass demonstration. Under grey skies and drizzle which grew gradually heavier, the march progressed […]
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It is Independence Day in Mexico today. 205 years have passed since the start of the armed conflict which eventually succeeded in expelling the Spaniards from what was the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Nueva España), allowing Mexico, as an independent nation, to be born. Understandably,the day has long been and continues to trigger an outpouring […]
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Campesinos from the state of Veracruz are in Mexico City and taking off their clothes, as they frequently do, to bring attention to their grievances. Their anger is primarily directed at federal member of parliament Miguel Ángel Yunes of the National Action Party (PAN) who they accuse of embezzling funds from the Institute for Social […]
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For the past five years Jose “Pepe” Ortiz has been impersonating Mexican Independence hero Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla on the streets of Mexico City and in various other cities and towns of the Mexican republic. Recently I sat down with Jose for around an hour and a half to talk about his current vocation, his […]
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It’s time to draw the second card in our game of la lotería mexicana. Most of us, fortunately, have two of these. Essential to our daily lives and to none more so than the thousands of artesanos (artisans or craftsmen/craftswomen) who ply their trade all across the vast expanses of Mexico City. Yes, our second card is […]
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LATIN AMERICA FOCUS 