Meme I saw floating around on social media. In the middle is Ricardo Anaya, presidential candidate for the right-left coalition For Mexico in Front but himself a member and former national president of the National Action Party (PAN). The PAN, a right of center, conservative party has been Mexico’s main opposition party for decades and […]
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The video below is a remix/mash-up of comments made by three of the four presidential candidates in the second debate a few weeks ago in Tijuana. The refrain of the “song” is sung by leading candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and means “Richie Rich Little Swine.” It’s a reference to second-place candidate Ricardo Anaya’s alleged […]
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Mexico’s presidential election is coming up on July 1, with four candidates battling it out to succeed Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for a six-year term starting December. Third time candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), has a commanding lead in most polls and barring a catastrophe — including electoral fraud — looks […]
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On Friday evening I passed Plaza Santo Domingo, just a couple of blocks from where I live, and encountered a veritable tent city. Hundreds of teachers had set up camp all across the plaza which is located directly opposite the headquarters of the Secretariat of Public Education. Teachers from some of Mexico´s poorest states had […]
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I was recently in Tijuana – el último rincón de la patria ( the last corner of the motherland) – having crossed over on foot from the southern suburbs of San Diego. The San Ysidro border crossing is the most crossed land border in the world. Heading south into Mexico,however, the crossing was swift and […]
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Mexico – A group of honest citizens, concerned about the country, proposed carrying out a human sacrifice of members of the legislature to pacify the recent clouds of smoke from Popo and thus solve two problems with a single measure. A member of the group that proposed the measure stated that ¨like the Aztecs several […]
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The toughest guy on the street sells frilly pink socks for infant girls My neighbour doesn’t smoke weed anymore In the inky dawn a mariachi blows his trumpet across the sky It floats to the doorstep, where he now sniffs solvents, all night blank The same sad señora pushes her little pile of carnitas across […]
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A deviation here from the regular focus on Latin America. Earlier this year, I completed a translation of the play Bangkok by Spanish playwright Antonio Morcillo Lopez. The play won the prestigious SGAE theatre prize, Morcillo Lopez’s second win, and has been performed in various cities of Spain. Here is a link to an article […]
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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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LATIN AMERICA FOCUS 