It took just 83 days for Adriana Mejía to lose half her family, as Covid unleashed a Mexican tragedy whose full impact is only now becoming clear. First to depart was her father, Juan, a 90-year-old carpenter who died at the family home in Mexico City last July after summoning his eight children to say goodbye. Two...
Mexico’s government has acknowledged that the country’s true death toll from the coronavirus pandemic now stands above 321,000, almost 60% more than the official test-confirmed number of 201,429. Mexico does little testing, and, because hospitals were overwhelmed, many Mexicans died at home without getting a test. The only way to get a clear picture is...
The Biden administration announced on Monday that two senior officials will travel to Mexico and Guatemala to discuss the increase in migrants attempting to enter the US. Emily Horne, a spokesperson for the national security council, said Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to the president and coordinator for the south-west border, “will travel to Mexico to engage with Mexican government...
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights will hear testimony on Monday from a Colombian journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and raped while reporting on her country’s civil war, in a case which could set a precedent for thousands of survivors of sexual violence in the Andean nation. Jineth Bedoya, who has been pursuing justice for...
Nicaragua has created a new National Ministry for Extraterrestrial Space Affairs, The Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, prompting scorn from critics in a nation experiencing a steady erosion of human rights since a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests three years ago. The new space agency was approved by 76 legislators Wednesday in the country’s congress,...
The first household name Arlindo Armacollo smothered in beeswax was Mother Teresa. Then came Albert Einstein, Pope John Paul II and a string of global luminaries who the entrepreneur-turned-artist admired. “It might look simple, but to achieve this richness of detail was hard work,” a local television reporter gushed during a 2015 visit to Armacollo’s waxwork...
Fuelled by black coffee, yellow-tipped cigarettes and white, incandescent rage, the faceless sleuth lurks on social media poised to unmask his next target. “It’s outrageous, bizarre, it’s horrifying – a collective genocide,” fumed the twentysomething activist who burns the midnight oil scouring the internet for footage of parties being thrown despite a rapidly deteriorating Covid...
A judge in Guatemala has accepted a guilty plea by the former head of security at Central America’s largest nickel mine who was on trial for killing an Indigenous leader, in a rare conviction over human rights violations allegedly linked to Canadian-owned mining companies in the region. Mynor Padilla was found guilty on Wednesday of homicide for...
The Mayans were a civilisation known for their architecture, mathematics and astronomical beliefs, who date back to 2000BC. Many of their impressive constructions still stand today in the jungles of southeast Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and western parts of Honduras. Puuc is the name of a region in the Mexican state of Yucatan, which includes the ancient “forgotten” town of Kiuic...
Seizures of the synthetic opioid fentanyl by Mexican security forces have increased by at least 486% in 2020, the country’s defence secretary has announced. Mexico’s military and police forces seized an estimated 1.3 tons of the synthetic opioid this year, compared to 222 kilograms in 2019. Luis Cresencio Sandoval, the country’s defence secretary, said the increase was...