Salem-News.com Mexico articles Page 32

Mexico`s 2010 Bicentennial Independence Celebration

You don't have to be Mexican to enjoy the Bicentennial/Centennial celebrations or appreciate the importance of the events to Mexicans all over the world.

(SAN FRANCISCO) - During the entire calendar year 2010, Mexico will celebrate the Bicentennial of Mexican Independence, which dates back to September 16, 1810, and eventually resulted in Mexico's independence from Spain in 1821.

Thus, this year there will be a concurrent Centennial celebration of Mexico's actual independence.

Commerce/Immigration: Migrant Dollars Lag

Individually, the states of Jalisco, Mexico, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Guerrero all received more remittances than any of their northern border counterparts.

(LAS CRUCES, N.M.) - Migrant remittances to the six northern Mexican border states showed a mixed record during the first half of 2010, according to figures from the official Bank of Mexico (Banxico) quoted in an El Paso newspaper.

Border Activists Organize for the Long Haul

“We’re looking to build long-term capacity. The issues won’t go away.” - Emily Carey, ACLU

(LAS CRUCES, NM) - Comprehensive immigration reform might be off the legislative agenda this year. And it remains to be seen how the immigration issue will play out once the November elections are over.

But in different parts of the United States, pro-immigrant rights activists are quietly building networks and digging in for the long haul.

Environment News: Climate Change in Baja California

Currently, Baja California Sur and more than a dozen other Mexican states are considering state climate action plans.

(LAS CRUCES, N.M.) - A new study sponsored by the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur (UABCS) and three other Mexican academic institutions lays out some of the possible consequences of climate change in the ecologically-fragile Baja California Peninsula.

Among the predictions are stronger hurricanes, changes in arroyo flows, loss of vegetation and soils, accelerated desertification, and negative impacts on fisheries and biodiversity.

Mexico`s Arizona Moment

Despite the dangers, migrants say they will continue to travel to the U.S.

(LAS CRUCES, NM) - If Arizona’s SB 1070 law, underlined by the continuing deaths of migrants in the inhospitable, blazing desert of the Southwestern state, dramatizes the crisis of US immigration policy, then the mass murder of 72 Central and South American migrants last week showcases a similar and widening crisis in Mexico.

The 22 August San Fernando Massacre was widely condemned by human rights advocates as the horrific culmination of years of corruption and neglect on the part of Mexican immigration and law enforcement officials.

The Border of Death

The summer of 2010 has been a deadly one for migrants.

(LAS CRUCES, NM) - Despite periodic campaigns to warn would-be border crossers of the dangers of jumping the US-Mexico line without papers, the people keep coming from the south. And instead of a better life in the Promised Land, many encounter horrible deaths.

US and international media reported this week that 170 people have been recovered from the scorching desert lands of Pima County, Arizona, this year. The bodies have been so numerous that forensic authorities have resorted to using refrigerated trucks to store the human remains.

Bodies of 72 Migrants Discovered Near US Border

The crime is connected to the Zetas drug cartel; it is the worst in Mexico's history.

(MEXICO CITY / SALEM) - Texas has the reputation as the place where 'Everything's Big", but when it comes to mass murders and piles of dead bodies, the XXL award certainly belongs to the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where the bodies of 72 people were discovered this week.

'White drugs', particularly methamphetamine, can quickly alter a personality and the need to maintain a supply leads people to do terrible things. That is likely part of the puzzle in a grisly discovery of 58 male corpses and 14 female bodies, described as Central and South Americans, who were killed this week.

Headless Corpses Hung From Mexican Bridge in Wealthy Neighborhood

The death and violence of Mexico's drug cartels is reaching into new areas.

(CUERNAVACA / SALEM) - The headless bodies of four men were hung upside down by their feet from an overpass in Cuernavaca, an established, wealthy neighborhood outside of Mexico City.

The corpses in their macabre poses were found early Sunday in this area of rich, elite homes. The Morelos State Attorney General's office reports that the victims' heads and genitals were cut off, also missing from the victims were their index fingers.

Reconstructing Ciudad Juarez: Nation Building on the Border?

For now, the violence only seems to be worsening.

(LAS CRUCES, NM) - Even as mass slaughter continues to stain the streets of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, plans are underway to rebuild, reshape and redevelop the bloodied border city.

Front Row of a Drug War

If current policies and trends continue, the Mexican refugee situation could become an issue for the United Nations.

(LAS CRUCES, NM) - They could have been videos from the Middle East or Central Asia. But the images flashed to the crowd at Texas Congressman Silvestre Reyes’ annual border security conference at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) showed graphic scenes from the so-called narco war in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

After giving a content advisory, the presenter, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Alonzo Pena, started the show.