Seeking to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship.
12/8/2016 The Guardian
Lizbeth Amores dropped off her son at her mother’s house before heading to a house party with her friend Verenice Guevara. They were last seen at a bar popular with local gangsters.
The following night, María de Jesús Marthen was among a dozen or so young women invited to a private party at a ranch about an hour east of the city centre. On her way to the event, Marthen messaged her boyfriend, pleading for help.
11/2/16 Al Jazeera
Every November 2, Mexicans mark the Day of the Dead by honouring deceased loved ones.
Given the disproportionate number of deaths produced by Mexico’s US-backed drug war, officially launched in 2006, it is starting to seem like an ever-more tragically appropriate tradition.
In a recent investigative piece for The Nation, Dawn Paley details the “spectacular violence” that has accompanied the drug war project.
10/25/16 BBC News
Jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman “fears he could lose his mind” before the end of the year, his partner Emma Coronel says.
He is watched constantly by three masked guards, even when he uses the toilet, his partner says.
Ms Coronel complained to the National Human Rights Commission about Guzman’s living conditions.
10/24/16 Business Insider
Next month, Californians will vote on a raft of propositions, including one that would legalize recreational production and consumption of marijuana.
Proposition 64 would allow Californians over 21 to have up to an ounce of cannabis and permit people to grow up to six plants. It would put a 15% tax on retail sales and ban large-scale production for five years to stave off the arrival of large corporate growing operations.
4/10/16 Business Insider
10/01/16 Al Jazeera
The sons of imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman are suspected of launching an ambush on a military convoy in northern Mexico which killed five soldiers and injured 10 others.
State and military officials said on Saturday that some 60 gunmen freed drug suspect Julio Oscar Ortiz Vega, also known as “El Kevin”, in Culiacan city in Sinaloa state, as he was being escorted by soldiers to a hospital in an ambulance. Vega had been wounded in an earlier gunfight.
10/02/16 Al Jazeera
Colima, Mexico – Alma Hernandez’s dreams of becoming an architect and building a future with her boyfriend, Pedro Navarro, were irrevocably crushed one sunny afternoon when they were shot dead outside a Walmart in their hometown of Colima.
The pair, both aged 21, had been together for five years. They had recently opened a hotdog stand to help support Hernandez’s family, following the death of her father. None of that mattered to the unidentified gunmen who opened fire on April 20, killing both in broad daylight.
