Mexico Weekly and Mexico Today

Suspected 'La Línea' gang demand Noroeste report on crimes of rival Sinaloa cartel

Management at a Mexican newspaper whose offices were riddled with bullets earlier this week said Friday that they received demands for the payment of $200,000 pesos ($15,400 U.S. dollars) in exchange for not blowing up the daily's headquarters in the Pacific resort town of Mazatlán, EFE reported.

Mexico's Proyectos Eléctricos Agua Prieta and a consortium made up of Spain's Sener and Elecnor will build a thermo-electric power plant in the northwestern border state of Sonora, the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) said, reported EFE Friday.

Carlos Moreno Alcántara, Oaxaca National Action Party (PAN) president, confirmed the deaths of two federal congressmen, a local elected legislator and two elected mayors, all members of President Felipe Calderón’s National Action Party, in a small plane accident near the Huatulco airport, reported Excélsior Friday.

New class of female scribes are racking up successes at home and abroad

In celebrated Chilean author Roberto Bolaño's 1998 novel The Savage Detectives, a brilliant but depressive group of young poets roams through Mexico City, writing and drinking at bars across the frenetic capital, Newsweek reported Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration said Friday that Mexico has met enough human-rights requirements for the United States to release $36 million U.S. dollars in previously withheld funds that were part of the $1.4 billion U.S. dollar Mérida Initiative, The Associated Press (AP) reported Friday.

Mexico reels from the worst wave of violence since the Revolution

Ten years ago Mexico completed a velvet transition to democracy after 71 years of one-party rule with the opposition winning an uncontested victory in presidential elections and the economy growing at 6.6 percent, The Guardian reported Friday.

Veterinarians and animal lovers from Mexico and the US have joined together to treat forgotten dogs and cats

Life isn't easy for stray animals on the mean streets of one of the world's busiest borders.
An estimated 7,000 animals spend their days dodging traffic, looking for scraps and living − and dying − in the streets of Tijuana, CNN reported Friday.

The church's rejection of Liberation Theology has rendered it powerless

The mood in Cuernavaca was subdued last week after four decapitated bodies were discovered, hung from their feet from an overpass in yet another set of drug-related assassinations. Turf-battles between rival drug cartels have plagued the once-tranquil “City of Eternal Spring” since December of 2009, when the Marines took out the drug kingpin, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and then offered for public display his stripped, bullet-riddled body, adorned with dollars, rosaries, and small religious medals they had taken from his pockets, wrote Jennifer Scheper Hughes for Religion Dispatches (RD) Friday.

Mexico FS: Success of talks does not depend on agreeing on legally binding text to combat global warming

Mexico's Foreign Affairs (SRE) secretary dampened hopes Friday for a breakthrough deal at the Cancún climate change talks in November, saying negotiators are focusing on making progress on smaller issues before perhaps seeking a comprehensive agreement in 2011 or later, The Canadian Press (CP) reported.

Juárez Valley and Ciudad Juárez have detached from Mexico and entered a realm beyond any map

The events which have no name scythe through the valley like invisible reapers. They slice east to west, west to east, a homicidal pendulum. No one sees anything.