By MARK LORENZANA A few days after U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar warned that growing insecurity across a number of Mexican states could have a negative impact on foreign investment in the country, Mexican daily newspaper Reforma released a report on Sunday, Aug. 28, detailing the contrasting homicide rates between cities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, based
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By JESSICA GUERRERO MORELIA, Michoacán — During the last two weeks, the country has faced a serious security crisis, after several violent incidents took place across cities located in the states of Baja California, Chihuahua and Guanajuato, where different organized crime groups directly attacked civilians and set fires to dozens of businesses and private vehicles. The aforementioned resulted, in the first
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By THÉRÈSE MARGOLIS Just two days after cartel violence wreaked mayhem in Mexico’s central states of Jalisco and Guanajuato, similar attacks gripped the country’s border city of Ciudad Juárez late Thursday, Aug. 11, leaving at least 11 people dead and six arrested, and Tijuana, on Friday, Aug. 12. Violence was also reported in the northern border towns of Mexicali, Rosarito
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By KELIN DILLON On Sunday, Aug. 7, five members of the LeBarón family – a group of Mormon relatives settled in Mexico’s Chihuahua desert who were thrust into the spotlight after the mass murder of nine members of ther family in November 2019 – were reportedly arrested for carrying high-caliber weaponry exclusively designated for use by the Mexican Army. The
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OPINION By JERRY HAAR Part of an ongoing series from the Wilson Center* The second decade of the 21st century increasingly mirrors the world’s political and economic environment of a century before when nationalism, protectionism and isolationism occupied center stage in the global political economy. The key drivers of economic growth and development — neoliberal economic policies and free market-oriented institutional
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By MARK LORENZANA Zoé Robledo, director of Mexico’s Social Security Institute (IMSS), said on the morning of Tuesday, July 19, at Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) daily press conference, that of more than 14,000 vacancies that were intended to be filled under the government’s medical specialist recruitment program, only 2,621 doctors had been hired in the country. And
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By KELIN DILLON On Tuesday, July 12, Mexico’s National Water Commission (Conagua) declared a state of emergency in light of the enduring drought facing Mexico’s northern states, establishing new regulations for water distribution in the affected territories through the emergency’s publication in the Official Gazette of the Federation. According to Conagua, newly introduced measures to address the drought issue include
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By MARK LORENZANA Six people were killed and at least eight more were injured after armed men stormed a family party in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 10, in León, the most populous city of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, local authorities reported. Individuals on board two motorcycles arrived, started shooting and then promptly fled the scene. Among
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PULSE NEWS MEXICO After two Jesuit priests were murdered in the northern state of Chihuahua on June 20, and numerous other members of the Catholic clergy in Mexico have come forth reporting cases of abuse and extortion by organized criminal groups, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) on Friday, July 8, called on its rival criminal organizations to “not mess
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By MARK LORENZANA The spokesman for the archdiocese of Guadalajara, Antonio Gutiérrez Montaño, said on Wednesday, June 29, in an interview with Mexican daily El Universal that extortion racketeering by organized-crime groups in Mexico have already reached the Catholic Church’s doorstep, specifically in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. “We cannot speak openly of this, or give out more details,
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