As the G20 nations prepare to meet in St Petersburg, Russia in early September, Index on Censorship is exploring the nations’ records on free expression. Today: Ana Arana on Mexico.
Journalists in Mexico’s border area with the United States face huge pressures from drug gangs in reporting on violence, Ana Arana reports.
The Guatemalan daily El Periódico and Fundación MEPI have published an exposé of corruption in the current Guatemalan government. The story, with information and documents gathered during the first year in office of president Otto Perez Molina and vice president Roxana Baldetti, detailed a multi-million dollar web of corruption in a country where 50 per cent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. After the story was published on 8 April, the newspaper was immediately the hit with a cyber attack, according to El Periodico’s publisher, José Rubén Zamora. The website went dead and nobody could read the story for a few days. Readers who did manage to access the website had their computers infected with a virus. […]
A new telecommunications reform that was presented in Mexico by the government of Enrique Peña Nieto has been heralded worldwide. The reform bill seeks to amend the Mexican Constitution and will open the telephony and television industries. The...
Ciudad Acuña, a tiny town on the Mexican side of Del Rio, Texas, has been in the news regularly because of drug-related violence. The town, resides in the state of Coahuila, which has been dominated by the ultra-violent Zetas. A competing...
Ciudad Acuña, a tiny town on the Mexican side of Del Rio, Texas, has been in the news regularly because of drug-related violence. The town, resides in the state of Coahuila, which has been dominated by the ultra-violent Zetas. A competing organised crime group, the Sinaloa Cartel has been trying to take control of this territory in recent months, creating a surge of violence. Just last October, Jose Eduardo Moreira Rodriguez, the son of Humberto Moreira, a high-ranking politician from the Partido Institucional Revolucionario (PRI) and former governor of the state of Cohauila was kidnapped and killed, a drug cartel with the cooperation of a top police official. But police in this city have decided to focus on a more serious threat — miniskirts. General […]
Until a couple of months ago, few in Mexico City knew who Heydar Aliyev was, and even fewer of those were aware that a marble and bronze statue erected in his honour sat smack in the middle of Reforma Avenue, one of Mexico’s most recognised streets. A plaque standing before the statue detailed the former president of Azerbaijan’s “loyalty to the universal ideals of world peace”. But the presence of the dead dictator sparked controversy in Mexico City. The conflict over how Mexico City accepted $5 million dollars from Azerbaijan to build the statue, as well as a park, has been brewing since November. The agreement to build the statue was reached by the leftist government of the Partido de la Revolucion […]
Until a couple of months ago, few in Mexico City knew who Heydar Aliyev was, and even fewer of those were aware that a marble and bronze statue erected in his honour sat smack in the middle of Reforma Avenue, one of Mexico’s most recognised streets. A plaque standing before the statue detailed the former president of Azerbaijan’s “loyalty to the universal ideals of world peace”. But the presence of the dead dictator sparked controversy in Mexico City. The conflict over how Mexico City accepted $5 million dollars from Azerbaijan to build the statue, as well as a park, has been brewing since November. The agreement to build the statue was reached by the leftist government of the Partido de la Revolucion […]
A 28-year-old middle school teacher at a private school in Mexico City has been fired after showing her students the 2008 film Milk, which tells the story of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was murdered in San Francisco in the 1970s. Mexico's...
Violent confrontations in Mexico City on 1 December between police and thousands of demonstrators protesting the swearing in of President Enrique Peña Nieto continue to reverberate, as human rights and media protection organisations grapple with...
In Mexico drug cartels continue to dictate news agenda — fear of retaliation influences news outlets’ decisions on what to publish. Ana Arana and Daniela Guazo reveal the results of a new study that exposes the depth to which the public are kept in the dark
On 30 October, the state government of Veracruz announced it had solved the murder of Proceso magazine reporter Regina Martinez, who was killed in April this year. In her 10 years as a Proseco journalist, Martinez had frequently reported on drug...