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Controversial 'three-parent baby' fertility technique takes off in Mexico City

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 08:15:00 -0400

Sitting in his spotless office in the New Hope Fertility Clinic in Mexico City, soft music playing in the hallway in the background, Doctor Alejandro Chávez-Badiola shows an affable smile. “’Three-parent babies’ is not the title I would have chosen for the treatment,” the clinic director says. “But if the press had not given it such an attractive title, the news of what we’re doing probably would not have had such an impact.”

Indeed, “three-parent baby” is easier to remember than “mitochondrial replacement treatment” (MRT), a relatively new procedure offered to couples who want to reduce the chance of passing certain genetic diseases onto their children.

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It is controversial because the embryo takes eggs from two mothers.

Pregnancies through MRT, which is banned in the U.S., are achieved by transferring the nucleus from a mother’s egg to a donor egg, which in turn had its nucleus removed. The new egg is then fertilized by the father’s sperm and ultimately placed in the mother’s uterus.

Mexico City’s New Hope is a branch of a namesake New York City fertility clinic founded by John Zhang in 2014. Critics say New Hope picked Mexico merely because of its weak regulatory framework.

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Dr. Chávez-Badiola, a gynecologist and obstetrician trained in Mexico and the United Kingdom, told Fox News he hopes to apply MRT to 20 pregnancies in the first half of 2017. He would not disclose, however, how many three-way pregnancies are underway at this time.

The first “three-parent” baby was conceived in Mexico’s New Hope in 2015 but delivered in New York City last year. He was born to a Jordanian couple at risk of reproducing a rare disorder called Leigh disease, an incurable that can lead to a child’s death within years from birth.

The Jordanian couple was treated in the New Hope clinic in Mexico by a U.S. team led by Dr. Zhang. So far, the boy appears to be healthy, according to New Hope, and the successful procedure led Chávez-Badiola and his peers to the conclusion that their work should be extended to a larger number of couples in Mexico.

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It isn’t the first mitochondrial replacement technique ever developed. Earlier procedures applied in the 1990s yielded good results, but were different — they transferred healthy mitochondria to the mother’s egg. New Hope’s technique is called “spindle nuclear transfer” and involves cutting-edge technology and equipment rarely seen in developing countries.

Aside from the morals, critics of MRT believe it is still far too early to consider the procedure to be safe. They worry that some defected mitochondria could be transferred with the mother’s nucleus into the donor cell. According to the science magazine Nature, some also worry that New Hope has rushed into the wider application of the procedure.

The clinic, located in Polanco, one of the swankiest neighborhoods of the Mexican capital, is currently waiting for enough patients to achieve Chávez-Badiola’s ambitious goal of 20 pregnancies. So far, he is principally counting on patients from abroad because Mexican couples are harder to find.

“There are families in Mexico suspected of having mitochondrial diseases, but as far as I know there isn’t anyone to offer them the means to diagnose,” he said.

Nor is money a problem, at least in theory. According to Chávez-Badiola, the procedure isn’t more expensive than a regular IVF-treatment. “We first want to know if the technique can be replicated and give us the results we’re hoping for,” he said. “Right now we’d be willing to absorb the extra costs, as it’s a treatment that stems from extraordinary technology.”

Chávez-Badiola acknowledges the criticisms, but counters them with the argument that he and his colleagues are on the vanguard of medical research, which always causes “some discomfort.”

“Mitochondrial diseases aren’t diseases that have been known for centuries. They’re diagnosed through technologies that are relatively recent,” he told Fox News. “I believe that, if you’re going to study such a thing, studying it alone has the potential of changing the way the medical profession acts.”

Development model in Guatemalan rainforest is slowing deforestation, but can it last?

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 15:33:29 -0500

The small furniture factory, littered with pieces of wood and piles of dust, is unassuming enough, but to Iván Arredondo it represents more than just a workshop.

“It's something, isn't it?,” he told Fox News Latino, baring his teeth in a proud smile. “Twenty years ago, what you see here was unthinkable. Wood was being cut without any control, any oversight. And the people were poor. We didn't have education, we didn't have health care, there wasn't even a road to connect us with the rest of the country.”

But now, Arredondo said, “We're taking care of the forest together. Everything's better – our economy, our welfare and the environment.”

While the world scrambles to reach a global solution to climate change as the U.N. Climate Conference in Paris draws to a close this week, this remote corner of Guatemala may hold a possible solution to deforestation.

Arredondo, a heavy-set man in his early 40s, is the general manager of the La Carmelita cooperative, a community-led business located in a village of 345 people with which it shares a name.

It is surrounded by the dense rain forest of the Maya Biosphere Reserve. A protected jungle area the size of Massachusetts, the reserve covers about a quarter of the northern Guatemalan department of El Petén – which is famous with tourists for its spectacular Mayan ruins, its biodversity and its charming capital city of Flores, situated on an island in the middle of Lake Petén Itza, some 50 miles to the south.

Together with ten other such communities, La Carmelita is part of a unique pilot project that began two decades ago. As the Central American country's 36-year civil war drew to a close in 1994, land concessions were given to the impoverished villagers.

The communities formed small companies that began extracting tropical wood, the rubber-like chicle used as a base for chewing gum and xate, a palm leaf sold mainly as an ornament for homes and flower bouquets.

The goal was to stop the relentless destruction of the region's environment. Sixty years ago, Petén, which takes up almost a third of Guatemala's total land area, was still mostly covered with rainforest.

But Petén, with around 350,000 inhabitants and historically without a strong government presence, fell victim to logging and oil extraction operations – both corporate and illegal ones – and the uncontrolled hack-and-slash deforestation by local farmers.

Today almost 80 percent of the jungle is gone.

“Large corporations would exploit tropical wood without taking into account the damage they inflicted on the environment and the people who lived there”, says Arredondo. “The livelihood of our communities depends almost completely on the forest. Our future was in jeopardy.”

Not so in La Carmelita and the nine other concessions, however. Satellite images show how the deforestation abruptly stops where the concessions begin. It's a remarkable success in a country plagued by poverty, crime and corruption and where little thought is given to environmental preservation.

The business model for the concessions maximizes sustainability rather than profit. The cooperatives have members, not shareholders, who take joint decisions over how the forest ought to be exploited and how the money should be spent.

In La Carmelita’s concession, which covers some 130,000 acres, loggers take care only to cut down trees of a certain age, allowing previously cleared swaths of jungle to restore over the course of several decades.

Moreover, instead of selling the tropical wood directly, it created its own furniture factory, adding value and increasing the community’s income.

Although functioning independently, the concession communities joined forces to form the Association of Forest Communities of Petén (ACOFOP). In 2004, they also set up Forescom, an umbrella company aimed at broadening their market.

The concession communities now sell their finished products to buyers both domestic and foreign, bearing a seal of approval from U.S. NGO, Rainforest Allliance, which is only given to suppliers adhering to strict conditions of sustainability. The communities also hope to generate revenue from ecotourism.

After a bumpy start in the 1990s, when La Carmelita's members had trouble getting used to the democratic model of doing business and, as a result, little money was made, the cooperative is now increasingly successful.

Last year, it made a profit 150,000 quetzales – or around $20,000. It's a modest amount compared to the money regular logging firms rake in, but to the workers of La Carmelita, it's a spectacular success.

Not only do they use the proceeds to bolster the company, they also invest heavily in the village itself. The company finances social welfare, education and health care in La Carmelita and is building a water purification facility.

Thanks to the cooperative, La Carmelita has become self-sufficient as both a business and as a community.

“This used to be a very poor area. There were no schools and no clinics at all, but now that we're able to exploit the forest ourselves, the average income has gone up, and we were able to set up our own school and our own medical facility. It's completely self-sufficient,” Jorge Sosa, a director with ACOFOP, told FNL.

“But the state also benefits,” he added. “The local economy used to be completely informal, but now we're paying taxes.”

A report published last month by the World Resources Institute (WRI), an NGO based in Washington, D.C., pointed out how the Guatemalan concessionary model could serve as an example to the world on how to deal with climate change and deforestation.

The World Resources Institute (WRI), an NGO based in Washington, D.C., investigated both the Guatemalan concessions and a similar model found in Brazil’s indigenous communities in the Amazon, concluded that, in the long run, the economic benefits can be enormous as preserving the forests helps mitigates carbon emissions the harmful effects of climate change.

The WRI estimated that Guatemala stood to benefit up to $800 million over the next two decades by letting the communities manage the exploitation of the rainforest. The potential benefits in the far larger Indigenous Territories of Brazil could be worth a whopping $194 billion.

“Communities in Guatemala and Brazil identify themselves not only economically, but also socially, with the land and forest. They don't see it as a way to make a profit but as a way of life,” Juan Carlos Altamirano, a Mexican economist with the WRI and one of the authors of the report, told FNL. “Indigenous people and local communities only have about one-eighth the property and exploitation rights of forests worldwide – but here we can see they are able to stop deforestation.”

It remains to be seen, however, if the success of these Guatemalan concessions is sustainable. The threat of illegal logging is always present, even if so far the communities have been able to stop it almost completely.

Oil companies are looking to explore possible crude reserves in Petén, while the presence in the region of drug traffickers puts the members of the communities under constant threat.

What’s more, the concessions only last 25 years – the communities will have to renegotiate them over the next five years. And in Guatemala's volatile political climate, renewal is far but certain.

“It is a constant struggle for us”, ACOFOP’s Sosa said. “We have proven the success of our model, but that doesn't mean that our future is guaranteed.”

During papal visit, Francis could surpass John Paul II in hearts of Mexicans

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 17:00:31 -0500

In the stark sunlight of mid-afternoon at the cathedral on Mexico City's central Zócalo plaza, 48-year old Jorge Santamaria carefully paints a portrait. On the right, the Virgin of Guadalupe, looks down. The object of her affectionate gaze is on the left hand side of the painting: Pope Francis, smiling, raising his arm.

"It's very important to us that Francis comes to Mexico”, Santamaria told Fox News Latino. “He will lighten our spirits with his message of peace.”

A professional painter, Santamaria says he was commissioned to paint the portrait by the Mexican nuncio as a gift to the pope, who arrives in Mexico City Friday evening for a six-day visit. Having one of his portraits given to the pope fills Santamaria with pride, but, as a Mexican Catholic, he says the pope's visit has meaning beyond his own feelings.

“As a Latin American, I believe Francis understands Mexico well, he understands the problems we're dealing with,” he says. “He loves Mexico more than his predecessor.”

When asked, most inhabitants of Mexico's sprawling capital city compare Francis favorably to Benedict XVI. Many here say the German pontiff – with his distant, intellectual demeanor – was not tremendously popular in Mexico.

Benedict came to Mexico in 2012. It was a brief visit to the city of León, in the country's Catholic heartland. The visit was almost like a stopover before his more widely publicized trip to Cuba. Benedict did not travel to Mexico City or see the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most visited Catholic shrine in the Americas.

Some her believe the length of the trip was a sign of Benedict's lack of interest in Mexico, which hurt the feelings of many in the country with the second-most Roman Catholics in the world after Brazil.

Especially considering that Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, appeared to go out of his way to show his love for the country. It was the first country he visited, in 1979, and four other other trips to Mexico would follow.

John Paul II was hailed as a "rock star" pope across the globe, but his popularity here rose to extraordinary levels. Photos and portraits of the Polish pope can be found still in churches across the country, and streets and plazas are named after him.

Over the next six days, Francis will extensively travel the country, visiting Mexico City, the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Ecatepec, Morelia, Chiapas and the border city of Ciudad Juárez. Whether he can win over the hearts and minds of Mexicans the way John Paul II did is an open question.

A recent poll in Mexico City's Reforma newspaper suggested he still has some work to do. On the question of which religious figure they identify most with, 53 percent answered John Paul II, while only 14 percent preferred Francis. Benedict didn't even rank.

“It's very interesting to compare him to John Paul II, whom many consider an honorary Mexican,” Andrew Chestnut, chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of several books on religion in Mexico and Latin America, told FNL. “They both have immeasurable charisma, but ideologically, they are polar opposites. Francis is closer to liberation theology, while John Paul II was more conservative.”

According to Chestnut, Francis' agenda shows he takes his trip here very seriously. “This is arguably the most important visit of his papacy. He is the first Spanish-speaking pope travelling to the country with second-largest number of Catholics in the world. The centerpiece of this visit will be his encounter with the Virgin of Guadalupe, who, obviously, beyond the religious realm is the most important icon of Mexicanism. It will be a powerful, poignant moment.”

“This is a hugely celebratory visit for him. He brings a kind of message that will profoundly resonate with Mexicans,” David Perlich, a Canada-based Vatican analyst who has covered the Holy See for 15 years, said. “His personal charisma may actually exceed that of John Paul II. Benedict was more of a teaching pope. He was more interested in doctrine, less so in public persona.”

Beyond his Latin American background, Francis' emphasis on peace, tolerance and attention for the poor appears to strike the right chord with Mexican Catholics.

One of the questions on many people's minds here is whether Francis will extend that message to the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, which has been harshly criticized for presiding over an ambiance of human-rights violations, increasing criminal violence and governmental corruption.

“I'm sure there is considerable apprehension among certain Mexican elites about the papal agenda in Mexico, specifically a focus on corruption and poverty,” Chestnut said. “However, the Argentine pontiff is the consummate diplomat who is highly skilled at delivering his message without ruffling too many feathers. While he is going to the Mexican periphery, he's avoiding the hot spot of Guerrero – the current epicenter of narco-violence."

That southern state became an international symbol of crime and corruption in Mexico after 43 students from a teachers' college in Ayotzinapa disappeared in September 2014. The families of those students have been the focus of demonstrations and unhappiness against the government ever since.

"If [the pope] does meet with their relatives," Chestnut added, "it will take place behind closed doors – most likely in Mexico City or Juárez.”

“Pope Francis is a very savvy Jesuit," Perlich told FNL. "He knows how modern communication works – how to leverage his personal popularity into a platform to get his social justice message out there.”

He added, “Francis is cautious as well as audacious. His message may prick the conscious of the wealthy, but it is never an attack. It's a call for reflection.”

Even if Francis' presence may prove to be uncomfortable to Mexico's elite, few in Mexico City believe his visit will provoke any real change.

“So many things have happened here in recent years, that many people really want change”, José López, a 24-year-old student, told FNL. “But in the end, this is just a state visit. We don't expect the visits of other heads of state to change anything, so we shouldn't with this one either.”

His friend and fellow-student, 20-year-old Marlene Uribe, believes Francis will accomplish something by raising the spirits of ordinary Mexicans.

“He has a very different style than Benedict, who many people here didn't like,” she said. “Francis just seems more open. I think – I hope – he'll be able to re-ignite some of the enthusiasm that John Paul II sparked.”

‘Sombrero-makers to the Popes’ prepare gift for Francis’ Mexican trip

Wed, 10 Feb 2016 07:00:28 -0500

In their hometown of San Francisco del Rincón, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the Salazar Yépez family is known as the “Sombrero-makers to the Popes.”

It is a well-deserved nickname. John Paul II, the first pope to visit Mexico, wore their hats, as did his successor Benedict XVI when he came to the country four years ago. Even Paul VI, who never visited the country, owned a Salazar Yépez sombrero the family sent to Rome in the care of friends.

And when Pope Francis arrives in Mexico this Friday, he too will be given a Salazar Yépez hat.

“It's a great honor for us to have the pope receive our sombrero,” 63-year old María de la Luz Yépez, who heads the family's workshop in San Francisco del Rincón, told Fox News Latino.

Soft-spoken and choosing her words carefully, there's nonetheless a touch of pride in her voice. “It's a recognition of a tradition that goes back generations. There's a picture of Pope Benedict smiling as he wore our hat back in 2012. It gave me a very special feeling, we were all very happy.”

The family's workshop was founded in 1956 by the late Gilberto Salazar. For six decades and spanning three generations, the family has dedicated itself to perfecting the art of hand-making sombreros – the wide-brimmed hats worn by Mexican charros and mariachi musicians and one of the most popular souvenirs among the millions of tourists that visit the country each year.

The sombrero that will be given to Pope Francis is nothing like the factory manufactured items sold to tourists for as little as $20. “It's an artisanal hat that takes a lot of time to make,” Yépez told FNL. “It took approximately 45 days to create and attach the design to the mold.”

The finished product will be worth around 15,000 pesos – about $800 – and was commissioned by a businessman who will present the sombrero to the pope.

Gregoria Salazar Uribe, a craftswoman at the workshop for years, came out of retirement temporarily to work on the hat.

The design is Mexican-Catholic through and through, with roses and an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe against a white background. “Our family is very Catholic, and we're all guadalupanos,” Yépez said.

Apart from the obvious pride of having the leader of the Roman Catholic Church presented with its finest product, the publicity that comes along with another pontiff receiving their sombrero has boosted sales for the workshop, which employs 15.

“In recent years, sales have been up and down, but we've been successful recently as the media picked up on the news that we were again making a sombrero for a pope,” Yépez told FNL.

It's certainly welcome news for the family. With the industrialization of the sombrero industry, traditional hat-makers have struggled to compete with mass produced versions.

“Frankly, even with sales up due to Pope Francis, we're noticing how hard it has become to find people interested in making the hats,” Yépez says. “Our family has been in the business for three generations, but the next generation no longer wants to do the same thing.”

Yépez said the hats are now finished in surrounding communities, where people still work by hand.

“We bring them the product half-finished and have them give it the finishing touch,” she added. “There are approximately 150 people working for us that way.”

Beyond the everyday business concerns, the Salazars and Yepezes are proud Catholics. The country has been preparing for weeks for the pope's arrival Friday evening.

John Paul II was immensely popular in Mexico, making a total of five trips to the country during his papacy. Benedict caused less of a stir in 2012 due to a perceived lack of interest in Mexico, which some found disappointing in comparison to the more simpático Polish pope.

To date, Francis appears to have struck a chord with Mexicans with his message of tolerance, warnings about inequality caring for those in need at a time when Mexico is increasingly pessimistic about social inequality, violent crime and government corruption.

“I like him a lot, like I did the popes before him,” Yépez told FNL. “Every pope has his own philosophy. John Paul II was beloved by Mexicans, but Benedict was a little more distant – even though he was still popular here. Francis seems very open, he's someone we Mexicans understand well.”

She added, “Personally, I hope Francis' visit will help bring a little more peace to the country.”

During dramatic capture, drug lord ‘Chapo’ Guzmán nearly tunneled to freedom. Again

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 07:15:24 -0500

It was raining Friday morning at 4:30 a.m. in the Pacific coastal city of Los Mochis, in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa.

Most inhabitants of Las Palmas, an affluent neighborhood of the city, were sound asleep when a small contingent of Mexican Marines creeped closer to the residence on the corner of Jiquilpan Boulevard and Río Quelite street.

They approached the residence where they had tracked down Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the world's most wanted man. Inside, the kingpin was holed up with his head of security, Orso Iván Castelúm, alias “El Cholo,” and five heavily armed bodyguards.

Unlike the other inhabitants of the neighborhood, the seven men inside the two-story building were well aware of the impending danger. As the Marines approached, cartel triggermen began shooting, according to an official statement by the authorities.

A two-hour gun battle ensued.

Eyewitnesses told local media that the crackling sounds of automatic weapons were interspersed with louder bangs of heavier-caliber weapons. One marine was wounded, and his companions called in the air cavalry.

Helicopters began to circle overhead.

As the battle continued, the drug lord's bodyguards fled onto the neighboring rooftops. All of them were eventually killed on different nearby houses. Photos published by local media showed that most of them had been shot in the head.

But the Marines still couldn't find Guzmán and his lieutenant.

The pair had fled through a tunnel into the drainage system. Guzmán’s main legacy as a cartel boss just may be tunneling. His Sinaloa Cartel is known for elaborate tunnels that cross the border and let out miles inside the United States.

Guzmán’s July escape from Mexico’s Altiplano prison involved a tunnel from his cell’s shower drain to a building a mile away.

And, almost exactly two years before, weeks before he was arrested in the resort city of Mazatlán in February 2014, law enforcement had tracked him down to a residence in the state capital of Culiacán, but the kingpin snuck away through an intricate system of tunnels that led to the sewers.

The world's most wanted drug lord, whose escape from a high-security prison last year was a national embarrassment in Mexico, almost succeeded again on Friday.

After they failed to locate the kingpin and Castelúm in the house in Los Mochis, the Marines noticed a hole in the ground – it was a tunnel leading to the sewers.

The Marines scrambled into the tunnels and began a furious search for the drug lord, which local media said lasted as long as two hours.

It turned out that Guzmán and Castelúm had crawled through a tunnel just over three feet high under several blocks and emerged, according to local media in Sinaloa, at around 8:20 a.m. about a mile away from the house.

The night’s rains had turned the floor to a gray sludge that stained the shirts of both fugitives. Law enforcement officers later found an M-16 automatic rifle with grenade launching capabilities in the tunnel.

After they emerged, Guzmán and Castelúm hijacked a car and tried to race toward freedom. While moving north at breakneck speeds on federal expressway 15, they were overtaken by Federal Police and surrendered shortly afterward.

The policemen took Guzmán and Castelúm to Doux, a nearby sex motel, where the suspects were kept handcuffed until the Marines arrived and took them into custody. Guzmán was flown to Mexico City later that day, where jubilant authorities presented the world's most wanted man to the press.

“The operation was extremely well planned and more than well resourced, with equipment and a vast number of Mexican Marines who slowly saturated the state of Sinaloa and the drug area known as the Golden Triangle,” Mike Vigil, former chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told Fox News Latino.

“Through fixed and mobile roadblocks along strategic choke points and intense searches of suspect ranches and homes, the pressure on Chapo escalated,” Vigil said. “It began to constrict the area in which he was able to maneuver and hide. Eventually, it forced him into Los Mochis, and he now, once again, was placed in a precarious situation that led to his capture. The marines were like a giant anaconda that smothered Chapo's lifeline.”

Unlike Guzmán’s previous capture in February 2014, the U.S. does not appear to have played a significant role.

“U.S. authorities have constantly provided information gleaned from technical and human sources since Chapo's escape,” Vigil told FNL. “However, in the capture of Chapo in Los Mochis they apparently played little to no role. When I called the DEA on the morning of his capture, most of those I spoke to had not heard of his arrest.”

The cinematic quality of Friday's arrest was almost eclipsed on Saturday, when Rolling Stone published a feature by actor Sean Penn, who had met the drug lord in October and spoken with him for several hours. It is believed to be the first interview the kingpin has given since his first arrest in 1993.

An anonymous law enforcement official told the Associated Press on Saturday that it was the interview with Penn, brokered by Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, that helped authorities to track down Guzmán. Penn described Guzmán's desire to have a film made about his life, in which del Castillo would play a part.

But authorities say it was a tip by a neighbor that led to his dramatic capture.

According to the law enforcement official cited by the AP, the interview with Penn took place in Tamazula, a remote community in the neighboring state of Durango.

The same location would be raided by Mexican Marines only a few days later, and Guzmán only narrowly escaped after reportedly hurling himself down a steep ravine.

On Friday night, Guzmán was returned to Altiplano, from which he escaped six months ago. Mexican authorities on Sunday announced it formally began extradition procedures against the drug lord, which can still be challenged by his lawyers.

Even if he does get extradited, the process could be tied up in the courts for months.

Reactions to capture of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán range from gratitude to skepticism

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 10:00:25 -0500

After the arrest of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in the city of Los Mochis in his home state of Sinaloa on Friday morning, expressions of disbelief, of gratitude, of appreciation and joy began to be issued in statements or posted on social media.

In fact, the news was broken early in the afternoon on Twitter by Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto. “Mission accomplished: we have him,” he tweeted. “I want to inform Mexicans Joaquín Guzmán Loera has been arrested.”

Later in the day he held a press conference thanking Mexico’s armed forces, police officers and attorney general’s office, and in a second tweet, he thanked his security cabinet, too. "My gratitude to the security cabinet of the government of the republic for this important victory for the rule of law in Mexico," he wrote.

Peña Nieto could perhaps be forgiven for all the gratitude. Guzmán’s escape last July was a major black eye for his administration that send his approval ratings to an all-time low. It also heightened tensions with the United States.

Little wonder then that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a statement about the capture that read, “Guzmán’s latest attempt to escape has failed, and he will now have to answer for his alleged crimes, which have resulted in significant violence, suffering and corruption on multiple continents. I commend the Government of Mexico for this arrest, and I salute the Mexican law enforcement and military personnel who have worked tirelessly in recent months to bring Guzmán to justice. The U.S. Department of Justice is proud to maintain a close and effective relationship with our Mexican counterparts.”

But not everyone was completely sold on Guzmán’s capture making everything hunky-dory.

"Chapo's arrest helps Peña Nieto's image in a small symbolic way," Malcolm Beith, who wrote a book, “The Last Narco,” about Guzmán, told Fox News Latino. "To most Mexicans, the chase-capture-escape-chase-capture-chase-capture for/of Chapo has become a bit of a national joke, and nothing more. It doesn't affect their daily lives – security does, but it's not all him – and the economy is far more important to the average person than Chapo."

“This arrest does, in some way, erase some of the humiliation that fell upon the Mexican government after Chapo's escape last year,” Alejandro Hope, a national security expert in Mexico City, told FNL. “But it will also mean that the file of his escape will be reopened.”

Even people from inside Peña Nieto’s own political party, the PRI, were calling for greater scrutiny of how Guzmán managed to escape in July.

"Investigations into what his flight meant need to continue, so as to benefit the country," the PRI president, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, told Mexico City newspaper La Jornada.
And the response on social media was predictably conspiracy-happy.

One commentator – a BuzzFeed correspondent in Mexico – wrote, “Interesting coincidence: Chapo caught as Mexican peso falls to record low against the dollar (more than 18:1).”

Some people’s thoughts turned instantly to how to make a buck out of Guzmán’s capture.

But a few remained philosophical about it.

The border surge, a year later: The perilous corridor to the U.S. slowly clearing out

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 14:15:17 -0400

This is the fifth in a series of posts, one year after the surge of unaccompanied undocumented minors who crossed across the U.S.-Mexico border, examining the effects it has had on communities, schools and children themselves.

MEXICO CITY – On a recent trip to La Patrona, a rural town surrounded by sugar cane plantations in Mexico's eastern state of Veracruz, Fox News Latino met with Las Patronas, a group of women who have dedicated themselves to helping Central American migrants travelling through the region on their way to the United States.

Every day they take posts near the railroad tracks with packages of food and blankets. When the rusty freight train aptly nicknamed “La Bestia” (“The Beast”) rushes by, the women toss the bags to migrants hitching a ride on the roof as they travel north.

These days, however, work at the tracks isn't as busy as it used to be.

“There just aren't that many people climbing the train anymore,” Norma Romero, founder of Las Patronas, told FNL. “There used to be hundreds of migrants on every train — so many we often didn't have enough packages to give them. But now there are only a handful, and often the train carries none at all.”

The trip, which is more than 1,100 miles just through Mexico, is a dangerous one. In their attempt to escape poverty, unemployment and rampant criminal violence, the migrants brave hunger, fatigue and cold, often face criminal gangs preying upon them.

The sight of freight trains cruising through Mexico with few or even no people on the roof is welcome news to its northern neighbor. Last year, U.S. authorities were scrambling to handle an unprecedented wave of undocumented migrants who crossed the border – a crisis made especially severe because of the many thousands of unaccompanied minors making their way to American soil.

Even as new detention centers opened and deportations sped up, the Obama administration began pressuring Mexico and Central American countries to lend a hand in solving the crisis.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his Guatemalan counterpart, Otto Pérez Molina, reacted last July by enacting a comprehensive package of measures aimed at stemming the flow of migrants at Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, the Programa Frontera Sur.

The plan, at least on paper, focuses mostly on ramping up security. New checkpoints were set up along highways in southern states such as Chiapas, and patrols searching for undocumented Central Americans have increased in number and intensity.

Part of that includes police and immigration officials trying to prevent migrants from boarding freight trains headed north.

The Frontera Sur Program also aims to combat human trafficking, organized crime and human rights violations in the border area, as well as making it easier for Guatemalan and Belizean workers to obtain a Regional Visitor Card, which allows a legal three-day stay to work in Mexico's four southernmost states.

At first blush, the effort appears to be bearing fruit. According to a recent report by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a D.C.-based NGO, Mexican deportations of undocumented Central Americans have spiked to unprecedented levels.

In 2014, 107,814 migrants were deported, the vast majority from Central America. And in the first two months of 2015, more than 25,000 were sent back to their countries of origin, a whopping 95 percent increase in comparison to the same period a year before.

Meanwhile, child migrant deportations from Mexico have increased so much they are now almost on par with U.S. statistics, and shelters in Mexico now report far less Central American visitors than in previous years.

Only a year ago, the migrant house in Saltillo, 190 miles from the Texas border in Mexico's northern state of Coahuila, received 300 migrants per night. That number has dropped to 80 at most, with sometimes as few as 20 visitors seeking shelter. Other shelters report similar drops.

Both Mexican and U.S. authorities consider the spike in deportations to be a sign of success.

In January, President Barack Obama praised Peña Nieto, saying, “In part because of strong efforts by Mexico, including at its southern border, we’ve seen those numbers [of migrants] reduced back to much more manageable levels.”

Not everybody agrees. In April, a number of migrant shelters and activist organizations including the MMM got together to form the Collective of Migrants and Refugees Defenders (Codemire). Together, they demanded that the Mexican government abandon Programa Frontera Sur.

“The plan is working, but not the way we'd like it to,” Martha Sánchez, president of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement (MMM), told FNL. “What's working is the repressive part, the part that increases deportations and allows human rights violations to escalate.”

Activists say that Mexican authorities are lagging behind on the implementation of humanitarian components of the plan, which are intended to help keep migrants from making the journey , and have instead focused only on the detain-and-deport side.

“By preventing them from getting on the freight train, migrants are forced to take alternative routes to the U.S., which makes them far more vulnerable to criminal gangs,” Sánchez told FNL. “At the same time, we see many more reports of human-rights violations.”

Activists also criticize what they call the “myth” that the Programa Frontera Sur is only focused on Mexico's southern border.

“It applies to the all of the corridors used by Central American migrants,” Alberto Xicoténcatl, director of the Saltillo Migrant House, told FNL. "What we have seen is a joining of the Federal Police, SEDENA (the Secretariat of National Defense) and the National Immigration Institute to detain migrants. These detentions are massive."

Central American countries presented their own plan to deal with the migration crisis in September of last year. Dubbed the "The Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle," it focuses mostly on economic development, job creation and strengthening institutions to combat the principal causes of migration in the region: poverty, unemployment and rampant violence.

The plan, though praised by some critics, has yielded no tangible results so far.

Meanwhile, violence and poverty keeps pushing migrants north.

Even as the murder rate in Honduras, the highest in the world, appears to have inched down in recent months, a failed truce between El Salvador's two largest criminal gangs has caused violence there to spike.

With more than 600 homicides, May was the deadliest month in that country in a decade.

“I have seen no sign that people are any less willing to go to the United States,” Rosa Nelly Santos, who heads Cofamipro, a migrant organization in the Honduran city of El Progreso, told Fox News Latino. “Employment, crime and poverty are as high as ever here. If that doesn't change, no amount of deportations can stop it.”

Includes reporting by David Agren in Saltillo, Mexico.

READ PART 1: Tens of thousands of immigrant children remain in limbo

READ PART 2: As crisis overwhelms system, philanthropy steps in

READ PART 3: Courts backlogged until 2019 to accommodate minors

READ PART 4: New U.S. policies have led to less children crossing

More Mexicans now leaving the U.S. than entering – but will it last?

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 14:00:38 -0500

In 2004, Romina Ramírez was asked by a friend to cross the border into the United States.

She was hesitant at first. Only 20 years old, she didn't have the papers to enter the U.S. legally. Moreover, she had a baby boy and was very attached to her family in Córdoba, a city in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

“My family said it was my decision to make,” she told Fox News Latino. “And eventually I decided to do it. I was promised a better life, and they told me my son would eventually join me. It was more an adventure than a dream to me.”

She took the trip north the next year. It was a long and arduous journey and not without danger, but eventually Ramírez reached her destination of Phoenix, Arizona. She found the job that had been promised her, working at a chicken farm.

Life was pretty good.

“I enjoyed most of it. I had work, and everything was easier to come by in the U.S.,” she said.

Even so, after barely 18 months in the U.S., she went back – not as a deportee, but voluntarily.

“Life was all right up north, but I missed my son, and I missed my family too much,” Ramírez, now a 31-year old housewife living with her husband and son in the Pacific resort city of Acapulo, said.

Stories like hers are increasingly common in Mexico as in recent years more and more migrants have returned voluntarily from the United States. Indeed, in a reversal of one of recent history's largest flows of people, more Mexicans are now returning to their country of birth than are traveling northward to enter the U.S.

A new analysis, published two weeks ago by the Pew Research Center, found that Mexican migration to the U.S. amounted to a “net loss” of 140,000 people between 2009 and 2014.

According to the study, more than a million Mexicans and their families left the U.S., while only 870,000 took the journey north.

A Mexican government survey of the returnees that was cited by Pew, says that more than 60 percent of them cited family reunification as the reason to go back, whereas only 14 percent admitted that they had been deported.

“It's not a surprising development – we've been monitoring it for a while now,” Jorge Durand, an anthropologist at Mexico City's CIDE University, told FNL. “Migration of Mexicans to the U.S. reached its climax in 2007 and started dropping in 2008.”

Economic and political developments appear to be the principal cause. As the U.S. economy slowed in the aftermath of the Great Recession, fewer jobs were available for undocumented migrants.

That was accompanied by increasingly strict enforcement of immigration laws, making it more difficult and more dangerous to cross without papers. The risk of getting caught and deported has never been as high as it is now.

“The economic crisis coincided with a saturation of the labor market, for Mexicans and Central Americans alike,” Durand said. “In the 1990s, Mexican migration to the United States practically doubled every year. It wasn't just a few marginalized regions sending migrants, it was the entire country. And everyone competed for the same jobs.”

And as the factors pulling in Mexicans became weaker, those pushing them out got stronger.

Demographic changes have reduced the potential number of people looking to travel north, while economic growth in Mexico – however sluggish, has made it more attractive to stay.

“Families in poorer regions used to have six or seven children, but that number has decreased radically, down to two,” Durand said. “Meanwhile it has become easier to earn a relatively decent salary in Mexico. Salaries in the U.S. used to be up to eight times higher than those in Mexico, but that difference has dropped significantly.”

To Iván Girón, a 35-year old musician and bartender in Mexico City, the disappointing income in the U.S. was the reason he went back to Mexico after living in the U.S. for only six months in late 2007.

“I went with a friend,” Girón told FNL. “We lived for a while in Tulsa. We worked as janitors in restaurants, but when they approved laws that allowed the police to check the residency status of anyo ne who looked like an illegal immigrant, we decided to move to Las Vegas and try our luck there.”

In Nevada, life wasn't quite as expected. “I earned relatively well, but everything was very expensive there,” he said. “It was a bit disappointing. I decided it was better to just go back to Mexico.”

Mexico's own approach to migrants has also vastly changed in recent years. As the flow of Mexicans northward has stalled, Central Americans are making the trip in larger numbers than ever before, pushed by poverty and extreme violence in especially Honduras and El Salvador.

Pressured by the U.S. government, Mexico last year implemented the so-called Plan Frontera Sur, which heavily fortified the southern border with Guatemala. Deportations of Central Americans have skyrocketed since, even overtaking the number of Central Americans deported from the U.S. this year.

According to Javier Urbano, who is on the faculty of Mexico City's Ibero-American University, the country’s new hardline policies toward Central American migrants have also had an effect on the attitude of ordinary Mexicans.

“Mexico didn’t just create a policy of giving law enforcement more money to stop migrants,” he told FNL. “It gives off a message to everyone that you shouldn't migrate. It's a message of fear. Mexicans, too, are being extorted and kidnapped along the way as they head north.”

The big question now is whether the trend will last.

“The current drop is paired with less demand on the labor market,” Urbano said. “The next few years will be very interesting. This won't be a structural change until it's paired with the U.S. economy gaining real steam.”

What’s more, he believes that there are still plenty of Mexicans willing take their chances traveling north.

“In order for Mexico to keep its people from migrating, it would need an annual economic growth of around 5 percent, and it would need to create 1½ million jobs each year. We're not anywhere near those numbers,” he told FNL. “We have anywhere between 7 and 10 million youths who neither study nor work. To them, there are only two career paths: migration or organized crime. If we don't deal with that, migration will continue.”

Both Ramírez and Girón have no plans to go back to the U.S., however.

“I enjoyed living in the States, but I prefer being here with my family,” Ramírez told FNL. “I've done the trip. I know what it's like. But ultimately I'm happy here, and there's no need for me to go back.”

“I'm not saying life was bad in the U.S., but it wasn't quite what I expected,” Girón said. “At least for me, going north isn't the dream that it used to be.”

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Migrants from all over world going to Central America, Mexico to join trek north to U.S.

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 13:07:11 -0500

One year after U.S. and Mexican authorities were almost overwhelmed by an unprecedented wave of undocumented Central American attempting to reach the U.S. through Mexico, migration in the region appears to have taken a new and somewhat unusual turn.

In recent weeks, migrants from countries of origin rarely seen around here before – such as Syria, India and Cuba – have been taking the long route to the United States from South and Central America and through Mexico.

These new migrants also appear to be taking a different approach to reaching the U.S. than their Central American counterparts. Whereas the latter mostly travel by themselves, braving accidents, organized crime and corrupt law enforcement officials, the new group more often relies on human traffickers – often paying them large sums of money to guarantee a safe trip.

Last weekend, five Syrian refugees turned themselves in to the Border Patrol in Laredo, Texas, only days after six Syrians were detained in Honduras and Costa Rica with stolen Greek passports. All of them were apparently on their way to the U.S. to seek asylum there.

Meanwhile, hundreds of undocumented Cubans have been crossing the porous border between Mexico and the United States in recent weeks. According to U.S. authorities, the number of Cubans requesting asylum in Laredo alone has jumped 80 percent compared to last year, to almost 30,000. A couple of thousand of Cubans have been stuck on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua for nearly a week, as the latter's government refuses to let them enter.

And last Friday, a Guatemalan woman pleaded guilty in Texas to human-trafficking charges of helping smuggle migrants from India via South and Central America across the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Twenty years ago, we only saw Guatemalans passing the southern border, but that has changed. We now see migrants from all over the world,” Olga Sánchez, the founder of the Jesus the Good Shepherd shelter for migrants in Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, told Fox News Latino. “In recent years, I've seen people from Africa, India, China and most of all Cuba.”

Migrants from those parts of the world are believed to be attracted by the increasingly sophisticated network of human smugglers operating in South and Central America and Mexico who, for a hefty sum, provide safe passage.

With the help of a "coyote," as the smugglers are widely known, they avoid many of the perils that Central American migrants usually face in Mexico: running into gangs of kidnappers, facing extortion and human rights abuses at the hands of police and government officials, as well as falling victim to accidents while hitching a ride on the notorious "La Bestia" freight train.

With the recent terror attacks in Paris, the detention of a handful of Syrians on both sides of the border with Mexico has stirred security concerns. Commentators fear that terrorists could attempt to enter the U.S. by travelling through Central America and Mexico.

But none of the recently arrested Syrians seems to have had any such intentions. The ones arrested in Honduras and Costa Rica were traveling on stolen Greek passports, but they appear to have been asylum seekers, as were the Syrians detained in Laredo.

Moreover, activists running shelters in southern Mexico told FNL that the number of Middle Eastern refugees in the country, especially compared to the hundreds of thousands who have fled to the European Union in recent months, is still just a trickle.

“We've had several Africans and a man from Morocco stay at our shelter over the past few weeks,” Ramón Márquez, a coordinator at the La 72 shelter in Tenosique, Tabasco, told FNL. “But no one from the Middle East." He added that he thought it would be unlikely that Syrian migrants would be traveling through Mexico by themselves. "They would most likely pay human traffickers to guide them north.”

The recent wave of Cuban migrants travelling through Mexico and Central America, on the other hand, are taking the land route to the U.S. in large numbers, despite having to travel 5,000 miles and cross eight borders before arriving in lieu of taking a 90-mile boat trip.

The trip takes them to Ecuador, the only country in the region to which Cubans can travel without a visa, and then Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico to reach the United States. Cuban migrants making the trip told Costa Rica's La Nación newspaper they pay human traffickers anywhere between $7.000 and $10.000 to get them to American soil.

The sudden surge in Cuban travellers has caused tensions between the Central American countries. Whereas Mexico provides the majority of undocumented Cubans temporary travel permits and the U.S. allows them residency once they cross the border thanks to the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy, both Panama and Nicaragua have refused to let in a large group of Cubans currently stuck in Costa Rica. Nicaraguan soldiers are blocking Cubans from entering the country, leaving more than 2.000 of them stranded at the border.

But even as Central America scrambles to find a solution to the crisis, activists in Mexico expect the flow will not diminish any time soon.

“There are already many Cubans in Guatemala and southern Mexico travelling north,” Jesus the Good Shepherd's Sánchez told FNL. “They are far less visible than Central American migrants, mostly because they use human traffickers, but I don't believe they their numbers will drop any time soon.”

World’s youngest psychologist is a Mexican 13-year-old who is in no hurry

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 14:47:23 -0400

When the news broke in August that Mexican teenager Dafne Almazán had just become the youngest psychology graduate in the world, some social media users asked themselves whether she would even be capable of treating patients at the tender age of 13.

They need not worry though, because Almazán, Mexico's most famous current child prodigy, isn't thinking of opening a practice just yet.

“I'm still too young to be working,” she told Fox News Latino. “I need to study more, gain more experience, both professionally and as a person.”

Almazán became Mexico’s most famous “baby genius” last summer, when Forbes named her one of Mexico's 50 most powerful women.

She received the honor mostly because of how her example may inspire the country’s schoolkids – and especially the approximately 1 million super-gifted children – in a country where education lags and excellence is often difficult to achieve.

This summer, she received bachelor’s degree in psychology at the Mexico City campus of the prestigious Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM). In Mexico, people who earn undergraduate degrees in psychology are able to get licensed to practice in the field. Almazán is now enrolled in a master’s program at her alma mater and may eventually seek a doctorate’s degree.

Her graduation garnered plenty of media attention, but Almazán herself seems unfazed.

When speaking, Almazán rarely stops smiling. Soft-spoken and extremely polite, she measures every word, clearly comfortable with being in the spotlight.

“It's been a little harder with all the recent media attention,” she said, “but I don't think it distracted me from studying. I just try to be the best at everything. I want to get the most out of myself.”

When not studying, Almazán paints, practices tae kwon do (she has a yellow belt), plays the piano and tutors kids.

“It's all a matter of discipline,” Almazán said when asked how she manages to cram so many activities into a single day. “I get up at 7 in the morning, I exercise, do my homework and study. When I'm done with my studies, I spend time on my hobbies.”

Her relaxed attitude is partly based on her protected upbringing; Almazán is the third of three siblings. Her brother Andrew (20) and sister Delanie (17) were also child prodigies.

Andrew earned bachelor's degrees in psychology and medicine and a masters in psychology by age 18. He has since become one of the leading authorities on super-gifted children in Mexico. The less visible Delanie followed a similar academic career and, since very young, has showed an abiding interest in literature.

With such exceptional children, it’s no wonder that their father, Asdrubal Almazán, founded the Center for Attention to Talent (Cedat), a research and educational institution devoted to identifying and attending to Mexican kids with genius-level capabilities.

With some 250 children like Dafne now attending courses at Cedat, it has become the largest institution of its kind in Latin America.

When in Mexico City, Almazán spends most of her time at Cedat – she says she has never set foot in more conventional schools in Mexico.

“My parents noticed I was different from other children when I was 2 years old,” she told FNL. “I was already able to read and write at that age, and with the earlier experience of my brother and sister, my parents were able to diagnose me very early. I am very thankful for that, because that way they could give me the special attention I needed.”

Many child prodigies are diagnosed with ADHD and suffer from bullying in schools. Such was the case with Dafne's brother, Andrew, who was taken out of a regular school at age 9 because he was continuously being harassed.

“I was never bullied, thankfully, because I was diagnosed when I was very young and my parents knew what had happened to my brother and sister,” Almazán says. “But bullying is unfortunately something that happens to many children who attend the Cedat. They are bored at school and rejected by their classmates and even their teachers. Most children don't get the support from their parents that I did.”

Despite her protected upbringing, Almazán doesn't feel she missed out on anything. “I played a lot when I was younger, especially with my brother and sister. I really enjoyed my childhood.”

The media attention might turn a less grounded person’s head or increase pressure for succeed in graduate school.

“It doesn't make me nervous,” Almazán said. “It's a great opportunity to show other kids what you can achieve by working hard and studying.”

And that, ultimately, is her goal.

“I don't want to look too far ahead,” she told FNL. “Right now my goal is to finish studying with the best possible grades. Eventually I'd like to help other gifted children to get the most out of their talents.”

'El Chapo' key in Mexico's turnabout on extraditing cartel bosses to U.S., experts say

Mon, 12 Oct 2015 11:45:50 -0400

Two weeks ago, Mexico's Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong was adamant. No, the sudden decision to extradite 13 suspects to the United States, including two major drug lords, had nothing to do with last July's escape of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, the world's most wanted man and alleged leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Even though Chapo's spectacular prison break embarrassed the Mexican government and infuriated Washington – which had requested his extradition just weeks before, to no avail – Osorio said his government was simply acting on bilateral agreements.

That may technically be correct, as the process of extraditing kingpins Edgar Váldez Villareal, alias “La Barbie,” Jorge “El Coss” Costilla Sánchez and 11 others began long before El Chapo fled.

But the timing, so soon after the Sinaloan's prison break, and the group being the largest the administration of president Enrique Peña Nieto has extradited since taking office in late 2012, did give the impression Mexico was trying to make up for something.

“You can safely say that choosing this moment to extradite these men is a direct consequence of Chapo's escape,” José Reveles, the author of numerous books on the drug war, told Fox News Latino.

“Peña Nieto's government was widely ridiculed over it,” he added. “Chapo was captured with American assistance [in February 2014] and was handed to us on a silver platter.”

“U.S.'s anger over his flight pressured the Mexican government into reconsidering its extradition policy,” he noted.

Until recently the Peña Nieto administration wasn't overly keen on sending kingpins to the United States, with the number of extraditions to the U.S. now totaling 56. His predecessor Felipe Calderón sent 52 across the border in his last year in office alone.

Indeed, collaboration between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement agencies reached unprecedented levels during Calderón’s time in office (2006-2012).

Peña Nieto has clearly taken a different approach, which many observers say it makes sense historically: his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico for 70 years in authoritarian fashion, championing national sovereignty and less inclined to bow to U.S. pressure than Calderón’s more conservative PAN party.

This was notably reflected in Secretary Osorio own words shortly after Chapo was captured last year, when answering a reporter’s about his extradition to the U.S. he said he would first have to spend “several centuries” in a Mexican jail.

“It's not just the mentality of this government, but that of the PRI in general,” said Mike Vigil, former Chief of International Operations of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

“Over the course of the PRI's history there was never a lot of cooperation with the U.S. For example," he added, "under Peña Nieto there is only a single point of contact for U.S. law enforcement to go to.

“We used to have a broader collaboration with different agencies, like prosecutors and the police, which I believe is necessary,” he told FNL.

By sending the group of La Barbie and El Coss northward, the single biggest extradited group since Peña Nieto took office, the administration is sending a powerful signal to the U.S. that it could be willing to cooperate more in the near future.

Observers say this is partly due to the embarrassment caused by Chapo’s spectacular escape, but also because Mexico's failing justice system is increasingly under international scrutiny.

One of the country’s main problems is its overcrowded and poorly functioning prisons, which, as Chapo shockingly showed, seem unable to keep the most powerful capos behind bars.

“Sending suspects abroad can be a tool to bring relief to some of bad prisons,” Reveles said, noting that La Barbie, El Coss and the other men extradited on September 30 were all inmates in Altiplano, the same prison Chapo escaped from.

“It's a very dysfunctional place; there have been murders, riots and hunger strikes in recent years. There's the constant threat of violence,” Reveles said about Altiplano prison.

A package of judicial reforms passed in 2008 is expected to make the justice system more transparent, efficient and accountable — but changes are taking a long time to implement.

Meanwhile, Vigil, Reveles and other observers expect Mexico to continue ramping the extradition of drug lords to the U.S., as there are still plenty of them – both jailed and at large – prosecutors north of the border would like to get their hands on.

They include Servando Gómez, alias "La Tuta," who led the Knights Templar cartel until his arrest in February of this year, and brothers Miguel Ángel and Omar Treviño Morales, former leaders of Los Zetas.

Other extraditable candidates belong to the "old guard" of the Mexican underworld, like the never arrested Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, allegedly one of Chapo's closest lieutenants, and Rafael Caro Quintero, who purportedly led the powerful Guadalajara Cartel in the 1980's and is wanted by U.S. authorities for his alleged involvement in the killing of DEA operative Enrique Camarena in 1985.

Caro Quintero already served 28 years in Mexico but in another incident that caused a strain on U.S-Mexican relations, he was suddenly released in August 2013.

And, of course, there is Chapo himself. “If they ever manage to capture Chapo again, which is unlikely at this stage, I have no doubt he would be extradited this time,” Reveles said.

“They would capture him and put him on a plane to the U.S. the next day,” he added.

Hunger strike, day of protest will mark anniversary of Mexico's missing 43

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 13:37:40 -0400

A mixture of anger, disappointment and defiance against the government dominates the national mood while Mexico prepares for Saturday's national day of protest marking the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of 43 teachers’ college students in Iguala, Guerrero, last year.

Thursday afternoon, parents of the missing students were greeted by supporters with the now familiar rallying cry “Alive they took them, we want them back alive!,” as they returned from their second meeting with president Enrique Peña Nieto to a white tent on the central Zócalo square in Mexico City, which is serving as their temporary lodging.

But instead of defiant, the parents seemed despondent. They addressed the press and their supporters and once again expressed their disappointment with Peña Nieto's apparent lack of commitment to solving the disappearance of their children.

“It's clear that he's waiting for this movement to become weary and forgotten,” Felipe de la Cruz, spokesman for the families, said. “The insensitivity of this man has overtaken his human feeling, and we condemn his attitude.”

The families began a symbolic 43-hour hunger strike on Wednesday evening. During yesterday's meeting, they presented eight new demands, including that the federal government allow a special unit to search for the students under international supervision.

Instead, the president offered to set up a special prosecutor's office to handle the case, much to the chagrin of the families, who feel federal institutions have repeatedly failed to make any progress in the search for the missing youths.

Nationwide anger over what some organizations have called one of the greatest human rights tragedy's in Mexico's recent history flared up again this month, after investigators of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concluded on Sept. 6 that a federal investigation into the disappearance was deeply flawed.

The students were attacked by local police on the night of Sept. 26 last year, as they crossed Iguala in buses that they had hijacked in order to get to a protest against educational reform.

According to the official explanation the government holds to, the students were taken into custody by local police and handed over to members of a local drug trafficking gang, who killed them and incinerated their bodies at a garbage dump.

More than a hundred people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the event, including dozens of municipal policemen, Iguala's mayor, who allegedly ordered the abductions, and the latter's wife.

But the IACHR concluded that it was physically impossible for the alleged killers to have disposed of the bodies by burning them. They determined, after 6 months of investigation, that the timeframe involved was too short and the amount of fuel needed for the pyre impossibly big.

Moreover, recent media reports suggest some of the witnesses upon whose statements the federal government based its official version were tortured.

In Guerrero, the IACHR's report led earlier this week to violent clashes between riot police and students at Raúl Isidro Burgos college – commonly known as Ayotzinapa, the school the 43 attended.

On Thursday, hundreds of policemen sealed off the two main access roads to Tixtla, the town where the college is located, to prevent students from travelling to Mexico City to participate in the protest march scheduled for Saturday.

Members of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies, meanwhile, got into heated discussions and even a fistfight while debating the IACHR report.

The disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students is but one of many recent crises the Peña Nieto administration has had to face. The president's approval rating has dropped sharply amidst rising poverty and drug violence, a sluggish economy and an explosion of violence against journalists – not to mention the prison escape of Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán's in July.

This year's traditional presidential “Independence Shout” – when Mexico’s president appears on a balcony of the National Palace overlooking the Zócalo rings a bell and shouts out patriotic messages – was received by a relatively small crowd with only a lukewarm reception.

According to media reports, a fair amount of the assembled crowd was trucked in from nearby towns and cities loyal to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

In contrast, many thousands are expected to participate in the protest march marking the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students.

“We ask all Mexicans who feel indignation to head out to the street this Saturday,” de la Cruz, the spokesman for their families, said. “If we keep silent today and stay hidden, history will repeat itself soon.”

Human-rights activists such as Heriberto Paredes, who also works as an investigative reporter for the website Subversiones, say the IAHCR’s recent revelations helped regain the momentum the missing students' parents and their supporters had in public opinion early this year.

“For a while, there had been a certain calm with regard to the marches and acts of protests by the families,” Paredes told Fox News Latino. “Things are heating up again, however, now that the official investigation has been discredited.”

On 1-year anniversary of missing 43 students, protesters in Mexico gain new momentum

Sun, 27 Sep 2015 10:39:36 -0400

Aristeo González looks much older than he should at 49. Early morning on Saturday, he coughed and sighed almost every time he spoke. “It's been hard for us,” he told Fox News Latino, apologetically. “Very hard.”

A farmer from the southern state of Guerrero, González has aged quickly since his two sons – Jorge Luis, 21, and Dorian, 19 – disappeared a year ago in the city of Iguala.

They were two of the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa teachers' college students who vanished the night of Sept. 26, 2014, shortly after they hijacked buses that were to transport them to a protest march against education reform several days later but vanished after they were attacked by municipal police.

Saturday in Mexico City, González and dozens of other parents of the missing students marched defiantly at the front of a protest rally to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy and to demand justice from a government perceived to be either unable or unwilling to solve what many consider to be the greatest crime in Mexico's modern history.

The parents were accompanied by tens of thousands of supporters who braved an afternoon downpour to show their solidarity, carrying photos of the students and banners demanding justice and the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

“You're not alone!” the crowd shouted repeatedly during the more than three-hour march to the Zócalo square in the capital city's historic center.

Organizers billed the protest a “Day of Indignation,” in which ordinary Mexicans could express anger over what many perceive to be a deeply flawed investigation into the disappearance, highlighting both the links between organized crime and municipal authorities as well as the high level of impunity in a country where more than 100,000 people have died in drug violence since 2006.

According to federal authorities, the 43 were abducted by corrupt local police officers on the order of Iguala's mayor and handed over to members of a local gang, Guerreros Unidos, who allegedly killed them and burned their bodies at a nearby landfill and dumped the ashes in a river.

More than a hundred suspects have been detained, including the mayor and his wife, alleged gang members and scores of policemen accused of links with organized crime.

But parents such as González never believed that “historical truth,” as former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam called it, pointing out flaws in the investigation. They believe their children are still alive, even though a laboratory in Austria identified the DNA of two of the missing students from the ashes the government recovered.

Their stubborn defiance was vindicated in part earlier this month, when investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concluded that alleged killers could not have burned the bodies as completely as they were in the time they had to do it. Also, the amount of fuel needed to burn them to that degree would have been unfeasibly large.

“It's good information for us, but bad information for the government”, González told FNL. “They have been lying to us from the start. They kept coming with more and more lies. That was perhaps the hardest thing for us to swallow, but the foreign investigators' conclusions have given us new strength to fight.”

Indeed, while previous rallies over the Iguala case were mostly an expression of anger and desperation, many attending yesterday's mass gathering also expressed hope that the IACHR bombshell may force the federal government to face the thousands of people who disappeared during almost a decade of brutal criminal violence.

Something Peña Nieto has dealt with by stubbornly trying to sweep it under the carpet and out of everyone’s sight. Which is the one thing the families of the students have refused to let happen.

“It feels like we have been given new oxygen”, Maria de Jesús Tlatempa, whose son José Eduardo is among the missing students, told FNL. “The last 12 months have been psychological torture for us, not knowing what happened to our children, and it's the government that tortured us. But now we have hope that there may be a new investigation and that maybe we will finally get real answers.”

During a meeting last Thursday with president Enrique Peña Nieto, the parents presented a list of fresh demands, including that the government set up a special search unit under international supervision.

Peña Nieto's offer of appointing a federal prosecutor to focus exclusively on the Iguala case was categorically rejected by the families.

“For us to move forward it is of vital importance that new institutions are formed to advance the investigation,” Vidulfo Rosales, the families' lawyer who was also present at the meeting, told FNL. “We can no longer work with existing institutions.”

If anything, the parents of the students now feel that they have momentum on their side.

“We feel very supported by public opinion, both in Mexico and abroad,” González told FNL, clenching his fists. “I feel a lot of extra strength to go on now.”

Mexican drug lord Chapo Guzmán may have led cartel from prison, experts say

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 07:45:07 -0400

After almost ten years of bloody gangland warfare, most of Mexico's major drug cartels have been decimated and split into smaller gangs, with dozens of capos either arrested or killed.

Of the seven major cartels former President Felipe Calderón declared war on in 2006, only one retains most of its original structure and power: the Sinaloa Cartel.

And the Sinaloa Cartel just got its leader back.

Immediately after Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, Mexico's most notorious drug lord, escaped the maximum-security prison of Altiplano on Saturday, speculation began about whether he would return to his former turf and retake control of the criminal organization.

But most experts believe it's a moot point because, they say, he never lost control of the cartel in the first place. One only needs to look at the way he was able to escape.

Guzmán fled through a mile-long tunnel dug from what authorities say was a building especially set up for the prison break in plain sight of the prison. The tunnel was equipped with a ventilation system and even a customized motorcycle most likely used to remove the dirt while digging towards the shower area of the drug lord's prison cell.

“The mere fact that he was capable of getting support from so many people to organize his escape is strong evidence of Guzmán retaining control of his organization,” Javier Oliva Posada, a political scientist and national security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told Fox News Latino. “He needed electricians, carpenters, construction workers. Mobilizing that kind of manpower means he was still firmly in charge,” he added.

After being arrested February last year, Guzmán spent roughly 18 months in Altiplano, far shorter than his previous stint in Guadalajara's Puente Grande prison, where he was held from 1993 until he escaped in a laundry cart in 2001. Mexican and U.S. authorities repeatedly stated that, during that period, he continued to firmly control the cartel, leading many to believe it's unlikely he would have lost much power during his brief incarceration in Altiplano.

“I have no doubt he's still the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel,” said Fernando Rivera, a former federal intelligence official now working as a consultant. “Even without him, the Sinaloa Cartel would have continued to function, but his escape clearly showed he hasn't lost any of his ability to mobilize his organization's power.”

The Sinaloa Cartel started out humbly in the 1980's, controlling a drug smuggling route through Mexico's west into Arizona. Under the auspices of major capos such as the still at large Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and the reportedly deceased Juan José Esparragoza Morena, alias "El Azul" (The Blue One), the cartel rose to prominence as a loosely organized alliance of cells trafficking drugs almost as a multinational corporation, with Guzmán as its CEO.

According to even the most conservative studies done in recent years, the total value of Mexican drug trafficking amounts to more than $5 billion per year. The Sinaloa Cartel, with its core territory in the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico's northwestern state of Sinaloa, an area known for its extensive marihuana and opium plantations, allegedly controls half of the market. Few expect Guzmán not to return to lead such an enormously profitable business.

“I reckon he will evade justice and head back to the hills of Sinaloa,” said British journalist Malcolm Beith, author of the book "The Last Narco," which chronicled the hunt for the drug lord. “If he had plans to just sit back and retire, he could have done that more peacefully in prison, with weekend visits from family and security from rivals.”

According to Fernando Rivera, his escape may in the short run disrupt the structure of the cartel somewhat.

“There will be some realignments in the cartel's leadership. There were quite a few young upstarts who wanted to be his successor,” he told FNL. “But he will quickly assume his position again.”

To many Mexicans, the matter over who controls what chunk of the underworld is less important than whether Guzmán's return will reignite a bloody drug war that has cost an estimated 80.000 people their lives since 2006. Most observers, however, don't expect violence to suddenly flare up with Guzmán back in charge.

“He will most likely attempt to broaden his organization, but I don't think that will necessarily lead to more violence,” said Javier Oliva of the UNAM. “Chapo and associates such as Azul are drug traffickers above anything else. I don't think he will be begin to challenge the power of the government so much.”

Challenging Mexico's federal government is precisely what the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), based in Jalisco state in central Mexico, has done plenty in recent months. The group has repeatedly attacked federal security forces, killing 15 federal police agents last April and even shooting down an army helicopter in May.

In a recent interview, Tomás Zerón, head of Mexico's federal Criminal Investigation Agency, said CJNG and Sinaloa are the only two major cartels still standing, with most other crime groups now operating as regional cells. The upstart CJNG, however, is an offshoot of an organization founded by Ignacio Coronel, a former associate of Guzmán killed by federal security forces in 2010.

Does Guzmán's escape mean the two major players will now battle each other for dominance?

As President Otto Pérez Molina leaves office, Guatemalans rejoice and worry over future

Thu, 03 Sep 2015 15:33:11 -0400

When asked about President Otto Pérez Molina, 50-year-old Miguel Guzmán shakes his head. “I feel betrayed by him," he tells Fox News Latino. “It's good for the country that he's gone, no one should be above the law.”

Guatemala's disgraced president resigned Wednesday and faces trial over allegations of links to a massive corrupt network within the government. He was replaced by 79-year-old conservative Alejandro Maldonado, who was sworn in Thursday afternoon.

“I can only hope that his removal serves as an example for everyone who wants to steal and betray the people,” said Guzmán, who served under then field officer Pérez Molina during the 80s civil war.

“Back in the day he seemed incorruptible, but politics made him dirty,” he told Fox News Latino.

As Guatemala prepares for Sunday's general election, many here share Guzmán's feelings. This week has been an emotional roller coaster for the Central American country – first, widespread outrage over corruption, then jubilation over what appears to be a historical first step in purging the nation's business and political elite of it, and now, utter uncertainty over what comes next.

On Tuesday, Guatemala's congress lifted Pérez Molina's immunity from prosecution, after the Attorney General's office and CICIG, UN-backed anti-corruption agency, revealed evidence the president may have led a network of corrupt public officials who allegedly took millions of dollars in bribes to circumvent customs duties.

After months of angry protests by thousands of Guatemalans demanding his resignation and a string of resignations of cabinet members, the president finally gave in Wednesday; he resigned and attended an initial court hearing. Perez Molina joined dozens of other politicians, including former vice president Roxana Baldetti and businessmen already behind bars over the scandal, which has been dubbed 'La Línea' ('The Line').

Even if the scale of the corruption has shocked and outraged the country, most Guatemalans also feel the current political turmoil serves as a possible purging of a country that has suffered decades of civil war, political repression, epidemic corruption and high levels of impunity.

“It really feels like it's a new dawn for Guatemala,” 23-year-old student Jenny Pérez told FNL hours after the resignation, as she and hundreds of others gathered in front of the National Palace in Guatemala City's center to celebrate Pérez Molina's resignation, waving flags and lighting fireworks.

“The La Línea scandal has taught my generation that it's possible to successfully fight corruption and impunity,” Pérez told FNL. “There's a new political conscience growing among the people, which will make it much harder for politicians to lie and steal like they used to.”

The scandal appears to have a real effect on the outcome of Sunday's elections. For many months, victory seemed all but certain for Manuel Baldizón, a right-wing populist and runner-up in 2011's election, behind Pérez Molina. Ever since democracy was restored in the country in 1996, runner-ups would win the next election. So certain was Baldizón of his victory that he initially simply used 'Le Toca' ('It's his turn') as a campaign slogan.

The La Línea scandal, however, has shaken up Guatemalan politics. A poll published Wednesday by the Prensa Libre newspaper shows Baldizón has been overtaken by Jimmy Morales, a television star and comedian with virtually no political experience. During the campaign, Morales presented himself as an anti-establishment candidate with no ties to powerful interest groups and a clean history.

His message has been successful as the disgust many Guatemalans feel with their political class, which includes Manuel Baldizón, rises to unprecedented levels. Morales now leads the polls with 25 percent, with Baldizón trailing by two points. Sandra Torres, a social democrat and ex-wife of former president Álvaro Colom, comes in third with 18.4 percent.

The two candidates with the most votes will face each other in a run off in October.

Even if Morales wins the first round with his upstart, anti-establishment persona, Sunday's elections likely still come too soon to be a watershed moment in Guatemala's troubled political history. Apathy among voters is traditionally high and none of the candidates, not even Morales, have been able to convince voters that a bright future is dawning for the country.

“There’s been a call to postpone the elections and a call to boycott them. It’s not clear how many people will stay home because of these sentiments,” Mike Allison, a Central American politics expert and associate professor of political science at Scranton University, told FNL. “At the same time, according to surveys, one in five likely voters say that they will submit a null or blank ballot on Sunday. So it’s not clear how those who turn out to vote will actually vote.”

Indeed, most Guatemalans are careful to point out they do not expect that much will change after Sunday. “What happened this week is not a revolution, but it did lift the veil that many citizens had over their eyes," Delia Ayala, a 62-year-old housewife, told FNL. “We have finally realized how much we're being cheated on all the time. Change will come, even if it comes at a slow pace.”

Mexican vigilante groups from Michoacán keep crumbling as violence worsens

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 10:00:04 -0400

In January 2014, the Mexican so-called vigilante groups that operated in the central state of Michoacán celebrated one of their finest moments. After a fierce gun battle of several hours, a caravan of trucks loaded with members of this ragtag group of heavily armed farmers drove victoriously into the town of Nueva Italia and vanquished their mortal enemy, the Knights Templar cartel.

Spurred by massive media attention and the support of many Mexicans who considered them a symbol of defiance against corruption, impunity and organized crime, the self-defense militias had taken one of the last bastions of the Templars in the Tierra Caliente region and, with bravado, vowed to keep pushing until they would achieve what Mexico's military and federal policy could not, or, as many of them claimed, would not.

But with last week's arrest of Semeí Verdia, one of the few early militia leaders that remained, the story of Michoacán's self-defense groups may have come to a bloody and bitter conclusion.

Verdia, leader of the civilian militia of Santa Maria Ostula, a mostly indigenous village, was arrested on charges of illegal weapons possession and for allegedly burning ballots during last month’s local election. His arrest triggered a bloody clash between his supporters and soldiers, which took the life of a 12-year-old boy and wounded other six.

“Semeí's arrest and the ensuing violence were the result of the government trying to end the citizens' right to defend themselves against criminals,” said Héctor Zepeda, Verdia’s cousin and commander of the rural police in a nearby town, to Fox News Latino. “But the government has done nothing to help people in the region. Michoacán isn't any less violent,” he added.

Semeí Verdia and his men were among the first citizens in the region to take up arms in 2009 against the now mostly defunct Familia Michoacana cartel and then against Familia’s offshoot, the Knights Templar.

The Knights Templar terrorized the region for years. Led by eccentric drug lord Servando Gómez, alias 'La Tuta' ('The Teacher'), it controlled the lucrative drug trafficking routes along the Pacific coast and reportedly made a fortune through kidnappings and the extortion of lemon and avocado farmers and ore miners, killing anyone who stood in their way.

In February 2013 another group of Tierra Caliente farmers decided to follow Verdia's example and took actions into their own hands -- they accused the state government of being in cahoots with organized crime. Inspired by José Manuel Mireles, a physician, thousands of farmers took up arms and began chasing the gunmen of the cartel out of their communities. Fierce fighting went on for almost a year, after which the militia controlled most of the region.

A year later, in early 2014, Mexico's federal government tried to restore order by appointing a special state 'security commissioner,' sending hundreds of troops and federal police to Michoacán and assimilating militia members into a newly formed “rural police force.” Those who refused to become rural police were told to lay down their arms.

But some groups, such as Verdia’s and Mireles’, refused to join, saying it was infiltrated by former criminals and accusing the federal government of still not doing enough to combat crime. Mireles was arrested in January of 2014 and remains in prison.

“The situation didn't improve at all,” said Zepeda, whose group agreed to join the new police corps and soon became disappointed. “Some rural police force squads were infiltrated by former cartel members,” he told FNL, “and the government severely underfunded us.”

Meanwhile, violence in Michoacán did not subside, even when the Knights Templar were, according to the government, largely dismantled after the arrest of 'La Tuta' in February of this year. The Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel reportedly moved in to take control of the newly available drug trafficking routes — more than 700 have been killed in Michoacán between January and April of this year alone, according to the National Public Security System.

Criminal groups remain very much active in the Tierra Caliente region but the autodefensa groups are quickly beginning to crumble. Several prominent militia leaders who refused to lay down their arms have gone into hiding. Others eventually fell victim to infighting over mutual accusations of colluding with organized crime, such as Hipólito Mora and Luis António Torres, two prominent rural police leaders in the town of La Ruana.

With Mora now retired, Mireles behind bars and Verdia arrested, Héctor Zepeda remains as perhaps the last prominent Autodefensa leader in the Tierra Caliente.

“It certainly looks like the government has decided to finish the Autodefensa movement”, Hipólito Mora told FNL. “But that doesn't mean the situation has improved in any way. The way I see it, things are worse than ever.”

Legend of 'El Chapo' Guzmán grows every day, at the expense of the Mexican government

Wed, 12 Aug 2015 18:00:43 -0400

One month after his spectacular escape from a maximum-security prison, authorities in Mexico appear to have made little progress in tracking down the country's most notorious drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. And with every day that he remains at large, his already larger-than-life reputation as an apparently omnipotent crime lord that no prison can hold grows.

Mexicans themselves meanwhile, seem only too glad to help him acquire mythical status.

All over the country, piñata-makers have put freshly made Chapo piñatas on display. In Culiacán, the northern capital of Chapo's home state of Sinaloa, t-shirts and caps depicting the drug lord fill the shelves of market stands.

It took less than a full day after Chapo escaped for the first “narcocorridos” – narrative songs celebrating the cartel life – describing his prison break to begin circulating on the Internet, their lyrics expressing a mixture of morbid fascination with the Sinaloa Cartel chief’s exploits and a total disdain for the federal government that allowed him to escape.

In Badiraguato, the municipality where Chapo was born, the mood at the time of his July 11 escape was festive locals say.

“The reaction among people in Sinaloa was one of gusto,” Omar Meza, a resident and the composer of a song inspired by Chapo's previous daring escape from a federal prison in 2001, told FNL. “He's very popular here.”

The place is a traditional stronghold of Mexico's illicit drug trade, and its dozens of tiny hamlets are tucked against the side of the rugged Sierra Madre.

Many of them – such as Chapo's birthplace, La Tuna – are only connected to the outside world by dirt roads, while the surrounding mountains are riddled with opium and marijuana plantations.

In theory it is one of the poorest municipalities in the country, but its seat, the town of Badiguarato, has neatly paved streets, freshly painted buildings and far more thriving small businesses than a town of such poverty should reasonably have.

Locals say the Sinaloa Cartel, the organization led by Chapo and his associates, controls the labor market here and has strong popular support, thanks in part to the protection its heavily armed gunmen provide to communities.

Part of the lore about the drug lord is the cartel is said to have invested a lot of money into the local infrastructure and even done charity work, supposedly.

“One of the reasons why Chapo is so popular and celebrated in Sinaloa is because he is seen as an alternative to the government,” one former military intelligence officer who was stationed in Sinaloa in the 1980s and 1990s and who requested anonymity out of safety concerns, told FNL. “The cartel’s power is based on violence and fear, but at the same time it provides security to communities in the mountains, something which the government has never been able or willing to do.”

A young woman from a hamlet located near La Tuna told FNL, “Most people in the mountains would think twice to speak ill of Chapo. The law of the land is enforced through the barrel of a gun, and the cartel doesn't like criticism.” She too asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal – her husband was a marijuana farmer who was murdered by a cartel gunman.

One of her uncles, she said, even gave Chapo shelter after his 2001 escape from the Puente Grande prison in the state of Jalisco. “He helped [Chapo] because he knew him, but also because you're not going to refuse one of the most powerful drug lords in the world,” she said.

Chapo's myth extends well beyond the state borders of Sinaloa, however, and critics say the Mexican government is mostly at fault for that.

“The whole of Mexico now looks at him as a kind of antihero”, says José Reveles, a veteran investigative reporter and the author of a number of books on the Mexican drug war, including one on the 2014 arrest of Chapo. “A kind of avenger – someone who vindicates a society that’s weary of an incompetent and untrustworthy government. It's not just that Chapo was smart enough to escape, but that the government was foolish enough to claim that he wouldn't.”

According to Reveles, the Mexican government itself has participated actively in helping to create the myth of Chapo.

“How many times did government officials say they were so close to capturing him, only to have missed him at the very last moment? They made him look smart,” Reveles told FNL. “And even though Chapo is a very violent man, the authorities needed him to seem less violent as a way to justify going after more disruptive groups such as Los Zetas.”

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Breaking Chapo Guzmán out of jail was a massive, but discreet operation

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:34:06 -0400

The house itself is not much to look at. Built on seemingly unused pasture next to a creek, surrounded by corn fields and with a clear view of Altiplano, Mexico's maximum security federal prison, the building is little more than a small construction of concrete bricks and a metal gate, surrounded on all four sides by a low wall.

A heavy contingent of soldiers and policemen prevent entry to the interior of the building, but a quick glance through a hole in the wall shows an empty space, littered here and there with construction materials. In the middle of the room the floor opens up, a square hole no bigger than a square meter. But it was all the space Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, Mexico's most wanted drug lord, needed to crawl to freedom after escaping Altiplano through a mile-long tunnel.

The building shows no sign of habitation and appears to have been built solely for the purpose of getting Guzmán out of prison. That may be exactly the case. As Mexican authorities scramble in a massive manhunt to recapture the drug lord, details begin to emerge on the scale of the operation that broke out the nation's top public enemy.

A report published Monday by Mexican website Animal Político, based on comments by anonymous law enforcement officials, chronicles a massive operation by Guzmán's organization to execute the prison break which took some 12 months of planning.

Many people and resources were inevitably involved, but as one of the founders of leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico's oldest and most powerful criminal enterprises, Guzmán may well have had all the resources he needed at his disposal. Though a disputed claim, Forbes once listed him as a billionaire and among Mexico's richest men.

Residents of the nearby Santa Juana neighborhood of Almolaya de Juárez told Animal Político that a 'robust and relaxed' man approached them in May last year and told them 'his boss' ordered construction work on the hill. During the following months, those involved in constructing the tunnel and the building hiding its exit kept a low profile.

Trucks would come and go on a regular basis, but according to the website residents were generally not bothered by the construction work, even though anonymous law enforcement officials hinted that several families living nearby were threatened by those involved in the operation.

As discrete as the construction work was carried out, it would have been impossible for Guzmán's accomplices not to have been seen regularly. The hill on which the concrete building was built is located to the southeast of Altiplano and relatively isolated, but in plain view of both the prison itself and a nearby residential area.

Approaching the site is not easy, however. The two dirt roads leading to the area are muddy and uneven. The first route, south of the site, lies closest to Santa Juana. Curious residents would have had to stumble through almost a mile of corn fields and soggy grasslands and jump a narrow creek to get to the hill.

There is a second, more isolated road approaching the structure from the north and ending right on the driveway of the building. That pathway, however, seems to have been constructed far more recently and specifically to allow a getaway car to park right outside and provide Guzmán with the means to escape immediately after exiting the building.

Law enforcement officials interviewed by Animal Político say that, for now, the authorities assume that was the scenario by which the drug lord could get away. They discarded the possibility he would have escaped by helicopter.

The tunnel itself, which ends in the shower area of the prison, is equipped with a ventilation system, electrical wiring and even a customized motorcycle placed on a rail, which authorities assume was used to remove the excess dirt while tunneling to the prison.

It still unclear who exactly was responsible for the construction work. No one seems to know who owned the property on which the building was constructed and the tunnel dug. The area surrounding the building is mostly inhabited by impoverished corn farmers, and Mexican media report many have illegally built their homes on land they do not own.

Nor is it clear what degree of involvement prison employees may have had in the prison break. So far, 30 people working at Altiplano are held for questioning, including the prison director. Their status as suspects or witnesses is still being determined, Mexican federal attorney Arely Gómez said in a short statement Sunday after visiting the building from which Guzmán escaped.

Shortly after news of Guzmán's escape broke, interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong hastily returned to Mexico from France, where he had accompanied president Enrique Peña Nieto on a state visit. He has taken charge of the search effort and was set to reveal more information in a press conference Monday night.

Chapo Guzmán’s escape may be Mexican Pres. Peña Nieto's biggest embarrassment

Sun, 12 Jul 2015 16:08:24 -0400

Heavily armed soldiers and policemen watch as journalists swarm a small, dilapidated house not far from Mexico’s most secure prison.

One of the policemen whispers, “Take pictures of whatever you want – show the world that everything has a price in Mexico.”

He sounds embarrassed to be standing guard over the hole through which, less than 24 hours earlier, Mexico's most notorious criminal escaped.

Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, who arrived in France for a state visit earlier Sunday, is facing what may well be the biggest embarrassment of his presidency so far, as Joaquín Guzmán Loera, one the country's most notorious and powerful drug lords, escaped a maximum security federal prison. Again.

Guzmán, nicknamed “El Chapo” (Shorty), escaped from the Altiplano penitentiary, just west of Mexico City, at about 9 p.m. on Saturday night. According to Monte Alejandro Rubido, the country’s National Security Commissioner, the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel used a mile-long tunnel to flee, one end of which is in the prison’s shower room.

Guzmán's escape is extremely awkward for Peña Nieto, who, when he took office, vouched to make Mexico a safer place. His security policies appeared successful at first, as violent deaths fell somewhat in his first two years in office, underscored by a string of high-profile takedowns of some of the country's most wanted criminals.

The arrest of Joaquín Guzmán, in February last year, was his crowning achievement. An intense manhunt, conducted with U.S. assistance, led to the arrest of a man who had been called “The Eternal Fugitive” after evading the law for 13 years after his escape from the Puente Grande prison in Jalisco state in 2001.

That time, with some help from prison guards, Guzmán managed to escape hidden inside a laundry cart.

After Guzmán was arrested last year, few people expected that the 58- or 60-year-old kingpin (there is disagreement about his birthdate) would make a run for it again.

This time he was incarcerated in the maximum security prison of Almoloya de Juárez, more often known as Altiplano, on the outskirts of the city of Toluca. The fortress-like facility holds many of Mexico's most notorious criminals, such as Jesús Zambada García, Teodoro García Simentel and Édgar “La Barbie” Váldez Villareal.

But not even Altiplano could keep Chapo locked up. And the way he escaped, through a sophisticated tunnel (it was his trademark method of smuggling drugs across the U.S. border) has stirred a mixture of disbelief, anger and scorn.

So brazen was his escape that many Mexicans believe he could not have pulled it off without help from both inside and outside the prison. Attorney general Arely Gómez told the press at the house where the exit of his tunnel was found that 30 employees of Altiplano prison are being questioned for possible involvement.

Many commentators suspect that, as was the case in 2001 at the Puente Grande prison, his escape may have been the result of corruption within the prison.

None of that is good for Peña Nieto, whose government has come under constant fire over ties between authorities and organized crime since 43 students disappeared and were most likely murdered in September last year in the southern city of Iguala, by gangsters working together with local police.

“Chapo's escape is an embarrassment for the authorities, not just Peña in particular,” British journalist Malcolm Beith, who chronicled the hunt for Guzmán in the book “The Last Narco,” told Fox News Latino. “Unfortunately, it's become the norm. For every step forward made on police reforms, on judicial reforms, something like this happens. And it's a big step backward.”

“If you can't keep a guy like Chapo in jail, how can you possibly tell your country that the situation will improve?” he added.

Besides the obvious hit the government's popularity will take at home, the prison break will undoubtedly also place a strain on Peña Nieto’s relationship with Washington. U.S. assistance was instrumental in capturing the drug lord last year and now seems to have been in vain.

Moreover, the 2014 release of Rafael Caro Quintero, a senior crime lord convicted for the murder of DEA undercover agent Enrique Camarena, caused a lot of unhappiness north of the border.

“It's a joke, and a big one”, says José Reveles, a senior crime reporter. “Especially if you consider that his capture last year was gift from the U.S. to Peña Nieto. They did all the work.”

With immigration comments Donald Trump achieved the impossible: uniting divided Mexicans

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 12:07:21 -0400

Getting a group of Mexicans to agree on anything can be a monumental task. The country’s revolution was fought over 10 years, but it took nearly two decades for politicians to settle on what the government it produced would look like.

It is still a fractious country, with three major political parties an increasing number of smaller political parties, dozens of powerful labor unions and countless criminal organizations that have produced an endless array of splinter groups.

But it just took a few words from Donald Trump to bring Mexicans together.

His speech on June 16, when officially announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, included the accusation that Mexico sends rapists and drug traffickers across the border into the United States.

“The great thing about Trump's comments is that he opened his mouth and failed almost in the same sentence,” columnist Denisse Pérez wrote this week in newspaper Publimetro. “And even though he initially talked about Mexicans, he placed almost all our Latin American brothers in his sick prejudice.”

Certainly Mexican politicians, celebrities and businessmen were quick to react and united in their anger.

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong called Trump's comments “prejudiced and absurd.” The lead singer of the rock group Maná, Fher Olvera, said he was “saddened” that there should be someone with “so much hate in his heart and who has a microphone to say such things.”

Several weeks have passed since Trump declared that “When Mexico sends its people, they aren’t sending their best ... They’re sending people [who] have lots of problems, and they’re bringing their problems with [them]. They’re bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

But the anger over real estate mogul and U.S. television personality’s comments can still be heard in the country.

“I don't think he really thinks about what he's saying,” Juan Carlos Malanche, a 37-year old taxi driver from Mexico City, told Fox News Latino. “He's impulsive, rude and he's getting worse. Seems to me like his age is catching up with his mental abilities.”

Such comments likely don’t bother Trump much. Possibly more of a worry are the Mexican businesses that have dropped their connections to him.

On June 29, a production company, Ora TV, a production company owned by telecom magnate Carlos Slim, announced it was terminating a television project it was developing with Trump. The same day, Televisa, the largest media conglomerate in the Spanish-speaking world, said it would no longer participate in any project that involved the presidential candidate.

However these moves may have affected his wallet, Trump is undeterred, and, after Kathryn Steinle, 32, was shot fatally last week by a Mexican national who had been deported five times, stated that “tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border” into the U.S.

In the northern city of Reynosa, a piñata maker created a paper-maché Trump, ready to be whacked by haters.

Others on social media have delighted in what they say see as his hypocrisy. Gabriel Sánchez, a Mexican-American from California, posted a photo on his Facebook page of a suit bearing the label of Trump's clothing line which was made in Mexico.

Josefina Vázquez Mota, who ran for president in Mexico's 2012 elections, pointed out in the El Financiero newspaper that Trump's comments provoked an “unexpected response.”

“[Trump] opened an enormous Pandora's box,” he wrote, which “will start a debate about the Mexican presence in the United States which could have very interesting results.”

But not everyone in Mexico is so sure about who is coming out on top in the exchange.

“With his declarations, Trump provoked and won,” declared Raúl Benítez Manaut, of Mexico's National Autonomous University in a forum discussion on the influential Animal Político (“Political Animal”) website. “Shame on our authorities, who started a debate with him. Why do they respond to every piece of bravado from a provocateur like Trump? As the Mexican folk saying goes: You look better when you stay quiet.”

Mexico's fireworks market resembles a war zone after massive, unexplained blast

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 14:06:00 -0500

A faint smell of gunpowder was still noticeable Wednesday morning in the vicinity of the San Pablito market in this city just north of Mexico’s capital.

After Tuesday evening’s massive explosion destroyed 80 percent of the country largest fireworks market, the area now more closely resembles a war zone. The stalls have been reduced to charred, twisted heaps of metal. Burnt carcasses of cars riddle the parking lots on the outskirts of the market.

“It felt like we were being bombarded. The explosions just kept going, I think they lasted for at least five minutes,” said Óscar Chávez, a 35-year-old taxi driver who was parked a few block away from the market when the explosions started. “I honestly thought for a moment that I was done for, it seemed like the explosion was going to reach us too,” he told FoxNews.com

Located in Estado de México, the state that curls around Mexico City like a horseshoe, Tultepec is reeling from what has been the greatest fireworks disaster in Mexico in recent memory. As of noon, at least 31 people had died, about 60 were wounded and 12 people were still missing.

Only 13 casualties have been identified.

“We have no idea where the victims are. The government’s response is inadequate, we need more information,” said Concepción Hernández Baez as she looked for her missing mother.

What exactly caused the explosion is still unclear; the authorities have not yet released any information as to what they believe may have happened. Soldiers and police officers sealed off the immediate surroundings of the disaster zone, only allowing family members of the victims to enter the area. On Wednesday morning investigators in white suits were scouring the ruins for clues of what may have caused the explosion.

Tultepec is no stranger to fireworks disasters. According to Milenio Noticias, a Mexico City television network, at least 68 people have died in more than 10 separate accidents over the past few decades. Those include two major explosions at the San Pablito market itself, in 2005 and 2006, in which most of the market was destroyed.

Each time, however, the market was re-established shortly afterwards. Tultepec is known as the ‘fireworks capital’ of Mexico, where the production of explosive materials is an important part of the local economy. Fireworks are widely used in Mexico, both in national holidays and Catholic patron saint celebrations. The San Pablito market had expected to sell 100 metric tons of fireworks this season.

Tultepec residents told FoxNews.com entire streets of the city hide a thriving underground fireworks business.

“It’s scary to think of what could happen if a spark goes off in one of those places. I know many of those underground factories, they’re very dangerous,” Óscar Sánchez, the taxi driver, said.

Ironically, the San Pablito market was called the ‘safest of its kind in Latin America’ by the state regulatory fireworks agency. The stalls were separated by several yards and all apparently had a barrel of water standing next to them to extinguish sudden fires.

“If the 300 stalls selling fireworks that make up the San Pablito Market had all the corresponding permits and appropriate safety measures, the authorities will have to verify whether there was corruption or negligence,” Mexico City newspaper El Universal wrote in a commentary this morning. “Or are the current regulations insufficient?”

“What happened in Tultepec begs the question whether the traditions and the freedom to use explosives are enough reason to continue to permit the indiscriminate use of fireworks”, the newspaper added.

Mexican town pumped up by decades of NAFTA gears up for colossal slowdown

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 07:30:00 -0500

Wendy Manríquez still remembers the excitement every time a new factory opened in her hometown in the border state of Coahuila.

“People would swarm to the factories, they meant work,” she told Fox News. “Everyone was excited.”

Only a generation ago, Ramos Arizpe was but a sleepy town near Coahuila's capital city of Saltillo, some 250 miles from the border with Texas. Agriculture and small-scale commerce provided most of the jobs in the region. No longer. Over the past few decades, Ramos Arizpe has been transformed into one of the major industrial hubs of northern Mexico. On its outskirts,
huge swaths of land are now riddled with approximately 250 maquiladoras, assembly factories that produce everything from refrigerators to car parts.

Salaries are low, especially compared to the United States. Workers in the plants make, on average, just over $2 per hour and receive few benefits like pensions or vacation pay. Still, the plants pay approximately 25 percent more than the average wage across the country.

Manríquez, 26, knows some of the plants well. She and several other members of her family worked in the Whirlpool plant, a ten minute walk from her home. “It's tough to work there, but the factories did mean new jobs for the region,” she said.

Whirlpool is but one of a number of U.S. companies that have settled in the outskirts of the city. General Motors, John Deere, Johnson Controls and Wix Filters also have factories in the area.

It was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed by Mexico, the United States and Canada in 1994, that gave rise to these enormous industrial areas, spread out across Mexico, but especially in states bordering the United States. By sharply reducing or eliminating import tariffs, the treaty made it extremely attractive for American companies to move to Mexico, where lower wages and weak unions made production substantially cheaper. Moreover, Mexican border states such as Nuevo León and Coahuila also lured in companies by showering foreign investors with tax benefits.

An estimated 10 million jobs were created directly or indirectly in Mexico by the free trade agreement. In Ramos Arizpe alone, a city with less than 50,000 inhabitants now provides jobs to tens of thousands factory workers.

“It's a very significant sector for our local economy,” Ana Gabriela Pérez, director of the Economic Development of the Ramos Arizpe
municipality, told Fox News. “Over the past few decades, the maquiladora sector has grown to almost 60,000 jobs in the Ramos Arizpe area alone.” It’s a huge number, bigger than the entire population of the city proper; Ramos Arizpe’s manufacturing sector is now so large it attracts workers from across the country.

The question is how much longer that industrial bonanza will
last in Mexico. The election of Donald Trump has sent ripples of doubt and uncertainty across the border and through Mexico's vast assembly industry.

Trump's anti-trade rhetoric and promise to either re-negotiate NAFTA or unilaterally leave the agreement may have disastrous consequences for Mexico's trade-oriented economy and could potentially destroy millions of jobs, if acted upon by the president-elect.

“It's hard to give exact figures on what might happen if
Trump actually delivers on his promises, but the consequences could potentially be severe for Mexico”, Carlos Mota, a columnist for Mexico City's El Financiero newspaper who writes extensively on trade, told FNL. “We'd be looking at an extended period, perhaps three years, during which Mexico's GDP would drop significantly. It would mean a recession.”

Trade between the U.S. and its neighbors has more than
tripled since NAFTA was signed in 1994. Bilateral trade with Mexico was almost $600 billion last year, with the U.S. importing a whopping $316,4 billion, $50 billion more than it exported southwards. With such big numbers and a huge trade surplus currently in its favor, any changes Trump would make to NAFTA would hit Mexico much harder than the U.S.

Indeed, several recently published reports on the subject
suggest Mexico will suffer heavily from any significant changes to NAFTA or a complete collapse of the agreement. The Center of Economic Studies of the Private Sector (CEESP), a Mexico City-based think tank, says there are 6.156 companies in Mexico that export goods to the United States. Moreover, each company has up to ten secondary providers that also depend on bilateral trade.
All in all, Mexico could lose millions of jobs if NAFTA is changed.

Not everyone is overly pessimistic, however. Some analysts point out that, should the U.S. quit NAFTA altogether, trade tariffs between Mexico and the U.S. would then be determined by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Indeed, Mexico’s richest man, billionaire and telecom mogul
Carlos Slim, even believes his country might actually benefit from a change in the trade relationship with the United States. Early this month, while visiting New York City, Slim said it would be ‘fantastic’ for Mexico if the president-elect succeeds and the U.S. economy grows, generating more trade and creating more jobs in the process.

“It would be negative, but not catastrophic”, Carlos Serrano, Chief Economist for BBVA Bancomer, a major bank, said in an interview in Mexico City newspaper El Universal in September. “We think exports could drop by two percent.”

It remains to be seen whether Trump will actually deliver on
his promises. Executive power gives him plenty of possibilities to do so, but the president-elect appeared to backtrack on some of his most important campaign pledges in the wake of his shocking November 8 victory.

“Right now we don't know what's going to happen”, El Financiero's Carlos Mota told FNL.

“But I do believe that we're entering a new era. The process of expanding international trade and globalization appears to be entering a process of reversal. We're only just starting to see the risks.”

American car makers that left U.S. for Mexico suffering worst drop since 2009

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 10:30:04 -0400

Protected by the newly signed NAFTA agreement, in the 90s American car makers flocked to Mexico and became the main engine behind its steady rise to the top tier of the region’s car-making nations.

For the better part of the last decade, a $26 billion investment frenzy fueled the sector, pushing Mexico to become the world's fourth biggest car exporter in the world.

There are signs, however, that Latin America's auto maker powerhouse may be running into a speed bump. According to the sector's umbrella organization, AMIA, production has gone down more than 3 percent this year, and overseas sales have dropped by almost 6 percent.

American auto makers are among those suffering the worst drop, with Ford, which has set roots mostly in the country's north, lowering production for export by more than 35 percent.

Chrysler, which has plants in Saltillo and Toluca, dropped production by 28,4 percent in the first semester of 2016.

Neither responded to a Fox News Latino request for comment.

It's the biggest lull in the industry since 2009, something especially worrisome in a country where cars and trucks account for almost a quarter of exports.

Bank of America's chief Mexico economist Carlos Capistrán recently said the sector was facing a "yellow alert."

Eduardo García, editor of the business website Sentido Común, referred to the drop as a "significant development," considering how the sector has developed over the past few years.

“Mexico has become a very important global platform in the car manufacturing industry, with a highly qualified labor force,” he said.

Observers largely agree upon the causes of the sudden weakening of the sector: both the global economy and the record-low oil prices. The latter is especially significant in the United States, by far the biggest importer of Mexican cars.

“With gas prices dropping, Americans change their consumer behavior,” Garcia said. “It's now more attractive to buy bigger cars that are less fuel efficient.”

Exports more than tripled between 2001 and 2014, up to almost $90 billion per year — but the car boom was mostly fueled by smaller cars that guzzle up less gas, models that rarely fare well when oil prices are low.

Some observers say it's still too early to tell whether the current lull in production and exports heralds a more permanently weak Mexican car industry. Car makers continue to invest billions of dollars each year in Mexico, as do secondary manufacturers.

Just last April, Ford announced a massive $1.6 billion investment in a new small cars plant, provoking the ire of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. And early this month, tire manufacturer Michelin said it would move forward with the construction of a new, $500 million plant in the city of León, in Central Mexico.

“It's still too early to draw any conclusions about the long-term situation of Mexico's car industry,” deputy director Manuel Molano of the Mexican Institute for Competitivity (IMCO), a Mexico City think tank, told FNL.

“Changes in the mobility market are a complicated issue,” he added. “There are signs that Americans are changing their mobility behavior, that the younger generation in urban areas is less inclined to buy a car, which could mean that car sales in the U.S. have reached a ceiling. But we could just be looking at a temporary drop in sales and production.”

Moreover, even as exports are doing poorly, the domestic market is booming. Car sales in Mexico represent less than half of the total output of the car makers, but have risen to record heights in recent years.

For American brands Dodge and Ram Trucks, marketed by Fiat Chrysler (FCA), June was the best month of 2016. General Motors has also sold steadily more cars in Mexico as the year progressed.

Indeed, some experts predict that Mexico's car production will rise to about five million cars yearly by 2020, over a million and a half more than last year's record-breaking 3.4 million units.

“Even though it represents maybe just a third of total production, the domestic market is very healthy,” Sentido Común's Eduardo García told FNL. “And investment also doesn't show signs of slowing down any time soon.”

Search brigades popping up across Mexico in desperate effort to find missing loved ones

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 10:57:24 -0400

Beads of sweat drop from Mario Vergara's forehead as he, very carefully, kneels to examine the small fragment between the small rocks on the ground. To the untrained eye, it may seem like just another little white stone, but Vergara knows better.

“It's a bone fragment,” he said. A faint smile appears on his somewhat gaunt face, covered in the shadow of his sombrero. “Looks human.”

Some 10 minutes later, a forensic anthropologist of Mexico's federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) confirmed Vergara's discovery. The fragment is human, most likely from a rib. It is the last of some 10 pieces of human remains Vergara and some 30 volunteers found last week on the steep slope of a mountain near this small mining town in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero. The pieces were found in a line pattern, in what appears to be a shallow natural trench.

“Looks like this all belonged to the same body,” Vergara, 41, told Fox News Latino. He looked up toward the top of the mountain with a frown. “It was probably buried in a too shallow grave on top of the mountain and was then brought down by the rain.”

All in all, Vergara and his team of volunteers found some 20 bone fragments when FNL joined them on their search last week, including pieces of a skull, a pelvis and ribs. It was one of the most successful forensic runs the group has had since they first started looking for clandestine graves in the area in late 2014.

His group was the first of a growing number of citizen collectives that, all across the country, have begun searching for the estimated 27,000 to 40,000 people who have disappeared in Mexico since 2006.

In small groups, they scour the countryside hoping to find the remains of those being looked for, unfaltering, by their loved ones over the course of years. They are doing the work that the Mexican government, they say, is either unable or unwilling to do.

Comprised exclusively of civilians, these groups work with little resources and only the most basic of tools, like pick-axes and shovels.

The search party Fox News Latino joined in Mezcala scoured a hillside just outside town following the tip of a local resident, who said she had heard rumors of kidnapping victims brought to the area. She asked FNL to remain anonymous out of fear for her safety.

The group visited the site with a police escort and a forensic team of the PGR, who said they were not at liberty to comment. Vergara, who was part of the team, had no qualms in blasting the authorities.

“They went over this area several months ago, but they definitely didn't do a good job,” he said. “We still found bone fragments here. It's incredible that we're doing a better job than they are.”

The number of people disappeared is enormous, yet what happened to them often remains unclear. Kidnappings for ransom have been a staple of Mexican organized crime since the early 1990s, but don't account for the entire number of victims. Many have speculated that drug trafficking bands are kidnapping victims for slave labor, but those rumors often remain unconfirmed.

In Vergara's case, the tragedy hits close to home. His older brother Tomás, a taxi driver in the town of Huitzuco, not far from Iguala, has been missing since July 5, 2012.

“My town has endured kidnappings for years,” Vergara told FNL. “It's a business there for organized crime, and my brother became just another victim. Shortly after he disappeared, the kidnappers called us and asked for 300,000 pesos (approximately $15.000).”

He said that they were never given the proof of life they requested so did not hand over the money.

Vergara, who still fights tears each time he speaks of his missing brother, said he heard his voice twice in a recording. Then, after the fall of 2012 the kidnappers fell silent, and he never heard of his brother again. He and his sister Mayra now join the search effort every Sunday. Vergara has become the unofficial spokesperson of the group.

“Every time I find a bone fragment or some other human remain, it provokes both joy and sadness,” he said. “On the one hand I can hope that maybe it's my brother and we can finally get rest. On the other hand it's terrible to have to face so many deaths. We often say we are dead in life, because it's no way to live having to wait for a loved one who disappeared.”

Vergara's group calls itself “Los Otros Desaparecidos,” (The Other Disappeared). They are all family members of the many hundreds, perhaps thousands who were abducted in Guerrero in recent years as the state became Mexico's most violent and the battleground for a bloody turf war between drug trafficking gangs.

The Other Disappeared formed in Iguala, Guerrero's third biggest city, in the wake of the disappearance and probable murder in that city of 43 students of a rural teachers' college on September 26, 2014. The mass disappearance, according to the official investigation, was perpetrated by local crime group Guerreros Unidos, in collaboration with corrupt police officers and under Iguala's mayor orders – he is now in jail on suspected ties with organized crime.

The Iguala tragedy became one the defining moments of President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration, a tragic example of how politics and organized crime are all too often intertwined in Mexico, especially in traditionally lawless states such as Guerrero. The disappearance of the 43 students sparked widespread outrage on the country, especially after an independent group of experts criticized an apparently botched investigation into the mass disappearance.

National outrage notwithstanding, the tragedy also sparked something else: a sudden surge of courage in the minds of thousands of Mexicans who had loved ones go missing in Guerrero and other states suffering under Mexico's violent drug war.

After Iguala’s “The Other Disappeared” was created, other groups have followed suit and popped up in states like Coahuila and Sinaloa. Most recently, a new group has begun searching for the missing in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, another of the nation's most violent.

But setting up such a parallel justice apparatus in a country where the police is distrusted and accused of having ties with criminals is difficult and often fraught with danger.

The Iguala group was originally led by Miguel Ángel Jiménez Blanco, a member of the UPOEG, one of several community police organizations set up in rural Guerrero in mostly indigenous communities rife with organized crime and where local law enforcement has proved incapable of providing basic security.

Jiménez Blanco was gunned down in his hometown of Xaltianguis in August last year, allegedly by members of a criminal gang.

And in Veracruz, José Jesús Jiménez, one of the members of the recently created group called simply “Search Brigade,” was murdered just last month, on June 22. He was gunned down in the town of Poza Rica while searching for his daughter.

“The murder of José Jesús is a sign of how difficult it is for us to conduct these search efforts,” said Juan Carlos Trujillo, a human rights activist who has been involved in the organization of the brigades in Veracruz. “Some families obviously fear the danger [involved in] the search of their loved ones, but we need to continue.”

Mario Vergara agrees.

“We don't look for criminals,” he told FNL. “That would only place us in harm's way. When we run into a gang or something, we just avoid them,” he added. “We don't want any trouble.”

Days after deadly protest, Mexican teachers continue standoff with police in Oaxaca

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 10:15:45 -0400

The air in this small town in Oaxaca, an impoverished and mostly indigenous state in Mexico's rural south, is heavy with the smell of burning tires. The highway, a strategic one that leads traffic from the neighboring state of Puebla to state capital Oaxaca de Juárez, is blocked on all sides with heaps of dirt, burned out carcasses of cars, buses and trailers, pieces of wood and rocks. Dozens of trailers stand in line just before the overpass, waiting for the moment they might pass.

But they won't anytime soon. Nochixtlán is reeling from Sunday's disastrous confrontation between members and sympathizers of a the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE), a dissident teachers' union, and law enforcement. State and federal policemen, some 800 in total, swooped in to clear the highway of a blockade, but fired live ammunition into a rawdy crowd of protesters armed only with sticks, stones and molotov cocktails.

By the end of the day, at least six lay dead, more than a hundred were wounded, the municipal palace and the local station of the federal police set on fire. And the blockade is still there.

Dozens of protesters are still keeping watch at the overpass where the confrontation took place. They painted anti-government slogans on the walls and prepared crates with bottles and wraps, ready to become molotov cocktails should the policemen come back.

“They were shooting at us as if we were animals”, William Velázquez, a 34-year old teacher, told FNL. He picked up a large stick. “These are the only weapons we have. We don't carry guns. They were firing on unarmed civilians.”

Protesters and the Mexican government have been trading blame over who was responsible for Sunday's clashes, with federal and state authorities claiming live ammo was used after unspecified 'radical groups' attacked policemen, after the dislodging of the protesters initially happened peacefully.

The authorities changed their version of the events several times, with interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong initially claiming the police weren't carrying arms. Federal police chief Enrique Galindo later admitted his men did indeed carry guns. On Monday, Oaxaca governor Gabino Cué said in a press conference that the policemen adhered strictly to protocol and that force was used 'rationally' and with 'due respect to human rights'.

But union members and its sympathizers deny any kind of radicals or infiltrators being present and say the police opened fire on unarmed civilians. During a visit to the scene of the confrontation on Monday, protesters showed FNL dozens of bullet casings of different calibres, which they said were found in places where the police was shooting at them.

One elderly man working at the Nochixtlán municipal graveyard told FNL that, during the attempt to dislodge the protesters, policemen had run into the graveyard, forced him to the ground and stole his wallet while threatening to kill him if he did not comply.

“They took all my money and started shooting at people just outside the graveyard”, he said, asking not to be named out of fear for his safety. He showed FNL several bullet casings at the graveyard, at the spot he said the policemen were shooting from.

“From where I could see, the police began to shoot without provocation”, he added.

At the local hospital in Nochixtlán, one employee confirmed to FNL to have treated at least 40 wounded and said four people had come in with bullet wounds, some of them in the head and throat, and that four people had died at the clinic while another person had died on the way to another. He asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the situation.

Sunday's clashes took place in the context of larger protests organized by the CNTE and its sympathizers in the wake of the arrest of Rubén Nuñez, who heads Section 22, the state chapter of the union in Oaxaca, which is widely seen as the most powerful section of the union. Nuñez was arrested June12th on money laundering charges, but members of the union say he is a political prisoner due to the opposition of the union against sweeping education reforms introduced by president Enrique Peña Nieto in 2013.

The CNTE is vehemently opposed against the reforms, which, among others, introduce mandatory testing for all teachers. The union claims the tests, which will allow the government to fire teachers who fail them, are unfair to teachers in rural areas where schools have less resources. The Mexican government says the reforms are necessary to improve the quality of nationwide education, which ranks an absymal last among members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong announced on Tuesday that the federal government invited the CNTE to the table to discuss recent events and attempt some kind of dialogue. But after last weekend's violence, some believe a dialogue will be very difficult, especially with Section 22-leader Nuñez in jail.

“We want to sit down and talk with the government”, Marisela Cruz, a teacher from Nochixtlán, told FNL. “But they have to stop using violence against us. The bloodshed must end.”