Foreign

Gunmen Kill Mexican Mayor During Public Event

By Web News 202

Gunmen shot dead the mayor of a Mexican city during a public event on Saturday, authorities said, in an area plagued by violence and organized crime.

Carlos Manzo, the mayor of Uruapan in the western state of Michoacan, was killed in an attack in the city center, the national public security agency said in a statement.

“Two people involved in the incident were arrested, and one of the assailants had lost his life,” it added.

Michoacan state has for years suffered violence from powerful drug cartels operating in the agricultural region seeking to extort farmers.

Manzo was shot during an event marking the Day of the Dead.
Videos shared online showed people fleeing the crowded event after gunshots were heard.

Manzo became mayor in September 2024 and occasionally joined security patrols on the streets wearing a bulletproof vest.

In a video on his social media of one such patrol in June, he urged the federal government to do more to tackle violent crime.

His killing came days after Michoacan farmer representative Bernardo Bravo, who often spoke out against extortion by crime gangs, was also shot dead.
Mexico, plagued by drug-related violence for nearly two decades, has seen numerous local politicians assassinated in recent years.

Last month, armed assailants gunned down the mayor of Pisaflores in central Mexico.

In June, armed men stormed a mayor’s office in southern Mexico, killing her and a staff member. The following day, another mayor was murdered in the country’s west along with her husband.

AFP / Titilayo Kupoliyi

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Foreign

“Poverty Exodus”: Thousands of Migrants Head for US Border

By Web News 619

A sprawling caravan of migrants from central and southern America has set off through Mexico heading north towards the United States border.

Up to 8,000 people of all ages, mainly from Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico, are part of the procession following a banner which reads “Poverty Exodus”.

It comes days before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to arrive in Mexico City.

Mr Blinken wants to strike new agreements to control migration.

The number of people apprehended at the US southern border exceeded two million both in the 2022 and the 2023 fiscal years.

In September 2023 alone, US Border Patrol apprehended more than 200,000 migrants crossing the US-Mexico border unlawfully, according to US Homeland Security figures.

The Christmas Eve caravan departed from the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, near the country’s southern border with Guatemala.

One Honduran migrant who joined the procession said he was escaping a criminal gang which had threatened to kill him.

José Santos told Reuters news agency: “I was scared so I decided to come to Mexico hoping I’ll be allowed to go to go to the US.”

On Friday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he was willing to work again with the US to address concerns about migration.

The Mexican leader is due to meet the US secretary of state on Wednesday.

The White House said in a statement Mr Blinken would discuss “unprecedented irregular migration” in the western hemisphere and identify ways the two countries would “address border security challenges”.

BBC/Simeon Ugbodovon

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Foreign

Church Roof Collapses in Mexico, Leaves Ten Dead

By Web News 370

At least 10 people have been killed after a church roof collapsed in northern Mexico, local officials say.

Forty-nine people were taken to hospital after the collapse at Santa Cruz church in the coastal city of Ciudad Madero in Tamaulipas state.

At least two children are reported to be among those killed.

Around 100 people were attending Mass at the time, police said. Some reports suggested a baptism ceremony was being held there.

Dozens of people were left trapped inside the church following the incident. Images on social media showed the church building in ruins as people crowded around the rubble, desperately searching for those who were missing.

The governor of Tamaulipas, Américo Villarreal, later said that all the missing had been accounted for, according to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

Local journalist Franc Contreras told the BBC World Service’s Newsday programme that the collapse happened at a key moment in the service.

“The church was packed with about 100 people, and people were lined up to take the communion – of course that’s sort of the climax of the Catholic Mass – and that’s when the roof came down on top of them; bricks, concrete, and of course steel support structures coming down on top of the people,” he said.

He added that according to Red Cross officials the roof came down on pews in the church, allowing the possibility that anyone trapped there could survive in air pockets.

People were said to be arriving with shovels and pickaxes to try to move the debris.

Later posts showed the emergency services were at the scene, following the collapse on Sunday afternoon.

Calls were made on social media for medical and rescue materials to help those searching for survivors.

Authorities were said to be requesting silence from those gathered at the scene so that they could hear if anyone trapped inside was calling for help.

BBC/Simeon Ugbodovon

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Foreign

Abortion No Longer Crime in Mexico

By Web News 347

Mexico’s highest court has ruled to decriminalise abortion nationwide after establishing that previous laws prohibiting it are unconstitutional and was in violation of women’s rights.

The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) made the judgement Wednesday, asserting that terminating pregnancies across Mexico are not constitutional.

According to BBC, the verdict was given two years after the court ruled in favour of a challenge to the existing law in the northern state of Coahuila.

The court had ruled that criminal penalties for terminating pregnancies were unconstitutional.

Mexico’s states and the federal government had since been slow to repeal penal codes, but the new ruling legalises abortion across all 32 states.

The Supreme Court said the denial of the possibility of a termination violated the human rights of women, BBC said.

“In cases of rape, no girl can be forced to become a mother – neither by the state nor by her parents nor her guardians,” said the head of the supreme court, Arturo Zaldívar.

“Here, the violation of her rights is more serious, not only because of her status as a victim, but also because of her age, which makes it necessary to analyse the issue from the perspective of the best interests of minors.”

The ruling has opened the door for the federal healthcare system to provide abortions. It has been welcomed by women’s rights groups.

Mexico City was the first of the country’s states to decriminalise abortion in 2007 and a dozen others followed suit.

But in addition to a lack of facilities to carry out the procedure, “many women don’t know that they have this right because local governments have not carried out publicity campaigns about it”, women’s rights activist Sara Lovera told AFP news agency.

“That’s why today’s decision of the Supreme Court is important.”

The new ruling is likely to anger Mexico’s more conservative politicians and the Catholic Church, in what is Latin America’s second largest Catholic nation.

However, the Church’s influence has been declining in recent years and the country’s government considers itself staunchly secular.

Latin America has seen a trend toward loosening abortion restrictions that have been referred to as a “green wave”.

Elective abortion is legal in Colombia, Cuba, Uruguay and Argentina though the frontrunner in the campaign for Argentina’s presidential election in October, Javier Milei, wants to ban the procedure.

Some countries allow abortions in circumstances such as rape or health risks, while outright bans apply in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The reforms in Mexico and other Latin American countries contrast with the situation in the United States, where a Supreme Court ruling last year overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the right to abortion nationwide.

BBC / Titilayo Kupoliyi

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Foreign

11 Die in Arson Attack on US-Mexico Border Bar

By Web News 398

A man has been arrested in Mexico on suspicion of setting fire to a bar after he was kicked out, killing 11 people, officials say.

The attack happened on Friday night in San Luis Rio Colorado, which borders the United States. The bar sits just one street away from the border.

Authorities say a drunk young man hurled a Molotov cocktail at the Beer House bar after being thrown out.

He had reportedly been harassing women before being ejected.

The mayor of San Luis Rio Colorado tweeted on Saturday afternoon that a suspect had been arrested. He has not yet been named.

The fire killed seven men and four women and left four other people hospitalised, according to a statement from the Sonora state Attorney General’s Office. A number of those injured were rushed across the border to hospitals in the United States for treatment.

“According to versions (from) several witnesses, the person with a young, male appearance was disrespecting women in that bar and was expelled,” the statement said.

It described the object thrown “a kind of ‘Molotov’ cocktail”.

Investigations continue to “clarify the facts” and “bring justice” it said, adding that “in Sonora, no one is above the law”.

It is unclear if the incident is related to organised crime, which has plagued Mexico for years.

BBC/Simeon Ugbodovon

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Feature

Video: Mayor in Mexico Marries Alligator

By Web News 719

A mayor in Mexico has married a female alligator-like animal in a traditional ceremony which is believed to bring good fortune to his people.

Victor Hugo Sosa wed the caiman reptile called Alicia Adriana as he re-enacted an ancestral ritual.

Local lore, or tradition, calls the creature the “princess girl” and the mayor said the pair “loved each other”.

Onlookers clapped and danced in San Pedro Huamelula, a town of indigenous Chontal people in Oaxaca State, Southern Mexico as they entered into holy matrimony.

Mr Sosa said during the ritual: “I accept responsibility because we love each other. That is what is important.

“You can’t have a marriage without love… I yield to marriage with the princess girl.”

He was pictured kissing the animal on the head.

Marriage between a man and a female caiman has taken place there for 230 years to commemorate the peace between the Chontal and Huave indigenous groups.

The mayor, representing the Chontal king, marries the reptile, symbolising a Huave princess girl, in a union of the two communities.

Caimans live in marshes and are endemic in Mexico and central America.

SkyNews/Ibrahim Adeyemo

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Foreign

Same-Sex Marriage Now Legal in Mexico

By Web News 444

Same-sex marriage has become legal throughout Mexico after the state of Tamaulipas became the last in the mostly Catholic country to approve it.

The northern border state’s decision ends a 12-year journey toward national marriage equality beginning when the capital Mexico City became the first to celebrate same-sex unions in 2010.

The move was followed by a Supreme Court declaration five years later stating a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional that spurred changes at the state level.

“The Congress of Tamaulipas approved the reforms to article 132 of the Civil Code for the State, to recognize the right to same-sex marriage,” the institution said in a statement.

“There are no first or second-class people, all people should enjoy this right,” said local congresswoman Nancy Ruiz of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), who promoted the reform.

Marriage equality was approved in seven other states this year — three of them in the last two weeks.

In five of Mexico’s 32 states where marriage equality was established through court orders or governors’ decrees, it is still pending “legislative harmonization,” said political scientist and LGBTQ activist Genaro Lozano.

“But it is already a reality throughout Mexico. Thanks to all the activists and legislators who have supported it over the years,” Lozano tweeted.

AFP/Titilayo Kupoliyi

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Foreign

Mexican Drugs Lord Rafael Caro Quintero Reportedly Nabbed

By Web News 533

Mexican drugs lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who is on the US most wanted list, has been arrested in the northern state of Chihuahua, reports say.

Mr Quintero, who is accused of murdering a US drug enforcement agent in 1985, was held in the city of Guachochi, local media say.

The US had offered $20m (£17m) for any information leading to his capture.

In 2013, a court in Mexico freed Mr Quintero after he had served 28 years for the murder of Enrique Camarena.

The court cut short Mr Quintero’s 40-year sentence, ruling that he should have been tried in a state rather than a federal court.

The murder strained US-Mexico ties at the time and changed the war on drugs trafficking.

Mr Quintero was one of three founding members of the powerful Guadalajara Carte

BBC/Simeon Ugbodovon

Foreign

Pope Condemns Killing of Priests in Mexico

By Web News 493

The bodies of two Catholic priests and a tour guide who were shot dead inside a church in northern Mexico have finally been found.

The three were killed last Monday after a suspected run-in with a wanted drug trafficker in the state of Chihuahua.

Report says, the priests were gunned down while trying to help the guide, who ran into their church for help.


Pope Francis condemned the killings, calling it a shocking reminder of the level of violence in Mexico.

“We’ve found and recovered… the bodies of the Jesuit priests Javier Campos, Joaquín Mora and the tour guide Pedro Palma,” Chihuahua Governor Maria Eugenia Campos said in a video posted to social media.

Palma was fleeing an armed gang when he sought refuge in a church in the town of Cerocahui, before being shot dead along with the two priests who tried to intervene, the Chihuahua prosecutor’s office said.

The three bodies were then taken away by a group of men in a pickup truck, Luis Gerardo Moro, head of the religious order in Mexico, said in a radio interview.

The suspect, who was identified by another priest who was in the church, was already wanted for the murder of an American tourist in 2018, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said. The suspect has been named as Jose Noriel Portillo Gil.

The president added that Palma’s wife was one of two people who were kidnapped on Monday before the killings, and is still missing

Pope Francis expressed dismay over the killings.

“So many murders in Mexico. I am close, in affection and prayer, to the Catholic community affected by this tragedy,” the pontiff said at the end of his weekly audience at the Vatican.

A reward of 5 million pesos, $249,300; £203,000, for information relating to the suspect’s whereabouts has been announced.

Some 30 priests have been killed in Mexico in the past decade, according to the Centro Catolico Multimedial, a Catholic organisation.


BBC /Taiwo Akinola