An anti-gang activist known nationally in the United States was arrested Wednesday on federal racketeering and conspiracy charges stemming from his alleged involvement in one of the most violent street gangs in the U.S., Scott Glover and Richard Winton report.
Alex Sanchez, executive director of Homies Unidos, a gang-intervention nonprofit with offices in Los Angeles and El Salvador, was among two dozen alleged members or associates of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, also known as MS-13, charged in a 66-page indictment that was unsealed Wednesday.
The defendants, with monikers such as Creeper, Grinch, Pain and Tears, were involved in a variety of crimes, including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, extortion and drug trafficking, over a 15-year period, the indictment alleges. Among the alleged crimes was a plot to kill a Los Angeles Police Department detective who specialized in investigating the gang, authorities said. Gang members had gone as far as choosing a handgun with which to kill Det. Frank Flores, authorities allege, but police thwarted the plot.
Read more of the report here.
Click here to see more recent posts on the Mara Salvatrucha gang.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Alex Sanchez is executive director of Homies Unidos, a gang-intervention nonprofit group. Credit: Los Angeles Times.
Journalists in Mexico can have a pretty hard time doing their jobs, especially those who cover Mexico's narco-trafficking and organized-crime problems.
A couple of nonprofit groups that work on press freedom and protection here in Mexico, the Rory Peck Trust and Article 19, got together and ran a course just outside Mexico City this month for 18 journalists living and working here.
During the five-day course, the participants, who came from all over Mexico -- from Michoacan to Baja California -- went through a simulated kidnapping dodged tear gas, learned first aid, and received psychological training on dealing with emergencies.
See the video for more.
-- Deborah Bonello in Toluca, Mexico
Video: Mexican journalists put through their survival paces, by Deborah Bonello.
Jesus Chairez is bored of the swine flu shut down in Mexico City, but Daniel Hernandez, creator of Intersections, is glad to be back after taking a few days rest from the capital. Joy Hepp, author of Chilangabacha, went to the open air mass at the Basilica de Guadalupe: "The outdoor mass is only one of the ways Chilangos have so far adapted to their new circumstances."
Meanwhile, freelance photographers Deanna Dent and Vanessa Able both spent Friday wandering the capital's quiet streets. Image: All non-essential businesses shut their doors this weekend in Mexico City because of a swine flu outbreak. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.
Mexico City is on high alert this morning as it awaits the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama, expected here today in his first official visit to Mexico.
Read on »
The National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) reports that Latinos made up nearly half of the more than 1 million people who became U.S. citizens last year.
According to the organization, the number of Latinos who became Americans in fiscal year 2008 more than doubled over the previous year, to 461,317.
That's nearly half of the record 1,046,539 new citizens overall in 2008, a 58% increase from 2007, according to the Associated Press.
NALEO Educational Fund Executive Director Arturo Vargas said the 2008 elections that put Barack Obama in the White House boosted efforts by Latinos to acquire the right to vote.
“In 2007, thousands of Latino newcomers applied for U.S. citizenship because they wanted to make their voices heard in our nation’s democracy," he said in an NALEO statement.
According to NALEO's analysis of figures recently released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS), Mexico was the leading country of birth of people becoming citizens in 2008 (231,815), and one out of five new U.S. citizens was from Mexico (22%).
The number of Mexican-born naturalized citizens increased by 90% between 2007 and 2008, while the number of new citizens from Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala more than doubled during the same period.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Cuban authorities accused blogger Yoani Sanchez of "Generacion Y", one of La Plaza's linked blogs, of dissidence and "provocation against the Cuban Revolution" after she publicly spoke against Cuban censorship during an arts performance in Havana, Reuters reports.
The Knight Center for Journalism's "Journalism in the Americas" blog reports that Sanchez spoke during an event in the Havana Biennial arts festival and read a manifesto stating that the Internet was creating a "crack" in government control. She then added: "The time has come to jump over the wall of control."
"Since microphones are not abundant, I just took the opportunity," Sanchez wrote in her blog about the event.
Sanchez's blog is critical of the Cuban government and widely read abroad, but her Cuban readership is limited because Internet access is restricted on the island.
Read more on Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
You may remember Eufrosina Cruz from this Column One article last year by Hector Tobar and Maria Antonieta Uribe. Cruz is a 28-year-old indigenous woman from the state of Oaxaca who is an activist for the rights of indigenous women. Cruz rebelled against the restrictions of her own community, where Zapotec is the native language, to become a college-educated accountant.
We caught up with her in Mexico City earlier this week during an event in which she launched a foundation, called Quiego, that she says will dedicate itself to providing shelter, education and work opportunities to indigenous women from poor, rural communities.
See her introduce herself here.
Speaking at a packed news conference about the women of her rural community, Santa Maria Quiegolani, in the southern highlands of Oaxaca, Cruz said: "Because we're in the mountains, no one hears us, no one listens to us."
She explains in the video below why she decided to speak out against some of the traditions and customs of her community in a cause that has gained national recognition.
I asked her whether she saw a conflict between her struggle and that of other indigenous communities to gain recognition and respect for a way of life that is often quite different from mainstream Mexico.
The most famous indigenous struggle here in Mexico is embodied by the masked guerrilla, Subcomandante Marcos, who led the Zapatista army out of the jungle in 1994 in a short-lived uprising.
The 1994 revolt, which lasted all of two weeks, demanded the recognition of indigenous rights. As Tracy Wilkinson reported last year about a speech Marcos made, the uprising was also "aimed at dramatizing the bleak living conditions, poverty and alienation of Mexico's indigenous population."
But does Cruz's struggle to improve the lot of women in these communities undermine the struggle by Marcos and others to gain recognition and, in some cases, autonomy for indigenous traditions and customs?
Article 25 of the state constitution of Oaxaca establishes the rights of groups such as the Zapotecs to elect municipal officials according to the "traditions and democratic practices of the indigenous communities." But women living, for example, in Cruz's community are lucky to complete grade school, and the roost is ruled by a male-only assembly. Cruz's sister was married off to a stranger when she was 12 years old.
Here are her thoughts on the issue.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
 Choire Sicha writes about Pedro Zamora, an HIV-positive Cuban American gay man who died of AIDS the day after 1994's "The Real World: San Francisco" television season finale aired.
Zamora has inspired an MTV biopic, due to air Wednesday night.
"The young HIV educator -- he was 22 when he died -- was always on message. He brought a scrapbook of his education work to show his cast mates, immediately lectured them on HIV transmission and took them along on his speaking gigs. And he and his boyfriend, Sean Sasser, had a tear-jerking commitment ceremony before the cameras.
"That anyone who saw that season's 'Real World' cannot get Zamora's story out of their minds has led us to 'Pedro,' a biopic by MTV and 'Real World' creators Bunim-Murray, directed by Nick Oceano — and written by Dustin Lance Black of Oscar-winning 'Milk' fame. It airs on MTV Wednesday at 8 p.m., although some members of Congress are getting a sneak-peek screening earlier in the day. That is how big Zamora was. The film also includes a reenactment of then-President Clinton's phone call of appreciation to Zamora and his family. (On MTV, Clinton will introduce the film.)," writes Sicha.
Click here for the full story.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Image: Pedro Zamora, by Ken Probst / MTV Networks
"I’m always telling Marcos, when he left my hair was black and now it’s as gray as the Orizaba volcano.”
Juanita often sits outside the small and humble home that she shares with her husband Pascual in the Mexican state of Puebla. She thinks of her children as she sews. Three out of eight of her brood are living in the United States, where they have been for the last eight years. Life goes on without them, but for Juanita and Pascual -- who eke out a modest living on their small farm -– it has never been quite the same since the children left.
“We’re getting on. There’s no turning back the clock. We spend our time thinking about our children ... about how far away they are,” says Juanita, speaking to the cameras directed by the Mexican duo Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman in “Los Que Se Quedan,” or “Those Who Remain.”
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Talking about the importance of women in the society, Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday: "It's a cynical culture of the world that ignores the contribution of women who stop working to look after children."
The president announced the creation of a Ministry for Women that will be set up to develop specific policies for women and to promote gender equality in Brazil, reports China View.
The new ministry will take on the work of an office in the presidency devoted to the issue and get a bigger budget, Lula said at the opening of a seminar on the role of women in public institutions.
Read the full report on Brazil's women's ministry here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
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Mexico City:
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