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.
The Krayolas, who when they first emerged on the U.S. music scene in San Antonio were known as the "Tex Mex Beatles", recently got in touch with our Mexico City office to let correspondent Ken Ellingwood know that one of his stories inspired a song on their latest album.
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Army Capt. Claudio Montane wants one thing clear from the start: This place is not not a narco-museum, writes Ken Ellingwood in Foreign Exchange.
"The point is not to glorify drug traffickers. 'Its purpose is to show Mexico and the world the efforts and the good results that we have achieved,' Montane said, opening a tour of a military collection officially called the Museum of Drugs."
"But spend a couple of hours examining the exhibits with Montane, in his crisp dress uniform and spit-shined shoes, and you wonder if a better name would be the Museum of Mexico's Long and Unwon War Against Drug Traffickers Who Keep Finding Clever New Ways to Feed the U.S. Habit."
Click here to read the whole article.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Video: Take a tour around Mexico's Museum of Drugs. Credit: Deborah Bonello
Isaac Campos, an assistant professor of history at the University of Cincinnati and a visiting fellow at UC San Diego's Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, writes today in The Times' Opinion section about how Mexico's policy on marijuana could be contributing to its problem of drug-related violence.
Ironically, decades of being "tough" on drugs has produced a new link between marijuana and violence, but of a different kind. Indeed, the nation's "drug-related" violence today might more accurately be termed "drug-policy-related" violence.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
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.
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More than 35 statues dedicated to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, have been removed from around the border city of Nuevo Laredo by officials, reports the Associated Press.
The statues, most depicting a robe-covered skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper, lined highways and roads in and around the Mexican city on the border with Texas. One of the statues was located at the base of an international bridge linking Mexico and the U.S. But soldiers stood guard Wednesday as city workers were seen taking down statues. The effort started before dawn Tuesday.
We reported back in 2004 that:
"Though La Santa Muerte is disdained and barely recognized by the Catholic Church, she's one of a number of unofficial folk 'saints' who've been taken to heart by the Mexican people in the centuries since the Spanish conquest. Death cults and death worship have deep roots in Mexico's pre-Columbian past, and in Mexican culture death doesn't carry the morbid taint that it does in other societies. And while La Santa Muerte embodies a certain fatalism about life's inevitable end, her all-too-human form makes ordinary Mexicans feel that, in some mysterious way, she is like one of them, that she feels their sufferings right down to her bones."
Read that full report, by Reed Johnson, here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Mexico City residents at a shrine to La Santa Muerte in 2004. In some places, the Death Saint's popularity rivals that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Credit: Chris Vail / For The Times
The music of Mexico's drug trade has taken a beating lately. As we reported from Tijuana last year, some radio stations south of the border have stopped playing the songs and promoters have banned the music from many public events. Nightclub owners ask bands to turn down narcocorrido requests. Richard Marosi wrote: Narcocorridos still draw legions of fans, despite government efforts to squelch the music. Calor Norteña played the song about Villarreal only because of repeated requests from hard-drinking bar-goers. But it was a momentary exception to a backlash that has succeeded like none before in changing people's attitudes toward the music, say members of several bands, nightclub owners, concert promoters and government officials.
They describe a growing dislike, even revulsion, for music that critics say celebrates the people terrorizing a community that has suffered at least 207 violent deaths this year. Attendance at narcocorrido concerts has dipped; bands say audiences request the music less and less, preferring dance and romantic tunes that take their minds off the city's troubles.
But Mexican artist Cristina Rubalcava wasn't put off by the controversy. After writing a song for Los Tigres Del Norte about the controversial 670-mile fence project along the U.S.-Mexico border, she got to listening to some of the band's narcocorridos and created a mural that illustrates phrases from more than 40 of their canciones. Watch the video for more.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
 News Thursday that Forbes magazine included one of Mexico's most-wanted drug traffickers Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on its rich list has prompted outrage from Mexican officials.
"I will never accept that a criminal could or would be recognized, even by a magazine like Forbes," said Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora, quoted in The News.
"In my country, [Guzman] is associated with a wave of violence in recent years ... and the death of many innocent people who have got caught in the crossfire of hit men."
Medina Mora said Forbes' inclusion of Guzman was "baseless" and lacking in "methodological rigor."
The News reports that other lawmakers in Congress echoed those sentiments Thursday.
Guzman was captured in Guatemala in 1993 and transferred to a maximum-security prison in Mexico, but he got tired of the life. Eight years after his incarceration, he paid guards to smuggle him out of the prison in a laundry truck. Read Tracy Wilkinson's report on sightings of Guzman in Mexico here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City.
Credit: Forbes.com
Reuters reports that Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who is blamed for thousands of deaths in the country's continuing drug war, has made it onto the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people, with an estimated $1-billion fortune.
Forbes placed Guzman at 701 on its list, tied with dozens of others worldwide with riches of about $1 billion.
Our Tracy Wilkinson reported last year: Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted drug-trafficking fugitive, chalks up more sightings than Elvis. He is everywhere, and nowhere, a long-sought criminal always a step ahead of the law, yet always in sight or mind.
A mythology has developed around Guzman, the commander of Mexico's most powerful narcotics network, the so-called Sinaloa cartel, named for the Pacific coast state that is the historic cradle of Mexican drug trafficking. Narcocorridos, popular songs about traffickers, lionize him.
Go here for the full Forbes rich list and here for our complete coverage of the drug wars in Mexico.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Mexico City's Museo de la Ciudad is playing host to a photojournalism exhibition -- Expofotoperiodismo -- that features nearly 50 photos from 2008. You can see some of the images featured in the show in the above slide show.
All images appear courtesy of the Museum de la Ciudad, and the show runs until April 19th.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
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Chris Kraul
Mexico City:
Deborah Bonello
Ken Ellingwood
San Diego:
Richard Marosi
Washington:
Nicole Gaouette