Drought and disease hit Peru

You may remember a report earlier this year on a drought in Mexico and how it was affecting both country and city-dwellers.

Farther south, inhabitants of the Andean mountains of Peru are also being hurt. Al Jazeera reports on how rising temperatures caused by climate change mean that diseases originally only seen in tropical areas are spreading to the mountains.

Watch the video, from Al Jazeera, for more.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Verification of immigrants' legal status scrutinized amid healthcare debate

Los Angeles County health worker Leonardo Rincon lifts the birth certificate up to the light and expertly scrutinizes it. Do faint watermarks show up? Yes. He rubs his thumb over the official seal to see if it is raised. It is. He checks the number of digits in the document number. Perfect.

Ruth Torres, he decides, has brought in valid U.S. birth certificates for her six children, a valid U.S. passport for her husband and a valid green card for herself, a legal immigrant from Mexico. The family will continue to receive public healthcare benefits, as least for the next year.

Since July 2008, when Los Angeles County began implementing tougher federal verification rules, Rincon and his colleagues have gone back to check the documents of more than 100,000 recipients of Medi-Cal, the public healthcare program for low-income residents, reports Teresa Watanabe.

Read more on verifications for immigrants here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

How will Mexicans respond to 'Bruno'?

It will be interesting to see how Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie, Brüno, is received here in Mexico when it launches in cinemas at the end of September.

In Mexico City, we have yet to see the latest effort from the British comedian, but the Miami Herald's columnist Andres Oppenheimer has -- and he's not happy.

"Its main character, an Austrian gay-model-turned-TV-reporter played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, makes fun of almost everybody, but is particularly brutal to Mexicans. In his fictional TV talk show, Brüno invites his celebrity guests to sit on top of live men on their fours looking at the floor with a mixture of boredom and resignation. The men resemble the stereotype of Mexican laborers, mustaches included," writes Oppenheimer.

In the audio clip below, you can hear Brüno say: "Come and sit on our great furniture. These are our Mexican chair people. Demi Moore has two of them in her house.''

Mexico 'at the vanguard of the disabled-rights movement'

The Economist reports on how Mexico is now "at the vanguard of the disabled-rights movement in the developing world":

At the main international airport for Mexico City, the first thing to notice is that the path from the baggage claim is lined with smiling employees guiding passengers to their taxis or connecting flights. The second is that they are all in wheelchairs. Since the opening of a new terminal in November 2007, the airport has hired some 60 disabled, bilingual workers to serve as Mexico’s face to the world. Their presence delights both passengers, who frequently offer congratulations and ask to take their picture, and their superiors. “They’re professional, attentive, always in a good mood, and never miss work,” says Héctor Velázquez, the airport’s director.

Read the whole report on the Economist website.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

A statue to tempt tourists into the eye of influenza storm?

You may remember Édgar Hernández from the end of last month. The 5-year-old, who lives with his mother and 3-year-old brother in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, was the first person from his country known to have been infected with the H1N1 virus here.

Now a local governor wants to erect a statue of young Hernandez in the pueblo where he lives, La Gloria, in an effort to attract tourists. 

Medical tourism considered by nearly 30% of Americans

You may remember the article we published last November about the issue of medical tourism in Mexico and around the world -- you can read it here. 

At the time, we also followed the case of Paul Hambleton, a Texan, who went to Monterrey, Mexico, for mild knee surgery. He said that the same operation in the United States would have cost him twice as much.

A survey from Gallup this week found that the availability of medical services in foreign countries isn't something that American consumers have failed to notice. 

Face masks sticking around as Mexico memorabilia?

The palpable tension surrounding the H1N1 virus here in Mexico City has practically disappeared. Few people these days are wearing tapabocas (face masks), and people's social and economic activities have largely returned to normal after a period of upheaval. 

But the cross-border Latino clothing brand NaCo. isn't ready to let those blue surgical masks, which will forever be associated with the flu outbreak, fade into the past just yet. 

The manufacturer has taken the symbol and applied it to its classic "I love DF" T-shirt, slapping a face mask across the heart in an effort to elicit a wry smile and perhaps some cash from potential customers. DF is short for Distrito Federal, another name for Mexico City.

Cartoon pokes fun at Subcomandante Marcos' signature ski mask

Subcomandante Marcos, Mexico's masked rebel figure who was one of the frontmen of the short-lived Zapatista uprising in the Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994, is famous for always wearing a black ski mask. 

Facebook group backs Chinese government's treatment of Mexicans

A Facebook group purportedly made up of Mexican nationals living in China has sprung up in support of the Chinese government's reaction to the H1N1 flu outbreak, part of which has included the quarantining of Mexicans.

The Facebook group claims that there is no discrimination taking place against Mexicans there, and claims that there is a lot of "media manipulation" on the issue.

Cinco de Mayo celebrations canceled in Mexico; U.S parties on

Cinco de Mayo celebrations here in Mexico were canceled Tuesday because of the outbreak of H1N1 flu.