The Mexico Thread

Angry Teachers paralyze Mexico City with Protests

This sprawling metropolis of honking cars and 22 million harried people has been brought to its knees, not by an earthquake or its ominous smoking volcanoes, but rather a small contingent of angry school teachers.

Some 10,000 educators protesting a government reform program have in the span of a week disrupted international air travel, forced the cancellation of two major soccer matches, rerouted the planned route of the marathon and snarled already traffic-choked freeways.

The disruptions have shown how little it takes to push a city that is snarled on a good day over the edge.

Taxi drivers are so desperate they are refusing fares to certain frequently blocked parts of the city, and residents have turned to urban survival skills - driving the wrong way down streets, using rental bikes, clambering over fences and piling into the back of police pickups to get to their destinations.

The city even been launched an app on Tuesday that warns drivers of protest locations, with a little orange icon of what appears to be a city resident climbing a mountain marking each blockade or march.

"It's terrible. There's no business ... people don't even want to get into a cab, because the traffic isn't going anywhere," taxi driver Ernesto Gallegos said disconsolately Wednesday, standing beside his parked cab on the curb of the city's main boulevard.

"People will get out and say, 'I'll walk instead.' They'll get on these eco-bikes," he said, referring to the city's bike-sharing program.

Cesar Juarez, 30, who works repairing wireless systems for a telecom company, sat in his car at an intersection blocked by protesters, shooting photos with his cellphone to show his boss why he couldn't reach a client. Others stuck in frozen traffic near the protests busily dialed in to postpone meetings.

"I've had to cancel two appointments so far today," fumed well-dressed bank employee Arturo Gutierrez, 47, rapidly texting away on his Blackberry. "That's lost economic activity."

"I just told my wife: 'Let's go live in the countryside. What are we doing here?'"

The cause of this upheaval is a government reform program that would subject teachers to periodic evaluations in the form of standardized tests, and end the unions' power over hiring. That would be a jolt to an education system in which some teachers can actually inherit their jobs from their parents.

Juan Melchor Roman, one of the leaders of the striking teachers, said the union was aware of the growing anger among city residents.

"But we think that is being whipped up by the news media," he said. "We are asking the public to understand the teachers' struggle ... and understand us a little."

The union says a standardized test is an unfair way to evaluate a teacher's entire career, and argues that parents and student evaluations and other factors should be taken into account. The government counters that teachers will have multiple chances to pass the test, and says failing teachers won't be fired, but re-assigned outside the classroom.

But those arguments were hardly the first thing on the minds of the suffering masses trying to make it through the day in Mexico City.

City police have taken to routing traffic the wrong way down one-way streets - something the government euphemistically calls "reversing" streets. The country's first-division soccer league announced it was cancelling two Mexico City matches because the police it would normally assign to keep the peace were too busy managing the protests.

And the situation looks like it may actually get worse.

On Saturday, the striking teachers plan to join other protesters in a giant march against the government's proposed oil industry overhaul, leading to fears that some demonstrators might resort to breaking windows and trashing stores, an unfortunate tradition in some past marches.

Already, the teachers have managed to paralyze a city that sees itself as one of the cultural and intellectual capitals of Latin America, an embarrassment for the leftist government that runs Mexico City. And it's not just disgruntled "chilangos," as Mexico City residents call themselves, who are noticing.

Tourists and travelers were forced to take a torturous route to the Mexico City airport last week after teachers blocked the main expressway leading to the terminal, causing severe flight delays. Some travelers pulling suitcases were forced to walk down the expressway, scale a chain-link fence or climb into the back of police pick-up trucks that drove them around the blockade and into the terminal.

Their problems haven't ended as they seek to navigate the city.

Luis Torres, a tourist from Caracas, Venezuela, wandered across the city's protest-blocked main boulevard Wednesday looking for the bright red double-decker tourist bus that normally stops on the corner.

"You come to such a historic place, only to find that the tour bus has been re-routed and all your plans are delayed," Torres said.

In a comparison that few Mexico City officials would be pleased to hear, Torres compared Mexico City to his protest-clogged home country.

"It's not just the traffic, even the protesters' slogans sound like the ones in Venezuela," he quipped.


Source : Sapa-AP /kn
Date : 29 Aug 2013 00:37
 
Mexico catches drug cartel leader dubbed 'Ugly Betty'

Mexican police have detained the alleged leader of the New Juarez Cartel, a 47-year-old man known as "Ugly Betty," authorities said Sunday.

Alberto Carrillo Fuentes was arrested by federal police in the western state of Nayarit and he was later questioned by prosecutors, an official from the attorney general's office told AFP on condition of anonymity.

He faces charges of drug trafficking, murder and organized crime. The official declined to provide more details.

Carrillo Fuentes is believed to have taken over the drug cartel named after Ciudad Juarez, the city bordering Texas, after his brother Vicente "The Viceroy" Carrillo Fuentes gave up the job.

The original group was founded by another brother, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, alias "The Lord of the Skies," who died in mysterious circumstances following plastic surgery in 1997.

According to the weekly magazine Proceso, the Juarez gang was in an intense turf war in several northwestern states against the Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man.

The two cartels waged a fierce battle for control of Ciudad Juarez in recent years and Guzman is believed to have come out on top.

The city was once considered the world's murder capital but the murder rate has dropped since a peak of more than 3,000 in 2010.

Carrillo Fuentes's arrest marks the third capture of a high-profile drug lord since July.

Authorities detained Zetas cartel kingpin Miguel Angel Trevino, alias "Z-40," on July 15, followed by Gulf cartel leader Mario Ramirez Trevino on August 17.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 02 Sep 2013 08:47
 
The problem with nabbing the cartel leaders, is that a new and unknown person steps in to fill the void.

There is too much money in that game for the cartels to just die if they capture the leader... :(
 
State Assemblyman hacked to death in Mexico

Authorities in western Mexico are searching for four men who hacked a state legislator to death with machetes and wounded a journalist who was apparently interviewing him.

State lawmaker Osbaldo Esquivel Lucatero had stopped with his brother to meet with a journalist by the side of a highway on the outskirts of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state.

While the two were talking Wednesday, four men pulled up in another car and attacked the legislator and the journalist.

Acting state prosecutor Marco Vinicio Aguilera says robbery may have been a motive.

Esquivel Lucatero had been arrested in 2009 along with more than 30 Michoacan state and local officials who were accused of protecting the La Familia drug cartel. All of the charges were later dismissed.


Source : Sapa-AP /nsm
Date : 12 Sep 2013 06:08
 
Rare Twin Storms Batter Mexico, 34 Dead

Authorities scrambled to rescue people stranded in flooded homes in Mexico's resort of Acapulco Monday after twin storms slammed opposite coasts in a rare one-two punch that has killed 34 people.

Hurricane Ingrid weakened to tropical storm strength as it made landfall on the northeastern coast in the morning while the Pacific coast reeled from the remnants of Tropical Storm Manuel, which dissipated after striking on Sunday.

Thousands of people were evacuated as the two storms set off landslides and floods that damaged bridges, roads and homes.

The last time the country was hit by two tropical storms in the span of 24 hours was in 1958, officials said. Never before has it been struck by a hurricane and another storm at the same time.

"More than two-thirds of the national territory has been affected," Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told a news conference.

At least 12 people died when a landslide hit a bus and workers removing earth that had previously fallen on a road in the eastern state of Veracruz, a civil protection official said after federal officials reported 22 deaths elsewhere.

At least 15 people have died in the southwestern state of Guerrero where Acapulco is situated, said national civil protection chief Luis Felipe Puente.

Six more people died in the central states of Hidalgo and Puebla and one in the southern state of Oaxaca. Guerrero state officials reported six deaths in a road accident, but Puente did not include them in his account.

Around 50 towns were affected in Guerrero, with some 238,000 people seeing various levels of damage to their homes, Puente said, adding that dozens of shelters had opened for some 20,000 people.

The highway linking Acapulco to Mexico City was closed due to landslides while the resort's airport was shut down, with some 100 people stranded on the terminal's second floor. Authorities hoped to reopen both later Monday.

With waters rising as high as three feet (one meter) in some neighborhoods, soldiers used boats to pluck around 100 people who took refuge on upper floors or the roofs of homes.

The flooding brought out crocodiles, complicating the rescue work, officials said, while Manuel's remnants were still producing rain. Those rescued were taken to an auditorium that was converted into a shelter.

At least 11 deaths were reported in Acapulco, including a family of six whose home was crushed by a landslide.

"There's no power and we are surrounded by water," said Carlos Alvarez, who lives near a neighborhood where around 50 two-level homes were flooded.

Residents used inflatable boats to evacuate around 40 people stuck on roofs, he said, complaining that neither helicopters nor troops guarding the area were not helping.

Authorities are working to create an air lift in the town of Pie de la Cuesta to transport people, state Governor Angel Aguirre told Televisa television.

Some 2,500 tourists were stranded at the Fairmont Hotel, according to employees there.

The storms forced authorities to cancel independence day celebrations in several towns.

In the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, hundreds of people were evacuated as Ingrid made landfall near the town of La Pesca and its maximum sustained winds slowed to 60 miles (95 kilometers) per hour as it moved inland, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

The storm was bringing heavy rainfall to the region, the Miami-based center said.

"We have to be very alert in the northern states. It just started raining and the damage will be seen in the next few hours," said National Water Commission head David Korenfeld.

Several communities were cut off by rising waters in Tamaulipas, while authorities rescued two power company workers whose truck was dragged away by a swollen river.

State-run energy firm Pemex, meanwhile, evacuated three oil platforms off the Gulf coast.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mr
Date : 16 Sep 2013 21:40
 
Desperate Thousands try to escape cut off Acapulco

Thousands of exhausted, hungry and increasingly despondent tourists lined up late into the night on a muddy road outside a military base for a chance to get home on one of two precious air bridges out of this famed beach resort isolated by landslides set off by Tropical Storm Manuel.

With the twin roads to Mexico City closed down, at least 40,000 tourists saw a long holiday beach weekend degenerate into a desperate struggle to get weeping children, elderly parents and even a few damp, bedraggled dogs back home.

Two of Mexico's largest airlines were running about two flights an hour from Acapulco's still-flooded international airport Tuesday, with priority for those with tickets, the elderly and families with young children.

Everyone else who couldn't wait for the government's promise to reopen the roads within two days flocked to Air Base 7 about 20 minutes north of Acapulco, where a military air bridge made up of barely more than a dozen aircraft ferried tourists to Mexico City. The normally quiet beach-front installation was transformed into a scene from a conflict zone.

Families in shorts and sandals waited for as long as eight hours outside the gates of the base, held at bay by rifle-toting soldiers until they were allowed to drag suitcases, pet carriers and red-eyed children across the tarmac, where they jostled furiously for a chance at one of the 150 seats on the next departing Air Force Boeing 727.

Military officials said only two of the passenger planes were in service, although a few hundred people got seats on one of the five helicopters or seven cargo planes also pressed into air bridge duty.

Many told of horror stories of spending the weekend trapped by torrential rains inside their hotels, emerging to discover there was no way back home.

"It's probably one of the worst holidays I've ever been on," said David Jefferson Gled, a 28-year-old from Bristol, England who teaches English at a private school in Mexico City. "It wasn't really a holiday, more of an incarceration."

By sunset Tuesday night, 24 hours after most vacationers were supposed to be back, less than 700 people had been flown out to Mexico City. Many times that number waited miserably on the runway or, worse, with thousands of other sweating, blank-eyed people in a roughly quarter-mile-long line outside the base.

"It's horrible. We haven't eaten anything since nine in the morning," said Lizbeth Sasia, a 25-year-old teacher from Cuernavaca. "They keep telling us we'll be on the next flight, but the next flight never comes."

Adding insult to injury, a few immaculately dressed families skipped the line and were escorted to private jets by soldiers, to the incredulous stares of the sweltering masses.

"We're cooking here, burnt. We're tired, desperate," said Irma Antonio Martinez, a 43-year-old housewife from suburban Mexico City who came to celebrate the three-day Independence Day weekend with 12 relatives. "We just want to get home to our poor house. Our families are waiting for us."

Asked how she felt, Juana Colin Escamilla cradled her toddler daughter and was able to get out one word, "bad" before she burst into tears.

A handful of big-box stores were looted Tuesday and cash machines along Acapulco's coastal boulevard were low on bills but most of the city's tourist zone otherwise appeared back to normal, with roads clear, restaurants and hotel open and brightly light and tourists strolling along the bay in an attempt to recover some of the leisure time lost to three days of incessant rains.

Gavin McLoughlin, 27, another teacher at Mexico City's Greengates School, said he went to Acapulco on a late night bus Thursday with about 30 other teachers at the school, many of whom are in their 20s.

"We had no idea of the weather," the Englishman said. "We knew there was a hurricane on the other side but not this side."

Officials said it had been more than 50 years since Mexico was hit by two tropical storm-strength weather systems and the death toll rose to 47 Tuesday from the unusual one-two punch of Manuel and Ingrid, which briefly became a hurricane as it pounded the Gulf Coast.

Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told the Radio Formula that 27 people had died because of Manuel in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Osorio Chong said 20 more people died nationwide, many as a result of Ingrid, which struck the Gulf coast on Monday. Mexican meteorologists said it was the first time since 1958 that two tropical storms or hurricanes had hit both the country's coasts within 24 hours.

Federal officials said it could take at least another two days to open the main highway to Acapulco, which was hit by more than 13 landslides from surrounding hills, and to bring food and relief supplies into the city of more than 800,000 people.

The situation was grim in parts of the city's low-income periphery, where steep hills funneled rainwater into neighborhoods of cinderblock houses.

City officials said about 23,000 homes, mostly on Acapulco's outskirts, were without electricity and water. Stores were nearly emptied by residents who rushed to stock up on basic goods. Landslides and flooding damaged an unknown number of homes.

The coastal town of Coyuca de Benitez and beach resorts further west of Acapulco were cut off after a river washed out a bridge on the main coastal highway.

Remnants of Manuel continued to drench Mexico further up the Pacific coast and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it was expected to become a tropical storm by Tuesday night or Wednesday morning near resorts at the tip of the Baja California Peninsula.


Source : Sapa-AP /ss
Date : 18 Sep 2013 06:36
 
Mexican Villagers Recount Horror of Huge Mud Slide

A rumbling noise came from the hill before the earth crashed down on the Mexican hamlet of La Pintada, burying people, the school and church after days of rain, survivors told AFP.

The remote mountain village in the southwestern state of Guerrero was the latest casualty of twin major storms that battered Mexico and killed 80 people elsewhere in the country this week.

Survivors who were evacuated to the Pacific resort of Acapulco told AFP that the mudslide occurred on Monday, but news of the disaster in the coffee-growing village only emerged on Wednesday.

Ediberto Tabarez, the mayor of Atoyac de Alvarez, a municipality that oversees La Pintada, told AFP in a phone interview that at least 15 bodies have been pulled out of the rubble after 20 homes were buried.

President Enrique Pena Nieto did not confirm a death toll but said 58 people were missing after the "major landslide" buried part of the village of 400 people.

"We are not sure for the moment how many people are trapped under the mud," he said.

The earth had already rumbled days before the mudslide, but most residents stayed put, survivors said. Only those living on the banks of the river decided to leave due to heavy rains.

"More than half of La Pintada was demolished, few homes were left," Maria del Carmen Catalan, a 27-year-old mother of three, said at a convention center that serves as a refuge for storm victims.

Many people were eating in their homes on the second day of independence day celebrations when the massive chunk of land slipped at around 4:00 pm.

"We were eating when it thundered, and when the mountain collapsed the homes were swept away and the thundering noise became louder," said Erika Guadalupe Garcia, a 25-year-old mother of three.

Ana Clara Catalan, 17, was preparing corn tortillas when she heard a "loud noise."

"We ran out. It was an ugly noise, worse than a bomb," she said. "The school, the kindergarten and the church were lost. Everything was taken."

The mix of earth and rubble came crashing into the river. Those who ran survived. Later, foul smells began to spread across the desolate village, apparently the stench of rotting bodies.

A resident spread the news of the disaster after he was able to communicate by radio with someone from a neighboring village.

Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said 334 people -- mostly women, children and senior citizens -- were evacuated by police helicopters on Wednesday.

He said 45 men would spend the night there with federal police officers and would be picked up by helicopters Thursday.

The injured were taken to a navy hospital. The minister said earlier that 14 people were hurt.

((Osorio Chong held up a picture showing the mountain of earth and rock smack in the middle of the village.))

He said the search for bodies will only begin Thursday because the area remains dangerous, with water gushing from where the earth fell, threatening to trigger another landslide.

"The risk for people staying there is high," he told a news conference.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 19 Sep 2013 08:59
 
[video=youtube;EtY39_oYFj0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtY39_oYFj0[/video]
 
58 Missing after mudslides

At least 58 people are missing after a major landslide buried part of a village in southwestern Mexico, President Enrique Pena Nieto said on Wednesday.

Pena Nieto said during a televised appearance in northern Mexico that "58 people are missing" but that authorities have yet to confirm if they are trapped in the rubble that hit the village of La Pintada in Guerrero state.


Source : Sapa-AFP /ss
Date : 19 Sep 2013 03:37
 
Manuel a Hurricane After Deadly Mexico Flooding

The toll from devastating twin storms climbed to 80 on Wednesday as isolated areas reported deaths and damage to the outside world, and Mexican officials said that a massive landslide in the mountains north of Acapulco could drive the number of confirmed dead even higher.

The storm that devastated the Pacific resort, Manuel, regained strength over water and became a hurricane Wednesday, taking a route that could see it make landfall on Mexico's western coast later in the night. It would be a third blow to a country still reeling from the one-two punch over the weekend of Manuel's first landfall and Hurricane Ingrid on Mexico's eastern coast.

Outside Acapulco, federal authorities reached the cutoff village of La Pintada by helicopter and airlifted out 35 residents, four of whom were seriously injured in the slide, said Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong. Officials have not yet seen any bodies, he said, despite reports from people in the area that at least 18 people had been killed.

"It doesn't look good, based on the photos we have in our possession," Osorio Chong said, while noting that "up to this point, we do not have any (confirmed) as dead in the landslide." Osorio Chong told local media that "this is a very powerful landslide, very big ... You can see that it hit a lot of houses."

Mayor Edilberto Tabares of the township of Atoyac told Milenio television that 18 bodies had been recovered and possibly many more remained buried in the remote mountain village. Atoyac, a largely rural township about 42 miles (70 kilometers) west of Acapulco, is accessible only by a highway broken multiple times by landslides and flooding.

Ricardo de la Cruz, a spokesman for the federal Department of Civil Protection, said the death toll had risen to 80 from 60 earlier in the day, although he did not provide details of the reports that drove it up.

In Acapulco, three days of Biblical rain and leaden skies evaporated into broiling late-summer sunshine that roasted thousands of furious tourists trying vainly to escape the city, and hundreds of thousands of residents returning to homes devastated by reeking tides of brown floodwater.

The depth of the destruction wreaked by Manuel, which first hit Mexico as a tropical storm, was highlighted when the transportation secretary said it would be Friday at the earliest before authorities cleared the parallel highways that connect this bayside resort to Mexico City and the rest of the world. Hundreds of residents of Acapulco's poor outlying areas slogged through waist-high water to pound on the closed shutters of a looted Costco, desperate for food, drinking water and other basics.

Many paused and fished in the murky waters for anything of value piling waterlogged clothing and empty aluminum cans into plastic bags.

"If we can't work, we have to come and get something to eat," said 60-year-old fisherman Anastasio Barrera, as he stood with his wife outside the store. "The city government isn't doing anything for us, and neither is the state government."

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Wednesday evening that Manuel's eyewall was now nearing the Pacific Coast of Mexico.

Forecasters said the deadly storm had top sustained winds of 75 mph (115 kph) and was centered about 20 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of the western Mexican community of Altata.

The center also says Manuel is moving north at 5 mph (7 kph) and a hurricane warning is in effect from La Cruz to Topolobampo in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

With a tropical disturbance over the Yucatan Peninsula headed toward Mexico's Gulf coast, the country could face another double hit as it struggles to restore services and evacuate those stranded by flooding from Manuel and Ingrid, which hit the Gulf coast.

Mexico's federal Civil Protection coordinator, Luis Felipe Puente, said 35,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.

Elsewhere in the verdant coastal countryside of the southern state of Guerrero, residents used turned motorboats into improvised ferries, shuttling passengers, boxes of fruit and jugs of water across rivers that surged and ripped bridges from their foundations over the weekend. Outside the town of Lomas de Chapultepec, the Papagayo River surged more than 30 feet (9 meters) during the peak of Manuel's flooding, overturning a bridge that stretched hundreds of feet across the mouth of the river.

In Acapulco's upscale Diamond Zone, the military commandeered a commercial center for tourists trying to get onto one of the military or commercial flights that remained the only way out of the city. Thousands lined up outside the mall's locked gates, begging for a seat on a military seat or demanding that airline Aeromexico honor a previously purchased ticket.

"We don't even have money left to buy water," said Tayde Sanchez Morales, a retired electric company worker from the city of Puebla. "The hotel threw us out and we're going to stay here and sleep here until they throw us out of here."

A lucky few held up ransacked beach umbrellas against the sun. Temperatures were in the mid-80s but felt far hotter. Dozens of others collapsed in some of the few spots of shade, joined there by panting stray neighborhood dogs. Soldiers wandered through the crowds offering lollipops, an offer many greeted with angry disbelief.

"Forty-eight hours without electricity, no running water and now we can't get home," said Catalina Clave, 46, who works at the Mexico City stock exchange. "Now all I ask for is some shade and some information."

Mexico's federal transportation secretary said that 5,300 people had been flown out of the city on 49 flights by Wednesday afternoon, a fraction of the 40,000 to 60,000 tourists estimated to be stranded in the city.

For many, the lack of clear information was more infuriating than the inability to get home.

"You call and they say come here," said Patricia Flores, a 35-year-old tourist from the state of Tabasco. "You come here and they say 'call the call center.' And the call center doesn't answer."

In the low-lying neighborhood of Colosio, residents drove through knee-high brown water to reach homes whose bottom floors were glazed in inches of brown sediment.

"We're devastated," said Jorge Luis Pacheco Meijia, a 26-year-old English professor, pausing as he piled sodden, soiled furniture and appliances outside his house. "All the time you spend working from dusk 'til dawn, everything's lost."


Source : Sapa-AP /ss
Date : 19 Sep 2013 02:57
 
Rescuers pull bodies from mudslide

Rescuers pulled two bodies Thursday from a mudslide that buried a Mexican village, but dozens remained missing after storms lashed the country and killed almost 100 people nationwide.

As soldiers and police removed debris in the southwestern village of La Pintada, Hurricane Manuel pounded the northwest state of Sinaloa, bringing more rain to the flood-stricken nation before degenerating hours later.

Luis Felipe Puente, the national civil protection coordinator, said the death toll from days of floods and landslides had jumped to 97 from 81, with 65 of the victims registered in the southwestern state of Guerrero.

Guerrero was the hardest-hit state from the dual onslaught of Manuel and sister storm Ingrid on the east coast this week that drenched most of Mexico, damaging bridges, roads and tens of thousands of homes.

The storms flooded half of Acapulco, including the airport terminal, while landslides blocked the only roads linking the city to the capital. Thousands of angry, stranded tourists held a protest, demanding swifter airlifts.

West of the city, in the mountains of Guerrero, some 100 rescuers toiled in the mud to look for victims of an epic mudslide that swamped half the coffee-growing hamlet of La Pintada and left 68 people missing.

Wearing surgical masks, they removed pieces of broken homes and chopped up collapsed trees with machetes. The village church vanished; only its broken steeple was left, toppled on a mess of mud, with its cross broken.

Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said soldiers had found two bodies so far. The municipality's mayor has said that 15 corpses were found by villagers in recent days.

"The rescue work has begun. It's very complicated, it won't be easy, it won't be just a few days," Osorio Chong said after visiting the village.

Mud cascaded down a hill and covered much of the village, burying homes, the school and church before ending its mad descent in a river.

"People were in the church asking God to stop the rain," said Roberto Catalan, a 56-year-old farmer. "The earth had been bubbling. When we heard a bang, we ran out."

Jose Minos Romero, 12, said he was playing soccer with 10 other children and was only saved "because my mother called me," but "my friends died."

The mudslide swamped the village on Monday as many people were having lunch during independence day celebrations. News of the tragedy only emerged two days later, after a survivor radioed a neighboring village.

The search for bodies was delayed several hours due to fears that water gushing from the mountain could trigger a new landslide in the village.

But troops finally arrived by helicopter or foot after a seven-hour hike on a winding mountain road covered by mud and rocks.

Police helicopters evacuated more than 330 people to Acapulco on Wednesday, and authorities said up to 30 survivors had decided to stay back until victims were found.

Local media said authorities lost contact with a helicopter after it dropped off a group of survivors, but said it may have simply landed due to bad weather and was unable to radio its base. A police spokesman refused to comment.

The storms that swept across the nation have damaged 35,000 homes and forced the evacuation of 50,000 people, officials said.

Human rights groups accused the government of neglecting mountain communities, but officials said some remote communities cannot be reached by land or air.

While rescuers looked for bodies in La Pintada, authorities hoped to re-open part of the highways around Acapulco on Friday, giving desperate and exhausted visitors a new way out after being trapped for almost a week.

Some 12,000 of 40,000 tourists have been flown to Mexico City in special military and commercial flights from an air force base and the civilian airport.

But some 5,000 frustrated tourists sheltered at the convention center blocked an avenue for half an hour in protest against the slow pace of the airlift.


Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 20 Sep 2013 08:46
 
Protestors clash with police in Mexico City

Protesters clashed with riot police in Mexico City on Wednesday, leaving dozens injured as thousands of people marched to mark the anniversary of a massacre of students in 1968.

The Red Cross said at least 51 people were injured as a group of masked protesters threw rocks and firebombs at police who used tear gas and threw stones back at them.

The city's public security department said 32 officers were injured by mostly masked and "self-declared anarchists." At least 97 people were detained.

Dozens of protesters broke the windows of stores, bus stops and a national newspaper office. Police officers used shields to defend themselves but also charged at protesters and journalists alike.

At least 10 journalists were hit by both police officers and protesters, according to the press rights group Articulo 19. Two other reporters were detained.

Three AFP journalists were among those attacked by police and were lightly injured. An AFP video journalist was attacked by protesters who used an aerosol can to blow fire at him, and broke his camera.

Hector Serrano, the city's government secretary, told Formula radio most of the protesters marched peacefully "but there were some 200 and 250 anarchists who are attacking officers."

The demonstrators marched to demand justice for the killings that took place on October 2, 1968, when soldiers opened fire on 8,000 protesters in the capital, leaving an official death toll of 40 while civil organizations say as many as 300 were killed.

This year, the demonstrators were joined by striking teachers who have held several protests in Mexico City since August against education reform championed by President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Demonstrations are held every year to mark the massacre in the Tlatelolco neighborhood, and it was the first march since the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) returned to power after a 12-year absence.

The violent repression of 1968 occurred in the middle of the PRI's long reign in Mexico.

The party held power for 71 years through a mix of rigged elections, corruption and patronage until it was voted out in 2000. Pena Nieto, who took office in December, has pledged that the PRI has embraced democracy.

"It was after the student movement of 1968 and the successive political reforms that today we enjoy a pluralistic and democratic Mexico," Pena Nieto wrote on Twitter.

But protesters criticized the PRI and Pena Nieto, demanding that those responsible for the massacre finally face justice.

The president at the time, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, later took responsibility for the repression but he died in 1979 without facing justice.

"There must be justice and reparations," said Emilio Reza, a member of the 68 Committee comprised of survivors and their relatives.


Source : Sapa-AFP /ss
Date : 03 Oct 2013 07:44
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X