Mexicans On Ice

Another commission from the Los Angeles Times, this time their first video blog news item on the ice rink in the Zocalo, Mexico.

Click here to watch the movie.

MexicoReporter on the LATimes Blog

MexicoReporter.com produced a film for the LATimes blog here in Mexico City this week about the celebrations surrounding Dia de la Virgen.

See the post and movie here:

Every year, on the north side of Mexico City, a remarkable sight begins to materialize around mid-December. Thousands of worshippers of the Virgen de Guadalupe converge on the Basilica named for her, an oasis of calm and spiritual contemplation in the heart of this restless metropolis.

Mexico’s Faithful Make Annual Pilgrimage On Dia de la Virgen

Formats available: Windows Media (.wmv)

Tags: mexicoreporter, basilica de guadalupe, mexico city, catholic, faith, pilgrimage, december

Wooden crosses bearing the bloodied effigy of Jesus and huge framed pictures of the la Virgen de Guadalupe are quite literally walking down Mexico City’s Calzada de Guadalupe. Boys with gelled hair labor with crosses strapped to their backs and middle-aged women lumber along the tree-lined avenue with enormous pictures roped to their shoulders in an image that brings to mind filmed depictions of the crucifixion itself.

Local reporter shot dead in Western Mexico

A local reporter, who covered agriculture and occasionally crime in the western Mexican state of Michoacán, was shot dead on Saturday night.

Gerardo Israel García Pimentel, who wrote for the daily La Opinión de Michoacán, was found in the stairway of the car park of the hotel in which he lived. He had been shot about 20 times with an assault rifle and a revolver, according to Reporters Without Borders.

A brother and cousin of his are reportedly missing, according to the local press in the state, and his fellow journalists said that they weren’t aware of any motive for the killing.

Senior staff at La Opinión de Michoacán said that García Pimentel “basically covered agricultural stories and sometimes breaking news, but only occasionally.”

Oaxaca Reporters Tell of Life in the Trenches

‘Alternative media’ in Oaxaca, Mexico, means graffiti, not the internet. Nancy Davies comments on the latest meeting of Oaxacan journalists this weekend on NarcoNews.com. Many issues were discussed, including the lack of unity amongst journalists and the increasing violence against the profession.

President Calderon: Cacho Case ‘Not a Political Compromise’

President Felipe Calderon said yesterday in a speech marking the end of his first year in office that the exoneration of Puebla Governor Mario Marin in last week’s Supreme Court ruling was ‘not a political trade-off’, according to reports today.

Speaking at a press conference last night in which he summarized his first year in office, Calderon’s comments were in response to media speculation that Marin got off easy in the case filed by Lydia Cacho as part of a deal between Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which was the ruling part in Mexico until Calderon’s predecessor Fox took office in 2000.

Various columnists and pundits in the Mexican press have alleged that by placating the PRI, the president would have found it easier to push through some key reforms, but Calderon denied that the SupremerCourt decision was a politically motivated move.

But although Calderon has drawn fairly good reviews from the press following the end of the first year of his tenure as President, but this recent ruling suggests that despite his crackdown on organized crime, impunity is still stronger than justice in Mexico.

Writers and NGOs: Supreme Court Ruling is a ‘Disgrace’

Writers, journalists and non-governmental organisations have called the Supreme Court’s decision at the end of last week a ‘disgrace’. The Court ruled that the rights of journalist Lydia Cacho’s had not been sufficiently violated to warrant legal action against Puebla State Governor Mario Marin.

In a show of solidarity for the journalist, twenty of the country’s writers signed a brief declaration in Guadalajara over the weekend that says that the Supreme Court’s decision last week not to investigate the alleged human rights abuses against Cacho has disgraced the country, according to reports in today’s newspapers.

In addition, a number of the country’s NGOs that work in issues of press freedom and freedom of expression today issued a statement saying that the Supreme Court decision violates human rights.