Magda Sayeg tagged Mexico City and covered a bus in her version of graffiti –- only she’s using knitting, not spray cans, to do the job.
The 34-year-old Texan, founder of the guerrilla knitting collective KnittaPlease.com, faced her biggest challenge yet last week in Mexico City when she covered a whole bus in, well, knitting. See her in action in the video above.
Reports are surfacing that the offices of the Culiacán newspaper El Debate were attacked with two grenades early this morning. The explosions, which shattered windows but caused no injuries, happened at around 1a.m when two youngsters wearing white shirts threw the grenades at the main entrance to the offices, reports La Jornada.
The area has been cordoned off by the Army.
El Debate is the largest newspaper in Sinaloa and "fairly aggressive in its organized crime coverage," according to BorderReporter.com. As Tracy Wilkinson reported earlier this year, the city of Culiacán is the birthplace of Mexico's multimillion dollar drug trade and home to some of the major players in Mexico's powerful drug cartels.
In May last year, Cambio in the northern state of Sonora closed its doors after two grenade attacks and what its editor said was a failure on the part of the government to protect its 250 employees. In October 2007, journalists of the Oaxacan newspaper El Imparcial del Istmo resigned out of fear for their lives after the killing of three of the newspaper’s employees and repeated threats after the newspaper reported the finding of a grave containing seven corpses.
In February 2006, the offices of El Mañana newspaper in Nuevo Laredo were attacked by men wielding grenades and assault rifles. A reporter was left paralyzed and the paper later announced that it would cease producing investigative reports on drug trafficking.
Maritza Cruz Salinas is not about to settle for a bad ballerina bun of a hairstyle.
"You're not doing it right, Mom," the 10-year-old snaps, reaching for her brown locks and wiggling impatiently in her black leotard and powder-pink tights. "It has to be perfect."
Perfect because class is about to begin -- and, for the first time, the fifth-grader will dance on her toes like a real ballerina. And she must look the part.
Across the shiny walnut floors and freshly painted walls of Gabriella's Place dance studio in the Pico-Union district, she and nearly 500 other children are celebrating the return this month of a popular dance program that closed three years ago after losing its home. The closure came after rain heavily damaged the makeshift studio inside a dilapidated church building, making it uninhabitable.
It was a major loss in the immigrant neighborhood, where the $5-per-month classes offered a rare relief to families, many of whom live in tiny apartments and travel by foot or bus. One student, Norbert de la Cruz, went on to receive a full dance scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School in New York.
Photo: Students strive for proper form at Gabriella's Place, which has reopened in a spacious new home not far from where the original dance studio had to close three years ago. Nearly 500 children use the facility. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times
Abel Garrido has just struck oil and he's not happy about it.
Using a tree branch, the weathered farmer probed the edge of a pond that his cattle use for drinking water and soon turned up the smelly black sludge that he says has killed much of his livestock and sickened his family.
"I've lost 30 cows," Garrido said. "I cut them open and their insides are black."
Paying the medical bills to treat his three children for skin cancer has cost him his meager savings.
"Here's the cause," Garrido said, contemplating the dark slime gleaming on the end of the branch.
The contamination at Garrido's farm and hundreds of others in a Rhode Island-sized area here in the Ecuadorean Amazon is the basis of a controversial, long-running civil lawsuit in which a verdict is expected early next year.
On one side are 30,000 mostly peasant farmers like Garrido who say they are living a health and ecological nightmare caused by careless oil drilling and production methods that contaminated their drinking water and spoiled their lush jungle environment.
On the other side is defendant Chevron, the San Ramon, Calif.-based parent company which in 2001 acquired Texaco, which produced oil here from 1972 to 1990, and which the lawsuit claims polluted a vast swath of the Amazon. Chevron says Texaco cleaned up its share of the spills with three years of remediation work and that the Ecuadorean government absolved it of all future responsibility in 1998.
Photo: Abel Garrido stands near his oil-polluted pond in Coca, Ecuador. “I’ve lost 30 cows,” Garrido says. “I cut them open and their insides are black.” Chris Kraul / Los Angeles Times
Richard A. Serrano reporting from Lilburn, Ga., and Sam Quinones reporting from San Diego:
The drug violence that has left about 4,000 people dead this year in Mexico is spreading deep into the United States, leaving a trail of slayings, kidnappings and other crimes in at least 195 cities as far afield as Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Honolulu, according to federal authorities.
The involvement of the top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations in distribution and money-laundering on U.S. soil has brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities.
Photo: Oscar Reynoso was found by police in a home in suburban Atlanta. Authorities say cartel members had chained and tortured Reynoso over a $300,000 drug debt.
My obsession with clay Jaina figures started about a year ago at the Museo de la Cultura Maya in Chetumal, Mexico. That is where I set my eyes on the tiny statues of a Maya woman wearing an elaborate blouse and ear spools and a young warrior with facial tattoos and scars.
The 6- to 7-inch-tall figures -- depictions of ancient Maya in traditional dress -- looked so lifelike that I half expected them to speak. When a museum guide told me that the statues behind glass were replicas of statuettes unearthed at Jaina, the Maya island of the dead off the western Yucatán Peninsula, I was determined to learn more about the figures.
The delicately detailed terra-cotta statuettes, described by experts as the finest figurine art of ancient America, were buried with each deceased person on the island, as many as 10,000 in all.
Pursuing my obsession, I headed to Ticul, a pre-Columbian Maya town about 50 miles south of Mérida that's known for its red-earth pottery, where I was told the replicas of the Jaina figures were being made.
More than 1,500 demonstrators marched through the violence-plagued border city of Tijuana to protest recent killings and kidnappings.
Participants carried placards reading "God Save Us."
But the killing continued. Two people were shot to death at a taco restaurant, a man was shot to death at a pool hall, and two men were found shot to death on a street.
It's understandable why Americans these days are thinking twice about venturing south of the border. A wave of gruesome violence, much of it related to drug trafficking, has swept Mexico in the last two years, leaving thousands dead.
Popular tourist venues haven't gone unscathed. Last summer, armed assailants shot up a town in northern Mexico that's a gateway to the spectacular Copper Canyon region, killing 13 people. A pile of decapitated bodies turned up 75 miles from the great Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzá.
Although the U.S. government hasn't warned Americans to stay away, it has urged caution. On its website, www.travel.state.gov, the State Department says, "While millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year, including thousands who cross the land border every day for study, tourism or business, increased levels of violence make it imperative that travelers understand the risks of travel to Mexico.... Common-sense precautions ... can help ensure that travel to Mexico is safe and enjoyable."
Travelers in Mexico must stay alert, especially along the border and in the states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua, which are rife with criminal activity. But there remain many safe, or at least relatively safe, destinations to explore.
During my recently concluded 4 1/2 -year stint as The Times' Latin American arts and culture correspondent, I was based in Mexico City and traveled extensively throughout the country. Any list of recommended travel destinations is, of necessity, subjective. But here are five spots that have a claim on my affections. I've visited all of them twice or more.
Any large metropolitan area such as Puebla or Veracruz, let alone Mexico City, will have crime. But having visited these areas and occasionally written about criminal activities in Mexico along with monitoring crime reports across the country, I feel confident advising friends or loved ones to include any or all of these five places on their itineraries.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is to visit Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez has been cultivating stronger military and economic relations with Moscow. Stops in Brazil and Cuba are also planned, reports Chris Kraul from Bogota.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plans to travel this month to Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba to strengthen regional ties, a tour that underscores a foreign policy challenge close to home that awaits the Obama administration.
Medvedev's visit to Venezuela comes as Russia and the Latin American nation strengthen their economic and military relationship. In July, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a strident critic of President Bush, told reporters in Moscow that he might spend as much as $30 billion buying Russian arms through 2012.
For Chavez, closer ties with Russia serve as a warning to the United States "to be careful about what you do with me," said Ricardo Sucre, a political science professor and analyst at the University of Central Venezuela in Caracas.
It turned out to be an unusual book launch. At the event, scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. Thursday in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, the authors Salvador Frausto and Témoris Grecko (both of them journalists) were to present their profile of Jorge Serrano Limón -- Mexico's most prominent Catholic fundamentalist and antiabortion campaigner.
But when we arrived, attendees of the event were loitering outside on the sidewalk. "No hay luz," they explained with a shrug. There was no electricity. That's not unusual in Mexico City, except that generally power cuts hit whole blocks. This time, the light was out only in the Centro Cultural de Foco where the launch was scheduled to take place.
The organizers joked that it was sabotage, and friends of the authors reported that cables had been deliberately cut.
But we weren't put off. Around 5:30 p.m. we all shuffled into the building carefully, guided by candlelight into our seats. We sat in the darkness waiting for the presentation to start.
"Serrano Limón is a fundamentalist who thinks that the modern world is wrong," stated Roberto Blancarte, a professor and investigator at the Colegio de Mexico and a specialist on religion. The organizers were sitting in front of a black backdrop on which had been mounted a simple, wooden cross.
And then, as Blancarte spoke, the light returned. An electric spotlight suddenly illuminated the speakers, cutting through the darkness like a celestial beam. The audience applauded.
"He epitomizes the right. He summarizes in brief what is a bigger phenomenon," said Blancarte.
"El vocero de Dios: Jorge Serrano Limón y la cruzada para dominar tu sexo, tu vida y tu país," which translates loosely into "God's spokesman: Jorge Serrano Limón and the crusade to dominate your sex, your life and your country," is an in-depth look at the life of the activist, who, according to the authors, "has influenced the Mexican public sphere for the last 20 years."
The rhetoric of Serrano Limón is steeped in Catholicism's most conservative traditions. A devout Catholic who claims to serve God, he at one stage considered the priesthood but instead opted for married life.
Frausto and Grecko report that he has opposed works of theater and art exhibitions, pitted himself against lawmakers and film directors, and planted himself in opposition to the use of condoms, the morning-after pill and the legalization of abortion.
But the controversial activist has a broad base of support in parts of Mexico, as well as from the Roman Catholic Church and the more conservative strands of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party.
Although Serrano Limón wasn't there to defend himself last night, we were told by the authors that he has read the book. His supporters produced the following video in response, in which Serrano Limón says that he is a truly happy man who loves his wife, his children and his job. He describes himself as a common man, like any other, with faults, but as someone who has taken the decision to defend his ideals.
"El Vocero de Dios: Jorge Serrano Limón y la cruzada para dominar tu sexo, tu vida y tu país" is published by Grijalbo, Random House.
-- Deborah Bonello and Cecilia Sanchez in Mexico City
This Los Angeles Times editorial asks why the rules of deportation aren't available to immigrants facing removal.
In the last few years, the number of illegal immigrants in detention who waived their right to plead their case to remain in the United States has shot up from 5,500 in 2004 to 35,000 this year. In all, nearly 100,000 people have agreed to leave the country under "stipulated removal."
Not surprisingly, troubling reports have surfaced of immigrants who say they were encouraged to self-deport without knowing that they had valid legal claims to remain in the U.S. and to have a hearing before a judge. Immigrants' rights groups are suing the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, demanding they divulge their procedures for informing detainees of their rights. The department, which has made only half-hearted attempts to comply, should be made to do so.
In the last two years, immigration authorities have turned over hundreds of pages of documents in response to requests for information -- pages that have been heavily redacted and shed little light on the issues in question -- and say they have no more records to offer. So Wednesday, three nonprofit legal organizations filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, asking the court to compel the government to turn over documents under the Freedom of Information Act. According to one internal memo wrested from the government, such records ought to exist. It says that field offices are to "establish consistent written procedures for reviewing and approving stipulated removal orders." If they are established, why aren't these written procedures available?
Colombian
rocker Juanes ruled the Latin Grammys on Thursday, sweeping awards in
five categories -- including record of the year and album of the year
-- and setting a record for total wins.
Juanes' joy-filled love
song "Me Enamora" won record of the year, song of the year and best
short-form music video. He also took trophies for the year's best album
and best male pop vocal album for "La Vida . . . Es Un Ratico."
After taking the top honor and final trophy,
Juanes spoke to U.S. Latinos: "You have chosen the right president.
Congratulations. It is time to change" -- the last line being the title
of his latest song.
The awards bring his total Latin Grammy wins to 17, breaking Alejandro Sanz's record of 14.
The murder 19 years ago of six Jesuit priests by a U.S.-trained army unit was the turning point in El Salvador's long civil war, an atrocity so grave that it helped force an end to the fighting.
But the soldiers and officers convicted or implicated in the slayings are free under a controversial amnesty law that is receiving new attention thanks to election politics here and a potentially landmark court case in Spain.
Relatives of the priests, who were killed along with their housekeeper and her young daughter, have joined with two human rights organizations and today plan to file suit in Madrid against the generals, colonels and soldiers blamed for the killings.
The plaintiffs are invoking the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which Spanish courts have championed, that allows a case of egregious human rights violation to be heard in a country even if the acts did not take place there and the defendants do not reside there.
Human rights activists in the Americas and Europe said they hoped the Jesuit complaint could be used to fight impunity and bring justice to the victims' families by joining a procession of Spanish court cases that have forced Latin America to confront its violent past. These include suits against Guatemalan military officers accused in the massacre of indigenous citizens and figures in Argentina's "dirty war" against leftist dissidents.
"This has an invaluable historic importance for El Salvador," said David Morales, program coordinator at a legal think tank in San Salvador that specializes in justice issues. "All Salvadoran society has been the victim here. . . . Just knowing the truth has a restorative effect."
That President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama discussed a Colombian free-trade agreement in their first postelection meeting indicates its importance to Bush's legacy and his concern for a nation that believes it gets little respect for its role as a key U.S. ally.
Representatives for Bush and Obama acknowledged that the two men discussed the proposed free-trade deal during their two-hour White House transition session Monday and whether the pact should come up for a vote during the lame-duck congressional session opening early next week.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino denied reports that Bush conditioned his support for a Democratic fiscal stimulus package, including help for the U.S. auto industry, on approval of the trade bill with Colombia.
But the fact that the topic came up at all, amid a welter of other pressing economic and geopolitical issues facing the incoming president, reflects the priority Bush attaches to the agreement in the waning weeks of his administration.
You don't get to be the No. 1 women's golfer in the world by backing down from challenges.
So when a fledgling pro named Lorena Ochoa was approached with the idea of saving an unconventional elementary school in one of Guadalajara's poorest neighborhoods, she didn't flinch.
Photo: Golfer Lorena Ochoa, left, checks the schoolwork of some children at La Barranca elementary school. The school stresses arts and activity-based learning. Credit Monica Marron
Mayor Hugo Torres has always pitched his seaside city as a cut-rate
paradise. But even this relentless hometown booster is stumped these
days: How do you sell the Mexican good life in the midst of a drug war?
The
city's bustling main drag, Benito Juarez Boulevard, has been the scene
of two shootings since September, including a drive-by slaying of a
15-year-old boy and three others in a pet store filled with frenzied
puppies and canaries.
Photo: Horses available for rent for seaside rides rest on the sand in front of the Rosarito Beach Hotel. Their owner said he had had only two customers that day, and the summer was his slowest in 30 years. Credit: Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
Another clearly marked signpost to the future was Latino participation, which has been growing in Los Angeles for decades but which surged to historic levels across the country in this election cycle, according to an unusually comprehensive exit poll conducted by Loyola Marymount University's Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles under the direction of Fernando Guerra. No one predicted at the campaign's outset that more than six out of 10 Latino voters would cast their ballots for the first African American president, but they did.
The significance of that landslide was amplified by the fact that Latinos are clustered in the Western states that Obama pried from the red column. Seventy-three percent of Colorado's Latinos went for the Democratic candidate, as did 76% of Nevada's and 69% of New Mexico's. More striking, Latinos helped deliver to Obama two of the three Sunbelt states crucial to Reagan's first realigning victory. In California, 77% of Latinos went for the Democrat, as did 57% of Florida's. Even the third, Texas, seems to be teetering on the blue precipice.
It's hard to believe that little more than a decade ago, many analysts were predicting that Latinos, mainly Catholic and socially conservative, would be irresistibly drawn into the Republican orbit, much as Italian Americans of similar background had been after World War II in Eastern states.
But this editorial, "Obama must signal change for Latinos," argues that although there are many issues of concern to Latino voters, immigration is a key one and immigration reform must be a priority for President-elect Barack Obama.
In now-blue states such as Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, many Latino voters have suffered housing foreclosures and seen their small businesses battered by the economic crisis. But they have an additional issue: immigration. Although they are U.S. citizens, most have a relative, friend or co-worker who aspires to become a legal resident. When undocumented immigrants are insulted or threatened, Latino citizens feel they are branded too.
Latino voters felt unrepresented, if not betrayed, by the Republican Party. And there's good reason for that. Republicans overwhelmingly supported the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, which launched construction of the 700-mile U.S.-Mexico border fence and made it a crime to aid illegal residents. The law ignited protests across the country by Latinos who vowed to vote in future elections. Furthermore, many were angered by John McCain's retreat from immigration reform for what they saw as a sop to the hard-line Republican base.
This Los Angeles Times editorial picks up the issue of the free-trade pact between Colombia and the United States.
The Colombia Free Trade Agreement is once again a political football in Washington. Almost as soon as Barack Obama won the election, it came into play. Now it is being punted, fumbled, spiked and maybe even hurled in a desperate Hail Mary pass to Congress as its chief supporter, President Bush, prepares to leave office.
Resistance to the pact by labor unions and human rights organizations, both here and in Colombia, remains stiff. And with an incoming Democratic administration, the deal faces significant new obstacles. But the gamesmanship between Democrats and Republicans, unions and rights groups should not obscure one fact: The agreement is good for Colombia and good for the United States.
As Chris Kraul reported yesterday, during a state visit to Mexico, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe enlisted President Felipe Calderon's support to lobby on Colombia's behalf for the bilateral U.S. free-trade agreement.
President Bush has not given up hope either. But President-elect Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, says a trade bill won't be on the Democrats' agenda during the lame-duck congressional session kicking off Monday.
The glittering storefront in this capital's trendy Palermo district once housed an art gallery and then a Chinese restaurant. Now it's a haze of pink: all Barbie, all the time.
Inside, girls face a dazzling constellation of Barbie-labeled outfits and trinkets, watch Barbie DVDs on a flat-screen TV or choose their preferred Barbie hairdo ("Butterfly," "Princess," "Fashion Fever"). A rear door leads to the high point: the Casa de Barbie, complete with life-size Barbie bedroom, Barbie costumes and makeup counters, even a catwalk for showcasing Barbie couture or staging a Barbie disco.
And, everywhere, of course, are dolls. Lots of dolls.
"This place is fantastic," said Michelle Blanchard, 37, accompanying her wide-eyed daughter, Francisca, 4. "For little girls, it's a place of dreams."
Welcome to the world's only stand-alone Barbie store, an "experiential marketing" experiment deemed such a runaway hit that the mercantile temple to Barbiedom may be replicated on a global scale. Coming soon: a five-story Barbie emporium in Shanghai.
Photo: Lucero Gonzalez, 6, reclining on sofa at the Barbie Store. Behind are collections of classic Barbie dolls. Credit: Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times
State and local elections in Venezuela on Nov. 23 will offer a key measure of President Hugo Chavez's popularity. Inflation is pushing 40% and the fiery leader is feeling some budgetary pressure with the price of oil falling below $60 a barrel in trading today, though analysts believe he has enough cash socked away to withstand several months' worth of price declines without his socialist programs becoming severely dented.
Chavez's candidates should maintain control of a majority of the 22-state governorships, benefiting from the popularity of the president's programs that have done much to redistribute the nation's oil wealth.
Still, Chavez's oratory is becoming increasingly incendiary as the voting draws closer, threatening Sunday to call out tanks to "defend the people" if opposition candidate Enrique Salas Feo wins the governorship of Carabobo state.
The state is one of a half dozen of 22 that opposition candidates may win in the voting this month, up from two governorships held by opponents now. As always, Chavez is framing the elections as a referendum on Venezuelan independence from U.S. interventionism and in a talk on Tuesday claimed the oppostion had a plan to disregard the elections and mount violent protests: "Shut up, Bush, you've got nothing to say. Let's hope President Barack Obama assumes a dignified position before the world."
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Chavez's candidates should maintain control of a majority of the 22-state governorships, benefiting from the popularity of the president's programs that have done much to redistribute the nation's oil wealth. 
Chris Kraul
Buenos Aires:
Patrick McDonnell
Caribbean:
Carol Williams
Mexico City:
Hector Tobar
Deborah Bonello
Marla Dickerson
Ken Ellingwood
Reed Johnson
San Diego:
Richard Marosi
Washington:
Nicole Gaouette