Mexicans

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's giant Popocatepetl volcano may generate lava flows, explosions of "growing intensity" and ash that could reach miles away, the National Center for Disaster Prevention said Monday. Officials were preparing evacuation routes and shelters for thousands of people who live in the shadow of Popocatepetl, located 40 miles southeast of Mexico City. Officials have created a 7.5-mile restricted zone around the cone of the volcano. Popo, as the volcano is known, has displayed a "notable increase in activity levels" in the last few days, including tremors and explosive eruptions, according to a statement from the federal government.

President Obama has much to discuss with Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, when they meet in Mexico City this week. No issue, however, is more urgent than the search for peace, justice and dignity for and between our peoples. For seven years, Mexico has been living a nightmare. More than 70,000 people, by some estimates, have been killed and thousands more have been disappeared in the wave of criminal and institutional violence of Mexico's war on drug cartels. The collateral damage is a humanitarian tragedy that requires our leaders to have deep and frank discussions about how to transform the failed policies exacerbating the violence.

MEXICO CITY - Millions of Mexicans voted Sunday to restore to power a once-authoritarian party they dumped 12 years ago, according to preliminary results, while also delivering a harsh rebuke to a government that advanced democratic rule but saw the country plunge into grisly violence. In an initial, partial count released just before midnight, the federal election commission said Enrique Peña Nieto, the telegenic candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was winning about 38% of the vote.

WASHINGTON - President Obama will seek to cement relations with Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, over the next two days with vows of neighborly kinship and future cooperation. But the true test of their ability to work together may be whether they can hold their tongues. Obama's visit to Mexico City comes as the fight over border security and immigration reform has begun to consume Congress. Peña Nieto supports the effort but wants to avoid the mistakes of a predecessor, Vicente Fox, who lobbied for a 2001 immigration reform bill in Congress.

The teenagers and young adults struggled as they rehearsed an ancient Korean song, a kind of lamentation to leaving home. "Uno, dos, tres," began Fermin Kim, 48, a chaperon for the group. Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo. . . . The words burbled out in a discordant drone, tentatively and unsteadily -- sounding very much like, well, Mexicans suddenly asked to sing in Korean.

MEXICO CITY - Adios, Heydar Aliyev, late strongman of distant Azerbaijan. Now that your statue has been hauled away from the Paseo de La Reforma, the Mexican capital's grand boulevard, where will Mexicans go now when they want to meditate on your legacy of KGB membership, fraudulent elections and human rights violations? Early Saturday, in the darkness sometime after midnight, Mexico City officials wrapped up the bronze statue of Aliyev, the ruler of Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003, and ferried it away on a truck.

Re "Independence, spoiled," editorial, Sept. 18 It is clear The Times would prefer that all Mexicans quietly accept the continuation of the same regime that has kept them in poverty. Indeed, intellectual Cuauhtemoc Cardenas won the election in 1988 but did not have the courage to do what the most recent presidential challenger, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is doing. Cardenas failed the Mexican people then, and he fails again by not supporting Lopez Obrador. Mexicans want progress, but not the kind of progress that will keep them poor.

TUCSON - Tourism officials here have long lured visitors and their dollars to the region with images of fantastic desert sunsets, wellness resorts and endless nature trails. But to entice their most prized foreign visitors, they tout great shopping at good prices. Louis Vuitton, Dillard's and Apple attract Tucson's neighbors in Mexico, who account for nearly 68% of its international tourists. For decades, millions of Mexican shoppers from neighboring Sonora and Sinaloa have trekked to Arizona for a full day, and sometimes a long weekend, dedicated to buying clothes, electronics and other goods.

The commentary by Jorge Castaneda of May 8 and your editorial of the same day lament Mexico's apparently insurmountable economic problems, which are highlighted by a 50% inflation rate, 2 million people unemployed, an ever-rising crime rate and uncontrollable illegal immigration to the United States. But, neither article nor editorial identifies the cause of the problems or suggests a remedy. Mexicans are victims of Catholic dogma, which forbids them from practicing birth control. As a consequence, their population increased from 17 million in 1930 to 91 million in 1995; it doubled in the last 28 years, and at this rate it is expected to double again in the next 40 years.

Every morning during television coverage of the World Cup, on the Mexican equivalent of the "Today" show, co-hosts chat, trade barbs and yuck it up. Behind them, actors in blackface makeup, dressed in fake animal skins and wild "Afro" wigs, gyrate, wave spears and pretend to represent a cartoonish version of South Africa. Yes, in the 21st century, blackface characters on a major television network. But this is Mexico, and definitions of racism are complicated and influenced by the country's own tortured relationship with invading powers and indigenous cultures.

LAREDO, Texas - This border city is trying to clear its name. It is so conjoined with its Mexican sister city across the Rio Grande, Nuevo Laredo, that the two are often referred to as "Los Dos Laredos," or simply Laredo. That was great for tourism in happier days. But as drug cartel violence exploded in Nuevo Laredo in recent years, pictures broadcast around the world of gunfights, decapitated bodies piled in abandoned minivans, and severed heads dumped in coolers often bore the same headline: "Laredo.

WASHINGTON - President Obama travels to Mexico this week amid signs that the relationship between the United States and its southern neighbor's new government faces a new period of uncertainty after years of unprecedented closeness forged by the deadly war against Mexican drug cartels. The government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is said to be wary of the level of U.S. involvement in security affairs that characterized the administration of his predecessor, Felipe Calderon.

The heavyweight boxing title aspirations of Riverside's Chris Arreola ended in a bloody mess Saturday night. The hard-punching, clever-talking Arreola, marketed as a great hope to become the first heavyweight champion of Mexican heritage, took a convincing beating from unheralded Bermane Stiverne. The boisterous, diehard Arreola fans in attendance in Ontario's Citizens Business Bank Arena, were they to be realistic, had to leave with the realization that their 32-year-old hero likely had had his last big shot.

The candidates for Los Angeles mayor proved they could be almost as disagreeable before a Spanish-language audience as they have been in front of English speakers - challenging each other's integrity in a debate Friday night on a Spanish-language television station. Councilman Eric Garcetti renewed his charge that opponent Wendy Greuel is beholden to the union that represents Department of Water and Power workers, while Greuel, the city controller, repeated her rebuttal that her rival is a hypocrite who has supported raises and other benefits for the same workers.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's leading newsmagazine says one of its investigative reporters has been threatened with kidnapping and possible death by government officials in the coastal state of Veracruz. Proceso magazine, in a statement posted on its website, said journalist Jorge Carrasco was in Veracruz this week reporting on the killing of another Proceso reporter there when he learned of the threats. (link in Spanish) “We have received information over the presumed intention of officials and former officials of the Veracruz state government to attack the physical integrity of the journalist,” the magazine said.

Shawnee Mission District Stadium in Overland Park, Kansas, isn't the kind of place most people associate with sporting history. A fake-turf football field ringed by a synthetic track and grandstands seating just 6,150, the nondescript stadium's main tenants are a pair of local high schools. But Shawnee Mission played host Saturday to the inaugural match of the National Women's Soccer League, a star-studded eight-team professional league that is promising to change the landscape for the sport in North America.

Lomas de Chapultepec, a neighborhood of huge homes behind high stone and brick walls, wakes up each morning to the sound of sweeping. As the dawn's dark fades to light, servants emerge from behind gates and, with witches' brooms, brush away the leaves and twigs and lavender jacaranda petals that have fallen overnight. Maids in pastel uniforms, security guards, gardeners and chauffeurs — these are the public denizens of this super-rich enclave. The actual homeowners and permanent residents are rarely seen.

The International Court of Justice ruled Monday that the United States violated its order last year when Texas proceeded with the execution of a Mexican national convicted of murder and rape. The court, based in The Hague, said the United States remains bound by a 2004 ruling to review the cases of 51 Mexican citizens on death row despite its failure to do so in the past.

  MEXICO CITY - Mexican drug cartels are striving to become “key players in the European drugs market,”  Europol officials said Friday. Their statement , issued from Europol headquarters in the Hague, said that Mexican criminals have become “global market coordinators” in trafficking cocaine and synthetic drugs to Europe. Police officials also alleged that Mexicans were moving firearms from southeast Europe and trading them with cocaine dealers in the Americas. They also specifically cited the Zetas cartel--perhaps the most ruthless of the Mexican gangs - for reportedly trafficking human beings “for sexual exploitation” from northeast Europe to Mexico.

SAN DIEGO -- A day after ending an 0-for-17 skid and collecting his first two hits of the season, Luis Cruz was still smiling. "I felt like the old me," Cruz said Thursday. Cruz acknowledged he was excited when he singled to right field in his first at-bat the previous night. "Almost as excited as I was when I got my first hit in '08," the third baseman said. A.J. Ellis hit a home run in the at-bat that followed, but Cruz said, "I think I was more excited than him. " Cruz credited his father, former Mexican league standout Luis Cruz Sr., for helping him break out of his slump.