Latest news with #Chiapas
BBC News
a day ago
- General
- BBC News
Mexico election: Indigenous lawyer Hugo Aguilar leads race for chief justice
An indigenous lawyer, Hugo Aguilar, looks set to become Mexico's new chief justice following Sunday's ground-breaking judicial were asked to choose the country's entire judiciary by direct ballot for the first time after a radical reform introduced by the governing Morena almost all the votes for the Supreme Court counted, Mr Aguilar was in the lead for the top Claudia Sheinbaum declared the elections a success, even though turnout was low at around 13%. Electoral authorities said Mr Aguilar, who is a member of the Mixtec indigenous group, was ahead of Lenia Batres, the candidate who had the backing of the governing Morena party. Hugo Aguilar has long campaigned for the rights of Mexico's indigenous groups, which make up almost 20% of the population according to the 2020 census in which people were asked how the identified themselves. For the past seven years, the 51-year-old constitutional law expert has served as the rights co-ordinator for the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI).He was also a legal advisor to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) - an indigenous guerrilla group which staged a short-lived uprising in southern Chiapas state in 1994 - during the EZLN's negotiations with the government in his campaign for the post of chief justice he had said that it was "the turn of the indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples to take a seat in the Supreme Court", accusing the highest court of being stuck in the past and wedded to "principles which don't drive real change for the people". Candidates with links to the governing Morena party look set to win the majority of the remaining eight posts on the Supreme Court, according to early of the judicial reform which led to the direct election of all the country's judges say the dominance of the governing party is undermining the judiciary's who backed the reform argued that it would make the judiciary more democratic and beholden to the turnout was the lowest in any federal vote held in Mexico, suggesting that there was little enthusiasm among voters for choosing members of the judiciary directly.
CBS News
2 days ago
- General
- CBS News
5 police officers dead after being "attacked and ambushed" in Mexico; patrol vehicle set on fire
Why Trump is pushing military help for Mexico to help fight cartels Why Trump is pushing military help for Mexico Why Trump is pushing military help for Mexico Five police officers died Monday after they were ambushed by an armed group in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, local officials said. The attack happened in the town of Frontera Comalapa, where the Chiapas state police officers were on patrol when they were ambushed. "Members of the state police were attacked and ambushed," the governor of Chiapas, Eduardo Ramirez, said on social media. Ramirez identified the slain officers as Guillermo Cortés Morales, Jesús Sánchez Pérez, Joel Martínez Pérez, Brenda Lizbeth Toalá Blanco and Pedro Hernández Hernánde. The local Security Secretariat said it had deployed more than 1,000 officers to "attend to the situation and guarantee security in the area." Five police officers died Monday after they were ambushed by an armed group in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, local officials said. Chiapas State Governor Eduardo Ramirez The agency also shared an image of the slain officers' charred patrol vehicle after it was completely engulfed in flames on a roadway. Later, the agency announced on social media they had arrested a man in connection to the murders. Authorities said the suspect was hiding in the weeds about half a mile from the crime scene, carrying an AK-47 rifle and a backpack with military uniforms. Officials did not immediately give information about other possible suspects. In recent months, Chiapas has been shaken by a bloody turf war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel — the country's two most powerful criminal organizations. Chiapas has been described by the InSight Crime think tank as "a major smuggling hub of both drugs and migrants." In December, authorities said they recovered more than 30 bodies from pits in Chiapas.
CTV News
4 days ago
- General
- CTV News
Mexico's first judicial elections stir controversy and confusion among voters
An electoral worker prepares ballot boxes for the country's first judicial elections in Mexico City, June 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano) MEXICO CITY — Mexico held its first-ever judicial elections on Sunday, stirring controversy and sowing confusion among voters still struggling to understand a process set to transform the country's court system. The election appeared to get off to a slow start. Some voting centers in Mexico City, the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and the southern state of Chiapas opened with no one or only a handful of people waiting to vote. Experts had warned that turnout in the historic elections could be extremely low, due to the mindboggling array of unfamiliar choices and the fact that voting for judges is entirely new. Mexico's ruling party, Morena, overhauled the court system late last year, fueling protests and criticism that the reform is an attempt by those in power to seize on their political popularity to gain control of the branch of government until now out of their reach. 'It's an effort to control the court system, which has been a sort of thorn in the side' of those in power, said Laurence Patin, director of the legal organization Juicio Justo in Mexico. 'But it's a counter-balance, which exists in every healthy democracy.' Now, instead of judges being appointed on a system of merit and experience, Mexican voters will choose between some 7,700 candidates vying for more than 2,600 judicial positions. In a middle-class Mexico City neighborhood, poll workers organized the color-coded ballots by federal and local contests. Four people were waiting to vote when the location opened. Esteban Hernández, a 31-year-old veterinary student, said he didn't agree with electing judges and doesn't support Morena, but came to vote because 'since there isn't much participation, my vote will count more.' He had studied the candidates on a website listing their qualifications and decided to pick those who had doctorates. At the same polling place, Octavio Arellano, a 67-year-old consultant, quickly made his selections, referring to handwritten notes he carried with him. He's also a critic of the process, but voted for members of the Supreme Court, as well as disciplinary and electoral tribunals, to 'influence the most important' races. He said he spoiled his votes for the local judicial positions. At a polling place in a park in Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, Francisco Torres de León, a 62-year-old retired teacher, came prepared, having studied the ballots and his selections. He marked all the ballots in about five minutes, but even so, said, 'the process is laborious because there are too many candidates and positions that they're going to occupy.' Hugo de León Roblero, 73, also a retired teacher, took about 20 minutes to fill out the ballots at the same polling place, but supported the process, which he said was a necessary change, 'even though there's some confusion about how to vote.' Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum and party allies have said the elections are a way to purge the court system of corruption in a country that has long faced high levels of impunity. Critics say the vote could damage democracy and open the judicial system up further to organized crime and other corrupt actors hoping to get a grip on power. That process has only grown more chaotic in the run-up to the vote. Civil society organizations like Defensorxs have raised red flags about a range of candidates running for election, including lawyers who represented some of Mexico's most feared cartel leaders and local officials who were forced to resign from their positions due to corruption scandals. Also among those putting themselves forward are ex-convicts imprisoned for years for drug-trafficking to the United States and a slate of candidates with ties to a religious group whose spiritual leader is behind bars in California after pleading guilty to sexually abusing minors. At the same time, voters have been plagued by confusion over a voting process that Patin warned has been hastily thrown together. Voters often have to choose from sometimes more than a hundred candidates who are not permitted to clearly voice their party affiliation or carry out widespread campaigning. As a result, many Mexicans say they're going into the vote blind. Mexico's electoral authority has investigated voter guides being handed out across the country, in what critics say is a blatant move by political parties to stack the vote in their favor. 'Political parties weren't just going to sit with their arms crossed,' Patin said. Miguel Garcia, a 78-year-old former construction worker, stood in front of the country's Supreme Court on Friday peering at a set of posters, voter guides with the faces and numbers of candidates. He was fiercely scribbling down their names on a small scrap of paper and said that he had traveled across Mexico City to try to inform himself ahead of the vote, but he couldn't find any information other than outside the courthouse. 'In the neighborhood where I live, there's no information for us,' he said. 'I'm confused, because they're telling us to go out and vote but we don't know who to vote for.' María Verza, Megan Janetsky and Fabiola Sánchez, The Associated Press AP journalists Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, Alba Aléman in Xalapa, Mexico and Fernando Llano in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Asharq Al-Awsat
13-05-2025
- Health
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Scientists in Mexico Develop Tortilla for People with No Fridge
Peering through a microscope, food scientist Raquel Gomez studies microorganisms that add nutrients and preserve tortillas for several weeks without refrigerators -- a luxury in impoverished Mexican communities. The humble tortilla is a Mexican staple, consumed in tacos and other dishes by millions every day, from the Latin American nation's arid northern deserts to its tropical southern jungle. Most Mexicans buy fresh corn tortillas from small neighborhood shops. The wheat flour version developed by Gomez and her team contains probiotics -- live microorganisms found in yogurt and other fermented foods. As well as the nutritional benefits, the fermented ingredients mean the tortilla can be kept for up to a month without refrigeration, much longer than a homemade one, according to its creators. It was developed "with the most vulnerable people in mind," Gomez, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told AFP in her laboratory. Nearly 14 percent of children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition in Mexico, according to official figures. In Indigenous communities, the figure is around 27 percent. The tortilla developed by Gomez is not yet commercially available, but it could benefit people like Teresa Sanchez. The 46-year-old housewife smokes meat using a wood-burning stove in her house with wooden walls and a metal roof. Like most of her neighbors in the town of Oxchuc, in the southern state of Chiapas, Sanchez has no refrigerator, so she uses the methods handed down by her Indigenous Tzeltal ancestors. "My mother taught me and grandparents always do it this way," she told AFP. "Where are you going to get a refrigerator if there's no money?" Less than two-thirds of people in Chiapas, a poverty-plagued region with a large Indigenous population, have a refrigerator -- the lowest among Mexico's 32 states. The average maximum temperature in Chiapas rose from 30.1 to 32 degrees Celsius between 2014 and 2024, according to official estimates. Half of its territory is considered vulnerable to climate change. While Oxchuc is located in a mountainous, temperate area, the lack of refrigerators forces its inhabitants to rely on traditional food preservation methods. "We think about what we're going to eat and how many of us there are. We boil it, and if there's some left over, we boil it again," Sanchez said. Sometimes meat is salted and left to dry under the sun. Tortillas are stored in containers made from tree bark. For that reason, Sanchez only shops for the bare necessities, although her budget is limited anyway. "I don't have that much money to buy things," she said. Gomez and her team use prebiotics -- which are mainly found in high-fiber foods -- to feed probiotic cultures and produce compounds beneficial to health, she said. Thanks to the fermented ingredients, no artificial preservatives are needed in the laboratory developed tortilla, Gomez said. That is another benefit because such additives have potentially toxic effects, said Guillermo Arteaga, a researcher at the University of Sonora. One of the most commonly used additives in processed wheat flour tortillas is calcium propionate, which is considered harmful to the colon's microbiota, Arteaga said. Although her tortilla is made from wheat flour -- a type eaten mainly in northern Mexico -- Gomez does not rule out using the same method for corn tortillas, which are preferred by many Mexicans but can go bad quickly in high temperatures. The researchers patented their tortilla in 2023. UNAM signed a contract with a company to market the food, but the agreement fell through. Gomez, who won an award in December from the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, still hopes to find partners to distribute her tortillas. She is confident that even though they were developed in a laboratory, consumers will still want to eat them.
Vogue
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Francisco Cancino Mexico Fall 2025 Collection
Francisco Cancino has entered a bold new phase. With La Última Ciudad—the final chapter in his tetralogy dedicated to Mexico City—the Chiapas-born designer demonstrated just how far he's come, and how attuned he is to the sociocultural forces shaping both his work and his country. Set against the historical weight of Tlatelolco, one of CDMX's most politically charged and architecturally distinct zones, Cancino paid tribute not just to place but to resistance. 'It was the last city to fall during the colonial era,' the designer said backstage. That spirit of endurance informed every thread of the collection. For a designer known for refined volumes and artisanal finishes, this was an unexpected—and welcome—departure. Cancino injected his lineup with streetwear codes, fluid tailoring, and a surprising amount of denim. Structured separates mingled with roomy silhouettes, graphic prints, and gauzy layers, creating a new tension between softness and edge. The overall effect was more minimalist, yet the craftsmanship remained meticulous. The styling did a lot of the work. Every look was paired with sneakers—a stark pivot from previous seasons. In the streets of Mexico City, Cancino's romantic dresses are often spotted combined with basics. Here, he leaned into that authenticity, giving the collection a casual, youthful energy that made it feel immediate. Cancino also pushed the label's artistic language forward. Inspired by designers like Thom Browne, he embroidered some of the garments with references to Tlatelolco—symbols and fragments tied to the site's complex history. He executed many of the embroideries himself, adding an intimate, almost archival touch to the work. Interestingly, this more conceptual approach yielded one of his most commercially appealing collections to date, a sign of his growing confidence and clarity. The finale played to Molotov's 'Gimme Tha Power,' the subversive Mexican rock anthem, closing with the explosive chant: '¡Viva México, cabrones!' It wasn't just theatrics. It was the punctuation mark on a collection rooted in place, protest, and power—and one that marked Cancino's most compelling evolution yet.
