Latest news with #UniversityofGuadalajara
Boston Globe
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Trump's cartel order revives ‘bitter' memories in Latin America
But up and down much of Latin America, any whisper of reviving such actions could also unleash a chain reaction resulting in a surge in anti-American sentiment. The news of Trump's order has already intensified a wariness against intervention from abroad, even in Ecuador and other countries plagued by violent drug wars in recent years. 'I'm a right-wing conservative, so I want armed citizens and the military actually shooting,' said Patricio Endara, 46, a businessperson in Quito, the Ecuadorian capital. 'But I wouldn't agree with having foreign soldiers in Ecuador.' Advertisement That skepticism draws from the bitter memories left by the long record of US military interventions in the region, whether through direct or indirect action, as during Colombia's long internal war. 'Those are formulas that have shown, to the point of exhaustion, their failure,' Iván Cepeda, a Colombian senator, said in an interview. These kinds of interventions 'inflict immense damage,' said Fernando González Davidson, a Guatemalan scholar, pointing to how such actions often strove for regime change. 'The U.S. leaves power in the hands of a corrupt and criminal class aligned with its own interests.' Advertisement A United States-backed coup in 1954 in Guatemala ousted a democratically elected leader over concerns that a land reform project threatened United Fruit Co., a powerful American corporation with large tracts of land there. In the decades that followed, that Guatemalan coup became a rallying cry across the region by exposing US Cold War policy as a tool for protecting US interests over democratic principles and national sovereignty. Long before the US military's involvement in the region became so contentious, President James Monroe's assertion in 1823 that the United States could use its military in Latin America had more bark than bite, historians say. But in the 1840s, President James K. Polk invoked the doctrine to justify the Mexican-American War, which produced the United States conquest of Mexican lands now comprising states such as California, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. That humiliating outcome, and other US military interventions in Mexico in the 1910s, profoundly shaped Mexico's political identity, fostering a strong sense of nationalism that is often in opposition to the United States. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico tapped into such sentiment Friday when she rejected the use of US military forces in her country. She made it explicitly clear that Mexico has ruled out any kind of 'invasion.' 'Unilateral US military action inside Mexico would be disastrous for bilateral cooperation on issues like migration and security,' said Arturo Santa-Cruz, an expert on US-Mexico relations at the University of Guadalajara. Advertisement Territorial expansion came into play again during the Spanish-American War in 1898, solidifying the United States' emergence as a global power when it took Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain. President Theodore Roosevelt followed in 1903 by sending warships to support a revolt by separatists in Colombia. They formed Panama and gave the United States control over the Canal Zone, which Panama fully regained only in 1999. Roosevelt created his own corollary to the Monroe Doctrine the next year, claiming that the United States should exert 'police power' in the Americas when it found cases of flagrant 'wrongdoing.' This pivot turbocharged US interventions, and protecting American property often was the justification. In Cuba alone, US forces intervened on three occasions from 1906 to 1922. During the Cold War, the United States found new ways to intervene. This included supporting coups that ousted democratically elected leaders in Guatemala, Brazil, and Chile. US forces also kept intervening with boots on the ground in places including the Dominican Republic and Grenada, driven by concerns about communists in these countries. So many interventions had the effect of unifying much of Latin America around the issue of sovereignty. Such positioning was on display when Latin American countries recently closed ranks to oppose Trump's threats to regain the Panama Canal. 'There's been an iron will among Latin Americans to define one of their core values as national sovereignty and nonintervention,' said Alan McPherson, a historian at Temple University in Philadelphia. Even as the Cold War was easing in 1989, the United States once again intervened in Panama to depose its de facto leader, Manuel Noriega, who was wanted by US authorities on drug trafficking charges. Advertisement For the Americans, it was 'Operation Just Cause,' said Efraín Guerrero, a community leader who gives walking tours in Panama City to keep alive the memory of the US invasion. 'But for us, it became 'Forgetting Forbidden,' because we have to remember all those who died.' That intervention could provide a template for a similar action in a country like Venezuela, where the United States has doubled a reward, to $50 million, for information leading to the arrest of its leader, Nicolás Maduro, whom US officials accuse of links to gangs such as Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. Since the news of Trump's move appeared Friday, some critics of the Venezuelan regime have called for the US military to do just that, asking the US president to order US troops to go after Maduro, just as they targeted Panama's president in 1989. 'Let's hope he does it,' said a Venezuelan woman in the city of Maracaibo, who asked that her name not appear for fear of Maduro. 'This is what we have been waiting for, for years -- for Maduro to leave or for Trump to take him. We Venezuelans would happily give him away.' 'This move or threat by the Trump administration,' said Christopher Sabatini, a Latin America expert at the London-based Chatham House, 'is going to really touch that historic and deeply felt popular nerve' about US interventions in Latin America. However, he said, throughout history there was also, often, 'a particular sort of partisan faction that was lobbying the United States to get involved.' This article originally appeared in Advertisement
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
First baby born from robot-controlled IVF in clinical trial
The world's first baby conceived through robot-controlled fertilization has been born, researchers say. The boy was born to a 40-year-old woman in Guadalajara, Mexico, following a previous in vitro fertilization attempt that had produced only one mature egg and no embryos, researchers said. Her newborn was conceived using a fully automated, digitally controlled version of an IVF procedure called intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. Remote operators in Guadalajara and in New York -- some 2,300 miles apart -- oversaw the automated system as it selected a sperm, prepared it for injection, and then injected it into a waiting egg. In ICSI, skilled lab technicians manually inject a single sperm directly into an egg, potentially creating an embryo that can then be implanted into the mother. The process involves 23 painstaking steps, and results can vary between technicians, researchers said. To try to improve the process, a research team created an automated workstation in which these steps are performed under AI control or under the digital control of a remote operator. 'With AI, the system autonomously selects sperm and precisely immobilizes its midsection with a laser ready for injection - executing this rapid, precise process with a level of accuracy beyond human capability," lead researcher Gerardo Mendizabal Ruiz, director of the Computational Perception Laboratory at the University of Guadalajara, said in a news release. For this study, five eggs were assigned to fertilization with the automated ISCI system, while three were fertilized by human lab technicians using standard methods. The eggs came from a 23-year-old donor, and were injected with sperm from the new mother's 43-year-old partner. Four of the five injected eggs in the automated system achieved fertilization, compared with all three in the standard method group. One high-quality embryo fertilized with the automated system was transferred into the mother, who became pregnant and gave birth to a healthy baby boy, researchers said. The system "represents a transformative solution that promises to enhance precision, improve efficiency, and ensure consistent outcomes," Jacques Cohen, an embryologist with Conceivable Life Sciences in New York, said in a news release. Conceivable Life Sciences created the automated system and funded this clinical trial. The entire automated fertilization procedure took an average of about 10 minutes per egg, slightly longer than routine, manual ICSI, researchers reported. "We expect to reduce procedure time significantly" as the automated process is further honed, Mendizabal-Ruiz said. Next, researchers plan to validate the system's effectiveness by testing its performance in a clinical trial involving more cases. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Reproductive BioMedicine Online. More information The Cleveland Clinic has more on intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Los Alegres del Barranco Apologizes After Controversial Concert Imagery Linked to Cartel Leader
Mexican band Los Alegres del Barranco spoke out for the first time on Wednesday (April 2) about the controversial concert where they projected images of the leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), Nemesio 'El Mencho' Oseguera Cervantes, in an auditorium at the University of Guadalajara last weekend. The incident caused the United States to cancel the work and tourist visas of the group's members. In a statement and video posted on their social media, the Sinaloan group offered an apology for the events that occurred on Saturday (March 29) during their performance at the Telmex Auditorium, and stated that, as a group, 'it was never our intention to create controversy, much less cause offense.' More from Billboard U.S. Cancels Visas for Mexican Group After Showing Cartel Leader Photos in Concert The Weeknd's 'Call Out My Name' Video Reaches 1 Billion YouTube Views Johnny Tillotson, Iconic Country & Pop Singer Behind 'Poetry in Motion,' Dies at 86 The band — who has released some songs with clear references to narcoculture — reaffirms that their music is inspired by telling popular stories within Mexican music. 'We will take more rigorous measures on the visual and narrative content of our shows,' he added. The statement from the corrido group — who perform in a genre that has occasionally made clear references to narco-culture and famous cartel leaders since its origins over a century ago — came a day after U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau confirmed on Tuesday (April 1) in a post on X that the government of that country had canceled the visas of the members of the Mexican group following the projection of images 'that glorify drug traffickers.' 'In the Trump Administration, we take our responsibility regarding the access of foreigners to our country very seriously. We are not going to roll out the red carpet for those who glorify criminals and terrorists,' Landau stated in both English and Spanish. The incident, which has caused great controversy and outrage in Mexico, was condemned on Monday (March 31) by Mexico's President, Claudia Sheinbaum, and prompted the Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office to launch an investigation for 'advocating crime.' U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on February 20 the designation of eight cartels — including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — and transnational organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT). On Tuesday, the governor of Jalisco, Pablo Lemus, stated in a message on X that his government supports the measures taken by the University of Guadalajara to prevent concerts from glorifying criminal acts, such as what occurred over the weekend at the Telmex Auditorium. Videos show the moment when attendees at the concert titled 'Los Señores del Corrido' (The Lords of Corridos) erupted in jubilation as images of the drug lord were projected, further fueling controversy and outrage in Mexico. In a statement, the Telmex Auditorium distanced itself from the events, explaining that the venue, 'has no involvement in the selection of the repertoire, speeches, or audiovisual material that the artists choose to share with their audience.' However, it acknowledged that the images of the drug lord could be considered as 'advocating crime.' The controversy over the alleged homage to the drug trafficker comes after the debate over the way in which the cartel founded in that western Mexican state allegedly uses clandestine ranches to recruit people to the criminal group through deceitful job offers. As reported by federal authorities and the media, a raid by authorities at Rancho Izaguirre in the municipality of Teuchitlán revealed the spot where acts of torture and murders were allegedly committed, actions denounced in March by the Guerreros Buscadores collective, a civilian corps focused on finding missing and disappeared loved ones. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
