Dedicated news junkies like myself can generally identify trends. But this week the news about Mexico has some of everything—the good, the bad, the hopeful and the bleak. If I was an infographic specialist and did a scatter plot diagram of Mexican news stories, the result would be either a blood spatter or a constellation, depending on your point of view.
What to make of it?
A. Possible changing Mexican narrative: economy vice drugs
B. Dead women in the news get more attention than dead men
C. I’ll never run out of grist for the Emilia Cruz mystery series.
Here are some of the stories in the news this week:
Port-mortem on death of Maria Santos Gorrostieta
The UK’s Daily Mail online edition carried the most comprehensive story I found. CNN had a video story and Fox News Latino carried some of the same pictures as the Daily Mail. BTW, I wrote a blog post when the news of her death broke last week.
Drug deaths and debate
Miss Sinaloa is killed: Fox News Latino reported that the local beauty queen had a gun in her hands at the time of her shooting.
Mass graves in Chihuahua: Fox News Latino story
Noted law professor on drug war tactics in The Daily Beast
Jailed cartel leader La Barbie accuses top officials with bribes/corruption
Mexican police deny La Barbie charges, reported by CNN
Pres-Elect Enrique Peña Nieto Goes to Washington
Peña Nieto met with President Obama and lawmakers with a message of expanding economic ties. Here are stories by ABC/Univision and the BBC which often has an interesting perspective on Mexico.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20521268
And for fun: Senator John McCain’s picture of EPN and new friends: https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/273812798759378945/photo/1
The Economist on the US-Mexican relationship
The Coming Presidential Transition
LA Times on How Times and Ties have changed
Noted author Alan Riding on the shift in the NY Times
The Washington Post: Mexico “subdued” ahead of ceremony
Outgoing President Felipe Calderon
Calderon will take a 1 year fellowship to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government where according to Reuters he will “meet with students, collaborate with scholars and researchers and help develop case studies on policy challenges.”
Defending His Record, from CNN
Mexico Through the Lens of a Survey
Management consulting firm Vianovo, together with national marketing communications and advertising company GSD&M, conducted a survey on US views of Mexico. Upshot: 50% unfavorable rating, only 2 points below Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden’s birthplace.
At the Table
Calvin Trillin writes enticingly about food in Oaxaca in this week’s New Yorker
23 Chicago-area Mexican restaurants to receive awards
Fashion
ABC/Univision profiles a designer in Oaxaca
