The Guatemalan daily El Periódico and Fundación MEPI have published an exposé of corruption in the current Guatemalan government. The story, with information and documents gathered during the first year in office of president Otto Perez Molina and vice president Roxana Baldetti, detailed a multi-million dollar web of corruption in a country where 50 per cent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. After the story was published on 8 April, the newspaper was immediately the hit with a cyber attack, according to El Periodico’s publisher, José Rubén Zamora. The website went dead and nobody could read the story for a few days. Readers who did manage to access the website had their computers infected with a virus. [...]

A new telecommunications reform that was presented in Mexico by the government of Enrique Peña Nieto has been heralded worldwide.  The reform bill seeks to amend the Mexican Constitution and will open the telephony and television industries. The changes had been recommended last year by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation  and Development, which said the lack of competition in the telecommunications sector cost Mexico $25 billion dollars a year and offered among the highest prices in the world to consumers. The Mexican Congress’ lower house approved the law on Thursday March 21 and the Mexican Senate is expected to approve it in April.  The version approved opens radio, television and telecommunications to foreign investment.  The reform was presented to Congress [...]

Ciudad Acuña, a tiny town on the Mexican side of Del Rio, Texas, has been in the news regularly because of drug-related violence.  The town,  resides in the state of Coahuila, which has been dominated by the ultra-violent Zetas. A competing organised crime group, the Sinaloa Cartel has been trying to take control of this territory in recent months, creating a surge of violence. Just last October, Jose Eduardo Moreira Rodriguez, the son of Humberto Moreira, a high-ranking politician from the Partido Institucional Revolucionario (PRI) and former governor of the state of Cohauila was kidnapped and killed, a drug cartel with the cooperation of a top police official. But police in this city have decided to focus on a more serious threat — miniskirts. General [...]

Until a couple of months ago, few in Mexico City knew who Heydar Aliyev was, and even fewer of those were aware that a marble and bronze statue erected in his honour sat smack in the middle of Reforma Avenue, one of Mexico’s most recognised streets. A plaque standing before the statue detailed the former president of Azerbaijan’s “loyalty to the universal ideals of world peace”. But the presence of the dead dictator sparked controversy in Mexico City. The conflict over how Mexico City accepted $5 million dollars from Azerbaijan to build the statue, as well as a park, has been brewing since November. The agreement to build the statue was reached by the leftist government of the Partido de la Revolucion [...]

A 28-year-old middle school teacher at a private school in Mexico City has been fired after showing her students the 2008 film Milk, which tells the story of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was murdered in San Francisco in the 1970s. Mexico’s capital has been celebrated as a champion of gay rights in the region, permitting civil unions in 2006 and approving gay marriage in 2009. However, the scandal around the dismissal of the teacher, Cecilia Hernandez, shows some of the ongoing battles for gay rights in the city. Until December last year, Hernandez was an adjunct professor of civics and ethics at Lomas Hill middle school, which serves a well-heeled community on the outskirts of Mexico City. In [...]