
Hostages of extortion in Mexico
EL PAÍS takes a look at this crime, one of the most common in the country and one that gets rarely reported

EL PAÍS takes a look at this crime, one of the most common in the country and one that gets rarely reported

After the death of El Perris, head of security, the government has captured hitmen leader Moisés Barnabé, delivering a new blow to the dwindling faction of the Sinaloa Cartel

The professional assassins carefully planned the attack, using a clean weapon and three stolen vehicles with fake license plates to cover their tracks

The former agent, a witness in the Menchito trial, was murdered exactly 10 years after surviving the downing of a helicopter in a failed operation to capture ‘El Mencho’

El Mencho ordered trailers to be set alight and highways blocked in Michoacán, Jalisco, and Guanajuato. Two police officers were killed, but no arrests were made: ‘We’ve never seen blockades of this scale’

The Jalisco New Generation Cartel is reacting to increasing pressure from the Mexican government, which has targeted high-ranking bosses and important logistics operators

In less than a week, at least 17 clandestine cemeteries with dozens of human remains have been uncovered in Sinaloa, Baja California Sur and Colima

A police commander was shot dead Tuesday after months of murders of officers, activists, and civilians at the hands of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel

On the same day, the Treasury Department sanctioned the two leaders of the criminal organization, a Georgia court indicted them, and the State Department offered $8 million for their capture

Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, free after serving a 40-year sentence, went from marijuana smuggler to cocaine trafficker with the help of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Rafael Caro Quintero, until their downfall after the murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena

‘Don Neto,’ convicted of the murder of DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena and Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala in 1985, served four decades in prison

Without passports and trapped by a sealed border, hundreds of Venezuelans seek repatriation at their embassy after being persecuted and kidnapped at the border

The internal war that has weakened the Sinaloa Cartel has only strengthened its main rivals, but the pressure from the United States to capture its leader, along with the discovery of the Teuchitlán ranch, has refocused attention on the brutal organization

Five women who are looking for missing family members across Mexico have denounced Claudia Sheinbaum’s failure to address the issue during her presidency. They accuse her of only taking action following the discovery of a mass grave in the town of Teuchitlán. These women also highlight the inaction of the prosecutors’ offices and the threats they’ve received from the cartels

In the border city of Mexicali, hundreds of addicts defy the government’s rhetoric that drug use does not exist in Mexico. They are not included in the official statistics and far from a political priority. Many pass through Verter, the first supervised drug consumption center on the continent

A judge’s blocking of the transfer of Abraham Oseguera, brother of the CJNG leader, to the U.S. is added to his arrest last year and release nine days later. The then-Mexican president considered it proof of the corruption of the judicial system

The most famous defender of the existence of UFOs in Mexico welcomes EL PAÍS into his house. In an underground dwelling, surrounded by nature, he discusses his encounters with aliens, the time that he heard the Virgin of Guadalupe, or his speech in Congress

Kurt Cobain imitated them, R.E.M. supported them, the Red Hot Chili Peppers would never have existed without them. The most indefinable group of the English scene of the 1970s says goodbye: ‘We were never commercial. We never participated in that big spectacle’

The Secretariat of the Navy seized 1,500 kilos of opioid pills in the Mexican state of Sinaloa amid the ongoing cartel war between Los Chapitos and the faction loyal to Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada

He started by documenting the protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, was elected at 23 as a representative for his Brooklyn district, and by 26 had successfully passed a law aimed at facilitating housing access for millions

We visited Handshake Speakeasy in Mexico City, which has just been enshrined by the ‘World’s 50 Best Bars’ list. We found a place that imitates the speakeasies of the Roaring Twenties, and where you can only stay for 90 minutes

The Ukrainian human rights lawyer talks to EL PAÍS about war crimes committed by the Russia, the weakness of the international justice system, and the accusations of genocide in Gaza

Farming and mining towns between Michoacán and Colima are targets for the cartels. Their inhabitants try to protect themselves and have been asking for a stronger state security presence in the region for years

The partner of the Sinaloa Cartel capo is back, post-prison, to promote her new project: starring in a music video for a corrido about her life sung by Mariel Colón, the narco lawyer-turned-performer

The anti-war student movement that has occupied campuses across the United States spreads with the birth of Latin America’s first pro-Palestine camp at UNAM, the storied Mexican university

The drug, which was already used as an opioid adulterant in the US and Canada and which significantly increases the risk of overdose, has now appeared in Mexico
EL PAÍS travels along the border of the poorest state in Mexico, a region dominated by criminal groups. From the city of Tapachula to the Lacandon Jungle, passing through the towns of Frontera Comalapa and Chisomuselo, this story illustrates the fight between cartels, the abandonment of the state, the murders, forced displacements, kidnappings and extortions, along with the efforts made by the local and migrant populations to survive