Mexico; North America

There’s no doubt that after the blue skies and sunshine of December 1st, there are already clouds on the horizon. But the role of an engaged citizen cannot be to simply cross your arms and watch the storm roll in while saying “I told you so”. Giving President López Obrador the benefit of the doubt is to replicate the old styles of rulers who demanded unconditional support for their actions and cloaked themselves in authoritarian power and self-praise. Seeing treachery before it happens ignores the need for facts-based judgement and closes doors.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador was inaugurated Saturday, in a ceremony unlike any other seen in Mexico. What’s next for the new president?

This year the Caravan of Central American Mothers arrived in Mexico City to participate in the first World Summit of Mothers of the Disappeared with mothers, other relatives of the missing and allies from Mexico, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Morocco, Mauritania, Spain, Italy and the United States to compare notes and gain a deeper understanding of the problem, across borders.

Fifty years since the attack that marked contemporary Mexican history, the demands of 1968 are still valid and the Mexican State has not yet clarified what happened this day.

Laura Carlsen talks to Jesus Vargas, a leader of the student movement who was at the demonstration when the army attacked on Oct. 2. Jesus recounts the terror of that day, how the movement regrouped and his work for social justice.

Relatives, friends, neighbors and supporters paid homage to the people who died last year in the earthquake that brought down a building where more than 100 people worked, among them women seamstresses.

“As long as one single neighbor is still displaced from their home, the crisis that started with the earthquake continues,” says Gabriel Macías of the Tlalpan United group of neighbors whose apartment complex collapsed in the Sept. 19 quake. Around him crowd dozens of journalists, neighbors and members of the “Topos”, the moles, Mexico City’s volunteer rescue crews.