Central American migrants have long passed through Tultitlán on their way north to the United States because the trains on which the migrants ride north pass nearby.

The mayor of Tultitlán says the number of migrants arriving has increased over recent months and wants them deported, but local activist Paty Camarena continues to fight for their rights.

Video by Deborah Bonello for the Los Angeles Times.

Back in May 2008, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials rounded up 389 undocumented workers in the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. The raid was the largest in U.S history.

Two weeks later, filmmakers Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan started filming “In the Shadow of the Raid,” a documentary film showing at the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. A 15-minute edit of the film was recently broadcast on PBS “Frontline’s” website.

“In the Shadow of the Raid” delves into the consequences of the ICE raid for Postville and for some of the the migrants who were arrested and deported back to their homes in two rural villages in Guatemala.

Following the closure of the meatpacking plant, Postville businesses failed and livelihoods were destroyed.

In Guatemala, migrant Willian Toj returned to his wife and parents. Awaiting him was a massive debt that he accrued from his trip to the U.S. He had been working in the Postville plant for 20 minutes before the ICE raid.

Toj can barely earn enough to pay the monthly interest on the $7,000 debt, let alone get the funds to treat his mother’s worsening cancer.

The tone of the documentary is observational rather than preachy, in the same vein as other recent works such as “Los Que Se Quedan / Those Who Remain.” The filmmakers try to reflect some of the realities that contribute to why so many Central Americans and Mexicans head to the United States. But there are no ICE officials interviewed, no legal redresses sought. Brosnan and Szymaszek focus on the people affected by the raid, and the resulting film is a photographic testament to a sad reality.

Watch the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Video: An interview with Jennifer Szymaszek and Greg Brosnan, directors of “In the Shadow of the Raid.” All non-interview material courtesy of Szymaszek and Brosnan. Video interview by Deborah Bonello.

Most Mexicans think their lives would be better in the United States, and one in three said they’d move to the U.S. if they could, according to the latest findings on Mexican attitudes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Half of those who said they’d migrate north of the border said they would do so without permission, although recent data on immigration suggests that the flow of Mexicans north is slowing.

President Felipe Calderon’s military-led campaign against the country’s drug lords and organized-crime networks is “overwhelmingly endorsed” by the majority of Mexicans, although large majorities describe crime (81%) and illegal drugs (73%) as very big problems, according to the study.

Calderon’s offensive against organized crime is now in its third year amid rising drug-related violence, but the Pew project reports that most Mexicans believe those anti-crime efforts are effective.

A hefty majority, 66%, say the army is making progress against the traffickers, while only 15% think it is losing ground. Calderon also is well regarded.

The popularity of the tough stance against drug gangs seems to be bolstering support for Calderon. Roughly two-thirds (68%) have a favorable opinion of the president, while only 29% express an unfavorable view.

You can read the report in its entirety on the project’s website or download it.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,000 adults in Mexico between May 26 and June 2, 2009, for the Pew report.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Mexico City’s central plaza, or Zocalo. Credit: Deborah Bonello / For The Times

Although Mexico is currently in the grip of the worst drought it has suffered since World War Two, houses flooded and streets turned into lakes this week when torrential rainfall lashed down on Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico.

Speaking to El Universal, Ramón Aguirre, director of Mexico City’s water system, said that although the rains won’t be enough to replenish reserves enough to stop current water rationing.

See the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Video: Mexico: heavy rains can’t beat the drought. Credit: Deborah Bonello

The first, last and only time that I met the French-born filmmaker and photographer Christian Poveda was on 1 April of this year, when I interviewed him in an apartment he was renting in Mexico City while doing promotion for his film, La Vida Loca.

I’d seen the documentary the night before at a screening attended by Poveda, who fielded questions on why he chose to spend 16 months following members of El Salvador’s notoriously violent 18th Street gang with a video camera. It is a film that could well have brought him to his violent end.

Poveda was shot dead on Wednesday 4 September just outside San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, where he lived. Sources say that the night before he was killed, Poveda confessed to being afraid and worried that the gangs were taking a turn for the worse, with a new crop of ever-more vicious leaders coming to the fore.

La Vida Loca is a groundbreaking documentary that shines a light onto the bleak lives of El Salvador’s Mara gangs. Poveda achieved unprecedented, long-term access to certain branches of the gangs and their daily lives in the capital.

I’m not one to speculate on who might be responsible for his death — the disorder, impunity and lawlessness in El Salvador means we might never know. But his murder is a terrible loss, not only to his friends, family and colleagues, but to the journalistic community in Latin America, which already suffers some of the highest rates of aggression and intimidation against members of the trade.

To Poveda, the young people who join las Maras were “victims of society”. He approached the gangs as a documentary filmmaker with an open mind and a lack of moral judgment.

As he said to me during our interview, he was of the opinion that “the majority are young boys that were abandoned at a very young age, and the fact that someone would come from another continent to spend time with them on a daily basis, filming and listening to them, for them that was something very important, that someone was paying attention.”

Many would disagree with Poveda’s assessment of the gangs that stretch across Central America to the United States. Poveda worked as a photojournalist in El Salvador during and after the 12-year-long civil war, which began in 1980. But the gangs really took on their current strength and size in the United States.

Gangs were formed by Salvadorans living on the streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s, many of who went to the US to escape the civil war ravaging El Salvador. When the peace accords that ended the war were signed in El Salvador in the early 1990s, huge numbers of gang members returned to the country, some of them by choice but most of them through deportation by US authorities. Many were sent back after completing prison sentences.

Although gangs did exist on a small scale in El Salvador before the mass return of migrants from the US, they only grew into the super-gangs they are today after the end of the civil war. The brutally violent groups have been connected with organized crime and other illegal activities across the Americas.

But however you view the gangs, Poveda did what good journalists do — he broadened the discussion, taking a new visual and journalistic angle on an issue that has become so black and white. As the United States continues to sweep the issue of immigration reform under the carpet and turn a blind eye to the repercussions of some of its policies on its smaller, poorer, weaker neighbours, Poveda put some of those realities up on cinema screens on both sides of the Atlantic for all to see.

Tragically, he paid the highest price for doing so.

La Vida Loca, which has been showing on the international film festival circuit, is coming up for commercial release in Mexico and France over the next two months. But the day after Poveda’s death, his producer Gustavo Angel was still trying to negotiate a US release for the film.

I can’t help feeling that if La Vida Loca isn’t seen by audiences within the United States, many of whom have never traveled south of the border, let alone as far south as Central America, we will miss an opportunity to advance the discussion surrounding America’s gang and immigration problems — issues that are inextricably linked.

Deborah Bonello is a blogger and video journalist MexicoReporter.com

www.MexicoReporter.com

This article was written for Index on Censorship.

Crops are wilting in the countryside, and the capital’s water shortage has turned dire as Mexico grapples with its worst drought in more than half a century.

See the Los Angeles Times report here.

Photographer and filmmaker Christian Poveda was shot dead in El Salvador Sept. 2, 2009. He spent more than 16 months, every day, with the mara gangs of San Salvador to make the 2009 documentary “La Vida Loca.” This is footage from an interview conducted by the Los Angeles Times’ Deborah Bonello with Poveda a few months before his death. It took place in Mexico City on April 1.

Reuters reports:

Suspected Salvadorean gang members killed French filmmaker Christian Poveda, whose 2008 film “La Vida Loca” crudely depicts the hopeless lives of members of the infamous Mara 18 street gang, local police said on Wednesday.

Poveda, 53, was shot on a road 10 miles north of the capital of San Salvador, as he drove back from filming in La Campanera, a poor, overcrowded suburb and a Mara 18 stronghold.

President Mauricio Funes said in a statement on Wednesday night that he was “shocked” by Poveda’s murder and ordered a thorough investigation.

“La Vida Loca” (The Crazy Life) closely followed the lives of several heavily tattooed gang members, some of whom were jailed or killed during the shooting of the film.

We’ll have more tomorrow, but you can see Poveda talking about his work filming the gangs in an interview I did with him earlier this year.

For Mexico, which prides itself on a unique artistic tradition, the crisis resulting from the global economic meltdown and swine flu is particularly acute, and is being felt by the country’s artistic community and museums.

See this report by for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: A model of a jaguar is part of a public art installation on Mexico City’s Avenida de la Reforma. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.

Hernandez is already posting updates on the micro-blogging site about his preparations for take-off and developments concerning the delayed launch of the space shuttle in both English and Spanish.

Yesterday, just before the Discovery’s planned launch, Hernandez tweeted: “Folks this is my last tweet before I go into space! Will start to suit up in 30 minutes, listen to weather brief and head to the pad!”

But a few hours later, after the launch was delayed because of bad weather, his update was: “Well back [at] crew quarters! Try again tomorrow at 1:10:22 am!”

On Monday, Hernandez even tweeted about the chat he had with Mexico’s president, saying: “Had a nice phone conversation with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico. He wished me good luck on our launch schedule for this Tuesday am.”

It’s hard to imagine Hernandez sending messages from a mobile phone or laptop when he’s wearing his full astronaut gear, but once he and his fellow crew members are in orbit, those messages couldn’t really be coming from anyone else.

And we can only assume that he and his colleagues have been set up with an Internet connection from which to tweet.

Discovery is scheduled to blast off at 1:10 a.m. Wednesday, according to the NASA website.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: From Jose Hernandez’s Twitter profile.