Mexico: From “Drug-Fueled War Zone” to “Well-Traveled International Tourist Destination” – This video has no official description. It’s a PR firm describing their campaign to reinvigorate Mexican tourism.
Uploaded by HDNetWorldReport on Sep 16, 2011
Many tourists no longer want to visit Mexico because of drug violence. It might be time to cross another nearby country (Guatemala) off the list, because Mexicoapos;s ruthless cartels are going international.
Published on Sep 10, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish
Northern Mexico’s Copper Canyon is considered one of the world’s most spectacular landscapes. But the site also right in the middle of Mexico’s drug-growing heartland, so it is struggling to attract tourists.
Al Jazeera’s Adam Raney travelled to the canyon in the state of Chihuahua to see what it offers for those prepared to make the trip.
Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Jul 12, 2011
Mexico’s once buoyant tourism industry is being weighed downby the country’s ongoing drug war. Al Jazeera’s Adam Raney reports from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Uploaded by CBS on Feb 21, 2011
As the deadly drug war in Mexico continues, new violence is spreading towards popular tourist areas. Terry McCarthy reports on conditions in Acapulco, a new battleground between rival drug cartels.
Uploaded by ANewsVanIsland on Jan 20, 2011
OAK BAY – The phones are ringing at Oak Bay’s Athlone Travel – the first few weeks of 2011 have been busy. But bookings to Mexico are down, and clients are asking questions. “They’re Concerned about the violence, if they go to Mexico are they in any danger” says Manager Liz Smith.
And you can see where skittish travellers may be getting that idea.
On Monday, 69-year-old Mike Di Lorenzo of Penticton was hit in the leg by gunfire meant for someone else in Mazatlan. He needed surgery and two blood transfusions, and likely saved his wife’s life by diving on top of her.
Earlier this month, a Montreal police officer got separated from his friends at a bar in Cancun and was severely beaten. A woman from Ontario claims was gang-raped by police in Playa del Carmen on New Year’s eve.
And in November, 33-year-old Nanaimo Realtor, father, and newlywed Malcolm Johnson was killed in a freak gas explosion at the Grand Riviera Hotel along with four other Canadians.
Royal Roads University “Human Security” expert Kenneth Christie just returned from Mexico, where he says a drug war has taken more than 30,000 lives over the past four years. But most of the violence is taking place far from your favourite all-inclusive resort. “I think tourists should be careful when they go to Mexico, stay away obviously from where the drug war is taking place, but in most of the resorts they’re pretty safe” says Christie.
He says the BC man injured this week was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Mazatlan’s been a very safe place for Canadian tourists to go.”
Liz Smith at Athlone Travel agrees, suggesting you stick to the familiar resort destinations to stay safe. “It’s like all the people that go on airplanes every day, millions of people around the world travel by air, and when there’s an accident, everyone stops to think about it, and I think that’s what’s happening here.”
For some Canadians, it appears the issue of whether or not Mexico is safe isn’t an issue at all. One viewer comments online: “Please don’t go to Mexico, way too dangerous. In fact, don’t go anywhere. Just stay home and hide under your bed, where it’s safe.”
He does make a good point – there are risks involved in doing just about anything.
Uploaded by AssociatedPress on Nov 4, 2010
In another grisly turn in Mexico’s drug war, police have recovered 18 bodies from a mass grave announced in a YouTube posting, a video saying the victims were from a tourist group kidnapped in Acapulco a month ago.
Uploaded by PBSNewsHour on Sep 15, 2010
A drop in tourism and manufacturing has left the Mexican state Baja, California, with a struggling economy. Jose Luis Sierra of New America Media reports on how the drug war and recession have played a role.
Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Sep 1, 2010
At least eight people have been killed in a fire bomb attack on a bar in the Mexican tourist town of Cancun.
Local reports said the attack was carried out by a drug cartel which was trying to extort protection money from the bar owner.
It has heightened fears that drug-related violence is spreading to tourist towns.
Al Jazeera’s Franc Contreras reports from Cancun.
Uploaded by catoinstitutevideo on May 5, 2010
Juan Carlos Hidalgo of the Cato Institute on how the country’s drug problems are impacting tourism.
Uploaded by worldfocusonline on Mar 5, 2009
In Tijuana, a once-thriving city just across the border from San Diego, the increasingly deadly drug war has touched almost every part of life.
Americans used to flock to the city, but now largely avoid it. In 2005, a banner year for tourism, some four million people visited Tijuana. Last year, the number dropped to around 400,000. Residents, too, are fleeing in fear.
Worldfocus correspondent John Larson, producer Bryan Myers and field producers Megan Thompson and Ivette Feliciano explore Tijuana, beginning in a hospital that not only treats the victims of drug violence, but that operates in fear that its own people will get caught in the battle.
Published on Mar 10, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish
After years of denying any wrongdoing, Peru has reopened investigation into forcible sterilisation of women, what human rights groups say was a crime against humanity.
During the 1990s, more than 300,000 women were pressured into being sterilised by the government.
Doctors and nurses under Alberto Fujimori’s administration, between 1996 and 2000, were assigned monthly quotas and given bonuses based on the number of sterilisations they performed.
Al Jazeera’s Latin America Editor Lucia Newman reports from Anta on the women’s quest for justice.
Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Jun 22, 2011
Researchers in Brazil say they have found one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes in a remote corner of the Amazon forest.
Aerial pictures revealed by the Brazilian government’s agency of indigenous affairs (Funai) show four large thatched huts fully surrounded by various crops in the Vale do Javari region.
Aloysio Guapindaia, a Funai director, also said they would work to keep the tribe isolated and safe. The tribe is thought to belong to the Pano linguistic group that straddles the border between Brazil, Peru and Bolivia.
Gabriel Elizondo reports from Sao Paulo.
Pictures released of uncontacted Peru tribe
Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Feb 1, 2012
One of the most isolated tribes in the world has been photographed in the most detailed pictures ever taken of them. The images of the Mashco Piro tribe, released by Survival International, have sparked the world’s imagination.
The once “lost” tribe live in the jungles of southeastern Peru, near the Manu National Park and are hostile to outsiders. They have been blamed for a number of attacks.
Rebecca Spooner, a Peru campaigner with Survival International, speaks to Al Jazeera from London.
Peru struggles to protect indigenous tribe
Uploaded by AlJazeeraEnglish on Feb 1, 2012
Peruvian authorities say they are struggling to keep outsiders away from a previously isolated Amazon people.
They have been appearing on a riverbank popular with tourists since May last year. Anthropologists are puzzled over why the tribe would leave the safety of their jungle homes.
At over three million, Peru has the highest child labour rate in the Americas.
Officially the practice is banned, but many poor families rely on the money their children earn. Of the nation’s three million child labourers, aged between five and 17, 70 per cent of them are engaging in activities that endanger their lives.
Now, thanks to the nation’s first children’s union – that monitors and defends minors who work – many of those children are getting some added protection.
The Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range is one of Mexico’s most precious natural treasures, boasting lush forests with rich biodiversity. It also serves as a vital carbon sink for the country. The corridor, which is under threat, has long been designated a natural reserve. Now, authorities are doubling their efforts to protect the area, teaching local communities and villages, too, how to take responsibility for their land. Reporter Michael Wetzel shows us the region’s rich diversity, from its cloud forests to wetlands to pine groves and arid zones, and he shows us how authorities are educating the locals on the urgency of protecting the nature around them.
The border fence that was built to keep illegal immigrants and narcotics out of the United States ends a couple of metres into the Pacific ocean. Captain Dave Myers shows Alastair Good where he has picked up swimmers, surfers, and boats laden with marijuana from Mexico.
“That’s Mexico over there,” says Captain Dave Myers, pointing to the Tijuana bullring 100 yards away from where he is sitting in his patrol car in Imperial Beach, San Diego.
“We used to come up here all the time as kids, go surfing, eat street tacos in Tijuana and then come back across.”
Those days are gone now. Two fences run along the Mexico-US border and video cameras mounted on 20ft poles monitor the barren strip of land 24 hours a day, giving the area the air of a demilitarised zone.
During his first week at Imperial Beach police station, Capt Myers joined a patrol at the border fence during severe fog. “All you could hear was the clink, clink of metal on metal, all around,” he said. “You couldn’t see the hand in front of your face but you could hear this noise everywhere, it was eerie.”
The noise was made by Mexicans putting ladders up to the fence and throwing their cargo and/or themselves over into America.
It is this determination that means law enforcement activity on the border is only likely to lead to the displacement of smuggling, rather than its eradication.
In 1996, Californians voted to pass Proposition 215, a law which paved the way for medical marijuana dispensaries in the state.
On November 2, California will be voting whether to approve Proposition 19, a law that would legalise the drug for personal recreational use.
Despite having the most Catholics in the world, 80 percent of Brazilian women of childbearing age are using some form of artificial contraception. In partnership with National Geographic Magazine, special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro examines the declining fertility rate, which has dropped to just 1.9 children per woman.
Salsa dance, like the food of the same name, is a mix of a lot of different elements. http://www.WatchMojo.com visits San Tropez Dance School to learn more about this dance’s origins.
Over a million revellers turned out for the “Black Ball” street carnival parade, according to the organisers on Saturday. The legendary samba troop, which has been performing for ninety-three years, attracted people of all ages who celebrated in black and white polka dot outfits in honour of the group’s name….
April 1996
For centuries the coco leaf was a blessing from the Gods. It alleviated the hunger of the Bolivian poor. Today it is a source of narcotic evil for the West.
Bolivia’s government, reliant on US aid and vulnerable to US dictates, has been forced to uphold a war against coco producers. The ‘Leopards’ – anti-narcotic paramilitaries – patrol the tropical jungles of Chapere and destroy small cocaine factories. Local farmers, like Berto, are put under pressure to rip up their coco plants and rePlace them with alternative crops. But now Berto can’t sell his new produce and is more impoverished than ever. Human rights organisations report violent abuses committed by the ‘Leopards’ against men and women. US Ambassador coolly contests such reports and admits that Bolivia would be ‘hurt’ if it objected to US initiatives. Evo Morales leads the Chapere people in a protest rally. In their muddy villages, the tired faces don’t understand why their government is trying to destroy their livelihood.
Produced by ABC Australia
Distributed by Journeyman Pictures
Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, a former coca farmer, is focusing on battling production for the drug trade
but not for other, traditional uses of the plant, and he’s enlisting coca farmers themselves in the fight. However, the US thinks Morales is being too lenient.
Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo joined a Bolivian army unit on a mission to find cocaine laboratories and sent this report.
The cocaine industry had a generally deleterious effect on the Bolivian economy. The cocaine trade greatly accelerated the predominance of the United States dollar in the economy and the large black market for currency, thereby helping to fuel inflation in the 1980s. The escalation of coca cultivation also damaged the output of fruits and coffee, which were mostly destined for local consumption. Coca’s high prices, besides being generally inflationary, also distorted other sectors, especially labor markets. Manufacturers in the Cochabamba area during the 1980s found it impossible to match the wages workers could gain in coca, making their supply of labor unreliable and thus hurting the formal economy.
