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Tag: Mexico

  • U.S. case dims hope in Mexico for extradition of alleged mastermind of journalist’s killing

    MEXICO CITY — The imprisonment of a cartel member in the U.S. has dashed hopes in Mexico for justice in one of the country’s most notorious slayings — the death of acclaimed journalist Javier Valdez, who was gunned down in broad daylight two blocks from his newspaper office in the cartel-embattled city of Culiacán.

    The brazen assassination in 2017 of Valdez — a tireless chronicler of cartel violence and politicians’ links to organized crime — sparked international condemnation. The slaying dramatized the perils faced by journalists in Mexico, where scores have been slain in recent years.

    Valdez’s assassination remains the most notorious killing of a Mexican journalist in decades.

    While two gunmen are serving prison terms in Mexico, authorities here have long sought the extradition from the United Stares of the alleged mastermind: Dámaso López Serrano, a former Sinaloa cartel capo and the son of a close associate of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the imprisoned co-founder of the Sinaloa syndicate.

    Mexican authorities and fellow journalists say López Serrano likely ordered the hit because the journalist had mocked the young narco mercilessly in Ríodoce, the weekly co-founded by Valdez.

    On May 8, 2017, Valdez wrote a scathing column dismissing López Serrano as a “junior” party-boy and fake “weekend” pistolero who moved around ostentatiously with 20 bodyguards, “excelled at chit-chat but not business,” and failed to fill the shoes of his father.

    One week later, on May 15, assassins forced Valdez, 50, from his car at midday and shot him at least a dozen times in downtown Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state. His body was left on the street amid shell casings; his signature Panama hat was streaked with blood.

    López Serrano, a godson of El Chapo, fled inter-mob bloodletting a few months later and surrendered to U.S. authorities along the border in Calexico, California. He later pleaded guilty to trafficking tons of cocaine and other narcotics into the United States. He was never charged in U.S. courts with the murder of Valdez.

    He is the son of Dámaso López Núñez, the El Chapo confidante known as El Licenciado, or The Lawyer. The son’s mob handle is Mini Lic. His father and El Chapo are both serving life terms in U.S. prisons.

    López Serrano served only five years in U.S. custody on the trafficking conviction. According to media accounts and Mexican officials, he agreed to become a cooperating witness for U.S. prosecutors pursuing other traffickers.

    López Serrano was released from federal custody after serving his term and allowed to remain in the United States. However, the FBI re-arrested him in 2024 in connection with a scheme to distribute fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid.

    On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia sentenced López Serrano to five years in prison on the fentanyl rap, to be followed by five years of supervised release.

    The new sentence dismayed those who hoped López Serrano would soon be brought back to Mexico to stand trial.

    “It’s painful and outrageous to know that the person who ordered Javier’s murder will continue avoiding his deserved punishment in Mexico,” Griselda Tirana, the journalist’s widow, wrote on Facebook.

    She has long been at the forefront of efforts to pressure Washington to hand over López Serrano.

    But there is a serious hurdle: U.S. prosecutors have viewed López Serrano as too valuable a source on the Mexican underworld to ship him back south, according to Mexico’s former Atty. Gen. Alejandro Gertz Manero, who said he pressed the extradition demand with counterparts in Washington.

    “They said he was a protected witness of the government of the United States and he was giving them a lot of information,” Gertz Manero told reporters in December 2024, after López Serrano was arrested in the fentanyl scheme. “And, because of that, they couldn’t help us.”

    In May, journalists, human rights activists and others gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on the anniversary of Valdez’s killing, demanding that López Serrano be sent to Mexico to face justice.

    That same month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexican authorities would “insist” on the extradition of López Serrano.

    The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the case.

    Advocates say they plan to continue pressing the U.S. government, even though many lack optimism that Washington will ever relent.

    “We are going to keep demanding — as we have since the assassination of Javier — that everyone, including the mastermind of this crime, be punished,” said Roxana Vivanco, news editor at Ríodoce, Valdez’s former publication. “We hope that, this time around, once he finishes his sentence in the United States he will be returned to Mexico to be judged for the killing of Javier.”

    As casualties mount among Mexican media personnel — and their assailants go free — many in Mexico view the case as a litmus test. The central question: Will there ever come a time when justice will prevail — and impunity will recede — in cases of Mexican journalists targeted by organized crime, corrupt politicians and others?

    To date, the Valdez investigation has followed a distressing pattern: Hired trigger-men are sent to prison, their arrests lauded by Mexican authorities, while the “intellectual authors,” or masterminds, remain free.

    “If this, the most high-profile case isn’t solved, then we cannot hold our breaths for resolutions in less high-profile cases,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexican representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based press advocacy group.

    “So this is a really, really important case,” Hootsen added. “We really need for this man to be extradited to Mexico eventually and stand trial.”

    Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.

    Patrick J. McDonnell

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  • 10 Miners from Canada Were Abducted in Mexico, Possibly by Cartel Members, Says Official

    NEED TO KNOW

    • Ten miners who work for a Canadian-based company in Mexico were kidnapped on Jan. 24, officials said

    • A legal representative from the company called 911 to report the missing miners, the Sinaloa State Attorney General’s Office said

    • A Mexican security official said authorities are investigating whether a cartel faction in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where the mining operation is located, is involved in the kidnapping

    Authorities in Mexico are searching for ten workers from a Canadian company who were abducted from a mining site on Jan. 24.

    On Wed., Jan. 28, Vancouver-based Vizla Silver Corp. announced in a statement that ten individuals were taken from a mining project site in Concordia, Mexico.

    “Local authorities have been notified, and the company’s crisis management and security response teams are actively engaged,” the company said in the statement.

    The company’s immediate priority “is the safety and well-being of the individuals involved,” it said.

    “As a precautionary measure, certain activities at and near the site have been temporarily suspended,” it said.

    The miners were abducted on Saturday, Jan. 24, Mexican Security and Citizen Protection Secretary Omar García Harfuch said during a press conference, the CBC reports.

    Federal and state authorities in Mexico are searching for missing miners, who were kidnapped at the same time, he said.

    He said authorities are investigating whether a cartel faction in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where the mining operation is located, is involved in the kidnapping.

    “What we know is there were no previous threats or interference with employees of this company,” Harfuch said, NewsNation reports. “A cell of Los Chapitos operates in that area. We have identified one of the leaders in that area and we also are looking for him.”

    The abduction came to authorities’ attention on Jan. 24, when a legal representative from the company called 911, the Sinaloa State Attorney General’s Office said in a statement on Jan. 29.

    An investigation was opened and the Attorney General’s Office began working with federal authorities, including the Sinaloa State Search Commission and the Ministry of National Defense, for the implementation to search for the missing miners, it said.

    “As part of these actions, a search warrant, duly authorized by the competent judicial authority, was executed on January 27th of this year,” it said.

    On Thursday, Jan. 29, the Mexican government sent 1,600 additional troops to Sinaloa after someone fired gunshots at two members of the Citizens’ Movement party in Culiacán, the state capital, the CBC reports.

    Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for  PEOPLE‘s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

    Harfuch said his top priority is finding the miners.

    “We want to tell the relatives of the victims that the entire Cabinet will not stop searching for them and that we are participating (with state authorities) in the investigation,” he said, the CBC reports.

    “The National Defense Secretariat and the Navy have a strong presence there, and the Secretary (of the Army) has sent reinforcements.”

    Read the original article on People

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  • Aunt and cousin of Mexico’s education secretary “brutally murdered” in their home, he says

    Authorities in the western Mexican state of Colima said they killed three people suspected in the shooting deaths of two family members of Mexico’s secretary of education on Saturday.

    Colima, located on Mexico’s Pacific coast, is one of the country’s most violent states. It recorded the highest homicide rate in Mexico in 2023 and 2024, according to the US State Department.

    The local prosecutor’s office said officers killed three suspects in the 4:30 am (1030 GMT) shooting of two women, whom Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education Mario Delgado later identified as his aunt and cousin.

    They did not identify a motive in the shooting or say whether they were searching for other suspects.

    “Deep shock, outrage, and sorrow over the events that occurred this morning in Colima, where my aunt Eugenia Delgado and my cousin Sheila were brutally murdered in their home,” Delgado wrote on X on Saturday.

    “Throughout my entire childhood, my aunt Queña —as we affectionately called her— made my birthday cake every year. That was how she earned her living, working hard, selling delicious cakes and traditional Colima food prepared like only she knew how. She is now with my grandparents and with my father, her beloved brother,” he wrote on X.

    Officials tracked the suspects’ vehicle to a Colima home on Saturday afternoon and killed three people in a gunfight, according to the prosecutor’s office.

    Investigators found weapons and clothing in the suspects’ home linked to the double shooting.

    Delgado was appointed education secretary by President Claudia Sheinbaum in 2024 and his profile photo on X shows both of them together.  He previously served as national president of the ruling Morena party.

    Mario Delgado, Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education, accompanies Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico, during a press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, on January 3, 2026. 

    Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images


    Last month, Sheinbaum said that efforts to crack down on Mexican cartels and slow migration north were showing “compelling results” in an effort to head off intervention talk by the Trump administration.

    Her comments came after President Trump threatened action against Mexican drug cartels by U.S. forces last week. Mr. Trump told Fox News that the United States had “knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in by water” and that the U.S. was “going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels.” 

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  • Patriots, Seahawks Arrive in San Jose Ahead of Super Bowl Showdown

    SAN JOSE, California, Feb ‌1 (Reuters) – ​The New ‌England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks ​arrived in San Jose, California, on ‍Sunday to begin weeklong ​preparations for Super Bowl ​LX ⁠in nearby Santa Clara.

    The Patriots touched down first, with players and coaches exiting their plane to partly sunny skies. The ‌Seahawks arrived approximately 90 minutes later ​after a ‌send-off parade of ‍fans ⁠in cloudy Seattle.

    Both teams are scheduled to meet with the media on Monday during Super Bowl Opening Night, the traditional start to game-week festivities.

    The ​Seahawks are returning to the Super Bowl for the first time since falling to New England in the championship game 11 years ago. The Patriots, considered underdogs in this matchup, are pursuing a record seventh Super Bowl title and their ​first since 2019.

    The Super Bowl kicks off on February 8 at 6:30 p.m. ET (2230 GMT).

    (Reporting by Angelica ​Medina in San Francisco; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)

    Copyright 2026 Thomson Reuters.

    Reuters

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  • Trump’s Cuba oil tariff threat creates new diplomatic challenge for Mexico’s Sheinbaum

    MEXICO CITY — President Trump’s plan to slap tariffs on nations that provide oil to Cuba has created a formidable new challenge for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in her efforts to balance Mexico’s interests with White House demands.

    On Friday, Sheinbaum said Mexico would seek a clarification from Washington in a bid to avoid a difficult choice: Halt oil shipments to Cuba, potentially triggering a humanitarian crisis on the island, or face new tariffs on Mexican products exported to the United States.

    Ceasing oil deliveries to Cuba, she warned, could result in a catastrophic scenario — a cutoff in electrical power to hospitals and homes, threatening medical care, food supplies and other essential services across the island, home to 11 million people.

    However, the leftist president signaled that she would not risk the imposition of additional U.S. levies on imports from Mexico, a nation heavily dependent on cross-border trade. “We cannot put our country at risk in terms of tariffs,” Sheinbaum told reporters at her regular morning news conference.

    For a year, Sheinbaum has been fending off Washington’s plans to impose punishing new tariffs on Mexico. Her efforts have mostly succeeded — and she has won warm praise from Trump — but a White House decree targeting oil supplies to Cuba presents a difficult new test.

    On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order establishing potential tariffs on goods from countries “that sell or otherwise provide oil to Cuba,” a step that, Trump said, was intended to protect “U.S. national security and foreign policy from the Cuban regime’s malign actions and policies.”

    Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced Trump’s move on social media as a “fascist, criminal and genocidal” plan to “asphyxiate” the Cuban economy, which is already struggling with blackouts and a lack of gasoline, among other shortages.

    Sheinbaum has also been engaged in strenuous efforts to dissuade Trump from following through on his threats to deploy U.S. military assets against cartels in Mexico. She has called any prospective U.S. strike on Mexican territory a violation of Mexican sovereignty.

    Mexican crude has taken on a new urgency for Cuba since the U.S. ouster this month of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose socialist government was long the major supplier of oil to Cuba. (Havana said 32 Cuban officers, members of Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the operation.)

    Maduro’s fall and the Venezuelan government’s subsequent submission to Washington has resulted in a cut-off of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. U.S. imports of Venezuelan oil, meanwhile, have soared.

    Mexico supplied Cuba with about 20,000 barrels a day of oil for much of 2025, said Jorge R. Piñon, an energy expert at the University of Texas. But shipments have declined drastically this year, apparently because of U.S. pressure.

    “The faucets are being shut off,” said Piñon. “Sheinbaum is walking a tightrope.”

    Without imports, he said, Cuba faces a daily oil shortfall of about 60,000 barrels to meet its energy needs. Other potential sources for Cuba include the oil-exporting nations of Russia, Angola, Algeria and Brazil, Piñon said, but it was unclear if any of those countries would be inclined to defy the White House and help bail out Cuba.

    Mexico’s support for the Cuban government has long been a point of pride here, a sign of a foreign policy independence from the United States, especially during the Cold War. Mexican leaders, including Sheinbaum, have repeatedly decried Washington’s more than half-century embargo of the island as an illegal blockade that punishes ordinary Cubans, not the country’s communist elite.

    It was from the Mexican coast that, in 1956, Fidel Castro sailed to Cuba along with Ernesto “Che” Guevara and other revolutionaries in the yacht Granma, launching an improbable but ultimately successful armed rebellion to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

    Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor — labeled Castro a “giant” and called Havana a “progressive” model for resistance to U.S. pressure.

    But the U.S. push to block Mexican oil exports to Cuba is also exposing divisions in the ruling Morena political bloc, which was founded by López Obrador.

    Leftists in Morena have assailed Washington’s attempt to halt Mexican oil exports to Cuba. But more conservative members of the ruling party have urged caution.

    Ricardo Sheffield, a prominent Morena senator who was previously a member of the center-right National Action Party, has called for a review of oil pacts with Cuba. In a recent speech, he acknowledged “the relationship and the history that unites” Mexico and Cuba, but warned: “If we continue giving away oil to Cuba, we will have more problems with our neighbors in the U.S.”

    Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.

    Patrick J. McDonnell, Kate Linthicum

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  • Firmness, flattery and phone calls: How Mexico’s president won over Trump

    MEXICO CITY — He has called Colombian President Gustavo Petro “a sick man” and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator.” He once slammed French President Emmanuel Macron as “publicity-seeking,” and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “dishonest and weak.”

    President Trump is known for hurling scathing insults at world leaders.

    Then there’s Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. The U.S. president has described her, at turns, as “fantastic,” “terrific” and “elegant.”

    In a social media post Thursday, he offered his most glowing compliments yet, extolling Sheinbaum as “wonderful and highly intelligent” and saying Mexicans “should be very happy” to have her as their leader.

    Trump’s emphatic praise for Sheinbaum is surprising, given their marked differences in temperament and politics.

    Sheinbaum, a leftist known for her patience and pragmatism, labeled Israel’s U.S.-backed war in Gaza a “genocide” and condemned the recent U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

    She disagrees with Trump on three of his firmly held beliefs: that the U.S. should raise tariffs on Mexican imports, expel migrants en masse, and attack drug traffickers inside Mexico.

    But Sheinbaum is keenly aware of how Trump’s actions on trade, immigration and security could plunge Mexico into turmoil, potentially threatening her own popularity and the legacy of the ruling party founded by her populist predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

    So she has tread strategically, requesting frequent phone calls with Trump, making concessions on issues such as security and heaping praise right back at him. She described her conversation with Trump on Thursday as “productive and cordial” and added: “I had the pleasure of greeting his wife, Melania.”

    So far, her tactics have worked. Trump’s repeated threats of sweeping tariffs on Mexican goods and drone attacks on cartel targets have not yet come to pass.

    Managing Trump has been one of the biggest — and perhaps most consequential — focal points of Sheinbaum’s presidency. “It’s not something that just happened today,” she said recently of her relationship with Trump. “Communication, coordination, and defending the people of Mexico … are constants.”

    Sheinbaum has been quelling nerves in Mexico since Trump’s election in late 2024, just weeks after she assumed the presidency. She promised to forge strong bonds with the incoming U.S. leader, who is widely disliked here for his diatribes against immigrants. Sheinbaum vowed to emulate Kalimán, a beloved Mexican comic-book superhero known for defeating villains with “serenity and patience.”

    She has sought to command Trump’s respect in other ways, holding massive public rallies that demonstrate widespread support for her government. “We will always hold our heads high,” she said at one event shortly before Trump took office. “Mexico is a free, independent, and sovereign country. We coordinate, we collaborate, but we do not submit.”

    In some ways, Trump has actually galvanized support for Sheinbaum by sparking a surge in nationalism. Polls show most Mexicans approve of her handling of the bilateral relationship. According to a poll conducted by El País newspaper, her approval rating soared to 83% in May after she persuaded Trump to postpone the implementation of heavy tariffs. It now stands around 74%.

    Still, some political analysts point out that Trump may like Sheinbaum because, despite her talk of defending Mexico’s sovereignty, she has actually acquiesced to him many times, particularly on issues of security.

    “The list of concessions to Trump accumulated in a single year far surpasses in scope and depth those made by supposedly more ‘subservient’ governments,” wrote columnist Jorge Lomonaco in El Universal newspaper.

    Sheinbaum has deployed Mexican troops to stop migrants from reaching the U.S. border. She has sent dozens of accused drug criminals to the U.S. to face trial there, sidestepping the standard extradition process to do so. She imposed tariffs on some imports from China and other countries, and her government reportedly paused shipments of oil to Cuba, signaling a possible end to what Sheinbaum had lauded as a “humanitarian” effort to aid the embattled island nation — another possible target of Trump.

    “In public, Sheinbaum’s government has maintained a sovereign and patriotic rhetoric, but it is evident that, in private, it has been very docile with the U.S.,” Lomonaco wrote.

    Trump’s discourse with Mexico continues to be infused with threats. While he calls Sheinbaum a “good woman,” he also said in May that she is “so afraid of the cartels she can’t even think straight.”

    Many believe Trump’s decision to send U.S. special forces to arrest Maduro and his wife in Caracas could embolden him to launch a U.S. military attack on cartels in Mexico — a move that Sheinbaum would clearly see as crossing a red line, and could probably ignite a political crisis here.

    “I do think there’s a real risk of a strike on Mexican soil against cartels, especially after what happened in Venezuela,” said Gustavo Flores-Macías, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

    Mexico, he said, is attempting “a delicate balance of keeping U.S. authorities happy without falling into this perennial game of trying to appease the White House and do everything that Trump wants.”

    Trump has also threatened to pull out of a trilateral trade deal with Canada, which was negotiated during his first term. The U.S., Mexico and Canada must launch a joint review of the free trade pact by July 1, its sixth anniversary, to determine whether the nations intend to renew it for 16 more years or make modifications. Trump has called the deal “irrelevant,” but the pact is fundamental to a Mexican economy heavily dependent on cross-border trade.

    Meantime, a controversy arose last week surrounding the mysterious capture in Mexico of Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who faces federal charges in California of running a billion-dollar drug-trafficking ring.

    Sheinbaum dismissed reports that FBI agents on the ground in Mexico participated in the the arrest of Wedding, who, according to U.S. authorities, had been hiding for years in Mexico.

    Sheinbaum insisted that Wedding turned himself in at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and, at a news briefing, displayed a photograph that she said depicted Wedding outside the embassy.

    But Canadian media said the image was probably fake, a creation of artificial intelligence. Sheinbaum dodged questions about the image’s authenticity. Wedding’s lawyer, Anthony Colombo, disputed Sheinbaum’s account that Wedding turned himself in. “He was arrested,” Colombo told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Santa Ana, where Wedding entered a not guilty plea. “He did not surrender.”

    Sheinbaum was able to weather the dispute, but the episode again raised questions about how far the Mexican president is willing to go to keep Trump happy.

    “It would be very very concerning — and certainly illegal under Mexican law — if the FBI operated and arrested an individual on Mexican soil,” said Flores-Macías, who added: “I think there are some clear signs that this took place without the involvement of Mexican authorities.”

    Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.

    Kate Linthicum, Patrick J. McDonnell

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  • 36 Hours in Mexico City: Things to Do and See

    10 a.m. Navigate a dizzying market

    When Mexico City was still the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the district of La Merced, in the southeastern edge of the Historic Center, served as a dock for goods from the mainland. There’s no water anymore, but with its thousands of informal vendors and 11 or so covered markets, La Merced still feels like a port: raucous, heady and overwhelming. To avoid getting lost, the best way to visit is over a roving breakfast with Eat Like a Local, a small tour operator that directs part of its proceeds toward educational programming for young women in the neighborhood. The company’s flagship, four-hour walk ($120 per person) covers both La Merced and the Mercado Jamaica flower market, but it can organize shorter, custom tours focused on this Mexico City landmark.

    1 p.m. Immerse yourself in art and craft in the Historic Center

    Walking from La Merced to the spectacular ceremonial plaza known as the Zócalo, stop at Cerería de Jesús for handmade beeswax candles (24 pesos) and the Ex-Teresa Arte Actual (free), a museum set in a precipitously tilting former convent. From there, traverse the sunken ruins of the Aztec Templo Mayor (100 pesos) en route to the new flagship shop for FONART, the National Fund for the Development of Crafts, and, around the corner, the moving works of José Clemente Orozco at the Colegio de San Ildefonso (50 pesos), widely considered the birthplace of Mexican muralism. Finally, take in Diego Rivera’s dynamic suite of paintings — ranging from romantic depictions of Mexican folkways to giddy gibes at capitalist excess — in the former Secretariat of Public Education, open since 2024 as the Museo Vivo del Muralismo (free).

    4:30 p.m. Sip a cocktail with a view

    Opened in April 2025, the restaurant Charco, on the roof of the new, kid-friendly Museo del Cacao & Chocolate, overlooks the domes and buttresses of the Metropolitan Cathedral. Charco’s kitchen, run by the Chilean chef Ricardo Verdejo, turns out an inventive, seafood-heavy menu with a strong program of cocktails, mezcals and natural wines (cocktails from 190 pesos, dinner for two about 1,500 pesos, without drinks). On a clear day — admittedly few and far between — the twin volcanic peaks of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl might appear on the horizon, but sunsets are spectacular in any weather. For a low-key drink with a bit of history, try one of the neighborhood’s classic cantinas like El Gallo de Oro (beers from 65 pesos), open since 1874 with décor that’s practically unchanged since the 1970s.

    7 p.m. Enjoy rare mezcals

    In 2022, after almost six years of collecting rare agave distillates across Mexico, the food writer Natalia de la Rosa and photographer Jason Thomas Fritz opened one of the city’s best tasting rooms, Ahuehuete, in the Historic Center. Receiving six visitors at a time, the owners pour a diverse range of high-quality spirits purchased from producers in remote villages from the highlands of Sonora to the tropical hills of Guerrero and the volcanic valleys of Michoacán. Two-hour tastings, $90, include at least six pours of mezcal that paint an incomparable picture of Mexico’s cultural and ecological diversity. For a more self-guided experience, Bósforo, also in the Centro neighborhood, remains the city’s standard-bearer for agave spirits and experimental music — still sexy and surprising more than 15 years after opening (one-ounce pours from 80 pesos).

    10 p.m. Indulge in a late-night snack

    In Mexico City, where lunches stretch well into the evening, late-night provisions, often served under fluorescent lights and a halo of smoke, make a common replacement for dinner. Options abound. Café La Pagoda, one of the Historic Center’s venerable cafés de Chinos — coffee shops opened by Chinese immigrants beginning in the 1930s — turns out enchiladas (149 pesos) and chilaquiles (94 pesos) 24 hours a day, the same punishing schedule kept at Caldos de Gallina Luis in la Roma, known for its warming bowls of chicken soup (from 65 pesos). In the Narvarte neighborhood, Tacos Tony turns out fragrant tacos de suadero (32 pesos), a block from El Vilsito, a mechanic’s shop by day and taquería by night, serving marbled petals of pastor (27 pesos) until 5 a.m.

    Michael Snyder and Jake Naughton

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  • Mexico sends 37 cartel members to U.S. amid pressure from Trump administration


    Mexico’s security minister said Tuesday that it had sent another 37 members of Mexican drug cartels to the United States, as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on governments to crack down on criminal networks it says are smuggling drugs across the border.

    Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch wrote in a social media post on X that the people transferred were “high impact criminals” that “represented a real threat to the country’s security.”

    Garia said under an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. He said the 37 individuals were taken to multiple cities, including Washington, Houston, New York,, San Antonio and San Diego, aboard 7 aircraft.

    Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch wrote on social media that the people transferred were “high impact criminals.” 

    Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch


    It is the third time in the past year that Mexico has sent detained cartel members to the U.S.

    Harfuch said that the government has sent 92 people in total.

    Last August, Mexico sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the U.S., including Abigael González Valencia, a leader of “Los Cuinis,” a group closely aligned with notorious cartel Jalisco New Generation, or CJNG. Another defendant, Roberto Salazar, was wanted in connection to the 2008 killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. 

    This is a developing story and will be updated.

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  • Deported to danger: Returning migrants discover a Mexico transformed by cartels

    MEXICO CITY — Adrián Ramírez hadn’t been to his hometown in western Mexico for more than two decades. When he finally returned there early last year after being deported from the United States, he found the place transformed.

    Ramírez remembered the town as vibrant. But the discotheque where he used to dance through the night in his 20s was gone. The bustling evening market, where locals gather for tacos, now empties out early. After 10 p.m., cartel members wielding military-grade weapons take control of the streets.

    “It is no longer the same Mexico of my childhood,” said Ramírez, 45, who asked to be identified by his middle and last name for security reasons. “There was more joy, more freedom. But that’s not the case anymore.”

    Anyone returning to their hometown after decades away will note changes — old businesses close and new ones open, some people move away and others die. Adjusting to such shifts has long been part of the Mexican migrant experience.

    But many of the tens of thousands of people who have been deported to Mexico by the Trump administration have spent decades in the U.S. and are discovering that their country has also changed in more profound ways.

    Criminal groups, better armed and better organized than in the past, now control about a third of Mexican territory, according to an analysis by the U.S. military. Gangs have branched out beyond drug trafficking to extort money from small businesses and dominate entire industries, such as the avocado and lime trade. In some regions, criminals charge taxes on just about anything — tortillas and chicken, cigarettes and beer.

    Military forces provide security during a meeting about the Michoacan Plan for Peace and Justice, at the facilities of the Morelos barracks in the XXI Military Zone in Morelia, Micoacan, Mexico, in November.

    (Enrique Castro / AFP via Getty Images)

    Parts of Michoacán, the state where Ramírez is from, now resemble an actual battlefield, with criminal groups fighting each other with grenade launchers, drones rigged with explosives and improvised land mines.

    Returning migrants are vulnerable to violence because they stand out. Many speak Spanglish. Their stylish haircuts, often with fades on the sides, set them apart in rural communities. So does their gringo-style attire, like baggy pants and T-shirts touting their favorite sports teams — Dodgers, Raiders, Dallas Cowboys. Ramírez said that even his mannerisms, which had changed from years up north, quickly identified him as an outsider.

    Cartels single out returning migrants for kidnapping or extortion because they are perceived to have money, said Israel Concha, who runs Nuevo Comienzos, or New Beginnings, a nonprofit with offices in Las Vegas and Mexico City that supports deportees. Returnees often don’t know how to navigate cartel-run checkpoints or local rules set by criminal groups.

    “We’re an easy target,” Concha said.

    Concha said he was abducted and tortured by cartel members in 2014 after he was deported to Mexico. He said 16 migrants from his organization’s support group have been assassinated or disappeared since he founded his organization.

    Ten of those cases happened in the last year.

    In May, a recently returned man vanished after leaving his job at a hotel in the central state of Querétaro, Concha said. His parents, giving up hope of finding him alive, held a funeral and a Mass for him in October.

    Ramírez left his town in Michoacán state for the United States when he was 21, hoping to save money so he could come back home and build a house of his own.

    But life happened — Ramírez got married and had three children — and he stayed. He was washing cars and driving for Uber in Nashville before he was deported.

    Returning to Michoacán was bittersweet. He cried with happiness as he hugged his mother and siblings for the first time in years. But shortly after, he was interrogated by a cartel member on the street who wanted to know his name and what he did for a living. Another cartel member photographed him while he strolled the town plaza.

    His town had once been famous for its cheese production. Now its most dominant industry is fuel theft, a booming multimillion-dollar enterprise in Mexico. Criminals with the Jalisco New Generation cartel recently burned down the town’s two gas stations and killed the owner to assert their control over the pueblo, Ramírez said. They then set up their own illegal stations, leaving locals no choice but to buy from them.

    The authorities were no help.

    Ramírez learned from his family that the mayor had been handpicked by the cartel. The police are also in cahoots with criminals. After a relative suffered an accident, the cops who responded ended up extorting money from him, Ramírez said.

    Ramírez began to fear for his life. He wondered whether it might be time to leave, and if so, where he would go.

    A growing number of Mexicans are being forced to flee their communities because of violence, data show. The conflict-ridden states of Michoacán, Chiapas and Zacatecas have seen particularly high levels of displacement.

    Israel Ibarra, a migration expert at the College of the Northern Border, said migrants returning to war-torn communities often end up having to leave again.

    “They are not only becoming deported people,” he said. “They will experience double-forced displacement.”

    That is what happened to a man who returned to a town few hours away from where Ramírez grew up, in the mountains of Michoacán. A local rancher hired the migrant to manage his herd of cattle.

    Contracting outsiders requires vetting and approval by the regional faction of the cartel, which the rancher had not done. No locals had dared help the rancher repair his fence and care for his herd because of the cartel requisites, leaving the rancher with a limited employment pool.

    The migrant, who declined to provide his name because he feared for his life, didn’t fully recognize the power wielded by cartels and took the job. The rancher also paid better than others, to the consternation of the Jalisco cartel, which controls wages in the area.

    One morning, sicarios arrived at the migrant’s home and fired round after round of bullets into the building. The worker fled out the back door as gunmen stormed in.

    “They left me in ruin,” he said. “They took everything.” He went into hiding in Michoacán’s capital.

    Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum touts data showing that homicides fell during her first year in office. But the number of people being disappeared has surged across the country, particularly in cartel-controlled regions. And shocking acts of violence continue to make headlines.

    “For people who left a long time ago, many of them are coming back to communities that are much more violent than they were when they left,” said Andrew Selee of the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.

    In Michocán in the fall, the Jalisco cartel is accused of assassinating a prominent mayor who had vowed to hold criminals accountable. In December the group detonated a car bomb in a municipality located along a top cocaine-trafficking route, killing four police officers.

    Deportations to Mexico were fewer last year than either of the two previous years, according to data from the country’s National Migration Institute. But President Trump’s hard-line deportation campaign means fewer migrants who were returned to Mexico are attempting to cross back into the the U.S., experts said.

    Sheinbaum’s government launched a reintegration program called México te Abraza, or Mexico welcomes you with open arms, that has provided limited support to those returning, according to migrant advocates.

    Under the program, migrants are supposed to be given around $100 and a bus ticket to their hometown. But Concha said that some don’t receive the money and that migrants need much more help. “The program doesn’t work,” Concha said. “We need something more comprehensive that also supports emotional and mental health.”

    Ramírez wants to return to the U.S. to be with his family but is afraid of ending up in detention there.

    He misses his children, and dreams of buying them plane tickets so they can visit. But he is afraid of exposing them to Mexico’s violence. “It’s a very different kind of life here,” he said. “It hurts me what’s happening.”

    He decided to leave his pueblo a few months ago. The town where he is now living seems more tranquil, although it is also controlled by the Jalisco cartel. After he got a job at a tortilleria, his new employer warned him: Cartel members may stop by to ask him where he’s from.

    This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom that covers stories from Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Steve Fisher, Kate Linthicum

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  • Suspected Santee bank robber nabbed at Mexico border

    A San Diego County Sheriff’s deputy’s patch. (File photo courtesy of the San Diego County Sheriff ‘s Office)

    A man suspected of robbing a Santee bank this week was behind bars Friday following his arrest at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The 31-year-old suspect allegedly handed a teller a note demanding cash at the Chase Bank on Town Center Parkway shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.

    Detectives identified him as the suspected robber through surveillance camera images and prior law enforcement contacts, Sgt. Justin Crews said.

    The suspect was arrested shortly before 7 p.m. Thursday as he attempted to cross at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. He was booked into at San Diego Central Jail, where he was being held on $100,000 bail pending arraignment, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

    Officials did not disclose how much money was stolen during the heist.


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  • Cars stolen in U.S. are being smuggled to Mexico, where they’re almost impossible to recover

    Tijuana, Mexico — After a month away, Catherine Vermillion came home to her San Diego apartment and an empty parking space.

    “I looked up and realized my car was gone,” Vermillion told CBS News. “I remembered that I had an AirTag in the car, so I checked my phone, and the AirTag showed that my car was in Tijuana, Mexico.”

    When she saw where the AirTag popped up, she said she was in “shock and disbelief.”

    Disbelief turned into frustration after she said local police couldn’t help.

    “They just said that because it’s across the border, they’re not able to go and get it even though I could show them it was only 45 minutes away,” Vermillion said.

    It’s a frustration shared by the California Highway Patrol.

    “When it comes to country borders, we cannot cross that line,” CHP Lt. David Navarro said.

    Navarro warned that organized theft rings are going after high-end SUVs, pickups and performance cars, stealing them in the U.S., then smuggling them into Mexico. He said it’s lucrative, hard to track and often impossible to recover those cars once they cross the border.

    In just the last four years, CHP data shows the number of stolen vehicles tracked crossing the border from California, Arizona and Texas jumped 79%.

    “If a vehicle’s stolen in the middle of the night, and the victim does not wake up till 7 in the morning, well if it’s stolen at 2, you have roughly five hours to transport that vehicle,” Navarro said. “If that vehicle’s not reported in the system, and it passes through that camera, then no, it’s not going to be alerted at all.”

    That’s exactly what happened to Vermillion’s Jeep. The difference was she knew exactly where it ended up — 46 miles away, over the border in Tijuana.

    Catherine Vermillion’s car was tracked to this lot in Tijuana, Mexico.

    CBS News


    Enter Phil Mohr, a repo man who has spent the last 20 years as a stolen car bounty hunter in Mexico.

    Mohr said a lot of stolen cars end up next to the airport in Tijuana, a few hundred yards from the U.S.-Mexico border.

    “This is a organized drop-off point,” Mohr said.

    Organized in many cases by cartels, who federal agents told CBS News drive the cars into Mexico and use them to traffic drugs and weapons.

    Mohr worked with local law enforcement in Mexico to repossess Vermillion’s car and bring it back to San Diego.

    “It feels like a win,” Mohr said. “It feels like you made it right, that you righted a wrong in the world.”

    A neighbor of Vermillion’s took a picture to capture the moment when Mohr brought her car back.

    “I just have my hands up, like, whoa,” Vermillion said. “It was like the best day ever.”

    For Vermillion, it was the best day ever, but for most, that day never comes.

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  • SoCal love triangle murder suspect extradited after 8 years on the run in Mexico

    A man accused of ambushing and fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend has been extradited to Orange County to face a murder charge after eight years on the run in Mexico, authorities said.

    Humberto Rodriguez Martinez, 39, is accused of working with a friend to kill his romantic rival outside his ex-girlfriend’s apartment in 2017, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office. Martinez is a Mexican citizen and was in the U.S. illegally at the time of the killing, prosecutors said.

    Prosecutors charged Martinez in 2017 with the murder of 32-year-old Daniel Reyes, as well as with felony enhancements for allegedly lying in wait and for using a knife. But for years police were unable to arrest him.

    Martinez’s car was recovered in San Diego, while he remained wanted on a $2-million warrant.

    His friend, Adan Zapot-Leyva, was arrested two days after the attack and later sentenced to 15 years to life after pleading guilty in 2023 to one felony count of second-degree murder.

    Mexican authorities, working with the U.S. Marshals Service, tracked down Martinez in 2024 in Mexico, where he was arrested at the request of the U.S.

    On Dec. 4, he was extradited to the U.S. and homicide detectives from the Anaheim Police Department took him into custody at Los Angeles International Airport. He pleaded not guilty to murder on Tuesday and is being held without bail.

    “This arrest does not undo the pain the victim’s family has endured, but it reinforces our commitment and promise to our community: We will never stop working until justice is served,” Anaheim Police Chief Manny Cid said in a statement.

    Prosecutors accuse Martinez of carrying out a deliberate, jealousy-driven murder plot.

    Martinez shared two children with his ex-girlfriend and they were co-parenting for several months after they broke up. On Oct. 17, 2017, Martinez and Zapot-Leyva went to the woman’s apartment to watch the children while she went to work, prosecutors said.

    She returned home around 8:30 p.m. and the men left the apartment. About 30 minutes later, her new boyfriend arrived, prosecutors said.

    Early the following morning, Anaheim police officers responded to the intersection of Santa Ana and Helena streets after witnesses reported seeing two men chasing Reyes and one of them stabbing him. Reyes died at the scene.

    Zapot-Leyva later told authorities that he and Martinez had watched the apartment for several hours because they knew that Reyes was inside, according to his 2023 plea agreement obtained by City News Service.

    The ex-girlfriend had called Zapot-Leyva to ask where he and Martinez were and, in a “deliberate trick,” Zapot-Leyva told her they had left the area hours ago, according to the plea agreement. The goal was to fool Reyes into thinking it was safe to exit the apartment.

    Once he did emerge, the men chased him down and attacked him, and Martinez stabbed him 10 times, Zapot-Leyva told authorities, according to the plea deal.

    Reyes begged them to stop, saying “please don’t … I have children,” according to the plea deal.

    “The pursuit of justice will never be derailed by time or distance,” O.C. Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said in a statement Friday. “We are grateful for the incredible work of our investigators and prosecutors and of our partners, both domestic and international, for their assistance in tracking down a wanted [murder suspect] and bringing him back to Orange County.”

    Clara Harter

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  • Donald Trump Says ‘I Don’t Need International Law’ In Quest For World Dominance: ‘Only’ THIS ‘Can Stop Me’ – Perez Hilton

    Well, this is concerning…

    Donald Trump is once again serving up a quote that sounds less like a presidential soundbite and more like a rejected line from a supervillain origin movie. And yes, it’s as alarming as it is headline-ready.

    Related: Jimmy Kimmel THANKS Donald Trump?! Whoa!

    In a new interview with the New York Times that has everyone clutching their pearls, Trump made it clear that pesky little things like international laws, rules, and norms are more of a suggestion than an actual obstacle. When discussing his ever-expanding vision for American dominance on Thursday, he casually dropped this gem:

    “I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.”

    Oh, okay! If you say so! Nothing says reassuring like dismissing international law in the same breath as claiming you’ll only have benevolent intentions… Yeah, tell that to the multiple civilians who’ve been killed of late..

    When the Times tried to gently nudge him back toward reality by pointing out that, yes, laws do apply, Trump doubled down with a rhetorical shrug that could be heard around the globe:

    “It depends what your definition of international law is.”

    WHAT?!

    Because definitions are so subjective, right? Gravity, laws, facts: all vibes-based, apparently. Sheesh…

    But wait, it gets better. According to Trump, there is exactly one thing holding him back from full-on global supremacy. And no, it’s not Congress, the courts, or literally the rest of the world. It’s this:

    “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

    Take a moment, y’all. Breathe. Scream into a pillow if needed.

    This interview lands just days after US forces under Trump’s direction seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores during strikes on the city of Caracas before shipping them off to face narco terrorism charges. Venezuela may have an interim leader now, but Trump has been boasting America is basically running the show.

    Related: Trump Makes Rare Melania Marriage Confession — Reveals What She ‘Hates’ About Him!

    And why stop there? Greenland is still on his wishlist, too. To that end, Trump explained to the Times on Thursday that being allies with Denmark simply isn’t enough. He wants full ownership of the land mass. In his own words:

    “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do with, you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”

    Add this to past musings about Colombia, Cuba, Iran, and Mexico, and suddenly this feels less like foreign policy and more like a Monopoly board where someone flipped the table.

    Buckle up, y’all. Apparently the only thing between us and Trump’s global takeover is… Trump. Yikes.

    [Image via MEGA/WENN]

    Perez Hilton

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  • Maduro didn’t flood the US with fentanyl

    A White House social media post misleadingly links deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro with the U.S. fentanyl crisis. 

    The X post includes a video highlighting parents who lost children to fentanyl overdoses thanking President Donald Trump for capturing Maduro.

    “Angel Families thank President Trump for saving lives & capturing Maduro — the kingpin flooding America with deadly fentanyl,” the White House’s Jan. 5 X post said. “Justice is being served.”

    U.S. troops captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their Caracas home in the early hours of Jan. 3. The two pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges Jan. 5 in New York federal court.

    The White House post isn’t the first time the Trump administration blamed Maduro for trafficking fentanyl to the U.S. Trump has cited the potent synthetic opioid that is responsible for most U.S. drug overdose deaths to justify pressure on Venezuela in the months before Maduro’s capture.

    But neither Venezuela nor Maduro plays a role in smuggling fentanyl to the U.S. The majority of U.S. fentanyl comes from Mexico and is made with chemicals from China, according to U.S. government reports and drug policy experts.

    The White House did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.

    Vice President JD Vance addressed fentanyl in a Jan. 4 X post, the day before the White House’s post, saying cocaine is “the main drug trafficked out of Venezuela,” and, “Yes, a lot of fentanyl is coming out of Mexico. That continues to be a focus of our policy in Mexico and is a reason why President Trump shut the border on day one.” 

    Drug experts previously told PolitiFact that Venezuela acts as a transit country for some cocaine trafficking in part because its neighboring country, Colombia, is the world’s main cocaine producer. However, most of the cocaine that enters the U.S. doesn’t go through Venezuela.

    Drug trafficking experts, government reports say fentanyl does not come from Venezuela

    The Drug Enforcement Agency’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment reports for years have pointed to Mexico and China as the countries responsible for illicit fentanyl in the U.S. None of the agency’s reports from 2017 through 2025 list Venezuela as a fentanyl producer or trafficker. 

    Most illicit fentanyl entered the U.S. via the southern border at official ports of entry, and 83.5% of the smugglers in fiscal year 2024 were U.S. citizens.

    “There is no evidence of fentanyl or cocaine laced with fentanyl coming from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America,” David Smilde, a Tulane University sociologist who studies violence in Venezuela, told PolitiFact in September. 

    The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report also points to Mexico as the country of origin for the most fentanyl seized in the U.S. 

    U.S. fentanyl overdose deaths recently have dropped. From May 2024 to April 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 43,000 synthetic opioid deaths, most of which were from fentanyl, down from nearly 70,000 in the previous year.

    “The United States has been suffering an enormous overdose crisis driven by opioids and fentanyl in particular in recent years,” John Walsh, director for drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America, a group advocating for human rights in the Americas, previously told PolitiFact. “I would say it has zero to do with anything in South America or the Caribbean.”

    Maduro’s indictment on drug-related charges doesn’t mention fentanyl

    The Justice Department first indicted Maduro in 2020 for alleged drug-related actions dating to 1999. A newly unsealed and updated indictment filed in the Southern District of New York charges Maduro and two co-defendants with narcoterrorism conspiracy and he, Flores and the four other co-defendants with cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns.

    The indictment calls Maduro an illegitimate leader who transported cocaine under Venezuelan law enforcement protection, enriching his family and cementing power. 

    The 25-page document does not mention fentanyl or fentanyl trafficking.

    Our ruling

    The Trump White House described Maduro as “flooding America with deadly fentanyl.”

    Drug experts and official government and international reports point to Mexico and China as the countries primarily involved in producing and trafficking the illicit fentanyl that reaches the U.S. The majority of fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Mexico, is made with chemicals from China, and is smuggled by U.S. citizens via official ports of entry at the southern border.

    The U.S. Justice Department indicted Maduro on charges related to cocaine. The indictment does not mention fentanyl.

    We rate the statement False.

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  • Cuba faces uncertain future after US topples Venezuelan leader Maduro

    Cuban officials on Monday lowered flags before dawn to mourn 32 security officers they say were killed in the U.S. weekend strike in Venezuela, the island nation’s closest ally, as residents here wonder what the capture of President Nicolás Maduro means for their future.The two governments are so close that Cuban soldiers and security agents were often the Venezuelan president’s bodyguards, and Venezuela’s petroleum has kept the economically ailing island limping along for years. Cuban authorities over the weekend said the 32 had been killed in the surprise attack “after fierce resistance in direct combat against the attackers, or as a result of the bombing of the facilities.”Related video above: What happens next: Venezuela’s future after U.S. capture of MaduroThe Trump administration has warned outright that toppling Maduro will help advance another decades-long goal: Dealing a blow to the Cuban government. Severing Cuba from Venezuela could have disastrous consequences for its leaders, who on Saturday called for the international community to stand up to “state terrorism.”On Saturday, Trump said the ailing Cuban economy will be further battered by Maduro’s ouster.“It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.” Loss of key supporterMany observers say Cuba, an island of about 10 million people, exerted a remarkable degree of influence over Venezuela, an oil-rich nation with three times as many people. At the same time, Cubans have long been tormented by constant blackouts and shortages of basic foods. And after the attack, they woke to the once-unimaginable possibility of an even grimmer future.“I can’t talk. I have no words,” 75-year-old Berta Luz Sierra Molina said as she sobbed and placed a hand over her face.Even though 63-year-old Regina Méndez is too old to join the Cuban military, she said that “we have to stand strong.”“Give me a rifle, and I’ll go fight,” Méndez said.Maduro’s government was shipping an average of 35,000 barrels of oil daily over the last three months, about a quarter of total demand, said Jorge Piñón, a Cuban energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.“The question to which we don’t have an answer, which is critical: Is the U.S. going to allow Venezuela to continue supplying Cuba with oil?” he said.Piñón noted that Mexico once supplied Cuba with 22,000 barrels of oil a day before it dropped to 7,000 barrels after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City in early September.“I don’t see Mexico jumping in right now,” Piñón said. “The U.S. government would go bonkers.”Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, said that “blackouts have been significant, and that is with Venezuela still sending some oil.”“Imagine a future now in the short term losing that,” he said. “It’s a catastrophe.”Piñón noted that Cuba doesn’t have the money to buy oil on the international market.“The only ally that they have left out there with oil is Russia,” he said, noting that it sends Cuba about 2 million barrels a year.“Russia has the capability to fill the gap. Do they have the political commitment, or the political desire to do so? I don’t know,” he said.Torres also questioned whether Russia would extend a hand.“Meddling with Cuba could jeopardize your negotiation with the U.S. around Ukraine. Why would you do it? Ukraine is far more important,” he said.Torres said Cuba should open its doors to the private sector and market and reduce its public sector, moves that could help prompt China to step in and help Cuba.“Do they have an alternative? I don’t think they do,” he said.Rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industryOn Monday, Trump told NBC News in an interview that the U.S. government could reimburse oil companies making investments in Venezuela to maintain and increase oil production in that country.He suggested that the necessary rebuilding of the country’s neglected infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil could happen in less than 18 months.“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Trump said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”It still remains unclear how quickly the investment could occur given the uncertainties about Venezuela’s political stability and the billions of dollars needed to be spent.Venezuela produces on average about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, down from the 3.5 million barrels a day produced in 1999 before a government takeover of the majority of oil interests and a mix of corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions led output to fall.___Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press reporters Milexsy Durán in Havana, Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires and Joshua Boak in Washington, D.C., contributed.

    Cuban officials on Monday lowered flags before dawn to mourn 32 security officers they say were killed in the U.S. weekend strike in Venezuela, the island nation’s closest ally, as residents here wonder what the capture of President Nicolás Maduro means for their future.

    The two governments are so close that Cuban soldiers and security agents were often the Venezuelan president’s bodyguards, and Venezuela’s petroleum has kept the economically ailing island limping along for years. Cuban authorities over the weekend said the 32 had been killed in the surprise attack “after fierce resistance in direct combat against the attackers, or as a result of the bombing of the facilities.”

    Related video above: What happens next: Venezuela’s future after U.S. capture of Maduro

    The Trump administration has warned outright that toppling Maduro will help advance another decades-long goal: Dealing a blow to the Cuban government. Severing Cuba from Venezuela could have disastrous consequences for its leaders, who on Saturday called for the international community to stand up to “state terrorism.”

    On Saturday, Trump said the ailing Cuban economy will be further battered by Maduro’s ouster.

    “It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.”

    Loss of key supporter

    Many observers say Cuba, an island of about 10 million people, exerted a remarkable degree of influence over Venezuela, an oil-rich nation with three times as many people. At the same time, Cubans have long been tormented by constant blackouts and shortages of basic foods. And after the attack, they woke to the once-unimaginable possibility of an even grimmer future.

    “I can’t talk. I have no words,” 75-year-old Berta Luz Sierra Molina said as she sobbed and placed a hand over her face.

    Even though 63-year-old Regina Méndez is too old to join the Cuban military, she said that “we have to stand strong.”

    “Give me a rifle, and I’ll go fight,” Méndez said.

    Maduro’s government was shipping an average of 35,000 barrels of oil daily over the last three months, about a quarter of total demand, said Jorge Piñón, a Cuban energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.

    “The question to which we don’t have an answer, which is critical: Is the U.S. going to allow Venezuela to continue supplying Cuba with oil?” he said.

    Piñón noted that Mexico once supplied Cuba with 22,000 barrels of oil a day before it dropped to 7,000 barrels after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City in early September.

    “I don’t see Mexico jumping in right now,” Piñón said. “The U.S. government would go bonkers.”

    Ricardo Torres, a Cuban economist at American University in Washington, said that “blackouts have been significant, and that is with Venezuela still sending some oil.”

    “Imagine a future now in the short term losing that,” he said. “It’s a catastrophe.”

    Piñón noted that Cuba doesn’t have the money to buy oil on the international market.

    “The only ally that they have left out there with oil is Russia,” he said, noting that it sends Cuba about 2 million barrels a year.

    “Russia has the capability to fill the gap. Do they have the political commitment, or the political desire to do so? I don’t know,” he said.

    Torres also questioned whether Russia would extend a hand.

    “Meddling with Cuba could jeopardize your negotiation with the U.S. around Ukraine. Why would you do it? Ukraine is far more important,” he said.

    Torres said Cuba should open its doors to the private sector and market and reduce its public sector, moves that could help prompt China to step in and help Cuba.

    “Do they have an alternative? I don’t think they do,” he said.

    Rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry

    On Monday, Trump told NBC News in an interview that the U.S. government could reimburse oil companies making investments in Venezuela to maintain and increase oil production in that country.

    He suggested that the necessary rebuilding of the country’s neglected infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil could happen in less than 18 months.

    “I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Trump said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”

    It still remains unclear how quickly the investment could occur given the uncertainties about Venezuela’s political stability and the billions of dollars needed to be spent.

    Venezuela produces on average about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, down from the 3.5 million barrels a day produced in 1999 before a government takeover of the majority of oil interests and a mix of corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions led output to fall.

    ___

    Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press reporters Milexsy Durán in Havana, Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires and Joshua Boak in Washington, D.C., contributed.

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  • Mexico’s president slams Trump’s attack on Venezuela, says it destabilizes the hemisphere

    MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday again condemned the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America for threatening the stability of the hemisphere.

    “We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”

    “Unilateral action and invasion cannot be the basis of international relations in the 21st century,” she said. “They don’t lead to peace or development.”

    Her comments came as Trump on Sunday threatened more military strikes on Venezuela — and raised the possibility of intervention in Mexico as well as in Cuba, Colombia and the Danish territory of Greenland. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said drugs were “pouring” through Mexico and that “we’re going to have to do something.”

    He has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the U.S. may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.

    “Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”

    Sheinbaum is part of a bloc of leftist Latin American leaders who have spoken out forcefully against the U.S. after its surprise attack on Caracas on Saturday morning. U.S. special forces abducted Maduro, Venezuela’s leftist president, and his wife, Cilia Flores, the former head of the National Assembly.

    Venezuela says at least 40 people were killed in the attack. The couple have been indicted in New York’s Southern District on drug trafficking charges.

    Right-wing leaders in the region, on the other hand, have cheered the removal of Maduro from power.

    At her news conference on Monday, Sheinbaum called for cooperation among countries in the region, at one point quoting Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

    “Washington called for good faith and justice toward all nations, and for the cultivation of peace and harmony among all,” she said.

    Nations cannot impose their wills on other countries, she said, and do not have the right to their resources. That was a clear reference to Trump’s stated desire to exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

    “Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government,” she said. “Each nation has the inalienable right to decide its political, economic, and social model, free from external pressure.”

    Sheinbaum warned that infighting among Latin American nations would hurt the region economically.

    “Global economic competition, particularly in the face of Asia’s growth, is not achieved through the use of force … but rather through cooperation for development, productive investment, innovation, education and social welfare,” she said.

    She said Mexico was committed to fighting organized crime, and reminded the U.S. that it fuels that dynamic.

    “The violence plaguing our country is partly caused by the illegal flow of high-powered weapons from the United States into Mexico, as well as the serious problem of drug consumption in our neighboring country,” she said.

    Kate Linthicum

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  • Maduro indictment alleges long criminal past, promises lengthy legal battle ahead

    Ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro stood in a Manhattan courthouse Monday a captive criminal defendant: surrounded by heavy security, deprived of his power as a head of state and facing drug, weapon and conspiracy charges likely to keep him behind bars for years.

    “I was captured,” he said in Spanish, before pleading not guilty during a brief arraignment. “I am a decent man, the president of my country.”

    Just two days prior, more than 2,000 miles away in Caracas, Maduro was seated “atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking,” according to a sweeping indictment unsealed Saturday.

    What preceded Maduro’s swift downfall was not just his weekend capture in what President Trump called “one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might” in U.S. history, but decades of partnership with “narco-terrorists” from Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico to enrich himself and his family through “massive-scale” cocaine trafficking, the indictment claims.

    The allegations, built off a 2020 indictment, stretch back a quarter-century and implicate other Venezuelan leaders and Maduro’s wife and son. They suggest extensive coordination with notorious drug trafficking organizations and cartels from across the region, and paint a world Trump himself has long worked to instill in the minds of Americans — one in which the nation’s southern neighbors are intentionally flooding the U.S. with lethal drugs and violent criminals, to the devastation of local communities.

    It is a portrait of drugs, money and violence every bit as dramatic as the nighttime raid that sent jets and helicopters into Venezuelan airspace, U.S. special forces into Maduro’s bedroom and Maduro and his wife into U.S. custody and ultimately to their arraignment in court Monday.

    It appears to rely on clandestine intelligence and other witness testimony gathered over the course of decades, which Maduro’s defense team will undoubtedly seek to discredit by impugning the cast of characters — some drug traffickers themselves — whom prosecutors relied on.

    Legal experts said it could take years for the case to reach trial, slowed not only by the normal nuance of litigating a multi-defendant conspiracy case but the added complexity of a prosecution that is almost certainly predicated in part on classified intelligence.

    “That’s very different than a typical drug case, even a very high-level drug case, [where] you’re not going to have classified State Department cables the way you’re going to have them when you’re actually prosecuting a head of state or a former head of state,” said Renato Stabile, an attorney for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a similar cocaine trafficking case in 2024 before being pardoned by Trump last month.

    Joe McNally, the former acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, said he expects the case will take at least a year to get to trial, after prosecutors “show their cards” and Maduro’s attorneys review that evidence and seek out their own witnesses.

    He said he expects a strong case from prosecutors — despite it being “not easy to prove a case that involves high level cartel activity that’s happening thousands of miles away” — that will appropriately play out entirely in public view.

    “He’ll have his day in court. It’s not a military tribunal,” McNally said. “His guilt or innocence will be decided by 12 people from the district [in New York where he’s been indicted], and ultimately the burden will be on the prosecutor.”

    The case against Maduro

    According to the indictment, Maduro and his fellow indicted Venezuelan leaders have since about 1999 “partnered with some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world” — including the FARC and ELN groups in Colombia, the Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels in Mexico and the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela.

    Among the others indicted in the case is Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, aka “Niño Guerrero,” a purported leader of Tren de Aragua.

    Trump has accused Tren de Aragua of committing violence in the U.S. and used alleged ties between it and Maduro to justify using a wartime statute to deport Venezuelans accused of being in the gang to a notorious Salvadoran prison. However, Maduro’s links to the group have been heavily questioned in the past — including by U.S. intelligence agencies — and the indictment doesn’t spell out any specific links between Maduro and Guerrero Flores.

    The indictment alleges Maduro and his co-conspirators “facilitated the empowerment and growth of violent narco-terrorist groups fueling their organizations with cocaine profits,” including by providing “law enforcement cover and logistical support for the transport of cocaine through Venezuela, with knowledge that their drug trafficking partners would move the cocaine north to the United States.”

    It specifically alleges that between 2006 and 2008, when he was foreign affairs minister, Maduro sold diplomatic passports to people he knew were drug traffickers, specifically so they could move drug proceeds from Mexico back to Venezuela “under diplomatic cover” and without military or law enforcement scrutinizing their flights.

    It also alleges that between 2004 and 2015, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, “worked together to traffic cocaine, much of which had been previously seized by Venezuelan law enforcement, with the assistance of armed military escorts.”

    It alleges the couple “maintained their own groups of state-sponsored gangs known as colectivos to facilitate and protect their drug trafficking operation,” and “ordered kidnappings, beatings, and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation, including ordering the murder of a local drug boss in Caracas.”

    The indictment references a half-dozen other criminal cases already brought in the U.S. against others with alleged ties to Maduro and his alleged co-conspirators, several of whom have been convicted.

    What’s ahead

    Stabile said the legally questionable nature of Maduro’s capture will no doubt be a factor in the criminal proceedings ahead, with his defense team likely to argue that his detention is unlawful. “That’s going to be front and center, and I assume it’s going to be the subject of a motion to dismiss,” he said.

    Whether anything will come of that argument, however, is less clear, as courts in the U.S. have in the past allowed criminal proceedings to continue against individuals captured abroad, including former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega. Part of the U.S. argument for why Noriega could be prosecuted was that he was not the legitimate leader of Panama, an argument that is likely to be made in Maduro’s case, too.

    Beyond that, Stabile said how the case plays out will depend on what evidence the government has against Maduro.

    “Is his case just gonna be based on the testimony of sources and cooperators, which is pretty much what it was in President Hernandez’s case?” Stabile said. “Or are there recordings? Are there videos? Are there bank records? Are there text messages? Are there emails?”

    McNally said he will be watching to see whom prosecutors have lined up to testify against Maduro.

    “In most of the high-level narcotics trafficking cases, international narcotics trafficking cases that have been brought and go to trial, the common thread is that you end up with cooperators — individuals who were part of the conspiracy, they were the criminal partners of the defendant, and they ultimately decide, hey, it’s in my self-interest to come forward and testify,” McNally said.

    “They obviously are cross-examined, and they’ll frequently be accused of … lying for their own self-interest,” he said. “But in my experience, cooperators in these types of cases are especially valuable, and the key is to then corroborate them with other witnesses who tell the same story or documentary evidence.”

    Kevin Rector

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  • Commentary: In Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, Marco Rubio is the biggest sellout of all

    By invading Venezuela, President Trump just lit America’s eternal exploding cigar.

    For over 175 years — ever since the United States conquered half of Mexico — nearly every president has messed with Latin America while telling the rest of the world to stay the hell out.

    We have helped depose democratically elected leaders and propped up murderous strongmen. Trained death squads and offered bailouts to favored allies. Ran economic blockades and encouraged American companies to treat the region’s riches, and its workers, like a cookie jar.

    From the Mexican American War to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Panama Canal to NAFTA, we’ve only looked out for ourselves in Latin America even while wrapping our actions in the banner of benevolence.

    It’s rarely ended well for anyone involved — especially us. Many of the leaders we put into power became despots we tolerated until they ran their course, like Panama’s Manuel Noriega. The political upheaval we helped create has led generations of Latin Americans to migrate to el Norte, fundamentally changing our country even as too many Americans think people like my family should have stayed in their ancestral homes.

    So there Trump was at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, insisting that the capture of Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife by American troops was a military action as brilliant and consequential as D-day. He also announced that the U.S. would “run the country” and practically jiggled out his weird “YMCA” dance at the idea of making money from Venezuelan oil.

    His message to the world: Venezuela is ours until we say so, just like the rest of Latin America. And if allies and enemies alike still didn’t get the hint, Trump announced an updated Monroe Doctrine — the idea that the U.S. can do whatever it wants in the Western Hemisphere — called the “Donroe Doctrine.”

    Because of course he did.

    No one in Washington should be more versed in this terrible history than Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the child of Cubans who fled the island when it was ruled by the U.S.-backed caudillo Fulgencio Batista.

    Rubio grew up in an exile community that saw Batista’s replacement, Fidel Castro, remain in power for decades, despite a U.S. embargo. As one of Florida’s U.S. senators, Rubio represented millions of Latin American immigrants who had fled civil wars sparked by the U.S. in one way or another.

    Yet he’s Trumpworld’s biggest cheerleader for Latin American regime change, helping torpedo the president’s anti-interventionist campaign promise as if it were a narco boat off the South American coast.

    On Saturday, Rubio looked on silently as Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro to “watch his ass.” When it was Rubio’s turn to take questions from reporters, he said Cuban leaders “should be concerned” and offered a warning to the rest of the world: “Don’t play games with this president in office, because it’s not going to turn out well.”

    In Latin America, few are more reviled than the vendido — the sellout. Betraying one’s country for personal or political gain is an original sin dating back to the tribes who aligned with Spanish conquistadors to take down repressive empires, only to suffer the same sad end themselves. Vendidos have dominated the region’s history and stilted its development, with leaders — Mexico’s Porfirio Diaz, the Somozas of Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic — more than happy to side with the yanquis at the expense of their own countrymen.

    Rubio belongs to this long, sordid lineup — and in many ways, he’s the worst vendido of them all.

    Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), left, listens during a 2016 president debate with candidate Donald Trump.

    (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)

    I still remember the fresh-faced, idealistic guy trying to pass a bipartisan amnesty bill in 2013. Though too right-wing for my taste, he seemed like a Latino politician who could thread the needle between liberals and conservatives, gringos and us.

    It was wonderful to see him call out Trump’s boorishness when the two ran against each other in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper, in words that sound more prophetic than ever, “For years to come, there are many people … that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because this is not going to end well, one way or the other.”

    The thirst for power has a way of corrupting even the most idealistic hearts, alas. Rubio ended up endorsing Trump in 2016, supporting Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged and proclaiming at the 2024 Republican National Convention that Trump “has not just transformed our party, he has inspired a movement.”

    Rubio’s reward for his boot-licking? He sets our foreign policy agenda, which is like putting an arsonist in charge of a fireworks stall.

    I’m sure all of this comes off as leftist babble to the Venezuelan diaspora, many of whom cheered Maduro’s fate from Spain to Mexico, Miami to Los Angeles. Only a deluded pendejo could support what Maduro wrought on Venezuela, which was a prosperous country and a relatively stable U.S. ally for decades as the rest of South America teetered from one crisis to another.

    But for Trump, toppling Maduro was never about the well-being of Venezuelans or bringing democracy to their country; it was about securing a foothold to flex American power and enrich the U.S.

    Meanwhile, his deportation Leviathan has gobbled up tens of thousands of undocumented Venezuelans and canceled the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands more.

    Back in 2022, when Rubio was still a senator, he advocated for Venezuelans to be eligible for temporary protected status, which is granted to citizens of countries considered too dangerous to return to. At the time, Rubio argued that “failure to do so would result in a very real death sentence for countless Venezuelans who have fled their country.”

    Now? At a May news conference, he maintained that the 240 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador earlier in 2025 “were not migrants, these were criminals,” even though the Deportation Data Project found that only 16% of them had criminal convictions.

    Rubio has long fashioned himself as a modern-day Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan who led the liberation of South America from Spain and who has been a hero to many Latinos ever since.

    But even Bolívar knew to be skeptical of American hegemony, writing in an 1829 letter that the U.S. “seems destined by Providence to plague [Latin] America with miseries in the name of Freedom.”

    Plague, thy name is Marco Rubio. By pushing Trump to run rampant over Latin America, you’re setting in motion the same old song of U.S. meddling that ties your family and mine. By letting Maduro’s cronies remain in power if they play along with you and Trump, even though they stole an election in 2024, proves you’re as much for the Venezuelan people as, well, Maduro.

    Vendido.

    Gustavo Arellano

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  • Contributor: California’s place in enslaved people’s struggle for freedom

    In one version of U.S. history, California is a place where slavery was prohibited from the founding, in the 1849 state constitution, and where that ban was reaffirmed by the state’s ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865. In another telling, it was a place that had ended the practice some 30 years earlier — when it was part of Mexico.

    Despite being on the periphery of the Spanish empire and Mexico before becoming part of the United States, California had an important place in the larger struggle by enslaved people for their freedom. California connects Mexican and U.S. history while also serving as a reminder that there are few corners of the Western Hemisphere that are untouched by the legacy of slavery.

    The story of the rise and fall of African enslavement is often presented as a national story in the United States — and a mostly Southern one — rather than as the hemispheric phenomenon that it was. Enslaved Africans could be found as far south as Chile and Argentina all the way up to Canada. Likewise, the end of slavery was not solely brought about by the Civil War in the U.S., but also by centuries of resistance through rebellions, wars, sabotage and self-emancipation, across the entire Americas. This, too, was part of California’s story.

    After the Spanish toppled the Mexica empire in 1521, they wasted little time bringing captive Africans to the place they called New Spain — a vast territory that would later expand to the north to include New Mexico and California. By the 1530s there were reports of conspiracies to revolt, as well as the establishment of colonies by escapees from slavery. The leader of one such community, Gaspar Yanga, forced Spanish authorities to recognize its autonomy, after troops failed to vanquish him in 1608. This land outside of Veracruz became the first free Black town in Mexico, today known as Yanga. It was a significant victory at a time when an estimated 130,000 Africans were brought to New Spain, resulting in one of the highest African slave populations in the 17th century Americas.

    However, by the 18th century the center of enslavement had shifted farther north, toward the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, and the numbers dropped in Mexico. In addition, there was still Indigenous labor in Mexico, which was often exploited. This was also the case in the lands that would become California, as well as New Mexico, where indentured and often “detribalized” Indigenous people, known as genízaros, were often forced into a servitude that often bore more than a passing resemblance to slavery.

    In 1829, president of a now-independent Mexico, Vicente Guerrero, who was of partial African descent, abolished slavery. This triggered an immediate outcry in the Texas territory, which was largely populated by slave-owning immigrants from the U.S. By 1836 Texas was independent, and slavery in Mexico was officially finished the following year. Now Mexico became a land of possible refuge for people fleeing enslavement in Texas or nearby places such as Louisiana. It was far closer than the Underground Railroad leading to the northern states or Canada. Historian Alice Baumgartner has estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 enslaved people escaped to Mexico from the U.S.

    However, this potential zone of freedom was significantly reduced by the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. In the aftermath of that conflict, 51% of Mexico was ceded to the United States. This included New Mexico, which had been part of Spain’s empire since the early 1600s, and California, which was colonized in 1769. Ultimately, the entire territory would form the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

    People in the lands ceded from Mexico were forced to confront the issue of slavery anew as part of the U.S. Gold miners were racing to California, and some were from the South, bringing enslaved people to work on their claims. By the time of statehood in 1850, according to one estimate, there had been around 500 to 1,500 enslaved people brought to California, their status obscured even after the state constitution was enacted. Although the shadow of Southern slavery stalked California, some people managed to find freedom in those early years. However, in 1852, California enacted a Fugitive Slave Law, which applied to people who were brought before statehood and led to many being sent back to the plantations of the South. The Utah and New Mexico territories — which would not become states until 1896 and 1912 — passed slave codes, which permitted slavery and were meant to regulate the treatment of people in servitude or bondage, both Black and Native Americans.

    Farther south, however, most of the new republics of Spanish America had ended their involvement with the slave trade and implemented gradual emancipation measures as early as 1811, and with final abolition in place by the mid-1850s. Had California remained part of Mexico, it would have been in this larger, earlier wave of abolition, rather than seeing the continuation or return of enslavement.

    Slavery shaped the Americas for four centuries, blighting the entire hemisphere. The long struggle to dismantle it did not happen only in the U.S. or only in the South; in fact, in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Brazil it continued for decades after the U.S. Civil War. Simple narratives such as “California banned slavery at its founding” and “slavery ended in 1865” obscure much of its connection to this larger story. What happened to California illuminates the unevenness of abolition and the many false promises of freedom. It also serves as a reminder of the need for a wider lens when thinking about enslavement and freedom throughout the Americas today.

    Carrie Gibson is the author of the forthcoming “The Great Resistance: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas” and of “El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America.”

    Carrie Gibson

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  • Around the world, U.S. attacks on Venezuela prompt praise, anger — and fear

    MEXICO CITY — Argentina’s president called it “excellent news for the free world.”

    Iran condemned it as a “blatant violation of national sovereignty.”

    Canada said little, except that it was “monitoring developments closely.”

    The dramatic U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was cheered by world leaders allied with President Trump, and condemned by those who oppose him.

    Other countries responded carefully to news of the covert U.S. operation, hoping to stay out of the crosshairs of a famously vindictive American president who wields tariffs freely — and who has hinted at a willingness to broaden his military campaign.

    On Saturday, as details emerged about the early morning apprehension of Maduro and his wife from their Caracas home by special operations forces and the White House plan to exploit Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, Trump boasted that he is “reasserting American power in a very powerful way” and suggested that he may target Cuba, Colombia and Mexico next.

    Venezuelans celebrate in Madrid after President Trump announced that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country on Saturday.

    (Bernat Armangue / AP)

    At a news conference, Trump said he wants to “help the people in Cuba,” which he described as a “failing nation,” and threatened military action in Colombia, whose leftist President Gustavo Petro has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics.

    Trump asserted, without evidence, that Petro is a drug trafficker and warned that Colombia’s leader should “watch his ass.”

    In an interview with Fox News on Saturday, Trump also revived warnings that U.S. forces may intervene in Mexico, one of America’s closest allies.

    “The cartels are running Mexico,” he said. “We have to do something.”

    Some conservative leaders in Mexico welcome the prospect of U.S. drone strikes on cartel targets, and in recent polls about half of Mexicans surveyed said they support U.S. help with combating organized crime.

    But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly insisted that she will not allow the U.S. military to fight drug cartels inside her nation’s borders.

    “It’s not going to happen,” she said late last year when Trump threatened such an operation. “We don’t want intervention by any foreign government.”

    She reposted a statement by her Foreign Ministry on Saturday that said “the government of Mexico vigorously condemns and rejects the military actions carried out unilaterally in recent hours by the armed forces of the United States of America against targets in the territory of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

    Sheinbaum also mentioned the United Nations Charter, which says members of the body “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

    People take part in a demonstration in front of the White House in Washington, D.C.

    People take part in a demonstration against U.S. military action in Venezuela in front of the White House in Washington on Saturday.

    (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    Trump’s actions prompted a rare statement from Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose term as Mexico’s president ended in 2024, and who has rarely spoken publicly since his retirement.

    “I am retired from politics, but my libertarian convictions prevent me from remaining silent in the face of the arrogant attack on the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people and the kidnapping of their president,” said López Obrador, who formed a friendship with Trump during the first Trump presidency. “Neither [Simon] Bolívar nor Lincoln would accept the United States government acting as a global tyranny.”

    He told Trump not to bend to the will of advisors pressing for military actions. “Tell the hawks to go to hell; you have the capacity to act with practical judgment,” López Obrador said.

    In Latin America, the Middle East and in other parts of the world familiar with the long shadow of American intervention, Saturday’s operation stirred memories of past U.S. airstrikes, coups d’état and military invasions.

    “The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president cross an unacceptable line,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He said Maduro’s ouster recalled “the darkest moments of [U.S.] interference in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, without mentioning specifics or possible new targets, viewed the action against Maduro as setting “a dangerous precedent,” according to his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric.

    “He’s deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected,” Dujarric said of Guterres.

    U.S. intervention in the region dates back 200 years, when President James Monroe declared Latin America off limits to European colonization and began a campaign to establish the U.S. as a hemispheric power.

    Over decades, the U.S. carried out an array of interventions, from military invasions to covert operations to economic pressure campaigns. Motivations included fighting communism and protecting U.S. business interests.

    In his Saturday news conference, Trump hailed the Monroe Doctrine, which many in Latin American have condemned as an imperialist blueprint.

    “We’ve superceded it by a lot,” Trump said of the doctrine. “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

    While many countries in Latin America criticized the U.S. campaign in Venezuela, others applauded it, highlighting the stark political divisions here.

    “The time is coming for all the narco-Chavista criminals,” wrote conservative Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on X, referring to followers of Hugo Chávez, the late leftist revolutionary who served as president of Venezuela before Maduro. “Their structure will finally collapse across the entire continent.”

    El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who last year housed Venezuelan deportees from the United States in his country’s most notorious prison, posted a photograph issued by the United States on Saturday of Maduro blindfolded and in handcuffs.

    The foreign ministry of Uruguay, meanwhile, said it rejected “military intervention by one country in the territory of another.”

    The actions in Venezuela reverberated globally.

    Beijing, which has sought to expand its influence in Latin America in recent decades, said in a statement that “China is deeply shocked and strongly condemns the U.S.’s blatant use of force against a sovereign state and its action against its president.”

    Iran, whose leadership frets about being in the crosshairs of a similar U.S. operation, said the action in Venezuela “represents a grave breach of regional and international peace and security.”

    “Its consequences affect the entire international system,” it said.

    Kate Linthicum

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