Mexico

MEXICO CITY, March 24 (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday denied that parts of his country are controlled by drug cartels, responding to recent comments from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Blinken said in a congressional hearing on Wednesday that it was "fair to say" that parts of the country were controlled by cartels instead of the government.

"That is false," Lopez Obrador said in a regular news conference. "There is no place in the country that does not have the presence of authorities."

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador held a massive rally in Mexico City’s main plaza attended by tens of thousands of people Saturday.

Though it was called to commemorate Mexico’s 1938 expropriation of the oil industry, many of those attending the rally Saturday agreed that it was the de-facto opening salvo to the 2024 elections that will choose the president’s successor.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, March 12 (Reuters) - U.S. officials stopped hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants entering the country from Mexico on Sunday after a large group broke through Mexican lines to demand asylum in the U.S., only to be thwarted by barbed wire, barriers and shields.

Frustrated with problems securing appointments to seek asylum using a new U.S. government app, the migrants gathered at the frontier in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, but could not breach the crossing connecting the two countries.

Many of the migrants had small children with them.

MATAMOROS, Mexico, March 9 (Reuters) - Suspected drug cartel members on Thursday handed over five purported henchmen as a would-be apology for the abduction of four Americans in the border city of Matamoros, according to media and a source familiar with the investigation.

Two of the Americans and a Mexican woman died after gunmen opened fire on the U.S. citizens shortly after their arrival in Matamoros on Friday. The four Americans were found on Monday on the edge of the city, by which time two of them were dead.

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AP) — A letter claiming to be from the Mexican drug cartel blamed for abducting four Americans and killing two of them condemned the violence and said the gang turned over to authorities its own members who were responsible.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press through a Tamaulipas state law enforcement official, the Scorpions faction of the Gulf cartel apologized to the residents of Matamoros where the Americans were kidnapped, the Mexican woman who died in the cartel shootout, and the four Americans and their families.

MEXICO CITY, Mar 8 (NNN-XINHUA) – Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, yesterday accused U.S. media outlets of “hypocrisy” and “yellow journalism,” in their coverage of four American kidnap victims in north Mexico, two of whom were found dead.

“It is very striking that these unfortunate events happen and all the media in the United States handle the news in a sensationalist manner, not like when they murder Mexicans in the United States, (then) they are as quiet as mummies,” the president said during his daily press conference.

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AP) — A road trip to Mexico for cosmetic surgery veered violently off course when four Americans were caught in a drug cartel shootout, leaving two dead and two held captive for days in a remote region of the Gulf coast before they were rescued from a wood shack, officials said Tuesday.

Their minivan crashed and was fired on shortly after they crossed into the border city of Matamoros on Friday as drug cartel factions tore through the streets, the region’s governor said. A stray bullet also killed a Mexican woman about a block and a half away.

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AP) — Four Americans who traveled to Mexico last week to seek health care got caught in a deadly shootout and were kidnapped by heavily armed men who threw them in the back of a pickup truck, officials from both countries said Monday.

The four were traveling Friday in a white minivan with North Carolina license plates. They came under fire shortly after entering the city of Matamoros from Brownsville, at the southernmost tip of Texas near the Gulf coast, the FBI said in a statement Sunday.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Tens of thousands of people filled Mexico City’s vast main plaza Sunday to protest President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s electoral law changes they say threaten democracy and could mark a return to the past.

The plaza is normally thought to hold nearly 100,000 people, but many protesters who couldn’t fit in the square spilled onto nearby streets.

MEXICO CITY, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Thousands gathered in cities throughout Mexico on Sunday to protest against President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's drive to shrink the independent electoral authority, arguing the changes threaten democracy - an accusation he vigorously denies.

Mexico's Congress last week approved a major overhaul of the National Electoral Institute (INE), which Lopez Obrador has repeatedly attacked as corrupt and inefficient.