From the streets of Paris and Brussels to Mexico City, Uber drivers the world over have come under attack from irate taxi drivers in recent months.
But few, if any, outbreaks of violence have been as extreme as in Guadalajara on Wednesday night, when masked gunmen assaulted and abducted several Uber drivers and then stole their vehicles.
Jose Eseverri, Uber’s chief spokesman in Mexico, confirmed to VICE News that five Uber partners were attacked in separate incidents close to Guadalajara’s international airport between 11pm and 12:30am on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.
Wearing masks and carrying handguns, the five assailants demanded to know the locations of other Uber drivers and proceeded to pistol-whip several of the victims.
According to Uber, the attackers took four of the drivers hostage aboard their own vehicles for approximately an hour before dumping them on the outskirts of the city and driving off in the stolen cars. The attempted theft of the fifth victim’s car was thwarted by the vehicle’s security features…
Click here to read this story in full at VICE News.
Veracruz is a hell on earth for Mexican journalists
Months before they were both murdered, Ruben Espinosa’s activist friend Nadia Vera said she held Veracruz Governor Javier Duarte responsible for anything that might happen to her.
The murder of 31-year-old photojournalist Ruben Espinosa has drawn international attention to the dangers that reporters face in Mexico in general, and in the troubled eastern state of Veracruz in particular.
Espinosa, who had fled to Mexico City after receiving threats in Veracruz, the state where he had been covering social movements, was tortured and murdered alongside four women aged 18 to 40 – three of whom were also raped – in an apartment in the capital last Friday.
Ruben Espinosa was the seventh Mexican journalist to be killed in 2015, meaning on average one reporter has been murdered every month so far this year.
Espinosa was also the 14th journalist who lived or worked in Veracruz to have been killed or disappeared since state governor Javier Duarte of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) took office in December 2010…
Click here to read this article in full at Latin Correspondent.
With 74.7 percent of the population living in poverty, Chiapas remains the poorest state in Mexico.
Despite the passage of economic reforms that President Enrique Peña Nieto promised would bring new levels of prosperity to Mexico, the number of people living in poverty rose by two million during the first two years of his administration.
A report released by the National Council on Social Development Policy (Coneval) last week showed that the number of Mexicans living in poverty rose from 53.3 million in December 2012 – the month Peña Nieto took office – to 55.3 million in late 2014.
Today, 46.2 percent of Mexicans live in poverty, almost half the population…
Click here to read this article in full at Latin Correspondent.
The Tequila Files 