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Ioan Grillo

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Mexico's cartel army, Los Zetas, is drug war's scourge

By Ioan Grillo | 01/13/12
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Residents of the town of Fresnillo in northeast Mexico cowered in their homes as gunfire rattled between federal police and cartel gunmen on the streets outside. When the shooting subsided, those brave enough to peer out the
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Does Mexico need the ICC?

By Ioan Grillo | 11/29/11
As Mexicans struggle with relentless massacres, mass graves and assassinations, a group of activists have turned to an outside power for help — the International Criminal Court. The group, which includes leading academics, lawyers and journalists,
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Paying for your life in Mexico

By Ioan Grillo | 09/13/11
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — At a construction site of an apartment building in the heart of the Mexican capital, a company engineer runs through his weekly payroll sheet. He has salaries written out for carpenters, bricklayers and electricians.
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Mexican drug gangs compete for bounty from human trafficking

By Ioan Grillo | 05/31/11
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — On a southern highway, Mexican police busted a record 513 foreign migrants crammed into two tractor trailers. Across the country, Mexican soldiers rescued 180 migrants who were held for ransom.
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Mexico’s Arab moment

By Ioan Grillo | 05/10/11
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The men and women took to the stage in the capital’s vast plaza and tearfully told stories of how they lost their loved ones: how a son was kidnapped, tortured and dumped dead in a car trunk; how a brother was killed for sta
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Can security reform save Mexico?

By Ioan Grillo | 04/28/11
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The sheer number of victims shot or beaten to death and buried in pits near the Texas border has shocked the Mexican public to the core. But as the body count reached 183 this week — the biggest mass grave in Mexico’s recen
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Mexicans rage over racist remarks on BBC

By Ioan Grillo | 02/03/11
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — It has always been great being a Brit in Mexico. When people ask where you are from, they are delighted to know you are not American, the country that absorbed the northern third of Mexico and whose border patrol agents regu
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Mexico's 'secular Taliban'

By Ioan Grillo | 01/06/11
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — The language used in the first Sunday paper of 2011 could not have been more attention-grabbing: the capital government, said the Mexico City archdiocese, is so intolerant it acts like a “secular Taliban.” And sure enough t
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Mexico celebrates ruling on Arizona law

By Ioan Grillo | 07/30/10
MEXICO CITY — In the heart of the Mexican capital a crowd of 100 activists stood silently outside the imperious American Embassy on Wednesday waiting for a judicial decision 1,800 miles away in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Video: Mexico feels the recession

By Ioan Grillo and John Dickie | 04/12/10