BISBEE, Ariz. — The tiny town of Bisbee, Ariz., is expected to pass a resolution recognizing gay civil unions Tuesday night.
It's a quirky mountain village in Arizona’s southeastern corner, a short drive from the Mexican border. Locals and tourists alike mingle outside the post office, where a group of men sit in the parking lot tapping out a fast rhythm on bongo drums.
Every day, at a small, nondescript building in Playas, Tijuana, a handful of people gather to pray. They are worshiping at a masjid, or mosque, one of two new Islamic centers within a mile of one another, both of which have opened within the past three years.
An annual Good Friday pilgrimage is underway in Northern New Mexico. Tens of thousands of Catholics are expected to visit a tiny church that's nearly 200 years old.
Many arrive by foot on a multi-day journey that includes traversing a major U.S. highway. Some come to seek forgiveness, others to ask for help or give thanks.
The Los Angeles Times reports that major Mexican civic groups are pressing President Enrique Peña Nieto to proceed cautiously with his plan to create a national paramilitary force to combat violence in the country.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — This week is Semana Santa – or Holy Week. It’s a big week in Mexico, when schools cancel classes and businesses take a holiday for the last week of Lent before Easter. And it’s a big week for retailers in the Southwest, because Mexican shoppers cross the border in droves.
PHOENIX — There was a lively debate in federal district court in Phoenix last Friday over whether Arizona can ban young immigrants who qualify for an Obama administration program from getting driver’s licenses.
In a hearing that lasted well over two hours, the judge grilled both sides with tough questions.
Or so I heard from other reporters. I didn’t get to see it myself.
NOGALES, Mexico — Hiram Gonzalez stands on a quiet street in Nogales, Mexico. He’s watching two men peering through the bars of the border fence into the U.S. One is talking feverishly into a cellphone while the other scrambles up the 25-foot border wall in seconds. Both men are oblivious to a pair of reporters standing on the street just beneath them, watching, until the man on the cellphone turns around.
On March 10, a gun battle erupted in Reynosa, a border city across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas. The battle raged all night. The events that followed illustrate the complexities of a drug war inflated with intimidation and speculation.
SAN DIEGO — Lawyers delivered opening statements today in the trial of two alleged Mexican drug gang leaders accused of up to nine murders in San Diego.
Jorge Rojas Lopez and Juan Francisco Estrada Gonzalez are being tried for murders that occurred between 2004 and 2007. Some of the victims’ bodies were dissolved in acid.
TUCSON, Ariz. — A final report on the gunwalking scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious shows a Homeland Security agent in Arizona participated in the operation and tried to warn his superiors in Phoenix, but those officials never read the reports.
HATCH, N.M. — Lately there's nothing grand about the Rio Grande. Persistent drought across the Southwest has sucked the river dry.
Light snowfall and little rain mean the region must brace itself for more of the same this year. It's a wake-up call for city folk and farmers alike that water is increasingly scarce.
