Voters in Mexico have some interesting choices.

They could pick the leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims he was robbed of the presidency in 2006, or they could bring back the Institutional Revolutionary party (the PRI), the party which ran the country for seven decades, by electing Enrique Peña Nieto, or they could elect Mexico’s first woman president in Josefina Vázquez Mota, who has recently been chosen by her party to run for the presidency.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to reporter Franc Contreras, who is in Mexico City, about the three candidates vying for the presidential elections.

The music was recorded in the region of Son Huasteco.

The 2-disc set is called “El Gusto – 40 Años de son Huasteco.”

The World’s Global Hit contributor Betto Arcos talks about some of his favorite tunes from the album.

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Every cop on the force has been ordered to leave his or her home and move into well-defended hotels.

A drug cartel has been carrying out its threat to kill one policemen a day.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Angela Kocherga who has been reporting the story for Belo, the Texas-based news corporation.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: The police force is also under siege in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. Every cop on the force has been ordered to leave his or her home and move into well-defended hotels. A drug cartel has threatened to kill one policeman a day in Juarez, and at least eight have been killed so far this year. Angela Kocherga has been reporting the story for the Texas-based new organization Belo. She’s now back in El Paso. So, the cops are the ones who are supposed to protect people. Now, they’re getting protected. What’s going on, Angela, why have the cops been targeted?

Angela Kocherga: Yeah, they’re really working double duty. They’re protecting the city and each other around the clock. Basically, you have a drug cartel calling itself the New Juarez Cartel, according to the police chief, that’s targeting the officers in an effort to force the police chief to step down, saying they’ll kill an officer a day. And they have until recently pretty much carried out that threat. They’ve been killing officers, mostly off duty, which is why they’ve decided when these officers are trying to sleep or get some rest they’re gonna put them in these guarded hotels.

Werman: So how is this working? How many hotels are being used and how crowded are the rooms?

Kocherga: Well, they’re being very secretive about how many hotels, but it’s pretty easy to tell as you drive around which ones. We went to one called Del Rio, which is housing a majority, a big chunk of the police force, not all of them. And the officers you know, they’ve got heavily guarded officers standing outside, so you can pretty much tell where they are. The officers told me, and they were reluctant to speak openly about this, that they’re being crowded into as many as seven per room. And of course, these are officers that have homes and families, so they’re unhappy about being stuck in hotels.

Werman: Well, I was gonna say, presumably it’s not hard for the cartels to find out where these police officers homes are, what about the families of the police men and women? They must be as concerned, maybe even more so than the police who are in the hotels.

Kocherga: Yeah, definitely, some of the police officers that I spoke to said they were dealing with just the day to day childcare, which they’re also worried about their families; that the cartels have great intelligence. They can certainly track down the family members. They also seem to think that some of the killings are targeted. One police officer I talked to had been stopped on the way home; her path had been blocked. She had been hit with the butt of an AK47, had a big bruise on her forehead, but she said when she explained who she was the hit man seemed to understand she wasn’t their target and they moved on to another person.

Werman: You know, the drug cartels are not known for being timid, is there a concern they’d actually try and attack any of these hotels if they found out where they were?

Kocherga: They probably know where they are. They seem to have been kind of a hit you know, kind of surprise attacks, so it would be hard to come upon one of these hotels with all the guards outside and attack. They tend to attack when they cops’ guards are down. They look for opportunities. The other morning we had some police officers at a gas station filling up right near a substation and that’s when they came under fire. And actually, the gunman tossed a grenade at the officers. It failed to detonate, so you didn’t have a big explosion, but you did have a firefight; three gunmen killed and three officers injured, and a suspect taken into custody.

Werman: Angela, I was reading that the cartel gets it messages out using giant banners. What do they look like and where do they hang them?

Kocherga: This is very common throughout Mexico and utilized by different cartels. It’s been a very effective way to send out a message to the government, to law enforcement, to their rival cartels and to the general public. And these are just big banners they unfurl, handwritten with messages, usually very targeted, very directed. The most recent ones, there were allegedly 10 banners out there throughout Juarez hung in public places, directed at the police chief, saying they’re pretty much gonna kill an officer a day until he steps down. Now, just so you know, that technique, that threat did work on the previous police chief. He did leave. He left and it took a while to get this new police chief and he has vowed he will not leave his job, he will not bow down to threats.

Werman: Angela Kocherga, border bureau chief for Belo News, just back from Cuidad Juarez, thank you very much for your time.

Kocherga: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Women in the state of Jalisco were told their children would be photographed for an anti-abortion ad campaign. The mothers received about $750 each in exchange for parting with their children for several weeks. Couples from Ireland who had travelled to Mexico were told they could adopt the children at a cost of up to $14,000.

15 Irish citizens have been questioned in the case. All have been released. The Irish couples say they thought they were involved in a legal process. They were permitted to meet the children in a center in Mexico, and cared for them for several weeks.

“These Irish couples had very personal relationships with these newborn babies,” Mexico-based reporter Franc Contreras tells host Lisa Mullins. “They thought, ‘This is going to be our new child.’”

Contreras says investigators cracked the case by tracking down money transfers from Ireland to Mexico. Authorities have arrested nine people in the scam. They’ve taken custody of 11 children, four of whom reportedly showed signs of sexual abuse.

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Lisa Mullins: Authorities in Mexico say they’ve broken up an illegal international adoption scam. It involved destitute young Mexican young women. The women were mothers. They were told that their babies had been selected for an ad campaign, a photo shoot. Instead, the children were handed over to couples from Ireland, who had traveled to Mexico hoping to adopt. The Irish citizens say they thought they were involved in a legal process. Prosecutors say that so far they’ve taken custody of 11 babies involved in the scam. Reporter Franc Contreras is following this story in Mexico City. How did this scam work, first from the point of view of these women, these mothers, who had their babies at what point taken away from them?

Franc Contreras: Lisa, these are very young women in the western part of Mexico, a very conservative part of the country. And one of them was 18 years old. She had just had her baby and she was running into all sorts of money problems, and so she was approached by a woman who said that she would love to have photographs of this newborn baby, and to be able to use those photographs in an anti-abortion campaign. As I said, this is a very Catholic conservative part of the country. And this young mother, she was happy to help out with this anti-abortion campaign lending her child to be a model, as she thought it was going to happen, for these photographs; and also to receive the amount of around 10,000 pesos, which was a little over $750.

Mullins: So they turned over their children for this photo shoot and they were told that they would get their children back in two weeks. Is that correct?

Contreras: Yes, the children were taken from the homes. They were taken to a center in a place near Guadalajara, Mexico, Zapopan, Jalisco state, and there the children were given brand new clothing, toys, and the things that their mothers really couldn’t give them back home. And so it looked like the children were being treated very well.

Mullins: And by the way, how old were these children?

Contreras: The children in many cases were newborns. They were sometimes just weeks old, months old, in fact. So they were taken to this center. They were also receiving visits from these Irish families. And these Irish couples had very personal relationships with these newborn babies. They thought this is going to be our new child.

Mullins: So what interrupted the plan, what happened?

Contreras: Well, police got word this scam was unfolding and they were able to track down two of the women who were the ones that were involved directly with convincing these young mothers that they should participate in this so-called campaign for anti-abortion, which was actually a coverup for this illegal adoption ring. So police investigators, little by little they were able to gather enough information leading to the arrest of two women and at least seven others, a total of nine people we’re told now are in police detention.

Mullins: How did the investigators crack the case?

Contreras: Investigators were able to track down, for example, money transfers taking place from Ireland to bank accounts here in Mexico, and in this way they were able to show that there was actual falsification, a scam taking place in this way.

Mullins: How much money had the Irish citizens turned over?

Contreras: Police say that the Irish citizens were charged each about $6,000 for a baby, and if they were able to get final custody that amount was somewhere around $13,500 up to $14,000. It’s unclear whether or not any of those Irish couple actually paid that maximum amount, $14,000, but some of them, yes, they did pay thousands of dollars in transfers to bank accounts here in Mexico so they were able to have access to these children.

Mullins: Now, some of the babies though in the meantime were given back to their mothers after the two week period, and they were shown the posters where their babies’ photographs had appeared, these anti-abortion posters, so what was the plan on the part of the alleged scammers?

Contreras: For those people who are accused of running this illegal scam, Lisa, it’s really unclear whether or not they were actually ever planning to deliver young Mexican babies to these Irish couples. They were making that promise, but they were sort of playing both ends of the stick if you will. They were at the very same time promising the mothers that they were gonna get their children back, and so it’s unclear if they were ever planning to actually deliver these children in adoption.

Mullins: Reporter Franc Contreras in Mexico City. Thank you.

Contreras: Thank you, Lisa.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The festival, called “Son por la Tradición” or Song for The tradition.

More than 60 musicians and bands took part.

The goal was to promote Mexico’s many varieties of traditional music.

But with Mexico literally under the gun of drug-related violence, organizers and participants had an additional objective.

They wanted to give Mexicans something positive to unite around.

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But now rising wages in China and a resurgent US auto industry are breathing new life into the maquilas in Tijuana. One of the most booming of border businesses is the aerospace industry.

“People’s perception about what cross-border manufacturing, what maquiladoras are like, is still based upon what was happening in the 70s and maybe the 1980s,” said Kenn Morris, president of Crossborder Group, a San Diego-based market research firm.

Morris said the aerospace industry along Mexico’s north-western border is nothing like the stereotype of overcrowded, low-skilled factories.

“The fact is that a lot of the factories,” he said, listing medical devices, aerospace, and electronics, “they’re building in such a way these days, and they’re managed in such a way, that they can be put anywhere on the planet. But they’re coming to Mexico.”

In the past five to 10 years, more than 50 aerospace and defense companies have started operations in Baja California, according to Mexico’s trade ministry. Most of them are American, and they produce everything from electronic components to steel bolts for commercial and military aircraft.

These companies employ more than 10,000 high-tech workers, many of them engineers, technicians and software developers. The companies choose this region for its proximity to the US and to western ports catering to Asian markets.

But the main reason they come here is simple: the cost of even highly skilled labor is roughly half of what it is in the United States. In San Diego, a senior aerospace engineer makes on average $90,000. In Tijuana, an engineer with similar skills earns $35,000 to $45,000.

Cobham, which produces defense systems, made the move to Tijuana in 1997. Inside its factory, workers dressed in royal blue coveralls sit in groups, looking into microscopes, holding tiny tweezers.

“Over here we do the tuning and testing of the product,” said Javier Urquizo, a plant manager at Cobham. But Urquizo can’t tell me exactly what the product is. That’s classified information.

“So after we finalize the assembly, we need to tweak around some components to get the electrical responses required on the different frequencies,” he said.

The company has to apply for special licenses from the State Department to build those components here in Mexico — that’s to make sure the raw materials and parts and the technology don’t get into the wrong hands.

Teresa Jesus Rio Ramos, a production supervisor here, said that aerospace and defense companies offer the most stable, best paid jobs of all the Tijuana maquilas. She makes around $1,800 a month.

“I think our company is pretty financially stable,” she said, “I don’t have to worry from month to month whether I’ll have a job or not. But that’s not true for all maquilas in Tijuana; people get fired and rehired elsewhere all the time.”

When asked whether she’d prefer working on the other side of the border, where she could potentially double her salary, Rio Ramos shook her head.

I’ve gotten a lot of professional training here in Tijuana, she said. I’m not interested in changing the course of my story.

Technically, it is a cable bridge. It is 1,321 feet tall and spans a deep ravine in northwest Mexico.

It is said to be so tall that the Eiffel Tower would easily fit under its span.

This bridge will provide drivers with a short cut through the jagged peaks of the Sierra Madre mountains.

The Baluarte Bridge is right on the boundary between two Mexican states and for the Geo Quiz we are looking for the names of those two states.

One of them has a coastline along the Gulf of California and the other is famous for its scorpions.

The answers to the Geo Quiz are the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Durango.

They are linked by Mexico’s new Baluarte Bridge that was inaugurated Friday. It is said to be the world’s tallest cable-stayed bridge.

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Christmas Songs From a Childhood in Veracruz, Mexico.

Betto Arcos’ Mexican Christmas Tune List

“La Rama – The Tree Branch”
“Los Peces en el Rio – The Fish in the River”
“Amarga Navidad – Bitter Christmas”
“Los Posadas”

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Enrique Peña Nieto (Photo: Sandstein/World Economic Forum)

American presidential candidates don’t have the monopoly on public gaffes.

Just ask Enrique Peña Nieto, who is the front runner in the 2012 Mexican presidential elections to succeed Felipe Calderón. Nieto was recently asked to name three books that have influenced him and he couldn’t.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to reporter Franc Contreras who is following the story in Mexico City.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Being a presidential candidate invites a lot of scrutiny and criticism. Just ask Herman Cain, or you can ask Enrique Pena Nieto. He’s a front runner in the race to become Mexico’s next president. He’s also the standard bearer for the PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for seven decades until the year 2000 and is now making a comeback. Pena Nieto’s critics say that the strikingly handsome candidate is just another pretty face who offers little substance. Whether that’s true or not, the candidate added fuel to that fire recently. He drew nationwide ridicule by failing to answer a simple question he was asked at a major book fair in Guadalajara — name three books that have influenced you. Well, reporter Frank Contreras is following the story in Mexico City. Frank, describe what must’ve been this awkward moment for us. It apparently went on for a few minutes as Pena Nieto turned to his aids for help.

Frank Contreras: He went on for about five minutes trying to explain just what these important books were. And the first thing he did was kind of stumble. You could tell he felt really uncomfortable with what appeared to be really a sort of softball question, Marco, three books that have influenced your life — what are they? And the first thing he said was the Bible. Then he mentioned another book; the translation would be something like the eagle’s throne. And he said it was written by Enrique Krauze, which turned out to be absolutely false and everybody at the book fair knew that. This is a well-known book in the Spanish language world written by Carlos Fuentes. And so this is one of those moments that these candidates just hate. And you know, they’re revealing to the public their Achilles heel and appearing to be sort of not very literate, you know? And all of this has just produced this tremendous reaction here in Mexico. All across Facebook and Twitter people are pretty much making fun of this presidential candidate now.

Werman: And what’s flabbergasting about this, Frank, is that he stumbled on a question at the largest book fair in Latin America. So how could he and his staff not be prepared for this question?

Contreras: Really that’s what everybody’s wondering. I mean that was the question they were going to ask him. It made people wonder does this man really have any kind of serious content to guide the country forward? Just after this happened one prominent historian said listen, candidates, all of you need to have some kind of at least serious knowledge of Mexico’s history to be able to guide this country forward; so if you don’t have that you should seriously question whether you’re really up for the job.

Werman: Well, that’s a historian. How have people, Mexicans, in general reacted to his blunder so far?

Contreras: Well, on Mexico’s Twitter sites here people have been making fun of him saying maybe he should’ve said I read a famous book called I Have a Dream by Martin Burger King…things like that, all kinds of jokes from all sorts of perspectives about what this many should’ve said, what he could’ve said. So it was a real tough day for the Mexican candidate, Pena Nieto.

Werman: You know this side of the border, Frank, and you’ve been to a few bookstores here. Are books by comparison more expensive in Mexico?

Contreras: Definitely, Mexican books on the average cost from $30-$40, even $50 a piece.

Werman: Wow.

Contreras: That’s pretty expensive, even on US standards, but in Mexico where the per capita income is much lower, you know, that’s more than a day’s salary, Marco, so most people can’t even afford a book and that explains why so few people are even able to pick up a book every year.

Werman: So according to some statistics, Mexicans on average read just three books a year. I’m wondering maybe this incident with Pena Nieto might actually prompt Mexicans to see more of themselves in him and vote for him. Is that possible?

Contreras: Well, I think the real reason they’re going to vote for him is not gonna be based on how many books he reads, but it’s going to be more because they’ve lost faith in the current ruling party, the National Action Party. It’s governed Mexico for 12 years and a lot of Mexicans feel that they’ve sort of lost ground in this time. There are now more than 62 million Mexicans living in poverty according to the United Nations, Marco. So many people feel that they’ve gotta go back to the devil they know, the party that once ruled Mexico for 70 consecutive years. It’s candidate is Pena Nieto.

Werman: Reporter Frank Contreras in Mexico City. Thanks a lot.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Drug tunnel from Tijuana to San Diego (Photo: BBC)

The tunnel was used to smuggle marijuana into the United States; more than 32 tons of marijuana were seized.

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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. This is the time of year in southern California when authorities discovered the latest illegal tunnels built by drug traffickers to bring their goods across the US-Mexico border. The timing is apparently tied to the marijuana harvest in Mexico. But the tunnel uncovered this week between warehouses in Tijuana and San Diego really stands out. For one thing, its discovery lead to the seizure of more than 32 tons of pot. That’s one of the biggest drug busts in US history. Richard Marosi in on the story for the Los Angeles Times and has been reporting on the discovery of this tunnel and a lot of others over the years. Is this one, Richard, any different?

Richard Marosi: It is in many ways more elaborate than previous tunnels. It’s not as long as some of the other tunnels, but it did have a electric cart system that’s new. It had wooden floors and wooden walls, and a about 30′ drop of a hydraulic powered elevator.

Mullins: So this is kind of a freight elevator. Exactly how would the operation work?

Marosi: Well, they would load up the drugs onto the freight elevator and then lower it into a staging area where the dope was then put on these carts and they were electric. And they would just motor them across 600 yards into a warehouse in San Diego’s Otay Mesa district.

Mullins: So basically it would go about a third of a mile from Tijuana’s international airport. The tunnel actually stretched under a runway and then came out on the other end on the California side under a warehouse there. Is that unusual?

Marosi: No, there have been several sophisticated tunnels found in this particular area. It’s a light industrial area where there’s a lot of warehouses on both sides of the border, so the tunnels are easily concealed in this area. So is the construction of the tunnels. This one appears to have gone directly underneath the runway of the Tijuana airport. And gone yeah, like you said, a third of a mile north into a produce warehouse in San Diego. They think that the produce warehouse was actually just a front. From the the dope would be loaded onto tractor trailers and then driven north into the Los Angeles area.

Mullins: So who owned the tunnel?

Marosi: They’re not sure right now, but historically the Sinaloa drug cartel has constructed tunnels under the border. They’re Mexico’s wealthiest, most powerful organized crime group and it certainly has the resources to build these elaborate tunnels. They cost a lot of money, they take a lot of time and they require a lot of engineering.

Mullins: And how did they even find it?

Marosi: Probably through informants, that’s how most of these tunnels are being found these days. They’ll followup on leads. They’ll infiltrate some of these cells and then they’ll do surveillance on the suspected buildings. And then they’ll follow the drug loads, bust the drug loads, then get a search warrant to search the actual warehouses. And then from there they’ll search. The tricky part comes when they found, after they found the tunnel on the US side they had to find where it goes in Mexico. So basically they have to go in there, a highly trained group of usually US and Mexican special forces agents, go down, they’re trying to confine space work and they’ll traverse the length of the tunnel and then come up on the Mexican side. Now, they don’t know where they’re going. They don’t know what they’re going to encounter along the way, so it’s very dangerous.

Mullins: Do you know what happened in this case when they came out in Tijuana?

Marosi: There were no arrests on the Mexican side, so presumably there was nobody there, just three tons of dope.

Mullins: You know, seems like for every one tunnel found you wonder how many others are down there. Does anybody know?

Marosi: Nobody knows and they don’t rule out that there’s probably right now operational as we speak. It’s impossible to know, but given the fact that these tunnels appear quite regularly, it’s a pretty good assumption that they’re working you know, right now underground as we speak.

Mullins: Richard Marosi, L.A. Times staff writer, thanks a lot.

Marosi: Thanks.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Minnie and Mickey (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

You might guess that finding a 5-foot tall woman dressed in a red-and-white Minnie Mouse costume would be easy. But, in this case, you’d be wrong.

The Minnie I wanted to talk to is named Andrea. I’d talked to her once before, but she was busy and told me to find her later. A day or two later I went to Times Square. The first Minnie I approached just shook her head. I walked up to a second. “Andrea?” I asked. “No soy Andrea, usted es Andrea?” she said, laughing. “I’m not Andrea, are you Andrea?” I’m pretty sure she was making fun of me.

I didn’t find Andrea that day.

I finally did catch up with her, and we made plans to meet at a small home she shares with a bunch of other folks in Passaic, New Jersey, a working-class town about 40 minutes by bus from Times Square. We sat at a table in a cramped kitchen. One of the Mickey Mouses-in civilian clothes– was there making soup.

The Mickeys, Minnies, Elmos, and Winnie the Poohs scattered across six or seven blocks in Times Square are mostly Latino, and mostly undocumented. On a typical day they’ll spend seven or eight hours waving hello and posing for pictures with the throngs of visitors who fill Times Square, asking for small tips in return.

Mickey and Winnie the Pooh (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

Mohammed Rahman has worked at a nearby newsstand for four years, and says he’s noticed a big increase in the fuzzy characters recently. They come over and buy sodas from him, sometimes he’ll talk business with them. He actually had his picture taken with one of the Mickeys; he put it on Facebook for his family back in Bangladesh to see.

“I have a little sister, they’re curious about this. You know the Mickey Mouse, so they’re looking like this and they’re feeling interesting and nice, that’s why.”

On a typical day, Andrea says they’ll make 50 or 60 dollars, minus about 10 dollars for bus fare. Alfredo, who lives in the house and is one of at least four Elmos working Times Square, says that in the summer they make less because they can only work for about four hours a day.

“Ah it’s so much, like 115 degrees, it’s so hot inside. Right there we’re cooking inside.”

Jorge-the one making the soup–started dressing up as Mickey about a year-and-a-half ago; Andrea’s been Minnie for about five months. Alfredo has been at it for about two months.

All three also work odd jobs through an agency: cleaning homes and offices, some factory work-but that’s slowed down a lot. Alfredo lost a job at a pizza restaurant when a new owner found out he didn’t have papers.

I asked him why he chose Elmo.

“Everybody loves Elmo. I love Elmo too, because he helps me. I don’t know but I like Elmo.”

Any money he has left over after he pays his bills he sends back home to his mom and sister in Cholula, Mexico.

Andrea has four children back home in Arequipa, Peru. Her face brightens when she talks about how being Minnie puts her in touch with kids.

“Porque tambien me gusta mucho los niños…”

“Because also I like children a lot. My kids are in Peru , and so it makes me happy to be around children.”

They also take some satisfaction from the acting chops they’ve developed. Andrea has gotten better at playing to the older audience members.

“‘Que linda’ dicen…”

They’ll say “How pretty,” and she’ll go to pose for a picture with them. They’ll demur, and she’ll pretend to be sad.

“‘Aye, pobrecita’ dicen, y ‘una photo’ dicen”

“Oh, you poor thing” they’ll say, and she gets the photo.

Winnie the Pooh (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

All three of them have been in the U.S. about seven years. They say it’s been a lot tougher than they’d imagined; money’s been a lot tighter. Andrea and Alfredo both told me they want to go back to their countries soon.

You might not guess any of this, though, if you saw them waving and posing and hamming it up for the cameras in Times Square.

“Okay” Child: “Bye Mickey Mouse!” Woman: “Bye Bye Mickey Mouse”

Increasingly, the military has been called upon to keep order in the most dangerous locations. Recently, violence swept the touristy state of Veracruz.

And the area surrounding Acapulco has become one of the most murderous in the country, adding to the woes of the traditionally violent state of Guerrero.

The Mexican government has responded by launching military operations in both states.

While the army retains a fairly positive image in Mexico, it also stands accused thousands of human rights violations.

In the state of Guerrero, a few hours inland from Acapulco, one of these cases has torn six families apart.

It’s late afternoon as Laura Garcia Orozco arrives at a nightclub in the town of Iguala. Her brother, Francis Alejandro Garcia Orozco, used to run this club.

But on a Monday night in March last year, she arrived here, just as a military convoy was pulling away. She hasn’t seen her brother since.

“It’s incredibly sad to be in this place, to remember the disappearance, to remember his face, the last time he looked at me that day,” Orozco said. “It’s horrible, horrible. The only thing I want is that, in one way or another – that they bring him back.”

Francis — and five other men who worked there — disappeared from the club that night. According to checks done by the families, none had criminal records, nor were they under any official investigation.

After the men went missing, all six families say they went straight to military base 27 in Iguala. “Our sons have gone missing, they demanded,” “where are they?”

The soldier allegedly replied, “no tenemos los del disco” – “we don’t have those guys from the club.” The families looked at each other. They hadn’t said anything about the club.

35-year old Laura sits at her computer, reviewing footage taken that night by a security camera across from the club. The video appears to show the missing men as they’re taken from the club by a convoy that includes soldiers in military vehicles.

“The families say the army originally admitted it had an operation there that night — then backtracked,” Orozco said. “Later, military officials told the families they’d launched an investigation. The families say they’ve yet to see any proof of that.”

Difficult to Prove

Most disappearance cases rely on hearsay, and are difficult to prove. This case stands out because there’s some formal evidence. But Laura’s older sister Rosario says it hasn’t helped.

“We’ve asked everyone,” Rosario Garcia Orozco said. “The federal prosecutor’s office, the defense department, the national human rights commission – all say they have no idea or that they are unable to help.”

In the last five years, more than 6,000 official complaints of human rights abuses have been filed against Mexico’s security forces. But according to Nik Steinberg, Mexico investigator for the group Human Rights Watch, convictions are rare.

“No matter whether the case is investigated in the military justice system, or the civilian justice system, there is almost never a solider or police officer held accountable for these crimes,” Steinberg said. “So no matter how much evidence there is, and how clear it is that security forces have perpetrated these horrific abuses, they’re never held to book.”

A Human Rights Watch report released this month says Mexico’s security forces enjoy ‘total immunity’ from a legal system that stops short of challenging military jurisdiction. Steniberg argues these injustices violate some key conditions governing US financial support for Mexico’s drug war.

“One of them, for example is that all soldiers, who commit human rights abuses, must be prosecuted in a civilian court, because the military justice system in Mexico has proven to be completely biased, and unable to punish soldiers who commit abuses,” Steinberg said. “Mexico, year after year, has failed to meet these conditions, and year after year the United States has given them these conditional funds anyways.”

On Patrol in Guerrero

This patrol is part of a new security operation in the state of Guerrero, where the six men from Iguala disappeared.

State Spokesman Arturo Martinez Nunez says an additional 2,000 soldiers and federal police have been deployed in the last few weeks to improve safety in Guerrero. And he says respecting people’s rights is a top priority.

“The Mexican Army is extremely attentive and respectful of the human rights of the local population,” Nunez said. “The proof of that is that during this operation we have not had a single complaint. If there was one, we would be the first to address it, because we need the people on our side.”

Back in Iguala, the Garcia Orozco family doesn’t feel entirely safe. They say they’ve been followed, intimidated, threatened and repeatedly told to stop pursuing the case of their son and brother. Four of the other five families involved have already given up.

But Rosario, echoing the rest of her family, says that for the sake of her brother and the other missing men, they will not stop, despite the risks.

“You know what, a lot of people are scared – I am also scared,” Rosario Garcia Orozco said. “But it makes me more scared to think that tomorrow it would be my kids, or my grandkids, that they take away, if I don’t open my mouth and say “today, this is happening, this is a reality, and that this is how they are hurting many families.”

Chefs Monica Martinez and Phil Ross check if the edible worms they will serve for dinner are cooked enough. (Photo: Monica Campbell)

“It’s really tricky because as soon as you open the box, they start jumping all over. Ah, they’re fast!” Martínez said.

It’s these bugs that Martínez, a 36-year-old artist and chef from Mexico City, hopes will convince people to consider insects a viable food source, instead of something gross. Tonight’s dinner will also test Martínez’s new experiment she’ll debut in San Francisco, called Don Bugito.

Don Bugito, Martínez explained, is a street food cart project based on edible insects and pre-Hispanic Mexican cuisine.

Larvae Tacos

The cart will feature familiar Mexican ingredients—soft, blue corn tortillas, chilies and cheeses—along with protein-rich insects also found in pre-Hispanic fare. The plump larvae of the wax moth will fill tacos, along with peppers and a mint-cilantro salsa.

There’ll also be toasted crickets and, for dessert, caramelized mealworms on top of Mexican vanilla ice-cream.

“When people ask why should I eat insects? I say, ‘Well, in pre-Hispanic times, in Mexico, before we had cows … the native people, the indigenous people used to have in their diets very strong insects, edible insects,” Martínez said. The insects were rich in proteins and vitamins, containing many of the same vital nutrients found in, say, milk, Martínez added.

San Francisco’s foodie culture and its large Asian and Latino communities, whose cuisines can already include edible insects, makes the city a natural testing ground. Martínez also gets around US Food and Drug Administration restrictions on importing insects by working with certified California insect farmers like Brenda Young in San Diego.

“I was a little surprised. But I thought it was great. I’m probably on the wrong end of this field. I should probably be thinking more about food instead of birds and reptiles,” Young said laughing. “I’m getting a lot more calls I’d say in the last year for people who are wanting to taste them.”

The increasing attention has policy studies on eating insects circulating at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. But the trend still has obvious limits. There’s the Fear Factor stigma. And pound for pound, insects remain pricey, especially if they’re used at a higher volume and not just as a delicacy.

But if eating insects does take off, it’ll be renegades like Martínez who’ll serve them with flavor.

Bugs are a Common Thing

Martínez’s husband, Phil Ross, also an artist and chief, pan fries wax moth larvae. They’re chubby and amber from a diet of bran and honey.

“In the state of Oaxaca, in Mexico, it’s a very typical, very common thing,” Ross said. “And you can actually watch people in the central market cooking them directly, almost in this exact same manner.”

As Ross cooks the larvae, crickets are toasting in an oven. A timer goes off ever three minutes when the insects need to be stirred and evenly browned.

At dinner, San Francisco-based artist Joseph del Pesco can’t wait for Martinez to bring her lunch cart business near his office. He said that he was “dying to walk down the street and have a bug for lunch, which sounds absolutely preposterous!” Del Pesco said that saw the insect-based food cart fitting into San Francisco already diverse food truck scene.

Open Minded

Next to del Pesco was graduate student Krystal Karney. She couldn’t convince her friends to come to the test-run dinner.

“Everyone I told was like I would never do that,” Karney said. “And I was actually shocked at my friends for not being opened minded enough to attend something like this because I thought it was fun.”

Alonso Gallindo of the Mexican consulate in San Francisco hopes attitudes changes, though he admits bugs aren’t a part of his regular diet.

“I mean thousands of years ago they ate insects, and I don’t know why we couldn’t eat them right now. It’s like a cultural barrier and I think if we get through it, we can explore new things,” Gallindo said.

Overall, Chef Martínez was pleased with how her dinner went.

“The world is not going to change and maybe edible insects are not going to start supplementing meat,” she said. “It’s about maybe introducing a new alternative.”

But there’s a downside to life as an insect chef.

“Sometimes it’s a little traumatic because I have dreams that they are in my bed with me. And I’m like, ‘Ahhh!’ That’s the price that you have to pay,” she said laughing.

At the National Museum of Mexican Art, 20 high school students from Ohio watch as blocks of white sugar are transformed into calaveritas de azucar or sugar skulls.

The Mondragon family is famous for their candy business in Toluca, in southern Mexico. Alejandro Mondragon says at one time, around 80 families in Mexico made them. Today, only 10 produce the seasonal treats.

In a house near the museum, Alejandro Mondragon watches a copper cauldron with boiling syrup made with 10 parts sugar and one part water. It’ll take two hours to cook before it’s ready to be poured into clay molds.

“I was the one in the family who really enjoyed making them,” Alejandro said. “We have 12 brothers and sisters in our family. Maybe it’s the vanity talking, but I was the one who taught my siblings how to make them. I was the one who worked the hardest on these candies. Because I always liked sweets.”

The skulls are a variety of sizes. From as small as a quarter to as large as a human head. The Mondragons worry their 150-year tradition won’t last many more generations.

Alejandro’s 9-year-old grandson wants to follow in his footsteps. But Mondragon can’t be sure the boy will stay with it.

“But we don’t know if he’ll enjoy making them later on,” Mondragon said. “Because it’s a very lonely job. You’re indoors all day. You don’t leave the house for anything. No parties. Nothing when you’re working. But I don’t want the tradition to die. Right now, the person who’ll most likely continue is my daughter the one who’s with us here in Chicago.”

Back at the museum, Mondragon’s daughter, 32-year-old Elvira, holds bags filled with sugar, lemon juice and vegetable based food coloring. She decorates each skull by hand with bright colors and vibrant patterns.

“Because at the end of the day, we’re all going to die,” Elvira said. “And death is part of life. That’s why we decorate the skulls with vibrant colors. So that people understand it’s not something sad. Mexicans love day of the dead. Because we remember those who are no longer with us.”

The Mondragons will make around 25,000 skulls before going back to Mexico in November. 61-year-old Alejandro has type 2 diabetes and only one kidney. He’s not sure how much longer he’ll travel to Chicago to make the candies. Elvira knows it’ll be up to her to continue the family tradition.

“Here and in Mexico, there are many doctors, many architects,” Elvira said. “But what my father does making sugar skulls, we have a lot of pride in this. Because in Mexico there aren’t too many people who do this. And in the United States, there’s nobody. He’s the only one who dedicates his life to this …We have to take advantage of this craft that our ancestors left for us.”

As the students from Ohio snack on the sugary treats, 16-year-old Brendan Bilek patiently waits for his baseball sized skull to be decorated.

Brendan Bilek: “I’m looking at a sugar skull for my cousin Brian,” Bilek said. “He was a DJ and me and him were very very close. And I believe he passed of an accidental drug overdose a little over a year ago.”

Yolanda Perdomo: What are you going to do with it when you bring it back to Ohio?

Brendan Bilek: “Definitely not eating it. That would be kind of disrespectful.”