New Tipping Law Aims to Protect Service Industry Workers’ Rights
At least 12 injured in hot air balloon crash near popular tourist site in Mexico
Pacific Dolphins Riding the Waves
At least twelve people were injured in a hot air balloon crash near an archaeological site near Mexico City on Friday, local authorities said.
The balloon undertook a “forced landing” in San Martin de las Pirámides after hitting an air pocket, according to a statement from the civil protection agency for the state of Mexico.
The twelve people who were aboard are being treated for injuries at a local clinic, the statement said.
Images shared by authorities and geolocated by CNN show that the crash occurred a short distance from the Pyramid of the Moon, a popular tourist site in the ancient city of Teotihuacan. The balloon lay draped over fencing and power lines along Tuxpan Avenue, a two-lane road just over a thousand feet from the base of the pyramid.
The civil protection agency added that the balloon was operated by a tour company that offers hot air balloon rides to view the pyramids from above. When CNN called the number listed on the company’s website, the representative would not comment on the incident.
The Attorney General’s Office for the state of Mexico reported that they are investigating a 29-year-old man whom police detained.
According to the Mexican government, Teotihuacan was once one of the largest cities in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon form the twin centers of the ancient ruins there.
Balloon rides around the pyramids are popular among tourists visiting Mexico, according to a government tourism website.
Mexico’s Navy Points Finger at US After Ship Hits Brooklyn Bridge
The Foundation will oversee the development, opening, and stewardship of the museum, as well as programs on Kahlo’s artistic legacy and values. Chaired by Rick Miramontez, the New York public relations veteran known for representing Broadway shows, the foundation plans on establishing the Kahlo Art Prize, a biennial award recognizing visionary contemporary artists, and Las Ayudas, a grant program.The murder of Ximena Guzmán and José Muñoz is a direct challenge to Morena, the ruling party, in its largest political stronghold
Claudia Sheinbaum and Omar García in Mexico City
President Claudia Sheinbaum learned of the assassination of Ximena Guzmán and José Muñoz during her morning press conference. Her Secretary of Security, Omar García Harfuch — who was present at the press conference — was the first to receive the police report and sent a cell phone message to Paulina Silva, the head of the federal government’s communications department and a close associate of Sheinbaum.
Harfuch impatiently gestured with his hand, indicating that Silva should write down the news on a card and pass it to the president. Sheinbaum, her face serious, read the note while Secretary of the Interior Rosa Icela Rodríguez spoke to the media about the government’s efforts to address the social causes of violence: the lack of employment, education, and opportunities — the philosophy of the National Regeneration Movement, the party known as Morena. García Harfuch texted, took calls, and put together what had happened. A hitman had shot at the heart of Morena, the party founded by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
García Harfuch then approached Sheinbaum to explain more details. The news: another high-profile attack, once again in Mexico City, once again targeting members of the Morena movement. Harfuch — who was Sheinbaum’s security czar during her tenure as mayor of the capital, just before Clara Brugada — was himself at the center of a shocking attack five years earlier, at the hands of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
But there are two major differences with that event. The obvious one: the secretary, also a member of Sheinbaum’s inner circle, survived. The other: the motive and message were clearer then, since he was leading the fight against organized crime in the capital.
That’s why the murder of Ximena Guzmán, the private secretary to Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada, and José Muñoz, Brugada’s advisory coordinator, has so unsettled Morena. Because the attack doesn’t fit the criminal logic of targeting police or prosecutors who interfere with illicit operations.
Morena is mourning its two distinguished activists with the grief reserved for activists killed for political reasons — for their convictions and their struggles — with the solemnity used to honor the railroad workers, students, farmers, and teachers repressed in the past, the disappeared during Mexico’s Dirty War, the Indigenous people massacred by the Army in Acteal (Chiapas) and by the police in Atenco (State of Mexico).
“Our hearts ache,” Brugada said hours after the crime. “We are deeply dismayed and mourning the loss of two dear colleagues.”
Brugada, officially known as head of the Mexico City’s government, held back tears during the press conference where she informed the public of what had happened. Her voice broke as she spoke. Guzmán and Muñoz were two of her longtime collaborators, whom she trained politically. They were so close that they shared with her the dreams and struggles to transform Iztapalapa — the marginalized, overpopulated Mexico City borough where Brugada was shaped and where Morena was born. So close that they became her most trusted and important collaborators.
Brugada described Ximena as “a wonderful, tireless, very good woman”; Pepe — as she calls him — she had known since he was a child, “one of the most intelligent and extremely responsible people.” “I feel very sad,” she said.
The grief was palpable. Two Morena activists were shot dead one morning as they were routinely commuting to work. Morena’s inner core has been breached, attacked.
The murder is unsettling because it was carried out in the style of organized crime. A gunman fired 12 shots at the car driven by Ximena, with José in the passenger seat. He quickly fled. A motorcycle helmet covered his face, but he was more protected by the impunity of a criminal underworld that grows ever more brazen, more savage — one that increasingly acts as if it owns the country and its people, escaping justice through its entanglement with political corruption.
Ximena was a 42-year-old sports sociologist, a “runner there and back,” as she described herself in her social media bio. José, a 52-year-old political scientist, used to say: “I observe and I commit. I’ve always stood on the left.”
Morena supporters are asking: why them? Why target two activists who had done nothing but contribute to López Obrador’s movement — one whose banner is the fight for the poor, for equality, against oppression and dispossession? Now, within Morena, people are reading between the lines. Were Ximena and José the intended targets of the attack? Ximena, who managed Brugada’s personal schedule and most private communications? José, her chief adviser for years? Or was the real target the leader herself?
Or was it a message to all of Morena? Is it possible that doing politics in a government that claims to tackle the root causes of violence can cost you your life? That’s what Senator Gerardo Fernández Noroña, president of the Senate, implied. “I deeply condemn the violence being incited against us,” said the legislator, who is frequently heckled in the streets by anti-Obrador protesters.
Morena is now looking over its shoulder. “This attack is a response to the progress we’ve made on public security in Mexico City. The Fourth Transformation will remain steadfast,” said Xóchitl Bravo, coordinator of Morena lawmakers in the local Congress.
Brugada herself, after offering her condolences, also hinted at the broader context of the party’s fight against violence. “I guarantee the residents of the capital that this government will continue its relentless fight against insecurity,” she promised.
There is no record of prior threats being made against Ximena and José, as President Sheinbaum reported at her morning press conference. During Ximena and José’s wake on Tuesday night, dozens of Morena supporters shouted the same political slogans they had chanted for decades in the street protests demanding proper governance. “Zapata lives, the struggle continues!” they chanted. But this time, the demands fall on Morena — the ones now in power.
In an appearance before the United States House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, he also said that the Mexican government has been “very responsive on our security concerns” and “increased their security cooperation with us.”
Responding to a question from Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas, Rubio noted that he “heard last night [that] two more people were murdered in Mexico City, associated with the mayor of Mexico City.”
“The political violence there is real,” he said.
Rubio was referring to the murder on Tuesday morning of Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada’s personal secretary, Ximena Guzmán, and José Muñoz, an advisor.
A man was captured by security cameras committing the crime on a busy avenue south of Mexico City’s historic center, but no arrests have been reported. Authorities are seeking to detain four people in connection with the murders, Mexico City Security Minister Pablo Vázquez Camacho said Wednesday.
As Rubio remarked, political violence in Mexico is indeed “real,” but Mexico City has been largely spared the kinds of attacks on politicians that are common in some other parts of the country. That made Tuesday’s double homicide — which experts believe was an organized crime hit carried out to send a message to Brugada’s administration — all the more shocking.
Among other remarks, Rubio told McCaul, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, that there have been “irritants” in the United States’ relationship with Mexico, but also “areas of cooperation.”“… It’s been actually pretty positive. They have been very responsive on our security concerns, they’ve increased their security cooperation with us in ways that have been very productive,” said the secretary of state, a former U.S. senator for Florida.
In February, President Claudia Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 National Guard troops to Mexico’s northern border region to stave off a tariff threat from U.S. President Donald Trump, while her government has ramped up enforcement against organized crime and allowed the CIA to fly drones over Mexico to spy on drug cartels and hunt for fentanyl labs.
The security concerns Rubio referred to are, most notably, the entry of narcotics, especially fentanyl, and migrants to the United States from Mexico.
The secretary of state also said on Wednesday that he “intended to travel potentially to Mexico” in “the next few weeks” along with “a couple of other cabinet members to sort of finalize some of these areas of cooperation.”
What are Rubio’s main concerns about Mexico?
“… We’ve been primarily focused with Mexico on two things. One is on trade, which is not my department, but obviously our Trade Representative Mr. Greer and also Commerce Secretary Lutnick has been engaging with them,” Rubio said, referring to negotiations over tariffs imposed by the United States on some imports from Mexico.
“And then the other is on security cooperation. We have a mutual interest in Mexico. In essence the cartels that operate within Mexico and threaten the state are armed from weapons that are bought in the United States and shipped there. We want to help stop that flow,” he said.
“The reverse is those cartels threaten the state. There are parts of Mexico that are governed by cartels,” Rubio said, referring to criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which, along with four other Mexican cartels, were designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government in February.
Earlier this month, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported that nearly 9,700 firearms bound for Mexico had been seized since Trump began his second term on Jan. 20.
The Mexican government has long called on its U.S. counterpart to do more to stop the southward flow of firearms, which are commonly used by cartel members to commit murders and other crimes in Mexico.
It appears to be pleased with the efforts made by the second Trump administration so far.
On May 6, Sheinbaum described as “historic” a recent statement released by the United States government declaring what she called a new “mano dura” (heavy hand or iron fist) approach to gun smuggling from the U.S. to Mexico.
On Wednesday, Rubio said that the Mexican government has a “vested interest and a desire to go after these cartels, and we want to help equip them and provide them information.”
“They’ve also been increasingly cooperative, more than ever before, in bringing back and extraditing people wanted in this country,” he added.
“… So I think we’ve got good areas of cooperation. We still have some more work to do on migration, but they’ve been cooperative,” Rubio said.
On Tuesday, Secretary of the Economy of Mexico Marcelo Ebrard announced a 15% average tariff on cars assembled in Mexico and exported to the U.S. This move comes as a relief measure following the recent 25% U.S. import tariff on vehicles, reflecting preferential treatment for products complying with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Ebrard emphasized the significant advantage this provides compared to other countries exporting to the U.S., expressing hope for eventual zero tariffs. The Secretariat of the Economy spokesperson confirmed that this reduction applies to exports meeting USMCA’s regional content requirements.
The U.S. began imposing a 25% tariff on all imported vehicles in early April 2025. However, Mexican and Canadian automakers can seek tariff reductions under the USMCA. Importers can lower tariffs by demonstrating the percentage of U.S.-made parts in each vehicle. With U.S. Department of Commerce approval, the 25% tariff will only apply to non-U.S. parts, not the entire vehicle value.
This policy is expected to significantly boost Mexico’s automotive industry. As a major car assembly and export hub to the U.S., shipping about 2.6 million vehicles annually, this tariff reduction offers an opportunity to enhance the sector’s competitiveness and strengthen its position in the U.S. market.
Mexico has grown its automotive industry through close trade ties with the U.S., and these tariff reductions are expected to have a positive impact on the country’s automotive industry.
However, to continue to capitalize on these benefits, Mexico will need to take a strategic approach, including ensuring full compliance with USMCA regulations and increasing the use of U.S.-origin parts. It is also important to remain sensitive to changes in U.S. trade policy and ensure supply chain flexibility.
Automakers should closely monitor these North American trade developments. Companies with production bases in Mexico must strictly adhere to USMCA regulations to maximize tariff benefits. To maintain competitiveness in the U.S. market, they should consider increasing U.S.-made parts usage and implement strategic supply chain management.
PAST ARTICLES
‘The United States is the villain of our story.’ Nationalism surges in Mexico amid Trump threats