FERNANDA PESCE

Video journalist

Pesce covers Mexico and Central America for The Associated Press.
Featured Videos
Wife of Mexican sailor who disappeared in Hurricane Otis shares harrowing story
 
Mexican workshop is keeping artisan traditions alive, making Day of the Dead paper decorations
 
Residents of Mexico City neighborhood keep iconic Volkswagen Beetle cars up and running
 
In Mexico City, Star Wars fans prepare to duel like Jedi knights
 
Mexico’s spring equinox celebrated at ancient pyramids
 
El Salvador gets ready to vote, but the winner is clear
 
AP Explainer: Why the strongman of El Salvador is set to win re-election
 
In Mexico, the sea swallows a community
 
Progressive outsider wins presidency in Guatemala
 
Migrants walk along the highway in Huixtla, southern Mexico, heading toward the country's northern border and ultimately the United States, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Trump victory spurs worry among migrants abroad, but it’s not expected to halt migration
 
Afghan Taekwondo Paralympian Zakia Khudadadi, part of the Refugee Olympic Team, poses for a photo during an interview with The Associated Press at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
First Afghan woman to compete internationally after Taliban takeover seeks Olympic gold in Paris
Taekwondo Paralympian Zakia Khudadadi says she is competing in the name of women in Afghanistan who have gradually been stripped of their rights over the past three years.
 
Teddy Riner and Marie-Jose Perec watch as the cauldron rises in a balloon in Paris, France, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Nothing could go wrong: The story behind the Paris Olympics cauldron balloon
The night the Olympic and Paralympic Cauldron first flew over Paris, its designer Mathieu Lehanneur held his breath. The balloon lit by the Olympic torch and set off into the sky was a risk.
 
Maroli Martínez, 19, a student of the Jedi Knight Academy learns how to use a lightsaber at a park in Mexico City, late Thursday, June 20, 2024. The academy is a lightsaber combat and choreography school founded in 2019 and a dream come true for fans of Star Wars. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
Star Wars fans hone their lightsaber dueling skills at a Mexico City Jedi academy
A park on the south side of Mexico’s capital lights up with a multicolored glow of lightsabers as a man slashing a white saber through the air shouts: “Check the defense!”
 
A woman suspected in the kidnapping and killing of an 8-year-old girl, is dragged out of a police vehicle by a mob in Taxco, Mexico, Thursday, March 28, 2024. Police then picked her up off the ground and took her away. The Guerrero state prosecutors’ office later confirmed the woman died of her injuries. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Mob in Mexico brutally beats suspected kidnapper to death hours before Holy Week procession
A mob in the Mexican tourist city of Taxco has brutally beat a woman to death because she was suspected of kidnapping and killing a young girl, rampaging just hours before the city’s Holy Week procession.
 
People dance and dodge a giant paper-mache bull stuffed with fireworks as roman candles and bottle rockets shower them with sparks, during the annual festival honoring Saint John of God, in Tultepec, Mexico, Friday, March 8, 2024. The celebration, now its 35th year, pays homage to the patron saint of the poor and sick, St. John of God, who the fireworks' producers view as a protective figure. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
A family run workshop keeps the legacy of the Mexican fireworks alive despite the danger
Hundreds of giant papier-mâché bulls stuffed with fireworks are erected in the front yards of the Mexican town of Tultepec every year in the first week of March.
 
In this frame grab taken from video provided by Canal Once, Amanda, right, the first-ever drag queen to host a news program for Mexican TV, interviews magistrate Ociel Baena, the first openly nonbinary person in Latin America to hold a judicial position, on the “La Verdrag” news program, in Mexico City, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. Baena was found dead on Nov. 13, 2023, next to their partner in their home in the central Mexican state of Aguascalientes. (Canal Once via AP)
Meet the newscaster in drag making LGBTQ+ history in Mexican television
From its inception, the newscast La Verdrag was meant to radically transform the way LGBTQ+ community are viewed in Mexican society.
 
A statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe stands amid pilgrims sleeping outside the Basilica of Guadalupe on her feast day in Mexico City, early Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023. Devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe gather for one of the world's largest religious pilgrimages on the anniversary of one of several apparitions of the Virgin Mary witnessed by an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Thousands gather to honor Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe on anniversary of 1531 apparition
Thousands of people sang the traditional Mexican birthday song “Las mañanitas” at Mexico City’s Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe to honor the virgin on the 492nd anniversary of her apparition in 1531.
 
Visitors take photos of Day of the Dead themes presentations at Mexico City´s main square the Zocalo, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
The Day of the Dead in Mexico is a celebration for the 5 senses
Mexicans are celebrating Day of the Dead, an intangible tradition borne down from pre-Hispanic cultures that is also a celebration for all the senses. The festivity smells of cempasuchil flowers and copal incense. It has a sweet taste.
 
Migrants watch a train go past as they wait along the train tracks hoping to board a freight train heading north, one that stops long enough so they can hop on, in Huehuetoca, Mexico, Sept. 19, 2023. Ferromex, Mexico's largest railroad company announced that it was suspending operations of its cargo trains due to the massive number of migrants that are illegally hitching a ride on its trains moving north towards the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
Mexican railway operator halts trains because so many migrants are climbing aboard and getting hurt
A Mexican railway operator has announced it is suspending train runs in the northern part of the country because so many migrants are climbing aboard freight cars and getting hurt in the process.
 
A trans woman waits to take a photo inside a mausoleum dedicated to trans women in Mexico City, Thursday, Sep. 14, 2023. A small altar with an image of trans woman Paola Buenrostro, who was murdered in 2016, can be seen in the background. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
A mausoleum for transgender women is inaugurated in Mexico’s capital as killings continue
Mexican transgender rights activists Kenya Cuevas and Andrea Luna sat in front of their longtime friend Paola Buenrostro’s pink grave in Mexico City. “You don’t have to pay rent anymore.
 
Miguel Garcia pushes a wheelbarrow filled with nopales or prickly pear cacti pads, into his family’s greenhouse, in San Francisco Tepeyacac, east of Mexico City, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. Garcia's family specializes in the production of cochineal dye that comes from the crushed bodies of tiny female insects that contain carminic acid and feed on the pads of nopal cactus plants. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
This red dye was so valuable it built cities. One family in Mexico is still making it the old way
One family in central Mexico is struggling to preserve the production of cochineal. It’s an intense, natural red dye so prized that after gold and silver, it was probably the most valuable thing the Spaniards found in Mexico.
 
FILE - This undated file photo provided by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a vaquita porpoise. Mexico’s Navy said Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023, that it is planning to expand the area where it sinks concrete blocks topped with metal hooks to snag gill nets that are killing vaquita marina porpoises. (Paula Olson/NOAA via AP, File)
Mexican Navy hopes to expand net-snagging hooks to protect endangered vaquita porpoises
Mexico’s Navy says it is planning to expand the area where it sinks concrete blocks topped with metal hooks to snag gill nets that trap vaquita marina porpoises.
 
FILE - Activists paste photos of Roxana Ruiz that read in Spanish "Defending my life is not a crime" on a wall near the court building where the 22-year-old attends a hearing where she is charged with homicide with excess of legitimate self-defense in Chimalhuacan, State of Mexico, Mexico, Abril 18, 2022. Ruiz, who killed a man defending herself when he attacked and raped her in 2021 was sentenced to more than six years in prison, a decision her legal defense called “discriminatory” and vowed to appeal Tuesday, May 16, 2023.(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
She killed a man while he was raping her, and a court in Mexico sentenced her to 6 years in prison
 
Historic Mexico City rock and counterculture hub closes
After 27 years, the Multiforo Cultural Alicia in Mexico City has closed its doors _ marking the end of an era. It had become an iconic music venue and counterculture hub in the Mexican capital.