TERESA DE MIGUEL

A man looks down from a bridge into the Santa Cruz cenote in Homun, Mexico, Tuesday, March 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Indigenous Mayans want their sacred cenotes to have personhood status
A lawsuit filed in Mexico seeks personhood status for the Ring of Cenotes, a group of hundreds of subterranean lakes that surround the northwest of the Yucatan peninsula in a semicircle.
 
FILE - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum gives a media briefing from the National Palace in Mexico City, Oct. 2, 2024, the morning after her inauguration. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)
Mexico’s new president promises to resume fight against climate change
In her first days as Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum made a point of distancing herself from the fossil fuel reliance promoted by her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and vowed to resume an energy transition that he halted.
 
Engineer Guillermo D. Christy photographs a steel pillar filled with concrete that was installed inside the Aktun Tuyul cave system to support the Maya Train track on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Sunday, March 3, 2024. Construction of the Maya Train is rapidly destroying part of the hidden underground world of caverns and sinkhole lakes, known as cenotes, already under threat by development and mass tourism. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Mexico’s Maya Train is destroying ancient caves. Learn about the beautiful ‘cenotes’ under threat
Mexico’s outgoing leader has rapidly built a train system looping around the country’s southern Yucatan Peninsula.
 
Tourists swim in the cenote "Dos Ojos," or Two Eyes, on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Saturday, March 9, 2024. These glowing sinkhole lakes, known as cenotes, are a part of one of Mexico's natural wonders: A fragile system of thousands of subterranean caverns, rivers, and lakes that wind beneath Mexico's southern Yucatan peninsula. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
In Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, a hidden underground world is under threat by the Maya Train
Mexico’s outgoing leader has rapidly built a train system looping around the country’s southern Yucatan Peninsula.
 
Juma Indigenous sisters Mandei Juma, from left, Mayta Juma and Borea Juma pose for a picture at their community, near Canutama, Amazonas state, Brazil, Sunday, July 9, 2023. The Juma seemed destined to disappear following the death of their father, the last remaining elderly man, but under his three daughters’ leadership, they changed the patriarchal tradition and now fight to preserve their territory and culture. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)
In the Amazon, Indigenous women bring a tiny tribe back from the brink of extinction
Until recently, the Juma seemed destined to disappear like countless other Amazon tribes decimated by the European invasion.
 
An Indigenous Wari' boy swims in the Komi Memem River, named Laje in non-Indigenous maps, in Guajara-Mirim, Rondonia state, Brazil, Thursday, July 13, 2023. The Amazon city of Guajara-Mirim recently approved a law that designates the river "as a living entity and subject to rights." (AP Photo/Andre Penner)
Indigenous leader inspires an Amazon city to grant personhood to an endangered river
In late June, the Amazon city of Guajara-Mirim approved a law that designates the Komi Memem River “as a living entity and subject to rights.”
 
Mexico’s ancient beverage of pulque makes a comeback
Mexicans have been brewing pulque from the juice of cactus-like maguey plants for centuries, but the viscous, beer-like beverage fell out of favor starting in the 1970s as the number of producers, consumers and bars known as “pulquerias” dwindled.
 
Mexico experts sight endangered ‘water monster’
“We weren’t able to capture them ... because the behavior of the axolotl makes them very difficult to capture,” Tovar Garza said. “We haven’t had any captures, but we have had two sightings. That’s important, because it tells us we still have a chance.”