The State Department recently published an annual report on human rights, which points to a variety of issues in Mexico. The report cites high levels of impunity, attacks on human rights defenders and the media, as well as low rates of prosecution. Mexico’s president is questioning the State Department’s motives.

In neighboring Sonora, Mexico, members of the Indigenous Comcaac Nation, often called the Seris, have long struggled for access to clean water in their two towns on the Sea of Cortez. Last Saturday, they walked miles to a sacred site for their people to demand the Mexican government provide them with potable water and other basic services.
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The vaccine effort in Arizona is proceeding apace, with tens of thousands of doses administered daily. But the picture is very different in neighboring Sonora and across Mexico, where the vaccine rollout has been much slower. For border communities like Nogales, that disparity could spell unique challenges.

A coronavirus variant first identified in Britain has been found on the Navajo Nation. Tribal health officials said Tuesday that the United Kingdom strain was confirmed in a sample obtained in the western part of the reservation.

The requirement to have a negative coronavirus test was particularly difficult in a state where access to testing has been much more limited than in neighboring Arizona.

The data would place Mexico as the country with the second-highest number of deaths after the U.S.

A Sonoran government official was among six killed in a plane crash Saturday. Leonardo Ciscomani was the state’s assistant secretary of economic development. In a post on social media, Sonoran Gov. Claudia Pavlovich praised him as an “exemplary” public official.

By next Thursday, the U.S. will have sent roughly 2.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico. The vaccine rollout is going much slower in Mexico than in the United States.

Mexico officially surpassed 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus Thursday, the third highest toll in the world — after the United States and Brazil. But that number is likely a significant undercount because the country’s testing rate is so low.