For seven consecutive months, remittances to Mexico have decreased.
For the entire article, click here.
Article by Allan Wall, published December 3rd, 2025, on Mexico News Report.
Tags: Remittances
There are indications that Ricardo Salinas Pliego may run for president in 2030.
For the entire article, click here.
Article by Allan Wall, published November 28th, 2025, on Mexico News Report.
Tags: El Salvador, Hugo Salinas Price, Mexican Politics, MORENA Party, Nayib Bukele, PAN, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, Soccer
Thanksgiving 2025 is upon us. Happy Thanksgiving to all !
The concept of thanksgiving to God is from the Bible.
For example, see I Thessalonians 5:18: “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
In the One Hundredth Psalm, verse 4, the Psalmist exhorts his listeners to
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving,
and into his courts with praise:
be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
The American Thanksgiving holiday owes its origin to the famous meal of 1621, which the English colonists (popularly known as the Pilgrims) and their Wampanoag Indian allies celebrated.
I’d heard that story since childhood, but this past year, for the first time in my life, I actually visited Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Pilgrims landed, established their colony and held their 1621 Thanksgiving feast .
It was part of a trip with my wife and son, a tour of the Northeast. We visited 15 states and 2 Canadian provinces. (See The Great Northeastern Tour for more about that.)
Here’s a map of Massachusetts by regions. Note “Plimouth Plantation” on the lower right, that’s the place I’m talking about:
A sign at the entrance to the municipality reads “Welcome to Plymouth, America’s Hometown”. And indeed, Plymouth and the other English colonies were the foundation of our nation.
At Plymouth, we visited a seaworthy replica of the original Mayflower. Like the original, this one has also crossed the Atlantic.
The Mayflower was not a passenger ship. In the 1600s there were only warships or cargo ships, and the Mayflower was a chartered cargo ship. Imagine crossing the Atlantic on a crowded cargo vessel, with no radio, no radar, no GPS. But they did it.
This is Leyden street, the first street the Pilgrims set up.
Obviously, these are not the original 1620s houses. The Pilgrims and their descendants didn’t think they needed to preserve their original houses for the benefit of 21st-century tourists. Instead, they continued to modernize their housing through the years.
So for the tourists, a replica of Leyden Street as it was in the 1620s was constructed a few miles away. It’s called Plimoth Patuxet. There you can see what the original colony looked like.
We have a running joke in our family about “fake” tourist attractions. My son calls any tourist attraction that’s not 100% original “fake”. By that standard, Plimoth Patuxet is “fake” But as fakes go, it’s a very impressive one!
Here’s the fort at the top of the hill:
The “Fake Plymouth Colony” even has reenactors who talk as if they are actual 1620s colonists at Plymouth. The ones I heard or spoke to were very knowledgeable and didn’t break character.
Back at the original colony, we saw a statue of the great William Bradford, governor of the colony in the early years.
Here’s what Governor Bradford wrote about the fall of 1621 and the leadup to the famous Thanksgiving meal: “They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwelling against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength, and had all things in good plenty; for as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All summer there was no want. And now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first, but afterward decreased by degrees. And besides water fowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, and now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.–And thus they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their out-goings and in-comings…”
Happy Thanksgiving!
-Allan Wall, November 26th, 2025.
Tags: American History, American Indians, God, I Thessalonians, Jesus Christ, Massachusetts, Plymouth Colony, Thanksgiving, The Psalms, Wampanoag Indians, William Bradford
Mexico is now the biggest importer from the United States.
To see the full article, click here.
Article by Allan Wall, published November 22nd, 2025, on Mexico News Report.
Tags: U.S.-Mexico Trade
Mexican drug cartels have their tentacles extending into various countries and continents. (See for example Mexican Cartel Meth Labs in Europe, Asia and Africa).
In Spain, Mexico’s madre patria, police broke up operations of the CJNG – the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, which is based in the Mexican state of Jalisco.
For the entire article, click here.
Article by Allan Wall, published November 19th, 2025, on Mexico News Report.
Tags: CJNG (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion), Cocaine, Methamphetamine, Methamphetamine Smuggling, Mexican Drug Cartels, Spain
Twenty years ago, in 2005, I served a tour of duty in Iraq. It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years. But I still remember it vividly.
I was there as part of the Texas Army National Guard. I was residing in Mexico, but I would go monthly to Texas for Guard drill.
In the summer of 2004 we were called up. We did our training mostly at Ft. Hood, Texas, with some in Ft. Polk, Louisiana.
In January of 2005 we flew over to Kuwait, and after a few weeks there we flew into Iraq, on a South Korean Air Force transport.
We were stationed at Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq. It was a former Iraqi base which had been taken over by the Americans in both the 1991 Gulf War and in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
We were attacked a couple of times, but one time I slept through it.
I carried out a variety of duties while in Iraq.
One was guard duty on the watch towers of nearby Camp Cedar II.
Here is some typical southern Iraqi scenery as viewed from a guard tower.
I also spent some time on a fence building project. There were three of us guardsmen working with local Iraqis. It was a great experience and we constructed a good fence. That was 20 years ago, I wonder what the fence looks like now. Here is the fence still under construction:
Here are some local sheep traversing through our fence when it was still incomplete:
I spent a couple of months as a liaison with the U.S. Air Force in this Iraqi-built building:
I was able to meet many soldiers from the following allied armies: Italy, the United Kingdom, Romania, Australia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Ukraine, El Salvador, Japan, Mongolia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Denmark. I once saw a Mongolian unit (with cool helmets) marching by and I saw a plane from the country of Georgia.
One day I met a Ukrainian soldier. Neither of us could speak the other’s language but he pulled a bottle of vodka out of his vehicle and was showing it to me. I wonder what happened to that Ukrainian soldier.
I even ran into a Canadian soldier. But wait, didn’t Canada stay out of that Iraq War? Yes, the government of Canada did, but the soldier explained to me that a few Canadian soldiers were there on loan to the US or UK armies.
For four months I served as a liaison with the Italian Army (Esercito). It was a great experience. The Italian soldiers were very professional but they also knew how to have a good time. They would cook their own pizza, for example. There were also Romanian soldiers on their base.
Here is the entrance to Camp Mittica, the Italian base:
At another point in time I was involved in some military instruction and it’s in Iraq where I learned to prepare a power point presentation.
I went on some humvee patrols, and here I am at the River Euphrates:
Here’s another view of the Euphrates taken from a bridge in the city of Nasiriyah:
The ruins of the ancient city of Ur, hometown of Abraham, were located within our security perimeter and I was able to visit it a number of times:
The photo above was taken from atop the ziggurat of Ur. Here’s a photo of the ziggurat:
In 2005 the U.S. Military had over 100 bases in Iraq. These bases had to be supplied, which explains the importance of the convoys, consisting of supply trucks (driven by Indian and Pakistani civilians) and escorted by U.S. military humvees.
Most of the American soldiers killed in Iraq in 2005 were killed by insurgent bombs on the roads.
I traveled by convoy to a Marine base at Taqaddum in central Iraq, passing through a much more arid region. Here is our convoy:
I missed my wife Lilia and the boys, who were in Mexico. We were able to keep in touch very well by phone and mail. Here I am at the Tallil base post office sending gifts in a box:
I flew out of Iraq the day after Thanksgiving, 2005. I am thankful to have returned safely and appreciate the support I received when I was there.
-Allan Wall, November 15th, 2025. All photos taken by Allan Wall with the exception of the two in which he’s in the picture.
Tags: Archaeology, Euphrates River, Ft. Hood, Ft. Polk, Iraq, Italian Army (Esercito), Kuwait, Louisiana, Tallil, Taqaddum, Texas, The Bible, U.S. Army
For six consecutive months, remittances to Mexico have decreased.
For the entire article, click here.
Article by Allan Wall, published on November 11th, 2025, on Mexico News Report.
A recent English-language article in Spain’s El País is entitled Indigenous Guatemalans denounce exploitation on Mexican farms: ‘Bananas are worth more than us’. It’s about Guatemalans working on banana plantations in the Mexican state of Chiapas (bordering Guatemala).
For the entire article, click here.
Article by Allan Wall, published November 9th, 2025, on Mexico News Report.
Tags: Agriculture, Bananas, Central American Illegal Aliens in Mexico, Central Americans in Mexico, Chiapas, Guatemala, Immigration to Mexico
An October 30th article in the New York Times reports on an activity carried out by the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, California. The title of the article is As ICE Raids Upend L.A., Mexican Immigrants Vent, and a Diplomat Listens .
For the entire article, click here.
Article by Allan Wall, published November 5th, 2025, on Mexico News Report.
Tags: California, Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez (Mexican), Claudia Sheinbaum, Donald Trump, Illegal Aliens, Illegal Immigration, Immigration Policy, Los Angeles in California, Mexican Consular Network