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Cabrero Segundo’s exchange

Everything in this story comes back to El Cabra. Everything leads to him, Cabrero Segundo, the “famous Lacandón,” the boss, a man of average height, about five foot five, brown-skinned, with a paunch, a goatee and tattoos: a cross on his left shoulder and a jaguar on his right. An eccentric character. In the film he had made about his life, he cast a hulking actor who was eight inches taller. At the height of his power he built a clandestine airstrip two minutes from his house to receive drug shipments. The night he kidnapped 33 soldiers, disarmed and stripped them — no one in the jungle forgets that — he spent the final hours before dawn snorting cocaine in front of them, using a banknote. El Cabra, a man with ambition.

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The house that witnesses identify as the property of Cabrero Segundo López, alias 'La Cabra.'View of the old illegal light-plane runway used for drug trafficking in the Lacandon Jungle.Esquivel Cruz, councilor of the municipality of Ocosingo, Chiapas.Lawyer Rufino Gómez shows a video in which Chiapas police carry out the operation in Lacanjá to arrest 20 alleged collaborators of El Cabra, not on the road as the local prosecutor claimed.

Photography and video:

Quetzalli Nicte-Ha

Visual editing:

Gladys Serrano and Mónica González

Layout and design:

Mónica Juárez Martín and Ángel Hernández

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The prolific pen of inmate 89914053: El Chapo’s letters from his Colorado prison

There are two Joaquín Guzmáns. One, known as “El Chapo,” rose to become the world’s biggest drug trafficker. He was feared by his rivals and by the authorities. He spilled the blood of anyone who crossed his path. It didn’t matter if they were members of a rival cartel, or innocent civilians.

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© Miguel Tovar (Getty Images), El País

The arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, on January 8, 2016, along with one of the letters addressed to Judge Brian M. Cogan, from August 2023.
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Burying the Cuban Revolution: A task for the left

It’s quite possible that the Cuban Revolution will soon die. Just over 67 years ago, it burst forth laden with hopes and redemptive promises. Biblical parallels abounded: there were 12 survivors of the Granma — the yacht that transported the fighters from Mexico to Cuba — and a messiah (Fidel Castro) triumphantly entered the new Jerusalem (Havana). A dove landed on his shoulder as he recited the divine word for hours on end, foreshadowing paradise on earth. Meanwhile, on the other side of the water — the Straits of Florida — the Yankee devil threatened this paradise from hell.

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© Norlys Perez (REUTERS)

A pro-government demonstration in Havana, Cuba, on May 22, 2026.
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Racists behind bars: Brazil is at the vanguard of the fight against discrimination

When he arrives at his office in the morning, Rio de Janeiro Police Chief Rita Salim knows that throughout the course of the day, two or three people will come in to report having been a victim of racism. Some will do so after having lived a life of discrimination based on the color of their skin. “Many victims come when they can’t take it any more, the drop that made the cup overflow,” she says in an interview at her office. It’s a sorry state of affairs — but at the same time, there is hope. The veil of silence and shame that historically covered up this kind of discrimination is lifting. Brazil documented more than 7,000 complaints of racism in 2025, 67% more than the year before.

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© Silvia Izquierdo (AP)

Protesters holding a banner that reads 'It's not soccer, it's racism' during a demonstration in Rio in 2023 following insults and threats against footballer Vinícius Júnior in Spain.
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The popularizer of the K-shaped economy: ‘The rich are living a golden age under Trump’

Peter Atwater, professor of economics at William & Mary, pictured in Washington.

Peter Atwater, a professor of economics at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, began popularizing the idea of a “K‑shaped economy” shortly after the pandemic began. Analysts were debating on social media what the recovery would look like after the self‑induced coma into which GDP had been plunged, and they floated the usual options: an L (a plunge followed by stagnation), a V (a rebound as sharp as the drop), a W (a renewed recession after a brief uptick)… Though he wasn’t the first to suggest the K. An unknown user — now rebranded as Ivan The K — argued on X (still called Twitter at the time) that the final letter would be a K: meaning some things would recover and others wouldn’t. For Atwater, 65, that message was a revelation that went much further: the more privileged social groups would emerge from the pandemic strengthened in several aspects of their lives, while those at the bottom would be worse off relative to 2019.

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Salvador Dalí at art school: A wayward and insolent student expelled for life

A century has passed since the day that forever changed the life of Salvador Dalí: his second dismissal, this one permanent, from the Special School of Drawing, Sculpture and Printmaking at Madrid’s prestigious San Fernando Fine Art Royal Academy. In such a rigid, rule‑bound environment, Dalí felt out of place — and perhaps for that reason, this academic period has been overshadowed in scholarly writing. What dominates the narrative of those years in Madrid — which he described as the happiest of his life— are his escapades and artistic exchanges with Federico García Lorca, Maruja Mallo, and Luis Buñuel, his companions at the Residencia de Estudiantes, a pioneering cultural and academic residence, and a circle of mutual inspiration.

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Ana Rocasolano, director of the Complutense University’s general archive holds up several of the Dalí documents in the law department.From left, the UCM fine arts librarians Javier Pérez Iglesias and Laura Bomati and Dean Raquel Monje.

Design:

Ruth Benito

Development:

Fernando Anido

Graphic design:

Inés Arcones

Coordination:

Brenda Valverde Rubio

Featured image:

Salvador Dalí and his classmates at the Special School of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving (Academy of San Fernando). 1922–1923. GALA-SALVADOR DALÍ FOUNDATION

© Museo Nacional del Prado

Several artists, including Salvador Dalí and Maruja Mallo, during a visit to the Prado Museum with King Alfonso XIII.

© Archivo Residencia de Estudiantes

From left to right, Salvador Dalí, José Moreno Villa, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, and José Antonio Rubio Sacristán in La Bombilla Park (Madrid) in May 1926.

© ARCHIVIO GBB / Alamy Stock Photo (Alamy Stock Photo)

Portrait of Salvador Dalí, dated to the 1920s.

© FUNDACIÓN GALA - SALVADOR DALÍ

Salvador Dalí with his classmates at the Special School of Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking during the 1922–1923 academic year.

© Juan Vicens (Archivo Residencia de Estudiantes)

From left to right: José Bello, José Moreno Villa, Luis Buñuel, José María Hinojosa (seated), María Luisa González, and Salvador Dalí at a meeting of the Order of Toledo at the Venta de Aires (Toledo) in 1924.
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Pious, lions, innocents: What does culture tell us about popes?

Urban VIII corresponded with Francisco de Quevedo, Alexander VII spent his leisure time as pope writing little poems in Latin, and John Paul II — who had studied St. John of the Cross in his youth — even published a collection of poems, Roman Triptych (2003), while still occupying the Chair of Saint Peter.

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© Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd (Bacon Francis)

‘Study for portrait II’ (1956). Francis Bacon.
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Hungry elephants displaced by the climate crisis with farmers for food in Zambia: ‘They ate the maize the whole night’

A herd of elephants crosses the Mosi-oa-Tunya road, which leads to Victoria Falls, to return to the national park after raiding maize fields at the Livingstone West camp in February 2026.

Veronica Akabondo had worked from dawn to dusk for months on her farm in southern Zambia and was confident she would have a plentiful maize harvest. But one morning she woke up and found it all gone. The culprit? A herd of hungry elephants.

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