News stories by Daniela Pastrana, page 8

'The threats change your whole life,' said Jade Ramírez, a journalist who has been living for months with that burden, which also hangs over a growing group of her colleagues in Mexico.

In the last two weeks, Mexico's Supreme Court has taken two fundamental steps in recognising the rights of gays and lesbians. On Monday, it voted to uphold a Mexico City law that allows same-sex couples to adopt.

Women's laughter fills the rectangular room on the ground floor of a building that houses a school for 250 local children, on the southern edge of Mexico City's sprawling metropolitan area.

A baby hits the floor when his father, who was holding him in his arms, is murdered in Mexico. A two-year-old watches from her stroller as six drug addicts are killed in a rehabilitation centre, including her mother. The mother of another three-year-old never makes it to collect him from his nursery.

'Sergio, your death will be avenged by the angry, organised people' reads graffiti under the Puente Negro railroad bridge connecting this border city with El Paso, Texas.

By 5:00 AM, dozens of women are already lined up outside of this clinic in the Mexican capital. Most come with their mothers, sisters, husbands, friends or boyfriends. A few show up alone.

'Sometimes I'm cheerful, but other times I see no reason for working in the community or even for life,' said Paula Flores, who has become the symbol of the fight for justice for the hundreds of women who have been murdered or disappeared in this northern Mexican border city.

'Sometimes I feel sad when things don't go ahead as well as I would like them to, but we have no alternative but to keep on trying,' says Lourdes Almada, a Mexican sociologist and activist for children's rights, as she drives her pickup truck in Ciudad Juárez.

'Our male coworkers have had to acknowledge it: we have worked side by side in this struggle,' says Emilia Peña, describing the role of women in driving forward the battle waged by thousands of workers to reopen a state power company in Mexico.

In Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in Latin America, Mexico's war on drugs has left at least 110 children dead in the past three years, and over 10,000 have lost parents.