There’s no smoking gun for this Geo Quiz, but there is a “smoking mountain.”

We want you to name a nearly 18,000 ft volcano about 35 miles outside Mexico City.

Its name means “smoking mountain” in the indigenous Nahuatl language.

And it’s living up to that name: the volcano’s been rumbling and sending up clouds of ash and steam in recent days.

Mexican authorities have raised the alert to level 5 on a 7-point scale.

That’s got locals on edge. One resident said “we close our eyes but we don’t sleep much”.

More than half a million people live in the volcano’s shadow and as many as 25 million live within a 60-mile radius.

The mountain we’re talking about is the Popocatepetl volcano. Reporter Franc Contreras has been speaking with residents who live in the shadow of ‘El Popo’.

A Smoking Mountain

FC RADIO ARCHIVE • July 15, 2002 • Guatemala • The World, PRI

Forensics workers face death threats in Guatemala

FC RADIO ARCHIVE • Dec. 13, 2002 • Caracas, Venezuela • The World, PRI

2002 general strike turns violent in Venezuela

FC RADIO ARCHIVE • May 31, 2004 • Mapou, Haiti • The World, PRI

2004 mudslide wipes away a Hatian village

A brief glance at the life of Rene M. Contreras. 

A tribute to my father

My interview with The World's Marco Werman following the July 16, 2013 capture of the leader of the violent Zetas drug cartel.  

Zeta Cartel Leader captured in Mexico

President Obama is calling it a humanitarian crisis: Tens of thousands of children are traveling north on their own from Central America and being detained at the US-Mexico border. Tuesday he asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to help cope with that surge of new migrants. The children are leaving their impoverished and crime-ridden neighborhoods to make the dangerous journey through Mexico to the United States. Many of the immigrants are young men between the ages of 18 and 25. Franc Contreras is a reporter for CCTV America(China Central Television-America). 

On the road to the US, Central American migrants face dangers

An audio essay by journalist Franc Contreras 

43 Missing students and the rule of law in Mexico

April 7, 2016 interview with Marco Werman for The World, broadcast on Public Radio International.

Candidate Trump threatened to use migrant earnings to pay for border wall

An audio tribute to slain Chicano correspondent Ruben Salazar on the 50th anniversary of his death. Narrated by Franc Contreras in Mexico City.

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