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Media lies presenter mocks journalists but gets her facts wrong

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Journalist Carlos Loret de Mola rejected Elizabeth García Vilchís' claim that he stoked public hysteria by reporting on a shooting that didn't happen.
Journalist Carlos Loret de Mola disputed federal spokesperson Elizabeth García Vilchis' claim that he stoked public hysteria by reporting on a shooting that didn't happen.

The federal government’s initiative to expose fake news demonstrated its own fallibility on Wednesday.

A well-known journalist has rejected the federal government’s claim that he disseminated false information about a supposed shootout at Cancún airport that didn’t actually occur.

Passengers at the Cancún airport rushed out of a terminal building Monday after hearing noises that sounded like gunshots. However, the bangs were in fact caused by three advertising displays falling over, the airport later confirmed in a statement.

Elizabeth García Vilchis, a government spokesperson who presents the “Who’s who in the lies of the week” segment at President López Obrador’s morning press conferences, mocked media outlets and “experienced journalists” such as Joaquín López-Dóriga, Hannia Novell, Azucena Uresti and Carlos Loret de Mola for reporting on the supposed shootout without verifying that it actually occurred.

“Without looking for official versions, without checking, without the event being confirmed or refuted, they published tweets, contributing … to collective hysteria,” she said Wednesday.

“… Pointing out this situation is not stigmatizing or attacking journalists or media outlets, it’s simply drawing attention to a fact of public interest. We also ask ourselves, when will media outlets, journalists, opinion-makers and influencers assume a social responsibility to citizens?”

Loret de Mola, a broadcast and print journalist who is a prominent critic of López Obrador and the federal government, published a tweet Wednesday morning to refute García’s claim.

Beneath a thinking face emoji, Loret reposted tweets he had written the day of the supposed shootout, including one that said there was no evidence of such an event at Cancún airport.

The journalist in fact interviewed Quintana Roo Attorney General Óscar Montes de Oca on his radio program on Monday and tweeted his remarks vis-à-vis the events at the airport.

“’We’ve had communication with authorities and they concur that there was no explosion or injured people at Cancún airport’: Óscar Montes de Oca, Quintana Roo Attorney General,” one tweet said.

“’The fall of a 50-kilo advertisement … may have caused confusion,’” Loret wrote in another post, quoting Montes de Oca.

With reports from El Universal 

AMLO’s electoral reform would give ruling party greater power in Congress

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MND Staff
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The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Mexican Congress, is made up of 500 representatives.
The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Mexican Congress, is made up of 500 representatives, 200 of which are elected by proportional representation.

A proposal by President López Obrador to reduce the size of Congress by getting rid of election by proportional representation is intended to give the ruling Morena party more power rather than save money, according to some experts.

Speaking at his regular news conference on Wednesday, López Obrador said his electoral reform bill would propose doing away with plurinominal deputies and senators.

In the Chamber of Deputies, 200 of the 500 seats are occupied by deputies elected in that manner, while there are 32 plurinominal senators in the 128-seat upper house.

Plurinominal deputy seats – the result of a 1977 political reform – are assigned proportionally to parties that attract support from at least 2% of voters. The system allows small parties with no chance of winning head-to-head contests to have a voice in Congress.

López Obrador on Wednesday complained about the cost of funding electoral authorities and staging elections and asserted that his proposed reform – which he intends to send to Congress next month – could halve that cost, generating savings of 10 billion pesos (US $501.3 million).

The president spoke about the proposed constitutional reform at his Wednesday morning press.conference
The president spoke about the proposed constitutional reform at his Wednesday morning press.conference

He then questioned why the country had so many deputies and senators, prompting a reporter to inquire whether he would propose the elimination of plurinominal lawmakers.

“Yes, of course, I’m proposing that, the elimination,” López Obrador responded.

Three experts who spoke with the newspaper Reforma claimed that the president’s proposal would not generate savings but would result in more power for Morena – which López Obrador founded – and its allies in Congress, namely the Labor Party and the Ecological Green Party.

Lawmakers with Morena and its allies currently account for 55% of all federal deputies and senators, but without plurinominal legislators that figure would increase to 75%, Reforma said.

Thus Morena wouldn’t have to rely on opposition support to pass constitutional reforms which require the backing of two-thirds of lawmakers to become law.

Without lawmakers elected by proportional representation, the makeup of the Congress would be similar to its composition in the decades when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) dominated Mexican politics, Reforma said.

The PRI ruled Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years between 1929 and 2000. Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa famously said in 1990 that Mexico under the PRI was “the perfect dictatorship.”

Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) political scientist Luis Eduardo Medina told Reforma that the elimination of plurinominal seats would be “a clear backward step.”

He claimed López Obrador’s proposal would take the country back 45 years.

The plurinominal seats were introduced so that Congress wouldn’t be dominated by the ruling party, Medina said, adding that the president “wants to return to a hegemonic, authoritarian regime” like “the old PRI.”

The academic described López Obrador’s proposal – which would also allow citizens to directly elect electoral councilors and electoral judges – as absurd.

Jorge Javier Romero, another UAM politics academic, also said that doing away with plurinominal lawmakers would be a regression. “His proposal is [to have] a centralized, state party regime,” he said.

Pamela San Martín, a former electoral councilor, noted that plurinominal lawmakers represent citizens who vote for “another option” beyond the largest party, which in terms of current representation in Congress is easily Morena.

López Obrador said Tuesday he would send his electoral reform to Congress after the April 10 revocation of mandate referendum, at which voters will get the opportunity to have their say about whether the president should complete his six-year term.

With reports from Reforma 

Immigration agents investigated for using electric shock device on migrant

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MND Staff
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INM agents arrested the migrant in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas on Monday afternoon.
INM agents arrested the migrant in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas on Monday afternoon. Screenshots

Immigration agents are being investigated for using an electric shock device on a Cuban migrant accused of rape on Monday, after videos of the detention circulated on social media.

The arrest was filmed in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, a town on the Guatemala border which is a focal point for border crossings by undocumented migrants.

In the video, two male National Immigration Institute (INM) agents are seen cornering the migrant. One agent had his hand around the back of the migrant’s neck and his other hand pulling the migrant’s t-shirt down by the collar.

The migrant twice shouted, “Let go of me,” before the other agent appeared to shock him with the device for about one second. The man screamed, but remained on his feet. The device was not visible but the sound of it being used was audible.

“If he has his papers why don’t you ask for them?” a person off camera shouted to the agents.

“He’s a rapist,” an agent replied.

A group of at least four migrants loudly protested the agents’ actions and told them they were being filmed. One migrant pushed an official after the shock was applied.

A third male INM agent attempted to restrain the migrant after the device was used.

The INM released a statement on Tuesday saying that an internal investigation had been opened to identify the agents involved in the incident.

The statement added that electric shock devices were not a tool available to its agents. The INM “does not include among its equipment, work tools or in its action guidelines the use of electric shock devices, such as the one that was apparently used … The INM condemns and regrets any act contrary to the law, especially if it is carried out or committed by an authority … The INM respects and safeguards the rights of migrants,” it said.

More than 4,000 migrants crossed the southern border every day in 2021 on average, a 44.5% increase over 2020, the INM said in December.

Detentions increased nearly threefold in Chiapas in annual terms last year: in 2020 there were 25,000 detentions, compared to 67,376 in 2021.

Illegal migrants crossing the southern border are generally arrested by INM agents and sent to prison-like migrant detention centers for an indeterminate period where armed police in watchtowers ensure they do not attempt to escape. They are otherwise told to go to Tapachula’s Olympic Stadium, a refugee camp where they are provided no humanitarian services and there are no immigration officials.

With reports from Sopitas

Is a Mexican late to meet you? You’re probably just confused

By
Joseph Sorrentino
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getting used to Mexican sense of time
In Mexico, when someone tells you, ahorita llego, it could mean "I'm coming right now" — or not. Miguel Ángel Gómez Cabrera

As anyone who has visited or lived in Mexico knows, Mexicans tend to be a little — well, let’s say imprecise when it comes to time.

When someone tells you when they’ll meet you or when something will start, take the time given as a fairly broad approximation. If you’re lucky, it’ll take place within an hour of the advertised time.

If you’re unlucky, as I’ve been on any number of occasions, it will be more like a couple of hours. No explanation is usually ever given, and I’ve never had anyone apologize for being late. The most I’ve ever gotten is a small smile and a shrug. It’s just the way things are in Mexico.

But in addition to imprecision, there are certain words pertaining to time that can lead to misunderstandings for the non-Mexican. I hope the explanations below will clear up some confusion.

Ratito

First, let me make it immediately clear that “ratito” doesn’t mean “little rat.” That would be ratita. I don’t want any unnecessary confusion because, when it comes to time, there’s confusion enough in Mexico.

I first heard ratito on an early trip here. Back then, as far as I could tell, it meant “in a little while.” So if I asked someone, “When are we leaving?” and they answered, “En un ratito” it meant we would be leaving in a little while — or what the person believed qualified as a little while.

This has been as short as 15 minutes, but they’re typically longer — a lot longer. I’ve learned to bring something to read whenever I have a meeting in Mexico; Russian novels are best.

The longest wait I’ve had after hearing en un ratito was in the small pueblo of Las Margaritas, Chiapas. I showed up on time at a park to meet a contact for a project I was doing and waited; then I waited some more.

After about 30 minutes, I called the person and was told “en un ratito.” I think I called every 30 minutes or so and was told the same thing. The person finally showed up three hours later.

Hoy

Hoy means “today.” Pretty straightforward, right? And it is, except that when someone tells me that something is going to happen hoy or they invite me to do something hoy, I like to know when exactly (or, being in Mexico, approximately).

Many a time has a friend has invited me to dinner hoy. I want to narrow it down a bit, so I’ll ask, “When?” Nine times out of 10, the answer is a simple “hoy.”

Call me silly, but if we’re talking about an invitation to dinner, an approximate time’s greatly appreciated. But if I ask, “What time?” The answer is almost always, “Whatever time you want.”

I remember telling a friend I’d stop by at 6 p.m. and being told that was fine. Sure enough, I show up on time to find I’m about two hours early. Dinner prep hadn’t even started.

Mediodía

This is another one of my favorites because it’s so ambiguous. Technically, it means “midday” which, for me, means noon. Not necessarily so in Mexico.

I’ve been told many times that something is going to happen at mediodía, and it can mean from noon to sometime in the afternoon. Or evening. It’s never clear, and pressing someone for an exact time usually results in a look of confusion and a one-word answer: mediodía.

After that, I suggest they give me a specific time and sometimes get an answer. I’ll then show up, a Russian novel stashed in my backpack.

Ahorita

I don’t know if ahorita has evolved to mean a few different things since I first heard it or if I didn’t initially know that it means a few different things. It’s derived from ahora, which means “now.”

When I first heard ahorita, it meant “right now,” as in, “We are leaving ahorita — which, like ratito, could mean pretty much anything from “immediately” to “sometime today.” But, as I’ve learned, it has more than one meaning.

For example, I’ve been with Mexican friends at fiestas and watched as they’re offered something to eat or drink. If they answer, ahorita, it could mean, “Yes, I’d like some of that right now.” It could also mean they’d like some of that in a little while. Or, when accompanied by a raised hand along with ahorita, it apparently means “no.”

So, if you offer someone something to eat or drink and they say, ahorita, it’s probably best to get clarification. Which, of course, you may or may not get. But, hey, it’s worth a shot.

Mañana

OK, sure. Everyone knows that mañana means “tomorrow.” The confusion comes when a Mexican friend invites you to do something mañana. A typical conversation will go like this:

“Want to have dinner with me mañana?”

“Sure. When?”

“Mañana.”

“When mañana?

“Pues [well], mañana.”

This could go on for several minutes without any clarification.

What I’ve finally learned when invited to do something mañana is to ask, “What time tomorrow?” That generally elicits a more precise response, but if the answer continues to be mañana I ask no further questions and just show up sometime in the afternoon with Tolstoy.

Where I’m from, the United States, it’s considered rude if someone shows up late. Events tend to start on time there, and it’s what I was accustomed to. In general, that’s not the way it is in Mexico. I do have Mexican friends — and a Mexican girlfriend — who do show up on time. But those are exceptions to the rule. The best thing to do when you’re here is to be flexible and, most importantly, understanding.

So, I’ll admit that, at first, it bothered me a lot when I’d show up on time for a meeting only to twiddle my thumbs for half an hour or more. But I’ve come to accept the fact that I’m in a different country and culture and that I’m the one who must make adjustments. I don’t get upset anymore when someone’s late. Life’s too short to be bothered by such things.

I’ve developed a lot more patience — and a great appreciation for Russian novels.

Joseph Sorrentino, a writer, photographer and author of the book San Gregorio Atlapulco: Cosmvisiones and of Stinky Island Tales: Some Stories from an Italian-American Childhood, is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily. More examples of his photographs and links to other articles may be found at www.sorrentinophotography.com  He currently lives in Chipilo, Puebla.

AMLO declares his respect for Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi Jinping

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MND Staff
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putin and amlo
Mexico is respectful of all peoples and governments, including Russia's Vladimir Putin, President López Obrador said Wednesday.

President López Obrador declared his respect for two heads of state that are often short on friends during his morning news conference on Wednesday: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

López Obrador said the presidents of both countries should be treated on equal footing with the leader of their major rival, U.S. President Joe Biden. “I don’t categorize anyone. It is not the policy of Mexico to insult anyone or any foreign government. We have a lot of respect for the president of China, [the president] of Russia and President Biden of the United States,” he said.

López Obrador insisted that political neutrality was imperative to Mexico’s independence. “Mexico is respectful of all peoples and of all governments. It is not a colony of Russia or China or the United States. It is a free, independent, sovereign country with great pride,” he said.

On the ongoing war in Ukraine, initiated by Putin in February, the president condemned Russia’s invasion, but said it was for the leaders of both countries to secure peace. “We cannot be in favor of any invasion. We condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We condemn all invasions …What I want … is for an agreement be reached and for peace to be achieved so that people do not suffer, so that human lives are not lost … It’s a matter of [conflicts] being fixed from the top,” he said.

The Mexican government has refused to send arms to Ukraine to support its forces and has not joined other countries in imposing sanctions on Russia.

The government’s neutral stance on the war was not helped by the creation of the Mexico-Russia friendship group last Wednesday, established by a group of deputies from the ruling Morena party, the Labor Party (PT) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

More doubts were raised on Thursday when a high-ranking United States military official said that Russia had more spies in Mexico than any other country.

That said, the president’s wish for harmonious relations doesn’t seem to apply equally to all countries: “The elite in Spain have not behaved well with Mexico and with our people … they have abused and companies and banks have taken exaggerated profits from Mexico, and they have gotten into matters that only correspond to Mexicans. They have even done politics in Mexico,” López Obrador reiterated on Monday.

In 2019 the president sent a letter to the king of Spain and Pope Francis calling for them to apologize for the indignities suffered by the native peoples during the period of the Spanish conquest, which the government of Spain rejected outright.

López Obrador’s cool headed diplomacy was also superseded when the European Parliament approved a resolution criticizing the murders of journalists and human rights defenders in Mexico. The federal government responded by accusing European lawmakers of “corruption, lies and hypocrisy” and describing them as misinformed sheep following the lead of its adversaries.

With reports from Reforma

Guerrero community’s own justice system jails woman’s killer for 25 years

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MND Staff
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Saturday's assembly at which a young man was sentenced to 25 years for femicide.
Saturday's assembly at which a young man was sentenced to 25 years for femicide.

The indigenous governing code known as usos y costumbres offers the justice system of choice for some Guerrero residents and there was evidence on the weekend that it can work.

A 19-year-old Guerrero man who murdered his girlfriend in January was sentenced to 25 years in jail after local officials and residents in the Costa Chica municipality of Ayutla agreed to the decision at a community assembly on Saturday.

Roberto Lucas confessed to killing his girlfriend with a machete on January 1. Roberto and Ángeles had attended a dance and got in an argument on their way home, according to Rogelio Teliz, lawyer with the Montaña Tlachinollan Human Rights Center.

Roberto was arrested by community police shortly after he committed the crime and pleaded guilty at an initial hearing on January 15.

During his 25-year jail term, Roberto will live in a cell at a facility known as the Casa de Justicia (Justice House). He will be allowed out to complete community work and has been ordered to learn a trade.

Roberto was sentenced by local officials and residents in accordance with usos y costumbres because they have little faith in state authorities and the conventional justice system.

Teliz said that Ángeles’ parents refused to allow the Guerrero Attorney General’s Office (FGE) to investigate and prosecute the crime due to their lack of confidence in that authority. On their request, the case was assigned to the community police force known as CRAC.

Teliz said that a life sentence was considered but officials and residents followed two precedents in deciding on a prison term of 25 years. Two other Ayutla men who were found guilty of femicide in 2018 and 2019 also received 25-year prison sentences.

Teliz said he would have supported a harsher sentence given that the conventional justice system jails perpetrators of femicide for 40 to 60 years.

“I think that the sentence could have been longer, but in the towns there is still a need to assign more seriousness to these cases and to work on them being considered with a gender perspective,” he said.

Nevertheless, a 25-year sentence is better than no punishment at all. Teliz said there have been eight femicides in Ayutla in the past three years and none of those investigated by the FGE has resulted in sentences against the perpetrators.

“In the traditional system the investigations are open but abandoned, without progress, without sentences,” he said.

“In some cases there are not even people who have been detained and that generates a lot of distrust among people,” the lawyer said.

Of 902 murders of women in Guerrero between 2017 and 2021, only 77 were classified as femicides and the perpetrators of just six of those crimes were sentenced, according to feminist and human rights organizations.

Ayutla is one of seven municipalities in Guerrero where a gender alert has been in place since 2017 due to high levels of violence against women.

Last November, the federal government’s women’s rights agency launched a strategy to prevent violence against women and girls in the Montaña and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero, where forced marriages continue to take place.

But gender violence persists in the southern state. Four women were murdered between March 22 and 28, the newspaper El Universal reported. Three of the murders were reported in Acapulco, which borders the Costa Chica region, while one took place in the municipality of San Luis Acatlán, which adjoins Ayutla.

With reports from El Universal 

Opposition presents Lego version of AMLO’s son’s luxury home in Texas

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MND Staff
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PAN senator Xochitl Galvez Mexico
Senator Xóchitl Gálvez puts finishing touches on a mock-up of the US house AMLO's son rented in Houston that ignited a scandal. PAN Twitter

In an attempt to draw attention to a possible case of corruption, lawmakers with the conservative National Action Party (PAN) presented a Lego-style toy model of the luxury home in which President López Obrador’s oldest son lived in the United States.

A report published in late January revealed that José Ramón López Beltrán and his wife rented a million-dollar home in Houston from a high-ranking executive with Baker Hughes, an oil sector company that has lucrative contracts with the state oil company Pemex.

López Beltrán, who has since moved to another Houston home purchased in his wife’s name, has denied any conflict of interest.

Presenting “The Gray House” Lego-style kit at a press conference in the Senate on Tuesday, Senator Xóchitl Gálvez said the idea was to remind the public that there are a lot of unanswered questions about the scandal.

“They haven’t explained where the money [to rent the house] came from, how much the president’s son earns, how long they really lived there,” she said.

mockup of Jose Ramon Lopez Beltran's Houston rental
The slogan on the box says, “Let the corruption be built!” Xóchitl Gálvez/Twitter

“… Hopefully the federal Attorney General’s Office will serve justice in such an embarrassing case of double standards,” the PAN senator said, alluding to the contrast between the luxurious life López Beltrán apparently lives in the United States and his father’s much-vaunted austerity.

“This house represents the privileges [of past officials] that they criticized so much but never ended,” Gálvez said.

In a video posted to Twitter, the senator said the gray house represents the “impunity, corruption and the gray [or drab] government they are.”

She told the press conference that the kit of toy bricks is a prototype and that she would hand over the patent to anyone interested in producing it on a large scale.

“It’s just a game, but I believe that [governing] the country is much more serious than a game,” Gálvez said.

“… We’re going to continue denouncing corruption,” said the senator, who revealed last year she had aspirations to become the next mayor of Mexico City.

José Ramón López Beltrán responded with humor on Twitter, saying he’d buy one for his son.

 

“… Corrupt people are in [López Obrador’s] government, his sons are corrupt, his niece is corrupt, his brothers are corrupt. That’s what we want to make clear with this game,” Gálvez said.

López Beltrán, who said last month that he works as a legal advisor for a Houston-based property development company, responded to the PAN’s publicity stunt in a Twitter post.

“I’m going to buy one for Salo,” he wrote, referring to his son in a post that included a photograph of the PAN lawmakers with a miniature version of his former abode.

López Beltrán added a laughing emoji and the hashtags #LEGO and #OposicionMoralmenteDerrotada (Morally Defeated Opposition) to his post.

The PAN is currently the main opposition party, occupying the second highest number of seats after the ruling Morena party in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

With reports from El Universal 

Widening La Pera-Cuautla highway in Morelos to be completed in August

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MND Staff
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La Pera-Cuautla highway in Morelos
The highway is being widened with an additional two lanes. Photos by Government of Mexico

Work on a long-opposed highway in Morelos is set to be completed in August, President López Obrador said in his regular morning news conference on Wednesday.

The 34.2-kilometer modernization of the La Pera-Cuautla highway is set to ease congestion for residents of seven of the state’s municipalities.

The highway, which runs roughly 20 kilometers north of the state capital Cuernavaca to 45 kilometers east of the city, is being widened from two lanes to four and is expected to benefit the municipalities of Cuernavaca, Tepoztlán, Yautepec, Tlayacapan, Atlatlahucan, Yecapixtla and Cuautla, as well as drivers from Puebla and Mexico City.

The project was planned by former president Felipe Calderón’s government and initiated in the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto. It suffered several judicial setbacks due to opposition from activists and residents, who accused engineers of passing through woodland and areas considered sacred.

President López Obrador supervised progress on the highway on Friday.

Work on La Pera-Cuautla highway, Morelos
The widening and modernizing work on the La Pera-Cuautla highway is supposed to reduce travel time along the 34.2-kilometer stretch to 30 minutes.

“I have just been in Tepoztlán. The highway is being expanded. It will look very good, and we are going to deliver it … in August … It had not advanced for years,” he said on Monday.

The president insisted that the expansion was necessary, despite its environmental impact. “In one way or another a highway interrupts and interferes with a life of meditation and tranquility … It was necessary work because there is a lot of traffic, and the roads issue had to be resolved, taking care not to be destructive,” he said.

In the president’s view, the work was more justifiable than a previous proposal. “They even wanted to set up a golf course, and the villagers objected,” he added.

The Transport Ministry reported in October that the work was 82.3% complete. It said at the time that the investment was 4.4 billion pesos (US $215 million). It also detailed that the journey along the modernized stretch would take 30 minutes, rather the 48 minutes it currently takes, according to Google Maps.

The project’s progress is more positive news for the president after the inauguration of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) on March 21, built to serve Mexico City. However, his flagship Maya Train, which is to connect the country’s southeastern states of Tabasco, Campeche, Chiapas, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, faces legal challenges and opposition from environmental activists.

With reports from Reforma and Proceso 

Michoacán cockfight massacre was attempt to take out regional CJNG boss

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MND Staff
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cockfight massacre site in Michoacan
Police guard the area where the attack on the clandestine cockfighting site occurred on Sunday night.

The massacre of 20 people at a clandestine cockfight in Michoacán on Sunday was an attempt to take out the regional boss of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), federal and state authorities have confirmed.

Gunmen with the Los Correa cartel stormed a cockfight around 10:30 p.m. in Las Tinajas, a town 70 kilometers east of the state capital Morelia, effectively declaring war. The leader of Los Correa, Daniel Correa, known as El 100 (The 100) or El Tigre (The Tiger) is thought to have ordered the massacre.

However, the gunmen’s apparent main target, CJNG leader William Rivera, alias El Barbas (The Beard), escaped from the building unharmed.

The bloody dispute has been long-running: in May, CJNG gunmen allegedly ambushed relatives of Rivera, killing seven people.

Los Correa came to prominence through illegal logging near Michoacán’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and are suspected of killing two environmental activists in February 2020. They later switched their concentration to the production of synthetic drugs, harvesting marijuana and extortion.

Los Correa cartel encampment in Michoacan
Authorities found five Los Correa encampments in CJNG claimed territory in eastern Michoacán last month. SSP Michoacán

According to the newspaper Milenio, it’s thought that the leaders of Los Correa held a meeting with members of Los Viagras cartel in recent days to form a common front against the CJNG. Michoacán state authorities told the newspaper Infobae in January that they were aware that Los Correa members were regularly extorting residents in at least eight communities of the Hidalgo and Zinapécuaro municipalities in cahoots with the Familia Michoacana, building up for a turf war against the CJNG ,and that they found Los Correa encampments in the woods of CJNG-claimed territory in those municipalities.

Los Viagras is part of the Cárteles Unidos, which is engaged in an extensive turf war against the CJNG in the notoriously violent Tierra Caliente region, which spans parts of Michoacán, Guerrero and México state.

The fighting was concentrated in Aguililla, Michoacán, until February, when the army largely retook control. Security forces, however, failed to prevent the assassination of Aguililla’s mayor, Arturo Valencia Caballero, near the town’s municipal palace on March 10.

Cárteles Unidos’ members are the presumed victims of another large-scale massacre in Michoacán on February 27, when 17 people were shot dead outside a wake that they were attending in the town of San José de Gracia.

Other cartels vying for power in the tinderbox region include Los Caballeros Templearios, El Cartel de los Reyes and Los Blancos de Troya.

With reports from Milenio and Infobae

AMLO moves to dismantle elections agency; citizens would elect officials, judges

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MND Staff
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The president said the change would leave democracy strengthened.
The president said the change would leave democracy strengthened.

President López Obrador on Tuesday announced a plan to dismantle the National Electoral Institute (INE) in its current form, triggering criticism from electoral experts and opposition parties.

At his regular news conference, López Obrador – an outspoken critic of the INE – said he would send a constitutional bill to Congress that would allow citizens to directly elect electoral councilors and electoral tribune judges.

He said his proposed reform would “guarantee democracy in Mexico” and ensure that there are no judges with “biased attitudes” on electoral matters.

“This is so that there are no councilors or judges that don’t have a democratic vocation. And also to guarantee a free and secret vote, so there are no electoral frauds,” López Obrador said.

The president claims that fraud was the reason he didn’t win the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections, at which he was runner up to Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, respectively.

“We reached the presidency after fighting for many years and suffering electoral frauds, so we have to leave democracy strengthened,” López Obrador said.

“We’re going to present this initiative and we’re going to do it with the participation of all the people. It will go to the Chamber of Deputies first,” he said, adding that citizens would be given the opportunity to elect councilors and judges via an open vote in “a direct way.”

“The top-down agreements that are contrary to the interests of the people are over, or I hope that they end,” López Obrador said.

He said the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government would each nominate about 20 honest, “truly independent” candidates to fill the electoral councilor and electoral judge positions for a total of 60 candidates in each category.

The objective would be to have male and female councilors and judges in equal numbers, López Obrador said.

If the proposed reform becomes law and electoral officials are elected by citizens, Mexico will become the first country in the world to have such a system, the newspaper Reforma reported.

Luis Carlos Ugalde, a former president of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the INE’s predecessor, said he wondered if López Obrador might be joking and contended that it would never pass Congress given that constitutional bills require the support of two-thirds of lawmakers to become law.

He also questioned what merit the elected individuals would have. “What kind of electoral authorities will come from this kind of exercise? It will give access to anyone and break the padlocks of experience and merit,” he said.

Ugalde also contended that those elected would serve the interests of the current federal government and the ruling Morena party, which together form the so-called Fourth Transformation or 4T movement.

The government has held several popular votes since it took office and has achieved the outcomes it sought largely because its supporters turned out in larger numbers than other members of the electorate. The opposition has called for boycotts of such votes, including a referendum last August in which citizens were asked whether past presidents should be investigated for crimes they might have committed while in office.

Electoral councilors and electoral tribunal judges elected in a popular vote would be “captured by an ideology, by the 4T,” Ugalde said. “They will be elected by the people but at the service of an ideology.”

Leonardo Valdés, another former IFE president, said that “experience tells us that it’s a terrible idea to reform the electoral system prior to an election.”

“So I would describe this idea as a terrible idea – a wrong idea at the wrong time,” he said.

Valdés, now an academic at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, noted that Morena and its allies would need opposition party support to approve the reform.

But Senator Clemente Castañeda, leader of the Citizens Movement party in the upper house, asserted that the bill “wouldn’t pass under any circumstance.”

“We call on the president to get serious and attend to the country’s problems,” he said.

Other opposition lawmakers, including representatives of the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), also indicated that they wouldn’t support the proposal.

Senator Julen Rementería, the PAN’s leader in the upper house, said his party won’t allow the destruction of Mexico’s election authorities.

“We have to respect the INE, strengthen the INE, and not, as he proposes, … destroy it, demolish it [or] simply not recognize it,” Rementería said.

“… The truth is that the announcement of this initiative shows the desperation and desire … [López Obrador] has to destroy the electoral umpire – the National Electoral Institute, and of course the [Federal] Electoral Tribunal.”

PRI Senator Mario Zamora asserted that no Mexican wants to take a backward step in terms of democracy building. He said López Obrador’s proposal may have been another improvised, fanciful “quip” of the kind he has previously made in his morning press conferences, but the president repeated his proposal on Wednesday.

In recent times, López Obrador has accused the INE of not sufficiently promoting the upcoming “revocation of mandate,” or recall, vote, a claim the institute’s president, Lorenzo Córdova, has rejected

The president and the INE chief have clashed on several occasions, including after the former said in 2020 that he would be a “guardian” of the 2021 midterm elections.

Córdova said in February that the federal government was seeking to undermine the autonomy of the INE by cutting its budget, while he claimed in 2020 that the institute was facing unprecedented hostility – antagonism that could result in its death, or at least a complete overhaul, if AMLO gets his way.

With reports from Reforma and AM

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