A relative of a victim reacts as members of the marines offer an apology to family members of victims for their role in the 2018 forced disappearances. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril
The navy offered a rare public apology on Tuesday for its potential role in the abductions of dozens of people who went missing from a northern border town in 2018 during operations against drug cartels.
As many as 40 people disappeared between February and May in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across from Texas, which has long been a flashpoint in turf wars between drug cartels.
In April, Mexican authorities charged 30 marines for allegedly participating in the forced disappearances there and said they would carry out the investigations within six months.
About two dozen family members of victims of the missing attended an outdoor ceremony in a small park in the center of Nuevo Laredo.
“This institution of the Mexican state deeply regrets the situation,” Navy Rear Admiral Ramiro Lobato told the ceremony. He added that the navy would keep collaborating with officials to seek justice for the victims.
During the event, family members called out the names of their disappeared loved ones and responded in unison, “Present.”
Along with the army, the navy for years assumed a central role in the government’s military-led crackdown on drug cartels, which was launched in 2006.
Their deployment led to frequent complaints of rights abuses by the armed forces, including forced disappearances.
“We are asking the marines for justice,” said Leticia Martínez Borjas at the ceremony. Her husband, Gabriel Gasper Vazquez, disappeared on March 26, 2018.
“No one deserves to live with this uncertainty of whether their loved one is alive or whether he’s no longer in this world,” she said.
The charges against the marines marked the first high-profile move against military personnel by President López Obrador.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights had denounced the disappearances, including those of at least five minors, as “horrific.”
Julie Metz, author of the besteller Perfection, will discuss writing from family history with author Danielle Trussoni in an online event on July 18.
“Go with what you know” is a writer’s maxim that inspires many hopeful authors to begin penning a memoir or novel based on their family history. Nothing could be easier, right?
But in reality, the art of researching and writing about one’s family history — and especially family secrets — is actually one of the biggest challenges a writer can take on: family stories are notoriously complex and at times told among members in an unreliable fashion. Not every member may be happy to assist their relative in unearthing painful or awkward family histories. Often, family stories span continents, making research difficult.
On July 18, the San Miguel Literary Sala’s Distinguished Speakers Series will help aspiring writers by bringing authors Julie Metz and Danielle Trussoni to a live Zoom discussion on the art of researching and writing about family secrets and the challenges of condensing it onto the page — be it fiction or memoir.
Ever since the pandemic forced the San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, literary organization to go virtual in 2020, it has been offering its annual diverse fare of author readings, writing workshops, interviews and panel discussions with major authors — including the well-known San Miguel Writers’ Conference — online each month, with events spread out over 2020 and 2021.
Known for its small, intimate workshops and author appearances that give audience members the opportunity for a brief one-on-one encounter with the guest speakers, the organization has strived to continue that tradition as it moved online. Events have been conducted via videoconferencing software that allows viewers to ask questions and interact with the guest. This casual discussion between the two authors will be no exception.
Danielle Trussoni is the author of the Angelology series of novels.
Julie Metz is the author of Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind. Interweaving personal memoir and family history, the book is a heartfelt ode to her mother, who escaped the Nazis as a child in Vienna in 1940. Metz is the New York Times bestselling author of Perfection. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Salon, Dame, Redbook and Glamour.
Danielle Trussoni, the bestselling author of the Angelology series of novels, has recently released a new work, The Ancestor, in which a woman unravels the truth about her family and learns that her true inheritance is not the castle in the Italian Alps or the family’s noble title but rather her genes and the choices her family has made.
The author currently writes a horror column for the New York Times Book Review and recently served as a fiction jurist for the Pulitzer Prizes. She holds an MFA in fiction from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she won the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award.
The two authors will conduct this event as an engaging and interactive conversation, with viewers allowed to “come up on stage” via videoconferencing and ask questions of the writers.
One of the mountain roads included in the public works project.
The “Connecting Querétaro” highway project has upgraded 226 kilometers of road for an investment of 1 billion pesos (about US $50 million), improving transportation among 300 communities in the sierra, the state government reported on Sunday.
Before the project, roads were in poor condition, some only providing one lane and others being unusable in heavy rain.
The hydraulic concrete highways have transformed residents’ lives by connecting communities, providing access to hospitals and schools, improving public transport, and enabling products to be transported and emergency services to reach people in need, the government said in a prepared statement.
The project provided social benefit too: local labor was sought which helped boost the local economy, and female workers were encouraged to join the workforce in a new precedent for public works in the state.
In one case, 40% of the workers employed in the modernization of roads in the Landa de Matamoros municipality were female.
Querétaro officials say other states have looked to follow suit and replicate the model of female participation. They have signed an agreement to produce a public works manual from a gender perspective, which seeks to ensure that contractors employ women.
Querétaro is one of the country’s safest and most affluent states. From January through May, Querétaro only recorded 92 homicides, compared to neighboring Guanajuato, the country’s most violent, which registered 1,545.
Querétaro’s namesake capital city placed fifth in the Financial Times’ Latin American Cities of the Future 2021/22. The only city in the country that ranked higher was Mexico City, which came first.
A fence is erected around Puebla's famous hole in the ground.
The first study into the origins of the huge sinkhole in the state of Puebla discounted overexploitation of groundwater sources. Now a second study has turned that theory on its head, only for its author to muddy the waters further by denying its own participation.
Water exploitation, soil erosion and recent intense rain caused the ground to part in Santa María Zacatepec and leave a massive sinkhole, said Beatriz Manrique Guevara, head of the state Environment Ministry.
She was quoting from a study that analyzed 25 hectares around the sinkhole, finding a number of illegal wells among 47 others that were registered for water extraction. Three years of drought followed by intense rain this year were also named as factors.
The study was credited to the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). However, in an unusual turn of events, the IPN looked to distance itself from the study and denied having “any official connection” to it on Friday, raising questions over its findings.
Guevara assured that there is an agreement between the government and the IPN, but that the organization had failed to process documentation to make the relationship official. It is not immediately clear why the IPN looked to distance itself further on Friday.
The giant chasm measures 126 meters across, having first emerged as a 10-meter hole on May 29 in Zacatepec, 20 kilometers northwest of Puebla city.
Guevara highlighted the findings of the latest study: the use of illicit wells amounted to a “massive exploitation of water” and in the last eight years the water level in the area had dropped by eight meters, due in part to the intensification of exploitation.
“[Overexploitation] has dragged away silt or clay, which is the element that binds the earth,” she said.
It revealed that 80% of wells in the area were used for agriculture, 15% for domestic use and 5% for industrial purposes.
The turbulent climate has also played a role: a lack of rain in the region had caused water levels to drop 35% below the average. In contrast, this year intense rainfall left the area with levels 85% above average.
The study pointed to the combination of factors. “The natural erosion of the soil through human activities and natural erosion, and the natural phenomenon of intense rain has caused the collapse of the soil, which has no resistance,” it read.
Authorities began Monday to extend the perimeter line around the sinkhole and erect a fence to prevent people from accessing the site, given the discovery of unregistered wells and the conclusion that the ground is unstable. An area of 25 hectares is being cordoned off, a move that comes just days after two men entered the secured area and walked to the edge of the hole where one of the two urinated in it, an event they captured on video.
Meanwhile, Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa was keen to point out that the investigations not final, and that opinions from other scientific institutions remain welcome. He added that determining the precise cause could take all the rest of the 21st century: it could be “79 or 78 years from now,” he said.
Ebrard speaks at one of the president's morning press conferences.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed Tuesday that he intends to seek the candidacy of the ruling Morena party to contest the 2024 presidential election.
His announcement follows the publication of media reports stating that he made his plans known at a lunch with colleagues and close associates on Saturday.
It also comes a week after President López Obrador named six possible successors to his position: Ebrard, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbuam, Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier, Energy Minister Rocío Nahle, ambassador to the United States Esteban Moctezuma and Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s permanent representative to the United Nations.
Speaking at López Obrador’s regular news conference on Tuesday, Ebrard thanked the president for considering him as a possible successor and confirmed that he will participate in the Morena party selection process to find a candidate to contest the 2024 election.
That process is still 2 1/2 years away, the foreign minister said, adding that he will continue to focus on his current role in the meantime. He encouraged other possible successors to do the same.
“… Let’s not lose our concentration on what we are doing. Let’s be consistent, perseverant and loyal. And of course when [the selection process] arrives we’ll be ready to participate,” Ebrard said.
At a lunch at a private residence in Toluca, México state, on Saturday that was attended by more than 100 guests including Foreign Ministry officials, federal lawmakers, Morena party insiders and some of Ebrard’s longterm political collaborators, the foreign minister emphatically declared his presidential ambitions, according to people present who subsequently spoke with reporters.
“We’re going to take the president at his word, … yes, we are going to compete [in the candidate selection process],” Ebrard declared to rapturous applause during a 20-minute speech.
According to some attendees who spoke with Reforma, the foreign minister railed against a group of people within Morena’s ranks that he claimed has launched a campaign to kill off his future political prospects by using the May 3 Mexico City Metro disaster against him.
Ebrard was mayor of the capital when Line 12 of the Metro system – part of which collapsed and caused an accident that claimed the lives of 26 people – was built and there have been reports that the project was rushed to ensure it was finished while he was in office in order to boost his chances during a possible tilt at the presidency in 2012. (He didn’t end up running.)
But Ebrard evidently believes he is still alive in a political sense and a good chance of not only securing the Morena party candidacy but also subsequently succeeding López Obrador, as he did in Mexico City after winning the 2006 mayoral election. (AMLO, as the president is commonly known, was Mexico City mayor from 2000 to 2005.)
“… They think that I’m dead but they’ve killed me politically many times,” Ebrard told guests as they ate carne asada (grilled meat) washed down with red wine and beer, according to Reforma.
“… They took me for dead but here we are. We’re going to participate [in the candidate selection process] respecting the rules of the game.”
About a dozen of Ebrard’s colleagues and close associates also delivered speeches at the lunch, reported Reforma, and one of them declared that the foreign minister is the sole person who can offer “proven continuity” of Obradorismo – the López Obrador political doctrine.
Several of the attendees subsequently took to social media to offer their support to Ebrard and post selfies they took with the would-be candidate, even though mobile telephones were ostensibly banned at the event.
“I had the pleasure to speak with Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard. I believe he would be an excellent president of the republic. There is no doubt that he will … provide continuity to the project of the fourth transformation,” wrote Morena party Baja California delegate Ismael Burgueño.
Another strong contender is Mayor Sheinbaum, who was greeted by cheering supporters as “Presidenta” — or Madam President — during Sunday’s inauguration of Mexico City’s new cable car system.
Two days after Ebrard’s lunch, the president broadened his list of possible successors, asserting that there are “many” men and women who could replace him.
“Everyone in [the federal] cabinet, [Morena party] governors, parliamentary leaders, all of them have the possibility [of becoming the candidate for president],” López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference, held Monday at a military base in Villahermosa, Tabasco.
The Morena candidate will be the person who receives the most support from “the people” in a democratic selection process, he added.
“… That’s the rule, the people will decide … in a free and democratic way who should represent us – … the progressive, liberal movement with a social dimension,” López Obrador said.
The next presidential election will be held on June 2, 2024, four months before AMLO is scheduled to leave office.
The main opposition parties – the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the Democratic Revolution Party – appear likely to field a joint candidate as they did in many of the recent gubernatorial elections.
A poll earlier this year found that Ricardo Anaya, the PAN candidate in the 2018 presidential election and a former lawmaker and PAN national president, was the most popular choice to run against Morena in 2024.
Four other choices were offered to those polled: Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro; Senator Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, a longtime politician and interior minister in the 2012-2018 federal government; Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral; and businessman and prominent government critic Claudio X. González.
Another possible contender is Yucatán Governor Mauricio Vila, who PAN national president Marko Cortés praised last week, saying he didn’t have “the slightest doubt” he would be a good choice to contest the race for the opposition.
“… Mauricio Vila has been a good governor, he’s achieved good results, he’s very well evaluated and part of the strength of the National Action Party is that we will have … good options on the path to 2024,” he said.
Protesters outside the sewer and water utility Monday in Acapulco.
Polluted water can be seen spilling onto a beach in Acapulco, Guerrero, in a video taken by a tourist just before the summer vacation season goes into full swing.
The video uploaded to social media shows the sand at Icacos Beach darkening as it becomes increasingly contaminated due to a leaking drain pipe in the Plaza Canada business precinct.
The tourist used the video to alert state and federal environmental authorities and the navy of the damage, complaining that it wasn’t the first time, and wrote of the health dangers to tourists bathing in filthy water as well as the risks to marine life.
The dumping of sewage on the city’s beaches has been a recurrent problem, despite fines handed out to local businesses, hotels and condos, according to the news portal La Silla Rota.
Last April, sewage leaked onto Papagayo Beach, which the city’s water treatment authority (Capama) blamed on the failure of the drainage system a few blocks away due to heavy rain.
Contaminated water captured in a video taken in Acapulco.
Angered by the inaction of authorities, around 300 tourist service providers protested outside Capama’s office Monday, forcing it to close before making the organization’s head, Roberto Villalobos, walk along Manzanillo Beach to see the extent of the problem.
The protesters shouted “Clean beaches! Clean beaches!” and demanded that authorities stop the flow of sewage into the bay, and put 17 treatment plants into operation.
Villalobos agreed to put together a working group.
One of the protesters said the contamination would dissuade tourists. “They don’t resolve anything, we want a solution. Capama needs to do its job … People won’t put up with this scourge any longer; tourists are eating and there is excrement by their side,” he said.
The head of a water sports cooperative, Arturo Pantoja Guatemala, put the blame squarely on the city government. “We are prepared for the summer season. The truth is that we need it, after very difficult days in the pandemic. But now what worries us is the bad image that we have due to the nauseating smells that we have on all the beaches of Acapulco; it is a situation that has gotten out of hand with the municipal council,” he said.
He called on the council to fulfill its public duties by collecting waste, fixing public lighting and attending to the sewage leaks.
Meanwhile, in more bad news for the tourism industry, Acapulco could soon return from green to yellow on the coronavirus stoplight map due to a surge in Covid-19 infections, according to the news site Infobae.
New ballast on the Mexico City Metro appears to have worn down the support structure.
The elevated section of Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro, part of which collapsed on May 3, was overburdened by as much as 7,000 tonnes due to the replacement of ballast in 2015, according to a report by the newspaper Milenio.
New ballast was placed on tracks between Culhuacán and Tláhuac after structural repairs were carried out on the elevated section in 2014 and 2015. The quality of the ballast previously used was deemed inadequate and substandard by a company contracted by the Mexico City government. The firm, Systra, recommended its replacement.
But the new ballast was heavier than that previously used and overloaded the elevated section by up to 7,000 tonnes, said Milenio, which accessed information from the Mexico City Ministry of Public Works.
The additional weight wore down the structure supporting the elevated section of the line including its concrete columns, the newspaper said.
Former Public Works Minister Alfredo Hernández and ex-Metro director Joel Ortega took the decision to replace the old ballast and selected the new ballast, which was purchased in Acolman, a México state municipality just north of the capital.
Milenio reported last month that replacement rails, sleepers and fasteners installed in 2014 and 2015 added 2,367 tonnes of weight. The new ballast alone weighs almost triple that amount.
“Experts consulted by Milenio commented that this excess load took the structure to its elastic limits, creating cracks, fragmentation and deformation [that] damaged [metal and concrete] sheets, beams and columns,” the newspaper said, referring to the weight added by the rails, sleepers, fasteners and ballast. The situation worsened as a result of two powerful earthquakes in 2017, Milenio added.
DNV’s report noted deformations, fractures and displacement of beams that form part of the structure that supports the elevated section. The excess weight placed on the structure during a period of several years may have contributed to the collapse, the Milenio reports suggest.
DNV will release a final report detailing the results of its investigation into the cause of the tragedy later this year.
Supporting baseball – President López Obrador’s favorite sport – is more than twice as important as supporting women’s rights, federal government spending plans suggest.
In contrast, the annual budget of the National Women’s Institute – which manages a range of programs for women in addition to overseeing the implementation of federal policies aimed at achieving gender equality and eliminating discrimination against women – is just 830 million pesos (US $41.8 million).
The “baseball budget” is also much higher than the annual funding of many other government departments, including the federal government’s Executive Commission for Attention to Victims and the National Commission for the Continued Betterment of Education, which receive 843 million pesos and 577 million pesos, respectively.
It amounts to almost two-thirds of the 2021 budget of the National Sports Commission, whose resources are under intense pressure this year due to Mexican athletes’ upcoming participation in the Tokyo Olympics.
López Obrador, who occasionally seeks to relieve the pressure of managing the nation’s affairs by retreating to a ballpark for some batting practice, has previously defended the government’s spending on his favorite pastime.
Nobody doubts the president’s passion for baseball but his interest in improving the lives of women in Mexico – where approximately 10 women are murdered every day – has been extensively questioned.
A statement published late last year that was endorsed by more than 650 academics, journalists, poets, scientists, artists, writers, filmmakers and other intellectuals even charged that López Obrador has shown contempt for women’s protests and the pain that victims of gender-based violence endure.
Ángel Luis Pereda ran for mayor of a municipality in Puebla June 6.
A former mayoral candidate in San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, was arrested Friday in New York for peddling fake modern art, U.S. federal prosecutors said.
Ángel Luis Pereda Eguiluz, 49, is accused of wire fraud in an attempt to earn millions of dollars by pretending works were by modern art icons Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Prosecutors said the Citizens’ Movement candidate in the June 6 elections had “conned art buyers” who he hoped wouldn’t notice the art was forged.
FBI agent Christopher McKeogh, who is investigating the case, said Pereda had tried to sell multiple fake artworks to various auction houses, including a vase and a painting by Haring, a collaborative painting by Basquiat and Haring and a copy of Basquiat’s “Glory Boys Kingdom.”
According to the newspaper Milenio Paredes had lined up a buyer for a supposed Basquiat piece for US $6 million.
The FBI has also tracked transfers of thousands of dollars to Pereda’s Mexican bank accounts, which it alleged are linked to other sales of fake art.
Late last year, at least two auction houses in New York City discovered fake pieces being sold to them. In one case a Haring piece was said to have been owned by the “Pareda Family, Mexico.”
The politician appears to have fallen victim to a sting operation. A person “acting at the direction of the FBI” told Pereda on June 23 that a Basquiat piece was fake but that it would be sold to a potential buyer for US $6 million if Pereda could come up with fake documents showing its provenance, which he did, according to the criminal complaint. “Pereda expected to receive a portion of the revenue of the sale of this fraudulent painting,” read the court filing.
Works by Basquiat and Haring have brought big numbers at auction. In 2017 a Basquiat painting was sold for $110.5 million, a U.S. record at the time.
Members of the philharmonic band are short 10 wind instruments.
Members of a youth philharmonic band in Oaxaca were deprived of 10 wind instruments when thieves ransacked a community center on June 29.
One clarinet, two saxophones, four trumpets and three trombones were stolen from the band in Santa Ana-Ne’äm, Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, 117 kilometers east of Oaxaca City in the Sierra Mixe, home to the indigenous Mixe people.
The case came to light when the band made a public denouncement, and simultaneously put out a plea for help. “We are kindly calling for the support of the whole population of Tlahuitoltepec … for assistance to recover the instruments of the young musicians,” it read.
The Culture Ministry condemned the theft and said the act could inhibit the children’s education. “We stand in solidarity with the girls, boys and young musicians … Acts like these threaten the comprehensive development of children and youth in Mexico,” it said in a statement.
This isn’t the first time a philharmonic in Oaxaca has been left without its instruments. In December 2019, the Philharmonic Band of San Pedro and San Pablo de Ayutla was robbed of 26 instruments. On that occasion, the instruments were replaced by donations organized on social media.
The Mixe people live in the eastern highlands of Oaxaca. They are considered to be culturally conservative, which has helped them preserve their language whose speakers number an estimated 90,000. The group call themselves ayuujkjä’äy meaning “people who speak the mountain language” rather than Mixe, which is probably derived from the Náhuatl word for cloud: mīxtli.
