The federal Attorney General's Office has been investigating former Interjet CEO Miguel Alemán Magnani since the beginnning of the year.
A federal judge on Thursday issued a warrant for the arrest of former Interjet CEO Miguel Alemán Magnani on 66-million-peso (US $3.3 million) tax fraud charges.
The warrant was issued in Mexico City on the request of the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR), according to court officials.
The FGR has been investigating the ex-chief of the beleaguered airline since the beginning of the year. Interjet faced a slew of problems in 2020, including cash flow shortages and flight cancellations, before ceasing operations in December. The airline announced earlier this year that it was filing for bankruptcy.
The issuing of the arrest warrant comes five months after the Office of the Federal Tax Prosecutor filed a complaint against Alemán with the FGR for allegedly failing to pay almost 66.3 million pesos in taxes owed by Interjet. The money the company should have paid but allegedly didn’t was income tax it was required to withhold from employees’ salaries in December 2018.
Court officials told the newspaper El Financiero that an Interpol red notice against Alemán, who is a part owner of Interjet, could be issued in the coming days.
“The Interpol red notice would be issued if it’s proven he’s out of the country … but that would take a few days,” they said.
Alemán is the son of businessman and former governor of Veracruz Miguel Alemán Velasco and the grandson of former president Miguel Alemán Valdés.
Interjet said in April that it intended to resume operations as soon as possible, but whether it will be in a financial position to do so is unclear. The budget carrier owes 47.6 million pesos to airport operator Pacific Airport Group and has other large debts to tax authorities and creditors.
A month and a half old baby was rescued with its parents after their vehicle was swallowed by a sinkhole Tuesday in Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
The family had been driving to take the baby to daycare when their vehicle suddenly nose-dived as the road gave way.
Video footage shows passing drivers going to the family’s aid and arms extending from the vehicle to pass the baby to safety, before the father and mother emerge unscathed.
The mother said she feared for the life of her baby and thanked God that the accident resulted in nothing more than damage to the vehicle. No injuries were recorded.
Meanwhile, in the nearby city of Nuevo Laredo three sinkholes are reported to be disrupting the flow of traffic.
Sinkholes have become a prominent talking point of late. An 126-meter chasm near Puebla city, which first appeared in late May, has become a tourist attraction, sparked an animal welfare debate, and has inspired a cake, a floral arrangement and cumbia song.
Other smaller sinkholes have since emerged in Hidalgo, Mexico City, Yucatán and Tabasco.
Every year on September 19, Mexico holds a nationwide public drill to mark the anniversary of the 1985 earthquake that killed an estimated 9,500 people and devastated families across the country. In 2017, a mere two hours after the commemorative drill, Mexico City trembled again in a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, which killed more than 200 people in the capital and the states of Puebla, Mexico and Morelos.
The Mexican republic is located in a highly seismic region on the planet, as it is crossed by the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, a part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Additionally, along the west coast of Mexico, the Cocos and North American tectonic plates meet in a subduction zone that creates frequent earthquakes.
Just offshore, the Guerrero Gap presents a particular concern to scientists due to its proximity to Mexico City, which has already suffered multiple devastating earthquakes. Located over a sinking aquifer, Mexico’s capital is particularly susceptible to earthquakes as a result of the compacting of the ancient lakebed on which the city was built.
There are debates amongst seismologists about which parts of Mexico are most likely to yield the next big earthquake. It could be from off Michoacán coast, where, according to the National Seismologic Service (SSN), minor earthquakes occur daily.
It could also be from southeast of the Guerrero Gap, or indeed in the Gap itself, which could produce an earthquake of catastrophic magnitudes.
The Ring of Fire is characterized by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. United States Geological Service
Some of the poorest states in Mexico are among those most prone to earthquakes, including Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero. They are additionally often subject to hurricanes and floods.
Historically, families in these states have some of the lowest income rates in the country and some of the highest illiteracy rates, which are aggravated by economic and personal losses as a result of natural disasters.
The exacerbation of social disparities as a result of these disasters is in many ways much more difficult to repair than the physical destruction, and it continuously affects everything in a cyclical way.
Earthquakes alone, however, do not cause deaths. Rather, it is the failure to prepare for the eventuality that an earthquake will occur that continues to make them devastating. Structural preparation and a culture of preparedness has been shown to be the way to mitigate disasters, but this is only effective where there is the political will to make it happen.
Take Chile, for instance, which has historically been subject to a large number of high-magnitude earthquakes, including, in 1960, the Valdivia quake, the largest one recorded in the 20th century. Today, the nation is held up as a model of earthquake preparedness.
In 2014, Chile experienced an 8.2 magnitude quake that resulted in proportionately few casualties. And why? Because there were rules and guidelines in place to prepare for it.
Victim being rescued from debris in Mexico City’s disastrous 1985 earthquake.
More than one million people were evacuated from coastal areas in a matter of hours, and the country has strict building codes which now require new buildings to withstand a 9.0 magnitude quake without collapsing.
This was not always the case. After the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, which killed thousands, reform of Chile’s national strategies to deal with disasters was not only possible but also popular. The failure to prepare for the 2010 quake exposed the need for a dialogue between the people on the ground in coastal communities and the legislators in government whose policies determine how risks are mitigated and disasters are managed.
Chile’s example offers up some big-picture solutions for countries across Latin America, and indeed for earthquake-prone regions across the globe.
Earthquakes in countries along tectonic boundaries are an unavoidable part of nature’s law. Notwithstanding the fact that these events are necessarily going to happen, they do not have to be devastating to communities, and to nations, if widespread structural change is made.
In Mexico, this means opening a dialogue between the people in power who are responsible for disaster risk management and those living their day-to-day lives in constant apprehension of the next catastrophe.
Ultimately, earthquakes are far from mysterious acts of God. They are natural disasters that nations can, and must, prepare for in order to not simply maintain a damaging status quo with regards to their disaster response (or lack of). The real question at hand is not whether Mexico is awaiting another earthquake of the magnitudes of 1985 and 2017, or whether the country must get used to smaller earthquakes occurring consistently over time.
Three years after Mexico’s 2017 earthquake, Marión Angélica Ferra of Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca, was still living in her home with no roof, lost in the quake.
The real question is whether the powers-that-be have an interest in fighting the legislative battles necessary to ensure that when the next earthquake does strike — as it certainly will — a safety net will have been fixed in place.
It is already too late to be talking about earthquakes when they occur; instead, discussions must happen during the gaps in between — when there is the time and the space to do something about them.
The time to be talking about earthquakes is now.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
The federal agriculture minister and his deputy are divided over whether corn used as animal fodder will be exempt from Mexico’s move to ban imports of genetically modified corn by 2024, according to a report by the news agency Reuters.
President López Obrador published a decree on the last day of 2020 stating that GMO corn imports for use in the food industry will be phased out by 2024.
But ambiguity in the wording created uncertainty as to whether genetically modified corn used as livestock feed would also be banned. Mexico imported some 16 million tonnes of GMO yellow corn last year, almost all of which came from the United States and was used as fodder. The uncertainty is a concern for U.S. corn growers who export to Mexico and farmers who work in this country’s US $12 billion livestock industry.
Reuters reported that “if liberally interpreted and successfully implemented,” the decree could end that dependence entirely. If there is “a more restrictive interpretation,” the animal feed exports could continue.
A source close to Agriculture Minister Víctor Villalobos told Reuters that the minister believes that fodder will be exempt from the ban on GMO corn. Villalobos, who has long advocated biotech crops, told United States Agriculture Secretary as much earlier this year.
But Reuters said “there are signs that Villalobos and his moderate allies have not yet won that battle and may be losing.”
Deputy Agriculture Minister Víctor Suárez, a former federal deputy for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, is opposed to the importation of all GMO corn, whether it’s used as fodder or not.
Ambiguity in the decree was the result of behind-scenes wrangling between factions in the agriculture ministry, one led by Villalobos and one headed by Súarez, according to Reuters, which cited three sources with knowledge of the matter.
Súarez is an advocate of “agroecological” farming, a frequent critic of big agribusiness and has said that animal feed GMO corn imports will be covered by the ban.
López Obrador has failed to provide clarity on the issue and it is not known when he will commit one way or the other. Meanwhile, the uncertainty for U.S. exporters and Mexican importers remains.
Sources close to health regulator Cofepris say that its leadership shares Suárez’s view that imports of GMO livestock feed should be prohibited, Reuters reported.
The regulator, formally known as the the Federal Commission for Protection Against Sanitary Risks, has not approved any new GMO corn varieties since late 2018, when López Obador took office. The approvals have been sought by leading GMO seed companies such as Bayer of Germany and the United States’ Corteva.
In addition, Cofepris is delaying new import permits for the crop, National Farm Council president Juan Cortina said last month.
Reuters said it was unable to arrange an interview with Villalobos despite multiple requests and Suárez was unwilling to discuss any differences with his boss. More than a dozen farm sector leaders consulted by the news agency said they were increasingly worried that imports of GMO corn used as fodder would be banned despite the agriculture minister’s assertions they wouldn’t be.
“The text of the decree specifies that the agriculture, environment and health ministries as well as [the science council Conacyt] will interpret it, and officials in charge of the latter three are all believed by several industry leaders to be sympathetic to Suarez’s views. None of the agencies involved responded to requests for comment,” Reuters said.
Cortina, the farm council chief, said there is no certainty about what will ultimately be decided. Assuming fodder imports will be exempted is “totally wrong,” he said.
The agriculture industry is right to be worried, Reuters said, because “López Obrador has a track record of confounding critics and taking drastic steps in line with his nationalist, big business-skeptic views.”
The issue is a highly sensitive one in Mexico – the birthplace of modern corn – where anti-GMO activists say that genetically modified corn has already contaminated fields where native, organic varieties of the grain are grown.
The whale spent about four hours on the beach before the tide came in.
A 10-meter-long, five-tonne humpback whale was discovered on Playas del Mirador beach and rescued Wednesday in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora.
The navy and Civil Protection were called out at about 5 a.m. and found the whale stranded among rocks.
Authorities reported the mammal was 200 meters from the water so about 50 police, firefighters, naval personnel and local residents responded to a call to help it return to the water.
The rescuers worked to keep the mammal hydrated until the tide rose to take it back out to sea. The plan proved effective and the rescuers celebrated as the whale returned to its habitat, having spent about four hours on the beach.
Local head of Civil Protection, Captain Alan Josué Ontiveros López, explained what might have brought the whale to shore. “It was a male juvenile humpback whale, which very possibly was nearby looking for food and unfortunately the low tide” left it stranded, he said.
Rescatan a ballena varada entre rocas en Puerto Peñasco, Sonora
He added that conditions favored the rescue effort. “Fortunately with the help of the military officers, volunteers and the good wave conditions, we were able to return it [to the sea],” he said.
The whale is being monitored to ensure it doesn’t fall victim to another low tide.
The young mother feeds the baby that was left in her care in downtown Monterrery.
A newborn baby was abandoned in the city center of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Monday after being left in the care of a woman who was begging in the street with her four children.
The person presumed to be the mother asked the woman, identified only as Alicia, to look after the baby, telling her that she couldn’t enter the store with it and complaining of pain in her arm. She left the newborn with a bag with diapers, a can of powdered milk and a baby bottle with prepared formula.
After waiting about three hours for the baby’s mother to return, Alicia was assisted by passersby to contact the police.
Red Cross paramedics diagnosed the baby with a fever and it was transferred to a maternal and children’s hospital in Guadalupe City. The infant was reported Wednesday to be in stable condition.
Authorities have taken DNA samples from the baby, requested video footage from security cameras and interviewed owners of local businesses to try to identify the mother.
In an interview with Televisa Alicia said she had considered continuing to look after the baby, and even thought a name for him, but was advised to call the police.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident a newborn baby was found lifeless outside a house in the north of the city Wednesday inside a plastic bag and wrapped in a blanket.
The award recognizes Enrique Krauze's 'broad career as a historian, essayist, editor and thinker,' the king said.
Mexican historian Enrique Krauze has received a prestigious Spanish award in recognition of his long career in the academic discipline of history.
King Felipe VI of Spain presented the Ordenes Españolas History Award to Krauze at a ceremony held Wednesday at a historical royal residence near Madrid.
The award, which was first presented in 2018 and comes with a 60,000-euro (US $71,000) prize, recognizes the 73-year-old’s “broad career as a historian, essayist, editor and thinker,” the king said.
The jury that selected Krauze as the winner said his work “covers the entire history of Mexico as a nation from a broad perspective that considers both its actors and institutions.”
“… He offers an independent vision of Mexican history in which indigenous elements combine with the Christian culture received from Europe.”
Among the more than 20 books Krauze has authored are Mexico: Biography of Power, History of the Mexican Revolution: The Economic Reconstruction and Century of Leaders: Political Biography of Mexico.
He was nominated for the award by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, of which the historian is an industrial engineering graduate.
In his acceptance speech, Krauze said he has “many affectionate links to Spain” and that receiving the award in 2021 was “a very high honor” accompanied by “the responsibility to remember the fifth centenary of the conquest of Mexico.”
The historian, who was highly critical of President López Obrador’s request that the King of Spain apologize for the conquest, said the civilization conquered by the Spanish was neither the “Arcadia,” or utopia, depicted by Mexican indigenous historiography nor the “hell” depicted by its “Hispanicist counterpart.”
Krauze also said that the discipline of “history is not a tribunal,” meaning that historians don’t have to establish a definitive version of events.
“… The duty of the historian, especially in the face of such a distant drama [such as the conquest] is not to judge but rather … document, explain and understand,” he said.
Krauze highlighted the importance of the mixing of Spanish and indigenous blood – the mestizaje – in forging a new culture and identity in Mexico, asserting that it was the greatest legacy of the conquerers and colonizers.
“The indigenous influence dominated in diet, both cultures came together in medicine and herbalism and in language, despite the dominance of Spanish … indigenous languages survived and pervaded Spanish with a variety of mexicanismos, tonalities and accents,” he said.
Krauze said that Mexico and Spain should commemorate the conquest together and not allow hate to impede dialogue, as occurred after the former won independence from the latter in a bloody war at the start of the 19th century.
“In that way history will be able to achieve its highest mission, that of being a path of understanding and harmony,” he said.
British historian John H. Elliot won the 2018 Ordenes Españolas History Award, while Spanish historian Miguel Ángel Ladero triumphed in 2019. The prize wasn’t presented last year due to the pandemic.
One of those wounded in a gunfight Wednesday in Oaxaca.
Two members of the National Guard are in custody on kidnapping charges and a third is dead after they engaged in a gunfight with state police in Oaxaca on Wednesday.
The clash occurred Wednesday afternoon on Federal Highway 190 in San Pablo Etla, a municipality just north of Oaxaca city.
One of the guardsmen was shot by state investigative police and subsequently died in hospital. Two police officers were wounded.
A young man from Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz who was allegedly kidnapped by the three guardsmen was rescued from a home from which the security force members fled before opening fire at police to aid their escape. Relatives of the man said the National Guard members had asked for 200,000 pesos (US $10,000) and a pickup truck as ransom.
The Oaxaca Attorney General’s Office said it would carry out a “diligent and exhaustive” investigation into the incident between police and the members of the National Guard, a two-year-old security force created by the current federal government.
It also said it would seek to gather evidence to support the accusation that the detained guardsmen committed the kidnapping.
The federal government’s plan to create a new state-owned company to distribute LP gas directly to consumers at low prices is concerning for several reasons, according to a leading economic analyst.
President López Obrador announced Wednesday that state oil company Pemex will establish the new utility within three months. Gas Bienestar (Well-Being Gas), as the new company will be called, is needed to create additional competition in the LP gas market because it is dominated by five large companies and gas prices have been rising “unjustifiably” above inflation, he said.
In a series of Twitter posts, the director of economic and financial analysis at Banco Base questioned the wisdom of the plan.
Gabriela Siller noted that Mexico is not self-sufficient in LP gas and therefore Pemex/Gas Bienestar will have to import a certain quantity of it at a price determined by the international market. (Pemex is already an LP gas importer and also produces gas.)
“There will also be transport, storage and commercialization costs, so it is not clear how they will offer gas at a lower price,” she wrote.
Siller cited data from the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece) that showed that domestic gas production was meeting less than 30% of demand at the end of 2017.
“This means that increases in international prices are absorbed by importers and distributors in the country, as well as sellers and finally consumers,” she wrote.
Siller noted that international LP gas prices have risen 45.7% annually as of late June and domestic prices were up 17.8% in the first half of last month compared to the same period a year earlier.
“The discrepancy between the rise in the international price and the local price is because several sellers have absorbed part of the increases,” she wrote.
“The creation of ‘Gas Bienestar’ also implies investment in tanks to sell [gas], employees, etc., so there are initial costs like in any company. The question is: who will absorb these costs, Pemex or [the Ministry of Finance]? (Which for practical purposes are the same),” Siller wrote.
The extra burden on government resources could have implications for Mexico’s sovereign credit rating, she continued.
International LP gas prices have risen 45.7% annually as of late June, says Gabriela Siller of Banco Base.
“Creating the [state-owned] company doesn’t guarantee that gas will be offered at a lower price. The only way for that to occur would be to incur the cost of creating the company, operating it and then selling gas at a subsidized price,” Siller wrote.
López Obrador said Wednesday that Gas Bienestar’s prices would not be subsidized by the government but rather the company will have very low profit margins that allow it to keep prices low.
But Siller maintains that creating and operating the company will be a costly exercise for the Ministry of Finance or Pemex, which already has debt in excess of US $100 billion.
“Creating Gas Bienestar will be doubly onerous for public finances because 1) gas will be sold below the market price and 2) [the government] will incur the operation costs,” she wrote.
Siller said it would make more sense for the government to subsidize consumers’ purchases from existing private companies, perhaps via a voucher scheme, rather than create a new state-owned one, although she acknowledged that would come at a cost as well.
“But we [would] save the cost of creating a new company and operating it,” she wrote.
“In summary, there are five concerning things about the creation of Gas Bienestar:
Additional costs for the public sector.
Investment costs for commercialization…
Risks of credit rating cuts.
Risk of a fall in fixed investment in the sector …
Risk of [the government] wanting to limit import permits, which could generate shortages.”
Meanwhile, Cofece responded to López Obrador’s criticism that it has done nothing to stop the increase of LP gas prices.
The competition watchdog said in a statement that it shares the desire of citizens and the president for fuels to be offered at the best possible prices in Mexico.
“In fact the commission has been emphatic and vocal [on the issue], … undertaking actions to investigate and … sanction anti-competitive behavior and promoting greater competition in the gasoline, diesel, LP gas, aviation fuel and electricity markets,” Cofece said.
With regard to LP gas in particular, the watchdog noted that it has investigated to determine whether there is “effective competition” in the market and if there is collusion between LP gas distributors.
“… In the case of collusion being proven, economic sanctions of up to 10% of the income of the companies involved can be imposed,” Cofece said.
A final determination of the investigations is awaiting response from the gas companies themselves.
The commission also noted that it published a study in 2018 that warned that the LP gas market was dominated by a small group of companies and made recommendations to reduce the impacts of the market concentration.
Among the recommendations were to allow the sale of LP gas cylinders at gas stations and supermarkets, to sell gas to vulnerable sectors of the population at state-run Diconsa stores and to eliminate obstacles to the installation of new distribution plants. None of the recommendations was implemented by the federal government, Cofece said.
Street vendors in San Cristóbal de las Casas pre-pandemic. Katja Tsevtkova/Shutterstock
My sister has come to visit!
It’s been a year and half since we’ve seen each other — a year and a half since I’ve seen anyone related to me other than my daughter, in fact. Needless to say, to me it’s a Very Big Deal.
She flew into Veracruz (about an hour and a half from Xalapa), so I decided to make a mini, safe-as-possible vacation of it. I booked a nice, extra-sanitized hotel in downtown Veracruz for a couple of nights, packed my hand gel, extra masks and swimsuit and headed there with my daughter to pick my sister up and spend a couple of days relaxing.
Since I mostly live and have lived like a local for the past almost 20 years, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything “touristy.” Being a tourist makes me squirm.
It’s not because I feel embarrassed about exploring a new place, looking at souvenirs or frequenting silly museums (I’m looking at you, Ripley’s Believe It or Not.) No, it’s because at least if you’re exploring a city — and especially one reeling from the double-whammy of a health and economic crisis that has left people devastated on both fronts — the pressure to actively participate at all times in the tourist industry’s recovery is on.
And while tourism is up, those who earned a living from it pre-pandemic are far from recovered.
As those of you who read my column frequently know, I do a lot of thinking about the ethics of my role as a foreigner living in Mexico. I try to do this even when it doesn’t leave me — or those who share more characteristics than not with me — in the most flattering light.
As uncomfortable as it is to simultaneously recognize how my privilege both supports and contributes to a way of life I don’t feel 100% comfortable with, I do my best not to keep myself stuck in a constant game of defense.
And though I genuinely love people — talking to them, hearing their stories, being around them — I’m naturally reserved at my core and can get easily overwhelmed by any intense onslaught of attention-wanting humanity. On this trip, those who depend on tourist dollars to survive were particularly persistent about wanting attention and business from me.
Who can blame them? It’s been a rough year, and many are desperate to recover lost ground. And let’s face it: even before the pandemic, the typical strategy for vendors without a storefront or a kiosk has been to walk around areas frequented by tourists, trying to sell things to you, even if you’re mid-bite or mid-conversation.
This makes the entitled, prissy part of me mad: will you please stop interrupting me every five minutes and let me freaking finish my meal/conversation/text? If I shop, I want to do so because I’ve decided to stop and have a look around, not because someone’s waving bracelets in my face and really wants me to stop whatever I’m doing to look them over and choose one to buy right then. The same goes for bus and boat tours, and meals at restaurants.
And then, of course, I immediately feel like a jerk. Walking up to people and trying to get them to buy something from you must be, after all, enough of a winning strategy enough of the time, and who am I to scowl at them for trying to make a living?
My right to shop or not shop when I want to hardly seems as important as their right to try their best to make enough money to eat that day. How to handle these simultaneous feelings of irritation and guilt?
Shortly before traveling, I translated an article (not yet published) about a small beachside town that the government had worked hard to turn into a paradise for tourists. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and I especially thought about it as I enjoyed some of the more luxurious activities that Veracruz has to offer.
There were all the normal complaints, of course: quickly rising prices in the area, which ensure that the non-wealthy citizens who already lived there would not have access to all of those new fun things available, and that businesses making up the tourism infrastructure would buy up all of the best land plots in town where community centers used to stand.
In the wake of the pandemic, there was an extra sting as well: children (still) out of school and with fewer places to play, all while their community systematically turned into a gigantic pay-to-play amusement park made up of 100%-open businesses for rich vacationers to come and live out their own fantasies.
As you might imagine, wages for locals remain flat, tied to the state’s minimum wage rather than the local cost of living.
Veracruz is hardly a beach resort, and most of the tourists that arrive there are from other parts of Mexico. But the divide between those of us treating it as a playground made just for us and those who are just trying to make ends meet in the increasingly expensive city they live in is obvious and uncomfortable (for me, anyway).
Might it be like one’s parents having a second child that the older one must witness getting showered with love and sweets while sitting in their regular corner with a simple plate of rice and peas?
I want the sweets, but I want my older sibling to get the sweets too. We both turn and frown at the parents, who never seem to be around when we want an explanation, or some justice. So, we take on the uncomfortable task of trying to work it out between ourselves.
