AMLO defends measures to protect palace, points to possibility of drone attack

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March 10, 2021

Snipers on the roof? No, soldiers with anti-drone devices.

President López Obrador has defended the use of anti-drone technology to prevent the unmanned aerial vehicles from flying over the National Palace during Monday’s International Women’s Day protest, claiming that they could have been used to attack the seat of government.

Members of the military were deployed to the roof of the National Palace and used drone defenders to stop any possible aerial incursion during the protest, a deployment that caused panic among some protesters as the devices resemble high-caliber weapons, especially from a distance.

Speaking at his news conference on Wednesday, López Obrador said that drones could have been used to start a fire at the National Palace or even drop a bomb on it.

He said an attack was possible because there are people who want to generate negative publicity for the government, which has been heavily criticized for inaction on women’s rights, and the country.

The president laughed off reports that the government had deployed snipers to the National Palace roof and said that he had information that radical protesters planned to set the main door of the building on fire.

The president attacked foreign media Tuesday, accusing them of participating in the looting of Mexico under past governments.

“I had information, it’s my job, I don’t have espionage groups but there is intelligence – what the people tell me. The intelligence is in the people, … the information I had is that they wanted to burn the palace door, … imagine that. So we had to install the wall,” López Obrador said, referring to the metal barricade erected around the National Palace before Monday’s protest.

The president also said Wednesday that he was not in favor of the prosecution of anyone who committed acts of violence during the event, among whom were men wearing hoods, according to the Mexico City government.

(There were clashes between protesters and police and the former succeeded in pulling down a section of the barricade. More than 60 police and about 20 protesters sustained injuries.)

“My opinion is that nobody should be prosecuted because above all they’ll feel like victims. There shouldn’t be any punishment. I believe that the punishment in this case is the public condemnation for what they did. The people don’t look kindly on the use of violence, besides it’s a contradiction,” López Obrador said.

“I believe that the crudest, most terrible expression of machismo is violence. Machismo is violence. Therefore, how can those against machismo exercise violence?”

The president said there are millions of women in Mexico fighting for equality and justice and asserted that their struggle is valid, legal and legitimate. However, López Obrador – who has been widely condemned for supporting the candidacy of an alleged rapist for governor of Guerrero – rejected the notion that he and his government should be the focus of women’s anger.

“We’ve been listening to the feelings of the people, men and women, for years and we are permanently fighting for [the rights of] women. In all the welfare programs, the majority of the beneficiaries are women and girls,” he said.

“… I’ve always attended to women, it’s a conviction, we don’t have any conscience problems because we’ve always supported women and the poorest women, those who were abandoned [by past governments],” López Obrador said.

At his press conference on Tuesday, the president said that provocateurs and infiltrators were responsible for violence at Monday’s protest. He also accused three foreign newspapers of not being objective in their coverage of it, claiming that they unduly criticized his government for provoking the violence because of its response, or lack thereof, to problems that afflict Mexican women such as gender violence.

The correspondents of The New York Times, The Guardian and Spanish newspaper El País are “representatives of companies that participated in the looting of Mexico in the neoliberal period,” López Obrador charged without providing any evidence to back up his claim. “They’re very annoyed because stealing and looting is not allowed anymore.”

Source: Reforma (sp), El Financiero (sp), El Universal (sp)

Extending tourist stay under Covid: an opaque, frustrating and sometimes impossible process

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Michelle Aguilar

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March 10, 2021

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When the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, the chaos it created threw up an unexpected roadblock for people staying in Mexico under the Forma Migratoria Múltiple, commonly referred to as the FMM, a visitor’s permit (not a visa) which allows people from many countries (including the United States, Canada, and the Schengen area nations) to remain in Mexico for 180 days as a tourist.

But with the coronavirus making many think twice about traveling back to their home countries in the middle of a pandemic, some (but not all) of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) offices have been willing since last summer to extend an FMM for another 180 days. The process is by all accounts opaque, frustrating and, in some cases, impossible — but the requirements are fairly simple. You attest that because of Covid-19, you cannot return home.

However, not all offices will extend an FMM, warns Sonia Díaz, author of The Move to Mexico Bible and owner of a business based in Puerto Vallarta, the Riviera Nayarit and San Miguel de Allende that helps English speakers navigate Mexican bureaucracy. Some offices will tell you that with the borders to your country open and flights available, no extensions to FMMs will be granted, period.

So your first step is to do your homework and check first with your local immigration office. Some offices will refuse and advise you to overstay your FMM although that is illegal and you will likely face a fine for doing so when you exit the country.

“Even though INM is federal, each office has some autonomy when it comes to special programs,” Díaz said. “In Mexico, the greatest consistency is inconsistency.”

Your FMM should not yet be expired when you apply, she advised. However, if it has been expired for less than 60 days, some offices will still allow the extension but require you to prove your financial solvency, i.e., that you can afford to stay in Mexico. This can be somewhat onerous. See more about this at the bottom of this article.

Another option that became available last summer in some INM offices is a special one-year humanitarian temporary resident visa. However, this too is not available everywhere because it is an ad hoc adaptation of Mexico’s regular humanitarian visa — which was not meant to address the Covid-19 pandemic.

This new humanitarian visa frequently comes with a requirement for a validated doctor’s letter stating that you have health conditions that would endanger your life if you traveled outside Mexico and caught Covid, Díaz said. Again, check your local immigration office to find out if this type of visa is even offered there and what the requirements are.

This temporary visa does over some advantages over an extension of your FMM, the biggest being that it gives you a temporary CURP number, which is a federal identification number (not unlike a social security number in the U.S.) that allows you to do things an FMM does not, like giving you a card you can present everywhere as ID, getting a Mexican driver’s license and signing up for the Covid-19 vaccine on the nation’s vaccination website.

The humanitarian visa, in most cases, according to Díaz, does not require proof of financial solvency, but your FMM should not be expired when you apply.

Some things to know if you are asked to prove your financial solvency:

You must show evidence that you can support yourself and your family while in Mexico. The income requirements apply to each person in your family who is staying, including children.
Do a reconnaissance mission regarding financial requirements. According to Díaz, there is supposed to be a standard requirement: at least 35,848 pesos (US $1,715) per person in monthly salary or pension income or 1,792,400 pesos ($85,680) in assets, but your local immigration office staff hold the cards here. Ask beforehand.
Printouts of financial statements should be sufficient proof of your income and assets but be prepared to show up to 12 months of statements and know that INM officials may require your financial statements to be translated to Spanish.
If your name on financial statements and on your passport don’t match to the letter, immigration will probably give you trouble. “Names on passport and financials must match 10,000%,” said Díaz. “Larry R. Smith is not the same as Larry Robert Smith.”
If you are caught in this position, one option may be to approach your consular office for a letter attesting to the fact that the two names belong to the same person.

Sonia Díaz’s Facebook page has more information about navigating extended stays in Mexico under Covid and other matters of Mexican bureaucracy.

Mexico News Daily

Auditor defends methodology used to calculate cost of abandoned airport

By

MND Staff

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March 10, 2021

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Agustín Caso has been suspended while the audit is under investigation.

A federal auditor has defended the methodology used to calculate the cost of canceling the previous government’s international airport project at Texcoco, México state, saying that it was consistent and internationally recognized.

The Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF) said in late February that canceling the new Mexico City airport project will cost almost 332 billion pesos (US $15.8 billion), an estimate more than three times higher than that of the federal government.

However, after President López Obrador rejected the estimate and called for the auditor’s office to explain how it reached the figure, the ASF said that there were “inconsistencies” in its calculation and that the audit was undergoing “exhaustive revision.”

In an appearance before an audit supervision committee of the lower house of Congress on Tuesday, ASF special performance auditor Agustín Caso – temporarily removed from the role as the revision takes place – denied that there was deceit or political motivation in the airport audit results.

(López Obrador canceled the partially-built US $15-billion project after a legally questionable public consultation held a month before he took office in late 2018.)

“The Federal Auditor’s Office adhered to due process and the [correct] methodology. …. There is no bad faith, there is no error,” Caso said.

The auditor said that if the ASF had acted in bad faith or inflated the cost of canceling the airport for political purposes – to damage the government, in other words – it would be a “serious issue” because the auditor’s office has a responsibility to “contribute to the good performance” of the government.

While denying that there were errors in the audit, Caso told deputies that he hadn’t come before them to defend the ASF figure and the validity of the audit process to such an extent as to completely repudiate other opinions.

“There are different perspectives and legal processes that air differences,” he acknowledged.

Caso pointed out that the Ministry of Communications and Transportation didn’t raise any objections to the audit result. He declined to respond to questions about the “inconsistencies” in the audit to which the ASF admitted because an investigation into them is currently taking place.

The federal government faced numerous legal challenges over its decision to cancel the Texcoco airport project and several injunctions were granted against the Santa Lucía airport, which is currently under construction at an Air Force base north of Mexico City.

The injunctions stalled work on the government’s cheaper alternative but they were ultimately unable to stop it. A new military base at the Santa Lucía facility was officially opened last month and the site’s commercial airport is expected to open in March 2022.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Oaxaca chef incorporates indigenous Zapotec flavors into her baking

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MND Staff

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March 9, 2021

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A chef in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca is tantalizing taste buds with her culinary creations that boast a range of distinctive Zapotec flavors.

Nabila Nichdali Aguilar Bla, a 31-year-old Zapotec woman who studied at the Culinary School of the Southeast in Mérida, Yucatán, uses a variety of Isthmus cheeses and locally-grown fruits in her popular cakes and desserts.

After returning to her home town of Unión Hidalgo in the Juchitán district of the Isthmus region six months ago, Aguilar started experimenting with local ingredients as she put her years of training in traditional baking techniques to use.

She now uses three different types of cheese in her orange cakes and caramel custard flans to strike a perfect flavor balance between sweet and savory. One of the cheeses is known as quesu bidxi by the Zapotec people and is characterized by its saltiness and intense flavor.

The others are queso oreado, which also has a strong flavor but is less salty, and queso fresco de leche, which is made with cow’s milk.

A lime tiramisú is one of Chef Aguilar's creations. — A lime tiramisú is one of Chef Aguilar’s creations.

Locally-grown fruits also caught the eye of Aguilar, who ventured to start her own culinary business despite the difficulties of doing so during the coronavirus pandemic.

The young chef decided to use coyol, a fruit from a palm tree that is cultivated in Unión Hidalgo, in some of her cakes and desserts. She also flavors cold beverages with a whitish liquid known as taberna that is extracted from the same tree.

“The palm tree from which the taberna and coyol come is only cultivated in Unión Hidalgo; they are two gastronomic elements that are only produced and consumed in this area, they belong to us. I buy them directly from the producers and contribute to their economy,” she told the newspaper El Universal.

Aguilar also uses tejocote, or Mexican hawthorn, as the base ingredient for a jam to which she also adds mezcal – Oaxaca’s world famous spirit, basil and other locally-grown herbs. She then uses the jam as an ingredient in some of her baked goods.

“I’ve always believed in recipes that combine [ingredients], … that’s why in our creative cuisine we never stop combining regional and natural flavors,” she said.

Her products have found a loyal following in her home town in the months since she started selling them and Aguilar even sends orders beyond the Isthmus region.

Despite being busy with her new business, the chef has found the time to teach, along with a local artist, a cooking and art workshop for children who have been stuck at home attending virtual classes for the past year.

“We saw that the people most affected [by the pandemic] are children because [they attend] classes on line but don’t have spaces to have fun together … so we started the workshop,” Pedro Hernández, the artist, told El Universal.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Indigenous town in Hidalgo wants a vote on whether to vaccinate

By

MND Staff

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March 9, 2021

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otomi citizens san ildefonso — Citizens aren't keen on the idea of Covid-19 vaccination.

Residents of an indigenous town in Hidalgo are demanding that the federal government respect their right to decide whether they want to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or not.

The government hasn’t made any announcement that getting a shot is mandatory but Hñähñu, or Otomí, people in San Ildefonso Chantepec have nevertheless made it clear that they will reject any imposition of the vaccine.

If the government doesn’t respect people’s right to choose whether they want to be vaccinated it will violate people’s rights, the San Ildefonso town leader told the newspaper El Universal.

César Cruz said the government’s Covid-19 vaccination program will not make up for the years of abandonment San Ildefonso and other indigenous communities in Hidalgo have suffered in terms of healthcare.

“We need quality care [always], not just sometimes,” he said.

San Ildefonso, located about 10 kilometers south of the city of Tula, and other indigenous communities have extremely limited access to health services and medications are frequently in short supply.

“We can only get sick from nine in the morning to two in the afternoon,” Cruz said, referring to the town clinic’s operating hours.

He said that many of the 10,000 residents, among whom are large numbers of artisans and musicians, don’t trust the Covid-19 vaccines because they’re new and they had bad experiences previously with the influenza vaccine.

“Some people had a negative reaction, … everybody’s body is different. In the community some people say no [to the Covid-19 vaccine], I personally won’t agree [to having it],” Cruz said.

The town governor clarified that he believes that almost the entire population shares his view but some don’t enunciate it out of fear of being stigmatized or stripped of federal welfare payments.

Cruz also said that people resorted to using traditional medicines to treat illnesses during the pandemic because they saw that people who went to hospital were dying.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s vaccination program continues to proceed slowly with just 51,802 doses administered on Monday. That figure is well short of the daily high of about 330,000 shots recorded last month but the highest since Tuesday last week.

A total of 2.85 million Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered in Mexico as of Monday night, a figure that accounts for almost 61% of the approximately 4.7 million doses the country has received.

The Health Ministry also said Monday that the accumulated case tally had increased to 2.13 million with 1,877 new cases registered while the official Covid-19 death toll rose by 319 to 190,923.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Museum educates on coconut’s value to Zihuatanejo and beyond

By

Elisabeth Ashe

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March 9, 2021

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An example of artisan work made from coconut that's sold at the museum.

On a beautiful piece of land tucked away among the streets of the Guerrero village of Coacoyul, next to a 70-hectare coconut plantation, sits el Museo del Coco, or The Coconut Museum.

You might wonder whether coconuts warrant a whole museum, but Jesús Espino Marcado, who founded the museum with his family two years ago next to his coconut plantation, knows the fruit’s value to Mexico.

“The coconut is of extreme importance to our economy,” he said. “It’s the first introduction to Mexico from Asia [from the Phillipines] and has risen in importance gastronomically, culturally and economically.”

Espino speaks from vast experience. For generations, since 1940, his family has dedicated itself to the coconut industry. He’s also president of Coco Pacifico Sur, a group of 10 coconut producers from Coacoyul who formed the entity in 2008 in response to their longstanding plantations reaching the end of their productive stage. The group now visualizes the possibilities of taking advantage of their old plantations’ wood and replicating orchards with hybrid palm trees, a move which a state government program subsidized.

Espino is also running for mayor of Zihuatanejo, the municipality which encompasses Coacoyul.

An entrance to the museum, which features a restaurant and a gift shop.

The museum, Museo del Coco, “was a dream of the family” when they opened it just two years ago, says Espino’s wife, Ana Alba Vargas. Their children are also involved in the day-to-day operations of the museum and its restaurant and are also creators of some of the artisan items sold in the gift shop.

Vargas believes the museum to be the only one of its kind in the state, if not all of Mexico.

The museum seeks to educate locals and visitors by way of posters that track the early years of the coconut in the area and progresses to the present day. The aim is to inform about the varied uses of this highly versatile fruit and the importance of coconut cultivation as a means of development for the state of Guerrero.

Its exhibits illustrate the wide range of products derived from a single coconut — everything from virgin coconut oil, coconut milk, yogurt, butter and cottage cheese. The museum encourages the consumption of the fruit and its ingredients by raising awareness of the health benefits of this fruit. There’s even a bar where you can purchase tequila shots or rum to imbibe with coconut.

Further illuminating the versatile uses of the fruit, a small gift shop at the entrance carries many coconut-based products, such as luxurious soaps, toys, candle holders, bowls and more. In addition to some of the designs being by Espino’s family members, they also sell pieces by various artisans from throughout Guerrero.

Jesús Espino, the Coconut Museum’s founder, with his wife and daughter.

At the end of last month, the museum opened an onsite restaurant featuring coconut, including many regional dishes. Other developments in the works this year will include a massive double-sided mural on the grounds by well-known local artists Leonel Maciel Sánchez and Carlos Quijano. A smaller model of this planned mural already sits on display in the museum and depicts the coconut’s story, its journey and its impact on the area and beyond.

Although limited now by Covid-19 (mask-wearing and social distancing rules apply), the museum normally welcomes tour buses and private tours and even hosts weddings, birthday parties and other special events seven days a week.

The Museo del Coco is easily accessible by taxi or by contacting your local tour guide or through WhatsApp: 755 55 7 74 05 or at 755 55 7 81 31.

The writer divides her time between Canada and Zihuatanejo.

Massive tree-planting program has contributed to deforestation

By

MND Staff

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March 9, 2021

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A woman in a straw hat plants a tree seedling in a grassy field — Sheinbaum cited the government tree-planting program Sowing Life, which operates in Central America, as an example of Mexico's work to address the root causes of migration. (File photo)

Its raison d’être is to reforest more than a million hectares of land in Mexico but the federal government’s tree-planting employment program is paradoxically encouraging deforestation.

A Bloomberg news agency journalist said in a report he saw evidence of deforestation associated with the US $3.4-billion Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) program during a trip to Yucatán and Campeche in late February.

The federal government’s flagship environmental initiative is designed to help Mexico achieve climate goals while providing jobs and income – currently 4,500 pesos (US $212) per month – for some of Mexico’s most disadvantaged people.

But while the government said the program had planted or prepared 660 million saplings by the end of 2020 and is on track to grow a billion by the end of next year, Sowing Life is also causing environmental destruction.

The Bloomberg report said that forested land in Yucatán has been burned so that saplings can be planted where mature trees formerly stood.

“This is what Sowing Life does,” José, a Yucatán farmer, told the news agency while kicking a blackened tree stump. “[But] what can we do? It’s the only opportunity there is.”

The problem is that in order to participate in the reforestation program and collect a monthly wage from the government, farmers need access to cleared land where they can plant timber-yielding and fruit trees. Sowing Life thus incentivizes farmers to clear forested land.

“In many cases people said, ‘Well, I have my hectare of jungle but the program is coming so I’ll cut down the jungle, use the trees for my house or to sell the wood or whatever, and when the program comes I’ll sow seeds again,’” said Sergio López Mendoza, an ecology and conservation professor at the University of Science and Arts of Chiapas.

According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), a United States-based environmental non-profit organization that has collaborated with the Mexican government to assess the results of the reforestation program, Sowing Life may have inadvertently caused the deforestation of 73,000 hectares of land in 2019, the first year the scheme ran.

The estimate came from a study that used satellite images to measure recent deforestation. In addition to Yucatán and Campeche, land in Veracruz, Tabasco, Quintana Roo and Chiapas has been deforested due to people’s desire to participate in Sowing Life, WRI found. Bloomberg noted that the estimated area of land deforested in 2019 is almost the size of New York City.

Some people in Mexico believe that the extent of the destruction could be even greater. Juan Manuel Herrera, a forestry engineer from Campeche, told Bloomberg that there has potentially been much more deforestation in that state than the WRI estimate suggests.

The president, center, inspects a tree nursery growing saplings for the tree-planting program.

In one village, more than two-thirds of Sowing Life beneficiaries felled trees in order to participate, one participant said.

Antonio, who asked for his surname not to be used out of fear of repercussions, showed Bloomberg a parcel of land where he and other family members cleared a thicket of trees including Caribbean walnut and Red Chaca so that they could join Sowing Life.

A representative of the program in the village, which Bloomberg didn’t name, rejected the claim that trees had been cut down so that people could become participants, asserting that land on which cattle was formerly grazed was used.

But Antonio said that he and his relatives didn’t plant saplings on such land because their cows needed it. He said he only wanted to remove some small trees from the forested area and replace them with saplings that are part of Sowing Life but the program representatives were only looking for land that was cleared completely and he couldn’t afford not to participate.

“Sowing Life’s inconsistencies add to [President] Lopez Obrador’s poor track record on climate,” Bloomberg said. The news agency’s revelations come after the newspaper El Universal published a report last June that said the tree-planting program was riddled with operational flaws and corruption.

Despite the problems that have been exposed, López Obrador has described Sowing Life as a “blessed program” and touts it as the most important reforestation initiative in the world.

For his part, the executive director of the Mexican Climate Initiative, a non-governmental organization, warned that poorly-designed environmental programs can have unintended consequences.

“These types of programs, if not well designed, can give birth to perverse incentives,” Adrián Fernández Bremauntz told Bloomberg.

In the case of Sowing Life, communities that have lived amid jungle for hundreds of years are left with a dilemma, the news agency said: “Cut down your habitat or turn away much-needed income.”

Source: Bloomberg (en)

Historic church goes up in flames in Paracho, Michoacán

By

Michelle Aguilar

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March 9, 2021

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The historic church in flames on Sunday. — The historic church destroyed by Sunday's blaze.

A historic 17th-century church built by Spanish missionaries in one of Michoacán’s original indigenous Purhépecha areas was destroyed by fire Sunday afternoon.

Emergency officials said they don’t yet know what caused the fire at St. James the Apostle Church in the town of Nurio. Residents noticed around 6 p.m. that the church’s wooden roof and its inclined support beams were in flames.

Residents attempted to put out the conflagration but it had already consumed a large part of the roof and by the time firefighters arrived from Paracho and Uruapan the church was severely damaged.

According to the newspaper Monitor Expresso, a lack of available water to fight the fire, as well as fire hoses that did not extend more than 20 meters and were themselves highly flammable hampered firefighters’ efforts.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) is investigating the extent of the damage but media accounts indicate that while the exterior walls are still standing, nothing remains of the roof and the interior.

Incendio destruye arte sacro invaluable en la Iglesia de Santiago Apóstol de Nurio, perteneciente al municipio de Paracho, ardió en llamas.#Nurio #Paracho #Michoacan #TemploSantiagoApostol pic.twitter.com/NUsAEcsDhh

— Orgullo Purepecha (@OrgulloPurepech) March 8, 2021

Federal Culture Secretary Alejandra Frausto described the church, which dates back to 1639, as “one of the most beautiful churches in the world.”

The Archdiocese of Morelia called it “an architectural jewel of incalculable value.”

Constructed of painted stone with an imposing entrance featuring a cut stone porch and Corinthian columns, the church was built in the Mudejar style, a Gothic architectural design with Islamic influences that was prevalent in Spain from the 12th to the 15th century.

Over time, features of the outer construction were replaced with masonry, but much of the church’s inner construction was done by local woodworkers.

The church featured intricate religious paintings and sculpture on its walls and ceilings dating back centuries. Its choir, according to Monitor Expresso, was one of only two with its distinct architectural style in the world; the only other is located in a historic church in South America.

The church was a central feature of Nurio’s religious and public life, with many holy days and Catholic saints’ feast days celebrated there, including that of St. James, the town’s patron.

The church's wooden interior was gutted by the blaze. — The church’s wooden interior was gutted by the blaze.

It had survived at least two previous fires; one in the 1980s took out some of the church nave’s historic painted ceiling panels. Another fire in 2015 damaged its vault.

Sources: El Universal (sp), Monitor Expresso (sp)

LP gas thefts soared in 2020; economic cost estimated at US $1.4 billion

By

MND Staff

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March 9, 2021

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Tanker trucks at the scene of an LP gas pipeline tap.

Illegal taps on LP gas pipelines soared above 20,000 last year, contributing to losses of more than 30 billion pesos (US $1.4 billion) due to gas theft, according to the president of the LP gas industry association Amexgas.

Carlos Serrano told the EFE news agency that there were more than 23,000 illegal taps on gas pipelines in 2020, up from 12,581 in 2018 and 13,136 in 2019.

Approximately 60% of all illegal taps detected since the turn of the century were discovered during the past three years. Serrano described the problem as “extremely serious” while noting the immense cost of LP gas theft.

“Armed groups are taking control of the [distribution] routes and imposing conditions that don’t benefit the final consumer and place society at risk,” the Amexgas chief said.

A security chief for a gas distributor told EFE that theft also takes place in Pemex storage and distribution centers due to corruption and that gas company vehicles are targeted.

The man, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisals from organized crime, said the states most affected by gas theft are Veracruz, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, Querétaro, Mexico City, México state and Guanajuato.

“In those states … the main impact on companies is the theft of vehicles and equipment they use to distribute gas. Tanker trucks and portable tanks of gas are stolen,” he said.

The security chief said that commission agents play a key role in getting stolen gas to businesses and people’s homes, explaining that they while they normally purchase gas from legally established companies they sometimes turn to criminal groups to get the product more cheaply and increase their profits.

He also said there are groups that obtain money from gas distribution companies in exchange for providing protection to them in the areas they operate. Once an organized crime group controls gas distribution in a certain region, it imposes its own conditions on all links of the supply chain and the consumer, he said.

“They affect the final consumer – the housewife, the hotelier, the tortilla maker and the baker. They force them to buy a certain quantity of gas every month … at a certain price, even one that is above their commercially viable cost,” the gas company employee said.

A legal representative of another gas company told EFE that the authorities are flagrantly violating their responsibility to prosecute criminals that operate in the gas sector and prevent theft from occurring.

“Until now we have no knowledge of any investigative file that has been initiated because of these crimes [even] when they are committed flagrantly and reported by entities such as Pemex,” he said.

Theft of petroleum from pipelines has generated losses in recent years that ran into the tens of billions of pesos for the state-owned oil company. But the federal government says it has drastically reduced the problem and that the losses are now a small fraction of what they once were.

Source: EFE (sp)

Security forces rescue US woman held captive by Sinaloa Cartel

By

Michelle Aguilar

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March 9, 2021

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One of the suspects taken into custody in Culiacán.

Federal authorities have rescued a United States woman who had been held prisoner for more than a year in Culiacán by the Sinaloa Cartel.

According to officials, the unidentified woman had been moved around to various safe houses controlled by the cartel in the Sinaloa capital since she was kidnapped in February 2020. They said the woman was in good health.

They did not offer a motive for her kidnapping nor say if the woman’s family had been contacted to pay a ransom.

The federal Attorney General’s Office, working with a police task force on organized crime and navy personnel, rescued the woman Monday at one of the cartel’s safe houses after a federal judge issued search warrants for three buildings that authorities demonstrated had links to criminal activity.

The woman was found in the first building searched. The rescue went smoothly with only one shot fired, the Attorney General’s Office said. A man was arrested at the scene.

Authorities found a man with a gun in the second building and arrested him as well before proceeding to the third location where a woman was found with 243 grams of heroin and weighing scales.

All three are suspected members of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Sources: Diario Contra Réplica (sp), Milenio (sp)