Police in Guadalajara arrest protesters in June. They were accused of arbitrary detention at the time.
Eleven Jalisco police officers have been arrested on charges of the forced disappearance of eight people since 2018.
The investigation, which took several months, culminated in the simultaneous arrests of six officers from Tlaquepaque, three from Teocaltiche and two from Autlán de Navarro. The Mexican army assisted in the arrests.
The disappearances occurred in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and officials say there may be more arrests to come.
“Some requests [for arrest warrants] are pending before the courts, others are on appeal,” said prosecutor Gerardo Octavio Solís Gómez. “We understand that in a regrettable way some public servants may be involved and in the case of the prosecutor’s office we will not make any exception when sufficient data is found to proceed.”
Besides Friday’s arrests, this year alone more than 30 municipal and state police officers have been arrested in Jalisco on charges of robbery, extortion, drug possession, police abuse, forced disappearances and even homicide, according to an investigation by the newspaper El Informador.
Alejandro Hope, a security analyst, commented that the origin of police force criminality lies in lack of supervision and training, as well as a culture of impunity.
“Very few [police forces] have supervision mechanisms and internal affairs units that function with honor and justice commissions, with tools that allow them to control these armed forces,” Hope said.
Broccoli makes a good stuffing for chicken breasts.
Sometimes shopping for produce in Mexico can be frustrating; there just isn’t the wide selection one finds north of the border. (At least in some parts of the United States.)
When local farmers’ markets open up again, usually in mid-November, the produce landscape starts to expand, but until then, well, it can seem like the same ol’, same ol’.
Broccoli is one of those always-available-but-not-really-inspiring vegetables. Its constant (and sometimes overbearing) presence in Mexican produce aisles and as an accompaniment to restaurant entrées might just be because the country is one of the biggest broccoli growers in the world. While most of it is exported, in recent years Mexico’s broccoli consumption has skyrocketed: per-capita consumption in Mexico is the world’s fourth-highest after China, India and the United States.
Most of it is grown in the state of Guanajuato, with San Miguel de Allende the biggest growing region. The cool, mountainous climate is an almost ideal condition for year-round broccoli production.
The word “broccoli” comes from the Italian plural of broccolo, meaning “the flowering crest of a cabbage.” That makes sense since it’s a member of the brassica family, which includes cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts. Interestingly, “broccoli raab,” or rapini, is actually a type of turnip!
Add a crust and the frittata becomes a quiche.
Even more confusing is the fact that purple cauliflower is really a variety of broccoli. And broccolini — which I always thought was simply the outer stems of regular broccoli — is a specific hybrid of regular and Chinese broccoli that produces small broccoli florets on top of long, slender stalks.
Before cooking broccoli, especially if organic, do look carefully between the tiny branches of the florets. At certain times of year there can be tiny green cabbage worms that are hard to see. Soaking the broccoli in salted water for 20 minutes or so will cause them to float to the top.
One more fun fact: broccoli has nearly twice the vitamin C of oranges by weight. Who knew?
Broccoli Frittata
Don’t use frozen veggies — the extra water content will make the end result soggy. Add a crust and you have a quiche!
Preheat oven to 375 F. Grease a 9-inch pie pan. Heat oil or butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Sauté onion, garlic, mushrooms and broccoli, stirring occasionally until vegetables are tender but not soft. Whisk eggs and milk; add red pepper, salt and pepper.
Pour egg mixture into pie pan. Spoon in vegetables and sprinkle cheeses over mixture. (They will sink as it cooks.) Bake in preheated oven until center has set, 30–40 minutes.
Asian Broccoli Salad
2 lbs. broccoli
2 carrots, peeled & julienned
1 small purple onion, sliced
¾ cup thinly sliced scallions, white and green parts (3-5 scallions)
½ cup lightly salted peanuts, finely chopped
1 pkg. dried ramen noodles, any flavor
⅓ cup tahini
¼ cup fresh lime juice
¼ cup toasted sesame oil
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. honey
1 garlic clove, finely grated
Hot sauce
⅓ cup chopped fresh cilantro or mint
Cut off broccoli florets, keeping an inch or two of the stalk. Julienne stems and florets and place in a large bowl. Add carrots, onion, scallions and peanuts.
In a small bowl, whisk tahini, lime juice, sesame oil, soy sauce, honey, garlic and hot sauce until smooth. Pour dressing over vegetables and toss. Set aside at room temperature for at least 15 minutes, tossing occasionally. Just before serving, mix in crumbled ramen noodles and fresh herbs.
Stuffed Chicken Breasts
Nonstick cooking spray
1½ cups finely chopped broccoli
½ cup sharp cheddar cheese, cubed
½ cup cooked white rice
¼ cup chopped onion
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. powdered garlic
4 (6 oz.) skinless, boneless chicken breasts
Spices for poultry rub
Preheat oven to 375 F. Coat an 8-inch square pan with cooking spray. Combine broccoli, cheddar cheese, rice and onion. Add salt and garlic.
Cut a deep pocket into each chicken breast with a sharp knife and stuff with broccoli-cheese mixture. Place in prepared pan. Sprinkle with poultry rub spices or just salt and pepper.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil and cook until chicken is no longer pink in the center and juices run clear, about 10 more minutes.
Fresh Broccoli Soup
1 ½ lbs. broccoli (1 big head)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
½ tsp chopped fresh thyme, if available
Salt & pepper
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup whole milk
Pinch nutmeg
Optional: cheddar cheese, chopped chives for garnish
Cut tops of broccoli into florets. Peel about 2 inches of stems closest to florets and cut into ¼-inch slices.
In saucepan, heat oil; add garlic, onions and broccoli and sauté till tender. Add lemon juice, herbs, salt and pepper. Add 2 inches of boiling water, cover and cook till veggies are tender. Puree carefully in blender with stock. Return to pan, add milk and nutmeg, and slowly heat through without boiling. Taste for seasoning. Garnish with chives and cheese and serve. — “More Recipes From A Kitchen Garden,” Renee Shepherd
Janet Blaser has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life and feels fortunate to be able to write about great food, amazing places, fascinating people and unique events. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.
Nuevo León Health Minister Manuel de la O Cavazos.
The Nuevo León health minister has rejected the federal government’s orange light assessment of the coronavirus risk in the state, asserting that it is in fact “intense red.”
The federal Health Ministry announced Friday that the risk level in the state would remain at orange light “high” this week, although health promotion chief Ricardo Cortés said that state as well as Coahuila and Durango could switch to red if their coronavirus outbreaks don’t decline.
Even before that warning, Nuevo León authorities considered the risk level to be red light “maximum,” said state Health Minister Manuel de la O Cavazos.
He noted that the Nuevo León government’s coronavirus numbers are significantly higher than the federal government’s numbers for the state because the former includes cases detected at private hospitals and laboratories whereas the latter does not.
As of Sunday, the state’s confirmed case tally was 78,389, according to the Nuevo León government, 27,343 higher than the federal government tally. The state government has counted 4,381 Covid-19 deaths but federal authorities have only registered 3,738.
De la O Cavazos said that without its high testing rate, Nuevo León would be considered a green light “low” risk state. However, at the same time people would be dying “in the streets and in the hospitals,” he said.
Due to the recent increase in case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths over the past two weeks, state authorities decided not to go ahead with a plan to reconfigure hospitals and thus reduce their capacity to treat coronavirus patients, the health minister said.
Four hospitals in the municipalities of Montemorelos, Juárez, Sabinas Hidalgo and Monterrey were all slated to stop accepting Covid-19 patients but will continue to do to ensure that there are sufficient beds.
He called on the federal government to provide more medical supplies, pointing out that providing health care is an expensive exercise and that it’s up to federal authorities to cover the costs. The state government “has made a great investment” in health but its resources are “finite,” he said.
The health minister announced that cemeteries in Nuevo León will not be open to the general public during the Day of the Dead holiday on November 1 and 2 to avoid large gatherings of people. Police will ensure compliance with the restriction, he said.
The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on Mexico – the country’s accumulated case tally increased to 891,160 on Sunday and the official Covid-19 death toll rose to 88,924.
However, the Health Ministry acknowledged Sunday that the real death toll is much higher. It said that there were 193,170 excess deaths between January and late September and that 139,153 were attributable to Covid-19.
There will be more work to do after quitting time.
If a woman’s work is never done, spare a thought for Mexican women.
Not only do they work more than men, in a country that already has the longest paid working hours in the OECD, they also clock up more hours between paid and unpaid work than their peers in other Latin American nations. And that was before Covid-19 dumped home schooling on to their already full plates.
While many women in developed economies fear that the pandemic has pushed them back into the traditional gender roles of the 1950s, their Mexican hermanas appear never to have left. Latin America’s second-biggest economy may be a sophisticated manufacturing powerhouse that has become the U.S.’s biggest trading partner, but it remains a place where female employment falls off a cliff once women reach childbearing age.
State statistics institute Inegi this month published a depressing survey of how Mexicans use their time. Overall, women do 6.2 hours more a week than men, counting both paid work and chores at home. But they do nearly triple the hours of housework as men — 30.8 hours compared with 11.6 hours — and spend more than twice as long caring for others in the household: 12.3 hours versus 5.4 hours for men.
When I, very briefly, had a Mexican boyfriend many years ago, he told me that he and his father would sit at the table for lunch to be served by his four sisters, who could not start eating before the men. He was blasé about it. (Clearly the relationship was destined not to last.)
I was reminded of that when reading the Inegi survey: Mexican women and girls spend 13.8 hours a week preparing and serving food; men spend 4.7 hours.
It is not just that in Mexico women work at home and men outside the home, either. As David Kaplan and Claudia Piras of the Inter-American Development Bank found in a study last year, Mexican women in fact work roughly the same amount of time in paid jobs as other Latin American women. It’s just that they then slap a disproportionate load of unpaid work on top, resulting in Mexican women having the highest workload in the region.
In terms of female participation in the labour force and salaries, Mexico — a G20 country — is more on par with its poor Central American neighbours than with advanced economies. The gap between men’s and women’s share of jobs in Mexico is the second widest in Latin America, second only to Guatemala.
Meanwhile, female participation in the workforce is only lower in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — and Mexico’s gender pay gap is bigger than anywhere else in the region, Mr. Kaplan and Ms. Piras found. For those women in work, their career prospects are often bleak.
Providing decent childcare might appear to be the obvious solution to removing some of the barriers to getting more women into jobs. But early in his presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador took funding from nurseries and gave it to families directly, which he said would reduce corruption.
Despite boasting of gender parity in his government he has outraged feminist groups, who say he is not taking the escalating problem of femicides seriously enough (he says he is attending to it “every day”). In recent weeks, feminist groups have marched and occupied government offices; in March, tens of thousands of women staged a day’s strike under the slogan “a day without women.”
The problem of overworked and underpaid women is an economic one for Mexico, where gross domestic product is expected to plunge 9% this year because of the pandemic and many economists expect income per capita to be set back a dozen years. Getting women into work should be an imperative.
In that, you might think the pandemic, with its normalization of remote working, might be a blessing. But twice as many Mexican women as men have lost their jobs during Covid-19.
Meanwhile, you can almost hear Mexican women’s incredulous laughter when UN Women and Ipsos asked people in 18 countries in May if they “strongly agreed” that their care load had increased during Covid-19. The 12-point gap between Mexican men and women’s answers was larger than anywhere else.
Hurricane Zeta has triggered a hurricane warning for portions of the Yucatán Peninsula.
The latest updates from the U.S. National Hurricane Center continues to put Cozumel and the area from Tulum, Quintana Roo, to Dzilam, Yucatán, in Hurricane Zeta’s sights, with hurricane warnings issued for both areas. Hurricane-force winds and heavy rains are expected by Monday evening.
A tropical storm warning is also in effect from south of Tulum to Punta Allen, as well as west of Dzilam to Progresso. Tropical storm-strength winds are also expected to arrive in the area by this evening.
A hurricane warning advisory means that hurricane conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area within the next 12 hours. A tropical storm warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area within 12 to 24 hours.
Zeta is expected to spend tonight and early Tuesday over the Yucatán Peninsula. Zeta’s maximum sustained winds were near 130 kilometers per hour at 3:00 p.m. CST, with higher gusts, but winds could strengthen before Zeta makes landfall. Some weakening is likely while Zeta moves over the peninsula, but it is forecast to strengthen again when it moves over the southern Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday.
Storm surges are possible when Zeta makes landfall, raising water levels more than one meter above normal tide levels.
Zeta was located 145 kilometers southeast of Cozumel at 3 p.m. and moving northwest at about 17 kilometers per hour.
After passing through Mexico, Zeta is predicted to move on towards Morgan, Louisiana, and the northern Gulf Coast, to the Mississippi–Alabama border, by Wednesday.
The president opened an upgraded coal-fired electrical plant in Coahuila on Saturday.
President López Obrador has rejected complaints by a group of United States lawmakers about policies in Mexico favoring state-owned energy companies over private firms, asserting that it is not the role of government to protect private interests.
A group of 43 U.S. senators and representatives wrote to President Donald Trump last Thursday to urge him to find a resolution with the Mexican government that maintains “current market conditions … along with certainty and fairness for U.S. companies operating and competing in Mexico.”
The lawmakers said that actions by the Mexican government “threaten U.S. energy companies’ investment and market access and undermine the spirit of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA),” which took effect July 1.
After noting the benefits the previous government’s 2014 energy reform – which opened up the Mexican market to foreign and private companies – brought to U.S. firms, the lawmakers said that “recent reports indicate that the Mexican government is providing preferential regulatory treatment for [state oil company] Pemex and delaying or canceling outright permits for U.S. energy companies.”
Supporting those “anecdotal experiences” is a leaked memo from López Obrador that directs authorities to use all available resources within the regulatory framework to protect Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), they said.
The lawmakers also noted that members of the ruling Morena party have presented initiatives that would roll back the 2014 energy reform and and “seek to relinquish all contracts currently in force.”
“These efforts violate and contradict the spirit, if not the letter, of the USMCA, an agreement among whose primary objectives are to promote growth among the participant countries,” they said before urging Trump to find a resolution.
Speaking at an event in Nava, Coahuila, Saturday, to mark the recommencement of operations of an old state-owned coal-fired power plant, López Obrador said his government would continue to favor Pemex and the CFE over private firms, asserting that the USMCA doesn’t set rules for Mexico’s energy sector.
“In line with the legal framework we have, we are going to give preference to Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission, let that be clear,” he said.
The Associated Press noted that appearing at the reopening of a coal-powered plant would be “bad optics” for most leaders as much of the world shifts to renewable energy and cleaner gas-fired plants but López Obrador’s remarks indicated that he was unperturbed.
“I am very happy to be here … at the Nava thermoelectric complex, to tell those who defend neoliberal policy that we are not going to retreat one step,” he said.
The president at the coal-fired thermoelectric plant in Nava.
The president said the U.S. lawmaker’s complaints that his government is protecting state-owned companies is a source of “satisfaction” and “pride.”
“What is the role of government? To protect private interests? No! The only businesses that public servants should be interested in are state-owned companies,” López Obrador said.
The president said that his wage isn’t paid by Repsol, a Spanish company he claims received unduly favorable treatment as a result of the energy reform, but rather the Mexican people and for that reason he won’t back down and stop defending the interests of Pemex and the CFE.
The federal government has certainly not been shy in implementing policies that benefit the state-owned firms, which López Obrador claims were neglected by previous administrations.
In May the Energy Ministry (Sener) published a new energy policy that imposed restrictive measures on the renewable energy sector that appeared aimed at restricting its expansion in Mexico.
In addition, the National Energy Control Center (Cenace) suspended national grid trials for renewable energy projects under the pretext that the reliability of supply had to be guaranteed during the coronavirus crisis. Industry groups said that move would affect 28 recently-built wind and solar projects and 16 that were under construction. All told US $6.4 billion in investment, much of it from foreign companies, was to be affected, the groups said.
Both the publication of the Sener policy and the Cenace decree triggered injunction requests from the private sector and environmental groups, some of which have been granted.
According to Kenneth Smith, a former trade official who headed up Mexico’s technical negotiating team in USMCA talks with the United States and Canada, there will likely be many more lawsuits against the government in relation to its energy policies.
In contrast to López Obrador’s view, the USMCA incorporates state monopoly-ending, market-opening measures outlined in the 2014 energy reform, he said.
“There could be cases in which the countries [the United States and Canada] bring lawsuits against Mexico for a violation of the treaty commitments,” Smith said. “Individually, [U.S. and Canadian] companies could also file lawsuits against the Mexican government.”
An unnamed energy sector insider told the newspaper Reforma that three international arbitration processes aimed at having Mexico respect energy sector rules put in place as a result of the 2014 reform are underway and that another is in the pipeline.
“A clash is coming between the current energy policies and the regulatory framework that is protected by international agreements under which investment was made,” the person said.
Echoing the warnings of business leaders and analysts, the secretary of the energy committee of the lower house of Congress warned that foreign investment to Mexico will suffer if the president doesn’t adopt energy sector policies that are more friendly to private firms.
Hernán Salinas Wolberg, a deputy with the National Action Party, said the complaints of the United States lawmakers are completely justified and charged that López Obrador needs to be provided with better advice on energy matters.
“It’s clear that the complaints of the United States legislators are well-founded; they’re justified both by the content of the free trade agreement and by … other instruments,” he said.
“There are two paths here: rectify [policies] … to adapt to the current legal framework [built on the 2014 reform] or modify the legal framework with the disastrous economic consequences that could have for the country,” Salinas said.
“What can be seen with complete clarity is that this fixation that [López Obrador] has on artificially improving the conditions of the CFE and Pemex at all costs, even by breaking international commitments …, will be very expensive for Mexicans.”
Supporters of President López Obrador march in the capital on Saturday.
About 5,700 people took to the streets of Mexico City on Saturday to show their support for President López Obrador during a march to the capital’s central square.
The procession, a response to recent and ongoing protests by the National Anti-AMLO Front (Frenaaa), was dubbed “the march of a million” by organizers but the number of participants didn’t even reach 1% of that number, according to Mexico City authorities.
Supporters of AMLO, as the president is widely known, came to Mexico City from several states including México state, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Guerrero and Chiapas to participate in Saturday’s march, which left the Angel of Independence monument in the early afternoon.
Chanting pro-AMLO slogans and insults directed at Frenaaa and its leader Gilberto Lozano, the staunch advocates of the president marched along Reforma Avenue before reaching the historic center of Mexico City.
The newspaper El Universal reported that the march was led by a man wearing a López Obrador mask who at one stage removed handcuffs from his pockets and proceeded to “arrest” other participants wearing masks of past presidents Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón, Vicente Fox and Carlos Salinas.
The federal government is planning to hold a referendum asking citizens whether recent former presidents should face justice for crimes they allegedly committed while in office.
Upon arriving at the zócalo, the march participants were unable to hide their animosity toward Frenaaa members who have been camping out in the central square since late September, hurling insults at them and telling them to go home.
“Out Frenaaa! The zócalo belongs to everyone,” the AMLO supporters shouted in between chants of “Es un honor estar con Obrador” (it’s an honor to be with Obrador).
The march participants subsequently held a rally in front of the National Palace, which flanks the eastern side of the zócalo, at which they called on the Mexican people to continue supporting the president and declared that they would launch legal action against Lozano, whom they accused of harassing López Obrador supporters.
“We’re not going to allow anything or anybody to stop … this grand national project,” said one of the march organizers referring to the so-called “fourth transformation” the federal government says it is carrying out.
“Let’s all unite for our freedom and democracy and against the [attempted] coup,” Óscar Zurita said.
The president cut short his speech when he was heckled by Frenaaa supporters.
A day later, López Obrador received a hostile response from Frenaaa members at an event in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, at which he provided an update on urban improvement projects in the northern border city.
As the president addressed the event, government critics gathered outside the venue, a sports center, repeatedly chanted “López out!” while a group of supporters cheered him on.
With the former attempting to drown him out, the president spoke for fewer than four minutes, asserting that his brevity was due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’m going to be brief because there is a lot of passion, a lot of people mobilized here in Nuevo Laredo and we have to take care of ourselves due to the pandemic so that there aren’t infections. … The less time we spend together the better …” López Obrador said.
He told the audience that the government has invested 1.4 billion pesos (US $66.8 million) on infrastructure projects in marginalized neighborhoods of Nuevo Laredo and that it will continue supporting the people of Tamaulipas despite its differences with Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, one of 10 state leaders who formed a group that is aiming to be a counterbalance to federal power.
“It’s in the public domain that we have differences with the state government but regardless of these differences we have to put the general interest, the interest of the people and the interest of the nation first.”
Speaking before the president, Governor García called on the federal government to make changes to funding arrangements with the states, asserting that Tamaulipas is treated unfairly. He also called on the National Water Commission to ensure that farmers in the northeastern border state aren’t left without water as a result of Mexico’s obligations to the United States under the terms of a 1944 treaty.
López Obrador didn’t address those issues in his brief speech but announcing a water deal with the United States last week said the U.S. had made a commitment to send additional water south of the border in the case of severe drought.
Like many organizations forced to adapt and evolve due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Morelia International Film Festival will be carrying on in its 18th year, but with various concessions.
The festival, renowned for its international connections with the Cannes festival and other European film organizations, will be a hybrid affair this year, with a combination of virtual and live events.
The festival will also be shorter than usual, taking place October 28–November 1. In addition, there will be fewer venues this year, with showings only in Cinepolis theaters in Morelia, according to festival press director Daniela Michel.
“It’s been much more difficult than other years to organize this festival, but we are very clear that the mission is to support Mexican filmmakers,” she said. “We have worked so hard to make this possible.”
Highlights of this year’s festival, including showings of films from around the world, include three film premieres and a restored version of director Alejandro González’s Amores Perros, as well as showings of Oscar contenders Ammonite starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan and Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand and David Strathairn.
It is often said that in challenges are found opportunities. Festival organizers are taking that maxim to heart, seeing the necessity to put on a partially virtual event as a call to make the festival more available to the public than in previous years.
“Festivals at times end up being only for the professionals, those who can obtain accreditations [to attend],” Michel said. “What we have done [this year] is make the festival be as open as possible so that the whole public can attend free digitally. We continue having our association with the Cannes Festival, with the International Critics’ Week at Cannes, with the French embassy, with the Goethe Institute [of Germany], and new this year, with the Televisa Foundation [in Mexico], the UNAM Film Library, and the National Cineteca, showing classic Mexican cinema.”
All this being said, however, Michel stressed that nothing will ever replace the festival’s commitment to live events, once a vaccine has been found and life can go back to normal.
“I believe that there are unique experiences that only can happen at a festival, and those festivals need to have contact with people and the interaction of the cinematic community. This [pandemic] is an unfortunate ‘parentheses’ happening in the world right now.”
A backhoe clears one of eight blockades in Chihuahua on Sunday.
Farmers in Chihuahua opposed to the diversion of water to the United States lifted their almost two-month-long rail blockade on Sunday after the state government agreed to support their demands.
Piles of earth and gravel that were dumped on tracks in eight locations in the municipality of Meoqui on August 26 were removed after state officials met with the disgruntled farmers and pledged to support nine demands set out in a document submitted to the federal government’s Chihuahua delegate.
One key demand is that the Chihuahua government lobby the federal government to release three farmers who were arrested in Delicias on September 8, the day farmer Yéssica Silva was fatally shot and her husband was wounded during an alleged attack on their vehicle by the National Guard after a protest at the La Boquilla dam.
Among the other nine demands are that no more water be diverted to the United States from dams in the Conchos River basin, that the National Guard and army withdraw from dams and deploy instead to insecurity hotspots such as Ciudad Juárez and the Sierra region and that criminal complaints against farmers for damage caused during protests be dropped.
The document also calls for justice for Silva and her husband. The farmers’ decision to lift their blockade was welcomed by the state government.
“By lifting the blockade of the rail tracks in Estación Consuelo, Meoqui, the economic vibrancy linked to the transport of rail freight in this region will return,” it said in a statement.
“The Chihuahua government is delighted with the decision that puts an end to the impact on this economic sector and reiterates its commitment to accompany the state’s farmers in their fight for water.”
The Confederation of Industrial Chambers said earlier this month that the rail blockade was generating losses of 450 million pesos (US $21.4 million) per day. Therefore, total losses during the almost two-month-long blockade likely totaled about 27 billion pesos (US $1.3 billion).
The Chihuahua government said that the incomes of thousands of families in the northern state were affected by the blockade and that its removal will benefit farmers, industry and the railroad industry.
The decision to lift the blockade came three days after the federal government announced that it had reached an agreement with the United States to settle Mexico’s water debt to its northern neighbor. Mexico and the United States have to send water to each other under the terms of a 1944 bilateral treaty.
The federal government’s efforts to divert water to the U.S. from Chihuahua, where many municipalities are in a state of drought, have triggered countless protests by farmers who argue that they will be left without the essential resource.
One of the 'monsters' discovered near the US border.
Authorities in the border region of Ribereña, Tamaulipas, said Sunday they have confiscated six armored tank-like vehicles found hidden under brush in the small community of San Pedro, near the city of Camargo. They are believed to have belonged to cartels in the region.
The vehicles, which police discovered after noting a man carrying a long firearm, contained 1,787 ammunition shells as well as body armor vests, helmets, caltrops, and an explosive device. The man carrying the weapon fired at police upon seeing them and escaped, authorities said.
The area has been the focus of a territorial war between factions of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas for more than a decade.
Security expert Alexei Chevez told the newspaper Infobae that these tank-style vehicles, often referred to colloquially as “monsters,” are used by cartels either for intense battles or to make a show of force, since they are difficult to maneuver and not easy to hide.
They are bastardized from civilian vehicles to look like military tanks. They are made out of armored money transport trucks and other large vehicles — in some cases garbage trucks. They typically feature turrets outfitted with automatic weapons.
One of the narco-tanks, with a solid looking ram on the front.
Authorities also announced that they had discovered other similarly armored vehicles full of weapons and ammunition in Caborca, Sonora.
The Caborca area is currently a battleground between cartel forces loyal to Ovidio Guzmán, son of jailed cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and the Caborca Cartel, led by Rafael Caro Quintero.
