Police haul woman from her car in Culiacán on Thursday.
Police in Culiacán, Sinaloa, are under investigation by the Human Rights Commission after a video appeared online showing an officer pulling a woman out of her car by the hair.
The 54-year-old was pulled roughly from her vehicle Wednesday evening by a female police officer after at least seven officers tried to convince her to get out.
Earlier, traffic police had towed the woman’s car to the police station for a parking violation. The woman arrived at the station and asked to retrieve documents from the car, but instead of doing so she drove away, prompting police to give chase.
The woman drove through at least six neighborhoods at a high rate of speed, running stoplights and stop signs and driving the wrong way on a one-way street before she finally came to a stop on Maquío Clouthier Boulevard, police said.
They said she was aggressive with officers, hurling insults as she clutched something in her hand they suspected could be used as a weapon, and bit the policewoman who finally extracted her from her vehicle and placed her in handcuffs.
The short video shows only the extraction of the woman and cuts off abruptly when a police officer realized the incident was being filmed and began to approach the person doing the filming.
Mayor Jesús Estrada Ferreiro did not classify the woman’s arrest as a case of undue force and said the woman’s own actions prompted the hair-pulling. “She’s slapping and hitting, what do you do? You grab her by wherever you can and what’s more, I didn’t even see that she grabbed her hair in the video, the video that they sent me is perhaps incomplete,” he said.
“The lady was too aggressive, insulting, and at the moment of opening the door … the person apparently had something in her hand with which she was trying to attack the police, so that was the reaction of the police officer,” said Police Chief Óscar Guinto Marmolejo.
“By instinct, she grabbed the person by the hair, and yes, indeed, she did lower the person [to the ground] and immediately put handcuffs on her. In any case, despite the fact that we could say she was doing her job, this police officer will be called before the honor and justice commission to review her actions.”
Cienfuegos was traveling with his family when he was arrested at the Los Angeles airport.
Mexico’s former defense minister, a decorated veteran who led the military for six years in a war on drug cartels, has been arrested at Los Angeles airport on a warrant from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
General Salvador Cienfuegos, 72, served under the scandal-ridden administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto from 2012-2018 and was traveling with his family in the U.S. when he was detained on Thursday, according to a report in the New York Times citing a federal law enforcement official.
The DEA has not issued a statement on the case but the Associated Press cited a source familiar with the details as saying the general was detained on charges of money laundering and drug trafficking.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed that he had been informed about General Cienfuegos’s detention by the U.S. ambassador to Mexico but did not give further details.
Corruption has been rampant for decades among politicians and police but the army had been seen as one of the country’s cleaner institutions, so General Cienfuegos’s arrest is likely to prove a major embarrassment.
The general served for more than 40 years in Mexico’s army before Peña Nieto appointed him defense minister. He served in that role for the whole of the Peña Nieto government before retiring two years ago.
No top Mexican military official has previously been arrested in the U.S., although a former senior justice official, Genaro García Luna, was detained last year and charged with taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.
García Luna had been the head of Mexico’s detective force and subsequently served from 2006-2012 as the country’s security chief, a role in which he helped craft a strategy to fight drug cartels. He is currently in prison in the U.S. awaiting trial.
President López Obrador has assigned the military a central role in the fight against drug trafficking and involved it in some of his major infrastructure construction projects.
He has been highly critical of corruption under the five presidents who preceded him and is likely to exploit General Cienfuegos’s arrest as further evidence of wrongdoing under his predecessors, a narrative which fuels his popularity and helps rally support amid a rapidly shrinking economy and one of the world’s highest levels of coronavirus deaths.
The former head of the state oil company Pemex during the Peña Nieto administration, Emilio Lozoya, was arrested in Spain in February for corruption and extradited. As part of a plea bargain, Lozoya has in turn implicated three ex-presidents, four former finance ministers, two presidential challengers, two state governors and a host of legislators in a snowballing bribery scandal.
However, López Obrador has himself faced heavy criticism for being soft on drug traffickers after ordering the release of Ovidio Guzmán, a powerful drug kingpin’s son, when security forces were overwhelmed by cartel gunmen during a botched raid last year in Sinaloa state.
López Obrador, who favours a strategy of “hugs not bullets” to combat the cartels, said he took the decision so as not to put the population at risk.
An artisan cheesemaker from Oaxaca has a blunt message for many of the large companies with which she competes: your cheese isn’t cheese.
After the Economy Ministry announced an immediate ban on the sale of 19 brands of cheese because they don’t comply with official standards, Zoyla López Pérez said the prohibited products “are not cheese – they’re like plastic.”
“Especially [commercial] quesillo,” she said referring to queso Oaxaca, a stringy, semi-hard white cheese.
“They’re not genuine [cheeses] made with milk, they have chemicals and preservatives.”
In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, the 55-year-old, third generation cheesemaker from Reyes Etla – a famous cheese-producing town about 20 kilometers north of Oaxaca city – said that all her cheese is made with nothing more than organic milk, salt and rennet.
Cheesemaker López of Reyes Etla, Oaxaca.
“We curdle 100 liters of milk per day. I make quesillo and [other kinds of] cheese because people look for both,” López said.
Among the products sold in her family’s cremería, or dairy store, are queso panela, requesón (a whey cheese similar to ricotta) and cheeses flavored with jalapeño and serrano chiles, epazote (a Mexican herb) and even chapulines (toasted grasshoppers).
López said her cheeses have absolutely nothing in common with those that are made by large companies and sold in chain supermarkets.
“[My cheeses] have a nice taste, they’re smooth. … Our quesillo is creamy. It also has a different color [to commercial quesillo], a pearly cream color,” she said.
López added that her products are nutritious and high in calcium, boasting that she sells them to doctors and nurses.
The cheesemaker acknowledged that the ban on the 19 different cheese brands, among which are Philadelphia, Lala and Fud, will likely benefit small, artisan producers. But she asserted that her products will continue to sell regardless of the prohibition.
“They’re products that are consumed daily, like all foods. Our products are [about] quality, not quantity. … There are many cheeses made in factories, … all those [banned] brands, but they’re not genuine.”
Representatives of the scientific community protest outside the Senate against the abolition of public trusts.
A group of 10 dissident governors has rejected President López Obrador’s claim that they are defending corruption by opposing the federal government’s plan to abolish more than 100 public trusts.
López Obrador said Monday that “those who are defending the trusts are defending corruption … because these trusts had no control, … there was no transparency.”
His remark came after the Federalist Alliance (AF), as the group of dissident governors is called, announced that it would launch a legal challenge against the government’s plan to eliminate 109 trusts, which has already been approved by the lower house of Congress.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the AF said there were two surprising aspects to the president’s comment.
“First, all of these trusts have been subject to audit since 2015 and have rigorous rules and controls,” it said.
“Second, with what moral quality can the federal government seriously speak about combatting corruption when this is reduced solely to public derision and its media handling [of the issue] for electoral purposes.”
The governors of Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Colima, Chihuahua, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas said they categorically deny defending corruption that may exist in the management of any public trust.
They also said that current laws only allow for a public trust to be abolished if its raison d’etre is fraudulent.
“There is no sanction, either administrative or criminal,” that punishes corrupt conduct with the abolition of a trust, the AF said.
The governors’ collective rejected López Obrador’s claim that the government is not confiscating the money from the trusts – which this year had a combined budget of 68 billion pesos (US $3.1 billion) – but rather “collecting” it for redistribution.
(The president said that anyone receiving government funding via a public trust will continue to receive it if it is justified and they deserve it.)
The AF said that whether the government confiscates or collects the trust money, the effect is the same: “The state appropriates the totality of the assets of the 109 legal entities [the trusts] when no one can be deprived of their assets and rights without trial.”
It added that López Obrador has “expressly” acknowledged that the government will “collect” the trusts’ resources before they are abolished when the law dictates – “and logic advises” – that their assets be disbursed upon abolition, not prior.
The AF called on the Senate to stop the abolition and prevent the “irreversible damage” it would cause. However, its plea is likely to be fruitless given that the ruling Morena party leads a coalition which has a majority in the upper house.
Government watchdog Causa en Común (Common Cause) said last week that funding for scientific research, cultural projects, disaster response, the defense of human rights, the protection of journalists, agricultural development, scholarships for students and attending to victims of crime would be placed at risk by the plan.
AF Governor Javier Corral of Chihuahua charged earlier this week that the federal government wanted access to the trust funds to help pay for social programs next year, when the midterm elections will be held.
Its 10 members announced last month that they were withdrawing from the National Conference of Governors and that they intended to become a counterbalance to what they see as the president’s attempt to concentrate power in the federal government.
The green darner has been reported flying over Monterrey, Nuevo León, recently. carlos velasco
The 4,000-kilometer migration of the monarch butterfly from Canada and the United States to the forests of Michoacán and México state is well known.
But there is another insect that undertakes an equally impressive annual journey: the dragonfly also migrates, and some do so for even greater distances than the butterflies.
Dragonflies, which can fly at speeds of up to 97 kilometers an hour, are capable of crossing the ocean and can travel as far as 14,000 kilometers without rest, says dragonfly expert Enrique González Soriano, a researcher at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) Institute of Biology.
ThePantala flavescens species “makes tremendously large migrations, the most extensive for any insect, as they are capable of crossing the Indian Ocean, flying from India to the northeast coast of Africa,” said González, who has studied the insect for 30 years.
Although the dragonfly migration is not as well studied as the monarch’s, 11 species of dragonflies migrate in North America, six of which include Mexico in their path.
11 species of dragonflies migrate in North America.
Dragonflies migrate at the end of summer or beginning of fall, following the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. Less is known about the migratory phenomenon in the Pacific where there may be more species that arrive in Mexican territory, González says. Dragonflies are too small to track and do not travel in swarms, as monarchs do.
Biologist Carlos Velasco, president of Nuevo León’s Biodiversity Commission, pointed out that at least two species of dragonflies have been reported flying over Monterrey recently: the yellow striped dragonfly (Pantala flavescens) mentioned above, as well as the green darner, whose scientific name is Anax junius.
The green darner emerges from ponds and lakes in Mexico in the spring to journey 700 kilometers north to the southern and central portions of the United States where it will lay its eggs and die. The second generation will reach maturity and head south in the fall to return to Mexico.
“Dragonflies are predatory insects in the water in their larval stage and outside it, as adults. They feed on other insects, but they can also feed on fish fry, some types of mollusks, and outside the water they are also predators and feed on wasps, flies and mosquitoes,” González explains, adding that they can also feed on the larva of insects harmful to humans, such as mosquitoes that can transmit dengue or malaria.
Velasco says that dragonflies can also act as indicators of the health of the bodies of water or ecosystems where they develop.
“Unlike the monarch butterfly, dragonflies need another type of habitat, not like the oyamel forests we have in central Mexico. For dragonflies, it is extremely important that there are wetlands, that is, bodies of water, rivers, streams, where they can lay the eggs of the next generation of dragonflies, that is why the conservation and knowledge of these species is of great importance to all of us,” Velasco says.
He recommends that people consider becoming citizen scientists by recording their observations of dragonflies and other flora and fauna on platforms such as Naturalista, part of the iNaturalist.org network.
The website is a joint project of the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic in which more than one million people are participants in an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.
Peace prize nominees Georgina, Aleida and Jorge from Oaxaca.
Three youths from Oaxaca and another from Sinaloa have been nominated for the 2020 International Children’s Peace Prize.
They join 138 other children from 42 countries who are in the running for the prestigious award. Last year’s recipients were environmental activist Greta Thunberg from Sweden and peace advocate Divina Maloum from Cameroon.
The prize is awarded to “a child who has made a special effort to promote children’s rights and better the situation of vulnerable children,” according to the Children’s Peace Prize website.
One of Mexico’s nominees is Aleida Ruiz Sosa, a 14-year-old ballet dancer, activist, short story writer and defender of women’s rights from Oaxaca who has organized different activities for children with cancer, dance performances for nursing homes and workshops for prison inmates with children.
Ruiz plans to become a lawyer as well as a dancer.
Also from Oaxaca, Georgina Martínez Gracida, 17, has spent 10 years working to promote children’s rights and providing food and toys to low-income youths. After the 2017 earthquake, she put out a request for food donations and managed to fill a trailer with 30 tonnes of food. She has participated in various campaigns, such as Boys and Girls to the Rescue, which focused on helping 80,000 vulnerable children combat bullying and domestic violence.
She also supported the Nutrikids campaign that fed poor children, helped build classrooms in Santa María Atzompa and San Pedro Pochutla, and has been a speaker at various conferences.
“I realized that my voice could be heard and that I could be the voice of many children who perhaps did not have access to many of their rights such as education, such as health …” she told Milenio.
Her brother, Jorge Martínez Gracida, 12, created a 3D printed face shield for those on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as hospitalized children. The mask, consisting of a headband and two rivets, a plastic shield and a spring has proven popular, and he has received inquiries from as far as India about replicating the mask there.
“We can all be agents of change if we take action to help each other,” he says. Jorge dreams of becoming an engineer and studying abroad, perhaps working in robotics in China.
“I feel that if you dream of something, and you set your mind to it, you can achieve anything and for this reason I urge all young people that if they want to achieve something, to move on, to fight for their dream, not to be limited by what people tell them,” he said.
Also nominated is 16-year-old Enrique Ángel Figueroa Salazar of Mazatlán, who is passionate about children’s rights and wishes to change local, federal and global societies so that children can live a life free of violence.
At the end of October, three finalists will be announced by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, and a winner, who will receive 100,000 euro (US $117,000) to be invested in projects linked to their causes, will be selected in November.
Police have arrested the presumed heir to the leadership of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez said Wednesday night.
State and federal forces took Adán Ochoa, alias “El Azul,” into custody in Celaya, the state attorney general confirmed on Twitter.
Ochoa is said to have been in control of the cartel since José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, alias “El Marro,” was arrested in August on charges of fuel theft and organized crime after an 18-month manhunt.
Ochoa is believed to have stepped in to take control in Yépez’s absence, and one of his first orders of business was to post narco-banners threatening to eliminate all those who betrayed him and anyone who allied themselves with the rival Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Ochoa is believed to be responsible for last week’s murder of Jesús Tinajero, a former candidate for mayor of Jerécuaro. His dismembered body was found on a highway along with the remains of three others partially stuffed in black garbage bags.
Also at the grisly scene was a narco-banner from the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel warning public officials to refrain from aligning themselves with the CJNG or risk being “eliminated.”
Ochoa made himself known on August 17, two weeks after Yépez’s arrest, through a video posted to social media where he appeared with a dozen armed men. “Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel is stronger than ever, the war will continue and continue against the fucking Jaliscans, and we will not allow any skinny bitch to settle in the state,” he warned. “Guanajuato is for Guanajuato, you are tourists!”
Guanajuato is strategically located between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico on the route to the country’s border with the United States and control of the state is essential to the operations of the CJNG. Before his arrest, Yépez released a video vowing never to let the CJNG pass through Guanajuato.
In February, the CJNG posted 50 narco-banners featuring the faces of Yépez and Ochoa, whose identity was previously unknown, offering bounties on their heads. “We are here in Celaya where we have them located, so come out and face us and stop messing with people, fucking rats, killers of innocents. People of Guanajuato, we only ask for information, we will do the rest,” the banners read.
Zavala and Calderón had been optimistic that their movement would become a political party.
The Federal Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF) has ruled against granting party status to a political movement created by former president Felipe Calderón and his wife Margarita Zavala, preventing it from fielding candidates at next year’s elections.
During a virtual court session on Wednesday, four judges voted against the registration of México Libre (Free Mexico) as a political party while three supported it.
Prior to the TEPJF vote, Judge José Luis Vargas argued that INE had acted in accordance with the law and therefore its ruling should be upheld.
He likened México Libre’s financing to past cases of irregular electoral funding including the so-called Pemexgate scandal in which the state oil company union was found to have diverted 500 million pesos to the 2000 presidential campaign of Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Francisco Labastida.
Leader Fernando González sings in a video promoting the RSP, which was given party status on Wednesday.
Vargas said that by receiving monetary contributions from unidentified people, México Libre violated the constitutional principles of certainty, transparency and accountability. He said the would-be party received as many as 50 such contributions.
The funding from unknown sources totaled 1.06 million pesos (about US $50,000), or just under 7% of the contributions México Libre received, Vargas said, adding that it might seem like a small amount but for ordinary Mexicans it’s a lot.
The Mexican state guarantees the right to freedom of association but problems arise when a group doesn’t comply with requirements as set out by the law, he said. Vargas told his fellow judges that a vote in favor of allowing the registration of México Libre would be a vote against transparency and accountability.
During the same court session, the TEPJF approved the registration of two parties with links to the federal government whose applications were previously rejected by the INE. It also ruled that a third party that is close to the government can maintain its registration after a majority of judges rejected that it had violated principles of secularism.
Redes Sociales Progresistas (RSP) is led by the son-in-law of Elba Esther Gordillo, the former teachers’ union leader who was jailed by the previous government on corruption charges, but later released.
In addition to denying México Libre party status, the TEPJF also increased a fine imposed on the group by the INE to more than 3 million pesos (US $140,000) from 2.3 million.
Zavala, who launched a bid for the presidency in 2018 but withdrew from the race 1 1/2 months before the election, criticized the tribunal’s decision in a Twitter post.
“The ruling of the TEPJF against the registration of México Libre is regrettable. It’s unfair, unconstitutional and illogical,” she wrote before thanking the three judges who voted in favor of granting the movement party status.
In a video message posted to social media, Zavala accused President López Obrador of being behind the court’s decision.
“That a single man can use the institutions of the state to lynch his opponents and prevent them from competing in elections is a blow to the very heart of democracy,” she said.
Zavala, who many people believe is planning to run for the presidency again in 2024, rejected the finding that México Libre accepted donations from unidentified people.
“We received signatures [of support] from free and committed Mexicans and raised funds transparently and honestly [but] none of that was sufficient to defeat the authoritarianism that co-opts and subjugates the authorities that should be independent,” she said.
Calderón speaks at a meeting of the México Libre movement.
Calderón, who said previously that the donations in question were made via the payment platform Clip and the identity of the people who made them is known by the INE, described the TEPJF decision as “absurd.”
“Arbitrariness was perpetrated: the parties close to López Obrador … obtained their registration. [The registration of] México Libre, the only opposition voice, the only true citizens’ voice, was denied in the most absurd way. Authoritarianism advances,” he wrote on Twitter.
At his morning news conference on Thursday, López Obrador denied that he or anyone in his government was involved in the decisions to deny México Libre’s registration as a party.
“Before presidents decided who to give registration to or not, … that [practice] has now gone to the dustbin of history.”
On Monday, the Mexican peso lost its winning streak against the US dollar, in part due to the impasse in the U.S. Congress between Democrats and Republicans regarding the pandemic stimulus bill. The price of the dollar had risen slightly to 21.62 pesos at Citibanamex windows with the start of operations this week.
Predictions about the fate of the Mexican economy following the election are not optimistic either.
With Joe Biden polling ahead on most counts, the forecasted political stability following a victory for the Democrat challenger in November had contributed to the gradual rise of the peso in recent weeks. Other indicators of stability in the United States also have led to a healthier peso, including the improving condition of Republican incumbent President Trump after contracting Covid-19.
The trend linking greater political stability in the United States with a stronger peso and higher investor confidence can be traced back to the 2016 election.
However, the long-term effects of the election’s outcome on the Mexican economy are less clear, given both the political tumult in the United States, the scarcity of plans released by either candidate for relations with Mexico, and structural issues that continue to exist under Mexican President López Obrador’s administration.
A Biden presidency would signify a return to an “institutionalized” U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship, said Duncan Wood, president of the Mexico Institute of the Wilson Center. Even though relations were good the past three years under Trump, Wood said, they were at the mercy of the U.S. president’s unpredictable mood swings.
“In bilateral politics and after so many trips to Mexico, Joe Biden wants to have a relationship of respect, dignity and collaboration on issues,” including tackling corruption and promoting transparency, said Roberta S. Jacobson, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and senior advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group.
Jacobson stepped down from her post at the State Department in 2018 amid heightening tensions between the U.S. and Mexico, caused in part by Trump’s pressure on then-president Enrique Peña Nieto to fund construction of the border wall.
Biden has also signalled support and a willingness not to politicize the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which entered into force on July 1. “What I’ve seen change is that the vast majority of the labor movement supported it,” Biden said in December. Even if he wanted to, he could not change the treaty’s terms during his presidency, since they can only be negotiated or modified every five years.
Some experts doubt whether Biden’s presidency would lead to better economic outcomes for Mexico. Gabriela Siller, director of economic and financial analysis at Banco BASE, warned that if Biden changed the existing pandemic stimulus packages, he “could slow down” the economic recovery in the United States and Mexico as a result. He could “hinder the entry of Mexican products” if he enforces pandemic-related sanitary restrictions for imported products, Siller added.
Moreover, Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harris has already shown opposition to the USMCA and could threaten its continuity if she gets elected into the White House.
Mexico is not high on the agenda for either Biden or Trump.
Even though Trump’s reelection would pose risks to the Mexican economy as well, they would be lesser as they are “the order of the day,” said Siller.
Some analysts argue that the president has made strides in boosting Mexico’s economic growth during his first term. Larry Rubin, representative of the Republican Party in Mexico, said Trump has effectively modernized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through spearheading the passage of the USMCA. Within five years, the treaty will triple Mexico’s bilateral trade with the United States, which is currently estimated at US $600 billion.
Rubin added that USMCA-generated jobs in U.S. companies “will be established in Mexico,” echoing a similar event when NAFTA came into force in 1994.
Despite Trump’s protectionist trade policies, the participation of the U.S. market in Mexico’s GDP increased, said Ignacio Martínez, coordinator of the Laboratory of Commerce, Economy and Business (LACEN) of the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM). “The share of Mexican exports that are directed to the U.S. represent 36.37% of Mexico’s GDP,” under his administration “while with Obama they represented 31.12%,” Martínez added.
Yet with Trump’s unpredictability, another four years of his presidency opens up the possibility of more bargaining on trade through the use of non-trade issues as chips, he said. As this has happened with migration, “we will be seeing how this issue continues to be used, now in relation to organized crime or drug trafficking,” he said.
Uncertainty following the highly anticipated, polarized election would inevitably bring negative effects for Mexico, said Julio Alejandro Millán, president of economic consulting firm Consultores Internacionales. Regardless of whether Trump or Biden wins, “the economic effects are still difficult to estimate, and this uncertainty often has negative effects on investors’ decisions, which is not good news for Mexico’s economic growth.”
Luis Rubio, president of the Mexican Council of International Affairs (COMEXI) and México Evalúa, a think tank, told Mexico News Daily that there are “structural” issues on the Mexican side of the border that prevent growth in foreign investment and trade.
Progress regarding economic and security reforms — such as leveling the development disparities between northern and southern Mexico and improving the rule of law — has been “going backward” under the López Obrador administration.
And with exports as one of the country’s most important economic drivers, Rubio said the government is “not doing anything to attract” multinational companies during the U.S.-China trade war that has many U.S. manufacturers leaving China in search of new spots for their supply chains.
Columnist Antonio Rosas-Landa writes that López Obrador has also “put at risk” billions of dollars of foreign investment by U.S. companies in the production of wind and solar generation in favor of “outdated nationalism,” which would go against policies by Biden, who would prioritize supporting greater renewable energy on his foreign policy agenda.
Rodrigo Aguilar, international analyst and founder of The Northamerica Project, said that despite the projected success of the USMCA, “free trade policies between Mexico and the U.S. are “a necessary condition, but it is not enough for economic growth.“
So far, the U.S. presidential candidates have made few mentions of Mexico on the campaign trail. President López Obredor made it clear recently in a morning conference that he prefers it this way: “The candidates have been very respectful in their opinions about Mexico — nothing like the last election.”
Rescue workers at the school after the 2017 earthquake.
The owner of a Mexico City private school in which 26 people died during the 7.1-magnitude earthquake in September 2017 was sentenced to 31 years in prison on Wednesday.
Mónica García Villegas, former owner and director of the Enrique Rébsamen school in the capital’s south, was found guilty of manslaughter last month.
A Mexico City court ruled that García had acted negligently by building an apartment for her personal use on the roof of a wing of a school building. The building collapsed in the September 19 quake, killing 19 children and seven adults.
A judge determined that García knew the risks of constructing an extra level on the building and found that the construction of the apartment violated building codes. The extra weight it placed on the building was identified as a factor in its collapse.
García extended her condolences to the families of the victims but maintained that she was innocent in her final statement to the court.
Former private school owner Mónica García.
In addition to being sentenced to 31 years imprisonment, García was ordered to pay 402,000 pesos (US $18,900) in compensation for each of the victims and was fined 123,000 pesos (US $5,800) for criminal negligence related to the construction of her apartment.
During the entire judicial process, parents of the the children who were killed at their school demanded that the judge deliver a sentence that sent a clear message that no one has the right to play with the lives of others.
Although the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office asked for a sentence of 57 years, Attorney General Ernestina Godoy said in a Twitter post that authorities had “achieved justice for the victims.”
Fernando Castillo Vega, a lawyer for the victims’ families, also said he was happy with the sentence, although he left open the possibility of challenging it.
“The lawyers and the victims we represent are satisfied,” he said.
The sentencing of García, who was called Miss Mónica by her students, brings some closure to a three-year-long nightmare for the victims’ families.
