Wreckage of the plane that crashed Tuesday in Querétaro.
A plane carrying 400 kilos of cocaine crashed in a remote area of Querétaro on Monday night after it was pursued by Mexican military aircraft. The two people aboard were killed.
Videos posted to social media show at least three military helicopters in pursuit of the low-flying Cessna, which was first detected by air force radar in Chiapas.
Initially, two Blackhawk helicopters and a Beechcraft King Air plane were dispatched to engage the suspect plane whose pilot refused requests to identify himself. As the chase progressed, more military aircraft joined the pursuit.
Witnesses say they watched the aerial chase unfold for over an hour until they simply stopped hearing the Cessna’s engine after it disappeared from view, indicating it might have run out of fuel before it crashed around 9 p.m.
The plane was found in pieces in a cow pasture at a ranch in La Botija near the border with Michoacán. Both of the plane’s occupants were found dead at the crash scene, one inside the plane and one out.
During its descent, the plane collided with several trees, spewing its cargo over a wide area. The National Guard cordoned off the area and prohibited access even to the property’s owners as they recovered 355 packages of cocaine from the area surrounding the crash site.
Suspicious airplanes are a fairly regular occurrence in Mexico, where cartels often use small planes to transport drugs north from South America to their eventual destinations in the United States. The air force has an aerial vigilance system, a network of radar and sophisticated aerial tracking software to track suspicious flights in Mexican airspace even before they enter.
According to the aviation industry publication Aviacionline, the network monitors 32% of Mexican airspace and can communicate with the aerial surveillance networks of other countries, including the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command.
In July, the network tracked a plane from Venezuela that made a forced landing on a state highway in Quintana Roo with 390 kilos of cocaine. Air force officials had been monitoring the Hawker 700 aircraft’s route since shortly after it took off from an airstrip south of Maracaibo, Venezuela.
The plane, authorities said, had no flight plan and was not using a transponder, fitting the profile of a “clandestine aircraft” used for smuggling.
A meteor was seen in the skies above Nuevo León Tuesday night and there are reports that it crashed to Earth in Tamaulipas around 11 p.m.
Numerous social media users shared photos and videos of the glowing celestial object which was also caught by a webcam mounted on a building in Monterrey. Meteors were also seen in Coahuila and Texas.
The Civil Protection agency was called to the presumed crash site, where the meteorite appears to have set fire to bushes and trees near a home in Lázaro Cárdenas, scorching an area measuring four meters in diameter.
Authorities responded to a 911 call to put out the fire, and Civil Protection recovered several unusual rocks the size and shape of large gumballs from the burnt area, which they collected for further study.
Meteorites were also reported to have struck the Earth in Tula and San Carlos, Tamaulipas, although authorities have presented no evidence that the fireballs witnessed actually struck the Earth and no fires have been reported.
Speculation on social media suggested the bright flash in the sky was part of the yearly Draconid meteor shower which is taking place now through October 11 with peak activity coming Wednesday evening. Others blamed aliens or businessman Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX.
In February, people in the state of México, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Michoacán and Mexico City reported seeing a large, glowing object traversing the night sky. Civil Protection posted on Twitter that it was a “meteorite that was surely destroyed in the air and is unlikely to have impacted Mexican territory.”
According to NASA, hundreds of particles and celestial objects cross the Earth’s atmosphere every day, and upon impacting with the atmosphere, ignite and create the flashes that are popularly called shooting stars.
Cosmos Magazine estimates that approximately 17 meteorites hit Earth each day.
Morena is the favorite among Mexico's three leading parties.
Mexico is in the midst of a dual health and economic crisis but support for the nation’s ruling party nevertheless increased significantly between May and September, according to a new poll.
Conducted by the newspaper El Financiero, the poll found that 39% of respondents intend to vote for Morena at the 2021 midterm elections, a 20-point spike compared to May.
Support for Morena, which was founded by President López Obrador, rose seven points between August and September alone.
The percentage of respondents who intend to vote for Morena at the elections, at which the entire lower house of Congress will be renewed, is more than triple the number who plan to vote for the main opposition parties.
Just 11% of those polled told El Financiero they intend to vote for the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and 10% said they will cast their ballot for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Support for both the PAN and the PRI has remained more or less stable in recent months.
Voter intent since December 2018. Orange is Morena, blue is the National Action Party and red is the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Undecided are indicated in black. el financiero
The poll, which surveyed 1,210 people across the country in September, also found that 31% of respondents don’t know who they will vote for or don’t intend to vote. That figure declined from 59% in March and 48% in May.
El Financiero said that if the election were held today, Morena would win a clear majority in the lower house of Congress.
The newspaper said the growth in support for the party could be linked to the increase in López Obrador’s approval rating, which rose from 56% in June to 62% in September, as well as a change in people’s perceptions about their personal economic and employment situations.
El Financiero found in April – the first full month of the suspension of all nonessential economic activities due to the coronavirus pandemic – that 53% of respondents believed that their personal economic situation was bad or very bad.
The percentage of those polled who said that they were struggling financially remained at or just below 50% in May, June and July but dropped to 43% in August and 41% in September.
Asked about their current work situation and prospects, 36% of poll respondents said that they were bad or very bad in September compared to 50% in April and 47% in June.
The president’s approval rating is shown in blue; Morena party support in red. el financiero
The percentage of respondents who said that a member of their family had lost their job or source of income in the past three months was 25% in September compared to 35% in June and 30% in July and August.
As for the national economy – which shrank almost 20% in the second quarter – 61% of those polled said that it was in bad or very bad shape whereas 70% said the same in July.
The economy and security are certain to be major issues at the midterm elections.
Mexico is set to record its worst recession since the Great Depression this year, the Covid-19 death toll (82,348 as of Tuesday) continues to rise and 2020 is on track to be the most violent year on record.
Yet the percentage of people with a favorable view of Morena is on the rise.
The El Financiero poll found that 48% of respondents have a positive opinion of the ruling party, a 17-point increase compared to March.
In contrast, only 18% of those polled have a favorable view of the PAN and just 12% of respondents see the PRI in a positive light.
Tulum's new airport will not be competition for Cancún, president insists.
The new airport in Tulum, Quintana Roo, will be built by the army and open in 2023, President López Obrador said Tuesday.
Asked about the project at his morning news conference, López Obrador said that military engineers will build the facility, as is occurring with the new Mexico City airport that is under construction at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base north of the capital.
“I believe we’re going to start work at the beginning of next year,” he said. “We’re going to formally open it in 2023; it’s already a fact that this project will be carried out.”
The president said that 1,500 hectares of land were set aside for the airport after former president Felipe Calderón announced a plan to build one in the popular tourism destination in 2010.
He said the facility will be built across two government lots near the town of Tulum. One is owned by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation and the other belongs to the Ministry of the Navy, López Obrador said.
He rejected claims that the Tulum airport will be in direct competition with that in Cancún, Quintana Roo’s premier tourist destination.
“It’s thought that it will be in competition with the Cancún airport but it won’t be. The truth is that there is room for two [airports]. There’s room for Cancún airport to continue having a large influx [of passengers],” López Obrador said, adding that the Maya Train project, also slated to begin operations in 2023, will generate more demand for flights to Quintana Roo.
The markets took a different view of the airport announcement. Shares in Cancún airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (Asur) sank almost 6% last Thursday.
Despite the additional details provided by the president, it remains unclear how the Tulum airport project will be funded.
“We’ll have to wait and see what the composition of the capital will be,” Darío Flota Ocampo, director of the Quintana Roo Tourism Promotion Council, said before today’s announcement.
“[It could be] private or public sector [money] or also a mixture,” he said.
Quintana Roo Tourism Minister Marisol Vanegas Pérez said that López Obrador’s announcement last week that an airport would be built in Tulum took state authorities by surprise.
“It was really unexpected for us as well as a lot of people in Quintana Roo,” she said, adding that it remained to be seen how the airport will be funded.
Vanegas said that having an airport in Tulum will be “extraordinary,” asserting that it will help the state recover from the current economic downturn.
Luis Javier Alegre Salazar, a federal deputy who represents Quintana Roo, said that the announcement that an airport will be built in Tulum is “great news” for the state.
“The president’s announcement … is another example of the federal government’s commitment to tourism,” he said.
Ensenada is among the port cities where homicides are up this year.
Homicides increased in five important Pacific coast port cities in the first eight months of the year while the quantity of cargo that passed through them declined, data shows.
According to the National Public Security System (SNSP), there were a total of 585 homicides in the municipalities of Ensenada, Baja California; Manzanillo, Colima; Guaymas, Sonora; Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán; and Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, between January and August, an increase of 45.9% compared to the 401 homicides in the same period of last year.
According to the Ministry of Communications and Transportation, the quantity of cargo that passed through the ports fell to 40.78 million tonnes in the first six months of the year, a 17.5% decline compared to the same period of 2019.
Ensenada recorded 210 homicides in the period, the highest number among the five port cities. Murders in the Baja California city, located about 100 kilometers south of Tijuana, spiked 51.1% compared to the first eight months of 2019 when there were 139 homicides.
Manzanillo ranked second for homicides with 201 between January and August, a 13.6% increase compared to the 177 murders in the same period last year. According to SNSP data, the eight-month period was the most violent of the past five years in Manzanillo.
Guaymas ranked third for homicides among the five ports but recorded the largest increase in percentage terms. There were 117 homicides in the Sonora municipality between January and August, a 178.6% increase compared to the same period of last year when there were 42 murders.
In Lázaro Cárdenas, homicides increased 41.7% in the first eight months of the year to 34, an increase of 10 compared to the same period of 2019.
Homicides in Salina Cruz increased 21% between January and August to 23 from 19 in the same period a year earlier.
Along Mexico’s Pacific coast there are 14 municipalities with at least one commercial port. SNSP data shows that only four of them recorded fewer homicides in the first eight months of this year than in the same period of 2019.
They are La Paz, Baja California, where homicides declined 84%; Acapulco, Guerrero, where murders fell 44.2%; Tapachula, Chiapas, where killings dropped 34.9%; and Mazatlán, Sinaloa, where violent deaths decreased 24.6%.
Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, is leading the coronavirus recovery in terms of tourism, the hotel data company STR reports.
The city enjoyed an August hotel occupancy rate of 33.9%, better than that of Los Cabos, which saw 25.8% occupancy, and the Mexican Caribbean which had a 25.4% occupancy rate.
All three resort cities beat out tourism to Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, indicating that leisure tourism is beginning to rebound whereas business travel may be slower to recover.
Luxury and economy-class hotels have been the hardest hit in Mexico with occupancy down 70% over last year while middle and upper middle-category hotels have seen 60% fewer guests in 2020.
In STR’s webinar presentation at the Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference, the company pointed out that countries such as Peru have benefited from domestic tourism. It also noted that U.S. travelers are interested in traveling to smaller, regional destinations around the country rather than large cities.
Domestic tourism is something Mexico is also focusing on. In 2019, 102.6 million domestic tourists traveled to different destinations within the country. This year Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco says 59 million Mexicans will travel within the country.
On Monday, at a ceremony celebrating the country’s Pueblos Mágicos, or Magical Towns, Torruco unveiled a new national tourism strategy by launching the official Pueblos Mágicos website, a tool connecting potential visitors with attractions and tour operators in any of the designated towns who can now register to be listed on the site free of charge.
Created to support tourism in towns with unique attractions, the government’s Pueblos Mágicos program has been in operation for 19 years and currently includes 121 destinations.
Delta's forecast track across the north end of the Yucatán Peninsula.
With Hurricane Delta approaching the Yucatán Peninsula as a powerful Category 4 storm, authorities have issued a red alert for seven municipalities due to the imminent threat of what the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) has called an “extremely dangerous storm surge and hurricane conditions.”
According to a 4 p.m. CDT advisory from the NHC, Delta is currently located 345 kilometers east-southeast of Cozumel and 385 kilometers east-southeast of Tulum with sustained winds of 230 kilometers per hour.
Meteorologists warn that further strengthening could take place before Delta makes landfall near Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Citizens in Tulum, Solidaridad, Cozumel, Puerto Morelos, Benito Juárez, Isla Mujeres and Lázaro Cárdenas are ordered to stay inside beginning at 5 p.m., and all work has been suspended except for supermarkets which will close at 5, Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín González announced on Twitter.
A dry law is also in effect in Quintana Roo, banning the sale of alcohol until further notice. Residents are asked to have enough food and water to last three days and should expect the power to go out.
The forecast map issued at 5:00 p.m. EDT by the National Hurricane Center.
The Federal Electricity Commission has assembled a Delta response team consisting of 650 electrical workers, 113 cranes, 181 vehicles, a helicopter, and 28 emergency generators to address Delta’s potential destruction in Quintana Roo and Yucatán.
President López Obrador sent disaster relief equipment and 5,000 troops to areas expected to suffer the greatest impact from the storm, which was a Category 2 hurricane this morning before rapidly intensifying. Tourists and people in high-risk areas are being evacuated to shelters. Some hotel guests in Quintana Roo are being bused to government shelters located inland.
Tourists — there are currently an estimated 40,900 in the state — may remain in hotels that have been rated for major hurricanes, Accuweather reported.
The Cancún and Cozumel airports will close today at 5 p.m., while the Chetumal and Mérida airports will remain open.
“It is expected to be a dangerous hurricane as soon as it reaches the coast of the peninsula. Its strength as a hurricane has not been seen in the last 15 years,” said Gabriel López Espinoza, director of the National Water Commission (Conagua) in Quintana Roo.
In 2005, Hurricane Wilma hit the peninsula as a Category 4 hurricane, killing eight people and causing US $4.8 billion in damages. Some 98% of hotels in Quintana Roo were damaged or destroyed, including 110 hotels in Cancún.
If the storm follows the current predicted track, it will mainly affect eastern Yucatán, from the port of Río Lagartos to Dzilam de Bravo. Tizimín and Río Lagartos are still reeling from the effects of Tropical Storm Gamma over the weekend, which mainly caused intense rainfall.
Lightning, a two-meter storm surge and up to 254 millimeters of rain are expected to accompany winds of 230 kilometers per hour in northern Quintana Roo and eastern Yucatán as Delta moves across the peninsula to the Gulf of Mexico later on Wednesday.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 45 kilometers from the cyclone’s center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 165 kilometers, meaning residents of Yucatán and Quintana Roo may experience hurricane-force winds later this evening.
Delta may lose strength in the hours it is over land but should regain strength over warm waters and continue its path northward, where it is expected to make landfall for a second time on Friday in Louisiana. Oil platforms in the Gulf have already begun evacuating workers.
Delta is the 25th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which this year could surpass 2005 as the busiest hurricane season on record in the Atlantic. Hurricane season officially ends on November 30.
The president exhibits a front page of Reforma over a story with which he took issue, a common occurrence at his daily press conferences.
The general director of a news website and the Americas director of the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) have criticized President López Obrador for attacking journalists and publications that are unfavorable to him and his government.
Roberto Rock Lechón of the news portal La Silla Rota and president of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information at the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), said López Obrador and his government collaborators create a “poisoned atmosphere” with their attacks on the media.
The attacks risk inciting violence against journalists, he said, a warning already made by the press freedom organization Article 19.
José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division at HRW, said the president’s attitude toward the media reveals “strong authoritarian tendencies” and an expectation that it will applaud the decisions he and his government take.
In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, Rock asserted that the attitudes of AMLO, as the president is best known, and his team toward the media amount to a “scheme of pressure and harassment” of journalists.
Rock: ‘The government seeks to discredit and insult the media on a daily basis.’
López Obrador frequently lashes out at media outlets for publishing reports and opinion pieces with which he doesn’t agree or which portray him and/or his government in a negative light. The Mexico City-based broadsheet Reforma is a favorite target of the president, who describes it as a “conservative” newspaper and part of the “elitist press.”
Rock said that AMLO’s “pattern of political positions” toward the media is similar to the attitudes adopted by presidents and governments in countries such as the United States, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Argentina.
“The president’s stance must be interpreted as intolerance of the essential work of the press” and its mission to inform the public with responsibility, independence and pluralism, he said.
Rock said the government’s decision to sanction the news magazine Nexos, ostensibly for submitting false documentation to obtain advertising, amounted to “intimidation or prior censorship” and set a “terrible precedent” for press freedom in Mexico.
He said López Obrador’s frequent attacks – the president has also taken aim at international publications such as The Financial Times – have caused members of the IAPA, an umbrella group of about 1,300 media organizations, to ask “what is happening in Mexico?”
The Mexican media helped to destroy authoritarianism over the past 50 years, foster a more plural dialogue and promote institutions tasked with ensuring transparency and accountability in all aspects of the nation’s democracy, Rock asserted.
Its work strengthened opposition parties, encouraged the expression of dissident voices and citizens’ participation in politics and established tolerance as a fundamental value of society, he charged, adding that the media helped politicians with parties opposed to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – which was in office in Mexico for most of the 20th century – to win important positions of power.
Thus López Obrador – who left the PRI in the late 1980s to join the Democratic Revolution Party before creating his own party, Morena, in 2014 – benefited from the work of a freer media, Rock said.
“López Obrador was able to arrive at the presidency of the republic thanks to this new atmosphere of citizens’ participation, the plurality of political actors and the opening up of the media. It’s ironic, a paradox, that with this history we’re faced with a government that seeks to discredit, insult and hurl questions at the media on a daily basis,” he said.
In a separate interview with El Universal, Vivanco also criticized the decision to fine Nexos and ban federal agencies from advertising in the magazine for two years. He said that Mexico is just as dangerous for media workers as Afghanistan and noted that 23 journalists have been killed since López Obrador took office in December 2018.
The president’s “stigmatizing and disqualifying” discourse towards journalists and the media in general constitutes a “serious problem,” Vivanco said in response to a question about whether López Obrador’s remarks pose a threat to freedom of expression.
AMLO and other government officials undermine the role journalism plays in a democratic society and pose a threat to freedom of speech, he said.
Vivanco: ‘The president would prefer to live in a society in which the media … applauds what he does.’
The president’s tendency to hurl insults at the media and attack journalists at his regular news conferences belies a “democratic attitude,” Vivanco added.
“On the contrary, everything indicates … that the the president has strong authoritarian tendencies and that he would prefer to live in a society in which the media … applauds what he does,” he said.
Asked about the consequences of the attacks on the press, Vivanco responded:
“There is an attempt to discredit the media [but] I don’t believe López Obrador has succeeded so far. In the face of this persistent and aggressive campaign … Mexico has shown that it has spaces and strengths that allow the official discourse to be countered in both traditional media and new media.”
The HRW director accused the president of espousing conspiracy theories which he doesn’t back up even with the bare minimum of evidence.
“My fundamental criticism of the head of state … is the lack of arguments,” he said.
Asked why attacks on the media and attempts to discredit news organizations appear to be a regional phenomena, Vivanco said:
“Leaders have emerged that make demagogy a way of life. Donald Trump lies systematically all day every day and so does [Jair] Bolsonoro in Brazil, another populist leader. … All these leaders, Trump as well as López Obrador and Bolsonaro, operate on the basis of a core value: vanity [and] their ego.”
The criticism leveled at López Obrador by Rock and Vivanco comes three weeks after the Mexico representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists also took aim at the president.
“The political climate in Mexico doesn’t encourage freedom of expression. When the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office we saw some positive signs; for example, the commitment to put an end to impunity, censorship and the murder of journalists. Unfortunately, almost two years later there is a climate of significant polarization, … a rhetoric of confrontation with the press [and] a division between good press and bad press,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen.
Leonor López in her Veracruz home, a dilapidated shack.
After a video was posted to social media about the dire straits of a 90-year-old woman in the city of Veracruz, authorities from the DIF family services agency have promised to find a home for her and Pedro Miguel, the great-grandson she cares for.
Temporarily housed in a shelter for the elderly, until last week Leonor López lived in a shack with tarps for walls and a rusted-out tin roof while caring for the 17-year-old boy who was abandoned by his mother shortly after birth, does not speak and suffers from epileptic seizures.
Her days were spent collecting aluminum cans and whatever else she could find to sell for food, and digging through garbage at markets in search of something suitable to eat. Each day López, hunched over with age and with Pedro in tow, would set out to scour the streets for sustenance.
To make matters worse, several times thieves robbed her shack of the few possessions she had while she was out foraging for food, a neighbor said.
The shack was furnished with not much more than a bed, which got wet every time it rained. López’s children have died, her grandchildren have abandoned her, and Pedro is basically the only family she has.
López and her great-grandson Pedro.
The 2,500-peso (US $116) pension she receives every two months was spent on medications for Pedro and paying off a hospital bill from the last time he got sick.
The video, which was posted by a neighbor, prompted an outpouring of support, municipal authorities said, and the city moved in to help.
Yesterday, DIF representatives met with López and her grandson to assess their health and announced both would get the medications they need. López was sent to a home for the elderly and Pedro was placed in a state-run home where each will remain for the three months it takes to locate suitable housing. Pedro has also been issued his own disability pension.
A customer's temperature is checked at a store in Guadalajara in July. The governor warns that a lot of businesses have stopped implementing such measures.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro has warned that stricter economic restrictions could be imposed if new coronavirus case numbers continue to increase as has occurred in the state over the past two weeks.
In a video message posted to social media on Monday, Alfaro said that a lot of people, mainly adolescents and young adults, have stopped following the measures designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
“We’re going out to carry out nonessential activities without [taking] the necessary care. The commercial centers are full of people walking around, the tourist centers are at their limit, and bars and restaurants are full,” he said.
“The most worrying thing is that a lot of these people who are out and about have stopped using face masks, and a lot of businesses have stopped implementing the established [health] measures. … This reality is reflected in hard data: infections are increasing among the young population, who are taking the least care,” Alfaro said.
The governor said that 40% of new infections are occurring in people aged 15 to 34, adding that while they are “more resistant” and thus less likely to have a serious illness they can still infect their parents and grandparents, who are “at much greater risk of dying.”
According to Jalisco government data, 73,910 coronavirus cases have been detected in the state since the start of the pandemic and 3,398 people have lost their lives to Covid-19.
Alfaro said the number of active cases rose above 4,000 during the past week and that the number of new cases detected per week per 1 million inhabitants had increased to 360 from 285 two weeks prior.
He said that if the weekly incidence of new cases exceeds 400 per 1 million inhabitants, and hospital occupancy increases above 50% (it is currently 19%), he will be forced to activate the so-called “emergency button” and apply stricter restrictions to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Alfaro has explained previously that almost all economic activities would be required to come to a complete halt if he presses the button.
“There are those who think that the button is just a threat to try to make people comply with their responsibilities. Believe me that it is not. We have shown that we know how to take decisions, as difficult as they might be, to look after Jalisco residents and that’s what we’ll continue to do,” he said in his new video message.
The governor said that 92% of economic activities have resumed in Jalisco but there is no possibility that the other 8% will be able to restart in the short term.
“We cannot yet allow the return of people to stadiums, the opening of nightclubs and any kind of mass events. Regrettably we cannot yet think about the return of in-person classes,” Alfaro said.
“We have to act with caution and take care with every step we take so that we don’t regret it later,” he said before urging mayors to ensure that coronavirus restrictions and mitigation measures are enforced in their communities.
“Without your support the strategy that we have built cannot work,” Alfaro said. “Rules are there to be complied with and I trust that municipal authorities will once again enforce this principle.”
