Swiss multinational Nestlé has confirmed that it will invest US $160 million in its pet food plant in León, Guanajuato.
The public confirmation came after Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo met with Nestlé executives in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday. The company first announced its intention to invest in the plant in October 2020.
The investment will allow Nestlé to increase its annual production of dry food by 33% to 285,000 tonnes. Wet food production will increase 108% to 25,000 tonnes annually.
The Guanajuato government said in a statement that the $160 million injection will generate more than 200 direct jobs and over 1,700 indirect ones.
“… This investment makes provision for the integration of high-technology equipment, control systems, automatization, tools focused on the digitalization of data and systems that will increase [Nestlé’s] production capacity,” the government said.
“… the expansion will generate new work opportunities in the operation of new processing lines, meeting Nestlé’s focus to boost the employability of Mexican talent in locations such as Silao, Irapuato, Romita, León, Celaya, Cortázar, Salamanca, San Luis de la Paz and [Guanajuato city].”
The plant is located in the Guanajuato Puerto Interior, a dry port facility about 25 kilometers southeast of downtown León.
Sinhue said that confirmation of Nestlé’s investment is good news for Guanajuato, asserting that it was a sign of the reactivation of the state’s economy.
“We’re working to continue generating better employment conditions for Guanajuato residents,” the National Action Party governor said.
Sinhue said that Nestlé, which has been operating in Mexico since 1930, could invest additional resources in the state in the future.
Laurent Freixe, Nestlé’s Americas chief, said the company has a long-term commitment to Mexico and its people.
“… Investments like this … as well as future investments and the main initiatives of the company are a sign of the confidence we have in the potential of Mexico and its people,” he said.
Another European company that is betting that Guanajuato – an industrial hub (and Mexico’s most violent state) – is a good place to manufacture its products is the Italian firm Proma, which makes components for the automotive sector.
Sinhue announced on Twitter on Tuesday that he had visited the firm and that its executives committed to investing 130 million pesos (US $6.5 million) to build a plant in the state.
“This project will generate more than 250 direct and indirect jobs in an initial development of 5,000 square meters in its first stage,” Sinhue wrote, adding that the plant would be eventually be triple that size.
“The Proma management team acknowledged that Guanajuato has the technology and innovation ecosystem for the operation of the company,” he wrote.
Five workers were killed and two others were injured on Monday when the boom of a crane fell on them at a construction site in Ecatepec, México state.
The accident occurred at about 9:30 a.m. at a site where an elevated section of road that will be part of a new route to the new Mexico City airport is being built.
The federal Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT) said on Twitter that the accident occurred when the boom gave way while lifting reinforcing steel, apparently because the load was too heavy.
The steel fell next to the road where the men were working but didn’t harm anyone or cause damage to vehicles, the SCT said.
Ecatepec Civil Protection chief Victoria Arriaga said the injured workers were taken to the Las Americas Hospital in Ecatepec, a municipality that borders Mexico City and is located about 20 kilometers south of the Santa Lucía Air Force base where the new Mexico City airport is currently under construction. Their injuries were not life threatening.
Khalil Bakhtiyari and Fernanda Olivares with their son Alexander at their home in Mexico City. ann deslandes
Mexico made headlines last week when 24 journalists and their families arrived from Afghanistan along with five members of that country’s world-beating girls robotics team. The Afghan arrivals were aided by volunteers and colleagues outside the country to fly to Doha, Qatar, from where they boarded a plane to Mexico City, arriving on Wednesday morning as holders of humanitarian visas granted by the Mexican government.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Mexico was committed to providing refuge for people fleeing Afghanistan since the country fell to the Taliban on August 15.
From his home in Mexico City, Kahlil Bakhtiyari watched the news closely. Perhaps his twin brother Yasin, in hiding in Kabul with his young family, could have the same chance to escape.
The Bakhtiyari family is Hazara, a persecuted ethnic minority in Afghanistan that is a target of the Taliban. On Monday, local media reported a massacre of 14 Hazaras in the center of the country.
Yasin Bakhtiyari also faces grave risk due to having been a captain in the national army. Kahlil says his brother was captured with around 1,000 other soldiers when the Taliban took control of Helmand province in the south of the country.
Yasin escaped to Kabul with some of his fellow soldiers.
“I don’t know how he managed but he escaped. And he called me and said please, please just do something to help us get out of the country,” Khalil Bakhtiyari told Mexico News Daily.
Khalil remembers being a young child in Afghanistan under Taliban rule 20 years ago. “They were killing innocent people. They were totally against women. It is going to be the same story again.”
Indeed, Khalil is worried for the women of his country, saying women colleagues he trained with in dentistry with jobs in hospitals and their own dental clinics have stopped working and are staying at home and living in fear.
With his wife Fernanda Olivares, 31-year-old Kahlil has lived in Mexico City since 2019. The couple have a 3-year-old son, Alexander. They met in India where Kahlil studied dentistry and Fernanda worked in international business.
As the situation continues to deteriorate in Afghanistan, Fernanda and Kahlil have been frantically working on options to get Yasin and his family out of Kabul, as well as Kahlil and Yasin’s sister who is also there with her young family.
Fernanda and Khalil contacted Guillermo Puente Ordorica, Mexico’s ambassador in Iran, who advised that if the family in Kabul could get to Iran, they could receive humanitarian visas to travel to Mexico.
Kahlil also decided to make a video for sharing on social media to raise some of the costs of getting their family out of Afghanistan.
The video has been shared over 500 times and some donations have been received.
Fernanda Olivares said she is glad that the journalists working for U.S. media and the girls robotics team members are now safe. She said the key was that they were able to get out of Afghanistan to another country to receive travel authorization and take a flight to Mexico. “Right now it is the people inside Afghanistan who need the most help, they have the most risk,” she noted, saying it is harder for “an ordinary family” to access asylum.
The airport has been the only way out since the fall of Kabul, and getting there has been an extremely complex and uncertain prospect, with Yasin fearing interception by the Taliban if he travels. On Saturday a suicide bomber attacked the crowds of people trying to get out, killing 169 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. soldiers and shutting down the terminal.
A large group of countries have since secured an agreement with the Taliban to let people leave Afghanistan. Further, Fernanda and Kahlil were informed Monday by the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Mexico that Yasin’s family could receive a travel authorization to come to Mexico if they are able to get to the airport.
Fernanda and Kahlil have also approached the Australian Embassy in Mexico to see if the family in Kabul could secure asylum in that country.
“My brother was trained by Australian army officers and has many friends there,” he said.
Kahlil Bakhtiyari says his brother also worked closely with U.S. and German army personnel.
The U.S. finished withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan Monday as reports from the streets of Kabul showed Taliban fighters brandishing weapons and celebrating victory.
Khalil and Fernanda say that while violence and insecurity in Mexico is a concern, they feel positive about a future in the country, especially compared to what their family in Afghanistan is going through.
Khalil Bakhtiyari is clinging to hope that his family can get to the Kabul airport this week.
“We don’t have much time. Day by day, the situation is getting worse. If they catch my brother, they will kill him.”
Two immigration agents have been suspended for acting aggressively against migrants who were traveling on foot in Chiapas on Saturday.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) said in a statement that the Chiapas-based agents were suspended for “improper conduct” during an operation on the Tapachula-Arriaga highway near the community of Cruz de Oro. Brutal aggression would be a more accurate description of their conduct.
Video footage posted to social media showed one INM agent kicking and attempting to stomp on the head of a migrant who had been tackled to the ground and punched by another agent.
The caravan members left Tapachula on Saturday after staging protests for several weeks to demand that their asylum cases be extradited. Dozens were detained during the confrontation on Saturday, while others avoided authorities and either returned to Tapachula or continued on their journey northward.
The INM said the decision to suspend the two agents was based on a clause of the Migration Law that states that institute officials must always act in accordance with principles of legality, objectivity, efficiency, professionalism, honesty and respect for human rights.
The agents were formally notified of their suspension on Sunday, the INM said. It reiterated that it won’t tolerate any conduct that doesn’t comply with its protocols and policies.
INM agents and National Guard agents confronted members of the same migrant caravan for a second time on Monday. A group of men that led the caravan was detained by authorities about 10 kilometers south of Mapastepec, a town about 100 kilometers north of Tapachula.
Women begged not to be detained while children were shouting and crying as their fathers were immobilized by INM agents, according to a report by the newspaper El Universal. The detained men were put on buses bound for El Ceibo, a community on Tabasco’s border with Guatemala.
Federal authorities made a second attempt to detain migrants after the caravan had advanced another two kilometers down the highway, but most managed to escape via a nearby mango plantations, El Universal said.
About 200 migrants made it to Mapastepec, where they spent Monday night, and were expected to continue traveling north on Tuesday.
Another caravan of some 400 migrants left Tapachula on Monday morning and a third is expected to depart on Wednesday. Their passage is also likely to be blocked by federal security forces and the INM.
Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas said Monday that Mexico cannot allow the free transit of undocumented migrants through the country to the United States. He also said the government would not offer transit visas to migrants that would allow them to legally travel to the northern border.
The government has previously issued such visas but stopped granting them after agreeing to the United States’ 2019 request for it to do more to stem the flow of migrants to the Mexico-U.S. border.
Even so, large numbers of migrants have arrived on the United States’ southern border this year. A monthly record of more than 212,000 would-be asylum seekers were detained by U.S. authorities after illegally crossing the border in July.
Students returning to in-person teaching Monday in Mexico City.
Schools across Mexico reopened on Monday 17 months after closing due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 25 million pre-school, primary school and middle school students were due to return to in-person classes but the actual number of returnees was expected to be lower because attendance is voluntary and online learning will continue for the foreseeable future in many states. Approximately 2 million teachers and other educational and administrative staff were also set to return to school.
“It’s a very important day because girls, boys and adolescents are returning to public and private schools. The school year is starting, a great effort has been made,” President López Obrador, a fierce advocate for the reopening of schools, told reporters at his morning press conference.
He predicted that the majority of students would return to in-person classes because “school is irreplaceable” – a place not just of learning but also a center of conviviencia (coexistence or togetherness).
“It has to do with the feelings that boys and girls express to each other,” the president said.
President López Obrador stressed the social importance of students’ return to classrooms at his Monday press conference.
The government forged ahead with the plan to reopen schools on Monday despite Mexico being amidst a delta variant-driven third wave, with daily case numbers currently higher than at any other time of the pandemic.
The Ministry of Public Education (SEP) drew up a range of guidelines aimed at ensuring a safe return to the classroom — among which are social distancing, wearing face masks and frequent handwashing – but it remains to be seen whether students will follow them and school outbreaks will be avoided.
Increasing the likelihood of transmission is the fact that the highly contagious delta strain spreads more readily among children than earlier variants of the virus.
The only states where schools were not scheduled to reopen on Monday were Michoacán – where authorities believe the risk is currently too high — Sinaloa and Baja California Sur. Authorities in the latter two states postponed the resumption of classes due to the passing of Hurricane Nora, which brought heavy rain and flooding to several states over the weekend.
Some teachers were also not expected to return to the classroom on Monday. The CNTE teachers union said that its members wouldn’t be offering in-person classes in Mexico City, Guerrero, Chiapas and Oaxaca because of the risk of infection.
Another obstacle to a smooth reopening is that almost one-quarter of public schools don’t have running water, according to the National Parents Union.
One new issue teachers will face is monitoring that students follow social distancing rules and not congregate closely as seen here in this pre-pandemic photo.
Education Minister Delfina Gómez conceded last Friday that the number of schools lacking the basic conditions required to safely welcome back students and teachers was unknown.
Francisco Landero, an education expert, told the newspaper El Universal that students of different schools will face different situations upon their return to in-person learning. Parents have to make a decision about whether to send their children back to school or not “in the face of the lack of an orderly, systematic and well-thought-out strategy by the federal government,” he said.
Landero noted that federal authorities haven’t contemplated the use of COVID-19 testing for students and teachers as part of their strategy to avoid the spread of the virus. However, some state governments, including those in Jalisco and Querétaro, are planning to do so.
“What is expected is that a large percentage of schools will open on Monday to comply with the presidential mandate, but a lot will move to the hybrid model in about two weeks,” Landero said, referring to a mix of in-person and online classes.
“… The protocols that SEP established don’t guarantee there won’t be infections,” said Rosa María García Jiménez, an education academic at La Salle University in Mexico City.
“Working with children and young people is always a risk,” she said, adding that teachers will not only have to worry about teaching but also monitor students to ensure they don’t hug each other.
The federal government previously said that schools could only reopen in states that are low risk green on the coronavirus stoplight map, a condition currently met by just one state – Chiapas. However, the government recently changed its position, concluding that the benefits of reopening schools outweighed the risks.
“Starting classes is very important. We celebrate that it’s happening because many [students] have been through very difficult … situations. But we’re now heading toward normality and we have a lot of faith,” the president said.
“… I had to wake Jesús up at six in the morning to go to school,” he added, referring to his 14-year-old son.
With no beaches, clubs or pyramids, Linares isn't for those seeking an exciting refuge from winter, but it is a nice, slow-paced environment in which to safely raise a family.
Almost every week, I am asked (and I sometimes ask myself) the question: why am I here?
It seems strange to the local people, even after 15 odd years of living here, that a foreigner should chose Linares as his adopted home when many millions of Mexicans dream of living in the United States, Canada or Europe.
They listen to my stock responses with polite interest, but something in the way they look at me implies the unstated question, “Yes, but why are you really here?”
Other than me, a Toronto-born writer, translator and educator raised in the pretty little rural Irish Midlands town of Lanesboro, County Longford, the only foreigners here are pastors, international students or the odd technician flown in for the weekend to fix some infernal machine at Kellogg’s or at one of the other factories inside the parque industrial (industrial park) at the entrance to town.
So I must be a drug dealer, bank robber or deviant on the run from my sordid past?
The bells of Linares’ Cathedral de San Felipe Apóstol.
Their skepticism is understandable. Linares is not the Mexico of the tourist brochures. Unlike Tulum, Puerto Vallarta or Los Cabos — places designed for well-heeled outsiders seeking refuge from the harsh blasts of winter—Linares has no golden beaches, bustling nightlife or ancient pyramids.
Nestled in Nuevo León’s Citrus Belt in the blue shadow of the Sierra Madres, Linares is largely known — if at all — for the norteño music of the legendary Los Cadetes de Linares. And for Glorias, a traditional gourmet candy made from nuts and burnt goat’s milk.
I ended up in this charming, slightly dilapidated city of 80,000 souls seemingly by accident. Fleeing from the Canadian winter in February 2001, I was backpacking around Central America and the Pacific coast of southern Mexico when a friend and resident here invited me to pay him a visit while he did fieldwork for his doctorate.
I had never heard of the place, but as I was on the road anyway, I headed north to the India-shaped state of Nuevo León. Many hundreds of kilometers later, I stepped into the dusty sunlight and looked up into a sky so clear and blue I could hardly credit it.
As I sat in the calm green shade of Linares Plaza, surrounded by a clutch of somber, sun-weathered old campesinos (farmers) wearing white cowboy hats, I felt a sudden intense sensation akin to déjà vu.
One muggy June afternoon, I was reading the news in a cybercafe when a woman approached and invited me to interview for the position of English teacher at a prestigious local school. As I understood very little Spanish, I smiled, shrugged my shoulders and asked, “When is it?”
The writer takes a moment at the gazebo in Linares Plaza. Bruce Meyer
“Mañana,” she said.
At noon the following day, a young English teacher named Verónica Garza Flores interpreted. We have been married 18 years now and have two beautiful little girls, Kathleen and Emma.
They are happy here, therefore I am happy. I would be happy anywhere as long as I was with them.
However, there are many other reasons why I enjoy living here. The average temperature in Linares is 22.4 C. After years of battling depression, seasonally deepened by Irish rain and Canadian snow, slush and ice, it was a delight to discover that the regular sunshine here is a natural mood enhancer, spiking my system with daily doses of serotonin.
The pace of life is slower — more in sync with agrarian rhythms than factory clocks — which for a country boy like me is familiar and therefore comforting — and Mondays are less stressful.
Unlike border cities such as Reynosa or Tijuana, where homicide rates are among the highest in the world, crime in Linares is more of the unorganized type — petty theft, burglary, drug abuse and drink-fuelled social violence. Apart from a rash of drug-related killings between 2006 and 2010, violent death is uncommon. In fact, Chicago, Houston and Vancouver are much more dangerous places in which to live.
Tacos agachados with its red tortillas.
The food in Linares is also excellent and comes in a diverse variety of shapes, forms and combinations. Among the most popular local dishes are cabrito (kid goat), a regional specialty, and tacos of every kind (carne asada, barbacoa, trompo, tripa) especially tacos agachados, a cheap working-class dish of mincemeat, cabbage, tomato and onions stuffed into small red tortillas and served with cube-shaped fried potatoes.
Other popular treats to be found in the local markets are queso del rancho (homemade cheese), chorizo, honey, and a variety of cactus jams and jellies. When I’m feeling in the mood for a little sweet bread to go at with my coffee, I tend to visit the famous local bakery in the center of town, Panadería La Flor.
In artistic terms, Linares is something of a blank slate. In the English-speaking world, apart from a mention in Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry’s classic novel, the only other reference to the city I know of is to “the snow-capped peaks of Linares” in Jack Kerouac’s novel Big Sur (Linares lies in a valley, but then, the author was known to go on the odd extended drug-and-booze-addled bender.)
Indeed, other than the odd brief text in a travel book, you would be hard-pressed to find much written about Linares in Spanish either. As a writer, I view this as an advantage because I am not unduly influenced by other scribblers when contemplating the history and culture of the city, as well as my place in it.
As for art — or what passes for art in these parts — I am more partial to the work of storefront painters than the pretentious and gaudy religious-themed paintings of the local (con-)artistes.
My daily round here during these dangerous days of COVID-19 consists of giving classes; reading; jogging; overeating; writing poems, articles and personal essays; conducting interviews and watching my beloved soccer team FC Bayern Munich in the comfort of Bar el Dáil — my private Irish pub.
The Sabinal River, an example of the types of waterways in the nearby town of Hualahuises where the writer often takes his family for recreation. Facebook
We are also constantly improving and upgrading our house, which involves dealing with workmen and making frequent trips to the hardware store for building materials. I also talk to my parents in Canada. (My mother lives in Milton, Ontario, my father in Toronto.)
Our daughters take karate classes three times a week, study online, play computer games and watch movies. As often as we can, we visit the neighboring town of Hualahuises to bathe in its clear, cold rivers and feast on the exquisite local cuisine.
Despite the passage of 20 years and the inescapable facts of debts, social obligations, work problems and other quotidian universal stresses, Linares remains a serendipitous refuge — strange enough to me still that I maintain the illusion that I am somehow on vacation, elsewhere, somewhere not “at home,” wherever that is anymore.
I miss many things about Lanesboro and Toronto, but as long as I continue to avoid the dreaded sensation of becoming stuck in a rut, I will probably stay in Linares. With little difficulty, I could quickly elaborate a list of drawbacks to living here too, but show me the person who from time to time doesn’t wish they were elsewhere?
Colin Carberry is a Canadian-born and Irish-raised writer who lives in Los Linares, Nuevo León, with his wife and two daughters. He has published four poetry collections and his work has appeared in publications in North America, Europe and Asia.
Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa has been in office too long, says president.
Authorities in Guanajuato – Mexico’s most violent state – are not supporting the federal government in the fight against crime, President López Obrador said Monday.
“What worries me about Guanajuato is insecurity because there is a lot and the government, the Attorney General’s Office in particular, isn’t taking action” he told reporters at his regular news conference.
Violence is a problem that was allowed to grow in Guanajuato, López Obrador said. “It’s very probable that the violence problem in Guanajuato has been encouraged because they [the National Action Party, or PAN] made a political alliance with [organized] crime in order to always win,” he asserted.
The current Guanajuato governor, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, and the previous seven all represented the PAN.
López Obrador noted that there were 32 homicides in Guanajuato on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a figure that accounted for 15% of all murders across the country.
“This is what worries me and that’s why I urge the governor” to do something, he said. “… We’re doing everything we can but we don’t have support. The attorney general [Carlos Zamarripa] has been there a long time and there are no results.”
The president last month called on Sinhue to remove Zamarripa, who has been state attorney general for 12 years.
“I can make recommendations; if they don’t take them into account that’s another matter but I would recommend renewal because things aren’t getting better and we have the National Guard and elements of the army and navy there,” he said July 26.
“We’re helping but we don’t see the same in the actions of the state Attorney General’s Office.”
Guanajuato, where several criminal groups including the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel operate, recorded 2,098 homicides in the first seven months of 2021. That figure represented a 22% decline compared to the same period of last year but was insufficient for Guanajuato to relinquish the unenviable title of Mexico’s most violent state.
Members of the dissident teachers’ union blocked the president’s vehicle as he traveled toward Motozintla, a town in southern Chiapas just north of the border with Guatemala.
Disgruntled about employment issues including remuneration, working conditions and recruitment, the teachers attempted to persuade López Obrador to get out of his SUV and listen to their demands, among which is the resumption of talks with the federal government.
But the president refused to disembark, although he rolled down his window to rule out negotiation while union members continue to show disrespect for him.
CNTE members also protested on Saturday outside a theater in Comitán, where López Obrador did get out of his car and briefly greet the protesters.
En el camino por la frontera con Guatemala, de Amatenango a Motozintla, nos pararon los de la CNTE, pero también nos saludaron muchos simpatizantes de la 4T. pic.twitter.com/hsbWQLqflc
A day earlier, the president described the CNTE in Chiapas as a “vested interest group” and declared he wouldn’t allow it to take him hostage. On Saturday, he acknowledged the brief delay he faced in a social media post.
“In the road along the border with Guatemala, from Amatenango to Motozintla, the CNTE people stopped us, but a lot of supporters of the 4T [fourth transformation] also greeted us,” López Obrador said, referring to the government by its self-anointed nickname.
Speaking at an event in Motozintla, the president asserted that his government retains the support of “the people” and that no one will be able to “defeat the transformation movement in Mexico.”
Although López Obrador was visibly annoyed by the two-hour-long blockade that prevented him from appearing in person at his presser at a military base on Friday, a member of the CNTE’s leadership committee in Chiapas claimed that the president deliberately allowed himself to be halted by it.
“… The president of the republic is very astute, he could have entered [the base] wherever he wanted to but didn’t; they told him that we were waiting for him there,” Virgilio Cruz said.
“… He needed the media– almost the majority of whom now support him – to see him as a victim and us as the guilty ones – teachers who don’t let him move forward,” he said. “… If he has all the security forces of the Mexican state [at his disposal], why didn’t he do anything?”
In describing the blockade on Friday as “improper,” López Obrador appeared to forget that he was once the leader of a protest movement that paralyzed sections of Mexico City in the wake of what he claimed was a fraudulent presidential election in 2006.
Realizing that the president had gotten a taste of his own medicine on Friday, many social media users took the opportunity to repost video footage from 2019 in which a Tamaulipas farmers’ association president declares that López Obrador taught him how to protest.
“… This … blocking of highways was taught to us by our own president,” Rogelio Ortíz said. “I learned from him, he was my teacher.”
Migrants attempt to force their way past National Guardsmen in Chiapas on Saturday.
A caravan of hundreds of Haitian, Cuban, Central American and South American migrants clashed with members of the National Guard (GN) and immigration agents on Saturday after leaving Tapachula, Chiapas, on foot.
The GN and National Immigration Institute (INM) agents resorted to using force to halt the advance of some 600 migrants who departed Tapachula after staging protests for several weeks to demand that their asylum cases be extradited.
Video footage showed scuffles between the authorities and the migrants. One video posted to social media showed an INM agent kicking and attempting to stomp on the head of one migrant who had been tackled to the ground and punched by another agent.
Dozens of male and female migrants, some of whom were accompanied by children, were detained and taken to a detention center in Tapachula, while others fled.
The clashes took place about 15 kilometers south of Huixtla, a town approximately 40 kilometers north of Tapachula, where thousands of Haitians have recently arrived. President López Obrador was en route to Tapachula when the confrontation occurred, and the authorities’ actions appeared to be at least partially motivated by a desire to avoid an encounter between the head of state and the migrant caravan.
Amid the commotion, a Haitian girl was injured by a stone that hit her in the head, the newspaper El Universal reported. Some of the migrants had been hurling stones at the GN troops and INM agents in an effort to free those who had been detained.
Hundreds of migrants who avoided detention broke through a military checkpoint on Saturday evening and continued their northward journey.
Most migrants are desperate to leave Tapachula, where they have few, if any, employment options and are forced to spend long periods living in shelters, cheap hotels or on the street as they wait for authorities to assess their asylum claims. Due to high demand, the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission (Comar) is taking up to a year to assess those claims, leaving many asylum seekers effectively stranded in Tapachula, a migrant hub due to its location just north of the border with Guatemala.
Comar is supposed to process claims within three months but budget and staffing cuts amid a surge of migrants has made that all but impossible.
“The important thing is not to cross the border [to the United States] but to leave Tapachula to look for work somewhere else,” a Haitian woman told the newspaper El País.
“There’s no work in Chiapas, … there’s no way to live [with dignity], the people are treating us like animals. We are refugees, what we are seeking is … to be able to eat.”
A migrant woman and her child on the ground during Saturday’s confrontation.
It was that kind of desperation that induced hundreds of migrants to flee the city on foot Saturday knowing full well that they were unlikely to be given free passage by a government that has sought to appease the United States by cracking down on irregular migration.
The INM on Sunday condemned the actions of its agents against the migrants and said it had referred the matter to its internal control body. The agents’ conduct was “inappropriate” and violated “the protocols and policies of respect the institute promotes,” it said in a statement.
“… One migrant started to hit a federal immigration agent and two elements consequently went to assist him, assuming … inappropriate conduct in their intervention,” the INM added.
COMDHSM, a collective of some 200 human rights organizations, also condemned the authorities’ use of force, describing their conduct as excessive and unjustified.
The migrants were “attacked, subjugated and beaten with shields and clubs,” it said, adding that INM agents dressed in civilian clothing incited the violence.
López Obrador said Sunday that the federal government would continue to “contain the northward flow of migrants” – there are thousands of federal security force members deployed across the southern border region – before adding that authorities also have a responsibility to help them and seek a solution to the issues they face.
Migrants leave Tapachula Saturday morning.
“The United States has to provide scholarships and allow temporary work visas for Central Americans,” he said at an event in Chiapas.
“This doesn’t affect them at all because labor is needed in the United States and in Canada. They don’t have [a sufficient] workforce and have an older population. How will [the United States] grow if there’s no workforce?”
López Obrador said earlier this year that the United States should issue temporary visas to Central Americans who worked in an expanded version of a tree planting employment scheme called Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life). But the United States showed little interest in the proposal.
United States President Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House, along with ongoing insecurity and poverty in Central America, have contributed to a surge in migration to the United States this year. A monthly record of more than 212,000 would-be asylum seekers were detained by U.S. authorities after illegally crossing the border in July.
Biden has sought to wind back some of his predecessor’s harshest immigration policies but the United States Supreme Court last week upheld a lower court ruling that ordered the U.S. government to reinstate the so-called remain in Mexico policy that forces migrants to stay here as they await the outcome of their asylum claims.
A recent study by the human rights organization Human Rights First found that the U.S government is placing asylum seekers in “grave danger” by expelling them from the country, while the Biden administration has reportedly urged Mexico to clear makeshift migrant camps in northern border cities where expelled asylum seekers often end up.
Hurricane Nora brought heavy rain and flooding to six states over the weekend and claimed at least one life in Jalisco after making landfall in that state on Saturday.
Downgraded to a tropical storm on Sunday, Nora lashed the Jalisco coast as a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 130 kmh and gusts to 155. After making landfall in Jalisco the storm continued north to Nayarit and Sinaloa.
The United States National Hurricane Center said early Monday that Nora had dissipated but heavy rains from its remnants were expected to continue to spread northward and north-northwestward during the next couple of days. At 4:00 a.m. Monday, what remained of the storm system was about 105 kilometers southeast of Los Mochis, Sinaloa.
Some of Nora’s worst damage occurred in Puerto Vallarta, where a 13-year-old boy died and at least one other person was missing.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro reported Sunday that the teenager, identified as Curro Prados Asencio, died due to the partial collapse of a downtown Puerto Vallarta hotel that was affected by the flooded Cuale River. Three other members of the boy’s family were in the hotel when it collapsed but were rescued.
Hurricane Nora: Road and building collapse in Puerto Vallarta
Floodwaters in Puerto Vallarta after Hurricane Nora passed through the area on Saturday.
“[We extend] our support and deepest condolences to his family, who arrived at our port from Spain seven years ago, and his loved ones,” Alfaro wrote on Twitter.
The flooding of the Cuale River was the worst in 50 years, the newspaper El Universal reported, and affected practically the entire downtown area of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco’s premier tourist destination. A vehicle in which a woman was traveling was swept away by the floodwaters and its occupant presumably drowned. Authorities mounted a search mission but as of late Sunday the woman hadn’t been located.
The Pitillal River also broke its banks in Puerto Vallarta, with floodwaters sweeping away at least three homes and causing damage to countless others. Residents of the Río Pitillal neighborhood were evacuated and taken to a temporary shelter.
Nora also caused a landslide on state highway 429, Jalisco authorities reported. Two men were reported missing after the event while a third man was rescued by Civil Protection authorities and the army. Some roads in Jalisco, and in other states, were cut off due to flooding, fallen trees and landslides.
In Cihuatlán, a southern Jalisco municipality on the border with Colima, about 500 homes were affected by floodwaters after the El Pedregal arroyo overflowed.
Other states where heavy rain and/or flooding was reported were Nayarit, Colima, Sinaloa, Michoacán and Guerrero. There was also heavy surf on the coastlines of those states and six fishermen remained missing off the coast of Guerrero late Sunday.
Rescue workers at a hotel that collapsed in Puerto Vallarta.
Access to the airport in Manzanillo was cut off as were several other roads in Colima. The Sinaloa municipalities of Elota and Escuinapa were among the worst affected by the storm, and shelters were set up for residents in each location.
The ports of Mazatlán, San Blas and Puerto Vallarta were temporarily closed due to the passing of Nora, which lashed the Pacific coast just a week after Hurricane Grace wreaked havoc in Veracruz. More than 260,000 electricity customers in Jalisco, Nayarit, Colima and Michoacán lost power but service had been restored to 78% of them by Sunday, the Federal Electricity Commission said.
Northwestern states including Baja California Sur, Sonora and Durango are expected to receive heavy rainfall as the remnants of Nora continue to head north.
