The vaquita marina, of which an estimated 10 remain.
The federal government has enlarged by 50% an area of what it calls zero tolerance in the upper Gulf of California to protect the critically endangered vaquita marina porpoise.
The Agriculture Ministry, the Environment Ministry and the navy published a decree in the government’s official gazette Thursday that declares that all gillnets are permanently prohibited in the zero tolerance zone, which is 75 square kilometers larger than the one previously in place.
A permanent ban on gillnets has been in place since 2017 but conservationists have accused the government of failing to enforce it, allowing illegal fishing to continue.
Some other nets including shrimp push nets can still be used in the area, according to the decree, and line fishing and diving for fishing purposes are permitted.
Gillnet fishing for totoaba, a species of fish prized in China for its swim bladder, has decimated the vaquita marina population to such an extent that it is now thought that there are fewer than 10 in the upper Gulf of California, the only place in the world they live. The mammals are prone to becoming entangled in the nets and drowning.
To ensure compliance with the fishing rules in the zero tolerance area, authorities will carry out sea and air patrols around the clock, according to the document published Thursday.
The government departments said that anyone planning to fish in the zero tolerance area using small boats must inform the nearest office of the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Commission (Conapesca) prior to launching.
They also said that fishermen must inform Conapesca if they have any interaction with marine mammals including vaquitas while on the water.
“All small boats … will be inspected without exception at the time of departure and at disembarkation,” the decree said.
Navy personnel, members of the National Guard, and officials with Conapesca and the environmental protection agency Profepa will be responsible for carrying out the inspections, the document said.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessels have also patrolled the upper Gulf of California to ensure compliance with fishing rules. One of them, the M/V Sharpie, came under gunfire in February as it was being chased by four fishing skiffs known as pangas.
Mexico City’s first 100% electric bus debuted Thursday on Line 3 of the Metrobús, which runs from Tenayuca to Ethiopia. Nine additional units will arrive by the end of this year, at a cost of about US $750,000 each.
“It is the first fully electric bus to operate in Mexico City in Metrobús, and our objective is to continue advancing in electromobility with buses and trolley buses that operate with electricity to replace diesel,” Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said at the bus’s unveiling.
“This helps us in two very important areas: the reduction of polluting emissions and greenhouse gases, which causes climate change, and even though the investment is a little higher, in the long run, it is much cheaper,” Sheinbaum said.
Metrobús director Roberto Capuano announced that the operating cost is 30% less than that of a diesel-fueled bus.
The new bus also promises a better experience for passengers and drivers, offering a smooth ride, free of vibrations, Capuano said. It also has spaces for wheelchairs and guide dogs, overhead monitors and USB ports for charging electronic devices.
The bus’s interior has space for wheelchairs and guide dogs and comes with USB charging ports.
Retractable doors mean passengers won’t be hit by the door as they embark or disembark, and the buses will be equipped with a camera system for security.
They can travel 330 kilometers on a single charge and will recharge at night in just 3.5 hours.
Capuano said it is the first unit of its kind to go into commercial operation in Mexico.
Compared to a diesel bus, Capuano says “the new electric unit reduces energy use by 80% and in 10 years of operation avoids the emission of 1,300 tonnes of carbon, he noted. “Likewise, it contributes to improving air quality by eliminating, in the same period, 14 tonnes of pollutants, including particulate material, harmful to the respiratory system, and nitrogen oxides, associated with ozone contingencies.”
The vehicles, which were manufactured by the Chinese company Yutong, which also made the city’s electric trolley buses, are 18 meters long and can carry 40 seated passengers and 120 standing.
A crocodile measuring more than three meters long was spotted at the Pie de la Cuesta beach in Acapulco Thursday, putting tourists and residents on high alert.
According to reports, the crocodile came out of the water at around 4 p.m. on Thursday, pausing for a few minutes on the beach while people snapped photos before retreating back into the surf.
Civil Protection personnel and firefighters were summoned to the area to search for the crocodile but were unable to locate it, and they suggested that residents and tourists in the area be extremely cautious.
The beach where the croc was spotted is close to Coyuca Lagoon where fresh and saltwater meet and currents may have pulled the reptile out of its natural habitat and into the sea, which often happens when the sandbar gives way.
This is the second crocodile sighted in the area this month. A crocodile that attacked and ate a stray dog was captured on September 7.
That was the 10th crocodile spotted in the municipality in recent months.
So far no one has been injured by crocodiles on the beaches of Acapulco, but in July a six-year-old boy was attacked by a crocodile in Ixtapa when he and his sister were playing near El Palmar beach and wandered away from their parents.
As the boy played near a fenced-off area under a bridge, a female crocodile with young grabbed him by the head, dragged him into the water and tried to drown him for approximately 10 minutes, biting him in the head, arms, chest and legs.
He was taken to the hospital with severe injuries.
Franco weighed 595 kilos in 2016, breaking a Guinness record.
The man who was the most obese person in the world before losing nearly 400 kilos through weight loss surgery has successfully fought another battle for his health.
Juan Pedro Franco of Aguascalientes has now survived the coronavirus as well, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.
Back in 2016, the 32-year-old weighed 595 kilos, the size of an average male polar bear, certifying him as the world’s fattest man by Guinness World Records.
But that was before he traveled to Guadalajara, Jalisco, and met Dr. José Antonio Castañeda, who put him on a Mediterranean diet that emphasizes vegetables and fruits and then performed two operations. After gastric sleeve, gastric bypass, and gastric band surgeries, Franco lost nearly 400 kilos and now weighs in at 208.
And although he suffers from comorbidities including diabetes, hypertension and chronic pulmonary disease due to his weight, he managed to shake off the coronavirus after testing positive a month ago.
“It is complicated because it is a very aggressive disease. I had a headache, body aches, my air was gone, a fever. I was a very at-risk person,” Franco said of his bout with the disease.
Franco considered that the complex treatment he underwent to lose weight helped him defeat Covid-19 because his diabetes and hypertension are now under control.
But Franco’s mother and caregiver, María de Jesús Salas, was not so lucky. The 66-year-old, who also had diabetes and hypertension, died of the disease after being intubated.
“Just because you are a thin person without comorbidities, you are not exempt from complications. All bodies behave differently when faced with the disease,” Franco said.
Mexico has one of the highest rates in the world for obesity in both children and adults, which has been an obstacle in the fight against Covid-19. One in four of the 75,439 coronavirus deaths in Mexico occurred among people who were overweight, and a fifth of the 715,457 who have been infected are obese.
Corral, left, and López Obrador: the relationship has soured since this photo was taken.
Contrary to President López Obrador’s claims, Chihuahua is complying with its obligation to send water to the United States to meet Mexico’s water debt under the terms of a 1944 bilateral treaty, according to Governor Javier Corral.
The governor said in an interview that Chihuahua has met its past obligations and will deliver more water to the United States by October 24, the deadline for Mexico to settle its current debt to its northern neighbor.
Corral said that by then Chihuahua will have delivered 905 million cubic meters of water to the United States during the treaty’s current five-year cycle.
His remarks came after Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote to United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to urge him to ensure Mexico meets its obligations under the 1944 treaty.
President López Obrador has been pressuring Corral to ensure that water is sent from Chihuahua, where farmers have been protesting its diversion from the Boquilla dam to the Rio Grande.
“Instead of helping to comply with this agreement, the governor opposed it,” López Obrador said Thursday, asserting that Corral’s actions are politically motivated as elections will be held in Chihuahua in 2021.
The governor countered that National Water Commission (Conagua) officials are to blame for the failure to keep up with Mexico’s water obligations to the United States. He accused the president of wanting to subjugate and humiliate him and other state governors.
“The president asks blind obedience of his collaborators,” Corral said, referring to remarks made by a government official who resigned this week, “and wants governors to be submissive and silent.”
“He never accepts responsibility and always looks for a culprit elsewhere,” he added.
However, Corral asserted that López Obrador won’t find a willing scapegoat in the government he leads.
One of eight railway blockades in Chihuahua.
“With us, he’ll hit a wall,” he said, adding that the president’s attempts at intimidation might work with other governors but not with him.
“He won’t intimidate me, he won’t keep me quiet. We’re going to respond with respect but also firmness,” Corral said.
The governor asserted that from López Obrador’s point of view,“everyone that is not with him, is against him – a traitor, a hypocrite, corrupt.”
“The country cannot be run with this temperament; the president needs to pause and think about what he’s doing and bring himself back to reality,” he said.
Corral, member of a group of 10 state governors who announced their withdrawal from the National Conference of Governors earlier this month after deeming that López Obrador was a threat to democracy, said López Obrador has no evidence for his claim that the Chihuahua government is involved in the water protests. Those have included the occupation of the Boquilla dam and toll plazas as well as a blockade of railway tracks.
Piles of earth and gravel have been dumped on the tracks in eight locations in the municipality of Meoqui in the month-long blockade, halting cross-border shipments of freight. The leader of one business group said 1.5 million tonnes of corn and wheat are among the trade goods awaiting shipment.
An indigenous water rights activist was murdered Thursday night in Tecate, Baja California.
Witnesses say two vehicles with tinted windshields arrived at the house where Óscar Eyraud Adams lived and shot him at around 7 p.m.
A member of the Kumeyaay indigenous group, Eyraud had been an activist for years, speaking out about issues of ethnicity and environmental injustice, a family member said.
Last month, Eyraud publicly denounced the lack of water in his community and warned of cultural consequences to come.
In an interview with the newspaper Reforma in August, conducted in a dried-up field, Eyraud complained that water that should go to indigenous communities to irrigate their crops was being diverted to transnational companies, such as Heineken.
“All this disappeared due to lack of water,” he told the newspaper as the camera panned the desiccated plot of land where he said fruit trees used to grow.
“These [water] rights should be for the indigenous community first rather than businesses and people who have the purchasing power just to have them … That puts the culture of this community at risk,” he added.
In what would prove to be his last social media post on Thursday afternoon, Eyraud called for the struggle to continue.
“Express your concern for water and disappearances, for indigenous communities,” he wrote.
Activists from Baja California shared the news of Eyraud’s death over social media and highlighted his struggle in favor of indigenous peoples.
“Óscar was willing to fight in search of self-determination for the Kumeyaay community, and the use of water concessions that Conagua had denied them,” she continued. “He was assassinated by the narco-state in Tecate, Baja California. The fight for the defense of water and the territory has taken comrades from us because they want to silence us by sowing terror,” activist Diana Tlazohcamati wrote on her Facebook account.
At least four other activists have been killed in Mexico this year, and the country is one of the most dangerous in the world for those who publicly condemn environmental injustice, according to Amnesty International. Fifteen activists were killed in Mexico in 2019.
Parents of the 43 missing students protested at the Federal Judicial Council. They claim corruption among judges is delaying progress in the case.
A suspected gang leader allegedly involved in the abduction and presumed murder of 43 teaching students in Guerrero in 2014 has been ordered to stand trial on organized crime charges not related to the students’ disappearance.
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that José Ángel “El Mochomo” Cassarrubias Salgado, presumed leader of the Guerreros Unidos gang, and his lawyer, Arturo Rodríguez García, must go on trial on drug trafficking charges.
Both men are being held in preventative custody in the Altiplano federal prison in México state.
The federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) alleges that Rodríguez was also a member of the Guerreros Unidos gang, which is accused of abducting students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College on September 26, 2014 and killing them.
According to FGR investigations, the lawyer was involved in the transport of drugs, colluded with authorities and acted as a front man for the gang in the purchase and sale of properties.
Cassarrubias has been accused of ordering the murder of the 43 students, who were abducted after being stopped by police in Iguala, Guerrero, in a bus they had commandeered to travel to a protest march in Mexico City.
He was arrested in June after almost six years on the run but released from the Altiplano prison on July 1 due to a lack of evidence. However, he was rearrested upon leaving the correctional facility.
The FGR alleged that El Mochomo’s mother paid multi-million-peso bribes to the presiding judge’s staff to secure her son’s release.
Rodríguez, who represented Cassarrubias at the July 1 hearing at which he was freed, allegedly acted as an intermediary in the arrangement.
According to the previous federal government’s “historical truth,” the students were intercepted by corrupt municipal police in Iguala and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos, whose members killed them, burned their bodies in a dump and scattered their ashes in a nearby river. The students were allegedly mistaken as members of a rival gang, Los Rojos.
Casarrubias, right, and his attorney have both been ordered to stand trial.
The current government rejected its predecessor’s official version of events and launched a new investigation shortly after President López Obrador took office in late 2018.
While the government claims to have made progress, what really happened to the students remains unclear and no alleged perpetrators of the crimes have been convicted.
There are, however, a number of suspects in prison awaiting trial.
El Mochomo’s brother, Sidronio Cassarubias Salgado, is in custody as are former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca, his wife María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, former Iguala security director Felipe Flores Vázquez and former municipal police chief Francisco Salgado Valladares.
Sidronio Cassarubias was allegedly the top leader of Guerreros Unidos while the former mayor and his wife – once known as the Imperial Couple of Iguala – have been accused of being the masterminds of the students’ abduction.
It is unclear when the suspects in the case of the students’ abduction and presumed murder, including El Mochomo, will be brought before a court on those charges.
Many other suspects, including former police officers and alleged Guerreros Unidos members, have been released from prison due to a lack of evidence or because they were found to have been tortured during the interrogation process.
Alejandro Encinas, deputy interior minister for human rights, said a year ago that the release of 21 municipal police officers detained in connection with the disappearance of 43 students was a sign of the “wretchedness and rot” of Mexico’s justice system.
At the end of June, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero said that authorities were seeking to arrest 46 municipal officials in Guerrero for the crimes of forced disappearance and organized crime in relation to the kidnapping of the students. It’s unclear how many of those officials have been detained.
Meanwhile, parents of the students continue to seek the truth about what happened to their sons and where their remains are today.
The parents and other relatives of the victims will march on Saturday from the Angel of Independence in Mexico City to the capital’s central square, the zócalo, where a rally will be held to call for justice.
On Thursday they protested outside the headquarters of the Federal Judicial Council, where they accused judges of acts of corruption in the case. Although the federal government has shown a willingness to get to the bottom of the mystery, a lawyer for the parents said, the Federal Judiciary has not been moving in the same direction.
Disgruntled Interjet customers are preparing a class action suit against the Mexican low-cost airline over the constant cancellation of flights and its reimbursement practices.
The unhappy would-be passengers are also preparing a collective complaint to be filed with the federal consumer protection agency Profeco.
Pablo Martínez Castro, the moderator of a Facebook group called Queja Colectiva a Interjet (Collective Complaint Against Interjet), said that about 3,500 people have signed on to support the legal action.
He said that talks are underway with a law firm interested in representing the dissatisfied customers and that other people who have had bad experiences with Interjet will have the opportunity to join the lawsuit.
In addition to regularly canceling flights, Martínez said, the airline is guilty of two practices that have caused customers to lose significant amounts of money.
He said that when a flight is canceled, Interjet issues customers with vouchers for amounts less than they paid for their tickets. As a result they are forced to pay extra when rebooking a flight on the same route.
Martínez also said that Interjet is duping people by advertising extremely low-cost flights that never get off the ground.
Customers in possession of vouchers from previously-canceled flights use them to buy tickets for the cheap flights, he explained. But when they are canceled, Interjet issues them with a new voucher for the value of the cheap flight, compounding customers’ losses, Martínez said.
Interjet officials have said that the coronavirus pandemic has required the company to modify its operations and make short-term adjustments to meet changing demand.
But they appear to have fallen foul of the law in the process.
According to Mexican civil aviation law, in the event of a flight cancellation affected customers are supposed to be guaranteed another flight to their destination or must be compensated for the full value of the unused flight — minus any flight legs already taken — plus 20% of the ticket’s value.
Interjet, which has financial difficulties, is not the only Mexican airline against which complaints have been filed but it has upset more people than any other, according to Carlos Rebolledo Sánchez, a Profeco director in San Luis Potosí.
He said that customers should check with airlines to ensure that all the flights listed on their websites are in fact scheduled to go ahead.
“A lot of the time airlines announce their flights on their websites and even though they can be booked sometimes they’re not scheduled and are canceled. … They end up giving [customers] electronic vouchers that must be used in less than a year. … That has caused a lot of complaints,” Rebolledo said.
The bad news for Interjet doesn’t end with the looming legal action and its financial difficulties – the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) has suspended its license to operate in Canada for failing to have liability insurance coverage.
The CTA issued an order on September 11 stating that Interjet was not in compliance with section 60 of the Canada Transportation Act. It said that Interjet’s license would be reinstated once it complies with the insurance requirements.
The airline has previously operated flights between Mexico City and Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
Interjet lost 90% of its fleet after 25 leased aircraft were repossessed by creditors in recent months. It is not currently flying any international routes.
Cárdenas: 'I expressed doubts and I believe they didn't always like those doubts.'
The departing chief of the federal agency tasked with distributing funds obtained through the sale of assets seized from organized crime claims that President López Obrador and other high-ranking members of the government expected “blind obedience” of him.
Jaime Cárdenas of the Institute to Return Stolen Goods to the People (Indep) submitted a resignation letter to the president this week in which he claimed that the agency is plagued by corruption and that officials stole jewelry in its possession.
In an interview on Wednesday, Cárdenas said his resignation was related to disagreements he had with López Obrador and his inner circle.
The outgoing Indep director said that they asked him to dismiss employees, cancel contracts and make resources available to other government departments without following proper procedures.
“They believed that I was going to have total and blind obedience to what they told me,” Cárdenas said, adding that he was prepared to follow orders but disagreed with the way officials wanted things to be done.
López Obrador, left, and Cárdenas: he lacked courage to combat corruption, the president said Thursday of the former Indep director.
He said that as a result of his training as a lawyer he insisted on doing things the right way and respecting procedures. His views, Cárdenas added, drove some members of the government to despair because they saw them as obstacles to getting things done.
Despite clashing with López Obrador and members of his team, Cárdenas said that he was – and continues to be – loyal to them.
“But my loyalty wasn’t blind, my loyalty is thoughtful, I believe that’s where the problems started,” he said.
“I expressed doubts and points of views both to the close collaborators of the president as well as the president himself and I believe that they didn’t always like those doubts and remarks,” Cárdenas said, conceding that he lost López Obrador’s support.
The president, he added, believes that politics is about results and that how they are achieved is of lesser importance.
“The president questioned my training as a lawyer several times, … my insistence on procedures,” Cárdenas said after acknowledging that his departure was inevitable.
He said that he still considers López Obrador a “good president” and that he hasn’t become disillusioned with the federal government’s project to transform Mexico.
Earlier on Wednesday, the president charged that Cárdenas quit his post out of fear and a lack of desire to combat corruption within Indep.
The fight against corruption is like the fight between David and Goliath and Cárdenas wasn’t up to it, López Obrador said.
“He didn’t enter [the fight]. … To be a [public] servant in a process of transformation you need desire, conviction and courage, and not give up.”
A vote could also violate the past presidents' right to the presumption of innocence, Justice Aguilar said.
President López Obrador’s plan to ask citizens whether Mexico’s five most recent former presidents should face justice for crimes they may have committed while in office is unconstitutional, according to a Supreme Court judge.
López Obrador sent a request to the Senate last week to approve a national consultation that would ask citizens whether Carlos Salinas, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto should be investigated and put before a court if there is sufficient evidence to do so.
In a submission published Thursday and to be discussed in the Supreme Court on October 1, Justice Luis María Aguilar argues that such a consultation is unconstitutional because it would subject the past presidents’ human rights to the will of the people.
He wrote that a consultation cannot ask citizens either expressly or implicitly about issues that “involve the restriction of human rights recognized in the constitution and in international treaties to which Mexico is party.”
A prohibition on such consultations is necessary because it ensures that Mexicans’ rights are protected, Aguilar said.
Holding a consultation in which citizens are asked whether the appropriate authorities should investigate, prosecute and punish past presidents for crimes they might have committed implies subjugating their human rights to the people when the government should be complying with its obligation to protect those rights, the justice wrote.
Aguilar also argued that a consultation could violate the past presidents’ right to the presumption of innocence.
In addition, he said that if a consultation found that a majority of citizens don’t want the ex-presidents to face justice, a miscarriage of justice could ensue if they had in fact committed crimes while in office.
Such a situation would constitute a betrayal of the constitution and the Mexican people, Aguilar said.
Responding to the justice’s views, López Obrador charged that Aguilar was making arguments already expressed by Calderón, who said last week that if the president has “well-founded proof” that he committed a crime in office he should present it to the Attorney General’s Office rather than hold a consultation.
The president also called on Supreme Court justices to act in accordance with the law and not allow themselves to be intimidated.
In addition, they should “take the sentiment of the people into account,” he said.
“They don’t need to read me article 35 of the Constitution, which establishes that human rights mustn’t be violated. I believe that there is no violation of rights and guarantees … because in the event prosecution takes place, the appropriate authority will have to [act] within the prevailing legal framework,” López Obrador said.
The president has previously indicated that he wouldn’t vote in favor of prosecuting his predecessors because he favors looking to the future rather than dwelling on the past.
Government critics argue that the plan to hold a consultation over prosecuting past presidents is, like the “presidential plane” raffle, a ploy to distract attention from more serious issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and the ailing economy.
