Former Federal Police officials Orta and Hernández are wanted for embezzlement.
A federal judge has issued arrest warrants for 19 former officials of the Federal Police (PF), including the previous chief of the Mexico City police, for embezzling millions of pesos during the term of former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
Jesús Orta Martínez, who resigned as the capital’s police chief last October, and Frida Martínez Zamora are among those suspected of being part of a scam in which government contracts were inflated and funds intended for the acquisition of vehicles, uniforms, weapons and technology were diverted for personal gain.
Martínez has been a close associate of Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, who was interior minister and responsible for the police force at the time, since 2004, the year before he became governor of Hidalgo. He is currently an Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) senator.
Both Orta and Martínez were secretaries general of the Federal Police at the time of the alleged embezzlement.
Federal authorities said Martínez is not currently in Mexico while Orta’s whereabouts are unknown. An attempt to arrest him at his home was unsuccessful.
Former interior minister Osorio Chong.
The Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) first uncovered the financial malfeasance in 2019. Authorities say Orta and Martínez alone are believed to have embezzled millions of pesos.
Among the items that caught the attention of the Special Prosecutor for Investigation of Organized Crime were payments of between 15 million and 30 million pesos (US $671,000 to $1.34 million at today’s exchange rate) in Orta and Martínez’s names.
Investigators discovered that a 2.6 billion-peso, no-bid contract to purchase technology from Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems was issued at four times market value and only half that amount was actually paid.
The police force also signed contracts for the maintenance of its land and air fleets during the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years in the amount of 890 million pesos, of which it only actually paid 467 million.
In addition to Orta and Martínez, among the 19 sought by police are former PF commander Carlos Hipólito Rivera Codin, who was a ranking official with the National Guard until last Friday, and Eleuterio Enrique Pérez Romero, a high-ranking official with the Ministry of the Interior.
Also wanted by authorities are Francisco Javier Cruz Rosas, former private secretary to the leader of the PF’s anti-drug division, and Federico Emilio Metzger Sánchez Armas, property administrator for the PF.
None of the 19 had been arrested as of noon Tuesday.
While Mexico’s toy industry has suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic, one bright spot has been for board game makers: they have seen a sharp increase in demand from consumers confined to their homes.
“Board games have taken the lead, followed by toys for infants, then by toys for children aged 3 to 7, followed by superhero toys and electronic games,” said Mexican Game Makers Association (Amiju) president Miguel Ángel Martín in an interview with El Universal.
Board game makers are riding a wave of specialized demand for both their types of games and electronic toys, although the toy industry as a whole has so far suffered a 50% decrease in sales in 2020.
But with entire families confined to their homes, board games have made a comeback in Mexico, as parents seek entertainment they can engage in with their children and escape the sense of confinement. Electronic toys and games that connect to the Internet, such as electronic robots that can be controlled by a smart phone, have also been popular.
The vast majority of sales are happening online, said Martín.
In general, the industry is “hoping for a miracle” for the rest of the year, he said, expecting to close 2020 with half the sales it saw in 2019 — and that’s assuming holiday sales numbers of US $1.4 to $1.5 billion in December, a far cry from the $2.8 billion the industry earned last year.
A big blow to the industry this year came from the cancellation of the annual Day of the Child celebrations due to restrictions on public gatherings. Martín cited the holiday, celebrated on April 30, as the center of an entire spring sales season for children’s toy sales. The holiday’s cancellation “punished the entire season,” he said, and ran right into what is normally a low-demand period during the summer that lasts until December and January, when Christmas and Kings Day spark more gift buying for children.
In addition, Martin said, many small toy manufacturers in the country have closed due to the pandemic, creating a perfect storm where medium-sized retailers that relied on the smaller toymakers for merchandise are facing supply problems in addition to being unable to open to the public because of government Covid-19 restrictions.
The bus rolled over on the Mexico City-Toluca highway.
Thirteen people were killed and 24 injured after a bus rolled over on the Mexico City-Toluca highway in México state around 3 a.m. Tuesday.
The accident occurred in the city of Ocoyoacac, according to México state authorities, and temporarily closed the La Marquesa-Toluca stretch of the highway in the direction of Toluca.
The bus, which was bound for Puerto Vallarta, was traveling at an excessive speed on wet pavement caused by recent rains, according to a preliminary report.
It is the second major accident on a highway in México state in as many days. On Monday, an accident on the Tenango-Ixtapan de la Sal highway involving a tractor-trailer, two cars and a state security truck left four people injured.
Frames from the video chat between the senator and his wife.
A Nuevo León senator found himself at the center of a trending firestorm on social media after he publicly scolded his wife on an Instagram Live video for “showing too much leg.”
During the live transmission between himself and his wife that was visible to their Instagram followers, Senator Samuel García is seen at one point ordering his wife, fashion and beauty influencer Mariana Rodríguez,to raise her webcam because “she’s showing too much leg” in the video feed, in which a thigh was visible.
Rodríguez at first protests that only her knee is showing, but then ends up putting her leg down after Garcia tells her twice that she is showing too much.
“Put down your leg. Don’t keep showing so much leg. I married you for me, not so you can be showing off [your body],” Garcia said in the video.
The video, meant to be a casual, socially distanced meal between the couple, soon went viral, attracting widespread criticism on social media yesterday, including Twitter, where it inspired the trending hashtag #YoEnseñoLoQueQuiera (I show what I want).
WEY NETA? No se que me da mas tristeza si ver a @marianardzcant pidiendo perdón por enseñar su rodilla en un en vivo, o a su “esposo” el senador de Nuevo León, valiéndole madre y siendo un machista, tóxico, etc. YOU NAME IT!
Que tristeza la neta. #MarianaRodriguez#samuelgarciapic.twitter.com/QRUGBwqMsB
Critiques of García online called him chauvinist and said it was evidence that the culture of toxic masculinity and violence against women is still normalized in Mexico. Even the general secretary of García’s own party, Movimiento Ciudadano, weighed in: Jorge Álvarez Máynez criticized the senator’s attitude on Twitter Monday, calling it “macho,” although his statement also implied that García had been joking.
“A great amount of aggression and expressions of violence against women have been hidden in ‘humor’ and the presumed lightness with which we repeat them,” he wrote on Twitter yesterday. “This is the moment to understand them, take them seriously, and rectify them. There is no room for incongruence.”
Soon afterward, García issued a public apology on Twitter, picking up on Álvarez’s characterization of his comments.
“I agree with @AlvarezMaynez,” he said on Twitter. “Macho jokes are a bad custom that many men engage in, and we have to stop. I already apologized to Mariana and I am grateful to be called out on these sorts of attitudes. They’re not correct, and they have to stop.”
Senator García has indicated publicly that he wants to run for governor in next year’s election.
Covid-19 testing in Mexico City: analysis suggests there have not been enough tests. cgtn
Mexico’s response to the coronavirus has received poor marks in a study by Foreign Policy magazine, which ranked it 34th out of 36 nations analyzed for their handling of the pandemic.
The magazine’s Covid-19 Global Response Indexfound that Mexico’s management of the pandemic is one of “the worst” due to its “weak financial response and [fragile] public health policy, including its very limited testing.”
Foreign Policy evaluated countries on public health directives, financial responses, and fact-based public communications. The magazine scored Mexico at 4.5 out of 100. New Zealand, which has reported just 1,570 confirmed cases and has a 0.45 mortality rate per 100,000 people, topped the list with a perfect score of 100. Mexico’s mortality rate is nearly 100 times greater at 42 per 100,000.
President López Obrador’s financial response to the pandemic, which included choosing not to raise public debt, mobilize emergency funds or provide significant federal aid, preferring instead to cut salaries for public servants, received a low mark from the magazine, as did his public policy directives.
Few tests have been carried out in Mexico compared to other countries, and funds dedicated exclusively to the health emergency are limited, which has helped engender conflict between federal and state governments and unequal responses in different areas of the country.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
Analysts were also concerned about the high number of positive coronavirus tests, which suggests that testing is mainly performed on those who are already ill, indicating a reactive rather than proactive stance on combating the spread of the virus.
The magazine also pointed to the country’s risk of contagion from the United States, which has manifested itself in the elevated number of coronavirus cases in the border region.
The only category in which Mexico obtained an acceptable score was in its communications, which Foreign Policy found to be based on scientific data and hard facts.
Joining Mexico in the bottom six on the index were the United States, Indonesia, Turkey, China and Iran.
Mexico’s handling of the pandemic has become global news. Yesterday, The New York Times reported on the health crisis in Mexico with a cover story titled “I’d Rather Stay Home and Die,” detailing Mexicans’ distrust of the country’s health system and their reluctance to go to the hospital with coronavirus symptoms, which could skew the accuracy of numbers of confirmed cases and increase the spread of the disease.
And the pandemic may be far from being under control. The latest projections from the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation estimate that by December 1 Mexico will register 118,810 deaths from the coronavirus, a prediction that, if accurate, will mean that the current death toll will double in less than four months.
As of Monday, Mexico had recorded the sixth-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world with 485,836, and 53,003 deaths, the third-highest in the world.
There were 705 deaths and 5,558 new cases reported on Monday.
Health promotion chief Ricardo Cortés presents virus statistics Sunday at the nightly briefing.
Coronavirus deaths rose 987 on the weekend for a total of 52,298, while confirmed cases were up 10,871 to reach 480,278.
Health Ministry spokesman Ricardo Cortés Alcalá said 322,465 people are still recovering, either in hospitals or at home, while over 84,500 people nationally are currently awaiting test results.
However, Cortés highlighted the fact that in recent weeks some states have seen a decrease in the number of cases, including Baja California, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Sinoloa, and México state.
Sinoloa has seen a 22% reduction in cases, with its worst-hit cities, Guasave and Culiacán, seeing reductions as well. The city of Navolato, however, has seen a slight increase. Baja California has seen a 21%reduction, although the cities of Mexicali and Ensenada remain classified as hotspots.
Oaxaca has 16% fewer cases than last week, with high numbers recorded only in the capital and the city of Huajuapan de León, although those cities’ numbers are down as well compared to last week. México state has also seen a reduction in cases, 15% fewer in the last three weeks.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
In Chiapas, the percentage of active cases has gone down to only 3%, with cases remaining only in the cities of Tuxtla Gutiérrez and Tapachala, an improvement over the 16% rise the state experienced between July 20 and August 2.
Hospital bed availability nationally is currently at 60%. The states currently with the fewest number of beds available are Colima with 34% availability, Nuevo León with 35%, and Baja California and Tabasco with 52%. Mexico City fared the best of the worst, with 55% availability. The number of total beds in hospitals in Mexico’s hospitals is 30,998. The number of currently available beds is 18,451, Cortés said.
Benito Hernández's fairy-tale house in the desert.
While Mexico as a whole may have suffered a blow to its tourist trade this year, an unusual tourist magnet still exists deep in the Coahuila desert, attracting intrepid visitors from far and wide: a home built directly into a 15-meter-high, 850-tonne boulder that hangs over it.
San José de las Piedras already attracts some tourists due to prehistoric cave paintings and hiking trails in the area. Gold prospectors and archaeology and paleontology enthusiasts also visit. And so despite tourism being down all over Mexico, the community is still attracting visitors, many of whom make a stop at the one-of-a-kind home built by Benito Hernández.
Visitors come from both inside and outside Mexico and Hernández, 70, welcomes them all with open arms, saying he enjoys the fact that his home has become a tourist site. He believes part of the attraction right now is that the desert area is so remote and therefore safer than the bigger cities from which many of his visitors arrive.
“Here we don’t have any [coronavirus] and I believe that people who are afraid of it come here for the desert … Here there’s no disease, there’s nothing.”
Hernández, whom his neighbors have dubbed “The Man of the Caves,” started building the rustic home decades ago in San Miguel, a remote environmentally protected area 400 kilometers from Piedras Negras and about 800 kilometers from Texas. But he has been captivated by the site nearly all his life. He first saw the rock formation about 60 years ago as an 8-year-old and never forgot it.
Hernández inside a room that serves as living room, kitchen and dining room.
“I thought, ‘One day, when I’m grown, I’ll marry and have kids and come back here.’”
Twenty years later, he managed to buy the site and he and his wife began to convert the spot into a home, doing extensive and exhausting excavation work to make a house fit.
“I suffered everything: cold days, sunny days, hunger,” he says. “I got fed up at times, but I worked on it for my wife and seven children. My oldest, who is 43, grew up here.”
The result is like something out of a fairy tale or a fantasy novel: the large rock formation serves literally as the home’s roof and is visible from the inside. It is the home’s main architectural feature, having been built around the boulder’s shape. His bed, for example, only has a few feet of clearance beneath the ceiling. The house has a wood stove for heat and uses gas lanterns for lighting.
But the rock roof offers protection against weather extremes. Hernández says the outside temperature can drop to -7 C or climb to a stifling 47 but inside the three-room house remains comfortable.
Despite its unique qualities, the home has not only attracted tourists but also interested buyers. Hernández claims he’s been offered as much as 2 million pesos for the property. But he’s not interested in selling at any price what he considers his life’s work as well as a family homestead.
“I have seven children, and those seven children are up to their ears in grandchildren,” he says. “I’m living here until God says otherwise. I’m not leaving.”
Calderón, left, accused López Obrador of political persecution.
Mexico was a narco-state during the administration of former president Felipe Calderón, given the evidence that has been coming out against his former security minister, president López Obrador said Monday.
He told his morning press conference that in the past he had believed the term was incorrect but today, based on evidence against Genaro García Luna that has been released by authorities in the United States, the president feels otherwise.
“… with everything that is coming to light, one can say Mexico was a narco-state because the government had been taken over.”
None of the evidence has been proven in court.
“It is truly a disgraceful matter that [García] acted as minister while at the same time he protected one of the organized crime gangs,” the president declared.
García is in a United States prison awaiting trial. He is accused of receiving millions of dollars in bribes to protect the Sinaloa Cartel.
The president’s comments followed questions about U.S. drug charges against two former officials who were close to García. He said Ramón Pequeño García and Luis Cárdenas Palomino will be investigated by the Attorney General’s Office.
Later this morning, Calderón accused the president of carrying out a “political persecution” against him and rejected “categorically” that Mexico was a narco-state during his term between 2006 and 2012.
“It’s political harassment on the part of the president and his people against me … it’s political revenge …”
Calderón bested López Obrador in the 2006 presidential election.
Calderón said the latter was attempting to divert attention away from the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout.
This herb salt is better if you dry the herbs yourself.
Mexican cooks and culture appreciate good salt; in fact, the Latin (and Spanish) word for salt, sal, is the root of the word “salary.”
Sadly, like so many other things, the essence of this simple, natural product has been lost through commercialization. But if you know what to look for, Mexico offers several delicious, affordable, natural salts.
Some of the best natural sea salt comes from Colima, and if you’ve been anywhere on the west coast you’ve undoubtedly seen bags of it for sale at roadside stands in beachfront towns. Full of minerals and made traditionally (i.e. organically), the crystals are quite big and a bit chunky, with a salty, fresh taste and naturally occurring minerals.
In the U.S. you’d pay about $2 an ounce for this salt through Amazon; outside of Puerto Vallarta on the coastal roads half-kilo bags are five for 50 pesos. Most Mexican grocery store chains carry Colima salt as well.
If you can find it, Mayan Pink Salt is another wonderful natural salt. Found in lakes on the northern tip of the Yucatán peninsula, the pink color comes from the thousands of tiny brine shrimp that inhabit the waters there.
Salinera - Exploring Baja episode 4
Baja California is home to Exportadora de Sal, the biggest commercial saltworks in the world. This salinera in the Ojo de Liebre Lagoon is within a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It takes about a year for a batch of seawater to be turned into salt through a series of crystallization steps. Some of their commercially packaged salts have iodine and anti-caking agents added, though, so do read labels carefully.
Without going on too much of a rant, refined table salt has anti-caking agents added to increase shelf life, as well as aluminum, ferrocyanide and bleach. These chemicals, which keep salt from absorbing moisture on the shelf, also interfere with salt’s main function of regulating hydration in the body.
Table salt is highly concentrated and doesn’t do your body or your food any favors.
If you’re accustomed to using common table salt on everything, the stronger, harsher, slightly metallic taste will seem “normal” to you. It may take a little while before your taste buds can appreciate the cleaner, lighter taste of a less-refined salt. Do a side-by-side tasting and you’ll see the difference.
Kosher salt — inexpensive and easy to find – is also unrefined, with larger crystals that dissolve slower, so it’s easier to control how much you’re salting something. Why is it called kosher salt? Not because it’s been blessed by a rabbi – although it can be — but because the size of the crystals makes it ideal for use in the koshering process of drawing moisture from meat.
The best thing is to find one kind of salt you like and stick with it. (But not table salt!) You may need to use more of a natural or kosher salt to get the flavor you’re looking for.
Harvesting Mayan Pink Salt.
Fresh Garlic Salt
Minerals and iodine in table or sea salt can cause the garlic to discolor, so be sure to use kosher salt. Have a dehydrator? Use that instead of the oven.
About ¼ cup of garlic cloves, about 1½ heads of garlic
1 cup kosher salt
Peel garlic cloves and place in a food processor. Add the salt. Process for about 20 seconds until it reaches the consistency of sand. Spread mixture on a baking sheet and bake at 180 F for about an hour, until dry and crisp. Put mixture back into the food processor and pulse several times until it resembles the texture of cornmeal. Store in an air-tight jar. Keeps about 3 months.
Herb Salt
Drying the fresh herbs yourself — in a dehydrator, oven or air-dried — will make for more vibrant flavors, but it’s not necessary. This recipe makes 32 ounces; cut it down or make small jars to give as gifts.
2 cups kosher or coarse sea salt
½ cup dried parsley
½ cup dried rosemary
½ cup dried thyme
½ cup dried oregano
½ cup dried granulated garlic (see recipe above)
(If drying herbs in the oven, set at 150-200 F and watch carefully. Time will depend on type and amount of herbs.) Using fingers or a fork, combine salt and dried herbs in a large bowl until all ingredients are evenly distributed. Store in an airtight glass jar.
Chile Lime Salt (like Tajín)
Use packaged chile powder or make your own.
¼ cup salt
1 tsp. chile powder OR 1 dried ancho chile
Juice (and zest) of 1 lime
Zest the lime; set aside. In a small bowl, mix salt and juice of the lime. Add zest and spread in thin layer on a cookie sheet. Bake at 200 F for 10-20 minutes, stirring once. Don’t let it get too brown! Wipe the ancho chile clean and grind into a fine powder, using a blender, spice grinder or food processor. Add chile powder to salt/zest mixture and mix well. Store in an airtight container.
There are several kinds of salt, but common table salt is not recommended.
Salt-Crusted Fish
Sealing the fish with a salt paste results in a flavor-filled, moist flakiness. The “stuffing” ingredients are suggestions — feel free to play around with what you have or use none at all.
1 whole fish, with skin, about 1 kilo
4½ cups kosher salt
3-4 egg whites
¼ cup water
3 Tbsp. chopped cilantro or parsley, divided
2 Tbsp. julienned sun-dried tomatoes
1 Tbsp. chopped kalamata olives
2 Tbsp. chopped shallots
2 slices lemon, sliced in half
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
Black pepper
Preheat oven to 400 F. If stuffing the fish, fill the cavity with the sun-dried tomatoes, olives, shallots and lemon slices. Make two small slashes through the skin on each side of the fish. Rub exterior of fish with the garlic, then sprinkle with 1 Tbsp. of parsley/cilantro and pepper.
In a bowl, mix salt, egg whites, remaining parsley/cilantro and water to a paste-like consistency. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment (it makes clean-up easier), then use the paste to create a “bed” for the fish, spreading a layer about ¼ inch thick that’s approximately the size of the fish. Lay the fish down on the “bed” and cover completely with salt mixture. If the fish is too long, leave tail uncovered. Try to seal the fish on all sides. Bake about 25 minutes for a two-pound fish. (Add five minutes more for every extra pound.) Let rest for 10 minutes; remove salt crust and skin. Serve immediately.
Janet Blaser has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life and feels fortunate to be able to write about great food, amazing places, fascinating people and unique events. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.
A man authorities say was the leader of the Los Rojos criminal organization and who has been linked to the case of 43 students kidnapped in 2014 has been sentenced to 20 years in prison on organized crime charges.
Santiago “El Carrete” Mazarí Hernández, who was apprehended in August 2019 on organized crime and kidnapping charges, operated in Morelos and Guerrero, where at one point he gave orders to 15 of Morelos’ most wanted criminals. He operated mainly in Tetecala, Jojutla, Zacatepec, Amacuzac and Puente de Ixtla, according to officials.
Felipe “El Cepillo” Rodríguez Salgado, former head of the Guerreros Unidos gang — has implicated Mazarí in the case of the Ayotzinapa teacher training college students. In a recorded interrogation, Rodríguez said that one of the students told him that Mazarí had paid the teachers college director to send the 43 students to demonstrate and “cause disturbances” in Iguala, Guerrero, against then-mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez.
On September 26, 2014, 43 male students from the college disappeared in the same city.
Federal authorities’ previous version of events alleged that municipal police in Iguala attacked the students, probably because they mistook them for being affiliated with the Los Rojos, then handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos, who killed and burned them before dumping their bodies. However, that version of events has been disputed by many. Last month, a new video emerged of Rodríguez under interrogation and appeared to have been tortured.
In 2018, President López Obrador announced he was reopening the investigation into the case.
Both Los Rojos and the Guererros Unidos, groups which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) cites as major traffickers of heroin, are believed to be spinoff groups of the Beltran Leyva cartel, active in Sinaloa until 2014. According to a recent DEA report, the two active groups casually cooperate with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Los Zetas cartel.
