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Comedian investigated for gender-based violence after verbal aggression

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caraveo and torres
The aggrieved senator and YouTuber Torres.

A comedian and YouTuber is being investigated for gender-based violence after calling a female politician an idiot, comparing her to a mollusk and referring to her as mamacita, a word that generally means “cute chick.”

The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) opened an investigation into José Manuel Torres Morales, better known as Chumel Torres, after Bertha Alicia Caraveo Camarena, a senator for Chihuahua with the ruling Morena party, made a legal complaint against him in February.

Torres made the comments on his internet show El Pulso de la República (The Pulse of the Republic), reacting to a Senate speech by Caraveo in which she expressed her support for President López Obrador’s son and his wife after they were criticized for their opulent lifestyle: “All my support and solidarity to José Ramón López Beltrán and his family. And also I’ll tell you: it was, is and will always be an honor to stand by [President] Obrador,” Caraveo said.

Torres interpreted the senator’s words as flattery, and made those feelings plain. “This idiot, I mean moron, is Bertha Caraveo from Chihuahua … just crawl a bit more, be a bit slimier and you’ll grow a shell,” he said.

“Just kiss ass a bit more and you’ll burn your tongue on the president. You’re supposed to be from Chihuahua, mamacita. I’m from Chihuahua and your bullshit doesn’t represent me. You don’t love Mexico, you love López Obrador. Can I tell her to fuck off, or is it a bit strong? Fuck off!” Torres said.

Caraveo wrote on Twitter to confirm that the FGR had opened an investigation and claimed that public prosecutors recognize her “as a victim in accordance with the General Law of Victims for his sexist violence.”

“I’ll continue until dignity becomes customary,” the senator added, and also noted an occasion on which a National Action Party deputy used “crude and unacceptable insults” against her.

Torres reacted to the announcement by saying the investigation demonstrated that freedom of expression was non-existent, before adding that his Chihuahua heritage made him battle ready. “I’m neither sad nor worried because I’m from Chihuahua. I’m from the desert … we walk miles for our cattle to graze; we work all day under the hottest bitch of a sun in the country,” he said.

The comedian added that his internet show would be impossible to silence. “The Pulso de la República is a hydra: if you cut off his head he grows seven more,” he said.

With reports from El Universal

Attorney general reproached for not collaborating in search for missing

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Alejandro Encinas.
There are 99,000 people missing but only 35 convictions for forced disappearance, demonstrating a failure to deliver justice to the victims, says Alejandro Encinas.

A leading government figure in the search for missing people has denounced the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) for failing to help tackle the humanitarian crisis.

Speaking on Monday at a meeting organized by the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), the Deputy Interior Minister, Alejandro Encinas, said that despite the 98,885 missing people in the country, there have been just 35 convictions for forced disappearance, demonstrating a failure to deliver justice to the victims.

The deputy minister said the FGR’s evasive attitude had caused friction with the government. “We have unfortunately had tensions that, in my opinion, were unnecessary … [the FGR] must fulfill its responsibility to carry out searches and investigations in cases where there is an allegation of enforced disappearance … we even went so far as to debate whether or not there was a right for people to be searched for in the event of their disappearance,” he said.

Encinas added that resolving impunity was a duty shared by the three powers of the state with the assistance of volunteer search collectives. “It is a structural problem that requires the consistent and comprehensive action of the state. That involves all levels of government, the three powers of the state … and the participation of the families of the victims, the search collectives,” he said.

For Encinas, the crisis is the result of historical negligence by authorities. “By 1982, we’d already registered more than 883 disappearances that the Mexican state did not recognize … The state tried to minimize and hide this very serious problem and it is largely this abdication, this omission of the Mexican state to face the problem which has led us to this very serious humanitarian crisis.”

However, he said that the failed approach had changed with the new administration. “From the first day of this government we considered the issue of disappearance to be part of a humanitarian crisis and the violation of human rights,” he said, before noting progress through the creation of the National Search Commission (CNB), the National Register of Disappeared and Missing People (RNPDNO) and 2.5 billion pesos (about US $120 million) of investment to tackle the crisis.

Encinas’ criticisms ramp up pressure on Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, who has been accused of improperly intervening in a court case related to the 2015 death of his brother after leaked recordings came to light which appeared to imply his collusion with the Supreme Court.

Homicide and impunity aren’t the only mountainous challenges thrown up by the missing persons crisis. The identification of the remains of victims is comparably intractable: the federal government acknowledged in December that Mexico is facing what the head of the UN committee called a “forensic crisis,” with an estimated 52,000 unidentified bodies in common graves and the nation’s morgues.

A UN report on Mexico’s missing persons crisis is due later this week.

With reports from El Universal

Former Nuevo León governor arrested on electoral crimes charges

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El Bronco
El Bronco is alleged to have used state officials to work on his election campaign for president.

Former Nuevo León Governor Jaime Rodríguez Calderón was arrested Tuesday on electoral crimes charges, state authorities said.

Rodríguez, governor of the northern state between 2015 and 2021, was detained in the municipality of General Terán and taken to a prison in Apodaca, part of the metropolitan area of Monterrey.

The office of the Nuevo León Electoral Crimes Prosecutor said authorities acted on a warrant issued for his arrest due to his “probable participation in events with the characteristics of electoral crimes.”

Media reports said Rodríguez was detained for alleged embezzlement of public funds during his 2018 presidential campaign.

Current Nuevo León Governor Samuel García, previously a federal senator, filed a complaint against the former governor in 2018.

He posted a video to his Twitter account Tuesday in which he declared that he who “stole or diverted public resources to his friends, nephews, favorites or to campaigns will go to jail.”

Rodríguez, widely known as “El Bronco,” allegedly directed some 500 state officials to set aside their usual duties in order to collect signatures of support to ensure that he would appear on ballots for the 2018 presidential election. Many of the signatures were initially deemed to be invalid.

Rodríguez finished fourth among the four candidates, attracting the support of just over 5% of voters. He is well known for using blunt and colorful language during his political career, which also included periods as a state and federal lawmaker and mayor of the municipality of García.

During the first presidential debate in 2018, Rodríguez proposed that thieves should have their hands chopped off, an idea that was widely condemned and ridiculed.

With reports from El Financiero and Milenio 

Gunfights close schools in 2 Michoacán municipalities

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Michoacan students caught in cartel gunfight
Students in a Matanguarán school taking cover as they listen to nearby gunfire outside. Screen capture

Gunfire forced the closure of schools in two Michoacán municipalities in recent days, but most reopened on Monday.

At least two schools in Matanguarán, a community in the municipality of Uruapan, closed Thursday due to a gunfight, while more than 20 in Nuevo Parangaricutiro shut the same day due to a confrontation between presumed members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cárteles Unidos.

In Matanguarán, students and teachers at a primary school and a high school were caught in the crossfire of a shootout, the newspaper Milenio reported. A video posted to Youtube by the newspaper El Sol de Morelia shows students taking cover on the floor of their classroom during the confrontation.

The Matanguarán primary and high schools remained closed on Monday, Milenio said, but the Michoacán Ministry of Education said in a statement that the majority of schools that shut due to violence reopened on Monday.

Milenio visited Matanguarán, an avocado-producing town about 20 kilometers from Uruapan, and reported that armed groups are visible in the area.

Michoacan teachers leaving school under fire by cartels
After being trapped in their school for three hours, teachers and students left the school in a convoy escorted by authorities. Screen capture

The newspaper said that at least a dozen armed men wearing bulletproof vests were seen in a black pickup truck. It said that residents don’t know whether they are members of a self-defense force or drug traffickers but acknowledged that they have been in the area for months. Residents told Milenio that the same men were involved in last week’s gunfight.

In Nuevo Parangaricutiro, which borders Uruapan, last Thursday’s early morning clash left left five men dead. The confrontation occurred in and around the municipal palace in the town of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro. There is a primary school just meters from the municipal palace, but it was empty when the gunfight occurred, Milenio said.

The newspaper reported that the facade of the José María Morelos primary school was damaged by hundreds of bullets during the clash, while the janitor found spent casings in the schoolyard on Monday.

Principal Adolfo Torres noted that the school has protocols to protect students in case of gunfire in close proximity. Three rings of the school bell advise students and teachers to remain in their classrooms and lie down on the floor, he said.

Michoacán was Mexico’s third most violent state last year, with over 2,700 homicides. Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla said recently that pacifying the state might take six years.

With reports from Milenio 

Mexican architect selected for renovation at New York’s Metropolitan Museum

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Frida Escobedo
Escobedo: 'An impressive and inspiring portfolio of projects.'

New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Mexico City-based architect Frida Escobedo will design the US $500 million renovation of its modern and contemporary galleries.

The Met, the largest art museum in the Americas and one of the world’s most prestigious, said in a press release that Escobedo was selected after a comprehensive international search.

“The project will encompass a full reimagining of the current modern and contemporary galleries, which The Met has been seeking to revamp for more than a decade, creating 80,000 square feet of galleries and public space. The cost of the renovation is estimated to be $500 million,” it said.

Daniel H. Weiss, president and CEO of The Met, said that Escobedo’s “impressive and inspiring portfolio of projects and her creative engagement with our team have given us great excitement about this important chapter” for the museum.

Escobedo, 42, has had her own architecture studio in Mexico City since 2006 and has designed a number of competition-winning projects in Mexico, including the renovation of the Hotel Boca Chica in Acapulco and the expansion of the La Tallera museum in Cuernavaca.

Lobby of The Met
Lobby of The Met, one of the world’s most prestigious art museums.

She achieved global acclaim in 2018 when she was appointed to design the Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens, becoming the youngest architect at the time to undertake the annual project.

Escobedo, who is also an architecture academic, said it was an honor to be selected for the “historic architectural reimagining” of the Met.

“The Tang Wing presents an opportunity to give new life to the museum’s art from the 20th and 21st century, to celebrate the dynamics we can find within art of different times, geographies, and ideologies, and to uncover new spaces for self-reflection and connection with others,” she said.

Met director Max Hollein said the new wing will be “a vibrant, exhilarating space” that meets the museum’s current and future needs.

Escobedo told The New York Times in an interview that it was too soon to discuss her specific ideas for the new wing but remarked that it was “important for it to connect to the rest of the museum, to connect with the park, to connect with the city and also to represent the cultural diversity of New York.”

Founded in 1870, the Met is located on Fifth Avenue on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It has a vast collection of art from all over the world and attracted some 6.5 million visitors in 2019 before attendance declined due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mexico News Daily 

Vacant office space at record level in Mexico City

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office space advertised at wework.com
Office space in currently being advertised as available in Interlomas, where 35.2% of workspaces are unoccupied. wework.com

Almost one-quarter of office space in Mexico City was empty at the end of last year, a record high.

There were 1.76 million vacant square meters of office space in the final quarter of 2021, which is almost 24% of the 7.48 million square meters pertaining to the city’s 10 main office districts, according to the real estate company JLL.

Office space in the city’s north corridor, which covers areas near Mexico City’s Northern Ring Road as well as the México state municipalities of Cuautitlán and Tlalnepantla, was 51.4% empty. In Lomas Altas, in the city’s west, 40.9% of office space was vacant. Further west in Interlomas, in Huixquilucan, México state, 35.2% of office workspaces were without tenants.

JLL spokesman Héctor Klerian told the newspaper Milenio that a fall in demand and increase in supply had caused a spike in vacancies.

“There is currently 20% more space available compared to the same period last year,” he said. “The vacancies derive from the impacts of COVID-19, coupled with the incorporation of new buildings into the inventory and oversupply that has existed since 2020 … in 2018 and 2019, when the pandemic was unforeseen, buildings were being constructed.”

“With the [pandemic], developers decided to stop their projects,” he said.

Office building under construction in Polanco, Mexico City
The Rio San Joaquín office building currently being built in the Polanco neighborhood, one project that has survived the pandemic. Anáhuac Constructora

Klerian explained that around 43% of the vacant office space is currently furnished, a market adaptation that resulted from the pandemic. “Before this did not happen,” he said. “All the available offices were completely unfurnished and the tenant had to adapt the space. This complicates the picture for those who are still letting unfurnished spaces.”

However, Klerian added that the market was showing signs of recovery: in the final quarter of 2021, there was an increase of 126,056 square meters of unused office space, down from an increase of 173,905 square meters in the previous quarter.

“We expect that trend to continue in 2022. We are seeing more activity and many more requests and renewals, which is a good sign,” Klerian said. “I believe that when the quarter ends, we will see more positive data than we did in 2021.”

Other real estate experts in Mexico also predict a gradual recovery.

Gonzalo Robina, who heads the real estate investment fund Fibra Uno, said that growth was likely after such a huge contraction. “The office market, I think, has already bottomed out. We are at the lowest occupancy levels on record, and from here on out, I only see growth … there is a huge number of potential tenants,” he said.

Jorge Avalos Carpinteyro, head of the real estate investment fund Fibra Monterrey, said that he expects office occupancy to return to pre-pandemic levels before 2025.

With reports from Milenio

Argentina proposes axis with Brazil and Mexico

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Argentine President Alberto Fernández
Argentine President Alberto Fernández. Facebook

Argentine President Alberto Fernández has proposed the creation of an axis between Mexico, Brazil and Argentina should former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva return to power.

In a letter to President López Obrador, Fernández noted that AMLO, a fellow leftist, had recently spent time with the Argentine president’s “dear friend Lula,” another leftist who was president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and intends to run for president in the 2022 Brazilian general election, which will take place in October.

“He’s a great person and the best leader that South America has had and has. We should accompany him in every way we can,” Fernández wrote.

Argentina’s leader also said the election of Lula as president would benefit the “long-suffering people” of Brazil and allow the establishment of a Mexico-Brazil-Argentina, or MBA, axis, which could promote policies aimed at improving democracy in Latin America and distributing wealth in a more equitable way.

“We must never forget that we live in the world’s most unequal continent,” Fernández wrote.

AMLO and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, right, met with President López Obrador in Mexico City on March 2. lopezobrador.org.mx

In a gushing letter that López Obrador posted to his Twitter account on Sunday, Fernández also said that he had thought that capitalism would be “revised” as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and that “social ethics sullied by the greed of the powerful” would be recovered.

“I was wrong. After the pandemic, we didn’t manage to improve ourselves. … I believe, dear Andrés Manuel, that we must join forces to change this shocking reality,” he wrote.

Fernández also referred to the recent visit to Argentina by López Obrador’s wife Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller in glowing terms and invited his counterpart to make the trip south as well.

“I told Beatriz that I want to welcome you in Argentina. I know that you’re not keen on leaving Mexico. But you should make an exception just to brighten the life of someone who is fond of you, respects you and admires you: that’s me,” he wrote.

López Obrador described the letter as a “beautiful, authentic and fraternal political proclamation.”

Fernández, who has led Argentina since late 2019, has an affectionate relationship with AMLO, and even appeared via video link at one of his friend’s morning press conferences.

On Sunday, President López Obrador posted a gushing letter from Argentine President Alberto Fernández.

 

Lula, who spent almost two years in prison after being convicted on corruption charges in 2017, was in Mexico City earlier this month.

“Great meeting this morning with President López Obrador. We spoke about social justice, combating hunger, the brotherhood of Latin America and the need for peace in our world,” the former president tweeted on March 2.

With reports from Reforma and El Universal 

2 dead, 19 injured in Playa del Carmen restaurant explosion

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Kool Beach Club after Monday's explosion.
Kool Beach Club after Monday's explosion.

A gas explosion at a beach side restaurant left at least two people dead and 19 injured, including one foreigner, in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, on Monday.

Kool Beach Club, located next to Mamitas Beach on the city’s central beach strip, was partially destroyed by the blast, which shook neighboring buildings.

Eight seriously injured people were taken to hospital while 11 others were treated for shock and light injuries at the scene.

The explosion was the result of a gas leak rather than a premeditated attack, the head of public security in Playa del Carmen said.

Raúl Tassinari said the injuries were caused by the collapse of part of the building. “It looks like it was a gas leak that occurred in the kitchen; so far we have 19 people injured, two possibly deceased, who are trapped under rubble. Part of the structure collapsed in the kitchen,” he said.

Tassinari added that the two fatalities were restaurant workers and that a woman was trapped inside. “We have only one foreign person with minor injuries … We are going to assess the injured right now in the clinics. I have a female trapped in the place who is alive.”

The nationality of the of the injured foreigner has not been confirmed.

A customer who was visiting the restaurant with a Polish friend said the explosion shook neighboring buildings. He said that after the blast they both temporarily took refuge before helping injured people.

The explosion will not help recover Playa del Carmen’s reputation as a safe destination. Adding to a string of violent incidents in Quintana Roo since October, a British businessman was shot dead in front of his daughter in Playa del Carmen on Saturday.

Another of those incidents was the the murder of the manager of Mamita’s Beach Club in late January, which is just meters from Kool Beach Club.

The United States government issued a security alert for Quintana Roo in January and the FBI launched an investigation into criminal activity in the state in February.

With reports from Reforma, La Prensa and El Universal

Cartel boss’s capture described as a ‘major blow’ against organized crime

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Juan Gerardo Treviño
Juan Gerardo Treviño after his arrest in Nuevo Laredo Sunday.

Federal authorities have detained the leader of the Northeast Cartel, an arrest described by Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard as one of the most significant of the past decade.

The Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) said in a statement that the army, federal Attorney General’s Office, National Intelligence Center and National Guard collaborated in an operation that resulted in the arrest Sunday of Juan Gerardo Treviño Chávez in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

It said that Treviño, also known as “El Huevo,” is the leader of the Northeast Cartel and the Tropa del Infierno (Hell’s Army), the cartel’s armed wing. Those groups are “heirs” to the Zetas criminal organization and instigators of violence in five states, Sedena said.

Treviño was the subject of three arrest warrants: one in Tamaulipas for extortion and criminal association; one in Coahuila for homicide and terrorism; and “one for extradition purposes” for conspiracy to traffic drugs and money laundering.

Sedena said that “El Huevo” – nephew of a former, currently-imprisoned leader of the Zetas known as Z40 – was detained in possession of two weapons whose use is restricted to the armed forces. His arrest came after military personnel came under attack by a group of armed men in Nuevo Laredo, located across the border from Laredo, Texas. Treviño was the only attacker taken into custody.

Video shows the reaction to Treviño’s arrest Monday morning in Nuevo Laredo.

 

“The arrest of Juan Gerardo, … “El Huevo,” represents a forceful blow to the leadership of the Northeast Cartel,” Sedena said.

Speaking to reporters Monday after a meeting in Mexico City with United States Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Foreign Minister Ebrard said that the arrest was a major blow to organized crime and noted that it occurred within the context of the new Mexico-U.S. security agreement.

“This man Treviño … is one of the main drug trafficking, arms trafficking and people trafficking leaders,” he said. “I believe it’s one of the most important arrests of the last decade.”

The capture triggered a violent response in Nuevo Laredo, where gunfire, the torching of vehicles and blockades on main roads were reported Sunday night and early Monday.

Soldiers were the target of 35 acts of aggression in the hours after Treviño was arrested, El Universal reported. Citing federal sources, the newspaper said that in one attack, the occupants of an armored pickup truck shot at military barracks in Nuevo Laredo. No casualties were reported.

Armed men also shot at the offices of the Tamaulipas Electoral Institute. The United States Consulate General in the northern border city warned of an “emergency situation” near the U.S. consulate in a Twitter post early Monday.

It said later that “due to reports of gunfire overnight near the U.S. Consulate and in locations throughout Nuevo Laredo, U.S. government employees have been advised to continue to shelter in place.”

“U.S. citizens should avoid the areas or continue to shelter in place,” the consulate added.

One Nuevo Laredo family told El Universal that they lived through more than three hours of terror after Treviño was arrested.

“It was like having a war in the backyard of the house because we could even hear the sound of the bullets passing, given that we live two streets from the United States Consulate. We spent the whole time lying on the floor,” one family member said.

“We’re scared. Yesterday on social media they said nobody should go out, that the situation was going to get ugly. We’re going to impose a curfew on ourselves, for safety. … The best thing is to be at home, to not take chances.”

Treviño, a U.S. citizen, was deported and turned over to U.S. authorities at the Tijuana-San Diego border crossing following his arrest.

With reports from El Universal and Milenio

17 bodies discovered in abandoned Sonora homes

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The Rastreadoras de Ciudad Obregón at work at one of the burial sites they discovered.
The Rastreadoras de Ciudad Obregón at work at one of the burial sites they discovered.

At least 17 bodies were found buried under the patios of abandoned houses in Sonora between Friday and Sunday.

Relatives of missing people and authorities worked together to uncover the bodies and other skeletal remains in Cajeme, 250 kilometers south of Hermosillo. The victims died between six months and a year before their bodies were recovered, the Sonora Attorney General’s Office said. It added that the remains would be forensically examined to determine the identities of the victims.

The search was conducted by the collectives Guerreras Buscadoras de Ciudad Obregón (Warrior Searchers of Ciudad Obregón) and Rastreadoras de Ciudad Obregón (Trackers of Ciudad Obregón) in Urbi Villa del Rey and Urbi Villa del Real.

Lira Muñoz, a member of the Rastreadoras, said that the group received anonymous calls pointing them to the site.

“We were told many times by people that we should search there. We went and we found all this,” she said, adding that she thought the final count would be higher than 17.

Muñoz also explained how the collectives search for bodies.

“We work with T-shaped rods. When the tip of the rod comes out [of the ground], there is a smell [when a body is present] … then when the rod is put into the ground again, it sinks because the earth has been removed,” she said.

Muñoz has already found the body of her missing daughter, Fernanda Sañudo Lira, but continues to help other members of the collective search for their loved ones.

The weekend’s find is the second highest number of missing people discovered in the area. In 2019, 38 people were found buried on a property adjacent to a place called Campo 30.

Despite the work of search collectives to uncover the remains of missing people, whether those bodies will ever be identified is an open question. The federal government acknowledged in December that Mexico is facing what the head of the United Nations (UN) Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) called a “forensic crisis,” with an estimated 52,000 unidentified bodies in common graves and the nation’s morgues.

At the time, the Deputy Interior Minister, Alejandro Encinas, conceded that the government doesn’t have the capacity to guarantee the identification of bodies and ensure they are returned to their families.

Meanwhile, UN representatives said on Monday that impunity is the biggest challenge facing the government from the missing persons crisis. At a meeting organized by the UN, Encinas said there were at least 98,885 missing people in the country, which had resulted in just 35 convictions.

With reports from Reforma and Infobae

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