Head of the National Electoral Institute Lorenzo Córdova.
That President López Obrador is proposing an electoral reform three weeks after “impeccable” elections were held is “unbelievable,” according to the head of the National Electoral Institute (INE).
The president proposed this week that Congress pass an electoral reform that would entail replacing all members of the INE, implementing new rules to ensure that electoral authorities are impartial and cutting costs associated with running elections.
Speaking at a forum on democracy on Thursday, INE chief Lorenzo Córdova warned against the reform.
“It’s unbelievable that three weeks after an election like this, the president of the republic is insisting on electoral reform. Careful with electoral reforms!” he said.
Such reform should only be carried out if it is absolutely necessary “because the current times are of great risk, of great demagogy,” Córdova said, making a thinly veiled attack on López Obrador.
He said that reform might not “strengthen what we have today” but rather weaken the system that has been “diligently” built over years.
“… Improving [the electoral system] is good, but a reform opens the door to eventual backward steps and eventual risks,” the INE president said.
Any reform that is carried out should be based on “real diagnoses” of problems that need to be solved, he said. “If you’re not clear about the problem you want to solve, … it makes no sense to undertake a reform because you can open up a Pandora’s box.”
He made it clear that he doesn’t believe reform is necessary because despite the pandemic, electoral violence and “unprecedented” verbal attacks on the INE, the June 6 elections were “impeccable” from “a technical and organizational point of view.”
“… They were probably the best elections [ever] … due to the context [in which they were held],” Córdova said.
He also noted that several reforms to improve the electoral system have already been carried out.
“They were all incremental reforms. [Let’s be] careful. Opening the door to electoral reform in the current times could translate into an electoral counterreform,” Córdova said.
Pueblos Unidos members said they have been forced into protecting their farmland from organized crime because of authorities' inaction.
Fed up with being besieged by criminal organizations, avocado and blackberry producers in Michoacán formed their own armed group that is successfully keeping cartel members out of four municipalities.
Some 3,000 farmers and farmhands from Salvador Escalante, Ario de Rosales, Nuevo Urecho and Taretán have taken up arms over the past eight months to defend themselves and their land from attacks by criminal organizations. A spate of kidnappings in the area and frequent demands for extortion money motivated them to act.
Now, according to a report by the newspaper Milenio, an armed private security force — “a parallel authority” — operates in the four neighboring municipalities, located approximately 100 kilometers southwest of Morelia.
“With high-powered weapons, they have shut off access to their communities for drug traffickers and hitmen, choosing who comes in and who doesn’t,” the report said.
Although the armed group — called Pueblos Unidos, or United Towns — has similarities to self-defense groups that have emerged in Michoacán and some other parts of Mexico in recent years, its members reject the autodefensas tag.
A spate of kidnappings prompted the group’s formation. One of the latest is of member Raúl Medrano, who disappeared June 6. The group blames the other man on the sign for the alleged kidnapping.
“We want to be very emphatic: we’re not autodefensas; we’re not a criminal group. Here in our lives, the only things we knew how to use were machetes. … Recently there has been the need to purchase some weapons, even though we’re afraid of not knowing how to use them correctly,” one of the men told Milenio.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and Los Viagras posed the main threat as both criminal groups have sought to establish themselves in the region in recent years and have engaged in a turf war with each other.
But with their 54 roadblocks across all four municipalities the avocado and blackberry producers have kept the criminal groups out. One roadblock on the road to La Huacana, a municipality controlled by the CJNG that neighbors Ario and Nuevo Urecho to the south, is manned night and day by up to 150 heavily armed men.
Among the Pueblos Unidos members are men who have been hired by avocado producers to bolster the ranks of the fledgling security force.
“It’s cheaper to buy a rifle than to pay extortion,” one member said, referring to payments demanded of avocado producers by criminal groups, including Los Viagaras, whose members were reportedly asking for a 50,000-peso (about US $2,500) per hectare “protection” fee.
In the eight months that it has been protecting the four Michoacán municipalities, the Pueblos Unidos group has achieved good results, members say. It has driven criminals out of the area, and homicides, kidnappings and extortion have all declined.
Pueblos Unidos rejects the term ‘self-defense group’ because such organizations have earned a reputation in Mexico for being populated by criminals.
One commander of the armed group told Milenio that there is no longer any trace of Los Viagras in Los Ates, a community in Ario.
“We had to follow them [the criminals] wherever they were. We combed the hills, walking — something that the government hasn’t done. We came together in groups of 20 to 60 to comb the hills, and we frightened them away,” he said.
The commander said that he and the other members of Pueblos Unidos don’t want to live “on the margin of the law” but have no choice due to authorities’ inaction. If municipal, state and federal forces were able to guarantee their security, the farmers would return to full-time work on their land, he said.
If the authorities don’t do that, he said, the avocado and blackberry producers should be allowed to set up their own government in the region and be given permission to legally bear arms, as has occurred in some other parts of Michoacán.
“They should give us permission to defend ourselves,” the commander said. “We also don’t want to be disarmed, and we want to be respected. … They should do the work we’re doing, and maybe we’ll withdraw.”
President López Obrador on Friday made his views clear about the formation of the armed group.
“My opinion is that … autodefensas shouldn’t exist, because the responsibility for security corresponds to the state. I’m not in favor of people arming themselves and forming groups to confront crime because that doesn’t yield results,” he said at his regular news conference.
The president also said that self-defense groups are used to hide or shelter criminals. He said “they disguise themselves as people fed up with violence.”
He called on Pueblo Unidos to trust authorities, including official security forces, claiming that they no longer collude with criminals, as occurred during past governments.
However, the federal government, which officially inaugurated a new security force — the National Guard — in 2019, was unable to reduce Mexico’s high levels of violent crime in its first two years in office, with homicide numbers reaching an all-time high of more than 34,000 in 2019 and decreasing just 0.4% last year.
López Obrador asserted Friday that his administration is now making progress in the fight against violence, a claim supported to some extent by data that shows that homicides fell 2.9% in the first five months of 2021.
“We’re advancing little by little but we’re making progress,” he said before acknowledging that the security situation had “broken down a lot.”
Security forces are being deployed to the highway in response to the disappearance of travelers.
It is common for embassies to publish travel alerts about Mexico for tourists. It is less common that those alerts come from Mexican authorities themselves.
But that is what happened in Nuevo León, where a wave of disappearances on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway prompted the governor to call for residents to avoid traveling to the neighboring state of Tamaulipas.
“What is happening is public. I have to recommend that the public of Nuevo León avoid [traveling], if it is not urgent … that they wait until everything is calm,” said Jaime Rodríguez.
The cities of Monterrey, Nuevo León, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, are less than 240 kilometers apart, but the journey between them is becoming dangerous. According to an organization of families of kidnapping victims, Fundenl, at least 49 people have disappeared on the highway between them.
“We have sent two letters to the attorney general and governor to ask them not only to protect us but also to at least make public what is happening,” said spokeswoman Angélica Orozco.
Another collective of victims’ families said the numbers are even higher. They claim to have knowledge of 109 people who have disappeared in the area, and say 73 of those disappearances happened this year.
José de Jesús Gómez is one of those. On January 3, he called his mother from a hotel in Nuevo Laredo. He had just arrived from Irwing, Texas, where he lived and worked as a computer engineer. He told her he planned to travel to Guadalajara, where his family was, via Monterrey. It was the last his family heard of him.
The governor’s travel warning also applies to the highway from Monterrey to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where last Saturday a group of armed men moved through the city killing at random. The death toll was 19.
State officials, including the governor, blame the disappearances on warring cartels.
According to a federal intelligence report, the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway is controlled by the Northeast Cartel, an offshoot of the famously violent Zetas. The Monterrey-Reynosa highway is under the control of the Metros, a faction of the Gulf Cartel, according to the same report.
The Nuevo León Attorney General’s Office has opened 41 investigations into disappearances on the former and has announced a joint operation with the neighboring state of Tamaulipas. Nuevo León officials maintain that the disappearances happened not in their state, but in Tamaulipas. Despite that claim, Nuevo León has launched a new special operation to patrol the road in conjunction with the federal government and Tamaulipas authorities.
Meanwhile, victims’ families say their search for loved ones is hindered by government inefficiency and states passing the buck.
The family of José de Jesús Gómez has experience with the problem of jurisdiction. They reported his disappearance in Jalisco the day after he stopped responding to calls, but that report was rejected. They filed another report in Nuevo León and were rejected again by authorities who said the disappearance occurred outside their jurisdiction. Finally, in Tamaulipas their report was accepted.
“That was in January, but since March they have not taken our calls or responded to emails. We don’t know anything more about the case,” said Gómez’s sister.
In Mexico there are currently more than 88,000 people missing, according to the National Search Commission. Of those, more than 11,500 are from Tamaulipas while nearly 5,500 are from Nuevo León.
Governors pose with the president at the National Palace.
President López Obrador on Friday expressed confidence that things will go “very well” in the 11 states to be led by new Morena party governors.
Candidates for Morena, which was founded by the president and swept to federal power in the 2018 elections, won June 6 governor races in Baja California, Baja California Sur, Campeche, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas.
López Obrador met with the 11 governors-elect at the National Palace on Thursday.
“It was a very fraternal meeting of colleagues who have been fighting for a long time and who were elected democratically. They’re legal, legitimate governors-elect, women and men, and I felt very happy,” he told reporters on Friday morning.
The meeting, also attended by Finance Minister Arturo Herrera, lasted for five hours and included a meal featuring dishes from the president’s home state of Tabasco.
López Obrador said they discussed the problems faced by each of the 11 states, the actions the incoming governors will take to improve the lives of residents and plans for the federal and state governments to work together.
“… I was really very pleased to be with them,” said the president, who indicated that he also intends to meet with the candidates who won the other four gubernatorial elections on June 6.
“All of them are aware that forming a good government depends 99% on managing the public budget, which is the people’s money, with honesty. This is the main thing and a commitment that all of them have taken on,” López Obrador said.
He said that the incoming Morena governors also agreed with his political motto of “don’t lie, don’t steal and don’t betray” the people.
“That’s the code of ethics, that’s how it’s summarized. They agree with the plan so I’m very happy, calm and satisfied, and I believe that the states where these men and women with principles and convictions will govern will do very well,” López Obrador said.
Guerrero governor-elect Evelyn Salgado, who replaced her father on the Morena ticket after he was barred from running for failing to report his pre-campaign expenses, told reporters on Thursday that the president’s treatment of the incoming governor’s at yesterday’s meeting was “very cordial.”
“We’re going to continue meeting. This was the first one,” she said.
Zacatecas governor-elect David Monreal, brother of Morena Senate Leader Ricardo Monreal, took to Twitter to comment on the meeting.
“Today I met with President López Obrador. We agreed on the need to strengthen coordination in fundamental areas for Zacatecas: security, investment and development of highway infrastructure, among others. Once I’m sworn in, they will be my priority,” he wrote.
Soldiers remove meth from the cargo bay of a bus bearing the Morena logo.
After the military seized a shipment of crystal meth from a bus in Apatzingán, Michoacán, on Wednesday, photos of the seizure — published in local media and on line — clearly showed that the vehicle bore an advertisement containing the logo of the ruling Morena party.
But in photos later released by the army it had disappeared.
The Ministry of National Defense announced the drug bust on Thursday, saying that the army and National Guard seized 280 kilograms of crystal meth in the operation, worth an estimated 83 million pesos (US $4.2 million).
Shortly after, the army shared its own images of the bust. The logo on the bus, which had originally read “Morena: the hope of Mexico,” had been erased. In its place a new inscription read, “The army: the great strength of Mexico.”
Social media users questioned the decision and shared the original images.
The army’s edited image of the meth seizure.
“Don’t modify the images. You are there to serve the nation, not a political party,” wrote one user.
The seizure occurred on the Apatzingán-Buenavista highway in Michoacán. Army officials found the drugs during a routine inspection.
The May 3 accident, only 9 years after Line 12 opened, was caused by construction flaws, according to preliminary investigation results.
The Mexico City Metro line, where 26 people died on May 3 when an overpass collapsed, will reopen within a year, President López Obrador said Thursday.
“I can now tell the people of Tláhuac and the people of Iztapalapa and Chalco, those who use [Line 12 of] this transport system, that it will be operating again with complete safety in a year from now at the latest,” he said at his regular news conference.
The president stressed that he was referring to the entire line, which runs underground for approximately half its length and in the open air on an elevated overpass for the other half.
López Obrador said the entire line, which runs from Mixcoac in the capital’s southwest to Tláhuac in the southeast, will be thoroughly inspected before repair work commences. An inspection by the Mexican College of Civil Engineers already found that the entire elevated section of the line needs maintenance or repair.
Carso, the company of billionaire Carlos Slim, right, seen leaving the National Palace Tuesday, built the part of Line 12 that collapsed. President López Obrador said Slim is willing to do needed repairs.
“A complete review will be done. It’s already being carried out, and I’m taking charge of it,” López Obrador said, explaining that Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum asked for his involvement.
“… I give my word that we’re going to resolve the problem; I’m talking about a … reconstruction of the project,” he said.
López Obrador ruled out any possibility that the military, which is building the new Mexico City airport and part of the Maya Train project, will participate in the repair work.
“… We’re going to have agreements with the companies [that built Line 12],” he said, adding that business tycoon Carlos Slim, whose company Carso Infrastructure and Construction was involved in the project, is a “responsible man” and socially conscious.
López Obrador said Wednesday that Slim was willing to repair the line, but it was unclear whether his company would absorb any of the cost. The president reiterated Thursday that he supports the investigations into the disaster and those responsible being punished.
The president didn’t visit the site of the May 3 tragedy and initially took a back seat in the political management of the disaster, which threatens to ensnare Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard — who was Mexico City’s mayor when Line 12 was built — and Sheinbaum, both of whom are considered leading contenders to succeed him. But López Obrador will now take sole responsibility for informing the public about the progress toward reopening the line, Sheinbaum said this week.
The Mexican College of Civil Engineers inspected most of the line and found that the entire elevated section needs maintenance or repair.
“There is an agreement that everything will be reported through the president,” the mayor said.
López Obrador said that he was happy to assume the responsibility because it will enable him to respond to media smear campaigns about the Metro disaster and its cause.
Sheinbaum evidently grew tired of relentless questioning on the issue, requesting last week that reporters stop asking her about it.
“I don’t want to keep talking about this Line 12 issue … because precisely what you want is confrontation, into which I’m not going to fall, for any reason,” she said on June 15, two days after The New York Times published an investigation that found serious flaws in the construction of the collapsed overpass.
Meanwhile, rumors are circulating that Metro director Florencia Serranía, who has disappeared from public view since the accident, will be shown the door. Asked about that possibility on Wednesday, Sheinbaum declined to confirm any speculations on the matter.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum at a June 16 press conference on plans for the Metro’s repairs. She will cede her role as information point person to the president, she said.
The May 3 crash, the worst disaster on the Metro in more than 50 years, is not the only fatal subway incident since Serranía became director in 2018. One person was killed and more than 40 were injured in a crash between two trains in March 2020, while a policewoman died in a fire in the Metro’s downtown substation in January 2021.
A family gathers the seaweed before enjoying a meal on the beach.
Massive amounts of sargassum are once again washing ashore in Quintana Roo, affecting both tourism and the environment.
But a Cozumel restaurant has come up with an innovative way of dealing with the stinky mess: offering free food and drinks to locals and tourists who help clean it up.
Restaurant owner Francisco Reyes said he was looking for a way to motivate guests to come help with the cleanup, improve the image of the area and enjoy some beach time. He calls the initiative a “Sargassathon.”
The restaurant provides the bags, tools, face masks and gloves to protect against the sargassum, which is irritating to the skin. The reward earned depends on the number of bags collected. Three bags earns a soft drink, four earns a beer and 20 bags can be exchanged for a ceviche, french fries and six beers.
Local resident Argel Carillo brought his whole family to participate in the cleanup. In less than 30 minutes, they cleaned a meter and a half-long stretch of beach and filled more than 20 bags.
“We all came because we were free and with more hands, we can fill more bags and get more food,” Carillo said.
Seniors marched in protest against Walmart Wednesday in Mexico City.
For 35,000 seniors, bagging groceries in Walmart for tips was a way to make a little money but at the start of the pandemic, those workers were dismissed.
Now, Walmart has announced that the seniors will not return to work, a move that has triggered a boycott among customers.
With the viral hashtag #YoNoComproEnWalmart (“I don’t buy from Walmart”), social media users are calling on others to join the boycott, which also calls on participants to stop shopping at Walmart-owned Bodega Aurrera, Sam’s Club and Superama.
The company announced last December that the baggers would not return, based on the fact that plastic bags are now banned around the country and the idea that shoppers do not want the seniors touching their products for sanitary reasons.
“We have observed that our clients want to avoid that third parties have contact with the merchandise,” the company said at the time. “We have stopped providing single-use plastic bags to support the care of the environment, so our clients now bring their own bags and have gotten used to packing the merchandise.”
Social media users argued that the job could still exist, since shoppers bring their own cloth bags and in some stores, paper bags are available.
To protest the decision, dozens of affected seniors marched on the National Palace on Wednesday, demanding that President López Obrador do something about the issue.
“It’s unjust that they make us feel like a nuisance. This is the only place where they give us work and we want them to see that we can still keep working,” said Susana, 64.
She had worked for three years as a grocery bagger, and said her life savings were not enough to live on in retirement.
“I decided to become a bagger to support myself, but I realized it made me feel productive,” she said.
López Obrador said Thursday that the federal government will call on Walmart to reconsider the decision.
“I will analyze it and call on them to help, to contribute. Walmart is one of the commercial enterprises with the highest sales, so why not help?” the president said in response. “It’s a matter of talking with them; often issues can be resolved with dialogue, with communication.”
The president instructed Leticia Ramírez, the director of citizen services in the president’s office, to reach out to Walmart executives to analyze the situation.
During a check for illegal firearms, municipal police in Cárdenas, Tabasco, found another, unexpected type of contraband: a stolen cow curled up in the back of a car.
The police were conducting routine weapons checks when they saw a yellow Ibiza being driven erratically. They stopped the car and found the six-month-old cow inside. None of the people in the vehicle could provide documentation showing that the cow was theirs.
All three occupants were arrested and will likely be charged with cattle theft, a crime that carries a two to 15-year prison sentence.
The federal Congress reformed the laws against cattle theft in October 2019, led by Deputy David Bautista.
“Almost 7 million Mexicans every day confront the constant theft of their livestock. The price of every cow and horse is about 10,000 to 20,000 pesos,” Bautista said at the time.
Starlink, which aims to provide satellite internet worldwide, currently is supported by some 1,800 satellites. SpaceX
Federal authorities have given a satellite internet service owned by business magnate Elon Musk permission to operate in Mexico.
The Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) granted Starlink Satellite Systems México authorization to send signals to and receive signals from satellites that provide coverage to Mexico.
The company, which was only recently established here, sought authorization on April 2, and the IFT granted it on May 28, the newspaper El Economista reported. It set a period of 180 days within which Starlink must be ready to offer its satellite internet service, meaning that the company will have to begin operations by October 28.
The IFT permit allows Starlink to operate for an initial period of 10 years. The company can seek to extend its authorization by additional periods of 10 years, provided it meets requirements set by the IFT. Starlink currently offers satellite internet service in parts of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Service at speeds of 1 Gbps cost US $99 per month in the United States. It was reported earlier this year that the cost will be the same in Mexico. Service will also require the purchase of a Starlink hardware kit, which will cost $499 plus shipping.
Starlink’s internet service is currently supported by some 1,800 satellites, but its network is slated to grow to 12,000, which will allow worldwide expansion.
According to reports on the quality of the service in the U.S. and Canada, the system offers much improved latency — 18 to 19 milliseconds —than other satellite systems. Latency is the time it takes for the signal to travel from a computer to a remote server and back.
Two other companies have also recently received permission to operate internet services in Mexico. One is Elektra Satelital, another satellite internet service, and the other is Claro TV, which could rent satellite capacity to Starlink, according to El Economista.
