Ex-defense minister, army chief pleads not guilty to US drug charges

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November 6, 2020

highway overpass — Some require urgent attention.

The federal Ministry of Transportation says more than 2,000 bridges and overpasses are badly in need of repair, but only 90 will get attention next year due to budgetary constraints.

The 90 on the repair list are “ready to collapse” if not given early attention, the ministry said.

“… if these bridge repairs are not carried out, it puts at risk their structural stability, leaving open the possibility that some will collapse and endanger the safety of bridge users, as well as resulting in traffic stoppages, causing longer and more costly commutes for motorists.”

The ministry is allocating 300 million pesos in its 2021 budget for repair of the 90 bridges, which represent only 4.9% of the 2,000 in need of repair. It is also far less than what was allocated in previous years. In 2018, the ministry spent 1.35 billion pesos to repair 129 bridges.

The proposed emergency repairs could the extend safe use of the 90 bridges for another 20 years, the ministry said.

Nearly all of Mexico’s 32 states have at least one bridge on the list of the 90 most at risk. Information about the specific location of the bridges was not provided.

Aguascalientes and Guanajuato, one each.
Baja California, Colima, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Puebla, Querétaro and Zacatecas, two each.
Baja California Sur, Guerrero, Jalisco, Sinaloa and Sonora, three each.
Durango, San Luis Potosí and Tabasco, four each.
Tamaulipas has five.
Michoacán, Oaxaca and Tlaxcala, six each.
México state and Nuevo León, seven each.
Veracruz has eight.

Highway maintenance authorities attributed the bridges’ disrepair to factors like vehicle use over time and weather, including hurricanes and earthquakes in some states.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Sex in the Sumidero gets cool response from authorities

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November 5, 2020

Two of the actors who enjoyed a sexual excursion in the Sumidero Canyon last week.

It’s best known as a tourist attraction but the Sumidero Canyon in Chiapas was used as the setting for an adult film last week. It didn’t sit well with local or federal authorities.

A group of pornographic actors filmed a sex scene aboard a boat while floating down the Grijalva River, which runs through the canyon.

Alex Marín, an actor and director for a pornography production company who featured in the scene, posted videos and photographs of the canyon cavorting to his Twitter account.

He boasted that it was the first time that sexually-explicit content had been filmed in the canyon, located near Chiapas capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

Marín’s posts went viral on social media and as a result caught the eye of the federal government’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp), which denounced the improper use of the Sumidero Canyon national park.

Conanp said Wednesday that the filming of pornographic content in the park “damages the image of an icon that represents the pride of Chiapas” and exceeds “moral limits.”

It also said the filming violated environmental laws and that those involved hadn’t been granted permission to shoot in the canyon.

The commission said it will take legal action against the people who participated in the “illegal acts.”

Conanp also said it will file a complaint against the cooperative that rented a boat to the pornographic actors and facilitated their behavior.

The municipal government of Chiapa de Corzo, where the Sumidero Canyon is located, also denounced the actions of Marín and the three women who participated in the sex scene with him.

The footage that circulated online “denigrates the image of the municipality and one of the country’s main natural attractions,” it said.

The president of the Central Chiapas Hotel and Motel Association took a very different view.

Manuel Niño Gutiérrez said the sexually explicit video will help promote tourism in the southern state. He also praised the actors for following the proper “health protocols” while filming, although it was unclear exactly what he was referring to.

During a five-day promotional trip to Chiapas, the female actors also posed for erotic photos in front of Tuxtla Gutiérrez’s famous flower clock. City authorities asserted that they hadn’t granted permission for nude pictures to be taken there.

Source: Proceso (sp), La Voz de Michoacán (sp), El Universal (sp)

Butterfly photographed in Guanajuato had been tagged in Iowa

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November 5, 2020

The butterfly in Guanajuato was one of many thousands tagged on their migration route.

After flying 39 days and covering 2,900 kilometers, a monarch butterfly tagged in Iowa was recently discovered in Acámbaro, Guanajuato, a few kilometers away from Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

According to Monarch Watch, which runs a monarch tagging program from its headquarters at the University of Kansas, the butterfly was tagged on September 23 in Dallas County, Iowa, by a member of a local citizen-science group.

Gilberto Ruiz Parra, a Mexican volunteer working with Monarch Watch, found the tagged butterfly on November 1 in the Sierra de los Agustino protected area.

“It’s male and is in excellent condition except for having a thin abdomen,” Ruiz told the newspaper Milenio. “It doesn’t have any significant injuries.”

Monarch Watch’s tagging program, founded in 1992, recruits volunteers from Canada, the United States and Mexico to observe and better understand the monarch’s annual migration between the three countries.

Sighting a tagged monarch in Mexico is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. Each year, Monarch Watch distributes over a quarter million tags to volunteers across North America who tag the monarchs as they migrate through their area. The majority of the organization’s tags are then sighted again in central Mexico. Volunteers go to areas known to be overwintering sites for the butterflies.

During the 2019 migration season, volunteers in Central Mexico found just 658 tags.

Ruiz spotted the tagged monarch in a group he found spending the night in a cluster of California pepper trees. It took some effort to get close enough to it to take a picture for the organization, he said.

“It was difficult to get to them because they were very high and because we’re directed not to touch or disturb them,” Ruiz said.

Source: Milenio (sp)

90 kids attend Sinaloa school equipped by El Chapo Guzmán’s sons

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November 5, 2020

The cartel-supported school in Culiacán.

The reach of the sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has extended into the education system in Sinaloa.

Since the beginning of the week, about 90 children have been attending a school in a poor neighborhood of Culiacán to which Guzmán’s sons donated desks, chairs, televisions and computers among other items.

Despite a sign with the letters JGL (El Chapo’s initials) adorning its entrance, the school appears to be a fairly normal if basic educational facility. But according to the Sinaloa education minister, it is operating outside of regulations.

Juan Alfonso Mejía López said the school needs to be officially registered with educational authorities, pointing out that if it isn’t, the students’ progress won’t be officially recognized.

He said education officials have begun discussions with the school’s voluntary teachers with a view to having it registered.

Despite its current informal status, the school’s students – many of whom are the children of men and women who earn a meager living scavenging on Culiacán’s south side – appear happy to be in school rather than at home, where most don’t have access to television or the internet and are therefore unable to watch virtual classes currently screening due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Video footage published by the newspaper Milenio shows primary school-aged children studying together in makeshift classrooms.

One girl tells a reporter that she is happy to be at school and when questioned about who equipped it, she responded: “Some men who always came here to help my aunt.”

She was apparently referring to some of the sons of El Chapo, among whom are Jesús Alfredo, Iván Archivaldo and Ovidio. All three are suspected high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel their father once headed.

The arrest of Ovidio Guzmán in Culiacán just over a year ago triggered a wave of cartel attacks in the northern city, prompting the authorities to release him.

One teacher who spoke to Milenio said she was approached by El Chapo’s sons and that they told her that they wanted to help local children.

el chapo's school — A sign bears the former drug lord’s initials.

Identified only as Esmeralda, the teacher said the imprisoned drug lord’s offspring initially wanted to build a new school but to save time they decided to adapt an existing property.

“I told them that luxuries weren’t so important, that the most important thing was internet. … We told them about this place and asked them if they could help us to adapt it and they did,” she said.

Esmeralda said the teachers had asked the state government for help in opening a temporary school but received no assistance because “all the resources were going to [responding to] Covid-19.”

Mejía, the education minister, said he had no knowledge of the teachers’ request.

Another teacher told Milenio that they communicate with El Chapo’s sons via cell phone messages, periodically telling them what items the school needs.

“In the last message I received they told me … not to worry that they would keep helping us in one way or another; we’re very grateful. … They were going to bring some tablets because there weren’t enough computers,” said Adilene Quiñones.

“We have very low-income children here who don’t have television [at home],” she said, adding that the parents of many are unable to help their children study because they have little education themselves.

Esmeralda said Joaquín Guzmán’s sons also gave uniforms, shoes, notebooks, pens and pencils to the students.

“Maybe it’s true that they come from organized crime but the truth is I look at their [charitable] actions,” she said.

Members of the Sinaloa Cartel and many other criminal organizations commonly distribute food packages and other essentials to needy residents in the areas where they operate.

Alejandrina Guzmán, El Chapo’s eldest daughter, distributed boxes, stenciled with her father’s image, of provisions including sugar, soups, beans, toilet paper and cooking oil to the elderly in Guadalajara earlier this year to help them get by amid the coronavirus crisis.

Meanwhile, the family patriarch is living out the rest of his days in the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, after a United States federal judge sentenced him to life in prison on drug trafficking charges in July 2019.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Riu Hotels challenges order to halt construction of project in Cancún

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November 5, 2020

Cancún's hotel zone has limited capacity, says Fonatur.

The Spanish hotel chain Riu Hotels & Resorts has filed an appeal against a court ruling that ordered the definitive suspension of construction of a 530-room hotel in Cancún’s hotel zone.

A district court in the Caribbean coast resort city last month ordered the chain to permanently halt the construction of the US $95.6-million Hotel Riviera Cancún, saying the company reneged on promises it made to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities at a cost of 60 million pesos (US $2.9 million).

Rui’s legal team said the injunction request that resulted in the court order was related to the alleged destruction of flora and fauna and not the management of wastewater and therefore the definitive suspension is invalid.

Lawyers also said that Riu has authorization from the federal Environment Ministry to build a wastewater treatment plant within the hotel complex. The plant will allow the hotel to manage ecologically its wastewater without using the city’s treatment facilities, they said.

As a result, public treatment plants won’t be placed under any additional pressure by the operation of the hotel, the legal team argued.

The district court judge had noted that Cancun’s three municipal wastewater treatment plants are at their limit and can’t handle the extra load the hotel would generate.

Riu’s legal defense also said that the company has fully proven that the hotel project won’t damage the environment and claimed that false accusations stemming from a conflict with the owner of a neighboring property have been made against it.

The recent suspension order is not the first legal obstacle Riu has faced to build the hotel, which would be the chain’s fifth in Quintana Roo. The project was suspended in 2016 due to concerns about the impact it would have on adjoining mangroves.

However, it subsequently got the green light to proceed.

Riu also faces opposition to its project from the National Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur), which created Cancún as an affordable, sustainable vacation spot for Mexicans in 1974 and remains in charge of municipal facilities.

Fonatur chief Rogelio Jiménez Pons said in February that the Cancún hotel zone doesn’t have the capacity to support new developments.

He said that Fonatur had offered land to the developers of the Grand Island hotel, a US $1-billion, 3,000-room project, and the Riviera Cancún in other destinations “where new hotel investment really is needed,” such as Huatulco, Oaxaca, and other resort cities that were developed by the tourism fund as planned projects.

Jiménez threatened to put an end to Fonatur’s management of Cancún if such projects were permitted to go ahead.

Fonatur legal director Alejandro Varela has also expressed opposition to the development of new projects in Cancún’s hotel zone.

“Fonatur is dead against over-densification of Cancún that doesn’t respect its original planning goals,” he said in February. “We believe that the number of rooms they are proposing far exceeds the capacity of services that Fonatur offers.”

Source: El Economista (sp)

Another airplane raffle but this one is an alebrije

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November 5, 2020

President's plane becomes an alebrije. — President's plane takes on a whimsical appearance.

A presidential plane was put up for raffle again, but this time it was a lot less controversial.

The plane in question, raffled Wednesday, was actually a whimsical painting of Mexico’s presidential plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Oaxaca artists Sergio Xross and Ángel Pacheco Soriano created the painting, which depicts the plane as an alebrije.

It was raffled off to benefit people with disabilities in Santa María Huatulco, Oaxaca, along with a series of other paintings by the artists.

The raffle poked fun at the fiasco surrounding President López Obrador’s attempts to dispose of Mexico’s presidential plane since he was elected in 2018. Calling the $130-million luxury jet “an insult to the people,” López Obrador has refused to use it and has flown commercial throughout his presidency.

The paintings’ raffle beneficiary was the nonprofit organization Acceptando mi Destino (Accepting My Destiny), which raises funds for people with disabilities in Huatulco.

The nonprofit’s president, Octavio Ramírez, said they conceived of the raffle because the organization’s normal fundraising figures have been affected this year by the coronavirus.

Source: El Heraldo de México (sp)

2,000 guardsmen deployed to remove toll plaza hijackers

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November 5, 2020

Troops at a plaza in México state Thursday morning.

The federal government has sent out 2,000 National Guard troops to take back control of hijacked toll plazas in several states.

In the Mexico City borough of Tlalpan, where toll booths have been repeatedly hijacked, National Guard members arrived in anti-riot gear to assume control. A similar scene was repeated on the Mexico-Pachuca highway, the Mexico-Puebla highway and the Mexico-Toluca highway.

At a toll plaza on the Mexico-Cuernavaca highway, guardsmen prevented a group that had arrived in two trucks from Guerrero from taking over the toll booths.

Guard patrols also showed up at the Circuito Mexiquense loop and the Arco Norte bypass in México state, as well as at toll booths in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa.

According to the Reforma newspaper, some 600 toll plaza hijackings have been recorded in the country this year.

The hijackings, which often last only a few minutes until the hijackers get wind that the authorities are coming, can nevertheless be very lucrative. In other cases, usually meant to call attention to a cause, occupations have gone on for weeks.

In most instances, the persons occupying the toll booths ask drivers for “voluntary contributions” instead of tolls. Some ask for less than the actual toll, but there have been instances where motorists refused to pay and protesters became aggressive to demand payment. Many drivers have told media outlets that they feel intimidated by the hijackers.

Some toll booth occupations have allegedly been controlled by cartels. Others have been taken over by people who say they are merely doing what they can to get by since the coronavirus pandemic put them out of work.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Chihuahua announces 14-day curfew on nonessential commercial activities

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November 5, 2020

chihuahua hospital — The number of Covid patients in state hospitals is at its highest level since the start of the pandemic.

A two-week curfew on nonessential commercial activities designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus takes effect Thursday in the state of Chihuahua.

Governor Javier Corral announced Wednesday that the curfew will apply between 7:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. on weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday.

The manufacturing sector, which is considered essential, can operate without restriction on weekdays but must shut down completely on weekends.

Among the businesses and services that are not subject to the restriction on operating hours are hospitals and other healthcare facilities, pharmacies, veterinary clinics, gas stations, airports, small grocery stores, butcher shops, bakeries, tortilla shops and convenience stores.

Most other businesses including supermarkets and department stores are subject to the commercial curfew.

Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio

Corral said that public transit will be “practically suspended” this weekend and next, explaining that the only services that will run are those that go to hospitals and other healthcare facilities. People will only be allowed to disembark at the final destination, he said.

The governor described the new restrictions as “drastic” but “completely necessary.”

He said authorities are confident that the measures, if complied with, will help to reduce hospitalizations of coronavirus patients and avoid deaths. Their effectiveness will be evaluated at the end of the 14-day period.

Corral also said that he would send an initiative to the state Congress that would make the use of face masks mandatory by law.

Chihuahua, currently classified as a red light “maximum” risk state on the federal government stoplight system, has recorded 27,293 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and 2,146 Covid-19 deaths, according to state data.

The state Health Ministry reported 443 new cases and 70 additional deaths on Wednesday. It also said that there are currently 1,165 coronavirus patients in 27 hospitals across the state including 159 on ventilators.

The number of hospitalized coronavirus patients is the highest since the start of the pandemic.

Corral announced that the state is collaborating with the federal government to bolster the capacity of hospitals in Chihuahua to respond to the pandemic. Approximately 220 additional beds are expected to be available to coronavirus patients in the next 15 to 20 days.

Meanwhile, the national coronavirus case tally increased to 943,630 on Wednesday with 5,225 new cases reported by the federal Health Ministry. The official Covid-19 death toll rose to 93,228 with an additional 635 fatalities registered.

Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía presented data that showed that 12,435 coronavirus patients are currently in hospitals across Mexico. The figure is 32% lower than the peak of 18,223.

Data showed that one-third of general care beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while just over a quarter of those with ventilators are in use.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Remains of missing LA firefighter found in Baja California

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November 5, 2020