One of the Covid-sniffing dogs gives a demonstration in Yucatán.
Yucátan has two new weapons in the fight against Covid-19: Hocky and Kadet are German shepherds specially trained to detect cases of the disease based on smell.
The dogs are now part of the K-9 unit of the state’s Ministry of Public Security (SSP).
The dogs were born in Poland and Slovenia but trained in a special program in San Antonio, Texas, said Yucátan Governor Mauricio Vila Dosal. There, they learned a new technique designed by French doctor Dominique Grandjean in which the dogs detect Covid-positive patients by smelling their underarm sweat. Studies show that the technique is 95% effective.
The new K-9 unit members were acquired as part of a transfer of gear and resources from the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), arranged through the U.S. consulate in Mérida.
The INL also provided the Yucátan SSP with canine instructor training, five Ford Explorers modified for canine transportation, and eight dogs trained to detect drugs, weapons and cash.
A worker removes debris from the Metro Line 12 accident site.
Almost one-third of the elevated section of the Mexico City Metro’s Line 12, where an accident last month killed 26 people, shows signs of damage, the Mexican College of Civil Engineers said Thursday.
Bernardo Gómez Gonzáles, head of the college’s structural safety technical committee, told a press conference that 101 experts inspected most of the elevated section of the subway line, which runs between Atlalilco and Tláhuac stations, both in the Iztapalapa borough.
Gómez said the inspection determined that 32% of the elevated section of Line 12, the Metro system’s newest, has “grade B” damage that requires repair.
Among the problems engineers detected were cracks in concrete support columns, insufficient separation between steel beams and concrete slabs on the overpass and welding deficiencies.
The sections on the line where damage was found are not necessarily “high-risk” but “must be analyzed with greater detail,” Gómez said, adding that 68% of the elevated section has “grade C” damage, or common wear and tear, that requires routine maintenance.
The committee Gómez heads advised against resuming services on any section of the line until further inspections and the required repair work are carried out.
It offered that advice even though inspections haven’t identified any structural problems with the underground section of the line, which continued to operate in 2014 while the elevated section was closed for repairs.
“The tunnel section of Line 12 of the Metro doesn’t have structural damage nor deformations that place its stability at risk,” said Francisco Suárez Fino, president of the Mexican College of Civil Engineers’ tunnels and underground projects association.
“The main problems it has are due to [water] leaks … that, with adequate maintenance and an efficient water capture and management system, can be resolved,” he said.
Don't suggest debt to López Obrador, says an ex-minister: 'He turns into a panther.'
Business gloom has been so pervasive in Mexico since Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the presidency in 2018 on a strident anti-establishment platform that a recent burst of optimism about the country’s growth prospects feels like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds.
Last October, the International Monetary Fund was forecasting that Mexico would grow just 3.5% in 2021 after shrinking by a seasonally adjusted 8.5% last year during the pandemic. Yet as the economy rapidly opens up, coronavirus infections remain low and the effects of the giant U.S. stimulus ripple across the border, many economists and bankers here now see Mexico expanding almost twice as fast.
“The combination of continued reopening with strong remittances and a U.S.-led global recovery has allowed Mexico to close the gap with other Latin American economies, outperforming all of them in the first half of 2021,” said Marcos Casarín, chief economist for the region at Oxford Economics. The consultancy’s recovery tracker shows Mexico is returning to pre-pandemic levels of activity more quickly than any Latin American country.
“Mexico will grow 6% this year and it could be higher,” said former finance minister and academic Carlos Urzúa, citing the spillover effects of U.S. fiscal stimulus and increased remittances from Mexicans working across the border. These could reach US $55 billion this year and are “much more important than oil,” he added.
But few believe this year’s U.S.-inspired growth spurt heralds a bright new dawn for Mexico. The expansion, bankers and economists say, is almost entirely thanks to President Joe Biden’s policies, rather than López Obrador’s. The biggest beneficiaries are Mexico’s export-oriented manufacturing companies in the north of the country and the tourism industry, while firms servicing the domestic market struggle with depressed demand.
“Mexico will grow 6% this year whether it likes it or not, dragged along by the U.S.,” said one dealmaker who runs an investment fund in the country. “It will grow quite well in 2022 also. That’s not the point. What matters is what happens after 2023.”
Here the picture is much less sunny. A near-universal complaint in the business community is that López Obrador’s hostile rhetoric, constant attacks on regulators and the judiciary, his unpredictable policy announcements and preference for state-owned companies have scared away the foreign money that should be coming to Mexico to take advantage of preferential access under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement.
“The ritual of bringing the global CEO to Mexico to announce a new investment is over,” said one leading member of the international business community. “There is a pause. Nobody is leaving the country but nobody is proposing incremental investment either.”
The example cited most often as deterring investors is the energy sector, where López Obrador is attempting to reverse an opening to private money begun under his predecessor and revert to a state-run fossil-fueled model, throttling a once-promising renewable energy boom in the process.
“The problem is investment and the issue is medium-term and long-term,” said Gerardo Esquivel, deputy governor of the central bank. “It’s been stagnant since 2015-2016.”
Urzúa said that public investment would be only 2.7% of gross domestic product this year, barely more than half the level it should run at. Much of the spending is directed towards López Obrador’s pet projects, which include an oil refinery in his home state of Tabasco and a tourist railway around the Yucatán peninsula.
Despite his government’s focus on social programs to help the poor, López Obrador stands out from other populists for his stubborn refusal to increase borrowing to allow more spending. Most economists here do not believe that his decision last week to switch finance minister and appoint longtime ally Rogelio Ramírez de la O, 72, will change this.
Those close to the president say his aversion to debt stems from a conviction that the Mexican governments he admires most in the 1960s and 1970s were crippled by excessive borrowing. “AMLO turns into a panther when you suggest that he should take on more debt,” said one former minister. “It’s simply not something you can discuss. He will not spend.”
Even amid the pandemic, López Obrador was one of the very few presidents in the world to reject extra borrowing to alleviate suffering, despite the fact that Mexico had the fiscal space to do so. Critics dubbed his policies “austericide.” And while public investment remains weak, the president does little to encourage the private sector to take up the slack.
“López Obrador must promote private sector investment,” said the CEO of one Mexican bank, adding that the private sector accounted for 86% of Mexico’s total investment. “There is no way to grow without private investment. This rejection of private investment has to stop.”
And as for Mexico’s recovery: “To grow 6% this year and 3.5 next year is not magic, it is inertia.”
Hallie Ephron, author of 11 suspense novels, will be interviewed by the San Miguel Literary Sala in a live web conferencing format on June 20.
The San Miguel Literary Sala continues its June online series with an interview with New York Times bestselling author Hallie Ephron on June 20 in a live streaming format during which viewers will get a chance to “come up on stage” and talk briefly with the author.
Ephron, who has written 11 suspense novels, has literary genes: her parents, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, were screenwriters who moved to Beverly Hills from the east coast, and her three sisters, Nora, Delia and Amy, have all had prolific careers as screenwriters, novelists, journalists and film producers.
Ephron started writing novels later in life. Her last five books have all been finalists for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her book Never Tell a Lie was made into a movie for the Lifetime network in 2011. Her latest work, Careful What You Wish For, was described by the New York Journal of Books as “expertly crafted …”
It tells the story of a professional organizer married to a hoarder. Emily, the protagonist, discovers some surprising secrets in a storage unit that belonged to the deceased husband of one of her clients, which starts her on a hunt to discover the perpetrator of a crime.
Ephron will be interviewed for the Literary Sala by literary agent April Eberhardt. They will discuss Ephron’s writing career, her novels and her experiences growing up in a family of writers.
Replicating a Literary Sala in-person tradition, viewers will be encouraged at the interview’s end to interact individually with Ephron via the online conferencing format.
Eberhardt, a reader for The Best American Short Stories series published annually by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, founded her own literary agency in 2011 after spending 25 years as a corporate strategist and management consultant. She is a frequent presenter at writers’ conferences and serves on the advisory council of The American Library in Paris.
Tickets for the online interview, which takes place at 6 p.m. CDT, cost US $5–$50, with viewers encouraged to pay what they wish. To purchase tickets, visit the San Miguel Literary Sala website.
A Center for Chinampa Education employee checks the center's compost aerating equipment.
It’s an overcast day in the heart of San Gregorio, one of 14 towns that make up the Xochimilco borough in southern Mexico City, and a small canal that ends in a cement landing is surrounded by piles of manure waiting to be used in the cultivation of the area’s vegetable farms.
San Gregorio is the area’s largest producer, cultivating tons of yearly vegetables that go on to be sold in the city’s massive central de abastos (produce market) and other local markets. The water in the canal is an electric green, choked by tiny algae called lenteja de agua (water lentils, also known as Lemna minor L.).
“It’s caused by an overwhelming amount of phosphorus and nitrogen in the water,” explains Refugio Rodríguez, a biotechnology scientist at Mexico’s National Polytechnic Institute. “It’s from the runoff when it rains that filters through fields laden with pesticides and untreated manure.”
Because of the plant cover, the water below doesn’t get sufficient oxygen, and little sun filters through it. This causes what little flora and fauna that exist to be stunted and creates a toxic environment for those that live near here.
Rodríguez is working to change this. After spending years working for monster polluters like Pemex and the Mexican National Railroad, Rodríguez’s life was changed five years ago on a single trip out to the canals in Xochimilco. It was a place that she, like many city residents, only thought of as a place for tourist boat cruises.
In just 60 minutes, Refugio Rodríguez’s filtering equipment can make 240 liters of water safe for washing, cooking and even drinking.
“I saw the problems that they had, how they were farming, and started thinking about the quality of food we were eating, and it affected me deeply. To see them water their crops with greywater, to see them unprotected like that, I just thought I could do something,” she says.
Rodríguez purchased a small plot of land two years ago and started to build the Center for Chinampa Education (CEDUCHI), a place that would offer workshops to farmers from the area and beyond, teaching methods to clean the immediate environment where they cultivate and improve the overall quality of the canals’ water and soil.
A simply built pump and filtration system sits enthroned in the center’s main workshop area. Made from high-impact PVC pipe and ultraviolet lamps, this machine can be built for around 40,000 pesos, or US $2,000, and will last about 20 years.
Its purpose is to gather both rainwater and canal water and send that collected water through a series of tubes where high-pressure nanobubbles and UV light rays destroy the water’s harmful microbes. The microbes have built up from years of runoff and illegal dumping in canals. In the case of rainwater, pollution has been drawn from the air as rain falls to the city’s surface.
In just 60 minutes, this pump can clean 240 liters of water, making it safe for washing, cooking and even drinking in certain circumstances.
Five pumps are already functioning in various places throughout the canals with several on individual chinampa island farms to help producers create clean sources of water for their crops and their families.
The pumps connect to simple rainwater catchment systems that can be mounted on the roofs of homes to capture some of the average 700 millimeters of water that fall during the city’s annual rainy season.
In the canals, the pumps work in conjunction with biofilters built right into them, which allow the water to first pass through various gravel layers and aquatic plants that reduce solids in the water and absorb some of the harmful microorganisms.
On the CEDUCHI patio, a mound of vegetable debris is being rotated by Refugio’s assistant to turn it into compost. Large PVC pipes stick out of the pile’s bottom to allow oxygen to enter and gases to release while it transforms.
This mound will be covered with plastic and left to sit for the next two months until it decomposes down to look like the finished product Rodríguez holds in her hand — a rich earthy compost, free of harmful microbes and rich in nutrients.
This compost model is already being used on Señor Pompilio Guerra’s farm a few miles away. One of the crops, radishes, is extremely sensitive to the high salinity in the area’s soil, and so they are incorporating Rodríguez’s compost into beds and using it to revitalize the soil and reduce salt levels.
Guerra has a large bunch of magenta radishes that he is picking under today’s cloudy sky. Just a month into production, they are already in shape to be sold.
Xochimilco farmer Pompilio Guerra holds a bunch of radishes grown using Refugio Rodríguez’s compost, filtered of pollutants.
The compost is made up of elements that are easily found in this watery landscape — lirio (a type of local water lily), orange rinds, dried leaves and grass and, in Rodríguez’s most recent version, used toilet paper.
The fungi produced on the skin of the oranges are sufficient enough to kill any harmful microorganisms in the mix, and they also help to reduce the area’s naturally high salinity.
Once the elements have time to decompose, the compost is safe enough to use on vegetables for human consumption.
Rodríguez has one more homespun invention up her sleeve. Similar to her stationery filtration pump, she has attached a nanobubble pump to several local trajineras (flat bottom boats used for pleasure cruises around the canals). The pumps run on solar power from panels strapped to the boats’ rooftops, and they push high-pressure nanobubbles deep into the canals’ water.
The size and force of the nanobubbles cause them to remain underwater and provide oxygen to areas that are in desperate need of it, as well as destroy harmful microbes and bust open the particles of greenhouse gases, eliminating them from the water’s chemical makeup.
This is what she is planning for the San Gregorio canal.
“[The nanobubbles] could reduce the growth of the lenteja de agua by getting rid of the pollution in the water. We have a plan,” she says.
CEDUCHI will allow Rodríguez that opportunity to share all the technologies she has painstakingly developed with all the farmers in the area, with the idea that these small models can be replicated and used throughout the country on similar problems. She hopes they will have a long-reaching effect on the larger conversation about water scarcity and water conservation in Mexico.
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The financial service sector attracted 24% of FDI in the first quarter of the year, as funds flowed into foreign-owned banks like BBVA and HSBC. (File photo)
A Romanian man accused of running a massive bank card skimming operation in Mexico has been ordered to stand trial on charges he stole 70 million pesos (US $3.4 million) from ATMs.
Florian Tudor, who was arrested in Mexico City late last month after an extradition request from Romania for organized crime, extortion and attempted murder, and two other alleged members of the Romanian criminal group were ordered to stand trial for crimes under the Credit Institutions Law as well as criminal association, the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) said Tuesday.
The FGR said it presented evidence against the suspects during a marathon 18-hour hearing in a Quintana Roo court. The judge remanded them in preventative custody and granted authorities a period of four months to complete their investigation.
“These people are likely responsible for illegally carrying out … operations at automated teller machines in the states of Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Hidalgo, México state and Mexico City,” the FGR said.
Tudor, known as “The Shark,” is currently being held at the Altiplano federal prison in México state, having been transferred there from a Mexico City prison on June 5.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said May 28 that he would be extradited to Romania “very quickly” but the alleged mafia leader has a court order that prevents his extradition, the newspaper Milenio reported.
According to authorities, Tudor and criminals he worked with – among whom were allegedly other Romanians, Mexican hackers, Venezuelan cyber crime experts and the Quintana Roo cartel boss Leticia Rodríguez Lara — scammed hundreds if not thousands of people who used Cancún, Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos ATMs in which bluetooth devices, or “skimmers,” had been placed to steal card details.
The criminals then used cloned cards to withdraw cash from their victims’ accounts. In one 24-hour period in March 2017, the group withdrew 150 million pesos (US $7.3 million) from BBVA ATMs in Quintana Roo, Mexico City and México state, according to a report by Milenio based on Mexican and United States intelligence.
However, authorities only have evidence showing that 70 million pesos was stolen from BBVA machines, the newspaper reported today.
A federal security cabinet document obtained by Milenio indicates that the Romanian mafia also stole similarly large amounts from ATMs at Citibanamex, Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and TD Bank. It is unclear where those heists occurred.
A burned truck at a home where residents fled Santa Isabel Las Delicias, Chiapas, to escape a violent attack.
The homes of 35 families in Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, were destroyed by armed men last weekend, and three men were murdered in the same municipality.
The violence is linked to a long-running land dispute between one agricultural group called the San Bartolomé de los Llanos Alliance (ASB) and another called the Emiliano Zapata Farmers Organization (OCEZ), also known as Casa del Pueblo.
According to a report by the newspaper El Universal, armed men from the former group arrived in the community of Santa Isabel Las Delicias last Saturday, forcing families to flee to the municipal seat, located about 90 kilometers southeast of state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
Two years ago, the now-displaced families bought 32 hectares of land on which they built homes and planted corn, El Universal said, adding that they didn’t take sides with either of the feuding groups.
Nevertheless, ASB gunmen toppled the walls of their homes, stole domestic appliances, money, tools and farm animals and set several vehicles on fire.
The remains of a destroyed home of one of the families that fled.
One Santa Isabel Las Delicias resident said the aggressors also used chainsaws to topple trees so they would fall onto the roofs of people’s humble homes.
Ricardo Guillermo Gómez Montoya, a spokesman for the 35 displaced families, said the people who fled Santa Isabel left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “That’s how we left in order to be able to survive,” he said.
The families are asking for clothing, footwear, medicine and food donations to help them survive while they take refuge in a shelter.
In addition to destroying homes, members of the ASB killed three members of the OCEZ on Saturday and abducted two others, the news magazine Proceso reported.
It said that the five OCEZ members entered a farm that has been controlled by the ASB for several years after it allegedly seized it from its adversary. Three men were shot dead on the property and two others were abducted and taken to an unknown location. The fate of the two kidnapped men is unclear.
The OCEZ said that 21 of its members have been killed over a period of many years but the authorities haven’t captured and punished the murderers.
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“On the contrary, the government sends the Red Cross, police, the National Guard and the military to protect and provide support to these murderers,” the group said.
The ASB is also accused of destroying and/or burning some 80 homes in Yaschen de los Pobres, another community in Venustiano Carranza, in April last year.
Violence has also affected Paraíso del Grijalva, a Venustiano Carranza town near the Angostura dam on the Grijalva river.
Local middle school and high school students sent a video message to the newspaper El Heraldo de Chiapas in which they called for the intervention of state and federal authorities to help bring peace to the municipality, where this month’s elections were suspended due to security concerns.
“We’re frightened about what’s happening; we don’t want so much violence. We’re told we’re outsiders, invaders, but it’s not true. Our fathers and grandparents have agricultural certificates from 1965 and 1993 [that prove land ownership]. We also have the right to live and work here,” said a statement read aloud by one of the students.
“… We want the attacks to stop. The intervention of the government with the National Guard is urgent because the Casa del Pueblo [the OCEZ] continues to threaten to come and kill us in our homes,” the teenage girl said.
Puerto Vallarta and the Riviera Nayarit are looking forward to the Canadians coming back.
Canadian airlines are reactivating flights to Puerto Vallarta after a four-month suspension.
Westjet reinitiated its flights to the Jalisco beach destination on June 5, and Air Canada will be next with the reopening of its Vancouver route on August 1.
Low cost airline Swoop plans to restart its Hamilton and Edmonton flights October 5, and its Abbotsford and Toronto routes on November 3. It will also inaugurate a new route from Winnipeg on November 4.
Transat will relaunch flights from Toronto and Montreal in November.
Sunwing is still yet to inform clients of its plans to reopen, but has previously announced it hopes to reestablish its Mexico routes in December.
Marc Murphy, lead of the Riviera Nayarit Visitors and Conventions Office, said Canadians would be happy for the change of climate. “Each year, thousands of Canadians travel to this region to escape the intense winter cold and find an enviable climate, the most beautiful beaches … and a great quality hotel offering,” he said.
The Guelaguetza festival in Oaxaca will be canceled for a second consecutive year due to ongoing concerns about the spread of coronavirus.
The festival, which normally takes place in July each year, brings the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca together to showcase their heritage and traditions in the form of intricate traditional garments, dances, music and food. It has been described as the largest ethnic festival in Latin America, and draws domestic and international tourists.
Oaxaca first went green on the Covid-19 stoplight map in April, and cases have been on the decrease. In total, 47,780 people in Oaxaca have been affected by the disease, resulting in 3,825 deaths. The state currently has 223 confirmed cases.
Governor Alejandro Murat confirmed at a press conference that the event would not go ahead. “The priority of my government is the lives of the citizens of Oaxaca,” he said.
The word Guelaguetza is of Zapotec origin, and has been interpreted to mean the “reciprocal exchanges of gifts and services.” The festivity is also known as Lunes del Cerro (Mondays on the Hill).
Guardsmen are the responsibility of the Public Security Ministry, but in its first five years the civilian security force is being overseen by the army and navy. File photo
A proposal by President López Obrador that the National Guard be incorporated into the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) appears doomed after the Labor Party (PT), an ally of the ruling Morena party, indicated that it doesn’t support the plan.
López Obrador said Tuesday that he intends to propose a constitutional amendment in 2023 so that the National Guard, a two-year-old civilian security force, can become a branch of the army.
López Obrador justified his plan by saying that he doesn’t want the National Guard to suffer the same fate as the Federal Police force, which he charged was left to rot after it was established during former president Felipe Calderón’s 2006–2012 government.
“It was spoiled to such an extent that he who was public security minister in the government of Felipe Calderón is in prison,” he said, referring to Genaro García Luna, who was arrested in the United States in 2019 on charges that he colluded with the Sinaloa Cartel in a drug trafficking conspiracy.
The president said he will propose a constitutional amendment in 2023 to allow the Guard to become part of the army. File photo
“In addition, that police [force] didn’t do its duty and didn’t act with professionalism,” López Obrador said.
The president wanted the National Guard to be part of Sedena and to have a military commander from the beginning but changed tack amid pressure from a range of non-government organizations, which argued that incorporating the new security force into the military would perpetuate the failed militarized public security model introduced by Calderón in 2006.
The National Guard is officially the responsibility of the civilian Public Security Ministry, but during the first five years of its existence, its operation is overseen by the army and navy in order to instill military-style discipline in the new force and ensure that it meets the same standards as those required of the armed forces.
López Obrador said Tuesday that his administration doesn’t want responsibility for the National Guard to be transferred to “the Interior Ministry or another institution” and for it to be “spoiled” six years after it was established.
He added that he doesn’t want to leave office without having proposed “the things I believe the country needs.”
However, getting the Congress to approve a constitutional reform that incorporates the National Guard into the army will require the support not only of lawmakers affiliated with Morena but also many of those from opposition parties, especially if the ruling party’s allies — the Green Party and the PT — don’t vote in favor of the initiative.
Labor Party (PT) lawmaker Gerardo Fernández Noroña.
PT lawmakers indicated Wednesday that they don’t support the president’s plan, although they reaffirmed their commitment to continue backing López Obrador in a general sense until the final day of his presidency.
Speaking after a meeting with his fellow deputies, Gerardo Fernández Noroña said the government has a commitment to withdraw the army from the streets in March 2024 and López Obrador’s proposal would contravene that promise.
“We share the concern about [the need] to combat insecurity and to keep the National Guard out of corruption but I believe that there is a way to achieve that without incorporating it in the Ministry of Defense,” he said.
The coalition made up of the National Action Party (PAN), the PRI and the Democratic Revolution Party also rejected the president’s proposal.
PAN Senator Julen Rementería described the plan as “madness,” asserting that the president is attempting to “completely militarize” public security.
López Obrador has also indicated that he intends to propose constitutional amendments to reform the energy sector and to get rid of the election of lawmakers via proportional representation.
Federal police officer with former president Felipe Calderón during his administration.
The PT said that it would support an energy sector overhaul – the president is aiming to wind back the previous government’s reform that allowed private and foreign companies into the Mexican oil and electricity market – but was not enthusiastic about the latter proposal.
