Will election officials have AMLO arrested? Morena party thinks it’s possible

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April 26, 2021

AMLO’s press conferences may have to stick with safer topics like eulogizing Jorge Arvizu, an actor he likes who voiced a character in Mexico’s version of Top Cat.

To stop President López Obrador from speaking about the upcoming elections, including promoting the ruling party and criticizing its opponents, the National Electoral Institute (INE) could go as far as arresting him, suggsted the secretary-general of the ruling Morena party.

López Obrador, who has already received one warning for violating INE rules on what he can and can’t say during the official campaign period in the lead-up to the June 6 elections, acknowledged that possibility himself on Monday morning when declining to respond to a question about whether he would propose a reform to reduce the cost of holding elections.

“… They [the INE] could fine me or even arrest me, so it’s better I don’t [comment],” the president told reporters at his regular news conference.

Citlalli Hernández, secretary-general of Morena — the party that López Obrador founded — claimed that the INE will seek to stop the president from making remarks about the election any way it can, including by having him detained, which is legally permitted for 36 hours as a last resort.

She accused INE president Lorenzo Córdova and councilor Ciro Murayama of being operatives of the National Action Party, Institutional Revolutionary Party and Democratic Revolution Party, which have formed an alliance to contest the June 6 elections at which the entire lower house of Congress will be renewed.

“It now turns out that the INE is threatening our president with arrest for speaking about various issues at his morning press conference. It’s outrageous that the electoral umpire doesn’t see what the opposition is doing to stop Morena’s advance,” Hernández said.

“On the contrary, Lorenzo Córdova and Ciro Murayama are taking sides to stop our movement. But let it be clear to this paid-off [electoral] umpire, let it be clear to the opposition: we are democrats determined to transform this country,” she said.

“… We say with complete clarity: we’re not going to allow them to attack democracy and attack hope.”

The INE issued López Obrador a warning last week for speaking about the government’s social programs at his morning press conference, or mañanera, on April 16.

The president spoke about matters related to “achievements and actions of the government,” the INE said, adding that his remarks “could be classified as government propaganda.”

The INE sent a document to López Obrador reminding him that, during the official campaign period — which runs from early April to early June — he is not permitted to speak about government achievements or pronounce his preference for one political party or alliance over another.

The president is also barred from commenting on the various parties’ political platforms, speaking about the internal machinations of parties and their electoral strategies, referring to specific candidates, talking about poll results and seeking to influence citizens about how to vote.

Complying with the rules is a challenge for López Obrador because he is accustomed to using his lengthy weekday press conferences to promote his administration and deliver blunt rebukes of government critics, including opposition parties.

In a media interview, INE councilor Claudia Zavala said that if the president again violates rules about what he can’t say, he could be issued with a formal reprimand. Further breaches could earn a fine of up to 708,500 pesos (US $35,650), she said Monday.

“The last measure … permitted in the legislation … is arrest for 36 hours,” Zavala said before acknowledging that the president has shown greater care at recent press conferences to ensure that he doesn’t fall foul of the law.

At his mañanera on Monday, López Obrador said that one thing he wouldn’t stop speaking about was the state of democracy because Mexico is “the country with the most electoral frauds in history.”

The president, who claims that he was robbed of the presidency at the 2006 and 2012 elections, said that one of the changes needed is to have impartial electoral authorities rather than ones that are on the side of the “conservative party.”

López Obrador recently clashed with the INE after it barred two Morena party candidates from contesting elections for governor in Guerrero and Michoacán because they failed to report their pre-campaign spending.

He called the INE’s decision an “attack on democracy” and pledged to present an initiative after this year’s elections to reform the electoral body to ensure that it is “truly autonomous and independent.”

Source: Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp)

City’s water turned off as Oaxaca protest enters fourth day

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April 26, 2021

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The mayor and his supporters turn off the water Sunday to Puerto Escondido.

Municipal water has been cut off to thousands of residents of Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, as part of a protest that blocked Highway 200 on Friday, local media reported on Sunday.

Highway blockades continued Monday, effectively cutting off communication between the city of Puerto Escondido and points east.

Neither state nor federal government officials have issued an official response to the protest, initiated by the mayor of Santa María Colotepec to support the municipality’s demands regarding some 1,300 hectares of land expropriated in 1970.

Mayor Carmelo Cruz Mendoza warned that his municipality would not give up any land to San Pedro Mixtepec, the other municipality in which Puerto Escondido is located.

On Sunday, Cruz and his followers turned off the city’s water, which comes from Colotepec, the newspaper El Imparcial reported.

It also reported that residents of several colonias in Colotepec have rejected the mayor’s actions and threatened to burn the vehicles being used to block the highway at several locations.

Source: El Imparcial (sp)

State police arrest suspects only to have 6 municipal police try to free them

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MND Staff

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April 26, 2021

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Six municipal police officers in Texcatepec, Veracruz, have been arrested for attempting to set three suspected murderers free.

State police had arrested Lucas Nicolás Licona, Nicolás Desiderio and Hilariano Lechuga before the municipal police officers arrived to try to help them escape.

The three are suspected of the murders of two female teachers, an evangelical pastor, a local councilwoman and a businessman from Hidalgo, as well as the attempted robbery of the local treasurer.

The six officers were disarmed and arrested.

It was the second time this week that municipal police have been detained for trying to set criminals free. Twelve officers were arrested in San Andrés de Tuxla, Veracruz, for liberating a detained suspect before state officers could present him before a judge.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Economista (sp)

Coronavirus vaccination creates new market for travel industry

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MND Staff

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April 26, 2021

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With lines for vaccination like this one earlier this month in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, some Mexicans who can afford the cost are opting to travel to the US to get a jab.

At least 50 Mexican travel agencies are offering holiday packages to the United States that include vaccination against Covid-19, according to the Mexican Association of Travel Agencies (AMAV).

Association president Eduardo Paniagua told the newspaper Milenio that the agencies began selling the packages two weeks ago.

About 120,000 packages – which cost approximately 20,000 pesos (about US $1,000) per person – have been sold in that period, according to AMAV data.

A package includes return flights to the United States, airport transfers, a short hotel stay and vaccination registration for travelers, Paniagua said.

Vaccine tourists are traveling from cities such as Mexico City, Guadalajara and Cancún to U.S. destinations in states such as Texas, Arizona and Florida.

One travel agency offering a vaccination package is Ticket Travel in Aguascalientes. It has a package called “Vacúnate en Texas” (Get Vaccinated in Texas) that costs 19,900 pesos and includes vaccination, a three-night hotel stay in Dallas and return flights to Aguascalientes city.

The agency said that initial interest was from individuals but entire families, including children and grandparents, have purchased packages in recent days.

Eduardo del Real, president of AMAV Zacatecas, said that Mexicans are buying the packages because of the simplicity they bring to the process of traveling to the United States to get vaccinated.

“There is a significant segment of people going to the United States to get vaccinated, … what they don’t want is to struggle [with the process]. The importance of the travel agency is that it combines all the services,” he said.

For a fee, travel agencies can make vaccination bookings for their customers at pharmacies or Walmart, del Real explained. They can also advise customers how to do it themselves if they want to avoid the additional charge when purchasing their holiday packages, he said.

One person who completed the process herself is Laura González of Monterrey, Nuevo León. She recently traveled to Las Vegas to get vaccinated and found the online registration process very easy.

“They don’t ask for your passport or visa and on the day of application the only thing they requested was a photo ID card to note my age and verify that I was the person on the register,” she told Milenio.

Almost 230 million vaccine doses have been administered in the United States whereas only 16.4 million shots had been given in Mexico by Sunday night. Vaccination in Mexico hasn’t yet reached the general population aged below 60, making a trip to the United States an attractive option for Mexicans who can afford it.

In some U.S. states, vaccination is available to all adults regardless of whether they live there or not.

Source: Milenio (sp)

With 6 weeks to go, Morena holds strong lead in race for Chamber of Deputies

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MND Staff

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April 26, 2021

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Multiple polls conducted by the newspaper El País and the website Oraculus agree: around 45% of respondents plan on voting Morena in upcoming elections on June 6. — Multiple polls conducted by the newspaper El País and the website Oraculus agree: around 45% of respondents plan on voting Morena in upcoming elections for the lower house of Congress.

The ruling Morena party has a commanding lead in the polls six weeks before voters will elect 500 deputies to sit in the lower house of the federal Congress.

Results of polls conducted between December 1 last year and April 23 and collated by the newspaper El País show that 46.9% of voters intend to cast their ballots for Morena, the party founded by President López Obrador that swept to power in the 2018 elections.

A “poll of polls” collated by the website Oraculus shows a similar result: 44% of respondents intend to vote for Morena, which currently has a slim majority in the Chamber of Deputies on its own and a two-thirds majority with its allies.

The El País analysis and the poll of polls both show that Morena has more than twice the support of the two main opposition parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

According to the newspaper, 17% of voters will vote for the conservative PAN and 16.5% will support the PRI, which held office between 2012 and 2018. Only 4.2% of poll respondents will vote for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), while the Ecological Green Party (PVEM), the Citizens Movement (MC) and the Labor Party (PT) will attract the support of 3.8%, 3.1% and 3% of voters, respectively.

The PVEM and the PT are Morena party allies. The three parties together will attract the support of 53.7% of voters at the June 6 elections, according to El País.

Oraculus, which collated the results of 67 polls, predicts that the Morena-PVEM-PT alliance will win 337 of the 500 lower house seats, 300 of which are elected directly and 200 by proportional representation.

The PAN, the PRI and the PRD have formed their own alliance to contest the elections. According to El País, the three-party alliance will attract the combined support of 37.3% of voters. Oraculus predicts that the coalition will win 152 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the other 11 seats will go to the Citizens Movement party, which currently has 25 federal deputies.

Oraculus’s poll also shows that López Obrador currently has an approval rating of 63%. He has maintained a high approval rating despite widespread criticism of the government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 300,000 lives in Mexico, a sharp economic slump in 2020 and the failure to combat high levels of violence, including homicides and femicides.

Among López Obrador’s four most recent predecessors, only Felipe Calderón, who represented the PAN between 2006 and 2012, had a higher approval rating after 28 months in office. Calderón’s rating two years and four months after he was sworn in as president was 67%, according to Oraculus.

Vicente Fox, who held office for the PAN between 2000 and 2006, was the third most popular president after 28 months in office with an approval rating of 58%.

According to the Oraculus website's polling, President López Obrador has an approval rating of 63%. — According to Oraculus, President López Obrador has an approval rating of 63%.

Ernesto Zedillo, who held office for the PRI between 1994 and 2000, had a 54% approval rating after 28 months while Enrique Peña Nieto, who also represented the PRI, only had 41% support in April 2015, seven months after the disappearance of the 43 teaching students in Guerrero, a crime that significantly hurt the popularity of the then-president and his government.

The strong standing of Morena and López Obrador in the polls is likely to instill confidence not only in the party’s candidates for deputy but also in at least some of its contenders for thousands of municipal and state positions. In addition to renewing the lower house of federal Congress, voters will elect councilors, mayors, state representatives and governors in 15 states on June 6.

According to the results of a survey conducted by the polling company Massive Caller, Morena is ahead in the gubernatorial races in nine states: Baja California, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas.

In two of those states, Guerrero and Michoacán, the party doesn’t currently have a candidate for governor because the two men it put forward were stripped of their candidacies for failing to report precampaign expenses.

The other states where voters will elect new governors this year are Baja California Sur, Campeche, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí.

Morena currently holds the governorships of five states — Baja California, Chiapas, Puebla, Tabasco and Veracruz — and is also in power in Mexico City, where the government is led by Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.

The PRI is in power in 12 states and the PAN holds office in nine. Quintana Roo and Michoacán have PRD governments, the MC is in office in Jalisco, and the Solidary Encounter Party — a Morena ally — holds power in Morelos. Independent governor Jaime Rodríguez, who contested the 2018 presidential election, heads Nuevo León.

Source: El País (sp), Forbes México (sp)

Relatives fear for the lives of inmates in Puebla prison

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MND Staff

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April 26, 2021

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Fights, prostitution and gang intimidation are rife in a prison in Puebla where the state government has dismissed two wardens since it took office in August 2019.

The Center for Social Reintegration (Cereso) located in Lomas de San Miguel, Puebla, has been investigated by both state and national human rights commissions.

One inmate died and five others were injured in a fight on December 28 when 15 inmates protested against a ban on visitors due to the pandemic. When other prisoners refused to join the demonstration, a brawl broke out. The inmate died while being treated by doctors, and state police were sent in to restore order.

Two days later the Puebla Human Rights Commission opened an investigation, but has yet to issue any recommendations.

Prison guards allowed parties involving prostitution in the facility on weekends during 2019, according to the National Human Rights Commission. During the parties, female inmates were allowed into the male wards where they exchanged sexual favors for money.

The commission instructed the Security Minister Raciel López Salazar to open an investigation and identify the authorities responsible. However, Salazar was dismissed from his position on April 16 before complying.

Relatives of inmates say they fear for the lives of those inside the facility. “The situation inside San Miguel prison is getting worse and worse because the violence and fights that put our families at risk is continuing. My brother is serving a sentence for a minor crime and he has told us that he has been beaten by inmates without deserving or anticipating it,” said the relative of a prisoner.

Another relative said that some inmates are members of the “El Cachibombo” gang, and according to what was also revealed by a ministerial source, they charge inmates for protection.

“This group asks for money to protect the inmates and, if they don’t pay them, they threaten them with death and beat them. There are times when we have had to get the money so that my brother gives it to them and they don’t hurt him. It really is scary what they live through there,” he said.

Both of the men agreed it was essential for state authorities to take full control of the prison.

Source: El Universal (sp)

March homicides up 12% but first-quarter figure is down 5% from last year

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MND Staff

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April 26, 2021

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There were 2,944 homicides last month, 316 more than in February.

Homicides rose 12% in March compared to February, but the overall number of murders in the first quarter of 2021 declined almost 5% in comparison to the same period in 2020, official data shows.

Nevertheless, the number of women murdered in March was the highest monthly total on record.

There were 2,944 homicides last month, 316 more than in February and 109 more than in January. The average number of daily homicide victims in March was 95, slightly higher than the 93.9 average for the 28 days of February.

All told, there were 8,407 homicides in the first three months of 2021, a 4.6% decline compared to the first quarter of 2020.

Just over half of the homicides — 50.7% or 4,262 — occurred in just six states. Guanajuato was the most violent state in the first quarter of the year with 926, followed by Baja California (806), Jalisco (668), México state (655), Michoacán (621) and Chihuahua (586).

Among the 2,944 homicide victims in March were 267 women. That figure — a 28.3% increase compared to February — represents the highest number of female murder victims ever recorded in a single month in Mexico, exceeding the previous record, set in April 2020, by one.

There were also 92 victims of femicide — women and girls killed on account of their gender, meaning that 359 females were murdered in March.

The combined total of 3,036 victims of homicide and femicide is the 11th highest monthly total in the 28 months since President López Obrador took office in December 2018. The number of monthly murders only exceeded 3,000 on three occasions during the 2012–2018 presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto.

In the first quarter of this year there were 715 murders of women and girls, a figure that accounts for 8.5% of all homicides.

Baja California recorded the highest number of murders of women with 99 between January and March, according to National Public Security System data published Sunday.

Chihuahua ranked second with 75 female victims of murder, followed by Guanajuato (69), México state (67), Michoacán (61) and Jalisco (52).

Per capita data for murders of women also shows that Baja California was the most violent state for women in the first quarter of the year. Chihuahua, Colima, Zacatecas and Michoacán followed.

In addition to the 715 murders of women and girls, there were 234 murders classified as femicides nationally in January, February and March, a 2% decline compared to the first quarter of 2020.

México state recorded the highest number of femicides in the first quarter of 2021 with 35, followed by Veracruz (21), Mexico City (18), Jalisco (13), Chiapas (12), Morelos (12) and Sonora (11).

However, on a per capita basis, the numbers look different: Morelos saw the highest number with 1.13 per 100,000 women, followed by Sonora (0.7), Sinaloa (0.56), Aguascalientes (0.54), San Luis Potosi (0.54), Baja California Sur (0.5) and Veracruz (0.48).

There were 5,809 reports of assaults against women in March, a 29.1% increase compared to February. The figure includes 2,020 cases of rape, the highest monthly total in six years.

Other crimes that increased in March compared to February included domestic violence (up 30.2%), extortion (+25.8%), burglaries (+14.8%), muggings (+12.8%), vehicle theft (+11.1%) and small-scale drug dealing (+7%).

Source: Animal Político (sp), El Universal (sp)

3 Mexicans win Oscar for best sound in film Sound of Metal

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MND Staff

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April 26, 2021

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Cortés, Couttolenc and Baksht with their Oscars.

Three Mexicans have won an Oscar in the best sound category for their work on the rock inspired film Sound of Metal.

Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc and Carlos Cortés are the Mexican sound engineers behind the film, which tells the story of Ruben, played by Riz Ahmed, a rock drummer whose hearing begins to deteriorate, forcing him to choose a new path in life.

Ruben is told that even with costly surgery his hearing will not recover, and he should decide whether he wants start over in a deaf community, or risk all by continuing to drum.

Sound engineer and dubbing mixer Jaime Baksht previously worked on Pan’s Labyrinth, Herod’s Law and Abel. He has won three Ariel Awards and one Goya Award in the best sound category.

Michelle Couttolenc specializes in cinematic sound and worked on Pan’s Labyrinth, The 4th Company and I’m No Longer Here.

Sound engineer Carlos Cortés previously worked on The Noble Family and the documentary Tempestad, which won him an Ariel in 2019.

Mexican names dotted the nominations at last year’s Oscars too. Mayes Rubeo for best achievement in costume design for Jojo Rabbit and Gastón Pavlovich as producer and Rodrigo Prieto for best achievement in cinematography in The Irishman.

Sound of Metal also won in the best achievement in film editing category, and was nominated for best motion picture of the year, best performance by an actor in a leading role, best performance by an actor in a supporting role and best original screenplay.

The film can be seen on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Coastal highway closed by flare-up of territorial dispute in Oaxaca

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April 24, 2021

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The blockade that has shut down the coastal highway in Puerto Escondido.

A decades-old territorial dispute has flared up in the city of Puerto Escondido, halting traffic on the coastal highway, the main arterial route on the state’s coast.

As with most of the state’s disputes over land — and there are hundreds, the protagonists are two neighboring municipalities fighting over land, in this case the jewel in the crown that is Puerto Escondido, a popular tourism and surfing destination.

On Friday, the mayor of Santa María Colotepec issued a declaration of war and installed a protest camp on Highway 200 at the city’s chief intersection.

“We are not going to give up even a centimeter of our land [and] we’re not going to allow the continuing harassment on the part of [San Pedro] Mixtepec … from here we say to the state government and the agrarian court that we don’t want rulings that have been paid for that put at risk the stability of the port,” declared Carmelo Cruz Mendoza according to a report by the newspaper El Imparcial.

The mayor warned that the blockade would remain until Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa and agrarian officials hear their concerns.

According to other officials in Colotepec, their counterparts in Mixtepec have “cunningly” engaged in attempting to influence agrarian officials in favor of the latter municipality, a process that began when lawyers for Mixtepec presented a constitutional argument before the agrarian court in 2018.

Colotepec officials accused both agrarian and state officials of colluding with “the criminal” Fredy Gil, mayor of San Pedro Mixtepec.

The highway blockade remained in place Saturday afternoon but there was a report that Governor Murat had arrived in the city to address the situation.

Mexico News Daily

Fewer people read but those who do are reading more

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MND Staff

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April 24, 2021

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Those who do read say they were encouraged to do so as children. — The majority of those who do read say they were encouraged to do so as children.

The percentage of Mexicans who read has declined to a record low, according to a national survey, but those who do read are reading more.

Among literate adults, 71.6% read a book, magazine, newspaper or internet page in the 12 months ending February 2021, according to the results of a survey published this week by the national statistics institute, Inegi.

The percentage of literate adults who read has been declining since 2016, a year in which Inegi found that 80.8% of such people had read something in the previous 12 months. The latest result, a 0.8% decline compared to last year’s survey, is the lowest since the statistics institute began canvassing citizens’ reading habits.

The most recent survey also found that Mexican adults read an average of 3.7 books in the 12-month period, an increase of 12% compared to two years ago and 3% compared to one year ago. The average among women was slightly higher, at 3.9, and slightly lower among men, at 3.5.

Just over four in 10 respondents – 43% – said they had read at least one book during that time, an increase of 1.9% compared to the previous survey. That figure is 2.9% lower than that found by the 2016 survey.

Mexicans who have studied to a university level are much more likely to read than those who didn’t complete their basic school education, Inegi found.

Among the former cohort, nine of 10 said they had read a book, magazine, newspaper or internet page in the previous 12 months while only five in 10 of the latter cohort said the same.

People with a university education read for an average of 50 minutes per reading session while those who didn’t finish their school studies read for only 35 minutes.

About four in 10 respondents – 41.6% – said they mainly read for pleasure while 25.1% said that they read for professional or educational purposes. Just under one in five respondents said they read for “general culture” purposes – to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world or to have topics of conversation with friends – while 11.6% said that the motivation for their reading was religion.

The survey also found that the percentage of people who read e-books has increased from 6.8% in 2016 to 21.5% in February 2021. A similar percentage of respondents – 21.3% – read online newspapers, up from 5.6% in 2016.

However, the printed word is still far more popular than the digital one, Inegi found. More than 70% of respondents prefer physical books, magazines and newspapers over digital ones.

More than three-quarters of adults who read said that they received encouragement to do so at home and/or school, underscoring the importance of promoting reading among children.

“The promotion of reading at school and home is a path for social development,” Inegi said, adding that reading allows people to develop critical thinking skills and brings them closer to “expressions of culture.”

Among the respondents who said they hadn’t read anything in the previous 12 months, the most commonly cited reason was a lack of time. Other reasons for not reading included a lack of interest, a lack of motivation and a dislike for the practice.

Source: El País (sp)