Morena lawmakers silence senior party member at odds on migrants’ policy

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January 23, 2020

The petroleum and commercial port at Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, will receive a 9.7-billion-peso (US $515-million) upgrade after 40 years of operating with “temporary” installations.

A cost-benefit analysis conducted by the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) found that the project will help transport fuel to all of Mexico’s Pacific coast more efficiently, more affordably and with less risk than the current “provisional” system.

“The port operations in these preliminary and slightly precarious conditions have been more costly and less efficient, and with heightened risks both to the environment and the workers involved,” says the study.

The document emphasizes that Salina Cruz is a strategic point for the logistic and commercial plans that the state oil company Pemex has for the coming years related to the interoceanic corridor the federal government is developing in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Pemex’s maritime operations are most important along the country’s Pacific Coast, and Salina Cruz supplies a large part of the gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and fuel oil consumed on that coast.

The SCT report said that with the increase of oil production, as well as with the supply of fuel from the refineries at Salina Cruz, Minatitlán, Veracrúz, and the one currently under construction at Dos Bocas, Tabasco, the current loading-unloading system will need to be improved significantly.

The project is expected to bring new business opportunities to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec through the creation of a new export route for crude oil and natural gas, such as one from the United States to Asia.

“Negotiations are underway for the provision of a transisthmus transportation service from the Laguna de Pajaritos Port [in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz] to Salina Cruz via a pipeline,” reads the SCT report.

“This route could compete with the current one which consists of going around the entire American continent or the African continent in large ships.”

The analysis foresees quantifiable benefits of 12.4 billion pesos (US $660 million) resulting from reductions in tanker delays, investments and operation and maintenance costs, as well as from revenue generated by tariffs and increased capacity.

“The abandonment of Pemex by past administrations was reflected in the lack of interest in investments that did not have large rates of return such as the extraction of crude oil, regardless of the fact that [such investments] were necessary to maintain balance, safety and adequate efficiency levels in the entire production chain,” says the analysis.

The primary risk the SCT sees for the project is that Pemex will not be able to make the necessary investments for storage, pipelines and pumps.

It also fears that the oil terminal will not be able to supply the total volume of petroleum products demanded by the Pacific coast of Mexico due to lack of product.

The planned upgrade includes the construction of a missing section of breakwaters and a petroleum loading and unloading dock, among other work.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Hospital chief to be investigated over cancer drug shortage: AMLO

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January 23, 2020

Police scuffle with parents protesting a shortage of cancer drugs.

The director of the Federico Gómez Children’s Hospital in Mexico City will be investigated over a long-running cancer drug shortage, President López Obrador said on Thursday.

Speaking at his morning news conference, López Obrador said that there is a “hypothesis” that Jaime Nieto Zermeño and other high-ranking hospital officials are responsible for the shortfalls that have plagued the facility since last year.

“The hypothesis is that they’re causing this chaos due to the contracts they have with the company PiSA, which used to supply [the hospital],” he said.

“. . . They want to continue having control of these kinds of medicines [cancer drugs], that’s why the SFP [Secretariat of Public Administration] is going to open an investigation against the director of the Children’s Hospital.”

The federal government implemented a new centralized and consolidated purchasing model last year that it said would allow medicines to be obtained at cheaper prices, but López Obrador claimed that there is still “complicity” between pharmaceutical companies and hospital directors doing “juicy business” with public money.

“. . . This is the case with the medicines for children with cancer, just one company was supplying and unfortunately, that’s why all this is happening,” he said.

López Obrador’s remarks came a day after parents of young cancer victims protested against the shortage of medicines outside the Federico Gómez hospital and at the Mexico City airport.

Parents blocked access to Terminal 1 for more than four hours Wednesday afternoon and clashed with police who attempted to move them on.

“The police hit us, pulled our hair and don’t bother to see that we have children with us,” one mother told the newspaper Milenio.

“It’s as if we were a terrible threat to the government,” Israel Rivas said in a radio interview.

In turn, the Mexico City Secretariat of Citizens Security said in a statement that the protesters had acted aggressively toward police.

Hospital director Nieto and others accused of doing 'juicy business' with drug contracts. — Hospital director Nieto and others accused of doing ‘juicy business’ with drug contracts.

The parents, who also protested at the airport in August last year, said they decided to demonstrate on Wednesday because they have not received a written response from the government to their questions about the cancer drug shortages.

Later Wednesday, the director of the National Institute of Health for Well-Being (Insabi), a newly created public health department, told the government news agency Notimex that the Federico Gómez hospital now has an adequate supply of cancer medications including vincristine, a chemotherapy drug.

“The medicine is in the hospital . . . There’s no need for them to adopt this attitude,” said Juan Antonio Ferrer, referring to the airport protest.

Hospital director Nieto echoed Ferrer’s statement, saying the hospital had sufficient supplies for one month. He attributed the shortage to problems on the part of a distributor and that legal action was being taken against it.

He denied having any contact with the pharmaceutical company PiSA.

Insabi’s national coordinator for medicine supply said there is currently scant global production of some cancer drugs but rejected any claim that there was a crisis in Mexico.

There is sufficient supply of vincristine, methotrexate and ciprofloxacin, said Alejandro Calderón Alipi, adding that “the priority is taking care of the children.”

Similarly, López Obrador pledged that “there will never be a shortage of medicines, even if we have to buy them in other countries of the world.”

“. . . We have enough funds . . . so that supply is not lacking. The parents wanted a statement from the president about the guarantee of supply, I’ll express it now . . .the president undertakes that medicines for children will not be lacking.”

Source: Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp)

Nearly 1,000 migrants stopped near Tapachula after crossing border

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January 23, 2020

Migrants march north from the border Thursday morning.

As many as 1,000 Central American migrants marched toward Tapachula, Chiapas, after crossing the Suchiate River at the border with Guatemala early Thursday.

The largest caravan of migrants to enter Mexico since President López Obrador agreed last year to reduce the flow of migrants to the U.S. marched over seven kilometers into Chiapas this morning.

But that was as far as they got.

National Guardsmen and immigration agents erected a barrier on the highway outside Tapachula and fired tear gas at the migrants when they approached.

Some were detained but many remained in the community of Frontera Hidalgo where they were making plans to submit a petition to López Obrador to ask for asylum.

On Monday, after the National Guard stopped migrants from crossing the international bridge into Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, hundreds attempted to wade across the Suchiate River.

Guardsmen used tear gas and batons to repel the majority and later detained others who successfully entered the country.

President López Obrador said at his morning news conference on Wednesday that the federal government took such actions to protect the migrants from crime in the north of Mexico and insisted that the use of tear gas was an isolated incident.

Sources: Reforma (sp), El Economista (sp), Milenio (sp)

Hotel staff arrested for collaborating with gang to kidnap guests

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January 23, 2020

Hotel staff are taken away by police after their arrest for kidnapping. — Employees are taken away by police after their arrest for kidnapping.

Mexico City police arrested a hotel manager and clerk for cooperating with a local gang to kidnap guests for ransom.

Sergio S., 38, manager of the Hotel Plaza Revolución, and employee Carmen Michelle N., 23, were taken into custody Wednesday afternoon after a man from Monterrey, Nuevo León, alerted police to the kidnapping of his wife and daughters from their room.

The employees of the hotel in the Tabacalera neighborhood are suspected of collaborating with the La Unión de Tepito gang by providing rooms to carry out kidnappings.

The man’s wife told police that her husband received a phone call around 10:00am on Wednesday in which the receptionist said a drug and weapons search was being carried out in the hotel.

Two men entered the room seconds later and said they were part of the La Unión de Tepito. They took the man’s wife and two daughters with the help of a hotel employee.

The man later received a video call from his wife’s cellphone in which the supposed gang members confirmed the kidnapping and demanded he pay a ransom of 500,000 pesos (US $26,500).

The man later heard his wife’s voice through a wall and realized they were in a communicating room. When he entered the room he found his wife and daughters along with the hotel manager.

He called police, who arrested the manager and receptionist.

The kidnapping wasn’t the only one thwarted in the city this week.

Another rescue was made Tuesday night in the Hotel City Express in Tlalpan, in the south of the city.

Police arrested three Colombian nationals after a man stopped officers on the street to say that he had received photographs of his mother being held captive in a room of the hotel. Police said the kidnappers demanded 300,000 pesos (US $16,000) for her release.

Sources: Excélsior (sp), Infobae (sp), El Universal (sp)

Man tests negative for coronavirus; 3 more possible cases in Jalisco

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January 23, 2020

Travelers don masks for protection against coronavirus.

A Tamaulipas man hospitalized for a possible case of the coronavirus has tested negative for the disease, said state Health Secretary Gloria Molina, but authorities in Jalisco are investigating three other suspected cases.

A 57-year-old professor at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, had traveled to China during the winter holidays and presented light flu symptoms upon his return to Mexico.

Molina said that screening of the man’s friends, family and others he had contact with upon is return has been lifted and that there is no need for a second test.

“It ends here,” she said.

In Jalisco, a 42-year-old man who traveled to Wuhan, China, and a woman and child with whom he had contact are now under observation. The man showed symptoms of the virus on January 13.

All three are from Tepatitlán.

Chinese authorities have raised the death toll from the coronavirus to 17 and confirmed 444 cases, mostly in Wuhan, where the outbreak is suspected to have begun and to which the Tamaulipas man traveled over the holidays.

Cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States, and authorities in the Philippines and Australia are investigating possible cases in those countries.

The coronavirus is a pathogen related to the common cold and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that can lead to pneumonia. An outbreak of SARS in southern China sparked global fears in 2002 and 2003.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

From the age of 6, Guerrero kids learn to defend themselves against crime

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January 23, 2020

How young is too young to begin training to learn how to fight back against a violent criminal gang? In the mountains of Guerrero, the answer is 5.

Nineteen children aged between 6 and 15 were presented as community police-in-waiting in the municipality of Chilapa on Wednesday.

Dressed in t-shirts of the regional community police force CRAC-PF, wearing kerchiefs that partially covered their faces and wielding shotguns or large sticks, the children marched along the Chilapa-Hueycantenango highway and through Alcozacán, hometown of 10 indigenous musicians who were murdered in Chilapa last Friday.

“Weapons to your shoulders now!” was one of the orders shouted during the march in which the youngsters from Xochitempa, Chilapa and Ayahualtempa, a community in the neighboring municipality of José Joaquín de Herrera, showed off some of the self-defense and policing skills they have learned over the past two months.

CRAC-PF coordinator Bernardino Sánchez Luna explained that the children are in training so that they know how to defend themselves in the case of an attack by Los Ardillos, a drug gang whose members were allegedly responsible for the murder of the musicians from Alcozacán.

Weapons training for children in Guerrero.

“The children sometimes go out to the fields to keep an eye on the animals and they find criminals there so it’s better for them to know how to defend themselves . . .” he said.

Dozens of people have been killed in confrontations between Los Ardillos and community police over the past four years, widowing at least 24 women and leaving more than 60 children without a father.

Sánchez said the decision to train the minors was taken because the army, National Guard and state police have all been unable to stop the attacks perpetrated by the gang, which is also engaged in a turf war with a criminal organization known as Los Rojos.

He conceded that the children would be better off at school but teachers are no longer showing up for classes out of fear they will come under attack.

The purpose of the mobilization of the budding vigilantes on Wednesday, the CRAC leader said, was to call for a visit to Chilapa by President López Obrador, to whom the CRAC has already presented a list of 29 demands aimed at reducing violence.

“We’re waiting for the president in the community . . . We want him to attend to our demands,” Sánchez said.

“. . . We’re waiting for a response from the government, from President López Obrador and from Governor Héctor Astudillo . . . they have the solution,” he added.

The presentation of the up-and-coming community police was not the first time that the CRAC-PF has publicly shown that it is preparing children for combat in Chilapa. Videos that circulated last May showed children undergoing training to defend the town of Rincón de Chautla in case of an attack.

In response to Wednesday’s march, the Guerrero government called on the CRAC-PF to respect the human rights of the children involved.

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

Government rounding up migrants to protect them from crime gangs: AMLO

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January 22, 2020

For his own protection, a migrant is chased by guardsmen at the southern border.

The federal government is rounding up migrants for their own protection, President López Obrador said on Wednesday.

“We’re protecting them, we don’t want them to get to the north [of Mexico where] they could be nabbed [by criminal groups] or become victims of crime. That’s what we’re doing,” he told reporters at his morning news conference.

The president’s remarks came two days after the National Guard used tear gas and batons to repel hundreds of Central American migrants, including pregnant women and children, who waded across the Suchiate River between Guatemala and Chiapas to try to enter the country.

Members of the so-called “2020 caravan,” the first large group of migrants to reach Mexico’s southern border this year, decided to ford the river after Mexican authorities blocked their entry via the official border crossing. They were also advised that they would not be issued with transit visas that would allow them to travel legally to the northern border to seek asylum in the United States.

About 500 migrants succeeded in getting past the guardsmen, who had formed a human wall, but the majority were detained a short time later. Those found not to have genuine claims to asylum will likely be deported.

Migrants make a dash across the Suchiate River.

López Obrador acknowledged that the government’s increased enforcement against migrants is controversial but stressed that the National Guard and immigration agents have been given a clear order to respect their human rights.

However, his claim that the government is detaining migrants for their own protection appears disingenuous considering that it first deployed the National Guard to ramp up enforcement against them in order to appease United States President Donald Trump, who threatened in the middle of last year to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican goods if more wasn’t done to stop asylum seekers reaching the Mexico-U.S. border.

Deporting migrants to violence-stricken Central American countries such as El Salvador and Honduras would also appear incompatible with the protection referred to by the president.

Asked by a reporter about the use of tear gas on Monday, López Obrador asserted that it was an “isolated case,” adding that it is not a strategy that the government will use often to stop migrants trying to enter Mexico illegally.

“. . . We want peace and to resolve differences with dialogue, with agreement,” López Obrador said.

“There is an instruction not to use force . . . The National Guard resisted a lot because there was aggression on the part of the migrants, they even threw stones . . . but those from the National Guard resisted, they didn’t fall into the trap of responding with violence,” he added.

“That’s possibly what the leaders of the caravan, and our adversaries, were looking for . . . but fortunately it didn’t get out of hand . . .”

Source: El Financiero (sp)

7 Mexican dogs fly to Canada for a new life

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January 22, 2020

Seven dogs rescued by an animal protection organization in Yucatán have left Mexico to begin a new life in Canada.

Evolución Animal, a non-profit that operates a dog shelter in the south of Mérida, said in a Facebook post that the dogs flew north on January 12.

Six of the dogs traveled to Ontario, where the Lincoln County Humane Society in St. Catharines will put them up for adoption while the seventh pooch flew to Vancouver, British Columbia, to meet its new owners.

Evolución Animal said the latter dog had been in its shelter for more than 11 years after being brought in as a 1-year-old by a student leaving Mérida. In all that time, not a single person expressed interested in adopting it, the organization said.

The non-profit said that it was sending the dogs to Canada with “complete certainty that they will be in the best hands” and “form part of loving families.”

Evolución Animal told the newspaper El Universal that the dogs traveled to Canada as part of the Patitas Viajeras (Traveling Paws) program, whose aim is to find responsible and loving owners for shelter dogs.

“. . . we work with the Lincoln County Human Society . . . and [animal rescue organization] Pets Alive Niagara, who receive [the dogs], care for them and carry out a meticulous process to place each little one with a family or person who best covers their specific needs . . .” the organization said.

It explained that the length of time that a dog has been in its shelter as well as sociability and age are among the factors considered when deciding which canines are sent abroad. Evolución Animal said it has sent 300 dogs to partners in Canada during the last six years.

The organization runs the largest animal shelter in Yucatán, providing a home to more than 300 dogs, 160 cats and a female pig called Dory.

Source: El Universal (sp)

CORRECTION: The original version of this story indicated that Evolución Animal hoped to send 300 dogs to Canada this year. In fact, it has sent 300 dogs in total over the past six years.

Remains of pre-Hispanic sweat lodge found near La Merced, Mexico City

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January 22, 2020