The federal government is taking steps to combat fraudulent conduct in the tourism industry.
According to the tourism news website Reportur, the tourism committee of the federal Congress and the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) will collaborate on a scheme designed to crack down on scams committed against people seeking to travel to destinations such as Quintana Roo, Baja California, Nayarit, Jalisco and Mexico City.
One of the main concerns discussed at a meeting between tourism committee president Luis Alegre Salazar and UIF chief Santiago Nieto was call centers that attempt to defraud potential tourists in the key markets of Canada and the United States.
Reportur said they operate as shell companies and that their detection is very difficult as a result.
In that context, Alegre asked Nieto to carry out a nationwide review to determine which companies are operating legally in the tourism sector and which are not.
He also asked the UIF chief to carry out an investigation into travel agencies that operate exclusively online, including those on social media sites such as Facebook, saying many are fraudulent.
Reportur said that in recent months, shell companies have swindled people selling vacation club memberships and timeshares by offering to purchase them and resell them at elevated prices. However, the fraudsters ask for a deposit of between US $4,000 and $6,000 to complete the paperwork for the sale.
The federal consumer protection agency (Profeco) issued an alert about the practice last year.
The online travel agency Expedia has also warned that fraudsters have passed themselves off as its employees to try to scam consumers by selling them non-existent tourism products. People in 17 Mexican states as well as Canada have been swindled to the tune of US $10,000, Reportur said.
We stuff them in our carry-ons, hide them in our checked bags and lie about them on customs forms. And we’re willing to pay extra – 30 or more dollars extra – and risk a really messy suitcase just to be able to bring them back with us to Mexico.
You know what I’m talking about.
Crunchy peanut butter. Miracle Whip. Licorice: red, black and Twizzlers. (So many Twizzlers!) Horseradish. Aged cheddar cheese. Vinegars. Butter. Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Grits. (Mentioned more times than you’d imagine.) Sloppy Joe seasoning. Natural body products. Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Ravioli. Oh, and candy – lots of different kinds of candy. (We’ll get to that later.)
Turns out nobody’s shy about sharing what they bring back when they go north of the border (NOB), items they can’t find here, and what they just can’t — or don’t want to — live without. Psychologists might say there are deeper reasons, and that these qualify as comfort foods, specific to each of us, our families and where we grew up. (See story below.)
While most of the 800+ people who responded to my post in a handful of expat Facebook groups shared lists of fairly common items, the very first response was, well, surprising.
“Korean gochujang,” wrote Jill from San Pancho, a little town north of Puerto Vallarta.
Huh?
“It’s a chile paste for a delicious, rice-based Korean dish called bibimbap,” the Evanston, Illinois, native kindly explained.
“Now mind you,” she continued, “10 years ago we had a LONG list of things we had to bring if we wanted them. As a matter of fact, it was so long that we drove back and forth. But now, you can get almost anything.”
That sentiment was echoed by many longtime expat residents of Mexico. Nowadays so much more really is available — grape jelly, Oil of Olay, the aforementioned peanut butter — than, say eight or 10 years ago. And if you live in or near a bigger city, like Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Cabo, Cancún or Guadalajara, your options are even greater, as Sam’s Club, Costco, Walmart, Home Depot and even Bed, Bath & Beyond have opened up the consumer landscape immensely. Factor in Amazon México and you would think anything and everything you could possibly want would be available here.
Ah, but read on, folks. Mexico, in all her glory, always has a trick up her sleeve.
What the author brought back from a recent trip north.
“We do use Amazon México, but our street address has nothing to do with our location, so we have to ship to someone else’s address, which is inconvenient for everyone,” said Nayarit snowbird Sallie. “It’s often easier to bring stuff from the U.S. than hunt things down in Mexico.”
So what were the most mentioned items? Let’s have a look.
The majority of the hundreds of replies included a multitude of food items. Some quickly established themselves as “Most Popular:” Miracle Whip, Cheez-Its, sweet pickle relish, peanut butter (plain and crunchy), horseradish, molasses (kudos to you brave and dedicated bakers!), sharp cheddar cheese (“One kg per month that we’re here,” shared a Canadian snowbird.)
Canadians were well represented, as evidenced by items like canned salmon, Marmite, “real Canadian maple syrup” and Hawkin’s Cheesies.
“You can pretty much adapt to most things, though,” said longtime snowbird Barb. “I love my life here!”
Certain stores also featured heavily in your answers, with one in particular mentioned over and over.
“Anything from Trader Joe’s!!” exclaimed Linett from Mazatlán, Ann from Baja, Carole from Guanajuato, Katie from Mexico City and many, many others.
The things we miss enough to ferry back in our luggage are many and varied. Wheat Thins, ranch dip mix, McCormick seasonings (especially meat loaf and chile blends), spice blends, Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix, Velveeta, Thai peanut sauce, Ranch Style Doritos, gravy mix, and Lipton, Tetley, Twinings or other quality black tea.
And while food items were by and large what most of you mentioned, high-count, 100% cotton sheets (“I’m a sheet snob,” confessed Eric of Mazatlán), thick, fluffy terrycloth towels and “things from Target” were mentioned often, by both men and women.
“Please post your article,” pleaded a reader from Texas. “I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity to import some of these things and supply retailers.”
Catherine, a Brit who’s beenliving in Mexico for 10 years, sent a photo of her over-stuffed suitcase brimming with potential contraband.
“Just got back from London and here’s a glimpse of my suitcase contents,” she wrote. “White chocolate features heavily.”
Some people take empty suitcases and fill them with the things they miss.
Some things were difficult to understand the need for. Taco seasoning. (Believe it or not, this was mentioned more than once.) “Good salsa.” “Crispy taco shells.” “Fiesta brand menudo mix.”
Who are these people, I had to wonder.
“I know it’s crazy to buy Mexican food in the States to bring to Mexico,” explained the menudo-loving five-year resident of Ensenada. “It’s just so easy since spices and chile are all in one package. Lol.”
And other things you may as well forget about: Russet potatoes, collard greens, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, Asian vegetables like pak choi and gai lan (“Trying to find a source for seeds so I can grow ‘em myself,” grumbled a San Miguel resident.)
Ahhh, and candy. So. Much. Candy.York Peppermint Patties, the aforementioned licorice (black, red, Aussie-style) and Twizzlers, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, red hots, Butterfingers, Good ‘n’ Plenty. “Candy without chile! Please!” begged a reader with a sweet tooth.
“We do manage to live without them but it would be nice to have them available, without paying double the price they are up north,” sighed a snowbird from Alberta, after sharing her list of a dozen or so items.
Turns out our pets have adjustment anxiety too.
“I’ve been here four years and finding anything reasonably priced for my cats has been a chore,” moaned a reader from San Luis Potosí. “This was echoed by Mérida resident Patricia: “I have spoiled north-of-the-border cats! They will not eat the treats I can occasionally find here. I’ve been mule-ing pounds of the stuff every four months!!”
Everyone has their own priorities as to what they use precious suitcase space to bring back. I know mine changes: one trip it was dark chocolate, in a multitude of forms; another trip bathing suits and underwear. Most recently it was organic salad dressings (yes, really), cotton towels and sheets.
Ann, a Baja resident for 15+ years, shared her method of acquisition.
“As I begin packing to visit my hometown of San Diego, I laugh. I have two suitcases nested together. No clothes. No cosmetics. Nada. When I get there, a trip to Trader Joe’s is No. 1 on my list. Face and body wash, dog treats, and my favorite foods to chow down on while I’m up north. Waiting for me will be a pile of stuff I ordered in advance from Amazon. New pajamas, underwear, cosmetics and vitamins, shower curtains. Those two suitcases will be bulging when I head south again. Trust me!”
Then there were the more, umm, specialty items.
Cheese was frequently mentioned.
“Decent inner tubes for my bike tires.” Feminine hygiene products. (“Impossible to find where I am in Mexico so I always stock up when visiting NOB.”) Breast milk storage bags. Certain art / knitting / craft supplies. Ultra-Strength 1000 Tums. Vitamins with readable labels. Shoes in half-sizes. (“PLEASE!”) Pickled okra.
A few things I’m not alone in missing are books, environmentally friendly cleaning products, calendars and greeting cards in English, real Q-Tips. (I brought four boxes back last trip.) And “A dozen real boiled bagels,” mused a reader in Mérida.
Problem-solver Linda of Playa del Carmen decided to try and be the change she wanted to see. Her extensive list included many of the most popular items as well as things like Pillsbury pie crust, Nilla wafers, cellulose sponges, canned green beans and Bisquick.
“I sent Walmart corporate offices a list of 30 items five times,” she sighed. “They didn’t care.”
Ultimately, we all learn to make do with what’s here in tandem with what we can bring down ourselves, learn to make or convince friends and family to bring.
“The longer you live outside your own country the less you miss,” said Holland native Ans. “We’ve lived all over the world and you find replacements, make it yourself or forget about it.”
Janet Blaser of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life, and feels fortunate to write about great food, amazing places, fascinating people and unique events. Her work has appeared in numerous travel and expat publications as well as newspapers and magazines. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.
Sometimes eating and happiness do go hand-in-hand
We all know how “comfort food” makes us feel better. But why?
Wikipedia defines comfort food as “food that provides a nostalgic or sentimental value . . . characterized by its high caloric nature and carbohydrate level. The nostalgia may be specific to an individual, or it may apply to a specific culture.”
That’s it in a nutshell, and explains why so many of us have such strong cravings as we navigate our new lives in a new culture. Familiar foods from our past activate feelings of well-being and emotional security, and take on increased importance for exactly those reasons.
Eat what you crave and feel better.
Psychology Today adds that “people often use comfort food — food associated with the security of childhood, like Mom’s chicken soup — to treat themselves, both physically and psychologically. Its power may lie primarily in the associations it calls to mind, memories of secure attachment.”
Ultimately, though, eating foods high in fat, sugar or salt just makes us feel better all the way around. Wikipedia weighs in on that too, saying those kinds of foods activate the brain’s reward system, “giving a distinctive pleasure or temporary sense of emotional elevation and relaxation.”
In conclusion, you’re not imagining it: when you’re feeling down eating what you’re craving really will make you feel better. Just remember to do it in moderation!
Volaris overtook Aeroméxico to become Mexico’s leading airline in 2019, statistics show.
The low-cost airline transported 21.97 million passengers on domestic and international flights last year, while 21.8 million people flew with Aeroméxico, the nation’s flag carrier.
The number of passengers transported by Volaris is 19% higher than in 2018 and an all-time record, according to CEO Enrique Beltranena.
“We transported 22 million passengers in the year, that makes Volaris the largest Mexican airline by volume of passengers,” he said. “. . . No other Mexican airline has transported so many passengers in a year.”
Volaris took possession of new Airbus 320 and 321 neo planes in 2019, allowing the airline to increase the number of seats it put on sale by 230,000, or 16%, compared to the year before. It also began flying to more than 40 new destinations.
In contrast, Aeroméxico’s capacity was reduced because its Boeing 737 Max aircraft remained grounded due to safety concerns.
An analyst at Monex financial group said that a major factor in Volaris’ strong 2019 performance was that it operates more efficiently than its competitors.
“Volaris has a point-to-point business model, which allows it to keep its planes operating in 13.1-hour blocks . . .” Brian Rodríguez said.
While Volaris transported the highest number of passengers, its low-cost rival Viva Aerobus recorded the strongest growth in 2019. Just over 12 million people flew with Viva last year, a 20% increase over 2018 numbers.
The airline added eight new aircraft to its fleet and started flying 23 new routes.
“The enlargement of our fleet, capacity, sales and passengers set 2019 apart as a year of historic expansion for Viva,” said CEO Juan Carlos Zuazua.
The goal in 2020, he added, is to continue growing with the aim of transporting 14.5 million passengers.
A farmer shows off his long corn cobs in Jala, Nayarit.
The grower of the world’s largest corn cob is farmer Jesús Nazario Elías Moctezuma, who won the annual corn cob competition in Jala, Nayarit, in December.
The winning cob measured 39.5 centimeters long, beating out the next largest by only a half centimeter.
In addition to the contest, the event hosted a gastronomical exhibition in which the star of the show was the grain that has been a staple of the Mexican diet since long before the arrival of the Spanish.
The executive director of the Mexican Corn Tortilla Foundation, Rafael Mier, said the competition is an initiative for promoting production and distribution of the large species of corn, as lack of demand threatens its existence.
“This [species] produces an excellent corn that can be used to make atoles, tortillas, sopes, tlacoyos and even pozole, among other suggestions,” he said, adding that local authorities are working to recuperate the species.
“A number of organizations have united to achieve this, such as the National Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research Institute (INIFAP), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Mexican Corn Tortilla Foundation,” he said.
The 2016 winner with 45-centimeter cobs.
Mier has worked to save a number of endangered corn species, such as his 2016 campaign to save the Toluqeño palomero strain, which is used to make popcorn.
Studies by the Mexican Biodiversity Commission (Conabio) have shown that the maize species produced in Jala is characterized by its long lifecycle, height of the plant and above all the size of its cob, considered to be the biggest in the world.
The plants grow as tall as four to five meters and produce cobs longer than 30 centimeters on average, while some as long as 60 centimeters have been reported.
The species is grown elsewhere in Nayarit and in neighboring states like Jalisco and Sinaloa, but does not grow as large in those places as it does in Jala, which winner Elías Moctzezuma praised for the fertility of its soil.
Macolm Madsen was last seen in Puerto Vallarta in October 2018.
Justice appears unlikely in the case of a Canadian man who disappeared in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, more than a year ago despite the best efforts of his daughter to assist Mexican authorities.
Malcolm Madsen, a 68-year-old snowbird from Sutton, Ontario, who spent winters living in a treehouse on the Jalisco coast, was last seen on the night of Saturday October 27, 2018, in the Ándale restaurant and bar in Puerto Vallarta.
Security footage filmed inside the bar shows Madsen sitting at a table with a woman who his daughter Brooke Mullins identifies as his 43-year-old Mexican girlfriend, Marcela Acosta Ramos.
The footage shows Madsen leaving the table at one point and in his absence, the woman believed to be Acosta is seen preparing a substance that she would soon put into his drink. After Madsen returns, the couple are seen in close conversation before the woman opens her fist and drops what appears to be a powder into his margarita glass. She then stirs the drink with a straw.
Edited and condensed footage posted online by the newspaper Toronto Star shows Madsen sipping from his glass nine times in a 13-minute period before the woman repeatedly stops him from drinking more by pulling the straw away from his mouth.
Madsen and his girlfriend, Marcela Acosta.
Footage also shows Madsen and the woman leaving the bar together. The Canadian was never seen again.
On November 1, 2018 – five days after the disappearance – Brooke Mullins received a Facebook message from a friend of her father who said that he couldn’t reach him at Los Chonchos, a beach town south of Vallarta where Madsen lived when in Mexico.
Mullins tried to contact her father by calling him and sending messages to his cell phone and Facebook account. However, all her attempts to get in touch went unanswered.
Mullins told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that she was not initially worried because she knew her father had poor internet and phone reception.
However, after hearing from friends and neighbors a few days later that Madsen hadn’t been seen at his home all week, the situation became one of “full panic,” she said. Her father was reported as missing but local police didn’t appear to take the case seriously, Mullins said.
“They thought maybe he wandered off or was taking a break from his life,” she said. “They were not interested at all.”
Mullins told the CBC that she was informed by Canadian authorities that there was little they could do because the investigation fell under Mexican jurisdiction.
“I’m not satisfied with the help I received from Canada, and I’ve spoken to everyone you could possibly imagine,” she said in a December interview. “I am not content with the way the Mexican government has dealt with this. I do not feel like anyone is interested or cares.”
Frustrated by the apparent police inaction after her father was reported missing, Mullins traveled to Jalisco in November 2018 to see what she could discover for herself.
A week after her father was last seen at the Ándale bar, the Ontario woman said the bar owner allowed her, her lawyer and a few of Madsen’s friends to review the security footage. Mullins said she “felt physically ill” after watching the video in which her father’s drink appears to be spiked. “There was that physical reaction of realizing how serious this really was.”
Mullins said she took the footage to police but an officer accused her of “doctoring” it.
By accessing GPS coordinates sent to her father’s email account, Mullins also discovered that Madsen’s Toyota van had traveled to several different locations on October 27 and 28, 2018.
What happened to Malcom Madsen? Watch shocking last known footage before he disappeared
She said the data – automatically sent to her father’s email address by GPS provider Trackimo – shows that Madsen’s van went to a shopping mall early in the evening of October 27, a remote jungle-like area north of Puerto Vallarta three hours later and a marina in the early hours of October 28 before returning to Acosta’s home.
The data is at odds with a statement Acosta reportedly made to police that the van had been in her garage all night. Mullins said that Acosta also told police that she and Madsen left the Ándale bar early because Madsen was drunk. Acosta claimed that she and Madsen slept at his home in Los Chonchos and that the next morning, he got up, packed his bags and left never to be seen again.
Along with the bar footage, Mullins took the GPS evidence to police believing that it would help them solve the case.
“I honestly felt like I was almost divinely guided. I just thought I had everything. You know, I thought how could they not see how damning this is and get involved?” she told CBC.
However, Jalisco authorities failed to make any progress in the case and there have been no arrests, the news website Vallarta Uno reported on January 10. The website said that Marcela Acosta contradicted herself about the last time she saw Madsen in a statement to the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office but noted that neither she, nor anyone else, faces charges.
Vallarta Uno also revealed that Mullins submitted a series of emails to police that provided an insight into the relationship between Madsen and Acosta. The latter would frequently ask Madsen for money and to buy cars and real estate for her, the website said.
In July 2018, Acosta sent an email to Madsen (who was in Canada at the time) to tell him that she, her mother and her son were sick and for that she reason she needed to continue withdrawing money using a bank card he had given her. Madsen reportedly responded that he had no problem with her withdrawing money when she needed to.
In other emails, Acosta asked Madsen to buy a house for her in Vallarta so that she could rent it out, threatened to withdraw all the money from his account and accused him of giving her a disease. Madsen told Acosta that he was going to buy her a restaurant but turned down her request to purchase a house in Vallarta, telling his girlfriend that she could rent out his property in Los Chonchos and keep the revenue it generated.
In addition, Vallarta Uno said that lawyers hired by Mullins discovered that Madsen made a call on October 27 to a man named Gabriel who operated a water taxi that the Canadian would use to travel between Vallarta and Los Chonchos. It is the last known call that the Canadian man made.
Although there have been no arrests, Vallarta Uno said there are a number of suspects in the case including Acosta’s son and brother, who may have been driving Madsen’s van on the night of his disappearance.
However, with little progress having been made, Mullins stood before a court in Ontario in late November to ask for her father to be declared dead. The court upheld the request.
Mullins and her lawyers hope that authorities in both Mexico and Canada will treat a suspicious death more seriously than a missing person case, CBC reported.
“It was very hard,” Mullins said, referring to her decision to ask the court to declare that her father was dead. “I’ve been holding on to that 15% still that he might be alive somewhere out there being held . . . But I do know he’s gone.”
An artisan works on one of the pieces of whimsical folk art.
The government of Oaxaca is taking legal action to protect the colorful artisanal wooden figurines called alebrijes from plagiarism and piracy by Chinese producers.
Oaxaca Economy Secretary Juan Pablo Guzmán said that a request has been sent to the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) to enforce a protection order for the folk art.
The registration called geographical indication will safeguard the Oaxacan heritage from inauthentic imitations.
“The IMPI has received the project sent by the government of Oaxaca for geographical indication for alebrijes, by which the wooden figurines carved by artisans would be protected at the national and international levels so that they won’t be subject to plagiarism and piracy,” he said.
The legal instrument will bring artisans better remuneration and worldwide prestige for their work, which will be protected and recognized across the globe, Guzmán said.
The government is working to protect textiles and the red and black clay pottery styles unique to the state in the same way, so that they also receive industrial protection from the IMPI.
“In Oaxaca artisans face problems such as competition from foreign products, primarily Chinese ones that are sold at lower prices and put them at a disadvantage, but also the fact that some foreigners take the models of the folk art and pirate them,” he said.
He added that the protection protocol aims to help with the production and commercialization of artisanal products, as well as advise artisans on intellectual property issues so that their creations and ideas are not stolen by others.
The daycare where children contracted food poisoning.
As many as 70 young children suffered food poisoning at an IMSS daycare in Guadalajara, Jalisco, on Tuesday.
They are believed to have taken ill after eating tainted panela cheese they were served at lunch at the daycare, operated by the Mexican health service.
Showing severe symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, the children ranging in age from a few months to 4 years old were taken to several IMSS clinics in the city but were later reported to be in stable condition.
IMSS authorities have come under fire for allegedly attempting to keep the incident quiet by hiding information from firefighters sent to the school and using the institute’s own ambulances to transport the children, instead of involving organizations such as the Red Cross and the Guadalajara Green Cross health service.
But the institute emphasized that it followed emergency medical protocols with regard to the detection of symptoms, provision of medical services, notification of parents and the transportation of the children to medical facilities.
Not all of the affected children showed symptoms severe enough to require emergency medical care, and some parents were called to come pick them up at the daycare.
“My daughter was not taken to the emergency room, but they’re telling me she has diarrhea, so I’ll have to take her to the doctor,” said Nancy Barraza, a mother of children in the institute’s care.
IMSS authorities said that an investigation into possible negligence is being conducted and that it will take disciplinary measures if necessary.
Senator Gómez Urrutia, financially successful union leader.
Like father, like son: mining union boss and ruling party Senator Napoleón Gómez Urrutia has amassed a fortune during a controversial career that included 12 years in self-exile in Canada after he was accused of embezzling US $55 million.
Now, son Napoleón Gómez Casso and his accumulation of wealth are in the spotlight after a report by W Radio journalist Carlos Loret de Mola revealed that he is the founder of two companies that appear to be in a prime position to take advantage of decisions made by his father in the Senate.
The report, entitled Emperor Napoleón and prepared by journalists Arelí Quintero y Miguel Castillo Chávez in collaboration with W Radio, details some of the dealings of both men and calls into question the legitimacy of the wealth they have acquired.
Despite having never worked as a miner, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia inherited the leadership of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers in 2001 after the death of his father Napoleón Gómez Sada, commonly known as Napo, who was at the helm of the union for 40 years.
Five years later – amid the 2006 Pasta de Conchos mine disaster in Coahuila in which 65 miners lost their lives – the government of then-president Vicente Fox launched an investigation into Gómez Urrutia, known as Napito, after 20,000 workers accused him of embezzling US $55 million from the union.
The Fox administration withdrew its recognition of Gómez Urrutia as union leader and Napito subsequently packed his bags and departed for Canada. However, the move didn’t put an end to his union leadership: while living in Vancouver, Gómez Urrutia continued to direct the union and was re-elected as president and secretary general twice.
Loret de Mola reported that despite being a union leader all his life, Napito and his and family have acquired multimillion-dollar assets both in Mexico and abroad. Gómez Urrutia continues to live a life “full of luxuries,” the report said.
Just months after he inherited the leadership of the mining union, Napito purchased a home in the upmarket Mexico City neighborhood of Lomas de Chapultepec for US $1.3 million, Loret de Mola said.
In 2015, Gómez Urrutia sold another Mexico City home located in the Florida neighborhood to a company owned by him and his son, Alejandro Gómez Casso.
The house was estimated to be worth 30 million pesos (US $1.6 million at today’s exchange rate) but was sold to the company Napale for just 2.8 million pesos, Loret de Mola said, a figure less than one-tenth its real value.
Gómez Urrutia also owns a colonial-style home in the town of Tepoztlán, Morelos, valued at about 60 million pesos and his wife, Oralia Casso Valdéz, purchased an apartment in Vancouver for almost CAD $2 million, or about US $1.5 million.
The senator’s 60-million-peso home in Morelos.
Loret de Mola said he has public records that show that the total value of the real estate owned by Napito and his wife is approximately 150 million pesos (US $8 million).
He also said he had obtained proof that Casso Valdéz is a frequent shopper at high-end department stores including Harrods in England, Saks Fifth Avenue in the United States and Holt Renfrew in Canada.
After Gómez Urrutia had been at the helm of the mining union for 17 years, and while he was still in Canada, an interesting political opportunity came his way. The septuagenarian was chosen by the now-ruling Morena party to stand as a plurinominal, or proportional representation, Senate candidate in the 2018 election.
With Mexicans supporting Morena and its presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador in their tens of millions, Gómez Urrutia had no problem securing a seat in the upper house. He returned to Mexico in late August 2018 to take up his position without fear of arrest on embezzlement charges because his new role afforded him immunity from prosecution.
President López Obrador, as well as many labor organizations around the world, has said that Gómez Urrutia was unfairly persecuted by past governments for political reasons.
The union leader is now “one of the most powerful figures in the Mexican Senate,” Loret de Mola said, adding that the federal government has designated him the “spearhead of new unionism.”
Almost a year ago, Gómez Urrutia presented a new labor federation he founded that unites 150 unions and is seen as pro-government. The International Confederation of Workers will fight for the rights of a labor movement that was oppressed by past “neoliberal governments,” he said when presenting the umbrella organization in February 2019.
Since becoming a senator, Gómez Urrutia has also been a member of the upper house’s mining and energy committees, memberships that his son appears to be trying to exploit.
Loret de Mola reported that just two months after his father was sworn in as a senator, Napoleón Gómez Casso created his own mining company called Exploraciones Rhino.
Gómez Casso began business maneuverings that appear designed to benefit from Gómez Urrutia’s position in the government just five days after López Obrador won the July 1, 2018 election in a landslide that swept Napito into the Senate.
On July 6, 2018, Gómez Casso created a company called Abstract Energy Holding, Loret de Mola said, adding that it was registered as a solar panel and energy generation firm. The company, 98.5% of which is owned by Napoleón Jr, is a shareholder of Exploraciones Rhino, the report said.
Loret de Mola pointed out that in the space of just four months after López Obrador’s victory at the 2018 election, Gómez Casso created two companies in two industries that his father could influence by developing new laws or modifying existing ones.
Under the subheading The Crown Prince, Loret de Mola said that Polo, as Napoléon Jr. is known to his friends, has long used social media to show off his wealth to the world.
At the age of just 21 in 2009, Gómez Casso purchased a home in San Antonio, Texas. By the age of 32, Polo had publicly boasted about the ownership of at least 31 cars, some of which were expensive racing or luxury models, seven motorcycles, two quad-bikes and six high-performance bicycles.
He frequently speaks of his purchases of luxury cars and his experiences driving them in online forums and even set up a YouTube channel to show off his assets, Loret de Mola said, adding that the channel has recently been set to private.
Among Gómez Casso’s purchases are cars made by Audi, Mercedes Benz, BMW and Porsche and Ducati motorcycles.
In a separate piece published today by the newspaper El Universal, Loret de Mola encapsulated the position that Senator Gómez Urrutia now finds himself in.
“With the inheritance of a union from his father and the business dynamic of his son, Senator Napito completes the trifecta: union power, political power, economic power.”
The first big school shooting — Columbine — happened in 1999, the year I was a senior in high school. It was blamed on all manner of things: Marilyn Manson, violent video games, absent or clueless parents, the lack of mental healthcare.
Notably, many scoffed at the idea that the prevalence of guns might be even partly to blame, or that the country’s own habit of killing its enemies might influence people’s feelings of justification for violence.
Learning about a school shooting is always sad, but it’s especially shocking when it happens where you don’t expect it: not just a school in Mexico, but a private school in Mexico.
I’ll expose my own prejudice here and admit that I was especially surprised that this took place at a private school made up of mostly well-off students. I think many would have expected something like this at a public school, a place, perhaps, with more seemingly “troubled” students.
But wealth and privilege don’t necessarily buy mental health, and sometimes the combination of above-average access to all manner of resources and freedom with private suffering can lead to tragedy.
I’m familiar with this kind of school: I worked at one for five years. The students were mostly the children of successful business people, industry leaders and politicians. My first year there, I had a student that I liked a lot but who, some days, seemed visibly troubled. He was bigger than most of his classmates, and stranger, and was no doubt picked on away from the eyes of the teachers.
One day as I was circling the room, I saw him showing a hammer in his backpack to another student. He then took it out and pretended to hit someone with it. I told him to put it away and notified the administration and the on-site psychologists, who called his parents right away. It wasn’t a gun, but it very well might have been a weapon.
I’ve written here about guns before, and reflected on how strange it was that with such violence in the country, there was such a shortage of American-style mass shootings. I hypothesized that the generally higher sense of social cohesion in Mexico might be partly to thank.
I don’t think there’s any one cause to what happened. I don’t think it was video games. I don’t think it was an admiring emulation of the country’s narcos. This kid had obviously been suffering, and needed help, and didn’t get it when he needed it.
I don’t blame his caretakers (with the information we have so far, at least) or the school. Indeed, we still don’t know a lot about his young life. But I do believe we should take this as a wakeup call, not just for ensuring that weapons don’t make their way into our schools, but that all children know they have a trusted adult they can turn to in the places where they spend most of their time.
I also don’t think “technology” is the cause, but I do believe that a growing obsession (along with the rest of the world) with personalized, single-user devices has made some of that social and civic cohesion that Mexico is famous for — that way of paying close attention to each other — fade. It’s not that we mean to ignore each other, least of all our children; it’s that these now essential devices are very specifically designed to demand our attention as much as possible.
There’s a reason that so many tech executives send their children to luddite schools and keep hand-held screens out of their homes and their children’s pockets.
Paying attention to people is hard, and sometimes boring, and increasingly awkward as we become more accustomed to interacting with typed words and emojis instead.
We don’t know a lot about this child. We know that he seemed to be fine on the surface. We know that he lived with his grandparents, having lost his mother a few years earlier. Strangely, nothing has really been said about the father, who presumably was absent from the start.
Would anything have been able to stop it? Certainly the backpack checks on the way into school that were rejected earlier in the school year would have, but that doesn’t get to the root of the problem. What was this child going through? Would anything have been able to help him as an individual? How many others like him are there?
The truth is that mental illness is easy enough to keep secret, especially in our distracted world. We need to make sure that every child has an adult that they can count on.
Mass shootings aren’t easy to predict, but the need for emotional and mental support is.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Please don't pee on the escalators, Metro authorities ask.
Fully one-quarter of escalator breakdowns on the Mexico City Metro are caused by people urinating on them, according to authorities.
The deputy manager of mechanical installations, Fermín Rafael Ramírez Alonso, said that Tacubaya and Chabacano are among the stations most affected.
Ramírez urged users not to urinate on escalators or other Metro installations, because of the damage it causes.
He said that other causes for breakdowns include excessively heavy loads, running on the stairs, imbalance on the stairs and objects falling between them.
“There are even users who cut the stairs with knives or other sharp objects, of which we have examples in Tacubaya,” he said.
The Metro will spend 270 million pesos (US $14.3-million) to repair 55 escalators — 25 by the end of 2020 and 30 more by the end of 2021.
Of these, 13 are in the Tacubaya station. They are the most structurally complex in the system and are already undergoing repairs.
Ramírez said the 55 escalators to be repaired this year are located on Lines 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9, and all have been in service well past their suggested lifespans.
“On Lines 4, 3 and 7 there are 49 escalators that are 31 to 38 years old. Grupo Comet [Engineering Services] recommends that the lifetimes of the escalators be no more than 20 years,” he said.
He said that in previous years there were only two companies contracted to maintain the escalators, but now there are five.
The transit system announced in March last year that the organization would begin checking all escalators over 33 years old in order to avoid accidents after eight people were injured on an escalator in the Mixcoac station on Line 5.
