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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MND Staff

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January 22, 2020

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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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MND Staff

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January 22, 2020

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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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MND Staff

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January 22, 2020

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Remains of the sweat lodge found in Mexico City. Edith Camacho/INAH

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a pre-Hispanic sweat lodge near La Merced, a market area in the historic center of Mexico City.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a statement Tuesday that the temazcal, as a domed, pre-Hispanic sweat lodge made out of mud or stone is known, was found during an excavation at a property on Talavera street, which is now known for the sale of baby Jesus statues.

Temazcales were used by indigenous people in Mesoamerica for medicinal purposes, spiritual rituals and childbirth.

Archaeologists found blocks made out of adobe and tezontle –a volcanic rock – that were used to build the sweat lodge as well as a bathtub used to heat the structure with steam. Based on the remains they found, the INAH team concluded that the temazcal was five meters long and about three meters wide.

INAH said the discovery has allowed archaeologists to pinpoint the location of Temazcaltitlan, one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tenochtitlán, the Mexica capital that would become Mexico City.

Site of a tannery that operated during the last century of Spanish rule. Edith Camacho/INAH

According to a chronicle of pre-Hispanic times in Tenochtitlán, a temazcal was built in Temazcaltitlan to bathe and purify Quetzalmoyahuatzin, a noble Mexica girl.

Hernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, a noble indigenous man who lived in colonial times, wrote in his Crónica Mexicáyotl that ordinary residents of Tenochtitlán also bathed there.

The head of the INAH team that found the temazcal said the discovery is the first concrete evidence of Temazcaltitlan’s vocation as a center of bathing and purification.

Víctor Esperón Calleja said the neighborhood belonged to the district of Teopan (also known as Zoquipan), which was the first territory built on Lake Texcoco and occupied by the Mexicas. It is believed that the female deities of earth, fertility, water and the pre-Hispanic beverage pulque were also worshipped in Temazcaltitlan.

In addition to the temazcal remains, on the same Talavera street property archaeologists found the remnants of a home that was possibly inhabited by a noble indigenous family shortly after the Spanish conquest and structures of a tannery, which operated during the last century of colonial rule before Mexico gained its independence in the early 19th century.

“The findings suggest that in the 16th century this area was more populated than we initially thought,” Esperón said.

“Given that it was an area of chinampas [floating agricultural gardens], it was thought that there were few houses but at this property we have evidence of the wooden pilings and stones that were used for the wall foundations [of a home],” he added.

Esperón said that the methods used to build the house allowed archaeologists to date it to the first century of colonial rule between 1521 and 1620.

The walls of the four-room home were decorated with red motifs and its floor was made of adobe blocks, features that the archaeologist said indicated that it was “inhabited by an indigenous family, possibly of noble origin.”

The tannery, Esperón said, likely made leather from cattle slaughtered at the San Lucas abattoir, which was located close to where the Pino Suárez Metro station now stands.

Mexico News Daily

Reynosa man who flew to China possible victim of coronavirus

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Cody Copeland

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January 22, 2020

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Tijuana is the only airport that receives direct flights from China.

A professor at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) campus in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, may be the first case of the coronavirus in Mexico, according to state Health Secretary Gloria Molina.

After a recent trip to China, the 57-year-old molecular biologist was hospitalized after showing symptoms of a cough and runny nose.

“This doctor went to China on December 25 and was in the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak occurred, and returned to Mexico on January 10. He spent a day at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City and later traveled to Reynosa,” Molina said.

The patient is of Asian descent and is a researcher of viral and bacterial pathogenesis at the IPN genomic biotechnology laboratory in Reynosa.

He does not show signs of a fever and diagnostics are being run to detect the presence of a respiratory virus.

Health authorities said the scientist had a cough on January 13 and a runny nose on January 16, but has not had any chest pain or a sore throat.

In response to the possibility that the coronavirus has arrived in Mexico, the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC) called an extraordinary meeting at the Tijuana airport to discuss measures and protocols to be taken at the country’s only airport that receives direct flights from China.

Representatives of the National Immigration Institute (INM), customs, the Secretariat of National Defense and the Baja California Secretariat of Health attended the meeting held on Wednesday.

The Tijuana airport has one flight, operated by Hainan Airlines, that arrives from Beijing on Mondays and Fridays.

Sources: Milenio (sp)

Second mural remembers 33 missing persons in Culiacán

By

Cody Copeland

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January 22, 2020

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The second of two murals that commemorate people who have disappeared.

The faces of 33 missing citizens of Culiacán, Sinaloa, look out from a second mural painted in that city in memory of the loved ones of the 317 families that make up a search collective called Sabuesos Guerreras, or Warrior Sleuths.

“May the walls speak what people want to keep quiet,” said Isabel Cruz, leader of the collective.

The group worked with a local printmaking shop to make the faces of the disappeared visible to the public on the walls of Culiacán and also in Oaxaca, Cruz’s home state. The first mural they painted in Culiacán features 32 faces.

For the members of the collective, the mural is an art form that will draw attention to those who have gone missing without explanation, as well as aid in searching for them and remind authorities how many people have disappeared in Sinaloa.

They say they want to cover the walls of the city with the faces of the disappeared.

“For us it is the way we shout at the government and say this needs to stop, since every time they report numbers, they grow more and more. We were at 44,000 disappeared people and it’s been raised to over 61,000 . . . We don’t have enough walls to paint all the faces of those we’ve lost,” she said.

The National Search Commission reported in January 2019 that there were over 40,000 people on the National Registry of Missing and Disappeared Persons, but earlier this month it revised that number to over 61,000.

Cruz called on the municipal government to donate walls for the project because she believes the murals have had an impact on residents and even graffiti artists have respected them and not painted over them.

Although the government has not responded to Cruz’s request, another wall next to that of the second mural was recently donated to the cause. The collective will be able to paint around 50 more faces on it.

Source: El Sol de Sinaloa (sp), Luz Noticias (sp)

Ex-security chief indicted in US won’t negotiate plea: lawyer

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Cody Copeland

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January 22, 2020

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Former public security secretary Genaro García Luna will not take a plea deal in the case against him in a U.S. federal court on charges that he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a defense attorney.

García “adamantly denies that he accepted any bribes” and is “very much looking forward” to fighting the charges, attorney Cesar de Castro said on Tuesday.

He said his client was in “very good spirits” despite being incarcerated since his arrest in Dallas, Texas, in December. García entered a plea of not guilty in a Brooklyn federal court on January 3.

De Castro’s statement came after a court hearing in which prosecutors were urged to hand over evidence to the former security chief’s defense.

Due to the large amount of documentation involved — much of which will come from outside the United States — prosecutors requested that the case be classified as “complex.”

García’s defense could be complicated by Mexico having blocked access to his bank accounts, de Castro said.

Prosecutors claim that García accepted millions of dollars in bribes — in the form of briefcases full of cash — in exchange for allowing the cartel headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to operate with impunity in Mexico.

Former Sinaloa Cartel member Jesús Zambada testified at Guzmán’s New York trial that he himself bribed García with at least US $6 million at the behest of his brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

Prosecutors say the Sinaloa Cartel smuggled tons of drugs to New York and other U.S. cities, including the federal district that covers Queens and Brooklyn.

García served as head of Mexico’s Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) from 2001 to 2005, and was former president Felipe Calderón’s public security secretary from 2006 to 2012. He was living in Miami, Florida before his arrest in December.

Source: NBC News (en)

Global peso boost wanted but not at expense of low-wage Mexicans

By

Tony Richards

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January 22, 2020

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Economy Secretary Márquez in Davos this week.

Mexico is willing to enhance its role on the world stage but not to the detriment of the country’s labor force, says Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez Colín.

Though Mexico is inclined to boost its participation in global commerce, lower salaries and low-wage jobs won’t be the price of doing so, Márquez told investors attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

“Last year we had a 16% increase in the minimum wage at the nominal rate, and a 13% increase in real salaries, and this year will bring a new increase of 20% in nominal terms and 17% in real terms,” she said.

In her opening statement at the WEF she said that macroeconomic stability alone will not suffice if it doesn’t result in reduced poverty and economic disparity.

While admitting to zero growth during the first year of the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration, she predicted a much better outlook for this year and the rest of the president’s term, thanks to the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is now awaiting ratification by Canada.

One of the key advantages that Mexico provides global and domestic investors is that “there is no social discontent,” she pointed out at the session devoted to perspectives on Latin America. “The Mexican president’s popularity sends a clear sign that we won’t be facing any demonstrations for the rest of his administration.”

Moderated by Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the panel of industrialists at the Davos summit requested an update on investment and new regulations in Mexico. Márquez responded that the Mexican market’s strengthened overseas presence is due to a robust domestic economy that can create well-paid jobs.

“Investors ask us how Mexico will confront the challenges of this century’s third decade,” said the economy secretary. “And in response we want to make it clear that we’re committed to macroeconomic stability, which we understand is key to driving growth.”

Source: El Economista (sp)

Agreement with China opens market to Mexican bananas

By

MND Staff

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January 22, 2020

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China-bound: 39 tonnes of bananas were shipped this week.

A shipment of Mexican bananas is on its way to China for the first time ever.

Thirty-nine tonnes of the fruit grown by producers in Teapa, Tabasco, and Mazatán, Chiapas, left the port in Manzanillo, Colima, on Tuesday bound for the world’s second largest economy, where consumers have already developed a taste for Mexican avocados and tequila.

At a ceremony to celebrate the departure, federal Agriculture Secretary Víctor Villalobos Arámbula said the opening of the Chinese market to Mexican bananas was the result of the work done by producers to ensure that they meet the necessary phytosanitary, or plant health, requirements.

Villalobos and a Chinese official signed a bilateral phytosanitary agreement in Beijing in May last year, paving the way for the export of Mexican bananas to the east Asian nation.

The agriculture secretary said on Tuesday that the government will continue to support producers, especially small-lot farmers, so that more can meet the strict import standards for countries such as China.

The Secretariat of Agriculture (Sader), through the National Agrofood Health, Safety and Quality Service (Senasica), will also oversee compliance with standards to ensure that export volumes increase, Villalobos said.

For his part, Senasica chief Francisco Javier Trujillo said that all Mexican banana plantations that will export to China in an initial phase have been certified as being free of pests and having sound agricultural practices.

A Sader certificate will accompany each shipment of bananas to serve as evidence of compliance with the agricultural conditions to which Mexico and China agreed, he explained.

Adrián Prats, president of the National Banana Product System Committee, said that producers will aim to increase their exports without neglecting the domestic market.

Mexico is the world’s 12th largest banana producer, according to the growers’ association, with annual yields of 2.7 million tonnes. About 30% of production is exported to 43 different countries, generating US $270 million in revenue.

The United States was the biggest buyer of Mexican bananas in 2018 followed by Japan and the Netherlands.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Plane’s raffle may be absurd proposal but buying it was the real absurdity

By

Sarah DeVries

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January 22, 2020

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The plane has been a popular target for memes.

My local gym put out a funny promo this past week on Facebook: it showed the presidential plane sitting on the roof and said, “For your convenience, we have special presidential plane parking for when you win it in the raffle — no excuses!”

So far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the jokes about the presidential plane being auctioned off; if there’s one thing Mexicans are good at, it’s coming up with funny stories to make fun of absurd proposals.

I’d argue that the real absurdity, however, was buying literally the most expensive plane in the world to begin with.

While the idea of raffling it off has met with predictable ridicule, it’s important to remember that it’s not the only option being floated out there. Before we get to the others, let’s take a look at the plane’s origins:

Though purchased in 2012, former president Peña Nieto was actually not the one to get the ball rolling: it was ordered during the administration of Felipe Calderón. The previous presidential plane had been built in the 1980s and it was argued that an update for reasons of safety and security was badly needed.

That’s not to say, of course, that Peña Nieto was against any part of it at any point; indeed, he had no qualms about charging close to 1.3 million pesos on what amounted to toiletries for just two flights — with public money, of course.

Really, how long did government officials believe they’d be able to get away with this kind of thing?

Indefinitely, apparently. Or perhaps they thought (correctly) that the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party was on the way out anyway, so they might as well milk the public coffers for all they were worth.

President López Obrador has repeated these words often: there cannot be a rich government with a poor population. For better or for worse, the presidential plane has been held up as a prime example of the ostentatious and unapologetic wealth of the country’s rulers at a time when half of all Mexicans live in poverty.

These types of comments are timely as, quite honestly, there has been a lot of push-back culturally against obscene displays of wealth. While the uncommonly wealthy government functionaries might have been able to convince themselves that most people were happy for them and thought they had earned and therefore deserved their wealth, that is increasingly hard to do with this planet’s obviously widening inequality.

Which brings us back to Mexico, and being stuck with this ridiculously extravagant plane.

Unabashed liberals like myself have often made the same kinds of quips as the president: “Really, how many families could the money for that new race car track have fed and sheltered?”; “What would the poorest school districts in the city have been able to do with that kind of cash?”; “If only that could have been put toward college or medical debt . . .”

Now that someone who thinks like us — at least in that regard — is actually in a position of power to do something about it, we’re all a bit stunned, staring at the spectacle of a new leader trying to backtrack the old ones’ irresponsible choices with our mouths hanging open.

AMLO has said that various needed services, like adequate water systems in poor communities, for example, could be paid for with the proceeds. As there have been several promises regarding what to do with the money, it’s hard to say where it would ultimately go.

Another, which has been proposed to the United States, is to trade the plane for medical equipment. If this is truly something that’s on the table, perhaps it could offset some of the unexpected costs of our new health system meant to replace the Seguro Popular. Maybe we could even make it free as promised! (You can bet you’ll read more on that in a later column.)

Finally, public works — especially those carried out by workers in the communities themselves — could be funded so that needed improvements could be made by those who understand fully what’s needed and stimulate the local economies, like this one in Oaxaca.

Or, maybe we could just give every Mexican a dollar and some change.

According to the newspaper El Universal, a decision on how to unload the plane will be made by February 15.

Until then, I suppose all we can do is sit back and enjoy the memes.

Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.