Travel agencies create new 8-day tour product in Quintana Roo

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January 3, 2020

Mahahual is one of the stops on the new Quintana Roo tour.

As part of its “Journey Across Mexico in Eight Days” program, the Mexican Association of Travel Agencies (AMAV) is preparing new tourism products in Quintana Roo to bring in more visitors.

The “Journey Across Quintana Roo in Eight Days” vacation package is a tour in which 42-passenger buses will take visitors from Chetumal International Airport to top tourist attractions with two departures a week.

National AMAV president Eduardo Paniagua Morales said the objective of the program is to create new vacation products that provide tourists with fresh experiences and generate more revenue for the states that participate.

The tours in Quintana Roo are expected to generate 756,000 pesos (US $40,000) a week, he said.

They will take tourists to popular and not-so-popular sites alike, such as the Bacalar lagoon, the coastal town of Mahahual, the cenote sinkhole in La Unión on the border with Belize, and forests of thousand-year-old mahogany trees in Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

Also on the itinerary will be Tulum, the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, the Cobá lagoon, more cenotes and other destinations. The tour will end in Puerto Morelos.

Paniagua said that at the national level the program is estimated to bring in 450 million pesos (US $23.8 million) of revenue and will start off in the states of Tabasco, San Luis Potosí and Campeche once the details are worked out with AMAV affiliates and tourism service providers.

In addition to the eight-day vacation packages, the association is also putting together three and five-day tours.

The idea is to gradually add other states, for which AMAV has also held meetings with tourism secretaries in Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Coahuila and Zacatecas to plan new tourism routes among their Pueblos Mágicos and other tourist destinations.

The association’s offering of tours can be viewed on its website (Spanish only).

Source: El Economista (sp)

Remittances fell 2.25% in November, the first annual decline in three years

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MND Staff

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January 3, 2020

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January-November remittances since 2013, in billions of US dollars.

Remittances sent home by Mexicans working abroad fell 2.25% in November compared to the same month of 2018, the first annual decrease in more than three years.

Bank of México data shows that total remittances in the penultimate month of the year were US $2.89 billion whereas overseas workers – most of whom are in the United States – sent US $2.96 billion home in November 2018.

The average single remittance in November 2019 was US $328, down 4% from US $342 a year earlier.

The annual decline was the first since March 2016, when remittances fell 2.8%. The month over month decline between October and November was 7.2%.

Experts who spoke with the newspaper El Financiero said that a slowdown in the industrial sector in the United States, economic uncertainty in that country and the strength of the Mexican peso in the last months of 2019 were the main reasons why remittances decreased in November.

“The majority of remittances come from compatriots who are employed in the industrial sector, construction for example,” said Ángel Huerta, an analyst at the financial group Ve por Más.

“What has been seen in recent months is that industry in the United States has been slowing down more than the rest of the economy, which becomes a risk for the sending of money to Mexico.”

Janneth Quiroz, deputy director of economic analysis at the Monex financial group, said the 40-day General Motors strike, which ended in late October, and the strength of the peso were factors in November’s decline.

Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs in New York, said that “remittances slowed down more than expected in November due to the 5% appreciation of the peso against the dollar since November 2018.”

He added that the annual decline in remittances when converted to pesos was 6.9%.

Despite the fall recorded in November, remittances sent to Mexico in the first 11 months of the year were the highest ever recorded by the central bank.

Mexicans working abroad sent a total of US $32.96 billion home between January and November, a 7.43% increase compared to the same period of 2018, a year in which remittances hit a record high. Annual remittances have increased every year since 2013, statistics show.

Remittances will likely pick up in early 2020, according to a report by Monex, which said that it’s probable that money transfers will recover due to the normalization of automotive production in the United States and positive construction figures seen in recent weeks.

Ramos of Goldman Sachs said he expected remittances to “stabilize to a moderately positive level in coming months,” adding that the record transfers in 2019 helped Mexico’s current account and had a positive impact on private consumption, particularly that of low-income families “who have a high propensity for consumption” and receive the lion’s share of the money.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

IMO 2020 means a cleaner shipping industry, but with consequences

By

Rajan Vig

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January 3, 2020

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The energy front has been quiet for the past week since we entered that awkward period between Christmas and New Year’s where markets are technically open but most people are out of the office, so market activity is relatively low.

As we begin 2020, Mexicans wait to see how their president will conduct business after holding power for over a year. The excuse of inheriting a bad economy from the previous governments is not an argument that will hold much longer with citizens, meaning President López Obrador and his Morena party need to start taking responsibility for their decisions and avoid scapegoating, a tactic the party used multiple times last year.

Whether the party was right or wrong in its judgment, it is time for Morena to take the bull by its horns and steer the country under its agenda, taking full responsibility for the consequences of its actions.

Today I want to talk about a legal change in global fuel usage and legislation I briefly commented on in early December. Entering a new decade, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), an institution that governs maritime regulations and is a subsidiary agency of the United Nations, implemented IMO 2020. What is it and why is it relevant to the common Mexican and how will it affect Mexico?

In short, the IMO implemented a change effective January 1 forcing the shipping sector to reduce significantly their emissions, that is to say their carbon footprint, in international waters. As a result, tankers will now have to utilize a cleaner refined product fuel.

In essence, it will be a cleaner diesel than the dirty fuel oil they have used. The regulation means our seas will see an 80% reduction in sulfur emissions. When we talk about refined product fuel, we are referring to the production of separated fuels that are created when crude oil enters a refinery. The long-chain and higher-weight hydrocarbon makeup of crude oil converts to more widely used refined fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Through this process, the cheapest of the refined fuel produced is known as heavy fuel/fuel oil or bunker fuel. There are subtle differences in the chemical makeup of these fuels but essentially they are the densest residual fuels created with the highest content of sulfur and dirt still in the fuel.

After the Great Depression and the Second World War, there was a move by shipping companies to stop burning coal for energy and turn to oil. Since fuel oil was “bottom of the barrel” and therefore cheap, it became common for ships to use it. There were financial and safety reasons for it too: ships literally burn tonnes of fuel and therefore a less expensive, highly sulfuric fuel is going to be cheaper to buy, and it has a higher flash point, reducing the danger of explosions.

The fuel’s higher energy content gave shippers more value for money in the low and medium speed engines used by ships that travel at much slower speeds than other forms of transportation.

IMO 2020 means that the current maximum fuel oil sulfur limit of 3.5 weight percent (wt%) will fall to 0.5.

How will this affect Mexican consumers?

Higher demand from shipping companies for low sulfur distillate fuels will push refineries worldwide to use middle distillates such as diesel-based marine gasoil (MGO), diesel (especially ultra-low sulfur diesel) and jet fuel to blend down HSFO (high sulfur fuel oil) and produce the compliant fuel. However, Pemex’s refineries do not produce the middle distillates, meaning that it and its trading subsidiaries will have to import diesel from the U.S. and other nations to be able to supply ships that enter Mexican ports.

From a pricing standpoint, if more diesel is used to produce MGO this will tighten supply in the refined fuels market, causing refinery margins – including jet and diesel fuel – to spike. This will have a knock-on effect for consumers in Mexico since there will be less availability of the aforementioned fuels in the U.S., meaning the cost of gasoline and diesel will increase since they are priced into an import pricing structure, given that Pemex also imports those fuels in large quantities.

Refineries with advanced processing flexibility could also decide to boost diesel yields at the expense of jet fuel production, adding the extra risk of lower jet fuel supply on the global market. But this is not an option for Pemex refineries that are heavy producers of fuel oil and, on average, are functioning at 30% capacity, which is why Pemex imports so much fuel.

How will this affect the Mexican environment?

Everyone in Mexico is fully aware of the contamination issues in some of its largest cities.

According to a report published by Nature Communications, “cleaner marine fuels will reduce related premature mortality and morbidity by 34% and 54% respectively, representing a ~ 2.6% global reduction in cardiovascular and lung cancer deaths and a ~3.6% global reduction in childhood asthma.” It has also been found that approximately 70% of ship emissions take place within 400 kilometers of land, waiting to dock at their respective ports.

In Mexico, a country that boasts 102 ports and 15 out-of-port terminals, this figure means a significant proportion of the population, especially communities that are perhaps unaware of the detrimental effects of sulfur oxides polluting the atmosphere.

IMO 2020 hopes to pave the way to less severe effects on respiratory systems and save marine life, reducing our carbon footprint in the world of commodity trading.

Shipping is the oldest form of merchandise trading and it is not a sector that is going anywhere so this type of law is essential to reducing emissions worldwide.

The writer is the founder of Indimex Group, a Mexico City company focused on the procurement, marketing, trading and optimizing of refined petroleum products as well as investing in and operating physical assets for the movement of fuels in Mexico and the United States. His bulletin about developments in the Mexican energy industry appears weekly on Mexico News Daily.

Arrest of ex-security chief ‘proof’ that cartel had power within government: AMLO

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MND Staff

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January 3, 2020

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The president claims that El Chapo, right, had people in government working for him.

The arrest of former president Felipe Calderón’s security secretary in the United States last month is proof that convicted drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán had people working for him in the government, President López Obrador said on Thursday.

Asked at his morning press conference whether he had evidence to back up a claim he made in his new year’s message that there was a time in which Guzmán had the “same power or same influence” as the president because there was a “conspiracy” between him and the government, López Obrador said the proof was that Genaro García Luna is accused of links to the Sinaloa Cartel.

The former security chief, a key architect of the so-called war on drugs launched by Calderón, was detained in Dallas, Texas, on December 9 on charges that he allowed the cartel once headed by El Chapo to operate in exchange for multimillion-dollar bribes.

“That’s the only proof . . . He was in charge of security, Calderón’s right-hand [man],” López Obrador told reporters, adding that García also worked for former presidents Vicente Fox and Carlos Salinas.

“. . . He’s accused of protecting a criminal organization, that’s the proof! It still needs to be shown [in court] but the signs are there [that he’s guilty],” he said.

García has not entered a plea but is expected to go on trial in New York.

Declarations of assets filed by García between 2002 and 2008 when he was head of the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency in Fox’s administration and then Calderon’s public security secretary showed that his wealth increased fivefold in the period and that he bought and sold several properties.

The United States indictment against the ex-official said that “financial records obtained by the [U.S.] government” showed that “by the time García Luna relocated to the United States in 2012, he had amassed a personal fortune of millions of dollars.”

The president questioned where that wealth could have come from if García wasn’t involved in criminal activities.

“Where did the houses and apartments come from,” López Obrador asked, adding that corruption in past governments was seen as something “normal.”

“That’s what I was referring to. We cannot allow crime to govern . . . It’s not that Guzmán Loera was here in the [National] Palace [or] in [the former presidential residence] Los Pinos but he had representatives in the government and that is extremely serious.”

The president also took the opportunity to launch a broadside at “conservatives,” a term he uses to describe members of past governments as well as critics of his administration, including journalists who write unflattering reports.

“Their true doctrine [is] hypocrisy. Don’t you remember what they said recently about the Sinaloa case?” López Obrador said referring to the government’s decision to release one of El Chapo’s sons after the Sinaloa Cartel reacted violently to the operation to capture him.

“[They said that] we faltered and that we should have used a heavy hand. What is a heavy hand? Dictatorship. And then it comes out that he who was in charge of security during a period of government was at the service of a criminal group and the conservatives kept quiet,” he said.

In Mexico, federal financial investigators are looking into the possible embezzlement of more than 4.8 billion pesos (US $250 million) in federal funds to companies with links to García.

Source: Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp)

Ciudad Juárez to build mega-cemetery for unidentified, unclaimed bodies

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MND Staff

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January 2, 2020

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An unclaimed body is buried in Ciudad Juárez.

The Chihuahua government will build a 50,000-square-meter mega-cemetery in Ciudad Juárez for the burial of unidentified and unclaimed bodies.

The State Forensic Interment Center will be located on the state government-owned San Isidro-Zaragoza reserve in the northern border city and include facilities capable of storing up to 800 bodies prior to burial.

Construction of the cemetery and facilities that will include an ossuary, or bone room, and six refrigerated morgue chambers will cost 50 million pesos (US $2.65 million).

Chihuahua Attorney General César Augusto Peniche said in an interview that the cemetery is needed because unidentified and unclaimed bodies are currently buried in regular cemeteries where the corpses of crime victims are sometimes not managed as they should be.

In the state-operated mega-cemetery, there will be “complete control” both in the burial and exhumation of bodies, he said.

“We intend to comply with the highest standards,” Peniche said, adding that the International Red Cross participated in the process to design the new cemetery.

“We intend to have a dignified space, to manage remains professionally and [to have] strict control on the entry, location and removal [of bodies],” he said.

State government statistics show that there were 2,410 homicides in Chihuahua in the first 11 months of 2019 of which 1,402 – or 58% – were in Ciudad Juárez.

Between October 2016, the month Governor Javier Corral took office, and October 2019, state authorities buried 818 unidentified bodies and 207 corpses of people whose identities were established but went unclaimed nevertheless.

Of the former number, 468 bodies – or 57% of the total – were killed in Juárez.

Homicides in the border city located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, increased 61% from 771 in 2017 to 1,245 in 2018 before rising an additional 12.6% last year even before data for December murders was included.

Source: Reforma (sp)

50% of Mexicans believe security situation will improve in 2020: poll

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MND Staff

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January 2, 2020

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Half of those polled predicted AMLO's popularity would increase and 26% said Donald Trump would be ousted before this year's election.

Fifty percent of Mexicans believe that Mexico’s security situation will improve this year, according to a poll conducted by the newspaper El Financiero, while just over half think the economy will pick up after stagnating in 2019.

In contrast, 30% of 800 Mexican adults polled last month predicted that the security situation would deteriorate this year, while 17% said it would stay the same.

The optimism of half of the those polled came despite homicide numbers reaching record levels in 2019.

With regard to the economy, 54% of respondents said they believed it would improve in 2020, while 27% predicted it would get worse and 17% said it would remain the same.

Revised data published by the national statistics agency Inegi in November showed that the economy contracted 0.09% in the first quarter of 2019 and 0.06% in the second, and grew by just 0.1% in the third. Figures for the fourth quarter of last year have not yet been released.

Reasons for the optimism on the economy from more than half of those polled including the signing of a revised version of the new North American free trade agreement last month and the announcement in November of a US $42.95-billion national infrastructure plan that the government said would stimulate growth.

Asked to offer an opinion on the outlook for President López Obrador’s popularity in 2020, 49% of respondents said it would increase, 29% said it would decrease and 18% said it would stay the same.

The result could be explained by the optimism of half of the poll respondents with regard to security and the economy.

However, to increase his popularity, López Obrador will have to reverse a downward trend in his approval rating revealed by polls published in the latter half of last year.

The poll also touched on the 2020 presidential election in the United States, asking what was most likely to happen to President Donald Trump. Twenty-three percent said he would win the election, 42% said he would lose and 26% predicted he would be ousted before they were held.

The El Financiero poll also found that 49% of Mexicans believe that women’s protests against violence and femicide will increase in 2020, while 30% think that their frequency will decrease.

Several such protests were held in Mexico last year, including a performance in Mexico City in November of “Un violador en tu camino” (A rapist in your way), a choreographed feminist chant that originated in Chile and spread to cities around the world.

In addition, the poll revealed division among Mexicans about whether López Obrador should travel overseas in 2020 to represent Mexico on the world stage: 49% of respondents said the president should travel abroad, while 48% said he should stay at home to concentrate on domestic issues.

López Obrador didn’t leave the country in 2019, choosing instead to send Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard to represent Mexico at international meetings such as the G20 leaders’ summit and the United Nations General Assembly.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Happy new year’s shooters kill one, wound 19

By

Cody Copeland

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January 2, 2020

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Firing weapons in the air can be fun at any time. This Mexico City cop was in a festive mood when he fired 15 shots into the air last March. — Firing weapons into the air can be fun at any time. This Mexico City cop was in a festive mood when he fired off 15 shots last March.

Despite awareness campaigns aimed at preventing people from firing guns into the air to ring in the new year, at least one person was killed and 19 were wounded by stray bullets during this year’s celebrations.

Gabriela Zavaleta Fermín, 30, died in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, when a stray bullet struck her in the head at 12:13am on January 1.

Also in Oaxaca, at least two people were reported wounded by stray bullets in Pinotepa Nacional.

A man from Irapuato, Guanajuato, posted on Facebook that his family’s New Year’s festivities were ruined when a stray bullet struck his wife in the hand.

“Your bullet didn’t go to the stars, your bullet fell on my wife’s finger, you ruined our New Year, while you continue to have fun and feel like hotshot and a thug for firing bullets into the air. May God forgive you,” he said.

“Help me share this so that the idiot can see where his bullet fell,” he added.

A teenage girl in Allende, Nuevo León, was injured while lying in bed when a stray bullet pierced her home’s sheetmetal roofing and struck her in the right shoulder. Since the bullet lost velocity when it hit the roof her injury was not severe and she did not require hospitalization, but received medical attention at a municipal clinic.

Six people were hit by falling bullets in Sinaloa where authorities said it was the worst year for such incidents. Last year there were three such injuries in the state.

A woman and seven men were injured in Tijuana just after midnight, and in Acapulco, a minor was struck by a stray bullet near the Plaza Marbella beach during the city’s fireworks show.

Each year authorities ask the public to refrain from celebrating the start of a new year by firing their weapons but the warnings goe unheeded by some.

Depending on the caliber of the gun and angle at which it is fired, a bullet shot into the air can reach an altitude of up to 1.6 kilometers, a height from which it can gather enough velocity to pierce a human skull by the time it returns to the ground.

Sources: Milenio (sp), El Imparcial (sp), 24 Horas (sp)

Chichén Itzá breaks attendance record with 18,000 visitors

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Cody Copeland

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January 2, 2020

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Chichén Itzá: 18,000 visitors in one day.

The Chichén Itzá archaeological site in Yucatán broke its one-day attendance record on December 29 with 18,696 visitors.

The day’s attendance was over 25% more than the 14,000 who visited on the equinox in March and 58% more than the 7,728 on the fall equinox in September.

The head of Yucatán’s Culture and Tourism Services Agency (Cultur), Mauricio Díaz Montalvo, said the famous Mayan pyramids weren’t the only tourist sites in Yucatán that were packed during the busy holiday season.

Although it didn’t see the spectacular numbers that Chichén Itzá saw, the Uxmal archaeological zone was also popular among tourists during the holiday break. On December 22, it welcomed 2,552 visitors, while the Dzibilchaltún site saw 1,239.

Other popular sites included the ecotourism destination Celestún, which received 1,054 tourists on December 23. The X’Kekén and Samulá cenotes (sinkholes with underground rivers) in Dzitnup, near Valladolid, saw 1,131 visitors between the two on that day.

Mérida’s Pasaje Picheta, a shopping center in one of the city’s oldest buildings, recently reopened after being closed for two years from renovations, saw 3,630 visitors on Saturday, December 21.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Durazo’s new year’s resolutions: Guard deployments in 200 locations

By

MND Staff

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January 2, 2020

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The deployment of the National Guard to 200 regions across the country is one of several new year’s resolutions outlined by Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo in a series of Twitter posts.

The federal government is beginning 2020 with “things to do and challenges,” Durazo wrote in the first of five New Year’s Day posts.

“We will continue combating corruption in the security forces and will not give any concession to uniformed crime that protects organized crime,” he said.

The security secretary asserted in his second post that the government’s welfare programs will continue to create opportunities this year, particularly for the nation’s youth and poorest people.

“We will continue moving forward to eliminate all activities and conditions that are generators of violence,” Durazo wrote in reference to the government’s so-called abrazos no balazos (hugs not bullets) security strategy that favors addressing the root causes of crime over combating it with force.

In his third post, the secretary said the government will deploy the National Guard to 50 new regions in 2020 to bring the total number of regions covered by the new security force to 200.

Durazo said that 21,170 new guardsmen will be recruited in order to bolster the National Guard’s presence in the entire country.

“The organizational and administrative maturing” of the force will continue to be a priority for the government, he added.

The National Guard, which has drawn most of its approximately 90,000 members from the Federal Police and armed forces, was formally inaugurated on June 30, 2019 and deployed to 150 regions the next day.

However, it failed to make any significant progress in reducing violence in the second half of last year, which is almost certain to go down as the most murderous in recent history.

In his fourth Twitter post, Durazo said the government will continue moving ahead with a “reorganization” process in the nation’s prisons in order to combat the criminal activity that is organized within them.

“We will especially work on the implementation of the new national policing model and coordination for the strengthening of state and municipal police,” he added.

The security secretary wrote in his fifth and final January 1 Twitter post that the government expects that “with these measures, and the will, unity and participation of everyone, 2020 will be a year of very good results for the recovery of peace” in Mexico.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Clashes between gangsters and police in Tamaulipas leave at least 17 dead

By

Cody Copeland

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January 2, 2020

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Police at the scene of one of several shootings this week in Tamaulipas.

Instead of celebration, the new year was rung in with widespread violence in two border towns in Tamaulipas as gunfights between members of the Northeast Cartel and security forces left at least 17 dead and many others wounded.

National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) troops were attacked by armed civilians in Miguel Alemán on Tuesday but at least six of the attackers were shot and killed by soldiers.

Soldiers also dismantled a criminal cell’s compound and seized guns, magazines and around 1,000 cartridges.

Nuevo Laredo saw at least five violent confrontations between criminal groups and security forces on New Year’s Eve. One of the attacks left three gunmen dead and a police officer wounded. Two gunmen were shot dead in another clash.

Armed men later attacked a hotel in which state police officers were staying, and another confrontation outside a hospital left two people dead and a civilian seriously wounded.

The violence continued into the new year, as clashes between cartel members and police forces created chaos in the city on Wednesday. At least four criminal suspects were killed and two officers were wounded in the confrontations.

Tamaulipas Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca responded on Wednesday evening to what he called the “cowardly attacks by the Northeast Cartel.”

“The [government of Tamaulipas] will not let its guard down and will keep acting with strength against the criminals,” he said in a tweet.

He went on to recognize “the good state police who have acted with strength and bravery facing the criminals in #NuevoLaredo.”

Source: Hoy Tamaulipas (sp), La Razón de México (sp)