A billboard in Los Angeles offering the reward for El Mencho.
Billboards announcing a US $10-million reward for information leading to the arrest of Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera appeared in Los Angeles, California, on Tuesday.
Located above several L.A. highways, the billboards ask the public to submit information about Oseguera – the No. 1 most wanted fugitive of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) – via the Twitter handle @DEALosAngeles and the Department of Justice e-mail address [email protected].
The United States government doubled the reward on offer for information leading to the arrest of the CJNG leader from $5 million to $10 million in October 2018. He is wanted in the U.S. on a range of federal charges including criminal conspiracy and drug manufacture and distribution.
Authorities announced in February that El Mencho’s son, Rúben Oseguera – El Menchito – had been extradited to the United States to face trafficking and weapons charges, while his daughter, Jessica Johana Oseguera González, was arrested in Washington, D.C., late last month after she arrived at a federal court to attend a bond hearing for her brother.
The Washington Post reported that she was apparently unaware of a February 13 indictment that charges her with five counts of violating a U.S. ban on transacting with designated drug trafficking entities and individuals.
A family affair: El Mencho, right, and his son, daughter (in foreground) and wife.
Oseguera Cervantes’ wife, Rosalinda González Valencia, was arrested in May 2018 on charges of money laundering and organized crime. However, she was released from preventative custody on bail later the same year after a judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute her.
El Mencho and other former members of the Milenio Cartel formed the CJNG in 2010 with the aim of seizing control of drug trafficking and other criminal activities in the states of Jalisco and Michoacán.
Ten years later, it is a transnational criminal organization (TCO) with contacts in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Central America and the United States. The cartel is believed to operate out of 24 Mexican states including Jalisco, Michoacán, Baja California, Veracruz, Chihuahua and Mexico City.
Announcing the $10-million reward for Oseguera’s capture in 2018, then-attorney general Jeff Sessions described the CJNG as “one of the five most dangerous criminal organizations on the face of the earth.”
In its 2019 National Drug Threat Assessment, the DEA said that the CJNG smuggles illicit drugs into the United States by accessing various trafficking corridors along the southwest border including Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Nuevo Laredo.
“CJNG’s rapid expansion of its drug trafficking activities is characterized by the willingness to engage in violent confrontations with Mexican government security forces and rival cartels. Like most major Mexican TCOs, CJNG is a poly-drug trafficking group, manufacturing and/or distributing large amounts of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. CJNG reportedly has presence in at least 24 of 32 Mexican states,” the report said.
At left, an earlier photo of El Mencho and a more recent one.
The DEA agent in charge of capturing Oseguera said in August last year that the drug lord was hiding out in remote areas controlled by the CJNG.
“He hides in the mountainous areas of Jalisco, Michoacán and Colima. We think he’s not in the cities anymore,” Kyle Mori told the broadcaster Univision.
Two months later, the newspaper El Universal reported that El Mencho had advised social leaders, mayors and municipal security officials in Michoacán of his intention to move back to Naranjo de Chila, his hometown in the Tierra Caliente municipality of Aguililla.
The kingpin wants to retire, be arrested or die in his native land, unnamed sources told El Universal, adding that he intends to guarantee his security with “human walls.”
A report published Tuesday by the news website Infobae said that there are rumors that Oseguera is ill and that the future of his cartel is uncertain because two of his children are in prison in the United States and El Mencho hasn’t groomed a successor.
Taiwan chicken at a pop-up restaurant in Mexico City.
Nick Gilman gives me the frazzled half-smile I sometimes see on new mothers – happy, exhausted, a tinge of anxiety. This is the opening night of his Moroccan restaurant. Tomorrow night it will close.
That’s because this no name pop-up restaurant only runs about two days a month in an artist’s studio space in Mexico City’s hip Colonia Roma.
It’s mid-February, so Gilman and partner Sebastian Manterola can be pretty sure there won’t be the deluge of rain the city gets from May to October. The rooftop tables are set for 30-plus diners and a simple bar is loosening up all the strangers about to sit down to a meal together.
If you haven’t been to a pop-up yet, you are hopelessly out of the loop, as the concept is now so solidly enmeshed in the gastronomic foodscape that you can find how-to posts on creating your own, as well as on leveraging your pop-up for investment in an eventual bricks-and-mortar spot. The exclusive and ephemeral meal offered by restaurants only open for a night or two appeals not only to the current obsession with “food experiences” (preferably those that are Instagram-friendly) but also the incredible sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) we are both afflicted with and hope to generate in others through our social media.
Often, a pop-up is a kitchen takeover from one chef by another, but its myriad of forms means it doesn’t have to be. Gilman is a well-known Mexico City food writer who was delving into Mexican food long before it was literally on everyone’s lips. He and Manterola, a Mexico City native who until 2018 was a graphic designer by day, dedicated home cook by night, had in the past each separately shrugged off the idea of being chefs, even though they are clearly obsessed with food.
Eric Namour and guests at Bacal.
“In my case,” says Gilman, “I’m older and so it wasn’t a cool thing to do back them. Nobody did that. I knew one girl from art school that went to The Culinary Institute and I had no idea why or what she was doing there. It would have never occurred to me, even though I’ve been fascinated by food since I was six.”
“To be honest,” continues Manterola, whose family has often asked him why he didn’t go to culinary school, “even now that I want to cook for a living, it’s never been my intention to be a chef. I like regular food, the whole chef scene is just not for me. I just want to be a cook.”
As friends cooking meals in Gilman’s kitchen, it occurred to these two to find a way to share the food they love with the public, but neither wanted the stress and creative restrictions of a regular restaurant. The pop-up seemed a logical choice.
“We want to make food we love, food we are excited about,” says Manterola. “With a restaurant you are stuck doing the same thing all the time, not with this.”
The concept of pop-ups in a country where random street stands burst through the sidewalk cracks like dandelions is not radical. But by calling these temporary dinners pop-ups, they suddenly have cachet with Mexico City foodies.
“It’s not that the pop-up trend came late to Mexico City,” says Manterola. “I know guys that have been doing pop-ups for 15 years, but they weren’t called pop-ups. The moment they started calling it that, and it reminded people of this culture of young chefs in Portland and Paris, then it became fashionable and something everyone wanted to be involved in.”
Corn soup at La Xaymaca.
The pure flexibility of the concept – from a backyard barbecue to a private fine dining room in a swanky boutique hotel – is a big part of the appeal for the cooks I talked to. It also means there is a pop-up for everyone in Mexico City.
Manterola and Gilman are trying to maintain a sense of flavor over finery, pleasant over pretentious, home cooking over haute cuisine. None of which should be misrepresented to mean that they don’t bring it to every meal they make. The general bent of their dinners is world cuisine (one night three kinds of fried chicken from around the world; another, Italian-American favorites; the night I went, a Moroccan feast) at a price point that’s accessible (about US $35) and in an ambiance that doesn’t feel precious but instead like a nice adult dinner party that’s going to get even more interesting as the alcohol flows.
A step in an even more casual direction is the La Xaymaca (pronounced za- Mai-Ka) project, run by Jamaican transplant Theresa Barrett. With usually under a dozen guests, sometimes as few as four, Theresa invites diners right into her living room lined with a motley crew of potted plants against the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Barrett is shy about her cooking, even though the delicate spice of her dishes invokes the island in a way that will have you checking flights on your way home. She explains that her food represents the history of her country, that of slaves from across the African continent each bringing their unique culinary history to the island. And there is also her own history, the smells and flavors of her mother’s kitchen in Kingston.
“For me personally, a good meal has a story and a journey,” she says. When her journey led her to Mexico City, one of the biggest holes in her life was food from home. So she started doing a dinner here and a dinner there, and people clamored for more.
While there is still plenty of gramming and influencer posturing, an overwhelming majority of Mexico City pop-ups have the added element of offering cuisines that weren’t available in the city just five short years ago, and even now are deliciously elusive. Mexicans, with their deeply rooted culinary past, have always been somewhat food obsessed, but nowadays they are looking outward beyond their region, and the pop-ups are scratching the foodie itch.
Manterola, left, and Gilman: obsessed with food.
“That’s what I’ve seen changing in the 10 or 12 years that I’ve been writing about food here,” says Gilman. “People are both more interested and more knowledgeable about other kinds of cuisine. People are starting to care more.”
“And more open-minded to try things,” adds Manterola.
Lest you think that pop-ups here don’t have the star power and chef worship that they do in the United States, that Luca Pronzato is bringing his international project to Mexico City in April of this year should be confirmation that Mexico City is officially on the pop-up map. In collaboration with the Mexican hospitality group Grupo Habita, the ONA Le Toit pop-up will run from April till June of this year and feature rising young chefs from across the globe.
Not that the city needs big name foreigners to do our cooking. We have dozens of world-renowned chefs right in our midst, ahem — Ricardo Muñoz, Enrique Olvera, Monica Patiño, Gerardo Vazquez, Eduardo García, Elena Reygadas …
Partners Saqib Keval and Norma Listman of Masala Y Maiz fame basically dragged their popular restaurant back into being after it was shuttered by city officials by doing pop-ups all over the city, including in collaboration with the last two names on that list. And Yolcan, a local community-supported agriculture project, has hosted about a dozen Chef Semilla pop-ups that have featured Muñoz, García and others.
Yolcan, which works with organic farmers in the city’s southern canals, provides all the aforementioned restaurants (and many more) with organic produce and specialty items. Their pop-up dinners not only feature fancy flavors, but also draw attention to the importance of local food sourcing and the ecological fragility of the city’s chinampa (island farm) ecosystem.
The Sexto Colectivo was one of their invited guest chefs, and for cerebral eaters, there could be nothing more inviting than one of this group’s prettily plated dives into food concepts and ingredients (themes like fermentation or wild mushrooms) that end up as unforgettable multi-course menus. Colectivo members come from a variety of backgrounds – PR, marketing, sustainability, even a pharmaceutical researcher – all led by the mild-mannered Juan Escalona, whose resume includes working in the kitchen of NOMA in Copenhagen, Maximo Bistrot and Pujol in Mexico City, getting a bachelor in genomic science, and a master’s in history and philosophy from the University of Leeds in London. They take their food seriously; it’s a heady dinner.
Then there’s Bacal, one of the more eclectic experiences in the Mexico City pop-up world.Run by the affable Eric Namour, a Lebanese transplant to Mexico via Martinique via Italy via London via Canada, this tiny bar and restaurant sits unassumingly on one of the city’s most bustling avenues and while it has the veneer of hipster, Namour sweeps away any pretension when you walk through the door. Every few weeks he invites a guest chef or cook (“I actually prefer when people cook that aren’t cooks,” he admits) that takes over his kitchen, serving a buffet-style meal of any type of food they fancy at a delightfullymoderate price (about 10 bucks a person).
Added to the delicacies are the homemade cocktails by his baby-faced barmaster Axel Bernardino, and dozens of natural wines which are Namour’s weakness.
The randomness of this style of dining does mean that you have to follow these folks on social media to fill in the whens and wheres of dinners. It also means that if you eat something mind-blowing you might never be able to find it again … but’s just all the more reason to eat up.
Thermal imaging cameras are being used at Mexico City airport.
An eighth case of the novel coronavirus Covid-19 has been identified in Mexico.
Health authorities in Puebla said late Thursday that a 47-year-old German man who traveled to Mexico to provide training to workers at the Volkswagen plant in that state had tested positive for the infectious disease.
The man recently traveled to Italy – where more than 10,000 cases of Covid-19 have been detected, the state Health Ministry (SS) said in a statement.
The ministry said that he doesn’t currently have any symptoms of the virus, which can include a dry cough, fever, breathing difficulties and fatigue, and that he has been placed in isolation in a private hospital, where he will be monitored over the next 14 days.
The SS said that the man had contact with a group of workers at the Volkswagen factory and they will remain in home quarantine for the next two weeks.
Volkswagen México said in a statement that 40 of its workers had attended a training session with the German man and that they and their families will remain in isolation for 14 days to avoid any possible spread of the disease.
Confirmation of the eighth coronavirus case in Mexico comes as the disease spreads rapidly in many countries around the world including the United States.
Mexico City infectious disease specialist Francisco Moreno Sánchez believes that the real number of cases in Mexico is much higher, while Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, predicts that new cases linked to the growing spread of the virus in the United States will show up in Mexico and other Latin American countries in the coming weeks.
Moreno said that Mexico should be carrying out more tests to detect cases of Covid-19, including passengers at Mexico’s airports.
Mexico City health official Yareli Pérez said Tuesday that the Health Ministry is using thermal imaging cameras at the airport in the capital to detect passengers with high temperatures. Those with fever are interviewed and subjected to a health check, she said.
Efforts to detect passengers potentially infected with Covid-19 will intensify at the airport to “contain and prevent transmission,” Pérez said.
All of the confirmed coronavirus cases in Mexico originated outside the country, meaning that there is no current evidence of local transmission. Three cases were detected in Mexico City, while Sinaloa, Chiapas, Coahuila, México state and now Puebla have seen one case each. Only one case was considered serious but the patient is now in stable condition.
The World Health Organization reported Tuesday that there were 113,702 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in 109 countries and 4,012 deaths caused by the disease.
Almost 81,000 of those cases and 3,140 deaths were in China, where the novel coronavirus originated in the city of Wuhan in late 2019.
A crash between two trains in the Mexico City Metro left one dead and 41 injured on Tuesday night.
The crash occurred around 11:30 p.m. in the Tacubaya transfer station, in which lines 1, 7 and 9 meet.
“Firefighters tell me 41 [people were] injured and one person, regrettably, lost their life,” said Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who visited the scene of the crash late Tuesday night.
She said that authorities would carry out all of the pertinent surveys and investigations, but that “at this moment, what’s most important is to take care of the wounded.”
Personnel from the city’s Rescue and Medical Emergency Squadron, the Red Cross, firefighters and Civil Protection, as well as the Metro’s director general Florencia Serranía Soto, were all on the scene to tend to victims and assess the situation.
The Metro announced on Twitter that Line 1, the pink line, will be closed between Chapultepec and Observatorio stations until the wreckage can be cleared away to allow for normal service once again. The line will still run between Chapultepec and Pantitlán.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ-CDMX) announced that it had opened an investigation into the incident to determine the cause of the accident.
Sheinbaum later posted that, according to initial expert reports, “a train headed for Observatorio station slid in reverse and hit the train that was in Tacubaya station.”
She added that the results of the investigations carried out by the FGJ-CDMX and an international investigator would be released once the inquiries are concluded.
She said that 25 of the injured passengers were treated in the station and required no further medical attention, but the rest were sent to various medical centers across the city.
“They are all out of danger, with minor injuries, and we will give all our support to their families. I went to the clinics to talk with the families and visit the injured. We will release more information at the appropriate time,” she said.
Vehicles burn in blockades on a Guanajuato highway.
Joint state-federal security operations in Guanajuato on Tuesday triggered a violent response from criminal groups, which set vehicles on fire to block 11 highways in seven municipalities.
The police operations took place in the Laja-Bajío region of Guanajuato, where the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, a fuel theft and extortion gang led by José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez Ortiz, has a strong presence.
Set up after 2:00 p.m. Tuesday on the Villagrán-Jueventino Rosas, Celaya-Comonfort, Salamanca-Querétaro and Salamanca-Celaya highways, among others, the blockades caused traffic chaos and triggered panic among residents of Guanajuato, Mexico’s most violent state in 2019.
Two police officers and two nurses were wounded in a clash with criminals on the Acámbaro-Salvatierra highway, the newspaper Milenio reported.
The hostile response to the police operations particularly affected Celaya, where four of the 11 fiery blockades were set up. The other municipalities that saw blockades were Salamanca, Juventino Rosas, Salvatierra, Comonfort, Apaseo el Alto and Villagrán, where the town of Santa Rosa de Lima is located.
The blockades triggered traffic chaos and panic.
Due to fear that their vehicles could be commandeered and set aflame, the ETN and Primera Plus bus lines canceled services scheduled to run late yesterday afternoon between Querétaro and several cities including Guadalajara, Salamanca, Irapuato, León, Morelia and Celaya.
As rumors swirled that the violent response from organized crime might have come in response to the arrest of Yépez, one of Mexico’s most wanted men, Guanajuato Government Secretary Luis Ernesto Ayala Torres announced that wasn’t the case.
The hostilities on Tuesday came after armed men attacked a municipal police surveillance booth in Celaya on Monday night, wounding one officer. Over the weekend, an explosive device detonated in a car left near National Guard facilities in the same municipality, Milenio reported.
The wave of violence came after the father of El Marro, Rodolfo N., was arrested in Celaya last Thursday. He remains in preventative custody as he awaits trial on vehicle theft charges.
Federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo described the arrest of the criminal leader’s father as “notable” and said that security forces would be ready for any violent reaction to the detention.
At least eight people close to Yépez have been arrested recently, including his wife Karina Mora, although she was later released after a judge ruled that police had entered the house where she was detained without a search warrant.
El Marro’s niece, Denise Yépez Pérez, was arrested on weapons charges in Apaseo el Alto, Guanajuato, in February, while his sister and her husband-to-be were murdered in January during their wedding ceremony at a church in the Guanajuato community of Pelavacas.
The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel he heads is engaged in a bloody turf war in Guanajuato with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, considered Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization.
The dispute between the two groups is the main generator of violence in the state, where there were more than 3,500 homicide victims last year.
Spring Break revelers in Cancún. Coronavirus wil probably mean fewer will travel to Mexico this year.
Beach destinations such as Cancún and Los Cabos will likely see a downturn in Spring Break visitor numbers due to the outbreak of coronavirus and the fear that the spread of the disease generates.
NYU, Columbia and Cornell universities in New York are urging students not to travel abroad this month, The New York Post reported, adding that Syracuse University is advising its students against both domestic and foreign travel “to avoid the possibility that your freedom of movement may become restricted.”
Students at many other universities in the United States, the largest source country for visitors to Mexico, are also likely to opt against Spring Break travel south of the border even though there are just eight confirmed cases of Covid-19 here, and there is no evidence that the virus is being transmitted within the country.
Fear about the infectious disease, rather than Covid-19 itself, is currently the “biggest problem” faced by the travel industry, said United States travel agent Claire Schoeder.
For those who do decide to travel to Spring Break destinations in Mexico, authorities are planning to implement protocols to protect against possible infection with the new coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, late last year.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell told a press conference that authorities from Mexico, the United States and Canada would meet this week to discuss plans to protect travelers.
“In these conversations with the United States and Canada … we will be developing protocols … that enable us, in advance, to protect each other,” he said.
The deputy minister said that the three countries will make a commitment to help travelers avoid Covid-19 but didn’t cite any specific measures they would take.
Spring Break dates run from late February to mid-April, but March is the peak month.
Meanwhile, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) announced Tuesday that it is postponing its global summit that was scheduled to take place in Cancún in April partially due to the global coronavirus outbreak. WTTC president Gloria Guevara said that the summit will now be held in October.
She said that she was optimistic that there wouldn’t be a widespread outbreak of Covid-19 in Mexico, asserting that the country is not as susceptible as others because of its warm climate. However, Guevara conceded that jobs in Mexico’s tourism sector, a large contributor to GDP, could be lost due to a downturn in tourism related to the health crisis.
While Mexico currently has only eight confirmed cases of Covid-19, Mexico City infectious disease specialist Francisco Moreno Sánchez believes that the real number is much higher, while Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, predicts that new cases linked to the growing spread of the virus in the United States will show up in Mexico and other Latin American countries in coming weeks.
Of the confirmed cases, five patients have recovered well and three of them will end their 14-day isolation period on Tuesday, Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía Zegarra said Monday. Two people confirmed to have Covid-19 required hospitalization but one is now in stable condition, he said.
The second was a case identified on Tuesday in Puebla.
One can be forgiven for thinking that a Saint Patrick’s Day parade held in Mexico City is just a kind of marketing gimmick, especially when sponsored by the McCarthy’s Irish Pub chain. But while marketing certainly plays a role, there is more interest in Irish/Scottish culture among Mexicans than one would suspect.
In 1997, Mexico City’s first bagpipe band, the Banda de Gaitas del Batallón de San Patricio, was officially formed on the 150th anniversary of the fall of the Saint Patrick Battalion on August 20, 1847. The battalion was made up of Irish and Scottish soldiers who came to Mexico City with the United States Army during the Mexican-American War.
Deciding the American side was unjust, they switched sides at the Churubusco Fort in the south of the city. When the fort fell, the battalion’s surviving members were executed as traitors.
Their story does not make it into U.S. history books, but they have not been forgotten in Mexico.
The San Patricio band was formed by Rafael Gutiérrez who was fascinated by the story, Irish/Scottish culture and, of course, bagpipes. He even went to Scotland to learn all he could there.
A previous edition of Mexico City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.
The group has 15 members and plays on the first Sunday of every month at the Churubusco Fort. They regularly play at festivals and other events in various parts of Mexico and even abroad. They performed on Saint Patrick’s Day in Dublin in 2015, and on Mexican Independence Day in Los Angeles in 2018.
In 2017, four members were invited to play with the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. In 2018, Gutiérrez received a medal from the government of the United Kingdom for his role in promoting British culture. The band is customarily hired for weddings, quinceañeras and other events where they play both Irish/Scottish and Mexican traditional tunes.
To be a bagpipe player in Mexico requires a special kind of dedication as the instrument is still rather exotic and not easy to play. Bagpipes and uniforms are expensive and, imported from Scotland, they cost 50,000 pesos (US $2,400) or more just for the basic equipment.
Practicing is not easy either. It must be done outdoors, and even then, neighbors can complain to authorities about the racket. Gaiteros (bagpipe players) mostly practice in public areas, which draws attention. Most reactions they get are of curious amusement, especially from foreign tourists. Many take pictures and record the music, and some even drop unsolicited donations.
And yes, the men get chided for wearing “skirts.”
For a long time, the San Patricio band had been the only gaiteros in Mexico City, but interest in the instrument and Irish migration to Mexico has grown. In 2014, a second group formed called the Banda de Gaiteros de la Ciudad de México with the support of the Casa Regional de Asturias. This group focuses on teaching the instrument and researching Irish/Scottish culture in Mexico. It plays monthly at the British Chapel in Mexico City and pays homage to the fallen Saint Patrick Battalion on August 20 in San Angel.
Kronos Cantus is a band that specializes in the medieval version of the bagpipes.
Other Irish/Scottish performing groups in Mexico City include Banda Asociación Cultural de Galicia, the Daoine Sidhé Dance Corps and Kronos Cantus, a bagpipe band specializing in the medieval version of the instrument.
Mexico City’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade is set for March 15, 2020 at 12 p.m. It starts on the corner of Tamaulipas and Alfonso Reyes streets in the Condesa neighborhood and proceeds to Parque España.
There will also be the Da Terra Celta Cultural Festival on Sunday, March 22 at 12 p.m. at the Churubusco Fort (National Interventions Museum), featuring the San Patricio group, Daoine Sidhé and Kronos Cantus.
The San Patricio band will play at Celtics Pub in Mexico City on March 14 and 17, Celtics Pub in Querétaro on March 15, and at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in Mexico City on March 19.
The auction results were announced at the president's press conference Monday.
Sunday’s “mega-auction” at the Los Pinos Cultural Center in Mexico City brought in 53,414,500 pesos (US $2.5 million), according to Ricardo Rodríguez Vargas, head of the Institute to Return Stolen Goods to the People (Indep).
He called the first Indep auction of 2020 “a success,” adding that it saw the highest participation by bidders of any of the government’s auctions so far.
“People didn’t put down their bidding paddles. We sold around 70% of the goods and there was great enthusiasm,” he told the president’s Monday morning press conference.
Rodríguez said that they sold the goods on the block for around 56% more than their general appraised value. One such good was a house in Cancún that sold for 15 million pesos (US $718,500) and another in Tlajomulco, Jalisco, that sold for 4 million (US $191,600).
He said that the jewelry also sold very well, for around 27% more than its general calling price. The airplanes for sale sold for as much as 2,500% more than the opening bid.
Rodríguez said that the money taken in by the auction will go to the Economic Culture Fund, which will invest it in the printing of over 2 million copies of 21 “very interesting, very nice, very entertaining” books.
He said that due to a lack of public will, many of the properties for sale — many of which were confiscated from “key public figures” — had sat in the federal Attorney General’s Office’s inventory for as long as 15 years.
One such figure was Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese investor who has been implicated in drug trafficking.
Rodríguez said that more houses in Cancún and the Mexico City neighborhood of El Pedregal will be auctioned off in the next few months and the proceeds will likewise be allocated to fund social projects.
Mexico is a country without laws and President López Obrador is a compulsive liar, according to the owner of a Coahuila steelmaker fighting extradition from Spain on corruption charges.
Arrested in Mallorca in May last year on charges related to the 2014 sale of a fertilizer plant to Pemex at an allegedly highly inflated price, Alonso Ancira, owner and president of Altos Hornos de México, made the claims during an extradition hearing in Madrid on Tuesday.
“There’s no justice in Mexico. Here [in Spain] justice is delivered and I congratulate you. Maintain it because in Mexico we already lost it,” Ancira told judges of the Audiencia Nacional court.
The businessman argued that if he is sent to Mexico, he has no guarantee of receiving a fair trial in a case that will examine the allegedly corrupt US $475 million sale of a disused fertilizer plant in Veracruz, a dealing in which former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya – arrested in February in the south of Spain – is also implicated.
Making clear his desire to remain in Spain, Ancira said that prisons in the European nation are like two-star hotels compared to jails in Mexico, where inmates are forced to sleep in crowded cells.
He also took aim at López Obrador, describing him as a mythomaniac, comparing him to Adolf Hitler and declaring that “he’s not an individual who is sane.”
Ancira described himself as “collateral damage” in the Mexican government’s pursuit of officials who allegedly committed acts of corruption during the administration led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
He rejected the accusation that he sold the fertilizer plant at an inflated price and charged that the case against him has no solid legal basis. The government has violated his rights to due process, legal defense and personal freedom, added Ancira, who is currently free on bail but has had his passport confiscated and is required to check in with legal authorities every other day.
The Audiencia Nacional judges will announce their response to Mexico’s extradition request within a period of 10 days, the newspaper El Universal reported, noting that Ancira will have the opportunity to file an appeal if they don’t hand down the decision he is hoping for.
Altos Hornos is Mexico’s largest integrated steelmaker.
Officer Velasco: attacked during Sunday's Women's Day march.
A protester at the International Women’s Day march in Mexico City on Sunday — held to draw attention to violence against women —used a caustic substance to burn the face of a female police officer posted to the event’s security detail.
Officer Lucero Velasco San Juan, 25, said that she stayed after her shift had ended in order to support her fellow officers on Juárez avenue.
“Everything was very calm until about five in the afternoon, which is when it all happened. … We were protecting the people … since there were families there,” she said.
“When we got in line … a group of women passed us and began to throw bottles at us, they began to throw liquids on us, to shout, to hit our shields, to paint them with spray paint. Then they tried to take our shields by pulling on them, and when they were pulling on them someone stuck their hand in my helmet and rubbed something on me.”
She said she didn’t feel anything at that moment, as she was busy with her duties, but the pain gradually began to set in.
“After the women continued on, that was when I began to feel more pain, more burning. I told my commander that it was hurting me, and she lifted the face mask on my helmet and saw that I had a burn on my face,” said officer Velasco.
She was treated by paramedics and taken to a hospital for further care. She hopes the burn will not leave a scar.
“I’m very sad, really very sad, because in the end we are women and we are human beings; before women, we are human beings,” she said.
“So if there’s no respect for women by men, for women by women, yes, it makes me very sad, even more so knowing that we’re there to keep people safe. … We were there to protect them, not hurt them, so it makes me sad that they burned my face and it scares me, because I don’t know if I’ll recover 100% or if I’ll have a scar on my face.”
