Lawmakers have unanimously passed a modification to the General Law on the Rights of Children and Adolescents to prohibit corporal punishment and humiliation of children.
“It is forbidden for the mother, father or any person in the family to use corporal punishment or any type of humiliating treatment and punishment as a form of correction or discipline of children or adolescents,” reads the bill which received preliminary approval from the Senate last November.
National Action Party Senator Josefina Vázquez Mota noted that the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has indicated that in Mexico corporal and humiliating punishment as a form of violence against children is prevalent.
“More than 60% of girls, boys and adolescents between 1 and 14 years old are subjected to psychological aggression and corporal punishment in their homes,” said Vázquez, who heads up the Commission on Children and Adolescents, citing UNICEF figures.
A survey in August by the Guardianes Foundation, an advocacy group, revealed that during the coronavirus quarantine, 40% percent of children and adolescents suffered psychological and physical violence.
Under the new terms of the law, corporal punishment is now defined as “any act committed against girls, boys and adolescents in which physical force is used, including blows with the hand or with any object, pushing, pinching, biting, pulling hair or ears, forcing them to maintain uncomfortable postures, burns, ingestion of boiling food or other products or any other act that has the object of causing pain or discomfort, even if it is slight.”
In addition, the law establishes that all members of the family, especially girls, boys and adolescents, have the right to have other members respect their physical, mental and emotional integrity in order to contribute to their healthy development.
However, the reform does not stipulate any punishment for adults who inflict physical abuse on minors.
During discussion of the reforms to the existing law, Senator Xóchitl Gálvez recounted her own experience as the daughter of a physically abusive father. Gálvez fought back tears as she spoke of the terror she felt while she and her siblings were being beaten by her alcoholic father, and said she hoped the reform to the law would end the kind of violence she experienced. Gálvez also noted the violence that exists in indigenous communities, where she said parents “take out their frustration” on their children.
Mexico is now the 11th country in Latin America with specific legislation prohibiting corporal punishment against children, joining Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The first country to ban corporal punishment was Sweden in 1979.
The treaty provides new tools to resist megaprojects such as the Maya Train on environmental grounds.photo illustration
Shortly after he was sworn in as president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised the indigenous communities of Mexico — who have historically had their voices silenced and their needs marginalized — that they would have priority in the development of new social programs.
In the south of the country at least, the promise proved to be short-lived with the announcement of projects such as the Maya Train and aggressive expansion of renewable energy and pig farming industries creating divisions and tensions in the very communities they purport to benefit.
Running 1,500 kilometers through southeastern Mexico, the Maya Train has birthed deep controversy, particularly because it plays into the same recurring narrative of externally imposed decisions which has affected indigenous communities for the last 500 years. Multiply this by the Mexican government seemingly unwilling to acknowledge the adverse ecological and environmental — and now archaeological — impacts it will have in the region, and the beginnings of a perfect storm are taking shape in the country’s south.
Which is not to say that the Maya Train is a one-off, rather an extension of a neoliberal modus operandi which — whatever your politics — transparently and singularly fails to take into account genuine local opinion, storing serious, systemic problems for the future of all involved projects and “megaprojects,” as well as for the society they are to exist within.
Beyond the rails being laid, prior even to the completion of environmental impact surveys, the Yucatán peninsula has also become a new focal point of large scale meat production, with industry growth seeing 3.5% more meat produced nationally in July 2020 compared to July 2019, despite public health consequences.
A Maya Train consultation meeting held last December.
While there is a chance that ongoing restrictions as a result of Covid-19 may impose some regulations on the expansion of the livestock industry in Mexico, a great deal of the damage has already been done to communities in the tropical south, whose lands and livelihoods have already been affected by mass swill lagoons and depletion and pollution of groundwater sources which serve local communities.
It is little wonder, therefore, that community groups across the south are becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to the continued bulldozing of their lands to make way for immense and disruptive infrastructure development. What before was whispered discontent is now turning into peninsula-wide calls for retribution, and even — on occasion — militancy.
The president’s standard response to resistance to his proposed projects is that there is a hidden political motivation to the criticisms of indigenous communities, with other parties implied to be fomenting and funding opposition.
Just last week he accused environmental groups of working on behalf of paid organizations, both within the country and abroad, to oppose the Maya Train. It is a defence uttered because he knows his supporters will find traction in his words, and while undoubtedly there are pockets of funded rebellion in areas where dominion was historically set to a particular party, the essential truth on the ground is a far cry from López Obrador’s paranoid accusations.
Pedro Uc Be, for instance, of the Múuch Xíinbal Assembly of Defenders of the Maya Territory, talks of how the organization is necessarily apolitical, not because they do not hold political positions, but because they and their ancestors recognized that there was no fundamental difference between one party and another in Mexico’s flawed democracy.
“We want to take care of what little we have left; we have had 500 years of aggression, of invasion, of colonization and these years have actually left us with a complicated, difficult situation.” Their backs are to the wall, and Pedro Uc Be understands — just as the UN does these days — that land and environmental custodianship and indigenous rights are not separate entities, but a necessarily intersected fabric which offers the only way forward for oppressed communities and overt, systemic environmental degradation.
Maya Train consultations were ‘propagandist’ meetings, according to Pedro Uc Be.
Recognizing the need to appear to have consulted locally vis a vis the contentious train, the López Obrador administration organized meetings with individuals with vested interests through several regional assemblies. These took place, however, before the environmental impact assessment of the project had even been commissioned, with scant mention of how the project would involve not simply a train but also the construction of development hubs at each of the stations.
Meetings also took place in areas unrelated to the train, participation in person was insisted on even though local and federal governments had established lockdowns, information provided was coercive rather than consultory, and many resistance groups were denied access to meetings for reasons related to “lost or incorrectly filed paperwork.”
“In reality these aren’t consultations at all,” says Pedro Uc Be, “but propagandist meetings held with individuals standing to economically profit from the development, and not communities as a whole. People aren’t in favor of the train, but there certainly are people who are misinformed, who have been manipulated, people who actually don’t understand nor have been properly informed of the fundamentals of this project. If they had been real consultations, women would have been invited to participate, and they weren’t. What is a community meeting without the voice of the mothers and grandmothers of the region?”
His tone as is calm, concerted, and focused, but there are plenty of others whose anger feels as though it is riding a thin edge. Within the communities of La Ermita and Camino Real in Campeche, bisected by the rails of the train, significant sections of the community are to be forcibly relocated and hearing despairing voices is the norm.
“There are people here with papers signed by Porfirio Díaz, thanking their great grandparents for allowing the old train to pass through here,” says Lourdes Ganzo. “Four hundred and thirty families are to be evicted, and these historic, traditional neighborhoods were here before the old railway lines were built. Even then there was never a legal right established to give the railway right of passage.
“Nobody has ever tried to destroy our houses until this government, without even asking for our papers demonstrating our legal rights. We have been threatened — our own president has been declaring that it is going to happen, nothing is going to stand in its path. We are being sentenced to being socially and culturally overrun by a high-speed train.”
Farmer Dzonot Carretero listens to information about windfarms on his lands.
In a record year in Latin America for killings of indigenous land protectors, Pedro Uc Be’s opposition to unsustainable tourism, renewable energy projects, and the Maya Train has brought its own personal backlash.
He and his family have received threats from organized crime units, at best wanting to silence him, at worst … We know how the story ends. And while López Obrador is busy criminalizing the work of civic groups and non-profits working to protect the land, the insidious possibility that the government has mobilized organized groups to threaten Mayan communities — who are standing up against the violation of their social and land rights — poses a real and immediate threat to the lives of individuals.
It is deplorable, laments Pedro Uc Be, that a president who took up the mantle of leadership with such legitimacy is today using that same legitimacy to crush what little Mayan communities have left, privileging instead the interests of the large organizations, like Fonatur, a government agency.
“The president continues to lie and falsify information, at the expense of indigenous cultures. We’re tired, exhausted even, but we’re not giving in. We are all that we have left.”
Christian Uriel did nothing but play video games, his mother said. illustrative photo
A 30-year-old man filed an assault complaint with the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office against his mother and aunt after they kicked him out of the house.
Christian Uriel told authorities that he was “offended” because his mother ran him out of her home for being a deadbeat.
Uriel’s mother described her son as a nini, meaning that he doesn’t go to school or work (ni trabaja ni estudia), and she became fed up with his behavior. She says he spent the entire coronavirus quarantine on a couch playing video games and demanded that she bring him whatever he desired.
Once lockdown conditions were lifted she said she asked him to get a job to help out with expenses, but he refused. His mother enlisted the help of the boy’s aunt, and together they poured cold water on him and struck him with brooms until he finally left the house, located in the Polvorilla neighborhood of Iztapalapa.
Uriel told authorities he would like to return home and asked for their help.
A survey last year of 3,000 Mexican millennials — people aged 25 to 35 — by De las Heras Demotecnia found 63% still lived with their parents and six out of 10 said they were in no hurry to begin a life like the one their parents led.
Godoy, also known as the 'Iron Lady,' says a new, all-powerful Internal Affairs Unit will be established.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ) is set to begin a major anti-corruption drive aimed at cleaning up the capital’s investigative police force and dismissing unscrupulous officials.
In an interview with the newspaper Milenio, Attorney General Ernestina Godoy described the imminent anti-corruption program as the most ambitious in the history of Mexico City.
She said that the objective is to create a new generation of “incorruptible” police who are immune to bribery and to identify, dismiss and prosecute FGJ officials who are corrupt or in cahoots with organized crime.
Godoy, who some people have dubbed the “Iron Lady” for her resolute approach to her job, said that a new, all-powerful Internal Affairs Unit will be established within the FGJ that will be tasked with identifying corrupt and/or irregular conduct of employees.
“With the unit we’re really going to investigate everything internal that has to do with corruption, omissions or illegal actions,” she said.
Godoy says the program will be the most ambitious in the history of Mexico City.
For example, she added, “we’ve detected situations in which investigation files are opened but no other activities, no other work, is carried out.”
“Or for reasons that all of us can intuit, someone who shouldn’t be set free, is set free.”
Godoy asserted that corrupt and improper practices will no longer be allowed within the Attorney General’s Office, adding that the anti-corruption drive will extend to district FGJ offices in each of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs.
She said that cases have been detected in which FGJ personnel have left victims of crime waiting for hours to file complaints and even talked them out of lodging them.
“Two, three, four hours [go by] and they don’t attend to them. So people decide to leave,” Godoy said, adding that women who have been victims of domestic abuse have been told that there is no point in them filing a complaint because they will later forgive their partners and withdraw it.
Asked about plans for Mexico City’s investigative police, the attorney general declared that the FGJ is “transforming” the force, adding that it will have 1,000 new officers by the end of the year.
New recruits must have university degrees and undergo 1,000 hours of training before they are deployed, Godoy said.
The training includes education about the new criminal justice system, investigative strategies and even ethics, she explained.
“They are taught what it means to be a public servant. It’s not about the official being above the citizen. We are here to serve citizens, to investigate, to punish – we don’t punish [criminals] ourselves but rather provide all the evidence judges need so that they can sentence them and so that there is no impunity. Instilling this in a human being who is going to be a police officer, that is ethics,” Godoy said.
Questioned about whether it is really possible to create an incorruptible investigative police force, the attorney general responded that she believed it was.
Godoy said that an external evaluation of Mexico City investigative officers found that they feel “very proud” of the work they do and have a strong personal identity. “That’s why I believe there are possibilities” to create an honest police force, she said.
Asked about organized crime in the capital and the FGJ’s strategy to defeat it, Godoy highlighted that there is “excellent coordination” between her office and the cabinet of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Mexico City’s investigative police will themselves be investigated.
“We’re autonomous but we coordinate [with other government departments] because that’s the way it has to be in order for things to really work. The coordination with the Security Ministry has been very good and yielded very good results. This has allowed us to carry out intelligence work together,” she said, adding that the FGJ also works closely with federal agencies including the National Intelligence Center and the military.
Godoy said that many leaders of organized crime groups that operate in Mexico City have been arrested and imprisoned since she became attorney general in late 2018, adding that some of the groups have been weakened and others have disappeared altogether.
Asked about progress in the case of Mexico City Security Minister Omar García Harfuch, who was wounded in an attack in June allegedly perpetrated by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the attorney general said:
“All the people we arrested are in prison and we’re subjecting them to a complementary investigation. We’re coordinating with the federal Attorney General’s Office on the weapons issue, … which is a federal matter. We’re collaborating to find out where they came from. When the investigation closes, we’ll need to provide all the evidence and we’re working on that.”
Dancers enjoy themselves at Querétaro's Jardín Zenea.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the cancelation of many social events but not dancing in the historic center of Querétaro.
At least 100 people gather every weekend in Jardín Zenea, a pretty park in the state capital, to dance danzón in the late afternoon and salsa, cumbia and bachata after the sun goes down.
It’s like the coronavirus simply doesn’t exist – the revelers not only dance with strangers but hug each other and laugh together into the late hours of the night and early hours of the next morning.
Face masks are not part of most dancers’ attire, according to a report by the newspaper El Universal.
“I’m not afraid [of the virus], I come here to dance every weekend,” a woman told the newspaper during a recent gathering.
“We don’t have weddings, we don’t have any kind of parties so we have to make the most of it. Everyone says that this pandemic is going to last forever, that we have to learn to live with the virus so why limit ourselves?”
However, limits on all manner of things – the number of customers allowed in restaurants, for example – are the order of the day as authorities grapple with how to stop the spread of the coronavirus without trampling on people’s rights and freedoms and completely destroying the economy.
In Querétaro, where more than 900 people across the state have lost their lives to Covid-19, some of the coronavirus restrictions are strictly enforced.
At 11:00 p.m. – just as the dancers are finding their groove – government inspectors and Civil Protection personnel make the rounds of the historic center to ensure that all the restaurants have ushered their customers out and closed their doors in accordance with state-mandated virus rules.
Yet police and other authorities turn a blind eye to the dancers and allow their public merry-making to go on – and on and on – despite their clear violation of social distancing norms.
The double standard rankles some restaurant workers who have seen their earnings drop due to limits on diners and operating hours.
“It’s not fair that they ask some of us to stop working at 11 at night and at the same time they allow a lot of people to get together and dance,” Francisco Martínez, a cook, told El Universal.
“According to … [the authorities], the service hours [in restaurants] are reduced to avoid infections, to avoid crowds but at the same time they allow a dance with almost 150 people. It’s not fair, ” he added.
A resident of the historic center also expressed annoyance at both the people who gather to dance every weekend and the authorities’ failure to stop them.
“It’s very frustrating that in the middle of a health crisis we see these actions when we know that a lot of businesses have gone bankrupt, a lot of people have died and a lot of people are sick,” Daniel López said.
“Even so the authorities allow this to happen. As a society we lack a lot of commitment. We shouldn’t need the police to tell us what to do but people unfortunately don’t respect the [health] measures,” he added.
“I’ve reported the situation because … it’s unbearable to have the noise so close to home every weekend; the music lasts until four in the morning some nights. I’ve reported it by telephone and on social media; I’ve proven it with photos and videos but I’ve never seen any authority show up.”
While escaping the loud music might not be an option for those who live in close proximity to Jardín Zenea, the female dancer who spoke with El Universal offered some blunt advice to anyone else who is bothered by the noise and carefree fun.
“To the people who report us I would say if you don’t like what we do, stay away – period!”
Senator Hernández and former professor Perezalonso.
An Ibero-American University law professor who made fun of Senator Citlalli Hernandez’s physique on Monday has lost his job.
“Yesterday Rodrigo Pérezalonso, professor at Ibero, posted an offensive and degrading comment on social media about Senator Citlalli Hernández,” the university said in a statement issued Tuesday. “As soon as we found out, through the same social network, we make it clear that these types of attitudes and behaviors are contrary to the values of our university, values for which we constantly work to instill in our students, and teaching and administrative staff.”
Pérezalonso made fun of the senator’s weight in the tweet and added a pig emoji. “Urgent news: Senator Citlalli registered for the presidency of Morena with the platform OINC = Organized and Outraged by Citlalli’s Nutrition,” the tweet read.
Hernández is a candidate for the leadership of the Morena party.
“After a deep discussion between representatives of different sectors of our university, including the department of law, the Ibero-American University reports that Rodrigo Pérezalonso has been separated from his teaching position in all his subjects,” the university’s statement continued.
Outrage at Pérezalonso’s remarks, which he initially brushed off as a joke, was widespread and began with Hernández herself. “Violence against women and physical discrimination must be fought in all spaces. Unfortunately, this type of aggression is experienced by girls and young people on a daily basis; it’s not about me but about all of us,” she said.
Politicians also condemned Pérezalonso, as did first lady and writer Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, who called his remarks “reprehensible.”
Pérezalonso, who is also a columnist for the newspaper Excélsior, published a letter of apology to his Twitter account yesterday in which he said that social media platforms should be used to “promote respect and celebrate diversity,” and that he had misused his Twitter account in offending a woman “who deserves all my respect and recognition as my behavior has always been characterized.”
Pérezalonso admitted that his comments were degrading, and apologized to all those he had offended. He also said he is seeking specialized counseling on gender awareness and training “to rectify and correct any type of violent, discriminatory and offensive behavior in me.”
The Cry of Independence in Mexico City — pre-pandemic.
On Mexican Independence Day of 2019 I went to a party at a friend’s house. There was food everywhere, and all the attendants had dressed up, if not in head-to-toe traditional Mexican garb, at least in the colors of the flag.
When it was time for “El Grito” (the Cry of Independence), we all piled into the bedroom of our hosts where the TV was to watch and participate. Afterwards, we watched the fireworks display here in Xalapa from their balcony.
We were all excited that evening. Most of us were still fairly hardcore fans of AMLO — President López Obrador, excited to see him doing something we were convinced should have first happened back in 2007 (actually, I’m personally still convinced that the 2006 election was stolen from him).
Though his first few months in office had gotten off to a shaky start, we were optimistic that the “fourth transformation” was well underway.
I’ve always been a sucker for pageantry and ceremonies. Take me to a graduation, a wedding, or even a parade, and the tears start flowing automatically. Usually it’s because I find the prospect of humans executing a precisely-planned choreography to accomplish something or infuse an event with meaning incredibly touching; sometimes I also find that kind of raw power that the coordination of sometimes thousands of people both touching and terrifying.
But if I have the chance to get a glimpse of pomp and circumstance in action, I’ll always position myself as close as I can get, wide-eyed with reverence and/or fear for the power of the meanings we humans give to things.
While I never actually attend the live state events (my goodness, it’s just so many people so close together!), I do usually watch a live streaming of the event in Mexico City. I’m downright enchanted by the unflinchingly serious demeanor of the military guard, the way they handle and move the flag, all quick and precise movements with somber faces that contrast so much to the fanfare outside. This is serious, they say. Our country and its symbols are sacred, and today is the day we pay due reverence.
The austere president and officials in the palace, juxtaposed with the wildly exuberant crowd, is what I think I find most thrilling. I love hearing thousands of people at once sing the national anthem. I love seeing the fireworks, and I love watching from afar one of the biggest parties I’ve ever witnessed.
It’s a rare time when it feels like we’ve got it together. Where maybe we’ll be all right after all.
This year, El Grito was a strange sight to behold indeed, but no less moving. Things inside the palace were the same. The military guard performed their rigid choreography to deliver the flag, the president stepped out onto the balcony to give the customary cry of independence.
But this time, he gave it to a plaza that was completely empty: populated with festive lights, but no people. It was so shocking that it was art. Talk about impactful.
Because this year, we’re in a pandemic. This year, we’re in the middle of an emergency that we didn’t admit was upon us until we could already see the whites of its eyes, and that we’re not sure will end anytime soon. This year, had we allowed the plaza to fill up, there would have been empty spaces that might have been filled by those we’ve lost so far, who instead of partying in the plaza are resting in their coffins and urns.
So this Independence Day season, as those of us who can still afford it gouge on chiles en nogada that have been delivered to our homes so that we can avoid contagion at restaurants, let’s reflect on that emptiness, and on those missing people, and think about the conditions we want to be in when we return.
Because it’s not just about the dead, though it’s a lot about the dead: the victims of Covid, and also victims of narco violence that’s scarcely let up, journalists who’ve disappeared and been killed because they published something that someone powerful didn’t like; women killed, sometimes on the street, but mostly in their homes by men who were supposedly devoted to them; those teachers in training who still haven’t turned up. All those children that have died, perhaps from their cancer, but certainly from the lack of chemotherapy drugs they had a legal right to receive.
We’ve got plenty of others we might also consider to be “missing,” too, though they’re still alive. Those who’ve lost their already precarious livelihoods with nary a rescue package in sight, the many who could already be considered left behind by a flippant economic model that assumes workers who lack power and agency can live happily and amply on 4,000 pesos a month or even less while their employers can’t imagine surviving on anything less than ten times that amount.
Covid-19 threw us a curve ball and shattered a vase that, for too many people, was barely being held together by a few strips of masking tape in the first place. And that’s not just a loss for them personally, it’s a loss for us as a society. When people are worrying about getting their basic needs met, they can’t be busy developing and sharing their particular gifts with the world to the degree that we all need them to.
There is zero doubt about the talent and drive that exist in so many people in this country. That’s true for every country and human, I know, but so many things about Mexico’s culture and society put us in a particularly advantageous position to really knock it out of the park.
So now’s our chance, people: let’s make something new now, perhaps out of a bit sturdier material this time. Next September, I want to see us back out there, doing one of the things we do best in this country: throwing one hell of a party.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
A show of force by police at a rail blockade in Michoacán.
Teachers and teachers in training protesting in Michoacán lifted their rail blockades on Tuesday after state police allegedly threatened to remove them using force.
Benjamín Hernández Gutiérrez, secretary general of Section 18 of the dissident CNTE teachers union, said that protesters in Maravatío, Pátzcuaro, Múgica and Uruapan freed the tracks they were blocking when confronted by police.
Teachers and teaching students known as normalistas have blocked railroads in Michoacán in recent weeks to demand the payment of bonuses and scholarships and the automatic allocation of jobs to graduates.
Hernández told the newspaper Reforma that he and other CNTE members were told at a meeting with officials of all three levels of government that the Michoacán state police operation to free the tracks was ordered by the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR)
The Michoacán Security Ministry also said on Twitter that police had acted on the orders of the FGR.
Hernández claimed that police who confronted protesters in Maravatío, a municipality northeast of the state capital Morelia, were prepared to use violence to remove them from the train tracks they were blocking.
“Colleagues in Maravatío told us that police arrived not with an attitude of peace but with … batons in their hands, … aggression was imminent,” he said.
The union leader said that the actions of the police contradicted the declarations of President López Obrador, who said there would be no aggression toward teachers and that a solution to their demands would be sought via dialogue.
“One thing is what is said … but another is what they [the government] are doing. In the media, they say that there is dialogue but in the [government] actions there is repression,” Hernández said.
He added that the CNTE in Michoacán will continue to pressure authorities to meet their demands but indicated that they would do so through dialogue, not violence.
Teachers tried again Wednesday morning to erect a blockade at the tracks in Múgica but withdrew after state police and National Guardsmen appeared almost as soon as the protesters arrived.
The state police operation to remove the teachers from train tracks came after the National Guard attended all four blockades on Monday but took no action against the protesters.
It also came after the president of the Michoacán Industry Association (AIEMAC) urged the federal government to intervene to end the rail blockades. Carlos Alberto Enríquez Barajas said the rail blockades scare off investors and drive up logistical costs that reduce Michoacán’s competitiveness.
According to AIEMAC, each day of blockades costs industry up to 50 million pesos (US $2.3 million).
Wreckage of the jet that was stolen Tuesday in Cuernavaca.
A Hawker 800 jet reported stolen from the Cuernavaca, Morelos, airport crashed Tuesday night in a Guatemala cornfield while trying to land on a clandestine runway, the Guatemalan army reported.
Packages of cocaine, cell phones and firearms were found among what was left of the charred plane in Santa Marta Salinas, Guatemalan authorities said, along with bodies of two people who had been aboard. Their nationality is pending confirmation.
The plane took off from the Mariano Matamoros International Airport Tuesday morning without authorization or filing a flight plan.
Officials in Morelos say three men wearing commercial pilot uniforms passed through security around 8:20 a.m. and entered the hangar in Cuernavaca where they fueled up the private jet, paying with a credit card, and one of the three left.
The two other men turned off the plane’s radios and took off, nearly crashing into another plane in the process.
It landed at 4 p.m. at the international airport in Zulia, Venezuela, before taking off again at 5:50 p.m. and heading north with a load of cocaine, Guatemalan officials said.
Guatemalan military authorities tracked the plane’s route and military forces in different parts of the country were put on alert.
Radar showed the plane entering Guatemalan airspace at 8 p.m. It reached the intended landing strip about 30 minutes later where it crashed.
In July, a plane traveling from Venezuela carrying 390 kilos of cocaine valued at 109 million pesos (US $4.89 million) crashed on a Quintana Roo highway. Its occupants escaped into the nearby forest.
According to official data, so far this year Guatemalan security forces have located 26 planes used in drug trafficking in rural areas in the north and south of the country.
In 2019, Guatemala confiscated 54 aircraft on suspicion of having been used to transport drugs.
International cartels use Guatemala and the rest of Central America to traffic drug shipments headed north. According to the United States, 90% of the cocaine smuggled into that country arrives by airplane, boat and submarine from Mexico and Central America.
A judge has ruled that the federal government must suspend its 2020-24 energy program because of its negative impact on the renewable energy sector.
The Mexico City-based federal administrative court judge issued a suspension order against the program while an injunction request filed by Greenpeace is considered. A final decision on the injunction request is not expected for months.
Greenpeace and the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (CEMDA) have launched legal action against federal measures designed to limit the participation of renewable energy companies in the domestic market. They have previously been granted injunctions against some of the measures in the energy program but not against the program as a whole.
In his ruling, the judge said the government must suspend all aspects of the program because it is not conducive to the creation of jobs in the renewable sector and the reduction of emissions.
“The Energy Ministry … must abstain from continuing to comply with the objectives and strategies … of the program,” the judge said.
He stressed that his ruling doesn’t nullify the energy program but rather halts it for the time being.
To avoid a “regulatory vacuum” while the Greenpeace injunction request is considered, the government must apply energy rules that were in place before the new program took effect, the judge’s ruling says.
Earlier this year, the federal government suspended national grid trials for renewable energy projects under the pretext that the reliability of supply had to be guaranteed during the coronavirus crisis and published a new energy policy that imposes restrictive measures on the renewable energy sector that could effectively prevent its expansion in Mexico.
A key aim of the new policy is to consolidate control of the energy sector in the hands of the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission.
The Ministry of Energy has previously indicated that it would challenge court rulings against the government’s policies in the sector.
