Homicides increased slightly in October compared to September, breaking a three-month trend of declining murder numbers from one month to the next.
There were 2,866 intentional homicides last month, the National Public Security System reported on Wednesday, 38 more than the number recorded in September.
It is the first time that homicides have increased from one month to the next since the National Guard was deployed nationally at the start of July.
With 305 homicides, Guanajuato was the most violent state in the country in October followed by Baja California, Chihuahua, Michoacán and México state, where there were 235, 217, 215 and 196 cases, respectively.
Yucatán saw just one homicide while Baja California Sur, Querétaro, Tlaxcala and Campeche recorded 7, 9, 10 and 11 cases respectively.
Femicide numbers declined 29% from 93 cases in September to 66 in October.
There were 29,574 victims of homicide and femicide in the first 10 months of 2019, a 2.4% increase compared to the same period last year. An average of 97 people per day were killed between January and October.
In per capita terms, Colima has been the most violent state in Mexico this year, recording 70 homicide cases per 100,000 residents to the end of October.
Baja California was next with a per capita rate of 61.2 followed by Chihuahua, Morelos and Guanajuato with rates of 48.4, 37.5 and 36.5 respectively.
The national rate to the end of last month was 23.4 homicide cases per 100,000 residents, 0.3 higher than the same period last year. If the rate is maintained in November and December, 2019 will become the most violent year on record.
In sheer numbers, the five most violent states during the first 10 months of the year were Guanajuato, México state, Baja California, Chihuahua and Jalisco. Mexico City ranked eighth.
Combating insecurity remains the biggest challenge for the federal government, which is just 10 days shy of completing its first year in office.
A poll published last week showed that President López Obrador’s approval rating had fallen 10 points following a spike in cartel violence and that support for his security strategy had slumped 20 points since March to just over 30%.
There were 32,565 victims of homicide and femicide between December 2018, when López Obrador took office, and the end of last month. The figure is higher than those recorded in the same period at the start of the six-year term of the previous three presidents.
The incidence of a range of other crimes is also cause for concern. The number of extortion, kidnapping, home burglary, street robbery and domestic violence cases all increased in October compared to the month before.
Farmers' tents outside the lower house of Congress in Mexico City.
The federal government’s new farm support policy has both positive and negative aspects, according to a social development expert.
Rodolfo de la Torre, a director at the Espinosa Yglesias Study Center (CEEY), a Mexico City think tank, told the newspaper El Economista that one positive aspect of the policy is that it intends to use satellite imagery that measures the size of a property to determine how much government support, if any, a farmer is eligible to receive.
“This mechanism is rigorous and beneficial because it will get rid of . . . farmers who said they had more land than they did. There was no way to verify it. Some of those farmers are the ones who . . . are protesting [against the policy],” he said.
Unlike a previous farm support policy, President López Obrador’s model sets a limit on the size of farms that can receive government support, de la Torre said.
Subsidies will only be provided to farmers on irrigated land if the size of their property is six hectares or less – financial aid was previously given to farms up to 100 hectares – while support for farmers on non-irrigated land will only be granted if their property doesn’t exceed 20 hectares, he said.
“This means that they’re cutting the register . . . [A lot of farmers] won’t receive the subsidy anymore, that’s being reflected in the protests at San Lázaro [the lower house of Congress]. It’s not the small-lot farmers that are coming to protest but the medium-size farmers . . . They’re going to be left off the register,” de la Torre said.
The CEEY director added that “the bad thing about this new farm support policy is that the register wasn’t put together well.”
De la Torre claimed that the government might have included “people who are not necessarily deserving of support.”
José Luis de la Cruz, director of the Institute for Industrial Development and Economic Growth, said the government should implement a more comprehensive farm support policy that allocates resources based on the needs of each agricultural sub-sector.
Some sub-sectors have become very successful as a result of exporting to the United States whereas others have not, he said.
De la Cruz argued that farmers who have already found a market in the United States – many avocado growers, for example – don’t need government support while many small farmers who don’t export and haven’t adopted new farming technology do require financial aid.
Farmers have been blocking the House of Deputies for more than a week with a camp outside the legislative precinct.
The Vallarta Botanical Gardens would like to purchase the surrounding land to create a buffer zone.
Five minutes into our hike and we are crossing the Los Horcones river in our underwear. Well, everyone, that is, but me.
Already balking at the thought of wearing pants in the 32-degree, 100% humidity weather, I refused to add another layer below them. I will walk the rest of the two-hour hike with wet pants.
Add to that discomfort the strips of red around my ankles from plantas quemaduras (burning plants), the dozens of mosquito bites, my already sunburned body from the previous day on Jalisco’s coastline and the cold I am fighting off, and it’s going to be one hell of a hike.
When Neil Gerlowski, executive director of the Vallarta Botanical Gardens, invited me to bushwhack through their newly acquired property I don’t think I fully grasped that it would require a machete and a waist-deep river crossing. As it turns out, neither he nor founder Bob Price, who set up the Gardens in 2004, have been through this part of the near-virgin forest that surrounds their center.
This would be a first-time exploration for everyone except Jesús Reyes, the Gardens’ general director, who is casually cutting us a path at the front of the line in sandals and shorts.
The botanical gardens sit on the boundary between tropical dry forest and the high pine-oak forest in northwestern Jalisco near Puerto Vallarta. The land butts up against parcels that belong to other owners, where grazing cows have left us little reminders of their passage in the form of cow patties and the psychedelic mushrooms sprouting from them.
At random intervals we have to pass underneath barbed wire fences as we crisscross the property line. In the satellite view that Gerlowski shows me later on his phone, the cleared areas that surround the forest are stark against the foliage we now walk through.
Sliding down an embankment we find wild vanilla creeping up a tree trunk. Gallitos with their bright red and green pistils litter the ground. I point to a feathery flower the color of sunset and comment on its beauty to Price.
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” he says, “but dangerous.”
Like most things in the forest.
Here there are ants as big as dimes that wait to chomp on exposed ankles. A nest of electric green and yellow barbarindio caterpillars clings to leaves the same color as their flesh, daring you to get to close enough for them burn your skin. It’s an exotic dance of survival as a strangler fig slowly squeezes the life out of the trees that support it and the sandbox tree spits out its seeds that only a handful of birds can eat without getting sick.
The Gardens have over 1,000 species of plants on display.
The land takes practice to walk through. Price, with his wide-brimmed hat and hiking boots, is doing a much better job of protecting himself than I am.
Price grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, he says, as we hike along a path that has only seen a dozen or so footprints this year. “I always wanted to get back to the land,” he says, “I guess I did that.”
I guess he did. He started the Gardens during what he describes as a moment of crisis in his life. “I was so tired of how things were going in the States, and I just felt like I could do nothing about it. I thought maybe I could make an impact in a place like Mexico.”
During a trip to Puerto Vallarta he visited and fell in love with a tract of land far away from the city’s high-end hotels and glittering beaches, and decided that he would try his hand at starting a botanical garden for safeguarding some of the beautiful endemic plants of the area.
“My mother always said, ‘You love plants, do something with plants,’” he tells me. His mother, in fact, went on to be his business partner and lived here on the property until her death in 2015. The Gardens have over 1,000 species of plants on display and have catalogued 200 more in the surrounding forest. With further study, they expect to discover at least 100 more species.
As we walk we’re insulated from the sounds of human activity except for the occasional plane overhead and the clang of the machete as it cuts through brush. But the encroachment of development is not as far away as the Gardens would like.
We pass a Palo María tree that’s been illegally cut and hauled away (they fetch close to US $10,000) and on the drive in to the Gardens this morning Gerlowski pointed out the nascent signs of development along the road – a barbed wire fence here, a cement slab there, earth that has been carved out of the ridge of the river’s canyon for the entrance to a future house or hotel. There are legal and illegal construction projects galore.
For those reasons and many others, the Jardín Botánico is working to purchase the land that surrounds it and create a buffer zone from development that will protect this forest and its inhabitants. Even as Gerlowski starts to talk about bringing scientists out to study the local flora and fauna, Price interrupts him:
“The truth is we really don’t want anyone out here. We just want to leave it be and let it be natural.”
That’s a more complicated and expensive task than one would expect. The Gardens already own 32 hectares (about 80 acres) of the surrounding land and is working with donors to acquire more, but they would need thousands of hectares to preserve the local jaguar community, for example, which needs massive tracts of land for migration and to ensure their genetic health.
They can protect the river otters on their land, but must worry about someone damming the river higher up. They can provide shelter for migratory birds, but they won’t survive without the surrounding habitat.
These and other factors have made the Gardens’ owners think bigger. They are avidly promoting an online petition started by Rafael Guzmán, one of Mexico’s foremost botanists, and other activists to declare the entire Horcones river watershed a natural protected area.
Waterfall on the Horcones river.
Just this week the petition hit half a million signatures. It doesn’t go into specifics on surface area but Gerlowski estimates that the watershed is about 160 kilometers square and the Horcones river canyon where the Gardens sit is only about 5% of that.
The Vallarta Botanical Gardens is a federally accredited Wildlife Management Unit and is pursuing a voluntary conservation land designation through a federal program managed by Conanp, the Natural Protected Areas Commission. To truly protect the area, other local landowners would also have to sign on to the program, a requirement not without its difficulties.
The program provides a small payment for dedicating your land to conservation but certainly not enough to compensate for lost grazing or farming land, or even more lucrative pursuits like selling it for development. The Gardens hope to lead by example and present ecotourism as a possible alternative income stream for folks in the region.
Another tactic to strengthen their case for protected status is to partner with Panthera, the world’s leading organization in the preservation of big cats in the wild, to set up camera traps that might provide visible proof of the threatened species in their midst.
Even if the area is granted these protections, Mexico has a mixed track record in actually preserving federal designated areas from development and damage, especially in regions where tourism, ecology and local politics converge. In a place like Puerto Vallarta, so heavily dependent on tourism, the struggle between conservation and development can be seen along every shoreline and on every highway.
The balance between growing the local economy, giving visitors the paradise they want and preserving the natural attractions they come to see (and that the region depends on) is a longstanding tug of war. The Gardens hope that even if local support isn’t forthcoming they can bring some international attention by supporting the online initiatives and educating visitors and locals about the very real environmental issues that face the area.
The idea being that in 40 or 50 years, when most of us on today’s hike will be long gone, the jaguars will still roam this river canyon in our absence.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer based in Mexico City and a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés, seated. Watching is La Malinche.
Bloody battle scenes, an exploration of love and a cliffhanger ending await viewers of the first episode of Hernán, a new television series that will premiere on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service on Thursday.
The release of the eight-part series based on the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire comes just after the 500th anniversary of the first meeting between conquistador Hernán Cortés and Aztec emperor Moctezuma II.
A review of the first episode by television news website vertele! said there was enough evidence to conclude that Hernán will be compelling viewing.
The start of the episode makes it clear that battle scenes depicting gruesome violence and featuring lots of blood will be a key part of the narrative arc of the Cortés story, vertele! said.
However, the episode also explores love, strategy and human relationships as it morphs into viewing that is more period drama than action film.
Hernán - Tráiler Oficial | Amazon Prime Video
Cortés’ close relationship with La Malinche, an indigenous woman who became his interpreter, advisor and lover, is central to the drama but action lovers shouldn’t despair: the cliffhanger ending in the first episode indicates that there will be plenty more battles and gore in Episode 2.
The first episode jumps between two different time periods, vertele! said, explaining that much of the action and drama takes place when the Spaniards are already in Tenochtitlán, but there are also flashbacks to the conquistadores’ march to the inland Aztec city from the Gulf of Mexico coast, where they first stepped on Mexican soil.
The plot device allows viewers to understand how the protagonist and secondary characters changed over time, the website said, adding that there are also moments of humor despite the heavy subject matter.
Spanish actor Óscar Jaenada (who appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and starred in the Mexican biopic Cantinflas) is convincing as Cortés, inducing empathy when revealing both the conquistador’s wild and more humane sides, vertele! said.
Mexican actress Ishbel Bautista plays the role of La Malinche and is predicted to be the “great discovery” of the series.
The 24-year-old’s performance in the first episode is successful in portraying an intelligent and empowered woman, vertele! said, at a time when the Spanish conquistadores’ main interest in indigenous women was to take advantage of them sexually.
Among the other actors in the series are Michel Brown, Almagro San Miguel and Víctor Clavijo, all of whom play Spanish conquerors.
After premiering on Amazon Prime Video, Hernán will also be shown on the History Channel and TV Azteca. Filming for a second season of the series will begin in 2020.
The series will be streamed in Spanish with English subtitles.
I’ve never not had crushes on boys. I never went through a stage of saying, “Ewww, I don’t want to play with them, gross!”
Even when I was 4 years old, I had a “boyfriend” at daycare (Joe), and throughout my childhood I was hyper-aware of their presence around me and my own aesthetic and behavior in front of them.
I’ve since calmed down considerably — thank goodness. Now the news that Congress is considering a bill to allow children to change their names and gender has me thinking about that very delicate topic of childhood sexuality and gender identity, and reflecting on my own childhood experiences.
I was a girl, and it didn’t occur to me to identify as anything but a girl. I liked “girl things” — ballet, playing dress-up, singing for my family in a ridiculously high-pitched voice, making lists with my friends of the boys I liked at school. I was shy and sensitive and cried easily, characteristics and behaviors perfectly acceptable for a girl.
I rehearsed for months how I would ask my mom to allow me to start shaving me legs and wearing a little bit of makeup, and I’ll always feel a little ashamed about that time I wore a bikini on a summer trip when she’d forbidden me to do so (the tell-tale sunburn when I got back revealed my deception).
When my best friend in fifth grade told me what “gay” meant (I hadn’t heard the term before in my conservative Texas city), I remember feeling a little surprised, and then not giving it much more thought. I didn’t hear the term “transgender” until college, and even after graduating with a degree in sociology I still didn’t feel I had a complete grasp on the concept.
I didn’t know for much of my life that there were people who didn’t feel they “fit” in their bodies. Had I known, I can’t imagine it would have had any effect on how I felt about myself and who I was.
I’ll freely admit even now that I am still learning. But I do understand enough to know that my not completely understanding something doesn’t automatically mean that it’s wrong or unimportant for those living it. I certainly understand that a tiny sliver of the population identifying as a gender that doesn’t “match” the sex they were born with for our particular society poses no threat to me or anyone else.
It is hard for me to fathom the idea that the thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviors produced by nature combined with socialization to create one’s gender identity might be considered “wrong” by the general public. How can the core of someone’s being be wrong?
I have nothing but sympathy for those who are met with rage at worst and confused looks at best when they don’t “match” their biological sex the way our particular society says they should. When I think of children in this situation, it breaks my heart.
The statistics are clear: any kind of gender or sexual identity “deviance” is correlated with sky-high rates of depression, suicide and self-harm . . . and that’s just on the individual level. Family estrangement, abuse and homelessness are also too prevalent in this population. Then of course there’s the run-of-the-mill everyday discrimination they face by society at large.
When the National Front for the Family organized marches across Mexico “in defense of the family” (read: against families composed of anything besides mother, father, children and particularly against Mexico’s impending changes allowing same-sex marriage), my jaw hung open at the news.
I’d naively believed that no one would show up. Did we really have people in our midst that believed that they, the dominant group, were threatened by consenting adults being allowed to marry one another? Apparently so. (Pro tip: if you’re part of the dominant group, then by definition there is no need to “fight for your rights;” your rights are already the law of the land, and giving others the same ones doesn’t take yours away.)
The concept of a “third gender,” or an option outside of the normal male/female binary, is nothing new in human societies. Just in North America several native cultures had clear social positions for “two-spirit” individuals, and to this day in Mexico we have the muxe of Oaxaca. This isn’t a fad made popular by young hipsters who are out to get your children to — do what exactly? If your answer is anything but “respect those different from them,” then it’s the wrong answer.
Just because Mexico has other, bigger problems doesn’t mean that we need to ignore all the ones we consider smaller in the meantime. If we can help children to accept themselves and be respected by others by giving them the legitimacy of a standardized bureaucratic procedure, then let’s do that.
Progress can be both uneven and incremental, but a win is a win. Legitimizing who people know they are is a more than worthy cause.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
AMLO and his latest book, an answer to neoliberalism.
Serving as president has not stopped Andrés Manuel López Obrador from writing: on Tuesday he announced the publication of his latest book, Toward a Moral Economy, his 18th.
“[The book] is ready, it will begin to be distributed to bookstores, and the publisher tells me that it will be available [in digital format] online starting tomorrow,” he announced at yesterday’s press conference.
“Here it is,” he said, holding up a physical copy of the book, “the foundation of our policy, what is being applied in the post-neoliberal era.”
The e-book is now available on digital platforms Amazon, Google Play and iBooks for 139 pesos (US $7). Published by Editorial Planeta, it is currently only available in Spanish.
The physical book will have a first edition print run of 40,000 copies.
López Obrador first mentioned the book in July when he said he was considering writing a text on his “alternative” to neoliberalism.
“If I have time, I’m going to write a book about the moral economy . . . in order to explain the alternative model to neoliberalism . . . I’d call it the moral economy, were it up to me to define it,” he said at the time.
The president’s first 17 books have been described as either political analysis or historical essays. His first was published in 1986.
Political scientist Genaro Lozano told BBC Mundo in an interview last year that López Obrador’s writing style is pragmatic: “He writes as a politician, with political intentions, to try to win votes.”
The state prison from which criminal activity is believed to be directed.
A wave of violence in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, this month was directed from inside a state prison in the border city, according to authorities.
There have been 91 homicides in Juárez in November and 50 bomb scares at factories, schools, businesses and government offices. At least 37 vehicles have also been set on fire, killing eight people.
Chihuahua authorities say the violence was ordered by imprisoned members of the Mexicles, a Juárez gang allied with the Sinaloa Cartel that has allegedly controlled the Cereso 3 prison since 2016.
The aim of the violence, authorities say, is to stop an inspection to detect weapons, drugs, cell phones and other prohibited items inside the jail.
State Attorney General César Peniche Espejel said there are two main instigators: imprisoned Mexicles leaders Luis Santiago E.C., also known as El Milo, and Jesús Eduardo S.R., aka El Lalo.
Mexicles members on the outside who follow their orders are rewarded with drugs, he said.
The joint federal and state inspection at the prison began on November 5, triggering an outbreak of violence that claimed the lives of at least 26 people in just four days.
At least 20 vehicles, including transit and factory-owned buses, were set on fire in the same period. In addition to deaths, nine factory workers suffered first and second degree burns in vehicle fires.
The chaos and violence were reminiscent of scenes from 2010, the most violent year in Juárez’s history, and terrorized local residents.
There was a lull in violence for 60 hours from November 11, the newspaper El Universal reported, but attacks resumed on November 14, killing 15 people.
Several bomb threats were made the same day and a bus was set on fire. Six passengers managed to escape unharmed.
A show of force by suspected members of the Mexicles.
A further 21 people were murdered between November 15 and 18, a period that coincided with the annual four-day shopping event called Buen Fin.
Two weeks after the commencement of the prison inspection and the resulting surge in violence, the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office has still not disclosed what it has found inside Cereso 3.
Isabel Sánchez, head of a Juárez citizens’ group that focuses on security and justice issues, urged state authorities to provide an update about what is happening inside the penitentiary as the inspection continues.
She condemned the reaction to the inspection by organized crime, saying that innocent people were victims of the violence and that society had once again become a hostage of crime gangs.
The federal government’s super-delegate in Chihuahua, Juan Carlos Loera de la Rosa, said that state authorities are working with the federal Attorney General’s Office to bring the perpetrators to justice.
He agreed with state authorities that the violence is a reaction to the prison inspection, saying it was designed to sow terror among citizens.
Homicides rose sharply in Juárez in 2018 compared to 2017 and this year is even more violent. There were 1,440 murders last year, while as of Monday there have been 1,347.
The record for homicides was set in 2010 when there were more than 3,600.
According to Chihuahua authorities, 80% of homicides in the border city are linked to turf wars between drug cartels. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration has said that the fragmentation of criminal groups has also contributed to increasing violence in Juárez.
Among the internal conflicts is one between the Mexicles and the Artistas Asesinos, both of which are affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel.
A teenage son shot and killed his father on Monday after the man confessed to abusing him and his sister.
After hearing his father’s confession, Ángel Israel N., 15, of Naucalpan, México state, went into his parents’ bedroom and returned with a .38-caliber pistol in his hand.
He then shot his father five times in the chest and face.
“I’m going to tell you something that has been tormenting me,” Ángel’s father had said. “I don’t know if you’ll forgive me, or if your mother will either. When you were little, I abused you and your sister.”
As he made his confession, his wife Ana asked incredulously, “This is a joke, right? When did it happen?”
After killing his father, Ángel hugged his mother and told her not to worry. He said it was not her fault, that his father abused him and his sister while she was at work.
The two decided it was best that Ángel turn himself in to authorities.
The youth has been charged with intentional homicide with a firearm.
One of Oaxaca’s top attractions, the Monte Albán archaeological site, was closed to the public on Tuesday after a gunfight broke out nearby over a land dispute in the surrounding area.
A group of communal landowners arrived in the area near Monte Albán about 9:00am with the intention of driving out people whom they claim to have occupied the land illegally. Neighbors reported hearing gunfire soon after.
The gunfight left one person dead and three wounded. The attackers also demolished and burned some houses that the alleged invaders had built on the land.
Oaxaca Public Security Secretary Ernesto Salcedo deployed police to the scene in order to avoid further confrontations.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which is responsible for the site, installed a chain-link fence in the area to demarcate the contested land. But it too has been accused of being part of the problem.
The Monte Albán archaeological site in Oaxaca.
The alleged occupants of the disputed land have accused INAH director Ilan Vit Suzan and deputy director Silvano Reyes Medina of having violated their human rights.
The 300 families claim that they are the rightful owners of 3,000 hectares adjacent to the Monte Albán site.
In August, they protested outside the INAH offices in Oaxaca city, demanding that the institution recognize their ownership and allow them to use the land. They claimed to have been beaten and robbed during previous eviction attempts.
“We bought our land in good faith. We are not responsible for the fact that the prevailing institutional corruption has allowed the sale of land in a prohibited area, which INAH now argues,” said one of the protesters in August.
After Tuesday’s eviction, the invaders blocked roads and broke into the INAH offices in Oaxaca city, where they detained workers in order to demand that their rights be respected.
Economy Secretary Márquez announces investment figures on Tuesday.
Preliminary figures for foreign direct investment (FDI) show a 7.8% increase in the first nine months of 2019 compared to the same period last year to reach its second highest level ever, the Economy Secretariat (SE) reported on Tuesday.
Data shows that Mexico received US $26.05 billion in FDI between January and September.
The figure is the second highest for the first nine-month period after 2013 when the purchase of brewer Grupo Modelo by Belgian multinational Anheuser-Busch InBev gave a significant boost to foreign investment numbers.
It will almost certainly be revised upward once companies have formally reported all foreign investment in the period to the SE.
Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez said the Trans-Pacific trade pact known as TPP11, which took effect on December 30, and higher investment in the energy sector were factors in the FDI increase in the first nine months.
Energy investment included $580 million for the extraction of oil and gas as well as additional resources to carry out projects related to the upgrade of Mexico’s refineries.
The manufacturing sector captured $11.63 billion in FDI between January and September – 44.6% of the total – an increase of 4.8% compared to last year. About $5 billion went to the automotive industry.
The financial services and insurance sector captured 13.9% of FDI; 11.9% came via trade; 5.8% went to the energy, water and gas industries; 5.3% was invested in media companies; and 5.2% was directed to mining.
Márquez said that investment in mining has fallen due to insecurity but added that the federal government is taking action in order to provide guarantees and greater certainty to companies operating in the sector.
The United States was the biggest foreign investor in Mexico, contributing 34.9% of total FDI between January and September.
Spain, Canada, Germany and Italy followed, providing 15.5%, 10.4%, 10.1% and 4.1% of foreign investment respectively.
Reinvestment of profits provided 55.2% of FDI, 36.1% came through new investments and 8.7% was sourced via payments to Mexican companies by foreign enterprises.
