IMSS to invest 13 billion pesos to build 111 new hospitals

-

November 15, 2019

A man accused of animal abuse has been remanded in preventative custody in Mexico City for the first time ever.

The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (PGJ) said in a statement that a judge ordered the man’s imprisonment as he awaits trial on cruelty charges.

It is the third time in Mexico that a person suspected of animal abuse has been sent to jail before facing trial. The other two cases were in Veracruz and Sonora.

According to the newspaper Excélsior, the jailed man doused a pit bull in solvent before setting it on fire and dumping it outside a property in the southeastern borough of Iztapalapa.

The PGJ also announced that authorities had rescued 10 dogs that were abandoned on a property in the borough of Tlalpan. All the dogs presented signs of neglect and some of them were suffering injuries.

They were taken to a veterinary clinic in Tláhuac for treatment before being placed in the care of an animal foundation.

Mexico City police arrested a 60-year-old man for animal abuse in August after they became aware that he was keeping 50 dogs inside a small area of his home in the borough of Gustavo A. Madero.

Source: Notimex (sp), Excélsior (sp)

CMDX law would streamline process for youths to change name, gender

By

-

November 15, 2019

Congressional committees have approved the new bill.

Children in Mexico City might soon be able to legally change their name and gender through a “quick” formality at a government office.

A proposal to allow minors to change the details on their birth certificates with the authorization of one of their parents will be presented in the Mexico City Congress next week after it won support from two congressional committees.

Nineteen lawmakers voted in favor of the bill while just three voted against it.

The Morena party-backed bill proposes changing Mexico City’s civil code to enable transgender children and adolescents to change their name and gender by completing an administrative procedure at civil registry offices.

To do so they would have to be accompanied by either their mother, father or legal guardian.

As Mexico City law currently stands, only adults are able to legally change their name and gender on their birth certificates via an administrative procedure while minors must present their case in court.

Morena Deputy Paola Soto, one of the bill’s two main proponents, said the proposed law would guarantee the rights of transgender minors.

They would be able to complete a “quick and effective administrative procedure” that doesn’t impose a burden of proof on them to show that they really do identify as the gender they wish to legally assume, she said.

“. . . Above all, it doesn’t imply a revictimizing judicial process as is now in force,” Soto said.

The proposal faces opposition from lawmakers with the other three major parties but Morena has a majority in the 66-seat unicameral Congress.

National Action Party Deputy Christian von Roehrich said that only the federal Congress is authorized to make civil code changes as per a Supreme Court ruling.

“. . . The court established that precisely to avoid the madness . . . that Morena is proposing,” he said.

Source: El Universal (sp), Animal Político (sp)

Why don’t the potholes go away? Chamba’s Law explains this and other mysteries

By

John Pint

-

November 15, 2019

An acorn woodpecker hard at work inside a telephone pole.

I live in the rustic community of Pinar de la Venta, located high in the hills west of Guadalajara. For months I watched woodpeckers — which abound in this area — hollow out the telephone pole in front of my house to build their new home.

The problem was that the hole they were working on was their fourth attempt at nest making and I wondered just how many holes that pole could take before it snapped. I also wondered whether male woodpeckers face the same problems as male weaver birds which have to “try, try again” until their lady loves say, “Yes, this nest is perfect.”

Woodpecker homemaking seems to involve more destruction than construction and I’m amazed their species is still with us.

The day after the telephone pole broke in two, Telmex came out and replaced it — with a brand-new wooden pole identical to the previous one.

“Isn’t that funny,” I said to our sagacious gardener, Don Pancho. “You’d think they’d put up a concrete pole, wouldn’t you?”

Don Pancho: there are two ways to repair a cobblestone road.

Don Pancho had a very different take on the matter.

“Bueno, I wouldn‘t think that, at all. Putting up a concrete pole would be against the Ley de la Chamba.”

Now chamba is slang for a paying job. “What has chamba to do with it?” I asked Don Pancho.

“Those carpinteros (woodpeckers) are providing a big chamba for the Telmex guys who put up poles. If they installed concrete or metal ones, they’d be out of a job en un dos por tres [in nothing flat]. Instead, they’ve got a chamba permanente just putting up poles here in Pinar de la Venta.”

Well, a light went on in my head and suddenly a lot of mysterious things I’d noticed in Mexico no longer seemed so mysterious at all.

camel in a pothole — The mystery of Mexico’s perpetual potholes has been resolved.

Chamba’s Law, I think, might read as follows: “Fix it so it’ll soon need fixing again.” I asked Don Pancho if he could give me another example of Chamba’s Law in action.

He pointed beneath my feet.

“See these cobblestones? When they come loose, there are two ways to fix the problem. One way — which was developed during centuries of trial and error — results in such an excellent repair job that those cobblestones will never work their way loose again in your lifetime.

“The other way lasts about a year. Both repair jobs look the same to the untrained eye. If the maintenance men used the first method, they’d have to go far away from home to find more chamba.”

After hearing this explanation, I understood why so many streets and roads always seem to be full of baches (potholes) even though those baches are filled in on a regular basis.

I used to joke that the repair crews must be filling the potholes with atole (watery corn mush) because every time it rains, the same old baches always reappear as if by magic.

Weaver-bird nests. Male weaver birds go to great lengths to please their partners.

Now I know it’s not magic, but good old economics, maybe the very same principle impelling carpinteros to keep making more holes until they’ve destroyed their home. Ha ha, and I used to think they were the birdbrains!

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.

12 judges in Jalisco under investigation for corruption

By

-

November 15, 2019

alfaro — Jalisco Governor Alfaro is confident that corrupt judges are going to jail.

The Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) and Attorney General’s Office (FGR) have opened investigations into 12 Jalisco judges for corruption and ties to organized crime.

The Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) has already frozen the bank accounts of two of the suspects.

Among the judges under investigation is one who in April ordered the release of one of the state’s most wanted narco-traffickers. The released gangster is believed responsible for the murder of a police officer involved in his arrest.

Led by President López Obrador’s legal advisor Julio Scherer, the head of the CJF and Supreme Court president Arturo Zaldívar, the investigative unit is working in coordination with Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro.

Alfaro declined to comment on the investigation, but maintained that its results will be exemplary in the purge of Mexico’s judicial system, both at the state and federal levels.

“The committee already had initial results with changes to the federal judiciary branch, but I believe that in the following weeks, it will have important results in the state judiciary,” he said. “There are several cases currently under investigation, documentation is being consolidated, [and] in some cases we have already frozen accounts of some magistrates and judges.”

“It’s a program that is working well, and we hope that it can serve as a reference for other states, that they will be able to initiate purge processes in their judicial systems. In the case of Jalisco, it is an urgent matter, and although they are long and complex processes that are carefully being carried out, I believe that in the end they will yield good results.”

Alfaro is confident that the investigations will lead to the imprisonment of the corrupt judges.

“I believe that it will be highly relevant that these people that have so damaged our state with their power to impart justice will soon pay the consequences for their actions and end up in jail.”

Source: Reforma (sp)

Students join cleanup after vandals attack university

By

-

November 15, 2019

Vandals start a fire at a university bookstore on Thursday.

Students at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) joined staff in cleaning up after vandals attacked a bookstore on campus.

“While criminals vandalize the university, the students protect their heritage,” read a tweet on the official UNAM account.

A march on Thursday to protest sexual assault carried out against students on campus ended in vandalism when protesters broke windows at a bookstore and looted books before setting it on fire.

They also burned a Mexican flag and spray painted messages including “Rapists” and “Not voting, Not praying, Fighting” on buildings and the flagpole plinth.

UNAM rector Enrique Graue and the university’s general secretary carried out an inspection of the damages after the protesters had left.

They confirmed that damage had also been done to a mural painted by David Alfaro Siqueiros on the facade of the rector’s building.

Students from many university colleges have shown their support for the movement by striking, including students at other campuses in Aragón, in Mexico City, and Cuautitlán, in México state.

There were also strikes in the colleges of political science, philosophy and literature and science and humanities.

Sources: El Universal (sp)

AMLO’s approval rating drops 10 points but on security it’s down 20

By

-

November 15, 2019

The president's performance on a scale of 1 to 10 since August 2018.

President López Obrador’s approval rating has fallen 10 points following a spike in cartel violence, a new poll shows, but he retains the support of almost six in 10 Mexicans.

Published by the newspaper El Universal on Friday, the survey shows that 58.7% of 1,000 people polled approve of the president’s performance. When the newspaper’s last poll was published in late August, López Obrador, or AMLO as he is commonly known, had an approval rating of 68.7%.

The percentage of respondents who disapprove of the president’s performance increased to 22.9% from 19.8% in August, while the number of those who neither approve nor disapprove grew to 16% from 10%.

The government’s failure to reduce violence since it took office last December has dealt the most damaging blow to López Obrador’s popularity.

In March, just over 50% of respondents approved of both the strategy to fight crime in general and drug cartels specifically but the latest poll shows that support has fallen about 20 points to 31.1% and 32% respectively.

The survey was conducted three weeks after the botched attempt to capture Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in Culiacán, Sinaloa, and two days after the November 4 massacre of nine members of the LeBarón family near the Sonora-Chihuahua border.

While the president’s rating on security has taken a sizable hit, his overall performance has declined by a more modest margin.

In March, poll respondents gave AMLO an average performance rating of 7.72. The rating fell to 7.33 in June and 7.22 in August.

This month, despite the surging violence, the president’s rating only deteriorated slightly to 6.99 even though less than a third of those polled believe that López Obrador has Mexico’s problems under control.

Seven in 10 respondents said that, given the opportunity, they would vote in favor of AMLO continuing his term, a decline of just 4% compared to August, and 63.1% said that they didn’t regret voting for him at the 2018 election, 1.3% less than three months ago.

A majority of poll respondents approved of the president’s performance in the areas of education, healthcare and poverty alleviation but only a third or less approved of his response to protests and migration and the way in which he deals with opposition parties.

Asked to name the greatest achievement of the López Obrador administration, 27.4% cited its social programs while the second most common response – cited by 14% of respondents – was that there hasn’t been one.

The next most commonly mentioned achievements were the crackdown on fuel theft, the fight against corruption and management of the economy (despite stagnant growth).

Just over a fifth of poll respondents said the federal security strategy – which aims to avoid the use of force wherever possible – is the government’s biggest mistake while 13% said that it hasn’t made any errors.

The approach to combating drug trafficking was considered the government’s biggest mistake by 8.2% of those polled, 6% cited the failure to curb violence and 5.1% said that social programs were the greatest error of the López Obrador administration.

Less than half of respondents said that they expect the president to keep his campaign promises but 55.5% said that Mexico will improve under his leadership. Only 14% said that the situation in the country will get worse while just under a quarter said that things will remain the same.

Although the government is just two weeks shy of reaching its first anniversary, six in 10 of those polled believe that it is too soon to begin to evaluate its performance.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Aspiring teachers arrested in Oaxaca, others steal buses in México state

By

-

November 15, 2019

Teacher training college students in Oaxaca and México state have continued their protests by blocking highways and hijacking buses and delivery vehicles.

But in a rare move, police arrested some of the protesters.

Federal Police in Oaxaca arrested 53 students of the Rural Vanguard School of Tamazulapan on Thursday after students had hijacked and looted delivery trucks at the San Pablo Huitzo toll plaza on the Oaxaca-Mexico City highway.

The federal roads and bridges commission (Capufe) filed a complaint against the students in response to numerous robbery reports from motorists and truck drivers.

Students spokeswoman Yesenia López said they were carrying out a campaign in support of students of the Mactumactzá, Chiapas, teachers’ college, who were arrested for carrying out similar protests last week.

The CNTE teachers’ union reported that the students were released around 4:45pm on Thursday after paying for damages.

Also on Thursday morning, students of the Lázaro Cárdenas teachers’ college in Tenería, México state, commandeered 22 Flecha Roja buses at four different bus stations.

The students demanded the withdrawal of 42 complaints filed against them for having taken similar actions in the past, as well as the release of fellow classmate Andrés Gutiérrez Bautista, who is currently in custody.

Michoacán has also seen unrest among teacher training students in recent weeks.

Beginning in late October, students in Morelia blocked roads and railroad tracks, costing as much as 500 million pesos (US $26 million) in economic damages.

Sources: Milenio (sp), El Financiero (sp)

7 dead after security forces clash with ‘Hell’s Army’ in Nuevo Laredo

By

-

November 15, 2019

Clashes in Nuevo Laredo killed 6 hitmen.

Six members of the Northeast Cartel’s military wing, known as Hell’s Army, died in confrontations with security forces in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on Thursday.

According to official reports, the fighting left one soldier dead and three wounded.

State security spokesman Luis Felipe Rodríguez said there were three separate incidents.

“Armed civilians assaulted security forces in three situations that took place in Nuevo Laredo as a result of the patrols carried out by military personnel to inhibit the actions of criminal groups,” Rodríguez said.

Initial reports said the attacks began when cartel hitmen opened fire on soldiers and stopped an army vehicle with traffic spikes to puncture its tires.

The attacks were initially believed to have been related to the transfer of 75 inmates from the local prison, but authorities rejected the claim and said the inmates were transported without incident.

Images of the clash recalled the confrontations in August that left as many as 12 gangsters dead near the Nuevo Laredo airport and outside an army barracks.

Among the dead in August was 16-year-old Juanito Pistola, a minor who had been recruited by Hell’s Army cartel at a young age. According to social media reports, Pistola had been arrested in 2015, but was later released as he was only 13 at the time.

Riding in one of the attacking vehicles, Pistola was decapitated by gunfire during the fighting. Following his death, a video on social media showed him carrying weapons, drinking alcohol and flipping off the camera. Background music was an original narco rap ballad dedicated to him.

Thursday’s actions came on the heels of attacks on security forces in Nuevo Laredo, one of which left a state police officer wounded.

Source: Vanguardia MX (sp)

Parallel narco-governments need to be stopped, warns US ambassador

By

-

November 15, 2019