Mexico City a feast for modern art lovers—and more than just murals

Culiacán chaos reflected a confused, overmatched government. — The chaos reflected a confused, overmatched government.

Amid a wave of national and international criticism for his handling of the Culiacán meltdown last week, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador faces the toughest public security test of his presidency.

But his approach over the first 11 months of his presidency leaves him little room to maneuver, and there is little evidence that his analysis of the crisis bears much resemblance to reality.

López Obrador, who is popularly known as AMLO, has largely built his political identity on his opposition to the militarized security policy, which is associated above all with the administration of Felipe Calderón. During his 2018 campaign, AMLO’s most famous promise was to attack organized crime with “hugs, not bullets.”

Lest anyone confuse that slogan with a simple bit of irony, upon ascending the presidency AMLO made noises about negotiating with criminal groups and repeatedly intimated that he would ratchet down the pressure on drug traffickers.

In short, the message from Mexico’s president was that they would be given a greater degree of freedom, but he expected them to respond by reducing their acts of violence.

Unfortunately for AMLO, the gangs did not react as he hoped. Violence, which had been trending upward during the latter years of the administration of former President Enrique Peña Nieto, has continued to tick upwards; the first six months of 2019 were the most violent half-year in the nation’s recent history.

The explosion of violence was concentrated in specific areas that seemed to undercut AMLO’s arguments about his policy’s efficacy. Some of his first steps upon taking office were to cut down on fuel theft, a longstanding practice that criminal groups have begun pursuing on a near-industrial scale.

Instead of tamping down on the bloodshed, these policies helped turn once-tranquil Guanajuato, ground zero for fuel theft, into the most violent state in the nation. In both Guanajuato and Tijuana, another area where murders have skyrocketed, recent narcomantas – banners hung by drug cartels looking to communicate with the population, their rivals, or the state – have threatened AMLO directly.

InSight Crime analysis

Beyond the rhetoric, there has been a lack of logic underlying many of the actual policy shifts that AMLO has pursued. He announced the creation of a new federal police force, the National Guard, and he secured passage of a constitutional amendment formalizing the deployment of the military in domestic security.

Neither of these stratagems has paid off; the National Guard has thrown the federal police apparatus into disarray, as officers are reassigned and agencies redeployed, and the constitutional change was viewed as a betrayal of AMLO’s deepest principles.

Moreover, even the rhetoric emanating from the head of Mexico’s government has lacked consistency. During the summer, for instance, he adopted a more aggressive posture in a series of public speeches, chastising criminal groups for their acts of violence and repudiating any idea of negotiating with them.

The disconnect between AMLO’s rhetoric and his policies has created a persistent sense of incoherence, which culminated in last week’s events in Culiacán. The chaos reflected not only a confused, overmatched government, but also a criminal group that may well have been under the impression that its leaders no longer faced any threat from government pressure.

A scenario in which both sides are not abiding by the same informal rules of the road lends itself to miscalculations, which can have deadly consequences.

The recent developments have left AMLO’s administration and its supporters without much of a rhetorical leg to stand on. The president’s defenses of his decision to release Ovidio Guzmán have been vague and unconvincing, and appeared entirely untethered from any broader strategic decision.

His surrogates’ efforts at justification — including arguments that this represents the demise of the narco-state that prevailed under Calderón, and suggestions that the United States was behind the incident — have bordered on the fantastical. AMLO has dismissed the complaints as byproducts of political opposition, but journalists and analysts from across the ideological spectrum have denounced his performance.

The most basic problem facing AMLO is that his longstanding rhetoric has now backed him into a corner. From the very beginning of his campaign, AMLO promised that a security policy built around military de-escalation and attacking the social drivers of organized crime would, in short order, end the bloodshed of the past decade. He ridiculed his predecessors and his opponents, leaving his audiences with the impression that only an idiot or a crook could fail to tame Mexico’s security challenges.

But now it is AMLO who is perched upon the hot seat, and the root causes of Mexican insecurity are no more tractable than before.

And with a strategy built on a series of half-measures and fantasies, the flaws in his approach have grown unmistakable.

Reprinted from InSight Crime. Patrick Corcoran is a contributing writer for InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Drone-mounted detection system makes bird counting fast

By

-

October 28, 2019

PInk flamingos are being counted on Yucatán peninsula.

A Mexican startup is using drones to aid conservation of the pink flamingo on the Yucatán peninsula.

Ornitronik, a company founded by National Autonomous University biology graduate Esaú Villareal, has developed an automatic observation and detection system that uses drones to count flamingos and monitor their behavior.

Called FlaminGO!, the system can capture a single image of as many as 1,000 flamingos in 30 seconds. The automatic census of the flamingo population saves time and drones can count birds in areas that are difficult to reach.

Data and images that the system collects are passed on to public and private organizations that can use the information to develop better conservation plans for the pink flamingo, which is classified as an endangered species.

DJI, the company that makes the drones used in the Ornitronik system, said in a statement that FlaminGO! helps to understand the behavior of flamingos, adding that the size of their population is indicative of the health of the ecosystem in which they live.

The system can identify information such as where Yucatán peninsula flamingos rest and nest, the company said.

Villareal said that care is taken to ensure that the use of drones in flamingo habitats doesn’t disturb the species.

“It’s important to consider that the use of drones for the monitoring of wild fauna has to be carried out with knowledge and ethics so as to not to disturb any species. There are some groups [of flamingos] that are more susceptible to stress and their well-being must come first,” he said.

Villareal said that he plans to use the FlaminGO! system to conduct accurate censuses of other animal species in Mexico.

According to DJI, the drone system, which makes use of thermal vision technology and zoom, is between 90% and 95% accurate.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Giant skeletons rise from Mexico City street for Day of the Dead

By

-

October 28, 2019

A skeleton surfaces in a street in Tláhuac, Mexico City.

Giant skeletons have left their graves and crawled out of the streets in the Mexico City borough of Tláhuac to celebrate the Day of the Dead.

Photos of the colossal bones went viral on social media along with the mistaken comments that the artists had been attempting to draw attention to potholes in the road.

But members of the Indios Yaocalli cultural collective who designed the figures said there were no potholes, but simply rocks and concrete placed around the protruding limbs to make it appear as though the skeletons were crawling out of the ground.

“No, they’re not potholes, they’re rubble from a construction site across from the neighbor’s house . . . the neighbors had the ingenious idea to add that detail,” one of the collective’s members told the newspaper El Universal.

He said they installed the skeletons in the street to preserve traditions, both of the festivities of the Day of the Dead and of the art of working with paper mache.

“The most important thing is to continue conserving our traditions,” he said. “We are proud to be from Tláhuac, to be from Mexico.”

Source: El Universal (sp)

Pemex records 88-billion-peso loss in third quarter

By

-

October 28, 2019

Chief financial officer Velázquez: sizable loss but less debt.

Pemex recorded a loss of 87.85 billion pesos (US $4.6 billion) in the third quarter but the beleaguered state oil company also reported that it has cut its debt for the first time in more than a decade.

Chief financial officer Alberto Velázquez said in a call with investors that the company’s third-quarter loss can be mainly attributed to two external factors: lower prices for Mexican crude and a stronger US dollar.

Prices for Mexican export crude were down 16.7% between July and September compared to the same period last year, falling to an average of US $55.10 per barrel from $66.20.

Velázquez said the dollar bought on average 4% more pesos in the third quarter of this year compared to the same period of 2018.

More than 35 billion pesos in foreign exchange-related losses were absorbed by Pemex between July and September, the company said in a report sent to the Mexican Stock Exchange on Monday.

In contrast, a positive exchange rate helped Pemex record an unusual profit of 26.8 billion pesos in the same quarter of 2018.

Other factors that contributed to the near 88-billion-peso loss were a decline in export volumes and reduced sales in Mexico’s retail fuel market.

Foreign sales fell just under 22% and domestic revenue declined by almost 20%. Pemex formerly had a monopoly in retail fuel sales but the previous government’s energy reform opened up the sector to private gas stations.

All told, Pemex’s revenues fell more than 88.6 billion pesos to 350.5 billion pesos in the third quarter, a 20.2% decline compared to the same period last year.

The state oil company also said in its report that its debt has fallen by 6.1% this year to US $99.6 billion.

Pemex had debt of $106 billion at the end of last year and has faced pressure from credit rating agencies to make its financial position more sustainable.

Retail fuel sales are down due to competition.

Fitch downgraded the company’s credit rating to junk status in June, and if Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s were to do the same, there would be a massive sell-off of Pemex bonds.

Velázquez said that market operations in September that refinanced US $20 billion in liabilities were crucial in achieving debt reduction this year.

“For the first time in over a decade, the company’s net debt was reduced,” he told investors.

“That operation has lowered Pemex’s refinancing risks in international markets and strengthened the company’s short and medium-term finances.”

However, the third quarter loss is indicative of the company’s ongoing challenges. Energy sector analysts have criticized the government’s plan to revive Pemex, whose oil output has been in decline for more than 10 years.

Many have spoken out against President López Obrador’s decision to put an end to joint ventures between Pemex and private companies, known as farm-outs.

Presidential chief of staff Alfonso Romo said in September that the government will cede the business of exploration and oil production in deepwater reserves to the private sector, seemingly confirming a report published in the Financial Times in late August that said that President López Obrador was poised to reopen private exploration in deepwater oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico.

But later the same month the news agency Reuters reported that it wanted to seize control of a lucrative private company oil project in the Gulf of Mexico. López Obrador rejected the report, stating that the government doesn’t “commit arbitrary acts.”

Whether the government will allow farm-outs to recommence remains unclear.

Source: El Financiero (sp), Reuters (en)

Muxe artist’s search for missing brother focus of short documentary

By

-

October 28, 2019

Lukas Avendaño, left, in a frame from the film.

The search for a Muxe artist’s missing brother is the focus of a short documentary doing the rounds of film festivals and cinemas.

Directed by journalist Miguel J. Crespo, La Utopía de la Mariposa (The Utopia of the Butterfly) was nominated for best short documentary at last week’s Morelia International Film Festival in Michoacán.

Lukas Avendaño’s brother Bruno went missing on May 10, 2018, and since then, the Muxe anthropologist, writer and performance artist has had one goal: to find him.

Considered a third gender in the Zapotec culture of Oaxaca’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Muxes are men raised to assume the social, cultural and economic roles of women.

“I no longer say that I’m an artist, teacher, researcher, because all my time is for Bruno,” said Avendaño.

Plumas Atómicas presenta el trailer de La utopía de la mariposa

Watch this video on YouTube

He has fully dedicated his work as well to the search. Whether at home or abroad, he uses his artistic endeavors to spread awareness of Bruno’s disappearance.

“I’m always trying to link [my work] to him. It is a way to make his case visible and demand that the details of his disappearance be made clear.”

Avendaño’s art has taken him far and wide. In May, he performed at the International Theater and Street Art Festival of Valladolid, Spain. It was director Crespo’s interest in the artist’s work that initially led him to interview Avendaño.

And after hearing what Avendaño and his family were going through, Crespo came up with the idea for the documentary.

Bruno Avendaño was a naval officer, but according to Lukas and his family, the navy did nothing to ascertain his whereabouts.

Lukas takes any chance he can get to tell Bruno’s story.

“I never say no to an interview, because each one is an opportunity to make Bruno’s story visible and . . . continue challenging the authorities . . . to do their jobs,” said Avendaño.

However, there is still no trace of Bruno, or even an official investigation into the circumstances of his disappearance.

Earlier this year, the number of people listed on the National Registry of Missing and Disappeared Persons surpassed 40,000.

Sources: Milenio (sp), Pluma Atómica (sp)

An estimated 2.6 million people turn out to watch Day of Dead parade

By

-

October 28, 2019

Elaborate costumes are a feature of the Mexico City parade.

A record 2.6 million people attended the International Day of the Dead Parade in Mexico City on Sunday.

The crowd was more than six times larger than the 400,000 who turned up for September’s Independence Day military parade, and dwarfs the 200,000 attendees of the 2008 March for Peace parade, which had held the record until this year.

Traffic in the area was stalled most of the day, as the parade ran from 2-8:00pm.

Not even the capricious rains of the Mexican capital could deter the vast crowd of onlookers, many of whom had waited up to three hours to see the monumental figures and floats pass by.

Attendees waiting in the zócalo hours before the event began said they were there to rescue the Day of the Dead tradition, as Halloween has garnered enough popularity in Mexico to compete, and in places outshine, the indigenous festival in recent years.

Day of the Dead comes alive in the capital on Sunday.

The parade began with a ribbon cutting ceremony featuring invited ambassadors from the United States, Bolivia, Pakistan and Hungary, to give the event a strong international impact.

Contrary to another Mexican tradition, the parade began at 2:00pm on the dot with a 150-strong marching band that played songs from Mexico and other Latin American countries over the nine-kilometer route.

A gigantic Xoloitzcuintle dog puppet followed, leading excited attendees on their trip into the Aztec underworld of Mictlán, the first of four themed blocks of spectacles. Also in this block were a giant puppet representing the Aztec god of death, Mictlantecuhtli, and a giant Catrina, the classy skeleton woman imagined by artist José Guadalupe Posada.

The following segments were themed Skeleton Carnival, Arts and Culture and, finally, La Fiesta (The Party).

Despite the record numbers of people, Mexico City police reported not one incident of violence, theft or other law-breaking associated with the event.

City authorities say the parade compares only with Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in terms of the number of people who attended.

The parade itself was a kilometer long and featured nine floats and 18 giant puppets.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Competition for leadership of Mexico’s ruling Morena party has turned ugly

By

-

October 28, 2019

Voting to elect delegates who will choose a new national leader of Mexico’s ruling party has been marred by violence for a second consecutive weekend.

Meetings of Morena party members in 17 districts in Hidalgo, Colima and México state were suspended on Sunday due to acts of violence.

In Huejutla, Hidalgo, a man who was demanding to be let into a meeting at which party members were voting fired a gunshot into the air before fleeing. He was later arrested. In Manzanillo, Colima, a man tried to steal a box of ballot papers, triggering a brawl between party members.

Meetings of 15 México state districts, including Ecatepec, Zumpango, Chalco, Nezahualcóyotl, Los Reyes and Coacalco, were canceled due to violence or the threat of it.

Party members came to blows in Nezahualcóyotl while armed persons were seen outside the meeting location in Coacalco, the newspaper La Jornada reported.

The violence in the three states came a week after similar incidents at Morena party meetings in Guerrero, Tlaxcala and Mexico City.

Four candidates are vying for the national leadership of Morena, a party founded by President López Obrador.

Incumbent Morena president Yeidckol Polevnsky is seeking re-election but faces challenges from the party’s leader in the lower house of Congress, Mario Delgado, former Morena National Council president Bertha Luján and Alejandro Rojas, a former secretary of tourism in Mexico City.

Polevnsky said last week that there were irregularities with the Morena party membership list and that the culling of names was necessary to ensure that only true members vote in the district ballots.

She said on Wednesday that those ballots would be suspended until the registry was reviewed but the party’s Honesty and Justice Commission said hours later that wasn’t the case. Polevnsky also claimed that one of her fellow candidates for the national presidency of the party was responsible for the irregularities and violence but didn’t disclose who.

All four candidates have criticized the irregularities and violence in local Morena party meetings.

Candidate Polevnsky claims a rival is behind irregularities in the party's membership list. — Candidate Polevnsky claims a rival is behind irregularities in the party’s membership list.

Martha Singer, a professor of political science at the National Autonomous University, told the news agency EFE that the situation within the five-year-old party is “very complicated.”

“It’s a party with very little institutionalization and that has generated a lot of tension and even aggression within it,” she said.

The tension has been further heightened by the competition for the Morena party leadership.

Singer highlighted that whoever wins the November election will play a key role in determining the candidates for the 2021 mid-term elections and those for state governors.

The national leader will also have the capacity to influence the selection of the party’s candidate for the 2024 presidential election, she said.

Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Morena’s leader in the Senate, Ricardo Monreal, have been touted as potential presidential candidates.

The rise of Morena has been meteoric. Apart from providing the president, the party leads a coalition with majorities in both houses of federal Congress and is also in power in Mexico City and several states.

“It’s a party with a lot of political power but with a lot of institutional weakness at the same time,” Singer said.

She contended that López Obrador’s decision to distance himself from Morena since he was sworn in as president last December in an attempt to avoid being tarnished by its internal politics has left the party without moral leadership and triggered a “power struggle” between competing factions.

The president claimed last week that he knew little about the problems in the party.

“They hardly . . . inform me about what’s happening in Morena. But when someone wants to address the issue, I immediately say that it’s nothing to do with me, that I don’t care, I’m not interested,” López Obrador said.

Source: El Financiero (sp), La Jornada (sp), El Sol de México (sp), EFE (sp)

Miners have lost interest in Mexico due to insecurity, over-regulation: Torex Gold

By

-

October 28, 2019

International mining companies have lost interest in investing in Mexico due to over-regulation and insecurity among other factors, says the CEO of Canada’s Torex Gold.

“Mining companies don’t feel comfortable in places where governments change the rules of the game,” Fred Stanford told the newspaper El Universal during the International Mining Conference in Acapulco, Guerrero.

He cited excessive regulation, difficulty to obtain permits, higher taxes, mine blockades, weak rule of law and insecurity problems due to the presence of organized crime as factors that have caused Mexico to lose its attraction as an investment destination.

Stanford said that Torex, which operates the Media Luna gold mine in Guerrero, has had to sell off some of its Mexico mining interests because investors want to reduce their exposure in the country.

He said the company is unlikely to open a new mine in Mexico any time soon but added that it “could return if the [business] environment is right.”

The Toronto-based CEO said there are several countries that are currently more attractive for mining investment, citing Canada, the United States, Australia, Chile, Peru and certain African nations.

“. . . The rule of law is predictable . . . They’re countries where there are no concerns about security and tax issues,” Stanford said.

In contrast, Mexico’s government has done nothing to put an end to blockades at Peñasquito – the country’s largest gold mine, raised taxes on mining companies and changed the rules of the game for the sector, he said, adding “it appears that there is no commitment to mining.”

Stanford said it was concerning that “everyone thinks the gold is theirs: communities, government, organized crime, the farmer . . .”

“They don’t care about how you extract it as long as you leave them something,” he said.

The CEO said that Torex will spend US $15 million this year to explore a site adjacent to Media Luna but asserted that if the company hadn’t committed to investing in the mine, it might not be in Mexico at all.

Torex CEO Stanford, left, speaks at a press conference last year.

Francisco Quiroga, undersecretary for mining at the Economy Secretariat, rejected Stanford’s assertion that Mexico is no longer attractive for mining investment, although he did acknowledge that the country has lost some competitiveness.

“Mexico continues to be attractive and has enormous mining potential,” he said.

“Torex itself has very significant investment programs and has invested in places with a high level of complexity such as Guerrero,” Quiroga added.

“We’re working to improve the competitive position,” the official said, asserting that every problem the mining industry faces is being dealt with by the government.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Social programs not enough to combat high crime, insecurity: academic

By

-

October 28, 2019