Navy marines and a shipment of the cancer drug Methotrexate.
The Mexican government has purchased enough cancer medication to last through the end of the year, President López Obrador confirmed Sunday.
In making the purchase, he kept a promise made in August that he would buy the medication abroad, and said the government will continue doing so as long as Mexican pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell to the government.
The cancer treatment Methotrexate was purchased in France from Mylan Pharmaceuticals, one of the three biggest generic drug manufacturers in the world, with the coordination of the navy and health and finance officials.
“We bought 38,200 units (29,230 of 50 milligrams and 8,970 of 500 mg), which covers the requirements in the whole sector for the rest of the year,” officials said in a statement.
The total cost for the medicines came to 4,66 million pesos (US $239,457), which included shipping from France. The statement pointed out that the price was slightly less than what the previous administration paid to the only laboratory in Mexico that makes the drug.
At his morning conference on Monday, López Obrador accused the businesses from which the medications had been purchased previously of being greedy, accusing them of raising the price 200-300%.
“They wanted to play the same arm-wrestle game as the huachicoleros [fuel thieves]. They thought they could break our will, but the government won’t let itself be blackmailed,” he said.
“Whoever wants to do business can do so, but with reasonable profits . . . We no longer permit bribery and we will continue buying the medications in Mexico if they offer fair prices and there are reasonable profits,” he said.
The Mexican drug war is an issue as complex as it is violent. Over the past two decades, almost 200,000 Mexicans have been killed, and reporting on it is as dangerous as any conflict – more than 100 journalists have been killed, or disappeared, in the same period.
British-born journalist Ioan Gillo has covered the conflict for Time magazine and The New York Times, and in two critically acclaimed books, El Narco (2011) and Gangster Warlords (2016). I met with him to try to understand the war and began by asking him to outline its main players.
IG: Right now you’ve got a lot of fragmentation. You’ve got the Sinaloa, the oldest and most infamous cartel, run by Chapo Guzmán and his sons (“Los Chapitos”), and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, based out of Guadalajara. Then there’s Los Zetas, the first paramilitary cartel, who have now split into factions; and the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas and Veracruz; the Juárez Cartel; and the Tijuana Cartel.
Then we come to the smaller cartels, the cartelitos: the Guerreros Unidos, Los Rojos, Los Caballeros Templarios and La Familia Michoaana. There are dozens of these.
ME: How wide are their operations?
IG: Oh, worldwide! The largest cartels have envoys everywhere. There’s a big presence in the U.S., the Caribbean and South America, but they are also active in Britain, mainland Europe, China, even Russia.
Grillo’s book Gangster Warlords explores drug gangs in Central and Latin America and the Caribbean.
ME: What launched the cartels as a global force?
IG: There’s no single watershed moment, but the breakdown of the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] was a big factor as it broke communication between municipal police forces. What was a stable system of top-down, endemic corruption suddenly became an unstable system of bottom-up, endemic corruption.
Another factor was the re-routing of the cocaine as it came into the U.S. After [former U.S. president] Reagan clamped down on the Caribbean route into Miami, cocaine started to steam through central America into Mexico, which became the final strait. After that the cartels began purchasing the cocaine directly from the Colombians at the border and selling it on. With more money came more violence for control of that money.
ME: Is it just about cocaine and other drugs, or are there other significant revenues?
IG: Concerning narcotics, there are five main products. The first is marijuana, a big cash crop. It’s inexpensive to manufacture and fetches a decent profit margin. However, legalization in the U.S. is damaging its reach. The second is cocaine – traditionally most profitable. A kilo of pure cocaine can be bought by cartels at the border for as little as US $2,000 and sold for a huge mark-up.
Then there’s heroin, which is now largely cultivated in Mexico. If you buy a wrap of heroin in Baltimore today, chances are it’s made in Mexico. Fourth, there’s methamphetamine, which ripped through Mexico after the 2005 Combat Methamphetamine Act in the U.S. And recently we’ve been seeing fentanyl being made in Mexico. This is a seriously dangerous opiod, responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths.
However, on top of the drugs, there’s anything and everything else. Stealing crude oil is big business for oil racketeers known as huachicoleros and other revenue comes from capturing agricultural plantations – avocados and limes, illegal iron mining, illegal logging. And there are the repugnant practices of people smuggling and people trafficking.
ME: Do you know how much overall revenue comes from all of this? And where it goes?
IG: It’s impossible to know. However, the Rand Center, commissioned by the White House, estimated the U.S. spends $100 billion per year on illegal drugs. Obviously much of that will not get to Mexico as the biggest mark-ups come from the street-selling level. Some of this money goes towards material wealth for the cartels and their lieutenants. But an enormous amount is laundered via U.S. banks, particularly in Texas, and through tax havens like Panama. Money is also laundered through real estate and shell companies all over the world.
ME: Can you describe the process in which people get involved with the cartels?
IG: It starts with an absence of government, an absence of wealth and an absence of family. With these three things, and the pull of easy money from (at first) petty crime, kids get involved. It usually starts with street gangs, then kids will be given a phone, a $50 weekly salary and told to stand guard on the corner as a kind of sentry, a halcón, before they’re moved to higher forms of crime, be it moving drugs or elsicariato (hitmen). And then the police are an active arm of the cartels in many areas.
ME: When you investigate in these dangerous areas, do you tell people you’re a journalist?
IG: Yes, always. I don’t want anyone to think I’m working for a rival cartel, or the DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration]. But reporting on organized crime can offer a strange protection. If I’m interviewing the head of the Red Command in Rio [de Janeiro], no one is going to hold me up because they know I’m with “them.” They also don’t want the trouble of robbing some gringo and having the whole police force roll up, guns blazing.
El Narco takes a look inside Mexico’s criminal insurgency.
ME: But journalists are targeted by the cartels in Mexico?
IG: It’s usually for a specific, terrifyingly petty reason. Sometimes it’s for publishing something they don’t like. A co-worker of mine was killed for publishing an op-ed by a grieving mother which called the cartels cowards. It can also be for not covering a story they want you to cover, such as an example murder. A Juárez newspaper once published a chilling headline, directed towards the cartels, titled ‘¿Qué quiere de nosotros?’ (What do you want from us?)
ME: I’m sure many newspapers back off. Are there any you respect for not doing so?
Yes many. ElRíoDoce in Sinaloa, for example, after my friend Javier Valdez was killed in 2017.
ME: When have you felt most in danger?
IG: There was one time in Michoacán, when cartel members dressed as autodefensas [self-defense forces] thought I was a DEA agent and threatened me with a grenade. Another in Tabasco when the Jalisco cartel told me they were going to raid my hotel for potential ransom victims. Another when I managed to pull over just a few miles before a cartel roadblock in Coahuila. The list goes on . . . .
ME: If you were to offer a child in Sinaloa a “Chapo” or a Che Guevara belt buckle, which would they choose?
Oh, Chapo every time. But the question of ideology is a pertinent one. While many cartels don’t have a political ideology, they do have strange rituals. For instance, Los Zetas take the Marines’ philosophy of “never leave a man behind” to new levels – “never leave the dead behind” – and steal back their fallen brothers from morgues.
Many cartel leaders, such as [former Familia Michoacana boss] Nazario Moreno , are quasi-religious, or suffer from a type of Jerusalem Syndrome in which they think themselves gods. There’s also a Robin Hood angle – standing up for the little man and the poor, which is celebrated by the narcocorridos.
ME: Okay, I’m giving you a magic wand. How would you attempt to solve the narco problem?
IG: First, drug policy reform. We need to accept drug policy is failing. It should be about reducing the tens of billions of dollars that go to criminals. There are two areas of tragedy: the people dying of overdoses, and the criminals being funded to slaughter each other, as well as their fellow citizens.
With drugs that are problematic to legalize, such as heroin, you need rehabilitation, because both the money and the overdose deaths are about addicts. Other drugs, such as cocaine, which are taken more casually, I would consider decriminalizing, or even legalizing. Certainly, I think marijuana should be legalized.
Secondly, you have to fight for the hearts and minds of the young people who are recruited into cartels. Society needs to offer something to these children, with funding for social work. Wealth inequality also breeds crime. It’s only after areas are ghettoized that cartels have room to breathe.
Thirdly, how do you build a police force that’s trusted? It’s very hard to find a blueprint for this. Nicaragua, despite its poverty, is supposed to have a police force that’s resistant to the insurgency of gangs, particularly in areas where they fought the Contras, but trust has been undermined recently. Cuba has a lot less crime than its neighbours but it’s a fairly authoritarian society. Countries like Chile, too, but I’d put that down to per-capita wealth.
ME: Would you halt the flow of guns into Mexico from the USA?
IG: I would try. Most of the guns used by the cartels are purchased in the U.S. I don’t see banning guns in the U.S. as realistic, but there are many other steps you can take. We need to reduce the number of guns coming into Mexico.
ME: What’s your opinion, so far, on López Obrador’s presidency?
IG: When he was elected there was a moment of hope for change. It was the biggest win for a president in years. However, his first eight months have been disappointing. You’ve had an increase in violence and a flat economy. You can’t pin this all on AMLO’s presidency because these things are eternally complex and can’t be solved overnight, but his strategies haven’t been clear, or successful. The new National Guard, for instance, hasn’t avoided corruption in the way López Obrador thought it would.
ME: Finally, are you optimistic for the future?
IG: I really can’t say. It’s not my job to be optimistic.
There were more than 16,000 confirmed cases of dengue fever in 16 states during the first eight and a half months of the year, more than triple the number reported in the same period of 2018.
The epidemiology department of the federal Health Secretariat said there were 100,510 probable cases of the mosquito-borne tropical disease to September 15, of which 16,410 cases are confirmed.
To the same date last year, there were 4,578 confirmed cases of dengue.
With 4,845 cases, Veracruz has seen the biggest outbreak of the disease that is also known as breakbone fever. Only 807 cases were reported between January and September last year.
Higher numbers have also been seen in Jalisco, Chiapas, Oaxaca and Puebla.
ACAPS, a Switzerland-based independent information provider that carried out an analysis of the disease in Mexico this year, said in a September 16 briefing note that “the ongoing rainy season, which lasts until October, could continue to increase caseloads of dengue both within Veracruz and across the country.”
In Veracruz, all four serotypes of dengue have been detected, ACAPS said, adding that “the deadliest strain of dengue, serotype-2 . . . could lead to more severe reactions to the disease.”
There have been more than 900 confirmed cases of “severe” dengue this year and deaths have been reported in both Veracruz and Oaxaca.
In the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of the latter state, a five-year-old boy died of dengue in late July while his sister is believed to have succumbed to the same disease in June although her death was officially attributed to appendicitis.
The federal health secretary said earlier this month that 120 people have died from dengue this year, but the Directorate General of Epidemiology says only 43 have been confirmed.
ACAPS cited a range of factors that could affect the capacity of Mexico, and Veracruz in particular, to respond to the high number of dengue cases.
It noted that 20% of people in Veracruz don’t have either public or private health insurance, adding that “the gap in health care coverage may lead to difficulty in accessing necessary treatment for some of the population.”
The NGO also said that gang violence may pose security risks in that it could prevent access to healthcare.
ACAPS also cited three “aggravating factors” that could make the dengue situation worse in Veracruz: climate, lack of insecticides and other diseases.
Heavy rains could increase the presence of standing water and thus facilitate the breeding of mosquitoes, ACAPS said.
It also said that the lack of insecticides available in Veracruz has been cited as one of the reasons for the higher than average level of cases so far in 2019 and that other viruses and diseases currently present could impact the ability of healthcare facilities to respond to the dengue outbreak.
However, Dr. Ruy López Ridaura, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control Programs, said that mosquito spraying had occurred throughout the whole year in parts of the country susceptible to dengue outbreaks, explaining that state authorities used their own funds to purchase insecticides.
He also said that spike in the number of cases this year was not abnormal or alarming.
The Oaxaca Congress will vote Wednesday on a bill to change the state’s constitution and remove criminal penalties for abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
A woman who procures an abortion can currently be imprisoned for between six months and two years, provided three circumstances are met: the woman does not have a “bad reputation,” that she has been able to hide her pregnancy and that the pregnancy was the fruit of an illegitimate relationship. If one of those circumstances does not apply, a woman can be jailed for between one and five years.
Providing an abortion with a woman’s consent is punishable with one to six years in prison. The only exceptions are in cases of rape, risk to the health or life of the mother and serious genetic disorders.
According to the organization Marie Stopes México, there are around 9,200 abortions in Oaxaca every year, of which only 2,300 are registered.
Between 2013 and 2016, at least 20 women are were sentenced to prison in Oaxaca for procuring abortions, according to the national statistics agency Inegi. Since 2016, Oaxaca prosecutors have opened 56 investigations for abortion.
According to Morena lawmaker Elisa Zepeda, decriminalizing abortion is not only an issue of public health but also of social justice, because it is mostly poor and indigenous women who do not have access to abortion services under good conditions.
Electricity stolen by tampering with or bypassing meters.
The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) detected almost 70,000 cases of power theft between January and May, a crime that is forecast to cost the state-owned company almost 8.8 billion pesos this year.
In the first five months of 2019, the CFE identified 69,515 cases in which electrical meters at homes and businesses had been tampered with to reduce power costs or bypassed altogether through the use of illegal hook-ups.
Electricity theft cost the CFE 3.65 billion pesos (US $187.6 million) between January and May, an amount that equates to a loss of approximately 16,690 pesos (US $860) per minute.
If the rate of electricity theft continues unabated between June and December, the company will suffer losses of 8.77 billion (US $450.7 million) pesos this year.
That would be more than double the amount the crime cost the CFE in 2018 and a 678% increase compared to 2013. Financial losses caused by electricity theft have increased every year since 2013, CFE statistics show.
Cost to the CFE could reach over 8 billion pesos this year.
In 2019, the electricity commission’s biggest losses have occurred in Tabasco, where illegal hook-ups and meter tampering cost 519 million pesos between January and May.
Almost 11,600 cases of electricity theft were detected in México state, over 2,000 more than in Tabasco. However, CFE’s losses, at 375 million pesos, were considerably lower than in the Gulf coast state.
The next highest losses were recorded in Jalisco, Chiapas and Mexico City.
De Hoyos: president lied about investor interest in the Texcoco project.
The Mexican Employers Federation (Coparmex) will continue its legal battle against the construction of a new airport at the Santa Lucía Air Force base, a project that was launched after what it calls one of the worst presidential decisions ever made.
Speaking on Saturday to an assembly of youth supporters of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Coparmex president Gustavo de Hoyos called the decision by President López Obrador to cancel the Texcoco airport one of the worst actions taken by a Mexican executive in history.
“No president has deliberately taken an action with this level of cost, not one, not even the worst president we’ve had in the past,” he said. “So even if they don’t like it, even if they get angry, even if they call us conservatives or legal saboteurs, we’ll continue filing injunctions so this project won’t be abandoned. That’s what we’re fighting for.”
De Hoyos also claimed that President López Obrador lied to the business community when he said there was no interest from private investors in completing the project.
“The president lied to us repeatedly, because there have been or are dozens of offers to finish this great project.”
The decision also did severe damage to Mexico’s reputation as a place in which to invest, he said.
“No government in the modern era of our country has received a country with better growth opportunities . . .” but those conditions do not exist today.
De Hoyos was responding to accusations by the president that injunctions against the Santa Lucía airport were politically motivated.
President-elect López Obrador decided to abandon the Texcoco airport after a controversial referendum last October, in which voters in an essentially ad-hoc public consultation chose to build an airport outside of Mexico City in Santa Lucía and upgrade the existing one.
But construction at Santa Lucía has been held up by legal challenges led by a group called #NoMásDerroches (No More Waste), a coalition of civil society organizations that includes Coparmex.
In June, a lawyer for #NoMásDerroches told reporters that preventing the construction of the Santa Lucía airport is part of a strategy to revive the Texcoco project, which they believe is still possible.
An estimated 42% of coral reefs have been affected.
Some of the most popular reefs around the island of Cozumel will be closed to the public due to white band disease, which is killing the coral.
The Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp) will restrict access to much of the Cozumel Reefs National Marine Park beginning in October.
The disease was first detected in Florida in 2014. In Mexico, it was first seen at Puerto Morelos, 45 kilometers south of Cancún, and it made its way to the reefs off Cozumel in October 2018.
In May of this year, Conanp calculated that 30% of the Mexican Caribbean’s reefs had been affected by white band disease. By August, that number had risen to 42%.
On Monday, Conanp announced a series of steps it will take in coordination with tourism service providers and researchers to confront the problem by reducing pollution generated by gasoline from boats and sunscreen.
“It makes me very sad to know that I’m of the last generation that will see healthy reefs,” said park deputy director Brenda Hernández. “Our kids aren’t going to see them.”
A researcher at the Institute of Ocean Sciences at the Autonomous University (UNAM), Lorenzo Álvarez, said that around 30 of the park’s 50 species of coral have been affected.
“Of those that have been affected, more than half have already died,” he said.
The phenomenon occurs as a result of pollutants and rising water temperatures, which cause the coral polyps to expel the algae on which they feed, and that live in their tissues. The tissues then disconnect from the coral skeleton, and the reef loses its color and dies.
“It’s like suffering a wound that exposes the bone,” said Maricarmen García Rivas, director of the Punto Morelos National Park. Along with Álvarez, she was one of the scientists to discover the disease in the Caribbean.
Researchers are still without solutions to the problem, although the state is replenishing damaged reefs with laboratory-grown coral. The goal of the project, which began in 2017, is to plant 265,000 coral reef colonies by 2022.
Conanp will hold its first meeting in Cozumel today to explain the next course of action to tourism providers affected by the reef closures.
Fox, left, and Cortés at the National Action Party assembly.
Members of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) have called for the formation of a united front against President López Obrador and the ruling Morena party.
Former president Vicente Fox, who led the PAN to federal power for the first time ever in 2000, was among the panistas, as members and supporters of the party are known, who urged the joining of forces in order to defeat Morena at the 2021 mid-term elections.
Speaking at the party’s 24th national assembly on Sunday, Fox called on all opposition political parties and citizens’ groups to come together in a national front against the president.
“Mexico is above any one political party, color, ideology, doctrine; it’s more than all that,” he said.
“. . . We have to unite and . . . we have to defeat this fourth transformation,” the ex-president said, using López Obrador’s catch-phrase for his administration and the change he says it is bringing to Mexico.
Fox said he has met with members of the PAN – including his successor Felipe Calderón, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the Citizens’ Movement party to build support for a united opposition.
“We’re going to get on the horse again, we’re going to repeat the triumph of 2000 by exposing the lies of this character [López Obrador],” he said.
For his part, PAN national president Marko Cortés called on panistas and all “Mexicans of good will” to come together so that the party can become “Mexico’s alternative.”
He said that Mexico’s future is at risk, that the fight ahead will require greater effort and that the PAN therefore needs to bolster its ranks.
The party has the responsibility to lead the fight against López Obrador’s “populist threat,” Cortés said.
He invited party members to hit the streets of the nation’s cities and to travel to its most remote communities to seek support for the party’s cause. The PAN has to consult with the nation’s young people, students, women, working-class people, farmers and senior citizens, Cortés urged.
Also offering advice was Diego Fernández Cevallos, an elder statesman of the PAN and the party’s presidential candidate in the 1994 election.
In a video message broadcast at Sunday’s meeting, he said that panistas must maintain unity and put their egos and personal ambitions to one side in order for the party to be a credible political option and to attract society’s leaders to the conservative cause.
Fernández charged that López Obrador has brought back a system of “caudillismo,” or autocracy, to Mexico and that his government is “attempting to destroy the institutions of the country.”
Fernández said the PAN must strengthen itself as a political force so that it has the capacity to effectively stand up to the president and the Morena party.
“Today we, the panistas of the country, must understand that our historical and political responsibility . . . is to be an opposition capable of defeating all arbitrary and caudillo-like exercises of power,” he said. “That and nothing else is our task and responsibility.”
Office workers attempting to flee were thrown to the floor.
A new video has appeared showing the moment inside an office building when Mexico City was hit by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake two years ago.
Facebook user Alejandro Vargas uploaded the video, which was captured by a security camera in the building in central Mexico City.
“After keeping this video for two years, I can share it,” Vargas wrote. “it was a moment that changed my life, and I think a lot of other people’s lives too, from the 15th floor.”
The video shows the inside of an office at 1:17 p.m. on September 19, 2017, when people start to realize that an earthquake is taking place.
“In those seconds, I asked God to take care of my loved ones, and if it was my time to go, I didn’t have a problem with that,” Vargas wrote. “I understood how small we are when facing something like this.”
A dos años del #Sismo19S, Alejandro Vargas compartió en su cuenta de #Facebook un video inédito de cómo vivió el sismo, en el que incluso le pidió a Dios cuidar de los suyos en caso de lo peor…
In the video, employees start to evacuate the office, but as the earthquake continues, some are unable to walk straight and are thrown onto the floor and others onto a desk, which collapses. Other people hold onto the wall as they struggle to stay upright, while others crawl out of the office.
The building is located at Izazaga 89 and houses government offices. Shortly after the earthquake, there were reports that the building’s owners were hiding structural damage to prevent it being closed by authorities.
“I try to joke when I talk about earthquakes, but inside, I still have that feeling of fear and nostalgia,” Vargas wrote. “For months, especially in the shower, I thought I was hearing the earthquake alarm, when it was impossible that the sound would reach the room. I try to enjoy every day, with my manias and everything, but I value every day.”
The September 19 quake was one of two during the month that killed more than 500 people and injured thousands more.
The Astoria will make its first cruise out of Puerto Peñasco on December 7.
Visitors to the Gulf of California will have a new, luxurious way of exploring this megadiverse region of Mexico later this year.
The 500-passenger boutique cruise ship Astoria, operated by Cruise & Maritime Voyages, will begin offering cruises in the area this December.
Six different voyages will begin and end in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, sailing to eight ports on both the Baja California peninsula and the Mexican mainland on 11-day cruises highlighting the natural and cultural sights and experiences that the region has to offer.
Home to almost a third of the planet’s marine mammal species, over 900 fish species — including great white and whale sharks — and over 170 species of sea birds, the Gulf of California is one of the richest and biodiverse bodies of water in the world.
It is so rich in marine life that Jacques Cousteau called it a “living aquarium,” and its natural beauty and cultural heritage inspired John Steinbeck to write the books The Log from the Sea of Cortez and The Pearl.
The British cruise company says the Astoria provides an intimate cruise experience, with a traditional walk-around promenade deck and classic profile. The maiden voyage takes place December 7.
The travel industry has been hoping for several years to see more cruise opportunities in the Gulf of California through the construction of a home port in Puerto Peñasco. But that project, now several years old, has been stalled by lack of funding.
Passengers will board the Astoria via tenders rather than the dock that is part of the home port plan.
