Six people were killed and another six seriously wounded Saturday in a gang-related massacre in the Mexico City borough of Azcapotzalco.
Authorities believe the attack was related to a dispute between an independent criminal operator and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which authorities say is seeking to control criminal enterprise in the city.
According to official reports, armed civilians burst into a bar known to sell drugs and opened fire on the people inside. Three suspects who were later detained and are currently in custody told police they were hired by the CJNG to “clean the area,” said authorities.
Police believe that the target of the attack was a man they identified merely as Joel “El Choco,” who apparently controls drug sales in Azcapotzalco. His brother and cousin, who authorities did not identify by name, were among those killed in the attack.
An independent operator, El Choco nevertheless sustained powerful ties with various existing criminal groups in the city, including the Unión Tepito, El Ojos (which has since been taken down by federal forces), and the Tláhuac Cartel.
Persons close to the investigation said the CJNG is seeking to control criminal activity in all Mexico City and is attempting to eliminate independent operators like El Coco.
The other victims, police said, were people in El Choco’s close circle who served as his bodyguards.
Finance Secretary Arturo Herrera, López Obrador, Romo and business group leader Salazar.
The federal government and the private sector have signed a deal to carry out 39 infrastructure projects with a total investment of 297.3 billion pesos (US $13.9 billion).
Speaking at his regular news conference on Monday, President López Obrador said the pact will generate jobs and greater wellbeing for the Mexican people.
In the presence of several prominent business leaders including Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man, López Obrador said the government has had “a lot of support” from the private sector and asserted that the two parties will continue to work together.
“[This is] just the beginning, … there will be more investment,” he said.
The new agreement encompasses projects in the communications and transportation, energy, and water and environment sectors, some of which have already been announced.
There are more than 20 projects to build or upgrade roads in several states including México state, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Chihuahua, Chiapas, Campeche, Veracruz and Tabasco.
Almost 14 billion pesos will be spent on building road links to the new Mexico City airport, which is currently under construction at the Santa Lucía Air Force base north of the capital.
There are also plans to build a new 511-million-peso cruise ship dock in Cozumel, Quintana Roo, and a new section of railroad to connect Mexico City’s suburban train to the capital’s new airport. The rail project has a price tag of 12.56 billion pesos.
Perhaps the most ambitious project in the new public-private pact is the construction of a new train line between Mexico City and Querétaro. Construction of the 51.3-billion-peso project is slated to begin in June 2021.
The agreement also includes a 4-billion-peso project to expand and modernize the port in Progreso, Yucatán, and a 2.8-billion-peso plan to build a new border crossing to southern California.
Via a “strategic alliance,” the government and the private sector intend to complete five energy sector projects.
They will invest 2.52 billion pesos to upgrade an ethane plant in Veracruz and 1.15 billion pesos to modernize a fertilizer plant in Chihuahua.
The largest public-private investment among the 39 projects is 54.7 billion pesos for the installation of a coker unit in Pemex’s oil refinery in Tula, Hidalgo.
More than 15 billion pesos will be invested in the rehabilitation of a coke plant at the refinery in Cadereyta, Nuevo León, and 25.2 billion pesos will be spent on the liquefaction unit at the refinery in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca.
The government and the private sector have also agreed to invest 1.6 billion pesos in wastewater management in Naucalpan, México state, and 494 million pesos to build a water supply system at the new Mexico City airport.
The president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), an umbrella organization representing 12 business groups, said the agreement serves as new evidence that López Obrador is committed to collaborating with the private sector on investment projects.
(The government and the private sector previously committed to work together on a US $42.95 billion National Infrastructure Plan encompassing 147 projects in its first stage).
“The private sector and the president committed to promote public and private investment in our country,” said Carlos Salazar, adding that the aim is to invest jointly an amount equivalent to 25% of GDP.
To spur the economic recovery from the coronavirus-induced downturn, Mexico also needs to make the most of the new North American free trade agreement, the USMCA, as well as improve security conditions and invest in tourism, the CCE chief said.
Alfonso Romo, the head of the president’s office and López Obrador’s point man for government relations with the business sector, said that private investment is the “best vaccine” against the current economic crisis.
“Private consumption will recover slowly. The best vaccine that Mexicans have to fight against the economic paralysis is private investment. Private investment is [our best] hope to overcome the crisis because it represents 87% of total investment in the country, and it’s vital for growth and wellbeing.”
Monterrey, Nuevo León, plans to build what will be the tallest skyscraper in all of Latin America, said Mayor Adrián de la Garza in his second annual report.
The 420-meter building, to be named Torre Rise (Rise Tower), is now in the planning stages, said the mayor. It will be located on Constitución avenue next to the Torre Obispado, also known as T.Op Torre 1, which is currently the tallest building in Latin America, at 305.3 meters.
That skyscraper is home to a hotel, restaurants, offices and residences.
Like the Torre Obispado, the Torre Rise will be a mixed-use complex and is linked with three to four other “vanguard” city projects in the works, said the mayor.
For the moment, Monterrey has not awarded the project to any company, but de la Garza said that the building will contain 92 floors and will host a 180-room hotel, office space, apartments, commercial spaces, and a lookout. He predicted that construction would begin in the second half of 2021 and would likely be completed in early 2025.
The tower will be mixed use: offices, residences and commercial.
The largest building in North America and in the Western Hemisphere, clocking in at 1,776 feet tall, is One World Trade Center in New York City. It is the sixth tallest building in the world. The world’s tallest building is the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai, which stands 828 meters tall.
It was a bloody weekend in Guanajuato where body parts were deposited in public places in cities throughout the southern half of the state.
The remains were left in bags, boxes or simply on the side of the road in the municipalities of Celaya, Salamanca, Salvatierra, and Romita. They were found in public squares, in front of churches and open-air markets, and in abandoned lots and cemeteries.
The latest discovery occurred around 6 a.m. Monday in Celaya. The newspaper PeriódicoCorreo reported that the remains of an unknown number of bodies were discovered in plastic bags, flour sacks, and wooden boxes dumped together in plain sight in front of the El Dorado market in the Aurora neighborhood.
Sunday morning also yielded similarly grisly discoveries: around dawn, El Universal reported, a human head was left outside a DIF family service agency building in Celaya, and the body of another person was discovered a few blocks away.
Meanwhile, in Salamanca, authorities discovered a human head left in a plastic bag. Around the same time early Sunday morning, three heads and three decapitated bodies were found along different stretches of the Romita–Puerto Interior highway.
On Saturday, a scrap collector in Celaya alerted authorities to two heads and other parts he found inside garbage bags in an abandoned lot. Meanwhile, in Salvatierra, authorities found a dismembered body in the Santo Tomás Huatzindeo Cemetery, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.
In Celaya on Friday, authorities found a bag with a head and torso as well as the body of a decapitated woman killed execution style in front of a church in the main square. The latter was found in the community of Juan Martín, where, according to local media, a male youth had been shot to death just the day before, his body also left in the main square with written threats to what appeared to be a criminal organization.
Also in Celaya, police were informed Friday about two heads left in plastic bags in the San Rafael neighborhood.
Flood victims salvage their belongings from flooded homes in Tabasco.
Tropical Storm Gamma claimed the lives of at least six people in two states and affected some 600,000 citizens as heavy rain and near-hurricane force winds wreaked havoc on Mexico’s south and southeast over the weekend.
The worst affected state was Tabasco, where two people died and more than 590,000 people were adversely affected by the storm.
Federal authorities said there was one death in the municipality of Jalapa and another in Jalpa de Méndez. Both victims drowned in floodwaters.
Authorities in Chiapas said that four members of the same family, including two children, died after a landslide buried their home in San Juan Chamula.
In Tabasco, 593,150 people were affected by flooding, Civil Protection authorities said on Sunday night. More than 80% of those affected live in Centro, the municipality where state capital Villahermosa is located.
A beach toy came in handy for these flood victims in Tabasco.
But state Civil Protection chief Jorge Mier y Terán said that residents of 14 of 17 municipalities in Tabasco were affected by the storm. He said that 74 temporary shelters were set up across the Gulf coast state and that 4,595 people had taken refuge in them.
In Chiapas, 543 homes across 35 municipalities were damaged, said José Elías Morales Rodríguez, emergencies director with the state Civil Protection service. He said that two schools, more than 300 roads, two bridges and water infrastructure in the southern state also sustained damage.
National Civil Protection chief Laura Velázquez Alzúa said that a total of 131 temporary shelters had been set up in Tabasco, Chiapas and Veracruz. She said more than 11,000 homes, the vast majority of which are in Tabasco, were flooded as a result of heavy rain.
The tropical storm made landfall near Tulum, Quintana Roo, on Saturday with maximum sustained winds of almost 110 kilometers per hour (km/h), just 9 km/h below hurricane force levels. It also brought heavy rain to parts of the Yucatán Peninsula.
The United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Monday morning that Gamma was 255 kilometers east-northeast off the coast of Progreso, Yucatán, and that it was expected to make landfall again on Tuesday along the northern coast of the peninsula.
It said that Gamma is drifting toward the south-southwest at about 4 km/h and that flash flooding is possible in the state of Yucatán.
Citizens in Tabasco flee the flooding.
The NHC said that a turn toward the southwest or west-southwest is expected by tonight and that the same general motion is expected to continue through Wednesday morning. On the forecast track, the center of Gamma should move inland over the northwest coast of the Yucatán Peninsula Tuesday night and remain inland through Thursday, it said.
“The maximum sustained winds are near 75 km/h with higher gusts,” the NHC said. “Gradual weakening is forecast, and Gamma is expected to degenerate to to a post-tropical remnant low on Wednesday. Dissipation of the low should occur on Friday.”
A day after thousands of people flocked to Mexico City’s central square to demand his resignation, President López Obrador sent a blunt message to his detractors on Sunday: be patient and express your dissatisfaction at the ballot box.
AMLO, as the president is best known, stressed that his administration will always respect its opponents and that there will be no repression of protesters “because we’re not the same” as past governments.
Speaking at an event in Hermosillo, Sonora, López Obrador said “the only thing” the government wants is for protesters to be patient, noting that they will have the opportunity to express their discontent at the 2021 federal midterm elections, at which the entire lower house of Congress will be renewed, and at a vote in early 2022 at which the public will be asked if they want the president to complete his six-year term.
“The elections are coming up, we can resolve our differences [at that time]. They [our detractors] want to conserve the corrupt regime, the regime of injustices and privileges, I don’t have the slightest doubt about that. We want to change and transform [the country]. These fundamental differences that we have can be resolved democratically,” López Obrador said.
“There are going to be elections in the entire country in June next year and then I’m going to subject myself to a revocation of mandate [vote]. In the first quarter of 2022, the people of Mexico will be asked, ‘Do you want the president to continue or to resign?’ I’m a democrat and in democracy the people are in charge. The people install [their representatives] and the people remove [them],” he said.
Protesters shout ‘AMLO out!’ during Saturday’s event.
“I accept these rules so the only thing I ask of the conservatives, who are annoyed because there is no longer corruption, … is to be patient. These two dates are coming up, … if the people so decide, we’ll have to withdraw. [But] while the people support us, we’re going to continue governing the country.”
Even though recent polls indicate that his approval rating has dropped below 60%, López Obrador claimed that surveys show that he and his government have the support of 70% of the population, adding that he didn’t believe that level of support would decline because “we’re going to continue working for the benefit of the people.”
The president’s plea for patience came after the National Anti-AMLO Front (Frenaaa) – which two weeks ago set up a protest camp in the zócalo, the capital’s main square – held its largest ever demonstration on Saturday.
Thousands of people marched from the Monument to the Revolution to the zócalo, where they joined the sit-in protesters whose tents spread across approximately half of the large square.
Gathered opposite the National Palace – the seat of executive power and López Obrador’s home – the protesters called for the president’s resignation, shouting “López out!” with their fists raised.
Protesters are also angry about the economic response to the pandemic and what one man described as the government’s implementation of “21st-century socialism.”
The self-styled leader of Mexico’s “fourth transformation” has concentrated even greater power in his own hands.
When a president demands “blind loyalty” from officials, alarm bells should ring. When he calls for a people’s vote on prosecuting his predecessors, launches a broadside at the independent electoral body and publicly shames those who criticize him, there is good reason to feel fearful.
The Supreme Court has become the latest institution in Mexico to bow to the will of populist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It ruled last Thursday that his plan to call a referendum over putting five ex-presidents on trial was constitutional, ignoring the principle that such decisions should be made by prosecutors on the basis of evidence.
Its only change was to reword the question on the ballot, making it vaguer and dropping the former leaders’ names.
López Obrador was elected by a landslide in 2018 with a mandate to pursue a radical “transformation.” He promised to rid his country of corruption, reduce the high murder rate and replace technocratic, market-friendly policies with actions that put the “poor and forgotten” first.
Such ideas had strong voter appeal: Mexican politics had been incorrigibly venal for decades and drug violence had scarred large areas. A narrow elite dominated the country, while the economic growth spurred by NAFTA had benefited the north but left the south behind.
What López Obrador did not win was a mandate to dismantle institutions. Mexico’s democracy was already fragile and its public bodies weak, the legacy of years of untrammelled presidential power and the predominance of a single political party. Genuine progressive reform would have granted greater autonomy to states and municipalities, reduced presidential power and reinforced the rule of law.
Instead, the self-styled leader of Mexico’s “fourth transformation” has concentrated even greater power in his own hands. Most big decisions are his alone. Institutions which refuse to bend to his will are targeted. The independent electoral authority has been attacked by the president for having “never guaranteed free elections,” even though it certified his landslide victory.
Journalists who disparage the president can expect to be named, accused of being “at the service of the authoritarian and corrupt regimes” which preceded him, and asked to apologize. Environmentalists who criticize his pet infrastructure projects, including an expensive new railway line to be driven partly through virgin Mayan forest, are described as foreign lackeys for hire.
Why is López Obrador so intolerant? After nearly two years in power, positive results are meager, apart from a modest pension reform. Economic growth halted in his first year and Mexico’s recession this year is forecast to be the worst of any major Latin American country bar Argentina.
Corruption and crime remain intolerably high and an erratic response to the coronavirus has led to one of the world’s highest per capita death tolls. The president’s habit of withdrawing approval for major projects which had already been agreed has crippled business investment. His interventions in the energy industry have favoured fossil fuels over renewables and the ailing state oil giant Pemex over the private sector.
The golden opportunity offered by the newly-agreed U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement to lure American companies returning from China to Mexico is being squandered.
Mexico is indeed being transformed, but not in the way López Obrador had promised. Unless the president changes course quickly, Latin America’s second-biggest economy risks sliding back into a poorer, darker and more repressive past, one inhabited by the authoritarian caudillos the region hoped it had left behind.
Tropical Storm Gamma at 4:00 p.m. CDT Saturday. The red dot shows its current location; in purple is the tropical storm warning area.
A hurricane warning for the east coast of the Yucatán peninsula — from north of Punta Allen to Cancún — has been downgraded to a tropical storm warning as Tropical Storm Gamma moves over the northeastern part of the peninsula.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the storm warning is in effect for north and west of Punta Allen to Dzilam, Yucatán, including Cozumel.
Gamma is forecast to move into the southern Gulf of Mexico on Sunday and pass near or north of the northern coast of the Yucatán peninsula Sunday night and Monday.
The NHC said maximum sustained winds had decreased to about 100 km/h at 4:00 p.m. CDT on Saturday, when the storm was located about 60 kilometers north-northwest of Tulum.
Additional weakening is forecast for Saturday night and Sunday, followed by re-intensification by Monday.
Heavy rain is forecast across portions of the peninsula.
Puente Grande, once home to El Chapo Guzmán—until he escaped.
A notorious maximum-security prison in Jalisco whose closure was announced this week has been under the control of inmates belonging to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said on Thursday.
“For inmates who belonged to the CJNG, being at the Puente Grande prison meant having all the conditions to continue ruling themselves, and part of the goal is to disperse these criminals among other prisons to eliminate the possibility of them repeating their self-rule,” Durazo said during a videoconference.
He offered Puente Grande as an example of how not to run a prison. “It has been irresponsible for the Mexican state to have criminals of such a high degree in a prison where some cells do not even have locks on the doors,” Durazo said, noting that there was a very high risk of escape from the facility, which Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán famously did in 2001.
The decision was made to close the prison and disperse the its 400 inmates to other medium and high-security prisons across Mexico to limit their influence and “take them out of their comfort zone,” Durazo said, as well as preserve their human rights and dignity. Closing the prison will also save Mexico 800 million pesos, nearly US $37 million.
Durazo said the federal government has up to 12,000 places available in prisons built during Felipe Calderón’s administration.
At Puente Grande, the inmates were in charge.
President López Obrador claims Calderón’s contracting out of prisons to private businesses is the reason for Puente Grande’s closure, not undue cartel influence.
“We are paying for federal prisons that we do not occupy. We have 9,000 spaces in federal prisons, and we have to pay as if they were full because those are the contracts that we inherited,” López Obrador said, indicating that he is in discussions with the governor of Jalisco to put the prison property to a different use.
Puente Grande, located near Guadalajara, was made famous by El Chapo’s escape in a laundry truck, but is also known for its riots involving highly dangerous inmates. In May a riot left seven inmates dead (three were gunned down and four were beaten to death) and nine injured. Authorities offered no explanation for how guns got inside the prison
Corruption at the facility was hardly a secret. Milenio reported in September 2015 that inmates controlled the majority of prison stores, managed the flow of prohibited substances, controlled the area reserved for conjugal visits and allocated prison cells.
The CJNG’s influence has also been well documented. In 2017 a video surfaced of a lavish party complete with a well-known musical group surfaced. The party was hosted by CJNG member José Luis “Don Chelo” Gutiérrez Valencia and the footage showed prisoners, women and children dancing and drinking.
“I’m the one who rules here,” he told his guests. “Ask for what you want, I’ll make you sure you have it.”
Other notorious inmates over the years included Guadalajara Cartel kingpin Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero and Alfredo “El Mochomo” Beltrán Leyva.
Fundraising by Los Amigos del Arte Popular in the U.S. bought US $1,400 worth of corn, beans and some basics for these artisans in Chiapas.
It is almost cliché now to say that the pandemic has hit people hard, often those who can least afford it.
These include Mexico’s artisans, whose centuries-old traditions today depend on the tourism industry and the festival calendar. Who knows when the festivals will resume and when the people will decide it’s safe?
To make things even worse, the last months have shown just how useless Mexico’s institutions dedicated to handcrafts can be. Museums and government culture agencies shut down completely or are operating only enough to justify their own existence.
Fortunately, some help has come from individuals and organizations who care about those who create fine works in wood, clay, leather, metals, and more in some of the poorest areas of the country.
Although there was a desire to help with the immediate needs for food and rent money in the first weeks, the truth was that the only people who could help artisans were family members (sometimes) and those organizations dedicated to such needs for the general public.
Christian Mendoza Ruiz of Oaxaca made this rug for Friends of Oaxacan Folk Art for a Covid exhibition online.
But help targeting artisans has begun to materialize. The first were simple fundraisers such as a GoFundMe by handcraft collector Alan Goldberg and a fundraiser by the Los Amigos de Arte Popular, each raising US $20,000. One very notable early effort was the 5 million pesos spent by the Alfredo Helú Foundation to buy handcrafts from 156 families in Oaxaca and some other states.
Soon after, it seemed that everyone, craftsperson or not, was making novelty face masks as they are one of the few products that sell.
As Goldberg noted in an interview, such efforts are only a “band-aid.” The baseline problem is that artisans have no way to sell because they have been almost entirely dependent on the tourist market and selling to middlemen who are themselves often beholden to tourism. Mexican artisans have not been very internet savvy, even though much better prices can often be found outside Mexico than within.
As the months wore on, efforts began to shift to longer-term solutions, almost all internet-related. Goldberg’s GoFundMe morphed into a Covid-19 themed art competition, displaying the entry online.
The Friends of Oaxacan Folk Art (FOFA), based in New York, did something similar. They offered grants to past winners of previous competitions to make pieces related to the pandemic, which were exhibited online on their Instagram page. Many sold the pieces that were shown, even though FOFA does not directly get involved in sales.
The Feria Maestros de Arte is an organization that for 20 years has been focused on holding one of Mexico’s best fine handcraft fairs in Chapala, Jalisco. With such a narrow focus, the cancellation of the November 2020 event has been almost an existential crisis. Worried about how the accepted artists for this year would cope, they have tried their hand at selling online.
Artisans Friday is a collaboration by Ayuda Mutua CDMX and Red de Artesanos Anáhuac of Mexico City to support the sale of handcrafts by artisans.
Taking a cue from Stephanie Schneiderman’s six-week commercial project called the Tuesday Textile Tianguis, they set up a weekly sale on Facebook called the Monday Bazaar. For the first three weeks, sales were good, but they have since dropped significantly. They are experimenting with ways to engage the public to bring customers in.
Another sales effort is a collaboration between a mutual aid society created for the pandemic, Ayuda Mutua CDMX, and Red de Artesanos Anáhuac, a Mexican organization that promotes the work of Mexico City-based artisans. Ayuda Mutua previously had a sale of fine art on their website, which helped some artists sell and raised funds for their food basket program.
The version for handcrafts is called the Solidarity Market CDMX with pages in English and Spanish. After the run on the Ayuda Mutua website, Red de Artesanos plans to shift the developed pages and payment processes for their own site for future development.
Goldberg is also developing a website with the purpose of giving artisans a place online to reach national and international markets, which should be ready by the end of the year.
Thinking even longer term, FOFA decided to offer online classes and mentoring in online marketing and sales targeting mostly younger artisans in Oaxaca. The idea here is to give individual artisans the tools to create their own presence online, not only teaching how the technologies work, but by having marketing experts help them develop their branding, customer service and the like. So far, half of the trained artisans have been able to sell at least one piece to the United States.
The shift to online sales is a struggle for both artisans and projects. Those that seem to be doing immediately well have taken advantage of online audiences that they already had cultivated. Schneiderman stated her initiative resulted in about 800,000 pesos in sales to artisans in Mexico in only seven weeks by taking advantage of the audience she had for her tour business.
It is a similar story for FOFA and Ayuda Mutua. However, for those who are starting from scratch, the shift to online sales is still an ongoing struggle.
The experimentation with online marketing is an important step for the handcraft industry in Mexico. It is not easy for either the artisans or organizations as so much work is involved before any benefit is seen. With travel still not recommended by most experts, however, these efforts do allow those of us who love Mexico a way to support its hardworking people.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears weekly on Mexico News Daily.
