Parque Papagayo in Acapulco will receive a 300-million-peso (US $15.7-million) upgrade over the next year.
Known by locals as Acapulco’s green lung, the 22-hectare park is to be revamped into a vibrant, modern space that will be a popular attraction for both locals and visitors.
Agrarian Planning and Urban Development (Sedatu) Secretary Román Meyer Falcón announced that the project will begin in November and will be completed next year.
“We’ll begin the process with certain actions next month, but we are going to concentrate on next year,” Meyer said. “Next year is when we will put in all our efforts to recuperate Parque Papagayo in order to assure that it won’t just be a local reference point, but also an important attraction for Mexican citizens and foreigners.”
Meyer said half of the investment would come from the federal government, and the other half from the state.
Inaugurated in 1981, Papagayo is Acapulco’s largest green space, incorporating an ecological reserve and recreational and tourist areas.
During a ceremony announcing the rehabilitation of the park, Guerrero Governor Héctor Astudillo Flores presented 415 families from Acapulco’s suburban areas with written pledges that their neighborhoods will receive federal funding, as well.
Through its Urban Improvement Program, Sedatu will invest 600 million pesos (US $31.5 million) in a number of infrastructure and other public works projects in neighborhoods that lack basic services and have restricted access.
“We’re going to install complete roads, water, drainage and housing, and improve schools, markets and parks,” said Meyer. “And . . . we’re going to repeat the program next year.”
A week after President López Obrador officially inaugurated construction of the Santa Lucía airport, progress is being made at the México state air force base site.
The newspaper Milenio, whose reporters visited the site located about 45 kilometers north of central Mexico City, reported on Friday that military engineers have made progress on the preparation of land for the construction of one of two new runways.
Machinery to lay the foundations of the runway is already on site as is a large team from the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), which is in charge of building the airport.
The two runways, to be built alongside an existing military runway, will enable domestic and international flights to take off and land simultaneously, Milenio said. The airport, which is expected to open in March 2022, will have a capacity of 20 million passengers annually in its initial stage of operations but capacity will eventually increase to 85 million passengers per year.
In contrast to what happened during the construction of the abandoned airport at Texcoco, where building materials such as the volcanic rocks tezontle and basalt were trucked in from nearby quarries – many of which operated illegally – clay, sand and gravel to build runways, taxiways and other infrastructure at Santa Lucía will come from the site itself.
Colonel Mario Alberto Pérez, who is in charge of a team of 455 military engineers, told Milenio that the onsite building materials are of “very good quality.”
He explained that personnel from the National Institute of Anthropology and History are currently working at the site to check for the presence of archaeological remains.
Pérez said that 17 separate projects will be executed simultaneously during the construction. Among them: the runways, a terminal building, a parking lot for 5,500 cars and maintenance hangars.
Existing military facilities will have to be relocated to make way for the airport and land adjacent to the site will be developed as an “airport city” with space for hotels, airline offices, banks, a shopping mall and a convention center.
Pérez said the airport “will be equipped with satellite technology” so that planes can land safely when fog hinders visibility.
The nearby Cerro de Paula, a 2,625-meter-high hill, will not affect the operation of the airport, he said.
Military equipment at work on new airport site.
The airport’s master plan was modified earlier this year due to the close proximity of the hill. The position of the two commercial runways was changed, meaning that several military facilities require relocation. The modifications to the plan caused the first overrun for the airport, increasing its cost by 11%.
Pérez said that building the airport is “a project of great magnitude” and explained that Sedena won’t be able to complete it on its own.
“. . . Although most of the engineers are here . . . we will need a complementary workforce,” he said. The government will launch a recruitment drive to attract the workers required.
To build a new road link to the airport, the government still needs to purchase several parcels of land surrounding the site. Pérez said 60% of 1,400 hectares that are required have already been acquired.
Construction was held up for several months due to legal action taken by a group that hoped to revive the abandoned project at Texcoco.
Local residents have raised environmental concerns about the project and are particularly worried about the impact that the airport will have on already depleted water resources in their México state communities.
The mayor of San Felipe Jalapa de Díaz, Oaxaca, was arrested in a joint operation by state and federal forces on Thursday as a result of an investigation into more than a dozen cases of forced disappearance.
Oaxaca Attorney General Rubén Vasconcelos Méndez said Arturo García Velázquez was found in possession of six illegal weapons and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition when his house was raided as part of the investigation. The mayor faces charges for weapons violations.
Police arrested nine people suspected of participating in forced disappearances, including two police officers from Jalapa de Díaz.
The attorney general said 100 state police and 120 National Guard troops participated in the operation.
García is the second Oaxaca mayor to be arrested in the past two weeks. San Marcial Ozolotepec Mayor Ramiro López was arrested in connection with a triple murder.
The lower house of Congress has approved steep hikes to two taxes that foreigners pay to enter Mexico, triggering criticism from business groups that are urging the Senate to vote against them.
Deputies approved a whopping 388% increase to the DSM immigration services tax and a 58% hike to the DNR non-resident tax.
The reform passed by the Chamber of Deputies increases the former to 380 pesos from 77 pesos and the latter to 885 pesos from 558 pesos.
To enter the country, tourists would be required to pay a total of 1,265 pesos (US $66), 98% more than they currently pay. (The DSM is only paid by visitors arriving by air.)
Four private sector groups – the Business Coordinating Council, the Confederation of Industrial Chambers, the National Chamber of Air Transport and the Mexican Transport Council – called on senators to stop the tax hikes, warning they would have an adverse effect on tourism and business.
“. . . Mexico would lose competitiveness as a tourism and business destination to countries with lower tax burdens,” the groups said in a statement.
“. . . The increases . . . represent a severe blow to the travel budget” of foreigners who travel to Mexico, they added.
Taxes and other fees included in the price of an airline ticket to Mexico are the highest in the world, the newspaper Reforma reported, making up about 45% of the total cost of flying in to the country.
Revenue from the DNR tax, approximately 6 billion pesos (US $314.6 million) annually, was previously allocated to tourism promotion.
But the current federal government disbanded the Tourism Promotion Council and has said that the DNR revenue will help finance construction of the Maya Train project on the Yucatán peninsula.
DSM tax revenue is supposed to be used to improve the country’s immigration services, including the implementation of new technology. However, the business groups claimed that it hasn’t been used for that purpose in recent years.
They said that if the revenue is used as it should be, “optimal” immigration services can be achieved at the nation’s airports without raising the DSM tax.
A vaquita porpoise swims alongside a boat fishing illegally.
Scientists have photographed an endangered vaquita porpoise swimming alongside a fishboat in an area of the upper Gulf of California where fishing is not allowed.
It was the same area in which a dead vaquita was photographed in a gillnet in March.
“Unfortunately, these boats are exactly where we saw the remaining vaquitas on our last trip,” said Octavio Carranza, captain of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel Farley Mowat.
The scientists reported that on October 17 they saw over 70 fishboats in the 150-square-kilometer zero-tolerance zone, where the use of gillnets for shrimp, milkfish and corvina is prohibited. The federal government has been frequently criticized in recent years for failing to enforce the fishing restriction, intended to prevent the vaquita from becoming bycatch of other species.
A measure intended to encourage fishermen not to fish was the payment of a government subsidy, but no monies have been paid in the last 11 months.
Buoys were placed this week to mark the area where fishing is prohibited.
Ramón Castro, president of a San Felipe-based fishermen’s organization, said fishermen were in the protected area as a result of the lack of attention and dialogue from the federal government.
The sentiment was echoed by Carlos Tirado, leader of a regional federation of fishermen’s cooperatives.
“We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: between organized crime . . . and the pressure put on the commercial fishing sector by the government,” Castro said. “Those most affected are the organizations that follow the rules. Those who benefit most are the illegal fishermen.”
Tirado demanded that the federal government attend to the matter immediately.
Fishermen in the region also go after totoaba, another endangered species whose swim bladder fetches high prices in Asia, so high that organized crime is believed to be trafficking in the product. Again, the vaquita is often unintended bycatch, picked up in the totoaba nets.
Although the fishboat photographed with the vaquita put it in danger, the fact that one was photographed is a positive sign, according to the director of marine mammal investigations for the National Protected Areas Commission (Conanp), Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho.
“There are still vaquitas as of now, [and] I hope that we can keep these few alive and protect them exactly where they are,” he said. “These types of expeditions are key for photographic identification efforts, which provide the best options for orienting our means of protection.”
Earlier this week, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the La Paz Whale Museum, along with federal officials and local fishermen, installed buoys in the area to mark the boundaries of the prohibited zone.
The buoys will facilitate the inspection and surveillance efforts by environmental authorities and other organizations, and help fishermen avoid the area.
Following recommendations from the International Committee for the Recuperation of the Vaquita (CIRVA), the demarcated zone covers 288 square kilometers, including the restricted area.
Scientists estimated earlier this year that only 10 vaquita porpoises remain. The species is found only in the upper Gulf of California.
A weather phenomenon known as the Santa Ana winds have fanned the flames of dozens of fires in northern Baja California since Thursday, damaging homes and closing schools.
The weather system brings hot, very dry winds originating in the Great Basin of the southwestern United States to southern California and Baja California in the autumn months, fanning wildfires on both sides of the border.
In the last 48 hours, firefighters have responded to more than 100 fires in Tijuana alone, 19 of them forest fires, and three of them categorized as major.
One of the fires started at 4:40am on Thursday in the Lázaro Cárdenas ejido and spread to a salvage yard where it consumed dozens of vehicles. Another fire started in a factory, which was apparently abandoned.
There are also two forest fires active, one in Tecate and the other in Ensenada, as well as several fires in Playas de Rosarito.
At about 9:40pm, Federal Police decided to close the Tijuana-Ensenada highway due to the fires.
There have been no injuries reported but at least four wooden houses have been destroyed in Tijuana.
Schools have been closed in the municipalities of Tijuana, Playas de Rosarito and Tecate as a precautionary measure.
“Due to the likelihood that there will continue to be incidents of falling objects, cables, electricity lines and billboards, as well as the fires and poor air quality, we have requested the suspension of classes in the municipality,” the Tijuana Civil Protection agency said in a statement.
Durazo: 'view information with skepticism;' inset: Iván Archivaldo Guzmán.
Federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo has rejected claims that a second son of convicted drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was arrested and released during a security operation in Culiacán, Sinaloa, last week.
Durazo said on Thursday that Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar was actually one of the instigators of the wave of attacks across Culiacán after his half-brother Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested on October 17.
Sinaloa Cartel gunmen quickly surrounded the house in which Guzmán López was arrested, outnumbering security forces and forcing the security cabinet to take the decision to free the 28-year-old suspected narco known as “El Ratón” (The Mouse).
Durazo said last week that the decision was taken “to try to avoid more violence in the area and preserve the lives of our personnel and recover calm in the city.”
A former head of international operations for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) claimed this week that Guzmán Salazar was also arrested by security forces. Mike Vigil accused the government of “distorting the truth” about what happened in Culiacán.
The wreckage of a burned-out vehicle after the violence in Culiacán.
The New York Times, citing sources who asked not to be identified, and other media outlets also reported that the 36-year-old Guzmán Salazar, who is wanted in the United States on trafficking charges, was arrested and released.
However, at a press conference in Oaxaca, Durazo said that “Iván Archivaldo was not on the property that was brought under control by the [security] personnel who participated” in the Culiacán operation.
“He was outside and in fact, he was one of the instigators of the mobilization of several members of the criminal organization in Culiacán,” he added.
He rejected a claim that the DEA participated in the operation alongside the army, the National Guard and Federal Police although authorities have confirmed that United States authorities requested the arrest and extradition of Guzmán López.
“This government has absolutely nothing to hide. We’re going to inform . . . before deputies and senators to clear up any doubts about the issue,” Durazo said.
“. . . A lot of incorrect versions have been disseminated about the events in Culiacán. I would recommend taking the information that circulates without any filter or surety with a dose of skepticism,” he said.
The security secretary reiterated that the insecurity plaguing Mexico was inherited from past governments and criticized their strategy to combat organized crime.
“The strategy to confront organized crime [by attacking] their operational capacity and strength, as was done in the past, is wrong and if we continue it we’ll fail,” Durazo said.
“We have to combat [criminal organizations] as economic entities and confront their financial strength, that’s what gives them the capacity . . . to operate” he added.
“In that sense, we’ve arrested 1,995 people who were part of the narco financial structure in Mexico. Moreover, bank accounts with 5.16 billion pesos and US $47 million have been frozen and this process will continue until the criminal groups are weakened.”
President López Obrador said Friday morning that a report on the investigation will be made public next Tuesday or Wednesday. He promised a report that would be “exhaustive, completely transparent and truthful.”
Tequila splitfins are now reproducing well at Balneario El Rincón in Jalisco. Arely Ramírez
Crystal-clear water bubbles up out of the ground just below the archaeological ruins of western Mexico’s circular pyramids, the Guachimontones.
This spot, known as El Rincón, is the birthplace of the Teuchitlán river, which flows for all of one kilometer only to disappear into La Vega Dam, a Ramsar Site (wetland of international importance) since 2010.
Long ago, for her own reasons, Mother Nature sprinkled into that short stretch of river several species of curious little fish called splitfins or Goodeids, typically only five centimeters (two inches) long.
These fish are unusual because they are viviparous: instead of laying eggs, they give birth to their young alive. The females actually have something similar to a uterus and the babies receive nutrition from their mothers via an umbilical-like cord called a trophotaenia.
Somehow British fish fanciers heard about the livebearers of the Teuchitlán river, came to see for themselves, and carried off pairs of them to breed far, far from their homeland.
Biologist Ernesto Moreno with a tequila splitfin, no longer extinct in Jalisco.
One of the species from Teuchitlán, the butterfly splitfin (Ameca splendens), particularly fascinated them because its favorite food turned out to be algae. It was the perfect choice to keep an aquarium clean — and it was indeed as cute as a butterfly — so in no time at all fish fanciers were breeding it all over the world.
Try Googling Ameca splendens in the most exotic languages you can think of and see how many results you get!
In time, unfortunately, the Teuchitlán river suffered from pollution and the introduction of invasive species. Rumors circulated that the butterfly splitfin had vanished, but eventually biologist José Luis Zavala found small numbers of them still breeding in a few private pools owned by restaurants along lake La Vega.
Then, in 1997, British livebearer enthusiast Ivan Dibble attended a symposium in Cuernavaca where it was demonstrated that several other species of splitfins really had gone extinct in their native habitat near the Teuchitlán river.
Here is where the idea of creating a Fish Ark in Mexico occurred to Dibble. “I have almost always risen to a challenge,” said the Englishman.
He flew off to England but, true to his word, returned to Mexico a few months later with two species of Goodeids now considered extinct locally: the tequila splitfin (Zoogoneticus tequila) and the golden skiffia (Skiffia francesae), both of which were soon reproducing happily in the aquatic biology lab of the University of Michoacán, in Morelia, the oldest institution of higher education in the Americas (founded in 1540).
The Teuchitlán river, original home of most members of the splitfin family.
From this point on, aquaria hobbyists have regularly contributed funds to keep this Fish Ark going.
Years passed, but the idea of returning these little fish to their native habitat never died. In 2018, while camping near the Teuchitlán river, I bumped into Rubén Hernández, a biologist at the lab in Morelia. He told me he was in Jalisco working on a project to reintroduce the tequila splitfin into the springs of Teuchitlán.
I was quite delighted to find out that the University of Michoacán’s co-sponsors in the project were the Chester Zoo in Cheshire, England, the Mohammed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund operating out of Abu Dhabi and 11 other organizations located in Austria, Denmark, Holland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Mexico and the United States. The eyes of the world, it seemed, were on Jalisco’s little splitfins.
Since then, this project to “bring back the dead” has been moving along nicely. A few days ago conservationist Manfred Meiners took me to the springs of El Rincón, where the Teuchitlán river is born, to watch the Morelia lab people at work.
I found biologist Arely Ramírez checking one of a dozen basket-like fish traps which she and her fellow researchers had set in two spring-fed ponds.
“This project started in 2015,” she told me, “under Dr. Omar Domínguez of the University of Michoacán. In the first year we studied all the variables of the springs and rivers around here: what species live in this site and how they might behave once we would have them interacting with the tequila splitfin. We looked at water quality, temperature, oxygen and all the environmental variables along the river.
Monserrat Íñiguez: “A biologist is what I want to be!” Manfred Meiners
“We studied each species of the local community of fish: what they eat, how they reproduce and what parasites they have. Finally we introduced Zoogoneticus into two pools, one natural and one artificial here at Balneario El Rincón. Since then we have been studying them carefully and I’m happy to say they are doing fine.”
I was amazed to learn that every one of the 3,000 fish which the biologists introduced into these waters four years ago had been specially marked so it could be identified as an individual. This is achieved by “tattooing” each fish with a series of tiny dots of color, all in a line. Each sequence of colors is different and each can be instantly identified by a special scanner that looks much like a little flashlight.
“Every time we come here,” Ramírez told me, “we check to see whether the fish we find are from the batch we originally introduced or are their descendants. You may be surprised to learn that these days most of the fish we’re looking at are completely unmarked. They’re almost all from new generations, and looking very healthy.”
I also learned that the team from Michoacán has deeply involved the local people in this project. School children learn all about their world-famous little fish and town officials cooperate in regular projects to clean up the river and to monitor water quality.
I found one of those water monitors working at the Teuchitlán Interactive Museum. “I was in prep school,” Monserrat Íñiguez told me, “when I began to hear that in our own river we had fish that were unique in all the world and that lots of people, even foreigners, were worried about them and were actually spending money to preserve those fish.
“Then it was announced that they would be giving a course about out local animals, plants and environment and I thought, ‘I need to support this; we should be taking care of what nature has given us.’ Well, the course was for adults, but they let me in anyway, and we learned so much! We learned how to care for the river so these fish can keep living in it and they taught us how to monitor the water quality.
[soliloquy id="92616"]
“We learned to measure air and water temperature, wind speed, alkalinity, etc. using techniques that were easy to do and understand even if you weren’t a scientist. As a result of all this, I decided to change my career from nutrition to biology. Right now I can’t afford to go back to school, but I’m working here at the museum and saving up, because a biologist is what I want to be!”
According to the United Nations World Conservation Monitoring Center, Mexico’s Central Mesa is considered one of the most important places in the world for the conservation of freshwater fish. It seems the number of species in Mexico alone is almost as great as those of the U.S. and Canada combined.
And those of us who live on that Central Mesa know that the problem of water pollution here is way beyond bad. We owe a debt of gratitude to the hobbyists and biologists in Mexico and around the world, who are now working together to bring the dead back to life in the tiny Teuchitlán river.
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.
Police Chief García has blamed federal investigators for the suspects' release.
A police raid on a notorious Mexico City gang on Tuesday has turned into a fiasco: a judge has ordered that 27 of the 32 people arrested must be released.
The federal judge ordered the immediate release of 27 suspected gangsters after ruling on Thursday that their arrests were illegal.
Mexico City Police Chief Omar García Harfuch told a press conference on Tuesday that police and marines had arrested alleged members of the notorious La Unión de Tepito during a raid on four properties in the neighborhood of Morelos. He also said that the security forces seized stolen vehicles, drugs, money and weapons.
But during a hearing Thursday night, Judge Felipe de Jesús Delgadillo Padierna determined that police fabricated evidence against 27 of the people arrested, including five women. The women were also subjected to police violence, the judge said.
“The police conduct was not clean,” Delgadillo said, adding that prosecutors have constantly presented people before the court against whom evidence has been fabricated.
The judge said the police report about the arrests of the alleged criminals didn’t add up and was unsigned.
The report stated that the 27 people were arrested on the street but the defendants claimed they were detained on a property where they were celebrating the birthday of the one of the alleged gang members.
“It’s implausible that these 27 people were within eight meters of a police car, drugs and money but didn’t run,” Delgadillo said.
He also said that it was implausible that just one police officer had searched the 27 people as the police report indicated.
The five alleged criminals who remain in custody could face charges of drug possession and trafficking, money laundering and possession of restricted weapons. The judge set a period of six days for authorities to bring formal charges against them.
Delgadillo ordered Chief García to investigate the officers involved in the raid for the alleged falsification of the police report and the violence against the women.
The police department said in a statement it will investigate the entire operation.
The department will conduct an internal investigation “in which every action carried out by the police will be reviewed . . . In the case that poor conduct [is detected] appropriate sanctions will be applied,” the statement said.
García today blamed the federal Attorney General’s Office for poorly prepared investigative files, an accusation that was repeated by President López Obrador at his morning press conference.
In a television interview earlier, García described the release of the 27 people as “very surprising.”
He said the decision to carry out Tuesday’s raid was based on a solid investigation and supported by two search warrants.
Evidence seized during the operation – including large quantities of drugs and more than 20 guns – is indicative of criminal activity and demonstrates that the investigation was sound, the police chief said.
“We will review what the judge said. If there was an error or police abuse of any kind it will be investigated.”
“. . . [The release of the suspects] is very surprising for us for the reasons I’m talking about, what was found, the prior investigation, the collusion of police . . .” he said.
“What the judge said today can’t be discredited, we need to review what he said but what I can assure you is that we’re going to continue with these operations as much as they are necessary.”
Presumed gang members hand out supplies to storm victims in Jalisco.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) appears to have diversified into humanitarian aid.
A video posted online shows suspected members of the powerful criminal organization distributing packages of food aid in Tomatlán, Jalisco, to victims of Tropical Storm Priscilla, which lashed the coast of western Mexico last weekend.
“Here we are with all the people giving them aid. The people are very grateful for this support. . .” a suspected CJNG gunman says.
“This aid . . . comes from the boss, our boss, the señor Mencho,” another man says, referring to CJNG leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, one of the most wanted men on the planet.
“[I’m telling you] so that you know where it comes from, so that you don’t think that it’s from the [family services agency] DIF or another company,” he adds with a laugh.
Two pickup trucks filled with large aid packages appear in the video. Several residents of the community of Morelos accept the packages from the suspected cartel members.
Children in 15 municipalities in the state’s mountainous central region received gifts accompanied by a card that read, “the CJNG wishes you a happy Children’s Day.”
The Sinaloa Cartel, whose gunman responded to the arrest of a son of former leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán last week with an unprecedented show of strength in Culiacán, has also shown that it has a charitable streak.
Just before Christmas last year, dozens of trucks turned up in several rural towns in the Sinaloa municipalities of Salvador Alvarado and Mocorito and delivered holiday gift baskets.
The baskets came with a card bearing a short message from the Sinaloa Cartel’s former chief lieutenant and security boss, Orso Iván Gastélum Cruz: “Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year from your friend Cholo Iván.”
Three months earlier, victims of Tropical Storm 19E in Ranchito, Angostura, also received a charitable visit from suspected Sinaloa Cartel members.
They received food supplies, mattresses, stoves and other appliances bearing a logo consisting of a black baseball cap with the initials JGL written in gold.
The donation of the disaster relief supplies was attributed to the former chief of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who was convicted by a United States court on drug trafficking charges in February and sentenced to life in prison in July.
