The accident scene Friday morning in San Juan del Río.
Nine people are dead after a transit bus driver in Querétaro attempted to race a train to a level crossing and lost.
Another 13 people were injured in the accident that occurred Friday morning in La Valla, a community in San Juan del Río.
A state police official said the 21-year-old driver of the bus made a “reckless” attempt to reach the crossing before the train. “He will have to answer for this terrible incident,” he said of the driver, who was injured but in stable condition.
The bus was left lying on its roof after the train swept it off the tracks.
The Mexico City government offered a public apology on Thursday to a woman who was jailed for almost seven years after she was wrongfully arrested on charges of kidnapping and homicide.
Lorena González Hernández was detained in September 2008 for involvement in the abduction and murder of Fernando Martí, the 14-year-old son of businessman Alejandro Martí.
She spent six years, 10 months and 11 days in prison although she was never convicted of the crime.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (PGJ), led at the time by former mayor and current senator Miguel Ángel Mancera, accused González, a Federal Police officer, of belonging to a criminal group called La Flor, which it alleged was responsible for the abduction and murder.
However, the group didn’t actually exist and was actually a fabrication by corrupt PGJ officials.
Human Rights Commission head Luis Raúl González applauds González at Thursday’s event.
In 2009, federal authorities arrested three members of a kidnapping ring called Los Petriciolet who were charged with abducting and killing Fernando Martí. They in turn implicated a woman who subsequently confessed her guilt.
However, it wasn’t until July 15 of this year that González, who always maintained that she was innocent, was finally released from prison after a judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the case against her.
At an event in the capital yesterday, Mexico City Attorney General Ernestina Godoy issued an apology to González.
Godoy acknowledged that she was arrested illegally and that her rights to due process and presumption of innocence were violated.
The Mexico City government – led by Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard at the time – fabricated evidence supposedly provided by non-existent witnesses, the attorney general said.
“The arbitrary detention of Lorena was made based on an anonymous text [sent] to the Attorney General’s Office . . .” Godoy said.
Rafael Guerra, chief justice of the Mexico City Superior Court – which had remanded González in preventative custody – also offered an apology.
“It’s my responsibility to offer a public apology and a promise, the promise to commit all the public resources within our reach to achieve a consolidation in the field of human rights,” he said.
The government apology was based on a recommendation by the National Human Rights Commission, which said that González was a victim of arbitrary detention, fabrication of guilt and inhumane treatment.
González accepted the apology from Godoy but later told reporters that she couldn’t forgive the officials responsible for her almost seven-year imprisonment.
“I accept the apology but . . . I don’t forgive the damage they caused us. I see my son, my mother and my siblings and there are consequences, there are still consequences in my life so I don’t forgive [them] . . .” she said.
Asked whether she considered then attorney general Mancera to be the main person responsible for what happened to her, González said that she doesn’t “accuse him directly.”
She also said she didn’t know whether then-mayor Ebrard was aware at the time of all the injustices she suffered.
“Those who instructed the judge [to remand me in custody], those who planted non-existent testimonies, they’re the ones who are directly responsible . . .” González said.
Students help themselves to vehicles on the Morelia-Pátzcuaro highway.
Students from the Vasco de Quiroga teacher training college in Tiripetío, Michoacán, hijacked at least 10 vehicles on the Morelia-Pátzcuaro highway on Friday morning.
Armed with machetes and sticks, the students blocked the highway near the Tiripetío school, about 25 kilometers from Morelia.
The hijacked vehicles included buses and cargo trucks, according to state police. Presumably they were to carry students to Morelia for a demonstration demanding funds for their school.
The students forced passengers to get off the buses and find another way to reach their destination.
State police tried to approach the students, but the latter repelled them by throwing rocks.
After seizing the vehicles, the students took them to the Tiripetío school.
Students at rural teaching colleges in México state and Puebla also hijacked buses this week. The students have similar demands of state and federal governments, which include scholarships, better funding for the schools and automatic job placement after graduation.
According to sources in the Michoacán state government, the CNTE teachers’ union is behind the hijackings.
Little bowls were carved into the rock of a Jalisco riverbed at least 800 years ago.
Jalisco archaeologists keep digging up strange, new — and at the same time very old — things in the vicinity of the town of Arandas, located almost exactly 100 kilometers due east of Guadalajara.
First there was the discovery of more than 1,200 often very complicated horizontal petroglyphs along the shores of a small lake east of Arandas called Presa de la Luz, suggesting that the site may have been used as an astronomical observatory over a thousand years ago.
These discoveries are described in an elegant, 154-page coffee-table book entitled El Santuario Rupestre de los Altos de Jalisco (The Rock-Art Sanctuary of the Jalisco Highlands).
One of the authors of the book, archaeologist Rodrigo Esparza, called me to describe a new and even more curious discovery, this one located only 14 kilometers north of Presa de la Luz.
“For the moment we are calling this site Los Pocitos, ‘The Little Bowls,’ and we’re going to go study the place next week. Want to join us?”
A few of the pits display chisel marks.
Well, I could hardly say no to an offer like that, and a week later Esparza drove me to a place called Sauz de Cajigal where we met with several other archaeologists, including two from Japan who have taken a great interest in the area around Arandas.
“Before the others arrive, I’d like you to have a look at the local museum,” said Esparza.
“Museum?” I queried. “I couldn’t even find Sauz de Cajigal on the map and there’s a museum here?”
Thus it was that I met Pancho Navarro, a local collector who, Esparza told me, “has managed to rescue countless artifacts that would otherwise have been spirited away to other countries. These range in age from very old pieces from 500 BC, found in shaft tombs, to artifacts from colonial times.”
Pancho took me on a quick tour of his museum, which is filled not only with artifacts like figurines, obsidian blades and pottery, but also faded photographs and posters, phonographs and typewriters, stuffed animals, life-size human figures and all sorts of items related to the Cristeros war.
I should mention, in addition, that every one of those items in the museum has a story, and that Don Pancho speaks English very well. On top of that he also sings in English. “Credence Clearwater Revival songs are my specialty,” he told me, “and I would be happy to sing a few for any of your readers.”
Francisco “Paco” Rodriguez brushing out bowls.
From the Sauz de Cajigal Museum we drove 10 kilometers and parked. “From here it’s all on foot,” the archaeologists told me.
We started up a slope covered with young agaves. carefully watching where we walked, because the needle-like tip of an agave leaf is coated with an irritant and once you’ve been stuck, you can expect pain for days.
Where the agaves ended, we came to the legendary “barbed-wire fence with which every adventure in Mexico begins.” Fortunately, right up against this particular fence there’s a stone wall, making it relatively easy to climb over.
Now that there were no more agaves underfoot, we had no problems to contend with except for thorn bushes with needles four centimeters long!
After walking about a kilometer, we found ourselves on top of a ridge overlooking a long ravine. “Teruaki Yoshida is down there with another team,” Esparza told me. “He’s from Tokai University in Japan and he’s investigating a shelter cave in that ravine known as La Cueva del Raso. Although El Raso was a bandido, this cave’s treasure is not the monetary kind.
“On the wall, there’s a set of petroglyphs: geometric figures, like spirals. What’s unusual — in fact possibly unique — about these figures is that they are not rock paintings but engravings. “All other cave art I’ve ever heard of,” said Esparza, “was drawn or painted, so we think these grabados are pretty important.”
The Sauz de Cajigal museum.
We continued walking for a few minutes more and suddenly archaeologist Francisco Rodríguez put down the load of brooms he was carrying and shouted, “Welcome to Paleolithic Park!”
I shaded my eyes and looked into the flat river bed below us. Oh yes, now I could see them: hundreds of little dots stretching off into the distance. Then I blinked and looked down at my feet only to discover that the pocitos were right here in front of me as well. “Oh wow!” I said. “They’re everywhere!”
From this vantage point, I noticed that the plethora of dots followed a shape something like an upside-down Y. On close examination, I could see that each dot was really a little bowl or cup carved into the rock. Each small hole was about 11 centimeters in diameter and four to six centimeters deep. Almost everywhere they were neatly aligned in rows.
“Pocitos [little pits] like these are not uncommon in this area,” Esparza told me, “but normally you see only one or two, always carved more carefully than here, with a nicely rounded bottom. As for their age, perhaps they probably date back to sometime between 900 and 1200 AD. We think the stone bowl is a prayer for rain, just like the spirals you find all over the world. An isolated bowl we understand, but this,” he said gesturing,”this is something else. Here what count are numbers.”
Esparza was hoping that today’s project, photographing the 400-meter stretch of little cups from a drone and capturing precise data about them with LIDAR (Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging) technology, might reveal something we had all missed, perhaps a shape that can only be appreciated when seen from far above, like the Nazca lines.
Which meant it was time to get to work, sweeping the whole area clean and brushing leaves and twigs out of each individual pocito, so the LIDAR would register a perfect record of what was carved in the rock.
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Cleaning out all those holes proved to be a long, slow job, but finally we finished it. Precise measurements were now taken with a special kind of ultra-precise GPS and reference points were chalked on the rock.
Meanwhile, with no more bowl cleaning to be done, I wandered down to the far end of the 400-meter-long stretch of pocitos and began counting them, just for the fun of it. Well, what I was doing was more estimating than counting, but I kept at it and in the end reached a grand total of 1.792 little holes.
Then, when everything was ready, the archaeologists started shouting, “Clear the area! Everybody out!” and the drone rose into the air and began to create its precise and detailed map of the now spotless pock-marked river bank. Once I had this map in hand at home, I did a recount of the holes and came out with 1,803 bowls carved in stone.
The area around Arandas now had three unusual archaeological sites: the 1,200 horizontal petroglyphs around Presa de la Luz, the engravings inside La Cueva del Raso and the nearly 2,000 (according to me) carved bowls at Los Pocitos.
Without a doubt, this little corner of Jalisco is destined for fame in the annals of archaeology. At the moment, it’s quite complicated to visit any of the sites I’ve described here, but I suspect that will not be the case for long.
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.
Mexico has the highest rate of workplace stress in the world, according to the Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Labor specialist Oddette Murillo said that STPS data reveal that 75% of Mexican workers suffer from work-related stress, higher than China, 73%, and the United States, 59%.
The news comes on the eve of a new labor law intended to reduce occupational burnout caused by stress and violence in the workplace. The World Health Organization (WHO) added burnout to its International Classification of Diseases in May of this year.
Experts say workplace stress can lead to a number of harmful behaviors and disorders, such as gastrointestinal problems, increased caffeine, tobacco and/or alcohol use, migraines, insomnia, muscular pain, and even family problems like divorce.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has estimated that 43% of Mexico’s workers suffer from burnout. The OECD also found that Mexicans work an average of 2,255 hours a year, 492 more than workers in other countries.
Vacation time could be a factor. Mexico’s General Labor Law guarantees workers only six vacation days a year, while other Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Panama, Peru, Cuba and Nicaragua, guarantee workers a total of 30.
One requirement of the new rules requires employers to keep registries of psychosocial risk factors identified in their workplaces, including violent and traumatic events. Companies that fail to comply could face fines ranging from 20,000-400,000 pesos (US $1,000-$21,000).
At least a hundred rounds of ammunition were fired at the home of Guaymas Mayor Sara Valle Dessens on Thursday afternoon.
The attack occurred around 5:00pm at the mayor’s family house on Almagres street in Guaymas’ Paseo de Las Villas neighborhood. No one was home at the time, and there were no injuries. The house and a car belonging to the mayor’s son were damaged.
According to the magazine Proceso, Mayor Valle does not live at the house and does not often visit because of threats she has received.
Security forces responded to the attack and are searching for perpetrators who reportedly fled in several vehicles.
The violence is believed to be related to a conflict between two splinter groups of the Sinaloa Cartel: the Salazar clan and Los Chapitos. The Salazar group has been known to commit arson and shooting attacks such as that on Thursday.
Chief Justice Zaldívar, left and the suspended judge Camero.
The Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) has suspended a federal judge over questionable financial dealings, which President López Obrador said included receiving an 80-million-peso bank deposit.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar announced the suspension on Thursday but didn’t reveal the judge’s name.
However, judicial officials subsequently said the suspension applied to Jorge Arturo Camero Ocampo, a Mexico City administrative court judge and president of the National College of Magistrates.
“Stemming from the policy of zero tolerance of corruption, which I have been leading, the plenary of the federal judiciary decided yesterday [Wednesday] to suspend a judge of the first circuit due to serious inconsistencies in his financial situation,” Zaldívar said.
The chief justice said the decision was of the “greatest importance” because the judge was allegedly a key part of a network responsible for “improper conduct that won’t be tolerated in the federal judicial power.”
Zaldívar didn’t provide details about the “inconsistencies” detected in Camero’s finances but federal sources told the newspaper El Universal that one irregularity was the judge’s purchase of a home in the affluent Pedregal district of Mexico City.
Camero allegedly paid 17.8 million pesos (US $920,000) for the property, which was registered in the name of his son.
At his regular news conference on Friday, López Obrador told reporters that his understanding was that the judge’s suspension was related to an 80-million-peso (US $4.1-million) bank deposit.
He praised the decision made by the CJF, which has also launched an investigation into Camero’s financial dealings, but stressed the importance of the presumption of innocence.
“I’m pleased that the judicial power is acting to combat corruption but of course no one can be convicted without presenting proof, without carrying out a process as the law establishes. But this action – the removal of a judge for corruption, or alleged corruption – is unheard of, especially in recent times,” López Obrador said.
El Universal reported that Camero, as a member of a panel of judges at the 10th Collegiate Tribunal in Mexico City, has heard applications for injunctions against the Santa Lucía airport, one of the federal government’s largest infrastructure projects.
However, the same court ruled on Thursday to reject another application for an injunction against the airport.
Camero was one of the judges who heard the application because, according to sources who spoke with El Universal, he hadn’t yet been notified of his suspension.
The decision by the CJF to relieve Camero of his duties came a week after Supreme Court Justice Eduardo Medina Mora, who is under investigation for allegedly transferring more than 100 million pesos to foreign bank accounts, announced his resignation in a move that surprised his colleagues and political observers. The Senate approved the resignation on Tuesday.
Chief Justice Zaldívar said yesterday that the judiciary is cracking down on corruption and nepotism in courts across the country.
Eleven Mexican restaurants are in the 2019 edition of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants, sponsored by World’s 50 Best.
The list, which was announced at a ceremony in Buenos Aires this week, is based on a poll of 252 experts on Latin American cuisine.
Enrique Olvera’s Pujol, in Mexico City, was the highest-ranked Mexican restaurant, coming in at third place, followed by Jorge Vallejo’s Quintonil, also in the capital, which was No. 11. Paco Ruano’s Alcalde in Guadalajara took 14th place, winning the “Highest Climber Award” because of its rise from 31st place in 2018.
Here is the full list of Mexican winners by ranking:
3. Pujol, Mexico City
11. Quintonil, Mexico City
14. Alcalde, Guadalajara
15. Pangea, Monterrey
16. Sud 777, Mexico City
27. Roseta, Mexico City
28. Máximo Bistro, Mexico City
31. Nicos, Ciudad de México
32. Le Chique, Cancún
38. La Docena, Mexico City
41. La Docena, Guadalajara
Guadalajara’s Alcalde won the Highest Climber Award after moving from 31st to 14th place.
Mexico and Peru both had 11 restaurants on the list, while Lima’s Maido won first place for another consecutive year.
The award for best pastry chef in Latin American also went to Mexico. It was presented to Luis Robledo of Mexico City chocolate maker Tout Chocolat.
Tests by environmental groups and scientists have found microplastics in the stomachs of 20% of four different species of fish caught in Mexican waters.
The tests examined grey snapper, red grouper, white mullet and king mackerel from the Gulf of California, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea using samples caught off the coasts of La Paz, Baja California; Veracruz, Veracruz; and Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, respectively.
The research, carried out by Greenpeace México, the Center for Biological Diversity and scientists from the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur, the Veracruzana University and the National Autonomous University, found that one-fifth of the fish they tested contained microplastics – tiny bits of plastic that break off larger pieces of plastic debris as it degrades in the ocean.
Fish caught off the coast of Veracruz had consumed twice as many microplastics as those in the other regions, the tests showed, possibly due to the area’s higher level of urbanization and poor waste management, which together cause more severe ocean pollution.
The lowest levels of plastics were found in fish caught off the coast of La Paz, which has a lower population density.
Alejandro Olivera, Mexico representative of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the tests “highlight how plastic pollution is infesting our oceans and contaminating the fish we eat.
“Microplastics threaten the environment and public health, in Mexico and around the world. Local efforts to ban plastic bags and straws are important, but we need national lawmakers to step up and help solve the problem,” he said.
The plastics that were most commonly found in the stomachs of the fish came from cellophane and adhesive tapes used for wrapping and product packaging, the report said.
However, the researchers also discovered that fish had ingested plastics from fibers used for clothing and textiles, food containers, fishing gear, bottles, supermarket bags and other sources.
New research conducted by researchers at the University of Victoria in Canada suggests that microplastics in a fish’s guts can migrate into its flesh. Therefore, people who eat fish can unwittingly ingest microscopic pieces of plastic.
According to the study, seafood is the third largest source of microplastics consumed by humans behind bottled water and air.
It is estimated that consumers could eat, inhale or drink up to 74,000 pieces of microplastic a year although it is not yet clear what impact that consumption might have on human health.
Miguel Rivas, coordinator of the Greenpeace oceans campaign, says that more needs to be done at a federal level in Mexico to cut down on plastic waste that pollutes the environment.
“Although different states and municipalities in Mexico have taken measures to restrict or prohibit single-use plastic items, our national legislators must stop plastic contamination at its source” by modifying the law, he said.
“Extending responsibility to the producers of the plastic products will stop plastic at its source. It’s time to stop letting big corporations greenwash their plastic pollution,” Rivas added.
Both Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity urged companies to use materials other than plastic for packaging their products.
The environmental groups also called for a ban on the disposal of single-use plastics and labeling that educates consumers about the environmental risks of the products they buy.
In addition, they urged the federal government to conduct research about the health implications for consuming fish contaminated with microplastics.
AMLO promises transparency around airport project.
President López Obrador pledged on Thursday that all information related to the construction of the Santa Lucía airport will be made public.
The announcement came after it was revealed that the defense department had ruled that the master plan and other airport documents would remain classified for a period of five years.
Asked at his morning press conference about the Secretariat of Defense (Sedena) embargo, the president responded:
“We’re going to reveal everything that has to do with Santa Lucía; perhaps due to the legal proceedings . . . the barrage of injunctions . . . the decision [to classify the information] was taken but once the legal process is finished . . . all the information will be opened, it will be made available to all citizens.
“We don’t have anything to hide, nothing at all. We’re not the same as the conservatives,” López Obrador added, using a term he often employs to disparage his political opponents and members of the governments that ruled Mexico in recent years.
“. . . The instruction is that the whole process has to be transparent.”
Eight suspension orders have been granted against the airport but one was overturned by a federal judge after Sedena, which has been given responsibility for building the project at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base, applied for its repeal on the basis that halting construction could place national security at risk.
All of the defense department’s movable and immovable property, including the airport project, were classified as strategic installations on August 29.
Three weeks later, Sedena’s transparency committee issued a resolution that classified documents relating to the design, construction, operation and financing of the project as reserved information for five years.
“The committee confirms and formally declares all information related to the construction of the mixed military/civil international airport as reserved . . .” said the September 18 resolution.
“The disclosure of this information represents a real risk, because it could be used by members of organized crime to commit crimes of espionage, terrorism, sabotage, treason [and] genocide within national territory.”
The embargo covers the airport master plan and studies related to the airport’s safety, among other documents, the newspaper Reforma reported.
It also reserves information related to the construction of a road link between Santa Lucía and the existing Mexico City airport and the relocation of military facilities on the air force base site.
The decision to reserve the information came after Sedena was asked to supply a copy of the most recent version of the master plan so that it could be presented in court to support the application for an injunction against the project.
The legal action has delayed starting construction of the US $4.8-billion airport but the government is confident that they won’t be successful in canceling the project altogether. Rogelio Rodríguez, an attorney who specializes in aviation law, said in June that the legal battle could end up in the Supreme Court.
As soon as the injunctions have been annulled, the government is ready to begin construction of the airport, López Obrador said on Monday
“We’re ready, we have the whole project [ready to go], the machinery . . . We’re literally on our way to waving the starting flag.”
