AMLO presents a check to the mayor of Metlatónoc, proceeds of an auction of narco-real estate.
Confiscated jewelry and watches are expected to “sell like hot cakes” at the government’s third auction of assets seized by federal authorities.
The fundraising goal for the auction being held by the System of Administrative Allocation of Assets (SAE) is 21.8 million pesos, the total of the starting bids for the 148 lots.
The July 28 auction will sell off jewelry being held by federal prosecutors, courts and tax authorities.
Ricardo Rodríguez, head of the Institute to Return Stolen Goods to the People, the so-called “Robin Hood” agency that manages the SAE auctions, said he expects the auction to surpass its goal and raise between 30 million and 35 million pesos. The proceeds will pay for road repairs in mountain communities in Michoacán.
“We expect them to sell like hot cakes,” said Rodríguez. “I think it’s going to be very attractive for those who want to participate.”
He said it was hard for the SAE to establish the market value of the pieces “because of how extravagant and unique they are,” and that the 21.8-million-peso figure is just an “initial reference point.”
Top-priced item is a 3-million-peso Piaget watch made of 18-carat white gold and encrusted with 49 diamonds.
Of the 148 lots, 133 were confiscated by federal prosecutors. Some of the others were gifts illegally given to public servants.
President López Obrador said the items will be on display for a week, beginning Sunday, at the former presidential home, Los Pinos.
He also announced that the government’s fourth auction will sell off land and cash confiscated from drug traffickers.
“In the next auction, we’ll sell confiscated goods and parcels of land, and money in cash, especially dollars,” he said.
On hand at today’s press conference were two Guerrero mayors, each of whom was presented with a check for 21.15 million pesos, cash generated by the auction of confiscated narco-properties.
The mayors represent Metlatónoc and Cochoapa El Grande, two of Mexico’s poorest municipalities.
The governor of Yucatán says his government has attracted investment projects worth 23.7 billion pesos (US $1.25 billion) since it took office just over nine months ago.
Speaking at the opening of the NH Collection Hotel in Mérida, Mauricio Vila Dosal said the projects will create 17,010 direct jobs and 54,120 indirect ones.
Vila attributed the strong showing to his government’s focus on promoting Yucatán to investors.
“Thanks to the promotion work in recent months at both a national and international level, Yucatán has recorded an unprecedented flow of investments, which allowed the state to achieve fourth place nationally in terms of job creation in June,” he said.
The governor added that his administration is aiming to grow the manufacturing and industrial sectors, among others, and wants all of Yucatán’s municipalities to benefit from the state’s increasing prosperity.
Among the projects Vila highlighted was a US $120-million wind farm in the municipality of Dzilam de Bravo and a US $30-million solar plant in San Ignacio, Progreso.
He also spoke about Grupo Kuo’s plan to invest 6.6 billion pesos to install new production lines and expand its food processing plant in the municipality of Tixpéhual, which will create 3,000 jobs, and the 720-million-peso Crown Park Yucatán project, which involves the development of a 150-hectare site in Hunucmá.
An industrial zone, a business center and a residential area are planned for the latter project, Vila said, adding that it will generate 120 direct jobs and 360 indirect ones.
The National Action Party governor said the port of Progreso will also benefit from the increased investment.
“Some of the firms will use the port to move their products to other parts of the world, consolidating its standing as one of the most important logistics points in the country,” Vila said.
The governor also said that during the first half of 2019, a total of 8,579 new jobs were created, a figure that is 32% higher than the same period last year.
Workers clean up the tonnes of water lilies that arrived on this Ixtapa beach.
It’s not just sargassum that’s washing up on Mexican beaches.
Local government and tourism workers this week removed more than 160 tonnes of water lilies from Playa El Varadero, a beach on Isla Ixtapa, a small island off the coast of the Guerrero resort city of the same name.
Recent heavy rains carried the plant into the sea from the Pantla river, whose mouth is near Isla Ixtapa.
Zihuatanejo public services director David Luna Bravo said that local hoteliers and restaurant owners contributed to the clean-up efforts.
After the water lilies are collected, they are transported by boat to Playa Linda on the mainland.
In just two and a half hours on Tuesday, 10 dump trucks were filled with lilies, Luna said.
Ricardo Pineda, owner of El Indio restaurant, said that water lilies wash up on Ixtapa beaches practically every year but explained that he hadn’t seen such a large quantity of the plant for three or four years.
Having to dedicate time to cleaning up El Varadero beach has caused restaurant owners to fall behind in other tasks they need to do to prepare for the peak tourist season, he added.
“It’s the season now . . . but thankfully . . . the authorities are helping us,” Pineda said.
AMLO's approval rating in green, disapproval in red.
President López Obrador’s performance rating has declined eight points but remains strong, according to a new poll that also shows that more than six in 10 Mexicans believe that migrants are a burden on the country.
Sponsored by the newspapers Reforma and the Washington Post and carried out by the former, the poll shows that 70% of respondents approve of the president’s performance compared to 78% in a March survey.
The percentage of people who disapprove of the way López Obrador is doing his job rose from 18% to 29%.
The president’s political party also has strong support.
More than half of those polled said they would vote for the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, if a presidential election were held today, more than three times the support garnered by the National Action (PAN) and Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) parties.
Asked what impact the changes being implemented by the president will have on the country, 44% of respondents said they will improve it, while 22% said that Mexico will get worse.
Four in 10 respondents said that Mexico is generally on a good path, while 27% said that the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Insecurity was cited by 55% of respondents as the biggest problem in the country, while 45% said that they felt safer since the deployment of the National Guard.
Unemployment, corruption, the economy and poverty were cited by 10%, 9%, 7% and 4% of respondents respectively as Mexico’s No. 1 problem.
Asked how the president is dealing with a range of different issues, poll respondents rated López Obrador best on education. Half of those polled said he was dealing with the issue well, while 21% said that his performance was poor.
The president’s response to drug trafficking and organized crime was considered the worst aspect of his performance. Just 24% of respondents said that he was doing a good job in the area, while 45% said that his performance was poor.
They’re a burden, said 64%.
More than half of respondents said that López Obrador has been successful in improving the economic situation of the nation’s poor and just under half said that he has done a good job in the crusade to end corruption.
However, just one-quarter of those polled said the economy has improved since the new government took office and 35% said that the security situation has worsened compared to 21% who said it has improved.
The navy is considered the most trustworthy institution in the country followed by the army and the National Guard, while less than a third of respondents expressed confidence in the nation’s judges and attorney general’s offices.
Three in 10 people said that Carlos Urzúa’s resignation as finance secretary will negatively affect the economy, 43% said they support the construction of the Santa Lucía airport and 86% expressed the belief that former president Enrique Peña Nieto committed acts of corruption while in office.
Less than a quarter of respondents said that Mexico has a good or very good relationship with the United States, while 77% said that they have a bad or very bad opinion of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Opinion was divided about López Obrador’s management of the bilateral relationship, with 47% saying that they approved and 41% responding that they disapproved.
Just over half of respondents said the president has defended Mexico’s interests in the face of Trump’s threats while 34% said that he hasn’t.
The agreement that ended Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican exports was imposed on Mexico by its northern neighbor, according to 55% of poll respondents.
Asked about migrants in Mexico, 64% of poll respondents said they are a burden on the country because they take jobs and benefits that should go to Mexicans. Only one in five people said they strengthen the country.
A majority of 55% said that migrants should be deported, while 33% said they should be given temporary residency while waiting for the outcome of their asylum claims in the United States. Seven per cent said migrants should be granted permanent residency.
The survey was carried out nationally between July 9 and 14 with 1,200 people.
Reforma said the poll has a margin of error of +/-4.9%.
El Chapo's first escape tunnel at the Altiplano prison.
Mexico’s most famous drug lord, already renowned for building one escape tunnel, was planning another three years ago in a bid to make a third escape from jail after he was captured in January 2016.
Nuevo León prison official Eduardo Guerrero Durán told the state news agency Notimex that a second tunnel was found at the Altiplano federal prison in México state, where the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was incarcerated following his arrest on January 8, 2016 in Los Mochis, Sinaloa.
Six months earlier, “El Chapo” had escaped from the same prison via a 1.6-kilometer-long tunnel that led to the bathroom in his cell.
The tunnel was detected after prison staff noticed noises emanating from Guzmán’s bathroom, to which the notorious drug lord went frequently, the official explained.
While in the bathroom, Guzmán would repeatedly flush the toilet.
As a result of the noises and suspicious behavior, a study of the soil beneath the prison was carried out and the second tunnel was found.
There was also a reference during Guzmán’s trial of his wish to make another prison escape after his 2016 capture.
Dámaso López, a former Sinaloa Cartel leader who was previously a security chief at the Jalisco prison from which “El Chapo” escaped in 2001, testified that Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel, approached him to discuss a third prison break.
“My comadre [female friend] sought me out to tell me that my compadre [buddy] wanted to escape again, [to ask] if I would help him again,” López told jurors.
It is unclear whether he was involved in planning the excavation of the second tunnel.
Guzmán was sentenced to life yesterday.
The witness – sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States last year on drug trafficking charges – also testified that he and other officials at the Puente Grande maximum security prison took bribes from Guzmán during his first incarceration in exchange for providing him with a range of perks such as new shoes, a mobile telephone and secret visits with his wife and other family members.
López quit his security job in September 2000 but told jurors that before he left he had a final meeting with Guzmán, who asked him to speak with the new security chief so that his perks would be preserved.
Four months later, the drug lord was wheeled out of the prison in a laundry cart and would remain a free, albeit wanted, man for the next 13 years.
Guzmán’s lengthy and notorious criminal career came to an official end yesterday when federal Judge Brian Cogan imposed a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment plus 30 years. He was found guilty on 10 drug trafficking charges in February.
United States authorities have not yet made any formal announcement but Guzmán is likely to spend the rest of his life at the “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, the country’s most secure penitentiary where tunneling out might be a challenge.
According to a report in the New York Post, he was on his way to the facility Wednesday night.
The Colorado Supermax prison where El Chapo might be incarcerated.
Since it opened in 1994, no one has ever escaped from the federal prison that is officially called United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility.
Located 185 kilometers south of Denver and nicknamed “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” the prison is home to a who’s who of notorious criminals.
Among the 376 inmates are domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Prisoners are typically confined to their solitary cells for 23 hours a day, where they may watch television or gaze out a narrow window that is angled upward so that only the sky is visible.
Special restrictions ensure inmates cannot make threats or exert influence in the outside world. Prisoners are escorted during all movements and head counts are done at least six times a day, the news agency Reuters reported.
“It’s very well designed for its purpose, to hold the most dangerous offenders in the federal prison system,” said Martin Horn, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and former commissioner of the city’s Department of Correction.
He told Reuters that the Florence “Supermax” prison “is literally built into the side of a mountain, with a robust security infrastructure.”
“Could Guzmán penetrate that?” Horn was asked.
“I would never say never,” he responded, “but it’s highly unlikely.”
Three of the suspects in the murder of Norberto Ronquillo.
Mexico City police are closer to solving a high-profile kidnapping case that has tarnished the department’s reputation and forced the city’s top anti-kidnapping agent to resign.
Four people have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder of 22-year-old student Norberto Ronquillo last month.
On Saturday, police arrested Daniel “B,” a cousin-in-law of the victim through his father, in Xochimilco. Police say Daniel is the owner of a grey Ford Topaz that was linked to the kidnapping and the receipt of a ransom payment.
Daniel “B” admitted to being the owner of the car but said he rents the car to a Uber driver and that when the crime took place, someone else was driving it. The driver, Óscar “N,” was arrested on Wednesday night.
Daniel “B” was also implicated in the 2015 kidnapping and murder of Édgar Carrasco Hernández, a distant cousin to Ronquillo. In a series of events similar to the Ronquillo kidnapping, Carrasco was kidnapped from his home in Morelos and his family received a call asking for a ransom.
Kidnapping-murder victim Norberto Ronquillo.
After the family paid 500,000 pesos (US $26,300), Carrasco was found dead. Investigators suspected that the kidnapping was committed by relatives of the victim, but could not find enough evidence to make an arrest.
Police have arrested two other people and are searching for three others.
The city’s Attorney General’s Office said today there was evidence that Ronquillo’s murder was related to a personal debt he owed.
Ronquillo, who was a student at Pedregal University, was kidnapped on June 4 as he was leaving the school. After his parents received a phone call demanding a ransom, a 500,000-peso payment was delivered by Ronquillo’s cousin, identified as Osvaldo “F,” to an unknown individual in a grey Ford Topaz. On June 8, Ronquillo was found dead in Xochimilco.
A lot more children have been making the trek north this year.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) says the number of migrant children detained by immigration authorities in Mexico more than doubled in the first six months of 2019 compared with the same period last year.
Agents arrested 33,122 migrants who were under 18 years of age, 131% more than last year. Of those, 8,525 were traveling without their families.
Almost all the child migrants came from the Northern Triangle of Central America and of those, more than half were from Honduras.
There was an even more significant growth in the number of female children and adolescents detained: the number almost tripled, from 4,936 to 13,671. The number of boys doubled from 9,343 to 19,451.
On Wednesday, a bus carrying 108 Honduran migrants was stopped in a joint operation by security forces in Tabasco. There were 23 children among them.
The president believes Guzmán's assets belong to Mexico.
President López Obrador will seek to seize the assets of former drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, although some United States lawmakers have already got their eyes on the loot.
A United States federal judge sentenced Guzmán to life in prison plus 30 years yesterday and ordered him to pay US $12.6 billion in reparation. The amount is the estimated value of the drugs he was accused of smuggling into the U.S.
López Obrador said today that he believed the money rightfully belonged to Mexico.
“I believe that everything confiscated that has to do with Mexico should be returned to Mexico, to the Mexican people, and I believe that the United States government is going to agree to turn [it] over . . . but we have to go through the process, because I don’t remember another time when [the Mexican government] has asked for resources to be returned.”
The president said that while previous administrations had never asked for the return of confiscated drug money, the possibility had been brought to his attention by Guzmán’s lawyer, José Luis González Meza.
“I listened to El Chapo’s lawyer, and he said something interesting: that the confiscated money legally belonged to Mexico in any case. And we will be looking into the matter. I agree with what El Chapo’s lawyer said, and we’re going to look into it.”
But some U.S. congressmen, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse have other ideas. They say the money should be used to fund President Trump’s border wall.
López Obrador said he did not expect the amount to be as large as estimated.
“Before they said that [he] was one of the richest [people] in the world, but I don’t believe that actually coincided with reality. They inflated the numbers when in reality there were other traffickers with much more money, but they inflated them for political reasons or for publicity. Now we need to look at his wealth seriously and honestly.”
Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard has been given the task of recuperating the former drug trafficker’s fortune, whatever it’s worth.
A prominent California businessman and father of a K-pop music star was found dead on Tuesday morning in a condominium in Cabo San Lucas.
According to several media outlets, the body of José Arredondo, 58, was found with signs of signs of “blunt force trauma.” State authorities said he had been beaten to death.
No arrests have been made, but a U.S. State Department official said U.S. authorities are closely monitoring the investigation.
Arredondo was born in Mexico but emigrated to the United States when he was 12 years old and eventually became a U.S. citizen. Initially he made a living washing cars but by the time of his death he was the owner of several local car dealerships in and around Bakersfield, California.
Francisco Duran, an admirer, wrote on Facebook that he was saddened by the news of Arredondo’s death.
“Sad news. I was thinking about quitting Bakersfield College back in 1995 when I saw him on TV. He was encouraging kids to stay in school. He changed my mind about quitting.”
Arredondo is survived by his wife, originally from South Korea, and two children. One child, Samuel Arredondo Kim, is a celebrated K-pop icon, known for his work as part of the music duo 1Punch and in the Korean soap opera Revenge Note 2. The 17-year-old released his first full-length solo album in 2017.
Firefighters at the scene of yesterday's toll plaza accident.
A semi lost its brakes yesterday evening at the San Marcos Huixtoco toll plaza near Chalco on the Mexico City-Puebla highway, colliding with two other vehicles before bursting into flames.
The truck, carrying a load of paper, slammed into a car carrying a family of three and another semi that was carrying auto parts before bursting through a toll booth barrier.
Leaking diesel fuel, it came to a stop when it crashed into a tow truck a few meters from the toll booth, and caught fire.
Firefighters from Ixtapaluca and Chalco arrived on the scene and worked for more than an hour to extinguish the flames.
Authorities said no one was hurt. The driver of the semi was taken into custody.
