The Adolfo Ruiz Cortines will be part of the train corridor at the new airport.
The new Mexico City airport, currently under construction at an air force base north of the capital, will not just have runways and an innovative terminal building but also a “cultural corridor” with three museums and repurposed historic train cars.
There will be an aviation museum, mammoth museum – the remains of at least 200 of the extinct mammals have been found at the airport site – and army and air force museum at the Santa Lucía airport, said Miguel Guerrero, the military engineer in charge of the cultural corridor project.
He also said that three 20th century train cars will together form an “historic cultural train” that will house a library, cafe, meeting rooms and other cultural and educational spaces.
The oldest train car to be restored and included was built in the United States in 1918. The Francisco I. Madero, named after the revolutionary and former president, was a luxury train carriage used to transport high-ranking military personnel.
While operational, it was decorated with fine furniture and blinds, classic lamps and wooden doors and had sleeping quarters with their own small bathrooms and kitchenettes.
Manufactured in 1926 in the United States, the Adolfo Ruiz Cortines car, named after Mexico’s president from 1952-1958, will also be part of the cultural train as will the Jalisco car, which was built in Mexico in 1980.
The former was also used to transport military personnel while the latter was used as a dining car, Guerrero said.
A replica 20th century train station will also be built in the cultural corridor. It will be named Santa Lucía station after the air force base and a stop on the now-defunct passenger train route between Veracruz and northern Mexico City.
The station will house a general services office, Guerrero said.
In arguing for the cancellation of the previous government’s project, López Obrador said it was corrupt, too expensive and being built on land that was sinking. He says that his plan is not only far cheaper but will solve the saturation problem at the current Mexico City airport more quickly.
Forum participant Paulina Monreal: 'Political gender violence.'
A virtual youth forum conducted on Zoom to mark the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women got a nasty surprise Tuesday when a group of young men quickly hijacked the event, making insulting sexist comments and then masturbating on camera.
Paulina Monreal Castillo, a Durango city councilor who participated in the event — the topic of which was gender equality and feminist empowerment, denounced the incident and the young men involved, calling it an act of “political gender violence,” saying the young men had had no intention of participating in good faith.
“We began to talk, but in the chat room, which we could all see, various young men began to address me, saying, “Why are you talking?” and other such things. Someone in the forum then pointed out that one of [the young men] was projecting images from a pornographic movie and that another was masturbating.”
The act apparently emboldened two others, who also began to masturbate on camera.
Forum participant Ana Luz Sánchez Soto also criticized the young men’s behavior, pointing out that it happened in a space created to discuss violence against women.
“How ironic,” she said on Twitter Tuesday. “We were putting on a forum about violence against women, and various men began calling us whores and masturbating on camera. This is what it’s like to be a woman in Mexico.”
The event had been created by Youth in Movement, a political youth organization connected with Mexico’s Citizens Movement political party, which is hosting events this week related to the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women. Organizers had put out a public call for participants in the forum, which was how the young men had been able to join it.
Organizers said the four youths have yet to be identified although they were kicked out of the forum’s online platform fairly quickly. Nevertheless, said Monreal, the young men’s “obscene attitudes” cast a pall over the rest of the event.
State cybersecurity authorities were informed of the incident and are investigating, she said.
In a video she posted on Twitter, Monreal lamented the fact that women had to confront sexist stereotypes and attitudes that they can’t be political, but she also said that this was a moment to remind women and girls that they are not alone.
“The women who decide to better our environment via politics deserve respect … We’re tired and fed up with [men] considering themselves superior and that they have the right to reclaim their spaces from us,” she said.
López Obrador: 'Strengthening values in the face of decadence.'
The federal government has published an ethical guide that suggests criminals and the corrupt “can redeem themselves through reflection, education and psychological therapy.”
“The crisis of Mexico is not just an economic crisis, it’s not just a crisis of material wellbeing,” President López Obrador said Thursday while presenting the Ethical Guide for the Transformation of Mexico.
“It’s also a crisis of the loss of cultural, moral and spiritual values. In recent times a whole process of degradation of public life arose – a decadence. To confront this degradation, this decadence, actions that improve material conditions aren’t enough; it’s also important to strengthen values and obtain wellbeing of the soul,” he told reporters at his morning news conference.
The president said the guide, which was drawn up by a committee of six people including his communications coordinator Jesús Ramírez, is similar to the Cartilla Moral, a 1944 booklet by celebrated Mexican writer and diplomat Alfonso Reyes, written at the request of the minister of education at the time.
The new guide was written “in light of the new times,” López Obrador said.
It contains teachings about 20 different values, principles and subjects including respect for difference, life, dignity, freedom, love, suffering and pleasure, the past and the future, gratitude, forgiveness, redemption, equality, truth, fraternity, laws and justice, authority and power, work, wealth and the economy, agreements, family, and animals, plants and things.
Redemption in the current day, the guide says, “means overcoming mistakes, awareness of wrongdoing and regret that implies recognition of guilt and intention not to commit a crime or immoral action again.”
It goes on to say, “From a humanist perspective, criminals and the corrupt can redeem themselves through reflection, education and psychological therapy.”
However, punishing criminals and the corrupt through means such as imprisoning them remains a possibility, the guide says.
The section on forgiveness says that he “he or she who grants it and he or she who receives it” is liberated, contending that people who forgive let go of pent-up bitterness, hate and the desire for revenge.
“To ask for forgiveness and to forgive are among the most difficult things in our relationships with others. There is a natural resistance to forgiving because he or she who does it humbles oneself, humiliates oneself or gives in,” the guide says.
“To ask for forgiveness if you acted poorly and to grant it if you were a victim of mistreatment, aggression, abuse [or] violence … will allow the release of guilt.”
López Obrador said that 8 million of the new ethical guides will be distributed to senior citizens across Mexico.
“The elderly, in a voluntary way, in their free time, can, if they want to, if they have the capacity to do so, pass on what this guide says to their children and grandchildren and analyze it with them … in order to strengthen our values.”
Mireles won national acclaim for standing up against cartels.
A man who co-founded and led a self-defense force that took the fight to the drug cartels in Michoacán died on Wednesday from Covid-19.
José Manuel Mireles Valverde, a medical doctor who more recently worked as an official in the state health system, died in a hospital in the Michoacán municipality of Charo three weeks after he was admitted. He was 62.
Mireles led a call to arms in 2013 against the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) cartel, which at that time was the main instigator of violence in Michoacán, especially in the Tierra Caliente region.
He helped put together a self-defense force made up of vigilantes from several regions of Michoacán. They fought to retake control of scores of communities where the Caballeros Templarios and other organized crime groups held sway.
Mireles’ bravery in standing up to the criminal organizations won him national fame and acclaim. He was the self-defense force’s leader, spokesman and most visible figure. Mireles was widely respected in Tepalcatepec, where he worked as a doctor prior to helping clear that municipality and others of criminal activity.
A gun-toting Mireles when he headed a self-defense force.
Less than a year after co-founding the self-defense force, the doctor-turned-vigilante survived a light plane crash that he always believed was an attempt on his life. The January 2014 accident left him with a punctured lung and 48 screws had to be inserted into his skull.
Five months later Mireles was arrested along with scores of other self-defense members on weapon possession charges. He would spend almost three years in jail before being released in May 2017 following the introduction of the new criminal justice system under which his alleged crime was not classified as serious. A federal court dismissed the case against him in July 2018.
Mireles was aligned with the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party in the 1980s but in more recent times was an ally of President López Obrador and his Morena party.
The current government appointed him to the position of medical services sub-delegate of ISSSTE, the government workers health service, in Michoacán in August 2019, a role that allowed him to use his training and experience as a doctor.
In addition to facing allegations of misogyny, Mireles was accused of domestic violence by his first wife and two of his children. The latter allegations were investigated but Mireles was never charged. His ex-wife said that he reconciled with his children before passing away in hospital Wednesday night.
Mireles: charismatic and controversial.
A charismatic yet controversial figure, Mireles also made headlines in 2019 when he married a woman almost four decades younger than him.
Despite the controversies he created, the criminal charges he faced and accusations that he was actually in cahoots with some criminal groups, Mireles will be best remembered for his willingness to do what most people are too afraid to do: take on Mexico’s notoriously violent cartels.
“He will be remembered as a great social fighter,” said Ramiro López Elizalde, an ISSSTE director.
López Obrador acknowledged Mireles passing at his regular news conference on Thursday, sending condolences to his family and all Mexicans who are suffering in any way from the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 103,000 lives across the country.
Lifeguards in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, have created a 100-meter-wide “no people” zone between two of the city’s beaches for a stranded crocodile in the hopes that it can return to a nearby lagoon.
The crocodile has been swimming in the waters off Bahía Principal and Marinero Beach for several days. It was first discovered by a sunbather, who took pictures of it as the reptile tried to enter the beach but got scared off by the presence of people and retreated to the ocean, where it has remained.
The lifeguards who created the crocodile crossing, a restricted area lined with poles and police tape, hope to lure the the 2-meter-long reptile onto dry land and relocate it where they think its destination is: the lagoon in the vicinity of a nearby bridge.
Well accustomed to dealing with crocodiles — American crocodiles are common in the area — the lifeguards said they created the restricted zone after hearing about the crocodile and then spotting it themselves in the water near the shoreline.
They believe it wants to cross land to get to the lagoon but say the animal will stay in the ocean waters as long as it can see humans — hence the no-people zone.
“If it sees people moving on the beach,” he said, “it will go back to the ocean.”
The lifeguards say they have informed local authorities and tourism officials of the situation. Their decision to create the zone is a temporary solution to get the crocodile where it needs to go with the least amount of trauma to the animal.
“It’s so it has confidence and can leave the waters calmly,” said Godofredo Vázquez Bohórquez, the city’s lifeguard coordinator. “If we can trap it to relocate it, that would be easier than trying to do so in the ocean.”
Mexico GDP from 2010 to the third quarter of 2020. inegi
The Mexican economy bounced back strongly in the third quarter compared to the previous three months as industrial activity surged, but GDP was still well below 2019 levels.
Revised, seasonally-adjusted data published Thursday by the the national statistics institute Inegi showed that the economy grew 12.1% between July and September compared to the second quarter.
The quarter-over-quarter growth, 0.1% higher than that shown by preliminary data published late last month, was the highest since comparable data was first kept in 1990.
Economic activity in the secondary sector, including manufacturing, mining and construction, increased 21.7% between July and September compared to the second quarter but was down 8.8% compared to the same three months last year.
The primary sector, including agriculture, forestry and fishing, grew 8% compared to the second quarter but was down 8.8% annually, while the tertiary or services sector, including commerce, transport, financial and media, expanded 8.8% on a quarterly basis but contracted 8.9% compared to a year ago.
The quarter-over-quarter and annual statistics for the three individual sectors show that a recovery is underway but that the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions nevertheless continue to exact a heavy toll on the economy.
Overall GDP in the third quarter was 8.6% lower than in the same period of 2019. The year-over-year contraction follows an 18.7% decline in the second quarter, a period that included two full months – April and May – during which the government ordered the suspension of nonessential economic activities.
The economy was floundering even before the pandemic: GDP also declined on an annual basis in the first quarter of 2020 and the final three quarters of 2019.
According to Banco Base economic analysis director Gabriela Siller, the last time Mexico recorded six consecutive quarters of negative growth was in 1982.
It appears almost certain that Mexico will record its largest economic contraction since the Great Depression in 2020 even though the central bank on Wednesday revised its forecast upward for this year.
The Bank of México (Banxico) predicted a contraction of between 8.7% and 9.3% in 2020, an improvement from its previous quarterly report when it forecast a recession in the 8.8% to 12.8% range.
“There is still a high degree of uncertainty about the future evolution of both domestic and global activity; this is reflected in the breadth of the growth interval,” Banxico said.
For next year, the central bank is less optimistic than it was.
It is forecasting growth of between 0.6% and 5.3% in 2021 whereas in its previous report it predicted GDP expansion of 1.3% to 5.6%.
Banxico also predicted a net loss of 700,000 to 850,000 formal sector jobs this year and the creation of 150,000 to 500,000 in 2021. Both the former and latter predictions are more optimistic than those made by the central bank in its previous report.
Using ingenuity and a couple of boats lashed together, men in the flooded municipality of Tenosique, Tabasco, created a large makeshift raft to help people move their cars to escape rising floodwaters.
Tenosique and much of the area southeast of the state capital of Villahermosa has been experiencing crippling floodwaters for weeks now thanks to the effects of Hurricane Eta and two cold fronts.
The weather events brought heavy rains, affecting 300,000 people in the state, leaving many homeless or trapped in homes in waist-deep water.
In many flooded towns, transit is only possible by boat. Tenosique is one of seven Tabasco municipalities for which the Ministry of the Interior issued emergency declarations on Monday, making them eligible for federal aid.
The good samaritans with the raft were not identified but were captured in action on video by observers who recorded the transport of one family, with their car, across the rising Usumacinta River in the town of El Faisán.
▶ Lancheros usaron su creatividad para rescatar un auto que quedó atrapado en el río Usumacinta, en #Tabasco
Authorities have declared four municipalities around the river to be on maximum flood alert and evacuated around 3,600 people.
The rescuers lashed planks on top of two rafted boats to provide a flat surface for the car, then transported the vehicles across the river, to the delight of onlookers.
Some major hospitals in Mexico City are completely full with coronavirus patients, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Wednesday as Mexico recorded its second consecutive day of more than 10,000 new cases and 800 Covid-19 deaths.
“In Mexico City, … there are hospitals that are completely full, some of the national health institutes [for example]. It’s the same in other federal entities,” he told the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing, adding that large hospitals tend to fill up the quickest.
An interactive map on the Mexico City government website shows that numerous Covid-19 designated hospitals in the capital are at capacity. Among those that are full are the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition, the Central Military Hospital, the Ignacio Zaragoza General Hospital and the Tacuba General Hospital.
Data presented by López-Gatell showed that 63% of all general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients in Mexico City are currently occupied while 61% of those with ventilators are in use.
According to Mexico City government statistics updated on Wednesday night, 2,722 coronavirus patients are in general care beds in the capital and 831 are intubated.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. New cases Wednesday numbered more than 10,000 for the second consecutive day.milenio
Across Mexico, 11,124 of 29,193 general care beds are currently occupied by coronavirus patients for an occupancy rate of 38%.
Durango, one of two red light “maximum” risk states on the federal government coronavirus stoplight system, has the highest occupancy rate for general care beds at 75%. Zacatecas and Coahuila follow with occupancy rates of 65% and 64%, respectively.
As for beds with ventilators, 3,335 of 10,538 are in use for an occupancy rate of 32%. Mexico City has the highest occupancy rate for critical care beds followed by Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, which have rates of 57% and 51%, respectively.
López-Gatell urged people to seek medical attention as soon as they develop any symptoms of the coronavirus such as a fever or cough. He reiterated that people with chronic diseases, those aged over 60 and pregnant women are more susceptible to serious illness.
Earlier in the press briefing, the deputy minister reported that Mexico’s accumulated case tally had increased to 1,070,487 with 10,335 new cases registered. It was the second day in a row that more than 10,000 cases were reported after the tally spiked by 10,794 on Tuesday.
The official Covid-19 death toll increased to 103,597 with an additional 858 fatalities registered – 45 more than the number reported on Tuesday.
López-Gatell said that six states – Coahuila, Nuevo León, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Querétaro and Mexico City – are at risk of joining Chihuahua and Durango as red light states.
Those six states are among 14 that are currently classified as orange light “high” risk on the stoplight system.
There are also 14 yellow light “medium” risk states while the risk of coronavirus infection in two states – Campeche and Chiapas –is green light “low.”
Veteran carpenter Francisco Castillo has seen Chipilo's economy transform.
The whine of power saws cutting wood in the carpentry shop fills the air while, just a few feet away, a cow calmly chews its cud, looking completely unconcerned. It’s an apt image for what’s happening in Chipilo, a town in Puebla that, for over a hundred years, had been known almost exclusively for its dairy products but now is becoming more famous for its furniture.
“In the future, it will be furniture,” said José Armando Piloni, whose family has had the dairy farm for 38 years and the attached carpentry shop for 25. “The price of milk has dropped; people are consuming less. In two years, we will not have the dairy.”
Chipilo was settled in October 1882 by 38 families from the Veneto region in northern Italy who were enticed to move to Mexico by the government’s promise of free, fertile land. Soon after they arrived, they learned that the land wasn’t always free but it was good, and chipileños (as they’ve come to be called) settled down and started farms and dairies.
It seems like every other building lining Chipilo’s streets houses a dairy or carpentry shop, although the carpentry shops now greatly outnumber the dairies.
“Before there were probably 300 [dairies],” says Antonio Zaraín García, who opened one of the first large furniture factories in the pueblo. “Now, maybe 80 and many have transformed to making furniture.”
In Chipilo, dairy farms reigned for a century but have given way to carpentry.
Mexico has a long history of furniture-making.
“The Spaniards brought furniture from Spain to Mexico,” said José Eskawratz, the founder and CEO of Mexsol, a furniture exporting company. “Puebla was the first city in the Americas to make furniture. The first items were basic trunks. Of course, there was a lot of Spanish influence.”
Although artisans in Puebla have been making furniture for centuries, the first furniture factory in Chipilo didn’t open until 1970, and it wasn’t until 1982 that Zaraín García started his, which he called Segusino.
“Segusino is … the pueblo in Italy where about 20% of chipileños come from,” he explained. He began attending furniture shows in the U.S. and started exporting furniture, first to California, Washington and Dallas.
In the early 80s, a different style began to develop.
“The style changed to rustic furniture and wood,” said Zaraín García. “It was much stronger.”
Workers prepare metal frames for furniture at a Chipilo factory.
According to Eskawratz, that style has an American influence.
“Rustic furniture came out of the [Great] Depression,” he said. “Many Americans survived the Depression by making rustic furniture, putting it on the road in front of their houses and selling it. That’s what, in the 80s, was brought to Chipilo. The Chipilo style, if there is one, is traditional rustic with a wax finish and wrought-iron fittings. It’s solid, heavy furniture. In Chicago, they call this rustic style, ‘hungry furniture.’”
The fact that the style grew out of the Depression doesn’t mean it’s inexpensive.
“In Chipilo, all furniture is made by hand, and it costs more,” added Zaraín García. “A machine makes it perfect, but many people in Europe and the U.S. want furniture made by hand. People feel that it is more like the furniture they remember from their nonna [grandmother] or from the countryside. People value things more when they are made by hand.”
In addition to running Mexsol, Eskawratz has four furniture factories in Chipilo, the largest of which is Seguisino, which his father bought from Zaraín García in 2010. The Seguisino factory, which he renamed Muebles Rústicos y Forjados de Chipilo, is a whirl of activity. In one section, sparks fly as workers cut and weld metal strips together to make frames for the furniture while in others, dust hangs in the air as the wood is cut and assembled into furniture.
“We use pine from Chile, Brazil and Mexico [and] walnut and poplar from the U.S.,” says Eskawratz. “Old wood has been bought from the favelas (slums) in Brazil. They’re paid $10,000 for their shack, and then they build another house out of cinderblock.”
Flavio Stefanoni Merlo, left, plans to succeed his father Luís, a fourth-generation dairyman. He’ll be a dying breed in Chipilo.
The Seguisino factory alone employs 350 workers and ships out 3,000 to 4,000 pieces a week; his other two factories ship about 2,000 pieces a week each. He estimates that in Chipilo, a pueblo with a population of less than 4,000, about 30,000 people work in the furniture factories and carpentry shops, the workers coming from the 12 surrounding towns.
“Before, they were vaqueros [cowboys] and campesinos [farmers],” said Zaraín García. Now they’re furniture makers.
Although the larger factories dominate furniture manufacturing in Chipilo, there are about a dozen medium-sized ones. Eskawratz figures there are at least 200 small shops. Francisco García Castillo owns one of the small carpentry shops, located a mile or so outside of Chipilo’s town center. Although he never had cows, like many people in Chipilo, he did work in a dairy for some time.
“I have been a carpenter for 20 years,” he told me, “and have had this business for 10.”
He has seven employees and ships 50 or 60 pieces a week — mainly small bureaus and tables — to an exporter. Although his shop is small, he expects the furniture business in Chipilo to keep growing, and he hopes to expand his shop soon.
Piloni, who has both the carpentry shop and the dairy, is finding it increasingly difficult to sustain the latter. He doesn’t have enough land to grow forage, so he has to buy it, adding to his costs, and it’s difficult to find workers. He’d like to get out of the dairy business and put all his energy into furniture, but there’s a problem.
[wpgmza id=”243″]
“Right now there are no buyers, only sellers,” he says.
Still, despite the challenges, not everyone in Chipilo’s ready to give up on dairy. Luís Stefanoni Precoma’s dairy has been in his family for four generations, and if Flavio Stefanoni Merlo, his 17-year-old son, has his way, there will be a fifth.
“I will continue with the dairy,” Stefanoni Merlo said proudly. “It is a family tradition.”
The dairy has 300 cows, which he says is large for Chipilo. “You need that many to survive,” he explains.
He is unfazed at the information there are fewer dairies in the pueblo and that many of the owners were looking to transition to furniture-making.
“I believe we can continue. I believe we can grow.” After a pause, he added, “I do not think we will change to furniture.”
Joseph Sorrentino is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The previous federal government left office almost two years ago but some of the many corruption scandals that plagued it have life in them yet and could result in the imprisonment of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s right-hand man.
Media attention this week has focused on the so-called “Master Fraud” embezzlement scheme in which government departments allegedly diverted billions of pesos to shell companies via public universities.
The highest-profile former official who has been arrested in connection with the scheme is Rosario Robles, who served as both minister of social development and minister of agrarian development in Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 government.
A lawyer for Robles, who remains in custody in a Mexico City prison, claimed this week that former finance and foreign affairs minister Luis Videgaray was in charge of the fraud scheme and used it to divert public funds to political campaigns of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Sergio Arturo Ramírez said his client will cooperate with the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and provide details about Videgaray’s involvement.
His claims were met with a firm denial from the former finance minister, who also faces accusations of wrongdoing related to a corruption scheme involving Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
Robles, who was jailed over a year ago, took to Twitter on Tuesday (going online is apparently not a problem in the Santa Martha prison) to announce that she had agreed to become a “collaborating witness” in the “Master Fraud” case.
“For now it’s the only thing I can say. … I’ve instructed my lawyers to abide by the legal process. What I must say is that I will speak the truth,” she wrote.
Robles added that she had asked her lawyers to seek an agreement with the authorities, apparently indicating that she is prepared to talk in exchange for acquittal or a reduction in any jail sentence she might receive.
“There will surely be those who deny the facts but the proof will speak [for itself],” she wrote.
Robles’ decision to cooperate with authorities came after it was revealed that she would face organized crime and money laundering charges in addition to being accused of improper exercise of public office.
Perhaps complicating her attempt to get out of jail are claims made by Emilio Zebadúa Gonzále, who was a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Ministry of Social Development (Sedesol) when it was led by Robles.
According to the newspaper El Universal, Zebadúa – who is also accused of involvement in the “Master Fraud” – told the FGR that Robles met with colleagues every week to plot the diversion of public funds via the embezzlement scheme.
Emilio Zebadúa claims that weekly meetings were held to plot the diversion of public funds.
Zebadúa also told the FGR that Robles and former Sedesol chief Ramón Sosamontes personally received cash that shell companies had received from public universities that were awarded government contracts.
The former official said that Sedesol and the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Urban Planning, which Robles headed up in the second half of the previous government’s term, diverted more than 1.2 billion pesos.
Zebadúa said Robles told him that Videgaray had explained to her that Sedesol needed to divert resources to pay for debts incurred and arrangements made during Peña Nieto’s 2012 presidential campaign. Videgaray was the ex-president’s campaign manager.
Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya, who also worked on Peña Nieto’s campaign, has accused the former finance minister of striking corrupt agreements with Odebrecht in order to obtain millions of dollars in funding for the 2012 presidential bid.
“I deeply regret that Rosario Robles is baselessly choosing to accuse me to try to get out of her legal situation,” he said in a statement posted to his Twitter account.
Videgaray said that he understands the “extraordinarily difficult” situation Robles is in but asserted that “desperation cannot be justification for lying and incriminating innocent people.”
“That mustn’t be the path to obtain her freedom,” he wrote.
“Rosario Robles can say many things but what she won’t be able to do is prove lies. I didn’t have any participation, direct or indirect, in the so-called Master Fraud,” Videgaray said.
“As a public servant I always acted within the legal framework and the only evidence that has emerged against me with respect to the alleged diversion of public resources are statements of people [Robles and Lozoya] who want to evade responsibility,” he wrote.
“I was never the boss of Rosario Robles. As cabinet colleagues we were equals – there was never a relationship of subordination between us. Neither her nor her co-workers received instructions from me.”
Despite his denials, government officials who spoke with the newspaper Milenio say the FGR already has sufficient evidence against Videgaray for him to go to jail. Information to be provided by Robles is only expected to strengthen the Attorney General’s Office’s case.
President López Obrador said earlier this month that the FGR had sought an arrest warrant for Videgaray in connection with the Odebrecht case but was blocked by a judge. It is currently preparing a new warrant request for the former cabinet minister, who – according to the statement he issued Tuesday – remains in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
However, it is not currently seeking to arrest the former president. There is a possibility that the FGR could seek to do so if a majority of citizens vote in favor of putting past presidents on trial for alleged wrongdoings at a referendum planned for next year.
