Revised figures show zero growth in second quarter, -0.3% in first

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August 23, 2019

Economic growth came to a standstill in the second quarter, according to revised data released on Friday, meaning that Mexico avoided a technical recession by an even narrower margin than previously thought.

The statistics agency Inegi said that growth was 0.0% between April and June. Preliminary figures released at the end of July showed that the economy had grown by 0.1%.

Weaker GDP figures for the industrial sector than those previously reported were responsible for the downward adjustment.

Growth figures for the first quarter of the year were also revised downward by 0.1%, meaning that the economy contracted by 0.3%, and not 0.2% as previously reported.

Economists generally define a technical recession as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

However, the chief Latin America economist for Credit Suisse said the terminology used to describe the economy was of little importance.

“. . . The last three quarters have had variations of +0.1% [growth], -0.3% and 0.0%. Let’s forget about whether it’s called a technical recession or not. This economy has now been stagnant for a long time,” Alonso Cervera wrote on Twitter.

Asked about the latest data this morning, President López Obrador said he wasn’t overly worried.

“We’re concerned about growth, but we’re more concerned about development. Growth is creating wealth and development is creating wealth and distributing that wealth,” he said.

“Now there is growth and better income distribution, people have more purchasing power, most Mexicans. That’s why I’m not very concerned about the matter.”

The president maintained that the economy can still grow at 2% this year.

“The growth expectation doesn’t change because we’re going very well, very different to what the experts think . . .” López Obrador said.

Inegi’s latest data increases the likelihood that the Bank of México will cut interest rates for a second successive time when its board meets next month.

The central bank cut rates for the first time in five years this month, citing slowing economic growth and lower inflation.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

No justice for Yucatán beekeepers a year after massive die-off

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MND Staff

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August 22, 2019

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It appears that there will be no justice for beekeepers in a Mayan community in Tizimín, Yucatán, whose bees died off en masse in July 2018 after a nearby farm was sprayed with pesticide.

Bees belonging to more than 30 beekeepers in Dzonot Carretero were allegedly affected by the aerial spraying of corn and soybean crops on a property owned by the agro-industrialist Jacobo Xacur.

Seven beekeepers filed a complaint against Xacur with the environmental protection agency, Profepa, while the remainder decided not to take action out of fear of reprisal because they have relatives who work on farms owned by the agricultural entrepreneur.

Beekeepers waited months for Profepa officials to arrive in Dzonot Carretero to collect samples of dead bees from their hives, which through testing they were confident would show that they died due to pesticide exposure.

However, according to the apiarists, the officials never showed up.

Nevertheless, Profepa announced in May that the case was closed and that no action would be taken against Xacur.

“Profepa says that the matter was closed but never, never, did we receive a visit from them [yet] they allege that there was no environmental damage,” Marco Cupul told the newspaper Milenio.

“It was a crime because [the helicopter pesticide spraying] didn’t just harm the bees, it also damaged squash, watermelon, bean and chile crops . . . and all that means a [financial] loss to farmers,” he added.

Another beekeeper, a 67-year-old man identified only as Elviro, lost all 40 of his bee colonies and along with them an investment of 120,000 pesos (US $6,000).

“More than a year has passed since July [2018] . . . but nothing has been resolved,” he said, explaining that he is now in a difficult financial situation.

“Who’s going to pay us?” asked José Isabel Uc Puc, a beekeeper who was incredulous that Profepa could declare that the spraying of pesticide didn’t cause any environmental damage.

“Don’t they see that bees died, don’t they see that trees and flora were destroyed?”

Source: Milenio (sp)

3 airlines suspected in Mexico City airport customs corruption

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MND Staff

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August 22, 2019

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Customs agents inspect a big seizure of pirated goods in April.

Customs authorities have identified three cargo airlines that are believed to be bringing pirated goods into the country via the Mexico City International Airport (AICM).

The three airlines are Cargolux of Luxembourg, Cathay Pacific Cargo of Hong Kong and Panalpina of Switzerland but it is unclear whether authorities have initiated investigations aimed at prosecuting them for bringing illegal goods into Mexico.

The newspaper El Universal reported that customs authorities identified the airlines as smugglers of counterfeit goods during an inspection operation carried out in April at 18 locations across the country including the Mexico City airport.

Authorities also identified three warehouses where the pirated goods are stored prior to dispatch and seized more than 45 tonnes of counterfeit merchandise including clothes, shoes, watches, jewelry, bags and mobile phone accessories.

Customs said that the seized goods had a value of around 200 million pesos (US $10.1 million) on the black market.

El Universal said in another report published Tuesday that the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) is investigating a network within the General Customs Administration that during the past three months has allegedly relaxed the inspection of goods entering Mexico via the AICM.

According to information obtained by the newspaper, complicity between several criminal groups and corrupt customs employees has facilitated the illegal import of weapons, drugs and counterfeit goods.

In the same period, there was a marked reduction in the collection at the airport of value-added taxes that should be applied to both imports and exports.

The FGR has six active investigations against current and former customs officials at the AICM, while 18 former customs employees have already been prosecuted for corruption during the administration of the federal government.

Widespread corruption within customs led to a proposal from the Secretariat of National Defense for retired military personnel to take up leadership positions at customs offices. The Federal Tax Administration (SAT), which has responsibility for customs, agreed to the idea last month.

However, experts warn that not even former military personnel are immune from the influence of criminal organizations that operate at the nation’s airports, ports and border crossings.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Lamborghini in Mexico City crash was reported stolen in 2017

By

Simon Schatzberg

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August 22, 2019

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The 2011 Lamborghini Gallardo that was totaled and abandoned in the Mexico City neighborhood of Roma last week was reported stolen and was likely connected to a car theft operation involving over 10 vehicles.

According to Mexico City prosecutors, the car was stolen in a violent carjacking in November 2017 in Guadalajara.

At the time of the crash, the vehicle was using a false registration number, which was discovered when it was taken to a police station.

Sources at the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (PGJ) said that they had spoken to a lawyer for the owner of the car, who could be held responsible for the damage to public property that occurred in the crash. The car’s owner could also face charges for receiving stolen property.

Police are also looking into the possibility that the driver at the time of the crash was the thief himself.

The theft might be connected to a serial fraudster who is facing more than 10 criminal investigations.

The suspect is a 25-year-old man who identified himself with the names Jussif Alejandro Marroquín, Abraham Campos Sanabria and Juan Carlos Parra. Police say that his scheme consists of posing as the son of a wealthy businessman to defraud used vehicle sellers, whom he would pay with bad checks.

Using that strategy, he was able to steal a BMW in Cancún, as well as a Mercedes Benz and a Harley-Davidson in Mexico City.

In 2018, he was arrested for the 2010 theft of a Porsche Panamera Turbo in Puebla, but was released several months later.

A photo of the Lamborghini has appeared on social media along with a man identified as “Guillermo” or “Soto Memín” who is carrying a gun in his waistband. He is suspected to be a member of the theft ring.

Source: Reforma (sp), Excélsior (sp)

Celso Piña, a musical legend, dies of heart attack at 66

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MND Staff

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August 22, 2019

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Celso Piña, a cumbia music legend who was known as “the rebel of the accordion,” died on Wednesday in his home town of Monterrey, Nuevo León.

The singer, songwriter, composer and accordionist passed away in the San Vicente Hospital after suffering a heart attack. He was 66.

Piña’s record label, La Tuna Records, announced the death in a brief statement.

“With deep pain, we communicate the unexpected departure of the maestro Celso Piña who passed away today [Wednesday] in Monterrey at 12:38pm from a heart attack,” the statement said.

“Our deepest condolences to his family, friends and fans. We’re left with an intense void but he leaves us a great musical legacy . . . Rest in peace, Celso Piña, Rebel of the Accordion.”

No hay quien se resista a la cumbia.
Celso Piña – Cumbia Sobre el Río Suena (En Vivo feat Pato Machete) https://t.co/ytNMROPbXA

— Celso Piña (@CelsoOficial) August 21, 2019

Born in Monterrey in 1953, Piña was put to work when he was just seven years old collecting discarded fruit from bins at supermarkets and in wealthy neighborhoods of the city before cleaning what he found and reselling it in his own neighborhood.

He also worked as a tortilla delivery boy, smelter, corn miller and upholsterer in his early years before he started playing his first instrument – the güiro, a percussion instrument – at the age of 15.

“I can’t say that I was attracted to music since I was a child because it’s not true,” Piña once said in an interview.

“What I did find out later on is that I had a good ear for music but like many others who have a good ear, I could have lived my whole life without knowing it.”

The discovery of his talent was just the beginning for Piña, who went on to become a pioneer in the fusion of the tropical sounds of cumbia with a range of other genres including norteña, ska, reggae, rap, pop and hip-hop.

After buying his first accordion in 1980, the instrument with which he will forever be associated, Piña began playing music with his brothers before forming the band Celso Piña y su Ronda Bogotá with whom he would record songs such as La Cumbia de la Paz, Como El Viento and a cover of La Piragua by José Barros.

During a long career, he collaborated with musicians as diverse as Café Tacuba, Ely Guerra, Natalia Lafourcade, Lila Downs, Gloria Trevi, Grupo Pesado and Control Machete, among others.

All told, Piña recorded 27 albums, the last of which was a 2017 collaboration with the Baja California orchestra.

In 2002, he was nominated for two Grammy awards in the best contemporary tropical album and best alternative artist categories, while in 2004 he played at an event in Monterrey attended by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez.

The author and his wife, Mercedes Barcha, “danced like they were in the clouds, as a Colombian cumbia should be danced,” Piña said in a 2014 interview.

The last time Piña played in public was at the Surf Music Fest in Acapulco, Guerrero, on July 4, but he was booked to perform concerts in both the United States and Mexico later this month and in September.

There can be no doubting that he was enamored by his craft right to the end of his prolific creative life.

“There is no one who can resist cumbia,” Piña wrote on Twitter just hours before he died in a post that included a video of him performing with Mexican rapper Pato Machete.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Tropical Storm Ivo closes schools, ports on Pacific coast

By

Cody Copeland

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August 22, 2019

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Heavy rains and high winds caused by Tropical Storm Ivo forced the closure of schools, ports and tourism services along Mexico’s Pacific coast Thursday morning.

Residents of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, woke to flooding after 89.4 millimeters of rain fell overnight, 10 millimeters more than the area has received all year. Winds reached speeds of 50 kilometers per hour.

Civil Protection personnel and municipal police evacuated around 50 people from flooded homes, according to government sources.

Mazatlán Civil Protection coordinator Eloy Ruiz Gastélum stated that there had been no need for temporary shelters, and all those who were evacuated were staying with family to wait out the flooding.

He urged residents to stay in their homes unless absolutely necessary.

In Baja California Sur, the Cabo San Lucas harbormaster closed the port at noon, and tourist service providers were forced to suspend operations.

Officials expected the storm to dump 85 to 125 millimeters of rain in Los Cabos on Thursday.

The National Meteorological Service (SMN) reported that Ivo will continue to bring rain to Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima and Michoacán until Saturday.

The Cabo San Lucas harbormaster expected the port to resume normal functions on Saturday.

Sources: El Sol de La Laguna (sp), BCS Noticias (sp), Por Los Pasillos (sp)

Opposition to Santa Lucía airport politically motivated: AMLO

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MND Staff

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August 22, 2019

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The president told reporters he was happy and relaxed despite injunctions against new airport.

President López Obrador claimed today that legal opposition to the Santa Lucía airport is politically motivated, asserting that opponents of his government “don’t want the transformation” he is bringing to Mexico.

“They want us to look bad . . . for the airport not to be built,” López Obrador told reporters at his morning press conference.

The president said that “there is no reason” for the opposition, pointing out that the site where the airport will be built has been used as an air force base for 60 years.

The only motivation is “political,” López Obrador charged.

The president reiterated his claim that the injunction requests against the airport filed by the #NoMásDerroches (No More Waste) Collective – a group made up of civil society organizations, law firms and more than 100 citizens – amount to “legal sabotage.”

“All the lawyers of conservatism” are involved in the legal action, López Obrador said, implying that they were supporters of the past “neoliberal” governments against which he frequently rails.

“Even the association of Claudio X. González, who has always had differences with us,” is supporting the legal action, the president said in reference to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, one of the #NoMásDerroches members.

“. . . Mr. Claudio X. González . . . was an advisor to [former president Carlos] Salinas and a promoter of the policies of privatization,” López Obrador added.

The collective has already been granted several injunctions against the Santa Lucía project including one issued by a judge yesterday that overruled the environmental authorization granted by the Environment Secretariat in July.

A lawyer for the collective said in June that reviving the abandoned Mexico City airport project at Texcoco is “legally possible.”

López Obrador today acknowledged that as many as 147 separate injunction requests have been filed against the Santa Lucía airport but expressed confidence that the government will be able to overcome them.

The president said that when he was mayor of Mexico City his government faced legal opposition against the plan to build the elevated road network known as the Segundo Piso, explaining that the main injunction was filed by “a great lawyer, an outstanding lawyer” but was nevertheless defeated.

Now, he charged, “there might be a lot of injunctions but the lawyers aren’t so good.”

The president doubled down on his decision to cancel the previous government’s airport project at Texcoco, asserting that its completion would cost much more than the estimated 300 billion pesos (US $15 billion).

López Obrador scrapped the project after a legally questionable public consultation.

“The criminal association between the economic power and political power is over. The government is for everyone, not for a faction, that’s the change . . .” he said today.

“. . . We’re not going to give in, we’re going to continue to confront all this questioning without losing our heads, without authoritarian acts, respecting the judicial power, enforcing the rule of law . . . There’s no need to get angry. We’re happy, happy, happy, relaxed, relaxed, relaxed.”

Source: Reforma (sp)

Protection program for journalists, rights defenders unsustainable: UN

By

Simon Schatzberg

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August 22, 2019

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press — 'Press, don't shoot,' reads the banner held by journalists during a protest calling for justice.

A government program to protect journalists and human rights defenders is plagued by underfunding, bad management and a lack of coordination, according to a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR).

The report found that the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which was created in 2012, has a budget of 207.6 million pesos (US $10.5 million) for 2019, enough to cover only 64% of the projected costs for the year, and less than it received in 2018 and 2017.

The scheme was providing protection to 903 people by April 30 of this year, a number that is expected to rise to 1,131 by the end of the year, with a projected cost of 325 million pesos. Of those receiving protection, 582 are human rights defenders, while the remaining 321 are journalists.

On April 4, the Interior Secretariat requested an additional 150 million pesos for the program, but there has been no word on the outcome.

The OHCHR report predicts that there will be approximately 3,400 people needing protection by 2024, and warned that as the number of beneficiaries grows, the program will become inefficient and unsustainable.

“To guarantee a more effective functioning of the Mechanism, the Mexican state should make sure that it receives the necessary human, economic and material resources so that its functionaries can fulfill their mandate of protection,” said the report.

With 36 employees, the program is also understaffed, according to the report. The employees responsible for reevaluations have an average case load of 155 beneficiaries and as of April 24, the program was three months behind on reevaluations and evaluations.

In its recommendations to the government, the OHCHR joined the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in calling for the transparency and functioning of the program to be improved.

Source: El Economista (sp)

6 Federal Police arrested for murder in connection with 2015 massacre

By

Cody Copeland

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August 22, 2019

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Police on patrol at the Apatzingán municipal palace in 2015.

Six Federal Police officers have been arrested for murder in connection with a 2015 massacre at Apatzingán, Michoacán.

The clash between citizens who had taken over the Apatzingán municipal headquarters and the Mexican military and Federal Police on January 6 left 16 people dead and many more wounded.

After the killings there were conflicting reports about the occupation of the municipal offices including a claim that the occupants were members of the Viagras crime gang.

But the subsequent investigation found those inside the building were actually unarmed civilians.

A human rights commission report later the same year found that Federal Police used excessive force, resulting in the deaths of five people and the extrajudicial execution of another.

The federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) said yesterday the Federal Police force gave full cooperation and facilitated the arrests.

“The six people were detained with complete respect for their human rights, without violence or impact on third parties, in order to be brought before the judge,” said the Attorney General’s Office.

Some officers denounced the arrests of their colleagues, claiming they were deceived, having been summoned to Federal Police facilities without being given a reason.

The six suspects are among dissident police who have protested against their transfer to the National Guard.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Highway checkpoint nets 24,000 turtle eggs in Oaxaca

By

Cody Copeland

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August 22, 2019

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Environmental officers and state police have seized 24,000 olive ridley turtle eggs at a checkpoint on Highway 200 near Salina Cruz, Oaxaca.

The seizure occurred during the second arrival of turtles for the 2019-2020 nesting season on the beach at Morro Ayuta, one of the most important nesting sites in the world for the olive ridley marine turtle.

The federal environmental protection agency, Profepa, said 48 black plastic bags containing 24,000 fresh eggs were found during the search of a vehicle.

Officers also seized the vehicle and arrested its driver, suspected to be one the chief traffickers in turtle eggs in the region.

“This seizure is one of the largest we have carried out,” Profepa said. “What’s more, the person [apprehended] is apparently a repeat offender and presumably one of the largest gatherers and distributors of turtle eggs in the region.”

The maximum penalty for trafficking in turtle eggs is nine years in prison and a fine of up to 300,000 pesos (US $15,000).

Although the law protecting turtles is enforced along the Pacific coast of Oaxaca and in most of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, officials turn a blind eye to turtle egg commerce in Juchitán, where the eggs are openly sold in street markets.

Although this year’s seizure was large, it was not the largest this year. Officials seized 47,000 turtle eggs near Mazunte, Oaxaca, earlier this month.

Source: Reforma (sp)