The war between two cartels vying over territory in the state of Guanajuato continued on the weekend with the execution of a high-ranking member of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel.
The body of Adolfo “El Michoacano” Mendoza Valencia was found hanging from a highway overpass. Mendoza appeared in a video on social media on the weekend, bound to a chair and surrounded by heavily armed individuals wearing uniforms bearing the Jalisco New Generation Cartel insignia, “CJNG.”
One of them interrogates the semi-nude Mendoza, who admits he sold drugs in Valle de Santiago, where gunmen assaulted a police station on Friday, killing five prisoners and freeing another.
The voice on the video announces that the cartel had arrived in Valle de Santiago.
‘To everyone in the Valle de Santiago, we are the elite group of the four letters . . . We come to clean the municipality of all the plague, extortionists, kidnappers and killers of innocent people. A clear example, here we have the Michoacano, who was the head of the Valle de Santiago turf . . .
“We are coming for you, you filthy Marro, and all of your filthy people, those who entered the Valle de Santiago police station and killed innocent people.”
“Marro” is José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez Ortiz, leader of the Santa Rosa cartel, which is believed to have been behind Friday’s assault on the police station.
Police say Julio César Santiago “N,” a judge in the municipality of Valle de Santiago, gave information to the group that attacked the prison.
He was ordered held in preventative custody.
Guanajuato police announced that they have also arrested one of the participants in the assault. Luis Ángel “N” is accused of throwing bombs at the police station.
Torrential rains last night brought flooding in two municipalities in México state, damaging property and leaving vehicles under water.
Intense rains accompanied by hail began at 6:00pm in Atizapán de Zaragoza and lasted for an hour and a half, dumping 50 milliliters per hour of water onto the municipality. The deluge caused the Moritas river to spill over its banks, flooding the municipal sports club and Zaragoza Theater, along with several homes.
Elsewhere in the municipality, floodwaters mixed with wastewater and engulfed the ground floor of the Salvador González Herrejón General Hospital. The Atizapán-Nicolás Romero highway was also inundated near the municipality’s warehouse district, submerging vehicles and cutting off traffic.
To minimize the damage brought on by the flooding, the municipal government activated an emergency flood plan supported by 200 government employees, drainage trucks and other heavy equipment.
In Cuautitlán Izcalli, local authorities were forced to carry out a “controlled” release of water from the Ángulo Dam after it reached capacity.
The resulting floodwaters rushed into homes in several neighborhoods and submerged vehicles. In one instance, police came to the rescue of a man and woman whose van was left under water.
Authorities have seized 47,000 sea turtle eggs from a building near Mazunte, a popular beach destination between Puerto Escondido and Oaxaca and once the site of a turtle slaughterhouse.
Oaxaca Public Security Secretary Ernesto Salcedo said the seizure is the largest in recent years, and was achieved after an investigation in which the National Guard participated.
Four people were arrested for environmental crimes.
Nereo García, Oaxaca delegate for the environmental protection agency Profepa, said that illegal collection of sea turtle eggs from nests on beaches in Oaxaca is a problem, and that some egg traffickers are protected by municipal authorities.
In recent years the military has actively patrolled Oaxaca’s beaches, where thousands of turtles arrive annual to lay their eggs in the sand.
García added that he thinks a new culture of protection of sea turtles needs to be created.
Federal law states that anyone who illegally captures, injures or kills a sea turtle or marine mammal or any of its products can be punished with a prison term of between one and nine years. If the offense was committed in a protected area or was done for commercial purposes, an extra three years can be added to the sentence.
The clinic built to treat victims is to shut down on Tuesday.
Five years after a massive toxic spill into two rivers in Sonora by a Grupo México copper mine, residents of affected communities accuse the company of failing to keep its promises to remedy the environmental damage and build water purification plants.
More than 40,000 cubic meters of toxic substances, particularly copper sulfate acid solution, spilled into the Sonora and Bacanuchi rivers on August 6, 2014, at the Buenavista copper mine in Cananea.
The incident, described by environmental authorities as Mexico’s worst mining disaster, contaminated the local water supply, affecting an estimated 22,000 people in seven municipalities.
Hundreds of people have suffered from serious spill-related health problems.
In affected communities, there are elevated numbers of cases of cancer and hypertension along with increased reports of liver, kidney, pancreas and nervous system issues.
Sonora river after the 2014 spill.
Grupo México, the country’s largest mining corporation, established a 2-billion-peso trust to carry out projects to remedy the damage and pay compensation to victims but it was shut down in February 2017 with only 1.2 billion pesos having been spent.
Affected communities have now initiated legal action in the Supreme Court have the trust reopened until all the promised projects have been completed.
Residents say that many of the water purification plants that were promised have not been built and that Grupo México only completed environmental remediation projects on one of five stretches of river where it committed to doing so.
They also say that a clinic established to treat people suffering from heavy metal poisoning will shut down today as the result of an agreement Grupo México reached with the former government behind their backs.
Luis Miguel Cano, a legal representative for the victims, said the pact violates the law because residents of affected communities were not consulted.
Residents say that if their legal action to reopen the trust is successful, Grupo México will not only have to spend the additional 800 million pesos it pledged but also provide details about the how the 1.2 billion pesos was used.
Irene Moiza, a resident of the town of Bacanuchi, said the last five years have been filled with uncertainty and anxiety because she doesn’t know whether the local water supply and the crops she grows are contaminated.
She said her animals have died without any explanation and charged that Grupo México has not been held responsible for the spill.
Baskut Tuncak, a United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes, said last year that the company’s failure to remediate the damage caused by its spill was a “shameless and flagrant example of impunity.”
Óscar Encinas, a small-plot farmer in Ures, said the copper mine spill has destroyed people’s lives, explaining that the economy has slumped by 70%. He explained that the squash, alfalfa and wheat grown in the region can’t find a market due to contamination concerns.
As residents continued to fight for justice, a collective of independent journalists made a documentary about the spill that investigates its effect on the environment and local residents.
Called Río Sonora: Impunidad y Olvido (Sonora River: Impunity and Oblivion), the film serves as a counterweight to authorities’ attempts to conceal the consequences of the 2014 environmental disaster, the journalists say.
To mark the fifth anniversary of the acid spill, the documentary premiered yesterday in the Sonora capital, Hermosillo.
Efforts to combat extreme poverty made few gains between 2008 and 2018, new statistics show.
Data released today by Coneval, the social development agency, shows that 16.8% of the Mexican population last year was considered to be living below the extreme poverty line based on their income, the same figure as 10 years earlier.
That means that the number of people in that situation – one in which their income is insufficient to purchase the food required to have adequate nutrition – increased from 18.7 million to 21 million in the 10-year period.
According to the World Bank, Mexico’s population increased to 126.2 million from 110.8 million in the same period.
The number of people living in absolute extreme poverty declined from 12.3 million in 2008, 11% of the population, to 9.3 million or 7.4% of residents in 2018.
A person is considered to be living in absolute extreme poverty if they suffer from deficiencies in at least three of six areas – education, access to healthcare, access to social security services, access to adequate nutrition, adequate housing and access to basic services in their housing.
Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty declined in percentage terms but rose in raw figures.
In 2008, 49.5 million people or 44.4% of the population were considered to be impoverished whereas 10 years later 52.4 million Mexicans or 41.9% of residents were in the same situation.
Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca had the highest percentage of residents living in situations of poverty while Nuevo León and Coahuila had the least.
Coneval data also painted a dramatic picture of income inequality in Mexico.
Families in the highest income decile of the population had an average quarterly income of 166,750 pesos (US $8,500 at today’s exchange rate) in 2018 whereas those in the bottom 10% earned 9,113 pesos (US $460) on average in a three-month period.
The latter amount is just 5.5%, or 18 times less, than the income enjoyed by the richest 10% of Mexicans.
President López Obrador has announced that the government will invite retired doctors to apply for positions in public hospitals plagued by personnel shortages.
“There are vacancies in the social security [healthcare sector] that are not filled . . . There will be a call-out for all doctors, not only so that they have work and earn well but also so that they help us to provide health care for the people,” the president said during a weekend visit to rural regions of México state.
López Obrador said that retired doctors who “still have strength” will have the opportunity to resume their medical careers by signing six-year contracts.
He explained that doctors who take up positions in rural areas will be paid more than those who work in cities.
The president also said that 80,000 healthcare employees currently holding replacement or contract positions will be afforded the opportunity to obtain permanent employment status although he conceded that it wouldn’t happen overnight.
In addition, López Obrador pledged that the government will improve hospital infrastructure and purchase new medical equipment using an additional 40 billion pesos (US $2 billion) that will be allocated to the public healthcare sector in 2020.
Appearing alongside México state Governor Alfredo del Mazo, the president said the government has developed a good working relationship with the leaders of all of Mexico’s 32 states.
“I’m pleased that in the case of México state and in other states, but here in a very prominent way, we have a very good relationship with the governor. We’re working together and that’s the way we’re going to continue.”
The president remains popular despite concerns over security and the economy.
A new poll shows that President López Obrador’s approval rating is holding steady and strong at 66%.
For the third month in a row, the president has found support among two-thirds of respondents to the monthly survey conducted by the newspaper El Financiero.
The percentage of respondents who disapproved of López Obrador’s performance was unchanged between May and July at 32%.
Although the president’s approval rating remains strong, it is 20 points short of the 86% support he garnered in the newspaper’s February poll, which came after the government’s crackdown on fuel theft.
And it is just below the 70% approval rating López Obrador attracted in a poll carried out by the newspaper Reforma last month.
The 66% rating is one point better than that achieved by former National Action Party presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón at the end of the second quarter of their first year in office.
Ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto had a 52% approval rating at the end of July 2013.
In terms of personal qualities, López Obrador scored best for honesty and leadership. Almost six in 10 respondents said that his performance in the former area was very good or good, while 53% said the same about the latter.
Less flattering for the president is that only 47% of respondents said that they mostly or somewhat believe what he says whereas 51% said that they have very limited or no faith in the veracity of López Obrador’s statements.
Despite the strong overall rating for the president, his government’s approach to dealing with key issues failed to impress most poll respondents.
The López Obrador administration fared best on education, with 35% of those polled saying that the government is doing well in the area.
The poll: ‘In general, do you approve or disapprove of the job President López Obrador is doing?’ In blue the approval numbers, in red the opposite and in black, don’t know. el financiero
However, 38% said that the government is doing badly on education issues, while 25% said that the performance was neither good nor bad.
The percentage of respondents who said that the government is doing badly exceeded those who said that the government is doing well on all other issues probed by El Financiero.
One-third of respondents said the government is dealing with public security issues well but 42% said that its performance was bad.
One-third of respondents also said the government’s response to welfare issues was good but 44% said otherwise
The positive/negative assessments of the government’s performance were 28% and 51% respectively for healthcare, 27% and 41% for infrastructure projects and 23% and 51% for the economy.
Hospitals have been plagued by shortages of medications and personnel this year, none of the government’s signature infrastructure projects – the Santa Lucía airport, the Dos Bocas refinery and the Maya Train – have made much progress and the economy only narrowly avoided entering a technical recession by recording 0.1% growth in the second quarter of the year.
Just over half of respondents said that economic growth was more important than the distribution of wealth while 43% said the opposite.
President López Obrador has stressed recently that his government is not aiming for growth for growth’s sake but rather to be in a position to distribute wealth more equitably.
Despite the government putting the fight against corruption at the center of its agenda, only 21% of respondents said that its approach to dealing with the problem was good compared to 62% who said it was bad.
Just one in six poll respondents said the government is responding well to combating poverty whereas almost six in 10 said it is doing badly.
More than seven in 10 said they disagreed with the government’s plan to deliver economic aid to Central American countries while just 27% said they supported it.
The government performed better with regard to the “decisions and actions” it has taken.
Six in 10 respondents said they had a favorable view of the creation and deployment of the National Guard while just 25% said that they had an unfavorable view of the new force.
More than half of respondents supported López Obrador’s daily news conferences while only a quarter were opposed, while similar percentages of people indicated that they were in favor and opposed, respectively, to the government’s implementation of austerity measures.
More than six in 10 respondents said they would vote for López Obrador to continue as president in a revocation of mandate vote, which López Obrador has pledged to hold three years into his six-year term, but 70% said that they were opposed to him being reelected as president, for which an amendment to the constitution would be required.
Asked whether Mexico was on a good or bad path under his leadership, 49% of respondents said the former and 45% the latter.
El Financiero conducted its poll nationally with 820 adults during two three-day periods in July. The newspaper said the survey has a margin of error of +/-3.4%.
Over a span of a decade and a half after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, a high school classmate and I borrowed another schoolmate’s car in Prague and crisscrossed eastern Europe, crowning that series of epic summers with a moonshot to Syria. Yes, that Syria.
The old coot is still traveling with me and is now 77. I am 76. We’re not ready for Golden Pond yet but maybe Copper Pond or Silver Pond.
These days we are retired and restless and bored and unbalanced enough to have driven three different Toyota Camrys, one Corolla and one GEO (Corolla) to my home in Guatemala. (1) Brownsville, Texas, to Guatemala in a 1988 Camry wagon; (2) Laredo TX to Guatemala in a 1993 Camry CE (Toyota’s somewhat rare and much underrated base model); (3) San Diego to Guatemala via Baja in a 2000 Camry CE; (4) San Diego to Guatemala in a 1993 GEO; and (5) Piedras Negras to Guatemala in a 1996 Corolla acquired from a Saudi Arabian SEAL, leaving the very evening of the day I took the keys to, as he put it “take care of an east coast Shiite problem” as in Iran/Yemen.
We learned a lot. Here are some of the things we learned: Toyota, AutoZone and Baja Bound Insurance are the best dish in Mexico.
• Don’t pack the trunk too full, there’s a spare tire in there somewhere and you are going to need it. Keeping the jack handle under the seat is a bad idea.
• It’s true that the fuel pump, however, is underneath the back seat.
• The Robin Hood peasants who have seized control of several toll booths are our friends and allies, even though they don’t take credit cards.
• Mexican cops still unscrew license plates. Bring epoxy for the screw heads to slow them down.
• There are millions of auto mechanics in Mexico. Their advice is free and you’re gonna need it. Every Mexican female’s DNA contains a tamal. Every Mexican man’s DNA contains a mechanic’s set of tools. Open a hood and you are in an instant operating theater, with specialists crowding around.
• Thank God for AutoZone. Their orange and white signs in Mexico are a slice of America, comfort food like Motel 6 in the lodging business north of the border.
• Sanctuary. A Mexican AutoZone on a Sunday is like the cafe in Lake Wobegon or any hardware store in West Texas on a Saturday morning. If Magellan had had AutoZone for backup, all of his ships would have made it around the world and he might still be going.
Thank you, God, for AutoZone.
• If you remember The Pit and the Pendulum from high school you know why at all costs you don’t want to see the inside of a Mexican jail. Thanks to Baja Bound, the San Diego-based agency for Mexico’s super modern and reliable HDI Insurance, we could sleep soundly.
• If you browse the internet you will flinch, stay home and miss out on all the fun but we have 130 million amigos in Mexico and you need not fear. Sixty-five million are mechanics. Well, maybe a few women, too.
• We didn’t see any sign of narcos but stayed one night in the town where uber-drug lord “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzmán was caught at the end of the tunnel leading away from underneath the refrigerator. Worth a repeat visit.
• Mexico doesn’t really want U.S. tourists, at least by car. There’s even a special building in Nuevo Laredo for “Repatriation of Human Remains.” Sometimes it’s better not to read Spanish, but if this scares you, just don’t go.
• There is no pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow on the map called Guatemala. Now that President Trump has finished ironing out the kinks in NAFTA, he should turn his attention to Guatemala’s CAFTA, which can turn a 40% duty into 200%.
• One fuel pump, four shock/strut assemblies, two windshield wipers, one starter motor, one radiator flush, one rewound armature and a hell of a lot of fun are a pretty decent tally for 6,000 or so miles and hundreds of speed bumps. Thank you, God, for AutoZone. Especially the four-for-the-price-of-three shocks/struts. I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, and again.
• Mexican paperwork is a nuisance and the green folded paper with the numbers in the corners doesn’t work anymore.
• Toyota understates the abilities of its intrepid Camrys. And they are Made in Kentucky, USA. MAGA Toyota USA.
Why Camry?
In our eastern European madness, we drove a SEAT Malaga of indeterminate age, learning only belatedly that it was really a VW, which may explain why over 15 years we didn’t even have to change a light bulb. I don’t know where it is now but sealed up and strapped on a rocket it would make an excellent space shuttle although I hate to give Elon Musk any more good ideas.
The Camrys have been equally reliable. Cheap on Craig’s List, gas-thrifty, comfortable, four out of five with AC, who could ask for anything more? Plus, in theory they are readily saleable in Guatemala if touted as “recently brought down from the USA.” Fool’s gold. Auto pyrite, as it turns out.
Who were the drivers?
The old guy took shop in high school and often holds that over my head. I didn’t take shop, since I was college-bound and Mom wouldn’t let me. Actually his early training came into play when on a hot, hot day at reasonably high speed just north of hot, hot Monterrey the engine stalled.
He mumbled “vapor lock,” pulled over for a minute and we were on our way. An impress-your-date trick. Shop-doc went to Stanford and then to medical school. No-shop me went elsewhere. Go figure. I shoulda took shop.
I think he also went to a Montessori kindergarten, since he is obsessively/compulsively neat. This is important in packing a car, which should never be done by two or more people but as many as possible when unpacking to find the spare tire in a hurry or a fuel pump. There, speed is more important.
I’m not so fussy a packer, always figuring that one more something will fit. I haven’t brought the kitchen sink yet on any of our cannonball runs, but I am thinking about a countertop dishwasher. And a refrigerator. And a lawnmower. And a dog.
In spite of his age, the old guy’s a good driver, at least since he got his eyes fixed with laser surgery. Before that he needed a white cane, so in our European capers I did the driving. Now it’s payback time, and he does most of the driving.
This is the first of a two-part series about the author’s cannonball runs through Mexico.
Neighbors were quick to to scoop up what they could carry after a beer truck overturned in Campeche on Saturday morning.
Motorists abandoned their cars on the Mérida-Campeche highway at San Francisco Kobén where men, women and children ran quickly to haul off entire cartons of free booze.
In photos and videos of the incident that surfaced on social media, some especially eager people can be seen arranging and tying down stacks of beer cartons on tricycles.
Police were curiously absent during the looting despite their presence at a checkpoint just a short distance down the road, emboldening residents. One man cried out, “It’s a party in San Francisco Kobén,” while neighbors that had already carried beer cartons back to their homes returned for more.
In all, residents made off with more than 1,000 cartons of beer.
Though authorities have not yet determined what caused the truck to turn over, initial coverage of the incident suggested that the driver may have been speeding and lost control.
Stories of looted beer trucks are not uncommon but in the most recent before Saturday’s incident neighbors took a different approach. They rallied to prevent looting and helped reload the cargo in a replacement truck after an accident in May in Ixtlahuaca, México state.
El Carrete and the Guerrero sierra where he was caught.
Seven hundred community police members were involved in a three-day confrontation in Guerrero that culminated in the arrest of the suspected leader of the Los Rojos crime gang.
Santiago “El Carrete” Mazari Hernández, identified as one of the principal instigators of violence in both Guerrero and Morelos, was detained in the municipality of Leonardo Bravo last Thursday.
Under siege from community police prior to his arrest, Mazari found refuge in a home in the community of Corral de Piedra.
According to a report in the newspaper El Universal, the gang leader entered a house and offered its inhabitants cash in exchange for providing him with a place to hide. They were too afraid to refuse.
Mazari’s whereabouts, however, didn’t remain secret for long.
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Members of the United Front of Guerrero Community Police (FUPCEG) laid siege to Corral de Piedra and for three days engaged in a confrontation with other Los Rojos gangsters in the town.
Juan Castillo Gómez, a gang member known as “El Teniente,” and two other men were killed during one clash near an outdoor basketball court.
“Three people died here,” a resident told the newspaper Milenio.
“The shootout went for 10 hours,” another resident said. “We had to grab the children so they wouldn’t go out.”
Milenio reported that spent bullet casings are littered around Corral de Piedra and that booby traps with active grenades were set and still remain in the town.
Holed up in the local home and with the community police closing in, Mazari decided to make a run for it.
Noticing that the householder owned a dump truck, the capo asked for – or more likely demanded – the keys. The homeowner complied.
Mazari and another gang member identified as Marco “N” – believed to be Los Rojos principal criminal operator – left the home and got into the truck. The former drove while the latter hid in the open bed box.
Trying to leave Corral de Piedra, Mazari came to a community police roadblock where he was ordered to get out of the truck. The officers also located Marco “N.”
El Universal reported that after establishing their identities, community police contacted Guerrero state police.
Federal Police, the army and the navy also responded to the report of the men’s capture and were ultimately responsible for taking them into custody. Mazari was subsequently flown to Mexico City in a navy helicopter.
Community police spokesman Salvador Alanís Trujillo said that with the capture of Mazari and the death of Gómez, the Los Rojos gang is practically “extinct” and that police will now turn their attention to combating the Cartel del Sur.
“. . . We’re going to put an end to the Cartel del Sur, we’re going to fight against them like we did with El Tequilero [the leader of the Tequileros gang] and El Carrete,” he said.
“We’re going after them and hopefully the authorities will also be willing to collaborate so that the work is easier and so there is not too much harm to third parties. The next challenge . . . is to exterminate the Cartel del Sur . . . Isaac Navarrete Celis, the leader, is our main target now.”
