Police arrest presumed henchman of Jalisco cartel boss

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August 5, 2019

Herrera and de la Cruz are believed to be close to the Jalisco cartel leader.

Police have captured a man and a woman suspected of being close to the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

Authorities said that both Edgar “El Caimán” (The Alligator) Herrera Pardo and his swimsuit model girlfriend, Maine de la Cruz, have close ties to cartel boss Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes.

Federal Police identified de la Cruz when she boarded a bus in Querétaro City bound for San Luis Potosí. Police detained the bus as it pulled into the terminal, boarded it and found that Pardo was also aboard. They were taken into custody without a struggle.

Both Pardo and De la Cruz were wanted for drug trafficking. Pardo is thought to be one of “El Mencho’s” eight most-trusted henchmen and the cartel’s plaza boss in Tijuana. He is also wanted in the United States.

De la Cruz is a former beauty queen who earned fame in Tijuana when she won a bikini contest hosted by the popular gambling hall Casino Caliente. Authorities said she also has strong ties to the infamous and elusive cartel chief.

Source: El Universal (sp), El Sol de San Luis (sp)

Mexico City begins project to rehabilitate National Canal

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Simon Schatzberg

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August 5, 2019

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Area bordering the canal will be declared one of environmental value.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has announced the start of work to rehabilitate an 8.4-kilometer stretch of the National Canal.

Sheinbaum said on Sunday that the 12-kilometer-long canal, which runs through the Mexico City boroughs of Coyoacán, Xochimilco and Iztapalapa, will be designated a special area, protecting it from being urbanized or run through pipes.

“This month, we are declaring it an area of environmental value,” she said. “That means that no one will be able to develop this area, that no one will be able to culvert the canal, and that it will be protected as an open public space, to protect the environment.”

She added that the project will protect the canal’s flora and fauna, and that the area around the canal will be reforested.

The work will start at the Miramontes pumping station in Coyoacán.

The company Consorcio Virgo was awarded a contract for the rehabilitation, an investment of just over 170 million pesos (US $8.7 million) for this year. Similar amounts will be invested in 2020 and 2021.

The project will include improving and building parks around the canal, improving the water quality and pedestrian access, and building flood barriers. Several Mexico City government departments will participate, including the Environment, Tourism and Mobility secretariats.

Sheinbaum said she will invite neighborhood associations to participate in the upkeep of the artificial, pre-Hispanic canal.

The rehabilitation of the canal is part of an initiative by Sheinbaum’s government to rehabilitate public parks.

“We want public parks in Mexico City to be real green spaces, spaces of environmental protection, but also spaces of social coexistence,” said Sheinbaum. “We don’t want malls to become the only spaces of coexistence, spaces that are only associated with consumption.”

Source: Milenio (sp)

Fewer international travelers arrived via foreign airlines in first 6 months

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MND Staff

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August 5, 2019

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Volaris was the domestic market leader in the first half of the year.

A 2.5% decline in the number of passengers flying into Mexico on foreign airlines in the first half of the year was the major contributing factor behind the commercial aviation industry recording its weakest growth for Mexico since 2011.

Data from the Civil Aviation Agency (DGAC) shows that 16.6 million passengers flew into Mexico on foreign airlines between January and June compared to 17 million in the same period last year.

A graph published by the newspaper El Economista shows that no year-over-year decline was recorded in foreign airline passenger arrivals during the first half of any year between 2013 and 2018.

Between January and June, a total of 50.1 million passengers flew into Mexican airports either from abroad or locations within the country, a 4.8% increase compared to the first half of 2018.

The growth in overall passenger numbers is the weakest since the first six months of 2011 when the number of people flying to Mexican destinations declined by 0.1%.

The decline in passengers flying into Mexico on United States airlines was – at 5.1% – more than double the overall drop in arrivals on foreign carriers.

United States tourist numbers were also down.

Interior Secretariat (Segob) statistics show that 5.7 million United States citizens flew into Mexico in the first half of the year, a decline of 0.4% compared to the same period in 2018.

The consultancy Gemes said in a report that the Segob figures “renew doubts about the behavior” of the United States market – the largest source of visitors to Mexico – and represent the “worst performance” in attracting U.S. tourists since 2012.

El Economista reported that visitor numbers from Canada, the second most important country for Mexico’s tourism market, are also on the wane.

The disbandment of the Tourism Promotion Council and consequent lack of international tourism marketing and insecurity in Mexico are the main reasons cited for the decline in international visitors.

While the number of passengers flying into Mexico from abroad on Mexican airlines increased in the first half of the year, growth was weaker than in 2018.

DGAC figures show that 7.9 million passengers flew into the country on Mexican airlines between January and June, a 10% increase compared to the same period last year.

In the first half of 2018, passenger numbers on Mexican airlines operating internationally grew to 7.2 million from 6.3 million the year before, a 14% spike.

Domestic passenger numbers increased in the first half of the year but again the growth was not as strong as that recorded in 2018.

A total of 25.6 million passengers took flights between Mexican destinations, an 8.5% increase compared to a year earlier.

In 2018, 23.6 million passengers flew domestically, a 9.2% increase over 2017 numbers.

Volaris was the domestic market leader in the first half of this year, transporting 8.1 million passengers. It also recorded the strongest growth, increasing its passenger numbers 22.6% compared to 2018.

Interjet transported 5.2 million passengers between January and June, a 3.6% increase compared to 2018, while 4.8 million people traveled on VivaAerobús, 18.6% more than the first half of last year.

Passengers traveling on Aeroméxico Connect declined 6.1% to 3.8 million, while 2.6 million people flew domestically on Aeroméxico, a 3.3% fall.

The flag carrier remains the leading Mexican airline for international flights even though passenger numbers declined 2.8% in the first half of the year to 3.2 million.

In contrast, Interjet’s international passenger numbers surged 27.5% to 2.2 million.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Auto sales slump: dealers chalk up 26 months of declining sales

By

Madison Koen

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August 3, 2019

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Domestic auto sales continued their long downward slide in July with a 7.9% decline in sales compared to July 2018. It brings to 26 the number of months sales have been dropping.

Auto dealerships sold 105,699 cars in July, the lowest July sales since 2009, according to data collected by the national statistics institute, Inegi. They sold 744,296 vehicles from January to July, down 6.6% from the same period last year.

The industry expects the trend to continue for the rest of 2019, which would make this year the third consecutive year of declining auto sales.

The July slump did not affect all brands equally: Nissan, the market leader, saw a 14.5% decline and General Motors and Volkswagen fell 5.6% and 7.2% respectively.

On the other hand, Suzuki and Mitsubishi both saw significant gains. Their sales were up 29.3% and 26% respectively.

Guillermo Rosales, general manager of the Mexican Automotive Dealers Association, said negative influences such as rising debt, declining purchasing power and a pessimistic outlook for the political and economic future have only deepened in recent months.

Source: Expansión (sp), El Financiero (sp)

Gunmen kill Veracruz reporter who was target of death threats

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Madison Koen

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August 3, 2019

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A Veracruz journalist who was supposed to have been provided security was murdered in a hail of bullets Friday night in Actopan.

Jorge Celestino Ruiz Vázquez was a reporter for the daily Gráfico de Xalapa, one of the state capital’s oldest newspapers.

Gunmen shot and killed the journalist at about 9:00pm in the Bocanita neighborhood.

According to the newspaper Ríodoce, Ruiz had received death threats and his house had been shot at on three separate occasions, triggering an order that he and his family be provided with security.

But it appears the order was not fulfilled. The state attorney general said today the reason why security measures were not provided will investigated.

Veracruz Governor Cuitláhuac García Jiménez condemned the killing and promised to apprehend those responsible.

“We condemn the cowardly killing of Jorge Ruiz, reporter for a local newspaper. We will catch those responsible; his murder will not go unpunished. For the last several hours we have been coordinating an operation to capture the culprits.”

Ruiz was the third journalist murdered this week. Yesterday morning, reporter and local official Edgar Alberto Nava was shot on a beach in Zihuatanejo, while the body of Guerrero journalist Rogelio Barragán was found in the trunk of a car in the state of Morelos on Tuesday night.

Nine reporters have lost their lives in Mexico this year.

Source: El Universal (sp), RíoDoce (sp), Milenio (sp)

Driver falls asleep, brings down transmission tower

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Madison Koen

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August 3, 2019

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The fallen tower in Ecatepec Saturday morning.

A tractor-trailer plowed into an electrical transmission tower in México state this morning, knocking it over and closing down the highway.

According to local sources, the driver of the truck fell asleep at the wheel on the Texcoco-Lechería Highway in Ecatepec and crashed into the tower around 3:00am.

“I heard a huge crash, and then our electricity went. When we looked out, we saw what had happened, but with the tower like that we didn’t get any closer and decided to call the police instead,” said Juan Villa, a resident of the Llano de los Báez neighborhood where the collision took place.

Emergency personnel extracted the driver from the truck’s damaged cab and rushed him to hospital, while police, firefighters and Federal Electricity Commission workers secured and closed off part of the highway and restored power to the neighborhood.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Government pays 1bn pesos for stadiums that will become baseball schools

By

MND Staff

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August 3, 2019

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The Héctor Espino stadium in Hermosillo.

The federal government will pay the state of Sonora more than 1 billion pesos to purchase two stadiums that will become baseball schools.

President López Obrador announced this week that the Secretariat of Finance will release funds for the purchases, adding that state development bank Banobras will also provide financial support.

According to a report published by news website Animal Político, the purchase of the Héctor Espino stadium in Hermosillo and the Tomás Oroz Gaytán stadium in Ciudad Obregón will cost 1.057 billion pesos (US $54.7 million).

López Obrador said the federal government has advised its counterpart in Sonora to use the funds to pay workers’ pensions.

The baseball schools that the government plans to build will also offer regular middle school and high school classes.

“. . . The stadiums are very well located, facilities will be built, a good project will be carried out in each one of them,” the president said.

López Obrador, whose favorite sport is baseball, added that the private sector will be invited to participate in the projects at some point in the future, explaining that the construction of hotels and shopping centers in the stadium precincts is under consideration.

Sonora Governor Claudia Pavlovich thanked the president for the government’s purchase of the stadiums, observing that the state government doesn’t have the resources to rehabilitate them.

However, critics quickly claimed that the outlay is incongruent with the government’s austerity measures and questioned López Obrador’s priorities.

“. . . There are no resources for syringes, gauzes, medicines, doctors, nurses, [medical] evaluations, police, postgraduate scholarships, science, culture or research centers, but for the president’s favorite sport: the Finance Secretariat will release 1 billion pesos . . .” Denise Dresser, a political scientist and columnist, wrote on Twitter.

In addition to pointing to budget shortfalls in healthcare and science, scores of social media users complained that such a large quantity of money was going to baseball when funding for daycare centers has been slashed.

The stadium outlay is not far short of the 1.7 billion pesos in funding allocated this year to the National Sports Commission (Conade), whose budget was chopped from the approximately 7 billion pesos it received annually during the last six years.

Conade argues that the funding is insufficient and this week shut down its drug testing laboratory.

“The closure of the laboratory is more than anything due to the cost of maintaining it,” said Conade chief Ana Gabriela Guevara.

She added that establishing the laboratory within Conade was a mistake because it made it appear as though the commission was involved in the drug-testing process when in fact it was not.

“Even though the World Anti-Doping Agency requests that there be no intervention on the part of the government inside the laboratory, in the end we’re linked [to the results],” Guevara said.

Announcing last month that she had become a citizen of Uzbekistan and would no longer represent Mexico, fencer Paola Pliego slammed Conade for not supporting her after she tested positive for the banned substance modafinil in the lead-up to the 2016 Olympics.

It was later revealed that the test carried out by a Conade laboratory had mistakenly shown that Pliego had taken the banned drug when in fact she had not.

Source: Animal Político (sp), El Universal (sp), Aristegui Noticias (sp)

Students awarded scholarships to study English in Canada

By

Tony Richards

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August 3, 2019

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Governor del Mazo presents a scholarship for study in Canada.

The governor of the state of México presented scholarships this week to 30 Mexican students, but they won’t be studying in Mexico.

They are all headed north to Canada to study English and learn about Canadian culture.

The state raised scholarship amounts by 30% this year, Governor Alfredo del Mazo said, which means 2,600 students will get an opportunity to study English abroad in 2019.

He said “the educational, cultural and personal knowledge young people obtain while studying abroad allows them to acquire a broader vision of development opportunities.”

Education Secretary Alejandro Fernández Campillo said students will study at one of 19 schools in Canada. He said scholarships give students “the tools necessary to face the challenges that globalization demands, and above all, build a better future for themselves, their families and the state of México.”

The 80,000-peso scholarships (US $4,140) are to pay for transportation, food and lodging, school expenses and medical insurance.

In addition, each student receives a laptop computer.

Source: El Financiero (sp), La Razón (sp)

Jalisco cartel boss in mountain hideout, copying El Chapo: DEA

By

Simon Schatzberg

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August 3, 2019

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Oseguera did time in the US in the early 1990s. — Oseguera in a 1986 mugshot. He did time in the US in the early 1990s.

The leader of one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels is staying under the radar and hiding out in the mountains of western Mexico, according to an agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) who spoke with the broadcaster Univision.

Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes is the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and one of the most wanted men on the planet.

According to Kyle Mori, the DEA agent in charge of capturing him, the drug lord has retreated to remote areas controlled by the CJNG.

“He hides in the mountainous areas of Jalisco, Michoacán and Colima. We think he’s not in the cities anymore.”

As to “El Mencho’s” living arrangements, Mori wouldn’t specify whether he’s living a life of luxury, or if he’s hiding out in humble shacks in the mountains.

“I’ll say this: it’s a combination of different things,” he said. “I don’t think he spends a lot of time in one place, or in one type of house. It’s a combination of everything you can imagine, he’s definitely constantly moving.”

Oseguera’s territory includes two ports: Manzanillo, Colima, and Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, as well as the city of Guadalajara. In the rural areas of his territory there are farms used for drug cultivation and secret laboratories.

The DEA is offering a reward of US $10 million for information leading to Oseguera’s capture.

Mori added that unlike other drug traffickers like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Oseguera avoids taking unnecessary risks like visiting cities.

“He doesn’t mind living in the mountains like a rancher,” said Mori. “That complicates capturing him. Where was ‘El Chapo’ captured? It was always in the cities. ‘El Mencho’ wouldn’t do that.”

Source: Milenio (sp)

Education officials warn against using textbooks developed by teachers’ union

By

MND Staff

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August 3, 2019

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Revolutionary leaders feature prominently in union textbooks.

The Education Secretariat (SEP) has issued a warning against the use of alternative, ideologically loaded textbooks developed by the CNTE teachers’ union.

The SEP said in a statement that the National Commission of Free Textbooks (Conaliteg) has the sole authority to print and distribute textbooks for use in public schools, and no other organization can replace those official materials.

The CNTE union has developed 48 textbooks with a clear ideological bent for use by primary and secondary school students.

Among the content of the books are critiques of the “neoliberal economic model” implemented in Mexico by past governments and biographies of former Cuban president Fidel Castro and revolutionary hero Che Guevara.

The CNTE plans to distribute texts for the 2019-2020 school year to more than 6,000 public schools in Michoacán that have already adopted the union’s education model.

The books are part of a wider alternative education plan developed by the dissident teachers’ union that it will present to President López Obrador during a meeting scheduled for September 10.

Members of the CNTE, which vehemently opposed the previous government’s educational reform, have expressed their desire to expand the union’s alternative program.

But blocking any attempt to do that will be the conservative National Parents Union (UNPF), which yesterday called on the federal government to put an end to the distribution of CNTE’s alternative textbooks and implementation of its education program.

“We think it’s very dangerous that the CNTE . . . has an indoctrination plan based on concepts that don’t stand up to factual analysis. It doesn’t frighten us that they want to talk about Russia or Marx, it concerns us that they want to lie to students about issues that don’t stand up to critical analysis . . .” said UNPF president Leonardo García Camarena.

“These kinds of proposals must be stopped . . . As parents, we don’t want to be pushed to accepting [education] models on which we haven’t been consulted . . .”

García charged that the federal government has been gradually ceding ground to the CNTE and that President López Obrador has opened the doors of the National Palace to a “tiny, radical and blackmailing group.”

He said the union has already achieved the elimination of teacher evaluation and that the quality of instruction given to students will suffer as a result.

Education specialists and lawmakers also spoke out against the CNTE’s plan to distribute alternative textbooks.

Alma Maldonado, an education researcher at the National Polytechnic Institute, said the distribution of the books threatens children’s rights.

“It jeopardizes the right to receive an education based on books made by the experts at Conaliteg, who are serious people that have the academic foundation to produce educational texts,” she said.

Maldonado argued that the government could set a dangerous precedent if it allows the CNTE books to be distributed and used.

“. . . It will set an example that any school, state or group [can] hand out the textbooks it wishes.”

Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, leader of the National Action Party in the lower house of Congress, told the newspaper El Universal that the CNTE’s distribution of textbooks is illegal.

“It’s flagrant illegality because education decisions correspond to the SEP, to state [education] secretariats. It’s a legal outrage that is part of the [CNTE’s] thoughtless and anarchic activism that doesn’t respect the pupils; it’s part of the miserable anarchy that the CNTE has built since 1979,” he said.

Romero added that there is no space for the CNTE to negotiate with the SEP because “what’s illegal doesn’t go ahead, it’s not a matter of whether ‘I like it or not.’”

Source: El Universal (sp)