The former Pemex CEO who is wanted for money laundering is going to tell all in the next few weeks with a video revealing the corruption that took place at the state oil company while he was in charge.
Emilio Lozoya, who was CEO from 2012 until 2016 and an advisor to former president Enrique Peña Nieto before that, will implicate his former boss and Luis Videgaray, who held the foreign affairs and finance portfolios in the Peña Nieto government, his lawyer said.
Javier Coello Trejo said his client will release a video and “tell the story about exactly how everything happened. He’s going to tell it all, because he knows it perfectly well.”
He said Lozoya will reveal the truth behind the accusations he faces related to Pemex’s purchase of several fertilizer plants, and will implicate Peña Nieto, as well as other government secretaries, in the looting of the oil company.
“They were the ones who looted Pemex,” he said. “I’m not saying they stole the money, but that they took it to the treasury.”
The looting, Coello said, consisted of official tolerance for fuel theft and declines in petroleum and natural gas production.
Lozoya is wanted for money laundering in relation to an alleged overpayment by Pemex for the fertilizer plants, which include the Agro Nitrogenados plant purchased from steelmaker Altos Hornos de México and the Fertinal plant in Michoacán.
Coello reiterated yesterday that Lozoya will not turn himself in.
“We are going to litigate this; using the law, we are going to prove that the accusations about Agro Nitrogenados and Odebrecht aren’t true, and we’re going to point out who was really involved in the purchase of Fertinal.”
Coello added that the arrest of Lozoya’s mother last week in Germany was an attempt to pressure Lozoya to turn himself in.
Greeted by residents angry over a shortage of medications and missing scholarships for students, President López Obrador yesterday assured residents of Bochil, Chiapas, that he was no fool and that he was aware of the situation.
“We’re going to fulfill all our commitments, that should be made very clear so that you don’t confuse us, we’re not the same as those who are no longer in government,” López Obrador said.
“Don’t think I’m a fool, I notice everything, I’m sharp. We already know [about the situation in Bochil]. You don’t need to tell me . . . Medications are lacking in the medical units, in the healthcare centers, in the hospitals, in the whole country,” he said.
The president also acknowledged that government scholarships haven’t reached primary school and middle school students in the Altos de Chiapas region, where Bochil is located.
“. . . The basic education scholarships are arriving everywhere [but] strangely they haven’t been delivered here. I already know that, I already told you that I’m not sitting on my hands,” López Obrador said.
Continuing on the subject of education, the president took aim at teachers who are often absent from the classroom as a result of attending anti-government protests organized by teachers’ unions.
“There shouldn’t be absenteeism. None of these [working] weeks from Tuesday to Thursday . . . You have to be honest, none of this saying, ‘I’m part of the democratic teachers’ movement but I’m not going to teach.’ You’re not democratic, you’re an irresponsible person,” López Obrador declared.
The National Guard arrested 13 people accused of fuel theft in the municipality of Tepeaca, Puebla, after a confrontation Friday in which Pemex personnel were taken hostage.
The incident started when Pemex workers were checking the Cactus-Guadalajara pipeline in San José Carpinteros after receiving an anonymous tip about a hidden tap in the line. But while doing so they were detained by suspected fuel thieves.
When the National Guard arrived to negotiate with the hostage-takers, local residents attacked them with rocks and sticks and set two Pemex trucks on fire.
After getting backup from additional guardsmen and Federal Police, including a Blackhawk helicopter, the security forces were able to disperse the crowd of residents and free the hostages.
Police arrested 13 people, including Genaro “N,” also known as “El General,” an allegedly high-level fuel thief and associate of Roberto “El Bukanas” de los Santos de Jesús, the leader of a Puebla fuel theft ring with ties to the Zetas cartel.
El General, as well as another suspect, sustained a bullet wound during the confrontation. The two are being held in a hospital in Puebla city.
Watch out — that guacamole at your favorite restaurant might be something else: it might not be made with avocado.
Rising prices for the alligator pear have reportedly led some taqueros to use calabacita – a Mexican squash similar to zucchini – to make the national dip.
Poor harvests, high demand and cartel control in parts of Michoacán, Mexico’s avocado heartland, have caused prices for the fruit to soar to as high as 100 pesos (US $5.25) per kilo in recent weeks. Some analysts predict that the price could go as high as 130 pesos per kilo in the not too distant future.
But rather than cough up the exorbitant price, or remove guacamole from their tables, some chefs have allegedly turned to calabacitas.
According to a YouTube video posted on the website of Mexico City magazine Chilango – which first reported the fake guacamole story – to make the dip out of the zucchini-like squash the vegetable is first boiled and then mixed with green tomatoes, cilantro and chiles before being pureed into a creamy, smooth consistency.
Some taco lovers say that telling the difference between a calabacita guac and the real deal isn’t as easy as it might sound.
“The scariest part is that it tastes almost exactly like your standard taquería guacamole: bright, spicy, rich and very satisfying,” said Javier Cabral, editor of news and culture website L.A. Taco and associate producer of the Netflix series Taco Chronicles.
“It almost fooled me,” he added.
It’s not just Mexicans who are suffering from the surge in avocado prices – restaurants in the United States are also feeling the pinch.
As a result, Chipotle Mexican Grill, a chain of fast casual restaurants, is looking beyond Mexico for new sources of supply for avocados.
“The whole country seems to be in love with the avocado,” CEO Brian Niccol told Bloomberg.
“We’re continuing to work in our supply chain to hopefully not have such big [price] swings,” he added.
For now, the chain still sources most of its avocados from Mexico, the world’s largest producer, but according to Niccol, Chipotle is looking at purchasing greater quantities of the fruit from California, Chile, Peru and Colombia.
“We’re starting to really reach out to folks in all these different places that are really starting to develop a stronger system to provide great avocados,” he said.
Pemex cut its second-quarter loss by 68% compared to the same period last year and made “gradual advances” in all other areas, according to a company report.
The company said its April to June losses were 52.79 billion pesos (US $2.8 billion).
In the second quarter of 2018, Pemex recorded a net loss of 163.2 billion pesos. Losses for 2019 now total 88.5 billion pesos.
Pemex said the main reason for the second-quarter loss was a decline of US $1.80 in the average price paid for a barrel of Mexican oil for export.
The heavily indebted oil company’s sales fell 14% in the second quarter to 376.6 billion pesos and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization declined 27% to 110 billion pesos.
But the company is optimistic.
“The trend is clear . . . Pemex is moving in the right direction,” finance director Alberto Velázquez told a conference call with analysts.
The state oil company was particularly buoyant about oil production figures even though they declined 10.2% compared to the second quarter of last year.
Crude production averaged 1.66 million barrels per day (bpd) compared to 1.85 million bpd a year ago.
However, Pemex highlighted that crude production was also 1.66 million bpd in the first quarter of the year and thus the output decline was halted.
Pemex also said it is making progress in bringing 22 new fields on stream, stating that it expected crude production to increase by 70,000 bpd towards the end of the year.
Another positive for the beleaguered company was that crude processing increased to 595,000 bpd in the second quarter from 560,000 bpd in the previous three-month period.
Tax cuts and large injections of capital were announced last week as part of the new plan for Pemex, which has debt in excess of US $100 billion.
But analysts were skeptical about how effective the plan will be because it doesn’t propose resuming private-public partnerships that could help Pemex share its financial risk.
Mushrooms are on the agenda this weekend in Guadalajara.
The fifth edition of the Guadalajara Mushroom Fair will bring together businesses, producers, academics, artists and enthusiasts this weekend for a unique celebration of the fungi.
Organizer Iván Fernández said the fair is an opportunity to educate the public about the diversity of mushroom species and help them to identify some of the species. It also gives the public access to mushroom experts and businesses at a one-of-a kind social event.
Fernández remembered that the first Guadalajara Mushroom Fair in 2015 was a mostly academic affair attended by professors and researchers from the University of Guadalajara, large producers and a few amateurs who were just starting out with small mushroom crops.
He said that since then, other towns have begun hosting their own mushroom fairs and interest has grown.
There will be several musical presentations, a fashion show, an art contest and an exhibition of mushroom art.
For the more academically inclined, the fair will include a special conference on the biodiversity of mushroom species in Mexico by Michoacán mushroom expert Horalia Barriga Díaz, as well as workshops, talks and a wide gastronomic offering of mushroom-based dishes.
For the especially dedicated who hope to get their hands dirty, the fair was to host two guided tours to collect mushrooms, one on Friday near Tapalpa and another on Saturday in the area surrounding the Tequila volcano.
The fair itself runs Saturday from noon until 9:00pm and Sunday from 10:00am till 8:00pm at the Jardín Americana.
For anyone in southern Mexico who has a beef — and there are more than a few — there are two effective ways of getting attention: set up a roadblock or take hostages.
In Chiapas last week, the National Front for Socialism (FNLS) did both.
It’s been a week since five police officers were taken captive by the organization in retaliation for the allegedly illegal detention and torture of its leader.
The state Attorney General’s Office said the five officers were detained at a blockade on the Ocosingo-San Cristóbal de las Casas highway near Río Florida on July 18. The roadblock was erected by setting fire to a stolen semi and other vehicles.
The FNLS said in a statement that theirs is not a criminal organization but rather a decades-old, grassroots political group. They said their leader, Javier González Díaz, was arrested on July 17 by state police, who subjected him to physical and psychological torture.
Vehicles burn at the National Front’s Chiapas blockade.
State authorities said yesterday that González had been arrested in connection with a violent robbery.
The FNLS said the police officers were detained when they attempted to forcefully disperse the organization’s blockade.
“They were detained for an act of provocation: they attempted to use their weapons against some of our companions during the blockade.”
According to the group’s statement, none of the five identified themselves as police, leading the organization to believe that the officers were not acting on official orders.
In response to concern expressed by the officers’ families, the FNLS wrote that the five had not been harmed.
“The agents are in our communities. They are OK, safe and sound, and waiting for us to be able to establish a respectful and unconditional dialogue with the government of Chiapas.”
In the meantime, the Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the organization for violent theft, property damage and terrorism.
Migrants at the southern border: some are paying large sums of money to smugglers.
Migrant are paying higher prices now that Mexico has stepped up security at its borders.
Asian migrants are paying up to US $40,000 to reach the United States via Mexico, according to the newspaper El Universal, while Central Americans pay between $10,000 and $12,000.
The newspaper reported that the strengthening of security at the southern and northern borders – and increased enforcement against undocumented migrants traveling through the country – has led people smugglers to move their customers not just by land but also by air and sea.
The fees they charge have increased as a result.
Migrants hoping to reach the United States from Brazil might pay a total of $12,000 to $15,000 to leave that country and secure passage to the northern border, while Mexicans hand over between $5,000 and $10,000 to smugglers to take them illegally into the U.S., El Universal said.
Human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants has become one of the most lucrative activities for organized crime, according to a 2018 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which said that the illegal trade generated profits of $7 billion in 2016.
Ricardo Ramírez Cortés, an official in the anti-human trafficking division of the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR), said that authorities have been forced to respond to the new ways in which criminals are moving migrants.
He said that earlier this year, authorities arrested members of a criminal group at the Mexico City airport who had been transporting undocumented migrants to the northern border by air.
El Universal said that authorities have also detected smuggling people to Quintana Roo by boat. After disembarking in that state, migrants cross the country to the Pacific coast and then board another vessel headed for the California coast.
United States border patrol agents detained seven migrants and two suspected people smugglers in November last year after a small panga-style boat landed at Laguna Beach, California.
Three of the migrants were Chinese nationals and four were Mexicans, the Los Angeles Times reported. One of the smugglers was a United States citizen and the other had an expired U.S. visa, the newspaper said.
In Mexico, authorities arrested 724 suspected smugglers between 2016 and 2018 but only 63 were sentenced, statistics show.
In the same period, 3,351 migrants who either paid for smugglers’ services or were kidnapped by human traffickers were rescued by authorities.
Last month, police stopped four semi-trailers in Veracruz that were carrying close to 800 undocumented migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, while last week around 150 Central and South Americans were freed from a trailer traveling in the same state.
Federal Police Inspector Marco Vargas said that people smuggling can often turn into human trafficking, pointing out that Brazilian migrants were rescued from such a situation in Tamaulipas a few weeks ago.
Both the Mexican and United States governments are working to dismantle human trafficking rings, an official in the national security department of the United States Embassy in Mexico told El Universal.
Édgar Ramírez said that multiple agencies from both countries are working closely by sharing intelligence information that allows them to identify smuggling routes and the vehicles criminals are using.
He also said that traffickers’ finances are under attack.
The Mexican government said last month that it would block the accounts and seize the assets of the company whose semi-trailers were used to transport the almost 800 migrants to the northern border.
Ramírez said that Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security in the Unites States are providing training to authorities in Mexico to help them develop their capacity to combat criminals who smuggle both people and contraband such as drugs, weapons and cash.
However, Inspector Vargas said that even shutting down borders completely wouldn’t put an end to the illicit trafficking of people and goods.
Organized crime has the ability to mutate and criminals will always seek ways to continue their activities, including the use of sea and air routes, he said.
However, since Mexico agreed to step up the enforcement of migration policy as part of an agreement with the United States, migrant arrests have increased significantly.
An average of 1,030 arrests per day in the period was 88% higher than that recorded between January and May when there was an average of 547 arrests per day.
Locals say there are about 15 pools of boiling mud at Los Negritos.
Anywhere else, Los Negritos Lake would have been turned into a recreational area and its curative and beautifying mud pots into an expensive spa.
But in El Platanal, Michoacán, the local people seem content to keep their natural wonders as they are rather than “developing” them.
If you happen to live anywhere near Lake Chapala, you should note that Los Negritos is practically in your back yard. If you love nature, you’ll be fascinated by the strange shapes and noises of its boiling mud pots and, if you suffer from arthritis, you may find an inexpensive — albeit dirty — possible solution to your problem.
I first heard about Los Negritos from José Luis Zavala, a biologist studying the fish in the area. He explained that this lagoon is unique because it contains all the aquatic creatures that used to be found in Lake Chapala.
“Laguna Los Negritos is actually hydraulically connected to Chapala,” said Zavala, “but it hasn’t been polluted. It’s a perfect laboratory for studying what Lake Chapala must have been like years ago.”
Four friends having fun in the mud.
The lake is rumored to be 700 meters deep, but Zavala calls this a myth.
Tall shade trees and several roofed kiosks make the laguna shore an ideal picnic spot and the mud pots are located only 400 meters northwest of the lake, easy to reach on foot over perfectly flat ground.
The mud is black as black can be and the boiling pots are mostly less than a meter in diameter. So “Los Negritos” (The Little Black Ones) is a fitting name for the place. We came upon at least a dozen boiling, hissing, plopping mud pots interspersed with small bogs and occasional wallowing holes filled with cool mud that would bring joy to the heart of any hedonistic porker.
So much moisture, of course, has brought lots of birds to this area and you can see vermillion flycatchers, golden-fronted woodpeckers, house finches, egrets and if you’re lucky you may even spot a white owl.
“Lots of people have drowned in the lake,” a local rancher told us, apparently because it drops straight down from the shoreline with no shallow spots for waders. He said a few people have drowned in some of the cool mud pools whose rims look far more solid than they really are.
However, he assured us that there are great benefits from getting up to your neck in mud, particularly if you suffer from arthritis. One must, however, be careful not to confuse the cool mud with the hot sort.
Los Negritos Lake is connected to Lake Chapala, but is said to be clean.
“One of my horses sank into what seemed to be cool mud and the heat was so intense, the poor horse lost two of its hooves,” explained the ranchero.
Our informant also told us that geysers sometimes shoot several meters into the air, but when and where this might occur is impossible to predict. Finally, our rancher friend said it may be worth staying overnight among the mud pots because occasionally they produce “big green flames.”
We imagined this must refer to the legendary will o’ the wisp or ignis fatuus (fool’s fire), a ghostly light said to hover over bogs, supposedly leading one either to rich treasures or perdition. Science tells us the phenomenon is the result of gases released by decaying organic matter, an explanation that’s not nearly as much fun.
When my friend Mario Guerrero told me he was going camping at Lake Negritos, I asked him to check out those green flames. A few days later, he sent me the following message. I think it nicely captures the flavor of many weekend excursions in Mexico. Tongue in cheek, he described his trip as “nothing special or unusual.”
“You asked me how our trip to Los Negritos went and I can report that it was todo sin novedad (nothing special).
“We started out fine in the morning in two vehicles, but when we stopped to pick up our compañeros, one of the cars refused to start. However, by pushing it, we finally got it going.
The thick black mud is said to cure all sorts of ailments, especially arthritis.
“A few hours later, about half a kilometer from Villamar — the closest town to Los Negritos — my own car suddenly died. It was the gas pump — totally shot. So, we had to tow it to Villamar using my friend’s car which, unfortunately, again refused to start.
“However, we push-started it . . . and got to Villamar where we found only one mechanic and he was hopelessly drunk. However, he staggered over to my car, looked at the pump, said he could fix it, but declared that there was no way to get a new one the same day because the spare parts store was closed.
“So, we left my car . . . and told him he should fix it as soon as he sobered up. ‘Just leave me money for the pump,’ he replied, ‘and a bottle of tequila.’
“Then all six of us piled into the other car. It was pretty crowded . . . .
“Finally, we arrived at Los Negritos at 10:00pm It was so dark we couldn’t see a thing, not even the lake. All we wanted to do by then was hit the sack. We went to the first kiosk, but what did we find in the middle of it but a big coral snake about two meters long.
“. . . we chased it away, but nobody in the group wanted to sleep in that particular kiosk anymore, so we went off in the dark looking for another one. Like I said, nothing ‘unusual’ about this trip.
[soliloquy id="85060"]
“. . . we set up our tents inside the next kiosk and now it was about midnight. Then I remembered I promised to check out those mud pots for you. Well, I had the GPS coordinates, so we had no choice but to traipse off into the darkness looking for them.
“Since we couldn’t see where we were going, we ended up walking through mud so thick and sticky it soon looked like we had cannonballs at the ends of our legs. Finally, we found the mud pots, turned off our lights and discovered absolutely nothing: no green flames, no mysteries, no ghosts. In fact, once again nothing unusual.
“. . . two hours later we finally crawled into our tents — when all hell broke loose.
“A hurricane-like wind hit us and suddenly the surface of the lake was churning with monster waves. We had to jump on top of our tents to hold them down. I swear that wind was blowing over 200 kilometers per hour, but it finally weakened a bit and at last we were getting ready to go to bed when — it started to rain.
“Well, the wind was still blowing pretty hard and, therefore, we had rain coming at us horizontally. The roof of the kiosk wasn’t doing us any good at all and in a few minutes all of us and our gear were soaking wet . . . We didn’t get to sleep until 3:00am. It was just another one of those nights — nothing special at all.
“The next day we found the mechanic as drunk as ever, but the new gas pump was installed perfectly.
[wpgmza id=”222″]
“On our way home we stopped at a taco stand under a canopy and what happened? While we were eating, another sudden downpour hits us — more horizontal rain — and we walked out of the ‘restaurant’ soaked again.
“Finally, at 11:00pm we arrived home after a rather long weekend but, gracias a Dios, a weekend sin novedad, with nothing special to report.”
To visit Los Negritos — if my friend’s report doesn’t dissuade you — ask Google Maps for directions to “Lago Los Negritos, Michoacán.” The mud pots are located at N20.06285 W102.61573 and yes, you can input these coordinates into Google Maps.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
A large mound of foam in the Puebla irrigation canal.
Huge quantities of foam suspected to be toxic formed earlier this week in an irrigation canal of the Valsequillo dam in Puebla.
According to the environmentalist organization Dale la Cara al Atoyac, the foam began to form on July 21 near the Valsequillo dam, which is fed by water from the Atoyac river.
“Today, the problem is more than visible,” the organization wrote Monday on its Facebook page. “We demand that responsibility be taken for the critical situation of the environment, especially the Atoyac river.”
According to the newspaper Excélsior, the foam in the canal, located in the southern part of the municipality of Puebla, was created by a mixture of pollutants that are dumped into it, including heavy metals like lead and cadmium, along with solvents, paints and engine oil.
The canal also receives household organic waste, the decomposition of which releases gases that, when mixed with the other pollutants, lead to the creation of the foam.
Foam overflows the canal’s banks.
The canal provides irrigation for around 1,000 hectares of farms in 17 Puebla municipalities, including Tecamachalco, Quecholac, Acatzingo and Palmar de Bravo. The foam has reached fields in Tecamachalco, but it is not known whether there are any adverse health effects for humans from consuming food grown with the contaminated water.
There was a tragic effect on Sunday when a man attempted to take a selfie of the foam-filled canal. The 32-year-old fell into the water and drowned after he was dragged away by the current.
A woman who was with the victim reported the accident to Civil Protection officials, but a search was delayed by foam extending for more than a kilometer in the canal.
On Friday morning, the body was found in the Valsequillo drainage canal in Tecamachalco.
