Workers clean up the tonnes of water lilies that arrived on this Ixtapa beach.
It’s not just sargassum that’s washing up on Mexican beaches.
Local government and tourism workers this week removed more than 160 tonnes of water lilies from Playa El Varadero, a beach on Isla Ixtapa, a small island off the coast of the Guerrero resort city of the same name.
Recent heavy rains carried the plant into the sea from the Pantla river, whose mouth is near Isla Ixtapa.
Zihuatanejo public services director David Luna Bravo said that local hoteliers and restaurant owners contributed to the clean-up efforts.
After the water lilies are collected, they are transported by boat to Playa Linda on the mainland.
In just two and a half hours on Tuesday, 10 dump trucks were filled with lilies, Luna said.
Ricardo Pineda, owner of El Indio restaurant, said that water lilies wash up on Ixtapa beaches practically every year but explained that he hadn’t seen such a large quantity of the plant for three or four years.
Having to dedicate time to cleaning up El Varadero beach has caused restaurant owners to fall behind in other tasks they need to do to prepare for the peak tourist season, he added.
“It’s the season now . . . but thankfully . . . the authorities are helping us,” Pineda said.
AMLO's approval rating in green, disapproval in red.
President López Obrador’s performance rating has declined eight points but remains strong, according to a new poll that also shows that more than six in 10 Mexicans believe that migrants are a burden on the country.
Sponsored by the newspapers Reforma and the Washington Post and carried out by the former, the poll shows that 70% of respondents approve of the president’s performance compared to 78% in a March survey.
The percentage of people who disapprove of the way López Obrador is doing his job rose from 18% to 29%.
The president’s political party also has strong support.
More than half of those polled said they would vote for the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, if a presidential election were held today, more than three times the support garnered by the National Action (PAN) and Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) parties.
Asked what impact the changes being implemented by the president will have on the country, 44% of respondents said they will improve it, while 22% said that Mexico will get worse.
Four in 10 respondents said that Mexico is generally on a good path, while 27% said that the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Insecurity was cited by 55% of respondents as the biggest problem in the country, while 45% said that they felt safer since the deployment of the National Guard.
Unemployment, corruption, the economy and poverty were cited by 10%, 9%, 7% and 4% of respondents respectively as Mexico’s No. 1 problem.
Asked how the president is dealing with a range of different issues, poll respondents rated López Obrador best on education. Half of those polled said he was dealing with the issue well, while 21% said that his performance was poor.
The president’s response to drug trafficking and organized crime was considered the worst aspect of his performance. Just 24% of respondents said that he was doing a good job in the area, while 45% said that his performance was poor.
They’re a burden, said 64%.
More than half of respondents said that López Obrador has been successful in improving the economic situation of the nation’s poor and just under half said that he has done a good job in the crusade to end corruption.
However, just one-quarter of those polled said the economy has improved since the new government took office and 35% said that the security situation has worsened compared to 21% who said it has improved.
The navy is considered the most trustworthy institution in the country followed by the army and the National Guard, while less than a third of respondents expressed confidence in the nation’s judges and attorney general’s offices.
Three in 10 people said that Carlos Urzúa’s resignation as finance secretary will negatively affect the economy, 43% said they support the construction of the Santa Lucía airport and 86% expressed the belief that former president Enrique Peña Nieto committed acts of corruption while in office.
Less than a quarter of respondents said that Mexico has a good or very good relationship with the United States, while 77% said that they have a bad or very bad opinion of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Opinion was divided about López Obrador’s management of the bilateral relationship, with 47% saying that they approved and 41% responding that they disapproved.
Just over half of respondents said the president has defended Mexico’s interests in the face of Trump’s threats while 34% said that he hasn’t.
The agreement that ended Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican exports was imposed on Mexico by its northern neighbor, according to 55% of poll respondents.
Asked about migrants in Mexico, 64% of poll respondents said they are a burden on the country because they take jobs and benefits that should go to Mexicans. Only one in five people said they strengthen the country.
A majority of 55% said that migrants should be deported, while 33% said they should be given temporary residency while waiting for the outcome of their asylum claims in the United States. Seven per cent said migrants should be granted permanent residency.
The survey was carried out nationally between July 9 and 14 with 1,200 people.
Reforma said the poll has a margin of error of +/-4.9%.
El Chapo's first escape tunnel at the Altiplano prison.
Mexico’s most famous drug lord, already renowned for building one escape tunnel, was planning another three years ago in a bid to make a third escape from jail after he was captured in January 2016.
Nuevo León prison official Eduardo Guerrero Durán told the state news agency Notimex that a second tunnel was found at the Altiplano federal prison in México state, where the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was incarcerated following his arrest on January 8, 2016 in Los Mochis, Sinaloa.
Six months earlier, “El Chapo” had escaped from the same prison via a 1.6-kilometer-long tunnel that led to the bathroom in his cell.
The tunnel was detected after prison staff noticed noises emanating from Guzmán’s bathroom, to which the notorious drug lord went frequently, the official explained.
While in the bathroom, Guzmán would repeatedly flush the toilet.
As a result of the noises and suspicious behavior, a study of the soil beneath the prison was carried out and the second tunnel was found.
There was also a reference during Guzmán’s trial of his wish to make another prison escape after his 2016 capture.
Dámaso López, a former Sinaloa Cartel leader who was previously a security chief at the Jalisco prison from which “El Chapo” escaped in 2001, testified that Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel, approached him to discuss a third prison break.
“My comadre [female friend] sought me out to tell me that my compadre [buddy] wanted to escape again, [to ask] if I would help him again,” López told jurors.
It is unclear whether he was involved in planning the excavation of the second tunnel.
Guzmán was sentenced to life yesterday.
The witness – sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States last year on drug trafficking charges – also testified that he and other officials at the Puente Grande maximum security prison took bribes from Guzmán during his first incarceration in exchange for providing him with a range of perks such as new shoes, a mobile telephone and secret visits with his wife and other family members.
López quit his security job in September 2000 but told jurors that before he left he had a final meeting with Guzmán, who asked him to speak with the new security chief so that his perks would be preserved.
Four months later, the drug lord was wheeled out of the prison in a laundry cart and would remain a free, albeit wanted, man for the next 13 years.
Guzmán’s lengthy and notorious criminal career came to an official end yesterday when federal Judge Brian Cogan imposed a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment plus 30 years. He was found guilty on 10 drug trafficking charges in February.
United States authorities have not yet made any formal announcement but Guzmán is likely to spend the rest of his life at the “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, the country’s most secure penitentiary where tunneling out might be a challenge.
According to a report in the New York Post, he was on his way to the facility Wednesday night.
The Colorado Supermax prison where El Chapo might be incarcerated.
Since it opened in 1994, no one has ever escaped from the federal prison that is officially called United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility.
Located 185 kilometers south of Denver and nicknamed “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” the prison is home to a who’s who of notorious criminals.
Among the 376 inmates are domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Prisoners are typically confined to their solitary cells for 23 hours a day, where they may watch television or gaze out a narrow window that is angled upward so that only the sky is visible.
Special restrictions ensure inmates cannot make threats or exert influence in the outside world. Prisoners are escorted during all movements and head counts are done at least six times a day, the news agency Reuters reported.
“It’s very well designed for its purpose, to hold the most dangerous offenders in the federal prison system,” said Martin Horn, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and former commissioner of the city’s Department of Correction.
He told Reuters that the Florence “Supermax” prison “is literally built into the side of a mountain, with a robust security infrastructure.”
“Could Guzmán penetrate that?” Horn was asked.
“I would never say never,” he responded, “but it’s highly unlikely.”
Three of the suspects in the murder of Norberto Ronquillo.
Mexico City police are closer to solving a high-profile kidnapping case that has tarnished the department’s reputation and forced the city’s top anti-kidnapping agent to resign.
Four people have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder of 22-year-old student Norberto Ronquillo last month.
On Saturday, police arrested Daniel “B,” a cousin-in-law of the victim through his father, in Xochimilco. Police say Daniel is the owner of a grey Ford Topaz that was linked to the kidnapping and the receipt of a ransom payment.
Daniel “B” admitted to being the owner of the car but said he rents the car to a Uber driver and that when the crime took place, someone else was driving it. The driver, Óscar “N,” was arrested on Wednesday night.
Daniel “B” was also implicated in the 2015 kidnapping and murder of Édgar Carrasco Hernández, a distant cousin to Ronquillo. In a series of events similar to the Ronquillo kidnapping, Carrasco was kidnapped from his home in Morelos and his family received a call asking for a ransom.
Kidnapping-murder victim Norberto Ronquillo.
After the family paid 500,000 pesos (US $26,300), Carrasco was found dead. Investigators suspected that the kidnapping was committed by relatives of the victim, but could not find enough evidence to make an arrest.
Police have arrested two other people and are searching for three others.
The city’s Attorney General’s Office said today there was evidence that Ronquillo’s murder was related to a personal debt he owed.
Ronquillo, who was a student at Pedregal University, was kidnapped on June 4 as he was leaving the school. After his parents received a phone call demanding a ransom, a 500,000-peso payment was delivered by Ronquillo’s cousin, identified as Osvaldo “F,” to an unknown individual in a grey Ford Topaz. On June 8, Ronquillo was found dead in Xochimilco.
A lot more children have been making the trek north this year.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) says the number of migrant children detained by immigration authorities in Mexico more than doubled in the first six months of 2019 compared with the same period last year.
Agents arrested 33,122 migrants who were under 18 years of age, 131% more than last year. Of those, 8,525 were traveling without their families.
Almost all the child migrants came from the Northern Triangle of Central America and of those, more than half were from Honduras.
There was an even more significant growth in the number of female children and adolescents detained: the number almost tripled, from 4,936 to 13,671. The number of boys doubled from 9,343 to 19,451.
On Wednesday, a bus carrying 108 Honduran migrants was stopped in a joint operation by security forces in Tabasco. There were 23 children among them.
The president believes Guzmán's assets belong to Mexico.
President López Obrador will seek to seize the assets of former drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, although some United States lawmakers have already got their eyes on the loot.
A United States federal judge sentenced Guzmán to life in prison plus 30 years yesterday and ordered him to pay US $12.6 billion in reparation. The amount is the estimated value of the drugs he was accused of smuggling into the U.S.
López Obrador said today that he believed the money rightfully belonged to Mexico.
“I believe that everything confiscated that has to do with Mexico should be returned to Mexico, to the Mexican people, and I believe that the United States government is going to agree to turn [it] over . . . but we have to go through the process, because I don’t remember another time when [the Mexican government] has asked for resources to be returned.”
The president said that while previous administrations had never asked for the return of confiscated drug money, the possibility had been brought to his attention by Guzmán’s lawyer, José Luis González Meza.
“I listened to El Chapo’s lawyer, and he said something interesting: that the confiscated money legally belonged to Mexico in any case. And we will be looking into the matter. I agree with what El Chapo’s lawyer said, and we’re going to look into it.”
But some U.S. congressmen, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse have other ideas. They say the money should be used to fund President Trump’s border wall.
López Obrador said he did not expect the amount to be as large as estimated.
“Before they said that [he] was one of the richest [people] in the world, but I don’t believe that actually coincided with reality. They inflated the numbers when in reality there were other traffickers with much more money, but they inflated them for political reasons or for publicity. Now we need to look at his wealth seriously and honestly.”
Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard has been given the task of recuperating the former drug trafficker’s fortune, whatever it’s worth.
A prominent California businessman and father of a K-pop music star was found dead on Tuesday morning in a condominium in Cabo San Lucas.
According to several media outlets, the body of José Arredondo, 58, was found with signs of signs of “blunt force trauma.” State authorities said he had been beaten to death.
No arrests have been made, but a U.S. State Department official said U.S. authorities are closely monitoring the investigation.
Arredondo was born in Mexico but emigrated to the United States when he was 12 years old and eventually became a U.S. citizen. Initially he made a living washing cars but by the time of his death he was the owner of several local car dealerships in and around Bakersfield, California.
Francisco Duran, an admirer, wrote on Facebook that he was saddened by the news of Arredondo’s death.
“Sad news. I was thinking about quitting Bakersfield College back in 1995 when I saw him on TV. He was encouraging kids to stay in school. He changed my mind about quitting.”
Arredondo is survived by his wife, originally from South Korea, and two children. One child, Samuel Arredondo Kim, is a celebrated K-pop icon, known for his work as part of the music duo 1Punch and in the Korean soap opera Revenge Note 2. The 17-year-old released his first full-length solo album in 2017.
Firefighters at the scene of yesterday's toll plaza accident.
A semi lost its brakes yesterday evening at the San Marcos Huixtoco toll plaza near Chalco on the Mexico City-Puebla highway, colliding with two other vehicles before bursting into flames.
The truck, carrying a load of paper, slammed into a car carrying a family of three and another semi that was carrying auto parts before bursting through a toll booth barrier.
Leaking diesel fuel, it came to a stop when it crashed into a tow truck a few meters from the toll booth, and caught fire.
Firefighters from Ixtapaluca and Chalco arrived on the scene and worked for more than an hour to extinguish the flames.
Authorities said no one was hurt. The driver of the semi was taken into custody.
Turns out the banana varieties go quite deep at the Central de Abasto.
The biggest market in Mexico City provides an estimated 80% of its food and it can be an overwhelming but exciting experience to watch the market’s controlled chaos.
Entering through 10-peso toll gates, the market finally comes to an end at a parking lot between the two main buildings — nearly a kilometer away.
It’s a miracle anyone can exit the parking lot with cars parked tightly at oblique angles.
Central de Abasto is open 24/7 and specializes in fruits, vegetables and packaged goods by the tonne, but also dispenses to smaller markets and individual retail clients.
The north building offers abarrotes (packaged goods); the south, mostly fruits and vegetables. A veritable highway of traffic moves between them, leading to giant stacked parking garages and loading docks that run through the interior rows of the market.
Cart sellers, market vendors and restaurateurs load their purchases into beat-up VW buses, tiny two-door hatchbacks and huge cargo vans — bags of potatoes and limes, plastic-wrapped crates of mayonnaise; loads of giant Corona cups, chamoy mixes and the colorful powders used to make psychedelic micheladas.
Central de Abasto opened in Colonia Iztapalapa in 1982 to alleviate stress on La Merced, the previous wholesale market, that had grown into neighboring streets, creating heavy congestion through the center of the city.
The new market houses over 2,000 businesses covering a whopping 328 hectares.
The main building runs 2,250 meters along its five passageways, with eight minor rows (lettered “I” through “X”) running about two-thirds of that distance from east to west. The hand carts, shopping carts and pallet jacks zoom through intersections with the carretilleros (hand-cart drivers) generally receiving the right of way.
It’s an underground city unto itself with bank branches, cell phone shops, Oxxos and gambling parlors — a city that comes up for air every couple of blocks where the passageways rise in concrete hills to overlook the loading docks. Carretilleros sprint hard up each hill, moving hundreds of kilos at a time, and stop for a breath before going down the other side, fighting the pull of gravity.
Central de Abasto moves around 30,000 tonnes of food a day. The major passageways teem with hand carts flying past.
At the top of each concrete hill, truckers look out onto the docks to see if their trailers might be loaded and ready, or if there’s still time to kill. Staff spend such a huge part of their lives in the market that there are plenty of distractions and amenities to fill the time — showers, video game parlors, liquor stores and gift shops.
A carretillero slows a massive downhill load at Central de Abasto.
Electronics stores push showy LEDs and the perfect stereo to help truckers make it through the long hauls. Carts sell flashy reflective decals to boast of one’s special interests, be they sports teams, naked ladies or Christ bleeding through his crown of thorns.
Women walk by with trays on their heads loaded with plates to deliver hot food throughout the market or return with stacked empties. Rows of cart drivers wait for a gig, chatting with friends, playing games on their phones or straight up napping on their feet, leaning against their carts.
Cops roll slowly along on golf carts looking for troublemakers — two seated in front and one holding a handrail in back, ready to tackle-dive a runner. And all the while, the carretilleros blast along, loudly whistling to let everyone ahead know to “get outta the way.” You need a good whistle to handle a cart at Central de Abasto.
Despite the chaos, the lanes are wide. It’s actually a pleasant experience to wander with a camera around your neck, looking like a tourist. No one bothers you hollering to make a sale. They know you’re not planning to fill a truck with tomatoes.
In the high-lettered rows of the main building, the chaos subsides and the air cools. It’s early afternoon and a potato salesman — two happy cats napping behind him — tells me it doesn’t get busy through here until around midnight. He distributes mostly to sellers at smaller markets or grocery stores, and there’s no point for them to fight the traffic.
In Row WX, bananas hang on hooks in double bunches, as if still growing. The hung fruit is moved to scales for weighing. Boxes, crates and bunches of bananas — most of them running from green to yellow in ripeness — are stacked everywhere. Some are tiny, plantains, of course. Others are purple — actually red bananas.
The smell is nice, if banana is your thing. It’s like being sealed in a plastic bag with them or hiking through the jungle, hacking them down with a machete.
The workers stack crates or stand ready for service, while the boss man sits at a desk, notepad in hand, usually smoking. He looks ready to chew someone out. Behind each floor display is a modest warehouse with more and more crates and pallets that leads to the open-air loading dock behind.
I ask a smiling, mustachioed banana employee, what sets his product apart.
“They’re from Chiapas,” he says in a charming, soft-spoken voice. His name is Fortunato Ornelas and he’s been at Central de Abasto for 30 years. “A lot of them here are from Tabasco,” he continues. “Bananas from Chiapas are sweeter. They’re the ones with the pointy tips.”
Two kids cruise by on a pallet jack, riding it like a giant steel stand-up go-kart. There are skateboards and scooters. It’s the kind of massive space that begs for transportation. A fat guy passes riding a motorcycle, taking up most of the passage, moving so slowly it seems as if he might topple over.
At the loading docks, dump trucks full of oranges sit parked with their front wheels up on metal ramps. A worker shovels out the oranges while another sorts and guides them onto chutes leading into the bowels of the market where they’ll later be moved to distribution centers.
The massive amounts of organic trash fill dozens of dumpsters a day.
The surrounding runway is a mess of smashed watermelons, overripe oranges and errant piles of soybeans. It’s like the aftermath of an epic food fight. Men shovel dead produce into truck- bed dumpsters, while ladies sort through piles of vegetal “trash,” looking for something that’s still edible.
Hand-painted murals above the warehouses show each business’s personality: smiling bananas play football with kids; mangos and apples dutifully fill warehouse carts; an orange maniacally peels off its own skin; and a bloodthirsty buccaneer carries a bunch of bananas over his back like a fresh kill.
Back along Pasillo 3, the main artery running to the crazed retail end of the market, three dogs meander, calmly searching for a snack. Curtains cover a video gambling parlor, presumably so you can’t see who’s slacking off. People wolf down tortas, the meal of choice at Central de Abasto — serious fuel for a long day (or night) of work. And the carretilleros never tire, hoofing into nearly thankless oblivion.
The market does have its problems. The amount of trash created is astounding, and surrounding neighborhoods complain of dumpster-sized piles appearing on their streets overnight. There’s petty theft and drug sales, as well as the constant threat of merchant kidnapping or theft by organized crime, not to mention underage prostitution because of the demand the market creates.
I politely ask a patrolling policeman if he might be willing to chat with me on the subject, expecting a firm rejection. But he’s come prepared to talk, ready to dive into a full-on diatribe about the status of cops and their general relationship with the market.
“I’m here to watch over everything,” he tells me. “Some people are like, ‘Hey, poli — what are you doing?’’ he says in a mocking voice. “‘Hey poli — what do you want?’ I make my rounds and keep an eye on things. I’m here to keep people out of danger.”
“A lot of people don’t like police,” he continues. “But what would happen in society if there weren’t police?”
“This place is my second home,” he says. “I watch over it.”
In a vast, faceless city like Central de Abasto, sometimes the only pat on the back you’re likely to get is from your own hand.
• Central de Abasto is located on Canal Río Churubusco with its own Federal Zone in Izstapalapa, Mexico City, and is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
This is the 18th in a series on the bazaars, flea markets and markets of Mexico City:
Highway blockade in San Luis Potosí was one of dozens on Wednesday.
Thousands of farmers erected blockades at 42 locations in 14 states today to demand that the government release additional funds to support the agricultural sector.
Protests started just after 8:00am on roads in the states of México, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Sinaloa, Morelos, Jalisco, Nayarit, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Chihuahua and Campeche.
Among the roads blocked were the federal highway between Oaxaca and Puebla, the Mexico City-Querétaro highway at kilometer 122, the Tres Marías toll both in Morelos, the La Tinaja-Acayucan highway in Veracruz and the Ciudad Victoria-Matamoros highway in Tamaulipas.
Access to the Oaxaca city airport was also blocked.
Farmers are angry that agriculture and rural funding was cut by 20% in the government’s 2019 budget. Some are also demanding the delivery of free fertilizer and other aid they were promised.
President López Obrador this morning recommended farmers not waste their time because the government won’t be pressured into ceding to their demands.
“. . . We’re not going to give in at all, none of this ‘we’ll take a highway and reach an agreement as long as you give us so many tonnes of fertilizer.’ Save your time, that’s not accepted anymore,” he said.
The president added that farmers who are protesting for a valid reason will be attended to but for those who are seeking to benefit unfairly or steal, “the corruption is over.”
López Obrador also said that the representatives of some agricultural organizations are upset because the government is distributing aid directly to farmers.
But he declared that the days of union leaders taking a cut of government aid for themselves is over, reiterating “support is now direct to the producer.”
