Hospitals warn of insolvency due to cuts but AMLO insists there have been none

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May 24, 2019

A patient waits for a bed in the hallway of a hospital in Irapuato, Guanajuato.

Hospitals and national health institutes have warned that they are on the brink of insolvency due to federal budget cuts and the freezing of funds, threatening their ability to operate.

At a meeting with members of the budget committee of the lower house of Congress yesterday, the directors of nine government health institutes and two public hospitals said that a total of 2.3 billion pesos (US $120.7 million) has either been cut or withheld from their budgets as a result of austerity measures.

They demanded that the federal government release additional resources to ensure that they can continue to provide care to patients.

A document submitted to lawmakers warned that a shortfall in funding for the institutes of Nutrition, Pediatrics, Cancer and Neurology among others as well as the Federico Gómez Children’s Hospital of Mexico and the Gea González Hospital will reach critical levels in June.

Failing the provision of additional resources, the 11 facilities will be unable to pay for anesthetic services, purchase specialty drugs and medical equipment and hire new staff, the directors said.

They also said they wouldn’t have the funding needed to pay for overtime hours, water and internet services and predicted that the number of surgical procedures carried out would have to be reduced.

“It was an intense, important meeting,” said budget committee president Alfonso Ramírez Cuellar, a lawmaker for the ruling Morena party.

“They’re asking for the budget committee to be a mediator in a meeting with the finance secretary and the president . . .” he added.

The document entitled Position of National Health Institutes in the Face of Budget Cuts said that 50% of the budget allocated to the Federico Gómez hospital in Mexico City to subcontract medical services has been frozen.

It also said that the hospital faced shortages of anesthetics and nitric oxide, undermining its capacity to schedule surgeries and threatening the adequate treatment of serious medical conditions in newborn babies.

The document added that the hospital only has enough funds to pay cleaning staff until July and warned that nurses and lab technicians may have to be laid off.

Union secretary general Ayala says 10,000 workers have been dismissed.

The institutes of Psychiatry, Nutrition, Respiratory Illnesses, Perinatology, Pediatrics, Geriatrics and Neurology as well as the Gea González Hospital warned that a lack of funding to hire medical personnel is affecting their capacity to provide care to patients.

“There are repercussions in the working environment, delays in medical attention, shortages of medicines . . .” said Pediatrics Institute director Alejandro Serrano.

But President López Obrador today rejected the claims that 2.3 billion pesos has been withheld from the health sector.

“There are no [fund] retention problems, [the accusations] are inventions . . . They may have a lack of information, that’s why we’re going to clear it up without any problem,” he said.

Yesterday, the president asserted that there haven’t been any staff cuts in the public health sector.

“No one is being laid off, it’s propaganda, it’s to damage us. Now you’re seeing the ‘underworld of journalism,’” he charged.

But the secretary general of the Federation of Unions of Workers at the Service of the State (FSTSE) disputed the president’s assertion, stating there have in fact been 10,000 dismissals since the new government took office.

“Of course there have been dismissals and what’s annoying is that they can provide [the president] with data that has no truthful content,” Joel Ayala said in a radio interview.

“We have proof about the number of workers in the health sector who have been dismissed, how many doctors, how many nurses . . .”

Ayala added that his union is open to dialogue with the government to discuss ways to resolve the problems currently faced by the public health system.

“We’re waiting for the president to instruct the Secretariat of Finance to open the doors for dialogue. We will present in real terms the deficiencies of the medical sector,” he said.

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

Insecurity, sargassum blamed for drop on international tourism ranking

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Simon Schatzberg

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May 24, 2019

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Sargassum and insecurity hurt tourist numbers.

Mexico fell to seventh place on the World Tourism Organization’s (WTO) ranking of most-visited countries in 2018 after being overtaken by Turkey for the first time.

According to the WTO, 41.4 million international travelers visited Mexico last year, a 5.5% increase over 2017. But international travel to Turkey grew 21.7%, and the west Asian country was able to overtake Mexico with 45.8 million international visits in 2018.

Jorge Hernández, president of the Mexican Association of Travel Agencies (AMAV), told Milenio that Mexico’s drop in the ranking is related to insecurity in many tourism destinations, as well as the large amounts of sargassum that are washing up on beaches around Cancún and the Riviera Maya, one of Mexico’s main travel destinations.

Hernández said that violence has been concentrated in certain places, including Cancún and the Riviera Maya, Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, but it affects the perception of the entire country.

He gave the example of Acapulco, which because of violence has lost its position as an international tourism destination, and now receives only Mexican visitors for the most part.

Countries that remain below Mexico on the ranking are Germany and Thailand, with 38.9 million and 38.3 million, respectively. Exact numbers have not been finalized, but the top three countries are expected to remain the same: France, Spain and the United States.

Hernández said another important reason behind Mexico’s drop in the ranking is that Turkey has become a “fashionable destination” for foreign tourists.

Visiting Turkey is becoming more popular because it has many attractive products and is close to many other destinations. Hernández said that even many Mexicans are starting to visit Turkey, often as part of multi-country trips that include other destinations like the Greek islands.

For the tourist industry, the outlook is not good. The National Tourism Business Council (CNET) says hotel occupancy was down 7% in the first three months, and rates were cut 15% in efforts to lure more business.

CNET president Pablo Azcárraga told Excélsior the disappointing numbers are a result of the decision by the federal government to disband the Tourism Promotion Council (CPTM).

“The problems are due to a mistaken tourism policy that we have in this country,” he said.

Source: Milenio (sp), Dinero en Imagen (sp)

Maya Train will trigger 150bn pesos in real estate investments: Fonatur

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MND Staff

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May 23, 2019

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The 15 stations on the Maya Train route can expect real estate investments. — The 15 stations on the Maya Train route.

The Maya Train project will trigger real estate investment of at least 150 billion pesos (US $7.9 billion), according to the chief of the National Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur).

Rogelio Jiménez Pons said that shopping centers and industrial warehouses among other developments will be built in the vicinity of the 15 stations proposed for the new railway, which will link cities and towns on the Yucatán peninsula and in Chiapas.

“There is no predetermined [investment] figure but I estimate that it will be just as significant as [the cost] that has been proposed [to build] the Maya Train, which is between 120 and 150 billion pesos. I believe it will be an equal amount or more,” he said.

Jiménez explained that a government trust will be set up to determine the zones in which real estate development can occur, adding that sufficient land will be set aside to ensure “long-term growth” in the regions through which the Maya Train will run.

Speaking at the conclusion of an investment summit, the Fonatur director said that 90% of the funds required to build the ambitious rail project will come from the private sector and that the government will provide the remaining 10%.

Both Mexican and foreign banks and asset management companies including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Santander and Bancomer have expressed interest in investing in the railroad, Jiménez said.

Initially announced as a passenger rail service, the train will also carry freight in the form of fuels, the Fonatur chief said, estimating that supplying the southeast region of the country with petroleum products would represent a market worth up to 13 billion pesos a year.

The government says that the construction and operation of the Maya Train will generate employment and economic prosperity in the southeast of Mexico.

But environmental experts have warned that that building the railway poses risks to the region’s underground water networks and the long-term survival of the jaguar.

The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (Imco), a think tank, has warned that the project could end up costing more than 10 times the amount estimated by the federal government, while a range of groups representing Mayan communities rejected it on the grounds that they weren’t consulted about it.

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

‘You know that if you mess up, they’ll kill you:’ a former hitman tells his story

By

Simon Schatzberg

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May 23, 2019

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An abandoned cartel training camp in Jalisco.

“Today, we’re going to do some tests to see how much you’ve learned,” the boss told the group of 19 recruits. “Stay calm, please. I don’t want to kill anyone.”

It was noon on a summer day in Talpa de Allende, Jalisco, and the heat was unbearable. The “test” consisted of standing completely still for an hour, wearing two heavy jackets, holding an AK-47 in shooting position.

Fire ants soon started climbing up the recruits’ legs.

One of them, Francisco, later told Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo about his experience in a Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) training camp.

“The ants started to bite us, it was horrible,” he said. “My foot started to fall asleep from the ant bites, but I couldn’t put the rifle down . . . You know that if you mess up, they’ll kill you.”

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The purpose of the exercise, the recruits were told, was to teach them to separate pain in their minds, a skill that could save their lives if they were ever injured in a battle.

Francisco, 34, remembers how it all started, in April 2018. He was in a bar in a state in southern Mexico when a stranger approached him, asking for a ride to an ATM. Francisco obliged, and when the stranger got out of the car he asked for Francisco’s number, saying, “I like you, I’m going to give you a call.”

Francisco later found out that the stranger was a son of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, the leader of the CJNG. After the arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in 2016, El Mencho became the most wanted person in Mexico, and the U.S. Justice Department offered a $10-million reward for his capture.

Soon after their meeting in the bar, the stranger called Francisco and offered him a job as a private security guard in Jalisco. The pay, 3,500 pesos (US $184) a week, was good, and the job included four weeks of paid training. It wasn’t until Francisco and the 18 other recruits were about to arrive at a training camp in Jalisco that they learned they would be working for the CJNG.

Francisco says they were trained by former military servicemen from Mexico and the United States, who enforced military discipline. The U.S. Defense Department said it does not have information about the activities of former servicemen, while an anonymous police source confirmed to Telemundo that both retired and active-duty Mexican servicemen are involved with the CJNG.

When he was at the training camp in Talpa de Allende, Francisco and the other recruits had to collect wood and build fires in a meter-deep pit where the cartel disposed of the bodies of victims.

“Some of them were still alive when we put them in there,” he said. “It took a whole day for them to burn, and then we had to spread the ashes around.”

The bodies that Francisco helped burn are some of the more than 7,000 missing people in the state of Jalisco.

Francisco fondly remembers his graduation from the training camp, when the cartel held a party for the graduates, with norteño bands, women and expensive whisky. At that point, Francisco still hadn’t killed anyone.

After his graduation, Francisco became a soldier for the CJNG, where his responsibilities included packing individual doses of methamphetamine. Later, he had to kill, but he wouldn’t say how many people he has killed.

Eventually, the cartel gave Francisco permission to “put his sneakers on” — to retire. But since he broke off contact with his former employer, Francisco has lived in hiding, afraid that CJNG members who don’t know he was allowed to leave might see him as a traitor or deserter.

It’s been a year since Francisco’s journey began. He hopes that by talking publicly about his experiences he’ll be able to help find some of the thousands of disappeared people in Jalisco and bring closure to their families.

Source: Telemundo (sp), Milenio (sp)

‘Clowns’ attempt to kidnap 7-year-old girl in México state

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Madison Koen

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May 23, 2019

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Popular horror literature came to life yesterday when three men dressed as clowns attempted to kidnap a 7-year-old girl in Nezahualcóyotl, México state.

According to initial reports the clowns used a motorcycle to intercept the girl in the Palmas neighborhood, grabbed her and sped off. The girl’s mother’s desperate pleas for help were quickly answered by neighbors who blocked the men’s route just a short distance ahead.

Arriving on the scene, police arrested the three clowns and turned them in for processing. Among the criminals’ confiscated possessions, authorities discovered a cell phone with a message to an additional party that said they were on their way with the “package.”

The three men, who were identified as Ángel Iván, 24, Ulises Leonardo, 25 and Gerardo Arturo, 35 were brought before a public prosecutor, who will define the charges they face.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Work begins on new police academy in heart of petroleum theft country

By

MND Staff

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May 23, 2019

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Security Secretary Durazo, second from left, and other officials at yesterday's ceremony. — Security Secretary Durazo, third from left, and other officials at yesterday's ceremony.

Construction of a new police academy began yesterday in one of Mexico’s petroleum theft heartlands.

The state police training facility is being built on the outskirts of Santa Rosa de Lima, a town in the Guanajuato municipality of Villagrán that has been made famous by a cartel of the same name.

Until February, the community was under the control of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, a gang of fuel thieves believed to be led by José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez Ortiz.

Authorities seized two luxury homes linked to the criminal organization during a police operation earlier this year and last month arrested a suspected right-hand man to the fuel theft capo in Comonfort, Guanajuato.

But Yépez remains at large despite an assurance by the federal government in March that his capture was imminent.

After the first stone of the police academy was laid yesterday, Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo said “the project symbolizes the recovery of territory that was difficult to access for authorities [and] where there was impunity and very significant social disintegration.”

The governor thanked the federal government for providing financial support for the facility.

Public Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo, who attended the groundbreaking ceremony along with the heads of defense and the navy, said the federal government presence was evidence of its will to guarantee the safety of all Mexicans.

He added that the police academy will contribute to the achievement of a fundamental objective of the national security strategy: the ongoing training and professionalization of members of public security forces.

“We aspire to have a national policing model that harmonizes and coordinates the forces and resources of the entire republic . . . in order to be ready to give the response society demands on security matters,” Durazo said.

Guanajuato was the most violent state in Mexico last year in terms of sheer homicide numbers and the high murder rate has persisted this year. Much of the violence is believed to be linked to pipeline petroleum theft.

The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) are involved in a bloody turf war in Guanajuato to control the lucrative fuel theft racket and to a lesser extent drug trafficking, the now-defunct National Security Commission said last year.

Guanajuato recorded the third highest number of taps on its petroleum pipelines in 2018 behind Hidalgo and Puebla.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Food, beverage companies weigh dropping delivery routes in Red Triangle

By

Simon Schatzberg

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May 23, 2019

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Delivery trucks face robbery risk in Red Triangle. — Delivery trucks face robbery risk.

At least four food and beverage companies are considering halting deliveries to the Red Triangle region of Puebla because of insecurity, according to the regional president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), Carlos Montiel Solana.

Montiel said that a wave of truck robberies in the region is scaring off the companies, whose drivers often refuse to work after 4:00pm because of the danger of being robbed. Five trucks have been robbed so far this week in the region, which has long been known as a hotspot for fuel theft.

The four companies, which Montiel did not name, will end deliveries to the Red Triangle if the situation does not improve over the next month. He added that the presence of federal security forces has not improved security in the region, and that there has been little cooperation from local governments in the five municipalities of the Red Triangle: Tepeaca, Acatzingo, Quecholac, Tecamachalco and Palmar de Bravo.

Montiel said that since the federal government cracked down on fuel theft, criminal groups in the Red Triangle have been diversifying, turning to new criminal activities such as stealing cargo from trucks.

“[Fuel theft] hasn’t increased, but it hasn’t gone down either,” he said. “But the criminals are moving into cargo robbery, and that’s what’s hurting us a lot.”

Although only four companies are actively considering halting operations, continuing insecurity could cause economic problems for the whole state, Montiel said.

Pepsi, Bimbo and Grupo Modelo halted deliveries in the Red Triangle last fall for the same reason.

Source: El Economista (sp), Milenio (sp), El Sol de Puebla (sp)

Could dirigibles with pollution capture device clean up Mexico City’s air?

By

César Hernández

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May 23, 2019

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Three dirigibles are proposed in the US $25-million project.

A Mexico City engineer and architect is proposing an airborne laboratory and pollution capture device to clean up the air in the country’s capital.

Salvador Silva Contreras this week presented an atmospheric clean-up and rehabilitation project, which utilizes a dirigible balloon flying at an altitude of 100-300 meters over areas with high concentrations of pollutants.

The airship would be equipped with an atmospheric laboratory, a suction device, a filter and a storage container.

Pollutants captured through a thermo-chemical process could be buried in the Sonora desert, in an area already used for similar purposes, explained the inventor, who has been working on his plan for 10 years.

Silva has identified the Chichinautzin volcano south of Mexico City as a suitable place to perform a trial run.

He proposes the use of three airships in areas with the worst air pollution levels.

Silva explained that each airship could clean 11% of the city’s polluted air in two years for a total investment of US $25.5 million.

Some funding could be obtained by selling advertising space on the Zeppelin’s surface, he said.

The inventor wants to present his project to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and is waiting for an opportunity to do so.

Another proposal for addressing the city’s air pollution, which was so bad last week that an Extraordinary Environmental Contingency was in effect for four days, was to install giant exhaust fans that would push the bad air out of the Valley of México through tunnels in the mountains. The mayor has nixed the idea on the grounds that it would not address the root cause of the problem.

Source: El Sol de México (sp), Puerto Libre (sp)

Ikea announces it will open medium-sized store in Mexico City in 2020

By

MND Staff

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May 23, 2019

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Representatives of Ikea met yesterday with the president and other government officials.

Swedish furniture multinational Ikea will open its first store in Mexico in the capital next year.

Malcolm Pruys, country retail manager for Ikea México, told a press conference yesterday that the company plans to open a store in eastern Mexico City in the fall of 2020. It will be called Ikea Oceanía, he said.

Oceanía is an area of the capital near the Benito Juárez International Airport.

The chain, the world’s largest furniture retailer, will also sell its products online in Mexico, Pruys said.

The country manager said in an interview that Ikea is planning to open more stores in other Mexican cities but didn’t specify when.

“We’re setting a reasonably aggressive expansion plan,” Pruys said.

The Mexico City store will be medium-sized, offering customers a range of 7,500 products. It will also house a 650-seat Ikea restaurant, where both Swedish and Mexican dishes will be on the menu.

Ikea México retail project leader Annie Chandler said the store will employ between 300 and 350 people. A separate e-commerce warehouse will also be set up.

Executives from the company met yesterday with President López Obrador, who according to Pruys, was pleased by Ikea’s confidence in Mexico.

“There is great movement in Mexico around cleaning up corruption,” he said. “We think there’s a big opportunity for Mexico’s economy to continue to grow.”

Plans to launch in Mexico began four years ago, while Ikea announced late last year that it also plans to enter other Latin American markets including Chile, Colombia and Peru.

The expansion strategy is designed to offset increased competition in its core markets of Europe and the United States.

Ikea has 427 stores in 52 countries.

Source: El Financiero (sp), Reuters (en)

Presumed leader of Arellano Félix Cartel captured in Tijuana

By

Madison Koen

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May 23, 2019

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The cartel leader captured in Tijuana yesterday.

One of the presumed leaders of the powerful Arellano Félix Cartel, historically based in Tijuana, Baja California, was detained by state police in the border city yesterday.

Felipe Avitia Sarellana, better known by his nickname “El Boca de Bagre” (Catfish Mouth), was captured in the Valle Verde neighborhood in an Audi that a police patrol identified as having been stolen in the United States. Police also secured four firearms, three kilograms of methamphetamines and ammunition.

According to state police, Avitia had been threatened on several large narcomantas hung from overpasses in the Sánchez Taboada neighborhood, which is hotly disputed by rival drug gangs.

Tijuana and its valuable access to the border was the undisputed territory of the Arellano Félix Cartel in the 90s until 2010 when it became embroiled in violent conflict with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa Cartel and later, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel under the command of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes.

This year, the Mexican nonprofit Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice gave Tijuana the dubious title of being the world’s deadliest city based on 138 killings per 100,000 residents, an average of seven murders a day.

Source: Infobae (sp), Zeta Tijuana (sp), Fox News (sp)