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Homegrown hero SuperSlim joins the fight against Covid-19

By
Jude Webber
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López Obrador and Slim: an unlikely duo.
López Obrador and Slim: an unlikely duo.

Mexico is locked in combat with an invisible enemy, whose menace is sweeping the globe. Spiderman, Superman, Batman and the Avengers are nowhere to be found. But one homegrown hero has stepped out of the shadows to fight: SuperSlim.

Carlos Slim, the famously unassuming telecoms mogul, has been hailed as a savior since his charitable foundation announced last week it would fund production of a promising AstraZeneca and University of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine as Mexico grapples with the world’s third-highest coronavirus death toll. Little wonder that a cartoonist in the national newspaper El Economista portrayed the 80-year-old magnate pulling open his shirt to reveal a Superman “S.”

For Mexico’s (and once the world’s) richest man, who prefers to think of charity as “social investment,” the move was in character. As he told his biographer, Diego Osorno: “Our concept focuses on achieving and resolving things, rather than giving. We don’t go around like Santa Claus.”

But for the cash-strapped government of leftist nationalist President López Obrador, the deal was a godsend as it struggles to tame a pandemic that has killed nearly 60,000 people.

The foundation, which Slim set up nearly 35 years ago, will stump up an unspecified sum to help produce 150 million to 250 million doses of the vaccine in Argentina and Mexico. López Obrador says that means a free, universal Covid-19 vaccine will be available in the first quarter next year — and volunteered to be the first to be inoculated.

It is not the first time Slim has ridden to López Obrador’s rescue. But a populist president who rails against Mexico’s neoliberal past, and a billionaire who made his fortune because of it, nonetheless make an unlikely duo. In fact the man-of-the-people president and the billionaire América Móvil boss go back a long way: López Obrador tapped Slim to help him spruce up the capital’s grungy historic center when he was mayor from 2000-05.

But as López Obrador barrelled towards his landslide presidential victory in 2018, Slim admitted to feeling queasy about the investment climate if he won and went ahead with a pledge to scrap the US $13-billion Norman Foster-designed Mexico City airport, which the magnate backed.

López Obrador did just that, straining the relationship between them, and only in the past year has there been a rapprochement. Last August, López Obrador fulsomely praised Slim for helping engineer a deal to settle a row over gas pipeline contracts he considered exorbitant.

The love-in continued, with Slim throwing his weight “100% behind” the president’s goals, including combating corruption and developing Mexico’s poor southeast through mega-projects. Indeed, a consortium led by Slim’s companies in May won a tender to build a section of the government’s flagship Maya train project and Slim has promised to invest $5 billion in infrastructure.

In February, when López Obrador summoned the business elite for a fundraising dinner at the National Palace, Slim was seated at his side. When López Obrador visited U.S. president Donald Trump at the White House in July, Slim joined the two leaders on the top table at a dinner with businesspeople.

Slim has graciously allowed López Obrador to bask in the credit for the vaccine program. But the president sometimes has a funny way of saying thanks: within days of the announcement, he called for an ethylene plant contract between loss-making state energy company Pemex and a consortium of Brazil’s Braskem and Mexico’s Idesa to be scrapped, or at least revised. Slim’s Inbursa bank is a major Idesa creditor.

The $5.2-billion plant was a landmark investment because of its size, but Pemex no longer has a glut of ethane — the raw material used in the plant — and is struggling to meet the terms of a contract the president considers unfavourable to the state company.

But he appears to be overlooking the fact that if Pemex fails to fulfil its contract, Braskem Idesa has an option to force it to repay all the investment plus return on capital. Pemex already has debts of $107 billion. Averting that disaster could be the next test for SuperSlim’s negotiating skills.

© 2020 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not copy and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Mathematician predicts 100,000 Covid deaths by year’s end

By
MND Staff
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covid victim coffin

Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll could exceed 100,000 by the end of the year and confirmed cases could total more than 1 million, according to a National Autonomous University (UNAM) mathematician.

Arturo Erdely told the newspaper Milenio that fatalities could go past six figures by the end of 2020 and case numbers could exceed seven figures if the pandemic wanes only slowly, as is currently occurring. If face masks are not made mandatory in the entire country, the numbers could be even higher, he said.

As of Wednesday, the official Covid-19 death toll was 58,841, an increase of 707 compared to Tuesday, and the accumulated case tally stood at 537,031, up 5,792.

Noting that some states have not yet reached the peak of their local epidemics, Erdely predicted that there will be 65,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths by the beginning of September and 79,000 at the beginning of October. Fatalities will reach 88,000 at the start of November and 95,000 by December 1, he said.

“We could close the year with more than 100,000 deaths due to Covid-19,” Erdely said.

Active coronavirus cases as of Wednesday.
Active coronavirus cases as of Wednesday. milenio

According to official statistics, Erdely added, “confirmed cases are also trending downwards but very, very slowly.”

As a result, there will be sufficient time this year for “many more cases” to accumulate, he said. “At this pace, we could go past a million cases by the end of the year.”

As Mexico’s testing rate is low – only just over 9,000 people per 1 million inhabitants have been tested to date – and targeted at people with serious symptoms, the real number of citizens who have been infected has almost certainly already passed 1 million.

Estimating a fatality rate of 0.6 per 100 cases (Mexico’s rate is currently 10.9), one infectious disease specialist said in late July that Mexico’s real coronavirus case tally could be more than 7 million. Independent studies have also found that Covid-19 deaths have been grossly underreported in Mexico.

The UNAM mathematician stressed that his end-of-year predictions are for the government’s official numbers. With regard to face masks, Erdely said it was unfortunate that the federal government hasn’t “forcefully”promoted their use.

The government’s coronavirus point man, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, did wear a face mask at Wednesday night’s coronavirus press briefing and for the first time in almost six months of nightly appearances left it on for the entire hour-long conference.

He reiterated that new case numbers in Mexico are on the wane and thanked citizens for continuing to follow coronavirus mitigation measures and maintaining a “healthy distance” from each other.

The deputy minister called on people to remember that the coronavirus outbreak is still active despite the decrease in case numbers and urged them to not drop their guard.

The Health Ministry estimates that there are currently just over 40,000 active cases across Mexico with the largest current outbreaks in Mexico City, México state, Guanajuato, Nuevo León and Coahuila.

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

Mexico maintains poor ranking on global impunity index

By
Susy Buchanan
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0
Mexico could use a few more judges, report suggests.
The country could use a few more judges, report suggests.

Mexico’s deficiencies in security and justice coupled with high levels of corruption have landed the country in 60th place on the 2020 Global Impunity Index (GII). 

The index measures systems of security, justice, the protection of human rights and structural capacity to come up with its ranking.

Authored by researchers at Puebla’s University of the Americas, the index rates 69 countries with the highest impunity worldwide. The only countries with higher impunity rates than Mexico are Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Guyana, Paraguay, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Morocco, Honduras and Thailand. 

In the last report, compiled in 2017, Mexico ranked 66th out of 69 countries, while in the 2015 report it ranked 58th out of 59. But that doesn’t mean that Mexico is getting better, it actually means that the rest of the world is getting worse, researchers say. The improvement in position this year is “the result of changes in the position of other countries, rather than the implementation of effective actions to strengthen the rule of law and guarantee access to justice or protect human rights,” the report says.

One concrete step that Mexico needs to take is to increase the number of judges, the report concludes, which would help improve justice administration capacity. The IGI found that of the countries surveyed, the global average is 17.83 judges per 100,000 people. Mexico has just 2.17 judges per 100,000. The country with the least impunity, Slovenia, has 42.77 judges per 100,000.

And although Mexico has a high number of police officers compared to other countries with 347.76 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, more officers does not translate into effective policing.

Police and justice system budgets need to be dramatically increased in order to improve both infrastructure and professionalism, the IGI found. 

Presidents López Obrador inherited high levels of crime and corruption, the report says, and penal reforms have depressurized Mexican prisons, but they lose effectiveness when not coupled with a solid justice and public safety system.

On the positive side, the report praises Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit, which investigates financial crimes.

The countries with the lowest rates of impunity are Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sweden.

Data used in the study was compiled in 2018 and 2019.

Source: El Economista (sp)

More than 1,000 people flee armed attacks in longstanding Chiapas dispute

By
Susy Buchanan
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Refugees from the conflict in Chiapas.
Refugees from the conflict in Chiapas.

More than 1,000 indigenous Tzotzil people have been forced to flee their homes due to violent attacks in Aldama and Chenalhó, Chiapas. 

Men, women, children and the elderly have sought shelter this week due to renewed violence over a long-disputed, 60-hectare plot of land. Some have set up camps in the mountains to escape the gunfire while others are sheltering in sports stadiums or in private homes.

Adama’s conflict is with an armed group from Chenalhó that has continued for more than four decades. In October 2017, more than 5,000 Tzotzil people took refuge in 11 different camps without access to toilets or running water while the government did nothing to intervene, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

Yesterday, a contingent of 200 National Guard and state police officers were dispatched to the area to prevent violence after one man was killed and another injured in the exchange of gunfire, with each side of the conflict accusing the other of armed attacks.

Gunfire drove 80-year-old Adama resident María Méndez Ruiz to flee with other families to a house in the mountain town of Chivic, but her husband, Mariano Jiménez, 81, could not join her as his health is too frail. She fears he may die as he has nothing to eat.

More than 15 families, mostly women nursing infants, have taken refuge in a 20-square-meter house where they lack food and clothing. Some are also sick with colds.

Rosa Jiménez, who lives near the border with Chenalhó, fled to protect her five children: “Almost all night there are shots and the children are scared. I had to flee to find a safe area. In the mountains we are cold, there is a lot of suffering,” she said.

High-caliber gunfire forced Doña Julia López, her husband, daughter and her two grandchildren to leave their home, and they can still hear shots ring out from where they are sheltered. “We cannot spend the night quietly with our children, we are quite scared,” she told El Universal through tears.

Mariana, another of the displaced women, called on President López Obrador to intervene on behalf of the Tzotzil people, especially for the children who are suffering and have nothing to eat.

On July 30, Chenalhó and Aldama officials ratified a non-aggression pact but have chosen not to respect its terms. Fighting between the two communities resumed last week and is intensifying.

On Wednesday morning residents of Chenalhó took the body of the man who was killed to the state government building in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. They placed his coffin mounted on a stretcher alongside banners calling for justice for the 20 people they claim Aldama residents have murdered since the conflict between the communities began. 

State Government Secretary Ismael Brito Mazariegos asserts that the government continues to maintain “a serious and responsible dialogue with both parties” as it searches for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Yesterday, a group of armed men wearing masks and dressed in military fatigues and carrying assault rifles released a video demanding the release of two Chenalhó leaders who were detained last year. “The state government wants to pass our legitimate territorial right from Santa Martha to Aldama, and through political means it wants to fix this problem,” a man told the camera. “We know well that it won’t be solved through political means but through legal means, justice and equity.” 

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

Ex-Pemex boss an instrument of ‘revenge, political persecution by AMLO:’ Calderón

By
MND Staff
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0
felipe calderon
Calderón: president not interested in justice; 'he wants a lynching.'

Former president Felipe Calderón has accused President López Obrador of using ex-Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya as an “instrument of revenge and political persecution” after the erstwhile state oil company chief accused him of acting corruptly while in office.

His claim came after the leaking to media outlets on Wednesday of a document submitted to the federal Attorney General’s Office in which Lozoya – currently awaiting trial on corruption charges – accused him, former presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Carlos Salinas Gortari and several other former officials of illicit conduct related to government dealings with the Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht.

Calderón, who Lozoya accused of approving the sale of ethane to an Odebrecht subsidiary at a heavily discounted price, wrote on Twittter:

“The illegal and showy management of the [Lozoya] case confirms that Lozoya (with the blackmail of having his mother imprisoned) is used by López Obrador as an instrument of revenge and political persecution. He’s not interested in justice but rather lynching [by] making ridiculous accusations” against me.

López Obrador, who has clashed frequently with Calderón since he lost the 2006 presidential election to him, last week called on the ex-president to testify in the Lozoya case. He also claimed last week that Mexico was a narco-state during Calderón’s 2006-12 administration.

The president said last Friday that he had forgiven Calderón for “stealing” the presidency at the 2006 election but the long-standing acrimonious relationship between the two men doesn’t appear likely to warm any time soon.

Ricardo Anaya, a former National Action Party (PAN) lawmaker who was the party’s candidate in the 2018 presidential election, also spoke out after it came to light that Lozoya had accused him of receiving a 6.8-million-peso (US $306,500 at today’s exchange rate) bribe in exchange for supporting the former government’s 2013-14 structural reforms, including the controversial energy reform that ended a 75-year state monopoly in the sector.

In a video message, Anaya described the accusation against him as “completely false” and “truly absurd.”

He noted that Lozoya accused him of receiving the bribe money in the carpark of the Chamber of Deputies in August 2014 but highlighted that he wasn’t even a deputy at that time.

“In addition to being corrupt, Lozoya is very bad at lying,” Anaya said.

The former PAN lawmaker, who also served as the party’s national president between 2015 and 2017, said he would initiate legal action against Lozoya for “moral damage.”

“I’ll do it because I am certain that there is no support at all for the vile lie that Lozoya has invented against me,” he said. “I don’t care how long it takes me; I will defend my honor and continue fighting to change Mexico.”

Querátaro Governor Francisco Domínguez and his Tamaulipas counterpart Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, both former PAN senators, also rejected Lozoya’s claim that they received bribes in exchange for supporting the previous government’s reforms.

Domínguez described Lozoya’s accusation as an “unprecedented vile deed” and “libel,” and asserted that the words of a “confessed criminal” cannot be trusted.

Speaking alongside López Obrador at a press conference Wednesday, the governor distanced himself from the actions of his personal secretary, whom he fired on Monday after a video surfaced showing him accepting 2.4 million pesos in cash when he was a Senate official.

“I removed him from his position, … for my part, I don’t have anything to fear, nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide. In my life I have always faced up [to accusations against me], today won’t be an exception,” Domínguez said, pointing out that he was a supporter of energy reform long before the previous government’s presented its initiative.

“Mr. Emilio Lozoya has sought to involve me … in acts of corruption. He has only provided words which are worth as much as his standing – nothing.”

García Cabeza de Vaca of Tamaulipas wrote on Twitter: “I will not allow them to use me for electoral purposes nor to hide the country’s serious problems. I will respond with resolve to the lies of the confessed criminal Lozoya.”

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

Yaqui tribe members turn off water for most of Guaymas, Sonora

By
Susy Buchanan
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0
The pumping station that was shut down in protest by Yaquis.
The pumping station that was shut down in protest by Yaquis.

Members of the Yaqui tribe closed the Rio Yaqui aqueduct in Sonora for 12 hours Tuesday night, leaving 80% of Guaymas and neighboring Empalme without water. 

As a result, Sonora’s Water Commission (CEA) announced it would file a complaint against whoever was responsible, and that it considers leaving thousands without water during a health emergency a criminal act. 

CEA executive Sergio Ávila Ceceña said protesters arrived at a pumping station number two, turned off the water and then relinquished control of the station in the morning without incident. 

“We don’t have the authority to remove anyone, much less by force, nor do we have the faculty or the capacity to do so,” Ávila said. “As of now, we do not have names. Obviously the people who arrived did not identify themselves with a voter ID, they only stated that they came from of the Yaqui ethnic group,” he explained.

Water supply to Guaymas and Empalme is gradually being restored, officials said.

Yaqui tribal leaders were looking to pressure Guaymas Mayor Sara Valle Dessens to intervene in their dispute with the federal government as they seek compensation for ceding tribal land for the construction of various infrastructure projects. 

They are also seeking to force the federal government to fulfill social development commitments for its eight Yaqui towns: Cócorit, Bácum, Vícam, Pótam, Tórim, Huírivis, Ráhum and Belem.

Last week protesters blocked federal Highway 15 and railway tracks in Sonora, stranding 2,176 rail cars.

Adelfo Regino Montes, head of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, was sent to Sonora by President López Obrador to negotiate with the Yaquis, who have demanded the presence of Sonora Governor Claudia Pavlovich Arellano and  Mayor Valle at talks.

Source: Milenio (sp), Expreso (sp), Las5 (sp)

Corruption probe is manna from heaven for López Obrador

By
Michael Stott
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López Obrador
López Obrador: a strategy of distraction.

Powerful leaders are fond of corruption investigations as a method for eliminating rivals. Instead of low political score-settling, they suggest an appeal to the moral high ground. Think of Xi Jinping’s sweeping purges. Or Vladimir Putin’s imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s top oligarch, on fraud and tax charges.

Mexico’s populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, appears to have taken a leaf from their book. Like Messrs Xi and Putin in the early days, he has made the campaign against corruption a signature theme, and the main targets have been political opponents.

In his boldest move to date, López Obrador has called upon two former presidents from opposition parties, Enrique Peña Nieto and Felipe Calderón, to testify in a scandal over alleged bribes paid by the state oil company Pemex. Emilio Lozoya, a former Pemex chief executive facing charges of money laundering, is cooperating with prosecutors. Almost daily, salacious leaks from what is said to be his testimony fill the Mexican press.

Let there be no mistake: a clean-up of Mexico’s political system is long overdue. For decades, corrupt politicians of all stripes have accumulated great wealth by milking a system that is rotten even by the low standards of the region. Transparency International’s annual corruption perceptions index ranks OECD nation Mexico in 130th place, tied with Mali and Myanmar.

But the way in which López Obrador has pursued his anti-corruption crusade has raised multiple red flags. Testimony from a confidential investigation is drip fed to the media almost daily, conveniently offering the president an opportunity to comment on a process that should be sub judice. The most explosive allegations so far compromise opposition politicians, while evidence of corruption within López Obrador’s government has gone mostly unpunished.

Manuel Bartlett, the powerful head of the state electricity company, denied accumulating a string of undeclared properties. He was exonerated in a probe conducted by a minister who was herself accused of accepting a plot of land from the city government and acquiring several properties while on an academic’s salary. (She denies wrongdoing).

The timing of the Pemex case is fortuitous. López Obrador’s opinion poll ratings were slipping, hurt by his disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic and by one of the emerging market world’s worst recessions. Voters in next year’s midterm elections threaten to rob him of his congressional majority.

“The priority right now is to distract from what is going on in the country, which is all very negative,” said Andrés Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister and now senior adviser at a non-governmental organization in the U.K. “It’s a circus for the people.”

So far, the strategy seems to be working. López Obrador’s popularity has begun to pick up as the Lozoya allegations knock the world’s third-highest coronavirus death toll off the front pages. The opposition is in disarray: a leading conservative governor has dismissed his private secretary after the man appeared in a video purporting to show him counting bundles of Pemex cash.

Calderón has not commented directly on the allegations but has accused López Obrador of waging a campaign of political persecution against him. Peña Nieto has not spoken publicly.

But improving his ratings and keeping his majority are not enough for López Obrador. His real aim is to remake Mexico, sweeping away the free-market, pro-business policies of the past four decades and replacing them with a vision of state-led development from the 1960s, epitomized by a reinvigorated Pemex. 

“López Obrador’s political agenda is clear: he will go after the period of Mexican history he considers an aberration,” said Thomas Shannon, a former top U.S. state department official who is now co-chair of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington. 

Key to this agenda is a reversal of the historic reforms passed under Peña Nieto, which opened oil exploration to foreign investment and weakened the hold of the powerful teachers’ union over hiring. If López Obrador can show that bribes greased the passage of the reforms, he can destroy their legitimacy.

“He wants to totally discredit the energy reforms and the education reforms,” said Raymundo Riva Palacio, a leading Mexican political commentator, of the Pemex corruption probe. “This is totally political.”

© 2020 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not copy and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.

In leaked document, ex-Pemex chief accuses 3 presidents, dozens of officials of bribery

By
MND Staff
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Former presidents, from left, Salinas, Calderón and Peña Nieto.
Former presidents, from left, Salinas, Calderón and Peña Nieto.

In a document submitted to the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) last week, former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya accuses three ex-presidents as well as former government ministers and federal lawmakers of corruption, much of which was allegedly linked to the payment of bribes by Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.

The 63-page document — submitted to the FGR on August 11 and leaked to media outlets on Wednesday — makes explosive accusations against ex-presidents Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón and Carlos Salinas Gortari as well as former cabinet ministers including Luis Videgaray and José Antonio Meade and several former National Action Party (PAN) lawmakers including two who are currently serving as state governors.

Lozoya, who was at the helm of the state oil company between late 2012 and early 2016 – the first half of the previous government’s six-year term, accuses Peña Nieto and Videgaray, the former president’s longest-serving finance minister, of leading a bribery scheme whose aim was to ensure that the previous government’s legislative agenda passed through Congress.

He said he was told by the two men in early 2013 that he would be required to deliver large sums of money to opposition party lawmakers to ensure the passage of the 2013-14 structural reforms, in particular the energy reform that opened up the sector to private and foreign companies.

“I was mainly involved in the approval of the energy reform delivering, through third parties, certain resources in transparent bank bags and [other] bags to senators who were members of the energy committee in the Senate and a federal deputy,” Lozoya wrote in the document, explaining that the money came from bribes paid by Odebrecht in exchange for lucrative contracts.

Former cabinet minister Videgaray, left, and one-time presidential candidate Anaya.
Former cabinet minister Videgaray, left, and one-time presidential candidate Anaya.

That claim is supported by a video posted to YouTube this week that shows two former PAN Senate officials receiving 2.4 million pesos in 12 transparent plastic bags.

Lozoya said that Videgaray gave him specific instructions about who was to receive bribes.

According to the ex-Pemex CEO, who is currently awaiting trial on corruption charges, six former PAN lawmakers (five senators and one deputy) received payments in exchange for their support of government legislation.

They were Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, the current governor of Tamaulipas; Francisco Domínguez, the current governor of Querétaro; Ricardo Anaya, a former federal deputy and PAN national president who was the party’s candidate in the 2018 presidential election; Salvador Vega Casillas; Ernesto Cordero; and Jorge Luis Lavalle Maury, a close collaborator of one of the men seen receiving money in the YouTube video.

Lozoya claimed that a group of four former PAN lawmakers including the two current governors acted as a virtual criminal racket by demanding US $50 million for their support of the government’s reforms.

The former Pemex chief said he met with the lawmakers in his office on several occasions on the instructions of Videgaray.

“Their demands amounted to … US $50 million in order to vote in favor of the energy reform. … They asked for appointments and took contractors close to them so that they would be given Pemex contracts. The mentioned legislators had a very aggressive attitude; they even threatened to boycott the energy reform if they didn’t receive their bribes,” Lozoya wrote.

The former oil company chief also accused Peña Nieto and Videgaray of fraud and embezzlement and depicted himself as a victim of their corruption.

“The president and the … finance minister used me to create a criminal conspiracy aimed at enriching themselves, not only by [taking] government funds, but also by extorting money from individuals and companies [and engaging in] fraud and deceit,” Lozoya wrote.

He also claimed that Calderón, Peña Nieto’s predecessor, had a cosy relationship with Odebrecht.

Lozoya wrote that Calderón’s government “put together solid schemes of corruption,” particularly with Odebrecht subsidiary Braskem, a petrochemical company.

He said the relationship between Calderón, who represented the PAN, and Braskem was so close that the former signed a more than 20-year-long contract with the latter authorizing Pemex to sell the Brazilian firm ethane “with an inexplicable discount of approximately 25%.”

Ex-PAN senators Domínguez, García and Lavalle. The first two are currently governors of Querétaro and Tamaulipas.
Ex-PAN senators Domínguez, García and Lavalle. The first two are currently governors of Querétaro and Tamaulipas.

“In addition, he decided to give such importance to this illicit act that damaged the wealth of the nation that … he invited [Brazilian] president Lula da Silva to the signing of said contract” in 2010, Lozoya wrote.

He said that José Antonio Meade, who served as a minister in both the Calderón and Peña Nieto governments, and José Antonio González Anaya, his successor at Pemex and a Peña-era finance minister, were involved in the scheme to sell ethane to Braskem at a reduced price. Both men were on the Pemex board when the deal was struck.

A lot of PAN politicians received “large sums of money” in connection with the ethane deal, Lozoya said.

Odebrecht and its former CEO Marcelo Odebrecht – convicted and imprisoned on corruption charges – had a close relationship with the Mexican government for a decade, Lozoya said.

“It wasn’t a bribe-contract-bribe relationship. It was a deeper relationship. It was about exercising influence over the president of the republic and the legislature” he wrote.

Carlos Salinas, widely considered one of Mexico’s most corrupt presidents, was also involved in the corruption linked to Odebrecht, Lozoya said, accusing the former leader of acting on behalf of PAN lawmakers even though he represented the once-omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The former Pemex chief also accused the ex-president, in office from 1988 to 1994, of influence peddling to try to secure Pemex contracts for his son.

Many of the former officials accused by Lozoya, including Calderón, Meade and Ricardo Anaya, quickly rejected the claims against them.

The leaking of the document comes after Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero said on August 11 – the date Lozoya’s document was submitted to the FGR – that the ex-Pemex CEO had indicated that some US $10 million in bribes paid by Odebrecht was used to fund Peña Nieto’s 2012 election campaign as well as pay off lawmakers for their support.

The FGR said it had launched an investigation into the leaking of the document, whose veracity it confirmed.

Lozoya, who was extradited to Mexico from Spain last month, is awaiting trial on charges related to his role in the Odebrecht corruption as well as Pemex’s purchase of a fertilizer plant in 2015 at an allegedly vastly inflated price.

FGR prosecutors have formally accused him of receiving a payment in excess of US $3 million from the president of Altos Hornos de México, which sold the plant to the state oil company.

Lozoya and Peña Nieto
Lozoya and Peña Nieto don’t have much reason to smile at present.

In the document he submitted to the FGR, Lozoya said that Peña Nieto and Videgaray negotiated the purchase price with the plant owner and that the two men intimidated him into signing off on the deal.

“It was evident that Luis Videgaray Caso had a personal interest in getting the deal done, either because he would obtain some possible illicit benefit, or to pay off favors from the past,” he wrote.

Lozoya, who has been given protected witness status and was not remanded in preventative custody, is one of two high-ranking members of the Peña Nieto government currently awaiting trial on corruption charges. The other is former cabinet minister Rosario Robles, who allegedly participated in the embezzlement scheme known as the “Master Fraud.”

President López Obrador has described the Lozoya case as “very important” because it will help to shed light on the corruption committed by past government officials. He said last week that Peña Nieto and Calderón should both testify in the case.

“The attorney general has disclosed that two ex-presidents are involved in possible acts of corruption. So what comes next is that they should be called to give evidence and Mr. Lozoya should present proof.”

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

Hurricane Genevieve delivers torrential rains, strong winds and big waves in Baja Sur

By
Susy Buchanan
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0
Rain began falling early Wednesday in Los Cabos.
Rain began falling early Wednesday in Los Cabos.

Hurricane Genevieve was bringing high winds and intense rain to Baja California Sur Thursday morning, as it moved northwest parallel with the state’s Pacific coast.

Effects of the Category 1 hurricane were felt Wednesday and into the early hours of Thursday in Los Cabos on the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.

According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Genevieve was 160 kilometers west-northwest of the tip of the Baja Peninsula with maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers per hour at 8:00 a.m. local time. The cyclone was traveling northwest at 19 kilometers per hour. Genvieve will remain a hurricane through most of Thursday, forecasters predict, before deteriorating into a tropical storm as it moves over cooler water.

The hurricane warning that was in effect for the area between Los Barriles and Todos Santos has been replaced with a tropical storm warning for Los Barriles to Cabo San Lázaro.

Rains in the area have been nearly incessant since the predawn hours of Wednesday. Flooding temporarily closed the highway between San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, and one resident of Cabo San Lucas reported that his rain gauge overflowed at 254 millimeters. Another 50 to 100 millimeters of rain are expected to fall today bringing totals in some areas to 305 millimeters.

An automated observation site near the Cabo San Lucas Marina reported a wind gust of 74 kilometers per hour. Landslides were reported in several areas, several lamp posts were toppled by the winds overnight and people attempting to drive through flooded areas had to be rescued. 

Genevieve has generated waves of eight to 10 meters high to pound Baja’s coast. Beaches and ports in Los Cabos have been closed since Tuesday.

Erick Santillán, director of Civil Protection for Los Cabos, said the hurricane was 60 kilometers from the peninsula at its closest point. 

An estimated 8,500 tourists are in Los Cabos. On Tuesday, the airport reported 34 domestic and international flights were canceled.

Residents are encouraged to remain in their homes until the tropical storm warning is lifted.

So far, the only casualties reported due to the hurricane are a 15-year-old tourist from Nuevo León and the 30-year-old lifeguard who tried to save her from drowning in Cabo San Lucas Bay.

Source: La Jornada (sp), Cabo Mil Noticias (sp), Milenio (sp)

Classes are set to resume but many children will be left out

By
Sarah DeVries
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0
student and computer
The new normal in education.

My daughter is starting first grade this year.

Well, kind of.

Public schools in Mexico are currently beginning to impart at least a fraction of the education they otherwise would to their students through educational public television programming.

As Jack Gooderidge wrote a few weeks ago, it’s a good enough effort in our current pinch, but not sustainable or likely impactful long-term. Especially at the lower levels, the purpose of school is just as much about learning to get along with other human beings as it is about learning to read and write.

Private schools, meanwhile, are trying to avoid bankruptcy as scores of families stop paying as a result of their own drastic decreases in income. Others have stopped simply because it doesn’t make economic sense to continue paying for a service that, by definition, cannot be given even close to the extent it’s intended to be. Thirty percent of private school students from last year have simply not re-enrolled, and 25% of private schools are at risk of closing permanently.

So far my daughter has had one day of class (there were apparently technical difficulties on the second day). Today will be the third day, and my first day “at school” with her since she was with her dad the previous two.

I’m a little worried about how it’s going to work. She’ll have around three hours a day of video-conferencing classes, and from what I can tell, either I or her father will need to be there actively participating for most of it.

We also need to get things set up each day: supplies must be bought or gathered and organized (and there are a lot of supplies — it’s first grade, after all); our own schedules must be cleared during that time.

The tablet we bought a few years ago is apparently not up for the job, which means she’ll need to be, when she’s with me, on my computer until we can find or afford another solution. As you know, I work as a writer and translator, and am also in the process of launching a new business. I need my computer, especially when she can be busy with something else for a few minutes.

On top of it, we’re paying the regular full price for her education even though we’ll mostly be imparting it to her in our respective homes while also trying to maintain our regular jobs. We’ve both been lucky enough to keep doing our jobs from home, but how does one both work and serve as elementary school teacher at the same time?

While she’s enrolled now in an excellent school, it’s new to all of us: we signed her up for it back in February when it was clear that her current school had every intention of continuing to raise already-high prices each year — now it feels like that happened in another world!

(The decision to move her came after the director said to me, in the most polite way possible of course, that if I was not OK with the price hikes, then I was welcome to send her somewhere else as there was a long line of families waiting to enroll their children in her place. Is it petty to feel a sense of cosmic justice at this point?)

The above are fairly bourgeoise problems. Many families are facing the exact same issues as we are, so at the very least we have the comfort of not being alone in our struggles. A lot of families, too, are facing far greater problems. Knowing that ours pale in comparison to those of many others keeps us from whining too much, because even though the situation is far less than ideal, at least we’ve got these expensive, inconvenient options.

Many families simply do not, and will slip through the cracks to join the crowd that was struggling with all their might to get their basic needs met even before the pandemic started. Forget education: they need food and safe housing. While valiant efforts are being made by inventive and selfless volunteers to serve this population, many children will simply continue to go without.

It’s hard, in general, to be selfless and generous when you’re struggling, and even those who’ve managed to weather the economic fall-out are likely struggling mentally and emotionally, not an ideal state of mind for being available for rescuing anyone.

In the end, I’m not too worried about my own daughter’s specific situation, other than the general sadness of her not being able to socialize and play with other kids. I worked as a teacher for many years and feel confident in my ability to educate her myself if need be, SEP paperwork or not. I’ve always had the possibility of homeschooling stored away in the back of my mind anyway, as I’d like us to be able to travel in the future without worrying too much about an official school year calendar. They’re simply not the circumstances I was imagining.

These are hard times. None of us knows when all of this will end, nor what things will look like when it finally does. What exactly, and how will we rebuild? In those moments between sighing heavily and pinching the bridge of our noses while we squeeze our eyes shut, when we can let got for a bit and think of creative solutions, let’s not forget to write them down. We’ll need all the ideas we can get.

Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.

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