López Obrador, left, presents the official gavel of office to new banking association president Niño de la Rivera.
Mexican banks will eliminate commissions on digital accounts, the president of the Mexican Banking Association (ABM) said yesterday.
Luis Niño de Rivera made the announcement during a closing address at a bankers’ convention in Acapulco, Guerrero, stating that the banking sector respects ruling party Senator Ricardo Monreal’s legislative proposal which seeks to regulate and reduce bank commissions.
“Within this context, we emphasize the importance of our commitment to self-regulation . . . which is evident in the decision to reduce commissions on digital accounts to zero. I repeat, zero commissions for digital accounts,” Niño de Rivera said.
The new ABM president, who is also the CEO and chairman of Banco Azteca, also said that achieving “inclusive prosperity” and financial inclusion were among the challenges faced by banks.
Niño de Rivera pointed out that 41.7 million people in Mexico don’t have bank accounts and 54.5 million don’t have access to credit.
The banking sector is committed to offering financial services in 500 municipalities across the country that don’t have banks, he added.
In an earlier address at the convention, President López Obrador called on bankers to reduce the commissions they charge their customers including those on remittances sent to Mexico from abroad.
“. . . There are a lot of banks, there is competition and bankers will have to offer better conditions to customers and that will allow the . . . commissions to come down,” he said.
He reiterated a commitment made in November that his government would not bring in legislation that would regulate commissions.
The president added that he hopes to return to the same convention next year to give a prize to the bank with the lowest commissions.
Sculptures in the El Triunfo mining museum courtyard recreate the area’s mining history. Lorin Robinson
President López Obrador recently announced that a controversial gold mining project in Baja California Sur will not go ahead because of environmental concerns.
The proposed Los Cardones open-pit mine was to have been located bordering the 29,000-acre Sierra de Laguna Biosphere Reserve southwest of the historic mining town of El Triunfo.
So, it appears that — 93 years after the gold and silver mines shut down around El Triunfo — mining will not return to restore the tiny town near La Paz to anything close to its former prosperity.
Gold and silver were discovered in the region in 1862. After decades of extraction and smelting, the industry began to decline and was eventually shut down in 1926. An estimated 800 pounds of gold and 661 tons of silver were extracted over the years.
During its mining heyday, El Triunfo boasted a population of around 10,000, making it the largest city in Baja Sur. The town was the first in the region to install electricity and telephones and its cultural life included regular concerts and two competing weekly newspapers.
The 154-foot “La Ramona” smelting chimney looms over El Triunfo. Lorin Robinson
Looming over today’s town of 327 residents is a 154-foot chimney known as “La Ramona.” The smelter smokestack was constructed for El Progreso Mining Company in 1890 and named for Saint Raymond because it was completed on his feast day. It has survived almost 130 years of seismic activity, lightning strikes and hurricane-force winds.
Today, the smokestack is a relic and reminder of a more prosperous era. It is also something of a mystery. For decades its design has been attributed to famed French civil engineer Gustave Eiffel. But chimney enthusiasts have been unable to find any conclusive evidence of his involvement.
Despite dozens of online references to the contrary, it does not appear that Eiffel had anything to do with the structure. Wikipedia, for example, is confused. In its entry for “El Triunfo, Baja California Sur,” the online encyclopedia refers to: “Another remnant of the past is the . . . smokestack designed by Gustave Eiffel.”
Meanwhile, another Wikipedia entry, using information taken directly from Eiffel’s own archives, makes no mention of the chimney — not even on a list of “not proven” projects.
How Eiffel and La Ramona became linked is a subject for speculation. One cynic has suggested that, as El Triunfo’s fortunes began to sink, some “chamber of commerce type” decided to burnish the community’s image by fabricating the connection.
In any case, the passage of 100 years had left the structure gravely damaged, including large longitudinal cracks and significant portions of the chimney with loose or missing bricks. The possibility of partial or total collapse after an earthquake or hurricane was a major concern.
Two non-profits have completed restoration of the 130-year-old icon of the regional mining industry. International Community Foundation
Recognizing the cultural and historical significance of the chimney, two non-profits — the International Community Foundation (ICF) and the Corredor Histórico CAREM, A.C. — collaborated recently with the ejido of El Triunfo, owners of the property, to restore the smokestack. The total project budget was estimated at US $200,000.
Walmart heiress Christy Walton, a major charitable force in the region since the 1980s, provided initial funding. Her efforts have focused primarily on environmental sustainability and cultural heritage.
The work, completed this past July, included brick replacement, mortar re-pointing, a new concrete cap, lightning protection and a ventilation system to help ensure that this historic treasure will stand for years to come.
Now ICF and CAREM must repay a loan taken out to fund the project and work to design programs for ongoing maintenance, upkeep and additional enhancements of the site. The goal is $300,000.
Visits begin with an 11-minute video introduction to the Ruta de Plata region of Baja Sur that explores its unique geology, past mining adventures and rich cultural history.
Various exhibits invite visitors to learn about significant locations along the Ruta de Plata, including Real de Santa Ana, El Rosario and El Triunfo. The museum makes the experience a personal one, exploring the lives of three central historical figures: Manuel de Ocio, Henry S. Brooks and Leonardo Orynski.
Local residents, in their own voices, share their recollections of the Ruta de Plata’s glory days. Digital scrapbooks of photographs and memories from local families having historical ties to the region are on display, helping visitors imagine what life was like during this era.
Visitors may also experience, first-hand, the world of mining by entering a simulated mine. Pyromaniacs are even invited to push the plunger and detonate a “dynamite” charge.
Also included is a historical overview of global, national and regional events that shaped the Ruta de Plata region from the 16th century to the early 20th century.
In addition, rare mineral specimens from Mexico and elsewhere in the world are displayed, as well as other intriguing mining artifacts. Plans are under way to open a mineral hall to showcase a larger collection.
Although it appears that mining will not return to the region, its history has been well preserved.
The writer is a newspaper and magazine journalist, photojournalist and the author of two books.
A natural gas pipeline project planned for Cancún could provide a boost for the city’s economy, according to a business leader.
Rafael Ortega, president of the Cancún chapter of the National Chamber of Commerce (Canaco), said that similar projects in the past had failed to get off the ground but he was confident that the current plan will go ahead because it is supported by the state government.
The main beneficiaries of new natural gas lines will be domestic and business consumers, he said, pointing out that natural gas costs more in Cancún than anywhere else in the country and that, in theory, prices should go down once the project has been built.
Ortega added that the industrial sector in the tourism-oriented city is not very strong but contended that the pipeline project would help attract manufacturers of products such as plastic, fertilizers, antifreeze and even fabrics because they all depend on natural gas.
The restaurant sector – one of the biggest natural gas consumers in Cancún – will also benefit, he said.
The pipeline project, to be built by Gas Natural del Noreste (GNN) with an investment of 450 million pesos (US $23.6 million), was approved last year by the Agency for Safety, Energy and the Environment (ASEA) and the Secretariat of the Environment (Semarnat).
The project is planned for the city of Cancún but state officials have held talks with GNN about the possibility of extending the project into Puerto Morelos and other Quintana Roo municipalities.
Citizens will have the opportunity to vote on the project in a public consultation to be held in the coming weeks.
The federal government has announced that it will strengthen the fight against illegal fishing and use buoys to mark the reserve of the vaquita porpoise as part of a new strategy to protect the highly-endangered mammal from extinction.
The secretariats of the Environment (Semarnat) and Agriculture (Sader) said in a joint statement that the aim of the initiative is to “create conditions of environmental, social and economic sustainability” in the upper Gulf of California.
Semarnat and Sader pledged to provide social programs and jobs for fishing communities in the region such as San Felipe, Baja California, and Santa Clara, Sonora, and said the rule of law will be strengthened “to avoid the illegal fishing and trafficking of totoaba.”
Vaquitas often die after becoming entangled in gillnets that are used to catch the totoaba, whose swim bladder is considered a delicacy in China and can yield high prices.
The two secretariats said that tourism, fish farms and better fishing practices – including the use of vaquita-safe nets – would be encouraged. One thousand marines will be deployed to carry out patrols of the vaquita reserve.
Environment Secretary Josefa González Blanco told a press conference yesterday that the government will also stop paying compensation to fishermen, a scheme introduced by the previous administration after gillnets were banned in 2015.
“The strategy adopted previously hasn’t been effective and the problem [of vaquitas dying] has obviously become worse,” she said.
“The initiative we’re presenting today tackles the problem in a comprehensive way . . .” González added.
However, environmentalists said there were insufficient details in the government’s strategy and that more urgent measures are needed to save the critically-endangered vaquita.
“With 10 vaquitas left, what is needed is total protection and the immediate elimination of illegal nets from the vaquita’s habitat,” said Alejandro Olivera, Mexico representative for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The plan to mark the vaquita reserve with buoys falls short of a proposal from activists to build a floating barrier to keep boats out.
Totoaba fisherman have continued to fish in the reserve even though they know very well where it starts, the Associated Press said.
Lorenzo García Carillo, president of a fishermen’s association in San Felipe, criticized the government’s new initiative, charging that fishermen weren’t consulted about it and that it doesn’t satisfy their needs.
He said that fishermen plan to fish this weekend, highlighting that they haven’t been paid any government compensation since the new government took office.
“The projects they have . . . we don’t know how long they will take to start. I understand that there are aquaculture projects but how long is it going to take for them to start working and to produce?”
'We want water,' reads the sign of a protester who has not had any for four months.
Water is being “shamelessly” stolen in the capital city of Guerrero through 10,000 illegal taps into the city’s water system, according to a municipal official.
Political affairs undersecretary Julio César Aguirre said Chilpancingo authorities will seek to prosecute those who are stealing water and causing shortages that residents have been complaining about for the past several months.
“We’re talking about 10,000 people who are stealing water in a shameless way . . . We ask them to pay for it and if they do, there will be no legal proceedings against them,” he said.
For the past two weeks, residents of several neighborhoods in the municipality have been protesting to demand the restoration of reliable water service and the dismissal of water chief Irma Lilia Garzón Bernal.
However, Aguirre predicted that water shortages would only worsen because even though there is enough water in storage systems, it can’t be distributed effectively because of the poor state of water lines.
An alternative, he said, could be to deliver water in trucks but municipal authorities only have three at their disposal – one of their own and two that are on loan from the state government.
“The previous municipal administration only left us one water truck, the others are in terrible mechanical condition,” Aguirre said.
Chilpancingo Mayor Antonio Gaspar Beltrán said in a video posted to Facebook that the Chilpancingo Water and Sewer Commission (Capach) needs 8.5 million pesos (US $445,000) a month to pay for its operational costs.
He explained that almost 5 million pesos is needed to pay for electricity and the remainder is to maintain equipment and cover the salaries of Capach employees.
The utility’s precarious financial situation is a result of many Chilpancingo residents failing to pay their water bills, Beltrán said, urging people to cough up.
However, protesting residents counter that they won’t pay while water supply continues to be so poor.
Traffic stranded at the border near Tapachula, Chiapas.
Following a three-day blockade, traffic is moving freely once again between Mexico and Guatemala after teachers and parents ended a protest demanding that schools damaged in the September 2017 earthquake be rebuilt or repaired.
The protesters used sticks and stones to block access to the Suchiate II international bridge in Tapachula, Chiapas, on Tuesday, and also blockaded the four lanes of the federal highway from Tapachula to Suchiate, Guatemala, stranding trucks on both sides of the border.
The blockades were lifted yesterday after the protesters met with representatives of the state government and reached an agreement.
A spokesperson for the protesters said the state had agreed it would “immediately” rebuild four schools and repair nine more over the course of the year.
Javier Ovilla warned that if the government fails to deliver, the blockades will go up once again.
“It’s unfortunate that authorities only turn around to see and heed the demands of citizens through their protests and blockades,” he said.
Parents and teachers are also demanding better safety conditions for students because earthquakes are common in the region and many school facilities are not prepared.
Ovilla explained that many students are currently being taught in premises rented by their parents, while others attend classes in rustic facilities with makeshift walls and roofs to protect them from the elements.
Mexican soldiers will don a new uniform to form the national guard.
Mexico’s new national guard is another step closer to taking up arms, but the logic behind the agency’s creation and its potential for improving the nation’s security remain uncertain.
On March 13, the state legislature of Yucatán approved a constitutional reform creating the national guard, one of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s signature security policies. With that vote, each of the 32 states has approved the new police force, making its creation all but certain.
These votes follow the February passage of legislation in both houses of Congress that established the legal basis for the 60,000-member national guard. The López Obrador administration has allocated $767 million to fund the guard’s first year of operations, and it is proceeding with plans to build 87 bases for the new service.
The basic idea behind the creation of the national guard is to establish an alternative to the military in the fight against organized crime in Mexico. The role of the force also emphasizes citizen security.
But the new force is not a clean break from the militarized approach of the past 12 years. The national guard will initially be populated by veterans of the Mexican military and Federal Police, and though it operates under the civilian Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, it may be headed by a military officer.
The national guard is also coordinating closely with the army as it builds capacity. Its personnel will initially occupy army barracks as the government builds separate infrastructure. The army is also aiding in the national guard’s recruitment efforts, and the army has justified a buildup of military hardware on the basis that it will be needed to support the new national guard.
InSight Crime analysis
The national guard’s creation has sparked two related critiques within Mexico.
The first is that the national guard is a betrayal of López Obrador’s promises to deescalate the war on drugs. A man who campaigned on the slogan of “hugs not bullets” and who ridiculed the idea of “fighting fire with fire” has now made permanent the participation of a quasi-military body in domestic security.
Critics also warn that the staffing of the new force with former soldiers means that it will not be immune to the abuses characterizing military deployments, such as those seen in a scandal like the Tlatlaya massacre.
Other security policies of López Obrador also stray from true security reform. For instance, Mexico’s Congress recently voted to increase the number of crimes for which people can be held in pre-trial detention. This controversial practice is already responsible for nearly half of the nation’s prison population, and the new law promises to further boost the number of Mexicans behind bars.
Meanwhile, López Obrador’s initial budget reduces spending on the prison system by 26%, despite widespread sentiment that the poor state of the nation’s penitentiaries spurs crime.
The second major criticism is that there is nothing sufficiently different about the national guard to justify the effort and expense of creating this new agency.
Past presidential administrations, promising to revolutionize the fight against organization crime, have enacted similar sweeping institutional reforms of federal police bodies. Vicente Fox created the Federal Investigative Agency, which was to be the FBI of Mexico. Enrique Peña Nieto created the ill-defined Gendarmerie.
None of these forces had an appreciable impact on security. In fairness, this is largely because the new forces are often radically reshaped or eliminated once a new administration takes office.
López Obrador’s own words also do little to clarify the role of the new force. He recently compared the national guard to the blue-helmeted peacekeepers of the United Nations. Similarly, in a November interview shortly after the new agency was announced, he said that the National Guard was meant to “guarantee peace,” though he did not describe how it would do so.
In December, amid growing criticism, he sounded similar notes: “We are proposing . . . the national guard because we want to guarantee peace and tranquility, that there be no violence.”
At no point in his justifications has he given insights on how exactly the new force will contribute to a safer and more peaceful Mexico. Yet the nation finds itself on the precipice of another costly institutional reform, with the government asking voters to put its faith in another new uniform.
Reprinted from InSight Crime. Patrick Corcoran is a contributing writer for InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.
Strikes in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, have generated losses of around half a billion dollars, according to a business group.
Luis Aguirre Lang, president of the National Council of the Maquiladora Industry (Index Nacional), said “the illegal stoppages and the cancellation of some orders” have cost businesses between US $500 million and $600 million.
He explained that manufacturing companies have been unable to meet their production and export commitments and that some have been forced to cancel their investment and expansion plans.
Thousands of workers in the northern border city have gone on strike over the past two months to demand pay raises of 20% and the payment of a 32,000-peso (US $1,700) annual bonus.
Most companies agreed to the demands but some decided to shut down their operations instead.
Two companies announced last week that they were closing their three steel mills in response to the strikes, leaving 400 workers out of a job.
Another six to 12 companies are in the process of deciding whether they will continue to operate in Matamoros, Aguirre said.
He added that there have also been strikes in Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Reynosa, Tamaulipas and Agua Prieta, Sonora. However, the job action in those cities didn’t prove to be contagious as it did in Matamoros.
“. . . The other illegal stoppages were shorter and they reached agreements very quickly,” Aguirre said.
The strikes in Tamaulipas were cited by the Bank of México last month as one reason why it reduced its growth forecast for the Mexican economy in 2019 to between 1.1% and 2.1%, a 0.6% cut at both ends of the range.
Workers are “waking up” to their working conditions and, in turn, taking action against the abuses of both their employers and their unions, the latter said.
Among those who have shown signs of awakening are employees of big-box retail chain Walmart who earlier this month threatened strike action if demands for a 20% pay increase as well as other benefits and better conditions were not met.
However, the strike that was to have commenced on March 20 was avoided as a result of an agreement between Walmart and the workers’ union that offered employees an average annual pay increase of 5.5% and a productivity bonus linked to company sales.
An art installation at last year's festival in Tulum. peter ruprecht studios
Artists, musicians and environmentalists are set to descend upon Tulum, Quintana Roo, for the second edition of the Art With Me *GNP Festival from April 24-28 for four days of art, music, cultural experiences and workshops.
The festival will feature over 100 art exhibits including works by celebrated New York City street culture artist Keith Haring, large-scale art installations that festival-goers will be able to wander through, a musical lineup to include vocalist and filmmaker Michael Franti, Brooklyn house duo Bedouin and techno artist Jan Blomqvis.
However, the event’s main focus is ecological awareness. The organization’s website states that although Tulum has until recently been sheltered from overdevelopment, “accelerated growth has expedited the need for immediate consideration and resolution of environmental concerns.”
As part of the festival’s program “Care With Me,” festival-goers will also have the opportunity to participate in a rain ceremony led by Mayan spiritual leaders, view films by the environmental organization Earth X and virtual reality pieces on plastic pollution by BioHogar, purchase indigenous and ecologically friendly products from a collective market and plant a garden with directors from Mexico City’s Huerto Roma Verde.
There will also be talks and workshops led by local and national leaders on environmentalism, recycling, eco-construction and eco-building, sexual education and sustainable development. The program will also host clean-ups of the Tulum’s beaches and jungle and town areas.
The “Care With Me” program operates year-round. Last year, it held six beach clean-ups, recycled 40% of the festival’s waste, hosted events to generate solutions for solid waste and formed a national alliance with 30 NGOs to ban single-use plastic in Mexico.
In 2019, the program aims to implement education programs to teach people how to reduce and sort their waste, install collection centers in the urban area of Tulum, build a municipal recycling plant, plant an urban garden in the town’s Casa de Cultura and to provide ongoing education for tourists on how to become more environmentally conscious.
Art With Me *GNP founder David Graziano said he intended the festival to be an impetus for lasting change in Tulum.
“My hope is that the festival will become a reference point for tourism and lifestyle travel in Tulum where people don’t just travel to Tulum for vacation, but also play an active role in protecting it now and for future generations.”
Nuevo León’s security secretary says the high cost of a new drone purchased by the state is due to its advanced intelligence technology.
Aldo Fasci faced criticism from legislators, security experts and the public this week for spending 54 million pesos (US $2.8 million) on the unmanned aircraft. He said its intelligence technology accounted for most of the cost.
He explained that the drone, which measures a little more than three meters long, has a top speed of 120 kilometers per hour, can fly at an altitude of 1,000 meters and can remain airborne for up to 12 hours, will be used on special search missions.
The newspaper Reforma reported that the cost of the aircraft exceeded that of the state’s Bell 412EP helicopter, known as the “VIP” because of the craft’s luxury furnishings, installed by former governor Natividad González Parás.
“The helicopter was a transportation issue; this is one of intelligence,” Fasci said, but refused to defend the purchase until the drone’s technical specifications are made public.
He said the government will soon release some technical information about the plane and its intelligence equipment, but many details will remain confidential.
“We can’t give details about the type of technologies used [in the drone’s construction] since they require both international and federal authorization . . . These things are built under strict confidentiality.”
The Mexican-designed drone is a UAV-MX1 built by Unmanned Systems Technology International in Apodaca, Nuevo León.
