A drone captured this image of kidnappers' getaway vehicle.
Police in Irapuato, Guanajuato, have begun using drones to fight the high levels of crime that continue to plague the city.
Just a few days after the municipal Secretariat of Citizens Security commenced crime prevention, detection and response tasks with four drones, it has already managed to thwart one serious offense.
According to a report by the newspaper El Universal, the 911 emergency service received a call at approximately 10:00am Tuesday about an abduction by armed men of a resident of the Villas de Irapuato neighborhood.
Police launched an air and ground search for the vehicle used in the kidnapping and a drone successfully tracked it down.
Once the kidnappers became aware that they were under aerial surveillance, they abandoned the SUV they were traveling in, along with their victim, near the border between the municipalities of Irapuato and Romita.
A police officer flies one of Irapuato’s new drones.
Police were deployed to the location where they found the victim still inside the vehicle and recovered some of the perpetrators’ personal objects. The evidence was later turned over to the Guanajuato Attorney General’s Office.
Although the kidnappers realized that they were being watched by a drone, Irapuato Police Chief Pedro Cortés Zavala said that everyday citizens won’t notice the operation of the unmanned aerial vehicles because they will be used discreetly.
“People won’t see them working, that’s what it’s about, they should be operations that people don’t see. . .” he said.
Cortés said that authorities are awaiting another two drones for preventing crime and supporting police operations.
Guanajuato airport saw 18% passenger growth last year.
The dangers of highway travel and cheap flights were factors in the strong 2019 growth of airline passenger numbers, according to the director of a Mexico City think tank.
Government statistics show that passenger numbers at Mexico’s 10 busiest airports increased 6% last year to 157.5 million.
José Luis de la Cruz Gallegos of the Institute for Industrial Development and Economic Growth (IDIC) told the newspaper El Economista that people feel safer flying in Mexico than traveling on the nation’s roads.
“Due to the rise of criminal offenses on highways, such as kidnappings, homicides and extortion, as well as the presence of organized crime, people prefer to travel by air,” he said.
De la Cruz added that, in their quest to grow their market, airlines now offer “relatively accessible prices,” which helps get more people on to planes.
He said the government’s decision to disband the Tourism Promotion Council (the marketing agency’s budget was diverted to the Maya Train project) and implement a range of austerity measures did not have a significant impact on tourism in the country.
Official statistics show that of the 10 busiest airports in the country, those in Guanajuato, Tijuana and Mérida experienced the strongest growth last year, attracting 18.2%, 14% and 13.8% more passengers respectively than in 2018.
An academic at the University of Guanajuato told El Economista that the growth in passenger numbers at the Guanajuato airport, also known as Del Bajío International, was due to “the industrial vocation of the state” and the efforts of the state government to improve logistics and attract new investment.
“A large part of this growth is linked to manufacturing development,” Lari Arthur Viianto said.
“In Guanajuato, there’s an industrial corridor and dry ports. What we’ve seen is that the arrival of foreign companies from Asia has increased,” he said, adding that industrial growth translates into higher passenger numbers.
The academic also said that important business meetings and sporting events were held in Guanajuato last year, which helped to boost arrivals and departures at the Guanajuato airport.
As for Tijuana, Economic Development Secretary Arturo Pérez Behr said the strong economy in the northern border city, medical tourism and industry all contributed to the substantial growth in passenger numbers. Tijuana’s proximity to the United States and its airport’s cross-border tunnel also make it attractive to U.S.-bound travelers.
“We have the most important market [in the world] a few steps away. . .There’s a constant flow of people [crossing the border]. Our gastronomic tourism is also attracting visitors; we [Baja California] are the state of craft beer,” Pérez said.
The strong passenger growth in Mérida is because the Yucatán Peninsula is becoming both a tourism powerhouse and the most important center of economic development in the southeast of the country, said de la Cruz of IDIC.
Passenger numbers at the seven other airports among the nation’s 10 busiest – Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, San José del Cabo, Culiacán, Monterrey and Cancún – all increased but none achieved growth above 10%.
Still, passenger traffic at the Mexico City airport accounted for almost one-third of the total, while that of Cancún handled 16.2%.
With regard to air freight, the volumes transported via the 10 busiest airports declined 2.8% last year to 1.03 million tonnes. Only Tijuana, Mérida and Hermosillo increased the volume of freight they transported, growing by 13%, 8.7% and 6% respectively.
The biggest decline in freight volumes was at Monterrey airport, which saw 7.6% less cargo than in 2018, followed by those in Querétaro and Mexico City, where volumes decreased by 4.6% and 4.4% respectively.
The expat haven named “Best Small City in the World” in 2018 by Conde Nast also hosts the largest, cross-cultural, bilingual literary event in the Americas.
The San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival has brought in thousands of established and emerging authors and publishing experts, as well as avid readers, from the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe.
This year the event celebrates its 15th, or “Quinceañera,” edition. From modest beginnings in 2006 when a handful attended, it now stretches over five days with over 60 presenters and more than 50 daily workshops.
The keynote events attract over 10,000 attendees, with hundreds attending workshops and master classes in writing and marketing. Past keynote presenters include Judy Collins, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Laura Esquivel, Jennifer Clement, Adam Gopnik, Joseph Boyden, Rita Dove and Jorge Volpi.
Although San Miguel de Allende has long held a reputation for attracting foreign visual artists, it has also been a Mecca for those with an English-language literary bent.
The town has attracted artists since the 1930s, when an art school was established there and foreigners looking for an alternative bohemian center all but abandoned Taxco, Guerrero. It became a retiree haven when some former art students who had been there on the GI Bill after World War II returned to settle in their senior years.
In the 1950s and 1960s Beat writers moved in and out of the town, including Neil Cassady, Vance Packard and Clifford Irving. Various notable works have been penned there over the years, among them Gary Jennings’ Aztec, Charles Portis’ True Grit, and Kathryn Blair’s Shadow of the Angel.
While a number of writers call San Miguel home, even more have spent part of their year here. These include screenwriter Bill Wittliff and poet W. D. Snodgrass. The town has also attracted such well-known Mexican writers as Daniel Sada and Victor Sahuatoba.
Despite the literary history of the town, by 2004 literary readings and similar events had died out. Self-help author Susan Page put an ad in the local newspaper looking for other writers. Twenty-eight people answered and formed the San Miguel Literary Sala. They began with author presentations, and then founded a bookstore that focused on local authors as well as other projects.
The first conference was the brainchild of Jody Feagan, who saw the potential of such an event, given San Miguel’s international status. It attracted 26 participants and was keynoted by organization friend John Berendt (author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil).
Although simultaneous translation into Spanish had always been provided for the major events, events for Spanish speakers and writers were added in 2013.
This year’s conference runs from February 12-16. The keynote speakers include Canadian novelist Madeleine Thein, Native American writer Tommy Orange, storyteller Colum McCann, Mexican writer and academic Rosa Beltrán, Mexican-American writer Juan F. Herrera and non-fiction writer Delia Owens.
All events are open to the public but fees apply. It costs US $115 just to attend the receptions, with prices ranging upwards to $875 to attend all events.
Armed with a police weapon, the woman fires on passing motorists.
A storm of accusations came down on Aguascalientes municipal police after a woman stole an assault rifle from an open patrol car and fired on passing motorists on Saturday, wounding three.
The woman, identified as Gabriela N., had no trouble stealing the loaded weapon, as the patrol car’s doors were open and the vehicle unoccupied.
The municipal police officer had reportedly entered a nearby Oxxo convenience store to buy a soft drink. His apparent negligence caused indignation and sparked a spate of angry reproaches from state authorities.
State Public Security Secretary Porfirio Sánchez Mendoza denounced the lack of professionalism in the city’s police force and accused it of not following protocol or supervising its officers.
“The state Secretariat of Public Security has always carried out the tasks for which it is responsible, and when necessary in total coordination with the municipal police, despite the fact that its chief [Antonio Martínez Romo] doesn’t always follow state public security laws relating to [inter-agency] coordination,” he said.
He added that in 2019 the state Attorney General’s Office received 120 complaints against Aguascalientes police officers for robbery, abuse of authority and bribery, demonstrating a failure to supervise officers and an obvious lack of ethics.
Aguascalientes Governor Martín Orozco Sandoval urged the city’s mayor, Teresa Jiménez, to take responsibility for Saturday’s incident. He had already met with her in October to warn her that municipal police executives and officers “were not performing their duties.”
After firing on motorists, Gabriela N. was shot in the leg by police and taken to a local hospital for treatment.
She appeared in court on Tuesday on charges of attempted homicide, assault and robbery and was ordered held in custody.
A mother of three, Gabriela N. has a history of theft. She was presumed to be under the influence of drugs at the time of the incident.
The three victims of the shooting spree did not suffer serious injuries and have been reported in stable condition.
A patient is treated at a Moons clinic in Mexico City.
A Mexico City-based startup has secured US $5 million in financing to expand its chain of dental clinics.
Specializing in clear aligners – plastic orthodontic devices that provide an alternative to metal dental braces – the company Moons has received funds from Jaguar Venture, Foundation Capital and Tuesday Capital as well as individual investors in Latin America.
Now, Moons is aiming to attract even more funding by participating in a program run by Y Combinator (YC), a Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator.
Moons co-founder and CEO Tommaso Tomba told the technology news website TechCrunch that the company applied to the program because of YC’s access to capital and ability to open doors in the United States.
“In Latin America access to capital to build long-lasting companies is still relatively limited compared to the U.S., so we think it makes sense to YC [to include us in their program] so that they can help us with investors and attracting talent going forward,” he said.
Moons already has 18 clinics in Mexico and two in Colombia but the company plans to expand rapidly in the latter country and open clinics in other Latin American nations, Tomba said.
He explained that the company offers free initial consultations at which orthodontists examine patients’ teeth to determine if they are good candidates for clear aligners.
For a suitable individual, Moons can develop a treatment plan and consultation schedule, and provide the patient with a 3-D printed aligner for about US $1,200.
The price is far lower than that offered by other clear aligner vendors, Tomba said, adding that Moons is providing treatment to more patients in Mexico than its U.S.-based competitor Invisalign.
The co-founder said that he decided to base the company in Mexico partly because of the high demand for aligners and partly because he had experience in the country as an employee of Linio, an online shopping platform.
Tomba added that Moons has ambitions to move beyond the dental market, explaining “we plan to go into other healthcare verticals – always with the core tenet of providing high-quality healthcare and making it accessible.”
Former Major League Baseball pitcher Narciso Elvira Delgado was murdered along with his son in Veracruz on Tuesday.
Elvira, 52, and his son Gustavo, 20, were shot dead by armed men traveling in two vehicles in the municipality of Medellín de Bravo.
Elvira began his career in the Mexican leagues and pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1990 before playing in the professional leagues of Japan and South Korea.
He threw a no-hitter for the Osaka Buffaloes in June 2000, the only Mexican player ever to do so in the Japanese league. With the Samsung Lions in South Korea he won a championship game and led the league in earned run average.
Nicknamed the “Whip from Cocuite” during his time in the Mexican leagues, he was one of only two pitchers to throw two no-hitters in a single season when he played for the Campeche Pirates in 1999.
After his retirement from baseball, Elvira returned to his hometown of Cocuite, Veracruz, where he raised cattle and produced sugar cane. His quiet life there was interrupted in June 2015 when he was kidnapped. His captors returned him more than two weeks later after a ransom was paid.
Both Mexican leagues and the Hermosillo Naranjeros lamented the ex-pitcher’s murder on Twitter.
“The sport is in mourning, we regret the terrible departure of an excellent pitcher,” the Mexican Pacific League said in a tweet.
A 13-year-old student was caught with an Uzi submachine gun in his backpack at a secondary school in General Zuazua, Nuevo León, on Tuesday.
The 9-millimeter weapon was discovered as parents and teachers carried out a backpack search before school. The gun was not loaded.
Teachers took the student to the school’s administrative offices, and the school principal notified police and called the boy’s parents.
Identified only as Jonathan, the student said he had found the weapon in the street while walking to school that day. He was taken to the Attorney General’s Office in Monterrey so authorities could begin investigations into the gun’s origin.
The “Safe Backpack” operation had been applied randomly in Nuevo León schools since a 15-year-old student shot a teacher and three classmates at a school in Monterrey in January 2017. The student took his own life in the attack and the teacher died of serious injuries weeks later.
Threats of school attacks have increased in the state since the Torreón shooting. In some cases authorities have seized knives and identified the sources of the threats, mostly on social media.
Government workers called servidores provide aid to citizens.
Drug cartels, fuel theft gangs, community conflicts and insecurity in general are hampering the delivery of the federal government’s social programs in 50 municipalities, according to an official report.
Obtained via a freedom of information request by the newspaper El Universal, the Welfare Secretariat report says that government employees responsible for conducting censuses to determine who is eligible for government support and explaining to citizens how they can register for programs have suspended their activities or only carry them out intermittently in high-risk municipalities.
Eighteen of those are in Puebla, 14 in Oaxaca, 11 in Tamaulipas, five in Chiapas and one each in Sonora and Durango.
A main aim of the social programs, which offer employment to disadvantaged people and provide payments for pensioners, the disabled and students, is to address the root causes of crime and violence, such as poverty and lack of opportunity.
Ironically, crime and violence are hindering the delivery of the very government support whose intention is to combat them.
El Universal reported that some servidores, or national servants, as the employees tasked with promoting the social programs are known, have been mugged and even attacked with firearms. One government worker was shot and killed in Puebla, while another sustained a gunshot wound in a separate incident in the same state.
The safety of the national servants has also been threatened by political and social conflicts that plague some communities, according to the report.
In Puebla, criminal groups involved in the robbery of trucks and the theft of fuel from pipelines pose the main threat to the government employees, although drug gangs also have a presence in the state. The social program workers are closely watched by gang members and have been warned not to attempt to enter certain communities.
Among the 18 municipalities where the national servers have been unable to complete their work are state capital Puebla, fuel theft hub San Martín Texmelucan, and Tepeaca, which is part of the Red Triangle, a region notorious for the tapping of petroleum pipelines.
In Oaxaca, community and agricultural conflicts have proved to be the main impediment to the work of the employees, the report said.
Other factors that have kept the workers from carrying out their duties within the state include the high rate of homicides, the threat posed by armed men and the presence of hidden graves.
Santiago Xanica: no feds allowed.
The Welfare Secretariat report said that national servants have been unable to enter the municipality of Santiago Xanica since September because a group called the Defense Committee of Indigenous Peoples has placed a blanket ban on the entry of security forces and federal government workers.
“We find ourselves in a position of not being able to attend to that municipality because the safety of the nation’s servants would be placed at risk,” the report said.
In San Pedro Ixcatlán, located on the banks of Lake Miguel Alemán, the discovery of “several clandestine graves on islands that belong to the municipality. . . create uncertainty and suspicion among residents towards [government] personnel carrying out fieldwork,” the Welfare Secretariat said.
Among other Oaxaca municipalities where the delivery of social programs has been affected are Juchitán, Tlaxiaco, San Francisco del Mar and Soyaltepec.
In the northern border state of Tamaulipas, the presence of armed groups involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities has interrupted the work of the national servants in 11 municipalities including Mainero, Villagrán, Hidalgo and Miguel Alemán, all of which border Nuevo León.
However, Nuevo Laredo, located across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, has proven to be the most difficult municipality in which to work.
Of the 115 most problematic locations that have been identified, 33 are in Nuevo Laredo. The city, a stronghold of the Northeast Cartel, is “controlled by organized crime,” the Welfare Secretariat said.
As is the case in Oaxaca, violence generated by community conflicts is the main barrier to the delivery of the government’s social programs in Chiapas.
Social conflicts and the presence of “apparent organized crime” have prevented national servants from going into eight communities in the municipality of Bochil, while they have been unable to enter five towns in Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán due to a territorial conflict.
In Chiapa de Corza, residents won’t let the government workers in because “they don’t want federal support,” the Welfare Secretariat report said, while the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which has long had a testy relationship with President López Obrador, refuses to allow social program employees into the municipality of Tila.
The national servants have also been prevented from entering two communities in Acalá that are controlled by the National Front of Struggle for Socialism.
In Nácori Chico, Sonora, the work of the social program promoters has been made difficult by a turf war between rival criminal gangs, while the workers have been warned not to enter some parts of Tamazula, Durango.
The army seized drugs from a plane flown by narcotraffickers for the second time in two days in Quintana Roo.
The National Defense Secretariat said the air defense system detected an unauthorized aircraft flying over international waters on Tuesday, destined for Cozumel from Argentina.
Planes from the Mexican Air Force forced it to land at the airfield in Mahahual where two Bolivian citizens on board were arrested.
Military personnel on the ground seized around a tonne of a white substance believed to be cocaine; the nature and exact amount remains to be determined by authorities.
The market price of the confiscated drugs is estimated at 224.6 million pesos (US $12 million).
The seizure and arrests were the second such military actions in as many days. Military personnel seized cocaine and guns from a plane forced to land on the highway near Chetumal early Monday morning. One soldier was killed and three wounded in that operation.
More than 1,000 kilos of chiltepín peppers valued at more than 1 million pesos (US $53,000) were stolen from a private home Saturday in Sonora.
Businessman Braulio Navarro Salcido said he had left his home, located in the Centenario neighborhood of Hermosillo, early in the day and on returning noticed that the front door had been forced, as well as the garage door. Once inside, he saw that the product he had stored in 47 sacks had vanished.
One witness said he had seen a pickup truck in the crime victim’s garage, as well as a van parked outside. The thieves apparently needed more than one vehicle to haul away the “red gold” due to the large volume.
After filing a report with the Attorney General’s Office, Braulio remained confident that the thieves would be nabbed, as a cache of that scale was unique in the chiltepín market, a business he’s been in for around 40 years.
The peppers had been purchased from harvesters in the Sierra Alta and several communities on the Sonora River for eventual sale in Tijuana, Mexicali, Culiacán and Los Mochis.
The chiltepín is harvested from wild plants in the Sonora desert. It can be hotter than the habanero but its strength can vary, depending on the weather conditions under which it grew.
