Migrants march north from the border Thursday morning.
As many as 1,000 Central American migrants marched toward Tapachula, Chiapas, after crossing the Suchiate River at the border with Guatemala early Thursday.
The largest caravan of migrants to enter Mexico since President López Obrador agreed last year to reduce the flow of migrants to the U.S. marched over seven kilometers into Chiapas this morning.
But that was as far as they got.
National Guardsmen and immigration agents erected a barrier on the highway outside Tapachula and fired tear gas at the migrants when they approached.
Some were detained but many remained in the community of Frontera Hidalgo where they were making plans to submit a petition to López Obrador to ask for asylum.
Employees are taken away by police after their arrest for kidnapping.
Mexico City police arrested a hotel manager and clerk for cooperating with a local gang to kidnap guests for ransom.
Sergio S., 38, manager of the Hotel Plaza Revolución, and employee Carmen Michelle N., 23, were taken into custody Wednesday afternoon after a man from Monterrey, Nuevo León, alerted police to the kidnapping of his wife and daughters from their room.
The employees of the hotel in the Tabacalera neighborhood are suspected of collaborating with the La Unión de Tepito gang by providing rooms to carry out kidnappings.
The man’s wife told police that her husband received a phone call around 10:00am on Wednesday in which the receptionist said a drug and weapons search was being carried out in the hotel.
Two men entered the room seconds later and said they were part of the La Unión de Tepito. They took the man’s wife and two daughters with the help of a hotel employee.
The man later received a video call from his wife’s cellphone in which the supposed gang members confirmed the kidnapping and demanded he pay a ransom of 500,000 pesos (US $26,500).
The man later heard his wife’s voice through a wall and realized they were in a communicating room. When he entered the room he found his wife and daughters along with the hotel manager.
He called police, who arrested the manager and receptionist.
The kidnapping wasn’t the only one thwarted in the city this week.
Another rescue was made Tuesday night in the Hotel City Express in Tlalpan, in the south of the city.
Police arrested three Colombian nationals after a man stopped officers on the street to say that he had received photographs of his mother being held captive in a room of the hotel. Police said the kidnappers demanded 300,000 pesos (US $16,000) for her release.
Travelers don masks for protection against coronavirus.
A Tamaulipas man hospitalized for a possible case of the coronavirus has tested negative for the disease, said state Health Secretary Gloria Molina, but authorities in Jalisco are investigating three other suspected cases.
Molina said that screening of the man’s friends, family and others he had contact with upon is return has been lifted and that there is no need for a second test.
“It ends here,” she said.
In Jalisco, a 42-year-old man who traveled to Wuhan, China, and a woman and child with whom he had contact are now under observation. The man showed symptoms of the virus on January 13.
All three are from Tepatitlán.
Chinese authorities have raised the death toll from the coronavirus to 17 and confirmed 444 cases, mostly in Wuhan, where the outbreak is suspected to have begun and to which the Tamaulipas man traveled over the holidays.
Cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States, and authorities in the Philippines and Australia are investigating possible cases in those countries.
The coronavirus is a pathogen related to the common cold and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that can lead to pneumonia. An outbreak of SARS in southern China sparked global fears in 2002 and 2003.
How young is too young to begin training to learn how to fight back against a violent criminal gang? In the mountains of Guerrero, the answer is 5.
Nineteen children aged between 6 and 15 were presented as community police-in-waiting in the municipality of Chilapa on Wednesday.
Dressed in t-shirts of the regional community police force CRAC-PF, wearing kerchiefs that partially covered their faces and wielding shotguns or large sticks, the children marched along the Chilapa-Hueycantenango highway and through Alcozacán, hometown of 10 indigenous musicians who were murdered in Chilapa last Friday.
“Weapons to your shoulders now!” was one of the orders shouted during the march in which the youngsters from Xochitempa, Chilapa and Ayahualtempa, a community in the neighboring municipality of José Joaquín de Herrera, showed off some of the self-defense and policing skills they have learned over the past two months.
CRAC-PF coordinator Bernardino Sánchez Luna explained that the children are in training so that they know how to defend themselves in the case of an attack by Los Ardillos, a drug gang whose members were allegedly responsible for the murder of the musicians from Alcozacán.
Weapons training for children in Guerrero.
“The children sometimes go out to the fields to keep an eye on the animals and they find criminals there so it’s better for them to know how to defend themselves . . .” he said.
Dozens of people have been killed in confrontations between Los Ardillos and community police over the past four years, widowing at least 24 women and leaving more than 60 children without a father.
Sánchez said the decision to train the minors was taken because the army, National Guard and state police have all been unable to stop the attacks perpetrated by the gang, which is also engaged in a turf war with a criminal organization known as Los Rojos.
He conceded that the children would be better off at school but teachers are no longer showing up for classes out of fear they will come under attack.
The purpose of the mobilization of the budding vigilantes on Wednesday, the CRAC leader said, was to call for a visit to Chilapa by President López Obrador, to whom the CRAC has already presented a list of 29 demands aimed at reducing violence.
“We’re waiting for the president in the community . . . We want him to attend to our demands,” Sánchez said.
“. . . We’re waiting for a response from the government, from President López Obrador and from Governor Héctor Astudillo . . . they have the solution,” he added.
The presentation of the up-and-coming community police was not the first time that the CRAC-PF has publicly shown that it is preparing children for combat in Chilapa. Videos that circulated last May showed children undergoing training to defend the town of Rincón de Chautla in case of an attack.
In response to Wednesday’s march, the Guerrero government called on the CRAC-PF to respect the human rights of the children involved.
For his own protection, a migrant is chased by guardsmen at the southern border.
The federal government is rounding up migrants for their own protection, President López Obrador said on Wednesday.
“We’re protecting them, we don’t want them to get to the north [of Mexico where] they could be nabbed [by criminal groups] or become victims of crime. That’s what we’re doing,” he told reporters at his morning news conference.
The president’s remarks came two days after the National Guard used tear gas and batons to repel hundreds of Central American migrants, including pregnant women and children, who waded across the Suchiate River between Guatemala and Chiapas to try to enter the country.
Members of the so-called “2020 caravan,” the first large group of migrants to reach Mexico’s southern border this year, decided to ford the river after Mexican authorities blocked their entry via the official border crossing. They were also advised that they would not be issued with transit visas that would allow them to travel legally to the northern border to seek asylum in the United States.
About 500 migrants succeeded in getting past the guardsmen, who had formed a human wall, but the majority were detained a short time later. Those found not to have genuine claims to asylum will likely be deported.
Migrants make a dash across the Suchiate River.
López Obrador acknowledged that the government’s increased enforcement against migrants is controversial but stressed that the National Guard and immigration agents have been given a clear order to respect their human rights.
However, his claim that the government is detaining migrants for their own protection appears disingenuous considering that it first deployed the National Guard to ramp up enforcement against them in order to appease United States President Donald Trump, who threatened in the middle of last year to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican goods if more wasn’t done to stop asylum seekers reaching the Mexico-U.S. border.
Deporting migrants to violence-stricken Central American countries such as El Salvador and Honduras would also appear incompatible with the protection referred to by the president.
Asked by a reporter about the use of tear gas on Monday, López Obrador asserted that it was an “isolated case,” adding that it is not a strategy that the government will use often to stop migrants trying to enter Mexico illegally.
“. . . We want peace and to resolve differences with dialogue, with agreement,” López Obrador said.
“There is an instruction not to use force . . . The National Guard resisted a lot because there was aggression on the part of the migrants, they even threw stones . . . but those from the National Guard resisted, they didn’t fall into the trap of responding with violence,” he added.
“That’s possibly what the leaders of the caravan, and our adversaries, were looking for . . . but fortunately it didn’t get out of hand . . .”
Seven dogs rescued by an animal protection organization in Yucatán have left Mexico to begin a new life in Canada.
Evolución Animal, a non-profit that operates a dog shelter in the south of Mérida, said in a Facebook post that the dogs flew north on January 12.
Six of the dogs traveled to Ontario, where the Lincoln County Humane Society in St. Catharines will put them up for adoption while the seventh pooch flew to Vancouver, British Columbia, to meet its new owners.
Evolución Animal said the latter dog had been in its shelter for more than 11 years after being brought in as a 1-year-old by a student leaving Mérida. In all that time, not a single person expressed interested in adopting it, the organization said.
The non-profit said that it was sending the dogs to Canada with “complete certainty that they will be in the best hands” and “form part of loving families.”
Evolución Animal told the newspaper El Universal that the dogs traveled to Canada as part of the Patitas Viajeras (Traveling Paws) program, whose aim is to find responsible and loving owners for shelter dogs.
“. . . we work with the Lincoln County Human Society . . . and [animal rescue organization] Pets Alive Niagara, who receive [the dogs], care for them and carry out a meticulous process to place each little one with a family or person who best covers their specific needs . . .” the organization said.
It explained that the length of time that a dog has been in its shelter as well as sociability and age are among the factors considered when deciding which canines are sent abroad. Evolución Animal said it has sent 300 dogs to partners in Canada during the last six years.
The organization runs the largest animal shelter in Yucatán, providing a home to more than 300 dogs, 160 cats and a female pig called Dory.
CORRECTION: The original version of this story indicated that Evolución Animal hoped to send 300 dogs to Canada this year. In fact, it has sent 300 dogs in total over the past six years.
Remains of the sweat lodge found in Mexico City. Edith Camacho/INAH
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a pre-Hispanic sweat lodge near La Merced, a market area in the historic center of Mexico City.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a statement Tuesday that the temazcal, as a domed, pre-Hispanic sweat lodge made out of mud or stone is known, was found during an excavation at a property on Talavera street, which is now known for the sale of baby Jesus statues.
Temazcales were used by indigenous people in Mesoamerica for medicinal purposes, spiritual rituals and childbirth.
Archaeologists found blocks made out of adobe and tezontle –a volcanic rock – that were used to build the sweat lodge as well as a bathtub used to heat the structure with steam. Based on the remains they found, the INAH team concluded that the temazcal was five meters long and about three meters wide.
INAH said the discoveryhas allowed archaeologists to pinpoint the location of Temazcaltitlan, one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tenochtitlán, the Mexica capital that would become Mexico City.
Site of a tannery that operated during the last century of Spanish rule. Edith Camacho/INAH
According to a chronicle of pre-Hispanic times in Tenochtitlán, a temazcal was built in Temazcaltitlan to bathe and purify Quetzalmoyahuatzin, a noble Mexica girl.
Hernando Alvarado Tezozómoc, a noble indigenous man who lived in colonial times, wrote in his Crónica Mexicáyotl that ordinary residents of Tenochtitlán also bathed there.
The head of the INAH team that found the temazcal said the discovery is the first concrete evidence of Temazcaltitlan’s vocation as a center of bathing and purification.
Víctor Esperón Calleja said the neighborhood belonged to the district of Teopan (also known as Zoquipan), which was the first territory built on Lake Texcoco and occupied by the Mexicas. It is believed that the female deities of earth, fertility, water and the pre-Hispanic beverage pulque were also worshipped in Temazcaltitlan.
In addition to the temazcal remains, on the same Talavera street property archaeologists found the remnants of a home that was possibly inhabited by a noble indigenous family shortly after the Spanish conquest and structures of a tannery, which operated during the last century of colonial rule before Mexico gained its independence in the early 19th century.
“The findings suggest that in the 16th century this area was more populated than we initially thought,” Esperón said.
“Given that it was an area of chinampas [floating agricultural gardens], it was thought that there were few houses but at this property we have evidence of the wooden pilings and stones that were used for the wall foundations [of a home],” he added.
Esperón said that the methods used to build the house allowed archaeologists to date it to the first century of colonial rule between 1521 and 1620.
The walls of the four-room home were decorated with red motifs and its floor was made of adobe blocks, features that the archaeologist said indicated that it was “inhabited by an indigenous family, possibly of noble origin.”
The tannery, Esperón said, likely made leather from cattle slaughtered at the San Lucas abattoir, which was located close to where the Pino Suárez Metro station now stands.
Tijuana and Mexico City will serve as hubs for the new partnership. (File photo)
A professor at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) campus in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, may be the first case of the coronavirus in Mexico, according to state Health Secretary Gloria Molina.
After a recent trip to China, the 57-year-old molecular biologist was hospitalized after showing symptoms of a cough and runny nose.
“This doctor went to China on December 25 and was in the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak occurred, and returned to Mexico on January 10. He spent a day at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City and later traveled to Reynosa,” Molina said.
The patient is of Asian descent and is a researcher of viral and bacterial pathogenesis at the IPN genomic biotechnology laboratory in Reynosa.
He does not show signs of a fever and diagnostics are being run to detect the presence of a respiratory virus.
Health authorities said the scientist had a cough on January 13 and a runny nose on January 16, but has not had any chest pain or a sore throat.
In response to the possibility that the coronavirus has arrived in Mexico, the Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC) called an extraordinary meeting at the Tijuana airport to discuss measures and protocols to be taken at the country’s only airport that receives direct flights from China.
Representatives of the National Immigration Institute (INM), customs, the Secretariat of National Defense and the Baja California Secretariat of Health attended the meeting held on Wednesday.
The Tijuana airport has one flight, operated by Hainan Airlines, that arrives from Beijing on Mondays and Fridays.
The second of two murals that commemorate people who have disappeared.
The faces of 33 missing citizens of Culiacán, Sinaloa, look out from a second mural painted in that city in memory of the loved ones of the 317 families that make up a search collective called Sabuesos Guerreras, or Warrior Sleuths.
“May the walls speak what people want to keep quiet,” said Isabel Cruz, leader of the collective.
The group worked with a local printmaking shop to make the faces of the disappeared visible to the public on the walls of Culiacán and also in Oaxaca, Cruz’s home state. The first mural they painted in Culiacán features 32 faces.
For the members of the collective, the mural is an art form that will draw attention to those who have gone missing without explanation, as well as aid in searching for them and remind authorities how many people have disappeared in Sinaloa.
They say they want to cover the walls of the city with the faces of the disappeared.
“For us it is the way we shout at the government and say this needs to stop, since every time they report numbers, they grow more and more. We were at 44,000 disappeared people and it’s been raised to over 61,000 . . . We don’t have enough walls to paint all the faces of those we’ve lost,” she said.
Cruz called on the municipal government to donate walls for the project because she believes the murals have had an impact on residents and even graffiti artists have respected them and not painted over them.
Although the government has not responded to Cruz’s request, another wall next to that of the second mural was recently donated to the cause. The collective will be able to paint around 50 more faces on it.
Former public security secretary Genaro García Luna will not take a plea deal in the case against him in a U.S. federal court on charges that he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a defense attorney.
García “adamantly denies that he accepted any bribes” and is “very much looking forward” to fighting the charges, attorney Cesar de Castro said on Tuesday.
De Castro’s statement came after a court hearing in which prosecutors were urged to hand over evidence to the former security chief’s defense.
Due to the large amount of documentation involved — much of which will come from outside the United States — prosecutors requested that the case be classified as “complex.”
García’s defense could be complicated by Mexico having blocked access to his bank accounts, de Castro said.
Prosecutors claim that García accepted millions of dollars in bribes — in the form of briefcases full of cash — in exchange for allowing the cartel headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to operate with impunity in Mexico.
Former Sinaloa Cartel member Jesús Zambada testified at Guzmán’s New York trial that he himself bribed García with at least US $6 million at the behest of his brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Prosecutors say the Sinaloa Cartel smuggled tons of drugs to New York and other U.S. cities, including the federal district that covers Queens and Brooklyn.
García served as head of Mexico’s Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) from 2001 to 2005, and was former president Felipe Calderón’s public security secretary from 2006 to 2012. He was living in Miami, Florida before his arrest in December.
