Four of every 10 police vehicles in Mexico City are not patrolling the streets, according to the capital’s police chief.
Jesús Orta said the 1,146 vehicles that are not in use are either undergoing repairs or have come to the end of their serviceable life.
That leaves 1,719 police cars patrolling the streets of the capital, a city spread over an area of 1,495 square kilometers with a permanent population of just under 9 million.
And yet more police cars are expected to be withdrawn from service over the coming months.
Orta acknowledged that more vehicles are needed but explained that buying them would be too costly. Instead, the Mexico City government will lease them, he said.
“We’re going to change to a leasing model . . . We’re going to always have 950 of every 1,000 police cars on the road,” Orta said.
The security secretary claimed that under the leasing model, there will be 33% more police cars on the road than is currently the case and the government’s security strategy will be strengthened as a result.
However, Orta acknowledged that the success of the strategy also depends on having a well-staffed police force, admitting that “we don’t have an optimal number of officers.”
When the new city government took office on December 5, the preventative police force was made up of 9,000 fewer officers than at the start of the previous administration in 2012, he said.
However, an additional 2,541 new officers were sworn in at an event yesterday that was presided over by Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
The mayor explained that the capital is divided into 847 different areas for policing purposes and that the new officers will help “to improve security.”
Sheinbaum added that “everyone – police, citizens, residents of this city, those who visit the city – aspire to have a safe city.”
Mexico City has been considered one of the safest parts of the country for most of this century but crime rates have risen in recent years.
In January, an average of 700 crimes – including homicides, femicides, kidnappings and extortion – were reported in the city each day, the newspaper El Financiero reported.
Niddo restaurant serves comfort food in Colonia Juárez. niddo
Everyone remembers that one mom who cooked while they were growing up. Maybe it was your mom. Her kitchen was always full of activity and laughter, there was always a little piece of cheese to steal, a carrot that needed chopping, gossip to be repeated.
That was Eduardo Plaschinski’s mom. His friends would literally sign up to come to Shabbat dinner every week.
“In our home there was food, flowers, friends, music and travel,” says his mother, Karen Drijanski. “Cultures were important, and friends, getting people together, enjoying life together.
“Telling stories at the table, fighting at the table, loving each other at the table, being real at the table, but nothing was in the living room, it was always in the kitchen.”
“I remember not wanting to go school because I wanted to go with my mom to work,” says Eduardo with a nostalgic smile. “I knew afterwards she would take me to Granville Island market, one of the best markets in Vancouver, and we would spend hours there, buying ingredients to go back home and cook.”
From left, Reyes, Drijanski and Plaschinski at Niddo restaurant.
Their strongest bond has always been over food, so it makes sense that they would open a restaurant together. What’s better than cooking and experimenting with your favorite foodie friend?
The restaurant Niddo was born from their combined passion for cuisine, and its ambiance is a bit like those early dinners. Diners wander up to the restaurant’s open kitchen on Dresde street in Colonia Juárez and could almost simply walk into the kitchen and stick a finger in a pot – if the room weren’t already packed to the gills with Eduardo, Karen and their small staff.
Half a dozen tables sit inside and three or four more provide sidewalk dining. And while there is a chic Mexico City tinge to it, Niddo was born to be down to earth.
“We never wanted to open anything pretentious,” says Eduardo, “we just wanted it to be representative of the things we liked – markets, family, home dinners, comfort, casualness. The things that I grew up with. What we had in mind from the very beginning was a place that would make you feel good, because we always felt good going to markets, going to dinner together, cooking at home.”
With a mindset like that it’s easy to understand a menu that doesn’t quite fit into a clear culinary category. It’s a mash-up of the things from Eduardo’s childhood, things from Karen’s childhood and the things they have tasted and discovered as they traveled the world together as a family.
“My family is from Budapest, Vienna and Prague and I am a gypsy cook,” says Karen, a strand of hair coming loose as she gestures passionately about her food.
Breakfast is served: potato latke, fried egg, serrano ham and fennel.
“I have shakshouka and chilaquiles, grilled cheese from Boston and fishcakes from Vancouver. We have cheesecake and we have linzer torta from Vienna. It’s cooking without frontiers, it’s what feels good to us. I’m not trying to be like anyone else, I just want to cook like myself.”
They call it comfort food. Their motto is “Comida que te apapacha,”apapachar meaning to hug, comfort, spoil or cuddle. The food is flavorful but not haughty. The burrata brava pricks your mouth with its tomato heat then soothes it again with creamy burrata cheese.
The linzer torte carries an exotic spice only just undistinguishable to the palate. The breakfast sandwich has evolved to include Karen’s blackberry onion jam, at the insistence of Eduardo’s brother Carlos when he came to visit — and eat — at Niddo.
A family with eastern European, Jewish roots, Mexicans who spent years in Canada’s multicultural Vancouver, has a lot of culinary ties in its blood, but the warmth of Mexico, its people and its flavors are what have always drawn Karen home.
“For the last six years we lived in Vancouver I could smell sweet conchas everywhere. We weren’t baking conchas at the house, I just had these memories of things that were very important to me. They brought me back to my family, to love, to being together and having a spice for life which you don’t find in many cultures,” says Karen.
Eduardo, who says his time working with celebrity chef Eduardo García gave him a deeper appreciation for ingredients and where they come from, tries to source all of Niddo’s produce and products from the nearby Chinampa farms and ranches in the state of México.
Niddo restaurant in Colonia Juárez, Mexico City.
He’s picky about his food and believes that attention to detail – knowing where your ingredients are from, how to source the very best, and how to work with them – is what makes or breaks a menu.
For just over two months Niddo has been humbly making mouths happy. As the buzz grows Eduardo and Karen, along with their business partner Mauricio Reyes Retana, are dedicated to keeping the menu, the restaurant and the ambiance representative of all the things they like.
And even with the trials and tribulations of running a restaurant they remain great friends.
“I don’t want to be right,” says Karen about difficult moments, “I just want to continue doing things with love.”
And on their days off, they go out to lunch.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.
The Mexican peso appreciated by 4.72% in the first 100 days of President López Obrador’s term in office, the currency’s best performance ever during the same period of any new administration.
The only other president who saw a stronger peso at the conclusion of his first 100 days was Enrique Peña Nieto but the currency’s gain against the United States dollar was a more modest 2.37%.
At the end of Felipe Calderón’s first 100 days as president, the peso was down 1.48% while Vicente Fox saw a 1.78% decline in the currency’s value.
The peso also lost ground against the U.S. dollar in the first 100 days of the administrations of Ernesto Zedillo, Carlos Salinas, Miguel de la Madrid and José López Portillo.
Before López Portillo’s presidency, which began in December 1976, the peso’s exchange rate was fixed.
Since López Obrador was sworn in on December 1, the value of the peso has fluctuated in accordance with the gains and slides of the U.S. dollar on the international market as well as in response to measures announced or implemented by the new government.
On Friday, the Bank of México (Banxico) said the interbank exchange rate for the peso closed at 19.48 to the U.S. dollar.
Although the peso has performed well since López Obrador became president, economic growth forecasts for the Mexican economy have been revised downward by a range of institutions in the same three-month period.
At the start of this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its 2019 growth prediction by half a point to 2% while in late February, Banxico slashed its forecast to between 1.1% and 2.1%, a 0.6% reduction at both ends of the range.
Data published last month by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) showed that Mexico’s economy expanded by just 2% last year, the lowest GDP growth since 2013.
In the past two weeks, the Mexican Stock Exchange’s benchmark IPC index has taken a hit, seeing 7.34% of its value wiped off as a result of 10 consecutive days of losses.
Francisco Caudillo, an analyst at the brokerage house Monex, said the stock market has been mainly falling since the middle of January.
López Obrador has made combatting corruption and adopting austerity measures central to his government – initiatives that have largely been applauded.
Nevertheless, Mexico’s most powerful business leaders made it clear at a February 18 meeting with López Obrador that they are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and that they remain committed to collaborating with the new government to achieve greater economic growth and prosperity.
Restaurants and tequila producers in Guadalajara, Jalisco, are preparing to say “Salud!” and celebrate the first-ever Tequila Cocktail Week.
Following the approval last year by the federal Congress to celebrate National Tequila Day on the third Saturday of March, 25 “iconic” restaurants and 15 tequila producers have joined together to celebrate for an entire week, starting today and concluding on Saturday.
The president of the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry (CNIT) said that special tequila-based cocktails will be prepared in the restaurants with 40 different brands provided by producers.
Twenty-four amateur mixologists from around the country will also get the chance to show their prowess in a cocktail contest.
Visitors to the capital of Jalisco will have the opportunity to visit the Tequila Route and the Altos de Jalisco, the two main tequila-producing regions in the state.
“The celebration of this date makes the industry and the whole country proud; our beverage is found in over 120 countries, and at least 70,000 people are involved in its production, a sign of its importance in the cultural and economic development of our country,” said Rodolfo González González.
National tequila production last year was 300 million liters, 222 million of which were exported. It has been predicted that tequila will be the second fastest growing alcoholic beverage in terms of sales growth internationally by 2021, behind whisky.
San Luis Potosí Deputy Pedro Carrizales and federal Deputy Martha Tagle marched for women's rights on Friday.
Women’s rights activists and a federal lawmaker yesterday rejected President López Obrador’s suggestion that the legalization of abortion could be put to a public vote.
Speaking at an International Women’s Day event at the National Palace, the president said his administration will never seek to restrict women’s freedoms but added that consultations will be used to democratically resolve controversial issues.
“We can’t forcefully declare ourselves [in favor of or against] an issue because this is a democratic movement and we represent all the schools of thought and all women, believers and non-believers,” López Obrador said.
“That’s why when we have to decide on a controversial issue we always say: let’s have a consultation . . . so as not to impose anything by force . . .” he added.
The president’s remarks triggered an immediate reaction from a group of women wearing green handkerchiefs, an accessory that has become emblematic of the campaign for abortion rights in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Argentina.
Senator Téllez plans to introduce anti-abortion legislation.
Accompanied by Citizens’ Movement lawmaker Martha Tagle, the women shouted, “rights are not up for consultation” while holding up a banner that read: “For the rights of women, not one backward step.”
López Obrador continued: “We’re never going to allow injustice. We’re always going to fight for the equality of men and women . . .”
After the event, Tagle reiterated in an interview that human rights must not be allowed to be subjected to public consultations, and called on López Obrador to provide more detail about his stance on abortion.
“. . . We’re asking for a clearer position from the leader of the executive on issues such as violence against women,” she said, referring to women’s abortion rights in cases of rape.
“. . . He [López Obrador] didn’t make any mention about that within the issue of pregnancy terminations . . . He revealed that it would be a matter for consultation, and rights are not up for consultation,” Tagle added.
Some ruling party lawmakers are calling for women to be able to legally access abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy as is currently the case in Mexico City.
However, Lilly Téllez, a Morena party senator from Sonora, is vehemently opposed.
“A woman who aborts is punishing herself in a very severe way, she’s a criminal, she’s murdering a baby,” she said in a radio interview on Thursday.
Téllez contended that the legal pregnancy termination program in Mexico City has been a “death program for more than 200,000 people,” and said she will present a proposal to Congress to “protect all individuals from conception onwards.”
Abortion should never be allowed, even in cases of rape, when deformities have been detected in the unborn baby or if the mother’s life is in danger, she said.
However, the senator conceded that a bill that proposed a complete ban on abortion would be unlikely to succeed.
“The ideal would be that a baby is not murdered in any case but it wouldn’t pass legislatively. I have to do what is possible, not what is perfect.”
In light of the current debate, Morena’s leader in the upper house of Congress, Ricardo Monreal, said the party is diverse and that the different opinions of its lawmakers are respected.
Legislating on the issue of abortion, however, is “not a priority” for the government.
“There are more important things that we have to concentrate on . . .” Monreal said.
López Obrador told reporters yesterday that he was not going to debate the issue but said he would do so at some point in the future.
Three of Mexico’s most powerful women celebrated International Women’s Day Friday by sitting down for lunch with inmates at a women’s prison in Mexico City.
Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, wife of President López Obrador, commemorated the day with a visit to the Reclusorio Sur prison in Xochimilco.
The three women sat down with 180 prisoners for a lunch of chicken with mole, rice and soup, after which there was music and dancing to Jailhouse Rock.
Gutiérrez Müller handed out books to the inmates, including Don Quixote — because of its central message of optimism, according to Gutiérrez, along with You Don’t Understand Me: Feminine Language vs Masculine Language by María del Pilar Montes de Oca and stories of Eros and Aphrodite.
“I’m not here as a political move; I’m just here to deliver greetings from the president and myself,” Gutiérrez said. “I have brought you something to entertain yourselves, because you’re going to leave here,” she assured the prisoners.
Interior Secretary Sánchez promised prisoners that each of their cases would be thoroughly reviewed because judges and prosecutors often do not take into account the circumstances that drive women to commit the crimes that lead to their imprisonment.
On several occasions the three women’s speeches were interrupted by petitions for case reviews and requests that the visitors approach prisoners so they could deliver handwritten messages to them.
One inmate shouted, “I have been here 15 years! They sentenced me unjustly when I was just 17 years old!”
The visit coincided with a massive march by more than 8,000 people in Mexico City. Participants marched from the Angel of Independence monument on Reforma avenue to the zócalo, demanding action against femicides and violence against women, government support for daycare and safe access to abortion services
They also expressed their opposition to the creation of the national guard.
Friday's issue of Reforma. In the photo, Grupo Reforma principals at the tax administration's office in Monterrey.
One of Mexico’s biggest media companies has accused the federal government of intimidation after its CEO and his wife were summoned to explain an alleged 12,000-peso (US $615) tax discrepancy.
The newspaper Reforma published a front-page editorial Friday stating that Grupo Reforma president Alejandro Junco de la Vega and his wife, Rosa Laura Elizondo, received an “invitation” from the Federal Tax Administration (SAT) to clarify a “supposed gap” in the company’s payment of tax in the 2015 fiscal year.
“The two Grupo Reforma shareholders were summoned to personally go to the offices of the federal tax auditor in Nuevo León yesterday via an official letter stamped with the word ‘urgent’ in red,” Reforma said.
“It is not common for the SAT to summon shareholders of a corporation for alleged minimum and routine tax clarifications,” the editorial continued.
Published under the headline: “They [the government] use the SAT to intimidate Reforma,” the newspaper contended that the summons “could be interpreted as an attempt to pressure the journalistic work of this publishing company.”
López Obrador: ‘we have our differences with Reforma’
It also said that even though the SAT letter referred to the summons as an “invitation – if the shareholder doesn’t attend to the invitation in a period of five days, a seed of non-compliance is sown.”
The newspaper added: “In the 97 years of life of this publishing company, tax authorities have never personally summoned shareholders: the company, dozens of times.”
With regard to the tax discrepancy, Reforma said that Grupo Reforma owed nothing, contending that the SAT had erred in its calculations.
The meeting between Junco de la Vega, Elizondo and tax authorities lasted about an hour and at its conclusion, the latter accepted documents which proved that there was no discrepancy, Reforma said.
The newspaper also said the summons of Junco de la Vega comes “97 days after the start of the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has repeatedly described Grupo Reforma as ‘prensa fifi’ [snobby press], conservative and a bearer of neoliberalism.”
At his morning press conference yesterday, the president denied that his government was attempting to prosecute or intimidate Grupo Reforma or the Reforma newspaper.
“It’s not true, it’s a complete falsehood. We don’t do that with anybody. Who knows what motivation they had to make this scene but to me it seems to be nonsense. I consider it a political posture, we have our differences with Reforma but we’re not going to go after anyone,” López Obrador said.
“With all respect, I think that they’re exaggerating at the newspaper Reforma, we don’t persecute anyone, we’re not like the governments that were protected by Reforma. We respect freedoms and the right to dissent,” he added.
“It’s a newspaper that emerged during the government of [Carlos] Salinas, which made sure not to [criticize] Salinas, which never questioned looting in the neoliberal period, which pretended that corruption was being combatted . . . which helped with electoral fraud, these are our differences with Reforma . . . If they got a request to clarify a tax matter, well everybody gets that. Can the untouchable not be touched?”
Reforma subsequently published a video featuring audio of López Obrador’s allegations of bias overlaid with images of stories it has published with the intention of disproving the president’s claims of partiality.
People from outside Reforma – including a human rights advocate, political pundits and politicians – also criticized the government while coming to the newspaper’s defense.
“Nobody is forced to read a newspaper they don’t like. What’s not fair is to make up reasons to discredit the media. That’s exactly what AMLO has done by attacking Reforma,” José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter.
Political scientist Denise Dresser said that López Obrador and his government don’t themselves represent the transformation they claim to be bringing to Mexico.
“Here’s the most recent example: the government using its power to intimidate/frighten counterbalances. Today it was the turn of Reforma but tomorrow it could be that of any other media organization if we don’t denounce unacceptable behavior in a democracy,” she said.
Marko Cortés, national president of the National Action Party (PAN), condemned this “new act of intolerance” by the government “against Reforma and freedom of expression,” while PAN Senator Damián Zepeda said the government’s “intimidatory practices” against the newspaper are “terrible” and must not be allowed.
Citizens’ Movement (MC) Senator Samuel García said that “bullying a media outlet through SAT is the worst sign there could be of authoritarianism,” adding that “we are opposed to any attempt to pressure journalistic work” and “what has happened to the president of the Reforma newspaper is alarming and the persecution is evident.”
Reforma was one of several media outlets that received almost US $2 billion in advertising revenue from the past federal government in its first five years in office, according to a December 2017 report published in The New York Times.
The money didn’t only buy promotional ads and television commercials but also favorable coverage for the Enrique Peña Nieto-led government and editorial influence, the report said.
At least 15 people are dead and five more in critical condition following an attack on a night club in Salamanca, Guanajuato, last night.
The state attorney general’s office confirmed that a group of civilians armed with high-caliber weapons entered Las Playas night club in the San Roque neighborhood just after midnight and opened fire, killing and injuring clients and employees alike.
State police and the Red Cross arrived on the scene shortly after the attackers fled, cordoning off the area and transferring victims to local hospitals. Two men later succumbed to their injuries in the hospital, while several others remain in critical condition.
Nearly 70 shells were later collected at the scene of the massacre.
The motive for the attack remains unknown but it comes in the midst of an operation to capture the head of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, a gang of petroleum thieves based in the Celaya community after which it was named.
Pots-and-pans sculpture celebrates Women's Day in Torreón.
Women’s rights activists in Torreón, Coahuila, have blasted the municipal government for the installation of a sculpture made of pots and pans in a square that was inaugurated as part of International Women’s Day celebrations.
Located in front of the Municipal Institute of Women (IMM), La Plaza de la Mujer (Women’s Square) was officially opened yesterday by Mayor Jorge Zermeño Infante.
Two back-to-back “árboles de sartenes” (frying pan trees) made by students from the Center of Visual Arts at the Coahuila Autonomous University are prominent in the square.
Written testimonies of women who have suffered gender-based violence appear inside the painted pots and pans.
Patricia González de Santiago, director of the Center of Visual Arts, described the sculpture as “relational art” whose aim is to provoke reflection about the issue of violence against women.
The controversial Women’s Day sculpture.
But others took a different view about the artwork and the new square.
“As if there were no more urgent things, Mayor Jorge Zermeño inaugurated a women’s square that is not needed and which reaffirms gender roles,” wrote women’s collective, Feminist Activists of La Laguna, on Facebook.
Adriana Romo, a member of the La Laguna Women’s Network, described the artwork as “absurd.”
“. . . It’s International Women’s Day and they [the municipal government] come out with these things . . . It can’t be possible that they’ve revealed a sculpture with pots and pans,” she said.
Romo charged that the pots and pans in the sculpture are symbolic of a stereotype of women that the feminist movement has tried to eradicate, and criticized the use of public money for the creation of the artwork and square.
“As if there were no urgent and pressing needs to improve the living conditions of women, they do something absurd, something ridiculous . . . and [then] they say that we didn’t understand the work. It’s disappointing and regrettable that in the 21st century they have installed this absurdity,” she said.
However, Romo added that that the municipal government’s unveiling of the artwork hadn’t surprised her because the Zermeño-led administration has a poor record on women’s issues.
“This is an administration that doesn’t care about the situation of women and which has been insensitive and negligent,” she said.
More than 8,500 Walmart employees will strike in 10 states on March 20 if the company doesn’t meet their demands for a 20% pay increase as well as other benefits and better conditions.
The mainly female cashiers and other low-ranking employees at the big-box retail chain earn on average between 140 and 150 pesos (US $7 to $7.50) per day and are not enrolled in medical insurance or retirement schemes, their union claims.
In addition, the National Association of Shop and Private Office Workers contends that Walmart doesn’t respect the right to an eight-hour working day, doesn’t pay overtime in accordance with the law, discriminates against pregnant women and has dismissed workers unfairly.
René Sasores Barea, the union’s secretary general, said that if the company and its employees don’t reach a new agreement on salaries and conditions before March 20, workers at 121 Walmart stores as well as 56 Sam’s Club outlets and an unspecified number of Bodega Aurrera stores will walk off the job.
Sasores said that in some states the threat to strike is supported by governors who have acknowledged the “abuse” to which Walmart employees are subjected.
He called on Walmart managers and the general public to support the workers as well “because it’s a struggle that is going to benefit everyone, even the consumer.”
Considering the large profits that the company makes, Walmart should be able to offer a fair salary to its employees and an annual bonus, Sasores said. It should also enroll workers in social security, housing and retirement schemes, he added.
The threatened strike follows widespread job action in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, where thousands of factory workers have won 20% pay increases and annual bonuses of 32,000 pesos (US $1,650).
“The winds of change are blowing and . . . employers must understand that,” Sasores said.
“Workers are no longer willing to suffer more abuse.”
