The signing ceremony at this morning's presidential press conference.
Three banks have reached an agreement with the federal government to underwrite a US $8-billion syndicated loan for Pemex, Mexico’s heavily indebted state oil company.
President López Obrador signed agreements with HSBC, JPMorgan and Mizuho Securities at his daily press conference this morning, stating that the banks’ commitment was evidence of their confidence in the Mexican economy and Pemex, which has debt of US $106.5 billion.
The loan – the largest amount ever borrowed by Pemex – is designed to allow the company to refinance its debt.
Both the president and Pemex CEO Octavio Romero stressed that it doesn’t represent new debt for the state oil company.
The latter said that the credit took five months to negotiate and explained that the deal will enable Pemex to refinance US $2.5 billion in debt as well as renew two revolving lines of credit for up to $5.5 billion over a period of three to five years.
“With this renegotiation, we are not taking on additional debt for Pemex,” Romero said.
Today’s announcement comes three months after the government presented a 107-billion-peso (US $5.5-billion) rescue package to reduce the company’s financial burden and strengthen its capacity to invest in exploration and production.
The three banks said they hoped Mexican and international banks would participate in the syndication process for the loan.
The CEO of HSBC México said the loan “showed the confidence HSBC has in Pemex, in Mexico and the current administration.”
Nuno Matos de Macedo added that the credit would give the state oil company more stability and flexibility in the allocation of resources.
The type of credit to be extended to Pemex is typically charged the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate, or Libor, plus 2.35%, or around 4.85% in total, according to the CEO of JPMorgan México.
“Below 5% for this type of instrument is very attractive,” Felipe García Moreno said.
Increasing Pemex’s oil production and refining capacity in order to reduce reliance on imports and eventually make Mexico self-sustainable with regard to its fuel needs is a priority for the federal government.
President López Obrador is forging ahead with plans for a US $8-billion refinery on the Tabasco coast, announcing last week that Pemex and the Secretariat of Energy (Sener) will build the project because the bids offered by private companies were too high and their estimated completion dates went beyond the three-year period requested by the government.
'Happy day, moms,' reads the message on a Cancún beach.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And when nature gives you tonnes of sargassum seaweed, use it to write a message dedicated to mothers on their day.
That was the silver lining found by security workers at a private residential complex in the Puerto Juárez district of Cancún, who worked through the small hours of Friday morning to create their touching Mother’s Day message with about 50 kilograms of sargassum.
Come early morning, as local mothers were getting ready to take their young ones to school, they were surprised by the short message writ large on the beach that wished them a “happy day.”
The health service is having trouble filling positions in two northern states.
Security concerns have led to a shortage of doctors in the public healthcare system in Chihuahua and Tamaulipas.
National healthcare workers’ union (SNTSS) leader Arturo Olivares Cerda said IMSS hospitals in the two states have seen nearly as many positions remain vacant as they were able to fill.
In Chihuahua, hospitals hired a total of 185 doctors but 136 positions remained unfilled, and in Tamaulipas hospitals hired 158 doctors while 136 positions remained vacant.
Available positions come with a monthly salary of 28,000 pesos (US $1,465), considered to be a good salary in the sector, along with bonuses and government assistance with mortgages. Most of the doctors’ positions were also available in central urban areas of the two states, and not in rural areas.
Oliveras said that even though Guerrero and Veracruz both have higher levels of violence than Tamaulipas and Chihuahua, both were better able to fill positions than their northern counterparts, which the union leader attributed to their proximity to the center of the nation.
The IMSS hired 5,080 doctors nationwide in the second week of March. The states that saw the most hires were Mexico City with 957 new doctors, México state with 561, Jalisco with 365, Nuevo León with 258 and Veracruz with 247.
To resolve the shortage in Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, Oliveras said, state authorities, the IMSS and the SNTSS are working together to guarantee better security and labor conditions for prospective employees.
González crosses the finish line to win gold at the 2015 Pan American Games.
Champion race walker María Guadalupe González has claimed that a positive test for a powerful anabolic steroid was triggered by a meal of tacos al pastor and other meat she had eaten beforehand.
The 30-year-old Mexico City native was handed a four-year ban from competition this week by the International Athletics Federation (IAAF).
González has won numerous trophies including a silver medal at the Rio Summer Olympics in 2016 and has been training in preparation for next year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
But she will not be able to compete in Japan unless she wins an appeal against the ban.
González tested positive for trenbolone after an out-of-competition drug test, but denies she took the drug. She said trenbolone is fed to cattle in Mexico to boost metabolism and burn fat. It is also used in higher doses by some athletes to increase muscle mass.
In a report, the Olympian detailed everything that she had consumed before the drug test, which included 200 grams of steak, five tacos al pastor and three medications that include trenbolone.
In response, the IAAF said that the amount of trenbolone found in her system was too great to have come from contaminated meat or pharmaceuticals. The federation engaged a security firm to look into Gonzalez’s claims, which had also included the assertion that a doctor had diagnosed her with anemia and instructed her to eat more meat.
The investigation concluded that González had probably forged hospital records and fabricated restaurant receipts. Although she had initially said she had consumed beef and pork, she later claimed to have consumed liver as well, which can contain higher levels of trenbolone.
“As the maximum permitted residue of trenbolone is five times higher in liver, she had an interest in having eaten liver.”
Although the ruling could prevent her from competing in future events, it does not strip her of her previous medals, including a gold in the 20-kilometer race at the 2015 Pan American Games and silver at the 2017 World Championships. González is expected to appeal the decision, which was issued last November, in the coming days.
Security officials have put federal penitentiaries on alert after a group of hitmen attacked prison guards yesterday morning in Puente de Ixtla, Morelos, killing five.
Eight guards were waiting for a bus to transport them to the federal women’s penitentiary No. 16 in the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood. Just as the bus arrived so did armed civilians, who opened fire.
The other three guards were wounded.
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The burned remains of a vehicle authorities suspect was the one used by the hitmen was found later in San Gabriel Palmas, Amacuzac. Four guns and three full magazines were found at the scene.
State Interior Secretary Pablo Ojeda said administrative staff at the penitentiary had received anonymous threats a few weeks before yesterday’s attack.
The attack came two days after a lone gunman shot and killed two union leaders in the zócalo in Cuernavaca, a few steps away from state government headquarters.
A suspect was apprehended at the scene and will make a court appearance on Wednesday.
The removal of mangroves at the site of the federal government’s new oil refinery in Tabasco has made the land more susceptible to flooding, raising questions about its suitability for the US $8-billion project.
Between September 8 and October 1 last year, 230 hectares of mangroves and other vegetation were cleared from the refinery site on the Gulf of Mexico coast at Dos Bocas, a port town in the municipality of Paraíso.
The Mexican Center for Environmental Law (Cemda) said that neither environmental authorization nor permission to change the land use of the site was granted before the preparatory work began and consequently filed complaints with federal authorities.
In December, Mexico’s energy sector watchdog ordered that all work that alters the condition of the land must immediately cease but by that time the site was already flooding.
The newspaper El Universal reported that flooding began in October and that water has ebbed and flowed since, covering parts of the site.
The site before it was cleared of mangroves and other vegetation.
Satellite images showed that flooding decreased in February but increased again in March.
When President López Obrador attended a groundbreaking ceremony on December 9, he didn’t actually set foot on the refinery site because it was flooded, El Universal said.
The flooding problem was not unforeseen.
A 2011 environmental impact statement completed as part of a project to expand the port terminal at Dos Bocas said the land was not usable because it has flood-prone areas.
“The mangrove functioned as a natural seawater filter. By removing it, not only will that plot of land flood, it’s very probable that adjacent areas such as Puerto Ceiba and the neighborhood of Lázaro Cárdenas will flood. The area is going to turn into an enormous swamp,” said Fernando Álvarez Noguera, a researcher at the biology institute of the National Autonomous University (UNAM).
“Mangroves also function as a natural barrier against hurricanes, they have strategic importance for the life of the coast, that’s why they’re protected,” he added.
Álvarez, an author of a book about biodiversity in Tabasco, explained that when the tide rises seawater will now flow into the site and neighboring areas unimpeded. He warned that remaining vegetation will be damaged by the salt water.
The researcher also said that emissions from the new refinery will contaminate the air and that runoff could pollute the nearby Mecoacán Lagoon, where oysters are farmed.
The refinery, which the government announced this week will be built by the state oil company and the Secretariat of Energy, will also likely pose a risk to coastal animals.
Wildlife expert Marcelo Aranda has confirmed that iguanas, toads, crabs, coatis and tlacuaches (opossums), among other animals, live in the area. Crocodiles, turtles, deer and birds also inhabit coastal land near the refinery site.
By choosing to pursue the refinery project at Dos Bocas the government is ignoring 10-year-old advice from the state-owned Mexican Institute of Petroleum (IMP).
A 2008 IMP report warned that building oil infrastructure in the municipality of Paraíso posed soil, environmental and social risks.
Out of seven sites identified as possible locations for a new refinery, Paraíso presented the “greatest risk” and therefore such a project there is “not recommended,” the IMP said.
Members of the new National Guard, supplied by the army.
Neither the navy nor the Federal Police has yet provided any personnel to the National Guard, leaving the first units of the new security force to be made up entirely of soldiers.
The secretariats of the Navy (Semar) and Security and Citizens Protection (SSPC), which has responsibility for the Federal Police, said they can’t transfer personnel to the force because a secondary law establishing the regulatory framework for the National Guard is not yet in place.
The secretariats also said they cannot begin the recruitment process for the security force because of a lack of legal clarity regarding a range of aspects related to the formation of the Guard, including entry requirements, evaluation and training.
That information, which came in response to a request by news website Animal Político, contradicts statements made by President López Obrador this week.
Yesterday he said that members of the navy police had already joined the National Guard and earlier this week he declared that the recruitment process was under way.
López Obrador has said that the initial deployments are legal even without secondary laws in place as the constitutional reform that enabled the creation of the National Guard allowed them.
However, the president’s office refused to provide Animal Político with copies of “general agreements” that showed that to be the case, stating that “it’s not a matter within its jurisdiction” and that it has no obligation to provide information to support statements made by López Obrador.
The National Guard was declared constitutional in March after both houses of federal Congress and all 32 states approved the security force.
But while Semar said it plans to transfer 6,288 naval police to the force it has not specified when that will occur.
Senate committees will begin discussion and analysis of a National Guard Law next week and according to the constitutional reform which was published in the government’s official gazette on March 26, legislation governing the security force must be drawn up by May 25.
Senators have said the law will set out the complete architecture for the Guard’s operation, including how it will be organized and how it will collaborate with other entities as well as the requirements for recruitment that Semar and the SSPC are currently awaiting.
Luis Rodríguez Bucio, an army general with extensive experience fighting and studying Mexico’s notorious drug cartels, has already been named commander.
The federal government has expressed confidence that the broader deployment of the force will be effective in combating the record levels of violent crime that are currently plaguing the country.
Homicides in the first three months of each year since 2015.
The number of homicides in Cuernavaca, Morelos, almost doubled in the first quarter of 2019 compared to last year, while murders across the state rose by a third, a situation that prompted the observation by a local activist that the state has kicked out the corrupt only to replace them with the inept.
The state capital recorded 37 intentional homicides between January and March, an 85% increase on the 20 registered in the first three months of 2018.
Statewide, there were 236 homicides in the first quarter, according to statistics from the National Public Security System (SNSP), a 33% spike compared to last year and almost double the 2016 figures.
A common denominator in the high levels of violent crime recorded in Cuernavaca in recent years and across the state in late 2018 and early 2019 is the governance of Cuauhtémoc Blanco.
The former soccer star became mayor of Cuernavaca at the end of 2015, a year in which there were 70 homicides in the state capital.
Homicides in Cuernavaca in the first three months of each year since 2015.
Last year, there were 103 murders in the city, a 47% increase compared to 2015.
Blanco was officially mayor until September 26, and four days later was sworn in as governor of Morelos.
Since he took the top job, there have been 580 homicides, the newspaper El Economista reported.
Javier Sicilia, a poet and founder of a group known as the Movement for Peace with Dignity and Justice, led a protest yesterday in front of state government offices in Cuernavaca to denounce the security situation and to urge authorities to take urgent action to combat violence not just in Morelos but across the country.
“[Former governor] Graco Ramírez was bad and it seems that this one [Blanco] is going to be worse,” Sicilia said, observing that the inept had replaced the corrupt.
Referring to a shootout in Cuernavaca’s central square Wednesday that left two people dead and another two injured, the activist said:
“That was the safest public space the state had, now nowhere is safe. There is negligence and idiocy on the part of state authorities not to mention the federal authorities, who aren’t taking the situation seriously . . .”
According to the Morelos interior secretary, turf wars are behind the high levels of violence.
Pablo Ojeda Cárdenas said that at least five competing cartels operate in Morelos, which is strategically located between Guerrero – a large drug producing state – and Mexico City.
Criminal groups, most notably the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Los Rojos, are fighting over the route between the two locations, Ojeda explained.
Authorities have introduced a single-command policing system as part of the efforts to fight crime but Cuernavaca has not yet joined the other 35 municipalities in the program.
That situation makes statewide coordination more difficult, Ojeda said, adding that the application of a decree to bring Cuernavaca into the single-command system is needed.
The secretary said the only way to achieve positive security results is via coordination between all three levels of government, pointing out that Morelos security authorities meet every day with their federal counterparts, including the army.
However, Ojeda argued that Morelos needs more state police because it currently only has a force made up of 600 officers.
He added: “The municipal police forces are in very disparate conditions with salary levels which sometimes are not enough to have the minimum levels needed to keep them honest.”
Ojeda expressed confidence, however, that with a future deployment of the National Guard, recruitment of more police officers and greater coordination, authorities will be able to significantly improve the security situation.
Jorge Mátar Vargas, president of the Morelos branch of the National Chamber for Industrial Transformation (Canacintra), said that state authorities have lost control of security and that “the National Guard, soldiers, marines need to come.”
The government has earmarked 20 billion pesos to fix things like this.
A federal transportation official said there are big spending plans for non-toll federal highways, 22% of which are in bad shape.
Cedric Escalante Sauri said the highways have been poorly maintained, especially those in the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero.
The infrastructure undersecretary at the Transportation Secretariat said immediate attention is required on long stretches of highway that have been damaged by climate conditions and use.
“The largest portion of the budget for highways will go to service and maintenance of non-toll highways; we have close to 20 billion pesos (US $1 billion).”
He added that the investment doubles that of previous years, calling it the most significant investment ever made in the history of highway maintenance in Mexico.
Escalante said the federal budget for all the nation’s highways totals 42 billion pesos (US $2.2 billion). In addition to the 20 billion pesos for non-toll roads, 9 billion will go toward construction and modernization, 8 billion to access and rural roads and 5 billion pesos to other needs, such as signage.
Oaxaca will be a special focus, with funding going to improving access roads to 50 municipal seats. In total, 138 municipalities in the state do not have paved access roads, compared to 300 in the entire country.
Construction Industry Chamber president Eduardo Ramírez Leal said the federal government has invited regional businesses to participate in the highway revitalization plan, which should be considered as important as the administration’s other large infrastructure projects such as the Dos Bocas oil refinery and the Maya Train.
One goal of the government’s national development plan is to guarantee that at least 90% of the nation’s 40,590 kilometers of federal non-toll highways are in good condition by the end of the government’s term in 2024.
At Colegio IMI in Guadalajara, every student has an iPad.
Fresh winds are blowing through the stuffy halls of academia. A few days ago, I got to see these changes with my own eyes when I visited a little private school in Guadalajara called Instituto México Inglés (IMI).
“We don’t use textbooks here,” I was told by director Luis Medina. “Every one of our students has an iPad. And we don’t have exams anymore because the Apple system we use shows us each student’s production and progress literally moment by moment.
“As for teachers, we don’t use that word anymore. The members of my staff are coaches, who do their best to help our students carry out their own research. And we don’t have an old-style curriculum either. Instead, we present our students with a monthly challenge and they investigate it. This month’s challenge is ‘How to Resolve a Crisis.’”
To understand how a little school in Mexico reached this point, let’s pause a moment to reflect on what education has meant for most of the world’s history.
The traditional model of a school is a place where students come to sit at the feet of a teacher. The teacher expounds his or her knowledge of a subject and the student hopefully absorbs it or at least takes copious notes on the subject. Although the system has been around forever, it is highly inefficient simply because memorizing the words of a master is not enough to guarantee understanding of a subject. Awareness comes from personal investigation, from hands-on encounters.
In the previous millennium, knowledge was locked up in books and the best overview of what humanity had learned during its entire history could be found in encyclopedias.
Students write questions in English. Lying on the floor is permitted.
Then came the internet and search engines. Today no one would run to their bookshelves and open a dusty volume of the Britannica in order to investigate the concept of “bullying.” Likewise, no one would open their once highly esteemed Merriam-Webster to find out what an MP4 file is.
They would turn to Google. We would all turn to Google! So why would we send our kids to school and expect them to learn from textbooks?
“Already in 2005 we had an inkling of this,” Luis Medina told me. “An organization based in California did away with individual textbooks for math, history, etc., producing a course of subjects unified in a single printed volume which came in monthly installments.
“By 2015, however,” continued Medina, “it was clear that nothing in printed form could come close to offering the richness and timeliness of what Google was making available to everyone. This was when we decided to adopt an approach developed by Noel Trainor and Noemí Valencia in Morelia, Michoacán, called Knotion (Knowledge in Action).
“This is a true innovation because it is really learning in action, learning directed towards real life. There are now 70 Knotion schools in Mexico (and one in Guatemala) and already Knotion has been recognized at an international level as providing one of the best models for education in the world.”
“The founders of Knotion,” continued Medina, “have created an approach which replaces the study of ‘subjects’ like history and math with the investigation of challenges, with problems to be solved. The latest challenge is called Crises and the Resolution of Conflicts and the students are spending 20 days working on it. Naturally biology, history, geography, etc. all come into play when you dig into a subject like this.
IMI students query a representative of Condusef about financial problems.
“While investigating conflict resolution, some of our students heard about a Mexican government organism called Condusef, which means National Commission for the Protection and Defense of the Users of Financial Services. So what did the kids do? They went on the net to check it out and then got on the phone, called Condusef and asked for the email address of their delegate for western Mexico ‘because we need to interview her.’
“These are fourth-graders, 10 years old! Well, they were told to fill out a form for this and those kids went right ahead and filled it out and sent it in and as a result, a committee of eight of our students went to Condusef here in Guadalajara to ask them questions about how they are protecting people from financial abuse.
“This in turn made the kids realize that most people don’t know how to manage and save money, so they sent teams out to financial institutions like Banorte and La Caja Popular and they came back and presented what they had discovered to their fellow students . . . so, these students ended up teaching the other ones and thanks to the technology we use, they could share what they learned through videos, recordings and photos, with everyone learning from everyone else.”
Medina pointed out that in such a situation the teacher can’t be the teacher because he or she is not an expert on economy. The teacher becomes a co-researcher, a kind of guide and catalyzer, so Knotion uses the word coach instead of teacher.
“In a Knotion environment,” says Medina, “students gain competence not only in ‘hard skills’ like science and history, but they also become masters of ‘soft skills’ like communicating, problem solving, developing projects, teamwork, innovation, leadership and creativity — and all of these are what 21st-century companies are looking for in an employee.”
How, you might ask, was an approach developed in Morelia recently ranked in London among the top 10 educational systems in the world?
Playing chess is part of the program at IMI.
“How did it all begin?” I asked co-founder of Knotion, Noemí “Mimy” Valencia.
“We started our own little school 24 years ago,” she told me. “We started it for our own daughter. We had moved away from Mexico City and wanted to live in the country, but we couldn’t find a school that met our expectations. My husband Noel Trainor and I both had had the opportunity to study in schools that fostered our curiosity and creativity and empowered us. So when we saw that our little girl wouldn’t have that opportunity in Morelia, we started our own school and right from the beginning we and the other parents had one essential question: what’s best for the kids?
“That is what has been taking us on this journey, figuring out what kind of world we are living in, the kinds of skills and competencies our kids need in order to face the world we adults are leaving behind, and the kind of citizens that the world needs in order to become a better place. We are striving for a new humanity with different patterns of thinking and behaving and understanding. We want to create a new generation characterized by compassion, by tolerance and by social commitment, so they can really make a difference.”
Are they succeeding in this? Here is the opinion of a Knotion coach Cristina Pratts:
“The most important thing is to develop children who are autonomous, self-taught, who are forever curious and wanting to learn, and I think Knotion does this. From the very first moment they catch them and make them want to keep going, to know more, more and more.”
And here is what a Knotion parent, Lorena Rodríguez, has to say:
“I am overwhelmed by what I see happening in this escuela. In primary and secondary school they are doing the kind of research that — in my day— would have been carried out in graduate school.”
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Finally, as I finished my visit to IMI, Luis Medina casually mentioned that representatives of three of Mexico’s best universities had recently visited him, each one to quietly encourage him to send his graduates to their institution, “and all of them offered to give my students scholarships,” he told me with a proud smile, “100% scholarships!”
Now if you are looking for a mark of success, I think that pretty well takes the cake.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
