14 killed after executive jet crashes in Coahuila

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May 6, 2019

A woman and child appear unfazed by the surrounding seaweed.

A plan to combat this year’s expected million tonnes of sargassum on the beaches of Quintana Roo is beginning to take shape.

The state government has announced emergency sargassum protocol that will divide the state into nine zones where efforts will be concentrated on preventing the seaweed from accumulating on beaches.

Environment Secretary Alfredo Arellano will head the initiative intended to keep the beaches clean and find a sustainable use for the collected plant matter.

The state has identified beachfront hotel owners and businesses that might be affected by the algae’s arrival, all of whom received a summary of the state’s plan, which outlines cooperation with business owners and residents to erect retention barriers and organize clean-up crews.

In a Friday meeting with hotel owners in Zone 7, which extends from Punta Maroma to Playa Mamitas in Solidaridad, Tourism Secretary Marisol Vanegas Pérez related the state’s plan and stressed the importance of federal support to combat the problem.

This morning, President López Obrador announced a Tuesday meeting with Fonatur director Rogelio Jiménez Pons, Quintana Roo business owners and Governor Carlos Joaquín to discuss solutions for the sargassum, which is expected to continue arriving over the next few months.

Asked at his daily press conference if the federal government will provide economic assistance to industries affected he said “we are going to help.”

The arrival of sargassum over the weekend didn’t quite live up to the forecasts but those are expected to be fulfilled over the next 72 hours, affecting beaches from Holbox in the north of the state to Xcalak near the border with Belize. Authorities are actively monitoring the situation’s progress with the help of satellite images and drones.

The Cancún sargassum monitoring network reports that beaches in Puerto Morelos, Solidaridad (Playa del Carmen) and Tulum are the most affected.

In Solidaridad, paid and volunteer workers have been removing more than 100 tonnes of sargassum a day from the beaches.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Financiero (sp), Notimex (sp)

‘AMLO out:’ 20,000 march in protest against government of López Obrador

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MND Staff

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May 6, 2019

#AMLOresignation, reads the hashtag on the banner at the Mexico City march.

More than 20,000 people took to the streets in 19 cities yesterday to protest against the federal government and demand the resignation of President López Obrador.

The largest protest took place in Mexico City where about 15,000 people marched along the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard holding signs on which they had written “AMLO out!” and “Wise people made a mistake with you,” among other anti-government messages.

Dubbed “La Marcha del Silencio” (The Silence March), some protesters covered their mouths with masking tape emblazoned with a clear message: “AMLO resign.”

The government’s cancelation of the new Mexico City international airport, insecurity, the staging of legally questionable public consultations, the dismissal of bureaucrats and López Obrador’s use of divisive language. He frequently describes his “adversaries” as fifí (elitist) or conservatives – were the protesters’ main complaints.

Plans to build the Maya Train on the Yucatán peninsula and a new oil refinery on the Gulf coast in Tabasco were also criticized.

Toluca, Saltillo, Veracruz, Mérida, Puebla, Chihuahua, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Morelia and Tijuana were among the other cities that saw protests, which were organized on social media by a group called Chalecos México (Mexico Vests).

Homero Velázquez, one of the group’s founders, told the news website Animal Político that Chalecos México has been organizing protests against López Obrador since before he was sworn in as president last December, and that its opposition to the new government initially focused on the decision to cancel the partially-built airport project at Texcoco, México state.

The group’s leaders and most of the people who participated in yesterday’s protests said they are not members of any political party but rather ordinary Mexicans who are concerned about the direction in which the five-month-old government is taking the country.

However, not all the protesters could claim to be everyday Mexicans.

Former president Vicente Fox, a frequent critic of the president, led a march of about 1,000 people in León, Guanajuato, while carrying a sign that called on the government to use “better criteria” in its decision making.

Former tourism secretary Enrique de la Madrid also took part in the protests although he said that he attended as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which lost power at last year’s elections.

“It’s a very delicate moment in which freedoms are being lost,” de la Madrid said without explaining what those freedoms were.

Former president Felipe Calderón, who has clashed repeatedly with López Obrador, praised Mexicans who participated in yesterday’s protests in a Twitter post in which he also invited them to join a new political movement in which he is involved.

At his morning press conference today, López Obrador was unperturbed about the protests and reiterated that people have the right to freely express their opposition to the government.

“They have the complete right to demonstrate. I’m even pleased that this protest was organized and hopefully those who are not in favor of the government will continue to protest with freedom,” he said.

“This is logical, it’s natural. When we won we said that there was going to be a change of regime, that we were going to put an end to corruption, privileges, luxuries of government; that we were going to listen to everyone, respect everyone; and that we were going to give preference to the dispossessed . . . for the good of all, the poor come first,” López Obrador continued.

“It’s new politics, a transformation and this of course doesn’t please [some people] . . .”

Source: Milenio (sp), Animal Político (sp), El Financiero (sp)

Andrick’s sandcastle dream comes true in Puerto Vallarta

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May 6, 2019

Andrick, left, and his family arrive in Puerto Vallarta on Friday. — Andrick, left, and his family arrive for their beach holiday.

A young boy’s dream of building sandcastles on a beach came true last weekend when he and his family were flown from Monterrey, Nuevo León, to the Pacific coast beach destination of Puerto Vallarta.

It all began at the end of the Easter vacation when a television reporter and a camera crew sought to interview low-income families who were unable to go the beach during the holiday.

The reporter found Andrick playing with other children around a fountain, leading to the now viral interview in which the boy said that what he liked to do the most during the holiday was build sandcastles. He told the interviewer that he had never actually been to the beach, and that he only built the castles in his dreams.

It didn’t take long for several companies and organizations in Nuevo León and Jalisco to come up with a plan to make Andrick’s dream come true.

On Friday, he and his family flew from Monterrey courtesy of the airline VivaAerobus. En route, Andrick visited the cockpit, donned a pilot’s cap and sat at the controls.

andrick and sandcastle — The dream fulfilled.

Once in Puerto Vallarta, he and his family were welcomed by tourism officials, who documented Andrick’s holiday and shared photos of his experience on line.

Accommodation was provided by the Buenaventura Hotel where Andrick was given a warm welcome by pirates who gave him a kit of sandcastle-building tools.

In addition to building castles and playing on the beach, Andrick rode a zip line.

Andrick was a special guest aboard a VivaAerobus flight.

Source: Infobae (sp)

Government doesn’t have billion pesos needed to deal with sargassum

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May 5, 2019

Sargassum on a Tulum beach yesterday. cancún sargassum monitoring network

As sargassum seaweed steadily invades the beaches of Quintana Roo, from Isla Holbox in the north to Xcalak near the Belize border, there is no money to do anything about it.

The federal government does not have the billion pesos needed to combat the massive waves of sargassum, revealed Pablo Careaga, the state representative of the tourism promotion fund. Fonatur.

There were hopes that Fonden, the natural disaster fund, could help. But this week it was discovered that under the agency’s rules, sargassum does not qualify as a natural disaster.

With winds and ocean currents driving the seaweed in to shore, it was forecast that by Saturday or Sunday the state’s entire coastline would lie under a bed of sargassum, with no immediate let-up in sight.

One report on Sunday said satellite images indicate the sargassum will continue to arrive over the next 72 hours.

Fonatur’s Careaga said lawmakers are working with businesses, organizations and other government agencies to find a way to free up funds to deal with the problem in the months ahead, which are forecast to see record amounts of the weed continuing to wash up on Quintana Roo shores.

“We are looking into the matter with the secretary of finance to see what other options might exist, but yes, we’re stuck on the funding.”

The Cancún sargassum monitoring network estimates that as much as one million tonnes of sargassum could finish up on the beaches this year. As of Saturday, one of the worst affected areas was Tulum, where a 25-meter strip of sargassum lined the beaches.

Quintana Roo Senator Marybel Villegas said Friday a multidisciplinary task force consisting of federal, state and local authorities, along with businesses, universities and NGOs will be created to address the problem.

Villegas said the problem is a priority for the federal government for its significant economic impact. She said that while an aid package of 240 million pesos (US $12.7 million) was pledged in August of last year, the measures implemented so far have been ineffective.

The Cancún-Puerto Morelos hotels association estimated that cleaning the beaches of sargassum will cost at least 700 million pesos.

Source: Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp), El Financiero (sp), Infobae (sp)

With cumbia, ranchera, Lila Downs’ latest album pays homage to the chile

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May 5, 2019

Lila Downs' new album: dedicated to the chile. — Lila Downs' new album is dedicated to the chile.

Mexican-American singer-songwriter Lila Downs’ new album is dedicated to the chile, is conformed mostly of cumbia beats and and doesn’t shy away from a hot issue in Mexico and the United States — immigration.

Downs said during an interview in New York that immigration is an “uncomfortable” issue for some people, but she could not abstain from addressing it in her new release, called Al Chile.

Al chile is a Mexican expression that means speaking with honesty, being “straight up” or “keeping it real.”

“It’s our personality. We Mexicans are sweet, but also spicy,” Downs said about her album’s title.”We are like that verse from La Llorona: ‘I am like the green chile, Llorona, hot but delicious,'” she sang with a smile.

Downs covers Manu Chau’s iconic song Clandestino, a hymn to immigrants everywhere. She gave the song her own cumbia and ranchera-inspired touch, and modified some of the lyrics to make it more up to date with the times, making it a protest against the immigrant detention and family separation policies in the United States.

“If we don’t fight for the children, what will become of us?” she asks.

Downs said she sings the song from the perspective of a migrant woman because her mother was one.

“My mother was a migrant. She married a gringo, she went to the United States. She came here and suffered. She migrated from her indigenous town to the city, she lived those two periods of her life, which were difficult, and perhaps that is why my perspective is that of the woman,” said Downs.

In Al Chile, Downs offers a diverse selection of music, through collaboration with various Mexican bands playing traditional Mexican music, to a song with jazz artist Norah Jones.

Two of the album’s 11 songs were co-written by Downs and her husband, Paul Cohen.

Source: AP (sp)

Ex-official jailed in 2005 torture case; former governor, 2 others still sought

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May 5, 2019

Nacif, Marín and Karam: arrest warrants outstanding.

One of four people sought for the torture of a journalist in 2005 has been arrested and remanded for trial.

Juan Sánchez Moreno, a former official in the Puebla Attorney General’s Office, was arrested last week for the torture of celebrated investigative journalist Lydia Cacho.

Sánchez is one of four people for whom warrants were issued last month. The others are former Puebla governor Mario Marín, businessman Kamel Nacif and another former senior police official in Puebla, Hugo Adolfo Karam Beltrán.

Cacho was detained by Puebla police in Cancún in 2005 on defamation charges following the release of her book, The Demons of Eden, which exposed a pedophilia ring in Cancún allegedly run by businessman Jean Succar Kuri (who has been tried and convicted) with the participation of Kamel Nacif, the Puebla-based businessman known “the “denim king” for his large textile empire.

While held in custody, Cacho was tortured and threatened with rape in a case that became a national sandal when a tape was leaked of a conversation between Nacif and then-Puebla governor Marín plotting to prosecute Cacho as punishment for her book.

Cacho accused federal authorities last week of allowing Marín, Nacif and their accomplices time to escape by neglecting to issue a red alert through Interpol. She wrote on Twitter that the alert should have been issued on April 13, just after the arrests warrants were issued.

As of Sunday, there was no record of an Interpol alert for either ex-governor Marín or Nacif.

In August, the United Nations denounced the lack of justice for Cacho and demanded that the Mexican government apprehend those responsible for human rights abuses during her imprisonment.

Two police officers accused of torturing the journalist were arrested in August and December of last year, one of whom was sentenced to at least five years in prison.

Source: Reforma (sp), e-consulta (sp)

17 kidnapping victims freed at two locations in Jalisco

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May 4, 2019

Police at the house in Tlajomulco where kidnapping victims were found.

Authorities in Jalisco freed 17 kidnapping victims yesterday after some escaped from their captors.

One group of victims was located in the Del Periodista neighborhood of Guadalajara after two were seen running along the street naked with their hands tied early yesterday morning.

The two men, who showed signs of having been tortured, told police that seven people remained in the safe house where they were being kept.

A search of the property led to the discovery of the remaining victims, all of whom had been injured with a sharp object. One was missing three toes. Police said soil in the back yard had been disturbed recently, indicating the possibility that bodies had been buried there.

Later in the day, there was a similar report in San Sebastián del Grande, Tlajomulco, where several men showed signs of having been tortured and tied up.

The men led authorities to a property where they found three women and five men being held captive, along with four bodies.

The state Attorney General’s Office said most of the kidnapping victims had a criminal record, are related to local small-scale drug-dealing and are suspected to be members of a criminal gang.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Shootout in Minatitlán after police arrest massacre suspect

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May 4, 2019

A man identified by the authorities as one of two perpetrators of the Minatitlán massacre in which 13 people were killed was arrested yesterday in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, leading to a fatal shootout a few hours later.

Adrián N. “El Pelón,” 25, is a suspected member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and a resident of Cosoleacaque, a municipality located near the scene of the April 19 killings.

Aauthorities suspect that Adrián N. was accompanied by Tomás N. “El Lagarto,” the cartel’s presumed plaza leader in Minatitlán.

Federal government sources said the former was an employee of the state oil company Pemex and worked at the Pajaritos industrial complex.

Federal agents apprehended him as he was leaving the Pajaritos plant after finishing a shift.

Hours after the arrest, police clashed with armed civilians on the streets of Minatitlán.

At least two officers were killed in the shootout, and three people were wounded, including two police.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Interjet restructures, drops 4 routes in US, opens 5 in LatAm

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May 4, 2019