Epicenter of Saturday night's earthquake in southwestern Mexico.
Fifty homes sustained minor damages after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck 38 kilometers southeast of Unión Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Saturday night.
Civil Protection agency chief Wilbert Cabrera reported cracks in walls and broken windows in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec town.
The municipal government building, the health clinic, the market and the old train station were also damaged. Over 100 years old, the government building was already damaged by the 8.2-magnitude quake that struck the region in September 2017.
Saturday’s quake, which occurred at 10:40pm CT, worsened those damages, which had previously been estimated to cost 3 million pesos (US $159,000).
Juchitán Civil Protection coordinator William López Cabrera reported some damages though not as serious as in 2017.
Five people were treated for nervous breakdowns, one of whom was a woman who had just given birth.
A couple of homes in nearby San Blas Atempa and Santo Domingo Tehuantepec sustained damages to their facades and roofs, but no injuries were reported.
Minor damages were also reported in the Cuenca del Papaloapan region, in the north of the state.
Mayor Sheinbaum said the program is for youths identified as high-risk.
A government program in Mexico City will seek to get 3,000 young people off the streets and lead them away from a life of crime, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday.
The mayor said that the Jóvenes unen al barrio (Young people join the neighborhood) program will offer educational scholarships to youth identified as being prone to crime and provide them with opportunities to participate in social and environmental schemes such as the Reto Verde (Green Challenge), a tree-planting initiative.
About 3,000 young people are expected to join the Youth Institute program this year, Sheinbaum said.
The program is part of a wider anti-crime initiative called Alto al Fuego (Ceasefire), which has already begun in the borough of Álvaro Obregón and will be extended across Mexico City this year.
The initiative consists of identifying people involved in criminal activity through intelligence work and then sending them messages that warn them that there will be zero tolerance for any high-impact crimes they commit.
The strategy doesn’t seek to negotiate with criminals or enter into agreements with them, said security undersecretary Pablo Vázquez, but rather “send them a clear message” that their crimes will be punished with “the full weight of the law.”
The Alto al Fuego initiative is directed at the 1% of the population that is directly involved in violent crime or has links to a criminal group, he said.
“It’s not a conversation, at no time do [the identified criminals] have a voice, it’s one-sided communication,” Vázquez said.
“. . . Alto al Fuego is a strategy . . . known as focused deterrence . . .It’s a strategy that has been implemented in U.S. cities such as Boston, with the so-called Operation Ceasefire in 1996, and in Oakland, California, a city which . . . has similar characteristics as the Mexican capital,” he said.
“We’re not seeking dialogue or negotiation, we’re trying to communicate in a direct way . . . ”
With the implementation of the strategy, the government is aiming to reduce murders and other violent crime in Mexico City, where there were 2,021 homicides and 60 femicides in the first 11 months of last year.
Deb Kraemer with a resident of the new seniors' home.
I believe in miracles, especially at Christmas. Perhaps two of the best miracles I have witnessed are those that have occurred for the residents of the formerly named Casa María de Asilo in Zihuatanejo, now called Asilo DIF.
About a year ago I wrote an article for Mexico News Daily in which I compared the faith-based seniors’ home in Las Pozas, near Zihuatanejo, with the government-run facility in La Noria, an impoverished neighborhood close to Centro Zihua. In it I discussed the differences in quality and care.
Although both provided for seniors who had been neglected and forgotten, or whose families had no support in place, that was where any similarities ended. The faith-based home had all the advantages of seniors’ homes you would hope to find while the one run by the government had little or none.
Until, that is, when Deb Kraemer from the United States and Shirley Cullum from Canada stepped in in 2016 and things began to happen. In a few months the quality of care improved and living quarters became cleaner, bathrooms were retiled and issues that were neglected began to have some semblance of order.
Still, despite their efforts and the immense dedication of a small army of volunteers, the roof still leaked, staff were untrained or in some cases incompetent, and food and basic supplies were in short supply or of poor quality.
The new home for seniors in Zihuatanejo.
And this is where the second miracle begins in the form of one woman, Lizette Tapia Castro, wife of Mayor Jorge Sánchez. In Mexico, the mayor’s wife automatically becomes the figurehead of the DIF family services agency.
In the past, some have taken this position seriously and have made positive changes while some, unfortunately, have not. Luckily for Zihuatanejo, Lizette Tapia is one of the former.
With a degree in social services, Tapia involved the DIF in initiatives to improve the lives of people, particularly women, children and the marginalized (such as seniors) in positive ways.
For example, she took a hands-on and dedicated approach during a horrific fire this time last year that wiped out a whole community, and has been involved in programs such as sewing cloth diapers and holding showers for new expectant mothers.
Perhaps the most impressive of Tapia’s accomplishments has been the incredible transformation in the lives of the seniors from La Noria. Rather than merely fix the roof of a crumbling, desolate seniors’ home, she and her husband undertook to reconstruct an unused portion of an old DIF building a few blocks away.
In a record six months, Casa DIF was transformed into a bright, airy facility. Where before residents were crammed as many as 15 in one room, now they are living in relative luxury at just two to a room with their own bathroom.
Moving day: a resident with DIF president Tapia and her husband the mayor.
The wide-open spaces of the courtyard allow residents to move freely in wheelchairs among plants and ocean breezes to cool down in the sometimes oppressive heat of summer.
Along with a few of the best staff from the old facility, the DIF hired a new and extremely capable manager, Laura Solis, to oversee the nurses, housekeeper and cooks.
Walking into the facility you can see the difference not only in staff attitude, but in the smiles from the residents themselves, who before were often bored and listless. Now many are walking about, playing games and doing crafts, and generally engaged in positive ways with staff and visitors alike.
In short, they are happy, loved and well cared for. Secret Santa celebrations, more school visits and local involvement have all contributed to the changes three women from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada have instigated.
The writer is a Canadian who has lived and worked in Mexico for many years.
Alarm system speakers emitted a false alarm at 7:00pm Friday.
The Mexico City government apologized on Friday night after the earthquake alarm was accidentally activated in at least four boroughs just after 7:00pm, causing people to rush into the streets.
“Due to a regrettable error that we will review internally the seismic alert was activated at 900 posts in the city. We apologize to the public,” Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on Twitter.
The alarm was heard in neighborhoods in the boroughs of Cuauhtémoc, Benito Juárez, Miguel Hidalgo and Tlalpan.
With the devastating earthquake of September 19, 2017, still fresh in the memory of Mexico City residents, the sounding of the seismic alert – which depending on the location of a quake can give people up to a minute to flee buildings that could be susceptible to collapse – triggers immediate fear and anxiety in many.
The C5 security command center said in a statement posted to social media that the alert was inadvertently set off while tests were being carried out to ensure that the earthquake alarm’s audio system was functioning correctly.
“This test consists of sending a file without audio to the 13,337 loudspeakers of the system [that are] divided in groups of posts. One of these groups, made up of 900 posts, was not properly configured and consequently reproduced the seismic alert file instead of reproducing the file without audio,” the statement said.
It added that the tests had been suspended while the problem was being corrected.
“The Mexico City C5 command center offers an apology to the citizens of Mexico City for the inconvenience caused,” the statement concluded.
Tickets are on sale now for for the eighth Carnaval Bahidorá international music and art festival, a “hippie style” event slated for February 14-16.
The festival’s music includes electronic, rap, hip-hop and more and the 2020 line up so far includes Masters at Work, Ibibio Sound Machine, Teto Preto, Son Rompe Pera, DJ Jasss, Move D, Theo Parrish and Avalon Emerson. More are to be announced.
The site is Las Estacas, a natural water park that is part of the Sierra de Montenegro Ecological Reserve, located 90 minutes south of Mexico City in Tlaltizapan, Morelos. It is a mountainous, wooded area centered on a natural spring which is the source of the Yautepec river.
The park has a number of ecological attractions such as areas for snorkeling, camping, boating, kayaking and inner tubing. It is open to the public, and hosts various events during the year.
The music festival declares itself to be 100% sustainable, providing recycling facilities and more. It also seeks to minimize the impact of the event on the park, such as prohibiting pets and flammable substances, as well as providing bus transportation.
Attendees wear costumes, masks or body paint and food options include vegetarian and vegan specialties. A marketplace will feature clothing, handcrafts, jewelry and other items.
Only people aged 18 and over may attend the event, which does not permit pets, professional video cameras, selfie sticks, flammables, knives or outside food and drinks.
Inmates' families wait for news outside the Zacatecas prison.
The governor of Zacatecas has announced the dismissal of the warden of a state prison where 17 inmates were killed in two riots this week.
Alejandro Tello told a press conference Friday that authorities believed that the removal of Antonio Solís as head of the Cieneguillas Social Reinsertion Center was necessary in light of the events that took place Tuesday night and Thursday morning.
Sixteen inmates were killed in the first riot, while another prisoner was killed in the second clash. Ten other inmates were wounded. Authorities relocated 120 prisoners after the first outbreak of violence.
Zacatecas Public Security Secretary Ismael Camberos Hernández said Thursday that authorities are investigating prison guards and other staff for allowing the entry of weapons into the facility, located just west of Zacatecas city.
A search of the prison after the New Year’s Eve riot uncovered almost 30 blades and knives, a variety of other weapons, marijuana, methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia and other prohibited items.
The probe extends to Solís but Governor Tello stressed that the decision to dismiss him wasn’t intended as criticism of his “work, effort [and] commitment” as prison warden. A replacement warden will be appointed next week, he said.
The governor said that authorities know that the Cieneguillas prison is a “time bomb” because it houses hundreds of highly-dangerous prisoners with links to organized crime in a minimum-security environment.
“We mustn’t forget that we’re talking about a prison that’s more than three decades old, we mustn’t lose sight [of the fact] that we’re talking about a prison that today houses several hundred federal-jurisdiction inmates [in] a minimum-security penitentiary,” Tello said.
“For a long time, since the first day of my government [in 2016], we’ve been speaking with federal authorities insistently about the prison issue because we know that it is a time bomb,” he added.
The governor said the violence seen in recent days in the prison was an extension of turf wars between criminal groups in the state, asserting “they’re in a fight outside and they’re settling scores on the inside.”
Security Secretary Camberos said the violence was due to disputes between members of the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels.
Tello said that federal intervention is required to guarantee safety in the prison, adding that he had spoken to both National Intelligence Center director Audomaro Martínez Zapata and Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo.
The former made a commitment to identify the cause of the violence and find a solution to it, he said, while the latter pledged that the federal government would provide additional resources for the prison and training for staff.
García appeared in court today in New York. file photo
Former federal security secretary Genaro García Luna has pleaded not guilty to U.S. charges that he colluded with the Sinaloa Cartel in a drug trafficking conspiracy.
The nation’s head of security in the government of former president Felipe Calderón entered his plea on Friday during a brief appearance in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
García, who led the so-called war on drugs launched by Calderón shortly after he took office in 2006, was indicted on December 4 by a grand jury in Brooklyn on charges that he allowed the Sinaloa Cartel to operate in exchange for multimillion-dollar bribes. He was detained in Dallas, Texas, on December 9.
The 51-year-old, who prior to serving as public security secretary headed up the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency, allegedly provided the cartel with security that allowed it to freely move drugs to the northern border and supplied confidential information about government investigations and other criminal organizations.
The U.S. indictment said that Sinaloa Cartel bagmen personally delivered payments on two occasions to García using briefcases that contained between US $3 million and $5 million.
United States prosecutors also said that the former official lied about his past criminal involvement when he applied for U.S. citizenship in 2018.
Dressed in khaki pants and a baggy gray sweatshirt, García appeared to be suffering from the strain of his almost month-long imprisonment during his 10-minute appearance in court, the newspaper Milenio reported.
His face was drawn and his demeanor submissive, Milenio said, noting also that he constantly turned around to look in the direction of his wife and two children who were seated in the second row of a packed courthouse.
García shook his head as the charges against him – three counts of cocaine-trafficking conspiracy and a false declarations charge – were read out by prosecutors.
Judge Peggy Kuo said he will remain in custody unless a court accepts a proposal for bail. Prosecutors said that they would oppose any such request because García’s wealth and alleged cartel links make him an extremely high flight risk.
Another procedural hearing was set for January 21 after which García will have a period of 70 days within which he may choose to change his plea. If convicted, García faces a prison sentence of between 10 years and life.
In Mexico, federal financial investigators are looking into the possible embezzlement of more than 4.8 billion pesos (US $250 million) in federal funds to companies with links to García. Former president Calderón has denied any knowledge of the alleged criminal activities of his security secretary.
President López Obrador, who blames Mexico’s ongoing violence problems on the security strategy first implemented by the Calderón administration, said on December 18 that his government wouldn’t investigate the ex-president in relation to the charges against his security secretary “because it would create the perception that we’re doing it for political purposes.”
Lake Pojoj features an island with a small orchid and bromeliad garden.
While in Tuxtla, the capital of the state of Chiapas, I had a brief chance to visit the celebrated Lagunas de Montebello, which are located 170 kilometers to the southwest, near the border of Guatemala. This lake area is a Mexican national park and was designated a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 2009.
No sooner had we passed Tuxtla’s city limits than we found ourselves and the highway entirely enveloped in thick fog. We really couldn’t see anything more than two meters ahead of us. I fully expected our driver and guide, Gabino, to pull off the road and wait for the fog to lift. But we just kept going, visibility almost zero.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “every time I come by here, it looks exactly like this. We’re all used to it.”
The further we drove, the higher we rose in altitude. “Oye, Gabino,” I asked, “will we pass any of those communities here in Chiapas with big signs saying ‘The Mexican government is not welcome around here?’”
“Bueno,” grinned Gabino, “you mean anuncios like that one right in front of us?”
Hourglass-shaped Laguna la Cañada is a great place for kayaking.
Sure enough, we were just passing a sign announcing that we had arrived at the Zapatista Center for Independent Resistance and Rebellion at a place called Tulan Ka’u, which means Caballo Fuerte, Strong Horse.
Another sign gave us a big welcome to a kind of Zapatista roadside restaurant offering tacos and local dishes, “open to the general public.” The word BIENVENID@S was written with the “at” symbol, a convention adopted by the Zapatistas to signify their commitment to gender equality.
Curious, we parked and — the air still heavy with fog — walked over to a rustic dining hall of sorts, without walls, but protected by a long roof. Here ladies wearing warm scarves were cooking delicious-looking shrimp on a comal. I noticed that quite a few of the people present were wearing bandanas over their faces, but whether this was for warmth, concealment or just part of the Zapatista “uniform,” I’m not sure.
We had already breakfasted, but when we spotted the homemade tortillas they were preparing, we couldn’t resist: “Could we please have six of your delicious-looking tortillas,” we asked.
“Of course,” replied a jolly-looking woman. “But you’ll enjoy them much more with a shrimp — try a few!”
“Muchas gracias, but we just had breakfast — still, we can’t resist trying your tortillas.”
Cheese fondue on a banana leaf with pumpkin flowers, red beans and chorizo.
Both the shrimp and the tortillas were indeed as delicious as they looked, but when we tried to pay for them, the woman adamantly refused. “No, no! We’re just happy to see how much you like our tortillas. Vayan con Diós.”
Now that we felt somewhat integrated into the local community, we drove on until we reached the first lake Gabino planned to show us. A 20-minute hike up a steep, rocky and very muddy trail brought us to Cenote Bartolo.While certain members of our party were none too happy about getting their shoes full of mud, I was delighted, as I had never seen a cenote before — and I was wearing hiking boots.
Bartolo, like so many of the lakes in this area, is surrounded by high walls that make it look something like a crater. But, of course, this area is not volcanic. The rock here is limestone and the lakes are spots where the limestone has been eroded, giving access to the water beneath the surface.
While Bartolo’s waters had none of the subtle shades of color that make the lagoons of Montebello famous, I realized that many of a cenote’s attractions are underwater and can only be appreciated by cave divers. Several of my speleologist friends are in the process of studying and mapping the vast network of cave passages linking Mexico’s cenotes together.
So many of these networks have been found to be interconnected that southern Mexico’s vast collection of cenotes is already recognized as the second-longest cave system in the world with a present-day length of 372 kilometers (231 miles). While this is still well behind the world’s longest, the Mammoth Cave System (668 kilometers – 415 miles), cave explorers of Mexico are convinced it’s only a matter of time before Mammoth will be in second place.
From Bartolo, we went on to visit a few of the famous lagunas of the area: Tziscao, La Cañada, Pojoj, Montebello, Cinco Lagos and little Lago Internacional, which Mexico shares with Guatemala. These lakes are strikingly beautiful, with colors ranging from turquoise to purple. The many hues are said to be caused by the mineral content of the water, the sediment at the bottom, the surrounding vegetation and light refraction. As for the number of lakes in the area, the Chiapas Secretariat of Tourism says that no one really knows how many there are, but 59 is the standard number given to statistics-hungry tourists.
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Apart from gazing upon the beauty of these lakes from miradores or lookout points, you can also go rafting or kayaking on some of them. One of the most popular lakes for doing this is Lago Pojoj, which has an island in the middle of it with a small orchid and bromeliad garden. “Raft” in Spanish is balsa and the amazingly buoyant rafts at Lago Pojoj are actually made of balsa wood, which is native to the area and obviously useful for something more than making model airplanes.
Other local activities include horseback riding, hiking and the simple act of crossing the border at Lago Internacional where there are no fences, sniffer dogs or guards and no one asks for or even cares about passports: a truly unique experience, especially in these days of obsession with border walls.
Climbing down countless stairs to the shores of these lagoons — and then back up — is bound to give you an appetite. When we were good and hungry, we asked Gabino where he thought we should eat.
“I know just the place,” he replied, leading us into a small, cinderblock structure with three walls and no windows. Two cheerful local ladies welcomed us and, even though this restaurant had all the ambiance of a dungeon, their cheese fondue with pumpkin flowers and chorizo was spectacularly delicious and their chincunguajes (corn gorditas filled with red beans) were my first introduction to an authentic Chiapas dish. These delights, I should mention, we washed down with Gallo beer from Guatemala which, of course, was just down the road.
This excellent meal, enjoyed in the humblest of “restaurants” brought to a happy end my all too short visit to Chiapas. Five days offered me only a glimpse of this state, but that was enough to convince me that five years would probably not be enough even for the briefest introduction to this fascinating corner of Mexico.
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.
Protesters call for justice for a Michoacán journalist who was victim of an assault last September and then harassed by police.
The Special Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Against Freedom of Expression has obtained just four convictions out of 803 investigations into crimes against journalists since its creation more than eight years ago.
In other words, 99.5% of investigations have failed to arrest and/or prosecute the perpetrators of crimes against media workers in Mexico, one of the most dangerous countries in the world in which to practice journalism.
In that context, National Action Party Senator Marco Antonio Gama Basarte last month presented a proposal that seeks to create a new, completely autonomous special prosecutor’s office to investigate crimes against both journalists and human rights defenders.
Mexico needs a strong and independent prosecutor’s office in order to “guarantee the institutional commitment we have with journalists and people who defend human rights,” he said while presenting his bill on December 12.
“. . . Attacks [on journalists] have increased 30% in recent years,” Gama said, noting that 11 journalists were killed in Mexico in 2019 as well as at least 13 human rights defenders.
“That’s why we’re seeking to guarantee . . . access to the administration of justice and protection of the right to express oneself freely with certainty, peace and tranquility in the exercise of one’s profession,” he said.
The senator also said that an average of 23 journalists per month requested government protection last year, adding that the funds to provide such protection were cut in the federal budgets for both 2019 and 2020.
President López Obrador has come under fire for contributing to a culture of violence against journalists by launching scathing verbal attacks on reporters and news outlets that are critical of his government.
The president often dismisses reports with which he doesn’t agree by declaring that they come from the prensa fifi (elitist press) and has called journalists and news outlets “puppets,” “hypocrites” and “two-faced,” among other disparaging terms.
Article 19, a press freedom organization, said at the time that the president’s “stigmatizing discourse [against the media] . . . has a direct impact in terms of the . . . risk it can generate for the work of the press because [his remarks] permeate in the discourse of the rest of society and can even generate attacks.”
The organization demanded that López Obrador “abstain from generating any act that inhibits the exercise of freedom of expression,” adding “this includes maintaining a stigmatizing discourse” against the media.
A state oil company strategy to speed up the process of drilling new wells has not worked as planned, according to two energy experts who spoke with the news agency Bloomberg and data from the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH).
Pemex used a closed bidding process with pre-selected companies to contract out the drilling of new wells at 20 priority oil fields.
But most of the contracts went to small, local companies, many of which are in “survival mode” and made low bids just to get the work, the vice president of Welligence Energy Analytics told Bloomberg.
Pablo Medina said that in some cases the contractors lacked drilling expertise and were unable to obtain the equipment they needed to complete the job.
Jorge Sierra, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told Bloomberg that “they were supposing that they could bring these fields online quicker, but they haven’t.”
CNH data shows that just two of the 20 fields were yielding oil by the end of November even though the bidding process concluded in May.
“The contractors that won the packages for drilling the priority fields haven’t had the experience of managing integrated service contracts, like the big international ones such as Schlumberger and Halliburton,” Sierra said.
Pemex is now expected to open a new bidding process for nine of the fields, according to Borr Drilling, an international company consolidating its presence in Mexico.
Bloomberg said the state oil company declined to respond to its questions about the tenders or its well-drilling schedule.
The news agency noted that Pemex’s crude production in November 2019 was 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) or approximately one million barrels short of its output target by the end of President López Obrador’s six-year term in 2024.
The failure of the strategy to speed up drilling of new wells was just one of several setbacks last year for Pemex, which has debt in excess of US $100 billion and has seen its oil output decline for more than a decade.
Pemex has also seen a brain drain as a result of the public servants’ salary cap enforced by the federal government and has months of unpaid bills, Bloomberg said, even though the López Obrador administration has poured additional resources into the company.
Welligence’s Medina predicted that the state-owned company will face a “reality check” in 2020 as oil production “will likely keep declining.”
López Obrador has repeatedly pledged to “rescue” Pemex and reduce Mexico’s dependency on gasoline imports by upgrading the country’s six existing refineries and building a new one on the Tabasco coast.
He has also taken steps to reduce the role of international companies in Mexico’s energy market by suspending new oil field auctions and blocking Pemex from entering into new joint ventures to develop existing projects.
