With the conviction of one of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords behind them, United States authorities are now going after his sons.
A week after the conclusion of the three-month trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, two of his sons were indicted yesterday on drug conspiracy charges by the United States Justice Department.
Joaquín Guzmán López, 34, and Ovidio Guzmán López, 28, are accused of conspiring to import and distribute cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana from Mexico and elsewhere into the United States between 2008 and 2018.
U.S. authorities believe that both siblings are living as fugitives in Mexico. The move against them indicates the U.S. government is continuing its efforts to dismantle the Sinaloa Cartel, which El Chapo Guzmán once led.
Guzmán was extradited to the U.S. in 2017 after escaping twice from Mexican prisons. He was found guilty in a New York City court of 10 drug trafficking charges on February 12.
Guzmán’s mother wants to visit her son in the US.
Sentencing is scheduled for June 25, where he will be facing a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance for parole.
Meanwhile, his lawyers have alleged juror misconduct.
In a letter sent Friday to Judge Brian Cogan, Guzmán’s defense team took the first step in appealing the unanimous guilty verdict, asking for additional time to prepare as they make a case for a new trial.
They allege “that multiple jurors engaged in misconduct by intentionally violating the court’s direction” to avoid media coverage of the trial and not to communicate with one another about the trial prior to deliberations.
While Guzmán awaits the outcome of his attorneys’ arguments he might get to enjoy some family visits.
President López Obrador told reporters this morning that he had instructed government officials to provide assistance to Guzmán’s mother and two sisters to enable them to travel to the U.S.
He explained that during a visit last week to Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Guzmán’s hometown, he had been given a letter from María Consuelo Loera Pérez, the ex-drug lord’s mother, asking him to help them obtain humanitarian visas from the United States embassy to allow them to visit her son.
She claimed that Guzmán had been extradited illegally, and asked that he be repatriated to Mexico. She wrote that she had not seen him for more than five years.
Loera concluded by sending the president her blessings in his efforts to bring peace and justice to Mexico.
AMLO's alleged pillagers: Salinas, Zedillo, Fox, Calderón and Peña Nieto.
President López Obrador delivered a scathing attack on five past presidents yesterday and Wednesday, accusing them of “pillage” during the “neoliberal period” of the past 30 years.
He also said that the Mexican people could be asked in a public consultation if they want Carlos Salinas, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto to be put on trial for their alleged crimes.
Speaking at his morning press conference yesterday, López Obrador said that the corruption and looting started during the 1988-1994 government led by Salinas, who he dubbed “the father of modern inequality.”
“We’re cleaning the government of corruption because the entire neoliberal period was characterized by pillage, not just the previous administration. This started in the government of Salinas,” he said.
“To speak clearly, the problems we are suffering from now originated then – when the assets of the people, of the nation, were handed over. When the policy of privatization was started is when inequalities in Mexico deepened and I can prove it, with information from the World Bank, I have the proof,” López Obrador said.
The president said that at the start of Salinas’ administration, only one Mexican appeared on Forbes’ billionaires list but at the end of his six-year term “24 appeared on the list of the world’s richest men.”
The 24 billionaires shared wealth of US $48 billion, López Obrador said, claiming “that was the size of the transfer of resources, the delivery of national assets to private citizens.”
Zedillo, who continued the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party between 1994 and 2000, perpetuated Salinas’ privatization push by selling off Mexico’s state-owned railway company and systems, the president said.
Zedillo also misused Fobaproa – a contingencies fund –turning debt owed by banks into public debt and costing the country a billion pesos in interest payments, López Obrador charged.
The leftist then turned his attention to Fox, who governed Mexico for the National Action Party (PAN) between 2000 and 2006, saying that the “preponderance of corruption and waste” during his presidency was “notorious.”
López Obrador also took aim at the ex-president for awarding favorable mining concessions and on Wednesday accused him of masterminding fraud in the 2006 presidential election that he lost narrowly to Calderón.
“We want to try Fox for being a traitor of democracy. Because after he reached [the presidency] through a movement to establish democracy, he headed an electoral fraud operation to impose Felipe Calderón,” he said.
Once in power, Calderón “acted with indolent irresponsibility,” López Obrador charged, because he started the so-called war on drugs by deploying the military to combat cartels without first carrying out a proper analysis of the security situation.
“He stirred up the hornet’s nest,” the president remarked, explaining that Calderón’s strategy unleashed a wave of violence and disappearances.
Peña Nieto “did the same,” López Obrador continued, referring to the previous government’s perpetuation of the militarized crime fighting strategy.
He added: “There was corruption with Peña but it came from before, that’s why a cleansing is taking place, it’s going to take time, not a lot but there are people [in positions] above who are not going to be in our government.”
The president defended his attack by saying that “I have to provide the background because sometimes there is amnesia and the conservatives tend to be very biased.”
Past governments left “a garbage dump, a mess,” López Obrador declared.
On Wednesday, the president explained that he has asked Congress to make changes to Article 35 of the constitution in order to make public consultations legally valid after which “the people will decide” if the five past presidents should be pursued legally for their alleged wrongdoings.
As he has said before, López Obrador indicated that his personal preference was to let bygones be bygones but stressed that the people will have the “final word” on the matter.
In his typical outspoken and colorful fashion, Vicente Fox fired back at López Obrador, declaring on Twitter that he too will face legal judgement for his actions.
“You’re also going on trial,” Fox wrote, listing a range of crimes López Obrador could be tried for including the deaths of 175 people who were “burned alive,” ruining Pemex and environmental damage resulting from his proposals to build the Maya Train on the Yucatán peninsula and a new oil refinery on the Tabasco coast.
Calderón also took to Twitter to respond to López Obrador.
“Accusing without proof violates the constitution because it breaks the presumption of innocence . . . Doing it from the power of the presidency and without even mentioning a specific crime is abusive, dishonest and immoral,” he wrote.
López Obrador has also accused the former PAN president of being complicit with fuel theft and corruption because in 2016 he accepted a position on the board of an energy company that was awarded contracts during his presidency.
The Morena party leader has made combating corruption the raison d’etre of his government and vowed not to take a backward step in his crusade against it.
At a January press conference, the president said that his predecessors were either accomplices to corruption or they turned a blind eye — “there’s no way [they] didn’t know.”
“. . . All the juicy business done in the country, deals of corruption, were greenlighted by the president.”
A new security operation has been announced for Coatzacoalcos.
The federal government announced today that it will bolster security forces in response to a wave of violence in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
This week will see the beginning of a six-year deployment of 450 elements of the navy, army and Federal Police in the troubled port city as part of a larger initiative by the federal government to go after organized crime in several key regions.
The news comes on the heels of the abduction of local businesswoman Susana Carrera, who was murdered after her family was unable to pay a ransom demand. According to the Coatzacoalcos Citizens’ Observatory, there were 49 kidnappings and 160 homicides in Coatzacoalcos last year.
Last Saturday, residents took to the streets to demand peace and concrete action from Mayor Víctor Manuel Carranza, who citizens say has done little to combat violence in the city.
Veracruz Security Secretary Hugo Gutiérrez Maldonado told reporters yesterday that most of Coatzacoalcos’s problems are due to a territorial dispute between two criminal bands fighting for control of the city.
Commenting on the federal strategy, security undersecretary Leonel Efraín Cota said that Coatzacoalcos had not previously been a priority in the administration’s security strategy because the municipality did not publish daily security updates, but that “that has been corrected.”
The undersecretary explained that the current plan is a departure from previous operations in terms of the sheer numbers of police to be deployed, which he said will finally comprise a sufficiently large force to make a dent in criminal activity.
He added that the force will be under the command of the navy secretary until the creation of the new national guard, which will then assume command. It will also answer to a security council composed of the mayor, the state government and federal authorities, and will remain in Coatzacoalcos for the remainder of President López Obrador’s six-year term.
Cota assured the public that the newly created police force will operate on their behalf.
“Our objective is public security, there will be no surprise or flash operations; we’re here to resolve the problem of insecurity in the southern region [of Mexico].”
He said the government has already installed several mobile security centers for the new force around the city and that the operation’s effectiveness will be evaluated every two months.
The ghost town of El Amparo is located 65 kilometers west of Guadalajara.
In the early 1900s, the Amparo Mining Company operated one of Mexico’s most successful silver mines and was making money hand over fist.
Although it was located in remote hills 65 kilometers west of Guadalajara, rumors abound that a bustling community of some 6,000 souls once lived there, enjoying such luxuries as two supermarkets, a cinema, a dance hall and their own classical music orchestra. This community, it was said, consisted of Americans, British, Mexicans and lots of Germans.
All that is what the rumors say, but when I tried to dig up some hard facts about Amparo, I discovered a curiously different picture of life at the mining camp.
“The miners worked their long, miserable, heavy days under brutal conditions,” I read in a monograph by María de la Luz Correa. I got the distinct impression that the riches flowing from the mine had only flowed into the pockets of the owner who, it seems, was American, not British. I also found out that there were only about 500 miners at Amparo, not 6,000.
As for the two supermarkets, it was claimed that their primary function had been to enslave the miners, offering them luxuries and expensive entertainment on credit until they were hopelessly in debt.
Overview of crushers and transformer building at Las Jiménez.
The miners are long gone from the Amparo Mine, but an impressive ghost town still remains and it’s not a difficult place to visit. A short, 16-kilometer drive south out of modern-day Etzatlán, Jalisco, will bring you to the sleepy rancho of Amparo, surrounded by once elegant buildings now swathed in vines and bushes.
“This was the bachelors’ dormitory,” local people told me. “That was one of the stores, and this was where the miners received their wages.”
“What’s that, up there?” I asked, pointing to a lonely tower atop a steep hill. “We call that El Faro, the lighthouse,” I was told. “Actually, it was a watch tower built for driving away bandidos.” Once I saw the outside of this tower, pockmarked with bullets, I gained a new respect for those people who worked at this remote outpost, cinema or no cinema.
More of this mining operation’s ruins can be found about two kilometers south of Amparo at Las Jiménez, where electricity from high-tension wires was transformed into usable voltage for the mine’s heavy machinery. Here I found the most beautiful building of all, several stories high. I was told the transformers were housed here, but the building looks too elegant for such a lowly purpose.
One day a geologist brought me a treasure. Somehow he had managed to find a copy of the unpublished memoirs of Salvador Landeros, a mining engineer who grew up at Amparo and eventually became general manager of all its operations. Below are a few selected anecdotes that give us a feeling for what life was like in that remote mining town.
“I was born,” says Landeros, “in what was then called the Villa of Etzatlán in the state of Jalisco on the 31st of December of 1905. At the tender age of three months, I went to live in a remote place called Amparo where my mother had been hired to wet-nurse Fany, the newly born daughter of Mr. Santiago Howard, manager of the Amparo Mining Company. And that’s where I grew up.
The Amparo Rural Defense Squad in 1912. Carlos Parra Ron
“One of the people from my childhood I could never forget was a man with only one leg whom everybody called No Ambition (Poca Lucha). This man couldn’t work, but he had a special talent: he knew by heart all the stories of the Thousand and One Nights. We children all loved to get together with him at night to listen to his stories.
“Sometimes the grown-ups would come join us kids and everyone would give 10 or 15 centavos to our fascinating storyteller. And that’s how I passed my time before I reached school age, listening to those stories and playing. It was a peaceful time.”
The memoirs of engineer Landeros include quite a few stories of his own. Here is an example.
“When mining was at its peak at Amparo, we had an aerial tramway which transported the raw ore down to Las Jiménez in big containers suspended from steel cables strung among four towers. To avoid accidents, riding in the ore buckets was forbidden, but there were always a few characters willing to take a chance.
“Now, on various occasions, the electricity would go off, but usually for less than five minutes. If the men running the tramway were going to cut off the power for a longer time, they would send word up and down the system by telephone, warning people not to ride in the containers.
“Of course — even though it was prohibited — it was mighty convenient to get a ride uphill from Jiménez to Amparo and even people not working for the company used to take advantage. One of these outsiders was doing exactly that one day when the bucket he was riding in suddenly came to a halt 15 meters from the tallest tower. Now, by chance, there was a deep arroyo right at the foot of that tower, so the distance down to the ground was about 40 meters.
Miners working “under brutal conditions” at El Amparo. Jorge McCormick López
“Well, this fellow was sitting in the container, hanging in the air and he waited a long time and nothing happened. And he waited some more — and some more. And finally he just had to get down from that ore bucket and he looked at that distance, only 15 meters, and must have thought it would be easy to get to the tower just by holding on to the thick cable with his hands and walking along the thin cable below it with his feet.
“So he went for it and got about six meters when suddenly the power came back on and the containers started moving. Well, the very bucket he had been in came straight at him and cut his hands right off and he gave a shout which was heard by a passerby who saw him fall to his death.
“When they found his broken body at the bottom of the arroyo, they discovered he wasn’t even a miner. The poor guy was living all alone in Las Jiménez and no one had any idea where he had been going or why he had climbed into that container.”
El Amparo was one of very few Mexican mines that stayed open all through the revolution, and when it was over, there were 10 years of bonanza. The Howard management brought in good teachers for the school and the children got all the needed materials free. Football and basketball teams were organized and there were many fiestas and dances.
In spite of all this, the miners at Amparo, led by Mexican Marxist muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, joined a state-wide union in 1926 and made demands for better salaries and working conditions to the company, which chose to shut down the mine rather than capitulate.
This mine produced 138,597 kilograms of silver between 1924 and 1931, plus impressive quantities of gold, lead and copper.
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It was still productive at the time it was shut down and would no doubt have been reopened later if President Echeverría had not (I was told) “stolen all the machinery and workings, causing the mine to be flooded.”
Why, with free football and dances, did the miners march off in protest to Mexico City behind leftist organizer Siqueiros? Some answers have been unearthed by local historian Carlos Enrique Parra Ron and you will find a few of them in The Dark Side of the Amparo Mine Story.
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.
Legislator Castillo is arguing for an end to daylight saving.
A citizens’ committee of the Mexico City Congress will analyze a proposal to eliminate daylight saving time in the capital.
If approved, Mexico City authorities will ask the federal government to exclude the capital from putting clocks forward an hour on April 7.
The proposal is backed by the Morena party, which is in power both in Mexico City and nationally.
Carlos Castillo Pérez, a Morena lawmaker who represents the borough of Coyoacán, said in Congress yesterday that changing the time twice a year has “harmful consequences” on people’s health, claiming that the elderly and children are particularly vulnerable.
He also said that adopting daylight saving time doesn’t bring any economic benefits or help save energy.
To support his claim about the effects on health, Castillo cited a 2018 survey carried out by the European Commission which found that changing the clocks can cause stress and fatigue and affect people’s ability to concentrate.
“The survey is an indicator that the change of time disrupts people’s natural biological rhythm and becomes a factor for stress and disagreement among the population and that makes us reconsider its functionality,” he said.
The lawmaker said that daylight saving time was introduced in 1996 with the aim of making better use of natural light and saving electricity.
But “there are sectors that believe that the measure doesn’t generate energy savings and on the contrary, it has a negative impact on the lives and well-being of families,” Castillo said.
“Several studies have shown that the possibility of suffering a heart attack increases by 5% for three days after a time change. There are also statistics that show that on the Monday after a time change, there are more accidents on the road and at work,” he added.
Castillo also said people’s performance at work and school can be affected, contending that time changes can cause extreme fatigue, irritability, insomnia, anxiety and poor concentration “while the body adjusts to the new schedule.”
President López Obrador has been a longtime opponent of the summer time regime, clashing frequently on the issue with former president Vicente Fox while he was mayor of Mexico City between 2000 and 2005.
He has also floated the idea of holding a national public consultation on the matter.
Daylight saving time will start this year on April 7 and conclude on October 27.
Most of Mexico observes the same time changes but municipalities on the northern border follow the daylight saving time schedule of the United States.
Route of the fibre optic cable to be installed by Huawei.
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei will lay a 250-kilometer-long underwater fiber optic cable across the Gulf of California between La Paz, Baja California Sur, and Topolobampo, Sinaloa.
The US $14-million project, a joint venture with the Mexican company Megacable, is designed to make telecommunications services cheaper, faster and more reliable in Baja California Sur.
Megacable received government authorization to complete the project last year and at a signing ceremony in July, then communications and transportation secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said the government would provide the company with technical support.
At the time, it was anticipated that installation of the cable would be completed this month but it is now unclear when the project will be completed.
Huawei said in a statement in August that that work was under way on a marine survey for the project and that the system is planned for delivery in the second quarter of 2019, but with installation expected to take six months that appears unlikely.
The company’s communications director in Mexico, Juan Carlos Zamora, didn’t shed any light on the expected commencement or completion dates, telling the newspaper El Sol de México that he had no knowledge of the project.
The delay in starting it could be related to the design and construction of the cable system.
Huawei said in its August statement that “the terrain and environment in the gulf and peninsula region is complex and places high requirements on the design and construction of the submarine cable.”
However, the company added that “Huawei Marine’s rich experience in working on difficult projects around the world will ensure the Topolobampo-La Paz project will be completed smoothly.”
Assault suspect Cruz, left, and the judge who has been dismissed.
A Veracruz judge who freed a man accused of sexually assaulting a minor on the grounds that there was no “lascivious intent” has been dismissed for corruption.
The Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) said that Anuar González Hemadi had been fired for “acting against evidence” presented and making “inexcusable mistakes” in the so-called “Porkys” case in which a 17-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted by four young men from affluent families in Boca del Río, Veracruz, in January 2015.
González granted an injunction to Diego Gabriel Cruz Alonso in March 2017 that released him from custody, ruling that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the case.
The CFJ, which oversees Mexico’s courts, said in reference to the injunction that “jurisdictional decisions must always be instruments that impact positively on people and generate a social change through their precedents and never subject to private or economic interests.”
After leaving a nightclub in Boca del Río, Dafne Fernández was forced into a vehicle by four college students who took her to one of their homes in the Costa de Oro residential estate and allegedly assaulted her.
The victim testified that one of the men fondled her breasts and the other inserted his fingers into her vagina.
But the judge said that “an incidental touching or fondling will not be considered sexual acts if proof is not presented that it was done to satisfy a sexual desire.”
González also ruled that Fernández was not “defenseless,” which he claimed the law required, because she had been able to move to the front seat of the car after pleading with her attackers to stop.
The judge was previously suspended by the CJF in March 2017 pending an investigation into his conduct.
The “Porkys” case gained national prominence in March 2016 after a video was posted on YouTube in which the four students – privileged sons of politicians and business leaders – apologized for their actions.
Diego Cruz Alonso fled to Spain shortly after but was arrested in January 2017 and extradited back to Mexico but was soon freed as a result of the injunction granted by González.
Only one of the men involved in the case, Enrique Capitaine, is currently in custody but he has not been formally charged.
A judge granted an injunction to Gerardo Rodríguez after ruling that while he was present when the abuse occurred he didn’t participate in it while the fourth man, Jorge Cotaita, is currently a fugitive from justice.
Senators at this morning's session at which a new security force was given the green light.
Federal senators have reached an agreement that will see the government’s national guard proposal pass unanimously in the upper house of Congress.
After days of intense negotiations, lawmakers from the ruling Morena party and its coalition partners reached a deal with opposition party senators in the early hours of this morning.
The agreement is based on the national guard being a civil force with a civilian command rather than a military one although soldiers and marines will be permitted to be members for a maximum of five years after its creation.
“For five years following the entry into force of this decree, while the national guard develops its structure, capacities and territorial establishment, the president of the republic will be able to make use of the permanent armed forces in public security tasks in an extraordinary, regulated, controlled, subordinated and complementary way,” the modified proposal says.
Until 2023, the secretariats of National Defense (Sedena) and the Navy (Semar) will cooperate with the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) to establish the “hierarchical structures [and] discipline regimes” of the new security force and share responsibility for recruitment and training, among other operational areas.
The national guard is expected to be on a par with the armed forces in terms of its professionalism and the salaries and benefits its members will be paid.
At a press conference this morning, Morena’s leader in the Senate stressed that the national guard will be a civil force.
“Let it be clear, the national guard will be of a civil nature, responsible for public security tasks as well as the preservation of public peace,” Ricardo Monreal said.
Leaders of all eight parties that entered into the agreement spoke of its importance to achieving improved security in Mexico and said it was the product of constructive dialogue and negotiation.
“We went from being a closed Congress to an open parliament. We heard different voices, even insults . . . but insisting on these types of mechanisms and open processes is worth it. I respect everyone equally and I respect each parliamentary group leader because they all contributed,” Monreal said.
Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, a former interior secretary and the current leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the Senate, said the changes to the proposal would contribute to making the national guard “a better institution . . . an institution in accordance with human rights treaties [and] an institution with counterbalances and parliamentary control.”
Mauricio Kuri, Senate leader of the National Action Party (PAN), the party which had been most strongly opposed to the national guard’s creation, said the modified proposal “avoided the militarization” of the security force and guaranteed “respect for human rights.”
Earlier this week, the National Human Rights Commission urged members of Congress to put respect and protection for human rights first in the constitutional amendments that must be approved in order for the new security force to be created.
President López Obrador said this morning that he accepted the arrangement for the armed forces to leave the streets in five years and return to their barracks and expressed confidence that the national guard will be a success.
Once the Senate has formally approved the creation of the force, its decree will be returned to the lower house of Congress for review.
If approved by the Chamber of Deputies, state congresses must ratify the decree after which the government can promulgate it and go ahead with the creation of the national guard.
A new caravan of migrants was forced to take a detour in Chiapas after encountering dangers similar to those from which they were escaping.
Nearly 1,000 migrants from Central America who crossed the border into Mexico yesterday were told to avoid the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, in light of a recent wave of violence provoked by the Mara Salvatrucha gang, which is also active in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Representatives from the national Civil Protection agency assisted and led migrants to the small town of Viva México, bypassing the city.
A Honduran refugee told the newspaper Reforma that authorities had told the migrants they could not be allowed to enter Tapachula on account of the murder of two local police officers the day before.
“They told us that the situation is heated there right now, that we should avoid [Tapachula], and that’s why they led us this way.”
The caravan crossed into Mexico yesterday via the Rodolfo Robles bridge after overwhelming immigration authorities who attempted to contain them.
In mid-January the federal government created a humanitarian visa program. The new visas were issued to more than 12,000 migrants who entered the country at the southern border but it has since been discontinued.
A probe by the federal auditor’s office (ASF) has found that state oil company Pemex abandoned over 4,500 oil spills, denying any responsibility to mitigate their impact on the environment.
The investigation revealed that Pemex stopped cleaning up oil spills in May 2016. A total of 4,509 fuel spills were recorded between that date and December 31.
Pemex based the decision on a ruling by the Supreme Court that said it was not required to mitigate the effects of spills when they are the result of a crime, in this case illegal pipeline tapping.
The ASF charged that Pemex had failed to verify that the oil spills and ensuing contamination were the result of criminal acts, and observed that the Supreme Court’s ruling was only valid for a single specific case.
The company also failed to failed to conduct mandatory tests of contaminated sites, meaning that public health and that of plants and wildlife could be at risk.
According to the Energy Secretariat, there were 14,894 illegal pipeline taps in 2018, a 43.72% increase over 2017.
