Yucatán enjoys 12% increase in Holy Week tourism

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April 30, 2019

An 83% hotel occupancy rate and record numbers of tourists in Yucatán ranked the state as a favorite during the Easter vacation period and represented a significant boost to the state’s economy.

According to the state Secretariat of Tourism, hotel occupancy was up by 29% over last year during the first week of the vacation period, followed by a more modest 9% increase during the second week.

Several cities registered higher hotel occupancy than the state average. Valladolid saw 90% occupancy in the first week compared to 54% last year, and a 16% increase in occupancy during the second week.

Similarly, Izamal had 91% hotel occupancy during the week leading up to Easter this year, compared to 44% last year.

The state’s famous archaeological sites also saw greater numbers of tourists: the Chichén Itzá area registered 75% hotel occupancy during the first week, up 35 points from 2018, while the second week saw 57.7% occupancy, marking an increase of 23.7 percentage points.

Uxmal also benefited from the tourist boom this year, registering 77% hotel occupancy in the first week compared to 47% last year.

Visitor numbers were estimated to have increased 12% during the first week compared to last year at 38,101, and 13% during the second week, with 38,641 visitors.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Medicine is top paying career in Mexico; music, performing arts is worst

By

Madison Koen

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April 30, 2019

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Medicine is the best paying career in Mexico with an average monthly salary of 17,449 pesos (US $920), according to the Mexican Competitivity Institute (IMCO).

The sum is twice that of the worst paying career, music and performing arts, whose average monthly salary is 8,385 pesos (US $442).

The institute’s “Compare Careers” index, which lists the average salaries of careers requiring university and technical school education, says the national average monthly salary is 6,687 pesos (US $352), but career professionals with higher education earn an average of 12,076 pesos (US $637).

According to the list, the 10 best paid careers in Mexico are:

Medicine 17449 pesos;
Electronics and automatization 15,109 pesos;
Environmental science 14,320 pesos;
Publicity and marketing 13,765 pesos;
Business and management 13,750 pesos;
Accounting 13,357 pesos;
Mathematics 13,232 pesos;
Construction and civil engineering 12,858 pesos;
Mechanical engineering 12,843 pesos;
Industrial, electrical and technical engineering 12,581 pesos.

And the 10 worst careers are:

Music and performing arts 8,385 pesos;
Alternative education services 8,484 pesos;
Social work 8,575 pesos;
Therapy and rehabilitation 8,639 pesos;
Preschool education 8,724 pesos;
Audio and video production 8,973 pesos;
Multidisciplinary and general studies 9,040 pesos;
Dentistry 9,230 pesos;
Education assessment and orientation 9,645 pesos;
Economics 9,692 pesos.

IMCO noted there has been a 2% increase in the percentage of the Mexican labor force with a university degree. In 2018, 21% had completed some level of higher education, compared to 19% in 2008.

The institute also revealed that 57% of those with university degrees held professional level jobs compared to just 13% of those with only a high school education.

Although IMCO noted that salaries for university graduates have decreased in recent years, it highlighted that the advantages over a high school diploma are significant: university graduates earned an average of 72% more last year than those with only a high school diploma.

University graduates are also 50% less likely to be employed in the informal economy than those with only a high school education.

Source: Excélsior (sp)

5,000 police strike in Michoacán calling for their boss’s head

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César Hernández

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April 30, 2019

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Nearly two-thirds of Michoacán’s state and municipal police have gone on strike to press for the removal of the newly-appointed state security secretary and for improvements to working conditions.

About 5,000 officers from across the state walked off the job yesterday, leaving some 3,000 on duty “so as to not leave the public unprotected,” said their representative, Javier Sánchez Razo.

He claimed that Public Security Secretary José Martín Godoy Castro, who was appointed on April 1, has fired close to 200 police and replaced them with corrupt people from the state of México.

Godoy was previously the state’s attorney general.

The police are also demanding better equipment and weapons, life insurance and “respect for their work.”

The strike started with demonstrations on the streets of the capital, Morelia, and across the state.

Communal landowners in the Purépecha region showed their support for the cause by hijacking buses, setting them on fire and using them to set up a roadblock on the Paracho-Nahuatzen highway.

In response, Governor Silvano Aureoles Conejo declared that if the police want to “participate in marches or protest camps they can go to the [dissident teachers’ union] CNTE or any other union or movement, but if they want to be police they have to behave in an orderly manner and be respectful.”

The teachers’ union has a well-earned reputation for disruptive protests and demonstrations.

The governor said the discontented police are few in number and “have not wanted to understand what’s going on.”

Aureoles refused to remove Godoy from his post, and asserted that his administration is always looking for better working conditions for all its police officers.

Some officers in Uruapan were among those who did not strike, responding instead to two attacks last night by armed civilians.

Three adults and a child were killed and eight people injured, six of them municipal police officers.

Violence has soared in the state as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel battles with Los Viagras over territory. Intentional homicides were up 10% in the first three months of this year at 329. Murders totaled 1,060 during all of last year.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Cartel boss was off to the fair when police nabbed him

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Tony Richards

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April 30, 2019

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A fun day at the fair turned into a not-so-fun day in jail for a suspected leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima petroleum theft gang.

Identified only as “El 76,” he was arrested Sunday afternoon in Aguascalientes while en route to the San Marcos Fair in the same city.

He was arrested in the case of a Querétaro homicide, for which an arrest warrant had been issued last year.

Police observed that El 76 has a tattoo reading, “Santa Rosa de Lima.”

He was taken into custody under the watchful eye of dozens of military personnel, federal and state police and investigators, likely made wary by the jailbreak two weeks ago of another cartel leader in Guanajuato.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Surprise economic contraction: 0.2% decline in first-quarter growth

By

Tony Richards

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April 30, 2019

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A drop in industrial activities contributed to the GDP decline.

The first quarter got off to the worst start economically in the last 10 years.

The economy contracted 0.2% compared with the previous quarter, when gross domestic product grew 0.2%.

The preliminary figures were released today by the national statistics agency, which said annual growth in the period was up 1.3% compared to a year earlier.

The results will come as a surprise to analysts at at least four financial institutions who predicted yesterday that GDP growth would be as little as 1.1% and as high as 1.6%.

The first-quarter decline was caused largely by a deceleration in services and manufacturing.

The January fuel shortage and strikes in Tamaulipas might have been a factor as well.

The quarter compares poorly with the first three months in the terms of the last three presidents. In the government of Enrique Peña Nieto the economy saw annual growth of 2.7%, for Felipe Calderón it was 2.2% and for Vicente Fox, 1.8%.

The Finance Secretariat is forecasting annual growth between 1.1% and 2.1% this year, although President López Obrador is more optimistic and predicts 2%.

Source: Milenio (sp), Bloomberg (en), El Financiero (sp), El Economista (sp)

Mazatlán murder victim identified as Colorado woman

By

Tony Richards

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April 30, 2019

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A woman who was brutally beaten and killed in Sinaloa has been identified as Holly Horsman, originally of Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Her body was discovered by a cleaning woman inside a beachfront rental apartment on Isla de la Piedra, Mazatlán, on April 22.

Horsman, 49, who also went by her maiden name Anderson, had lived in Mexico for 1 ½ years, said her sister Robin Anderson.

She described Horsman as an entrepreneur and a certified scuba diver who was planning to open a restaurant on a boat. “She was living the American dream in Mexico . . .”

Anderson was advised of her sister’s death by the United States embassy in Mexico but had had difficulty finding further information.

“I’m not getting information from anybody down there,” Anderson said. “All we know is that she was killed on Easter Sunday. They found her body Monday or Tuesday. I wasn’t notified until Thursday or Friday.”

She said her sister, who had two adult sons, was a kind-hearted person who loved life.

Anderson has created a GoFundMe page to raise money for a funeral.

Source: The Gazette (en), La Verdad (sp)

CORRECTION: The original version of this story incorrectly identified Colorado Springs as being in Arizona.

Mexico could impose tariffs over delays at border but dialogue continues

By

Tony Richards

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April 29, 2019

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De la Mora and Grassley: remove metal tariffs.

Mexico-United States trade issues came up on two fronts today as Mexico said it was considering retaliatory tariffs for U.S. border slowdowns and a U.S. senator warned that maintaining metal tariffs against that country’s two biggest trade partners would kill the trade deal that replaces NAFTA.

The Mexican government has not ruled out imposing new trade sanctions against the U.S. in retaliation for measures that have had slowed the movement of trade goods across the border.

But foreign trade undersecretary Luz María de la Mora expressed confidence such a move won’t be necessary due to the dialogue Mexico has with Washington.

Truck traffic has been slowed for more than a month as the U.S. has been unable to keep up with the volume since it reassigned hundreds of border agents to handle the influx of migrants attempting to cross from Mexico.

De la Mora said there are provisions in international agreements that stipulate there should be no unnecessary measures implemented that would inhibit trade.

But “what we want is that this is resolved quickly through dialogue and we believe that can be achieved.”

She said Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez has had conversations with her U.S. counterpart, Wilbur Ross, seeking to have more personnel assigned to customs duties.

“We cannot allow this kind of unilateral measure by the United States to affect us. This is an unfortunate blend” of immigration and trade themes.

Meanwhile, another trade irritant came up today in Mexico and in Washington.

De la Mora said a new list of U.S. imports that will be subject to tariffs in retaliation for the U.S. tariffs on Mexican steel and aluminum will be announced in the coming weeks.

Those tariffs are also holding up ratification of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) in both Mexico and Canada and threaten to kill the deal in the U.S. Congress.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Chuck Grassley wrote in an op-ed piece today in the Wall Street Journal that if U.S. President Donald Trump does not lift the tariffs on Mexican and Canadian metal imports the trade agreement is “dead.”

“These levies are a tax on Americans, and they jeopardize USMCA’s prospects of passage in the Mexican Congress, Canadian parliament and U.S. Congress,” Grassley wrote. “Canadian and Mexican trade officials may be more delicate in their language, but they’re diplomats. I’m not. If these tariffs aren’t lifted, USMCA is dead. There is no appetite in Congress to debate USMCA with these tariffs in place.”

Source: El Financiero (sp)

11 passengers killed, 26 injured in Zacatecas bus accident

By

Madison Koen

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April 29, 2019

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The bus that rolled over in Zacatecas yesterday.

A bus rolled over on Highway 40 in Río Grande, Zacatecas, yesterday morning, killing 11 passengers.

State Civil Protection officials said the bus, which belonged to the company Chaac, was bound from Mexico City to Torreón, Coahuila.

Although initial reports of the accident declared there were six fatalities, authorities later confirmed that 11 died in the accident, and 26 more were injured. Of those who lost their lives, four are believed to be minors, while six other young passengers were among the injured, and transferred to Fresnillo and Zacatecas hospitals for treatment.

Authorities said the driver, who is presumed to have fallen asleep at the wheel, fled the scene before police arrived.

An unofficial list of passengers indicated they were from all over the country.

Source: Reforma (sp)

National Guard priority will be to safeguard high-crime highways

By

Madison Koen

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April 29, 2019

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These are the highways that will be the initial focus of the National Guard. federal police/el sol de méxico

The protection of key interstate highways will be one of the first priorities of the newly-created National Guard.

The new security force will safeguard those routes where highway robbery has been worst, using security checkpoints, arms and drug detectors and other measures to combat theft against transport trucks and motorists, concentrating initially on four states.

Canacar, the national trucking association, says 75% of all crimes committed against motorists and shippers occur in Puebla, Michoacán, México state and Tlaxcala, costing the economy an estimated 92.5 billion pesos (US $4.8 billion) every year.

The organization also said that in February there were 990 incidents of highway robbery, of which 80% occurred in those four states.

The most dangerous highways have been identified as Mexico City-Veracruz, Morelia-Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico City-Querétaro, Querétaro-Salamanca-Irapuato, Mexico City-Cuernavaca-Chilpancingo and Monterrey-Reynosa.

The new National Public Security Plan will coordinate cooperation between different government agencies and depend heavily on the participation of the private sector, said Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo earlier this month.

He said measures to put a stop to lawlessness on high-crime highways will include an official barcode specific to any merchandise transported along the routes, a robbery reporting center, certified rest stops to provide secure areas for motorists and truckers on long journeys, and control checkpoints, where authorities will be able to inspect drivers’ cargo.

He added that members of the National Guard will have full access to surveillance cameras at toll plazas, as well as permission to inspect vehicles and their cargo at distribution and supply centers and in a wide variety of commercial centers.

The National Guard will also use gamma rays to detect hidden weapons and drugs that are being transported.

Source: El Sol de México (sp), Infobae (sp)

Crime worsened in 10 of 17 municipalities where forces were deployed

By

César Hernández

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April 29, 2019

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A burning bus forms a roadblock in Reynosa, where murders surged 225%.

The February deployment of 10,200 police and military personnel to the 17 most violent municipalities has been less than successful in 10 of them.

Homicides increased between January and March in five of those municipalities, of which Reynosa, Tamaulipas, was the worst example with a 225% spike.

There were 15% to 50% more homicides in Uriangato, Salamanca and Celaya in Guanajuato; Monterrey, Nuevo León; and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Homicide numbers remained unchanged in Manzanillo, Colima, and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco, while they were down in Tijuana, Baja California; Irapuato, Guanajuato; Acapulco and Chilpancingo, Guerrero; Guadalajara, Jalisco; Ecatepec, México state; Cancún, Quintana Roo; Culiacán, Sinaloa; and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

When all crimes are taken into account, 10 of the 17 municipalities saw an increase of between 1% and 22%.

The worst hit between January and March were Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo and Chilpancingo, where crime rose by 22%, 19% and 16% respectively.

According to an analysis by the National Public Security System, 35% of all homicides occurred in the 17 municipalities. In an effort to reverse the trend, a 600-strong deployment of federal forces was sent to each of those locations on February 6.

Source: El Financiero (sp)