New statistics show that the chances of being involved in a traffic accident in Jalisco are significantly greater than in 2017.
But rather more people are dying from bullet wounds than from motor vehicle accidents.
According to a state police report, accidents spiked by 602% over the course of last year compared with 2017. In that year, police recorded 284 traffic accidents. In 2018, the number soared to 1,994.
According to Pedro Limón Covarrubias, a pavement and asphalt expert at the University of Guadalajara, one of the principal causes for the increase in accidents is the lack of maintenance on important highways in the state.
The professor said 16% of vehicle accidents are due to infrastructure, including road conditions and their design.
Infrastructure and Public Works Secretary David Zamora agreed. He told the state Congress last month that of 4,420 kilometers of highways, 1,547 were in critical need of repair, 1,989 were in normal to poor condition and only 884 kilometers were acceptable.
The municipality with the most accidents last year was Arandas, with 133. The most dangerous stretch of road was kilometer 314 of the Tepatitlán-León highway, with 56 accidents — up from 33 in 2017.
In second place, San Miguel El Alto registered 47 traffic accidents in 2018, 18 of which took place at kilometer 304 of the Jalostotitlán-San Diego Alejandría highway.
Limón said that a combination of heavy vehicular traffic and varying weather conditions cause the majority of potholes and cracks on state highways, for which he recommended regular preventative maintenance.
“With the studies that we have done, we have determined that preventative maintenance — not corrective maintenance — needs to be conducted every two to three years. [When they conduct] corrective maintenance, we are talking about a road that shows a lot of serious damage, and that is why we need rigorous maintenance.”
Meanwhile, the state’s Forensic Science Institute said firearms killed more people than either traffic accidents or various illnesses during the first three months of the year.
There were 469 people killed in gunfire, 189 in motor vehicle accidents and 178 by heart attacks, pulmonary edema and other ailments.
Trucks and cars continue to face excruciatingly long wait times at border crossings between Mexico and the United States despite the implementation of measures aimed at easing the congestion.
There have been long delays at most ports of entry over the past week following a decision by United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to reassign 750 border officials to deal with a massive influx of migrants.
United States President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to close the border completely if Mexico and the U.S. Congress didn’t act to respectively stem migration flows and enforce tougher security measures at the border.
Although Trump pulled back on the threat Thursday, stating that he was giving Mexico “a one-year warning” to stop drug and migration flows, Mexican companies are still rushing to get cargo into the United States “in case of a shutdown,” the news agency Bloomberg reported.
The resultant surge in traffic has also contributed to the long delays at the border as have more exhaustive vehicle inspections by United States officials.
“The shippers try to push as much freight as possible and, at the same time, you have fewer officers,” said Ben Enriquez, senior vice-president of Transplace, a Texas-based provider of transport management services.
“So, it’s not a good combination,” he explained.
Wait times at border crossings in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, and Tijuana, Baja California, among other locations, have been as much as 10 hours longer than usual, Bloomberg said, while the newspaper Reforma reported delays as long as 20 hours between Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas.
In Tamaulipas, the World Trade International Bridge, a commercial traffic-only crossing that connects Nuevo Laredo to Laredo, Texas, is now opening half an hour earlier than normal but the measure has failed to prevent long lines of trucks from forming.
Diverting traffic to the nearby Laredo-Colombia Solidarity and Rio Grande City-Camargo International bridges has done little to ease congestion either, truck drivers say.
Re-routing trucks at other congested ports of entry across the 3,145-kilometer-long border between Mexico and the United States is not currently worthwhile because almost all crossings are facing similar situations.
President Trump acknowledged Saturday that the redeployment of CBP agents was causing “commercial and traffic delays” at the border, writing on Twitter that they will continue “until such time as Mexico is able to use its powerful common sense immigration laws to stop illegals coming through Mexico into the U.S.”
He added: “Until Mexico cleans up this ridiculous and massive migration, we will be focusing on border security, not ports of entry.”
While the United States has not yet seen a significant shortage of imports from Mexico, prices for one of the most popular products – Mexican avocados – have soared amid Trump’s border shutdown threats.
Thousands of trucks have been stranded at the border since early last week, generating multi-million-dollar losses daily for Mexican companies.
Unable to make timely deliveries to clients in the United States, some firms have begun sending their goods by air.
The Ciudad Juárez branch of the National Chamber for Industrial Transformation (Canacintra) said in a statement that businesses have begun using air charter services to transport goods from Ciudad Juárez to Santa Teresa, New Mexico – a distance of less than 40 kilometers.
The average cost per pallet is US $2,000, Canacintra said, meaning that contracting a Boeing 737, in which up to 25 pallets can fit, costs up to US $50,000.
Other companies have decided to make use of the border crossing between Palomas, Chihuahua, and Columbus, New Mexico – around 150 kilometers west of Ciudad Juárez – but doing so is risky due to the presence of criminal groups in the area that extort or attack the trucks, Canacintra said.
If the delays at the border continue, there will be “grave consequences” for the economy, the organization warned, adding that an interrupted supply of medical products to the United States could even place people’s lives at risk.
President López Obrador has largely avoided responding to Trump’s threats but last week he said that “the closure of borders is not in the interest of anyone” and pledged to continue to cooperate with the United States to stop large flows of migrants traveling through Mexico to the northern border.
A car is almost totally submerged during flooding in Xalapa.
Strong winds, heavy rain and some hail yesterday during an electrical storm in the state of Veracruz caused flash flooding in the state capital, Xalapa.
The state Civil Protection office warned early yesterday morning that heavy rains were expected for the state’s mountainous regions, with an accumulated rainfall of between 70 and 100 milliliters, courtesy cold front No. 49.
Flooding took place during two hours of heavy rain, affecting several major thoroughfares and leaving at least three cars stranded in the deep water.
Floodwaters in Xalapa Sunday.
At least four trees were toppled by strong gusts of wind, along with a billboard that fell near a shopping mall.
Civil Protection chief Guadalupe Osorno Maldonado said electrical service was also affected for some residents.
The National Water Commission forecast intense rainstorms to continue today in Veracruz and in the southeastern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.
A sample of the data presented in the government's daily security report. secretariat of security and citizen protection
Mexico is on track to record its most violent year on record, according to security experts who point out that the daily homicide statistics provided by the federal government have underestimated the actual number by more than 20%.
There were 7,056 intentional homicides in the first three months of 2019 – an average of 78 per day – according to daily reports issued by the Secretariat of Security and Citizens Protection (SSPC), which compiles data from a range of sources.
But the official homicide figures for the first quarter of this year as reported by the National Public Security System (SESNSP) will exceed 8,500 if the 21.5% underestimation seen in the daily reports during the first two months of the year continues.
The former reported 5,649 homicides in January and February whereas the latter counted 4,652 in the same period.
Ricardo Márquez Blas, a high-ranking security official in the previous federal government, said that when the SESNSP publishes its homicide statistics for March on April 20, a figure around 20% above the 2,404 murders reported by the SSPC can be expected.
Such an increase would make March the most violent month since the new federal government took office in December, Márquez explained.
The first quarter of 2019 would also be the most violent first three-month period of any year since the SESNSP started recording comparable statistics in 1997.
“. . . With these statistics, we can see that the incidence of intentional homicides is not being reduced or contained, which has been identified as a priority objective in the security strategy of the current government,” Márquez said.
“I would very much doubt that violent deaths in Tijuana have already gone down . . .” Márquez said.
Security analyst Alejandro Hope predicted that the SESNSP will report that there were as many as 3,100 homicides in March – 29% more than the 2,404 murders reported in the daily statistics.
Another crime scene: there have been more than initially estimated.
“. . . we’re on track for 36,000 or 37,000 intentional homicides in 2019, which means that we’ll most probably exceed 40,000 victims in the Inegi [National Institute of Statistics and Geography] count,” Hope said.
Inegi figures are higher than SESNSP statistics because they are indicative of the number of murder victims rather than the number of cases.
Hope said the government could try to deflect responsibility for the stubbornly high murder numbers by contending that they represent a continuation of the dire security situation inherited from its predecessor and by pointing out that the central element of the new national security strategy hasn’t yet been implemented.
“They can still claim that this [the homicide rate] is inertial, that the National Guard isn’t yet in place,” he said, before adding, “they can claim [those things] but the reality is that an enormous violence problem remains.”
Today, the president did as Hope predicted. He acknowledged that ending insecurity will take longer than anticipated and blamed previous administrations, claiming that the problem had been ignored for many years.
López Obrador said progress was being made but it would take considerably more time “because there had been no strategy for public security.”
He cited the state of Guanajuato in particular “where we have many problems,” noting that there had been a large number of homicides in the past few days. Saturday was the worst, according to the government’s daily tally, with 19 out of the country-wide total of 101.
Hope also said that López Obrador and his security cabinet shouldn’t rely on those daily homicide statistics when making decisions aimed at combatting violence.
“They’re giving the presidents figures that are not in keeping with reality. If the quality of the information is bad, the quality of the decisions [the government takes] can’t be very good. In order to know what the situation is, the secretariat [SESNSP] figures are much more valuable,” he said.
The daily figures are provided on a website where the federal government points out that the information is preliminary and the numbers do not represent official crime statistics.
The director of the National Citizens’ Observatory (ONC), an independent organization that monitors security conditions, agreed that the SESNSP homicide figures – which are compiled from murder cases reported by each of Mexico’s 32 federal entities – are more reliable than those reached by consolidating the daily statistics.
Like Márquez and Hope, Francisco Rivas contended that this year will go down as Mexico’s most violent on record, asserting that there is nothing to indicate that the security situation will improve in the coming months.
“There is no evidence that we have a better-defined security strategy than what we had before. In fact, if we look at the operations in Guanajuato, they appear to be exactly the same as what we’ve had throughout the past 20 years,” Rivas said.
He added that the security situation today is much more complicated than that faced by former president Felipe Calderón, who initiated the so-called war on drugs by deploying the military to fight the country’s notorious cartels.
Non-governmental organizations rejected the current government’s plan to create a national guard, contending that it will only perpetuate the unsuccessful militarization model implemented by Calderón in 2006.
A Cuban migrant “crucified” himself yesterday in Chiapas to protest arbitrary deportations and demand safe passage for migrants.
For three hours, Denis Hernández Barona chained himself to a wooden cross outside an office of the National Immigration Institute (INM) near the Mexico-Guatemala border in Tapachula to draw attention to what he explained was a dire situation for migrants.
Hernández also began a hunger strike last week in protest against a recent increase in deportations, saying he would rather die than return to Cuba.
He called on the federal government not to deport Cuban migrants in light of the political oppression they face in their home country. He demanded that authorities instead grant refugees a 20-day exit pass to leave Mexico and seek asylum in the United States.
He also denounced the tactics used by immigration authorities to lure migrants.
“Many of those who were deported in recent days were victims of a trap, because when they entered the immigration station to receive their exit passes, they were herded on to buses in the middle of the night to be loaded on to planes [back to Cuba].”
In just over a week, the INM has deported 123 Cuban and 71 Haitian migrants. Activists say that migrants from both Caribbean countries face political persecution and economic hardship back home.
Currently, hundreds of migrants from Central America, Cuba, Haiti and various African countries remain camped outside the immigration office in Tapachula. On April 1, the INM implemented an emergency measure to issue a limited number of humanitarian visas, with priority given to women, children and seniors over 65.
Other migrants also protested yesterday by burning effigies of Donald Trump, President López Obrador and Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero.
The president of an immigrants’ rights advocacy organization charged last week that increased deportations were carried out in response to pressure from the United States. Wilner Metelus said the situation was particularly unjust for Haitians because of their country’s economic and political situation.
“I believe these deportations are happening because of political pressure on Mexico from [United States] President Donald Trump, but to me these decisions seem wrong and discriminatory.”
Metelus alleged numerous cases in which Haitian migrants were lied to by immigration officials, who promised them humanitarian visas that never materialized.
According to federal statistics, 13,643 undocumented migrants were deported from Mexico in the first two months of this year, while more than 30,000 were detained in the first three months, a figure that has risen significantly since January, when 7,500 illegal migrants were arrested.
The number went up to 9,900 in February and 12,746 in March.
Claire Donahue, the “glass lady,” spearheaded a glass-crushing initiative.
Like many Mexican communities, the twin towns of La Ventana and El Sargento in Baja California Sur suffer from serious waste management problems. The community’s single garbage truck breaks down regularly and its inadequate landfill is reaching capacity.
The two contiguous towns sit at the apex of pristine La Ventana Bay on the Gulf of California. They are blessed with scenic beauty, good weather and El Norte, the steady wind blowing across the Bay in winter that makes for perfect kiteboarding and windsurfing.
In fact, La Ventana Bay is regularly listed as either the No. 1 or No. 2 destination in the world for practitioners of these sports.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the area is suffering from rapid growth. Its infrastructure, including waste management, simply isn’t up to dealing with the increasing population and business activity.
Five years ago, this led a group of residents to found the non-profit No Más Basura (NMB), or No More Garbage, to develop a program to remove recyclables from the waste stream. Not only does it offer a popular weekly recycling event for the community, it’s actively engaged in educational programs K-12 to help raise a new generation of recyclers and to train local businesses in recycling methods. The group also organizes several annual community-wide clean-up days.
Though quiet as a kitchen blender, the crusher quickly reduces a weekly bottle collection to crushed glass.
One major focus is minimizing the impact of Easter Week on local beaches as some 5,000 people, many from nearby La Paz, gather to party for three or four days. In addition to organizing trash removal and recycling, NMB fields ambassadors from local schools who patrol the beaches to ask campers to take home as much of their trash as possible and to dispose properly of the rest in provided receptacles.
NMB is confronting the two major problems that dog virtually all recycling efforts — raising money to fund the operation and what to do with the recyclables once collected. Recyclers might think: “Good for me. I’ve gotten rid of that stuff in the right way.” But it’s doubtful that too much thought is given to where “that stuff” is going and how.
Most recyclable material is of little, if any, value. So, creative ways must often be found to make use of it. Fortunately, plastics, aluminum and metals are marketable. NMB gives all the plastic to the local schools for them to sell in La Paz. The aluminum and mixed metals are sold to a recycler and the proceeds help buy gas for transportation.
Cardboard is another matter. Since the Chinese banned imports of waste cardboard, the market has collapsed. Prices are so low in La Paz that it’s not worth the gas to take it there. However, NMB is looking into ways to get the commodity to the recycler without making a special trip. Another solution is providing cardboard to Rancho Cacachilas, a local sustainable resort, where it is used as mulch for its extensive organic gardening.
Styrofoam is another significant problem for recyclers. NMB does not accept Styrofoam items such as plates, cups and food containers, but a significant amount in the form of packing materials is provided to a local manufacturer of “eco blocks,” some 80% of which are polystyrene. Eco blocks are used in construction, replacing standard concrete blocks.
Unique to this area, because of unusually high kiteboarding and windsurfing activity, is the presence of discarded sails made of virtually indestructible ripstop polyester. To take sails out of the waste stream, NMB offers them to a local seamstress who manufactures colorful, strong, reusable shopping bags and purses. This also helps keep plastic bags out of the landfill.
Samples of crushed glass.
But one the biggest headaches facing recyclers is what to do with glass bottles. Each week NMB collects as many as 3,000 bottles — primarily beer, wine and liquor. There is, however, no market for the commodity.
Recycling processors are increasingly reluctant to crush glass for reuse by bottle manufacturers because so much of the glass they receive is contaminated. The cost for removing labels, eliminating contaminates and cleaning glass prior to crushing is prohibitive.
Enter the NMB “glass lady.”
Claire Donahue, a diminutive seasonal resident of La Ventana and NMB member, met with program manager Javier Ponce about two years ago to discuss the glass issue. Claire had some experience in creating art glass and was intrigued by the challenge of dealing with the huge weekly bottle collection. She and Javier decided NMB should crush its own bottles and find local uses for the product.
After doing the necessary research, she located and purchased a glass crusher for NMB to use. It sits in a palapa on her beachfront property where she crushes bottles from each weekly collection.
“Meanwhile, we are moving ahead with plans to build a bodega for the glass crusher on 1.65 hectares on the outskirts of town.”
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Label removal was the first hurdle. Claire discovered that labels from most beverage companies are not easily removed. Many are virtually impossible. These “dirty” bottles are crushed to be used by local builders and homeowners for drainage fields or construction footers as a partial replacement for the sand or gravel.
But even if this dirty crushed glass goes to the landfill, it’s still a win since it takes significantly less space than uncrushed glass.
Claire has discovered about a dozen manufacturer’s bottles whose labels are easily removed after soaking. They are washed and turned into clean glass for use in concrete countertops, floors and walls. For countertops, for example, various combinations of colored glass are added to the concrete and ground smooth. Local builder Édgar Ramírez is offering this alternative to customers and experimenting with other uses.
Clean crushed glass is also suitable for decorating pavers, benches, water features and other landscaping applications including mulch. The commodity may also be used as a filler in concrete and road paving.
From an environmental perspective, Claire notes that glass bottles, despite being overtaken by plastic containers, are a better choice. It takes twice as much fossil fuel to make a plastic bottle than a comparable glass container and, in the process, plastic bottle manufacturing releases five times the greenhouse gases and requires 17 times as much water compared with plastic. And they help decrease the plague of plastic going into the oceans.
As soon as practical, she would like to turn the operation over to a third party, either a local entrepreneur or an educator interested in creating an internship program for local high school kids.
Interns would provide part of the labor and proceeds from the sale of the glass and products they’d create could go to a charity of their choosing, a scholarship fund or even back into the program. The internship would also teach many general skills important to anyone entering the workforce.
“There is a lot of excitement about the potential for raw crushed glass as well as the products that can be made locally with it. We hope that a successful project will inspire others in their creative treatment of ‘waste’ for the betterment of our community.
“A community like La Ventana/El Sargento is a great place to be involved in a project of this sort since you really feel like you can make a difference.”
The writer is a newspaper and magazine journalist, photojournalist and the author of two books.
The tourist industry’s biggest event of the year and the largest of its kind in Latin America starts tomorrow in Acapulco.
The 2019 Tianguis Turístico will bring displays from all 32 states to promote their tourist attractions while about 1,200 buyers from 60 countries around the world are expected to attend the five-day event.
Among those international visitors are representatives of 45 countries that are ready to sign agreements and close hotel deals for the upcoming vacation periods.
Representatives of 120 international media outlets will be covering the event, along with 30 domestic ones.
Tianguis Turístico will open its doors tomorrow at noon with a ceremony led by President López Obrador, who will be joined by the Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco and Governor Héctor Astudillo Flores.
The show comes at a time of great uncertainty in the tourist industry due to what it sees as insufficient marketing on the part of the new federal government. Visitor numbers have declined and some industry leaders predict the situation will worsen unless more resources are allocated for promotion.
A legislative proposal by Mexico’s ruling party to create an anti-corruption chamber in the Supreme Court (SCJN) and increase the number of justices from 11 to 16 is a ploy to enable President López Obrador and his government to control the court, an academic and opposition lawmakers say.
Raúl Mejía, an associate professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), said the proposal is a way for the López Obrador administration to get an “effective majority in the court” because it would be able to appoint eight justices to the SCJN instead of just three.
He said the number of corruption-related cases doesn’t justify increasing the number of Supreme Court justices.
Mejía, a former SCJN official, added that if the government was able to stack the court with its own hand-picked justices, a situation would likely be created in which the “judicial counterweight to the Congress” is eliminated.
Citizens’ Movement (MC) Senator Clemente Castañeda said the government’s intent is to seize power in the court, while Emilio Álvarez Icaza, a senator not affiliated with any political party, called on the Morena party and López Obrador to give an assurance that the proposal isn’t an attempt to control the SCJN.
Another senator, Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), said the appointment of additional justices is “absolutely unnecessary” and would be a financial burden on the country.
Damián Zepeda of the National Action Party (PAN) was also critical of the Morena party proposal.
“A new chamber isn’t needed. It’s nothing more than a pretext to dominate the court by increasing the number of justices because if you have five new justices plus the two already appointed [by López Obrador], you’re just one away from having the majority with the president’s casting vote,” he said.
López Obrador will be required to make a third appointment to replace Justice José Fernando Franco, whose 15-year term will end in 2021.
The president yesterday distanced himself from his party’s proposal, saying that it was a matter for Congress rather than the executive branch of government.
“It’s a matter for the legislative power. My respectful opinion is that we don’t need more [judicial] apparatuses. What’s needed is to put an end to corruption from top to bottom,” he said.
United States President Donald Trump is “shooting himself in the foot” by threatening to close the border with Mexico, according to the president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE).
Carlos Salazar Lomelín said the only thing Trump achieves by making such threats is to slow down cross-border trade, which generates economic losses for both Mexico and the United States.
The U.S. president had threatened to close the border “or large sections of the border” this week if Mexico didn’t immediately stop all illegal immigration into the United States through its southern border.
However, Trump pulled back on the threat Thursday, stating that he was giving Mexico “a one-year warning” to stop drug and migration flows. If the government doesn’t comply within that period, tariffs will be imposed on Mexican auto imports and the border will be closed.
Trump’s words are also a factor in the delays, Salazar contended.
He said it was “logical” that whenever Trump makes a threat, the process to cross the border slows down, causing trucks to stack up and making it impossible for them to make timely deliveries.
“He doesn’t realize that he’s shooting himself in the foot,” Salazar said, explaining that it’s not just Mexican companies who are affected and complain about the situation but those in the United States as well.
“You don’t [just] affect Mexico, you affect both countries . . .” he said.
Meanwhile, the Business Roundtable – an association of chief executive officers of United States companies – has written to United States officials to express its concern about delays at the border and the possibility of a future closure.
“Shutting down the U.S-Mexico border or slowing cross-border trade would severely damage the operations of American businesses and hurt American workers. Closing the border would back up thousands of trucks, impact billions of dollars of goods each day, cripple supply chains and stall U.S. manufacturing and business activity,” the letter said.
“Even the threat of a border closure injects significant uncertainty for American companies who depend on legal workers who cross the border each day to operate their businesses. Instead, we urge the administration to keep U.S. land ports of entry open to legal commerce to support U.S. economic growth and competitiveness.”
The current situation at the border will be a key issue at a summit in Mérida, Yucatán, next Friday at which business leaders from Mexico and the United States will meet.
President López Obrador and Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard are also expected to attend the United States-Mexico CEO dialogue, a biannual event organized by the CCE and the U.S Chamber of Commerce.
Discussion of the pending ratification of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and the provisions in the new trade accord, will also be on the agenda.
The United States is Mexico’s largest trading partner, while Mexico ranks third for the U.S. behind China and Canada.
Mexico sent exports worth more than US $295 billion across the northern border by land last year, according to the United States Department of Transport.
Scene of the fire that knocked out power on the Yucatán peninsula.
For the second time in a month a fire beneath electrical transmission lines has been blamed for a major power outage on the Yucatán peninsula.
The power went out at 3:35pm yesterday for 1.63 million customers of the National Electricity Commission (CFE) in Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche. The figure represents about 85% of the CFE’s clients on the peninsula.
The utility said the burning of brush between towers on the transmission lines between Ticul, Yucatán, and Escárcega, Campeche, caused the outage.
The CFE said power was restored by 7:00pm, although there were reports until 8:00pm that parts of Cancún were still without electricity.
A similar outage occurred on March 8 when transmission lines were affected by the burning of sugar cane, cutting off electricity to at least 351,000 customers in Yucatán and Quintana Roo.
