Journalist Jesús Ramos was murdered Saturday in Tabasco.
A veteran journalist was killed Saturday in Tabasco.
The host of a popular radio program, Jesús Ramos Rodríguez, known to friends and listeners as “Chuchín,” was shot and killed at a restaurant in Emiliano Zapata.
The journalist was having breakfast with a former mayor of the municipality among others. The current mayor was also expected to join but had not yet arrived when the gunman arrived in a vehicle, went straight up to Ramos and shot him eight times.
The Tabasco Attorney General said the special prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression had been asked to help investigate the murder.
The federal government, Tabasco Governor Adán Augusto López Hernández and the newspaper Tabasco Hoy were among many who lamented the murder, recognizing Ramos’s work over the last 20 years.
Presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez Cuevas wrote on Twitter that the executive will “strengthen the measures of protection for human rights defenders and journalists; freedom of expression is a right and fundamental element for democracy, justice and freedom.”
Ramos, 59, is the second journalist to be murdered in Mexico this year. Rafael Murúa Manríquez, 34, was found dead on January 20 in Baja California Sur. The young reporter was the director of a multi-city community radio station and a regular contributor to a local newspaper.
Prior to his death, Murúa Manríquez received several death threats, presumably related to his investigative work to expose corruption and nepotism in local politics. It is not yet known whether Ramos received similar threats for his work, though the state of Tabasco is widely considered to be one of the most dangerous for journalists due to widespread corruption in government and the presence of drug cartels and fuel theft.
The murder of journalists has become increasingly common in the last two decades. In 2017, 11 journalists, including veteran reporters Javier Valdez in Sinaloa and Miroslava Breach in Chihuahua, were silenced in killings linked to their work. Last year saw the murders of nine more.
Mexico is often cited as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero has promised to provide more federal protections for journalists since she took office in December.
Xila liqueur, made by women at Destilería Flor de Luna.
Pineapple, lavender, chile ancho, hibiscus flower, clove, cinnamon and black pepper infused into mezcal. These are the potent ingredients that make up Xila, an award-winning artisanal liqueur produced by a micro-distillery in Mexico City that is run completely by women.
Xila is one of several small-batch liqueurs that tantalize the senses and make up the products of Destilería Flor de Luna.
Founded in 2015 by distiller Dona Spotter, Flor de Luna started out as a one-woman show. Spotter created infusions in her apartment, a passion that arose from working as a bartender in Santa Fe.
“I really liked studying the measurements of each drink, but I wasn’t that interested in mixology,” Spotter said. “What really intrigued me was the entire process of making a vodka, rum, tequila or mezcal. I spent a lot of time doing tests, making comparisons between what I made with other products that were out there and bit by bit I was able to establish my style and my recipes.”
Spotter went to learn the basics of distilling from Edgar Villanueva, proprietor of Edgar Villanueva Distillery in Guadalajara. The rest, she says, was a combination of reading a lot of books on the subject and, of course, trial and error.
Dona Spotter in the herb garden behind the production facility. megan frye
“I didn’t make the alcoholic base at first, just infusing with different herbs and such,” Spotter said. “It was just me. It was with my designs — very underground. Finally I came around to making a mezcal infused with pineapple and chile, and that was what people liked the best.
“So I decided to focus on that, to improve the recipe and create my product. Throughout 2016, I was formulating different processes and trying out different things, and finally Xila emerged as it is now.”
A major aspect of Spotter’s research was based on the changing seasons of Mexico and how that affects the country’s produce.
“It took me a while to make the perfect recipe throughout all seasons,” she said. “We have ingredients that change; there are months when the chile is more spicy, months when pineapple is more sweet, more dry or more acidic. So that entire year I was trying the Xila recipe during different seasons, but I also learned how to distill all kinds of other alcohol.”
Spotter took Xila to the SIP, the International Spirits Competition in California, where it won the gold medal in 2016. That gave her the confidence to begin producing more of it, and also to begin approaching distributors in Mexico.
Unfortunately, she said, that was when Mexico’s machista reality reared its ugly head. And ultimately what led Flor de Luna to be a team of women.
Flor de Luna has more than 300 spices for its various liqueurs. megan frye
“I decided to work only with women because a lot of doors closed to me for being a woman,” Spotter said. “I visited a lot of distributors and showed them my product, and one actually told me flat out that he didn’t want anything to do with my product because he didn’t believe in it and that I didn’t know what I was doing because I am a woman.”
Flash forward to December 2018 when Xila hit the bars of New York City. It had already been present in places such as the Riviera Maya, Monterrey, San Miguel de Allende, Mérida, León, Los Cabos, Ensenada and on the shelves of City Market, Mexico’s gourmet grocery chain.
In addition to Xila, Flor de Luna also produces both a lavender liqueur and a lychee liqueur, as well as four bitters: Fourth Season, Cafe de Olla, Xila and Tea Mix.
The distillery also takes on special projects and commissions, such as a strawberry gin and a Pan de Muerto liqueur made in the past for Mexico City restaurants. Recently, Flor de Luna worked with chef Alejandro Cabral of Mexico City’s Alba Cocina Local to create marinades using Xila.
Moving through what Spotter says is the sexist environment of bartending and liquor distribution has been one challenge, though she doesn’t seem to fazed by it at this point. The other challenge her company has faced is getting people to try something different.
“It’s hard to change people’s minds,” Spotter said. “They are closed off to only drinking what they know. But a lot of people are starting to become more interested in buying Mexican artisanal products. I think a challenging thing for anyone in this business is that while you can get people to try something, it’s harder to later get them to actually choose it over something that they are used to, even if they love what you’ve exposed them to.
Production chief Wendy Rodríguez prepares labels for the company’s selection of cocktail bitters. megan frye
“It also has been challenging to explain to people that even though my team is completely made up of women, that doesn’t mean that the product is only for women. It’s for everyone.”
Still, Spotter says, the positives far outweigh any potential setbacks.
“The best thing for me is to see people’s pleasure when they try my product and they like it,” she said.
Currently producing 1,500 liters a month, Flor de Luna will be needing a bigger space soon to accommodate more production and therefore more employees. There is a small but elegant tasting room as well, and Flor de Luna invites people to take a distillery tour ending with a tasting at its location in Mexico City.
Wendy Rodríguez, chief of production at the distillery, has worked at Flor de Luna for four years, learning the entire process of production, bottling and labeling from Spotter. Now Rodríguez is in charge of training new hires.
The production team currently consists of five women, including Spotter and Rodríguez, as well as one of Rodríguez’s sisters and two cousins. The women work a flexible schedule of three days per week, which allows them to care for their children, while learning a new skill.
Bitters made by Flor de Luna.
“Dona is learning even more every day so I keep learning from her,” Rodríguez said. “We go from doing the basic to then labeling and bottling. I love preparing Xila, I love the ingredients. I love to count every little thing that goes into it.”
Building a team of only women wasn’t entirely based on a desire to tell the patriarchy to back off, though. Spotter says she believes women have more finesse and delicacy and are more detailed when it comes to hand-picking the botanicals that go into each bottle.
Xila means woman in the Mexican indigenous language of Zapotec. Flor de Luna references the fragrant and mysterious moon flowers endemic to Chiapas and the Yucatán peninsula.
“If we have to cut 3,000 lavender leaves, they do it with a lot of love,” Spotter said. “And I think that has a been a reason why the product is so good as well; one way that we are able to maintain the quality.”
While Spotter’s professional motto for the company, to be a production house of the best organic alcoholic beverages in Mexico, could well be the goal of many distilleries, her personal goal is one of the things that she asserts sets Flor de Luna apart from competitors.
“I like to believe that in every product and lot that we made, we embottle our feelings,” Spotter said. “We have a massive closet filled with different trials that we’ve made, and each of them was completed at a different point of my life. The whole year that I was actively trying new things, well, each bottle has a feeling in it from that. That is what we want to share.”
Megan Frye is a writer, photographer and translator living in Mexico City. She has a history of newsroom journalism as well as non-profit administration and has been published by several international publications.
Blue indicates territory of Santa Rosa de Lima; yellow is being fought over with the CJNG. Inset is the area that previously formed the base of operations for the former. milenio
The fuel theft gang believed to be behind much of the violence that made Guanajuato Mexico’s deadliest state last year is now expanding into Querétaro and Hidalgo, according to federal intelligence officials.
The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel has expanded its area of influence significantly over the past two years and now has operational bases in the Guanajuato municipalities of Villagrán, Juventino Rosas, Celaya, Apaseo el Grande and Apaseo el Alto, the officials told the newspaper Milenio.
The gang’s suspected leader, José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez, also has complete control of the municipalities of Cortazar, Jerécuaro, Comonfort, Coroneo and Tarimoro.
Since 2017, the cartel has expanded the area of territory it controls – known as the Guanajuato Triangle – from 130 square kilometers to 400 square kilometers despite efforts by both federal and state authorities to combat its activities.
The two Apaseo municipalities border Querétaro, providing a springboard for the cartel to move into that state, while it has also begun making its first incursions into Hidalgo, located farther east.
The areas targeted by the gang all have one thing in common: Pemex petroleum pipelines run through them.
As the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel expands its presence – all the while tapping the pipelines to extract fuel which it sells on the black market – violence in the parts of Guanajuato in which the gang operates has surged, especially in areas where it is involved in a turf war with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Irapuato, Salamanca and Celaya, all three disputed by the two criminal organizations, ranked first, third and fourth respectively for the number of homicides they recorded in 2018, and along with Valle de Santiago accounted for 36% of all murders in Guanajuato.
The four municipalities also led the state for slayings of police officers. Six traffic police were shot and killed in one particularly violent attack in Salamanca on June 1 last year and two months later, three officers were abducted and executed in the same municipality.
In Apaseo el Alto, a candidate for mayor was shot dead while campaigning in May last year while the municipality’s new transport director was murdered the same day he took office last October.
On January 25, the director of the 911 emergency response service in Irapuato was killed after he refused to continue leaking information to the Santa Rosa Cartel and six days later, a narco-banner allegedly signed by Yépez appeared in Salamanca warning President López Obrador to remove security forces from Guanajuato or innocent people will die.
Explosives, referred to in the narcomanta as a “little gift,” were also left inside a vehicle parked in front of the Salamanca oil refinery but were removed by the army before they detonated.
The federal government is cracking down on fuel theft with a strategy that includes deploying the military and Federal Police to guard petroleum pipelines and other infrastructure owned and operated by the state oil company.
A semi that is on the list of vehicles to be auctioned this month.
The full list of more than 200 vehicles to be auctioned by the federal government this month — from semi-tractors to farm tractors — has been published online.
Armored vehicles, cars, motorcycles, buses, tractors and semi trailers are among the vehicles listed, eight of which are valued at more than 1 million pesos (US $52,000).
The priciest vehicle on the list is Lot 1, a 2012 armored Audi A8 valued at 1.9 million pesos (US $99,500).
For truckers, there’s a 2016 Volvo semi-tractor and trailer whose value of 1.61 million pesos makes it the second most expensive.
Cheapest ride on auction is a 2003 Chevrolet Cheyenne pickup worth just 29,400 pesos, while for bikers there’s a 2013 Kawasaki Vulcan 900 valued at 45,300 pesos.
The federal government anticipates taking in 100 million pesos ($5.24 million), money that will help fund a new security force to be called the national guard.
The auction will take place on February 23 and 24 at the Santa Lucía air force base in México state.
Business groups question government's lack of support for steel industry.
The federal government’s decision not to renew a 15% safeguard duty for imported steel and protect the Mexican industry is a grave mistake, two business groups have warned.
In a joint statement directed at President López Obrador and Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez, the National Chamber of the Iron and Steel Industry (Canacero) and the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) said they were concerned about the January 31 expiration of the 15% safeguard for steel imports from countries with which Mexico doesn’t have a trade agreement.
The safeguard measure was first put in place in October 2015 and was subsequently renewed every six months before the current government allowed it to lapse on February 1.
Canacero and Concamin said the decision not to renew the safeguard measure could lead to Mexico being used as an interim destination for goods headed to the United States.
Its renewal, they said, is a fundamental factor in having the United States exclude Mexico from the tariffs on steel and aluminum that were imposed on June 1 last year.
Non-renewal will result in Mexico being seen as a “triangulation platform” and the respective 25% and 10% tariffs won’t be removed, the business groups said.
That would place the approval of the new United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement at risk because the majority of members of the United States House of Representatives have placed the elimination of the measure in North America as a condition for their approval of the pact, Canacero and Concamin said.
Because there are no negotiations currently under way to have the tariffs removed, Canacero president Máximo Vedoya said, the Mexican steel industry is unprotected.
In contrast, other countries have put up adequate barriers to protect their steel sector, he said.
“Unfortunately, Mexico is taking a different path and we have to convince the Secretariat of the Economy that this is a mistake, a grave mistake, because we can’t compete and it’s not worth competing with different weapons,” Vedoya said.
Francisco Cervantes, president of Concamin, said that a safeguard on foreign steel is urgently needed but added that the Secretariat of the Economy (SE) is dragging its feet.
“We’re in discussions [but] we don’t feel receptiveness [to our point of view]. They’ve taken too long in their communication . . .” he said.
“We’re seeking safeguards . . . [of] a significant percentage [but] that don’t affect the automotive sector,” Cervantes continued, adding that Secretary Márquez has been invited to reflect on the need to protect the national steel industry.
Canacero and Concamin said the industry generates more than 700,000 direct and indirect jobs in Mexico but the sector is under threat from the global overproduction of the metal and the 25% tariff “imposed unilaterally and unfairly by the United States government.”
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has warned the federal government that it cannot delegate its responsibility to protect people’s rights after the latter asked the former for advice on how to end teachers’ rail blockades in Michoacán.
In a statement, the CNDH said that “authorities of the different levels of government are obliged to protect and guarantee . . . people’s rights, a mandate that they can’t relinquish or seek to delegate to third parties.”
The commission urged the federal executive to fulfill that obligation, stating that the government’s responsibility cannot “depend on or be made conditional on a declaration or resolution by an organization for the protection and defense of human rights.”
President López Obrador said yesterday that the government had filed a complaint with the CNDH against those responsible for the rail blockades and sought the commission’s opinion on what action to take in the context of its determination not to use force against the teachers.
The CNDH commended the government’s commitment not to use force but added that the position doesn’t absolve it of the responsibility to act if protesters are found to have broken the law.
“While it is positive that other ways [to end the blockades] are favored over the use of force, if the relevant government authorities were to determine the existence of an illegal act, such an attitude cannot justify it being permissible that authorities relinquish or hold back from fulfilling their constitutional obligation,” the statement said.
The CNDH urged that “the parties involved in the conflict seek a solution through the building of agreements, within the framework of the law, establishing a process of dialogue that contributes to the building and strengthening of a culture of peace in the country.”
López Obrador told reporters at his morning press conference yesterday that his government has been available for dialogue and had done everything asked of it to satisfy the demands of Michoacán teachers, who say they are owed billions of pesos in unpaid salaries and benefits.
He also asked the CNTE teachers’ union to clarify whether teachers who continued to block railway tracks in Uruapan and Pátzcuaro were its members.
Speaking later in the day at an event in Huetamo, Michoacán, the president urged dissident teachers to not be “rebels without a cause,” and asked them to wait patiently for their demands to be resolved and for the “misnamed educational reform” to be repealed.
“I’ve just seen my Interior Secretariat file, what they were saying about me 40 years ago; they spied on me because I was in the opposition, so I know what it’s like to fight for just causes,” López Obrador said.
“. . . None of this intransigence and waiting [on the railway tracks] thinking that . . . you’ll provoke me and that I’ll use public force so that you can accuse me of being an oppressor, an authoritarian . . . No, I’m not going to fall into provocation,” he added.
While the CNTE teachers’ union last week agreed to lift the seven rail blockades in Michoacán, radical teachers belonging to the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) and the National Democratic Executive Committee have maintained those in Pátzcuaro and Uruapan.
Section 18 union leaders said in a statement Thursday that the CNTE was not associated with any groups that choose to defy the directive to lift the rail blockades.
However, early yesterday CNTE-affiliated teachers reestablished a blockade on tracks in the port city of Lázaro Cardenas, where thousands of shipping containers are stranded, and barricaded at least 60 government offices in Michoacán.
The newspaper Milenio reported that the CNTE members returned to the tracks in a show of solidarity with three teachers who were summoned to the federal Attorney General’s office in Morelia after railway company Kansas City Southern filed a criminal complaint against them.
The blockades, which were first erected on January 14, have cost the economy close to 30 billion pesos (US $1.6 billion), while the teachers’ work stoppage has left students in Michoacán without classes for almost a month.
The CNTE said later yesterday it had agreed to “a tactical withdrawal” of all rail blockades in Michoacán and that it was ready to resume trilateral talks with state and federal authorities. However, this morning the blockade in Caltzontzin, Uruapan, remained in place.
Despite the ongoing blockade, Michoacán Education Secretary Alberto Frutis Solís said yesterday that talks between the three parties would resume today and it is believed they will be held in Mexico City.
Teachers have previously said that they want 5 billion pesos before they will return to the classroom but Section 18 CNTE leader Víctor Manuel Zavala said yesterday that the union is seeking commitments worth around 6 billion pesos (US $313.7 million) in order for the conflict to be resolved.
To date, state and federal governments have released more than 2 billion pesos in funding to pay salaries and bonuses in response to teachers’ demands.
An environmental organization in Morelos has unequivocally rejected President López Obrador’s public consultation on the Huesca thermal power plant in Yecapixtla, Morelos.
The People’s Council in Defense of Air, Water and Land, an umbrella group of several different organizations, said it remained opposed to the project regardless of the outcome of the vote.
Organization leaders Jaime Domínguez Pérez and Teresa Castellanos told a press conference that they were surprised and angered by what they see as López Obrador’s flip-flop: in 2014 he said that building the plant would be like “putting a garbage dump in Jerusalem.”
They said they had hoped for an ally in the president and had expected him to announce the project’s cancellation and designation of the site as the location of a new public university.
The two said the consultation aims to make a mockery of their seven-year-long fight.
Castellanos said residents have seen an increase in respiratory problems, pinkeye, rhinitis, hearing damage, cancer and genetic mutations, all of which have been corroborated by studies conducted by academics and civil organizations. She added that large numbers of fish and birds have turned up dead near the plant.
The opponents of the project plan to present their demands Sunday when the president is scheduled to visit Cuautla, and invite him to drink a glass of water from the area surrounding the plant and observe its effects. Those usually include intense vomiting and nausea, they said.
López Obrador has promised that the 20-billion-peso plant (US $1 billion) will be clean and that its operation will include a water quality certification by the National Water Commission.
He stressed that the project could provide cheap electricity for the entire state of Morelos, but he also said he would respect the outcome of the consultation.
The vote will be held on February 24 and 25 in more than 70 municipalities in Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala.
Infonavit head Martínez makes a lot less than his predecessor.
The former head of the national housing fund, Infonavit, paid himself a handsome salary — because he could.
Speaking in Guerrero yesterday at a presentation on the national fertilizer program, President López Obrador repeated that excesses in government spending will no longer be tolerated, and used the former Infonavit chief as an example.
David Penchyna, the president said, earned a gross monthly salary of 700,000 pesos (US $37,000). His successor, on the other hand, is receiving substantially less.
The extravagance is over now, López Obrador said. “We’ve cut salaries of those at the top to increase the salaries of those at the bottom.”
The new Infonavit director, Carlos Martínez Velázquez, told a Wednesday press conference that the former director’s annual income had been set at 9.3 million pesos (US $487,000), a salary set by Penchyna himself.
In answer to a direct question from a reporter, Martínez said he had chosen a more modest salary for himself in keeping with the administration’s austerity program.
“Since I made a promise to the president, I set my salary — because Infonavit’s rules stipulate that I can give myself however much I want — at 107,500 pesos (US $5,600) a month net.” (In gross terms, that’s about 150,000 pesos.)
López Obrador reiterated his promise not to tolerate corruption and impunity under his watch and appealed to those present to be honest.
“What am I asking of you? Just that you implement the program well. I’m not asking you to learn how to use the fertilizer; you’re all experts. I am asking you to not resell the fertilizer, that there not be a black market for fertilizer, that we all behave well.”
Workers' representative Elejarza speaks to reporters.
Workers at 45 factories in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, have threatened to take strike action if they are not given the same pay raise and annual bonus as those given to thousands of workers in Matamoros.
But rather than abruptly walking off the job to demand a 20% salary increase and 32,000-peso (US $1,700) end-of-year bonus, the workers will first seek to negotiate with their employers.
Workers’ representative Marco Antonio Elejarza said that direct negotiations – without the involvement of trade unions – could take place between the employees and companies.
He said the 8,000 Reynosa workers, many of whom are employed at electronics and auto parts factories, have “a lot of concerns” about their labor situation that they wish to take up with their employers.
Worker unrest has reached the northern border city from Matamoros, located around 90 kilometers east, where tens of thousands of employees from around 75 businesses have gone on strike over the past two weeks. The job action has been dubbed Movimiento 20/30 in reference to the pay raise and bonus sought.
Workers in Ciudad Victoria, the state capital, are also seeking salary hikes. Aptiv, an auto parts manufacturer, reached an agreement Thursday with its 5,000 workers to increase salaries 16%. Workers began negotiations demanding 30%.
Employees of Kemet, another auto parts maker, have threatened a strike to press for a 16% raise, said Dolores Zúñiga Vázquez, general secretary of the Maquiladoras Industrial Union.
Many companies have agreed to the demands but the president of the National Council of the Maquiladora Industry (Index Nacional) said last week that even though they are signing new collective agreements with workers, some of them plan to leave Matamoros and Mexico in the next six to nine months.
He and labor law academic, Enrique Larios Díaz, warned earlier this week that strike action would spread to other parts of the country.
In Matamoros, the job action has not just hurt the factories where the striking workers are employed but also other sectors of the economy.
Miguel Ángel Caballero, president of the city’s Historic Center Businesses’ Union, said that since the labor conflict began on January 12, businesses have seen a 40% reduction in sales.
President López Obrador has warned that the merger between the Walt Disney Company and 21st Century Fox must be considered carefully because of a possible conflict of interest related to its regulatory approval – and it could push soccer matches on to Pay TV channels.
Speaking at his daily press conference this morning, López Obrador said that he has been informed that a former official who worked at the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) was hired by one of the two companies to complete the application to formally register the merger in Mexico.
The Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece) approved the Disney-Fox merger this week, stating that there is little probability of it affecting free competition, but the IFT also has to give its approval for it to go ahead.
“The information I have is that [the merger] wasn’t allowed in Europe or the United States and here they want to authorize it. I am respectful of the organization that regulates and decides on these matters but I also have information that there is a conflict of interest,” López Obrador said.
The president also said that he was concerned that the merger between the two companies could result in Mexicans having to pay to watch the nation’s favorite sport on television.
“What worries me the most is that they’ll charge for watching soccer. It’s not my favorite sport but a lot of people watch soccer. An authorization that affects consumers, soccer fans, it’s not going to happen,” López Obrador said.
“If soccer is affected, well no, review the matter, discuss it, debate it. Yes, they [Cofece and the IFT] are autonomous organizations but they’re not infallible, they’re not like The Castle of Purity [a 1972 Mexican film], let’s see what they’re doing, we all have a right to know that,” he added.
Federico González Luna, a member of the Institute of Telecommunications Law (IDET), said that if the merger is authorized under the terms currently proposed, 73% of Mexico’s sports television channels will be owned by a single company and many soccer matches will likely be shown only on premium channels.
That scenario, he said, would “exclude a lot of Mexicans, especially those with lower incomes because they won’t be able to pay to watch soccer matches.”
The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox in a deal worth US $71.3 billion that was approved by shareholders of both companies in July last year.
