Zihuatanejo shooting kills two, shocks visitors

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February 6, 2019

The Zihuatanejo street where Monday's shooting took place.

Gunfire in downtown Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Monday night killed two people, wounded three and shocked tourists who were nearby.

The shots were fired about 10:30pm at Bar Ego, known among locals as a “narco-bar,” located across the street from another bar that is popular with local residents and visitors.

One visitor who happened to be on hand when the shooting took place was a former nurse who treated one of the victims by attending to her injuries and stopping the bleeding. “There was blood everywhere,” the former nurse said later.

She said she urged the victim to take advantage of the ambulance that had arrived at the scene, but the woman refused, apparently afraid that the attackers would go after her. She fled down an alley instead.

Another tourist who witnessed the incident, a former firefighter and first responder from the United States, described it as the most traumatic thing he had ever seen.

The attack comes just a few days after another in which a young man was killed in the densely populated area of Plaza Kyoto, a few blocks away.

The shooting at the Bar Ego, which many residents hope will be closed by authorities, was the fourth in three years.

Mexico News Daily

Mexico’s biggest drug store company to open 300 new outlets

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César Hernández

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February 5, 2019

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A troupe of Dr. Simis promote Mexico's largest drug store.

The stocky Dr. Simi, mascot of the national drug store franchise Farmacias Similares, is about to appear on many more sidewalks as the company intends to open 300 more stores this year.

Described by the newspaper El Financiero as the largest drug store in Mexico and Latin America, Farmacias Similares finished 2018 with 6,400 stores in Mexico.

” . . . The expansion goal is to add 300 more this year,” said the company’s strategy and product promotion director, Víctor González Herrera.

The plan will add 1,200 jobs to the franchiser’s existing 17,000.

According to the market research firm Euromonitor International, Farmacias Similares has beaten competitors like Farmacias Yza and Farmacias del Ahorro, taking 10.9% of the market, with estimated sales of US $2.9 billion.

The firm recently opened a number of stores in the tunnels of the Mexico City subway system, but their profitability does not compare to that of the more traditional drug stores.

Instead of looking for new venues or business models, González said, Farmacias Similares will focus on launching a wider variety of products, along with its own name brand.

The executive explained that the sale of over-the-counter medications, vitamins and skin care products represent 30% of the firm’s revenue.

González also said that Farmacias Similares intends to analyze sales of CBD — cannabidiol, a compound found in cannabis that has a relaxing effect and helps control anxiety — before deciding whether to offer it to the public.

While the firm has based its business model on the sale of generic drugs, hence its name, González remarked it has never ruled out selling patent medicines. “. . . We never stop analyzing anything,” he said.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Petition calls for former self-defense force leader to head national guard

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MND Staff

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February 5, 2019

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A gun-toting Mireles when he headed a self-defense force.

A prominent former self-defense force leader from Michoacán has garnered strong support in Tamaulipas to be the leader of the new national guard.

José Manuel Mireles garnered 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for his nomination as the head of the new security force proposed by the federal government, said Francisco Chavira, a former independent candidate for governor in the northern border state.

Mireles, a medical doctor and co-founder of Michoacán’s paramilitary self-defense groups, attended a rally yesterday in the municipality of Hidalgo, Tamaulipas, where local self-defense group Columna General Pedro J. Méndez also threw its support behind his candidacy.

At the event, the former self-defense leader, who was imprisoned for almost three years on weapons charges that were dropped last year, expressed his support for President López Obrador.

Mireles was also elected as Mexico’s national self-defense force leader via a show of hands by the thousands of attendees at the rally, among whom were members of self-defense groups from other states.

Chavira said the petition’s 100,000 signatures were collected in less than a month and will be presented to the federal government at the beginning of March.

He explained that the backing came from “everywhere” in Tamaulipas, including the cities of Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Matamoros, Tampico, Ciudad Victoria and Ciudad Mante.

Chavira told the newspaper Reforma that they are now waiting for Congress to approve the creation of the national guard after which Mireles will be formally nominated for the role of leader.

“There is an official letter being prepared to present his nomination . . .” he said, adding that yesterday’s event attracted more than 20,000 people.

“More than 5,000 people came on horseback. There was a parade with tractors, farmers. It was a march in solidarity and support of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador,” Chavira said.

The ex-gubernatorial candidate explained that Mireles will undertake a national tour in support of López Obrador and to meet with activists and civil society groups.

The president’s national guard proposal attracted criticism from several non-governmental organizations, which said that it would only perpetuate the unsuccessful militarized security model implemented by former president Felipe Calderón in 2006 and continued by the previous federal government.

Federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo announced last month that López Obrador had decided that the national guard should have a civilian command and not a military one as was initially proposed.

The decision followed calls for the new security force not to be under the control of the army, including from within the president’s own party.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Radical teachers put brakes on Michoacán agreement; one blockade remains

By

MND Staff

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February 5, 2019

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Radical teachers in Michoacán have broken ranks with the CNTE union by refusing to lift one of their rail blockades.

Section 18 of the union reached an agreement with state and federal authorities over the weekend that included a renewal of its commitment to remove the blockades, which have stranded hundreds of trains and cost the economy billions of pesos.

The CNTE said in a statement that “the tactical withdrawal agreement involves clearing the railway tracks in order to progress to a second tripartite meeting with the state and federal governments.”

However, teachers who belong to the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) and the National Democratic Executive Committee (CEND) of the SNTE union have maintained a rail blockade at Caltzontzin in the municipality of Uruapan and only lifted one at Pátzcuaro last night.

In the former location, the teachers agreed to remove their blockade but threatened instead to barricade the municipal palace complex and shopping centers, among other locations. In the end, they did neither.

Meanwhile, Morena party lawmakers in the Michoacán Congress called on teachers to end their protests and go back to the classroom in order to “make peace with society.”

In a statement, the party’s parliamentary group urged Section 18 of the CNTE union “to participate . . . in dialogue with the will to build agreements that make guaranteeing children’s right to education their priority.”

Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles said today that he had ordered the payment of money still owed to teachers.

He also said that he will send a proposal to the state’s Congress to reassign education funding to ensure that there are resources to meet the payroll.

The Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) governor added that the state is ready to resume trilateral talks and find a “real solution” to the conflict.

“This only depends on the CNTE notifying us when we can resume the work of the tripartite committee,” Silvano said in a video posted to his Twitter account.

“[I’m committed to] once and for all resolving the outstanding issues with teachers for the good of the education of our boys and girls and for the good of the development of our state,” he added.

The union said yesterday it had prepared a counter-proposal following the first meeting with authorities and that it will submit it to federal Education Secretary Esteban Moctezuma and the Michoacán governor.

Most schools in Michoacán have now been closed for 22 days.

Source: El Universal (sp), El Financiero (sp)

President announces new initiative to combat insecurity in 17 regions

By

Madison Koen

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February 5, 2019

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The government launched a new security operation Monday in Tijuana.

The federal government today decided to implement a new security initiative in light of continuing homicides and violence.

President López Obrador announced that the new security plan would combat crime in 17 different regions.

He introduced the plan during his morning press conference in response to a reporter’s question about what the administration planned to do to protect journalists who reported on crime.

López Obrador told reporters that the new strategy, which began yesterday in Tijuana, will target insecurity in 17 regions that account for 35% of homicides in the country.

He said security is the executive’s top priority now that fuel distribution has begun to stabilize around the country.

“Our plan to combat fuel theft is drawing to a close; distribution has returned to normal and instances of theft have decreased. The situation had us very worried.”

The president added that measures to prevent fuel theft will remain in place even as the administration brings the issue of insecurity into focus. He elaborated that the new security initiative would specifically target corruption.

“We are committed to . . . guaranteeing to you and all citizens that the government will no longer be involved in crime, that there has been a complete and total separation. There will be no cooperation; this is a dividing line, a boundary, and I am dedicated to making sure that no part of the government is caught up in crime.”

The president also encouraged citizens to begin to trust in the state again.

“We will face the existing crime threat and guarantee public security, and if necessary, protection. I hope that this situation is temporary and that we can quickly solve the problem of insecurity and live in peace, but if anyone requires protection from criminal threat, they can count on us.”

President López Obrador said that he would outline the new security initiative in detail in a Wednesday or Thursday press conference.

Source: Reforma (sp)

AMLO accuses past presidents of theft; Calderón demands proof

By

MND Staff

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February 5, 2019

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President López Obrador and past president Felipe Calderón have engaged in a testy tit-for-tat after the former accused the latter of corruption for the second time in as many months.

At his daily press conference yesterday, López Obrador charged – without mentioning his name – that Calderón had acted corruptly by taking up a position on the board of United States energy company Avangrid in 2016, four years after his six-year term concluded.

During Calderón’s administration, the company was awarded contracts to supply energy to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).

“A company that sells energy to CFE hired an ex-president as a member of their board of directors. And it wasn’t just the ex-president, those who were in the Secretariat of Energy went to companies to which they had awarded contracts. What do you call that? Coyotaje [crookedness/cronyism], corruption?” López Obrador said.

Later yesterday, Calderón rejected the president’s claim of improper conduct, pointing out that the Federal Law of the Responsibilities of Public Servants stipulates that past officials must abstain from taking up such a position for a period of only one year after they leave their post.

“I’ve never committed an act of corruption with any company. If the president has proof, he should show it and if he doesn’t he’s better off keeping quiet,” he said.

The former president also challenged López Obrador to a public debate.

“I would invite the president of the republic, I would ask that he allows me to speak to him personally and that we discuss these issues . . . in the National Palace or that we have a public debate on television or at one of his morning press conferences . . . to talk about personal wealth and sources of income, both his and mine,” Calderón added.

“. . . I live from my work because I was born and brought up to make a living from honest work and if I work for a company, it’s because I need to work and I do it without breaking the law.”

It’s not the first time that Calderón has rebuked López Obrador after being accused of unethical or criminal conduct.

After the president claimed last month that not just he but also former presidents Vicente Fox and Enrique Peña Nieto were complicit with or knew about fuel theft from the state oil company during their respective administrations, Calderón hit back.

“With complete respect, I don’t accept his slandering of me because as the president says himself ‘it’s better to bequeath honor and poverty than dishonor’ and what I have for my children is a good name and it’s a name [of someone] who governed our beloved Mexico with honesty – making mistakes, of course, but I never stole a centavo and I was never an accomplice to the theft of a single drop of fuel,” he said in a January 15 television interview.

“It’s serious and it’s false. It’s truly slanderous. President López Obrador doesn’t have any evidence at all to make such a reckless accusation, which made by any person is serious, but made from [the pinnacle of] power is extremely serious and abusive,” Calderón charged.

Responding to the former National Action Party (PAN) president’s latest comments, López Obrador today rejected the offer of a debate and even offered an apology to Calderón before asserting again that he had “crossed the line” by accepting employment with a company that had links to his government.

“I’m not going to debate with the ex-president. The only thing I said was former presidents because [Ernesto] Zedillo did it as well . . . I have to raise it because I always say what I think. I’m president and I must be careful with the power invested in me but I don’t think that I should shut up like a mummy,” he said.

On Calderón’s board appointment and Zedillo’s consultancy work with a company that benefited from the privatization of Mexico’s railways, López Obrador declared: “You can’t do that, it’s not a legal matter [but] it should be a legal matter. If it’s not illegal, it’s immoral.”

He added: “These things shouldn’t continue to happen and we shouldn’t keep quiet because cleaning up corruption isn’t just going after those who commit crimes or acts of corruption, it’s also [a matter of] public questioning.”

The leftist president, who has made combating corruption a central crusade of his administration, said that powerful politicians who committed corruption in the past didn’t even lose any respectability or status, declaring that “they devoted themselves to looting but continued being Mr. so-and-so.”

“The thieves were those who stole a cylinder of gas and those above, the white-collar criminals, [were] gentlemen to whom you had to pay homage,” López Obrador said.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp), Nación 321 (sp)

Former Coahuila governor arrested in Puerto Vallarta

By

Tony Richards

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February 5, 2019

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A former governor of Coahuila was arrested today on corruption charges, some 13 months after the United States sought his extradition from Mexico.

Jorge Juan Torres López, wanted in the U.S. since November 2013 for money laundering and fraud, was arrested in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.

Torres, who served as interim governor of Coahuila between January and November 2011, transferred more than US $5 million to banks in Texas in 2008. The money was later moved to banks in Bermuda.

Former Coahuila treasurer Héctor Javier Villarreal Hernández was also charged. The latter has already pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in San Antonio, Texas, on July 10.

Torres was placed on the U.S. most-wanted list by the Drug Enforcement Administration and was described as armed and dangerous.

Mexican authorities opened an investigation into his activities in October 2013, shortly before the U.S. issued an arrest warrant, to determine the source of $2.8 million in a Bermudas bank account in his name.

The investigation determined that the money had been a gift from Torres’ father.

Torres became interim governor of Coahuila after then-governor Humberto Moreira resigned to become national president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Widely accused of corruption himself but never charged, Moreira lasted only nine months in his new job, resigning over a scandal in which it was revealed that he ran up the state’s debt from $200 million to $35 billion while in office.

He was arrested in Spain in 2016 on suspicion of money laundering and embezzlement but later released.

Source: Milenio (sp), Vanguardia (sp)

Telescope, observatory scientists in Puebla stop work due to insecurity

By

Madison Koen

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February 5, 2019

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The Puebla telescope, difficult to access due to criminal activity.

Scientists at the Alfonso Serrano Large Millimeter Telescope (GTM) and the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory in Puebla have abandoned their posts because of the threat of organized crime in the region.

The telescope, the largest of its kind in the world, is located on top of the Sierra Negra volcano on the Puebla-Veracruz border.

The roads leading to the telescope, nicknamed “Death’s Way” by locals, have been taken over by criminal organizations, employees told reporters. Scientists who work at the site say they have been the victims of constant attacks by crime gangs engaging in robbery and kidnapping.

The Alfonso Serrano telescope is the culmination of 20 years of work and an investment of US $20 million. The binational project, a collaboration between the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was completed just last year.

The telescope is the world’s largest in its frequency range. According to the project website, it is uniquely suited to the study of the birth and evolution of stars, the formation of planets, the growth and distribution of galaxies, the constitution of comets and planetary atmospheres and the origins of the universe.

According to the newspaper Diario Cambio, the highways that cross the boundary between Puebla and Veracruz are considered to be some of the region’s most dangerous because of the “cockroach effect,” produced by the government’s strategy to combat fuel theft. Such operations tend to push criminal gangs from one area into another.

The INAOE confirmed today that activities at both the telescope and the observatory have been reduced due to insecurity, but expressed hope that the problem would be resolved soon.

Scientific work will resume at the two facilities once authorities have confirmed that conditions are safe, the institute said.

Source: Milenio (sp), Diario Cambio (sp)

400 people flee their homes after fuel leak at pipeline tap

By

César Hernández

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February 5, 2019

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Location of the gas leak in México state.

About 400 people in two communities in Otumba, México state, fled their homes last night after a nearby fuel spill.

The spill is believed to have been caused by fuel thieves who lost control of the flow of fuel after tapping into the pipeline and decided to abandon the scene.

Neighbors noted a strong smell of gasoline about 10:00pm and decided to leave their homes, fearing an explosion.

Otumba Mayor Mauricio Cid Franco reported the spill to officials at Pemex, requesting that the affected pipeline be shut down.

Police and military personnel arrived soon after to cordon off the area around the illegal tap.

Residents began returning to their homes after midnight.

Local officials said there were no reports of injuries or attempts to scoop up free gasoline.

A large number of illegal pipeline taps have been detected in this region of México state, where pipelines are buried under farmland.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Experts say DNA identification of victims of pipeline blast almost impossible

By

MND Staff

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February 5, 2019

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Victims' remains are removed from the scene of the Hidalgo explosion and fire.

Recovering DNA from the charred remains of people killed in the petroleum pipeline explosion in Hidalgo last month is almost impossible, genetics experts say.

The death toll from the blast and fire that spread across a field in the municipality of Tlahuelilpan on January 18 has reached 126. Of the 68 people who died at the scene, just 16 have been identified.

The remaining 52 bodies are undergoing DNA testing at the Pachuca morgue to look for matches with victims’ family members who have provided genetic samples, but as fire damages DNA molecules more than anything else, the task is extremely difficult.

“When organic remains are massively burned and charred, the DNA degrades,” explained Jean Phillipe Vielle, a researcher at the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity in Irapuato, Guanajuato.

“Even though it’s a molecule that is present in many parts of the body and [is located] on its surface, it has a tendency to degrade at high temperatures and that prevents us from being able to decipher the DNA code with current technology,” he told the newspaper Milenio.

At a temperature of 95 C, Vielle said, DNA begins to undergo a process of denaturation – “it loses the double helix make-up that allows it to be sequenced.”

In Tlahuelilpan, temperatures exceeding 1000 C – more than 10 times higher – were detected in the fire that followed the pipeline explosion, caused by an illegal tap to steal fuel.

However, Vielle said that hopes that the bodies can be identified are not completely lost because DNA in victims’ teeth could still be intact, despite the intense heat to which it was exposed.

“Fortunately, teeth are hermetic and in their roots you can often recover DNA that is preserved to such a degree that it can be extracted,” he said.

Mauro López, head of genetic laboratories at the Institute of Forensic Sciences of the Mexico City Superior Court of Justice, agrees that the task national and international experts are confronted with is extremely complex, meaning that victims’ families face a long wait for their loved ones to be identified – if it is possible at all.

“From my experience and certainly that of other researchers . . . it’s clear that a genetic profile cannot be obtained from burned, charred material. It’s going to depend on the [fire] conditions to which it was subjected,” he said.

López said that if remains received by laboratories tasked with conducting the DNA testing are in a state of virtual calcination or carbonization “genetic materials won’t be obtained,” adding that direct fire is one of the things that damages DNA the most.

Asked whether scientists faced a worst-case scenario with respect to the possibility of identifying the charred bodies, López responded, “unfortunately, that’s correct.”

Neither the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, one of the leading centers in Latin America in its field, nor the Mexico City Institute of Forensic Sciences is involved in the identification process.

However, the director of the former, Alfredo Herrera, said the Irapuato facility stands ready to lend its expertise, although he explained that it has not been accredited to issue forensic reports.

“. . . Working with DNA is our daily bread here, we have specialists in human genetics as well as old [human] remains. Their degree of knowledge in working with such samples is significant. Indeed, we have a specialized laboratory that avoids contamination when working with human samples,” he said.

Last month, Hidalgo Governor Omar Fayad said that identifying the remains could take months and “the most difficult cases” could be sent to laboratories in the United States or Innsbruck, Austria, for analysis.

Researchers at the Innsbruck Medical University previously carried out DNA testing on bone fragments recovered from a river near the Cocula garbage dump in Guerrero, where the bodies of 43 students are believed to have been burned in 2014.

Source: Milenio (sp)