A bus commandeered by teachers blocks a Oaxaca city street.
Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat reached an agreement with striking teachers yesterday, ending four days of protests that affected major thoroughfares in the state capital.
Among demands by teachers affiliated with Section 22 of the CNTE union were the reinstatement of physical education teachers left without employment by the 2013 education reforms and the payment of bonuses and benefits they say they are owed.
The governor told the newspaper Milenio that since several of the CNTE’s grievances could only be addressed by the federal government, he had called upon President López Obrador for help.
“We have agreed to accompany leaders and representatives from Section 22 of the CNTE to Mexico City to formally present their demands. For example, physical education programs disappeared with the implementation of the previous federal government’s education reforms, but the current federal government has the authority to renew them and give these teachers formal positions once more.”
The latest outbreak of CNTE strikes, generally an annual occurrence in Oaxaca, saw protests in different locations around the state, while in the capital teachers erected barricades along main streets and highways.
They also closed the main bus terminal for 12 hours, forcing the ADO bus line to set up a temporary station in the middle of the street. Several departures to central and southern parts of the state were cancelled.
Murat denounced the protesters’ tactics in a video before sitting down for negotiations.
“As Oaxacans, we denounce the violence and the blockades, but we are in favor of building the conditions for a quality education for our children.”
National Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval describes Tijuana's new security strategy this morning.
A large force of federal and state police and the military will be part of a new security strategy in Tijuana, Baja California, next week in response to a spike in the number of homicides.
A record 2,518 people were murdered in the border city last year, almost seven times the total in 2012.
President López Obrador this morning presented the rough draft of a security plan that will be implemented beginning Monday with the deployment of 1,800 military and police personnel. It was well received by local authorities.
Municipal Public Security Secretary Marco Sotomayor Amezcua said the city had repeatedly requested the intervention of federal forces for two years.
“If it is as announced and we get a real presence of a large number of [federal agents] . . . I believe it will work in reducing the number of homicides.”
The president of a public security citizens’ council, Juan Manuel Hernández Niebla, took the president’s announcement as a clear sign that Tijuana is a priority.
“We must applaud and congratulate ourselves for the fact that the president of the republic is turning around and looking at Tijuana in terms of security,” he said.
Local and state officials say the spike in homicides is not the result of drug cartels fighting over trafficking routes into the United States as it has been in the past, but local drug dealers fighting each other.
They estimate that 90% of homicides are now related to local drug sales.
View of the restored pyramids from “bleachers” atop a nearby hillside.
Two thousand years ago, a unique society thrived in western Mexico. It appears they were the only people in history to base their public monuments on the geometry of concentric circles, and to this day their hundreds of circular pyramids still mark the territory of an empire bigger than Guatemala.
The capital of this ancient nation was Teuchitlán, “The Place of the First God,” located within the shadow of the Tequila Volcano, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city.
Inhabitants of the modern-day Teuchitlán knew there was something special about a group of large mounds just over a kilometer north of town, but had no idea how important they once were. They called these mounds Los Guachimontones.
I paid my first visit to this site in 1985 before any sort of development had taken place. Upon reaching the edge of the little town of Teuchitlán, I stared in disbelief at the “road” leading to the Guachimontones. I was driving a Jeep, but that so-called road was such a mass of ruts and churned up rocks that I simply parked and went on foot.
All I could see were tall weeds and cornfields but, by good luck, I found a farmer out there who pointed to a hill covered with heavy brush. “That is a Guachimontón,” he said.
A mural by Jorge Monroy shows the Bird Man in flight.
Just getting through the corn to the base of the Guachimontón was difficult enough, but now I had to push my way through thorn bushes, cacti and irritating nettles to finally reach the very top of the hill — which did appear to be man-made. “This is an unusually tall heap of rocks,” I thought, “but that’s all it is, just a heap of rocks.”
Without realizing it, I had drawn a conclusion similar to what many archaeologists of the time thought about the nature of ancient west Mexico and — like them — I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
Unknown to me, two local researchers, archaeologist Phil Weigand and his wife Acelia, an art historian, had looked beneath the surface at Teuchitlán and had discovered that the textbooks were wrong. An amazing civilization — unique in many ways — had once flourished in those weed-covered hills.
Twenty some years before my visit to the Guachimontones, Acelia Weigand happened to be visiting a natural spring located just east of Teuchitlán. “It was in 1962,” she says. “The kids were diving near a huge fig tree in a small, natural pool when I saw these shiny pieces of glass under the water. I told them to be careful because there were broken bottles down there and they could get cut.
“So the kids started pulling these shiny things out and they said, ‘No auntie, they’re not bottles, they’re knives!’ Well, all of them were long, sharp, prismatic blades of obsidian and I brought 13 of them back to our house in Etzatlán. But I couldn’t get Felipe to pay any attention to them for seven years. Seven years it took for me to lead him up to the obsidian workshop from which those blades had washed down to the swimming hole!”
This ancient obsidian workshop led the Weigands to the ruins of the pyramids now known as the Guachimontones. Phil Weigand later recalled: “I stood on the largest pyramid, looked around and thought, this is unexpected.”
Phil Weigand directs excavation of the ball court.
It turned out to be an understatement. The Weigands set aside a summer to explore the pyramids they had found and ended up spending the next 29 years documenting a complex, highly organized society which had begun in western Mexico in 1000 BC and had reached its apogee around 200 AD.
I had no clue what the Guachimontones represented until one day in 1997, when I heard rumors about an American archaeologist living in the town of Etzatlán, 26 kilometers northwest of Teuchitlán. Tracking down a foreigner in a small Mexican town is easy and this is how I first met the Weigands.
One of the many endearing characteristics of Phil Weigand was his total lack of pretentiousness and his willingness to share his discoveries — at length, I might add — with anyone who would listen, and I do mean anyone, even the humblest rancher or laborer.
“Look at these clay models of people gathered around the Guachimontones,” he said. “I’ve just had them made. Each one is a faithful copy of a 2,000-year-old original found right here in this part of Jalisco. Aren’t they amazing?”
“Amazing” doesn’t do justice to those clay models. They are full of life. We see dozens of people socializing, chatting and jostling one another or perhaps linked arm in arm, performing the cadena (chain dance), while listening to groups of musicians. Around this walkway, on evenly spaced, terraced platforms, the local VIPs gazed out the doorways of buildings that to western eyes might look typically Chinese.
These structures had tall, pointy, gabled roofs which, along with their wattle-and-daub walls, were carefully plastered and beautifully painted in bright colors. The VIPs chatted with the people in the milling crowd, perhaps discussing the latest score of the ball game taking place in the court located alongside the largest pyramid. Directly to the north, a huge crowd of onlookers may have watched the events from a steep, terraced hillside.
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Everyone, of course, was anxiously waiting for the main event of the day to begin. A sturdy pole had been set in the exact center of each steep pyramid. No one today knows exactly what its function was. The clay models show a “flier” balanced on top of the pole, probably representing Ehécatl, the Bird Man and, as the clay models show us, a crowd of people pushing on the pole caused him to “fly.”
It is also possible that ropes were wound around the pole, as is still done today in Veracruz, and that fliers tied to the ropes and bedecked with feathers swooped through the air in ever-widening circles, soaring up and down like graceful birds, finally to land on the circular walkway around the pyramid.
This, however, is pure speculation on my part, as no archaeological proof has yet been found to back up the idea that the ritual of voladores originated here.
The size and proportions of the rings around the mound followed a deliberately chosen geometrical formula, and the diameter of the pyramid was always 2.5 times the width of the walkway. These proportions form the basis for Teuchitlán’s formal circular architecture which is unique not only in Mesoamerica, but in the entire world. Nearly 200 complexes employing this architectural style have been found in western Mexico, making it easy for archaeologists to trace the limits of Teuchitlán’s influence.
No one knows what these people called themselves. What we do know is that they revered Ehecatl, “the First God, who was known as the Night Wind and portrayed as the Bird Man, covered with feathers.” Ehecatl apparently didn’t need human sacrifice to satisfy his ego. Perhaps because of this, the people of the Teuchitlán tradition seem to have been peaceful souls in comparison with the Aztecs, who came much later.
The bright blaze of the Teuchitlán civilization began to dim around the year 450 AD for reasons so far unknown. Archaeologists tell us that a day came when every building around the circular pyramids was burned to the ground. At the same time, new organizational and political systems had sprung into existence and the ritual of the Bird Man simply disappeared. These changes were expressed architecturally in the form of rectangular buildings. Gone were the circular pyramids — forever.
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For a while it was thought that the Teuchitlán people had simply vanished around 450 AD, but when the foundations were dug for a museum, now called the Phil Weigand Interpretive Center, numerous proofs were uncovered showing that Teuchitlán had been inhabited continuously for 2,000 years, from the pre-classical period right through to the post-classical. The enigma of this curious and industrious civilization is today inspiring a new generation of archaeologists to carry on the studies begun by the Weigands and to dig even deeper into the fascinating mystery of the ancient people of Teuchitlán.
More than 150,000 people from all over the world visit the Guachimontones ruins and museum every year. The site is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9 to 5 and there is no admission charge on Tuesdays. An English-Spanish guide to the Guachimontones is available at the museum and can be ordered online.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
Federal security forces may be closing in on the suspected ringleader of a gang of fuel thieves in Guanajuato who is believed to be behind a threat directed at President López Obrador.
José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, believed to the leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, has evaded capture during the last two and a half years, helped in no small part by highway blockades made of burning vehicles such as those seen in the municipality of Villagrán earlier this week.
However, intelligence reports seen by the newspaper Milenio reveal that federal authorities have a lot of information about the criminal leader known as “El Marro” that could make it difficult for him to remain free.
According to the reports, authorities have identified five ranches frequented by Yépez, his closest criminal associates and the locations his gang targets to extract fuel from Pemex pipelines.
Four people have been identified as members or past members of the ringleader’s inner circle.
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They are Yépez’s uncle, Efraín Labrada Reyes, a financial operator for the cartel; another uncle, Raymundo Labrada Reyes, who was involved in money laundering until he was killed in December 2016; El Marro’s sister, Karen Lizbeth Yépez, and her husband, Santiago González Martínez, both of whom work for the cartel in Celaya.
The intelligence reports also reveal the names of several other men with links to Yépez and the cartel he heads, including some who have already been arrested.
The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, which since 2017 has been engaged in a bitter turf war with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), has a strong presence in a region of Guanajuato known colloquially as the Bermuda Triangle.
Made up of the municipalities of Apaseo el Alto, Apaseo el Grande, Salamanca, Irapuato and Celaya, the region has a high incidence of both violence and fuel theft. Both tanker trucks transporting gasoline and petroleum pipelines are frequently targeted.
The Yépez-led criminal group’s presence also extends into the municipalities of Villagrán, considered the cartel’s operational center, as well as Cortazar, Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas, Valle de Santiago and its namesake Santa Rosa de Lima.
Pemex pipelines running between the refinery in Salamanca and the cities of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, León, Morelia and Tula have all been tapped by El Marro’s cartel, the intelligence reports reveal.
Residents of towns in the municipalities where the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel operates have set up highway blockades and shot at vehicles during operations carried out by the army and navy aimed at arresting Yépez.
The criminal leader is believed to be responsible for a narco-banner that appeared in Salamanca early yesterday morning, warning López Obrador to remove security forces from the state or innocent people will die.
After advising that a “little gift” had been left at the Salamanca refinery, which turned out to be explosive devices inside an abandoned vehicle, the banner concluded with: “Yours sincerely, El Señor Marro.”
The street in Salamanca where explosive devices were left.
The federal government has revealed that there were explosive devices inside a vehicle left outside the Pemex refinery in Salamanca, Guanajuato, yesterday after initially denying that was the case.
Presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez and other sources close to the investigation told the newspaper Milenio that the devices found inside an orange pickup truck parked at the entrance to door No. 4 of the Antonio M. Amor refinery have been destroyed.
Ramírez told reporters yesterday there had been a false alarm and that “there was no explosive in the abandoned truck.”
The suspicious vehicle, which had no license plates, was reported to authorities via the 911 emergency line just after 6:15am yesterday.
A narco-banner, allegedly signed by the leader of a Guanajuato-based gang of fuel thieves, also appeared in Salamanca early yesterday morning, warning President López Obrador to remove security forces from the state or innocent people will die.
The alleged author of the banner, José Antonio “El Marro” Yepez, warned that a “little gift” had been left at the refinery.
Officers from the Guanajuato state police force were the first to arrive at the refinery followed by soldiers, Federal Police and other security forces and authorities. The street on which the pickup was parked was closed for more than five hours.
Sedena said in a report that soldiers from the anti-bomb squad removed the explosive devices at 12:20pm and that they were destroyed later in the afternoon.
The report said the devices were cartridge emulsion explosives, which are used in the mining industry and demolition.
Ramírez said yesterday that the Attorney General’s office had opened an investigation to determine who is responsible for both the banner and the pickup.
López Obrador was unconcerned by the threat made on the narco-banner, which is presumed to have been made by the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel.
“He who fights for justice has nothing to fear,” he said.
A refrigerated semi in which bodies were being stored in Jalisco.
Authorities in Jalisco cremated 1,581 unidentified bodies between 2006 and 2018, acts described as “totally criminal” by the director of one of the organizations that discovered them.
A study entitled Cremations of Unidentified Bodies in Jalisco, Crimes without Justice, also tells of cases in which authorities attempted to intimidate family members of missing persons into accepting ashes, even though there was no genetic evidence to indicate they belonged to their loved ones.
The Center of Justice for Peace and Development (Cepad), a non-governmental organization, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a public policy think tank, presented the study yesterday.
Family members who attended the presentation say they have been deprived of the opportunity to find out the truth about what happened to their sons and daughters and to seek justice.
“I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the moment when we can’t find our children is not the only time they disappear. When they don’t identify the bodies, in one way or another, they disappear again,” said María del Rosario Cervantes, the mother of a missing child.
Rosario Hernández said that a state police officer threatened her with a gun when she refused to accept the ashes that authorities said belonged to her son.
“I told him, ‘I can’t accept the ashes if there’s no body, I want to see the body . . . because I didn’t authorize the cremation of my son.’ And he asked me, ‘what do you want us to do? Isn’t it enough what you have? You have the photos, the fingerprints, everything, it’s your son,’” she said.
“When I didn’t want to accept the ashes . . . He tried to intimidate me so that I would accept them out of fear . . . It was all a lie, it was all a ploy. Those people did a lot of damage to me,” Hernández added.
Cepad director César Pérez described the cremations carried out by successive state governments as “totally criminal.”
He said that thousands of families had been left with the uncertainty of not knowing if their missing relatives were among the unidentified bodies that were cremated.
The possibility of recovering a loved one’s body and being able to say goodbye in accordance with their traditions and beliefs was taken away from families forever, Pérez said.
Ana Karolina Chimiak, a lawyer for Cepad, rebuked authorities for trying to publicly justify their actions.
“They said that it was all regulated and in accordance with the law, that the cremations had to be carried out for health reasons . . . that it was more honorable to cremate a body than send it to a mass grave,” she said.
Chimiak said it was never too later for justice and called on authorities to respond to the seriousness of the situation to ensure that there is no repeat of “another human tragedy” such as last year’s case of unclaimed bodies being stored in refrigerated trailers.
Pérez said it was possible that authorities in Jalisco had acted the way they did due to complicity with organized crime gangs such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
“We don’t know the extent of these relationships, the depth with which authorities and organized crime are complicit.”
For that reason, he said, his organization intends to ask for the intervention of the United Nations.
“Sometimes it’s mandatory but they do pay you something.”
The words are those of José N., a doctor in southern México state’s Tierra Caliente, a region notorious for cartel violence and he’s talking about being kidnapped by criminal gangs that need a doctor to treat their wounded.
“We don’t have much choice,” José says. “In the end, they’re human lives and we have to do what we can.”
Scores of doctors have been abducted from México state municipalities such as Luvianos, Tlatlaya, Tejupilco and San Simón in recent years.
While most have returned unharmed after the ordeals, three have been murdered, leaving doctors in the region fearing for their lives.
Ongoing turf wars between cells of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), La Nueva Familia Michoacana, the Guerreros Unidos and Los Rojos mean that doctors’ skills and expertise could be needed at any time.
José, who has been a doctor in southern México state for 10 years and and has been kidnapped by criminal groups at least four times, told the newspaper Milenio that he left Ciudad Altamirano, Guerrero – also in the Tierra Caliente region – precisely to escape the kind of violence he continues to see.
“There [in Ciudad Altamirano], kidnappings went hand in hand [with the job]. A lot of doctors closed their offices and I left to have a calmer life but [here] it’s the same,” he said.
But it’s not just abductions and forced labor that doctors have to contend with.
“Here, [criminal] groups ask me for money. I’ve paid as much as 100,000 pesos [US $5,250] because they think that I earn a lot and you end up giving in. It’s that or you leave,” he said.
Another doctor in southern México state, who asked not to be identified due to fear of repercussions, says that criminal groups not only kidnap doctors but seek to exert control over them at hospitals.
“Those of us in the emergency room are most at risk,” he said.
“Straight after a shootout, they call – here almost everyone in the town has our telephone number – to warn you that they’re coming to the clinic, not to ask questions and to attend to their people. We can’t ask their names nor where they’re from . . .” he explained.
The director of a hospital in the region, who also asked to remain anonymous, said that members of organized crime groups have even demanded they be employed as medical staff so it is “they who control everything.”
Carlos Aranza, head of the México state Institute of Health, said that while visiting health care facilities in the Tierra Caliente region a few months ago, he was caught up in an incident involving a criminal gang.
“. . . they showed up at a hospital . . . and demanded medical supplies and some medications,” he said.
Aranza said he told hospital managers to comply with the demands.
He explained that doctors and other medical personnel who have been threatened have decided not to file formal complaints out of fear.
“[The threats] remain on an anecdotal level and don’t progress to a formal investigation,” Aranza said.
The only investigations that have taken place followed the murder of the three doctors, including one whose dismembered body was found near Querétaro in February 2018. However, no arrests have been made.
Aranza said that 36 clinics in four southern México state municipalities have closed as a result of the presence of organized crime and the inability to attract new medical personnel.
He explained that residents of rural communities who were previously able to access health care services close to home are now forced to travel to the larger municipal seats for medical attention.
“There is resistance from doctors, interns and social services personnel to working in the area. They don’t want to go even though there are vacant positions and [patients] to take care of,” Aranza said.
Thousands of Central Americans left Mexico City Thursday morning to continue their journey towards the United States border as President Donald Trump railed against past and present migrant caravans and continued to argue for his long-promised wall.
Authorities said that just under 2,400 migrants began leaving a sports stadium-cum-shelter at 4:30am to travel by subway to the north of the capital, where they were going to look for rides to Querétaro.
An additional 500 to 600 migrants remained in the shelter, waiting for humanitarian visas to be granted.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) said on Monday it had registered 15,582 requests for the visas and on Tuesday it reported that another 4,750 had been granted.
Since last October, thousands of Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence have entered Mexico as part of several migrant caravans, with most continuing to cities on the northern border, especially Tijuana.
There they remain stranded on the border, where they face long waits to lodge asylum requests with United States authorities.
Despite the likelihood that they too will have to wait for months or even years in cities with high rates of violent crime, members of the latest caravan are determined not to give up.
“I know it’s violent at the border, but I have to take that risk. I don’t have any more money and my family is waiting for me in the United States,” 27-year-old Honduran migrant María Murillo told the news agency Reuters.
Standing alongside her young son at the Mexico City shelter, she added: “Only God knows what we have gone through during all this time. I know that He is not going to abandon us.”
Another Honduran migrant, 33-year-old Óscar López, who is traveling with his wife and two children, said that he planned to go to Monterrey and then decide which section of the border to travel to.
“I’m not thinking of going to Tijuana . . . I want to find a more accessible border to hand myself and my family in [to United States immigration authorities]. I don’t want to be returned to Mexico,” he said.
On Tuesday, the United States government returned the first Central American asylum seeker to Mexico since a hardened immigration policy known as “Remain in Mexico” was introduced by the Trump administration.
Many migrants have expressed their opposition to the U.S. policy because they say that it will expose them to the kind of violence they are trying to escape back home. Other say that they will try to cross the border illegally, even if that means paying a smuggler.
“I’m not thinking of returning to Honduras, and if it’s necessary I’ll pay to have a [smuggler] help me cross,” said Mauricio Gómez, a young Honduran man.
A few hours after the migrants left Mexico City this morning, Trump took to Twitter to announce that United States authorities are preparing for their arrival.
“More troops being sent to the southern border to stop the attempted invasion of illegals, through large caravans, into our country. We have stopped the previous caravans, and we will stop these also. With a wall it would be so much easier and less expensive. Being built!” he wrote.
In other tweets today, he cited Mexico’s record 2018 homicide numbers, charging “this is a big contributor to the humanitarian crisis taking place on our southern border” and that the situation was worse than Afghanistan.
“Why wouldn’t any sane person want to build a wall! Construction has started and will not stop until it is finished,” Trump wrote.
Asked about the tweets this morning, President López Obrador said he respected Trump’s right to say what he wished but added, “I don’t want to say anything about that.”
The drug war is over and arresting drug lords is no longer a priority, President López Obrador told reporters yesterday.
“We are no longer at war,” he announced after a reporter asked if the government had captured any crime bosses since anti-fuel theft operations began in December.
“We haven’t detained any cartel leaders because that’s not our principal function. The government’s foremost responsibility is to ensure public security; our strategy no longer includes capturing drug lords.”
As for the drug war, launched in 2007 by former president Felipe Calderón and continued by his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, the president replied, “There is officially no more war. We want peace, and we are going to achieve peace.”
López Obrador said his strategy will focus instead on reducing homicides, which he claims is seeing progress. He expressed satisfaction over a report that said Tuesday’s homicides totaled just 54.
The daily average during 2018, a record year for homicides, was 90.
The president said what was important to him was reducing the number of homicides, robberies and kidnappings.
The president’s announcement drew skepticism from security consultant Alejandro Hope, who told the AFP news agency there was “a clear contradiction” in Wednesday’s statements.
“His anti-crime strategy barely changes anything, it’s not different from that of previous governments, and even accentuates the use of the armed forces for public security.”
A priority for former president Peña Nieto was locking up cartel capos, which his administration did. It arrested more than 100, including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Dámaso López, Miguel Ángel Treviño, Omar Treviño, Héctor Beltrán, Servando Gómez, Vicente Carrillo, Nazario Moreno and Enrique Plancarte.
But instead of curbing violence, it only became worse as the cartels fragmented and traffickers began to broaden the range of their criminal activities.
Cuernavaca Fair: lots of beer and a fake products market.
For the third year in a row, the Cuernavaca Fair has been cancelled by municipal authorities for security reasons.
Mayor Antonio Villalobos Adán explained that one of the main reasons to suspend the event, scheduled for mid-April, was the uncertainty over what security strategy the municipality’s new government will adopt.
“We must first guarantee the physical safety of those visiting . . . [the fair] can take place on another date, and not necessarily during Easter Week,” he said.
The municipality’s tourism promotion secretary said the fair needs to recover its status as a tourist and cultural attraction, which it lost many years ago, and become an event worthy of the capital of Morelos.
Andrés Remis Martínez said the fair instead has become more like a cantina, or bar, contributing to insecurity and violence.
“The Cuernavaca Fair should be about culture, flowers and food, and not a beer fest,” he said.
Violence and insecurity have contributed to the cancellation of the fair in the recent past, including the murder of its organizer in 2017. But before that the event had earned criticism for the sale of counterfeit products and copious amounts of alcohol, and for showcasing bands that were apologists for narco-culture.
Remis dismissed the suggestion that the fair would be cancelled permanently, asserting that the event could well take place in the summer and become a cultural and gastronomic festivity with ties to nature, instead of a “beer fest and counterfeit goods market.”
