Strike action in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, will result in the loss of 15 manufacturers that have decided to leave Mexico, according to a business leader who warned that about 30,000 jobs would be lost.
Luis Aguirre Lang, president of the National Council of the Maquiladora Industry (Index Nacional), said most of the firms are in the automotive sector.
Of 45 employers affected by the stoppage, 27 had agreed by last night to union demands for a 20% increase in workers’ salaries and a 32,000-peso (US $1,700) annual bonus.
However, Aguirre said even though companies are signing new collective agreements with workers, some of them plan to leave Mexico in the next six to nine months anyway.
He described the strikes as illegal and said it was regrettable that the federal government hadn’t intervened given that the Tamaulipas Conciliation and Arbitration Board recused itself from talks between 15 companies and leaders of the Union of Laborers and Industrial Workers of the Maquiladora Industry (SJOIIM).
Aguirre said companies faced stiff penalties for not complying with production contracts and that 21 manufacturing regions could see a reduction in foreign direct investment as a result of the work stoppages.
He said the Matamoros branch of Index Nacional has been negotiating collective agreements with the SJOOIM on behalf of 40 of its member companies for 30 years.
However, Aguirre claimed that after the increase to the minimum wage in the northern border region, the two parties had a different interpretation of one clause in the contracts, precipitating the dispute.
The SJOOIM interpretation resulted in its demand for a radical 20% pay increase, he said.
Kristobal Meléndez Aguilar, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research in Mexico City, said that while the increase to the minimum wage in the region along with reductions to the value-added and income tax rates were “good in theory, in practice it’s not easy because after a few months companies lack liquidity because they have to fund [the pay increase] or turn to credit.”
He added: “What’s happening in Matamoros is worrying because it could discourage the arrival of FDI [foreign direct investment], hence the role of the federal government in mediating between the two parties is essential.”
Burning vehicles during an anti-fuel theft operation in Guanajuato yesterday.
An anti-fuel theft operation in Guanajuato yesterday triggered a hostile response from residents who attempted to repel security forces with fiery blockades.
Around 200 members of the army, navy and Federal Police carried out an operation in the municipality of Villagrán that resulted in the seizure of at least 24 tanker trucks filled with gasoline, seven trailers and 5,000 liters of stolen fuel, all of which were found on a property in the community of San Salvador Torrecillas.
Angry residents responded to the raid by placing barricades at the entrance to the small town of Santa Rosa de Lima to prevent the security forces from reaching an illegal gas station.
The mask-wearing, stick-wielding residents who, according to municipal police, are complicit with fuel thieves, claimed that the authorities didn’t have a search warrant to enter the property where the stolen fuel and vehicles were seized.
Other residents set up a blockade made of burning tires on the Celaya-Juventino Rosas highway and set at least four vehicles on fire on other roads in order to block access to Villagrán.
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In Celaya, which adjoins Villagrán to the east, a group of individuals stopped a bus at around 7:00pm and forced the driver and 10 passengers to get off before they set the vehicle alight.
The same individuals also forced the occupants of a car to get out after which they riddled it with bullets.
Authorities didn’t report any arrests in relation to the anti-fuel theft operation or the response by residents, while local officials said the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, led by José Antonio “El Marro” Yepez, operates in the Villagrán-Celaya area.
Meanwhile, authorities discovered a tunnel beneath an industrial building in Mexico City that was dug by fuel thieves to place illegal taps on five different pipelines.
Pemex CEO Octavio Romero said taps were found on all five pipelines, which varied in size from eight to 14 inches and carried magna and premium gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.
“Within the property there is a tunnel where we can see five pipelines that transport fuel from Tula [Hidalgo] to Mexico City and México state and we can [also] see five illegal taps,” Romero said in a video posted to Twitter.
The Mexico City tunnel that led to five pipeline taps.
Hoses were connected to the taps to transport the fuel to a large parking area where it was presumably loaded into tanker trucks.
The owner of the property, located in the northern borough of Azcapotzalco, said he had rented the building to supposed business people but they abandoned it in recent days after failing to pay rent for two months.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said that safety authorities and Pemex had indicated that there was no risk to the local population from the illegal taps. She said that nearby properties where there might be a “similar situation” are being reviewed.
No arrests have been made and the whereabouts of the building’s recent tenants is unknown.
The discoveries in Guanajuato and Mexico City come amid a crackdown on fuel theft by the federal government, which has deployed the military to protect petroleum infrastructure and closed some major pipelines.
The latter part of the strategy caused widespread and prolonged gasoline shortages that persist in some states.
President López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance.
Reuters/Edgard Garrido
Nearly 34,000 people were murdered in Mexico last year, according to new government statistics — the deadliest year since modern record-keeping began.
Of all the challenges facing Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, curbing violence may be the biggest.
Mexico has seen ever-growing bloodshed since 2006, when president Felipe Calderón deployed the Mexican armed forces to fight drug cartels.
Rather than reduce violence, the government’s crackdown actually increased conflicts between and among cartels, according to my research on criminal violence and numerous other studies. It also led to widespread military abuses of power against civilians.
More than 250,000 people have been murdered and 35,000 have disappeared since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war.
López Obrador said on the campaign trail that Mexico must “consider multiple alternatives to achieve the pacification of the country.”
He pitched several possibilities to reduce crime without using law enforcement, including granting amnesty to low-level criminals, negotiating with crime bosses to dismantle their syndicates and confronting the human rights violations committed by soldiers, police and public officials.
Some of those ideas – particularly the controversial notion of negotiating with organized crime – have faded away since López Obrador took office on December 1.
So far, his administration has put more emphasis on traditional law-and-order policies.
In December, he ordered the creation of a Mexican national guard to fight organized crime. Though human rights advocates and security experts fear this approach will repeat past fatal mistakes of militarizing Mexican law enforcement, the lower house of Congress recently approved the measure. It will likely be approved in the Senate.
López Obrador has followed through on one of his campaign proposals for “pacifying” Mexico, though.
Mexicans have marched every year since 2014 to demand the truth about what happened to the 43 Ayotzinapa college students. AP Photo/Marco Ugarte
Days after being sworn in, the president established a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in the southern Mexican town of Iguala in 2014.
Five years after their disappearance, the truth of this infamous case remains elusive.
According to the government of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, the crime was a local affair. Students en route to a protest march in Mexico City were detained by the Iguala police and, at the mayor’s order, handed over to a local gang, which killed them and burned their bodies.
Investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights could not corroborate this story. In the burn pit identified in 2016, they found no physical evidence of the missing students.
In a scathing final report, investigators said that authorities had ignored crucial evidence that the army and Federal Police were involved in the students’ disappearance.
A truth commission will help Mexicans “understand the truth and do justice to the young people of Ayotzinapa,” López Obrador said on Twitter in announcing its creation.
The Ayotzinapa truth commission will put extraordinary resources and personnel on the case and give the victims’ families and perpetrators a voice in the process – neither of which police investigations in Mexico typically do.
Truth commissions aim to create a collective, participatory narrative of human rights atrocities that not only exposes the perpetrators but also identifies the conditions that facilitated violence. They are a central component of transitional justice, an approach to helping countries recover after civil war or dictatorship.
Countries like Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil and Peru all used truth commissions to reckon with the toll of their bloody dictatorships and wars and give reparations to victims. South Africa famously used a truth commission to document the horrific human rights violations committed under apartheid.
Mexico’s situation is different: it has a criminal violence problem, not a civil war.
But my research indicates this pacification strategy may have some promise.
Recent studies suggest that truth commissions can actually help prevent future violence. Because they identify perpetrators, who then face punishment for their crimes, truth commissions can both take criminals off the street and deter others from committing crime.
Holding public officials responsible for their corruption would be a major achievement in Mexico.
As the United States trial of drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán illustrates, corruption penetrates the highest levels of Mexican government.
Since the beginning of its drug war, in 2006, Mexican citizens have filed 10,000 complaints of abuse against soldiers, including accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture. The government has done little to look into those allegations. Nor has it actively investigated most of the murders of 97 Mexican journalists since then.
If an Ayotzinapa truth commission enjoys the full support of federal authorities – which is not a guarantee given the corruption it will almost certainly uncover – it could restore some faith in Mexico’s justice system. Currently, 97% of all crimes go unpunished.
Focusing on truth may also help the country better understand – and therefore address – the root causes of violence in Mexico.
Truth commissions, however, will not immediately solve an incredibly complex security crisis.
As Amnesty International has said, the Mexican government cannot create a truth commission to investigate every mass atrocity of the drug war. Mexico also needs a functioning justice system.
Another transitional justice tool the López Obrador government has proposed is amnesty to non-violent, low-level drug offenders.
Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero says that pardoning people convicted and jailed for growing, processing, transporting or using drugs – particularly women and offenders from marginalized populations – would stop the cycle of violence in Mexico and encourage petty criminals to disarm.
Mexico’s amnesty proposal is not unlike the First Step Act recently passed in the United States, which will result in the early release of about 2,600 prisoners, many of them drug offenders.
Mexico’s prison population has been steadily rising for years.
Between 2000 and 2016, it increased 40%, from 154,765 inmates to 217,868, according to the Institute of Criminal Policy Research. The number of people jailed in Mexico for drug offenses has also increased markedly.
As in the United States, most prisoners in Mexico come from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the Collective for the Study of Drugs and Law, a nonprofit research group.
Should López Obrador’s amnesty idea become policy, it would surely be controversial.
Victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez were outraged when, in August 2018, president-elect López Obrador said residents must be “willing to forgive.”
Many caught in the crossfire of Mexico’s drug war say justice and punishment should come before forgiveness.
But violence in Mexico is so pervasive that, in my opinion, the country must consider every option that might stanch the bleeding.
Truth commissions and amnesties to low-level crimes will not pacify the country immediately – but they may bring some of the truth and justice Mexicans so desperately need.
Fuel is scooped up at a pipeline tap in Acambay January 12.
In Acambay, México state, everyone knows who the petroleum thieves are. At least, that’s what one local politician claims.
Illegal taps on the Tula-Toluca pipeline, which runs through the municipality, are carried out “in broad daylight,” according to councilor Francisco Ángeles.
While he doesn’t accuse Acambay residents of involvement in the illegal fuel theft racket, another councilor does, although the locals themselves deny that to be the case.
Instead, the mainly indigenous Otomí people assert that the crime is committed by gangs that come into the municipality from other states.
Acambay councilor Miguel Ángel Navarrete Gonzále, told the newspaper El Universal that there are at least four communities in the municipality where stolen fuel is stored and sold.
“La Teresa, Conejeras [and] Puentecillas are three of the four [communities] where there are a lot of people who earn their living [tapping pipelines]. They’re from here, there might be one or two who come from elsewhere,” he said.
“Many of [the local residents] decided to take up [petroleum theft] as a job instead of working in the fields or another trade,” Navarrete added.
Nicodermo González Correa, a 74-year-old farmhand, said that the huachicoleros, or fuel thieves, often arrive in the early morning in the fields where he works, through which the Tula-Toluca pipeline also passes.
However, he said that he had never reported the presence of the thieves to authorities because of fear.
“I prefer to cross myself each morning, get on the tractor and hope that a fuel spill won’t be the cause of my death,” González said.
Since the pipeline explosion in Hidalgo on January 18, local residents fear the same could happen in Acambay, claiming that although the military and Federal Police have cordoned off the Toluca-Tula duct, unsecured perforations are still leaking fuel.
Even so, councilor Navarrete said that if free gasoline is on offer again, people won’t hesitate to steal it.
“If they open another tap, 10 or 20 times more people than last time will approach it . . . Even if you told them that 100 people died [in Hidalgo], they’d go again to take the gasoline,” he said.
Michoacán is not the only state where teachers have walked off the job to protest against the government.
More than 1,000 Oaxaca teachers affiliated with Section 22 of the CNTE union began an indefinite strike yesterday, erecting blockades in the capital that snarled traffic on two busy streets and staging protests in other parts of the state.
The CNTE members are demanding a meeting with the Oaxaca State Institute of Education (IEEPO) to discuss issues including job security, the recognition and employment of physical education teachers and the payment of bonuses and benefits they say they are owed.
Yesterday’s protests were led by teacher-trainers from the 11 teachers’ colleges in the state, media group NVI Noticias reported.
To block traffic, teachers commandeered buses bound for the Oaxaca bus terminal and parked them across Avenida Juárez and Calzada Niños Héroes de Chapultepec, the newspaper Reforma said.
Police sources said the latter street was blocked between 1:30pm and 6:00pm. On Avenida Juárez, a sit-in was staged in front of government offices.
Teachers also protested at the IEEPO cashiers’ officers in Oaxaca City for two and a half hours.
“They owe us bonuses dating back to 2015 and other work benefits . . .” said Wilfrido López, an instructor at the Tlacochahuaya Bilingual Teachers’ College.
However, IEEPO chief Francisco Ángel Villareal denied that any money was owed to the teachers, charging that the protests related only to administrative matters that the government is already attending to.
Lucila Mendoza, an official in Section 22 of the CNTE union, said that since the previous federal government’s educational reform was implemented, state education authorities have discontinued physical education programs in many schools, leaving at least 4,000 teachers with reduced hours.
Strikes, blockades and even vandalism have been a trademark of Oaxaca teachers’ strikes for many years.
The darker the color, the more corrupt. transparency international
Mexico’s ranking on an international corruption index plummeted 33 places during former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term, a period in which the government was embroiled in several damaging scandals.
Transparency International’s 2018 Corruption Perception Index placed Mexico in 138th place in the ranking of 180 countries, three spots below its 2017 ranking. When Peña Nieto took office in 2012, Mexico ranked 105th.
However, in subsequent years, Peña Nieto and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government he led were plagued by a range of scandals that analysts believe contributed heavily to the party’s crushing defeat at last year’s elections.
They included the disappearance of 43 teaching students in Guerrero, the so-called White House scandal in which the former president’s wife purchased a mansion built by a favored government contractor, the Master Fraud embezzlement scheme, the use of spyware to monitor government critics and allegations that the former CEO of Pemex accepted bribes from Brazilian company Odebrecht.
Transparency International also pointed out that several governors in Mexico have also been caught up in corruption scandals.
In the organization’s latest index published yesterday, Mexico sits on a par with Guinea, Iran, Lebanon, Papua New Guinea and Russia, all of which achieved a score of 28 out of 100.
A score of zero means that a country is highly corrupt, while 100 means that it is very clean.
“In Mexico, basic political rights, including freedom of expression and press freedom, have sharply declined. Without a free media to provide oversight to government, the ability to prevent and denounce corruption is limited,” Transparency International said in its Americas report.
Mexico’s ranking is the lowest of all 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and only slightly above Guatemala and Nicaragua, both of which Transparency International said were suffering from “democratic governance crises.”
Eduardo Bohórquez, director of the Mexico office of Transparency International, said that impunity was a significant factor that has allowed corruption to flourish.
“Preventative measures taken until now lose their effectiveness when those who participate in networks of corruption know very well that they won’t be sentenced and that they will be able to keep money diverted from the public purse,” he said.
President López Obrador, who took office on December 1, has vowed to combat corruption, but has said that his government will only seek to prosecute past presidents if the public demands it.
First on the 2018 Corruption Perception Index was Denmark, with a score of 88 out of 100, followed by New Zealand, which was one point behind. Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland shared third place.
In the Americas, Canada was the highest ranked country at ninth followed by the United States, which ranked 22nd and Uruguay, which placed 23rd.
The world’s most corrupt countries, according to the rankings, are Somalia, Syria and South Sudan, with scores of just 10, 13 and 13 respectively.
Two ships carrying 800,000 liters of fuel believed stolen have been seized by the Criminal Investigation Agency and the navy in the Gulf of Mexico.
The federal government was tipped off about the vessels by an anonymous caller early Monday morning and quickly intercepted the ships, which were then placed in federal custody at the port of Dos Bocas, Tabasco.
Government forces also detained 10 suspects, the ships’ captains and crew members among them.
Neither the ships’ point of origin nor destination is certain, but officials suspect they took on their cargo in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
Tabasco Governor Adán Augusto López Hernández recently told reporters that the federal government is investigating several cases of fuel theft in Dos Bocas.
The latter port is the site of the federal government’s new oil refinery. On January 16, President López Obrador told reporters that corruption was rampant in the port.
“We are investigating what is possibly a massive fuel theft operation, because it appears that thousands of unregistered barrels of crude oil are leaving port daily in Dos Bocas port alone.”
The federal government’s program to pay guaranteed prices to farmers for five agricultural products could place pressure on inflation and discourage competition if it is not well-executed, experts warn.
President López Obrador announced earlier this month the prices the government will pay for corn, beans, wheat, rice and milk, asserting that more than two million farmers will benefit from the program and that it will help Mexico to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Francisco Javier Núñez, former chief of the Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece), said that while the government hasn’t yet explained the detail of the program, at face value it appears to be flawed.
“It’s not clear how this program will work. For example, the government will purchase corn crops at 5,600 pesos [per tonne] when the market price is 4,000 pesos so, what will Segalmex [Mexican Food Security, a government agency] do with the crops it buys? We assume that it will go out to sell them but nobody will buy them because they’re overpriced,” he said.
Núñez charged that the government will be forced to sell corn at a lower price than it paid and will thus lose money.
“You can’t force large consumers to buy it from you at an expensive price. The only way is to limit grain imports but that will drive up industry costs,” he said.
The former Cofece chief warned that if the program isn’t implemented carefully, it could also be vulnerable to fraud.
“The main problem will be how to prevent fraudulent schemes from people who, for example, buy corn cheaply [from the government] and sell it at an expensive price . . . Those whom the program is directed at won’t be the beneficiaries,” Núñez said.
He also said that according to existing regulations the government requires authorization from Cofece in order to set guaranteed prices, charging that their establishment would reduce competition.
Juan Pablo Rojas, president of the National Confederation of Corn Producers (Cnpamm), said there was a possibility that the program could have an impact on consumers if it is not well-executed, predicting that the price of tortillas could go up by as much as 20%.
Nevertheless, he argued that guaranteed prices are a good thing for small and medium-sized agricultural producers.
“It gives us confidence and certainty that yields will have a market and a secure price,” he said.
Rojas said “the main concern” with regard to the payment of guaranteed prices is that the government won’t have “the resources necessary to meet the demand” of the different agricultural sectors and that “the program ends up being a mere promise.”
He also said the program could cause yields to decrease rather than increase, meaning that imports of basic foodstuffs would have to go up, undermining López Obrador’s goal to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Representatives of other agricultural organizations were less pessimistic about the impact on inflation and the economy, and generally praised the initiative.
Pedro Alejandro Díaz, president of the National Council of Rice Producers, said he was confident that the program wouldn’t causes prices of the grain to increase, while Álvaro González, head of the National Front of Milk Producers and Consumers, said it was pleasing to see that the government was taking dairy production costs into account.
Juan Carlos Arizmendi, head of the Mexican Council for Sustainable Rural Development, said the program was also a good thing for bean farmers but added that the extent to which it will benefit producers in states such as Zacatecas, Durango and Chihuahua remains to be seen.
“We offer our vote of confidence that the authorities will know how to efficiently execute these [price] programs,” he said.
Some of the vehicles to be sold at auction in February.
President López Obrador has announced that the federal government will sell off vehicles and aircraft in two auctions at the Santa Lucía Military Base in February and April.
He said proceeds from the sales will be used to fund the creation of the new security force, the national guard.
The government expects to generate more than 100 million pesos (US $5.26 million) at the first event, scheduled for February 23 and 24, with the sale of 263 vehicles.
Among them:
171 pickup trucks;
Seven semi-tractors;
30 motorcycles;
12 trucks;
Two farm tractors;
Two buses;
Five semi-trailers;
One armored BMW;
One armored Audi.
The second auction will take place April 26 and 27 and will see the sale of 76 airplanes and helicopters, including the presidential jet, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
With the sale of the presidential plane, López Obrador will fulfill one of his campaign promises. The aircraft was seen by many as a symbol of the excesses of previous administrations. However, some experts contend that the government might actually lose money on the sale because of the lack of demand for such aircraft and the high cost of reconverting the plane.
During his announcement, the president also addressed concerns regarding the future of the vehicles and aircraft. He said he would ask for thorough background checks on potential buyers to ensure that the items are not used in illicit activities.
A suspect has been arrested in the homicide of journalist Rafael Murúa Manríquez, who was slain in his native Mulegé, Baja California, on January 19.
State Attorney General Daniel de la Rosa Anaya told a press conference that Héctor “El Moreno” N., originally from Veracruz, had been identified as a drug trafficking plaza chief in Santa Rosalía.
De la Rosa said the suspect was one of several in the case and that all have been identified and arrest warrants have been issued for them.
Two main lines of investigation are being pursued in the murder, one regarding Murúa’s activities as a journalist and another concerning a personal dispute that arose between him and an alleged gang member after both were involved in a traffic accident.
De la Rosa also stated that Murúa’s reports regarding the threats he received in 2017 and 2018 are also being investigated.
The most recent of those reports was made just over two months ago when Murúa denounced harassment and threats after writing comments that were critical of the administration of Mulegé Mayor Felipe Prado Bautista.
On November 14 he wrote that he had learned through a municipal official that there was a plan to kill him.
After the Attorney General gave his update on the investigation, Mayor Prado celebrated the progress achieved and said he was fully disposed to collaborate and, if necessary, would step down as mayor.
Murúa, 34, operated a local web portal called Radio Kashana and lived in Santa Rosalía.
