A bus was set on fire during violence Friday in Acapulco.
At least 30 schools in Acapulco will begin their Christmas break early, but not to give students and teachers more time to enjoy the vacation period: it is believed to be too dangerous to remain in school.
Teachers have advised the Guerrero Secretariat of Education stating that the holiday vacation will begin on December 6, two weeks early, due to the current wave of violence in the city.
Teachers said in a letter that the situation is becoming “more dangerous,” calling the violence “a scourge that is becoming more uncontrollable each day.”
The recent wave of violence is part of a rising trend that has been growing over the last decade in the popular tourist destination.
In an analysis published by the newspaper El Universal in October, journalist and native Acapulco resident Arturo de Dios Palma recounted how his hometown has changed during his lifetime.
“I’m from Acapulco and I’ve seen how the port city has gone from being a paradise to a living hell,” he wrote.
“I grew up in an Acapulco very different from the one of today . . . I spent Christmases awake all night looking for posada celebrations, lighting fireworks and drinking cider with my cousins.”
This Christmas promises to be quite different from those of the author’s childhood.
“I’ll admit that Acapulco has never been a place of peaceful tranquility, but nor has it been the hell that it has become in the last decade,” wrote de Dios Palma.
“The violence has brought us many scenes of terror, pain, desolation, many scenes of death, many disappearances.”
Deputy Bank of México governor Heath: downturn not significant.
The economy entered a light recession in the first half of the year, according to revised data published Monday that also showed that third-quarter growth was lower than first estimated.
The national statistics agency, Inegi, reported that the economy contracted 0.09% in the first quarter and 0.06% in the second. It also said that GDP shrank by 0.1% in the last quarter of 2018.
In addition, Inegi reported that growth between July and September was just 0.01%. Preliminary figures published at the end of October showed a third-quarter expansion of 0.1%.
Initial Inegi data showed a contraction in the first quarter of 2019 but growth in both the last quarter of 2018 and the second quarter of this year, meaning Mexico had not entered a recession.
Most economists classify two consecutive quarters of negative growth as a technical recession. However, others take a different view.
Deputy Bank of México governor Jonathan Heath pointed out in July that the National Bureau of Economic Research, a United States non-profit organization, classifies a recession as a period in which there is a significant downturn across all sectors of the economy as well as higher unemployment and lower industrial production, among other indicators.
He acknowledged that there has been a downturn in the economy but charged that it was far from “significant.”
Health also said that not all sectors of the economy have contracted, pointing out that manufacturing has grown, albeit at a slow pace.
Alonso Cervera, chief Latin America economist for Credit Suisse, expressed a similar opinion on Twitter Monday.
“Some will say ‘see, we were already in recession.’ I call it stagnation more than recession. The decline in activity hasn’t been significant nor has it hit the whole economy,” he wrote.
Whatever way it’s interpreted, the revised data is bad news for President López Obrador, who has overseen a lackluster economy in his first year in office.
His pledge to achieve average 4% growth during his six-year term now appears more difficult to attain than ever.
Marcelo Ebrard tells president's press conference that a narco-terrorist designation is unnecessary.
The extended family of three women and six children who were murdered in Bavispe, Sonora, earlier this month is asking the United States government to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Uploaded to the White House online platform “We the People,” the LeBarón family petition says that cartels control the flow of illegal drugs into the United States from Mexico, including heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and “ultra-deadly” fentanyl.
“With seemingly unlimited resources it has proven almost impossible to stop them. They run major human trafficking networks. They kidnap and extort with almost complete impunity. Their unbridled acts of violence and murder have overrun our borders and created an international crisis. They seek political power in order to create a narco-state in Mexico,” the petition says.
“Each year, there are approximately 35% more murders committed in Mexico than by all officially designated terrorist groups combined. We cannot afford to continue the same failed policies used to combat organized crime. They are terrorists, and it’s time to acknowledge it!”
The petition needs 100,000 signatures by December 24 in order to get a response from the White House.
The LeBarón commmunity in Galeana, Chihuahua.
Bryan LeBarón, a California-based activist with close links to the Mormon communities in northern Mexico, told the newspaper El Universal that the aim of the petition is to attract the attention of the presidents of both the United States and Mexico and encourage them to develop a joint strategy to combat drug cartels.
“People are afraid that Mexico’s sovereignty will be affected but there are ways to respect the country’s laws and achieve more effective collaboration,” said the dual U.S. and Mexican citizen.
LeBarón claimed that “Mexico doesn’t have enough resources, soldiers or weapons” to combat organized crime on its own.
“We saw that in the release of the son of El Chapo Guzmán and also in the massacre of my family. They [the security forces] took almost eight hours to arrive,” he said.
“The hugs, not bullets, strategy isn’t going to work,” LeBarón added, referring to President López Obrador’s plan to reduce violence through social programs rather than the use of force.
The social change that López Obrador is trying to achieve is unattainable without security, he said.
“It doesn’t matter how much is invested in education or how much they seek to help the middle class or the poorest people, without security it’s not possible, as honorable as the president may be,” LeBarón said.
The activist said that members of the LeBarón family will ask López Obrador during a scheduled December 2 meeting to accept United States President Donald Trump’s offer to help Mexico “wage war” on cartels.
AMLO, as the president is widely known, quickly declined the offer, telling reporters on November 5 that his response to Trump was a “categorical no,” explaining, “we have to act independently in accordance with our constitution.”
Both the president and Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard repeated that message on Monday morning. The latter said the the petition to have narcos declared terrorists was unnecessary because Mexico would not permit any kind of foreign intervention.
Furthermore, he said, there have been advances in the joint investigation into the November ambush of the Mormon women and children but declined to offer details.
Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said on November 11 that suspects had been arrested in connection with the attack, which federal authorities believe was perpetrated by La Línea, a gang with links to the Juárez Cartel. But no additional details regarding the arrests have been given.
Authorities said the gang may have mistaken the vehicles in which the murdered women and children were traveling as those of a splinter cell of the Sinaloa Cartel known as Los Salazar. However, family members rejected the hypothesis.
Actresses Vanessa Arias and Esmeralda Ugalde were traveling with Sandí on Sunday.
A Mexican actor and a French tourist were kidnapped Sunday on the Xinantécatl volcano, better known as the Nevado de Toluca, a popular hiking area in México state.
Unofficial reports state that the actor was Alejandro Sandi, 37, who has appeared in a number of television series including the popular telenovela El Señor de los Cielos (Lord of the Skies). The French tourist was identified as Frederic Michel.
According to police, the victims, who were traveling separately, were near the top of the mountain when they were kidnapped.
A witness traveling with Sandi, 39-year-old Vanesa Arias of Mexico City, told police they were stopped in their vehicle around 8:45am. The kidnappers forced her and another friend out of the car and escaped in it, taking the actor with them.
Meanwhile, Mathieu Noirot Julien told police a similar story. He said that he and his friend Michel were riding in a Toyota truck when they were forced to stop. The kidnappers forced him out and took the truck with Michel in it.
A search effort led by the National Guard and state and local police was initiated after the reports were filed.
As of Monday morning, there were still no reports of the victims’ whereabouts or whether the kidnappers had made contact with their families.
Neither Attorney General Alejandro Gómez Sánchez nor his office had issued an official statement related to the case.
According to the National Public Security System (SESNSP), kidnappings have increased by 9% in the first year of President López Obrador’s administration.
There were 1,273 reported kidnappings from January to October 2018, and 1,392 in the same period in 2019, amounting to 119 more cases during the new administration.
Monday's march will be accompanied by 1,000 female police officers.
One thousand policewomen and 2,000 female government workers will accompany a march in Mexico City on Monday to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum told a press conference on Sunday that the city employees – dubbed “women of peace” – will walk side by side with the various groups participating in the anti-violence march, which will take place four days after a gender violence alert was activated in the capital.
She said that the workers will help to keep the peace but stressed that “they won’t intervene; they’ll simply be accompanying the march in a peaceful way.”
The mayor said the participation of the government in the march wasn’t planned, explaining that the employees themselves asked to be included.
“A lot of colleagues said they wanted to help and participate . . . They decided to attend voluntarily but it won’t be like before,” Sheinbaum said, referring to the cinturón de paz, or peace belt, of government workers that lined the route of the October 2 march to commemorate the 51st anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre.
Mayor Sheinbaum announces measures to guarantee peace during Monday’s march.
“Now they will accompany the demonstrators in their march,” she explained.
The mayor said the role of the 1,000 policewomen will be to “guarantee peace” during the march, which will depart at 5:00pm from two points, the Angel of Independence and the Monument to the Revolution, and conclude in Mexico City’s historic center.
“It’s important to say that if anyone is empathetic with the demand for there not to be violence . . . it’s policewomen . . .” Sheinbaum said.
The mayor said that 37 historic monuments along the route will be walled off or covered to ensure that they are not vandalized and that the police will carry fire extinguishers to put out any blazes lit by radical demonstrators.
“There is a very clear instruction from the secretary of citizens’ security to the policewomen who will participate and that’s for there not to be any police abuse . . . All of them have this instruction . . .” she said.
“. . . We’re not going to fall into a provocation. A lot of the time what they [radical demonstrators] are seeking is for there to be police abuse, a confrontation . . . but we’re not going to do that . . .” Sheinbaum said.
The mayor on Thursday issued a gender alert for Mexico City, activating a range of measures to address violence against women. Gender alerts are now active in 20 states across the country.
There were 3,662 murders of women in 2018, according to official statistics, and 1,834 in the first six months of 2018.
Ten women are killed on average every day in Mexico, making the country one of the most dangerous for females in the world.
Electric scooter rentals are coming to the Guadalajara suburb of Zapopan after the municipality approved a pilot project to begin testing their use on December 2.
Scooter companies Bird, Frog, Grin and Movo will each place 250 scooters on Zapopan streets.
They will charge 10-15 pesos (US $0.50-0.75) to unlock the scooters with an app and 2-3 pesos (US $0.10-0.15) per minute to use them.
The operators will be required to carry insurance and police users to ensure they follow traffic regulations.
The companies are not allowed to place advertising beyond their own branding on the scooters, and any company that places more than 250 scooters on the streets will be pulled from the project.
For their part, users of the scooters will have to comply with city regulations. They will have to ride in bike lanes or the right lane of traffic, and are not allowed to ride on sidewalks.
They must respect all traffic signals, rights of way and ride with, not against, traffic. They will also be obliged to park them in special scooter parking zones or vehicle spaces, and not obstruct sidewalk traffic.
Guadalajara is also expected to join the initiative to provide the alternative form of transportation.
Martínez, left, and the priest who abused him, Marcial Maciel.
A priest abused as a teenager by the founder of the Legion of Christ Catholic order himself went on to abuse children in at least two cities in Mexico.
Fernando Martínez Suárez admitted to having sexually abused at least eight girls aged 6 to 11 between 1990 and 1993 at the Cumbres Catholic Institutes in Mexico City and Cancún.
As a result of an investigation by the sexual abuse prevention organization Praesidium, the Legion of Christ admitted to being aware of a number of acts of sexual abuse by Martínez.
It stated that the mother one victim accused Martínez of having abused her daughter in 1990 in Mexico City.
The priest admitted to having abused the girl and was suspended from his religious duties as a result, only to be moved to another city by his superior and founder of the order, Marcial Maciel.
Pope John Paul II received Maciel at the Vatican in 2004.
He sent Martínez to the Cumbres Institute in Cancún, despite the priest’s request that he not be assigned to the post.
“I do not feel physically, spiritually or morally firm enough to accept such a responsibility with all of the recent precedents,” Martínez is reported to have said.
The priest was placed in the school anyway, and went on to abuse at least seven girls between 1991 and 1993. Six of the cases were fully documented, but Martínez admitted to having abused a seventh girl as well.
The Legion of Christ admitted Maciel himself had sexually abused Martínez in Spain and Italy in 1954 when he was 15 years old.
“Although he knew that Father Martínez had in turn abused others, Maciel decided to move him from one place to another and, ignoring the reservations from the regional superior and the priest’s own request, he named him director of the school in Cancún,” the Legion of Christ said in a statement.
“The community and the school were not informed of Father Martínez’s abuse. Thus, Martínez committed acts of abuse in at least two different places.”
When once again informed of Martínez’s actions in 1993, Maciel relieved him of his post in Cancún and moved him to an administrative position in Salamanca, Spain. It is not known if Martínez continued to commit acts of sexual abuse after the move.
The Mexican-born Maciel founded the Legion of Christ in 1941 and remained its general director until 2005 when he was forced to step down due to accusations of sexual abuse. There were suspicions over the latter going as far back as 1941, and he was investigated between 1956 and 1959, but nothing came of the investigation.
After Maciel died in 2008 it was revealed he had had relationships with at least two women and fathered as many as six children. He is alleged to have abused two of them.
Avelar, left, and his alleged boss, cartel leader El Mencho.
A judge suspected of being on the payroll of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) was arrested in Guadalajara on Friday.
Isidro Avelar Gutiérrrez, 59, is accused of receiving bribes from the CJNG in return for favorable treatment in the courts. The Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) suspended the judge from his post in May after a complaint was filed against him for irregularities in his assets and income.
Avelar is being held in the Altiplano maximum security prison until his court hearing on Friday, November 29.
“With results, we continue to demonstrate the policy of zero tolerance for corruption,” said the head of the Supreme Court (SCJN), Arturo Zaldívar. “[We are] building a solid and trustworthy [federal judiciary power] that benefits the people.”
Avelar was designated and sanctioned under the Kingpin Act by the United States Treasury Department in May for his ties to the CJNG and its financial arm, Los Cuinis. It alleged the judge had accepted bribes from the organizations “in exchange for providing favorable judicial rulings to their senior members.”
He acquitted Nemesio “El Menchito” Oseguera González, son of the cartel’s founder, of charges of organized crime and money laundering in 2016.
The U.S. government considers the CJNG to be one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world due to its involvement in the trafficking of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl to the United States and its violent actions in Mexico.
“Officials such as Isidro Avelar Gutiérrez . . . callously enrich themselves at the cost of their fellow citizens,” the Treasury Department said in May. It also sanctioned the ex-governor of Nayarit, Roberto Sandoval for alleged corruption involving the same cartel.
The arrest is part of President López Obrador’s commitment to rid the judiciary of corrupt judges.
It took 20 people to lift the baby Jesus into place.
A 6.5-meter-tall statue of the baby Jesus recently installed in a Catholic church in Guadalupe, Zacatecas, is believed to be the largest effigy of its kind in the world.
Measuring 6 meters, 58 centimeters tall and weighing an estimated 750-800 kilograms, the gargantuan baby Jesus was commissioned by the parish priest of the the Church of the Epiphany, Humberto Rodríguez.
“The church is eight meters from floor to roof, and I commissioned an image measuring six and a half meters. I wasn’t planning on it being the biggest baby Jesus in the world, I simply adapted it to the size of the church,” Rodríguez said.
Nevertheless, he admitted that once he began to study other representations of the child savior for inspiration, he realized that it was going to be the world’s biggest.
“I realized that the biggest baby Jesus — until now — was in Nezahualcóyotl [in Mexico state], measuring five meters tall, and that there was another in Germany at four meters,” he said.
One of many memes suggested it was actually Genesis drummer Phil Collins, noting the biblical connotation of the band’s name.
Created by artisan Román Salvador Barrueto and his team from Chimalhuacán, México state, the statue cost 218,000 pesos (US $11,227), which came from funds donated by parishioners.
The statue was transported the 600 kilometers between Barrueto’s workshop and the church in Guadalupe with its arms removed.
Once it arrived at the church on November 13, it required 12 men to carry and place it next to the altar. It then took 20 to hoist and attach the statue to the wall.
The next step for the baby Jesus will be to find him some clothes, a task which the parishioners have already begun to tackle. Rodríguez said they were sewing nine-meter-long cloaks in which to swaddle the newly arrived statue.
On the wall next to the figure, local artist Hilario Fuentes painted images of the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph and the three wise men.
The appearance of the colossal baby Jesus did not go unnoticed on social media, where the statue was quickly given the internet’s implacable meme treatment.
“This baby Jesus from #Zacatecas deserves a thread of memes. Let’s all pitch in. I’ll begin with this EDC [Electric Daisy Carnival] Baby Jesus,” one user posted along with a photo of the statue on the extravagantly decorated stage of the popular electronic music festival.
Other memes compared the statue to Genesis drummer Phil Collins and put the baby Jesus in classic monster movies and TV shows, such as Godzilla and Power Rangers.
Easy prey for gas thieves, presumably working with local cops.
A criminal organization that is allegedly in cahoots with municipal police and authorities is stealing one million liters of propane gas a month in Texcoco, México state, before selling it at inflated prices.
According to a report in the newspaper Milenio, gang members known as halcones (hawks or lookouts) alert their fellow criminals to the location of tanker trucks carrying gas in the municipality just east of Mexico City.
The huachigaseros, or gas thieves, then catch up to a truck in their own vehicles, surround it to prevent any attempt at escape, force the driver out at gunpoint and steal the tanker with its valuable load.
A gas truck driver identified only as Carlos recounted a terrifying early morning robbery experience to Milenio.
“I was supplying [gas] at five in the morning and all of a sudden I heard that stones were being thrown at the truck. I stopped and some armed guys came up and . . . took everything we had: telephones, money . . . and the gas,” he said.
Carlos said municipal police attended the scene of the robbery but told him and his co-worker that there was nothing they could do.
“With their arms crossed, they told us: ‘You know what? We can’t do anything. If you know that you can’t come this way, what are you doing here?’” he said.
Another driver, Antonio, said that gas thieves hijacked his truck and beat him and his co-worker.
“They pointed a gun at my head and hit my colleague with a pipe. The aggressors said to us: ‘You know what? Speak with who you have to speak to. You have to leave here . . . If you don’t . . .we’ll kill you and burn the tanker truck,” he said.
Antonio said municipal police arrived while a gun was still pointed at his head and that an officer asked the gas thief “’what’s happening, brother, how are you?’”
The truck driver said the police officer told the gas thieves to “get them [him and his colleague] out of here,” adding: “’we’ve agreed that they shouldn’t be here . . . The boss is going to be angry.’”
Gas companies that operate in Texcoco estimate that they are losing a million liters of gas a month to the huachigaseros. Some companies have decided to cease their operations in the municipality altogether due to the risk of theft.
A joint Federal Police/Attorney General’s Office operation in September captured six members of a propane gas theft ring and seized 42 tank trucks and 222,000 liters of gas at three properties in Texcoco and Ecatepec. But it failed to put an end to gas theft in the former.
A lawyer for the gas company for which Antonio works told Milenio that evidence indicates that Texcoco police and authorities are profiting from gas theft.
“We believe there is complicity because we ask for support from the municipal police but the commissioner responsible told us that they couldn’t help us, that they didn’t have the authority . . .” the unidentified lawyer said.
“We went to the city hall and we got the same results; they refused [to help us]. It is said that Texcoco officials and politicians participate in this illegal gas market,” the lawyer added.
Texcoco business owners who depend on gas for their day to day operations say they have received threats after buying gas from legal companies rather than criminals.
“They threatened us [by saying that] if we contracted the service again, they would go after the business and do harm to my family and I,” said Rogelio, who purchased up to 1,000 liters of gas a week.
“I called another company and they refused to sell to me because . . . they don’t come into Texcoco out of fear. Due to the lack of gas, I had to close the business that my father started many years ago and which several families depend on,” he added.
According to Milenio, business owners in Texcoco are not only forced to buy gas from criminals but also pay up to 30% more, even though the liters they purchase are incomplete.
