AMLO, left, and Bartlett at this morning's press conference.
Nine former public officials, including ex-president Felipe Calderón, awarded energy contracts to private companies at which they would later work or hold shares in, the head of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) charged today.
Denouncing the conflict of interest at this morning’s presidential press conference, Manuel Bartlett accused the officials of signing contracts that included favorable terms and conditions for the companies.
That “process of privatization,” he argued, contributed to the weakening and “dismantling” of the state-owned electric utility to such an extent that it now generates only 50% of Mexico’s energy needs.
In addition to Calderón, the former officials Bartlett named were:
José Cordoba Montoya, chief of staff for former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
Jesús Reyes Heroles, a former energy secretary and CEO of Pemex.
Carlos Ruiz Sacristán, secretary of communications and transportation during the presidency of Ernesto Zedillo.
Luis Téllez, secretary of energy during Zedillo’s presidency and secretary of communications and transportation during the administration of Felipe Calderón.
Alfredo Elías Ayub, former chief of the CFE.
Georgina Kessel, secretary of energy in Calderón’s administration.
Jordi Herrera, also a secretary of energy under Calderón.
Alejandro Fleming, chief of legal affairs at the Secretariat of Energy during Calderón’s presidency.
All of the ex-officials now work as consultants at energy firms including Iberdrola and IEnova, Bartlett said.
Calderón, who has already engaged in a testy tit-for-tat with President López Obrador over claims of corruption, reiterated in a radio interview today that he had done nothing wrong by accepting a board position with Avangrid, a United States subsidiary of Iberdrola.
“If they have a single piece of proof that shows that I benefited illegally from any company, they should present it. If not, they should shut up,” he said.
“I worked for a company that has never had operations in Mexico almost four years after I left the position of president . . . I respected the term that the law sets,” Calderón added, explaining that he waited almost three years beyond the one-year period stipulated by federal law during which past officials must not take up private sector roles.
“I have no conflict of interest,” he declared
For his part, President López Obrador said this morning that contracts that the CFE has entered into with private companies should be reviewed in order to keep energy prices low.
“We are urging companies that have agreements with the Federal Electricity Commission to come together to review contracts and above all to reach an agreement that electricity prices will not increase,” he said.
The president also contended that the CFE’s energy infrastructure was abandoned by past governments that favored giving contracts to private companies rather than investing in the state company.
López Obrador said the federal Attorney General’s office (FGR) would determine if any crimes were committed by the former officials and if so, it would decide what action to take.
The story of the scam began outside the Super Lake store.
When you venture to a foreign land you never know about the local folks until you experience them first hand.
Having traveled previously to Panama, where they don’t much care for Americans because of the invasion of Panama by George Bush Sr., and Ecuador where, although friendly, they basically want your money more than you. There the theory is if you’ve got it they want it and they will take it.
With these not so pleasant experiences in mind I ventured off to Mexico, not expecting it to be much different. To my considerable surprise and joy the local Mexican folks were warm, friendly and happy. Their priorities were family, church, celebrating and they were not really much into material things. I fell in love with them from the first day here.
Fast forward more than a year. I had returned to Canada to get my temporal visa and come back to live out my life here in Mexico. Despite my then Mexican fiancée breaking up with me by text message the day we got back I was simply happy to be here surrounded by all these wonderful people.
That all changed recently when I was stupid enough to trust someone. When I came out of my favorite grocery store here, Super Lake, there was a young girl standing outside with a sign that read, “Please help me with some food for my baby” scrawled in English and then Spanish on a piece of cardboard. I gave her the few coins of change I had.
As I waited for my driver I stood behind her to have a smoke and I watched as person after person came out of the store totally ignoring her friendly “hello” and her sign. I could tell from their clothing and jewelry that they weren’t suffering financially so it annoyed me that they ignored her plight.
After far too much of this I introduced myself to her and asked her to come back in the store with me where I bought her baby food, bread and some chocolate to treat herself. Not a lot of money but I am a pensioner so money is tight. She was thrilled and helped me to load my groceries when my driver arrived. This is when I made my first mistake.
I felt sorry for her and gave her my business card. I told her if she ever found herself with no food for her baby to contact me and I would try to help.
Two days later she called me and asked me for 300 pesos towards her rent. I told her I was not in a position to just give her money. She thanked me and ended the call.
A few days later she called me again and we arranged to meet at Super Lake. She didn’t show up but she called me later to meet her. I told her I couldn’t come back but if she wanted to come to my place I would give her some money. Second mistake.
She showed up with a friend in tow, I assumed because it wasn’t smart for a girl to be alone in a man’s apartment. I got that. I fed them and when her friend wasn’t looking I gave her 200 pesos, telling her that this was the last help I could give her for at least a month.
We were all sitting out on my terrace chatting when she went back in and started cleaning my apartment. I told her she didn’t need to do that but she insisted. I assumed it was to thank me for the money. We said our goodbyes and they left.
A few minutes later her friend returned alone. I thought she might have forgotten something but when I let her in she pointed to the ring on my finger. I was confused but eventually understood she was referring to my other ring, the one with the diamonds that was on my bedside table. The one worth CAD $1,000. The one I had had for 10 years. Sure enough it was gone from my bedside table. Her “friend” had stolen it. That was the thanks I got for helping her.
As upset as I was that she had stolen my ring I was more impressed that her “friend” had come back to tell me the little thief had showed her my ring and said she was going to sell it. She didn’t have to come back, but she did. We called the police, who showed up fairly quickly and took all the details. The plan was to call my driver and meet the police in Chapala then go to the thief’s house and demand my ring back.
By the time we got there, the police station was closed. The new plan was to return in the morning, meet the police and go to her house. I was concerned that my ring would be sold by then so I asked her friend if she was willing to go to the house and confront the woman and she agreed.
When we got to the house she either wasn’t there or refused to open the door. I had her friend call on my driver’s phone so she wouldn’t recognize the number. Although she answered, she soon hung up on her.
The new plan was then to come back in the morning to go with the police. She talked to my driver and made arrangements for him to pick her up at eight o’clock in the morning, get me and then go to the police station. At least that’s what I understood. Third mistake.
The reason we were going to meet early was because the friend said she had to be at work at 10:00 and we didn’t want her to be late because she said she had only just started working at Super Lake. She said she worked from 10 until two. Fourth mistake.
As I waited anxiously for my driver to show up with her the next morning it got later and later. I called my driver to see where they were but he said he knew nothing about picking her up and he didn’t know where she lived.
The new plan was to go to Super Lake at 10:00 and see if she could go with us at two o’clock to the police and then her friend’s house. That was not what I wanted because I figured by then my ring would have been sold. Still, the friend was the only proof I had that she had stolen my ring because the police believed that she had been shown the ring and told that it was going to be sold.
When we got to Super Lake shortly after 10 I asked where Estafan was. I was told no person by that name worked there.
That was when I finally realized they had worked together. I still don’t understand why she came back to my apartment to tell me about the theft, but maybe she thought she could steal something else.
As I have shared this story with friends they have all told me how stupid I was to trust this girl. They said that lots of Mexicans pull these kinds of stunts. They told me to trust no one.
My ring is gone and I will never get it back. The thief will never be charged or go to jail. She will no doubt do this again and again. This experience has certainly tarnished my opinion of the locals. It’s also served to destroy my trust in people.
Live and learn.
The writer is originally from Canada and the developer of city portal sites in the Lake Chapala region of Jalisco, the first being AjijicToday.com.mx.
State police arrive for duty in San Pedro Garza García.
Nuevo León state police assumed responsibility for policing duties in Mexico’s wealthiest municipality Saturday after a request for help from the mayor.
State Secretary General Manuel González said the state police takeover of San Pedro Garza García, part of the Monterrey metropolitan area, followed a request for assistance from Mayor Miguel Treviño de Hoyos.
He explained that the state will remain in charge of security while municipal officers are subjected to control and confidence testing.
“The decree . . . that will be published says that [the takeover] is temporary, it doesn’t establish a time frame. The reality is that we think that it’s going to take about a month, a month and a week maximum, to carry out an analysis of the control and confidence tests. We will seek to do it faster in order to be able to return to normality soon,” González said.
“We think that it’s a very healthy attitude on the part of the mayor; for him to decide to [ask us] to come to help, to review and diagnose, together with him, the condition of the police force,” he added.
For his part, Treviño thanked the state government for its prompt response. He said his request followed a preliminary analysis of the municipal police force carried out in the months since he was sworn in as mayor at the end of October.
That analysis, he said, allowed us “to arrive at the conclusion that it was pertinent to ask the state [government] to support us in checking that the entire force is clean.”
The mayor, who won last year’s election as an independent candidate, said the decision to ask for assistance wasn’t related to incidents of violence in recent days, including the burning of vehicles.
Nuevo León Public Security Secretary Aldo Fasci Zuazua said the army will also collaborate with state police to carry out security duties in San Pedro Garza García while the confidence tests are applied.
Responding to news of the takeover, former mayor Mauricio Fernández Garza defended the performance of the municipal police force during his three-year administration from 2015 to 2018.
He said that in October, the month he left office, San Pedro Garza García was ranked by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) as having the lowest perception of insecurity among residents of all municipalities in Mexico.
“. . . The effort of the major [former San Pedro security secretary Antonio Lucas Martínez] in controlling the [municipal] force and in coordinating with the military was extraordinary. He was recognized by civil associations for the extraordinary results,” Fernández said.
He added that “what the people perceive, feel and believe” about security in the municipality, as expressed in opinions given to Inegi, gave San Pedro Garza García the best security perception results in Mexico’s history.
In addition to being the country’s wealthiest municipality with a per-capita GDP of more than US $25,000, San Pedro Garza García was last year deemed Mexico’s most livable city in a survey conducted by polling firm Gabinete de Comunicación Estratégica.
Roma, the intimate and semi-autobiographical film by Alfonso Cuarón, won four awards at the 72nd edition of the British film and TV awards (BAFTA) last night, including best film.
The director himself won a record four personal BAFTA awards for a single film from a record six personal nominations, including best director and best cinematography. Roma also won the BAFTA for best film not in the English language.
Cuarón now has seven BAFTA wins, having previously won best director and best British film for Gravity and best non-English film for producing Guillermo Del Toro’s movie Pan’s Labyrinth.
“Thank you Alfonso, you did not make this easy, but it was worth it,” said producer Gabriela Rodriguez as she received the award for best non-English film alongside the director himself.
The ever-growing list of wins and accolades received by Roma and its cast makes it a strong contender for the biggest night for the film industry, the Oscars, for which it has 10 nominations: best picture, best director, best actress, best supporting actress, original screenplay, foreign language film, cinematography, production design sound editing and sound mixing.
As in the BAFTA nominations, Cuarón has been nominated in four of those categories.
Roma has also become the first film distributed primarily by a streaming service to be nominated for best picture, and has tied with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the most Oscar nominations ever received by a film not in English.
Journalist Jesús Ramos was murdered Saturday in Tabasco.
A veteran journalist was killed Saturday in Tabasco.
The host of a popular radio program, Jesús Ramos Rodríguez, known to friends and listeners as “Chuchín,” was shot and killed at a restaurant in Emiliano Zapata.
The journalist was having breakfast with a former mayor of the municipality among others. The current mayor was also expected to join but had not yet arrived when the gunman arrived in a vehicle, went straight up to Ramos and shot him eight times.
The Tabasco Attorney General said the special prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression had been asked to help investigate the murder.
The federal government, Tabasco Governor Adán Augusto López Hernández and the newspaper Tabasco Hoy were among many who lamented the murder, recognizing Ramos’s work over the last 20 years.
Presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez Cuevas wrote on Twitter that the executive will “strengthen the measures of protection for human rights defenders and journalists; freedom of expression is a right and fundamental element for democracy, justice and freedom.”
Ramos, 59, is the second journalist to be murdered in Mexico this year. Rafael Murúa Manríquez, 34, was found dead on January 20 in Baja California Sur. The young reporter was the director of a multi-city community radio station and a regular contributor to a local newspaper.
Prior to his death, Murúa Manríquez received several death threats, presumably related to his investigative work to expose corruption and nepotism in local politics. It is not yet known whether Ramos received similar threats for his work, though the state of Tabasco is widely considered to be one of the most dangerous for journalists due to widespread corruption in government and the presence of drug cartels and fuel theft.
The murder of journalists has become increasingly common in the last two decades. In 2017, 11 journalists, including veteran reporters Javier Valdez in Sinaloa and Miroslava Breach in Chihuahua, were silenced in killings linked to their work. Last year saw the murders of nine more.
Mexico is often cited as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero has promised to provide more federal protections for journalists since she took office in December.
Xila liqueur, made by women at Destilería Flor de Luna.
Pineapple, lavender, chile ancho, hibiscus flower, clove, cinnamon and black pepper infused into mezcal. These are the potent ingredients that make up Xila, an award-winning artisanal liqueur produced by a micro-distillery in Mexico City that is run completely by women.
Xila is one of several small-batch liqueurs that tantalize the senses and make up the products of Destilería Flor de Luna.
Founded in 2015 by distiller Dona Spotter, Flor de Luna started out as a one-woman show. Spotter created infusions in her apartment, a passion that arose from working as a bartender in Santa Fe.
“I really liked studying the measurements of each drink, but I wasn’t that interested in mixology,” Spotter said. “What really intrigued me was the entire process of making a vodka, rum, tequila or mezcal. I spent a lot of time doing tests, making comparisons between what I made with other products that were out there and bit by bit I was able to establish my style and my recipes.”
Spotter went to learn the basics of distilling from Edgar Villanueva, proprietor of Edgar Villanueva Distillery in Guadalajara. The rest, she says, was a combination of reading a lot of books on the subject and, of course, trial and error.
Dona Spotter in the herb garden behind the production facility. megan frye
“I didn’t make the alcoholic base at first, just infusing with different herbs and such,” Spotter said. “It was just me. It was with my designs — very underground. Finally I came around to making a mezcal infused with pineapple and chile, and that was what people liked the best.
“So I decided to focus on that, to improve the recipe and create my product. Throughout 2016, I was formulating different processes and trying out different things, and finally Xila emerged as it is now.”
A major aspect of Spotter’s research was based on the changing seasons of Mexico and how that affects the country’s produce.
“It took me a while to make the perfect recipe throughout all seasons,” she said. “We have ingredients that change; there are months when the chile is more spicy, months when pineapple is more sweet, more dry or more acidic. So that entire year I was trying the Xila recipe during different seasons, but I also learned how to distill all kinds of other alcohol.”
Spotter took Xila to the SIP, the International Spirits Competition in California, where it won the gold medal in 2016. That gave her the confidence to begin producing more of it, and also to begin approaching distributors in Mexico.
Unfortunately, she said, that was when Mexico’s machista reality reared its ugly head. And ultimately what led Flor de Luna to be a team of women.
Flor de Luna has more than 300 spices for its various liqueurs. megan frye
“I decided to work only with women because a lot of doors closed to me for being a woman,” Spotter said. “I visited a lot of distributors and showed them my product, and one actually told me flat out that he didn’t want anything to do with my product because he didn’t believe in it and that I didn’t know what I was doing because I am a woman.”
Flash forward to December 2018 when Xila hit the bars of New York City. It had already been present in places such as the Riviera Maya, Monterrey, San Miguel de Allende, Mérida, León, Los Cabos, Ensenada and on the shelves of City Market, Mexico’s gourmet grocery chain.
In addition to Xila, Flor de Luna also produces both a lavender liqueur and a lychee liqueur, as well as four bitters: Fourth Season, Cafe de Olla, Xila and Tea Mix.
The distillery also takes on special projects and commissions, such as a strawberry gin and a Pan de Muerto liqueur made in the past for Mexico City restaurants. Recently, Flor de Luna worked with chef Alejandro Cabral of Mexico City’s Alba Cocina Local to create marinades using Xila.
Moving through what Spotter says is the sexist environment of bartending and liquor distribution has been one challenge, though she doesn’t seem to fazed by it at this point. The other challenge her company has faced is getting people to try something different.
“It’s hard to change people’s minds,” Spotter said. “They are closed off to only drinking what they know. But a lot of people are starting to become more interested in buying Mexican artisanal products. I think a challenging thing for anyone in this business is that while you can get people to try something, it’s harder to later get them to actually choose it over something that they are used to, even if they love what you’ve exposed them to.
Production chief Wendy Rodríguez prepares labels for the company’s selection of cocktail bitters. megan frye
“It also has been challenging to explain to people that even though my team is completely made up of women, that doesn’t mean that the product is only for women. It’s for everyone.”
Still, Spotter says, the positives far outweigh any potential setbacks.
“The best thing for me is to see people’s pleasure when they try my product and they like it,” she said.
Currently producing 1,500 liters a month, Flor de Luna will be needing a bigger space soon to accommodate more production and therefore more employees. There is a small but elegant tasting room as well, and Flor de Luna invites people to take a distillery tour ending with a tasting at its location in Mexico City.
Wendy Rodríguez, chief of production at the distillery, has worked at Flor de Luna for four years, learning the entire process of production, bottling and labeling from Spotter. Now Rodríguez is in charge of training new hires.
The production team currently consists of five women, including Spotter and Rodríguez, as well as one of Rodríguez’s sisters and two cousins. The women work a flexible schedule of three days per week, which allows them to care for their children, while learning a new skill.
Bitters made by Flor de Luna.
“Dona is learning even more every day so I keep learning from her,” Rodríguez said. “We go from doing the basic to then labeling and bottling. I love preparing Xila, I love the ingredients. I love to count every little thing that goes into it.”
Building a team of only women wasn’t entirely based on a desire to tell the patriarchy to back off, though. Spotter says she believes women have more finesse and delicacy and are more detailed when it comes to hand-picking the botanicals that go into each bottle.
Xila means woman in the Mexican indigenous language of Zapotec. Flor de Luna references the fragrant and mysterious moon flowers endemic to Chiapas and the Yucatán peninsula.
“If we have to cut 3,000 lavender leaves, they do it with a lot of love,” Spotter said. “And I think that has a been a reason why the product is so good as well; one way that we are able to maintain the quality.”
While Spotter’s professional motto for the company, to be a production house of the best organic alcoholic beverages in Mexico, could well be the goal of many distilleries, her personal goal is one of the things that she asserts sets Flor de Luna apart from competitors.
“I like to believe that in every product and lot that we made, we embottle our feelings,” Spotter said. “We have a massive closet filled with different trials that we’ve made, and each of them was completed at a different point of my life. The whole year that I was actively trying new things, well, each bottle has a feeling in it from that. That is what we want to share.”
Megan Frye is a writer, photographer and translator living in Mexico City. She has a history of newsroom journalism as well as non-profit administration and has been published by several international publications.
Blue indicates territory of Santa Rosa de Lima; yellow is being fought over with the CJNG. Inset is the area that previously formed the base of operations for the former. milenio
The fuel theft gang believed to be behind much of the violence that made Guanajuato Mexico’s deadliest state last year is now expanding into Querétaro and Hidalgo, according to federal intelligence officials.
The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel has expanded its area of influence significantly over the past two years and now has operational bases in the Guanajuato municipalities of Villagrán, Juventino Rosas, Celaya, Apaseo el Grande and Apaseo el Alto, the officials told the newspaper Milenio.
The gang’s suspected leader, José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez, also has complete control of the municipalities of Cortazar, Jerécuaro, Comonfort, Coroneo and Tarimoro.
Since 2017, the cartel has expanded the area of territory it controls – known as the Guanajuato Triangle – from 130 square kilometers to 400 square kilometers despite efforts by both federal and state authorities to combat its activities.
The two Apaseo municipalities border Querétaro, providing a springboard for the cartel to move into that state, while it has also begun making its first incursions into Hidalgo, located farther east.
The areas targeted by the gang all have one thing in common: Pemex petroleum pipelines run through them.
As the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel expands its presence – all the while tapping the pipelines to extract fuel which it sells on the black market – violence in the parts of Guanajuato in which the gang operates has surged, especially in areas where it is involved in a turf war with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Irapuato, Salamanca and Celaya, all three disputed by the two criminal organizations, ranked first, third and fourth respectively for the number of homicides they recorded in 2018, and along with Valle de Santiago accounted for 36% of all murders in Guanajuato.
The four municipalities also led the state for slayings of police officers. Six traffic police were shot and killed in one particularly violent attack in Salamanca on June 1 last year and two months later, three officers were abducted and executed in the same municipality.
In Apaseo el Alto, a candidate for mayor was shot dead while campaigning in May last year while the municipality’s new transport director was murdered the same day he took office last October.
On January 25, the director of the 911 emergency response service in Irapuato was killed after he refused to continue leaking information to the Santa Rosa Cartel and six days later, a narco-banner allegedly signed by Yépez appeared in Salamanca warning President López Obrador to remove security forces from Guanajuato or innocent people will die.
Explosives, referred to in the narcomanta as a “little gift,” were also left inside a vehicle parked in front of the Salamanca oil refinery but were removed by the army before they detonated.
The federal government is cracking down on fuel theft with a strategy that includes deploying the military and Federal Police to guard petroleum pipelines and other infrastructure owned and operated by the state oil company.
A semi that is on the list of vehicles to be auctioned this month.
The full list of more than 200 vehicles to be auctioned by the federal government this month — from semi-tractors to farm tractors — has been published online.
Armored vehicles, cars, motorcycles, buses, tractors and semi trailers are among the vehicles listed, eight of which are valued at more than 1 million pesos (US $52,000).
The priciest vehicle on the list is Lot 1, a 2012 armored Audi A8 valued at 1.9 million pesos (US $99,500).
For truckers, there’s a 2016 Volvo semi-tractor and trailer whose value of 1.61 million pesos makes it the second most expensive.
Cheapest ride on auction is a 2003 Chevrolet Cheyenne pickup worth just 29,400 pesos, while for bikers there’s a 2013 Kawasaki Vulcan 900 valued at 45,300 pesos.
The federal government anticipates taking in 100 million pesos ($5.24 million), money that will help fund a new security force to be called the national guard.
The auction will take place on February 23 and 24 at the Santa Lucía air force base in México state.
Business groups question government's lack of support for steel industry.
The federal government’s decision not to renew a 15% safeguard duty for imported steel and protect the Mexican industry is a grave mistake, two business groups have warned.
In a joint statement directed at President López Obrador and Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez, the National Chamber of the Iron and Steel Industry (Canacero) and the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) said they were concerned about the January 31 expiration of the 15% safeguard for steel imports from countries with which Mexico doesn’t have a trade agreement.
The safeguard measure was first put in place in October 2015 and was subsequently renewed every six months before the current government allowed it to lapse on February 1.
Canacero and Concamin said the decision not to renew the safeguard measure could lead to Mexico being used as an interim destination for goods headed to the United States.
Its renewal, they said, is a fundamental factor in having the United States exclude Mexico from the tariffs on steel and aluminum that were imposed on June 1 last year.
Non-renewal will result in Mexico being seen as a “triangulation platform” and the respective 25% and 10% tariffs won’t be removed, the business groups said.
That would place the approval of the new United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement at risk because the majority of members of the United States House of Representatives have placed the elimination of the measure in North America as a condition for their approval of the pact, Canacero and Concamin said.
Because there are no negotiations currently under way to have the tariffs removed, Canacero president Máximo Vedoya said, the Mexican steel industry is unprotected.
In contrast, other countries have put up adequate barriers to protect their steel sector, he said.
“Unfortunately, Mexico is taking a different path and we have to convince the Secretariat of the Economy that this is a mistake, a grave mistake, because we can’t compete and it’s not worth competing with different weapons,” Vedoya said.
Francisco Cervantes, president of Concamin, said that a safeguard on foreign steel is urgently needed but added that the Secretariat of the Economy (SE) is dragging its feet.
“We’re in discussions [but] we don’t feel receptiveness [to our point of view]. They’ve taken too long in their communication . . .” he said.
“We’re seeking safeguards . . . [of] a significant percentage [but] that don’t affect the automotive sector,” Cervantes continued, adding that Secretary Márquez has been invited to reflect on the need to protect the national steel industry.
Canacero and Concamin said the industry generates more than 700,000 direct and indirect jobs in Mexico but the sector is under threat from the global overproduction of the metal and the 25% tariff “imposed unilaterally and unfairly by the United States government.”
The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has warned the federal government that it cannot delegate its responsibility to protect people’s rights after the latter asked the former for advice on how to end teachers’ rail blockades in Michoacán.
In a statement, the CNDH said that “authorities of the different levels of government are obliged to protect and guarantee . . . people’s rights, a mandate that they can’t relinquish or seek to delegate to third parties.”
The commission urged the federal executive to fulfill that obligation, stating that the government’s responsibility cannot “depend on or be made conditional on a declaration or resolution by an organization for the protection and defense of human rights.”
President López Obrador said yesterday that the government had filed a complaint with the CNDH against those responsible for the rail blockades and sought the commission’s opinion on what action to take in the context of its determination not to use force against the teachers.
The CNDH commended the government’s commitment not to use force but added that the position doesn’t absolve it of the responsibility to act if protesters are found to have broken the law.
“While it is positive that other ways [to end the blockades] are favored over the use of force, if the relevant government authorities were to determine the existence of an illegal act, such an attitude cannot justify it being permissible that authorities relinquish or hold back from fulfilling their constitutional obligation,” the statement said.
The CNDH urged that “the parties involved in the conflict seek a solution through the building of agreements, within the framework of the law, establishing a process of dialogue that contributes to the building and strengthening of a culture of peace in the country.”
López Obrador told reporters at his morning press conference yesterday that his government has been available for dialogue and had done everything asked of it to satisfy the demands of Michoacán teachers, who say they are owed billions of pesos in unpaid salaries and benefits.
He also asked the CNTE teachers’ union to clarify whether teachers who continued to block railway tracks in Uruapan and Pátzcuaro were its members.
Speaking later in the day at an event in Huetamo, Michoacán, the president urged dissident teachers to not be “rebels without a cause,” and asked them to wait patiently for their demands to be resolved and for the “misnamed educational reform” to be repealed.
“I’ve just seen my Interior Secretariat file, what they were saying about me 40 years ago; they spied on me because I was in the opposition, so I know what it’s like to fight for just causes,” López Obrador said.
“. . . None of this intransigence and waiting [on the railway tracks] thinking that . . . you’ll provoke me and that I’ll use public force so that you can accuse me of being an oppressor, an authoritarian . . . No, I’m not going to fall into provocation,” he added.
While the CNTE teachers’ union last week agreed to lift the seven rail blockades in Michoacán, radical teachers belonging to the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) and the National Democratic Executive Committee have maintained those in Pátzcuaro and Uruapan.
Section 18 union leaders said in a statement Thursday that the CNTE was not associated with any groups that choose to defy the directive to lift the rail blockades.
However, early yesterday CNTE-affiliated teachers reestablished a blockade on tracks in the port city of Lázaro Cardenas, where thousands of shipping containers are stranded, and barricaded at least 60 government offices in Michoacán.
The newspaper Milenio reported that the CNTE members returned to the tracks in a show of solidarity with three teachers who were summoned to the federal Attorney General’s office in Morelia after railway company Kansas City Southern filed a criminal complaint against them.
The blockades, which were first erected on January 14, have cost the economy close to 30 billion pesos (US $1.6 billion), while the teachers’ work stoppage has left students in Michoacán without classes for almost a month.
The CNTE said later yesterday it had agreed to “a tactical withdrawal” of all rail blockades in Michoacán and that it was ready to resume trilateral talks with state and federal authorities. However, this morning the blockade in Caltzontzin, Uruapan, remained in place.
Despite the ongoing blockade, Michoacán Education Secretary Alberto Frutis Solís said yesterday that talks between the three parties would resume today and it is believed they will be held in Mexico City.
Teachers have previously said that they want 5 billion pesos before they will return to the classroom but Section 18 CNTE leader Víctor Manuel Zavala said yesterday that the union is seeking commitments worth around 6 billion pesos (US $313.7 million) in order for the conflict to be resolved.
To date, state and federal governments have released more than 2 billion pesos in funding to pay salaries and bonuses in response to teachers’ demands.
