Aspiring teachers arrested in Oaxaca, others steal buses in México state

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November 15, 2019

Clashes in Nuevo Laredo killed 6 hitmen.

Six members of the Northeast Cartel’s military wing, known as Hell’s Army, died in confrontations with security forces in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on Thursday.

According to official reports, the fighting left one soldier dead and three wounded.

State security spokesman Luis Felipe Rodríguez said there were three separate incidents.

“Armed civilians assaulted security forces in three situations that took place in Nuevo Laredo as a result of the patrols carried out by military personnel to inhibit the actions of criminal groups,” Rodríguez said.

Initial reports said the attacks began when cartel hitmen opened fire on soldiers and stopped an army vehicle with traffic spikes to puncture its tires.

The attacks were initially believed to have been related to the transfer of 75 inmates from the local prison, but authorities rejected the claim and said the inmates were transported without incident.

Images of the clash recalled the confrontations in August that left as many as 12 gangsters dead near the Nuevo Laredo airport and outside an army barracks.

Among the dead in August was 16-year-old Juanito Pistola, a minor who had been recruited by Hell’s Army cartel at a young age. According to social media reports, Pistola had been arrested in 2015, but was later released as he was only 13 at the time.

Riding in one of the attacking vehicles, Pistola was decapitated by gunfire during the fighting. Following his death, a video on social media showed him carrying weapons, drinking alcohol and flipping off the camera. Background music was an original narco rap ballad dedicated to him.

Thursday’s actions came on the heels of attacks on security forces in Nuevo Laredo, one of which left a state police officer wounded.

Source: Vanguardia MX (sp)

Parallel narco-governments need to be stopped, warns US ambassador

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November 15, 2019

Soldiers went on parade Thursday in Culiacán, Sonora, to mark the opening of military exhibition in the city. — Soldiers went on parade Thursday in Culiacán, Sonora, to mark the opening of a military exhibition in the city.

Criminal organizations function as parallel governments in parts of Mexico and their power will only increase unless an effort is made to stop them, United States Ambassador Christopher Landau warned on Thursday.

“We’ve already seen that in several parts of Mexico there is . . . a parallel narco-government . . . where on the surface it appears that everything is normal, right?” Landau said at a symposium in Monterrey, Nuevo León.

“People go to school, to the movie theater, but they don’t meddle with the narcos – [who] really have the power. The territory where they have this kind of power cannot be [allowed] to continue expanding through the republic. It’s very important for the future of Mexico. If we don’t combat it now, it will get much worse,” the ambassador said.

Referring to the unprecedented show of cartel strength in Culiacán, Sinaloa, last month that was triggered by an operation to capture a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Landau asked:

“If Culiacán doesn’t wake us all up to the reality of the situation, I don’t know what we are waiting for. If [organized crime] is not stopped, this is a threat that is going to get worse.”

Drug demand in US among causes of violence in Mexico, ambassador admits.

He added: “We have to confront these security challenges; it’s extremely important for the future of Mexico. It cannot be that there are groups of criminals that have control of part of the territory, that’s basic to sovereignty. It must be the army that has the monopoly.”

The ambassador acknowledged that the demand for drugs in the United States and the trafficking of U.S. arms to Mexico are causes of the violence plaguing the country.

“. . . It’s an embarrassment that there are so many drugs in my country. I don’t understand why this happens in a nation that provides so many opportunities,” Landau said.

He said that United States authorities are investigating 200 cases of arms trafficking to Mexico and that 19 people were arrested in connection with one case related to a weapon found in Guadalajara, Jalisco.

The ambassador emphasized the need for cooperation between Mexico and the United States on three binational issues: organized crime, the illegal trafficking of weapons and drugs, and illegal immigration.

“Neither of our countries is safe if the other one isn’t, neither country can face up to organized crime on its own. This is a shared responsibility,” Landau said.

After the massacre of nine members of a Mormon family on November 4, United States President Donald Trump said the U.S. was prepared to help Mexico “wage war” on drug cartels but President López Obrador declined the offer.

Concluding his address, Landau said he didn’t want to be an ambassador who only makes speeches but rather one who plays a role in achieving successful security cooperation between Mexico and the United States.

The ambassador, who took up his position in August, also said that a prosperous Mexico is important for the economy of the United States.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Buen Fin, Mexico’s Black Friday, expected to generate 118bn pesos in sales

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November 14, 2019

Buen Fin, the annual four-day shopping event similar to Black Friday in the United States, will generate sales of at least 118 billion pesos (US $6.1 billion), a business leader predicted on Thursday.

“An [economic] spillover of more than 118 billion pesos is expected, 5% more than in 2018 and triple the first edition in 2011,” José Manuel López Campos, president of the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco), told reporters at the presidential press conference.

The shopping event, during which hundreds of retailers will offer products at heavily discounted prices, begins Friday and runs through Monday.

Concanaco has developed a free mobile app that people can use to look up products that will be on sale and compare prices between retailers, López said.

The names of shoppers who make purchases with credit or debit cards will go into a raffle for a chance to win back the amount they spent.

Economy Secretary Márquez promotes Mexico's big shopping weekend at the president's press conference. — Economy Secretary Márquez promotes Mexico’s big shopping weekend at the president’s press conference.

Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez said that traditional bricks and mortar stores and online retailers will both participate in this year’s Buen Fin, or Good Weekend.

President López Obrador said he was confident that sales will be strong during the four-day event. He said the shopping event would benefit the economy and allow families to increase their purchasing power.

The president suggested that Buen Fin could be a good time to buy domestic appliances, clothes, shoes and books.

However, the head of the consumer protection agency Profeco urged people to be prudent.

“Before going out . . . get together as a family to decide what products you need to buy, let’s be reasonable in our consumption,” Ricardo Sheffield said.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Economista (sp)

Beer maker admits it erred after filmmaker objects to its using his images

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November 14, 2019

The Victoria beer cans featuring the fimmaker and two monster creations.

Acclaimed film director Guillermo del Toro called out the maker of Victoria beer for using his image and those of characters in his films on beer cans without his permission.

The filmmaker denounced Victoria beer in a tweet on Thursday and urged the company to donate the profits earned from sales of the beer to young students competing in math and robotics competitions.

“Very poorly done, @VictoriaMX. These cans do not have my authorization, my consultation or my signature to use my image or my name . . .” he said.

Victoria, made by Grupo Modelo, responded by admitting that it had made a mistake.

“We would never take liberties with something like this, @RealGDT. We are reviewing where the wires got crossed. Apart from this, we will continue to support Mexican talent as we have done up to now,” tweeted the company.

Victoria beer was one of the sponsors of Del Toro’s At Home with my Monsters, an exhibition featuring over 900 objects the Oscar-winning director has used in the making of his films, such as costumes, notebooks, drawings and personal objects.

The exposition was on display at the University of Guadalajara Art Museum (MUSA) from June 1 to November 3 of this year.

The beer can collection features three specially designed cans, one featuring the director’s face, and the other two featuring monsters from his films Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water.

They were designed by illustrator Guy Davis, and are to be sold in convenience stores in Mexico City, Jalisco, San Luis Potosí, Michoacán and México state.

Sources: Milenio (sp), El Financiero (sp)

Mormon families’ exodus leaves workers worried about their jobs

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November 14, 2019

One of the funerals held for the nine people murdered in Chihuahua November 4. — A judge designated the 2019 murders of 9 members of a border-zone Mormon family as an act of terrorism. (File photo)

Dozens of people have lost their jobs in Bavispe, Sonora, due to the exodus of Mormon families following the massacre of three women and six children this month, and more workers are worried that they will suffer the same fate.

Many women previously employed as domestic workers and nannies in the small community of La Mora and men who worked as gardeners no longer have jobs, the newspaper Milenio reported.

About 100 people from La Mora, where most of the victims of the November 4 attack lived, and Colonia LeBarón in Chihuahua left Mexico last Saturday for the United States.

Workers who travel to La Mora from Bavispe as well as the municipalities of Bacerac and Huachinera to work on pecan farms owned by Mormon families fear that they too could find themselves out of a job.

“The Langfords and the Millers give us work here, we’ve been with them for 22 years. If they go, we’ll be left without food because that’s how we make a living,” said Héctor Durazo Martínez, a farmworker who earns about 2,000 pesos (US $100) a week.

“If we’re left without work, we’ll have to start over and where will we look? As things are at the moment, I think that we would struggle to find work,” he added.

The week after the massacre that also left five children wounded, La Mora looks like a ghost town, Milenio said. Just seven of 25 homes are occupied and the streets are deserted.

Lafe Langford and his family, relatives of the nine murder victims, are the latest people to pull up stakes. They left for Louisiana on Wednesday.

“I feel like I’ve got 10 tonnes of stones on my back and I need to go and see something different, I don’t want to see that road [where the massacre occurred],” Langford told Milenio.

“I went to Bavispe . . . to buy some cattle tags and I told the ladies there that I was going to leave, they hugged me and started to cry.”

Julian LeBarón, another relative of the murder victims, claimed that the exodus of Mormon families to the United States won’t be permanent.

In a radio interview, he said that many people who left their communities in northern Mexico did so to be close to the five wounded children who are in hospital in Tucson, Arizona.

LeBarón said he was confident that families planning to stay in the U.S. for the time being would eventually return to Mexico.

“In 2009 [when two members of the Mormon community were murdered] a lot of people left but they came back. This is our home, it’s what we’ve built over a century. We obviously don’t want to abandon it,” he said.

Colonia LeBarón, located southeast of La Mora, has had Federal Police protection since 2010 and the municipality in which the town is located, Galeana, is one of the safest in Chihuahua, LeBarón said.

Although the government announced on Monday that suspects had been arrested in connection with last week’s massacre, the community leader expressed doubt that justice will be served.

“There’s no justice for anyone in Mexico . . . We change the politicians and parties but the corrupt-to-the-core institutions remain the same . . .”

Source: Milenio (sp), Infobae (sp)

Mexico City street has highest commercial rents in Latin America

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November 14, 2019

A street in Mexico City’s swanky Polanco district has the highest commercial rents in Latin America, according to a report by an international real estate firm.

The study Main Streets Across the World by real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield found that average annual commercial rents on Avenida Presidente Masaryk are US $1,011 per square meter.

Renting a small 50-square-meter space on Masaryk would cost US $4,212 a month.

Named after the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the avenue is home to luxury brand boutiques and high-end restaurants among other businesses that cater to the well-heeled.

Masaryk ranked as the 13th most expensive street on which to rent a commercial space in the Americas and the 37th among those studied by Cushman & Wakefield in 67 cities around the world.

Masaryk, left, and the street that bears his name. — Masaryk, left, and the street sign that bears his name.

Despite the high ranking, commercial rents have actually fallen almost 6% on the street compared to last year, while across Mexico rents have “generally been edging down in the last year as a result of weaker demand, particularly at the luxury end of the market,” the report said.

Causeway Bay in Hong Kong has the highest commercial rents in the world followed by Fifth Avenue in New York, New Bond Street in London, the Champs-Élysées in Paris and Via Montenapoleone in Milan.

Causeway Bay rents average $28,216 per square meter per year, almost 28 times higher than those paid on Masaryk. A 50-square-meter shop would rent for $117,500 a month.

In Latin America, the second and third most expensive streets for commercial rents were in Bogotá, Colombia, and São Paulo, Brazil, respectively.

The cheapest rents among the 67 cities studied were in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where a 50-square-meter commercial space can be rented on the city’s most expensive shopping strip for $870 a month.

Source: El Financiero (sp), De10 (sp)

Large tumors found in sea turtles in Sinaloa; pollution a likely cause

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November 14, 2019

One of the turtles with large tumors. — One of the turtles with a large tumor.

Two adult green sea turtles caught off the coast of Sinaloa within a week of each other were found to have very large tumors.

A marine biologist at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), Alan Zavala Norzagaray, said it was not the first time tumors have been found on turtles of this species, but those found previously were smaller.

Multiple tumors ranging in size from 0.1-40 centimeters were found on the turtles’ fins, skin, tissues, heads, cloaca and upper and lower shells.

He said the cause of the tumors is not known for certain, but the most likely explanations are pollution and climate change.

Researchers are running tests on the two turtles and will keep them indefinitely.

Zavala said that concentrations of contaminants on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico are high. This exposes the turtles to harmful pollutants when they come ashore to lay their eggs.

Aside from pollutants like plastics and other garbage, Zavala suspects that agrochemicals, heavy metals, organochlorides and other chemical waste could also be to blame.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Pirates have attacked 16 cargo vessels a month this year in Gulf of Mexico

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November 14, 2019

Drilling platforms and cargo ships are targets of pirates in the gulf.

Pirate attacks in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico have increased fourfold in just two years, triggering calls for the navy to bolster its presence in the area.

Between January and September, there was an average of 16 attacks per month on cargo ships off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, and Dos Bocas, Tabasco, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).

In 2017, there was an average of four pirate attacks per month while last year the monthly average increased to 12.

Merchant marine data shows that there were 167 attacks on ships and oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico between January and September but not a single arrest was reported in the period.

Pirates typically steal whatever they can get their hands on including the belongings of crew members as well as ships’ communication and navigation systems, which are later sold on the black market.

The increase in pirate attacks poses a risk to energy sector investments, warned the Ciudad del Carmen president of the Business Coordinating Council.

“This could cause future foreign investments in the energy sector to be canceled because entrepreneurs look for peaceful areas where their resources are protected . . .” Alejandro Fuentes Alvarado said.

ITF Latin America inspector Enrique Lozano Díaz told the newspaper Reforma that pirates have also attacked Pemex oil platforms in the Cantarell field, located 85 kilometers off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen.

“Pirates travel in two or more boats with powerful outboard motors,” he said.

“[There are] up to seven individuals in each boat,” Lozano added, explaining that the pirates make specific plans for each ship or oil platform they intend to attack.

Most recently, pirates attacked an Italian ship that provides services to oil drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Two crew members were injured in the November 12 attack, which came eight days after a group of armed pirates robbed workers on the Independencia oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The attack triggered an international alert for the region, Lozano said.

“In addition to weapons, pirates use hooks to climb onto ships and platforms. They always operate in the early morning, they know that crew members don’t use firearms due to international regulations so they board with complete safety,” he said.

“The criminals steal . . . self-contained breathing apparatuses and expensive equipment as well as copper and pipes . . .”

In light of the increasing number of attacks, Ciudad del Carmen business owners have urged the navy to increase patrols in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico.

The merchant marine has submitted a report about piracy in the Gulf of Mexico to both houses of Congress and is also calling for the navy to send more ships to deter and respond to criminal activity at sea.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Pulque and barbacoa on the menu this weekend in Mexico City

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November 14, 2019