The budget for Mexico City’s C5 security command control center will allow it to purchase 11,200 new surveillance cameras this year, 200 of which will record at 4K ultra-high definition resolution.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the center’s 1.2-billion-peso allocation (US $63.2 million) will also allow it to install more storage for video footage.
It will be able to store footage recorded by the cameras for 30 days instead of the current seven, preserving criminal evidence for a longer period.
Also in the center’s plans:
• The 889 seismic alert speakers that are malfunctioning will be repaired by the end of February.
• By March, the city government will conclude its distribution of 1,000 geolocalization devices to women living in high-risk conditions. The devices can be used to request police presence remotely and instantly in case of emergency, and are part of the government’s Violet Code program.
• A C5 facility is to be operational at the Central de Abasto – Mexico City’s huge wholesale market — by the end of the year, and will be equipped with 20 cameras that will scan license plates.
• One hundred panic buttons will be installed throughout the market, allowing shoppers and shopkeepers to report crimes and request rapid police presence.
• Tighter collaboration protocols will be implemented with neighboring states, allowing security forces to arrest criminals who flee across state lines.
• Higher salaries for 911 operators, who are poorly paid, according to C5 chief Manuel García Ortegón, leading to high staff turnover. He said savings in other areas will allow the emergency response service to pay its operators higher salaries and promote their professionalization.
He also reported that the number of operators will increase from the current 118 to 250, allowing the emergency service to reduce response time.
Migrants begin their long northward trek from Honduras last night.
The federal government is determined to avoid any repeat of violence on the southern border, a high-ranking official said yesterday as a new migrant caravan set out from Honduras bound for the United States.
Alejandro Encinas, undersecretary for human rights, migration and population in the Secretariat of the Interior, said the government has a clear strategy with which to receive the next migrant caravan and warned that its members will not be permitted to “bang down the door.”
A clash between Central American migrants and Mexican police on the Mexico-Guatemala border near Tapachula, Chiapas, in October resulted in the death of one Honduran man.
Thousands of migrants reached Mexico’s southern border in the final months of last year as part of several migrant caravans.
Large numbers of migrants are now stranded on Mexico’s northern border, especially in Tijuana, where they face a long wait for the opportunity to request asylum in the United States.
Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero said earlier this month that the government is reinforcing the southern border to guarantee that migrants’ entry into Mexico is safe, orderly and regulated, a strategy reiterated by Encinas yesterday.
“Everybody has the right to human mobility, to orderly, safe and regulated migration, and he who enters in a regular manner . . . will have no impediment . . .” he said.
“We have to guarantee [migrants’] rights but at the same time comply with the regulations that our laws establish,” Encinas added.
The undersecretary also said that the government has been in contact with its counterparts in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to discuss their “responsibilities [which] we expect them to meet.”
Around 300 migrants left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on 30 small buses under the cover of darkness last night to travel to that country’s border with Guatemala, the news agency Associated Press reported.
Another 300 migrants set out on foot in the rain toward the border town of Agua Caliente. One man asked a journalist for his umbrella, saying that he was afraid his daughter would get sick.
A woman who refused to give her name due to safety concerns said that she had decided to leave Honduras with her nine-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son after the girl was raped.
“It’s not possible to live in Honduras anymore,” she said.
A report by Associated Press today said that hundreds more migrants had started trekking out of San Pedro Sula, a notoriously violent city, this morning.
Honduran media reported that that authorities had secured the border with Guatemala to ensure that everyone had proper documentation to leave the country.
If the members of the new migrant caravan succeed in leaving Honduras, crossing Guatemala, entering Mexico and traveling to the border with the United States – a journey that is likely to take weeks or even months – they will then, like the thousands of migrants who preceded them late last year, be faced with a long wait to plead their case for asylum with U.S. authorities.
Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump continues to try to convince the American public and the Democratic party that there is a “crisis” at the southern border that can only be solved by his long-promised border wall.
“A big new Caravan is heading up to our Southern Border from Honduras. Tell Nancy and Chuck that a drone flying around will not stop them. Only a Wall will work,” Trump wrote on Twitter today, referring to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer.
The new government of Veracruz has accused the previous administration of fraud in the installation of video surveillance cameras.
The public security secretary said only 34% of the 6,316 surveillance cameras are operational.
Hugo Gutiérrez Maldonado told reporters that the irregularities in the new surveillance system were detected during the final part of the transition process. He intends to denounce whoever is found responsible for the alleged fraud.
The previous administration, under Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, signed a 1.1-billion-peso contract (US $58 million) with Comtelsat, a telecommunications equipment company, to install cameras in six different regions of the state: 380 in Pánuco, 1,112 in Poza Rica, 1,228 in Xalapa, 1,868 in the port of Veracruz, 676 in Fortín de las Flores and 1,052 in Cosoleacaque.
Of the 676 cameras installed in Fortín de las Flores, only 49 work, Gutiérrez said. In the state capital, Xalapa, only 263 of the 1,218 cameras that were installed are operational.
Gutiérrez stated that his department will not be an accessory to the previous administration’s bad management, asserting that he takes the security situation in Veracruz seriously.
An armed gang known as Los Cuernudos stormed the community of Barrio Lozano in Guerrero’s Costa Grande region Sunday, terrorizing residents until Monday morning.
The mayor of Coahuayutla, in which the town is located, told reporters that the violence was punishment for not having met a monthly extortion demand of 2 million pesos (US $105,000) and control of the police station, the public works office and the municipal treasury.
Rafael Martínez Ramírez said more than 40 armed civilians descended on Barrio Lozano on Sunday evening, where they stole vehicles and looted stores and private homes.
On Monday morning, they proceeded to the town of Coahuayutla, where they opened fire for two hours, injuring an 11-year-old girl, who was transferred to a hospital in Zihuatanejo.
The Morena party mayor said Los Cuernudos have been active in the region for more than 10 years and have regularly extorted money from many previous mayors.
Martínez added that because of death threats he has received from the gang, he does not live in the community, and has been able to enter city hall on only three occasions since he took office.
[wpgmza id=”130″]
“Listen, I’m not governing [here]. I haven’t been able to govern,” he said in an interview.
The mayor blamed the situation in part on the fact that Coahuayutla does not have a police force: Felipe Heredia Hernández, the previous mayor, dismissed the municipality’s 30 police officers and turned their firearms over to the state government last July. He added that the gang even put up its own candidate in the last election.
Guerrero was Mexico’s most violent state in 2017, and 1,707 homicides were reported in 2018. The Global Index of Impunity Mexico, conducted by the University of the Americas Puebla, gave the state one of the worst scores for impunity for homicide in the country.
Mayor Aboyte has been in a US jail since December 27.
The mayor of Bácum, Sonora, was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents when he attempted to enter the United States with a phony passport.
Rogelio Aboyte Limón was arrested on December 27 but it was not until yesterday that sources in Mexican public security and the Morena party made the information public.
Party officials said they would not participate in the defense of its members or affiliated public servants accused of illegal activity in or outside the country.
Morena will request Aboyte’s formal removal from office.
[wpgmza id=”129″]
Mayor Aboyte was last seen a few days before his arrest and has been absent from municipal council meetings since. His wife, Mariana Bernal, has attended in his place.
Aboyte has had run-ins with the law before. He was charged with trafficking drugs and people into the United States and sentenced to 84 months behind bars in 2012.
There is at least one other instance on record of Aboyte attempting to enter the U.S. using false documents.
The municipality of Bácum is one of eight that make up the historical territory of the Yoeme, or Yaqui, people. The region has seen a high incidence of activity by organized crime.
A tanker delivers fuel to a gas station, a rare sight in some regions during the last three weeks.
Gasoline supply will return to normal in two days in Mexico City and in three to four days in México state and the Bajío region, according to the federal energy secretary.
“For Mexico City, it’s anticipated that service will be reestablished in these days . . . While for the most affected states like México state, Guanajuato and Jalisco it’s anticipated that supply will return to normal in a space of three to four days,” Rocío Nahle said in a radio interview.
But in the case of the capital, Nahle’s forecast appears overly optimistic due to another act of sabotage on the pipeline between the Veracruz port city of Tuxpan and the northern Mexico City borough of Azcapotzalco.
“They’re continuing to break into the pipelines, yesterday they did precisely that. Breaking pipelines, acts of sabotage, they took some pipelines out of operation, the Tuxpan-Azcapotzalco pipeline is out of service,” President López Obrador told reporters this morning.
“They’re working quickly to repair the pipelines so that the lives of workers and residents are not placed at risk,” he added.
It was the fifth time in less than a week that the pipeline was tapped, an act that the president called “deliberate” as criminal elements seek to prevent the restoration of fuel supplies. The pipeline delivers up to 170,000 barrels a day to the Valley of México.
In a television interview this morning, the vice-president of the gas station trade organization Onexpo said that damage to the Tuxpan-Azcapotzalco pipeline would likely prevent gasoline supply from normalizing as quickly as hoped.
“Unfortunately, we’ve just heard about that news and that means once again a delay in the flow of product towards Mexico City,” Fernando González Piña said.
While repairs to the pipeline are taking place, González said, fuel will continue to be transported by tanker trucks, “a means of transport much less efficient than pipelines.”
López Obrador said that he would “take a tour of the entire route of the Tuxpan-Azcapotzalco pipeline” next Tuesday to have meetings and “speak with the people.”
The president added that “the pipeline transports 170,000 barrels a day,” and when fuel thieves or saboteurs target it “we have supply problems.”
However, López Obrador reiterated that there are sufficient gasoline reserves to ensure that Mexico won’t be left without fuel and that the federal government’s anti-fuel theft strategy is working.
He has repeatedly said that fuel shortages in some states are due to logistics rather than supply.
Yesterday, the energy secretary refuted a report published by The Wall Street Journal Friday that said Mexico had significantly reduced gasoline imports from the United States’ Gulf Coast since López Obrador was sworn in as president on December 1.
Referring to all gasoline imports, Nahle said the state oil company bought an average of just under 765,000 barrels a day in the first nine days of January, 36.8% more than December when imports averaged 559,000 barrels a day.
The Secretariat of Energy (Sener) said that once purchases made by private companies, including ExxonMobil, Novum Energy and Windstar, were added to those made by Pemex, daily gasoline imports averaged just under 610,000 barrels a day in December and 814,500 barrels a day in the first nine days of January.
One of two journalists who wrote TheWall Street Journal story, which cited figures from United States research firm ClipperData, expressed doubt that the Sener numbers were correct.
“Given that vast majority of Mexican fuel imports come from U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, it’s hard to reconcile ClipperData’s decline of 30.2% in the daily average for January and SENER’s increase of 32%. Situation is still clear as mud,” Robbie Whelan wrote on Twitter.
More than 10 states have been affected by the gasolines shortages, which in some cases have now entered their third week.
A survey of 2,809 gas stations conducted in several states between January 11 and 13 by the Federal Consumer Protection Agency (Profeco) found that 70% had no fuel.
Motorists in states such as Michoacán, Guanajuato and Jalisco have faced long lines to fill up at service stations with fuel and the shortages have taken a heavy toll on the economy in some parts of the country.
But the government has remained adamant that it will continue to wage its war against fuel theft despite the negative consequences.
The military has been deployed to protect refineries, fuel storage facilities and petroleum pipelines and López Obrador has said that combating fuel theft, a crime that costs the government billions of pesos a year, will take as long as it takes and “will depend on who tires first [between] those who steal fuel and us.”
Nahle said yesterday that “with the security measures being implemented [including] flyovers of the pipelines, [fuel thieves] are not being allowed to arrive and puncture the pipelines whenever they want.”
Large quantities of sargassum are again likely to wash up on the beaches of Mexico’s Caribbean coast in 2019, according to an ocean researcher from the National Autonomous University (UNAM).
Brigitta Ine van Tussenbroek, a scientist at the university’s Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology, said that satellite images from the University of Florida show that there are currently large floating masses of the brown seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean between southern Africa and Brazil.
The coast of Quintana Roo at Chetumal, Tulum or Cancún could all be affected, van Tussenbroek said, although she explained that more detailed monitoring and modeling is needed to say with confidence which beaches would see large amounts of sargassum.
“If it’s in open ocean, the possibility of it arriving on the Mexican coast is very high although it depends on local atmospheric conditions, like trade winds, that carry sargassum to our beaches,” she said.
Van Tussenbroek warned that if the seaweed arrives in quantities similar to those seen last year, the impact on local ecosystems and tourism will be severe.
In 2018, tourism declined in some parts of coastal Quintana Roo due to the presence of unsightly and smelly sargassum on beaches that draw visitors because of their usually pristine white sand.
Van Tussenbroek said that authorities at all levels of government need to work together to establish efficient and environmentally-friendly methods with which to collect sargassum before it reaches the coastline.
“In Quintana Roo, the tourism sector is extremely worried and actively participates . . in the mitigation [of the problem] but [the response] should reach another level, go beyond local action,” she said.
The scientist added that her suggestion is to “establish a state or national coordinating body, [that is] specifically dedicated to effective [sargassum] mitigation.”
Floating sargassum barriers were installed off some sections of Quintana Roo’s coast last year to prevent the seaweed from arriving on shore but authorities and citizens were still required to dedicate thousands of hours to clean the state’s beaches.
Heaps of compost occupy an open space in the jungle of Woolis Farm. jenna Belevender
Mauricio Jervis never intended to be a chef. Nor did he anticipate becoming an expert in compost and recycling.
But now, the owner and chef of a Tulum restaurant whose supplies are locally sourced is also the founder of an organic waste management organization that seeks to take on the town’s massive trash problem, brought on by rapid population growth and an explosion in tourism.
Still, Jervis said, he’s not a savior. Just a guy with ideas who saw a problem that needed addressing.
A native of Mérida who also dabbles in photography, Jervis first became aware of the town’s trash problem when asked by fellow chef and writer Juan Pablo Inés to photograph the former garbage dump site for a Yucatán magazine. Inés would later become a partner in Jervis’ restaurant.
That dump site, an eight-hectare, clear-cut part of the jungle roughly 9.5 kilometers from Tulum, received 160 tonnes of waste per day (40-60% of which was organic). The new official disposal site has been open only a year and is already at capacity.
Shocked at the level of inefficiency and contamination, where garbage seeps into the underground river systems which form the region’s freshwater cenotes and winds up in the ocean, Jervis sought to provide an alternative.
Chef and organic farmer Mauricio Jervis at Woolis Farm, north of Tulum. jenna Belevender
He founded Woolis Green Solutions in 2016 and now has 20 clients, including restaurants and hotels in the Tulum area. During high season, he and his team collect nearly two tonnes of organic waste each day, all of which travels in the back of a pickup truck to Woolis Farm, about a half-hour north of Tulum.
Jervis, also the owner and executive chef of Tulum’s Farm To Table restaurant, says the ideal scale of the recycling and composting project would be unlimited. But the issue is that some businesses don’t want to spend the money.
“Every restaurant prices things differently. At Farm To Table we have a 45% food and beverage cost which most people would be freaking outraged at,” he said.
“But what we are trying to do is completely different. On average, each restaurant produces about two kilos of waste for an average two-course menu, so you’re looking at about three to four kilos for a fine dining experience for two. For 100 people at our restaurant, we produce 200 kilos of waste per day. That’s a very general number that varies day to day. It’s really a result of whether we’re paying attention or not.”
Solutions for reducing waste in restaurants can be as simple as one of Farm To Table’s methods, which includes emptying the fridge each day before dinner service begins and seeing what can be used again. This results in an ever-rotating menu.
Jervis walks through the greenhouse at Woolis Farm. jenna Belevender
“You’re always going to have some sort of waste, it’s just how creative are you to reduce it,” Jervis said. “For us, it costs about seven pesos more on a dish to do this. You don’t have to make a profit on it, so instead of paying 150 pesos for three tacos on the beach, you have people pay 160 and you put on the menu that the extra 10 pesos is going toward a compost solution for the town.”
Jervis says that hotels and restaurants will often feign excitement at the proposal. Woolis, which gets its name from the Mayan word for “cycle,” will distribute boxes that fit up to 50 kg of waste, and will remove them for 550 pesos. A one-time staff training fee is 1,500 pesos, and businesses are charged a monthly collection fee of 3,500 pesos per tonne of waste collected.
All waste is taken to Woolis Farm, in the vicinity of nearby Puerto Aventuras, sorted and distributed for animal feed and aerobic and anaerobic composting which ultimately becomes the fertilizer and soil for the herb, fruit and vegetable gardens.
“There are restaurants that promote having compost and I know for a fact that they don’t,” Jervis said. “There are restaurants in town that literally publish with magazines saying that they compost and are healthy and local, but you’ll find smoked salmon and tuna on their menu, from Alaska. We advise restaurants that they shouldn’t offer it on their menu and their response will be ‘well, the customer wants it.’”
Jervis sees Farm To Table as one of the vehicles to spread the word around the region.
Free-range chickens at Woolis Farm. jenna Belevender
“The people I really want to reach are dishwashers, waiters, cooks, chefs; those are the people I’m going for,” Jervis said. “Management, owners; I don’t care about them. They should be educated anyway. The chefs and bussers are the ones who have their hands on it.”
Woolis Farm lies on a perpetually shady and bumpy dirt road leading from the highway into the thick of the jungle, where Jervis has taken over a parcel of seven hectares and a hacienda-style home.
Six people live and work on the farm, where chickens, pigs and any number of jungle animals roam freely. Jaguars, owls and monkeys have been known to make an appearance. Frogs and spiders are ubiquitous.
The state of Quintana Roo is blessed with abundant freshwater and sunshine, so little irrigation is needed. The property has its own cenote, which is fed by rainwater filtered through layers of limestone.
“Here, you taste that spice in the food which comes because there is activity in the soil,” Jervis said, handing me a piece of arugula nearly as potent as a habanero. These pigs, their pork is good for you. It is high in omega 9s, omega 2s and omega 6s. I learned that recently because a professor that is studying native breeds of pigs was here and he’s comparing the factory pig to the free range, waste-fed pig.”
Remains of coconuts will eventually become compost and fertilizer. jenna Belevender
Woolis also aims to educate local children on how to be conscious with waste and about the underlying problems behind climate change.
“Society tends to be really small-minded when it comes to these problems,” Jervis said. “Plastic is enemy No. 1 today, but back when I was a kid, it was aerosol. We just keep looking at these one-dimensional things and say ‘if we fix this, we’ll be OK.’ But the biggest problem really isn’t plastic in the ocean, rather the production of plastic, and burning of fossil fuels and not taking care of our waste.”
Farm To Table opened in April 2018 on the main restaurant strip, which is the highway that passes through Tulum. The menu features all Mexican-made beverages and local food products such as lionfish, an invasive species which appears on the menu as a way to reduce harm to native fish.
Other dishes, such as duck tamal with cauliflower purée and grilled nopal filled with locally made cheese, are examples of the rotating menu options.
Still, Jervis says Farm To Table is approaching the social aspect of the food chain with its organic farm, which will make organic food available to a wider audience. The idea is to create clean food on the cheap. The reason the restaurateurs haven’t jumped on the bandwagon with him, he says, is based on greed.
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.
Photographer Jenna Belevender is based in Detroit and has a strong background in editorial, documentary and environmental portraiture.
Nieto speaks at this morning's press conference as the president looks on.
Many gas stations located near petroleum pipelines sell stolen fuel, the federal government’s financial intelligence chief asserted today.
Santiago Nieto, head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), a division of the Secretariat of Finance (SHCP), said the sales of “a large proportion” of such stations exceed the quantities of fuel they purchase from Pemex, the state oil company.
“What does that mean? That differential can’t be [attributed to] anything else than the supply of stolen fuel,” he said.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s daily press conference, Nieto said that this month the UIF has analyzed information provided by banks about transactions made by gas stations that are located near Pemex pipelines.
“All reports related to gas stations were analyzed using two models. In most of the municipalities through which pipelines cross . . . deposits, particularly in cash, are being made . . . They’re reported by the banking system,” he said.
“. . . A large proportion of gas stations make deposits and transfers in cash that differ from the amount of funds with which they operate . . . This [analysis] has led us also to open a series of money laundering cases. In the 32 federal entities, we found more than 14,000 reports of unusual operations . . .” Nieto added.
The intelligence chief said the amount of money detected by the UIF that is linked to the commercialization of stolen fuel and “laundered in the Mexican financial system” was 10 billion pesos (US $526.8 million).
In 32 cases, the SHCP, the Secretariat of Security (SSPC) and the Federal Tax Administration (SAT) have taken legal steps to freeze accounts that have allegedly been used for the deposit and transfer of funds linked to stolen fuel, Nieto said.
“. . . Five specific cases have already been taken to the PGR [federal Attorney General’s office] with the idea to bring them before the courts quickly. In these cases . . . businessmen [are involved] but also public servants including a Pemex official, a former state deputy [and] a former mayor . . .” he added.
“The modus operandi involves not just the commercialization of stolen fuel but also the laundering of capital through the financial system,” Nieto said.
“We’ve detected international transfers of varying significant amounts that, in some cases, exceed US $2 million, purchases of luxury cars . . . We’ve also detected public servants who purchase property on an annual basis in their own names or those of family or people close to them. They buy airline tickets, jewelry, artwork to launder capital which comes from the theft of fuel.”
López Obrador speaks during his daily press conference.
President López Obrador said today his predecessors were either accomplices to corruption or they turned a blind eye — “there’s no way [they] didn’t know.”
“I’ve said it before, that all the juicy business done in the country, deals of corruption, were greenlighted by the president. To state it clearly, it’s not that they ‘didn’t know’ or ‘the president had good intentions but he was deceived’ — it’s a lie,” the president told his daily press conference.
He also said that if Mexicans demand punishment for the acts of corruption committed by his predecessors, his administration will act accordingly.
Such an action would “aim high” and not at lower-level public workers.
In the past, he charged, scapegoats were used to “simulate a fight against this crime.”
“Corruption [starts] from the top down and [ex-presidents] shielded behind scapegoats . . . and the president was protected and unpunished,” López Obrador said.
“If we are going to open the files, let’s go all the way to the top,” he continued before checking off the names of his predecessors: Carlos Salinas, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto.
Ex-president Fox did not take long to offer a reply, calling on the president to present proof.
“AMLO is defaming many people. I challenge him to present proof . . . and if he does not to be quiet.”
Fox declared he was not involved in any act of corruption during his time in the public service. “Back then we didn’t even know the term ‘huachicol [fuel theft].”
