Cemex wouldn't say how much cement prices will go up.
The price of concrete will increase by 20% on January 1, an industry group has announced.
The Mexican Association of Independent Concrete Producers (AMCI), which represents companies that make 70% of the material nationwide, said in a statement yesterday that a range of factors are behind the price hike.
ACMI president Emanuel García Villarreal pointed to the rising cost of cement and aggregates including sand and limestone as well as higher prices for diesel and electricity.
“This increase . . . is due to the rise in 2018 of all our inputs . . .” he said.
Jorge Pérez, spokesman for Nuevo Léon-based Cemex, the second largest building materials company in the world and a large supplier to independent concrete producers, declined to say when and by how much it would increase its prices for cement.
“Cemex will increase its prices in Mexico according to the inflation of our inputs, which could vary depending on the geographic area,” he said.
However, Javier Fernández, CEO of concrete producer Mecasa, said he had been informed that Cemex’s cement prices would increase by 12% to 13% from January 1.
Cement and diesel contribute to 50% of the overall cost of producing concrete, he explained.
Víctor Salazar, director of real estate development company Clúster de Vivienda de Nuevo León, urged concrete producers to reconsider raising their prices by such a significant amount due to the damage it will cause to the construction sector, which is already confronted with rising costs.
He said that the increase went above inflation and producers’ price indices.
The head of the Nuevo León branch of the National Chamber for Housing Development (Canadevi), Marco Salazar, said “the increase in the price of concrete concerns us but we hope that it doesn’t materialize in a generalized way.”
He added that the exchange rate could be another factor that affects the price of new housing but nevertheless predicted that 50,000 new dwellings will be built in Nuevo León next year.
“We are very hopeful that economic uncertainty won’t increase in 2019,” Salazar said.
According to the National Statistics Agency (Inegi), construction costs rose by 10.23% between January and November, the biggest increase for the same period over the past decade.
Cement prices increased between 3% and 9.9% in the first nine months of the year, depending on the supplier, but respective 30% and 28% increases in the cost of steel and wire rods have contributed even more to rising building costs.
AMLO has declared himself against transgenic products.
President López Obrador’s commitment to not allow the use of genetically-modified (GM) organisms has been called into question by two non-governmental organizations, including Greenpeace.
In his inauguration speech on December 1 the new president pledged that the use of transgenic products, such as genetically-modified seeds, would not be permitted in Mexico under his government.
However, López Obrador’s appointments of Alfonso Romo as his chief of staff and Víctor Villalobos as agriculture secretary have raised eyebrows among GM opponents.
Both men have been involved in organizations that support the GM food industry.
Romo was the founder and CEO of the company Seminis, a transgenic seeds pioneer that was sold to United States agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto for US $400 million.
Villalobos was previously the head of CIBIOGEM, a federal government agency that develops policies for the safe use of genetically modified organisms.
María Colín, legal adviser for Greenpeace México, questioned whether Romo and Villalobos – who she said “come from a long career of promoting genetically modified organisms” – would “really have the will” to follow through with López Obrador’s pledge.
She added that the government needs to provide more details about how it plans to go about prohibiting the use of transgenic products and clarify if “everything is going to be banned or just corn.”
Adelita San Vicente, director of the Semillas de Vida (Seeds of Life) Foundation, an organization dedicated to the conservation of corn in its traditional form, also said that the presence of Romo and Villalobos within the upper echelons of government was cause for concern but pointed out that there are also new officials who have spoken out against GM foods.
They include María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, head of the National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt), and Víctor Suárez, who was named undersecretary for food self-sufficiency.
“. . . The doctor Álvarez-Buylla has been important in the fight . . . against genetically modified organisms because she’s provided us with scientific information,” San Vicente said.
Planting GM corn in Mexico has been prohibited since 2013, pending the outcome of a lawsuit. Álvarez-Buylla has advocated the ban be made permanent.
Criminals who operated in the northern border states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas have been sentenced to hefty prison terms.
David Rosales Guzmán, identified as the Gulf Cartel leader in Monterrey, Nuevo León, has been ordered to spend to 53 years behind bars.
Also known as “El Comandante Diablo,” Rosales was found guilty of organized crime, kidnapping, homicide, crimes against health and carrying an unauthorized firearm.
He was arrested in 2012 for the murder of two men whose bodies were hung from an overpass. He was also linked to an attack on a bar in Monterrey in which 14 people were killed.
In Tamaulipas, a man identified only as Benedick N. was sentenced to 90 years for a kidnapping that took place early last year.
A complaint filed by the victim’s family led to his rescue and the apprehension of the kidnapper.
The New York trial of former drug lord 'El Chapo' Guzmán, seated just to the left of the map on the wall.
A drug trafficker testified at the New York trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán that he spent millions of dollars buying professional Mexican soccer teams.
Tirso Martínez Sánchez, nicknamed El Futbolista, told jurors Monday that he was the owner of teams in Querétaro, Celaya, Irapuato, La Piedad and Mérida, all of which were bought with the proceeds of distributing drugs in the United States for Mexican cartels.
The trafficker, who according to his own testimony worked for both El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Juárez Cartel between 1995 and 2003, said he bought the Venados club in Mérida, Yucatán, for between US $600,000 and $700,000 and the Reboceros club in La Piedad, Michoacán, for US $2.2 million.
Martínez added that he sold the latter club in 2004 for $10 million, explaining that he made a $4 million net profit after paying off players and other employees.
Once the Mexican Football Federation became aware of his ownership of soccer teams in 2006, the witness said, it offered to buy his interests in the clubs for $10 million.
In just three years between 2000 and 2003, Martínez’s trafficking activities are estimated to have netted him between $40 million and $50 million.
But the witness said that he lost between $2 million and $3 million betting on cockfights held at palenques, or cockfight rings, in several Mexican cities.
With his remaining riches, Martínez said, he bought one restaurant in Tijuana and another in the state of Illinois, a car dealership in Los Angeles, four clothing stores and a light plane and cars, among other purchases.
“I spent all my money betting on cocks, horses, properties, cars, houses, parties and women,” the 51-year-old said.
He told jurors that he only had five assets left – a house, a ranch and three other properties – all located in Mexico.
Martínez also testified that he had collaborated with Guzmán on the operation of a train route that transported cocaine from Mexico to the New York area. He said that El Chapo “invented” the route that terminated in a New Jersey warehouse.
The witness said he met Guzmán after the former drug lord’s first escape from prison in 2001 and estimated that during the time he worked with him, the Sinaloa Cartel earned between $500 million and $800 million in cocaine sales in the United States.
Martínez told the court that he stopped working for the cartel in 2003 because he believed that the police were closing in on him, after which he said that he feared that patas cortas (short legs), as he called Guzmán, would have him killed.
Arrested in Mexico in 2014, Martínez was extradited to the United States the following year where he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and importation charges.
He, like other cartel witnesses who have appeared at Guzmán’s trial, hopes to receive a reduction to his prison sentence.
If convicted of crimes including trafficking, criminal conspiracy and money laundering, Guzmán faces a probable sentence of life imprisonment. The trial continues.
Hijacked trucks can be seen on the grounds of the Michoacán school.
Students at a teacher training school in Morelia, Michoacán, hijacked several vehicles yesterday in a protest against the state government.
Masked students enrolled at the Vasco de Quiroga Normal School in Tiripetío nabbed five trucks and three buses on the Pátzcuaro-Morelia highway, ordering the drivers out and commandeering the vehicles.
The newspaper El Universal reported that aerial footage it obtained showed the eight vehicles were being kept on the school grounds, where students looted the trucks’ cargo.
A student who asked to remain anonymous initially denied that any vehicles were being kept on the school’s premises but then explained that the hijacking was in protest against the government for not releasing funds for the school’s maintenance and for scholarships for 540 students.
The student said that some of the hijacked vehicles were released when negotiations with the state government started.
Students in Guerrero probably hold the record for the largest number of hijacked vehicles. An estimated 500 were stolen during protests over the disappearance of 43 teaching students in Iguala, Guerrero.
Teachers have also engaged in the practice. In 2016, teachers built up an impressive storage lot of 75 stolen vehicles in Nahuatzen, Michoacán. They were among 200 that authorities believed were stolen in protests in the state against the 2012 education reforms.
Over 4,000 people who arrived in migrant caravans have applied for refugee status in Mexico.
The Mexican Commission for Assistance to Refugees (Comar) is swamped with a backlog of more than 48,000 applications, nearly half of which date back to 2017.
The number of refugee applications received four years ago was 2,137, but this year is expected to close with more than 26,000 from migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, said Comar’s new chief, Andrés Ramírez Silva, calling it a drastic increase.
Among this year’s applications are 4,721 filed by travelers in the migrant caravans that have entered Mexico since October.
” . . . Comar is in a very complicated position, in terms of its finances and operational capabilities,” Ramírez said, explaining that the massive increase in applications has not been matched with a budget increase.
Ramírez said he has asked for more money but an insufficient budget had not been the only problem.
The previous authorities were not adequately prepared to process the applications, he said.
“That’s the entrance,” said my taxi driver, pointing at a cement drainage ditch that sloped downward into the sub-tropical jungle.
“That’s the entrance?” I asked and he nodded and started his engine.
Carefully, in my flipflops, beach bag slung around my shoulder, I stepped sideways down the steep trail that came after the drainage ditch, down to the sea. I came out from the cover of trees on to the tiny El Violin beach. A head bobbed a few meters out past the shore, snorkeling over the reef, a family of three sat on the other side of the rock line that divided the beach in half.
Beside them there was nothing but sun, sand, rocks and the occasional passing boat. Ducking my head under the water I could hear the crackling sound made by the reef nearby, and fall leaves, beaten baby-soft by the tide, floated around me.
This was just one of the virgin beaches I explored last month in Huatulco on Mexico’s Oaxaca coast. Huatulco is a series of bays, beaches and small towns that make up a region developed into a tourist destination in the mid-1980s.
La Bocana, one of many beaches in Huatulco.
It was not on my radar until I was invited to come down and see this little slice of paradise for myself, and I was hesitant about what I would find. Searching online for information I wanted — the best places to eat, the most isolated beaches, the coolest tours — was an exercise in futility. Now that I am back I can say that Huatulco is delightful, with lots to offer if you know where to look.
Eating
I really don’t want to travel anywhere where I can’t get good food, so getting some local restaurant recommendations was my top priority upon arrival. Mexican beach destinations are notorious for strings of identical oceanfront restaurants that are pretty mediocre and/or gourmet spots that cost an arm and a leg, and still pretty mediocre.
In Huatulco I found some reasonably priced places where the food was excellent — but it did take getting off the beach.
My first stop was at El Chino, opened just a few months ago in the town of Santa Cruz. Like every place on this list El Chino is not on the beach, but the vibe is as beachy as it gets — hammocks strung from poles that frame an open-air restaurant, a palapa roof. If I could recommend two things on the menu, I beg you to try the chile de agua stuffed with marlin and the chilpachole (soup might sound too hot for 30 C weather, but just trust me).
For more light beachy fare, try La Tosta in the town of La Crucecita, a few blocks off the main plaza. They have a mixed seafood tostada (a crispy tortilla) and an octopus ceviche tostada that I am still dreaming about.
Rocoto is evening dining on Benito Juárez boulevard and is run by a Chilean-Mexican couple that have a killer coconut shrimp soup and an octopus and mushroom quinoa dish that I couldn’t even comprehend (in a good way).
A prawn dish at Mercader in Santa Cruz.
These women are serving up different specials every night centered around local seafood and ingredients. Rocoto needs to be on your list for at least one night of your vacation, but they are often packed so make a reservation or come knowing you may have to wait.
Mercader in Santa Cruz has an Asian-Mexican fusion menu, with dishes like Vietnamese rolls, a tamarind shrimp salad with tropical fruit and rice noodles, or salmon croquettes with chipotle sauce.
My last suggestion is local classic El Chacal, named after the river lobster native to Huatulco. They serve some special preparations of the little creatures there, but my favorite was grilled with butter and garlic. Also great was the fish ceviche with tomato and cucumber.
This is a homestyle place with sandy floors and a thatched roof. It sits right next to the Copalito river and any local can give you directions. A few other suggestions I got? Juanita’s Cafe on fish taco night; Cafe Viena, an Italian joint run by Italian immigrants, Che Dieguito, an Argentinian steakhouse; and Las Tlayudas de Sector E for local Oaxacan fare.
Beaches
With 36 local beaches, you can visit a different one every day for your entire vacation, which was pretty much my plan. El Violin, described above, is great for solitude and snorkeling. Cacaluta is a gorgeous beach where I can almost guarantee you’ll be alone, because it requires a short hike through Huatulco’s National Park and so isn’t very frequented by the everyday tourists.
The hike is about a 20-minute leisurely walk and can get a little swampy in places. Along the way you pass a beautiful bird estuary and you’ll see dozens of butterflies in your path. Don’t stress out if the path isn’t clearly marked, just keep heading towards the ocean. Waves here were a little stronger than some of the more mellow bays.
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El Tejon (often called El Tejoncito) is more centrally located near Chahué bay, but it also takes a small walk to get to it. A cab will drop you off at the entrance to a residential development and you have to walk in and to the left along a paved road. The entrance is an unmarked trail downward right next to a black trash bin. This is another virgin beach made for peace and quiet.
If you don’t mind other tourists the Santa Cruz bay has some of the calmest waters for swimming and there are other beaches in the bay you can reach via boat or car like La Entrega or El Órgano. Arrocito is a tiny beach to the south of Chahué marina with a beach bar with tables, umbrellas and cold beers. Tourist traffic can be heavy, but again, the waters are extremely calm for swimming.
La Bocana is a favorite of foreigners and is known for its good surf. This beach is more open ocean than the bays and so the waves are bigger and the beach stretches down further.
There are several other beaches accessible from inside the national park. They are unmarked and unnamed and so pretty isolated, but a local taxi driver can point out a few for you. My big regret was not making it to Riscallillo which is only accessible by boat but is said to be lovely. It’s also inside the national park, north of Cacaluta.
Activities
My hosts for the week, Aventura Mundo, have a bevy of local tours and adventures that they arrange for visitors including a breathtaking moonlight cruise down the Copalito river and a night kayak tour to see the local phosphorescent plankton.
For early risers, local guide Shiro Lopez (961 370 0744) offers a sunrise fishing and snorkeling tour. We went out at 5:00 one morning and were honored with a spectacular dawn and a few fish for breakfast.
Definitely catch a bird-watching tour to one of the local nature reserves (try Cornelio Ramos, 958 106 5749) and snorkel the reef, either on your own in one of the small bays or with a group. For a beach break, Aventura Mundo arranges glamping excursions to Pluma, Hidalgo, a nearby coffee-producing region about an hour and a half into the Oaxaca mountains.
General Tips
Almost everywhere you go in Huatulco by cab will cost you around 40 pesos (US $2.50) unless you are headed to one of the beaches farther from town. Santa Cruz and La Crucecita are like little towns, places like Arrocito and Chahué more like residential areas. Tangolunda bay and Conejos bay are home to the major resorts as well as some vacation rentals, mostly condos.
Having your own car is definitely the easiest way to get around, but cabs will also take you anywhere and there is a local bus that runs up and down the main boulevard.
Lastly, come to Huatulco in search of surf, turf and relaxation — this is not a place for dance clubs, high-end shopping, and lots of entertainment. It’s more a place to enjoy the sun on your face and a cold beer in your hand.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.
The new Jalisco government has been given a bloody welcome to office: more than 50 people have been murdered in the state since the weekend.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, 10 people were murdered, the newspaper El Financiero reported.
Eight of them were shot dead, including four individuals aged between 25 and 30 who were attacked inside a home in the Guadalajara neighborhood of Vicente Guerrero. A fifth person also suffered gunshot wounds at the same address and was reported to be in serious condition.
Yesterday’s homicides followed three days of violence, with at least one multiple homicide on each of Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Jalisco was identified as one of six insecurity hot spots by new federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo last week, underscoring the challenges faced by the new state government led by Enrique Alfaro Ramírez.
Data on the state government platform Seguridad Mapa shows that the number of annual homicides in Guadalajara has increased by 240% since former governor Aristóteles Sandoval took office in 2013, while there has been a 200% spike in the murder rate in the neighboring municipality of Tlaquepaque.
There have been around 1,800 homicides in Jalisco this year, a statistic which new security cabinet chief Macedonio Tamez said was cause for concern. However, he deflected responsibility for the current wave of violence.
“The red [warning] light welcomed us when we assumed office, it was already on . . . This dynamic of violence we’re experiencing is the same one that was there before we entered [government]. With this I want to explain that the situation in the state is alarming, it’s worrying and it’s forcing us to take decisions such as getting together daily to work on the issue of security,” Tamez said.
Governor Alfaro said Monday that agreements that had created the regional and metropolitan single-command police forces have expired, meaning that the state police are back on the beat.
His government plans to strengthen the Metropolitan Security Agency in order to facilitate the establishment of coordinated actions between state and federal security forces.
It will also review the management of the C5 security monitoring system that started operations two months ago, although more than 2,000 surveillance cameras are still to be installed.
Jalisco is home to Mexico’s most powerful and dangerous criminal organization – the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) – which is accused of torturing and murdering three students in Guadalajara this year and carrying out an attack on the state’s former labor secretary, among other high profile crimes.
One of many marches held to protest the 2012 education reform.
President López Obrador presented his new education plan to the media this morning and will send it to the lower house of Congress today.
“Commitment fulfilled, teachers,” the new president declared after signing the plan at his daily 7:00am press conference at the National Palace.
“We’re going to present the general education plan, starting with the reform initiative to cancel the badly named education reform, repeal it and substitute the current legal framework with a new one,” López Obrador said.
The 2012 education reform implemented by the previous federal government was vehemently opposed by the dissident CNTE teachers’ union, which took particular umbrage at subjecting teachers to compulsory evaluations.
The union staged countless protest marches and strikes, primarily in Chiapas and Oaxaca where the union is strongest.
López Obrador pledged both during his election campaign and after his victory on July 1 that he would abolish the reform.
Today he said that his government’s plan would allocate more resources to the education sector and ensure that youth have the opportunity to continue their studies.
The president also said that teachers and parents had been consulted about the plan and that the government had entered into an agreement with them.
“. . . This is an important change, a difference with the way in which they acted when they implemented the badly named education reform against the will of the teachers,” López Obrador said.
Alongside the president at today’s press conference, Education Secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragán methodically listed what he said were the inconsistencies and weaknesses in the previous reform.
Moctezuma told reporters last week that evaluation will continue under the new government’s education plan but that it will “only be used to offer information and training” to teachers.
“It won’t be punitive and linked to labor issues but linked rather to continuous training that the teachers of Mexico must have,” he said.
Other proposals include the recognition of teachers as fundamental agents of social transformation and that they will have the right to permanently access training and development programs.
It also stipulates that education be not only free, secular and mandatory – as currently specified – but also universal, equitable and excellent and that educational content and policies can be differentiated depending on the region of the country they apply to.
The government plans to make 10 million scholarships available to students from families with limited economic means. There will also be an increased focus on teaching indigenous languages.
The plan was developed after a national consultation that was conducted both online and in face-to-face forums.
Mario Delgado, the leader of López Obrador’s Morena party in the lower house of Congress, expressed his support for the new education plan and pledged that “not even a comma” from the past government’s reform would remain.
An Irish chef and owner of two Michelin star restaurants has dubbed avocados “the blood diamonds of Mexico” and taken them off his menus.
“I don’t use them because of the impact they have on the countries that they are coming from: deforestation in Chile, violence in Mexico,” said JP McMahon, owner of Aniar and Tartare, both located in Galway.
“For me, they are akin to battery chickens. I think Irish restaurants should make a conscious effort to not use avocados or at least reduce the amount they use. You can get Fair Trade avocados but most are not produced this way,” he told the newspaper the Irish Independent.
McMahon added that “change won’t happen unless consumers avoid them.”
Michoacán is the largest producer of avocados in the world but it’s not just farmers who are cashing in on crops of the fruit dubbed Mexico’s “green gold.”
Avocado growers from the municipality of Tancítaro calculated that from 2009 to 2013 organized crime made around US $770 million from the region’s avocado business, or $154 million annually, according to a report in the newspaper El Universal.
A 2017 report by the federal Attorney General’s office said that throughout the 1990s the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Los Cuinis criminal gang pioneered the extortion and kidnapping of wealthy avocado farmers to fund their expansion.
A report published by the New York Times Magazine in March this year said that “under the volcanos in Mexico’s Michoacán state, violent cartels are fighting to dominate a shadowy and lucrative market.”
The Times report said that La Familia Michoacana, the Caballeros Templarios and Los Viagras have all muscled in on the lucrative avocado trade in Michoacán over the past decade.
The Caballeros Templarios, known in English as the Knights Templar, “taxed, extorted and kidnapped [avocado] farmers and usurped their land,” the Times said.
La Familia Michoacana started extorting local avocado growers in 2009, killing farm hands and displacing farmers, and appropriating their property, according to InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime in Latin America.
In response to threats and violence, avocado farmers in some parts of the state have formed their own self-defense groups.
All the while Mexico has continued to export millions upon millions of avocados, mainly to the United States but also to Europe and new markets such as China, meaning that a veritable army of restaurateurs – and everyday consumers – would have to stop eating the fruit for any effect to be truly felt.
Nevertheless, McMahon’s two acclaimed Irish restaurants are not the only eateries that have taken the decision to remove avocados from their menus for ethical reasons.
The Wild Strawberry Café in the English county of Buckinghamshire announced on Instagram late last month that it would no longer be serving avocado.
The café cited “seasonality,” “food miles” and “sustainability” as the three reasons why it made the decision to remove avocado from its menu.
“The western world’s obsession with avocado has been placing unprecedented demand on avocado farmers, pushing up prices to the point that there are even reports of Mexican drug cartels controlling lucrative exports,” the café’s Instagram post said in explanation of the last reason.
“Forests are being thinned out to make way for avocado plantations. Intensive farming on this scale contributes to greenhouse emissions by its very nature and places pressure on local water supplies.”
Other establishments including Frank’s Canteen in London and Tincan Coffee Co in Bristol have also stopped serving the fruit, also known as the alligator pear.
“Serving avocados, knowing the huge socio-economic impact that avocado farming is having in Mexico and California just didn’t feel right,” said Tincan cofounder Adam White.
