The aircraft that was abandoned along with its cargo at the Chetumal airport.
Cocaine production in Colombia is on the rise, and so are accidents involving light aircraft transporting the drug into Mexico.
Two planes that departed the South American country carrying cocaine have crashed in Quintana Roo during the past four months while another was abandoned after landing without authorization at the airport in the state capital, Chetumal.
Most recently, a Cessna light aircraft carrying one and a half tonnes of cocaine crashed on March 10 in El Cedral, a community in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco, which borders Belize.
The plane reportedly skidded along the ground for 100 meters before hitting a tree. A Colombian man died in the accident, while a Sinaloa man who survived was arrested.
The accident followed the crash of a similar plane carrying two tonnes of cocaine in the Othón P. Blanco community of Río Verde last November.
On January 1, two Colombian nationals disembarked from an aircraft after landing in Chetumal and fled, leaving one and a half tonnes of cocaine inside the plane.
Chetumal security official Adrián Sánchez said the plane is believed to have traveled to Mexico from Colombia and that its two crew members abandoned it because it had run out of fuel.
“They preferred to take the risk of being arrested rather than dying in a crash in the jungle as has occurred in other cases,” he said.
According to a report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in September, 171,000 hectares of land in Colombia were used to grow the coca plant in 2017, an increase of 25,000 hectares or 17% over the year before.
The same report estimated that enough coca was grown to produce 1,379 tonnes of cocaine, up 31% over 2016.
Javier Oliva, a researcher and professor at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) who specializes in security and intelligence issues, told the newspaper Milenio that drug cartels are desperate to cash in on the high cocaine production levels by getting their product to the United States.
The light plane accidents are a result of that desperation, he contended.
Oliva also provided an analysis of the United Nations statistics.
“The conclusions that we can take away from this astonishing data are firstly, consumption of the drug has increased; secondly . . . the profits of Colombian criminal groups and the organizations where the goods pass through have also gone up; and thirdly . . . [efforts] to eradicate and contain production of coca leaves [in Colombia] are obviously a failure,” he said.
While the use of planes to transport cocaine out of Colombia appears to be on the rise, the drug is more commonly sent to Mexico by sea before continuing its journey to the lucrative United States market by land.
The amount of cocaine shipped northbound by sea through Mexican waters almost tripled between 2014 and 2017, according to estimates by the United States Coast Guard.
'We cannot work because we have been invaded by fleas and cats,' the sign advises.
An infestation of fleas has closed at least five municipal government offices in Acapulco, Guerrero.
Civil servants told journalists that hundreds of flea-ridden feral cats have taken up residence for several months near the offices of political parties. Workers said that as of two weeks ago, their workplaces have been infested with fleas that cover the furniture in the offices.
On the door of one, a sign went up that reads, “We cannot work because we have been invaded by fleas and cats.”
Municipal employee Tania Martínez Ruiz said she and other workers have been affected by insect bites, which presents a health risk.
“Right now my neck is completely bitten, my legs are full of fleas — these are the conditions all of my coworkers are in, too.”
She added that despite promises to fumigate the offices, local authorities have not intervened. She added that in addition to the fleas and cats, the offices’ air ducts are infested with rats and possums. Despite an official complaint, local authorities have not responded.
Rosaura Rodríguez Carrillo, another municipal employee, said she and other workers abandoned their offices a week ago because of the invasion.
She added that despite the sign warning of the infestation, residents continue to appear to file paperwork at the offices without taking any precautions.
Quintana Roo state police attempted to evict residents of an illegal settlement in Playa del Carmen yesterday but were forced to withdraw to avoid a violent confrontation.
The police arrived in the community of Nueva Esperanza early yesterday morning to act on an eviction order obtained by the owner of the illegally-occupied land.
A verbal confrontation ensued between the officers and some of the approximately 300 residents who have squatted on the land in the west of the resort city for between one and a half and two years.
Around 10 people were forcibly removed from their homes and heavy machinery was used to tear down some of the makeshift dwellings, but residents retaliated by picking up sticks and stones to repel the police.
The officers left Nueva Esperanza at approximately 8:30am.
Later yesterday morning, about 80 residents arrived at municipal government offices to voice their opposition to the eviction attempt and to seek support to buy the land they are occupying in order to regularize the legal status of their homes.
Mayor Laura Beristain Navarrete met with the disgruntled residents and told them that municipal authorities would seek to mediate between the disputing parties.
She condemned the police’s use of force in a community where women, children and the elderly live.
Beristain also accused the state government of violating its authority by trying to carry out the eviction without notifying municipal authorities.
“. . . We have municipal autonomy, they carried out an improper act using force . . .” she said, adding that Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín González should come to Playa del Carmen to help the local population instead of sending the police.
Large fish-shaped containers have been showing up on several Mexican beaches as part of a campaign to promote the recycling of PET plastic bottles and the protection of the marine environment.
The most recent of the containers — called PETZ, a combination of the name PET and pez, Spanish for fish — was installed last month near the Papagayo park in Acapulco, Guerrero.
Beachgoers are encouraged to drop their plastic bottles through the fish’s maw, and keep the waste off the beach.
A PETZ container in Guaymas.
Smaller containers were installed nearby to collect plastic caps, with the purpose of supporting a different campaign. A round of chemotherapy treatment for a child can be funded with 1,000 caps.
Donations from the private sector are funding the PETZ but more money is required for the municipal government to install additional containers. Officials are looking for more local business owners to help out, so it can have more containers ready for the Easter vacation.
PETZ containers have also appeared on beaches in Guaymas, Sonora, where a local business designed them, and Manzanillo, Colima.
The offending statue of Columbus, on Paseo de la Reforma.
Another politician is attempting to scrub away the centuries-deep stain of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Yesterday, a week after President López Obrador asked Spain for an apology, Mexico City state legislator Teresa Ramos Arreola called on the city government to take down statues of Cristopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés and rename streets dedicated to the two conquerors.
Ramos Arreola said the two figures were not worthy of commemoration because of the atrocities they committed against indigenous peoples.
“Christopher Columbus committed atrocities such as mutilating indigenous people that didn’t think like him. He also ordered the brutal killing of natives that dared to talk about his abuses, and he even ordered some of them dismembered and exhibited to inspire fear in other native peoples.”
The lawmaker said that Hernán Cortés had been even more ruthless during the conquest of Tenochtitlán.
“It is calculated that the number of Mexicas killed by the Spanish exceeded 100,000, including children, women and the elderly, in contrast with just 50 fallen Spaniards.”
She characterized the two men’s actions as a “desire to annihilate and erase their [indigenous peoples’] culture, institutions and languages from the face of the earth.”
Just over a week ago, the Spanish government “vigorously rejected” the president’s request for an apology and urged López Obrador to view the two nations not for the events of hundreds of years ago, but “as free people with a common legacy and an extraordinary future.”
Ramos Arreola’s proposal must go before legislative committees before it can be voted on by the Mexico City Congress.
Over 130 hectares of virgin pine and oak forest have been consumed by a week-long wildfire in the southern Chiapas biosphere reserve and natural park of El Triunfo.
The blaze started on March 26 in a remote mountainous region in the municipality of Mapastepec, where fighting the fire was complicated by having to travel between five and seven hours to reach the area.
About 250 firefighters have been working for over a week to bring the blaze under control. As of this morning, it was about 90% contained.
An official with the Commission for Natural Protected Areas (Conanp) said yesterday that a military helicopter had been enlisted to transport personnel and dump water on the fire, 2,500 liters at a time.
Conditions during the current dry season have been worsened by the presence of a weak El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon triggered by warmer temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that can significantly affect weather.
Conanp warned residents of mountain communities that rely on fire for cooking to avoid lighting fires if they were unable control them.
Cars and trucks are facing long wait times at several border crossings between Mexico and the United States as a result of a decision to redeploy U.S. border officials to deal with a massive number of migrants.
Drivers are having to wait for up to 10 hours to cross between Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas, where long lines in the former are generating chaos and congestion on several main avenues, the newspaper El Universal reported.
Around 350 semi-trailers packed with products manufactured at local factories have been waiting to cross the border since before 1:00am, El Diario de Juárez said.
To reduce the discomfort of motorists trapped in their vehicles for such long periods, Ciudad Juárez authorities have placed portable toilets along the roads leading to the city’s three ports of entry to the United States.
While the media is reporting multi-hour waits to cross into El Paso, United States Custom and Border Protection (CBP) said this morning that the longest wait time at the three ports of entry was two hours at the Zaragoza International Bridge.
Travelers at many other northern border crossings are also experiencing lengthy delays, while only Baja California ports of entry are operating normally.
Capufe, the federal agency responsible for bridges and highways, reported waits of between two and seven hours for motorists attempting to enter the United States from Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros in Tamaulipas and Piedras Negras and Ciudad Acuña in Coahuila.
“They [CBP] are working at 40% [capacity] . . . The Tamaulipas border is half-closed,” said Julio Almanza, president of the Tamaulipas Federation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism.
Wait times at Nuevo Laredo averaged seven hours yesterday, while all car lanes on the Reynosa-Pharr International Bridge were closed for several hours to allow trucks that had been stranded since Monday to enter the United States.
A protest by Tamaulipas farmers made matters worse. They blocked the port of entry for eight hours on Monday in a campaign calling for more government assistance.
There are fears that congestion at the border will only worsen in the coming weeks as cross-border traffic spikes for the Easter vacation period.
Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump renewed his threat this morning to close the border but instead of ordering Mexican authorities to do more to stem illegal immigration, he urged the U.S. Congress to support his border plans.
“Congress must get together and immediately eliminate the loopholes at the border! If no action, border, or large sections of border, will close. This is a national emergency!” he wrote on Twitter.
If the border were to close completely, Mexico’s losses in trade revenue could reach as high as US $808.8 million a day.
The figure is based on data from the United States Department of Transport that shows that Mexican exports to the U.S via land borders were worth US $295.2 billion in 2018.
“The impact would be tremendous,” said Francisco Cervantes, president of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin).
Pedro Chavira, president of the Chihuahua branch of the National Council of the Maquiladora Industry (Index Nacional), said that huge losses have already been incurred due to the delays at border crossings but claimed that it was impossible to quantify the exact amount.
President López Obrador addressed Trump’s threat to close the border during this morning’s press conference.
“The closure of borders is not in the interest of anyone,” he said.
“It’s not the most advisable thing. I’m pleased that the government of the United States is now recognizing that we are helping [on migration] and we’re going to continue to do it . . .”
Everyone’s a rock star. Felipe Reyes poses with his guitar.
The blazing sun reflects off hot blacktop outside the Taxqueña Metro where the disciples of tune and tone arrive, noodling unplugged electric guitars slung over their shoulders, flashily twirling drumsticks while nodding along to imaginary beats or lumbering through with amplifiers against their bellies, rock n’ roll-honed biceps exposed from under black tank tops.
They come every Tuesday for the Bazar Músico Cultural de Taxqueña, Mexico City’s mecca for used instruments and musical paraphernalia, over 100 market stalls running on the street alongside the Mexico City Music Workers Union in Campestre Churubusco, Coyoacán.
Native Mexican instruments, electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, drums, brass and wind and all manner of knobs, switches and tiny pieces needed to make a musician whole.
Some come for the hard-to-find, some because it’s simply cheaper to trade or buy used, and some come just to pass the time speaking the mother tongue with their fluent brethren.
The sales first sprouted up inside the union doors, but merchandise overcame space and in 1997, the swap meet moved to tiny Calle Cerro del Músico, where the temporary vendor tents now stand in a neat, single row partitioned off from trundling bus traffic by ropes tied to traffic cones, baskets and music stands, with the occasional nut and chapulín vendor helping maintain the barrier.
Jorge Rodríguez strums one of the vihuelas he has for sale.
Jorge Rodríguez has been selling at Bazar Músico Cultural for 25 years, 18 of those out here at his personal stand. He specializes in stringed instruments, with the rarer specimens his favorites, like the small, four-stringed vihuela of 15th-century Iberian heritage and the eight-stringed huapanguera from the Huasteca region of Mexico, both common in Mexican mariachi and folk music.
“It’s better to sell what you like,” he tells me. He’s a seasoned musician, having toured in much of Mexico and into the United States around New York City, and his love for the profession is made clear as he walks me through the origin and history of each his instruments.
Rodríguez’s prices run as low as 600 pesos (US $30) for a ukulele to around 3,000 to 4,000 ($150-$200) for a decent vihuela, with prices going up to as much as 12,000 for something of superior quality in maple or ebony.
Some people walk by with only a single guitar pedal or a handful of drumsticks, hoping to go home with a few pesos or trade up for something better. Long-haired heavy-metalers mix with the straight-laced, classically trained.
Suits from the union pass by glad-handing vendors, and it’s unclear to the uninitiated observer whether the hands meet with genuine esteem or generic disdain. Could be a combination of the two.
Francisco Reyes has been selling at the bazaar for 18 years. He sells everything, he says, though the wares are a little slim today: some drum pieces, a melody harp, a couple of keyboards and drumsticks. Reyes doesn’t want to be in a photo but his friend swats him with a newspaper he’d just borrowed, trying to coax him into the frame, while the camera snaps photos of Reyes’ merchandise. A quick lesson that vendors either refuse to appear in photos or insist on holding guitars for them.
Javier Coyotecatl (back to camera) working out a deal.
One of the few vendors who isn’t a musician herself, Sandra Sánchez sells brass instruments, mostly trumpets and trombones, generally around 3,500 pesos, she reckons.
She got into the instrument trade through friends and has been selling for about three years, simply because she picked up a knack for selling — and the instruments are certainly beautiful.
I’m told that guitars, keyboards and amplifiers are of principal importance to buyers these days. Most of the vendors are working musicians and many are, or once were, members of the union.
I chat with Guillermo Amaya Espinosa at his stand, an overflowing array of all the tiny hardware, cables, knobs and pieces needed to surgically reassemble dying instruments.
“Right now we do more trading,” Amaya tells me. “We usually sell more, but the economy is a little bit down, so we trade and get a little money.” Amaya gives lessons in guitar, bass, drums and keyboards and volunteers with the Covarrubias Project, a music therapy organization for children with special needs.
His gleeful salesmanship keeps the customers coming, as dozens pass through to peruse his products or display some obscure electronic element in need of replacing. “Something that would cost 20,000 pesos in Centro, you can get from me for 6,000,” he says. “I love music, and I can make a little extra income — and I get the opportunity to hang out at the Bazar.”
Guillermo Amaya poses with a guitar.
When the bargaining heats up, Amaya brings prospective buyers out of the way of general traffic to the back of the tent to get down to the nitty gritty of the transaction. One such negotiation, with Javier Coyotecatl, was over a used banjo head. After about five minutes of back and forth, a deal was made, and both men appeared to leave happy.
Coyotecatl made the long drive up from Cuernavaca. “I repair stringed instruments,” he tells me. “I’m what’s called a luthier.” Coyotecatl has been coming to the market for 25 years or so and only just moved to Cuernavaca about a year ago.
“There’s a good diffusion of culture in Cuernavaca,” he continues. “There’s a lot of work in music. I teach, play, set up events and sell and repair instruments.” But he still comes back to the market because materials are cheaper here, and there are certain things you just can’t get in Cuernavaca.
“Music has given me a lot,” explains Coyotecatl. “I can make trades and sales and it keeps working for me. I studied agronomy, but I liked music better. Then I studied at Bellas Artes. Music is my life. Music gives us everything. It’s like life; it gives us harmony.”
• El Bazar Músico Cultural (or Tianguis del Músico Tasqueña) appears every Tuesday from (approximately) 7:00am to 4:00pm on Cerro del Músico, alongside the Taxqueña Metro stop in Campestre Churubusco.
This is the fourth in a series on the bazaars, flea markets and markets of Mexico City:
The Mexican tourism industry is in crisis due to a lack of marketing and insecurity, the president of the National Tourism Business Council (CNET) said yesterday.
Hotels have suffered a 15% decline in profits in the first quarter of 2019, he said, because they have had to lower their rates to maintain occupancy levels.
In Cancún, the January occupancy rate of 70.7% was the lowest since 2012, according to federal Tourism Secretariat figures, while Mexico City recorded a rate of 54.2%, the lowest since 2013.
The lack of marketing has caused tourism from the United States to decline, Azcárraga claimed.
“The number of people from the United States – our main market – who are traveling outside their country is higher than last year and consequently the competition, like Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, have reported [tourism] growth of 16% to 20% when in Mexico there is a decline,” he said.
Hotel operators in Cancún say that decline has been evident for some time but government officials did nothing in response. The president of the Cancún and Puerto Morelos hotels association claimed that it took two years for state Tourism Secretary Marisol Vanegas to even recognize there was a decline in visitors from Canada and the U.S.
Roberto Cintrón said it was time for a change in strategy to counter negative publicity from insecurity and double spending on new marketing campaigns.
But hotel owners in Cancún and the Riviera Maya expressed alarm in interviews with the tourism publication Reportur over the fact that the state has no plan to address the problem, and has shown no leadership.
CNET’s Azcárraga warned that if the situation persists, Mexico will lose tens of billions of pesos in revenue and jobs in the tourism sector will disappear.
“The country’s business sector is worried [but] there’s still time to take decisions that will allow us to turn around what today is a crisis,” he said.
Cancún hotels association president Cintrón.
“The business community has the obligation to insist that our authorities truly seek to defend the [tourism] sector. Today we shout, ‘Help!’ Because we’re in a situation that is not working,” Azcárraga added.
The CNET president was critical of the decision to divert resources that previously funded the CPTM to the Maya Train, President López Obrador’s signature infrastructure project.
Azcárraga said that savings generated by the elimination of the tourism marketing agency that will go to the Yucatán peninsula rail project only represent 4% of the latter’s total cost.
“That makes no difference to the [rail] project” but has a big impact on the tourism sector, he argued.
Azcárraga acknowledged that the Maya Train will “enrich” Mexico’s overall “tourism product” but added that in order for it to be a success, it will also need to be promoted.
The government’s decision to disband the CPTM as part of its policy of austerity has been widely criticized by Mexico’s tourism and business sectors.
Nayarit is easily the largest tobacco-producing state in Mexico, accounting for 84% of national production, but there is significant potential to grow more.
Tobacco is cultivated on 7,000 hectares of land in the Pacific coast state, a figure that represents less than one-fifth of Nayarit’s estimated capacity of 40,000 hectares.
With that in mind, Governor Antonio Echevarría García appealed yesterday to multinational company British American Tobacco (BAT) – which controls 55% of tobacco production in the state – to increase its investment.
“. . . We want more investment because we want the people of Nayarit to have more money in their pockets. I offer you open arms to continue investing in Nayarit,” Echevarría said at a BAT event.
There are 3,426 tobacco farmers in Nayarit and the harvest season creates 15,000 jobs for jornaleros, or day laborers. The sector generates an annual economic spillover in the state of 950 million pesos (US $49.4 million).
However, Echevarría said that the economic benefits of tobacco cultivation in Nayarit used to be much greater.
“The tobacco industry is an economic activity that was once three or four times greater than what we currently know,” he said, adding that only “traces” of the boom years remain.
Miguel Ángel Navarro, federal senator for the Morena party and president of the upper house’s health committee, said that on the request of Echevarría, he will lobby the government to ensure that legislative changes don’t hurt companies such as British American Tobacco.
He said that higher taxes on cigarettes hadn’t created any health improvements among Mexicans but they had hurt the tobacco sector and caused jobs to be lost in Nayarit.
“I don’t know what is more painful, dying from an illness related to tobacco or dying from hunger . . . I don’t like the idea of tobacco coming from other countries when Nayarit has been a source of extremely high-quality tobacco . . .” Navarro said.
Gastón Zambrano, BAT’s director of legal and corporate affairs in Mexico, said that 70% of the price consumers pays for a pack of cigarettes is made up of taxes but instead of persuading people to stop smoking, they drive many smokers to purchase illegally imported tobacco products from countries such as China, Vietnam and India.
Brands from those countries not only pose greater health risks to smokers but their purchase causes the government to lose billions of pesos in tax revenue, he added.
Zambrano said that BAT will continue to stress to authorities that the current taxes on tobacco products are “more than enough” to send a message that smoking is harmful to health.
He explained that the company plans to continue to increase production in Mexico, pointing out that production in Nayarit has doubled over the past five years.
Chiapas and Veracruz are the only other states in Mexico that produce tobacco, accounting for 9% and 7% of national production respectively.
