Lorena's forecast track at 10:00am CDT on Saturday. us national hurricane center
Hurricane Lorena is dumping heavy rain on Baja California Sur but the twin cities of Los Cabos were spared a direct hit as the storm took an “erratic” northward path toward the coast of Sonora.
The Category 1 hurricane was 90 kilometers southeast of Loreto, Baja California Sur, and 270 kilometers south of Guaymas, Sonora, over the Gulf of California at 10:00am CDT on Saturday, the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. The storm was moving northward at 19 kilometers per hour.
The center of Lorena is expected to continue moving over the Gulf of California today and approach the northwest coast of mainland Mexico late tonight or early Sunday.
A hurricane watch is in effect for Huatabampito, Sonora, to Puerto Libertad in the same state, while a hurricane warning between Bahia San Juan Bautista and San Evaristo on the eastern Baja California coast has been downgraded to a tropical storm warning.
Maximum sustained winds are about 120 kilometers per hour with higher gusts but a slight weakening of the hurricane is forecast before the center of the storm reaches the coast of Sonora.
Baja California Sur and Sonora are expected to get between seven and 15 centimeters of rain Saturday and Sunday, while five to 10 centimeters is forecast for northwestern Sinaloa. The NHC said the rainfall may result in life-threatening flash flooding.
Lorena made landfall on Friday near Cabo Pulmo, a cape about 100 kilometers northeast of Cabo San Lucas and 65 kilometers from San José del Cabo.
National Meteorological Service (SMN) chief Jorge Zavala said that Lorena’s “path has been extremely erratic and uncertain,” explaining that its trajectory changed from that which was forecast.
For days, forecasters had predicted that Lorena would make landfall in or very close to Los Cabos but the storm took a last-minute turn towards the east of the resort area.
More than 1,000 people took refuge in shelters in Los Cabos yesterday, while two shelters were opened in Loreto on Saturday, Baja California Sur Governor Carlos Mendoza Davis said. Authorities said that just under 200 people sought refuge in shelters in the state capital, La Paz.
Mendoza Davis said on Twitter on Saturday morning that no serious hurricane damage had been reported in either Los Cabos or La Paz and operations at airports in both locations had returned to normal.
The governor said that electricity will be restored to the communities of Los Planes and La Ribera later on Saturday and warned motorists to take care on the Los Planes highway as heavy rain caused a section of the road to collapse.
In Sonora, Civil Protection authorities have activated an orange alert indicating “high danger” for Hermosillo and municipalities in the south of the state while a yellow “moderate danger” warning is active for the northeast.
Climate change protesters in Mexico City on Friday.
Hundreds of people marched in Mexico on Friday demanding that Mexican and world governments take action on climate change.
The protesters were among millions who took part in a global day of action as part of the Global Climate Strikes and Fridays for Future. In Mexico City, students from major Mexico City public universities and members of several environmentalist organizations marched from the Angel of Independence to the zócalo.
Marchers carried signs with messages such as “There is no Planet B” and chanted “Se ve, se siente, la Tierra está caliente!” (“You can see it, you can feel it, the Earth his hot.”)
The protesters are demanding that world governments recognize that there is a climate emergency and make a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.
Students also marched in Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mérida and several other Mexican cities.
Organizers say that around four million people participated worldwide, making it the biggest climate change protest in history.
The movement is inspired by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who last year began skipping school on Fridays to protest government inaction on climate change.
The students plan to stage another protest next Friday, September 27, as part of the Global Week for Future, which started last Friday and ends on the 27th. More environmentalist and scientific organizations are expected to participate.
Other actions being planned for Global Week for Future include World Car-Free Day on September 22. The week coincides with the United Nations Climate Action Summit, which will be held in New York from September 21 to 23.
Nationwide homicide numbers holding steady since the National Guard deployment June 30.
National homicide numbers remained unchanged between July and August but Guanajuato and Michoacán both saw significant increases in violence.
There were 3,054 victims of homicide and femicide in each of July and August, according to the National Public Security System (SNSP). The unchanged figures for the two months are 0.6% lower than the 3,074 homicides recorded in June.
All told, 23,724 people were murdered in the first eight months of the year, a 3.5% increase compared to the same period of 2018, which was the most violent year since the SNSP started recording comparable statistics in 1997.
While the spiraling homicide rate has been halted since the nationwide deployment of the National Guard on June 30, violence has not been contained uniformly across the country.
Between July and August, homicide numbers went down in 16 states but increased in 15. The murder rate was unchanged in Nuevo León.
Guanajuato and Michoacán recorded the largest increases in homicides from one month to the next.
The number of murder victims in both states increased by 22% in August compared to the previous month. In Guanajuato, 296 people lost their lives to violent crime in August compared to 242 in July, while in Michoacán the number of homicide victims increased to 202 from 165.
Jalisco, the home state of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, saw a 9% reduction in homicide numbers between July and August.
In per-capita terms, Colima was the most violent state in the country in August. The small Pacific coast state recorded 8.8 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants last month.
Baja California was the second most violent, recording a per-capita rate of 7.4, followed by Chihuahua, where there were 5.8 homicide victims per 100,000 residents. The national per-capita murder rate in August was 2.4.
SNSP statistics show that homicide is not the only high-impact crime that increased in the first eight months of the year.
The number of kidnappings rose 9% to 937 cases compared to 860 in the same period of 2018, while extortion increased 36% to 5,671 investigations between January and August.
The search for human remains in Jalisco has moved to Tala.
Police and forensic experts continue to uncover human remains at locations near Guadalajara, Jalisco.
On Thursday, after the search was widened near a site where 138 plastic bags of human remains had already been discovered, 17 bags of remains were found in a nearby area, in the municipality of Tala.
Jalisco Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solís said his team of experts will go wherever the search dogs lead them, and will not stop until they have uncovered everything.
“We aren’t leaving until we have done a complete examination of this area,” he said of the search that began on September 3 in a field in Zapopan where his team has found 138 plastic bags of human remains in two mass graves.
Supported by municipal police and soldiers, the team extended the search radius to 200 meters from the secret grave in which 119 bags were found between September 3 and 11. They are believed to contain the remains of at least 40 people.
After resuming the search on Wednesday, experts from the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences found 19 more bags of human remains and clothing in a nearby ditch.
Solís said that expert reports have confirmed 29 bodies, of which 13 are complete and 16 are incomplete, and he believes that the number will grow to around 40 once the genetic test results have come back.
For now, Solís does not intend to involve the families of disappeared persons in the search due to security, despite requests from the families.
Blanca Trujillo, a prosecutor specializing in missing persons, said that of the 119 bags uncovered in the initial search, only five bodies have been identified by relatives, among them one woman.
She said that 27 mass graves have been found in Jalisco so far in 2019 with a total of 123 bodies, 28 of which have been identified.
Jalisco is one of the regions in the country with the highest presence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
The cartel is now considered the most active criminal organization in Mexico, having risen above the Sinaloa Cartel, weakened after the fall of its leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
San Ángel is one of 21 Mexico City neighborhoods that were designated 'magical.'
The tourism commission of the Mexico City Congress will ask the city government to revive the capital’s “magical neighborhoods” tourism promotion program.
The program, which designated 21 barrios as magical, was created in 2011 but was never formally launched and its funding was discontinued in 2012.
Commission members argue that the program’s reactivation will create new jobs, stimulate the local economy and rehabilitate run-down urban spaces.
Commission president Ana Patricia Báez Guerrero explained that the magical neighborhoods program would complement the existing Turismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Tourism) scheme.
The latter was created by the current government in order to promote lesser known tourist attractions in Mexico City and develop new ones in less visited parts of the capital.
Báez said the two programs together would provide greater opportunities for all 16 Mexico City boroughs to promote their tourism offerings and attract more visitors.
The request will be directed to the Secretariat of Tourism, Báez explained, adding that the Congress is also seeking an update on the progress of the Turismo de Barrio scheme.
Among the 21 neighborhoods that were designated as magical in 2011 are San Ángel, Santa María la Ribera, Coyoacán, Roma-Condesa, Xochimilco, La Merced, Mixcoac and Mexico City’s home of Mariachi music, Plaza Garibaldi.
Infrastructure spending is down, to the chagrin of builders.
Activity in the construction sector declined 9.1% in July, the biggest drop since June of 2001.
The decline followed six consecutive months of economic downturns in the building sector, which the president of the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC) blamed on low levels of public investment this year.
Eduardo Ramírez told the newspaper El Economista that the situation is causing “great despair” among builders and construction companies.
To the end of July, just 24% of resources allocated to public works projects had been spent, the CMIC said this week, and a 6% cut to infrastructure spending was proposed in the government’s 2020 budget.
Ramírez said that there is a risk that some construction companies will be forced to shut down, adding that the CMIC is seeking to meet with President López Obrador to discuss the situation.
“There is already great despair in the sector because, despite the importance that construction represents, [the government] hasn’t given it a place. We’re not going to confront anyone but we are seeking the opportunity to tell President Andrés Manuel López Obrador directly that we are his allies to revive the economy. We’re confident that he will receive us soon,” he said.
Ramírez said that the CMIC has already met with other government officials – including presidential chief of staff Alfonso Romo – who agreed that greater public investment is needed to stimulate the construction sector.
However, their support for higher infrastructure spending has not yet translated into concrete benefits for the sector, he added.
“We’ve insisted on having a meeting with the president to set out the situation that the sector is going through. We want him to see . . . the important asset he has in Mexican builders to achieve his regional development and job creation goals,” Ramírez said.
One government infrastructure project that will provide ample opportunities for the construction sector is the Santa Lucía airport. However, the project is currently delayed by legal action against it.
López Obrador reiterated this week that opposition to the airport is politically motivated, adding that he expected the injunctions granted against it to be overturned soon because they have no legal basis.
“. . . There has been a delay because of these injunctions but we’re doing everything in accordance with the legal framework [to defeat them],” he said.
Another major government infrastructure project, the Maya Train, is not currently facing any legal action that could delay its construction, the president said.
“Touch wood, they’re not going to file injunctions [against it too] . . .”
Photographer and scuba diver Manfred Meiners. José Martínez Verea Fotografía
My mind is reeling. I set off — a few hours ago — to investigate why my friend Manfred Meiners just won the excellence award presented yearly by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to one — and only one — person thought to have contributed the most among this renowned organization’s thousands of members in North America.
And the prize goes to — a Mexican. Well, that could be a surprise to those who don’t know that Mexico is in North America, but the fact that it went to this particular Mexican conservationist is in no way surprising.
So why is my mind reeling? Because Google revealed Meiners’ name associated with so many ecologically sound projects that I’m no longer asking why he received that prize, but rather why he wouldn’t be the one to receive it. The people at IUCN certainly knew what they were doing.
Manfred Meiners is a cinematographer, a photographer and a scuba diver from Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. A few days ago he was invited to Ottawa, Canada, where IUCN executives were meeting in preparation for their World Conservation Congress, held once every four years.
In case you are unfamiliar with its name, the IUCN is the group that maintains and updates the Red List of Threatened Species and has been the motor behind conservation projects for over 70 years.
Filming the release of a newly tagged flamingo in Yucatán. Claudio Contreras Koob
“They told me they were giving me an award for the work I’ve done with them over the last 10 years in the fields of education and communication,” Meiners explained to me. “So they flew me to Canada, but I missed a connecting flight along the way, so I arrived in Ottawa really late and in my hotel I barely had a chance to take a shower.
“Then I had to make a decision: am I going to be on time or am I going to iron my shirt? Well, I decided being on time was more important, so I received the award with a wrinkled shirt, but with lots of warmth and good wishes from the members of IUNC. They gave me a wood carving (from certificate wood, of course) created by an indigenous artist in Chiapas name Pedro Jiménez: a beautiful piece which my family and I really love.
“It was an honor to receive a prize made by a paisano artist. This experience has really charged my battery to keep working on conservation issues.”
Over the years, Meiners has made numerous films documenting the success stories of humble communities which have learned to work with nature rather than against it. These films are, for the most part, narrated by local people deeply involved in a project, many of them campesinos whom Meiners has managed to put at ease for the camera.
Because I was asked to translate the subtitles of several of these documentaries into English, I had a good chance to see how conservation theory was being put into practice in the field, literally.
One of these documentaries is called Vive el Paisaje (Become One with the Landscape) and shows the practical application in the mountains of western Jalisco of a concept developed in France called the biocultural landscape. To see the English subtitles, click on “cc” at the bottom of the screen.
Manfred Meiners managed to photograph this otter in Jalisco’s La Vega Dam.
“The way we do farming now,” says a local man at the start of the film, “all this technification, this chaos, this overuse of insecticides and fertilizers . . . It’s impacting human life and harming wildlife too. We’re killing the Earth, but the Earth is our patrimony . . . so how can we be productive?”
The film goes on to present the concept of the biocultural landscape, “which combines the biological landscape with the culture of the communities that exist within that landscape, a policy tool which seeks the consensus of all the local stakeholders in a specific area.”
We then visit numerous communities, where we see agriculture, forest management and cottage industries flourishing in a sustainable way and without damage to the environment.
Another project where we see the hand of Manfred Meiners is called Albora. It is a response to the tendency of lugubrious headlines to dominate Mexico’s media, creating an atmosphere of gloom, cynicism or terror which simply does not jive with the joie de vivre of ordinary people living and working in every corner of the country.
One corollary of this zest for life is creativity for solving problems and I don’t just mean problems like how to get a 50-year-old jalopy back on the road. Mexicans are attacking real problems affecting the whole planet, like finding a harmless substitute for styrofoam, with as much imagination and creativity as environmentalists anywhere on the planet, and Albora is out to set the record straight.
This organization, founded in 2015, searches out and investigates environmental projects that really make a difference and helps activists publish their stories.
Manfred Meiners of Guadalajara receives IUCN. Jürgen Hoth
An example is Seeds of Change by Clara Migoya, which tells the story of The Mexican Network of Educational Gardens, a project that took root in 2018 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and brings together students, teachers, parents, nutritionists, campesinos, academics and activists (just to name a few of the participants), all working together to reconnect the new generation with the natural world.
Migoya introduces us to Loreto, a teacher whose school garden is considered a landmark in San Cristóbal: “Loreto has a wide smile and a radiant face. While she showed me the garden she cultivates with ‘her children,’ I could hear the enthusiasm in her voice: ‘Here we raise worms, we observe insects and bees, we decide on seeds, we plant and we harvest.’
“Loreto tells me that for her students one of the most exciting things about the garden is harvesting what they grew and then cooking it. Once a month they all get together to prepare a breakfast. The boys and girls all participate in the same way, including cooking and cleaning up, something that may seem insignificant, but which represents a radical change from the patterns they are exposed to at home.”
Clara Migoya’s story — accompanied by gorgeous photos — can be found on Albora’s web page along with many other success stories that deserve to be told.
When I asked Manfred Meiners for one final example of one of his projects, he said, “Alright, you know how everyone dreams of bringing back extinct species? Well, in a way we have managed to do that . . .”
Meiners went on to tell me the story of the tequila splitfin, a little fish that, for a while, was listed on the IUCN Red List as extinct in its native environment, “but is now back thanks to the efforts of a lot of good people at Michoacán University.”
That story is too long to tell here, but watch for it soon on Mexico News Daily.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
Residents and authorities have battened down the hatches as Hurricane Lorena approaches the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.
The Category 1 hurricane was 55 kilometers east of Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, at 1:00pm CDT on Friday and was forecast to pass near or over the southern portion of the Baja peninsula later in the day, the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
A hurricane warning is in effect between La Paz and Puerto Cortés and a hurricane watch is in effect for the east coast of the peninsula between La Paz and San Evaristo. A tropical storm warning is in effect for Puerto Cortés to Cabo San Lázaro.
The NHC upgraded the storm to a Category 1 hurricane early on Friday. Maximum sustained winds are near 120 kilometers per hour with higher gusts and some additional strengthening is possible as the storm slowly moves towards land.
With forecasters predicting damaging winds, flash flooding and life-threatening surf conditions along the Pacific coast of Baja California, residents prepared as best as they could on Thursday.
In the Los Cabos area, boat owners pulled their vessels from the water and shopkeepers covered windows with plywood, the Associated Press reported.
“If we don’t get the yacht out, the waves can damage it,” said Juan Hernández, who rents his boat to foreign visitors. It’s “a preventative measure for when a cyclone threatens.”
Baja California Sur authorities suspended classes for Friday so that schools can be used as shelters if necessary. Governor Carlos Mendoza Davis said on Twitter this morning that 790 people had already decided to leave their homes and take refuge in shelters in Los Cabos.
A total of 177 properties across all five Baja California Sur municipalities were available to be used as shelters.
State government secretary general Álvaro de la Peña said that the government has taken “preventative measures” to prepare for the hurricane’s arrival. “Rations, gasoline, all supplies are guaranteed. There is no need for panic buying,” he said.
“Lorena is going to dump a lot of water,” said Carlos Alfredo Godínez, deputy secretary for Civil Protection in the state. Heavy rain is already falling in Los Cabos, Mendoza Davis said on Friday morning.
The NHC said that Lorena is expected to produce rainfall of 7-15 centimeters across far southern Baja California Sur with maximum amounts of 20cm.
The hurricane caused flooding and minor landslides in parts of Jalisco and across Colima on Thursday. All 10 municipalities in the latter state were affected, AP reported. Roads were flooded, dozens of trees came down in the strong winds and some areas lost power.
However, Colima Governor José Ignacio Peralta said there were no deaths or significant damage to infrastructure.
The NHC said that Lorena will gradually move away from the west coast of the Baja California peninsula tonight and Saturday, and then will degenerate into a remnant low or be absorbed in a couple of days by Tropical Storm Mario, which was 555 kilometers south of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula at 10:00am CDT.
Senator Guadiana has proposed legislation to punish electricity theft.
A lawmaker has presented a legislative proposal that would punish electricity theft with up to 10 years in prison.
The objective of Morena party Senator and energy commission chairman Armando Guadiana’s bill is to protect the transmission and distribution of electricity.
“Although the federal government initiated a head-on fight against the theft of gasoline, there are still no guidelines for the theft of electricity, even as this problem damages state coffers by millions of pesos,” says the text of the bill.
It proposes a penalty of three to 10 years in prison and a fine of over 1 million pesos (US $52,000). It would also include fines totaling three times the amount of what would have been charged for the illegally consumed energy.
The law would also apply to anyone impeding or intimidating a public servant engaged in suspending service to someone involved in the criminal use of electricity.
It proposes a prison sentence of two to 20 years for the use of Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) services without a contract, or for tampering with meters.
Lastly, it includes a prison sentence of six to 10 years and fine of over 1 million pesos for anyone who illegally commercializes CFE services and installations.
The Senate Energy Commission will discuss and vote on the bill, and if passed, it will be voted on in the plenary session.
Prosecutors seek a life sentence for ex-attorney general Veytia.
United States prosecutors are asking for a life sentence for former Nayarit attorney general Édgar Veytia, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in a U.S. court earlier this year.
“The accused provided substantial assistance to a violent drug-trafficking organization,” the prosecution wrote in a memo. “In exchange for bribes, he allowed . . . the transportation of drugs and violent score-settling.”
Veytia, who is accused of protecting drug traffickers while he was attorney general between 2013 and 2017, will be sentenced next Thursday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the same court where notorious trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was tried. Veytia’s defense lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, also defended Guzmán. Veytia’s crime carries a minimum sentence of 10 years.
According to a court document seen by the newspaper El Universal, the former politician was also known as “El Diablo,” or “The Devil,” worked with a drug trafficker named Juan Francisco Patrón Sánchez, who moved a half-tonne of heroin and 100 kilograms of cocaine into the United States every month.
Veytia accepted bribes from Patrón to free the latter’s partners from prison, arrest his rivals and cover up at least one murder, among other crimes.
“The government does not dispute that the accused faced a difficult task: apply the law in a place with significant corruption,” the prosecution memo reads. “However, it’s clear that . . . he chose a life of corruption that put Nayarit in danger. Veytia, a U.S. citizen with residence in California, could have left the life of corruption behind, but he decided to aid these violent drug trafficking organizations and accept the benefits.”
