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Food for thought: restaurant etiquette for those who want to integrate

November 28, 2019

Some of you aren’t going to like what I’m about to write, and I’m sorry about that. In fact, if you’re one of those people who pride themselves on knowing everything about everything – and aren’t open to hearing otherwise – it might be best if you just stopped reading right now.

This is about restaurant etiquette – yours, not the owner’s, waiter’s or anybody else’s. It’s about good manners and being polite and considerate; basically, being a grown-up.

After 30 years of writing about food and restaurants, cooking and eating, I’ve observed countless hours of restaurant behavior from both sides. I’ve worked in kitchens and waited tables, run “front of house” and managed, grown, harvested and sold produce at farmers’ markets.

I’ve had quite a bit of time “behind the scenes” with owners and chefs, waitstaff, cooks and prep staff. I guess you could say I’ve been a part-time professional eater for three decades.

So here’s the thing: if you really want to be a member of your adopted community in Mexico (or anywhere else for that matter) trust me when I say the etiquette tips below are an important part of that integration.

• Should/shouldn’t. This is a biggie, and that’s why it’s No. 1. Don’t tell the owner what they “should” or “shouldn’t” do. Just don’t. Whether it’s what they should serve on the side, how the menu/hours/décor should be changed or umpteen other things that you know better than they do, hold your tongue unless asked.

• Show them the money. Tip as though the server is your son or daughter working their way through school. Especially in Mexico, where the minimum wage PER DAY for an eight to 10-hour shift is about 103 pesos (that’s US $5.10) and tips are their livelihood. And those propinas are split with everyone working that shift: not only the waiters, bartenders and hostesses, but all the backstage folks you don’t see: cooks, dishwashers, maybe a night watchman or cleaning lady too.

Be generous. You can afford it. What’s normal here? Just like the U.S.: 10% is basic, 15% for good service and 20% because you can.

• The language thing. We understand you want to practice your Spanish, and that’s admirable. However, chances are your accent, pronunciation, and/or vocabulary, collectively or individually, aren’t perfect. So if your server doesn’t quite understand what you’re asking for the first time, please, please just say it in English.

This is a restaurant, not a language school, and the majority of waiters in towns with foreign populations or tourists have been hired partly because they can speak and understand English – much better than how most of us speak Spanish. Case in point: When we say sin azucar incorrectly, it’s often unintelligible – a mumbled sound – to a native Spanish speaker. Then, when we’re furious our limonada is too sweet we blame it on “bad service” instead of “bad Spanish” – which is the real problem.

• My way. Want your meal made special – different than what’s on the menu? Are you on a special diet, or do you suffer from food allergies? Expect to wait a little longer and, quite possibly, for there to be a mistake. Why? Because in a busy kitchen, it’s easy for a cook to forget and thrown the onions/garlic/bacon in as usual, or bring you a standard sandwich on plain bread instead of toast. Whether you send it back or eat it anyway, try to be gracious; it won’t kill you. (And if it will, what are you doing eating out?!) Also, please see No. 3 again.

smoking in restaurant — Another bad idea.

• Loose fingers. It used to be that publishing an opinion or critique of a theater production, movie or restaurant was reserved for, well, professionals – or at least those judged professionals by others in the business. With the advent of the internet and social media, though, now anyone can post anything, anywhere.

Having a bad day? Grumpy as all get-out? Think your omelet/steak/Caesar salad wasn’t as perfect as it coulda/shoulda been? Don’t head for your computer; instead, ask for the owner or manager and politely explain what’s bothering you. Nine times out of 10 they’ll be more than happy to remedy the situation on the spot without your having to trumpet your dissatisfaction to the world at large. Your casual critique of your less-than-perfect soup posted on TripAdvisor or Yelp can cause a restaurant to suffer hugely – and needlessly.

• Patience is a virtue. Don’t like to wait for your meal? There’s a very simple solution: Don’t go at busy times. Or come back later. And one more thing: just because you have a reservation for, say, 7:00pm on a Saturday night, does not guarantee you quick service. Look around you – is every table full? Maybe that big group of 15 showed up without a reservation and has totally thrown the kitchen into a tizzy. Order something to drink and relax. Problem solved. Easy. Still can’t accept this? Wondering why the owner doesn’t plan better, have more staff, etc.? Go back and read No. 1 again.

• Groups & parties. Now that we’re on the subject . . . going out with a group of four or more? Is it a special occasion? Call ahead. Please. Make a reservation. Show up on time. Have a few more or less people than you said? Have tickets for the theater afterwards? (Order simple entrees, no appetizers and don’t ask for separate checks.) Alert your server and be appreciative of them accommodating your needs.

• Water. Sigh. Try to remember: in Mexico, everyone pays for purified drinking water. Everyone, everywhere. So do restaurants. And for a small business trying to make ends meet in a challenging economy, the extra five or 10 garrafones of water every few days can really add up. Why do they bring you a bottle, instead of just a glass? Because it’s easier, because they want to, because some picky gringos in the past complained about water-in-the-glass. The real question is, why do you have a problem with this?

• Smoking. The laws in Mexico changed several years ago regarding smoking in restaurants; legally, it’s not allowed inside except in designated smoking areas. So why don’t they say anything when you light up? And why do they bring you an ashtray? Don’t ask those questions; their purpose is to feed you, not teach you how to be a polite, law-abiding citizen. Just do the right thing, which means not smoking except in the smoking section.

• Last call. It’s 11:00pm, you finished eating an hour ago and are just hanging out with your friends swishing the last sip of a now-warm cerveza in your glass. By now, you’re on a first name basis with your waiter and he’s laughing at all your jokes. Out of the corner of your eye you see them stacking chairs on the side of the dining room. Ahhh, but it’s OK if you stay another 15-20 minutes longer, isn’t it? NOT! Leave now, please. Say good night and go home. Crawl down to the next open bar. They’ve been working for eight-plus hours and have a long bus ride ahead and a family waiting at home. The restaurant is closed. End of story.

• Dogs. (Have an actual professionally trained service animal? None of this applies to you.) Why, why, why do you think it’s OK to bring your pet to a restaurant here, something you would never do in Canada or the U.S. or wherever else you’re from?! It’s not cute when they sit on the chairs, not charming when they lick your plate clean, not OK when they bark and whine and tangle themselves up with the table/other customers/your waiter’s legs.

Hard as it is to believe, not everyone likes dogs – and they don’t belong in restaurants. If your dog can’t stay home for an hour while you go out to eat, that’s what you should be addressing, my friend – instead of trying to explain to the restaurant owner why he “should” allow dogs (especially yours) in his establishment. (See No. 1.)

• All about me. OK, so you go to the same café every day during your entire four or five-month stay in Mexico. By now, you and the owner/waiter have shared personal information and really are friends. But you know what? During the breakfast, lunch or dinner rush, with every table full, he doesn’t have time to chat about the weather, your latest ailment or to gossip about your neighbor.

Throw in one cook calling in sick and he doesn’t have a minute to spare. Really a friend? Be considerate. Remember, he’s working (hard), you’re not. He’ll come back and talk when he can.

Janet Blaser of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life, and feels fortunate to write about great food, amazing places, fascinating people and unique events. Her work has appeared in numerous travel and expat publications as well as newspapers and magazines. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.

‘Stop treating US expats like tax cheats:’ editorial gets warm reception

MND Staff

November 28, 2019

'Accidental Americans' protest tax law in France in June.

An editorial with the headline “Stop treating American expats like tax cheats” has struck a chord with overseas United States citizens.

Written by Andreas Kluth, a member of the editorial board of the Bloomberg news organization, the editorial says that “an estimated nine million American citizens living outside the U.S. face a tax nightmare those at home can’t imagine and none should ever suffer.”

It explains that the United States is one of only two countries (the other is Eritrea) in the world that taxes its citizens even if they live abroad.

The obligation to file tax returns, even if expats don’t owe the United States government any money, is expensive and annoying and causes “needless anxiety,” Kluth writes.

He says that penalties even for innocent mistakes on filed returns can be “draconian” and that the United States treats citizens with foreign bank accounts as if they were likely tax evaders or money launderers.

Kluth, a dual U.S and German citizen, also notes that Americans with foreign assets must disclose them to both the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

He claims that changes to American tax law have exacerbated the problems of the citizen-based tax system.

As a result of a 2017 reform backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, the editorial says, the IRS “now treats the American owner of a lemonade stand in Belgium like Google, forcing them to declare a new kind of income known – say it out loud to feel it – as GILTI.”

Kluth writes that while the original targets of the “harsh” tax regime were wealthy Americans with money hidden in foreign bank accounts, “the victims today are Americans abroad with ordinary incomes and no special tax expertise.”

They include “accidental Americans” – children born in the U.S. to foreign parents who were visiting, for example, or people who were born abroad to U.S. soldiers and continue to live abroad.

Kluth acknowledges that some U.S. expats give up their citizenship but notes that most don’t want to do that and even if they did, the process to do so is prohibitively expensive.

“At a minimum, the U.S. should simplify the rules for its expats and raise the balance thresholds so middle-income filers are exempt,” he writes.

“But the best solution would be even simpler: Follow the example set by almost every other economy . . . and base the personal income tax on residency, not citizenship.”

The November 26 editorial, which was republished by The Washington Post, received a warm reception on social media.

“Thank you for writing about the ‘tax nightmare’ that U.S. expats and accidental Americans must endure,” wrote Twitter user @zachexpat.

“Thank you for spending time to fully grasp this nightmare,” said @wisecroneknows.

“The tax treatment of U.S. citizens is both appalling and unnecessary,” Frank Sportolari, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany, said on Twitter.

“It would take so little to fix the problem and would have virtually no impact on tax revenues.”

Source: Bloomberg (en), American Expat Financial (en)

Topolobampo residents divided over controversial fertilizer plant

MND Staff

November 28, 2019

A proposal to construct a fertilizer plant is dividing residents of Topolobampo, Sinaloa, and other communities in the municipality of Ahome.

The plant was one of 147 projects presented Tuesday as part of the public-private National Infrastructure Plan (PNI), although President López Obrador told opponents of the project in June that they would be the ones to decide if it should go ahead.

Gas y Petroquímica de Occidente (GPO), a Mexican subsidiary of the Swiss-German group Proman AG, said the government’s announcement provides certainty for it to go ahead with the construction and operation of the US $1.25-billion plant, which will have the capacity to produce 2,200 tonnes of ammonia per day.

However, some Ahome residents remained determined to stop it.

Many fishermen say the plant will cause irreparable damage to the Santa María, Topolobampo and Ohuira lagoons and restrict the area in which they can work.

Site of the controversial ammonia plant. — Site of the controversial fertilizer plant.

“I’m a fisherman 100%, it’s my means of support and the plant is [in the area] where I fish, about two kilometers away,” Milton Armenta told the newspaper Milenio.

“[Its operation] is going to take this whole work area from us, and besides they’ll contaminate the bay,” he added.

Diana Escobedo Díaz, an environmental researcher at the National Polytechnic Institute, said the lagoons near the plant are home to shrimp larvae as well as feeding areas for turtles and a “critical habitat” for bottlenose dolphins.

“. . Therefore, no additional impact is recommended . . . [The area] is already affected by the thermal power station, which is already drawing water . . . for cooling,” she said.

Some residents are also concerned that a gas leak at the plant could pose a risk to their lives.

The Aquí No (Not Here) Collective has been granted six injunctions that have stalled the project, and they reject López Obrador’s proposal to hold a public consultation about its future. The collective is demanding that he cancel it instead.

The head of the Natural Protected Areas Commission has also expressed opposition to the proposal. Roberto Aviña says that having an ammonia plant so close to lagoons that are protected by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance “is not possible.”

For its part, the company building the plant rejects the charge that it will have an adverse effect on the environment and says the probability of a major gas leak is practically zero due to the security systems that will be installed.

The company has the backing of other Ahome residents who have formed their own collective, called Aquí Sí.

Guadalupe Rivera, a resident of Lázaro Cardenas, a town across Ohuira bay from Topolobampo, told Milenio that she and other locals support construction of the plant because of the economic and social benefits it will bring. The company has already provided financial support for needy residents, she said.

“We agree with it being built . . . [GPO] has provided for the community, for both children and senior citizensc. . . A lot of people have needed [to pay] surgeries, hospitalization and funeral expenses. A lot of support has come to the community that the other group [Aquí No] hasn’t wanted to accept.”

Source: Milenio (sp)

Doctor accused of leading band of Mexico City kidnappers

MND Staff

November 28, 2019

Mexico City police have arrested a doctor accused of leading a band of kidnappers that operated in the south of the capital.

Benito Arriaga Cedillo, a surgeon with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), was taken into custody after a warrant was issued for his arrest following the November 23 kidnapping of a woman in the borough of Tlalpan.

According to authorities, the victim was abducted after agreeing to meet with a woman who feigned interest in purchasing a property she was selling.

Upon arriving at the property last Saturday, the victim was forced into a car by five armed and masked men and driven to a safe house in Tlalpan allegedly owned by Arriaga.

The kidnappers then called family members of the woman to demand a ransom, and reportedly received 800,000 pesos (US $40,800) for her release.

Authorities say that Arriaga, an IMSS employee for the past 25 years, was the mastermind of the kidnapping and was at the property where the woman was held.

He is also accused of ordering at least one other abduction that employed a similar modus operandi. The doctor is currently being held in Mexico City’s Reclusorio Oriente prison.

IMSS said in a statement that it will fully cooperate with authorities’ investigation into the crimes allegedly committed by Arriaga.

Kidnappings surged in Mexico City in the first half of the year compared to the same period of 2018 but declined 30% in the third quarter.

The head of the capital’s anti-kidnapping unit was dismissed in June as a result of his handling of the Norberto Ronquillo case, in which a 22-year-old student was kidnapped and later found dead.

Source: Infobae (sp), Milenio (sp)

How Mexico’s ‘small armies’ came to commit a massacre

Parker Asmann

November 28, 2019

National Guard patrol in northern Mexico.

Two lesser-known criminal groups have grabbed headlines in recent weeks for their suspected role in the brazen ambush and murder of women and children in northern Mexico, but how did these so-called “small armies” emerge in the first place?

The group of 17 family members from a prominent American Mormon family were traveling in three vehicles when armed gunmen opened fire on the convoy. Nine U.S. citizens — three women and six children — were killed in the onslaught near the small town of Bavispe in northwest Sonora state along the U.S.-Mexico border.

At the center of what led to the attack weren’t Mexico’s traditional cartel powerhouses, but rather two smaller criminal groups: one known as Los Salazar that is linked to the Sinaloa Cartel and operates in Sonora state, and another called La Línea, a faction of the Juárez Cartel with a strong presence in Chihuahua state.

The LeBarón family had for years denounced the presence of and threats made by organized crime groups in this lawless frontier. In 2009, two of their family members were kidnapped and murdered in Chihuahua. More recently, however, the family and Los Salazar in Sonora had reached a peaceful coexistence.

“Basically, it was ‘We won’t bother you if you don’t bother us,’” one family member told The Washington Post.

That all changed on November 4.

There were rumors about an escalating turf war in the months leading up to the deadly attack. Los Salazar in Sonora had allegedly asked the LeBarón family living in La Mora not to buy fuel from neighboring Chihuahua, which they argued was funding their rivals in La Línea, according to The Washington Post.

On the other hand, La Línea perceived the potential incursion of Los Salazar into Chihuahua as a direct threat to their operations, and decided to send a violent message in response, according to General Homero Mendoza, chief of staff of the Defense Secretariat.

With the attack, La Línea made it clear to their rivals in Los Salazar who controlled the highway crossing from Sonora into Chihuahua and eventually up to the U.S. border. Such routes are vital for smuggling drugs and migrants and facilitating other lucrative criminal economies.

InSight Crime analysis

The armed group alleged to be behind the massacre in Sonora emerged years ago as part of the outsourcing of security by Mexico’s most dominant cartels. While starting out as small family-based operations, these networks eventually expanded, leading to rising profits and the militarization of their drug trafficking activities.

Beyond securing their own areas of influence, the cartels were now also competing for control of drug smuggling corridors known as “plazas.” By winning a specific plaza, the dominant criminal group could charge a “piso,” or tax, to any other group moving contraband like weapons, humans or drugs through the area. This tax system provided another significant revenue stream.

To win these plaza battles, however, it was essential to have a greater number of loyal foot soldiers willing to fight to the death.

For the Tijuana Cartel, the Arellano Félix family looked across the border to members of San Diego’s Logan Street Gang, which they provided with weapons and tactical training. Members of the Mexican Airborne Special Forces Group were employed by the Gulf Cartel to be its enforcer wing, which later became known as the Zetas.

For its part, the Sinaloa Cartel used an internal faction of the group known as the Beltran Leyva Organization to form a mini army supported by smaller street gangs in areas the group controlled along the U.S.-Mexico border to combat its rivals. The Juárez Cartel hired current and former Mexican police officers to form La Línea, in addition to working with an El Paso-based street gang known as the Aztecas.

Over time, however, the structure of Mexico’s cartels changed and became less hierarchical. These armed wings developed more financial and decision making authority, as well as more autonomy. This in turn allowed them to expand outside of just providing security to engage in their own criminal activities, such as demanding extortion payments from local businesses and kidnapping.

The Zetas, for example, would eventually break away from the Gulf Cartel and transform into one of Mexico’s most ruthless criminal groups for a time.

La Línea also rose to prominence, even finding itself in the crosshairs of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). The group’s former leader, Carlos Arturo Quintana Quintana, alias “El 80,” made it onto the bureau’s most-wanted list before he was arrested in May of 2018 after a blood-soaked criminal career that spanned nearly a decade.

Under Quintana’s command, La Línea bought off several municipal police forces and co-opted political operators in northwest Chihuahua to facilitate the Juárez Cartel’s drug trafficking operations through Ciudad Juárez and over the U.S.-Mexico border.

The ongoing turf war for control of key trafficking and smuggling routes in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora dates back more than a decade.

But while some of the country’s so-called “small armies” have come and gone, La Línea’s brutal show of force against Los Salazar at the expense of the LeBarón family suggests they might be a critical piece of the Juárez Cartel’s plans to reign supreme once again in their former stronghold.

Reprinted from InSight Crime. Parker Asmann is a writer with InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.

Conservation efforts lead to removal of Mexican wolf from extinct species list

MND Staff

November 28, 2019

The Mexican wolf is no longer extinct, but the species remains endangered.

The Mexican wolf has been removed from the extinct species list thanks to conservation and breeding efforts in Mexico and the United States.

The story of the resurgence of the lobo mexicano (Canis lupis baileyi) begins in the late 1970s when former wolf trapper Roy T. McBride was commissioned by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a survey of wolves in Mexico.

The survey became a trapping mission with the aim of starting a captive breeding program for the critically endangered mammal, and by 1980 McBride had captured five wolves.

Three of them became the founders of what came to be known as the McBride lineage of Mexican wolves. By 1995, about 100 McBride wolves had been born in the United States.

Later, eight wolves born in captivity in the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City and 22 others that were privately owned in the United States were added to the U.S.-based breeding program in order to increase genetic diversity.

The offspring were first returned to the wild in the southwest of the United States in 1998 and in subsequent years they were also reintroduced in northern Mexico.

The Janos Biosphere Reserve in Chihuahua, created by presidential decree in 2009, was one of the places that became home for the reintroduced species.

Gerardo Ceballos, head of the ecology and wildlife conservation laboratory at the National Autonomous University’s Institute of Ecology, told the newspaper El Universal that the wolf population is doing well in the reserve, where other animals such as American bison have also been reintroduced.

Ceballos, whose laboratory played an important role in the design of the 500,000-hectare Janos reserve, said that Mexican wolves – which are still considered endangered – should now be reintroduced in the neighboring state of Coahuila as well as Zacatecas.

Fourteen wolf pups have been born in recent years at the Desert Museum in Saltillo, Coahuila, including three this year. In addition, at least 25 pups have been born in the wild since 2014.

As for the Janos reserve, Ceballos explained that one of the key objectives in its creation was to reestablish populations of all the large mammals that lived in the region at the start of the last century. Apart from wolves and bison, prairie dogs, pronghorns and bighorn sheep have also been reintroduced.

“We just need to reintroduce a couple of more species so that there are practically all of those that lived there in 1900,” Ceballos said.

He also said that a joint federal and state project is planned in the reserve to restore large areas of grassland that have been overrun by plant species such as mesquite.

“. . . We’re proposing the largest restoration project in Latin America: 100,000 hectares in the coming years,” Ceballos said.

“It’s not a complicated task, it’s laborious and requires resources. It’s the same territory where the wolf is . . . the population is now in the high parts of the sierra but it will eventually disperse and come down.”

Source: El Universal (sp)

Pemex suppliers are having to wait months to get paid

MND Staff

November 27, 2019

Marinsa says Pemex is seven months behind on payments. — Pemex supplier Marinsa says the state oil company is seven months behind on payments.

Pemex contractors are waiting months to get paid due to pressure from the government to slow spending.

According to a report by the news agency Bloomberg, the state oil company has delayed some payments for as long as seven months.

Oil industry sources told Bloomberg that President López Obrador is determined to end the year with a government-wide surplus and payments from Pemex to its suppliers have slowed as a result.

Goods and services required to keep oil wells running are consequently becoming scarcer, complicating efforts to make good on the president’s promise to revive the state oil company, which is saddled with more than US $100 billion in debt.

One company owed money by Pemex is Marinsa de México, a service provider to offshore drilling platforms. Director of strategy Sergio Suárez Toriello told Bloomberg that the company is owed 155 million pesos (US $7.9 million).

It has been waiting seven months for approximately 47 million pesos of that amount while the remaining debt is three to four months old.

An international service supply company has also been waiting months to get paid, a person familiar with the unnamed firm’s finances told Bloomberg.

Wilbur Matthews, founder of Vaquero Global Investment, a Pemex bonds trader, described the situation in Mexico’s oil industry as an “absolute train wreck.”

Pemex “can’t get out of their own way to make a change that’s going to improve upon it,” he said. “At some point, people are just going to realize that they are a terrible client.”

Source: Bloomberg (en)

New aviation studies identify limitations at Santa Lucía airport

MND Staff

November 27, 2019

Architect's rendering of the Santa Lucía airport.

Two new aviation reports have identified challenges and limitations to the operation of the Santa Lucía airport, currently under construction on an air force base north of Mexico City.

According to Navblue, a Canadian subsidiary of Airbus, the simultaneous operation of the Toluca and Santa Lucía airports is possible but the use of airspace will have to be redesigned to ensure their compatibility.

Aircraft taking off and landing at the two México state airports will have to take the most precise and shortest routes possible to ensure that they don’t interfere with each other, the flight operations software company said.

International Air Transport Association chief Alexendre de Juniac said earlier this year that operating three airports within close proximity to each other in Mexico City and México state will be “complex” and “challenging.”

Meanwhile, French airport operator and consultancy firm Aéroports de Paris (ADP) – architect of the Santa Lucía master plan – said in a new report that the simultaneous operation of runways 1 and 3 — the latter won’t be built until 2052 — will not be possible.

Due to the construction of military facilities, a shared military/commercial runway at the southern end of the airport site and the construction of commercial facilities towards the north, runway 3 will have to be built parallel to runway 1 at a distance of 380 meters, ADP said.

“This location will not allow independent operations,” the report said, explaining that once the two runways are in use, the former will only be used for landings and the latter for take-offs.

ADP also said that due to the proposed length of the runways – 4,300 meters – planes will be required to carry lighter payloads than those with which they take off at the existing Mexico City airport. Two common commercial aircrafts – the Boeing 777 and 747-400 – won’t be able to use the new airport, the report said.

Addressing the simultaneous runway use issue, the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), which is overseeing construction of the airport, highlighted in a statement Tuesday that runways 1 and 2 will be able to operate concurrently.

“Runways 1 and 2 will be built in the first stage, they will operate independently and will allow simultaneous operations . . .” Sedena spokesman Col. Francisco Enríquez told the newspaper El Financiero.

Once runway 3 is built, runway 2 will continue to operate, he stressed.

“[Runways] 1 and 3 will be complementary but they will supplement runway 2, the [commercial aircraft] flow will be divided between the three runways,” Enríquez said.

Sedena said that even without the simultaneous operation of runways 1 and 3, the Santa Lucía airport will be capable of meeting the demands of almost 85 million passengers per year from 2052.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Financiero (sp), A21 (sp)

Poll finds public confidence highest in navy, army and president, lowest in police

MND Staff

November 27, 2019

Confidence survey ratings — The navy, the army and the presidency led the confidence survey. Ratings are a lot or some in blue, little or none in brown and don't know in black.

The navy, army and president command the greatest confidence among the Mexican public, according to a new poll.

Published Wednesday by the newspaper El Financiero, the poll shows that the navy is No. 1 in the minds of Mexicans: 69% of respondents have a lot or some trust in the institution.

The navy has long been considered the most trustworthy of Mexico’s armed forces but it hasn’t completely avoided controversy: the United Nations said last year there were “strong indications” that it was responsible for the disappearance of 23 people in Tamaulipas.

Trust in the army is 68%, the polls shows, while 62% of respondents said they had a lot or some confidence in the office of the president, occupied by Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The high confidence in the army comes despite proven and alleged human rights abuses in recent years, including allegations that it played a role in the disappearance of the 43 teaching students in Guerrero in 2014.

Russian President Putin ranks No. 1. — Russian President Putin ranks No. 1 among international politicians. Blue is favorable, brown unfavorable, gray is neutral and black, don’t know.

The next most trustworthy institutions are the National Guard, the National Electoral Institute and the Bank of México. The poll shows that they have the confidence of 56%, 47% and 46% of respondents, respectively.

Journalists enjoy a lot or some trust of 45% of those polled, while the federal Congress, the National Human Rights Commission, the Supreme Court, media outlets and police have the confidence of 43%, 43%, 41%, 40% and 35% respectively.

Asked what the primary role of journalism in Mexico should be, 67% of respondents said it was to monitor the government and inform the public, while 31% said that it was to support López Obrador in the transformation he promises to bring to the country.

Just over two-thirds of those polled said the president’s attitude towards the press is fair and respectful while a quarter said the opposite.

López Obrador is known to dismiss reports critical of him or his government by declaring that they come from the prensa fifi (elitist press) or express the views of “neoliberals” or “conservatives.”

The media’s reporting about the president and his government has been fair and balanced, according to 54% of respondents, while 38% said that it has been unfair and alarmist.

Conducted via telephone this month with 1,115 Mexican adults in all 32 federal entities, the poll also sought opinions about eight international political leaders past and present.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proved to be the most popular, with 34% of respondent saying that they had a favorable view of him.

United States President Donald Trump was the least popular: three-quarters of those polled said they had an unfavorable opinion compared to just 7% who expressed a positive view.

Another survey published this week showed that López Obrador’s approval rating has slumped 12 points since March.

Polling firm De las Heras Demotecnia found that 68% of respondents approved of the president’s performance when the survey was conducted in the third week of November compared to 80% in March. The rating is almost 10 points higher than that found by an El Universal poll published on November 15.

Almost half of those polled by De las Heras said the country’s security situation has deteriorated under López Obrador’s leadership while a third said it had improved. Statistics show that 2019 will likely end as the most violent year in recent history.

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

Bullfights, cockfights prohibition now in force in Quintana Roo

Cody Copeland

November 27, 2019

A law banning bullfighting, cockfighting and other acts that cause suffering or harm to animals entered into force in Quintana Roo on Monday.

It is the fourth state to outlaw bullfighting, after Coahuila, Sonora and Guerrero.

Passed by the Quintana Roo state legislature in June, the law also prohibits the use of horses as beasts of burden. It is now a crime to load them with goods and a saddle weighing more than one-quarter of the animal’s weight.

The law protects domestic, abandoned, wild, trained, entertainment, guide, assistant and service animals and pets within the state’s borders either temporarily or permanently.

It also encompasses animals used for all types of work purposes, as well as for scientific research and exhibition.

The law had been analyzed by the legislature since it was proposed by then National Action Party (PAN) Deputy Eugenia Solís Salazar in October 2018, but a version of it had been considered since 2014, when it was struck down for not considering all types of regulation.

The animal rights organization Animal Heroes applauded the law in a tweet on Tuesday.

Source: Reforma (sp)

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