There has been another reduction in Mexico’s growth forecast, this time by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
It cut its forecast by half a point for both this year and next, calling for a 2019 growth rate of 2% and 2.25% in 2020.
The OECD’s Interim Economic Outlook said on a positive note that strong remittances, an increase in the minimum wage and government plans to boost infrastructure investment and revive energy production should lift domestic demand.
Further declines in inflation would offer scope for monetary policy easing, the report said.
The OECD revised growth downwards in almost all G20 economies, citing high policy uncertainty, trade tensions and further erosion of business and consumer confidence.
Speaking on the revised forecast during his morning press conference, President López Obrador repeated his own, confident outlook, observing that macroeconomic figures are looking good and there is financial stability in the country.
“We are growing, jobs are being created, salaries are improving, there is well-being . . . . We are fine and in good shape.”
He said he would offer additional information next Monday.
Mexico’s high-end tourism market has taken a hit so far in 2019, according to the CEO of a hospitality-travel firm who predicts that visitor numbers will decline further in coming months.
Alejandro Zozaya, CEO of Apple Leisure Group, estimates that the economic spillover from tourism is down 20% to date this year compared to the same period of 2018.
The problem: not as many wealthy Americans are coming to Mexico to vacation, get married at lavish ceremonies and honeymoon.
“The most important market we have lost is that which leaves the largest economic spillover, the high-end North American,” Zozaya told the news outlet Aristegui Noticias.
“We still have a lot of Americans but the highest segment [of the market] has stopped coming and we’ve replaced them with tourists from other countries and regions who leave a smaller spillover – they spend less at the destination, hotel rates go down,” he said.
The businessman claimed that the main reason well-off tourists are not coming to Mexico is insecurity but added that sargassum on Caribbean coast beaches and a lack of marketing following the government’s decision to disband the Tourism Promotion Council (CPTM) are also factors.
More United States citizens are traveling outside their country than ever before and there is not a decline in the international tourism market, but tourists are deciding to “go to other destinations that are not Mexico,” Zozaya said.
“[Americans] are going to the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Mexico loses market share.”
He said that tourism is declining in Mexico’s most popular destinations at the same as the number of hotel rooms is going up.
“We have 30,000 additional rooms projected for Quintana Roo on top of those in Puerto Vallarta, in Los Cabos and other destinations in Mexico,” Zozaya said.
He stressed that advertising is the best way to attract greater visitor numbers to Mexico and that demand for accommodation and other tourism services must grow at a rate at least equal to supply growth in order to maintain profitability and employment in the sector.
Zozaya’s estimate of a 20% reduction in tourism spending this year is well above the 0.3% decline in air arrivals recorded in January but the businessman warned that “the most complicated” period for the tourism industry “is still to come.”
Contributing to the decline in international air arrivals in January was a reduction in the number of passengers flying into Cancún International Airport, the first year-over-year decrease for any month in almost seven years.
Earlier this year, the Secretariat of Tourism predicted that international visitor numbers could hit 43.6 million in 2019, which would represent a 5.2% increase on last year’s record figures.
Total tourism expenditure is forecast to reach just under US $23.7 billion, which would also be 5.2% higher than in 2018.
Last month, Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco Marqués said the government is aiming to increase expenditure by tourists in Mexico by focusing more on attracting big spenders.
Among the nationalities that spend the most while visiting Mexico, the Japanese are in first place, spending an average of $2,008, not including airfare.
Los Blancos de Troya, suspected of stirring things up in Michoacán, display some firepower in a 2015 photo.
Six years after citizens staged an uprising against Los Caballeros Templarios cartel and other criminal groups in the Tierra Caliente of Michoacán, violent crime in the region and state is even worse.
Figures for intentional homicides, firearms injuries, kidnappings, threats and drug dealing in Michoacán were all significantly higher last year than in 2013.
Confrontations between criminal gangs are frequent and the spiraling crime rates – there were 1,060 homicides last year compared to 475 in 2013 – have left many people running scared.
Among those terrorized are widows of self-defense force members who lost their lives in Tierra Caliente clashes with cartel members.
Some of the narcos have returned to the towns as members of different criminal gangs and with their husbands’ executioners at close quarters, the women – and other residents – are terrified.
Self-defense force founder Mora: ‘Things are worse.’
“We’re worse off than before,” said Hipólito Mora, founder of the self-defense force in La Ruana, where citizens took up arms on February 24, 2013, the first town in the region to to so.
“[There are] a lot of homicides, kidnappings, robberies and extortion. In almost all of Michoacán, there is a serious insecurity problem. Unfortunately, not everyone dares to speak out,” he said.
José Juan Ibarra Ramírez, secretary of the government of Buenavista, the municipality where La Ruana is located, agrees that the security situation has worsened.
“One cannot make decisions like before, we can’t say with certainty that we will go to [the neighboring municipality of] Apatzingán at 8 at night because we’re afraid, our whole community is frightened. Confrontations in the surrounding areas haven’t stopped and there have been some police deaths . . . The night is dangerous . . .” he said.
An army colonel was also killed in Buenavista last month, the first high-ranking military fatality since the López Obrador-led federal government took office on December 1.
According to Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles, a turf war between two of Mexico’s most violent criminal organizations is responsible for much of the bloodshed in the Tierra Caliente region and other parts of the state.
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“Los Viagras have their headquarters, let’s say their operational base, in the municipality of Buenavista . . . In Tepalcatepec [southwest of Buenavista], the Jalisco [New Generation] Cartel has a beachhead and they want to control the trafficking [of drugs], the route . . .”
Their goal, the governor said, is to break up the local cell of Los Viagras. “That’s the issue.”
An escalation in the violence in recent weeks has been blamed on a gang of sicarios, or hitmen, known as Los Blancos de Troya, who presumably work for the Jalisco cartel. They have been confronting groups linked to the Viagras after announcing their intentions in early February to conduct operations in Buenavista.
As in the days when Los Caballeros Templarios were in control, organized crime is once again having its say in who should govern.
In July last year, the mayor-elect of Buenavista, Morena party member Eliseo Delgado Sánchez, was shot and killed. A woman elected as municipal trustee who was proposed to take his place decided instead to flee Michoacán after receiving threats from a criminal group.
“I [want to] make my resignation public, I [want to] make it public that politics doesn’t interest me . . . I’m leaving the country, I will never again participate in political life . . .” Elvia del Socorro Ortega said in a video posted to Facebook in September.
The Tierra Caliente region in Michoacán and Guerrero.
The next day, she posted another video from Tijuana, reiterating that she had given up political life for good.
Buenavista’s Ramírez said that more and more women are now being affected by the violence plaguing Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente.
“Two months ago, violence spread a bit more to women, there were some confrontations and some very young women died,” he said, explaining that some of them were likely married to or in relationships with gang members.
A total of 144 women were murdered in Michoacán last year and a further seven lost their lives to violence in January.
There were almost 1,300 missing people in the state as of last April, of whom almost 300 disappeared in the Tierra Caliente region.
Hipólito Mora said that five young men including his nephew were abducted in La Ruana last month.
“. . . They weren’t involved in anything, not with one cartel or the other. Their only sin is that they were drug addicts . . . but they weren’t halcones [hawks or lookouts for drug gangs]. They were nobodies but they were taken . . .” he said.
A new player has entered the motorcycle market in Mexico in partnership with a subsidiary of automotive firm Grupo Surman.
Bajaj Auto Limited of India, the world’s third-largest motorcycle manufacturer, will build bikes in Toluca, Mexico state, in collaboration with Mexican partner and distributor MotoDrive.
At full capacity, expected sometime next year, the plant should produce 50,000 motorcycles a year.
MotoDrive network development manager Ernesto Ibarra told the newspaper El Economista that Bajaj is the global leader in small-displacement motorcycle production and in the development of new technologies.
He also said that MotoDrive will participate for the first time in the Mexico City international franchise trade show, a move aimed at finding more domestic distributors for Bajaj bikes.
The new Toluca plant will allow both companies to continue expanding in the Mexican market, with MotoDrive consolidating as the firm in charge of importing, assembling, distributing and selling Bajaj motorcycles and parts.
“We’ve had a remarkable acceptance from our new investors,” said Ibarra, explaining that the firm has 55 dealerships with 77 points of sale. “The idea is to continue growing and reach all the corners of the country.”
The Bajaj-MotoDrive alliance kicked off in August, and over 1,500 units have been sold since.
It’s Ash Wednesday but only in southern Mexico City after an explosion at the Popocatépetl volcano early this morning triggered an ash fall alert.
The explosion was recorded at 8:26am, expelling an ash plume that extended 1,200 meters above the volcano. Winds sent the ash to the west of the volcano, covering an area in southern and southeastern Mexico City that encompasses the boroughs of Magdalena Contreras, Tlalpan, Coyoacán, Xochimilco, Milpa Alta, Tláhuac and Iztapalapa.
Authorities advised residents of those areas to cover their mouths and noses with damp handkerchiefs, clean their eyes and throast with water and avoid using contact lenses, as these contribute to eye irritation in the presence of ash.
Drivers are advised to keep their windows closed and to moderate their speed, as the ash can reduce traction. The use of air conditioning is not advised, and drivers should listen to the radio for updates on air quality conditions.
Residents are urged sweep up the ash and deposit it in bags, avoiding the use of water. Mixing water and ash solidifies when it dries and can clog storm drains.
A senior officer in the Ciudad Juárez police department saved his family but lost his life in an ambush near his home in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua.
Intelligence chief Adrián Matsumoto Dorame was gunned down on his day off in this city located about 200 kilometers southwest of Juárez.
Matsumoto was returning home with his wife and two young children on Sunday afternoon when he noticed two suspicious vehicles about a block away from his house.
Sensing that he was the main target and knowing that the occupants of the vehicles had not yet seen his family inside the car, Matsumoto got out and walked over to the vehicles.
Minutes later he was dead after several gunmen opened fire. At least 50 shells from high-caliber weapons were later found at the scene. Witnesses say that as soon as the gunmen drove off the officer’s family tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him.
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According to the Juárez police department, Matsumoto, 33, had a lengthy law enforcement career in Chihuahua, including leadership roles in state and local police.
Matsumoto had received threats and was the target of narco-banners, and had recently killed a presumed member of a criminal organization during a police operation.
He was neither armed nor wearing any protection at the time of his murder.
Despite the crime scene’s proximity to the attorney general’s offices and a Federal Police station, officers were not dispatched to the scene of the shooting or to pursue the killers, according to the newspaper El Universal.
On Monday, the attorney general’s office reported that investigators had raided a safe house belonging to a criminal organization, killing one man and capturing another, and seized several high-caliber weapons.
Attorney General Jorge Nava explained that according to preliminary investigations the two men might be linked to the murder of Matsumoto.
A vehicle burns at a Guanajuato highway blockade yesterday.
An operation against the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel in Villagrán, Guanajuato, yielded results yesterday: cash allegedly paid to residents to man highway blockades was seized and two people close to the cartel’s suspected leader were arrested.
State police found dozens of envelopes containing 1,500 pesos (US $77) that are believed to have been given to people who participated in blockades that were set up yesterday to repel federal and state security forces at two points on the Celaya-San Miguel de Allende highway, two points on the Salamanca-Querétaro highway and at the entrance to the town of Santa Rosa de Lima, among other locations.
A photograph published in the newspaper Reforma showed an envelope stamped with a message that warned recipients that they “must go out to protest when required.”
Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez said the envelopes were evidence that the blockade participants were paid by the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, a gang of fuel thieves.
He also said that the joint operation conducted by the military, Federal Police and state police to locate suspected cartel leader José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez Ortiz is continuing.
Mayor Lara: cartel doesn’t operate in Villagrán.
“We’re continuing to execute search warrants. The operation hasn’t concluded, it’s going to be permanent and we’re going to be here day and night until we return peace to this area,” Rodríguez said.
Angélica N., sister-in-law of Yépez Ortiz and allegedly a financial operator for the fuel theft organization, was arrested yesterday as was her husband, an active Federal Police officer identified only as Javier N.
Sources told the newspaper Milenio that Angélica N. – the sister of Yépez Ortiz’s wife – was in charge of organizing the blockades aimed at preventing security forces from getting into Santa Rosa de Lima, where El Marro is believed to be in hiding.
Javier N. allegedly provided information to the cartel about the movements of the forces, which enabled it to strategically choose where to set up blockades.
A third person identified as Mariela N., who also allegedly helped to organize the blockades, was also arrested yesterday.
As federal and state security forces continue to search for Yépez Ortiz, the mayor of Villagrán has come under suspicion of protecting the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel.
Governor Rodríguez and state Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa have both accused Juan Lara Mendoza of refusing to participate in the operation against the cartel and its leader.
But Lara rejects allegations that he and the municipal police force are in cahoots with the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and denies knowing El Marro.
“I don’t know him and I haven’t received any payment, we’re not linked to any criminal group,” he told a press conference.
The mayor claimed that residents of Santa Rosa de Lima are opposed to the joint military and police operation – and have set up blockades to hinder it – because they fear that they will be victims of human rights violations and that their properties will be damaged as has happened “on previous dates.”
“I don’t fear anyone, I’ve lived an honorable life, I’ve never committed any crime, I haven’t been in jail even for being drunk so I have no fear,” he said.
Lara also asserted that the municipal police work for the citizens of Villagrán, not organized crime.
In a television interview, he denied having any knowledge that Yépez Ortiz is in the municipality and that his gang of fuel thieves operates there.
“He’s like the devil, we all know he exists but nobody sees him . . . I believe that he doesn’t live here, I’m not aware of that . . . As far as I know, he doesn’t operate in Villagrán.”
Meanwhile, there was gunfire this morning at the federal attorney general’s office in nearby Irapuato. Gunmen aboard two vehicles fired several times at the office shortly after 6:00am, damaging the building and a pickup truck parked outside.
There were no casualties, a security spokeswoman said.
Artifacts found inside the Balakmú cave. Karla Ortega, Proyecto Gran Acuífero Maya
Archaeologists exploring and mapping subterranean water deposits on the Yucatán peninsula have discovered a treasure trove of ritual objects in a cave system beneath the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá.
Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava, archaeology coordinator at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), and Guillermo de Anda, director of the Great Mayan Aquifer (GAM) project, told a press conference yesterday that hundreds of artifacts were found last year in the cave system known as Balamkú or “cave of the jaguar god.”
The cave system, located 2.7 kilometers east of the El Castillo pyramid at Chichén Itza, was first discovered in 1966 by ejidatarios, or community landowners, from San Felipe, the archaeologists said.
However, archaeologist Víctor Segovia Pinto, who visited the site and noted the presence of extensive archaeological material in a report, ordered the landowners to seal up the entrance to the cave system and for more than 50 years records of its discovery seemed to vanish.
But last year, 68-year-old Luis Un led members of the GAM team to the cave system he first visited with the ejidatarios when he was a teenager.
Exploring the Balakmú cave. Karla Ortega, Proyecto Gran Acuífero Maya
De Anda, also a National Geographic Explorer, recalled that he had to pull himself on his stomach through the narrow tunnels of Balamkú for hours before he reached a chamber filled with perfectly preserved ceramic incense burners, pots, vases, decorated plates and other objects.
Many of the 200 incense burners feature representations of the rain god Tláloc while their lids have images of the jaguar, a sacred animal for the Mayan people.
Within the incense burners and pots, archaeologists found burned materials, seeds, jade, shells and bone fragments. Stalagmites had formed around the artifacts, which appear to date back to around 1000 A.D.
“I couldn’t speak, I started to cry. I’ve analyzed human remains in [Chichén Itzá’s] Sacred Cenote [sinkhole] but nothing compares to the sensation I had entering alone, for the first time in that cave,” de Anda said.
“You almost feel the presence of the Mayans who deposited these things in there,” he added.
De Anda and James Brady, a California State University professor and co-director of the GAM project, agree that locating Balamkú is the biggest discovery in the area since the Balamkanché cave was found in the 1950s.
Hundreds of artifacts have been found in the cave. Karla Ortega, Proyecto Gran Acuífero Maya
“Balamkú will help to rewrite the history of Chichén Itzá . . . The hundreds of archaeological artifacts, belonging to seven offerings that have been documented so far, are in an extraordinary state of preservation. Given that the context remained sealed for centuries, it contains invaluable information related to the foundation and fall of the City of the Water Wizards [Chichén Itzá] and about those who were the founders of this iconic place,” de Anda said.
One hypothesis of the GAM team is that between 700 and 1000 AD, there was a severe drought in the north of the Yucatán peninsula that prompted residents to carry out ceremonies in the underground caves to ask their deities to deliver rain.
The GAM team is now working to map and create a 3D model of the cave system, which measures around 1.3 kilometers. Archaeologists plan to leave the artifacts in the places they were found within the cave.
De Anda said that only a preliminary exploration has been carried out to date, explaining that it is possible that more objects and human remains could be found beneath mud and sediment in Balamkú.
The five youths who disappeared in 2016 in Veracruz.
Veracruz Governor Cuitláhuac García issued a public apology to the parents of five youths who were detained by state police three years ago and turned over to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) to be tortured and executed.
In a ceremony yesterday at Mexico City’s Museum for Tolerance and Memory, the governor recognized and condemned the 2016 tragedy in the municipality of Tierra Blanca.
“Today we publicly recognize the state’s responsibility for the actions of state government officials on January 11, 2016 in the forced disappearance, torture and arbitrary execution of five youths, whose rights to liberty, integrity and life were violated.”
“I offer all of you an apology for the actions of the police and the illegal and arbitrary detention of your children as they traveled along a Veracruz highway. I offer this apology because without just cause, the police took them and turned them over to presumed members of a criminal organization.”
The five friends, four men and a teenage girl, were detained while returning home to Playa Vicente from the city of Veracruz and turned over to the CJNG. Their remains were later found on a ranch known as El Limón in the municipality of Tlalixcoyan.
Governor García, left, and parent Benítez embraced during yesterday’s ceremony.
Three of the parents were also among the speakers yesterday.
Businessman Bernardo Benítez told yesterday’s gathering he had intended to speak about justice, but decided he was not the person to do so.
“I have reason not to believe in it. If it existed my son would be alive, working, studying. I do not believe in the justice of the Mexican state.”
It was Benítez who was the first up to make the coffee every morning during the 87 days that parents and supporters camped out in front of the prosecutors’ office in Tierra Blanca. Their protest — to defend the innocence of the five youths — took 1,158 days and lasted through three state governments before authorities recognized that the five were indeed innocent.
Benítez said the parents would “neither forgive nor forget” what happened to their children.
In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, Carmen Garibo Maciel relived the day that her daughter Susana Tabia, 16, went missing. Susana sent a text message that morning to say she and her friends would be on their way home after eating breakfast.
But there was no further communication; calls to the young woman’s cell phone went unanswered.
“And so the hours passed on, thinking and imagining [what might have happened]. We even began to call the hospitals and police stations, but they had no news. I lived in agony from then on, and more so when the Veracruz police told us that our children were criminals and that there were no leads in the investigation.”
Speaking at the ceremony, she begged the governor to expedite the investigation, which has dragged on despite the arrest of 21 suspects, eight of whom were police officers. They have been in custody for as long as three years, awaiting trial.
“The Veracruz police cannot go on working for organized crime. They cannot go on taking our children away from us . . . .We cannot accept their inaction in these cases and for the mothers to have to just bear the pain.”
Federal human rights undersecretary Alejandro Encinas said the federal government will assist family members to get to the bottom of what truly happened.
“With a feeling of great responsibility, I will put all of our resources into attending to this grievance so that the family members of the victims can obtain justice and the guarantee that this will not happen again.”
Brewery opponents outside the electoral institute's office.
Electoral authorities in Baja California have reversed a decision to allow a public consultation on a US $1.5-billion brewery in the Mexicali valley.
Late last year, the Baja California Electoral Institute (IEE) received a request supported by more than 18,000 signatures for a plebiscite on the controversial brewery that is being built by international beverage company Constellation Brands.
The IEE approved the request last month but yesterday five of six members of its general council voted against the consultation going ahead.
Clemente Ramos Mendoza, president of the general council, said the IEE is not the authority to which citizens should have turned in order to try to stop the construction of the brewery.
“There are federal tribunals for that . . . administrative courts. They are the relevant authorities . . .” Ramos said, rejecting any claim that he and other councilors were “the bad guys in the movie.”
He also called on the Baja California government to inform the public about the policies it will adopt in order to guarantee water supply in the state.
Farmers and other local residents who claim that the brewery will divert water required for agricultural and household use have protested against the project since 2016 and clashed with authorities on several occasions.
Supporters of the brewery plebiscite yesterday attended the session at which the IEE councilors ruled out the possibility of a vote being held.
They claimed that the council members were pressured into making the decision and suggested that money may have changed hands.
The citizen who presented the plebiscite request, Jesús Filberto Rubio, congratulated Olga Viridiana Maciel Sánchez for being the only councilor not to vote against the consultation, contending that she is the only one who has a brain and didn’t accept money. The other councilors were either bought off or “mentally retarded,” he said.
State politicians and business leaders warned last month that the unprecedented consultation could threaten investment.
Mexican Employers Federation (Coparmex) president Gustavo de Hoyos said that if construction of the brewery is blocked, “it would be an irreversible blow to the reputation of Mexico’s production sector” while Baja California Governor Francisco Vega de Lamadrid said that a referendum would send the wrong message to investors.
Constellation Brands, the third largest beer maker in the United States, has said that the brewery would create around 5,000 jobs and that its use of water – expected to be 1.8 million cubic liters a year – will not affect citizens’ access to water.
