Landowners collect tolls on the Mazatlán-Durango highway. They relinquished the plaza this week.
Communal landowners in Durango have relinquished control of a toll plaza they occupied for a year and a half to demand compensation for the use of their land to construct the Mazatlán-Durango highway.
The liberation of the Garabitos toll plaza came a day after the landowners from surrounding cooperatives received 33.5 million pesos (US $1.7 million), the first of two payments they will receive from the federal government.
Durango Governor José Rosas Aispuro Torres assured the landowners that another payment of 30.1 million pesos will be made next week.
“Next week, you will receive the remaining part of a total of 60.6 million pesos for compensation for your lands that were affected in the construction of the highway,” he said.
“Let me put on the record my
gratitude to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for his willingness to
resolve this matter which affected the communal landowners for over 14 years.”
Aispuro made the announcement at the toll plaza on Wednesday. After, the landowners began breaking down their encampment, taking away their belongings and cleaning the area.
President López Obrador visited the site on August 9, where he announced that the debt would be paid.
“This Monday, we will pay the
landowners what they are owed, so that this can come to an end,” he said.
“This puts out a bad image of
anarchy, of disorder,” he continued. “Regardless of the fact that their demand
is just, we can’t allow them to continue charging a toll here after more than a
year.”
Aispuro added that from now on no citizen would be allowed to take over public roads in the area.
Mexico City police have been accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (PGJ) said yesterday that prosecutors allowed vital genetic evidence to be lost in the case of a 17-year-old who filed a complaint of sexual assault against Mexico City police.
But the attorney general said today that the circumstances at the crime scene do not coincide with the declaration given by the victim..
She claimed she was raped by four officers while returning home from a party on the night of Friday, August 2.
The victim filed the complaint at 1:30pm on August 3, at which time the medical examiner did not apply the standard testing protocol for sexual assault cases, the newspaper El Universal reported.
At 3:00pm, the girl’s mother and grandfather, who had accompanied her to the police station, took her home to rest.
It wasn’t until August 6 that the family was given an appointment to return to the station for the testing to be performed. The medical examiner took samples from the clothes the victim was wearing on the night of the attack, as well as tissue samples from under her fingernails. Results came back negative.
A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office told a press conference today that the evidence gathered so far does not coincide with the victim’s declaration.
“With the information that we have at this point, we are able to determine that the timing, circumstances and facts do not coincide with that which the victim declared,” said Ulises Lara López.
He also said that medical and psychological studies were carried out immediately after the victim reported the incident.
Meanwhile, the investigation continues, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said later.
López Obrador with governors during signing of new pact.
The governors of nine states signed an agreement yesterday that seeks to boost development in the south and southeast of Mexico and to narrow the economic gap with the north of the country.
At a meeting in Oaxaca convened by the Confederation of Industrial Chambers, the governors of Oaxaca, Yucatán, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Veracruz and Puebla inked the so-called Oaxaca Pact.
Under the terms of the agreement, the governments of the southern and southeastern states will work collaboratively with the private and academic sectors to create a more prosperous region.
Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat expressed confidence that the pact will help to reactivate the regional economy and contribute to the achievement of equitable development across the nation.
Growth will be sought in the industrial sector, business and tourism, he said, adding that the agreement also stipulates cooperation on education, security and infrastructure.
The federal government is pursuing three large infrastructure projects in the south and southeast – the Maya Train, the Dos Bocas oil refinery and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor, which includes modernization of the railway between Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, and Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz.
President López Obrador has said that the projects will act as a trigger for economic and social development.
Mexico’s southern states lag behind the north and center of the country in terms of human development.
A report published by the United Nations in May said that development in certain highly disadvantaged municipalities in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Veracruz is on a par with that in impoverished African countries such as Burundi and Burkina Faso.
As a result of a lack of economic opportunities, the southern-southeastern region has struggled to retain its population because many residents choose to seek employment in other parts of the country or the United States. The region also finds it difficult to attract new residents.
The governors agreed that development in their states has not kept pace with other parts of the country, which has exacerbated the north-south divide. They pointed out that the south and southeast has failed to attract much foreign investment and to tap in to export markets a significant way.
The Zapatistas’ Galeano is not a fan of AMLO’s development plans.
Seven out of 10 workers are employed in the informal sector of the economy and 80% of indigenous residents live in poverty, the governors said.
Some residents of the region are not all that keen about the development plans.
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) announced this week that it is planning to hold a music festival to protest against the government’s infrastructure projects.
In a rambling statement, Subcomandante Galeano (formerly Subcomandante Marcos) said the Zapatistas will also demonstrate against the “wall that the supreme government is planning to build on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to separate us from the people of the north.”
It is unclear exactly what the EZLN member was referring to although some people have likened the deployment of National Guard troops to southern Mexico to ramp up enforcement against undocumented migrants to the construction of a wall.
Suspicion is growing that the 2018 helicopter crash that killed the former governor of Puebla and her husband was deliberately provoked, the national president of the National Action Party (PAN) said.
“Without a doubt suspicion is growing that someone provoked the death of Martha Erika Alonso and Rafael Moreno Valle,” Marko Cortés said yesterday after the release of a new federal government report on the accident.
The couple, a political aide and two pilots were all killed after the helicopter in which they were traveling plunged to the ground just outside the city of Puebla on December 24.
Alonso was sworn in as governor just 10 days before the crash. Her victory in last year’s gubernatorial election was disputed by the Morena party, which alleged electoral fraud.
The Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC) said on Tuesday that it had found no evidence that the helicopter sustained a mechanical malfunction, a conclusion that echoed its finding in an investigation update published in June.
Cortés said the new report confirms what the PAN has been saying all along – “If there was good weather, the equipment didn’t fail and the pilots were experts, what happened then? Who was it?”
The national president charged that “what’s needed is a serious, professional, conclusive investigation by the government,” claiming also that the administration led by President López Obrador “is hiding what happened” and hoping that the crash will be forgotten.
“It’s unfortunate that this government is not interested in
finding out what happened,” he said.
“What’s needed is for the government to apply itself [so that] it can give us accurate information. Mexicans need to know the truth about what happened on December 24. The Secretariat of Public Administration [must] take action on the matter and open an investigation with respect to the conduct of the director of the civil aviation agency. That’s our most emphatic demand to the Morena party government . . .”
Four employees of a Chiapas hospital have been fired after the family of a deceased newborn got a surprise when they opened the coffin in which they expected to find the child’s body.
It was empty.
The state Health Secretariat said the director of the Palenque general hospital, two security officials and a social worker were dismissed.
Health Secretary José Manuel Cruz Castellanos said the employees did not follow the hospital’s protocol for giving coffins to families.
“These protocols exist in every Chiapas hospital, and they should
be applied effectively,” he said. “As the responsible authority, we will make
sure that they are followed.”
Cruz noted that the baby did receive proper medical care.
The baby arrived at the hospital in serious condition suffering from neonatal asphyxia and lung collapse. According to the Health Secretariat, the doctors could do nothing to save him and he died on Sunday.
An eruption at El Popo sends ash and steam skyward.
Mountain climbers who scaled the Popocatépetl volcano have been called “imprudent” by the chief of the national Civil Protection agency.
A video circulating on social media shows a group of at least five climbers ascending the side of the volcano’s crater, wearing face masks, goggles and helmets, as the volcano emits plumes of smoke.
Civil Protection director David León Romero criticized the climbers, who numbered as many as a dozen, warning that they not only risked their own lives but those of emergency workers.
“Climbing an active volcano shouldn’t be seen as an athletic achievement for mountain climbers, but as an imprudent action,” he said. “The people who do it are not only risking their lives, but also the lives of rescue workers who would need to go help them, and the human and material resources of the Mexican state.”
Climbers are not allowed inside a 12-kilometer restricted zone around the crater.
#Video Captan a alpinistas en el cráter del Popocatépetl
Located in central Mexico and straddling the borders of the states of México, Puebla and Morelos, Popocatépetl has been active since 1994, and large fragments of molten rock are often ejected several kilometers from the crater.
The video of the climbers was uploaded to Twitter by the volunteer urban search and rescue organization, GORDAS-USAR.
A lawyer for the group defended the climbers and said they had good reason for approaching the crater.
“The people who went to the crater did it to take scientific measurements of altitude, temperature, the velocity of the volcano and other things,” Honorio Hernández said. “Another reason was to accompany members of the community of Santiago Xaliztintla, Puebla, who leave an offering to the volcano every year.”
There have been three other reports of climbers on the summit of the volcano while it was active. Experts said youths who climbed to the top in March were lucky to have survived.
Route of the migrants seeking asylum from Ciudad Juárez.
About 6,000 migrants are stranded in the border city of Ciudad Juárez while waiting to apply for political asylum in the United States.
Chihuahua’s State Population Council (Coespo), which heads the coordination of migrant services in the city, stated that the current wait time to apply for asylum is about 90 days.
The migrant population in Juárez
includes people from Cuba, Central America, Mexico, and even Africa.
As of August 13, 5,981 people were on the waiting list administered by Coespo. From this list, migrants are called by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to cross into El Paso, Texas, and apply for asylum with an officer.
Once they have applied, migrants are held for a short time in El Paso before being returned to Ciudad Juárez, where they must wait for their cases to be heard. Wait times can be as long as a year in some cases.
Dirvin García, head of Mexico’s Center for Comprehensive Migrant Services (CAIM), stated that there are already cases with wait times that extend well into 2020.
Since October 27, 2018, 18,166 people have been put on the list to apply for asylum, of which 12,185 have been allowed to cross into the U.S. to make the application.
Of the 67 people who arrived at the CAIM facilities on August 10, one was from Cuba.
“It’s a long time to wait,” he said, “and we’re running out of money.”
He said he had relatives in the United States that were helping him financially, but the wait still wasn’t easy.
“Hopefully they can speed up
the process so we can cross,” he added.
Instead of waiting, many migrants opt for crossing the Rio Grande to speed up the process. Once in the United States, they are arrested by the Border Patrol. At that point they can apply for asylum.
On Monday, the Border Patrol began holding interviews with migrants after a 10-day moratorium during which no one on CAIM’s list was called to cross into El Paso.
A similar situation occurred at the end of July, when interviews were suspended for 11 days due to overcrowding at CBP facilities.
Opponents and supporters of the bill in the gallery of the state Congress yesterday.
The state of Zacatecas voted not to legalize same-sex marriage on Wednesday, when 13 of the 26 deputies voted no, 11 voted in favor and two abstained.
The Morena party, which has a small plurality in the Congress, supported the bill with the exception of Deputy Armando Perales Gándara. The two-deputy blocks of the Labor Party (PT) and the Social Encounter Party (PES) also split, with one voting for and one against the bill in each party.
Morena Deputy Mónica Borrego Estrada expressed her disappointment after the vote, blaming the outcome on party-line votes by deputies allied with Governor Alejandro Tello, a block made up of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN), the New Alliance Party (PANAL) and the Green Party (PVEM).
“I’m convinced that the truth won today, but lost to party-line votes, shameful votes by legislators from parties that are allied with Governor Alejandro Tello . . .” she said.
Borrego added that failing to legalize gay marriage puts
Zacatecas behind the rest of the country and the world.
“International agreements approved by the General Assembly
of the United Nations support the recognition of marriage equality as a
mechanism to fight discrimination and intolerance on the planet,” she said.
The outcome of the vote sparked protest from members of the LGBT community who were gathered in the chamber, and applause from the National Family Front, a Catholic Church group that opposes same-sex marriage.
Such marriages were legalized by a 2015 Supreme Court decision. However, in Zacatecas and the 11 other states that have laws defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, same-sex couples must obtain an injunction from a federal court in order to be able to legally marry.
In the state’s municipalities of Zacatecas, Cuauhtémoc and Villanueva same-sex couples may get married without obtaining an injunction.
Zacatecas joins Yucatán and Sinaloa as states that have voted down proposals to legalize the practice this year.
A frame from the video supposedly made by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has accused Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro of links to organized crime in a video posted to social media.
Surrounded by more than 20 heavily armed and masked men dressed in military attire, a man who identifies himself as CJNG leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes accused Alfaro of breaking a pact that gave the Jalisco cartel criminal control of the state.
He charged that the governor instead plans to give the “plaza” to Martín Coronel, a man known as “El Águila” (The Eagle), and Esteban “El Güerito” Rodríguez Olivera.
Coronel, nephew of a former close associate of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is believed to be the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in Jalisco.
“Alfaro made arrangements to remove us from Jalisco, thinking that he could do it overnight . . . Governor Alfaro was a very good friend of [Ignacio] Nacho Coronel and that’s why he has this relationship with his nephew ‘El Águila’ and ‘El Güerito,’ a close friend of ‘El Águila’ Coronel,” the presumed CJNG leader said.
“The governor did a deal with me, Mencho Oseguera, with which he didn’t comply at all. All of you know that before the new government led by Enrique Alfaro came in everything here in Jalisco was very calm and now with his rule, violence started in the whole state.”
The masked man who claimed to be “El Mencho” denied that the CJNG has anything to do with safe houses where dead bodies and bound captives have been found.
“Governor Enrique Alfaro is the only person who can tell you who owns those safe houses and [who is responsible] for those dead people since, in reality, they’re houses that are property of Martín Coronel . . . and Esteban Rodriguez Olivera . . . both [of whom are] directly protected by the governor,” the speaker said.
“El Mencho” – who according to a DEA agent is hiding out in the mountains of western Mexico – also denied that the CJNG is responsible for crimes committed in Puebla, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Chiapas, México state, Cuernavaca and Chihuahua.
“. . . We don’t kidnap, we don’t rob people, we don’t charge extortion,” he said.
Jalisco Governor Alfaro.
The suspected CJNG leader called on President López Obrador to launch an investigation into bank accounts that Alfaro allegedly holds in the names of prestanombres, or front men, in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
The governor uses the accounts to “move the money he receives from Martín Coronel and Esteban Rodríguez in exchange for agreements with them,” he claimed.
The masked man, who remains seated throughout the almost six-minute video, also claimed that Alfaro has a personal grudge against the CJNG because his “current woman” had a relationship with a high-ranking cartel member.
“. . . The hate and the personal problems that the governor has against our company are personal and because of that he preferred to give his support” to Coronel and Rodríguez, the man said.
The Jalisco government declared that all the accusations made in the video were false.
“For the state government, the fight against violence is a matter of utmost seriousness. That’s why since the beginning of this administration we’ve made it clear that this government doesn’t speak to, nor will it speak to, criminals,” the government said.
“The stunt, put together in a video with false assertions, contains lies that have the sole and clear intention to defame, intimidate, misinform and generate fear among citizens. For these reasons, it doesn’t deserve more than a single response: the government of Jalisco will continue doing its work and will file the corresponding [criminal] complaint with the federal Attorney General’s Office.”
In February, thousands of women marched in Mexico City to demand that President López Obrador do more to keep women safe. The protest sign featured here reads, ‘Don’t be indifferent.’ Reuters/Edgard Garrido
After the leftist firebrand Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the Mexican presidency in a landslide last year, he vowed to “govern for all, starting with the poor.”
In Mexico, “the poor” includes many women, who earn 34% less than men for doing the same job. Women in Mexico also face incessant catcalling and extremely high rates of violence. With 1,199 women murdered in Mexico between January and April this year – about 10 a day – Mexico is Latin America’s second-most dangerous country for women, after Brazil, according to the United Nations.
As a presidential candidate, López Obrador spoke about the challenges facing women in Mexico. His campaign even acknowledged that domestic abuse and poverty are particularly prevalent among indigenous women, and pledged to help them, too.
López Obrador’s administration has not, however, made women’s rights a priority. Instead, it has been rolling back some of the few federal policies designed to protect and empower Mexican women.
Under austerity measures meant to curb public spending, López Obrador in February ended an internationally lauded daycare program that allowed low-income families to sign up for government-subsidized childcare close to their workplace or home.
Rather than pay subsidies to this network of private daycare facilities, the Mexican government will now give vouchers worth about US $80 every two months directly to families.
The new policy will give parents more choice in their childcare, the Mexican government says. Each family may now decide whether to send their children to daycare or pay “a sister, an aunt or a grandma,” López Obrador said in a February 7 press conference.
López Obrador, who remains popular six months into his six-year term, additionally explained his decision to end government-subsidized daycare by saying the program was corrupt.
Several private daycare centers that benefit from government subsidies have been involved in high-profile child abuse scandals or shown to have unsafe facilities. In 2009 ABC Daycare in Hermosillo, Sonora, caught fire, killing 49 children.
Lopez Obrador blamed these problems on corruption among government and private-sector middlemen, who pocketed cash meant to serve children. He says that by removing the intermediaries to give money directly to families, the opportunity for corruption is eliminated.
As a group, indigenous women are the poorest people in Mexico. They are also the most likely to receive inadequate medical care and to die in childbirth. Reuters/Jacob Garcia
Public corruption is rampant in Mexico. But there’s no evidence that the childcare program suffered particularly from abuse of public funds.
In fact, Mexico’s subsidized childcare network, which has served two million children since it was established in 2007, has been quite successful in enabling more women to work outside the home.
According to a 2017 government evaluation, the daycare network had relieved 1,825,394 parents of childcare duties for 34 hours a week over the past decade. A significant percentage of the communities served by the daycare network were either very poor or home to a predominately indigenous population, according to the U.N., and women were the primary beneficiaries.
Women’s groups and human rights organizations in Mexico responded to the termination of the daycare program – and to the president’s suggestion that female relatives could care for Mexico’s children – with outrage.
In a joint statement released February 11, 17 civil society organizations said the new policy would “strengthen gender stereotypes” and “promote discrimination and gender inequality.” The groups reminded the president that women do 70% of all domestic work in Mexico and that grandmothers already care for 50% of all young children not in their parents’ care.
Mothers who used government subsidized daycare were 18% more likely to have gotten a job between 2007 and 2017 compared to those who did not receive government-subsidized childcare, according to a government program evaluation.
Even so, Mexico still has the second-lowest female participation in the workforce among developed countries, behind Turkey. Only four out of 10 women are employed outside the home.
The López Obrador administration has responded to this criticism with indignation.
After Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission ruled that ending the daycare program violated the constitutional rights of Mexican women and children, a government official sought to discredit the independent government agency as a partisan entity.
Undersecretary of Human Development Ariadna Montiel Reyes called the organization’s position an “unacceptable aberration” orchestrated by López Obrador’s political opponents and accused the commission of complicity with “atrocities” committed by previous administrations.
This is the first time the federal government has challenged the legitimacy of the commission since its creation as a government watchdog in 1992.
The elimination of public daycare was infuriating to López Obrador supporters who expected the president to promote a more progressive gender agenda.
So when the president announced in March that his administration would additionally slash funding for women’s shelters and instead give the money directly to victims of domestic violence, the backlash was immediate and fierce.
President López Obrador remains popular. On July 1, 2019, he celebrated the one-year anniversary of his landslide win with a rally in Mexico City attended by several thousand people. AP Photo/Fernando Llano
Worldwide, women are most likely to be murdered by a male partner and may be unsafe in their own homes, making shelters a vital sanctuary.
The number of Mexican women stabbed or strangled at home rose 54% between 2012 and 2016. In March 2019, the same month the cuts were announced, Mexican police received 56,590 reports of domestic violence – a 16% increase over February 2019.
Advocates for victims of domestic violence warned that cutting funding to domestic violence shelters would expose women and children to even more danger.
Public uproar forced the Mexican government to retreat on its plan to stop funding women’s shelters and give cash payments to women instead.
But a few months later, in May, news reports revealed that women’s shelters would see substantial budget cuts under the government’s austerity measures. Twenty-nine percent of Mexico’s 81 publicly funded domestic violence shelters have received no federal funding for the second half of the year.
To quell criticism that it doesn’t care about women, the Mexican government in late May announced the launch of a European Union and United Nations program in Mexico to eliminate violence against women.
The US $7.7 million investment, called Spotlight Initiative, will target three Mexican states with high rates of violence against women: México state, Chihuahua and Guerrero.
Its goals, according to the EU, are to design public spaces that are safer for women, facilitate women’s access to justice and protection services and to “fundamentally change the perception of women within their families and in society.”
López Obrador wasn’t always sure that Mexico needed the help.
A spokesperson for the European Union told the Spanish newspaper El País that López Obrador initially rejected this initiative because, for his government, gender “was not a priority.”
