Buen Fin, Mexico’s Black Friday, expected to generate 118bn pesos in sales

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November 14, 2019

The Victoria beer cans featuring the fimmaker and two monster creations.

Acclaimed film director Guillermo del Toro called out the maker of Victoria beer for using his image and those of characters in his films on beer cans without his permission.

The filmmaker denounced Victoria beer in a tweet on Thursday and urged the company to donate the profits earned from sales of the beer to young students competing in math and robotics competitions.

“Very poorly done, @VictoriaMX. These cans do not have my authorization, my consultation or my signature to use my image or my name . . .” he said.

Victoria, made by Grupo Modelo, responded by admitting that it had made a mistake.

“We would never take liberties with something like this, @RealGDT. We are reviewing where the wires got crossed. Apart from this, we will continue to support Mexican talent as we have done up to now,” tweeted the company.

Victoria beer was one of the sponsors of Del Toro’s At Home with my Monsters, an exhibition featuring over 900 objects the Oscar-winning director has used in the making of his films, such as costumes, notebooks, drawings and personal objects.

The exposition was on display at the University of Guadalajara Art Museum (MUSA) from June 1 to November 3 of this year.

The beer can collection features three specially designed cans, one featuring the director’s face, and the other two featuring monsters from his films Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water.

They were designed by illustrator Guy Davis, and are to be sold in convenience stores in Mexico City, Jalisco, San Luis Potosí, Michoacán and México state.

Sources: Milenio (sp), El Financiero (sp)

Mormon families’ exodus leaves workers worried about their jobs

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November 14, 2019

One of the funerals held for the nine people murdered in Chihuahua November 4. — A judge designated the 2019 murders of 9 members of a border-zone Mormon family as an act of terrorism. (File photo)

Dozens of people have lost their jobs in Bavispe, Sonora, due to the exodus of Mormon families following the massacre of three women and six children this month, and more workers are worried that they will suffer the same fate.

Many women previously employed as domestic workers and nannies in the small community of La Mora and men who worked as gardeners no longer have jobs, the newspaper Milenio reported.

About 100 people from La Mora, where most of the victims of the November 4 attack lived, and Colonia LeBarón in Chihuahua left Mexico last Saturday for the United States.

Workers who travel to La Mora from Bavispe as well as the municipalities of Bacerac and Huachinera to work on pecan farms owned by Mormon families fear that they too could find themselves out of a job.

“The Langfords and the Millers give us work here, we’ve been with them for 22 years. If they go, we’ll be left without food because that’s how we make a living,” said Héctor Durazo Martínez, a farmworker who earns about 2,000 pesos (US $100) a week.

“If we’re left without work, we’ll have to start over and where will we look? As things are at the moment, I think that we would struggle to find work,” he added.

The week after the massacre that also left five children wounded, La Mora looks like a ghost town, Milenio said. Just seven of 25 homes are occupied and the streets are deserted.

Lafe Langford and his family, relatives of the nine murder victims, are the latest people to pull up stakes. They left for Louisiana on Wednesday.

“I feel like I’ve got 10 tonnes of stones on my back and I need to go and see something different, I don’t want to see that road [where the massacre occurred],” Langford told Milenio.

“I went to Bavispe . . . to buy some cattle tags and I told the ladies there that I was going to leave, they hugged me and started to cry.”

Julian LeBarón, another relative of the murder victims, claimed that the exodus of Mormon families to the United States won’t be permanent.

In a radio interview, he said that many people who left their communities in northern Mexico did so to be close to the five wounded children who are in hospital in Tucson, Arizona.

LeBarón said he was confident that families planning to stay in the U.S. for the time being would eventually return to Mexico.

“In 2009 [when two members of the Mormon community were murdered] a lot of people left but they came back. This is our home, it’s what we’ve built over a century. We obviously don’t want to abandon it,” he said.

Colonia LeBarón, located southeast of La Mora, has had Federal Police protection since 2010 and the municipality in which the town is located, Galeana, is one of the safest in Chihuahua, LeBarón said.

Although the government announced on Monday that suspects had been arrested in connection with last week’s massacre, the community leader expressed doubt that justice will be served.

“There’s no justice for anyone in Mexico . . . We change the politicians and parties but the corrupt-to-the-core institutions remain the same . . .”

Source: Milenio (sp), Infobae (sp)

Mexico City street has highest commercial rents in Latin America

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November 14, 2019

A street in Mexico City’s swanky Polanco district has the highest commercial rents in Latin America, according to a report by an international real estate firm.

The study Main Streets Across the World by real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield found that average annual commercial rents on Avenida Presidente Masaryk are US $1,011 per square meter.

Renting a small 50-square-meter space on Masaryk would cost US $4,212 a month.

Named after the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the avenue is home to luxury brand boutiques and high-end restaurants among other businesses that cater to the well-heeled.

Masaryk ranked as the 13th most expensive street on which to rent a commercial space in the Americas and the 37th among those studied by Cushman & Wakefield in 67 cities around the world.

Masaryk, left, and the street that bears his name. — Masaryk, left, and the street sign that bears his name.

Despite the high ranking, commercial rents have actually fallen almost 6% on the street compared to last year, while across Mexico rents have “generally been edging down in the last year as a result of weaker demand, particularly at the luxury end of the market,” the report said.

Causeway Bay in Hong Kong has the highest commercial rents in the world followed by Fifth Avenue in New York, New Bond Street in London, the Champs-Élysées in Paris and Via Montenapoleone in Milan.

Causeway Bay rents average $28,216 per square meter per year, almost 28 times higher than those paid on Masaryk. A 50-square-meter shop would rent for $117,500 a month.

In Latin America, the second and third most expensive streets for commercial rents were in Bogotá, Colombia, and São Paulo, Brazil, respectively.

The cheapest rents among the 67 cities studied were in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where a 50-square-meter commercial space can be rented on the city’s most expensive shopping strip for $870 a month.

Source: El Financiero (sp), De10 (sp)

Large tumors found in sea turtles in Sinaloa; pollution a likely cause

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November 14, 2019

One of the turtles with large tumors. — One of the turtles with a large tumor.

Two adult green sea turtles caught off the coast of Sinaloa within a week of each other were found to have very large tumors.

A marine biologist at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), Alan Zavala Norzagaray, said it was not the first time tumors have been found on turtles of this species, but those found previously were smaller.

Multiple tumors ranging in size from 0.1-40 centimeters were found on the turtles’ fins, skin, tissues, heads, cloaca and upper and lower shells.

He said the cause of the tumors is not known for certain, but the most likely explanations are pollution and climate change.

Researchers are running tests on the two turtles and will keep them indefinitely.

Zavala said that concentrations of contaminants on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico are high. This exposes the turtles to harmful pollutants when they come ashore to lay their eggs.

Aside from pollutants like plastics and other garbage, Zavala suspects that agrochemicals, heavy metals, organochlorides and other chemical waste could also be to blame.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Pirates have attacked 16 cargo vessels a month this year in Gulf of Mexico

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November 14, 2019

Drilling platforms and cargo ships are targets of pirates in the gulf.

Pirate attacks in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico have increased fourfold in just two years, triggering calls for the navy to bolster its presence in the area.

Between January and September, there was an average of 16 attacks per month on cargo ships off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, and Dos Bocas, Tabasco, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).

In 2017, there was an average of four pirate attacks per month while last year the monthly average increased to 12.

Merchant marine data shows that there were 167 attacks on ships and oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico between January and September but not a single arrest was reported in the period.

Pirates typically steal whatever they can get their hands on including the belongings of crew members as well as ships’ communication and navigation systems, which are later sold on the black market.

The increase in pirate attacks poses a risk to energy sector investments, warned the Ciudad del Carmen president of the Business Coordinating Council.

“This could cause future foreign investments in the energy sector to be canceled because entrepreneurs look for peaceful areas where their resources are protected . . .” Alejandro Fuentes Alvarado said.

ITF Latin America inspector Enrique Lozano Díaz told the newspaper Reforma that pirates have also attacked Pemex oil platforms in the Cantarell field, located 85 kilometers off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen.

“Pirates travel in two or more boats with powerful outboard motors,” he said.

“[There are] up to seven individuals in each boat,” Lozano added, explaining that the pirates make specific plans for each ship or oil platform they intend to attack.

Most recently, pirates attacked an Italian ship that provides services to oil drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Two crew members were injured in the November 12 attack, which came eight days after a group of armed pirates robbed workers on the Independencia oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The attack triggered an international alert for the region, Lozano said.

“In addition to weapons, pirates use hooks to climb onto ships and platforms. They always operate in the early morning, they know that crew members don’t use firearms due to international regulations so they board with complete safety,” he said.

“The criminals steal . . . self-contained breathing apparatuses and expensive equipment as well as copper and pipes . . .”

In light of the increasing number of attacks, Ciudad del Carmen business owners have urged the navy to increase patrols in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico.

The merchant marine has submitted a report about piracy in the Gulf of Mexico to both houses of Congress and is also calling for the navy to send more ships to deter and respond to criminal activity at sea.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Pulque and barbacoa on the menu this weekend in Mexico City

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November 14, 2019

Lamb barbacoa and pulque on the menu this weekend.

Savory, slow-roasted lamb and pre-Hispanic agave tipple will be on the menu this weekend at the 2019 Barbacoa, Pulque and Artisans’ Fair in Mexico City.

Regional producers will offer their best lamb barbacoa recipes, roasted either in above-ground or traditional pit ovens, as well as the accompanying consomé, a rich, clarified broth.

There will also be lots of antojitos (snacks) such as quesadillas, tlayudas, pork tacos, the sauce-drenched and grilled sandwiches called pambazos, elote (roasted corn) and the spicy soup made from beef stomach called pancita.

To wash all this down, festival attendees can grab a gourd full of pulque, a drink made from fermented agave syrup that dates back to before the conquest. Also on the menu will be curados, pulque that is flavored with ingredients such as lime, coconut, mango, pineapple, tomato and oats.

Although pulque has a very low alcohol content, those who must abstain can still try a cup of the sweet aguamiel, the raw agave syrup before fermentation.

As if all that weren’t enough, there will be traditional candies, ice creams, crepes, flan, cakes and gelatin for dessert, as well as lots of folk art booths to browse in between courses.

Now in its fourth year, the fair is a free family event held November 15-17 from 10:00am-8:00pm each day. The location is in the southwest of the city, at Calle del Rosal 2, in the borough of Magdalena Contreras.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Ghost towns in Chihuahua: most people have left, thanks to the narcos

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November 14, 2019

Violence by organized crime has turned two communities in Chihuahua into veritable ghost towns.

Confrontations between the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels have driven out entire families from the towns of Nicolás Bravo and Las Varas in the municipality of Madera.

“Go look and you’ll see, there’s no one in the streets,” Nicolás Bravo resident Abisail Bojórquez Solano told the newspaper El Universal.

Sitting alone on a bench across the street from the abandoned police station, Bojórquez told reporters that the violence has driven out most people from the town, and that those who remain live in fear.

“Some they chase out, some they kidnap. They burn people’s houses down and say ‘Get out.’ The ones they don’t want they take and disappear them,” he said.

Abisail Bojórquez doesn't see peace coming any time soon to Nicolás Bravo. — Abisail Bojórquez doesn’t see peace coming any time soon to Nicolás Bravo.

Narcotraffickers have driven out the town’s mayor and town council members. There is no longer a local police force, and state police only carry out random surveillance.

Nicolás Bravo is an example of what federal security official Leonel Cota Montaño spoke of when he warned in October that the country’s municipalities are defenseless against organized crime.

Bojórquez said that cartel members drive around town in pickup trucks dressed as soldiers and carrying military-grade weapons.

“The truth is [that we’re afraid]. Before it gets dark, everyone is already in their houses, at six, seven in the evening,” he said, adding that he sees no solution to the problem and doesn’t believe peace will come back to Nicolás Bravo.

The same situation can be found in the nearby community of Las Varas, where the scars of a raid on the state police barracks on June 24, 2018 are still visible. The attack left two officers dead, a patrol car burned and the barracks completely destroyed.

The pervasive nature of violence in the area was made apparent by a statement by one Las Varas resident who preferred to remain anonymous.

“Oh yes, very scary. I was cutting hair and we heard a helicopter . . . and shortly after we heard shots, but we didn’t think it would be much,” she said.

However, once the fighting intensified, she knew it was more serious than she had thought.

“A bit later it became more intense. It got real bad, the fighting was really loud, and the children were really scared. We will never forget that day.”

Days later, a confrontation between members of the La Línea and Nueva Gente cartels at the edge of town lasted 10 hours and killed 20 gang members from both sides.

Investigators found evidence of the use of assault weapons, hand grenades and .50-caliber rifles.

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For many families, it was the last straw. They abandoned their homes and fled.

“We are never calm, there is never peace. We always live with fear, we can’t shake off the fear. It’s something that sticks with you, I think,” said the Las Varas resident.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Bank cuts benchmark interest rate; weaker peso predicted to follow further cuts

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November 14, 2019

mexican currency — Economists predict peso will gradually weaken.

The central bank cut its benchmark interest rate on Thursday in a move that was predicted by economists, who expect the bank to continue monetary policy easing in 2020.

Leading economists forecast a weaker Mexican peso as a result.

The Bank of México cut the interest rate by 25 basis points to 7.5%.

Seventeen of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted that the bank would cut its benchmark rate by 0.25% to 7.5% at today’s meeting. The other nine anticipated a 0.5% cut to 7.25%.

The bank made quarter-point cuts at its last two meetings after inflation dropped and the economy continued to slow.

Further rate cuts could diminish the appeal of the peso because they put a dent in its carry trade appeal. Carry trade is a strategy in which investors borrow currency in markets where interest rates are low and buy in markets where they are higher.

The strong performance of the peso since President López Obrador took office is mainly due to demand for the currency generated by its carry trade appeal, Bloomberg said.

Among the world’s major economies, only Argentina, where the economy is in crisis, and Turkey currently have a higher real interest rate (the difference between the interest rate and the inflation rate) than Mexico. A decrease in inflation to the central bank’s target of 3% has left Mexico’s real rate at 4.73%.

If the Bank of México benchmark interest rate continues to fall as predicted, Mexico’s real interest rate will also fall and purchasing pesos will become less attractive to investors, causing the currency to weaken.

“We believe the peso will depreciate gradually for the rest of the year and into 2020 as the carry advantage of the peso erodes,” said Banorte economist Juan Carlos Alderete.

He predicted a 6% interest rate at the end of next year and an exchange rate of 21.3 pesos to the US dollar.

The most recent survey by Citibanamex showed economists predicting on average a 6.5% rate at the end of 2020 and an exchange rate of 20.07 to the dollar. Early on Thursday, the peso weakened 0.55% to 19.46.

Bloomberg said the “debate among economists and strategists isn’t whether the peso will depreciate, but how weak it will become.”

While López Obrador has lauded the strength of the peso since he took office, a weakening of the currency due to monetary policy easing could actually help his government grow the economy because it would make Mexican exports more competitive.

Any economic expansion would be welcome news for the government after growth of just 0.1% in the third quarter, 0.0% in the second and a contraction of 0.3% in the first.

The ailing economy coupled with concern about the government’s policy agenda is affecting investor confidence in Mexico.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch November survey showed that 77% of investment fund managers in Latin America believe that Mexico will lose its investment grade credit rating.

The figure is the highest since January when the survey first asked fund managers to offer an opinion about the outlook for Mexico’s sovereign rating.

Almost six in 10 fund managers said that government decisions represented a risk to the economy, while 23% expressed concern about the impact on Mexico of a slowdown in the United States.

The possibility of new U.S. tariffs on exports, another cut to Pemex’s credit rating and non-ratification of the new North American trade deal were also cited as risks albeit by just 8%, 4% and 4% of those polled, respectively.

Carlos Capistrán, the Bank of America’s chief economist in Mexico, told the newspaper El Financiero that data shows that investment has dropped significantly in real terms in 2019. Policy “uncertainty is one of the main factors” that has caused investment to fall, he said.

Capistrán said that monetary policy easing could stimulate the economy but predicted that it wouldn’t lift GDP growth above 1% next year.

The Bank of America is forecasting 0.0% growth this year and 0.9% in 2020.

Source: Bloomberg (en), El Financiero (sp)

Cold front brings chest-deep sea foam to Tabasco town

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November 14, 2019