Sinaloa journalist Valdez was murdered in May 2017.
A former top lieutenant to Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán testified Wednesday that the ex-Sinaloa Cartel boss’s sons murdered Javier Valdez, a Sinaloa journalist who covered drug trafficking.
Dámaso López Núñez made the accusation under cross-examination by Guzmán’s lawyers. It had previously been thought that López’s son, Dámaso López Serrano, might have been responsible for the reporter’s death.
According to López, Valdez was killed after publishing an interview with López himself in which he revealed cartel infighting, evoking the displeasure of Guzmán’s sons. Valdez’s newspaper, Río Doce, had previously published a story that implicated López in an attack on El Chapo’s sons, which had prompted López to go on record.
When questioned further about his son’s rumored involvement in the journalist’s killing, he rejected the accusation. “Everyone in Culiacán [Sinaloa] knew El Chapo’s sons had threatened Valdez.”
Guzmán has fathered at least 15 children but López did not specify which had murdered Valdez. Four sons are believed to be involved in the family business — Iván, Alfredo, Ovidio and Joaquín. López, who has showed affection for Guzmán throughout his testimony, said that his former boss might not have known that his sons had murdered the reporter.
The witness met Guzmán when he was the director of security at a Jalisco maximum security prison in which the former drug lord was being held. He later quit his and job and went to work for the cartel, where he quickly climbed the ranks.
He was arrested in 2017 and extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking. He is testifying for the prosecution at Guzmán’s trial with the hope of having his sentence reduced.
In other testimony, he said Guzmán’s wife played a key role in planning her husband’s prison escape in 2015. López said he and Emma Coronel, who passed messages to and from Guzmán, worked with the latter’s sons to plan the escape.
They bought a piece of land near the Altiplano prison in México state and dug a 1.5-kilometer tunnel to the prison, through which Guzmán made his getaway.
López’s former boss is now on trial in New York for drug trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and weapons offenses.
When he took the stand on Tuesday, he looked at Guzmán and bumped his chest with his fist. Asked later by one of Guzmán’s lawyers why he had done it, he said, “Because I love him.”
López Obrador, left, and Alfaro are sparring over fuel shortages.
The governor of Jalisco has hit back at President López Obrador after the latter described the governor’s comments about the gasoline shortage as a publicity stunt.
Governor Enrique Alfaro took to Twitter on Tuesday to question why gasoline shortages in Jalisco were worse than in other parts of Mexico and to accuse the federal government of abdicating its responsibility to the citizens of the state.
Calling the shortages an “unprecedented crisis” for both Jalisco and the country as a whole, the governor said that if the “federal government doesn’t assume its responsibility and generate certainty for the residents of Jalisco,” his government would take matters into its own hands.
Yesterday, López Obrador dismissed Alfaro’s views as propaganda.
“I’m not going to fall into provocation, with all due respect to the governor, I’m not getting into that, I’m breaking free! . . . He’s not serious, it’s [a] publicity [stunt] . . . Yesterday, I told them that the Salamanca-Guadalajara pipeline was tapped four times, four times!” he told reporters.
“. . . Despite that, the supply to Jalisco has been improving but the governor has been giving interviews saying the opposite, he’s within his rights but so am I, I have the right to not fall into any provocation,” López Obrador continued.
The president rejected any suggestion that the government has given special treatment to Puebla with regard to the supply of gasoline – as Alfaro insinuated – in light of the fact that voters in the state will go to the polls later this year to elect a new governor after the Christmas Eve death of Martha Erika Alonso in a helicopter crash just 10 days after she took office.
“I have the responsibility to guarantee that there is no shortage of gasoline, of fuel, in the whole country. I’m not sectarian, I represent all Mexicans, I’m the president of the republic, I’m the head of state, I’m not the head of a group, a party, a faction, that’s finished . . .” López Obrador said.
Later yesterday, Alfaro went back to Twitter to return fire at the president.
“The gasoline shortage problem in Jalisco is not a matter of publicity, it’s a crisis that requires complete seriousness on the part of the federal government, not to say, ‘I’m breaking free’ of responsibility. I’m not picking a fight, I’m very serious . . .” he wrote.
Beneath his tweet, Alfaro posted a video showing gas stations that are closed in Jalisco and long lines of motorists waiting to fill up at those that remain open.
In subsequent posts, he detailed the severity of the shortages in several municipalities and asked:
“. . . Should we keep quiet? Do we have to accept that Pemex doesn’t say a single word? Do you seriously think that the governor of Jalisco should say nothing? . . . When are you going to tell us how much longer it will be until the shortage problem is solved?”
The federal government has explained that the gasoline shortages, which persist in at least five states, are the result of López Obrador’s decision to close several major petroleum pipelines as part of the strategy to combat fuel theft.
But there have also been claims that reduced gasoline imports from the United States, inefficiency at Mexico’s oil refineries and insufficient investment in logistics infrastructure have contributed to the shortages.
AMLO's priority is fighting corruption rather than attending Davos forum.
President López Obrador asked his cabinet secretaries not to attend the World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week and focus instead on the fight against fuel theft and attend to the Hidalgo pipeline explosion.
Foreign trade undersecretary Luz María de la Mora, head of the Mexican delegation, told reporters in Davos yesterday that by asking top officials not to travel to the Swiss ski town, the president is sending a clear message that the government’s priority is to combat corruption in Mexico.
“Yes, it’s true that a delegation was going to come at the secretary level, but the president asked them to stay in Mexico to attend to the emergency,” de la Mora said.
“That is the reason they are not here. The message we are sending is that for President López Obrador, the fight against corruption is central to his agenda, and he is taking it with all seriousness.”
De la Mora said the government remains committed to attracting foreign investment to Mexico and that around US $20 billion was expected to flow into the country this year.
She explained that the López Obrador administration wants to work with new Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to negotiate a broader free trade deal which would remove tariffs on vehicles shipped between the two countries.
In an interview with German broadcaster DW, de la Mora reiterated that Mexico is fully committed to free and open trade.
“The way we’re dealing with global trade tensions is by not getting into the same trap of protectionism. We do not believe that protectionism is the solution to any problems that trade may bring . . . Trade is an engine for growth and we’ll continue to support it,” she said.
Migrants line up at an immigration facility in Chiapas.
Immigration authorities have now registered more than 10,000 migrants at the southern border as part of a new government program that has been described by an official as “super successful.”
The National Immigration Institute (INM) announced on Twitter today that it registered 8,446 requests for humanitarian visas from adult migrants currently in Chiapas and 1,897 requests from minors in just six days.
Many of the migrants crossed into Mexico last week as part of a new caravan that left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on January 14.
Some of them entered Mexico illegally and continued walking to Tapachula but later returned to the border crossing to regularize their immigration status. Some returned in buses provided today by the federal government.
Of 10,343 migrants, 75% are from Honduras while most of the remainder are from Guatemala and El Salvador, although the total also includes a small number of Nicaraguans, Haitians, Brazilians and Cubans.
INM chief Tonatiuh Guillén told the newspaper La Jornada that the initiative to offer humanitarian visas to the migrants has been successful and will continue, explaining that it is part of the federal government’s new immigration policy.
“I understand that for Donald Trump it’s not his ideal scenario and that he prefers another vision but this is Mexico’s sovereign decision and we hope that it also has an impact on reducing human trafficking,” he said.
“It’s been a super successful program, it’s really establishing a new paradigm in Mexico’s immigration policy that is based on Mexico’s laws and the country’s international commitments,” Guillén added.
The humanitarian visas, which allow migrants to work in Mexico and access services for a period of 12 months, are issued five days after the INM receives the requests.
Once in possession of the visa, the migrants are able to move legally throughout the country, meaning that if their goal is to apply for asylum in the United States, they can travel to the northern border.
“The objective on our part is for their entry to be regular, for all of them to have their legal situation in order and for them to consider Mexico as an alternative for employment,” Guillén said while in Chiapas to oversee the issuing of visas.
An added benefit of the visa scheme, he said, was that it allows authorities to know who is in the country.
“. . . For the first time, we’re going to know who has crossed into Mexico . . . and obviously we’ll have the possibility of identifying those who have a legal problem in Mexico or in another country,” Guillén said.
Thousands of Central American migrants are already in cities on Mexico’s northern border, especially Tijuana, where they face long waits for the opportunity to request asylum with United States authorities.
It is unclear how many of the cohort currently in Chiapas will also attempt to reach the Mexico-U.S. border and how many will choose to remain in Mexico.
Salvadoran migrant Aura Guinea, who is traveling with her five-month-old daughter, told CBS News today that she saw the humanitarian visa as a means to get to the United States and that she remained determined to do so.
However, a Honduran woman said that she would stay in Mexico because Trump doesn’t want people like her in the United States.
She said she hoped to be able to find a better paying job in Mexico than in Honduras, where she earned just US $2 a day washing dishes.
Trump, who has accused Mexico of doing nothing to stop migrants from reaching the United States’ southern border, is currently locked in a bitter battle in the United States over funding for his long-promised border wall.
“Build a wall and crime will fall,” he tweeted today.
Puebla International Airport, where traffic was up 40%.
Government-owned airports operator Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares, or ASA, saw a record 3,016,631 passengers at its facilities in 2018, up 17% from the previous year.
The ASA operates 19 airports, which were used by 316,474 more travelers than in 2017. It attributed the increase in traffic to the inauguration of new air routes.
The airport with the largest increase in traffic was Puebla International, which saw 685,583 passengers in 2018 — a 39.9% increase; followed by Puerto Escondido, which was up 18.2%; Chetumal, up 16.8%; Tepic, up 14.8%; Colima, up 12.7%; and Ciudad Obregón, up 11.5%.
Cargo volumes were up even higher in 2018. ASA said it transported 4,533 tonnes, a 33.6% increase.
Chetumal was up a whopping 598%, Puerto Escondido 47% and Campeche 32%.
File photo of Guzmán, left, and former prison official López.
A former security chief at the Jalisco prison from which Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán escaped in 2001 testified yesterday that he and other prison officials took bribes from the former drug lord in exchange for providing him with a range of perks.
On his first day on the witness stand at the New York trial of the former Sinaloa Cartel chief, Dámaso López told jurors that among the privileges afforded to Guzmán while he was locked up in the Puente Grande maximum-security prison were new shoes, a mobile telephone and secret visits with his wife, brother and brother-in-law.
López, who joined the Sinaloa Cartel after resigning from his prison job, said that in exchange he received at least US $10,000, a house valued at 1.5 million pesos and assistance to pay medical expenses for one of his sons.
The witness told jurors that he quit his security job in September 2000 because the federal government was conducting an investigation into corruption at the prison.
However, López said that before he left he had a final meeting with Guzmán, who asked him to speak with the new security chief so that his perks would be preserved.
Known by the nickname “El Licenciado” (The Graduate), López later became a fixer and ultimately a leader in the Sinaloa Cartel. He is believed to have been chosen by Guzmán to be his successor.
However, “El Licenciado” was arrested in Mexico City in May 2017 and extradited last year to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to importing cocaine into the U.S and was sentenced to life in prison.
The sole accomplice to the escape was a guard known as “El Chito” who worked in the prison’s laundry section, he said, adding that Guzmán was later upset that other guards were falsely accused of aiding his breakout.
The 52-year-old witness also told the court about several executions that Guzmán allegedly ordered during his years at the helm of the cartel.
López is one of many cartel witnesses who have appeared over the past two months at Guzmán’s trial on charges of trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and weapons offenses.
The former kingpin’s lawyers have attempted to portray the witnesses as unreliable “degenerates” who are speaking in the hope that their own prison sentences will be reduced.
If convicted, Guzmán faces probable life imprisonment.
The helicopter shortly after it crashed December 24 in Puebla.
The manner in which a helicopter fell in a crash that killed the governor of Puebla was described today as unusual by federal transportation officials.
The Italian-made Agusta helicopter plunged almost vertically and upside down on December 24, killing Martha Erika Alonso, her husband the ex-governor, an assistant and two pilots.
“Yes, it was unusual, it was not normal [and] it is one of the things that catches the eye,” said transportation undersecretary Carlos Alfonso Morán Moguel.
The fall was “almost vertical, at 60 degrees, and furthermore inverted,” he said.
Another unusual factor was that the heads of several bolts on the main rotor had had their heads sheared off, but investigators have concluded that the impact of the aircraft hitting the ground was the cause.
Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Espriú said the cause of the accident remains unknown. The investigation has not been able to determine if it was a mechanical failure, human error or weather.
Illustration prepared by the Transportation Secretariat demonstrates how the helicopter fell.
Authorities are now waiting for the results of studies of various components of the helicopter that are being carried out in Italy, the United States and Canada.
When gasoline started gushing out of a punctured pipeline in a field in Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo, on Friday afternoon, word spread quickly.
Hundreds of local residents rushed to the rupture with containers in hand, determined to get some free fuel as gasoline shortages continued to make the commodity hard to come by.
Hours later, amid an atmosphere that has been described as festive, the pipeline exploded, a huge fire spread across the field and more than 100 people were engulfed in flames. At least 95 people lost their lives and more than 40 others remain in hospital with severe burns.
In the days since the tragedy, a debate has raged across the country.
Were the victims who flocked to the illegal pipeline tap out-and-out criminals, or were they merely desperate opportunists whose actions were influenced both by the gasoline shortages afflicting Hidalgo and their own precarious economic situations?
Even President López Obrador weighed in on the debate, rejecting the former view and arguing that people’s poverty had compelled them to get in on the act.
“We have the conviction that the people are good, that they are honest, that if they arrived at these extremes, these practices, it’s because they were completely abandoned” by past governments, he told reporters at a press conference last weekend.
Poverty has long afflicted Tlahuelilpan, a municipality around 120 kilometers north of Mexico City, but according to many local residents, the situation has got even worse over the past two years.
According to the social development agency Coneval, 55% of Tlahuelilpan’s 18,531 residents live in poverty and 7% are in situations of extreme poverty.
The economic means of almost a quarter of all residents are so limited that they find it extremely difficult to buy enough food to have three meals a day, statistics show.
Education levels are low – only three in 10 residents have finished middle school – and more than 70% of people don’t have a formal job, meaning they don’t have access to social security services and other employment benefits.
Searchers look for remains of the missing at the scene of the explosion.
More than 10% of homes in Tlahuelilpan lack basic services such as running water, electricity and adequate drainage and many have only dirt floors. Almost half the municipality’s houses are without a washing machine and a quarter have no fridge.
The situation leaves little doubt in the mind of Tlahuelilpan Mayor Juan Pedro Cruz that poverty was to blame for people’s reckless decision to get so close to the geysers of gasoline last Friday and place themselves in a position of such obvious risk.
Ernesto Cardenas, a writer who chronicles the life and times of Tlahuelilpan, agrees.
But he also points his finger at Pemex, alleging that while poverty is the main culprit in the tragedy, the state oil company has played a role in exacerbating it.
More than 40 years ago, Pemex opened the Miguel Hidalgo oil refinery in Tula, a municipality just 15 kilometers from Tlahuelilpan. But Cardenas contends that the refinery has brought few benefits to the local townsfolk.
“They came, according to them, to create jobs but as the campesino [small-plot farmer] wasn’t prepared, they started to bring their own people. We made an effort to gain access to a job and many people went for training. We were ready but in the end, they didn’t give us an answer, they just brought their own unionized workers,” he said.
In recent years, the municipality’s economy has become increasingly dependent on fuel theft, known colloquially as huachicoleo, as more and more residents looked for a way to lift themselves out of poverty.
Before huachicoleo, Contreras said, Tlahuelilpan’s economy was based on agriculture, especially the cultivation of crops such as alfalfa, wheat and corn.
But residues from the nearby refinery contaminated the fields, he explained, and with gasoline prices rising, many people – especially young men – saw a lucrative alternative in the tapping of Pemex pipelines and the sale of stolen fuel.
“I got into the business two years ago. I needed money and as a farmhand or farmer, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of poverty,” an unnamed young huachicolero, or fuel thief, told the newspaper Milenio.
He explained that from a young age, he tried to earn an honest living in a range of different, poorly-paid jobs but unable to make ends meet, he accepted an offer from a friend to get in on the illegal fuel theft racket.
In January 2017, when the federal government imposed a sharp increase in the price of gasoline, many others also decided to join the illegal business, the huachicolero recalled.
“In the beginning, we only sold it [the stolen fuel] here but the competition has grown a lot and for that reason we took it to other municipalities. It’s a profitable business because we sell the stolen fuel at six pesos a liter and the reseller sells it at 12. Everybody wins. On a normal day I used to take home 10,000 or 12,000 pesos [US $520 to $630],” he said.
But now, the federal government has made cracking down on fuel theft a priority, threatening the livelihoods of huachicoleros all over the country but especially in states such as Hidalgo, Puebla and Guanajuato, which led the country in illegal taps in 2018.
'There is no gasoline' nor is there a date on which it can be expected, says sign in Guanajuato.
Almost three weeks after gasoline shortages began affecting Guanajuato, 70% of gas stations in the state have no fuel, according to authorities.
Gas station closures have been reported in most parts of the state including the cities of Guanajuato, León and Irapuato as well as rural municipalities.
Mauricio Usabiaga, Secretary for Sustainable Economic Development, said the shortages have affected at least 50% of Guanajuato’s economy.
“The [economic] impact due to the lack of gasoline in Guanajuato has been severe, especially in cities like León and Irapuato, which represent more than 85% of the state’s wealth,” he said.
“Now we’re trying to raise awareness of the situation with the federal government . . . in order to receive support, we’re also looking for options such as attracting investment for a [new fuel] storage center . . . Business people are looking for legal, economic and social certainty” Usabiaga added.
Paulo Bañuelos Rosales, a lawmaker for Guanajuato’s ruling National Action Party (PAN), said that if shortages persist, agriculture could be among the sectors that are hardest hit.
The industry has already recorded losses of more than 200 million pesos (US $10.5 million), according to the state Agricultural Development Secretariat.
Bañuelos said that farmers in municipalities such as Abasolo, Cuerámaro and Pueblo Nuevo are becoming increasingly angry about the situation and have threatened to protest.
“They’ve been telling me that they were going to block the highways but I told them that was not something that would help us to solve the problem,” he said.
The lawmaker said the fuel shortages have meant that many farmers have been unable to harvest their crops.
“We’re talking about 15% or 20% of more than 130,000 producers [who are affected]. It’s mainly those who grow vegetables . . . The corn is still a little bit pale and you can keep it on the plant but you can’t do that with onions and bell peppers. Of course, they get marked and they no longer meet the quality to be exported . . . It’s having a very big impact on the agricultural sector,” Bañuelos said.
Meanwhile, in Jalisco, where 85% of gas stations in Guadalajara and 80% in the rest of the state remained closed yesterday, Governor Enrique Alfaro took to Twitter to question why the shortage crisis was worse there than in other parts of Mexico.
“It’s not controversial to say that the size of the fuel shortage problem . . . in Jalisco is very different to the rest of the country. It’s worrying that here it’s been going on almost 19 days while in other places, such as Mexico City, they only had three days of crisis,” he wrote in the first of several tweets on the subject.
Alfaro also took aim at the state oil company and the federal government, charging that they had let Jalisco down despite the state government doing everything that was asked of it.
“We helped to reinforce security for the tanker trucks and guaranteed their entry to the city, we’re collaborating with the protection and surveillance of pipelines, we strengthened the patrolling of distribution centers and operations to combat fuel thieves,” he wrote.
“However, as we have said from the beginning, Pemex and other federal agencies haven’t shared precise information that is useful to take the necessary decisions . . . so that the citizens suffer the negative effects as little as possible . . . It’s very concerning that the metropolitan area of Guadalajara is receiving just 40% of the daily fuel it requires,” the governor continued.
“We’ve complied with all the requests that have been made to us but if the federal government doesn’t assume its responsibility and generate certainty for the residents of Jalisco, we will take preventative measures on a larger scale to contain the impact of this unprecedented crisis on Jalisco and the country.”
The Popocatépetl volcano sent a two-kilometer ash plume in an eruption last night, triggering an ash fall alert for communities in the vicinity.
The 9:06pm eruption was accompanied by the emission of incandescent material that fell a few meters from the crater on the eastern slope of the volcano and the two-kilometer-high plume of ash, water vapor and gases.
The explosion was heard in nearby towns and caused windows and doors to vibrate as far away as Puebla city, located 44 kilometers to the east of the volcano.
Authorities have issued recommendations following the low-scale eruption, including limiting open-air activities, bringing pets indoors and avoiding eating meals outside.
Anyone who goes outside is advised to wear a face mask, a long-sleeved garment and a hat. Once back indoors, people should rinse their eyes and throats with water.
Special attention should be given to water tanks and other water sources for human and animal use, keeping them covered and protected from the volcanic ash.
Hiking near the crater is not advised, as the emission of incandescent material and other ballistic fragments is expected to continue.
The alert for Popocatépetl remains at yellow, Phase 2, which means that the release of water vapor and gas plumes is to be expected, as is the light fall of ash in nearby areas along with incandescent fragments.
The alert level also warns of the possibility of eruptions causing pyroclastic flows and mudslides carrying debris, although at such a small scale that evacuation of inhabited areas is not required.
