Yesterday's ceremony to open the new flight school in Morelos.
A new pilot training program at the Aviation School of Mexico at the Cuernavaca, Morelos, airport will raise the state’s profile in national and international aviation, predicts Morelos Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco.
Speaking at the new program’s inauguration on Thursday, Blanco said the Cuernavaca airport has become an important center for pilot training in Mexico and around the world.
“This is allowing Morelos to truly become a host to the world, as students from around the country and other countries will be able to study aviation here,” he said.
The French aircraft manufacturer Airbus is also a participant in the program.
Aviation School director Alfredo Velázquez Maciel said the airport has the best hangar for pilot training in the country.
He said the school will offer 30,000 flight instruction hours in 2019, of which 40% will take place in Morelos.
Airport manager Federico Misael Álvarez Dávila said the investment in Cuernavaca shows that the city’s airport could be an alternative to the over-saturated Benito Juárez Airport in Mexico City.
State officials said they will meet with the federal Communications and Transportation Secretariat to discuss the possibility of including Cuernavaca in a Mexico City airport system.
Los Mochis, Sinaloa, is the second-worst city in the country for police corruption.
Almost three-quarters of Mexicans feel unsafe in the city in which they live, according to a new survey that also found that Acapulco is the worst city for police corruption.
Carried out by national statistics agency Inegi in the first half of June, the National Survey on Urban Public Security found that 73.9% of respondents consider their city unsafe.
The figure is slightly below those recorded by the same poll in March and June last year, when 74.6% and 75.9% of respondents said their city was unsafe.
Ecatepec, a México state municipality that is part of greater Mexico City, recorded the highest perception of insecurity among residents followed by Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz; Naucalpan, México state; Villahermosa, Tabasco; Tapachula, Chiapas; and Uruapan, Michoacán.
The percentage of residents who said they felt unsafe in those cities ranged between 97.4% and 88.9%.
In contrast, the cities where the lowest perceptions of insecurity were recorded were, in order: San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León – an affluent municipality in the Monterrey metropolitan area; Mérida, Yucatán; San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León; Los Cabos, Baja California Sur; Durango, Durango; and Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.
The percentage of residents who said they felt unsafe in those cities ranged between 18.9% and 43.1%.
The survey also determined the percentages of people who were recent victims of crime and acts of police corruption.
At a national level, Inegi said that at least one person in 34.9% of households was a victim of robbery or extortion during the first half of 2019.
Atizapán fared worst and three other México state municipalities in the metropolitan area of Mexico City – Chimalhuacán, Cuatitlán and Ecatepec – were also among the five worst cities in the country in terms of victim rates for those two crimes. León, Guanajuato, ranked second worst.
Tampico, Tamaulipas; Los Mochis, Sinaloa; Campeche, Campeche; San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León; and Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, recorded the lowest rates of victims of robbery and extortion.
The survey determined that 15.5% of respondents came into contact with public security authorities during the first half of the year and of those, 47.3% were victims of an act of corruption.
Just under 74% of poll respondents who had an encounter with police in Acapulco, Guerrero, reported being forced to pay a bribe or suffering from some other act of corruption, making the Pacific coast resort city the worst in the country in that respect.
Los Mochis, Sinaloa, recorded the second highest police corruption rate, with 71.9% of polled residents reporting that they were victims.
Next worse were the México state municipalities of Naucalpan, Tlalnepantla and Atizapán followed by Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, and Ecatepec.
Canadian investors have been turned off by the electricity commission's wish to renegotiate contracts.
Foreign holders of government securities have begun withdrawing their investments due to declining confidence in the federal government and the Mexican economy, and the expectation that the Bank of México will cut interest rates.
Statistics from the central bank show that the value of government bonds and federal treasury certificates in the hands of foreign investors was 2.11 trillion pesos (US $111 billion) on July 9, the lowest amount since December 14.
Since February 8 – when the value of government debt in foreign hands hit a record high – investors have offloaded securities worth 162 billion pesos (US $8.5 billion), the newspaper El Universal reported.
Foreign investment in treasury certificates, which are easier to cash in, has declined to its lowest level since March 2018.
“Investors are already starting to get nervous and while they perceive greater risk, we may see more sales of government securities and the interest rate for bonds may go up,” said Ernesto O’Farrill, general manager of Bursamétrica, a Mexico City brokerage firm.
Despite decisions such as the cancelation of the new Mexico City airport, the federal government generated confidence among investors during its first months in office after presenting a 2019 budget that was described as fiscally prudent and realistic by many analysts.
The first sell-off of government issued securities by the López Obrador administration in the middle of January garnered strong interest from investors.
More than 300 institutional investors from the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East participated in the auction and demand to purchase securities exceeded supply fourfold.
But investor confidence has waned on the back of downgrades to Mexico’s sovereign rating and that of Pemex, and the possibility that more ratings cuts are still to come.
“Investors are anticipating rating agencies’ adjustments and they deduce that Moody’s will strip Pemex’s investment grade in coming months like Fitch did at the start of last month,” O’Farrill said.
He predicted that agencies will also downgrade Mexico’s sovereign rating but not below investment grade. Fitch cut its sovereign rating for Mexico to one notch above junk status last month but if it, and other rating agencies went lower, a huge sell-off of government bonds would occur.
“Ninety-five per cent of investors are in government securities because Mexico has investment grade,” O’Farrill said.
Other factors that have made investors nervous are the widespread cuts to growth forecasts for the Mexican economy and Carlos Urzúa’s resignation last week as finance secretary.
El Universal reported that investors now see instability in the implementation of public policy and have responded by withdrawing their investments in government securities. The pullback could hasten as the Bank of México draws closer to cutting interest rates, which many analysts believe will happen in August or September.
Yet another factor weighing on some investors’ minds is the decision by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to seek international arbitration aimed at annulling clauses in seven pipeline contracts.
One of the contracts the utility is seeking to renegotiate is for the Texas-Tuxpan gas pipeline, which was jointly built by the Canadian company TC Energy (formerly TransCanada).
Canadian ambassador Pierre Alarie spoke out against the CFE’s move, while the embassy’s deputy head of mission said that the legal action has triggered concern among Canadian investors.
“The truth is that since the actions of the CFE, I receive calls every day with regard to the signal that Mexico is sending to Canadian investors. They ask for our advice in order to know if Mexico still wants more investment and what to do with their current and upcoming investment. Yes, they’re actions that cause concern,” Jean-Dominique Leraci said.
President López Obrador announced today that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) will provide internet service throughout Mexico through the creation of a new subsidiary.
“We have just created the company that will connect the entire country to the internet,” the president said at his morning press conference. “Today we will give you the name: it’s a subsidiary of the CFE. Why was this company placed under the CFE? Because this way, it will be able to use all of the CFE’s infrastructure, all of its lines. It will have all of the lines and fiber optic cables needed to get the entire country online.”
The president said the subsidiary has been approved as a non-profit service by the CFE board of directors.
Internet service will be delivered through the government’s new Integration Centers, federal facilities intended to deliver services such as social, health and education programs in rural areas. The government announced last week that 10,000 such centers would be installed throughout the country in an effort to provide services to the 200,000 communities in which fewer than 500 people live.
The centers will also house branches of the new Bank of Well-Being, a new institution that replaces Bansefi, the federal government savings bank.
The president said this morning that internet service will be delivered to the centers by the CFE through fiber optic cables and then on to residents through a wireless connection.
The Paso Express sinkhole that killed two people in July 2017.
The two-year old Cuernavaca Paso Express highway will likely require “major surgery,” according to the federal communications and transportation secretary.
The 14.5-kilometer stretch of road has been plagued with problems since it opened, including the appearance of a sinkhole in July 2017 that trapped a car, killing both occupants.
Javier Jiménez Espriú didn’t provide details about the work that will be carried out on the highway but said that technical studies are already under way. He stressed that there is no current risk to motorists using the road.
“We’re carrying out a study of the entire Paso Express, it will take a couple of months,” Jiménez told reporters at the National Palace, adding that all of the “delicate points” have already been identified.
“Everything’s under control and there’s no risk of any serious issue . . . Once we have the complete study we’ll probably carry out a major surgery,” he said.
Morelos authorities warned last August that there were at least five danger spots on the 10-lane highway, which was built by a private consortium consisting of the companies Aldesa and Epccor and cost almost 1 billion pesos (US $52.7 million at today’s exchange rate).
The highway’s problems, and in particular the sinkhole, were a significant source of tension between the previous federal government and former Morelos governor Graco Ramírez.
Former transportation secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza repeatedly denied responsibility for the problems, claiming that the Morelos government, the municipality of Cuernavaca and the principal contractor were to blame.
Ramírez said he warned Ruiz and former president Enrique Peña Nieto that the highway wasn’t ready to open when it did but they failed to heed his advice.
Local residents were aware of drainage problems on the section of the highway where the sinkhole appeared and warned officials about a damaged culvert but no action was taken to repair or replace it.
The secretary also said that the environmental impact statement for the Santa Lucía airport will be ready in coming days, whose completion will allow the project – currently stalled because of legal action – to begin.
AMLO presents a check to the mayor of Metlatónoc, proceeds of an auction of narco-real estate.
Confiscated jewelry and watches are expected to “sell like hot cakes” at the government’s third auction of assets seized by federal authorities.
The fundraising goal for the auction being held by the System of Administrative Allocation of Assets (SAE) is 21.8 million pesos, the total of the starting bids for the 148 lots.
The July 28 auction will sell off jewelry being held by federal prosecutors, courts and tax authorities.
Ricardo Rodríguez, head of the Institute to Return Stolen Goods to the People, the so-called “Robin Hood” agency that manages the SAE auctions, said he expects the auction to surpass its goal and raise between 30 million and 35 million pesos. The proceeds will pay for road repairs in mountain communities in Michoacán.
“We expect them to sell like hot cakes,” said Rodríguez. “I think it’s going to be very attractive for those who want to participate.”
He said it was hard for the SAE to establish the market value of the pieces “because of how extravagant and unique they are,” and that the 21.8-million-peso figure is just an “initial reference point.”
Top-priced item is a 3-million-peso Piaget watch made of 18-carat white gold and encrusted with 49 diamonds.
Of the 148 lots, 133 were confiscated by federal prosecutors. Some of the others were gifts illegally given to public servants.
President López Obrador said the items will be on display for a week, beginning Sunday, at the former presidential home, Los Pinos.
He also announced that the government’s fourth auction will sell off land and cash confiscated from drug traffickers.
“In the next auction, we’ll sell confiscated goods and parcels of land, and money in cash, especially dollars,” he said.
On hand at today’s press conference were two Guerrero mayors, each of whom was presented with a check for 21.15 million pesos, cash generated by the auction of confiscated narco-properties.
The mayors represent Metlatónoc and Cochoapa El Grande, two of Mexico’s poorest municipalities.
The governor of Yucatán says his government has attracted investment projects worth 23.7 billion pesos (US $1.25 billion) since it took office just over nine months ago.
Speaking at the opening of the NH Collection Hotel in Mérida, Mauricio Vila Dosal said the projects will create 17,010 direct jobs and 54,120 indirect ones.
Vila attributed the strong showing to his government’s focus on promoting Yucatán to investors.
“Thanks to the promotion work in recent months at both a national and international level, Yucatán has recorded an unprecedented flow of investments, which allowed the state to achieve fourth place nationally in terms of job creation in June,” he said.
The governor added that his administration is aiming to grow the manufacturing and industrial sectors, among others, and wants all of Yucatán’s municipalities to benefit from the state’s increasing prosperity.
Among the projects Vila highlighted was a US $120-million wind farm in the municipality of Dzilam de Bravo and a US $30-million solar plant in San Ignacio, Progreso.
He also spoke about Grupo Kuo’s plan to invest 6.6 billion pesos to install new production lines and expand its food processing plant in the municipality of Tixpéhual, which will create 3,000 jobs, and the 720-million-peso Crown Park Yucatán project, which involves the development of a 150-hectare site in Hunucmá.
An industrial zone, a business center and a residential area are planned for the latter project, Vila said, adding that it will generate 120 direct jobs and 360 indirect ones.
The National Action Party governor said the port of Progreso will also benefit from the increased investment.
“Some of the firms will use the port to move their products to other parts of the world, consolidating its standing as one of the most important logistics points in the country,” Vila said.
The governor also said that during the first half of 2019, a total of 8,579 new jobs were created, a figure that is 32% higher than the same period last year.
Workers clean up the tonnes of water lilies that arrived on this Ixtapa beach.
It’s not just sargassum that’s washing up on Mexican beaches.
Local government and tourism workers this week removed more than 160 tonnes of water lilies from Playa El Varadero, a beach on Isla Ixtapa, a small island off the coast of the Guerrero resort city of the same name.
Recent heavy rains carried the plant into the sea from the Pantla river, whose mouth is near Isla Ixtapa.
Zihuatanejo public services director David Luna Bravo said that local hoteliers and restaurant owners contributed to the clean-up efforts.
After the water lilies are collected, they are transported by boat to Playa Linda on the mainland.
In just two and a half hours on Tuesday, 10 dump trucks were filled with lilies, Luna said.
Ricardo Pineda, owner of El Indio restaurant, said that water lilies wash up on Ixtapa beaches practically every year but explained that he hadn’t seen such a large quantity of the plant for three or four years.
Having to dedicate time to cleaning up El Varadero beach has caused restaurant owners to fall behind in other tasks they need to do to prepare for the peak tourist season, he added.
“It’s the season now . . . but thankfully . . . the authorities are helping us,” Pineda said.
AMLO's approval rating in green, disapproval in red.
President López Obrador’s performance rating has declined eight points but remains strong, according to a new poll that also shows that more than six in 10 Mexicans believe that migrants are a burden on the country.
Sponsored by the newspapers Reforma and the Washington Post and carried out by the former, the poll shows that 70% of respondents approve of the president’s performance compared to 78% in a March survey.
The percentage of people who disapprove of the way López Obrador is doing his job rose from 18% to 29%.
The president’s political party also has strong support.
More than half of those polled said they would vote for the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena, if a presidential election were held today, more than three times the support garnered by the National Action (PAN) and Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) parties.
Asked what impact the changes being implemented by the president will have on the country, 44% of respondents said they will improve it, while 22% said that Mexico will get worse.
Four in 10 respondents said that Mexico is generally on a good path, while 27% said that the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Insecurity was cited by 55% of respondents as the biggest problem in the country, while 45% said that they felt safer since the deployment of the National Guard.
Unemployment, corruption, the economy and poverty were cited by 10%, 9%, 7% and 4% of respondents respectively as Mexico’s No. 1 problem.
Asked how the president is dealing with a range of different issues, poll respondents rated López Obrador best on education. Half of those polled said he was dealing with the issue well, while 21% said that his performance was poor.
The president’s response to drug trafficking and organized crime was considered the worst aspect of his performance. Just 24% of respondents said that he was doing a good job in the area, while 45% said that his performance was poor.
They’re a burden, said 64%.
More than half of respondents said that López Obrador has been successful in improving the economic situation of the nation’s poor and just under half said that he has done a good job in the crusade to end corruption.
However, just one-quarter of those polled said the economy has improved since the new government took office and 35% said that the security situation has worsened compared to 21% who said it has improved.
The navy is considered the most trustworthy institution in the country followed by the army and the National Guard, while less than a third of respondents expressed confidence in the nation’s judges and attorney general’s offices.
Three in 10 people said that Carlos Urzúa’s resignation as finance secretary will negatively affect the economy, 43% said they support the construction of the Santa Lucía airport and 86% expressed the belief that former president Enrique Peña Nieto committed acts of corruption while in office.
Less than a quarter of respondents said that Mexico has a good or very good relationship with the United States, while 77% said that they have a bad or very bad opinion of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Opinion was divided about López Obrador’s management of the bilateral relationship, with 47% saying that they approved and 41% responding that they disapproved.
Just over half of respondents said the president has defended Mexico’s interests in the face of Trump’s threats while 34% said that he hasn’t.
The agreement that ended Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on all Mexican exports was imposed on Mexico by its northern neighbor, according to 55% of poll respondents.
Asked about migrants in Mexico, 64% of poll respondents said they are a burden on the country because they take jobs and benefits that should go to Mexicans. Only one in five people said they strengthen the country.
A majority of 55% said that migrants should be deported, while 33% said they should be given temporary residency while waiting for the outcome of their asylum claims in the United States. Seven per cent said migrants should be granted permanent residency.
The survey was carried out nationally between July 9 and 14 with 1,200 people.
Reforma said the poll has a margin of error of +/-4.9%.
El Chapo's first escape tunnel at the Altiplano prison.
Mexico’s most famous drug lord, already renowned for building one escape tunnel, was planning another three years ago in a bid to make a third escape from jail after he was captured in January 2016.
Nuevo León prison official Eduardo Guerrero Durán told the state news agency Notimex that a second tunnel was found at the Altiplano federal prison in México state, where the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was incarcerated following his arrest on January 8, 2016 in Los Mochis, Sinaloa.
Six months earlier, “El Chapo” had escaped from the same prison via a 1.6-kilometer-long tunnel that led to the bathroom in his cell.
The tunnel was detected after prison staff noticed noises emanating from Guzmán’s bathroom, to which the notorious drug lord went frequently, the official explained.
While in the bathroom, Guzmán would repeatedly flush the toilet.
As a result of the noises and suspicious behavior, a study of the soil beneath the prison was carried out and the second tunnel was found.
There was also a reference during Guzmán’s trial of his wish to make another prison escape after his 2016 capture.
Dámaso López, a former Sinaloa Cartel leader who was previously a security chief at the Jalisco prison from which “El Chapo” escaped in 2001, testified that Guzmán’s wife, Emma Coronel, approached him to discuss a third prison break.
“My comadre [female friend] sought me out to tell me that my compadre [buddy] wanted to escape again, [to ask] if I would help him again,” López told jurors.
It is unclear whether he was involved in planning the excavation of the second tunnel.
Guzmán was sentenced to life yesterday.
The witness – sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States last year on drug trafficking charges – also testified that he and other officials at the Puente Grande maximum security prison took bribes from Guzmán during his first incarceration in exchange for providing him with a range of perks such as new shoes, a mobile telephone and secret visits with his wife and other family members.
López quit his security job in September 2000 but told jurors 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.
Four months later, the drug lord was wheeled out of the prison in a laundry cart and would remain a free, albeit wanted, man for the next 13 years.
Guzmán’s lengthy and notorious criminal career came to an official end yesterday when federal Judge Brian Cogan imposed a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment plus 30 years. He was found guilty on 10 drug trafficking charges in February.
United States authorities have not yet made any formal announcement but Guzmán is likely to spend the rest of his life at the “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, the country’s most secure penitentiary where tunneling out might be a challenge.
According to a report in the New York Post, he was on his way to the facility Wednesday night.
The Colorado Supermax prison where El Chapo might be incarcerated.
Since it opened in 1994, no one has ever escaped from the federal prison that is officially called United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility.
Located 185 kilometers south of Denver and nicknamed “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” the prison is home to a who’s who of notorious criminals.
Among the 376 inmates are domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Prisoners are typically confined to their solitary cells for 23 hours a day, where they may watch television or gaze out a narrow window that is angled upward so that only the sky is visible.
Special restrictions ensure inmates cannot make threats or exert influence in the outside world. Prisoners are escorted during all movements and head counts are done at least six times a day, the news agency Reuters reported.
“It’s very well designed for its purpose, to hold the most dangerous offenders in the federal prison system,” said Martin Horn, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and former commissioner of the city’s Department of Correction.
He told Reuters that the Florence “Supermax” prison “is literally built into the side of a mountain, with a robust security infrastructure.”
“Could Guzmán penetrate that?” Horn was asked.
“I would never say never,” he responded, “but it’s highly unlikely.”
