Hotel operator Selina, which specializes in accommodations for digital nomads, is looking to expand in Mexico and open up more parts of the country to freelancers and other types of remote workers who rely on telecommunications technologies to earn a living.
With an investment of US $150 million, the chain plans to add 8,000 hotel and hostel beds in several tourist destinations in Mexico over the next two years.
Selina operations director Paulo Pena said that Mexico is a strategic area for the company’s expansion plan, which includes new units in San Miguel de Allende, Sayulita, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Mérida.
“The plan is to have a total of 10,000 beds [in Mexico]. We now have 2,300 beds open. We’re working with a local partner [DD3 Capital Partners] … with a $150-million fund in order to develop the properties, and in conjunction with them we think we can achieve this goal,” he said.
Selina Los Lirios, recently inaugurated in Tulum, boasts 100 beds in both private rooms and 12-bed dormitories. Pena said that the property is emblematic of the unique service the company offers its guests.
The firm’s business model is to combine diverse accommodation options with coworking installations, restaurants and cultural and artistic activities that guests can make use of during their stays.
Selina, which specializes in revitalizing already constructed buildings, has seven properties in Mexico, many of which are in coastal towns. But it is looking to expand into colonial cities, the specially designated Magical Towns and areas with natural attractions.
A screw that has pulled out of the wall at housing project.
Just a week after repairs were finished, residents of a Mexico City housing development that was damaged in the September 2017 earthquake have already reported major safety issues.
Several people were killed when one of the buildings in the complex collapsed in the 7.1-magnitude quake that struck central Mexico on September 19, 2017.
The families moved back into the buildings, located in Tlalpan, on February 8 and immediately found potentially life-threatening problems with the work contracted by the Mexico City government.
The handrail of a fourth-story balcony came loose and fell to the ground, a victims’ group posted to Facebook on Friday. They also posted photos of window security bars coming loose, the screws barely holding the bars to the wall.
“What other hidden defects could there be in other buildings?” the post read.
The residents demanded that authorities review and approve the safety of all of the housing units that received government repairs.
Eight of the development’s 10 buildings received structural reinforcement, which included complete renovations of the floors, stairwells and electrical, gas, water and drainage networks.
Authorities reviewed the damages on Saturday accompanied by a legal representative of the construction company that performed the repairs.
“The solution is to add angled anchors with 3/8-inch rods and epoxy resin to the floors, studs and interior faces of the walls,” said the reconstruction commission in a press release.
It added that it would carry out a timely review of the apartments and common areas of the other buildings in the complex to find any other safety issues.
State police in Chiapas used tear gas on Sunday to break up a march by family members of the missing 43 students from Guerrero and students of a teachers’ college in Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
Parents of the missing young men, who were studying at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College when they were abducted and presumably killed in September 2014, and students of the Mactumactzá Rural Teachers College were marching towards the center of the Chiapas capital on the Libramiento Norte road when they were approached by some 200 riot police Sunday morning.
The Chiapas Secretariat of Security (SSyPC) said that the officers approached the participants of the “Caravan in Search of the 43” to seek dialogue and listen to their demands.
However, the students assaulted two officers, threw molotov cocktails, rocks and fireworks at the police contingent and vandalized a police car, the SSyPC said, adding that one police officer sustained a head injury and was taken to hospital.
The police used tear gas in response to the aggression “in accordance with the eviction protocol” in order to reestablish order, the secretariat said.
However, the Chiapas-based Ku’untik Human Rights Center charged that the police response amounted to government repression of the protesters, while parents of the missing Ayotzinapa students said that excessive force had been used.
Three Mactumactzá students, two of the missing Ayotzinapa students’ mothers and the 3-year-old granddaughter of one of them required medical treatment, the parents said.
The “authoritarian attitude” of the Chiapas authorities is “inconceivable,” they said in a statement, adding that their constitutional rights and freedoms were trodden on.
The Mactumactzá students are well-known for protests and have clashed with police in the past. They stole four buses last November after attacking a Tuxtla Gutiérrez garage owned by the bus line Ómnibus Cristóbal Colón (OCC) with molotov cocktails.
The students said they were protesting against the privatization of education and government repression. They also demanded more funding for their school.
Fugitive cartel leader José Antonio Yépez Ortiz built infrastructure in a small Guanajuato town and the surrounding area that was specifically designed to aid and abet his criminal activities and help him avoid capture.
Santa Rosa de Lima, a community in the municipality of Villagrán, was the home base of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, a fuel theft and extortion gang, and a fortress for its leader, also known as “El Marro.”
According to a report by the newspaper Milenio, Yépez turned Santa Rosa de Lima into a town that perfectly met the needs of the criminal organization he heads. His properties there and in the neighboring municipality of Celaya also afforded him a life of luxury with his family and helped him to evade authorities.
Milenio reporter Jannet López Ponce described the criminal infrastructure that was once at the gang leader’s disposal and detailed its layout, explaining how it helped El Marro flee when authorities launched an operation to arrest him early last year.
A pink chapel on Leandro Valle, a street on the outskirts of Santa Rosa de Lima, marks the entrance to the town that was formerly Yépez’s undisputed domain.
Hidden behind trees on an unpaved nearby side street is a green house with a front yard that was used by the criminal gang for the manufacture and storage of homemade explosives.
Just 150 meters from the makeshift explosives factory is a yellow three-story structure that was once used as a cartel safe house, Milenio said, adding that a small business now occupies the ground floor. One-hundred meters further along Leandro Valle is the so-called “pink house,” where Santa Rosa de Lima gangsters dismembered the bodies of their victims and dissolved them in barrels of acid, according to authorities.
Two-hundred meters away in the center of the small community is a monument with two arches that El Marro reportedly had built in his own honor. Located in front of the town church, the structure alludes to the letter M, a reference to Yépez’s nickname.
A few meters away is a home that is now used by state police officers – who have wrested back control of Santa Rosa de Lima – to go to the bathroom, Milenio said. Yépez formerly loaned the house to residents for parties, occasionally also providing food, wine and musical groups.
According to Guanajuato security commissioner Sophia Huett, the purpose of making the home available for social functions was to maintain the social fabric of the town. In other words, it was a means for “El Marro” to ensure that he maintained the support and loyalty of residents, who set up road blockades and confronted security forces early last year to stymie the operation to locate and arrest him.
This ‘prison’ housed El Marro’s rivals.
At the end of a nearby dirt road, the fugitive criminal leader – Mexico’s most notorious huachicolero, or fuel thief – created his own prison to house rivals from whom he believed he could extract information that would benefit the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, Milenio said.
When security forces seized control of the facility in the middle of last year, they freed six people — among them a police officer from the neighboring municipality of Celaya.
The makeshift jail had some of the features of a real one, such as cells with barred doors secured with padlocks. Mounds of dirt now surround the improvised lockup because authorities excavated the property to search for bodies, Milenio said. Those held there were reportedly told that they would be killed and buried on the grounds if they didn’t cooperate with their interrogators.
On the opposite corner is a house to which “El Marro” is believed to have retreated after he was personally involved in the interrogation and torture of people held in his prison. The home, which has a garden, swimming pool, bar and games area, is the largest seized by authorities in Santa Rosa de Lima.
Yépez was able to move between his network of properties in the space of just a few minutes, Milenio said, adding that their proximity to each other helped him to avoid capture.
A few kilometers from Santa Rosa de Lima is another enclave that was once controlled by Yépez and his criminal colleagues. On the outskirts of San José de Guanajuato, a town in the municipality of Celaya, is a warehouse that El Marro used as the front for a shell company his family created called Logística López.
The Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel stored stolen vehicles and goods in the warehouse as well as drugs and weapons. The property had a security camera system and a living room, bedroom and bathroom with a hot tub, Milenio said.
The warehouse has a door that leads directly onto one of Yépez’s most prestigious properties. Known as Casa Albercas, it boasts a large pool with a swim-in bar set in a garden decorated with stone statues of lions.
The home has an entrance onto a deserted street that allowed El Marro to access the Salamanca-Celaya highway and the Celaya airport in a matter of minutes.
A short distance away is the Alamo Country Club where Yépez had another luxury home in an exclusive residential estate. Painted in orange, the spacious house was the main residence for the criminal leader and his family, Milenio said.
While authorities have secured many properties linked to El Marro and his criminal organization, seized more than 100 vehicles, blocked access to bank accounts holding 35.4 million pesos and arrested scores of people connected to the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, including El Marro’s wife (later released), they have not managed to achieve the central aim of the operation they launched early last year: take Yépez into custody.
Still, Guanajuato Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa told Milenio that the operation to capture El Marro and break up the cartel is continuing with the same intensity with which it began last year. Asked when Yépez might be captured, he responded: “It’s something that is under investigation.”
Federal authorities have claimed success in reducing fuel theft in Guanajuato but have failed to stem bloodshed in the state, which was the most violent in Mexico last year with more than 3,500 homicides. A bloody turf war between the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is believed to be the main cause of the high levels of violence.
When the Rotary Club of Zihuatanejo was considering a theme for its annual fundraiser, it wanted to do something different.
It hit on the idea of staging a paella festival, mainly because it would be unlike all the other gastronomical events in the area. Besides, it would be a great way to introduce the traditional Spanish favorite to the Pacific coast resort.
Held February 1 on the municipal beach in front of the archaeology museum and set against the backdrop of a cruise ship that happened to be docked there that evening, the second annual edition of the Paella Festival was a magical and tasty experience for the 360 people that attended.
The committee invited various restaurants and four major hotels to whip up their best version of the saffron-infused rice dish from Valencia. Aside from the traditional paella of seafood and/or chicken, there were vegetarian options as well.
The beneficiary of this year’s event was the Neonatal Intensive Therapy Unit and the toco-surgery area of the General Hospital of Zihuatanejo. The hospital’s wish list ran up a hefty price tag of 600,000 pesos and included a special crib for premature babies.
“Everything related to the paella festival was donated,” says organizer Claudia De Leon Mederos, from the cutlery, plates and flowers to the wines and, of course, the 23 different paellas provided by 11 businesses.
For last year’s event, the municipality contributed 40,000 pesos to the cause for a grand total of 200,000 pesos. A silent auction was added and various business contributed with gift certificates and products — another example of how important the cause is to the city.
Mederos says she has every reason to believe that the proceeds from this year’s fundraiser will exceed last year’s, given the generous contributions from the community, and that over time everything on the hospital’s list will be purchased.
Mexico News Daily
CORRECTION: The previous version of this story contained incorrect information regarding the beneficiary of the festival.
For the past 22 years, Roberto Barnan has dressed as a clown and juggled for Mexico City’s frustrated drivers as he bounces between the red lights at the crossroads of Avenida Baja California and Calle Medillín.
The city is known for its terrible traffic and pollution, but Roberto has capitalized on this and brings a few seconds of entertainment to the local commuters.Depending on the day, he makes between 200 and 300 pesos, but he appears to thrive more on the warm reception he receives from his audience.
The early commuters are always the most pleased to see him, he explains, but it’s also fantastic to see a child’s face light up as they pass him in the street. As we chat between red lights, Roberto returns numerous greetings from various people going about their daily lives.
Roberto is a married father of five and grandfather of many but he is the only juggler in his family. What does his wife think of his job, I asked.“She likes my job,” he says and then chuckles as he adds, ‘probably because it brings in money.”
We talk briefly about the city and how beautiful it is before the conversation turns to politics.
“It’s always best not to talk politics in this town’, he says, but given a magic wand, Roberto would make everyone more honest. “It would help with so many problems.”
Roberto’s message to anyone considering visiting Mexico is not to believe everything on the television.
For the most part the country is calm, with beautiful places and cultural traditions that cannot be found anywhere else in the world — not to mention the juggling clown in Roma Sur.
A collaboration between Zacatecas residents and visual artists has brought color and hope to the streets of three violent and marginalized neighborhoods in the northern state.
Residents of Gavilanes, a neighborhood in the municipality of Guadalupe; Popular CTM in Zacatecas city; and Abel Dávila in Fresnillo worked with street artists to dream up and paint 43 murals on the exterior walls of houses and apartment buildings.
The murals express the residents’ feelings, wishes and desires and feature their pets and family members, the newspaper El Universal reported,
The overriding theme, El Universal said, is that the future can be better – the future can be what the residents painted.
Called Comunidad en Paz (Community at Peace), the mural project was supported by the Zacatecas government, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Tomate artists’ collective and the paint company Comex.
In addition to representing hope for a better future, the murals also draw attention to problems that the neighborhoods suffer, such as drug consumption, violence, low levels of school attendance and teenage pregnancies, said Zacatecas Crime Prevention Undersecretary Armando García Neri.
One of the participants in the project was 59-year-old housewife Cipriana González. She collaborated with the artists David Hernández – or Dagos as he is known in the street art world – and Tomás Major to develop an idea for a mural that now adorns her home in Gavilanes.
The mural features González and her half-sister Cristina as young women as well as the former’s mother holding her favorite flower, an alcatraz, 0r calla lily. The painting of González’s mother was based on the only photo that González has of her.
Above the three women are two young boys, who were added on the suggestion of a neighbor who yearns for the days of her childhood. González has her hand on her heart in the mural, a reference to the two heart attacks she has suffered, and survived.
Females are the stronger sex but lack respect and opportunities, she told El Universal. Featuring women as protagonists in the new murals help to generate greater respect for them, González said.
She said that the mural project and the art it produced have helped to bring the local community closer together.
Since the mural was painted, people who she didn’t previously know have stopped her in the street to say hello, González said, adding: “It’s nice to see people are interested … I like making friends from this.”
Just a few kilometers from Gavilanes is Popular CTM, a Zacatecas city neighborhood where 26 murals were painted as part of the Comunidad en Paz project. One of the most eye-catching is a 15 by 12-meter mural featuring a young boy wearing a bonnet with elephant ears.
Also painted by Dagos, the mural is of the oldest son – now a grown man – of Lourdes Mendoza Pizarro, or Doña Lulú as she is known in the neighborhood. She told El Universal that she has seen people stopping in their cars to take photos of the mural since it was painted on her home late last year.
Local children, including Doña Lulú’s granddaughter, helped Hernández complete the work. Mendoza said that she hasn’t noticed a reduction in crime in Popular CTM but added that young people are not scrawling graffiti on the murals as they do on unadorned walls.
Violeta Zarco, a project coordinator at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said that it is too soon to say whether crime has dropped in the neighborhoods where the murals were painted. However, a change can already be seen in the people who live in them, she said, explaining that their confidence has grown.
Zacatecas Governor Alejandro Tello said that more work needs to be done to reduce crime but acknowledged the efforts of the people involved in the mural project. He said that his administration has invested 700 million pesos (US $37.8 million) in crime prevention strategies implemented by 22 different government agencies.
Dagos, the artist, conceded that murals can’t solve problems such as drug use and trash in the streets but said that the “visual gifs” could “empower” children and help steer them down a positive path in life.
The murals help them to know that they matter and feel that they are important to the barrio, or neighborhood, in which they live, he said.
The warden of a jail in Zacatecas and the state’s prisons chief have been dismissed over a case in which a female inmate was allegedly raped by a guard.
Zacatecas Public Security Secretary Ismael Camberos said in an interview Friday that the warden of the Calera prison and the general director of the state prison system, Adán Jiménez Solano, have both been removed from their roles.
Camberos told Radio Fórmula that Governor Alejandro Tello ordered the dismissals, which come a year and a half after the sexual abuse allegedly occurred.
A woman identified as Brenda N. was arrested in August 2018 on aggravated kidnapping charges and transferred to the District Men’s Prison in Calera, a municipality 25 kilometers north of Zacatecas city.
She was held for two months in the prison, where she alleges the chief guard raped her and subjected her to physical and verbal abuse. She reported the abuse when she was transferred to a state women’s prison in Cieneguillas.
The head of the Zacatecas Human Rights Commission (CDHEZ) told the newspaper Milenio on Thursday that the alleged aggressor is “fully identified” and that the commission has asked the state Attorney General’s Office to lay charges and arrest him.
“He was the chief [guard]; after the events occurred, the man left the prison system,” María de la Luz Domínguez Campos said.
“There were female personnel [in the prison] but … not many; it was at the time when there were no female guards there that [the chief guard] took the opportunity to attack the victim,” she said.
Domínguez said that the victim – who remains in prison – has received psychological support since she first reported the abuse and that she has proved her innocence of one charge against her and is in the process of attempting to clear her name of a second charge.
She said that the CDHEZ issued a recommendation in December 2019 that stated that other guards at the Calera prison became aware of the abuses committed by the aggressor but did nothing to stop it.
“The fellow guards, observing … the circumstances, didn’t report them to their superiors,” Domínguez said.
The commission urged the state government to take action against prison authorities and asserted that Brenda N. should have never been held at a men’s prison.
Women cannot be incarcerated at a district prison because they are exclusively for men and don’t have the infrastructure or sufficient female personnel to attend to them, Domínguez said.
Despite its name, Security Secretary Camberos claimed that the District Men’s Prison in Calera is not exclusively for men.
Women can also be held there while they attend pre-trial hearings, he said, adding that if they are ordered to stand trial, they are then transferred to state-run women’s prisons. Camberos stressed that men and women are always separated when detained in mixed correctional facilities.
He also said that a warrant has now been issued for the arrest of the accused rapist but “he remains a fugitive.”
Zacatecas government General Secretary Jehú Eduí Salas also rejected the claim that the Calera prison is exclusively for men, adding that Brenda N. “was completely isolated on a [separate] floor of the penitentiary, under … personal protection, with guards.”
The suspected leader of the Unión de Tepito drug and crime gang has been released from prison and rearrested for a second time within the space of a week.
Óscar Andrés Flores, also known as “El Lunares,” left the Reclusorio Norte prison in Mexico City early Saturday morning after a judge ruled on Friday that he wasn’t required to stand trial on charges of express kidnapping.
The judge determined that there were irregularities in the case against Flores, including the fact that the apparent victim of the alleged kidnapping filed the complaint against him using the identity of another person.
Upon leaving prison, “El Lunares” was immediately arrested by Mexico City police on homicide charges and transferred to a prosecutor’s office, the newspaper Milenio reported.
It is the third time that authorities are attempting to put Flores on trial since the suspected criminal leader was first arrested in Tolcayuca, Hidalgo, on January 31.
According to official police reports, Flores and two other suspected members of the Unión de Tepito were arrested in the act of committing a crime. The reports said that the three individuals were found to be in possession of drugs, military-grade weapons and ammunition after being stopped for speeding.
However, at a hearing on February 8, Judge Beatriz Moguel Ancheyta said that federal prosecutors were unable to provide sufficient evidence to back up the official version of the capture.
Both Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and the capital’s Attorney General’s Office (FGJ) slammed the judge’s decision on Friday to release Flores, who allegedly took over the leadership of the Unión de Tepito after the arrests of the former bosses known as “El Betito” and “El Pistaches.”
“It’s inconceivable, outrageous, that a judge has released a criminal [based on] minor arguments. Security and justice are only possible with the commitment of the three powers [of government] . . . The Mexico City judicial power needs to review this case and others,” Sheinbaum wrote on Twitter.
In a strongly-worded statement, the FGJ expressed its “complete disagreement” with the decision to release Flores.
“The times of presenting false evidence were left in the past,” the FGJ said, adding that “under no circumstance” would it allow a complaint to be filed under a fake name.
Flores’ defense team, the statement continued, presented a person at Friday’s hearing who claimed to be the victim of the express kidnapping, identifying himself with a document that the judge “accepted as authentic without giving the Attorney General’s Office the opportunity to verify its validity.”
The person who filed the claim against Flores for express kidnapping – the real victim – “was and is under the protection of this Attorney General’s Office,” the FGJ said.
The Attorney General’s Office said that it will appeal the decision to absolve “El Lunares” of the express kidnapping charges and file a complaint against the judge with the Mexico City Judiciary Council.
It said that the suspected criminal leader is linked to a range of crimes including drug trafficking, bribery, kidnapping, assaults and murder.
Flores is believed to have moved to Hidalgo after Mexico City police raided four properties linked to the Unión de Tepito in the neighborhood of Morelos last October. Police arrested more than 30 suspects but “El Lunares” evaded capture, allegedly by escaping via a secret tunnel.
The gang he is suspected to lead is believed to be one of the largest distributors of drugs in Mexico City and is also suspected of extortion and other crimes.
Gunmen from the Unión de Tepito – based in the notoriously dangerous neighborhood of the same name – allegedly dressed as mariachis to carry out an attack on members its arch rival, the Anti Unión, at Garibaldi Square in Mexico City in September 2018. Six people were killed in the attack and another seven were wounded.
Diners at McDonald’s restaurants in Nur-Sultan and Almaty will soon be biting into burgers served on buns originally conceived in Mexico: the Mexico City-based baked-goods multinational Grupo Bimbo is extending its reach into Kazakhstan.
Via its United States-based subsidiary Bimbo QSR, the world’s largest bread maker announced that it has signed a deal with the company Food Town, which is the exclusive supplier of buns to McDonald’s in the central Asian nation.
Grupo Bimbo said that it will have a 51% stake in the deal with Food Town and that Bimbo QSR will have the opportunity to “strengthen its manufacturing footprint” and relationship with quick-service restaurant (QSR) clients in central Asia.
“It is our priority to meet the needs of our QSR customers worldwide and we will continue to invest in our business to achieve it,” said Bimbo QSR president Mark Bendix. “This operation in Kazakhstan is well positioned to meet the growing demand of our customers in the region.”
The joint venture with Food Town is expected to be up and running by the end of the first quarter of 2020, Grupo Bimbo said, adding that Kazakhstan will be the 33rd country in which it has a presence.
The company’s biggest market is the United States followed by Mexico. The two North American countries account for 50% and 30% of total sales, respectively. Bimbo also has a presence in many Latin American nations as well as countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.
The company’s investment plans for Mexico will be announced soon, CEO Daniel Servitje said this week. Economic stability, low inflation and a stable exchange rate have generated confidence to invest in the country, he said.
Founded in Mexico City in 1945, Bimbo has 196 factories both in Mexico and abroad and employs more than 136,000 people. Its products include fresh and frozen bread, buns, cookies, cakes, English muffins, bagels, tortillas and snacks.
Bimbo has one of the world’s largest distribution networks and sells its products at more than 3.1 million retail outlets.
