Three of the suspects in the murder of Norberto Ronquillo.
Mexico City police are closer to solving a high-profile kidnapping case that has tarnished the department’s reputation and forced the city’s top anti-kidnapping agent to resign.
Four people have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder of 22-year-old student Norberto Ronquillo last month.
On Saturday, police arrested Daniel “B,” a cousin-in-law of the victim through his father, in Xochimilco. Police say Daniel is the owner of a grey Ford Topaz that was linked to the kidnapping and the receipt of a ransom payment.
Daniel “B” admitted to being the owner of the car but said he rents the car to a Uber driver and that when the crime took place, someone else was driving it. The driver, Óscar “N,” was arrested on Wednesday night.
Daniel “B” was also implicated in the 2015 kidnapping and murder of Édgar Carrasco Hernández, a distant cousin to Ronquillo. In a series of events similar to the Ronquillo kidnapping, Carrasco was kidnapped from his home in Morelos and his family received a call asking for a ransom.
Kidnapping-murder victim Norberto Ronquillo.
After the family paid 500,000 pesos (US $26,300), Carrasco was found dead. Investigators suspected that the kidnapping was committed by relatives of the victim, but could not find enough evidence to make an arrest.
Police have arrested two other people and are searching for three others.
The city’s Attorney General’s Office said today there was evidence that Ronquillo’s murder was related to a personal debt he owed.
Ronquillo, who was a student at Pedregal University, was kidnapped on June 4 as he was leaving the school. After his parents received a phone call demanding a ransom, a 500,000-peso payment was delivered by Ronquillo’s cousin, identified as Osvaldo “F,” to an unknown individual in a grey Ford Topaz. On June 8, Ronquillo was found dead in Xochimilco.
A lot more children have been making the trek north this year.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) says the number of migrant children detained by immigration authorities in Mexico more than doubled in the first six months of 2019 compared with the same period last year.
Agents arrested 33,122 migrants who were under 18 years of age, 131% more than last year. Of those, 8,525 were traveling without their families.
Almost all the child migrants came from the Northern Triangle of Central America and of those, more than half were from Honduras.
There was an even more significant growth in the number of female children and adolescents detained: the number almost tripled, from 4,936 to 13,671. The number of boys doubled from 9,343 to 19,451.
On Wednesday, a bus carrying 108 Honduran migrants was stopped in a joint operation by security forces in Tabasco. There were 23 children among them.
The president believes Guzmán's assets belong to Mexico.
President López Obrador will seek to seize the assets of former drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, although some United States lawmakers have already got their eyes on the loot.
A United States federal judge sentenced Guzmán to life in prison plus 30 years yesterday and ordered him to pay US $12.6 billion in reparation. The amount is the estimated value of the drugs he was accused of smuggling into the U.S.
López Obrador said today that he believed the money rightfully belonged to Mexico.
“I believe that everything confiscated that has to do with Mexico should be returned to Mexico, to the Mexican people, and I believe that the United States government is going to agree to turn [it] over . . . but we have to go through the process, because I don’t remember another time when [the Mexican government] has asked for resources to be returned.”
The president said that while previous administrations had never asked for the return of confiscated drug money, the possibility had been brought to his attention by Guzmán’s lawyer, José Luis González Meza.
“I listened to El Chapo’s lawyer, and he said something interesting: that the confiscated money legally belonged to Mexico in any case. And we will be looking into the matter. I agree with what El Chapo’s lawyer said, and we’re going to look into it.”
But some U.S. congressmen, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse have other ideas. They say the money should be used to fund President Trump’s border wall.
López Obrador said he did not expect the amount to be as large as estimated.
“Before they said that [he] was one of the richest [people] in the world, but I don’t believe that actually coincided with reality. They inflated the numbers when in reality there were other traffickers with much more money, but they inflated them for political reasons or for publicity. Now we need to look at his wealth seriously and honestly.”
Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard has been given the task of recuperating the former drug trafficker’s fortune, whatever it’s worth.
A prominent California businessman and father of a K-pop music star was found dead on Tuesday morning in a condominium in Cabo San Lucas.
According to several media outlets, the body of José Arredondo, 58, was found with signs of signs of “blunt force trauma.” State authorities said he had been beaten to death.
No arrests have been made, but a U.S. State Department official said U.S. authorities are closely monitoring the investigation.
Arredondo was born in Mexico but emigrated to the United States when he was 12 years old and eventually became a U.S. citizen. Initially he made a living washing cars but by the time of his death he was the owner of several local car dealerships in and around Bakersfield, California.
Francisco Duran, an admirer, wrote on Facebook that he was saddened by the news of Arredondo’s death.
“Sad news. I was thinking about quitting Bakersfield College back in 1995 when I saw him on TV. He was encouraging kids to stay in school. He changed my mind about quitting.”
Arredondo is survived by his wife, originally from South Korea, and two children. One child, Samuel Arredondo Kim, is a celebrated K-pop icon, known for his work as part of the music duo 1Punch and in the Korean soap opera Revenge Note 2. The 17-year-old released his first full-length solo album in 2017.
Firefighters at the scene of yesterday's toll plaza accident.
A semi lost its brakes yesterday evening at the San Marcos Huixtoco toll plaza near Chalco on the Mexico City-Puebla highway, colliding with two other vehicles before bursting into flames.
The truck, carrying a load of paper, slammed into a car carrying a family of three and another semi that was carrying auto parts before bursting through a toll booth barrier.
Leaking diesel fuel, it came to a stop when it crashed into a tow truck a few meters from the toll booth, and caught fire.
Firefighters from Ixtapaluca and Chalco arrived on the scene and worked for more than an hour to extinguish the flames.
Authorities said no one was hurt. The driver of the semi was taken into custody.
Turns out the banana varieties go quite deep at the Central de Abasto.
The biggest market in Mexico City provides an estimated 80% of its food and it can be an overwhelming but exciting experience to watch the market’s controlled chaos.
Entering through 10-peso toll gates, the market finally comes to an end at a parking lot between the two main buildings — nearly a kilometer away.
It’s a miracle anyone can exit the parking lot with cars parked tightly at oblique angles.
Central de Abasto is open 24/7 and specializes in fruits, vegetables and packaged goods by the tonne, but also dispenses to smaller markets and individual retail clients.
The north building offers abarrotes (packaged goods); the south, mostly fruits and vegetables. A veritable highway of traffic moves between them, leading to giant stacked parking garages and loading docks that run through the interior rows of the market.
Cart sellers, market vendors and restaurateurs load their purchases into beat-up VW buses, tiny two-door hatchbacks and huge cargo vans — bags of potatoes and limes, plastic-wrapped crates of mayonnaise; loads of giant Corona cups, chamoy mixes and the colorful powders used to make psychedelic micheladas.
Central de Abasto opened in Colonia Iztapalapa in 1982 to alleviate stress on La Merced, the previous wholesale market, that had grown into neighboring streets, creating heavy congestion through the center of the city.
The new market houses over 2,000 businesses covering a whopping 328 hectares.
The main building runs 2,250 meters along its five passageways, with eight minor rows (lettered “I” through “X”) running about two-thirds of that distance from east to west. The hand carts, shopping carts and pallet jacks zoom through intersections with the carretilleros (hand-cart drivers) generally receiving the right of way.
It’s an underground city unto itself with bank branches, cell phone shops, Oxxos and gambling parlors — a city that comes up for air every couple of blocks where the passageways rise in concrete hills to overlook the loading docks. Carretilleros sprint hard up each hill, moving hundreds of kilos at a time, and stop for a breath before going down the other side, fighting the pull of gravity.
Central de Abasto moves around 30,000 tonnes of food a day. The major passageways teem with hand carts flying past.
At the top of each concrete hill, truckers look out onto the docks to see if their trailers might be loaded and ready, or if there’s still time to kill. Staff spend such a huge part of their lives in the market that there are plenty of distractions and amenities to fill the time — showers, video game parlors, liquor stores and gift shops.
A carretillero slows a massive downhill load at Central de Abasto.
Electronics stores push showy LEDs and the perfect stereo to help truckers make it through the long hauls. Carts sell flashy reflective decals to boast of one’s special interests, be they sports teams, naked ladies or Christ bleeding through his crown of thorns.
Women walk by with trays on their heads loaded with plates to deliver hot food throughout the market or return with stacked empties. Rows of cart drivers wait for a gig, chatting with friends, playing games on their phones or straight up napping on their feet, leaning against their carts.
Cops roll slowly along on golf carts looking for troublemakers — two seated in front and one holding a handrail in back, ready to tackle-dive a runner. And all the while, the carretilleros blast along, loudly whistling to let everyone ahead know to “get outta the way.” You need a good whistle to handle a cart at Central de Abasto.
Despite the chaos, the lanes are wide. It’s actually a pleasant experience to wander with a camera around your neck, looking like a tourist. No one bothers you hollering to make a sale. They know you’re not planning to fill a truck with tomatoes.
In the high-lettered rows of the main building, the chaos subsides and the air cools. It’s early afternoon and a potato salesman — two happy cats napping behind him — tells me it doesn’t get busy through here until around midnight. He distributes mostly to sellers at smaller markets or grocery stores, and there’s no point for them to fight the traffic.
In Row WX, bananas hang on hooks in double bunches, as if still growing. The hung fruit is moved to scales for weighing. Boxes, crates and bunches of bananas — most of them running from green to yellow in ripeness — are stacked everywhere. Some are tiny, plantains, of course. Others are purple — actually red bananas.
The smell is nice, if banana is your thing. It’s like being sealed in a plastic bag with them or hiking through the jungle, hacking them down with a machete.
The workers stack crates or stand ready for service, while the boss man sits at a desk, notepad in hand, usually smoking. He looks ready to chew someone out. Behind each floor display is a modest warehouse with more and more crates and pallets that leads to the open-air loading dock behind.
I ask a smiling, mustachioed banana employee, what sets his product apart.
“They’re from Chiapas,” he says in a charming, soft-spoken voice. His name is Fortunato Ornelas and he’s been at Central de Abasto for 30 years. “A lot of them here are from Tabasco,” he continues. “Bananas from Chiapas are sweeter. They’re the ones with the pointy tips.”
Two kids cruise by on a pallet jack, riding it like a giant steel stand-up go-kart. There are skateboards and scooters. It’s the kind of massive space that begs for transportation. A fat guy passes riding a motorcycle, taking up most of the passage, moving so slowly it seems as if he might topple over.
At the loading docks, dump trucks full of oranges sit parked with their front wheels up on metal ramps. A worker shovels out the oranges while another sorts and guides them onto chutes leading into the bowels of the market where they’ll later be moved to distribution centers.
The massive amounts of organic trash fill dozens of dumpsters a day.
The surrounding runway is a mess of smashed watermelons, overripe oranges and errant piles of soybeans. It’s like the aftermath of an epic food fight. Men shovel dead produce into truck- bed dumpsters, while ladies sort through piles of vegetal “trash,” looking for something that’s still edible.
Hand-painted murals above the warehouses show each business’s personality: smiling bananas play football with kids; mangos and apples dutifully fill warehouse carts; an orange maniacally peels off its own skin; and a bloodthirsty buccaneer carries a bunch of bananas over his back like a fresh kill.
Back along Pasillo 3, the main artery running to the crazed retail end of the market, three dogs meander, calmly searching for a snack. Curtains cover a video gambling parlor, presumably so you can’t see who’s slacking off. People wolf down tortas, the meal of choice at Central de Abasto — serious fuel for a long day (or night) of work. And the carretilleros never tire, hoofing into nearly thankless oblivion.
The market does have its problems. The amount of trash created is astounding, and surrounding neighborhoods complain of dumpster-sized piles appearing on their streets overnight. There’s petty theft and drug sales, as well as the constant threat of merchant kidnapping or theft by organized crime, not to mention underage prostitution because of the demand the market creates.
I politely ask a patrolling policeman if he might be willing to chat with me on the subject, expecting a firm rejection. But he’s come prepared to talk, ready to dive into a full-on diatribe about the status of cops and their general relationship with the market.
“I’m here to watch over everything,” he tells me. “Some people are like, ‘Hey, poli — what are you doing?’’ he says in a mocking voice. “‘Hey poli — what do you want?’ I make my rounds and keep an eye on things. I’m here to keep people out of danger.”
“A lot of people don’t like police,” he continues. “But what would happen in society if there weren’t police?”
“This place is my second home,” he says. “I watch over it.”
In a vast, faceless city like Central de Abasto, sometimes the only pat on the back you’re likely to get is from your own hand.
• Central de Abasto is located on Canal Río Churubusco with its own Federal Zone in Izstapalapa, Mexico City, and is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
This is the 18th in a series on the bazaars, flea markets and markets of Mexico City:
Highway blockade in San Luis Potosí was one of dozens on Wednesday.
Thousands of farmers erected blockades at 42 locations in 14 states today to demand that the government release additional funds to support the agricultural sector.
Protests started just after 8:00am on roads in the states of México, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Sinaloa, Morelos, Jalisco, Nayarit, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Chihuahua and Campeche.
Among the roads blocked were the federal highway between Oaxaca and Puebla, the Mexico City-Querétaro highway at kilometer 122, the Tres Marías toll both in Morelos, the La Tinaja-Acayucan highway in Veracruz and the Ciudad Victoria-Matamoros highway in Tamaulipas.
Access to the Oaxaca city airport was also blocked.
Farmers are angry that agriculture and rural funding was cut by 20% in the government’s 2019 budget. Some are also demanding the delivery of free fertilizer and other aid they were promised.
President López Obrador this morning recommended farmers not waste their time because the government won’t be pressured into ceding to their demands.
“. . . We’re not going to give in at all, none of this ‘we’ll take a highway and reach an agreement as long as you give us so many tonnes of fertilizer.’ Save your time, that’s not accepted anymore,” he said.
The president added that farmers who are protesting for a valid reason will be attended to but for those who are seeking to benefit unfairly or steal, “the corruption is over.”
López Obrador also said that the representatives of some agricultural organizations are upset because the government is distributing aid directly to farmers.
But he declared that the days of union leaders taking a cut of government aid for themselves is over, reiterating “support is now direct to the producer.”
What do you do when you leave your cell phone in a taxi? Easy: scream!
Of course you made a point of remembering the taxi number. (Us older folks always jot the number down on the back of our hand between the liver spots. Not.)
This shouldn’t be hard — just look for that green car that says taxi. In your dreams! There are 400 of the beasts in San Miguel de Allende. To complicate matters this is Mexico. I’ll leave it at that.
On some level I realized I have a co-dependent relationship with my phone. The first recognition of its loss left me with sweaty palms and a rapid heartbeat. There was true fear.
I have been so cynical of the younger members of our family and their addiction to those devices and now here I am suffering withdrawal symptoms. How can this be? I’m too old, too smart, to aware for this to be happening but it is. If I was a drinker it would be a good excuse for a scotch.
Our workers stepped in to help with some very good suggestions. A cynical call for prayer, call the taxi companies and ask them to put it out on their radio network, put up posters at the taxi stands and as a last resort have the local AM radio station announce it with a reward.
I jumped into the first option with less cynicism than they would have thought and then went through the motions for the others. We waited. And waited.
Being the optimistic sort I asked where does one go to buy an unlocked phone in San Miguel? There are a surprising number of places, the two most interesting were slipped to me by a guy at the taco stand with the instructions to go there tomorrow. They buy “liberated merchandise” and yours might be there by then. So we waited some more.
At about 6:00 my electrician’s phone rang. A taxista had heard the announcement on the radio station and wanted to return my phone. Yes, for real. We met up, he gave me my lovely phone and I offered him the 500-peso reward but he refused, only wanting the 50-peso fare for making the trip to drop it off.
As we parted he was very apologetic for taking so long. He was with a fare 70 miles away when he heard the announcement. We parted with me gushing thanks.
This is the San Miguel de Allende I live in.
Bill Holder shared this piece thinking it was time for some positive news from San Miguel.
The chair that Mexican culture officials believe uses indigenous designs from Mexico.
I’ve never been particularly fashionable. I tend to wear the same “uniform” every day: jeans with a short sleeve shirt and sandals if it’s warm, the same with a sweater on top and boots if it’s cold.
The colors are usually demure with lots of dark teals, navies and purples, and if anything about my outfit stands out it’s usually a three-seasons-too-late scarf or purse. It’s important to me that my clothes fit well, but beyond that I’ve never had the economic status or the wherewithal to seek out specific brands or chase after the latest trends.
You won’t catch me in Crocs — I have standards, after all — but for the most part, the fashion industry feels like a different world to me. While I won’t say that brilliant advertising doesn’t affect me, it falls fairly low on the list of things that occupy my mind.
All that said, I felt a tinge of guilt when I read the article about Louis Vuitton selling Otomí-print upholstered chairs for US $18,000. While fashion isn’t normally on my radar, interior design is, and I pride myself on my ability to “steal looks” on the cheap with the fervor of tweens practicing the makeup techniques of their favorite celebrities from YouTube tutorials.
Beautiful design and practical, pretty organization are passions of mine, and my favorite look is what you might call “folkloric chic:” bright and bold colors, natural-colored wood, lots of plants and quirky figurines and absolutely no, under any circumstances, “daylight” lightbulbs (trust me, people, just stay away from them: they make everything look grey and depressing).
In my backyard, I’ve painted several giant murals on the available wall space, which is an excellent way to get a dramatic change when you have a low decorating budget (give me unlimited paint, baskets and custom shelves, and I’ll redo your whole house!). Some were free-handed, but the biggest and prettiest ones were saved from Pinterest and then projected and traced on the walls.
I feel self-conscious enough about having “stolen” the work that I quickly tell people where it’s from and how I did it when they comment on it, but since I’m not selling it, I suppose there’s no real reason to make a point of it not being “mine.”
I’ve entertained the fantasy of making a business of painting murals, but as my own artistic creativity and talent hit a wall when it comes to the actual drawing of patterns and designs, I’ve hesitated: the ethics of charging people for copying others’ designs on to their walls just does not meet my standards of integrity. It feels like a dishonest way to make money.
The nature of art and intellectual property is both sticky and slippery. What’s the difference between copying something and simply being inspired by it? I know that I copied two of the murals that are on my wall, because I traced them exactly from a projection. The Quetzalcoatl I free-handed on another part was inspired by several images I found online (before you get too impressed about that one, keep in mind that several people have mistakenly called it a “Chinese dragon”).
Should original artists and creators be flattered that their work is admired and deemed worthy of mass production, or irritated that it’s being copied and then sold? If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, how should indigenous artists feel about their designs being used by others to make more money than they could even dream of?
My guess is they feel about as impressed as you or I would if we sold an original creation — one whose design and techniques had been passed down for generations, no less — and then saw virtually the same thing mass-produced and sold at a marked-up price by someone who had the means to put the needed infrastructure in place for a sophisticated global market.
Alejandro Frausto, Mexico’s culture secretary, did the right thing by writing to Louis Vuitton to defend the rights of the people who create the authentic designs that were used, and asking for concrete ways for them to be both credited and compensated.
As of this writing, the company responded saying they were looking to collaborate with the artisans of Tenango de Voria in Hidalgo where such designs originate, although they did not list the specific ways they would do so. For such a large and wealthy company, surely they could spare the funds to make a point of practicing fairness and goodwill, though I wonder if they worry about the “slippery slope” of giving credit, intellectually and monetarily.
Much like public indecency laws, what exactly constitutes copying is subject to all kinds of interpretation, and surely they’re wary of setting precedents that will be hard to back out of later. This is the route Carolina Herrera seemed to take when she claimed that the criticized Mexican-patterned clothing she sold was simply “inspired” by Mexico.
As a friend who works in the fashion industry here told me, appropriation in fashion might not be ethical, but it is (apparently) perfectly legal. In my somewhat unrefined view of the philosophy of art, I certainly think there is something to be said about inspiration — art isn’t created in a vacuum. It sure does get ethically ambiguous, though, when money for other versions of it comes into the equation.
In the case of the Louis Vuitton chair, the Otomí pattern is very clearly copied in style and color, not simply “inspired.” For most of us it’s a moot point anyway, as I don’t imagine many people have 18k sitting around to spend on a chair.
The work is beautiful, and I have several pieces in my own home, bought from artisans in places I’ve visited. I dream of lampshades and blankets of the same designs, and mentally set aside money for their future purchase.
I’ve seen cheap Chinese-made printed versions on Amazon, but have resisted the urge to get the “look” without paying the artists who created it. Let’s all resist that urge, shall we?
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
The three ex-bureaucrats arrested for embezzlement.
Three former Mexico City finance officials were arrested this week for hacking into the finance department’s bank accounts and stealing 190 million pesos (US $10 million).
In June 2018, Berenice Guerrero Hernández, a former financial planning undersecretary, ex-funds and assets director José Iván Morales Palafox and former general director of financial administration Gabriel Rincón Hernández transferred the funds from two Secretariat of Finance accounts to a shell company.
After their arrest on Monday, the three reportedly said the embezzlement was “easy” and that they didn’t believe they would be caught because the finance department was in a state of “disaster” at the time.
The theft occurred just before last year’s elections and about six months before the new government took office.
The officials also said they were paid “miserable” salaries, the newspaper El Universal reported.
The embezzled funds were earmarked to pay the salaries of employees of other Mexico City secretariats, and close to 10,000 workers were affected.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said yesterday that the comptroller’s office has identified irregularities in virtually all of the capital’s secretariats since she took office last December.
Some warrant administrative sanctions while others are criminal offenses, she said.
The finance department embezzlement case was referred to the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office, which launched an investigation that led to this week’s arrests.
Sheinbaum, a political ally of President López Obrador and member of his Morena party, said her administration’s aim is to eradicate corruption in all government departments.
