The first 100 migrants of a huge caravan enter Mexico, apply for refugee status

By

-

October 19, 2018

Here they come: the first Honduran migrants crossed into Mexico this morning.

The first 100 Honduran migrants crossed the Mexico-Guatemala border this morning at Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, where they applied for refugee status from the National Immigration Institute (INM).

They are part of a migrants’ caravan that left Honduras a week ago to travel to the United States to seek work and flee from crime and poverty. The caravan has since grown to numbers that some estimates put as high as 4,000.

The Mexican ambassador to Guatemala said this morning that the travelers are being asked to cross the border in groups of 100 to 150. Luis Manuel López said the migrants seeking refuge will be sent to a shelter to wait for their applications to be reviewed, a process that can take up to 10 days.

If approved, they must wait a further 45 days to receive their official refugee status, he explained.

One group of about 500 people arrived yesterday in the Guatemalan border town of Tecún Umán, a town on the southern bank of the Suchiate River across from Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, 35 kilometers southwest of Tapachula.

The newspaper Milenio reported that the majority of the group were going to wait for other members of the huge caravan to arrive before trying to cross the border.

It is unclear how many of the migrants have visas that are required to formally enter Mexico.

The federal government said Wednesday that if migrants enter the country illegally they will be detained and deported.

A large contingent of Federal Police officers has been sent to Chiapas to help secure the border area.

Some migrants succeeded in crossing into Mexico yesterday and are continuing their northward journey towards the U.S.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray said after a meeting with United Nations officials yesterday that the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has agreed to help attend to the migrants.

The immigration institute said yesterday that it would only offer 50 appointments per day to hear refugee requests and that migrants would have to wait in Guatemala until they can be assessed.

A large number of women, children and elderly people are part of the group that arrived in Tecún Umán, where they stayed last night in a migrant shelter or in the town’s central park.

Many of the migrants received treatment from the Guatemalan Red Cross for blisters and other injuries to their feet caused by countless hours of walking.

Among the worst cases was that of a 65-year-old Honduran man identified only as José Luis, who suffers from kidney disease for which he requires dialysis.

Yet he remains intent on reaching the United States, where he hopes to find work so that he can send money back to his family in the notoriously dangerous city of San Pedro Sula.

Not all are from Honduras. A young man from El Salvador who was among those who arrived in Tecún Umán told the Associated Press it was his third attempt to enter the United States. He hopes to land a construction job in Los Angeles, California.

Despite an increased police presence on the Mexican side of the border, Milenio reported that people continued to cross the Suchiate River yesterday without going through official immigration checkpoints.

Rafts made out of wooden planks attached to inner tubes of tractor tires ferried undocumented travelers across the river from Guatemala to Mexico, where prices for basic food items are much lower.

A member of the migrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders) was arrested in Ciudad Hidalgo yesterday.

The INM said in a statement that Ireneo Mujica, who said he is a dual Mexican-United States citizen, was detained after allegedly acting aggressively towards its officers and municipal and federal police.

However, Pueblo Sin Fronteras said that Mujica was detained “illegally, with violence and without an apparent motive” while participating in a peaceful march of solidarity with the migrant caravan.

The advance of the huge caravan, the second this year, has once again infuriated United States President Trump, who yesterday threatened to deploy the military and close the United States’ southern border.

In response, former Mexican president Vicente Fox, a frequent Trump antagonist, took to Twitter to hit back at the U.S. president and also to take a swipe at president-elect López Obrador, who said that once he takes office visas will be offered to Central Americans who want to work in Mexico.

“About the caravan: as always, @realDonaldTrump [is] demonstrating his lack of humanity, straight away resorting to aggression as a response and here @lopezobrador_ [is] offering something we don’t have, demonstrating his lack of vision. It’s clear here that extremes don’t work,” he wrote.

Source: Milenio (sp), Infobae (sp), Associated Press (en)

Official arrested in Sinaloa used mattress case

By

César Hernández

-

October 19, 2018

0

A Sinaloa man finds a used mattress inside its new covering. — A Sinaloa man finds a used mattress inside its new cover.

An official at the Sinaloa Social Development Secretariat was arrested yesterday in connection with the purchase of 2,000 used mattresses that were distributed to flood victims in Culiacán.

Carlos Baltazar Castro Olivas is charged with fraud.

Castro had been absent from his office since the mattress story became public.

Earlier yesterday, Castro’s father called a press conference to tell reporters that his son was absent because he had traveled to Guadalajara, Jalisco, to file a formal complaint against the supplier of the mattresses, identified as Isabel Reyes Villanueva.

Baltazar Castro Blanco, a local businessman, insisted that his son did not commit a fraud. He explained that in the days after the September 20 flooding he was looking for mattresses and found a supplier in Jalisco.

Some 14,000 mattresses had already been purchased in Sinaloa, exhausting the inventory in the state. So Castro Olivas bought more in Jalisco, unaware that they were used products that had been re-covered.

Castro Sr. said he had come forward to explain the situation because his name and that of the family business had been linked to “an embarrassing and unacceptable affair.”

He also offered an apology to the recipients of the old mattresses on his own behalf and that of his son.

The mattresses were distributed last weekend to flood victims, who became aware that the products smelled after removing them from their plastic bags. In one case, a woman said her mattress smelled like rotting meat. She found what she thought was a bloodstain after removing its cover.

Source: El Universal (sp), El Debate (sp)

Young man is 16th victim of lynching this year in Puebla

By

MND Staff

-

October 19, 2018

0

Site of the lynching yesterday in Puebla. — Site of yesterday's lynching.

A suspected burglar was lynched in Puebla yesterday, becoming the 16th victim of deadly mob justice in the state this year.

According to authorities, residents of the Jorge Murad neighborhood in the state capital caught an approximately 20-year-old man trying to break into a house early yesterday morning.

They detained the young man, tied him to a post and beat him to death.

The vigilantes abandoned the victim’s near-naked body with a sign on his chest that read: “This happened to me for being a ratero [thief].”

Puebla Mayor Claudia Rivera said that no emergency calls were made to alert authorities to the incident, which occurred near Puebla’s largest market.

“We found out through the media. The police were the first to respond . . . As soon as we were notified, an operation was launched in the area,” she said.

Rivera added that the state Attorney General’s office will be in charge of the investigation to identify and locate those responsible for the crime.

During 2018, there have been 183 attempted lynchings in Puebla and police have prevented the deaths of 203 people targeted by angry mobs, according to the state Secretariat of Public Security (SSP).

The highest number of cases have occurred in the municipalities of Puebla, San Martín Texmelucan, Acajete and Amozoc.

The targets of the attempted lynchings have been accused of committing crimes including robbery, rape, assaults and kidnapping.

Two suspected child snatchers were beaten and burned alive by angry citizens of a town in the Puebla municipality of Acatlán de Osorio in August. A day later, two more people were killed in the same fashion in Hidalgo.

Behind those lynchings was hysteria whipped up by fake messages circulating on social media which supposedly served to alert citizens that a wave of kidnappings was taking place.

The SSP said that in 40% of attempted lynching cases this year, the perpetrators had no proof that their targets had actually committed the crime they were accused of.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Pemex workers cast secret ballots for union leaders for the first time

By

Tony Richards

-

October 19, 2018

0

Partners in corruption? A file photo of President Peña Nieto, ex-Quintana Roo governor Roberto Borge and union boss Romero. — Partners in corruption? A file photo of Peña Nieto, ex-Quintana Roo governor Roberto Borge and union boss Romero.

Members of the Mexican Petroleum Workers’ Union made history this week when they cast secret ballots to elect union leaders. But critics labeled the process a sham.

On Wednesday, members of the Pemex workers’ union voted to fill leadership positions at each of the union’s 36 locals but dissident union members say the election was rigged to ensure that the winners were supporters of longtime union boss Carlos Romero Deschamps.

Juan Carlos Chávez González, president of the Democratic Alliance of Oil Workers, said the idea was to elect 36 leaders loyal to Romero, who would then ratify him as leader for another six years.

“Everything is a maneuver to leave Romero Deschamps as leader, despite the opposition of the president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who demands democratic elections,” Chávez said.

López Obrador has promised to modify the laws on union elections so that workers can elect their leaders freely and democratically through a secret vote.

At the elections this week Pemex workers voted in the privacy of booths installed at their workplaces. But for Chávez, it didn’t mean much: he said the vote was little more than a simulation.

He accused the national leadership of threatening union workers over their vote, and charged that those responsible for counting the votes had close ties to Romero. For that reason, his union did not participate in the elections.

“We’re not going to lend ourselves to a cheap ploy,” he said. “They simulate democratic elections, but it’s like going to play a soccer match on their field, with their ball, with their referee and with their rules, just to be destroyed.”

A rival to Romero said much the same. María de Lourdes Díaz Cruz, head of an organization that advocates for reform at the Pemex union, charged that there were irregularities in the election process, which she said was marked by lies and impediments to the registration of dissident groups.

“There was no union democracy, it’s a farce.”

Díaz announced in August she wanted to challenge Romero for the union leadership, saying it was time to end “repression, intimidation and violence against workers on the part of vandals and corrupt leaders” when elections came around.

She called for Romero’s removal and an investigation into abuses and illicit enrichment.

In 2013, Forbes magazine named Romero one of the 10 most corrupt politicians in Mexico.

His critics have pointed out that it is unlikely that his union salary — less than US $2,000 per month — is able to finance his family’s lifestyle.

In a speech on Wednesday in Tamaulipas, López Obrador spoke against union corruption, taking a direct shot at Romero.

“None of this ‘I want to be a union leader because if I’m an oil leader I’m going to bathe in money, because I’m going to sell positions, because I’m going to award contracts for money’ — that’s going to go down the drain, that’s ending completely,” he said.

The corruption goes beyond the oil workers’ union, he said. “. . . it’s not just Romero Deschamps.”

According to Chávez, the election represented an attempt by the Institutional Revolutionary Party establishment to solidify control in the union before the end of President Peña Nieto’s term next month.

“It is a crude strategy that is being carried out by Pemex, by the federal government,” Chávez said. “They intend to leave Romero Deschamps at the head of the oil union for six more years to serve as a counterweight to López Obrador.”

Source: Reforma (sp), Excelsior([sp), El Universal (sp), El Sol de Puebla (sp)

Bus’s brakes fail, killing 11 and injuring 24 in Michoacán

By

Tony Richards

-

October 19, 2018

0

The site of the accident that killed 11 yesterday in Michoacán. — The site of the accident that killed 11 yesterday.

A bus lost its brakes in Michoacán yesterday afternoon, killing 11 passengers when it struck a logging truck, went off the road and collided with an abandoned house.

Another 24 passengers were injured in the accident on the Angangueo-San José del Rincón highway in Cantingón, Angangueo.

The passengers, who were from the Michoacán communities of Angangueo, Ciudad Hidalgo and Zitácuaro, were returning home from a pilgrimage to Tlalpujahua in the northeast of the state.

The injured were transferred to hospitals in Zitácuaro and Ciudad Hidalgo.

Source: Eje Central (sp), EFE (sp)

Slide buries two homes, kills six after heavy rain in Oaxaca

By

Tony Richards

-

October 18, 2018

0

A landslide in Oaxaca this morning buried two houses and left six people dead, state Civil Protection officials said.

Today, the National Defense Secretariat sent 150 soldiers to clear the rubble after a hillside collapsed after heavy rain in the municipality of San Pedro Ocotepec. The houses were buried under trees, soil and mud.

Army personnel were also working today to open a local highway after it was closed by landslides.

[wpgmza id=”96″]

The six victims were reported trapped in the slide rubble early this morning but no one survived. Officials recovered the bodies of two women and four children.

Heavy rains were brought on by the interaction between cold front no. 6 and a weather system in the Gulf of Tehuantepec.

Ocotepec is located in Oaxaca’s Sierre Norte region and has a population of about 2,000.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Aqueduct will carry recycled water to Baja’s winemakers

By

MND Staff

-

October 18, 2018

0

Vineyards in the Valle de Guadalupe will be getting more water.

Winemakers in the Valle de Guadalupe region of Baja California are betting on an innovative solution to their water shortage problem.

An Israeli company, Odis Asversa, will build an aqueduct between Tijuana and the well-known wine region to carry recycled wastewater to the area’s vineyards.

Although the company won a state government tendering process to complete the project — the first of its kind in Mexico — the winemakers will foot the US $1.5-billion bill.

The Valle de Guadalupe region currently has only one source of water — the Guadalupe aquifer, which is overexploited.

Odis Asversa, which has operated in Mexico for more than 25 years, predicts that it will be able to send 1,000 liters of high-quality water per second to Valle de Guadalupe, located in the municipality of Ensenada.

Company director Fabián Yáñez said that each wine producer will be responsible for building its own connection to the aqueduct system.

He also said that technology used by Odis will allow the quantity and quality of water transported in the aqueduct to be monitored in real time.

“We’re going to have online quality control 24/7. If the water meets the standard, it’s delivered to the winemakers. If it doesn’t . . . the water is immediately sent back,” Yáñez said.

Hans Backhoff Guerrero, a Baja California wine industry representative, told Milenio Televisión that the aim of the project is to provide winemakers with high-quality water that will allow them to increase their production.

Yáñez added that the aqueduct will guarantee water supply to winemakers in Valle de Guadalupe in the long term and help to save drinking water.

Winemakers are currently growing grapes on about 5,000 hectares of land in Baja California but once the aqueduct is in operation, Backhoff said, an additional 1,000 hectares could be supported.

The northern state is Mexico’s largest wine producer. Its wineries have won countless accolades at national and international wine competitions.

Source: Milenio (sp), Conacyt Prensa (sp)

2 hotels, shopping center, office complex to be built at Querétaro airport

By

MND Staff

-

October 18, 2018

0

Querétaro airport: hotel complex announced.

Mexican hotel group Milenium will invest 600 million pesos (US $31.3 million) to build a new hotel complex near the Querétaro airport, the state governor has announced.

Francisco Domínguez Servién said that Milenium and property developer Don Diego will build one five-star and one four-star hotel as well as a shopping center and corporate office building at the site.

Construction of the complex is expected to create 600 direct and 1,800 indirect jobs and once the project has been completed it will provide employment for 900 people, the developers said.

The complex will be built in three stages but the expected completion dates were not announced.

A 144-room five-star hotel will be built in the first stage followed by a 7,000-square-meter mall and 91-room four-star hotel in the second. The office building will be built in the third stage.

After signing an agreement with the developers Tuesday, Domínguez said that in terms of passenger numbers the Querétaro Intercontinental Airport is the fastest growing airport in the country.

The new development will cater to the growing demand for accommodation among both business and leisure visitors to the state, he added.

“From September 2017 to August 2018, we had 13.6% more visitors. In that period, 66 new hotels opened their doors and there are now more than 15,000 rooms [in the state],” Domínguez said.

He also said the airport’s terminal will be expanded and that roads near the facility would be widened to the benefit of both tourists and the local population.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Kindergarten students traumatized in sexual assault case

By

César Hernández

-

October 18, 2018

0

Parents outside the kindergarten where abuse allegedly occurred.

Close to 40 children are alleged to have been sexually abused in a Mexico City kindergarten where parents have accused school officials of a cover-up.

A man identified as an administrative employee was singled out by one of the parents about a month ago after noticing strange behaviour in his son.

But a school official ignored the parent’s accusation of sexual assault and asked him to “keep the incident secret” as it was only “an isolated case.”

News of the attack soon spread and before long the parents of 37 of the children discovered that all had been exhibiting similar and unusual behavior: they had all urinated in their pants while at school, suffered nightmares, stopped talking and refused to go to school.

The parents subsequently determined that their children were afraid of a figure they called The Monster or La Calaca (the skeleton).

They learned that the school employee, identified as Ramón Morales, told the children that he was a monster, that he had eyes everywhere, was very big and strong enough to lift houses and kill whomever he wanted. He said he was watching over them even during their sleep, and that if they spoke about what he did to them he was going to kill their parents.

The man waited for the children to go to the washroom before taking them to a storeroom where the sexual assaults took place.

Morales’ whereabouts are unknown but some parents are claiming that two other staff members were complicit in the attack and that the school principal was aware of them.

The case is now under investigation by the federal Attorney General’s office.

Source: Milenio (sp), ADN Político (sp)

Mexico to migrants: you will be deported if you don’t have documentation

By

MND Staff

-

October 18, 2018

0

Wheelchair-bound migrant lost his legs the last time he attempted to enter the US. Now he is trying again.

The federal government has warned a caravan of Central American migrants traveling to the United States via Mexico that if they enter the country illegally they will be detained and deported.

In a joint statement, the secretariats of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and the Interior (Segob) said that in accordance with the law, anyone who enters Mexico “irregularly” will be “rescued” and subjected to review.

If they do not have the required documentation they will be returned to their own country.

The statement said the measure “responds not just to compliance with national legislation” but also to the government’s interest in avoiding migrants becoming “victims of human trafficking networks.”

More than 200 Federal Police officers arrived in Tapachula, Chiapas, yesterday to help the National Immigration Institute (INM) secure the southern border. The organization’s chief, Manelich Castilla, traveled to the border city earlier this week.

As many as 4,000 mainly Honduran migrants fleeing poverty and crime are planning to travel through Mexico to the United States, infuriating U.S. President Trump.

Many are traveling on foot, some with babies and small children, while others are in buses.

One Honduran whose legs had to be amputated after he fell from a Mexican freight train during an attempt to get to the United States in 2015 is trying again. This time a fellow migrant is pushing his wheelchair.

The caravan entered Guatemala Monday, overwhelming attempts by security forces to stop them, and some migrants began trying to cross into Mexico today, according to local media.

This morning, Trump threatened to deploy the military and close the United States’ southern border.

“I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught – and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” the president wrote on Twitter.

“. . . The assault on our country at our Southern Border, including the Criminal elements and DRUGS pouring in, is far more important to me, as President, than Trade or the USMCA [trade agreement]. Hopefully Mexico will stop this onslaught at their Northern Border.”

Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete Prida today insisted that Mexico will not give in to U.S. pressure to stop the caravan on human rights grounds while senators called on the foreign affairs secretary to issue a strong response.

Senator Alfonso Durazo, who has also been nominated to head the new security secretariat, said he thought it improper for a head of state to threaten another country.

Marcelo Ebrard, the incoming government’s foreign secretary, suggested it was politically motivated.

“It was predictable, and it’s also very close to the [midterm] election. He’s making a political calculation,” he said.

Ebrard added that migrants arriving in Mexico without a visa would need to apply for refugee status.

During a visit to Tamaulipas yesterday, president-elect López Obrador said that once he takes office visas will be offered to Central Americans who want to work in Mexico.

“From December 1, we’re going to give employment to Central Americans. It’s a plan we have, he who wants to work in Mexico will have a work visa,” he said, adding that migration issues are not just solved by deporting people but also by giving them options.

The president-elect sent a letter to Trump in July in which he proposed that the migration problem be addressed “in a comprehensive manner through a development plan that includes Central American countries.”

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Mexico City tomorrow to meet with President Peña Nieto.

Source: El Universal (sp), Reuters (sp)