It was a bittersweet moment at the Volkswagen plant in Cuautlancingo, Puebla, yesterday when, serenaded by a mariachi band playing Las Golondrinas and showered with flower petals, the last Beetle to be produced at the plant rolled out the factory doors to head to its final resting place, the Volkswagen Museum in Puebla city.
Volkswagen started producing Beetles in Wolfsburg, Germany, in 1938, and the car quickly propelled Volkswagen to international success. Production in Mexico began in 1967, and by the end of the 70s, most Beetles were being made at the Puebla plant.
The original, rear-engine “Vochos” became the car of choice for Mexico City taxi drivers, and are still used as illegal taxis in some parts of the city, although the government stopped renewing licenses for the cars in 2012.
The plant produced 21 million of the original Beetles between 1967 and 2003, when they were phased out by the sleeker, front-engine “New Beetles,” which had started production in 1997.
Between 1997 and 2019, the Puebla plant produced a total of 1.7 million New Beetles, which were sold in Mexico and 90 other countries around the world.
The Volkswagen plant in Puebla bid farewell yesterday to the venerable Beetle.
Roberto Berinstain, who has been working at the plant for 31 years, said he remembers the start of production of New Beetles in 1997 as a radical change.
“With the Vochos, we did almost everything by hand and when the Beetle came, everything changed, there was more automation, it was a trip into the future,” he said at the Beetle’s farewell ceremony.
But in recent years, shifting consumer preference towards SUVs in the United States and elsewhere has been hard on the VW Bug. In 2018, Beetle sales in the United States hit a seven-year low of 14,411.
In response to these market conditions, the Puebla Volkswagen plant will shift production from the Beetle to the Tarek, a small crossover SUV.
According to Rey David García Avendaño, general secretary of a union that represents 7,883 workers at the plant, there will be no layoffs, although more than 900 workers accepted a voluntary retirement package offered by the company.
The last batch of 65 Beetles will be sold online in Mexico for US $21,000 each.
All eyes are on Arturo Herrera, the new finance secretary.
President López Obrador is the sole force behind the government’s economic policy, according to an energy sector executive who warned that the new finance secretary is likely to be “trodden on.”
Rajan Vig, founder of oil trading company Indimex Marketing and Trading LLC in Mexico City, told Bloomberg that “there is only one person that runs economic policy in Mexico and that is AMLO.”
Vig’s comment came a day after Carlos Urzúa announced his resignation as finance secretary, citing the public policy decision making process within the government, the appointment of officials with no knowledge of public finances by people “with a clear conflict of interest” and “discrepancies over economic matters.”
López Obrador said yesterday that he and senior officials in his administration had differences of opinion with Urzúa but rejected the conflict of interest charge.
The president said that one disagreement was about the National Development Plan – a wide-ranging public policy blueprint – explaining that Urzúa supported a version of the plan that perpetuated rather than ended the neoliberal policy model of the past.
Vig said that the conservatism of Urzúa, an adherent of fiscal discipline, was likely behind the rift between him and the president.
“Urzúa was diligent and highly conservative when analyzing opportunities. That’s what I gathered the issue was,” he said.
Vig said that Urzúa’s resignation could lead to higher spending by the government on Pemex’s refining business, which would divert funds from the state oil company’s exploration and drilling business.
López Obrador has vowed to make Mexico more self-sufficient with regard to its energy needs, a goal that is outlined in the National Development Plan.
Canadian investment bank TD Securities said the departure of Urzúa, who one analyst described as “the adult in the room in the AMLO administration,” could trigger another junk rating for the heavily indebted oil company a month after Fitch cut its Pemex rating from investment grade to speculative.
Urzúa’s exit “opens the door to fiscal slippage in the 2020 budget and, crucially, a lack of strong impetus to address the bubbling Pemex ‘crisis’,” said Sacha Tihanyi, deputy head of emerging markets strategy.
Herrera, right, displayed a less than enthusiastic countenance when López Obrador announced his appointment. But he has been seen smiling since.
The oil output of the state company, which has debt of US $106.5 billion, has declined for 14 consecutive years with its refineries only operating at 35% of their capacity due to underinvestment.
In addition to dealing with debt and declining output, Pemex was given responsibility for managing the construction of the US $8-billion refinery on the Tabasco coast after López Obrador announced in May that the government had scrapped the bidding process because bids from private companies were too high and the project would take too long.
Pemex and the Secretariat of Energy have been given the task of building the refinery in just three years but business groups and analysts have warned that the project poses a range of risks especially considering that the government has little or no experience in the field.
Investors fear that the project could drain Pemex’s resources, causing dwindling oil production to decline even further.
But newly-appointed Finance Secretary Arturo Herrera told reporters that Pemex’s business plan will focus on investment in oil production and that refinery investment is minor compared to the total amount of funds the government will inject into the company.
With regard to an interview he gave to the Financial Times in March in which he said that the refinery project had been postponed only to be promptly contradicted by the president, Herrera claimed he was misquoted.
López Obrador’s assertion of authority over the then undersecretary could be a sign of things to come.
Herrera will likely be “trodden on,” Vig told Bloomberg, “unless he can convince AMLO to act based upon economic indicators.”
The Gryphon Trio, a highly acclaimed Canadian piano trio, is among the guest artists at the upcoming Chamber Music Festival.
Camden Shaw, the cellist for the Dover Quartet, had just arrived at an airport in Arkansas, en route from London, when he called my home phone.
The Dover, one of classical music’s most-coveted ensembles – “the young string quartet of the moment,” in the words of The New Yorker – was fresh from performing at London’s Wigmore Hall with piano legend Emanuel Ax, and Shaw had perhaps a half hour to talk before being whisked away to the Dover’s next engagement.
Ever since sweeping the 2013 Banff Competition, winning every prize in every category, the Dover have been international stars, with more offers to perform than the four young musicians can possibly fulfill.
On August 9 and 10, the Dover Quartet will make its second appearance in two years at the Festival de Música de Cámara de San Miguel de Allende, which runs this season from August 2 to August 31.
Shaw did not have to stop to think when I asked him why the San Miguel festival is so appealing to the Dover. First, there is the city itself, one of the world’s highest-rated tourist destinations.
Dover Quartet, ‘string quartet of the moment,’ according to The New Yorker.
Then there is the performance space, Teatro Ángela Peralta, the warm and inviting concert hall in the heart of downtown San Miguel, a neoclassical 19th-century opera house with a facade of rose-colored sandstone.
Most particularly, Shaw likes the San Miguel festival’s atypical format, established over four decades. (Inaugurated in June 1979, the festival is entering its 41st consecutive season.) Many other chamber festivals dictate programs to the performers, asking the ensembles to play predetermined pieces with resident musicians.
The San Miguel festival, by contrast, invites chamber ensembles to come with repertoire of their own choosing, and present two different back-to-back concerts on consecutive Friday and Saturday evenings.
“The San Miguel format is wonderful,” Shaw says. “It’s like a mini-residency.”
It is wonderful for audiences, too. Concert-goers are able to experience the undiluted essence of some of classical music’s finest ensembles, playing the pieces for which they have the greatest affinity.
A case in point is the program chosen by the Gryphon Trio, widely acknowledged as the premier piano trio ensemble in Canada. The Gryphon’s two concerts are scheduled for August 16 and 17, and comprise a total of six works.
The month-long festival opens August 2.
Three of those pieces are Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert warhorses, but the other three are compositions with which the Gryphon has a special relationship. First, there is Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Trio No. 19 in G minor.
Though the Haydn trios contain “some of the greatest music ever written” (Charles Rosen, The Classical Style), they are woefully underperformed because in Haydn’s day the piano trio was essentially a piano showcase, with few independent melodic passages for violin and cello. By putting ego considerations aside, the Gryphon have become nonpareil interpreters of Haydn.
The Gryphon have also programmed Rebecca Clarke’s long-neglected Piano Trio, composed in 1921, and Love Triangle, by the Sri Lankan-born Canadian composer Dinuk Wijeratne. Commissioned by the Gryphon in 2013, Love Triangle fuses Western classical structure with Middle Eastern and North Indian modes and rhythms.
The composition includes cadenzas for each instrument, aiming for an effect that Wijeratne calls “the glorious out-of-time-ness” that occurs when an Arabic oud solos over the steady groove of a band.
The composer told me the improbable story of how he was commissioned to write Love Triangle. In 2007, in Nova Scotia, he had conducted Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with Gryphon pianist Jamie Parker as the soloist.
Half a dozen years later, on a whim, Wijeratne reached out to Parker via Facebook Messenger. “I said, ‘I don’t think you know this, but I am a composer, too.’” Two weeks later, he received a commission. The Gryphon have since performed Love Triangle over a hundred times. “The piece usually goes down well with audiences,” Wijeratne told me.
The San Miguel festival’s two other visiting ensembles for 2019 represent the same level of excellence as the Dover and Gryphon. The opening concerts, on August 2 and 3, feature the Cuarteto Latinamericano, two-time Grammy winners, called “superb” by the New York Times, appearing with musical guests Sivan Rotem, soprano, and Nargiza Kamilova, piano.
Performing as a chamber ensemble and an orchestra, the Symphonie Atlantique of the Hague, Netherlands, will close the festival. The chamber group will present a collection of baroque and classical works on August 23 and 24, respectively, on instruments such as baroque bassoon, viola de gamba and harpsichord. The full orchestra will perform at the Peralta on August 30 in a program that includes the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor.
Finally, the Symphony Atlantique will be featured in two special events. On August 21, at 7:30pm, at the new Auditorio Renacimiento in León, Guanajuato, student musicians will join forces with the Symphony Atlantique in a concert of baroque works.
And on August 31, the Symphony Atlantique will perform at the Hacienda Santa Clara in San Miguel in a gala closing night celebration.
All nine Peralta concerts are at 7:00pm. Tickets range in price from 725 to 150 pesos, and may be purchased online at boletocity.com, or at the Boleto City ticket kiosk in the Mercado Sano, Ancha de San Antonio 123, San Miguel de Allende, every day but Sunday between 11:00am and 5:00pm.
Ticket purchases help support the festival’s education program for Mexican music students. For more information about the festival, visit FestivalSanMiguel.com.
Fredric Dannen is a New York Times bestselling author, and a former staff writer for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. He has been a San Miguel resident since 2002.
Residents of Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, have spoken out against the burning of forest land, which they believe is a precursor to a new real estate development.
Complaints about the fires on social media caught the attention of Sebastián Torres Perdigón, a researcher in the Faculty of Science at the National Autonomous University.
After traveling to Puerto Morelos to investigate, he told the newspaper Reforma that jungle located near the El Faro residential estate is being set on fire at night.
Firefighters arrive to battle the blazes but fires are set again the very next night, Torres said.
“For two weeks, residents have been complaining that smoke is coming out of the jungle . . . In that area, they’re building new real estate developments in the El Faro, Quinta Mareta and La Palma residential estates,” he said.
“The fires start at about eight at night and continue until two or three in the morning, which is when the smoke begins to be noticed in the residential areas,” Torres added.
He said that trees extending across approximately three kilometers of land have been cleared, a process that residents fear is designed to bring about a land-use change to permit further residential development.
The presence of boundary markers was further evidence, Perdigón said.
During a June 29 visit to the site, the researcher said he noticed that two species of protected trees – the chechem or black poisonwood and zapote or Mexican apple – have also been cut down.
Juan Pedro García Trujillo, a resident of the El Faro estate, told Reforma that the fires have very nearly encroached on his home.
“My house is right next to the jungle, it’s only separated by a wire fence so for us it’s very evident. At night, you notice the smell of smoke. One night I got up at four in the morning and the whole place was full of smoke. We went outside and the jungle was on fire,” he said.
“The next day we walked around the site and saw several hectares had already been cleared. There is a federal road [next to the jungle] where high-voltage electricity lines run and some parts [of the lines] were still burning.”
Karen Daniela Hernández said the constant fires are not only clearing trees but also causing the displacement of fauna.
She and other Puerto Morelos residents have called on the National Forestry Commission and the Secretariat of Agrarian and Urban Planning to take action to stop the fires and to implement an orderly urban expansion strategy.
Juan Jamarillo is the most perfectly preserved mummy in Guanajuato's famous mummy museum.
Way up on one of the many bowled hills of Guanajuato city, just below the enormous statue of Independence hero Pípila, amidst the calls of finches and wrens, the sun shines down on 16th and 17th-century colonial stone mastery – built by the hands of peasants with the largest caches of gold and silver the world had ever seen.
Below, the Basílica de Guanajuato glows a bright gold yellow, and the university the ever-present bluish silver of locally mined volcanic tuff stone, like a mystic fortress. The sharp, deep canyons and massive, silver-fueled architecture guarantee an amazing view from any vantage point.
But up on the hill, across from the multihued residential buildings stacked like a game of Connect Four, the mingling sounds of the city are the most captivating.
“Isn’t it amazing?” our host asks. “It’s all human sounds.”
And he’s right, aside from the birds and the breeze and the occasional dog’s bark or rooster’s crow, you hear only conversations carried in the wind, names hollered at friends from a distance, and copious applause and laughter – blissful, buoyant laugher – most of it a reaction to the gags of the minstrel estudiantinas – wandering musicians and performers dressed in Renaissance velvet.
One of many grisly sights in the Guanajuato museum.
Although it had been mined for many years before they arrived, the Spanish began to remove huge deposits of gold and silver from Guanajuato’s hills in the mid-16th century. In the 18th century, Guanajuato mined more silver than anywhere else in the world, with one mine alone accounting for two-thirds of the world’s silver production at its height.
Guanajuato is a city of tiny, winding callejónes (alleys) of stone and giant tunnels for automotive and foot traffic dug directly under the city. The surrounding culture is immense, most of it tied to music.
Follow the callejoneadas, led by singing jokesters, as you meander through the streets. Stop by the Jardín de la Unión bandshell for one of the many concerts that could just pop up at any moment. Or, at the gilded Teatro Juárez, step in under the outstretched statue arms for a cheap visit to see the orchestra practice in the afternoon.
Yet up in the hills to the northwest, facing the city center, lies the attraction that has secured Guanajuato’s fame well into the modern era – the mummies, the pulled-from-their-graves, leathered and seemingly screaming, naturally occurring, creepy local mummies of Guanajuato.
The mid-1800s saw a massive, worldwide outbreak of cholera. In Guanajuato, the deaths were so numerous that the city was simply too short on cemetery space to bury their dead beneath the ground, so they began entombing them in walled crypts above ground.
In 1865, a law was passed requiring relatives of the dead to pay a yearly grave tax. If the relatives were unable to pay the tax, the corpses of the dead would be removed from their mausoleums or dug up from the ground and stored in catacomb vaults beneath the cemetery – in case the relatives might be able to come up with enough money to return them to proper, independent storage within the cemetery.
No end of creepy scenes.
In June of 1865, Dr. Remigio Leroy, Guanajuato’s very first mummy, was exhumed. Thanks to particularly well-sealed crypt vaults that allowed for no moisture or oxygen exchange, and the city’s generally temperate and extremely dry climate, the cemetery workers discovered that the body had dried out before decomposing.
As more corpses were dug up for tax evasion, a number of near mint mummies amassed below the Panteón Municipal de Santa Paula. (It’s estimated that approximately 2% of the pantheon’s vaulted dead become suitably mummified.)
Word spread about the “mummies of Guanajuato,” and by the early 1900s, cemetery workers were charging for a view.
The storage below the Santa Paula Municipal Pantheon officially opened as a government museum in 1968, although it had operated ad hoc for a number of years. There are currently 57 mummies on display and more than 100 in the museum collection.
Given that the burial tax ended in 1958, there doesn’t appear to be a proper explanation as to why the leathered corpses continued to be exhumed until as recently as 1989, when the museum uncovered two babies who’d died in 1984.
But then, to fend off a possible spiral into obscurity, the world’s great museums must continually add new pieces to their collections.
Bernardo in his Sunday best.
Among the most famed members of the museum are “Mother and Child,” an approximately 40-year-old woman exhumed with her fetus, “the smallest mummy in the world,” thought to be around five to six months in gestation. The tiny unborn baby is like a SciFi dream, an 8-inch, nearly complete human with a too-big cranium and gangly limbs, appearing to be lost in a seated meditative wail.
The woman’s belly is like a deflated piñata, the skin holding its structure completely, though appearing to be more flora than human skin. The woman is thought to have been from a poor family, as her bone structure indicates that she hadn’t received proper nutrition for a pregnancy at her age.
Most of the collection is in near perfect condition, the papier mache skin holding tight to their bones, with only a few holes through the feet and legs. The museum literature helps stoke the creepy scene, as with the description of Ignacia Aguilar or “Buried Alive.”
Aguilar is thought to have suffered an attack of catalepsy – a condition causing paralysis, rigidity and slowed heartbeat – before being improperly pronounced dead.
Her mummified corpse was found face-down in her tomb, with wounds on her forehead and her hands at her temples, as if attempting to escape. The museum description continues, “In the last minute of her life the woman must have experienced anguish, desperation and horror. Just the fact that she was in a completely dark and confined space with no means of saving herself generates among us a deep feeling of compassion and grief.”
Many of the mummies still have eyeballs, pronounced lips and even tongues protruding slightly from their mouths. Most of their mouths are open and appear to be howling in horror, although this is due to postmortem transformation from skin to leather, not actual living terror.
The view of Guanajuato centro from the hill. Mummies are not the only attraction.
There are tiny babies Bernardo and Enrico dressed in their Sunday best, little Enrico with a yellow and green robe, wool mittens and a crown, like a baby king. “Stabbed to Death,” shows a man buried in 1946 with a hole in his abdomen, a rusty-red display of blood still visible on his skin.
There’s “Nico,” a gargantuan man standing, slightly hunched over with his hands at his waist in an apparent attempt to hold up his boxer shorts. Or “Drowned,” a man who died in the Guanajuato dam in 1965, with still visible blue and purple skin colorations.
Up the hill behind the museum, the Panteón Municipal de Santa Paula is open to the public and a nearly equally impressive scene. It’s still in active use, with mariachi bands playing the newly dead into their tombs. You can even trace some of the interior mummies back to their original crypt sites in the cemetery.
It’s a truly Mexican experience, the Guanajuato Mummy Museum, this refusal to fear death or the bodies it leaves behind. Hard to imagine many other places that would bus in groups of children to view the recently dead. They are beautiful and terrifying.
Most mummies are displayed completely nude and, until fairly recently, were simply leaned against the walls with no protection. Local lore says they were only covered in glass because visitors were stealing all manner of appendages.
Whatever memory of Guanajuato you take home, you can be sure it will last a lifetime – or beyond.
Andy Hume is a Mexico City-based freelance writer. He writes regularly for Mexico News Daily.
Authorities in Mexico City and México state have announced that they won’t comply with a court order to issue an environmental warning when pollution exceeds 100 points on the air quality index because it would cause “economic and social stress.”
Greenpeace was granted a definitive injunction on Monday dictating that contingency measures must be activated when the Imeca index, which measures the quantity of fine particulate contaminants in the air, hits 101.
Under the Mexico City government’s environmental contingency program, a contingency is declared when the Imeca index reaches 150.
While Greenpeace’s stricter pollution standard was endorsed by a judge, the non-governmental organization explained that the ruling allows authorities not to declare a contingency at the lower pollution threshold if doing so would adversely affect the economy, education, public and private transportation and the public in general.
But Greenpeace said that prioritizing the economy over people’s health would be irresponsible, highlighting that 17,000 people per year die in the Mexico City metropolitan area from illnesses related to air pollution.
However, the Environmental Commission of the Megalopolis (CAMe) and the environment secretariats in both Mexico City and México state say that is exactly what they will do.
Had the stricter standard applied since January 1, an environmental contingency would have been declared on all but 19 days so far this year, said CAMe chief Víctor Hugo Páramo.
He explained that around 200 gas stations and 11 LP gas plants would be forced to close on any given day when a warning is in effect.
In addition, more than 2,000 factories would have to reduce their production by 40%, Páramo said.
The CAMe chief also said that declaring a contingency at a lower pollution threshold doesn’t reduce air contamination, adding that people’s health is already protected by the dissemination of information about the risks of exposure to smog.
Mexico City Environment Secretary Marina Robles pointed out that a lot of the measures in Greenpeace’s more stringent standards, such as recommendations not to smoke on high-pollution days and for certain segments of the population to avoid going outdoors, are also set out in the government’s contingency program.
The mayor of Villa de Mitla, Oaxaca, is under fire from animal rights activists and residents for dressing Mazapán — a street dog that became a star earlier this year for his dance moves — in a guayabera for the state’s Guelaguetza celebration.
Mazapán rose to fame in February when videos of the dog dancing and turning in perfect step with dancers in traditional dress went viral on social media. The dog has also been an enthusiastic participant in marathons and protest marches.
On Sunday, Mayor Abelardo Ruiz Acevedo published several photos of Mazapán in his new shirt.
Although some social media users congratulated the mayor on his present, others criticized the tailored guayabera as a misuse of public money and reminded him that Villa de Mitla’s sewage and drainage systems were in urgent need of repair, and urged the mayor to focus his efforts and spending on public works rather than on shirts for dogs.
Hilda Toledo, a member of an animal protection society, demanded that the mayor take down the photos because they represented a “despicable [attitude] because it makes use of Mazapán as an object, which demonstrates how miserable human beings are.”
Meanwhile, away from the spotlight and controversy, Mazapán has enjoyed a more stable home life in recent months. In March, another animal rights organization revealed that the dog had been adopted by a loving family just a couple of blocks away from downtown streets.
The organization assured that whenever fireworks and dancing feet are heard in the street, the pup will also be there, barking and whirling ecstatically, and that when the fun is over his new family will be there waiting to take him home.
The head of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) described the condemnation of dissenting views as “grave” after President López Obrador declared that the organization doesn’t have the “moral authority” to oppose the government’s agenda.
The president’s attack on the independent organization came after it launched legal action against the National Guard in the Supreme Court, arguing that some of the secondary laws that govern the new security force’s operations are unconstitutional.
Later yesterday, CNDH president Luis Raúl González Pérez said he respected López Obrador before retaliating against the president’s offensive.
“The CNDH is in no way seeking confrontation. Of course, statements such as those spoken by the president surprise me and concern me. I believe that condemning dissidence is grave,” he said, adding that López Obrador is perhaps “seeking to suppress the powers” of the commission.
González said the CNDH was right to file legal action against the National Guard laws because members of the public have sought its “intervention” in the matter via a growing number of complaints.
He said that López Obrador’s claim that the CNDH “remained silent” during the administration of past governments and that “it was an accomplice when the state was the principal violator of human rights” is incorrect, asserting that the commission has always opposed the militarization of public security, a strategy first adopted by former president Felipe Calderón in late 2006.
The CNDH also challenged the constitutionality of policies implemented by previous administrations, González said.
He described the commission as “a healthy counterweight, not a confrontational one,” charging “it’s not an opponent of [government] institutions.”
Instead, “it seeks to contribute” to public debate, González said, adding that different institutions should be able to have “different points of view” without descending into out and out confrontation.
The CNDH chief said that he will seek out the president to discuss their differences but stressed that he will continue to speak out when the human rights of any person are threatened.
A professional soccer player who was placed in preventative custody after being arrested for causing the deaths of two people in a car accident in Guadalajara could go free due to mistakes by the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office (FGE).
Twenty-year-old Joao Maleck, a Guadalajara native who most recently played for Spanish club Sevilla Atlético, was arrested following a June 23 accident in the Villas del Tepeyac neighborhood of Zapopan, part of the metropolitan area of the Jalisco capital.
A recently married couple were killed after the vehicle in which they were traveling was hit by a car driven by Maleck, who was under the influence of alcohol when the accident occurred.
At a June 28 hearing, prosecutors said that Maleck was driving at 70.7 kilometers per hour in a 40-km/h zone. However, lawyers for the accused said that because there are no speed limit signs in the area, the maximum speed is 50 km/h.
As Maleck was not traveling more than 30 kilometers per hour above the limit, speed cannot be considered an aggravating circumstance in the culpable homicide case, the lawyers argued.
Professional soccer player Maleck.
Five hours after the 9:00am accident, Maleck was tested for alcohol, which was only detected in his urine and not his blood. The accused’s lawyers argued that the consumption of alcohol can only be considered an aggravating circumstance in a crime if alcohol is found in a person’s bloodstream.
A judge upheld the lawyers’ arguments, ordering the defendant to stand trial on charges of culpable homicide with no aggravating circumstances. He set a period of two months for authorities to prepare their case after ruling that there was insufficient evidence to convict him at that time.
But Gabriel Regino, a former undersecretary in the Mexico City Security Secretariat, believes that the FGE should have already gathered the evidence they need, charging that if officials didn’t carry out the “proper processes” during the initial investigations into the accident, it was due to either “incompetence” or “corruption.”
He also said the slow pace at which the FGE is managing the case suggests that evidence may have been altered, including proof that Maleck had been drinking. A witness claimed that bottles of alcohol were removed from Maleck’s car after the accident.
Regino also rejected the judge’s ruling that alcohol consumption was not a factor in the accident.
“If he was intoxicated when the accident occurred, that’s an aggravating circumstance,” he said.
The former security official said if the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office doesn’t prove that alcohol was an aggravating circumstance, the door would open for the soccer player’s lawyers to seek a compensation agreement with the victims’ families, although they have said that they won’t accept a single peso.
However, if they changed their minds and did agree to a monetary settlement, the accused could avoid a jail sentence.
Regino charged that rather than the “good defense” of his lawyers, what has helped Maleck the most “are the errors of the Attorney General’s Office, which have been very clear.”
Authorities with the family services agency (DIF) in Ecatepec, México state, have freed a 13-year-old boy who had been kept confined with a chain around his neck.
Responding to an anonymous tip, authorities entered the home in the Los Bordos neighborhood where they found the boy with a metal chain secured around his neck with a padlock.
It is suspected that the boy’s grandmother was responsible. Civil Protection officials and firefighters freed the child with a bolt cutter.
Officials said the boy will remain in the custody of the DIF for his own protection pending further investigation and the determination of the child’s family status.
This is not the first time that authorities have freed children chained by family members. Earlier this year, police freed a young girl whose hands had been chained together by her mother. When questioned, the mother claimed that her daughter suffered from mental illness and that she had chained her up so that she would not leave the house when the mother left for work.
In 2017, authorities in Mexico City freed a 7-year-old who had been completely bound in chains by his uncles. As a consequence of the boy’s long period of confinement, officials initially believed him to be 5 years old because of his speech development and small stature. The boy also presented cigarette burns and head injuries from many beatings.
Last year, a young boy in Aguascalientes was found chained by the neck to a tree in his backyard. The child testified that his father regularly chained him to the tree and that at the time of his rescue he had not eaten in two days.
