Debt, poverty, violence and a litany of other woes face México state municipalities

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December 4, 2018

Ecatepec is one of the municipalities whose new governments face serious challenges.

Several new municipal governments in México state will face high levels of debt, poverty and violence when they take office on January 1, according to a report by the state auditor’s office (Osfem).

Ecatepec, Naucalpan, Coacalco, Tlalnepantla and Atizapán de Zaragoza – all part of greater Mexico City – also face other problems including poor water services, educational deficiencies, bad roads and underperforming government officials.

High levels of homicides, femicides, attacks on public transit, motor vehicle theft, robberies of homes and businesses and muggings have made Ecatepec the most dangerous municipality in the country, according to the people who live there.

The most recent National Survey on Urban Public Security, released by statistics institute Inegi in October, shows that 96.3% of Ecatepec residents consider their city an unsafe place to live.

The most shocking criminal conduct reported in the municipality this year was the murder of as many as 20 women by a man dubbed the “monster of Ecatepec” and his partner, who also allegedly sold the baby of one of their victims.

Naucalpan and Tlalnepantla have public debt of 246.7 million pesos (US $12 million) and 624.2 million pesos (US $30.4 million) respectively, the state’s 2017 Public Accounts report reveals, meaning that the new governments will face the challenge of finding funds to repay it.

The Osfem assessment said that levels of transparency and institutional development in Coacalco are in a critical state and issued 181 recommendations to municipal authorities.

In its own development plan, the municipal government had committed to repaving roads but made no progress on the project, Osfem said.

For the next Atizapán de Zaragoza government, one pressing challenge will be to update the municipal development plan because no studies identifying work that needs to be done have been completed since 2003.

México state municipal governments will also inherit a collective 5-billion-peso (US $243.6-million) debt related to the supply and chlorination of water.

Municipalities that form part of the Valley of México metropolitan area, where water supply is often unreliable, have the largest outstanding bills.

The debt is payable to the México State Water Commission, which services 59 municipalities.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Judge halts Chihuahua governor’s ‘impunity expo’

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MND Staff

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December 4, 2018

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Governor Corral speaks at the inauguration of "Impunity Expo," which a judge has ordered closed. — Governor Corral speaks at the inauguration of the exhibition that a judge has ordered closed.

A federal court has ruled that a so-called “Impunity Expo” in Mexico City showcasing evidence of corruption allegedly committed by a former Chihuahua governor must be shut down because it compromises his right to the presumption of innocence.

The Mexico City-based administrative court granted a provisional suspension order to ex-governor César Duarte, who ruled the northern border state between 2010 and 2016 before fleeing Mexico early last year to avoid possible criminal charges.

The court said that photographs, video and other evidence on display at the Chihuahua government’s offices in Mexico City could discredit Duarte’s personal and professional reputation.

Current Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral, who has made bringing Duarte to justice a central aim of his administration, inaugurated the exhibition officially called “Impunity Expo: the plundering of César Duarte, protected by the regime,” on November 22.

The court order said that “upon being consulted or observed by any given person, the information exhibited in the Impunity Expo, to a greater or lesser extent, generates a certain unfavorable image of the now-plaintiff.”

The court also said that media reports about the contents of the exhibition could irreversibly affect the ex-governor’s right to the presumption of innocence.

Duarte, who held office for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is believed to be living in the United States.

Two Interpol Red Notices have been issued for him but he has so far avoided arrest and extradition to Mexico.

Governor Corral accused the previous federal government and specifically ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto of protecting Duarte.

The Supreme Court last month granted provisional protection to Peña Nieto and members of his cabinet that prevents them from being targeted by the Chihuahua government’s corruption probe.

During its investigation, state authorities have seized several ranches that Duarte allegedly bought with funds he embezzled during his governorship.

Photos of the ranches and information giving details of his alleged embezzlement of more than 1.2 billion pesos (US $58.4 million at today’s exchange rate) had been among the evidence on display.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Boy, 10, kills father for beating his mother

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César Hernández

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December 4, 2018

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A 10-year-old boy stabbed his father to death in Tabasco on Sunday after he refused to stop beating the boy’s mother.

The boy’s 30-year-old father, identified only by his first name, Higinio, was visiting at the home of his ex-wife and his son in Puerto Ceiba, Paraíso, when he began arguing with the former.

The disagreement escalated and the man became violent. The couple’s son, Alan, witnessed the incident and pleaded with his father to stop.

The boy’s pleas went unheard. So he grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his father with it, puncturing a lung.

Neighbors and family transported the man to a nearby hospital but he died as he was being rushed to the operating room.

Under Mexican law Alan cannot be arrested or put on trial because he is a minor.

Tabasco deputy attorney general Aureola Rodríguez Cupil explained that there is no crime to prosecute, and that the boy is instead a victim of a violent home and should receive psychological counseling.

The Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico (Redim), advised that the boy, as a victim, should be offered all available public programs to avoid psychological repercussions.

Redim director Juan Martín Pérez García also warned that Alan is being re-victimized by several news outlets that have revealed his full name and address, with some going as far as publishing pictures of his home, in clear violation of the law and his rights.

Source: Excélsior (sp), Tabasco Hoy (sp)

Thousands of visitors ‘purify’ Los Pinos, formerly home of presidents

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César Hernández

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December 4, 2018

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Visitors line up to tour the former presidential mansion, Los Pinos. — Visitors line up to tour the former presidential mansion.

President López Obrador thinks that Los Pinos, formerly the official residence of Mexico’s president, has been cleansed of the bad vibes left behind by previous occupants.

The cleansing process was accomplished, the president explained yesterday, by opening the mansion to the public and allowing the people to enter. Their presence left the house, occupied by presidents for the last 84 years, purified and clean.

López Obrador places a lot of stock in the power of the people. First they rejected Mexico City’s new airport in a public consultation, a decision the then-president-elect attributed to the fact that “the people are wise.” Now they have the power to rid haunted homes of their ghosts.

He told the first of his daily, 7:00am press conferences yesterday that what cleanses and purifies is the presence of the people.

The president made it clear during the election campaign that he would not live at Los Pinos, because “it has bad vibes and is haunted.”

The residence is to be transformed into a cultural center. “We want to integrate this area into the greater Chapultepec Forest, giving us the largest recreational and cultural space in the country and the world.”

Los Pinos opened to the pubic on Saturday, the day of López Obrador’s inauguration, and it has since proved to be a popular attraction.

As of yesterday, more than 60,000 people had entered its gates.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Tijuana migrant numbers down by 3,000 but no one knows where they are

By

MND Staff

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December 4, 2018

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Muddy conditions at the shelter in Tijuana after heavy rains.

The whereabouts of around 3,000 Central American migrants is unknown after fewer than half of those in a Tijuana shelter were transferred to a new location.

More than 6,200 mainly Honduran migrants have arrived in the northern border city since mid-November and most had been staying in a sports complex that was converted into a temporary shelter.

However, government authorities announced last week that the migrants would be transferred from the Benito Juárez sports complex, whose grounds had become a quagmire after heavy rain, to a 9,000-square-meter-piece of land known as El Barretal, which is located in Tijuana’s eastern outskirts.

However, Rodolfo Hernández, president of the Baja California State Migrant Council, said that between last Thursday and yesterday only around 2,500 migrants had arrived at the new shelter while 300 remained in and around the previous one.

“. . . the rest, around 3,000 [migrants], nobody knows where they are,” he said.

“We’re asking other shelters to supply us with lists in order to know how many of them are in those places, others crossed the wall and went into the United States . . . We’re trying to carry out a census,” Hernández added.

Those who have moved to the new shelter, located in the notoriously violent neighborhood of Mariano Matamoros, say that conditions there are much-improved.

The El Barretal shelter has the capacity to house 2,500 people indoors and another 3,500 in an outdoor area, according to Tijuana Civil Protection authorities.

David Alejandro, a 23-year-old Honduran man, told the newspaper El Universal that there was a downpour on the last day he spent in the Benito Juárez sports complex, which ruined his few possessions.

“. . . We’re better off here . . . because there is hard ground here and there it was dirt that turned into pure mud . . . they say it’s going to rain again and we don’t have a roof here either but at least there is no mud,” he said.

Another migrant identified only as Alicia, who is accompanied by her three small children, said that living in the previous shelter in crowded conditions with no privacy and poor hygiene was difficult but that the rain made it impossible.

“. . . Here the children can play a little bit more because it’s not so dirty. They told us that women and the little ones are going to sleep indoors, that’s fine by me,” she said.

Some other migrants agreed to move to the new shelter but quickly began planning their departure.

Honduran Claudia Lorely, her husband Bryan José and two of their friends were among those who decided to leave, according to a report published by the news website Univision Noticias.

On Sunday, the four Hondurans, who left San Pedro Sula on October 13 as part of the first and largest migrant caravan, ate a Chinese meal outside the El Barretal shelter and stocked up on sports drinks before setting off for Playas de Tijuana, a neighborhood in the west of the city where the border fence separating Mexico from the United States meets the Pacific Ocean.

Once there, they planned to try to jump the fence to turn themselves into United States border patrol agents and request asylum.

“We’re going to hand ourselves in because we no longer see any other option,” Claudia said.

The Hondurans took the decision to try to cross the border illegally after coming to the realization that they wouldn’t be able to enter the United States as a group as they originally thought would be possible.

A daily “metering” system adopted by United States border authorities limits the number of migrants who are granted appointments at which they can begin the process to request asylum.

That system, coupled with an existing backlog of would-be asylum seekers who were already in Tijuana when the caravan arrived, means that most new arrivals will be forced to wait months or even years to plead their case to U.S. authorities with no certainty that they will be successful.

“It’s not as we thought it would be. We’re tired, desperate, it’s already been a long time since we left home and we want to see something clear,” Bryan said.

The United States border patrol said that 24 people were intercepted on the U.S. side of the border Saturday while more migrants have crossed or attempted to cross the border over the past two days.

Some migrants have decided to remain in Tijuana – at least for the time being – while others have sought assistance to return to their countries of origin.

Mario Madrazo, a director at the National Immigration Institute (INM), said that 453 migrants had voluntarily requested assistance to return home, adding that around 150 others would be deported after being arrested for committing misdemeanors or other crimes.

Around 100 migrants were arrested and deported after participating in a rush on the border on November 25 to which U.S. border agents responded with the use of tear gas.

Honduran migrant Yoselin Martínez told Univision that the number of people making snap decisions about their plans had spiked since Thursday when rumors began circulating that those transferred to the new shelter would be detained by immigration authorities and immediately deported.

Another migrant at the new shelter, 23-year-old Honduran Milson Martínez, who traveled more than 4,000 kilometers to the border with his partner, cousin and five-year-old nephew, said it was necessary to remain “level-headed” when planning any future move because “one could lose everything” with a poor decision.

“The truth is that they’re filling our heads with a lot of ideas, a lot of people think that those of us who are here are going to be deported . . . and others are enticing people to leave and cross the wall but I believe that we have to be calm and patient . . . We saw that we can’t enter as a group like we entered Guatemala, we have to wait,” he said.

“We know that Donald Trump’s heart won’t be touched by us, we know that it’s going to be difficult but for now we’re going to wait and see if they speed up the process to request asylum . . .”

Source: El Universal (sp), Univision Noticias (sp)

AMLO creates super-commission to investigate missing 43 of Ayotzinapa

By

MND Staff

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December 4, 2018

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López Obrador with parents of the missing students during yesterday's signing of the decree.

President López Obrador signed his first presidential decree yesterday, creating a super commission that will conduct a new investigation into the case of the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero more than four years ago.

Just two days after he was sworn in as president, López Obrador told parents of the missing students gathered at the National Palace that “there will be no barriers, no obstacles to arriving at the truth” about what happened to their sons.

The 43 young men, who were studying to become teachers at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, disappeared in Iguala in September 2014 and were presumably killed.

The case precipitated the worst crisis of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, triggered mass demonstrations in Mexico City and became representative of other disappearances and rampant violence and corruption.

The new commission, whose creation was ordered by a federal court in June, will have no limits to its investigation, complete access to existing information about the case and will offer protection to witnesses so that they can tell their stories without fear of repercussions.

Alejandro Encinas, deputy interior secretary for human rights, will head the commission, which will be funded by the Secretariat of Finance but could also receive monetary contributions from national and international organizations.

Family members of the victims, their lawyers and representatives of the secretariats of the Interior, Foreign Relations and Finance will all be part of the commission.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and other international organizations, authorities and experts will also be permitted to “assist and cooperate” with the truth commission’s investigation.

López Obrador declared that his government will not be an accomplice to human rights violations, explaining that all lines of investigations will be pursued, including any role that the army may have played in the students’ disappearance.

“I believe that the investigation has to include the whole government, all the people involved,” he said, charging that an army probe would not inflict any damage, reputational or otherwise, on the military.

“Arriving at the truth and delivering justice doesn’t weaken institutions, it strengthens them. In this new government, the truth must reign above all else, it’s the truth that is revolutionary [and] Christian. Lying is reactionary, it’s of the devil,” López Obrador said.

According to the former government’s “historical truth,” the 43 students were intercepted by corrupt municipal police in Iguala on September 26, 2014 while traveling on buses they had commandeered to travel to a protest march in Mexico City.

The police then handed them over to members of the Guerrero Unidos gang who killed the students, burned their bodies in a municipal dump and scattered their ashes in a nearby river.

However, the former government’s conclusion was widely questioned both within Mexico and internationally and authorities were heavily criticized for their handling of the case.

Many people suspected that the army played a role in the students’ disappearance but it was never subjected to investigation.

Deputy secretary Encinas said at the National Palace yesterday that members of the new commission and other government investigators would have “free access” to all facilities where “due to the circumstances of the case it is presumed that the missing persons or remains corresponding to them may have been present.”

Questioned whether the “free access” would extend to military barracks, Encinas responded that it would because “they are the only [facilities] that haven’t been opened [to investigators].”

Scores of people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the students’ disappearance but both the United Nations and the National Human Rights Commission have said that there is evidence that many of them were tortured by authorities and likely forced into making admissions of guilt.

A federal court judge ruled late last month that 83 statements made by people accused of involvement in the crime must be omitted from the Ayotzinapa investigation due to evidence that their human rights were violated.

Three men who had been identified as actual perpetrators of the crime and who had supported the past government’s official version of events were consequently released from custody.

Parents of the missing students have always rejected the past government’s “historical truth” but are now placing their faith in the new administration to deliver answers – and their sons – to them.

“We ask you [López Obrador], as a father, to help us, to pull us out of this dumpster where Peña Nieto left us, and for you to gain the trust of all Mexicans, because we don’t trust anyone anymore,” pleaded María Martínez, the mother of one of the missing students.

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

Ensenada wins its argument, gets admission into new border zone

By

MND Staff

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December 3, 2018

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Ensenada will be a border free zone city.

Ensenada, Baja California, will be included in the new northern border free zone to be implemented by the federal government although it is located beyond the official limits.

President López Obrador confirmed Ensenada’s inclusion during a speech to thousands of supporters at Mexico City’s central square Saturday evening just hours after he was sworn in.

The free zone, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, will generally extend around 30 kilometers south of Mexico’s border with the United States and run from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, to Tijuana, Baja California.

Ensenada is located about 100 kilometers south of Tijuana and the Mexico-United States border.

The value-added tax rate (IVA) is slated to be cut in the free zone from 16% to 8% while the maximum income tax rate (ISR) will be reduced from 30% to 20%.

Baja California Governor Francisco Vega de la Madrid said he was pleased that Ensenada – the state’s third biggest city behind Tijuana and Mexicali – would be included in the zone.

“It’s with satisfaction that we see from the first day of the new federal administration that Baja California is considered a strategic region for the development of Mexico,” he said.

Business groups including the Mexican Employers Federation (Coparmex), the Business Coordinating Council (CCE) and the National Chamber for Industrial Transformation (Canacintra) had warned that excluding Ensenada would have a negative effect on the city and surrounding municipality’s main commercial activities of tourism and trade.

The private sector lobbied strongly for Ensenada’s inclusion in the free zone, and sent a letter to López Obrador in October.

The president of Coparmex in Ensenada said the area depends heavily on tourism and investment from municipalities located closer to the border as well as the United States and it was important to ensure that it didn’t lose competitiveness.

“The municipality is geographically and commercially isolated from the rest of the country, being 940 kilometers from Hermosillo in Sonora and La Paz in Baja California Sur . . . there’s no kind of economic contact,” Marco Navarro said.

If Ensenada wasn’t included in the border region free zone, there were fears that the city’s workforce could be lured away and that shoppers would chose to spend their money closer to the border, or in some cases, in the southern United States.

An economic loss of 900 million pesos (US $44.3 million) had been predicted in the free zone’s first year of operation.

CCE Ensenada president Jorge Cortés Rios welcomed the government’s decision, saying that it would allow the city to maintain economic growth and position itself as one of the nation’s premier tourist destinations.

Other cities that will benefit from the zone are Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Nogales, Sonora; and Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Airport bonds buyback planned as construction carries on

By

MND Staff

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December 3, 2018

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The federal government announced today that it would buy back a portion of the US $6 billion of bonds sold to fund the cancelled Mexico City International Airport project.

The Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) said in a statement that “the Mexico City Airport Trust (MEXCAT) will proceed with a transaction directed at holders of international MEXCAT bonds.”

It added that “the transaction is part of a comprehensive plan to attend to the contractual rights of all parties with interests in the development of airport infrastructure in the Mexico City metropolitan area.”

Under the buyback plan, the airport trust will purchase US $1.8 billion worth of bonds at between 90 cents and the par price of US $1.

The newspaper the Financial Times reported that in exchange the bondholders would have to agree to a loosening of their rights on the remaining debt.

“The principal objective of the repurchase and consent request is to give flexibility to MEXCAT in the event that the new administration makes changes [to the airport project],” the SCHP statement said.

It added that the proposal is “part of a comprehensive plan to attend to the agreements and commitments related to the Texcoco airport with contractors, investors and other shareholders, including holders of FIBRA E shares.”

The statement concluded by saying that the Mexico City Airport Group, the state-owned firm responsible for the airport project, intends to guarantee “fair treatment” to all interested parties “in accordance with market practices in these situations.”

Since the cancellation of the airport project in late October following a public consultation, there has been market concern about the economic impact of the decision and FIBRA E shareholders said late last month that they were evaluating their legal options in light of the government’s decision.

The Financial Times said that investors gave an initial welcome to today’s buyback proposal: a US $3-billion bond due in 2047 increased in value to 86 cents on the dollar whereas prior to the announcement it was trading at 75 cents.

Michael Leithead, a portfolio manager at EFG Asset Management, told the Times that on balance the government’s proposal was a positive development.

“As a bondholder, you invest to be paid back over time and when considered against this alternative, the current offer looks potentially attractive,” he said.

The Mexican peso rallied on news of the buyback and was on track to post its best single-day gain since July, the news agency Reuters reported.

While the bond repurchase process takes place over the next 20 business days, construction of the US $14-billion airport, which is roughly one-third complete, will continue.

However, the government hopes that there will be sufficient take-up of the buyback offer to be able to announce a definitive termination to the project during the second half of this month.

During this year’s election campaign period, President López Obrador rallied against the airport project, charging that it was corrupt, too expensive and not needed.

He also argued that the location – an ancient lake bed in Texcoco, México state – was unsuitable due to its susceptibility to sinking.

Almost 70% of people who participated in a four-day consultation on the new airport’s future voted in favor of building two new runways at the Santa María Air Force Base and upgrading the existing Mexico City airport and that in Toluca over continuing with the current project.

In his inauguration speech Saturday, López Obrador pledged that Santa Lucía would be operating as Mexico City’s new airport in three years.

Source: Milenio (sp), Financial Times (en)

Mexico’s new president gets in line for commercial flight to Veracruz

By

MND Staff

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December 3, 2018

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AMLO lines up at the gate to board his flight to Veracruz. — AMLO lines up at the gate to board his flight.

The new era of government austerity that President López Obrador has vowed to deliver was on full display yesterday as he lined up to board a commercial flight to Veracruz.

The day after he was sworn in as president, López Obrador arrived at the Mexico City airport in his Volkswagen Jetta just after 2:00pm in the company of his small, unarmed security detail made up of just three women and two men with no police training.

Gone are the days when it was impossible for ordinary citizens to approach their president due to the presence of the Estado Presidencial Mayor, the institution which until Friday was charged with protecting the nation’s leader.

Yesterday, passengers in the airport and airline staff posed for photos with López Obrador and congratulated the avuncular 65-year-old political veteran on his inauguration, with some even taking the opportunity to give him a hug.

For his part, the new president appeared relaxed, chatting with those who approached him about a soccer match in Mexico City and asking some which they had enjoyed more: his official swearing-in ceremony at the legislative palace or his indigenous cleansing in the zócalo, the capital’s main square.

Waiting for his flight, López Obrador assured fellow passengers within earshot that the presidential plane is going to be put up for sale.

On board, the newspaper El Universal reported that the airplane’s captain welcomed the new president aboard, a gesture that was met with rapturous applause from the other passengers.

During the flight, López Obrador drank coffee and looked over documents with Daniel Assaf, the head of his informal security detail — known as the presidential ayudantía, a word which literally means assistants or helpers.

He also assured executives of the airline he was traveling on – Aeromar – who accompanied him on his maiden flight as president that he would continue to fly commercial in line with his austerity plan.

Once on the ground in Veracruz, López Obrador declared to waiting reporters and supporters that he was a fellow veracruzano given that his father was a native of the Gulf coast state.

After traveling from Veracruz to the state capital Xalapa, the popular new president addressed some 2,000 supporters at a rally reminiscent of a campaign event in the city’s Lerdo square.

There, he also declared “we are selling all the planes and helicopters that the corrupt politicians used,” a remark that triggered a loud roar of approval.

Earlier yesterday, Finance Secretary Carlos Urzúa told a press conference in Mexico City that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner presidential plane would be put up for sale “very soon” along with about 60 other government planes and 70 helicopters.

A statement issued by the Finance Secretariat said the luxurious US $218 million plane would depart Mexico City today for the Victorville Airport in southern California, where Boeing recommended it be sent to await a new owner.

After yesterday’s rally in Xalapa, at which the new president also outlined other austerity measures including ending past presidents’ pensions and slashing bureaucrats’ salaries, López Obrador returned to the Veracruz airport, where he took another commercial flight – this time on Interjet – to return to Mexico City.

In this new age of austerity, any commercial aircraft has the potential to become the new presidential plane.

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

On day 2 of AMLO’s presidency, protesters march against him

By

César Hernández

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December 3, 2018

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For Mexico’s two most recent past presidents their first days in office were marked with loud protests in Mexico City.

Things are no different this year for President López Obrador but with one exception: he was not leading the demonstrations this time around.

AMLO, as he is commonly known, argued strenuously in 2006 and again in 2012 that the elections had been stolen from him after losing both and staged large protests in the city center.

No one is arguing this year about the validity of the election that put López Obrador in office, but there are worries about what he might do now that he is finally there.

The protesters marched yesterday from the Angel of Independence to the Monument to the Revolution, calling themselves a “responsible front” that will challenge any impositions by the federal government.

Among the group’s slogans were “Mexico, don’t fall asleep, this is how Venezuela started,” “Neither chairos [a pejorative term used to describe extreme left-wingers in general and López Obrador’s supporters in particular] nor fifís [snobs], we’re Mexican,” and “Democracy and federalism, not authoritarianism.”

One of the fears expressed by yesterday’s demonstrators was that social, political and financial conditions in Mexico could duplicate those in Venezuela while others said they were against social polarization, the militarization of the country and pardons for criminals, and in favor of the construction of the new Mexico City airport in Texcoco.

They asked for an end to public consultations whose outcome, they said, is decided beforehand.

“We will be the thorn in his side, but we can be his best collaborators,” said María Elena Herrejón, leader of the Pro-Neighbor Movement, who announced that a national citizens’ front will be created as a counterweight to the new administration.

Source: El Financiero (sp)