Gómez, left, during his heyday and right, during his capture in 2015.
The former boss of the Caballeros Templarios cartel has been sentenced to 55 years in jail for the kidnapping of a businessman in 2011.
Servando Gómez Martínez, also known as “La Tuta” and “El Profe,” both of which mean “the teacher,” was one of the founders of the criminal organization known in English as the Knights Templar Cartel.
He was arrested in 2015 for organized crime, kidnapping and drug trafficking.
Before becoming one of the most wanted criminals in Mexico, Gómez taught at a teacher training school. He then went to work as a farmer and also created several rehabilitation centers for young drug abusers.
His stint as a caregiver was followed by a life of crime and he rose to become the leader of the Caballeros Templarios cartel when it splintered off from La Familia Michoacana in 2011.
Like its predecessor, the new cartel cast itself as a “self-defense” organization engaged in a struggle with Mexico‘s larger criminal cartels on behalf of the people of Michoacán.
As the cartel’s leader, Gómez infiltrated the highest levels of power and government in Michoacán, with former governors Jesús Reyna García and Fausto Vallejo Figueroa having been directly linked to him.
Lozoya is in Mexico City but well hidden, his lawyer says.
Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya Austin is a wanted man again after a judge withdrew a temporary order protecting him from detention on corruption charges.
On Monday, Judge Luz María Ortega Tlapa rescinded a ruling she had made earlier this month temporarily protecting Lozoya from arrest for his prosecution for money laundering.
Ortega noted that he had been summoned to appear before the criminal court where he faces prosecution but had failed to appear, a violation of the temporary suspension of his arrest warrant.
In an interview with El Financiero, Lozoya’s lawyer, Javier Coello Trejo, confirmed that Lozoya is in Mexico City, but said he will not be arrested because authorities will not be able to find him.
Coello also said that his client had never been cited by the criminal court, and that he will continue pushing for the suspension of the arrest warrant.
“The injunction proceedings are still going on, and we’re going to present all the proof we have that the prosecutors never summoned us to defend ourselves,” he said.
Coello added that Lozoya is in good health, although he is “hurt” by what he sees as political persecution.
Coello also insisted that his client is innocent of the charges against him, which relate to the 2014 purchase by Pemex of a dilapidated fertilizer plant for US $475 million from steelmaker Altos Hornos de México. Prosecutors say that Lozoya received bribes from Altos Hornos in exchange for purchasing the plant.
According to Coello, the timeline of the alleged events will prove Lozoya’s innocence.
“It’s honestly funny to say that two years before Lozoya was Pemex director, Altos Hornos gave him money,” said Coello. “. . . It would be like if I gave you money so that, in case you get the job three years later, you can give me a contract.”
The arrest warrant against Lozoya was originally issued on May 26. Alonso Ancira, CEO of Altos Hornos, was arrested in Spain by Interpol on May 28 for charges relating to the fertilizer plant.
A judge in Spain today ruled that Ancira must remain in jail without bail after his lawyer filed for his release, arguing that “a series of errors” had been made in ordering his incarceration.
Interpol has also issued a red notice against Lozoya at the request of Mexican prosecutors. He could be arrested in any of the 190 countries where Interpol has jurisdiction.
Arrest warrants against Lozoya’s mother, sister and father remain suspended.
López Obrador, left, and Transportation Secretary Jiménez: a contradiction over airport crooks.
A federal court yesterday issued a seventh injunction against the Santa Lucía airport, triggering an accusation by the president that “crooks” are behind the legal action, a charge that was refuted by the federal transportation secretary.
A judge in México state ordered that construction of the airport cannot proceed until the government shows that it has all necessary environmental, security, aeronautic viability, archaeological, social, political and inter-institutional permits.
The definitive suspension order also instructs authorities not to make any changes to the site of the abandoned airport in Texcoco, México state.
Existing elements of the canceled project must not be demolished, dismantled, flooded or altered in any way, the judge said.
The court order is the seventh obtained by the #NoMásDerroches (No More Waste) Collective, a group made up of civil society organizations, law firms and more than 100 citizens.
Artist’s conception of the new airport at Santa Lucía.
The collective has filed 147 injunction requests that could hold up or threaten construction of the new airport.
The group has said that it wants a review of the legality of the cancelation of the new Mexico City airport whose revival, a lawyer said last week, is “legally possible.”
At his morning press conference yesterday, López Obrador said that “crooks” involved in construction of the canceled Mexico City airport are responsible for initiating the legal action against the Santa Lucía project.
“. . .They’re unhappy because they couldn’t carry out the swindle. . . It was a lucrative business, so they were left upset,” he said.
During last year’s presidential campaign, López Obrador opposed the Texcoco project on the grounds that it was corrupt, too expensive, not needed and being built on land that was sinking.
He canceled the partially-built project following a legally-questionable public consultation in October that found almost 70% support to convert the Santa Lucía Air Force Base into a commercial airport and to upgrade the existing airports in Mexico City and Toluca.
“. . . Now they don’t want us to do the Santa Lucía airport,” the president said yesterday, referring to the so-called “crooks” behind the legal action.
“They’re even using drones to see if it’s being built and if they can stop it with legal proceedings, with injunctions. They’re people linked to those who don’t approve of us,” he added.
The president said he will continue to speak out against the airport-related legal action despite the Mexican College of Lawyers issuing a request for him not to intervene in the matter and not to pressure the federal judiciary.
“Now that I pointed out that there was a campaign to present injunctions against construction of the Mexico City military airport, a lawyers’ association came out saying that I couldn’t talk about the matter. Well, I’ll make use of my right to [free] expression. There’s no way they’re going to shut me up . . .”
Later yesterday, Communications and Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Espriú told a reporter outside the National Palace in Mexico City that he didn’t share the president’s view that “crooks” were responsible for filing the injunction requests.
“Well, the president said that, I don’t agree with the president,” he said in a recorded interview.
Jiménez reiterated that the injunctions haven’t affected the airport project because construction hasn’t yet started. He also said that reports that he would leave the cabinet were nothing more than “rumors.”
Despite clearly contradicting López Obrador’s “crooks” claim, the transportation chief last night issued a Twitter message stating that he had been misquoted or misinterpreted.
“This morning at [the National] Palace a reporter asked my opinion about the president’s statements in relation to there being corruption behind the injunctions against the Santa Lucía airport. I said: I agree with the president.”
A protest in Mexico City last month against a shortage of HIV medications. There were more such protests last week.
Public hospitals and healthcare clinics continue to face medicine shortages, according to a pharmaceutical industry leader who also says the federal government hasn’t considered the logistics and costs of distributing the drugs it plans to purchase in 2020.
Hospitals in at least 24 states reported shortages of medicines last month and the problem still “hasn’t been controlled,” said Rafael Gual Cosío, head of the National Chamber of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Canifarma).
“It continues because the federal government stopped buying,” he said, explaining that the current administration has only purchased 20% of the medicines its predecessor committed to for 2019.
“[The government] should have bought 50% of what was agreed to [by now] . . . but it’s not more than 20% on average. It stopped buying and that’s why there’s a shortage,” Gual added.
To avoid a crisis in the health sector, the Canifarma chief said, the full order placed in November needs to be “reactivated” although he conceded that the pharmaceutical companies contracted to produce the drugs may not have the raw materials to do so.
“If they don’t, we’ll have to wait at least three months [for new medicines],” he said.
The government is currently preparing its 2020 medicine order but according to Gual, preparation of the new tender is delayed and it doesn’t consider the cost of distribution.
At the conclusion of its six-year term, the previous government awarded contracts to three logistics operators to store and distribute the 35 billion pesos (US $1.8 billion) worth of medicine it committed to purchasing this year.
However, the new government announced that the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) would take on that responsibility.
But Gual argues that neither IMSS nor any other government department, including the army, has the capacity to adequately store and transport the massive quantities of drugs required by patients in the public health system.
“. . . It’s humanly impossible . . .” he said. “The government didn’t calculate the volumes [of drugs that have to be stored and transported] . . . The current [2020] tender is madness . . .”
The industry representative said that Canifarma personnel have met with government officials to express their concern about its future plans and to seek solutions to the current medicine shortages but has only found “great ignorance of the industry and its operation.”
He pointed out that the Secretariat of Health has taken over responsibility for ordering medicine from the Secretariat of Finance but claimed that “they don’t know what to do” to resolve the current situation.
Gual said that in 38 years working in the industry, he has never seen a medicine shortage as bad as what the nation is currently facing.
“To deal with the shortage, we have to take advantage of what we have,” he said, referring to the previous government’s tender.
The Canifarma chief also said that time is running out to prepare and submit the 2020 medicine order, warning that if it doesn’t adequately anticipate medicine needs for 2020, the government’s logistical limitations will make it difficult for imports to make up the shortfall.
“They’ll face the same distribution problem. The medicines arrive at [the port of] Manzanillo and then what? Who’s going to take them to the 2,000 points [public health facilities]. There’s no way [to do it].”
The huge crowd that turned out Saturday for the opening of an upgraded road in Sinaloa.
Opening an upgraded road in Sinaloa proved to be a popular event: more than 10,000 people turned out on Saturday for the inauguration of a 300-million-peso (US $15.6-million) road project in Culiacán.
Entire families including young children in strollers, thousands of university students and cyclists were among the massive contingent of revelers who participated in a celebratory parade down the widened Rolando Arjona Amábilis boulevard.
The upgrade project widened the road to six lanes and built two new bicycle lanes and two new bridges – one that distributes traffic to Pedro Infante boulevard and another spanning the Culiacán river.
Leading Saturday’s procession was Governor Quirino Ordaz Coppel, who said the opening of the project was cause for celebration because it “completely transforms transportation in Culiacán.”
“This is an avenue where more than 45,000 cars travel every day. It was a knot, a bottleneck, it couldn’t provide the mobility that was needed because there are a lot of universities [and] many neighborhoods [in the area],” he said.
The governor explained that hydraulic cement was used in the project, which he said will ensure the road’s durability into the future.
Ordaz described the modernized boulevard as “a state-of-the-art project” comparable to emblematic roads in Mexico City and Guadalajara.
As part of Saturday’s inauguration celebrations, five and 10-kilometer road races were held in three of the six lanes, with the winners sharing a total prize pool of 40,000 pesos (US $2,100).
Farmers in Guerrero have counted on government-supplied fertilizer for years, but not necessarily to grow corn, says the leader of a local agricultural association.
Rigoberto Acosta, head of the Guerrero Sierra Regional Council, told the newspaper Reforma that there was no doubt that “official” fertilizer has been used to grow opium poppies, explaining that the farmers themselves have said as much.
Acosta also said that during the 2005-2011 administration of former governor Zeferino Torreblanca, he accompanied a delegation from the United States to communities where they confirmed the use of government-supplied fertilizer to grow the illicit crop.
For the past 25 years, state and municipal authorities in Guerrero provided subsidized or free fertilizer to farmers but this year the federal government launched a national distribution program whose first phase is currently being rolled out in the southern state, albeit with delays.
The government’s goal is that farmers stop growing opium poppies and cultivate corn instead.
Pablo González Villalba, adviser to the federal government’s super-delegate in Guerrero, said that when fertilizer was recently distributed to farmers in the state’s Sierra region, they asked for ammonium sulfate rather than diammonium phosphate, which was used to grow opium poppies.
“The farmers said they didn’t want phosphate . . . which, according to them, is what they used for the production of that crop,” he said.
“That’s what they said, [although] we can’t prove that they worked with that type of crop or if they used the fertilizer for that purpose.”
González said that by the end of the year, federal authorities will be in a position to determine whether their distribution of free fertilizer has been successful in increasing corn production.
The government is aiming for a significant increase in cultivation of the crop during its six-year term as part of a plan to achieve food self-sufficiency, and to that end President López Obrador announced guaranteed prices for five agricultural products, including corn, earlier this year.
While state and municipal programs – including the distribution of free fertilizer – have failed to increase corn yields in Guerrero during the past 25 years, the federal government is hopeful that it can turn one of the country’s largest opium poppy-producing states into a more productive maize-growing region.
According to government statistics, corn is currently grown on 20,975 hectares of land in Guerrero, while the annual production of just under 16,000 tonnes is insufficient to meet demand in the state.
However, the rise in popularity of fentanyl among U.S. drug users, and the resulting slump in the opium price, may just help the government to convince poppy producers to ditch the illegal crop and switch to the legal one.
Parents of the young victims of a tragic daycare fire that killed 49 children 10 years ago have denounced the theft of eight pairs of bronzed children’s shoes installed on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma as part of a memorial to the young victims.
On June 5, 2009, Guardería ABC in Hermosillo, Sonora, was engulfed in flames after the converted warehouse housing the daycare center caught fire following an explosion in a neighboring warehouse.
Reports after the blaze revealed a number of problems with the facility, including improperly installed fire alarms, windows that were too high for rescue efforts and only one fire exit.
More children might have died had passersby not intervened, including one desperate citizen who used his pickup truck to punch a hole in the wall.
The stolen shoes — bronze casts of 25 of the real shoes worn by the victims — formed part of an “anti-monument” installed June 5 in front of the offices of the social security institute (IMSS) to mark the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy.
Bronzed shoes are placed at the memorial on June 5. Eight pairs have since been stolen.
The installation is intended to commemorate the victims and as a highly visible reminder of government inaction in punishing those who neglected to oversee the daycare building’s safety.
On the same day, the parents of the children who perished held a silent march along the Paseo de la Reforma to remember their children and demand justice. In interviews, parents insisted that they intended to install the remaining 24 bronze shoes, replicas of the last pairs of shoes worn by the children on the day they died.
Parents called the theft of the shoes an “insensitive act” that inflicted more pain upon the families of those lost in the tragedy than what the thief stands to gain; bronze is worth relatively little.
The parents also reproached the federal government. No arrests have been made, and despite Reforma’s status as one of the most highly-watched avenues in the Mexican capital, the theft was not captured on camera.
The day after the silent march, parents met with President López Obrador and human rights undersecretary Alejandro Encinas to reach an agreement regarding punishing those responsible for neglect and a guarantee of better future oversight.
On May 13, 2017, nearly seven years after the ABC daycare fire, a federal judge handed out sentences ranging from 20 to 29 years in prison to 19 people implicated in the blaze, including social security and Civil Protection officials, who were deemed to be criminally responsible.
However, for many of the parents whose children lost their lives, the sentences were not enough, and the wounds left by the tragedy are still raw. Julio César Márquez said the theft of the shoes has exacerbated that pain.
“I have not had any easy days since 10 years ago, but to finish today this way leaves a feeling of enormous emptiness and sadness.”
“They can continue trying to hurt us, but we will not stop shouting ‘Justice for ABC.’”
The military's heavy equipment is ready to build the airport, but the permits aren't approved yet.
The Santa Lucía airport project is facing a new delay: the Environment Secretariat (Semarnat) has suspended assessment of the environmental impact statement (EIS) until it receives more information.
Gustavo Alanís, director of the Mexican Center for Environmental Law, told the newspaper Milenio that on June 12 Semarnat asked the Secretariat of Defense (Sedena) – which is in charge of the project – to provide more studies and more information about the México state project, and to clarify some of the information that it has already presented.
The additional information must be provided within a period of 60 working days, Semarnat said.
Alanís said that approval for the project might not be granted for nine months, meaning that construction wouldn’t be able to start until the first quarter of 2020.
Before the request for additional information was made, Communications and Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Espriú said he expected environmental approval to be granted by the end of this month.
Paula’s hill has posed one of the setback at the new airport.
Sedena filed an EIS with Semarnat on April 15 that seeks environmental approval for the construction of the new airport, a road link to the existing airport and the relocation of military facilities on the Santa Lucía Air Force Base site.
However, according to a report published in Milenio, the statement lacks information about a range of environmental impacts related to the construction and operation of the airport.
The EIS doesn’t adequately consider the impact it will have on the area’s water supply by drawing water from the already overexploited Cuatitlán-Pachuca aquifer, the newspaper said, nor does it examine the effect that excessive noise levels will have on the local population.
In addition, a study included in the EIS about the airport’s impact on birds that frequent the nearby Zumpango lagoon was completed between January and March, a period when the avian population is much lower than in the rainy season.
At least 94 different bird species fly through the airport site or perch and forage there, while more than 220 species have been observed at the lagoon, which is located 10 kilometers from the Santa Lucía Air Force Base.
The EIS itself recognizes that more studies about the migratory patterns of birds at different times of the year are needed.
There is also a lack of detail in the EIS about the plan to build a 45.7-kilometer road between the Santa Lucía and Benito Juárez airports and Semarnat has asked for clarification about plans to cut down 5,195 trees on the air force site.
The request for additional information adds to the challenges the government faces in order to commence construction of the US $4.1-billion airport.
A collective opposed to government waste has filed 147 injunction requests that could hold up or threaten construction of the new airport, or even revive the abandoned Mexico City airport project.
The presence of a 2,625-meter-high hill less than 10 kilometers from the construction site has also caused problems for the project and earlier this year forced changes to the position of the two commercial runways, which added almost 7 billion pesos to the construction cost.
However, there are still concerns that the Cerro de Paula could hinder the ability of planes to take off and land.
Aviation experts have also questioned the capacity of the Santa Lucía airport to operate simultaneously with the existing airport due to their proximity to each other and the limited airspace they will share.
But the government has maintained that the project will be a success, pledging that it will open in June 2021 and immediately relieve pressure on the saturated Mexico City airport.
Jalisco transfusion center warns against buying blood in the street.
Need some blood? Donors outside hospitals in Guadalajara are offering to sell it for between 500 pesos and 1,000 pesos (US $26-$52), according to María Guadalupe Becerra Leyva, the director of the state’s blood transfusion center.
But she warned the practice is dangerous for the buyer. Despite the risk, Becerra said it’s common to see groups of people selling their blood outside hospitals and the transfusion center.
She said officials attempt to make the groups leave the vicinity of the center. But in order to completely stop the process, she said, officials need to act on and apply the law.
“In order to legally sanction them, the thing is you have to find the mafias . . .” who recruit people to sell.
Becerra recalls patients seeking blood from similar groups when she was working in public hospitals in Guadalajara.
The risk is that the blood might not be clean, she said.
“If we ask [the vendor], ‘Do you use drugs?’ surely he’s going to say no. If we ask him, ‘Do you have tattoos?’ he’s going to say no. If we ask him, ‘Do you have various partners?’ he’s going to say no because he’s going to receive money from the donation he’s going to make. So what he tells us is not going to be true.”
Becerra was speaking on World Blood Donor Day Friday and called on people to donate blood officially through the state system.
She observed that students make up the largest group of donors.
The process for donating blood in Jalisco takes two hours. She said a donation has the potential to save many lives.
Bautista is sought in connection with the murder of a 29-year-old student.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (PGJ) is searching for a priest who is the main suspect in the murder last week of 29-year-old student Leonardo Avendaño.
The PGJ has not released the suspect’s name, but confirmed that he is a priest and that he may try to flee the country.
According to the magazine Huellas de México, the suspect is Francisco Javier Bautista, parish priest at the Cristo Salvador Church where Avendaño was a deacon. Bautista was last seen in public on Friday, when he led Avendaño’s funeral service at Cristo Salvador.
Avendaño was last seen leaving his house in Iztapalapa on the night of June 11 to meet the suspect at the church, in the borough of Tlalpan.
After meeting at the church, the two left together. Two days later, Avendaño was found dead in his pickup truck in a neighborhood near the church, showing signs of torture and asphyxiation. Authorities said he was killed a few hours after he disappeared.
Mexico City prosecutors say they have security camera footage of the suspect driving towards the Mexico City airport, presumably after having committed the murder. Immigration authorities have issued an alert to prevent him from leaving the country.
Bautista has led the Cristo Salvador parish for 15 years and he is known among the city’s Catholic community for having published several books and being a frequent source for press reports about religion.
According to a report by the BBC in 2013, Bautista is a practitioner of exorcisms, and blames the Santa Muerte cult for violence in Mexico.
Avendaño had recently finished a master’s degree in psychoanalysis at the Intercontinental University, which is run by the Guadalupe Missionaries. He had previously studied in a Catholic seminary and had planned to return to the seminary after finishing his master’s.
Before Bautista’s alleged involvement was made public, the Mexican Bishops’ Conference (CEM) issued a statement condemning the murders of Avendaño and of Norberto Ronquillo, a 22-year-old student who was kidnapped and found dead earlier this month.
In the statement, the CEM asked the authorities to address violence and insecurity, and asked Catholics “not to be indifferent to the pain of others and to continue building peace.”
