Two armed and masked thieves stole historical objects from the Fort of Guadalupe Museum in Puebla city on Friday night after tying up a security guard.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a statement that the thieves got away with 36 historic coins and medals, three sabers, a digital video recorder and the monitor of the museum’s video surveillance system.
INAH personnel were informed of the theft by the security guard who managed to free himself after the thieves had fled.
Accompanied by state and municipal police, they carried out an inspection of the museum in the early hours of Saturday morning to determine the extent of the theft. A criminal complaint was subsequently filed with the federal Attorney General’s Office, INAH said.
The institute said it would seek greater support from municipal and state authorities in order to bolster security at all museums and cultural precincts in Puebla.
The Fort of Guadalupe Museum houses items of historical importance from the Battle of Puebla, a clash between the Mexican army and invading French forces on May 5, 1862. The fort itself was successfully defended by the Mexican soldiers who, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza, won a famous victory over the better-equipped French army.
The fort museum, located in a cultural precinct five kilometers northeast of downtown Puebla, will remain closed until further notice, INAH said.
Former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán may be out of the picture but his tunnel-building legacy lives on.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports that tunnels are still commonly used for drug smuggling in the primary border towns in which the cartel operates, such as Tijuana, Mexicali and Nogales.
The most recent tunnel discovery was made by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) on December 19. It crossed the border from Nogales, Sonora, into Río Rico, Arizona.
The U.S. government named it Tunnel 125, the number being the running count of functioning tunnels discovered since 1990. Another 119 unfinished tunnels have also been discovered since then.
In the three years since El Chapo’s arrest, U.S. border forces have found 35 passageways, primarily in Baja California and Sonora, the route the Sinaloa Cartel has used since the 1990s.
All the tunnels discovered in Mexicali, Tijuana and Tecate had lighting, ventilation, electric elevators and steel rails for the carts used to move drugs.
Discovered in April 2016, the longest tunnel seized so far ran 800 meters from Tijuana to San Diego, according to California officials.
Nogales is considered the cradle of drug tunnels, as U.S. border forces discover an average of one per month there, either in use or under construction.
On August 23, 2018, a tunnel task force operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) discovered a tunnel running from a fast food restaurant in Arizona to a house in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora. The owner of the property was arrested for possession of US $1 million worth of methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl.
U.S. Army engineers will design technology to detect tunnels this coming year and the U.S. Congress has approved the $2 million the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requested for the project.
In a speech to the U.S. Senate in April, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent Timothy J. Tubbs said the corrupting ability of the cartels is extensive and has its tentacles in both countries.
He said the primary drug-running organizations are the of Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation and Zetas cartels, whose sourcing operations extend as far as Asia.
Tubbs said that DHS deployed 1,700 special agents and 180 intelligence research specialists on the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the smuggling.
In 2018 HSI investigations led to 4,562 criminal arrests, 3,523 indictments, 3,173 convictions and 153 administrative immigration arrests.
Tubbs praised the collaborative relationship between the two countries in its ability to take down targets such as “El Chapo” Guzmán.
“Mexico has proven to be an outstanding partner in the fight against [transnational criminal organizations], taking down the cartels’ top leadership and helping in efforts to dismantle these organizations,” he said.
Tunnel master Guzmán, whose most famous project was the 1.5-kilometer tunnel that led him to freedom from the Altiplano penitentiary in México state in 2015, is serving a life sentence after being convicted in July on drug, murder and money laundering charges.
Six people were killed and five were wounded in an attack at a gas station in Uriangato, Guanajuato, early Saturday morning.
The attack was carried out by gunmen in several vehicles around 3:00am near the municipal fairgrounds.
Emergency personnel arrived on the scene soon after the attack to find five dead and three wounded.
But soon after it was reported that three other men who had been hurt in the attack had arrived at a local hospital on their own. One of them died while receiving medical attention.
Municipal police had received a report of shots being fired near the Burladero Bar, local authorities said. Upon arriving, officers found five people dead.
They said the state sent 60 police officers to the area to reinforce local security forces.
“After the terrible events in Uriangato, at the instructions of Governor [Sinhue] we have sent 60 officers and we are in close coordination with the [Attorney General’s Office] to shine a light on the events,” a state official said.
The attack occurred just hours after the local fair ended with a concert by the musical duo Río Roma, which had had its musical equipment stolen at gunpoint the night before. The equipment was found in Salamanca just hours after being stolen.
An accident on a Chiapas highway left 11 people dead and seven injured on Sunday morning.
The crash occurred around 9:00am on the Ocozocoautla-Arraiga highway when a Volkswagen Jetta ran head-on into a van carrying passengers from Tapachula on their way to celebrate the New Year’s holiday in San Cristóbal de las Casas.
The Chiapas Attorney General’s Office had identified nine of the 11 people who died as of Sunday afternoon.
On Sunday night, an eight-year-old passenger suffering from a severe head injury was fighting for her life in a Tuxtla Gutiérrez hospital. She and another passenger who was also in serious condition were transferred to the capital city by helicopter.
State authorities warned drivers to proceed with caution during the holiday period due to the large volume of traffic on the highways.
Tony the Tiger, or Tigre Toño as he is known in Mexico, may soon disappear.
Tony the Tiger and other mascots used to market high-sugar food to children may soon be banned from breakfast cereal boxes and other packaging of food products bearing a warning label.
Congress passed a law in October that requires foods high in sugar, salt, saturated fats and other ingredients to be labeled as such.
Currently up for debate is another initiative that would ban the use of characters, drawings, celebrities, gifts, sales, games, toys and other marketing schemes directed at children on the packaging of products containing the warning labels.
“This is based on the Pan American Health Organization’s statement that this type of publicity takes advantage of the credulity and inexperience of girls and boys,” said Katia Yetzani García, food health coordinator for the nonprofit El Poder del Consumidor (The Power of the Consumer).
“But it’s important to make clear that this will only occur on packaging that has at least one warning seal, so yes, the [Frosted Flakes] cereal box will not have the tiger,” she said.
Debate over the modification to the General Health Law is expected to conclude in January and, barring unforeseen delays, the law will take effect in February.
García explained that the objective of modifying junk food packaging imagery is to promote the rights of children and deter minors from seeking out these types of products because of their attractive elements.
She said that packaging will bear the health warnings if the levels of added sugar, salt or saturated fats in a product surpass 10% of the recommended daily intake.
“Following the recommendations of the World Health Organization, for an adult the maximum tolerable limit of consumption of added sugar is 10% of the total energy. In a 2,000-calorie diet, the limit would be 10 coffee spoons of sugar,” she said.
Beatriz Bautista of SGS México, a consultancy, said that although warning labels will influence people’s buying decisions, they could end up being insufficient as there is still a need to educate children and the general public on healthy nutrition.
“We lack a lot of information in order to be able to decide which are the best foods for consumption,” she said.
Tony the Tiger has been the cartoon mascot for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes since 1952.
A security guard, center, breaks up a fight in Mexico City airport.
An airline employee is the latest target of social media shaming using the #Lord hashtag after a clash with a passenger at the Mexico City airport on Christmas Day.
In a video that went viral on Twitter, the employee is seen dealing with a crowd of angry passengers demanding food and hotel vouchers after their travel plans were disrupted when Interjet cancelled their flight. But the employee left his post behind the counter when he saw that he was being filmed by one of the passengers.
He approached the man and told him not to film him. But when the passenger refused, the employee grabbed for the man’s cellphone and a physical confrontation ensued.
A video shot by another person in the terminal shows a security guard breaking up the fight.
The video went viral on Twitter, where users dubbed the man #LordInterjet.
Interjet released a statement announcing that it would carry out an investigation.
“In relation to a video circulating on social media about a discussion between an employee of the company and a passenger, Interjet regrets the actions that triggered this incident,” the company said.
Opinions among Twitter users were divided, with some supporting the passenger and others taking pity on Interjet employees.
“It’s dramatic what is happening with @Interjet. What a disaster of administration, one that has permeated the whole organization. The clearest example of the disaster of a company is #LordInterjet,” said one Twitter user.
“They had been flying for hours, worn out covering for flights without crews. They did their jobs perfectly and smiling . . . I’m not justifying #LordInterjet but truthfully I realized yesterday that Interjet employees are under [a lot of] stress,” tweeted one sympathetic user.
Instead of taking sides, others simply took advantage of the situation to make memes.
“New waiting rooms in the airports thanks to #LordInterjet,” said one tweet with a picture of a wrestling ring “photoshopped” into an airport terminal.
The Federal Consumer Protection Agency reported that over 4,000 passengers were affected by Interjet’s seven cancelled flights and 25 delays during the Christmas holiday season.
Coahuila Governor Miguel Ángel Riquelme Solís went to Villa Unión to hand over the houses already finished to their owners.
“Little by little we’re carrying out this reconstruction,” he said. “It’s not about declaring victory because in the end it was a terrible act, but we’re not going to allow crime to come back.”
Reconstruction of the homes is about 50% complete. The municipal offices and two churches were also badly damaged in the gunfight.
At least 10 million pesos (US $531,000) of state funds have been allocated to the reconstruction effort.
Riquelme said the state will coordinate with the federal government to maintain security in order to defend against any future attacks.
The visit was the governor’s sixth since the November 30 attack, by which he hoped to show residents that the state will continue its security strategy to combat organized crime.
Chiapas weaver Carmen Vázquez keeps the tradition alive.
A weaver from a rural town in Chiapas has a new award in her collection after being named winner of the National Prize in Arts and Literature, presented to recognize those who have contributed to Mexico’s cultural heritage.
Carmen Vázquez, a Tzotzil Mayan woman from Venustiano Carranza, won the award in the folk arts category for her work in preserving and promoting traditional textile designs and techniques.
Vázquez was born in 1958 in the state’s Tierra Caliente region, several hours from the cities of San Cristóbal de las Casas or Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Villages are surrounded by sugar cane fields and in many ways, life here has not changed much in the 20th century.
The youngest of five children, her upbringing was traditional for the time, speaking only Tzotzil and not permitted to attend school. Instead, she was prepared for chores associated with rural domestic life, which included the making of textiles, in particular weaving on a backstrap loom.
For the most part Vázquez conformed to her community’s expectations, but not entirely. She studied secretly as a child and eventually convinced her family to allow her to attend school. Unlike her sisters, she can speak, read and write Spanish. But much of her time was spent working with her mother, who taught her how to weave on the traditional loom.
The winner of the National Prize in Arts and Literature at her home in Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas.
At first Vázquez watched then played with the thread and fabric scraps from her mother’s projects. At age 10, she began to learn in earnest. “My mother began teaching me to weave starting with napkins. I began playing with the threads I saw that were not being used, and I watched my mother weave so I could do it.” Much of her work was sold to support the family’s economic needs.
She married early, at 15, becoming the mother of five and eventually the grandmother of six. Over the following decades, Vázquez continued weaving, preserving a number of designs and techniques that others would leave behind.
Her proficiency is such that her pieces are works of art,with intricate weaving and embroidery, and designs reflect the Chismacal, the cosmology of the Tzotzil people. Like many indigenous communities, traditional dress for women has indications that tell where the woman is from. For example, Vázquez explains, women’s blouses in Venustiano Carranza are lighter than those in other communities because the weather is warmer. While some Chiapan communities weave with wool, those in Venustiano Carranza weave exclusively with cotton.
Over the years, she has perfected the making of linens, along with blouses, rebozos (a kind of shawl) and men’s shirts and pants. Some of these garments require working with very fine threads and most take months to make.
Vázquez won her first award the year she married and it was followed by many others at both the state and national level. The most important of these was the National Grand Prize in Handcrafts, sponsored by one of Mexico’s most important collections of folk art, the Fomento Cultural Banamex. It has brought the work of her Tzotzil community to national attention.
About 14 years ago, Vázquez began actively promoting and teaching traditional weaving to the younger generations in Venustiano Carranza. She is also one of the founders and the current president of the Cooperativa Jolobiletik Jun Ya’el, which makes and sells the work of 10 women in the community. In addition to all this, she still weaves with her sisters.
Despite their cultural and historic importance, handwoven garments are in danger of disappearing. They are time and labor-intensive and have to compete with the importation of copies. Many weavers in the area have stopped working or have abandoned more difficult techniques such as brocade, which Vázquez and her sisters are working to keep alive.
Says Juana Solano Espinosa, another weaver from Venustiano Carranza: “We plan to keep teaching . . . We hope to keep teaching the children so that they continue to keep our work alive; continue to make a living from handcrafts since this work is unique. Outside of Carranza no one does it anymore.”
Santiago Nuyoó, where 1,700 residents are now enjoying mobile phone service.
An association made up of 16 mountain communities in Oaxaca has achieved what no private company was willing or able to do: it has taken low-cost mobile telephone service to the state’s Juárez, Mixe-Alto and Mixteca Sierra regions.
Called Indigenous Community Telecommunications (TIC), the association was supported in its endeavor by Rhizomatica, an international organization whose mission is to support communities to build and maintain self-governed and owned communication infrastructure.
Sixty percent of the revenue generated by the new mobile network will be reinvested in the communities that built it.
One of the main beneficiaries is Santiago Nuyoó, a municipality in Oaxaca’s Mixteca region, where 1,700 of the 4,000 users of the new network live.
“Our ancestors didn’t know telephone communication. Their communication was based on the ringing of bells, whistles and shouting. The people of our town never dreamt of having this technological advance,” Timoteo García, a local chronicler, told the newspaper Milenio.
Although just 100 kilometers from Oaxaca city as the crow flies, the journey to Santiago Nuyoó from the state capital takes six hours due to a roundabout highway route.
The difficult access to the municipality and other parts of Oaxaca’s sierra regions is one of the reasons why no company has shown interest in providing mobile coverage there, Milenio said.
Anastasio Vázquez, a Santiago Nuyoó councilor, said the community-built network is “very important” for the municipality, explaining that it has helped authorities overcome difficult communication problems.
“For example, when we need to communicate quickly with the seven communities [of Santiago Nuyoó] we have the radio but sometimes it’s difficult because of the mountains. We solve that with the telephone,” he said, adding that if the service was taken away, it would be akin to losing a hand.
Another Santiago Nuyoó resident said that having telephone service was no longer a luxury but a necessity.
“To take a message to some communities in this municipality, you have to walk three hours. I have family in [the community of] Plan de Zaragoza and when my mom got sick, the news didn’t reach there until the next day,” Hermelinda Pacheco told Milenio before making a call on her mobile phone.
“I can’t hear you,” said the person on the other end of the line, proving that while the construction of the mobile network is a big step forward, it hasn’t made communication foolproof.
To improve reliability, TIC is now working to upgrade the network from 2G to 4G, which would give residents of Santiago Nuyoó and other Oaxaca mountain communities the same service as that provided to residents of Mexico’s largest cities.
Quiroga, left, accused President López Obrador of 'kneeling before' Donald Trump.
A dispute between Mexico and Bolivia intensified on Thursday after the federal government said it was initiating legal action against the South American nation and a former Bolivian president called President López Obrador a “cowardly thug.”
Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the government would file a complaint against Bolivia in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, against a “siege” on the Mexican embassy in the Bolivian capital, La Paz.
“We will present a complaint before the International Court of Justice so that the police and military siege on the headquarters of the embassy of Mexico in Bolivia is suspended. We demand respect for the Vienna Convention [on the Law of Treaties] . . .” he wrote on Twitter.
The government says the embassy in La Paz has been encircled by Bolivian forces since it gave refuge to nine former officials from the government of ex-president Evo Morales, who resigned in November amid accusations of electoral fraud and took up an offer of political asylum in Mexico only to leave the country for Argentina less than a month later.
The Mexican government says that drones have been flown over the embassy, more than 50 security force members have been deployed there and that its diplomatic staff, including the ambassador, have been intimidated and harassed.
The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE) acknowledged in a statement that it made a request to its Bolivian counterpart for the provision of security due to the unrest in the country that followed the disputed October 20 election, but asserted that the police response has been excessive.
“. . . The police operation that Bolivian authorities have assembled is not only out of proportion but generates exactly the opposite of what the embassy requested: support to guarantee the security of the Mexican buildings, diplomatic personnel and the people under Mexican protection in La Paz,” the SRE said.
The department charged that Bolivia has violated the Vienna Convention by constantly filming its embassy and searching its diplomats’ vehicles.
Speaking at the president’s regular news conference on Thursday, Ebrard said he hoped that the International Court of Justice would uphold Mexico’s right to grant asylum and have its embassy respected.
The “consensus of the international community” is on Mexico’s side, he said.
The foreign secretary said Mexico asked for safe conduct passes for the nine people in the embassy, among whom is Morales’ former chief of staff, but Bolivian authorities refused the request.
Mexico’s embassy in Bolivia is ‘under siege.’
The government of the landlocked nation, led now by interim President Jeanine Áñez, has issued warrants for the arrest of four of the former officials, he said.
Standing alongside Ebrard, President López Obrador said he hoped that no attempt would be made to force entry into the embassy, adding “not even [former Chilean dictator Augusto] Pinochet did that.”
A minister for the Bolivian presidency responded that the intention of his government was in fact to protect the Mexican embassy, stating that there are “supposedly groups who want to come down and take it.”
However, Yerko Nuñez added that the Bolivian government also wants “everyone who committed acts of terrorism and sedition and sought to organize conflict to face justice.”
He asserted that the ex-officials in the embassy won’t be given safe passage.
In turn, Bolivian Foreign Minister Karen Longaric told reporters in La Paz that Mexico’s appeal to the International Court of Justice was a “mistake” and a “legal fallacy” and should be withdrawn.
She rejected the claims that Mexican diplomatic personnel have been intimidated and that the police presence outside the embassy has been bolstered.
“No one can file a lawsuit for unproven facts, no one can be sued for acts they have not committed,” Longaric said.
“The government of [interim President Jeanine] Áñez is respectful of international treaties, of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations and, so national security forces would never enter a diplomatic building without prior authorization,” she added.
Also on Thursday, former Bolivian president Jorge Quiroga – now an international delegate for the government of the interim president – launched a scathing attack on López Obrador.
“Mr. López Obrador, it’s time to speak clearly. You have clearly decided to be the godfather of the Latin American tyrants. You’re a cowardly thug . . . we’ve seen you kneeling down ashamed before [United States President Donald] Trump, who places demands on you, who forces you to deport Central Americans, who’s putting labor inspectors even in the bathroom of your apartment,” he told a press conference.
“You kneel down before Trump and you shamefully kneel down before Castro of Cuba and [President Nicolás] Maduro of Venezuela,” Quiroga added.
In granting asylum to Morales, López Obrador “gave shelter” to a person who committed electoral fraud and is a “cocaine producer,” the ex-president said.
Quiroga also asserted that the Mexican president violated asylum conventions by allowing Morales to make political declarations while in Mexico that instigated violence in Bolivia.
“You have become a rogue with Bolivia. You confused our respect, our deference, with cowardice . . . Don’t come and bully the second female president of Bolivia . . .” he said.
In response, López Obrador told reporters at his Friday news conference that he wouldn’t take Quiroga’s bait and “fall into provocation.”
“We’re going to wait for this diplomatic matter to be resolved. We’re not going to get hooked on tittle-tattle, it’s not up to our level,” he said.
“. . . We’re going to continue demanding that they [the Bolivian government] respect the sovereignty of our country that is represented in the precinct of our embassy [in La Paz].”
