Serial killers of Ecatepec confess to eating the remains of their victims

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October 10, 2018

A couple who admitted to killing at least 20 women in México state have confessed to eating remains of their victims, authorities said.

State prosecutor Dilcya García Espinoza de los Monteros said Juan Carlos N. and Patricia N. confessed separately to committing acts of cannibalism.

“Both suspects, in their respective formal interviews, mentioned that they ate some parts of their victims,” she said.

Juan Carlos and Patricia, who were arrested in the municipality of Ecatepec on October 4 in possession of a baby carriage containing human remains, allegedly lured their victims to their home under the pretext of showing them clothes for sale.

After the women were killed, the couple allegedly cut their bodies into small pieces.

Investigators found body parts in buckets and freezer bags at the couple’s home, a nearby vacant lot and two other addresses in the same Ecatepec neighborhood where they lived.

Juan Carlos, who has been dubbed in media reports as “The Devil of Ecatepec,” has also confessed to sexually abusing some of the women after he killed them and feeding body parts to his dogs.

“I prefer that my dogs eat the flesh of those women than that they keep breathing my oxygen,” he said during a psychiatric assessment.

Juan Carlos said he was driven to commit at least 20 murders over the past six years because of his hatred for women.

His misogyny, the suspect told investigators, was cultivated by the treatment he received from his mother, who dressed him in female clothing when he was a boy and forced him to watch her having sex with several men.

Prosecutors said at an initial hearing that psychiatric testing had determined that Juan Carlos has both psychotic and personality disorders. Patricia has suffered from mental retardation since birth.

Both, however, know the difference between right and wrong, the testing determined.

Juan Carlos told his psychiatric examiners that he didn’t expect to be ever released from custody but added: “If I do get out . . . I’m going to keep killing women.”

México state Attorney General Alejandro Gómez, who described the serial murder case as “the most horrifying we’ve had,” also confirmed the cannibalism confessions and said that Juan Carlos had given specific details and descriptions of 10 of his victims.

He added that the couple, who confessed to selling the baby of one of their victims, are also suspected of selling human bones to practitioners of the Santería religion known as santeros.

State authorities are seeking two people who allegedly bought the bones, Gómez said.

The newspaper Milenio said that as a result of its own investigations it had determined that a single human bone can sell for up to 1,500 pesos (US $80) and that a skull is the most sought-after.

Carlos Mata Martínez, a criminal lawyer, told Milenio that buying or selling bones is a federal crime warranting up to five years’ imprisonment.

Both Juan Carlos and Patricia remain in preventative custody at México state’s Chiconautla prison.

Their crimes were the catalyst for a march in the sprawling municipality of Ecatepec Sunday, during which participants chanted and held up signs emblazoned with “ni una más” (not one more femicide victim).

Source: Milenio (sp)

Federal government to retain control over teacher payrolls

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César Hernández

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October 10, 2018

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AMLO's fans give him a warm welcome to Zacatecas.

President-elect López Obrador has vowed to repeal education reforms introduced in 2013 but one element will remain: teacher payrolls will continue to be the responsibility of the federal government.

The incoming president told a rally in Zacatecas that the reforms will be “canceled . . . abrogated, repealed, abolished,” but with a caveat.

“The only thing that will continue is the handling of the payroll by the federal government” to ensure that the money gets to the teachers.

Before the reforms the states managed teacher payrolls and in some cases they let the teachers themselves do it through their unions. In Oaxaca there were vast discrepancies between the salaries of teachers at the low end of the pay scale and their union leaders.

López Obrador also pledged that no government employee, unionized or otherwise, will receive a raise below the rate of inflation.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Pemex finds more oil in Gulf of Mexico; reserves contain up to 180mn barrels

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MND Staff

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October 9, 2018

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Pemex's Treviño announces new oil discovery.

Pemex announced today that it has discovered reserves with up to 180 million barrels of crude oil in shallow waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Company CEO Carlos Treviño said that light and heavy crudes were found in seven reservoirs along the Mulak and Manich fields off the coast of Tabasco.

The find is expected to help boost oil production that has been in decline for over a decade.

“Their future development will contribute to Pemex reaching its goals in the coming years,” Treviño told a press conference.

Federal Energy Secretary Pedro Joaquín Coldwell said that the discovery was one of the 10 most important anywhere in the world during the last 15 years.

“These are the reservoirs that will feed the country’s reserves,” he said.

The discovery follows others announced by Pemex in recent years in four nearby fields.

To exploit the reserves, Treviño estimated that US $7 billion to $10 billion will be required in investment, including drilling rigs, pipelines and at least one production platform.

The CEO predicted that production from the six fields could peak in the second half of 2020 at 210,000 barrels of crude and 350 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

Pemex’s oil and gas production has trended downwards since 2004 but despite budgetary constraints, the company has increased exploration efforts in recent years.

Pemex exploration director José Antonio Escalera said last week that those efforts had allowed the company to slow down declines in the Cantarell field, adding that some new subsalt reservoirs had also been exploited.

Coldwell said that the downward trend in oil production is expected to turn positive in two years as a result of the 2014 energy reform that allowed foreign and private companies to enter the sector.

Mexico has held a series of auctions to sell off oil and gas blocks and another round is scheduled to go ahead in February 2o19.

Incoming president López Obrador has been a vocal critic of the energy reform but last month assured private energy executives that their contracts will not be canceled if they meet existing terms.

He has also pledged to increase crude oil production to 2.6 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of his six-year term.

Average production in August was 1.82 million bpd, well below the record high of 3.4 million bpd recorded in 2004.

López Obrador plans to invest 75 billion pesos (US $4 billion) in oil exploration and drilling during his first year in office.

He has also announced plans to build a new refinery in Tabasco and revamp the six that are already in operation.

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

No large hotels, golf courses, airstrips—or throwaway plastic—on Holbox

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MND Staff

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October 9, 2018

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Holbox: new management program announced.

Visitors to Isla Holbox will be prohibited from taking any throwaway plastics with them in line with new federal regulations announced yesterday.

The Yum Balam management program, published by the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp), also bans the construction of any new large hotels, golf courses or airstrips and the dumping of wastewater into the surrounding sea.

A small island located off the northern coast of the Yucatán peninsula, Holbox has suffered from a range of problems in recent years due to aging infrastructure and unauthorized development.

The island’s sewage system has struggled to cope with the pressures placed on it by a growing population and has been plagued by wastewater overflows.

However, Conanp chief Alejandro del Mazo Maza said that the Yum Balam program, named after the biosphere reserve to which Holbox belongs, will guarantee that future development is sustainable and that the island’s biodiversity is protected.

Beaches on Holbox are used by sea turtles to lay eggs and its surrounding waters are important feeding grounds for whale sharks, stingrays and other marine species.

Jaguars, howler and spider monkeys and flamingos are among the species that live on the island.

“This management program seeks to avoid disorderly urban development, new population centers, deforestation, changes to land use, the accumulation of rubbish, the introduction of exotic species that become invasive or feral and the contamination of the sea, land and aquifers that place residents, ecosystems and native species of this natural protected area at risk,” Conanp said in a statement.

In addition to banning disposable plastic products, the plan also prohibits disposable containers made out of polystyrene or any other non-biodegradable materials from being taken on to Holbox.

Federal Environment Secretary Rafael Pacchiano Alamán described the new management program as something that is owed to Mexico and “above all a commitment to the world.”

He added that the federal government has now implemented 48 management plans for natural protected areas, increasing the total number of plans in place across the country to 114.

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

World Justice Project study finds weak rule of law in all 32 states

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MND Staff

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October 9, 2018

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mexico states rule of law index — The darker the color the worse the ranking.

The rule of law is weak in all 32 Mexican states, according to a new study which determined that Guerrero and Baja California Sur are the most lawless entities in the country.

The Mexican States Rule of Law Index 2018, released today by the World Justice Project (WJP), ranked all states according to their adherence to the rule of law.

The index provides scores for 42 performance indicators grouped into eight factors, which were calculated from a poll responded to by more than 25,000 citizens, questionnaires answered by more than 1,500 experts throughout the country, and third-party sources, the WJP said.

No state obtained a score above 0.5 on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 indicating the strongest adherence to the law.

Corruption, the lack of clear regulatory measures, violence and impunity were the main factors that contributed to the weak rule of law that is prevalent across the country.

Yucatán fared best on the index, scoring 0.45, followed by Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, both of which achieved scores of 0.44.

At the other end of the scale, Guerrero — where drug gangs control swathes of territory such as the Tierra Caliente region — scored just 0.29 and Baja California Sur got 0.35.

Other states also included in the top 10 with the weakest rule of law were México, Sonora, Puebla and Quintana Roo, all of which scored 0.36, and Morelos, Mexico City, Veracruz and Jalisco, all with 0.37. The national average was 0.39.

“This is like having an immune system that doesn’t work,” said WJP researcher Jorge Morales.

“If you don’t take your vitamins, if you don’t look after the rule of law, which is the immune system, you’re weak. And then infections such as influenza come along, which could be a security crisis or a sudden violent event, you’re not prepared and the flu can turn into pneumonia,” he added.

“A weak rule of law has a negative impact on the lives of citizens,” said Alejandro Ponce, the study’s chief researcher.

“Today, Mexico is in a unique situation to enhance its institutions and ensure that laws are complied with. The WJP is committed to helping strengthen the rule of law in Mexico and will accompany this process through the release of analysis, evaluation and monitoring tools. The Mexican States Rule of Law Index is the first step in this regard,” he explained.

“We hope that this report will be used to set reference points on states’ performance regarding the rule of law, as well as inform and direct reforms, and identify successful local models that can be used to strengthen institutions in other regions of the country.”

Despite the low overall scores, WJP researchers pointed out that some states achieved noteworthy results in certain categories such as Guanajuato, Querétaro and Zacatecas with regard to controlling corruption and Yucatán on order and security.

Below is a summary of the best and worst performing states in the eight categories the study evaluated.

Constraints on government powers

Here the checks and balances in place in each state were assessed.

Some of the factors considered were the strength of the state legislature, whether elections are free and transparent, whether state laws stipulate penalties for corruption committed by government officials and whether there are strong independent actors such as social organizations and local media outlets.

The worst five states in the category were Guerrero, Baja California Sur, Veracruz, Coahuila and México state.

The best five were Nuevo León, Campeche, Aguascalientes, Baja California and Oaxaca.

2. Absence of corruption

Corruption was identified as the single biggest cause of the weak rule of law in Mexico. The national average of 0.35 was the lowest of all the categories evaluated.

Mexico City has the highest levels of corruption in the country, according to the study, possibly because a lot of bureaucratic procedures occur in the capital and bribing officials is relatively common.

The next worst were Guerrero, México state, Quintana Roo and Jalisco.

States with the lowest levels of corruption were Querétaro, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes and Baja California.

3. Open government

The main factor evaluated in this category was government transparency.

The worst five states were Querétaro, Tlaxcala, Nayarit, Oaxaca and Tamaulipas.

The best five were Mexico City, Guanajuato, Jalisco, México state and Zacatecas.

4. Fundamental rights

The protection of human rights, such as the right to not be discriminated against and freedom of expression, were assessed in this category.

The worst five states were Guerrero, Veracruz, Puebla, Tamaulipas and México state, and the best five were Aguascalientes, Nuevo León, Querétaro, Colima and Chihuahua.

5. Order and security

This was another area that contributed significantly to the overall weak rule of law. The national average in the category was just 0.4 on the WJP index.

A factor in the results was that last year was the most violent year in at least two decades and this year is on track to be even worse.

The worst five states were Guerrero, México state, Morelos, Baja California and Chihuahua.

The best five were Yucatán, with a notable score of 0.77, followed by Coahuila, Durango, Chiapas and Hidalgo, all of which scored above 0.55.

6. Regulatory enforcement

This category examined how regulations are implemented and enforced in areas such as public health and the workplace as well as to protect the environment.

The worst five states were Sonora, Morelos, Nayarit, Tlaxcala and Guerrero.

Baja California, Querétaro, Zacatecas, Campeche and Nuevo León performed best but not one of them exceeded 0.5 on the index.

7. Civil justice

Citizens’ trust in their state’s justice institutions was evaluated in this category. Independence from government and perceived levels of corruption were among the factors assessed.

The worst five states were Guerrero, Nayarit, Veracruz, Puebla and San Luis Potosí.

The best five were Baja California, Zacatecas, Coahuila, Durango and Campeche.

8. Criminal justice

This category was also one of the heaviest weights on the overall weak rule of law, with a national average of just 0.38.

The biggest failure of the criminal justice system was considered to be ineffective criminal investigations which in turn result in high levels of impunity.

According to an investigation conducted by the organization Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity), the probability of a crime being reported, investigated and solved in Mexico is just 1.14%.

The worst five states were Guerrero, Veracruz, Puebla, Mexico City and Quintana Roo,

The best five were Querétaro, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, Yucatán and Morelos.

Source: Animal Político (sp)

AMLO’s fracking stance seen as bad news for meeting natural gas needs

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MND Staff

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October 9, 2018

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Fox, left, says yes to fracking. AMLO says no.

President-elect López Obrador’s opposition to hydraulic fracturing is “bad news for gas supply,” a prominent business leader claims.

Speaking at a government event yesterday, the president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), Juan Pablo Castañón, said that López Obrador’s stance on the controversial gas and oil extraction technique commonly known as fracking would prevent Mexico from being able to reduce its dependency on natural gas imports.

“It’s bad news for gas supply because we import 80% of the natural gas we use,” he said.

The president-elect reaffirmed his opposition to hydraulic fracturing last week, telling reporters in San Luis Potosí that there will be no fracking in Mexico during the six-year period he is in office.

Castañón, however, is adamant that Mexico has to increase domestic natural gas production and believes that it is possible to do so without harming the environment.

“There may be [gas extraction] technologies that without damaging the environment and by recycling water allow us to comply with our commitments as part of the United Nations’ 2030 agenda for sustainable development in terms of the environment and sustainable energy production,” he said.

Castañón has an ally on the issue in former president Vicente Fox, who last week posted a video to his Twitter account in which he declared that it is false that fracking has a negative impact on the environment.

“López Obrador . . . the information you have on this occasion is not correct . . . In a very short time, Mexico could be the great producer of petroleum and natural gas that it always was,” he said.

Fox claimed that with “the technologies of today” fracking can achieve two things: “generate wealth and protect the environment at the same time.”

However, many others, such as the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking (AMCF), disagree.

Among the biggest concerns about fracking is that it requires the use of enormous quantities of water.

According to the AMCF, hydraulic fracturing of a single well uses between nine and 29 million liters of water.

In addition, more than 1,000 cases have been documented in the United States in which the practice has contaminated water sources, the alliance said.

López Obrador’s opposition to fracking puts contracts already signed for exploration and extraction of natural gas at risk.

One example of a planned project that the incoming government could shut down is the exploitation of a shale gas deposit in Coahuila, for which the state oil company Pemex has signed a US $617-million contract with Texas-based Lewis Energy.

Despite his opposition to fracking, López Obrador, who will be sworn in as president on December 1, has pledged to reduce Mexico’s reliance on foreign countries for its energy needs.

While he has been an outspoken critic of the 2014 energy reform that opened up the sector to foreign and private companies, the president-elect last month assured private energy executives that their contracts will not be canceled if they meet existing terms.

That assurance as well as his plan to build a new oil refinery and upgrade existing ones are aimed more squarely at reducing dependence on foreign petroleum rather than gas.

But Juan Carlos Zepeda, president of the National Hydrocarbons Commission, believes that ensuring Mexico’s gas security is an even more pressing need, declaring in July that reliance on United States imports creates not only a “geopolitical risk” but also an “operational risk” due to the possibility of a natural disaster interrupting supply.

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

Inattention to chain of custody in serial femicide case worries advocacy group

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César Hernández

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October 9, 2018

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The unguarded lot where the murder suspects are believed to have buried victims' remains.

A women’s advocacy organization has criticized authorities in Ecatepec, México state, for their alleged inattention to the chain of custody in the case of the couple who confessed to murdering 20 women.

A vacant lot where the couple allegedly disposed of their victims’ remains is guarded only by bright yellow police tape. The newspaper Milenio visited the site in the Jardines de Morelos neighborhood and found women’s clothes and shoes strewn around the property.

It was evident that no effort had been made to preserve the scene and maintain the chain of custody. It was the same at home of the couple, who were arrested last Thursday.

The president of a women’s rights advocacy organization warned of the “high risk” that the Jardines de Morelos crimes will not be processed as femicides.

“The lack of attention by the authorities to the chain of custody has caused deficiencies in many cases. I am almost certain that [the crimes] will not be prosecuted as femicides, but only as homicides,” said Xóchitl Arzola.

Juan Carlos N., 34 and his wife Patricia N., 38, are being held for the murder of 10 women, although Juan Carlos has confessed to killing at least 20.

One of their neighbors told Milenio that they had filed a formal complaint against the couple over six months ago because of foul-smelling water running from the couple’s property.

Neighbors also thought the couple’s comings and goings were strange. At times they were seen walking with a baby carriage but instead of a baby it carried a sack.

When the two were arrested last week they were pushing a baby carriage in which human remains were found.

Residents fear that the couple belonged to a larger criminal organization because similar events have happened before in other areas of Ecatepec.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Hundreds stranded by flash flood in Mexico City

By

César Hernández

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October 9, 2018

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Children wait on the roof of a stranded transit van.

Heavy rain flooded several kilometers of Mexico City’s Periférico beltway, stranding hundreds of commuters and public transit passengers.

The sudden rush of water surprised people traveling on the southbound lanes between Valle Dorado and Santa Mónica in Tlalnepantla, México state, a few minutes before 6:00pm.

Many had just enough time to get out of their vehicles and abandon them as the water rose, while others attempted to drive or push their cars out of the floodwaters.

Passengers aboard a public transit van found themselves trapped as the water rose while the vehicle was traveling through an underpass. All they could do was put the most vulnerable passengers, two children, atop the half-submerged vehicle and wait for the best.

The flash flood lasted about an hour after which the waters recede allowing traffic through once more.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Inadequate refrigeration in Jalisco’s mobile morgues means bodies decompose

By

MND Staff

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October 9, 2018

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One of the Jalisco 'death trailers.' — One of Jalisco's 'trailers of death.'

When authorities in Jalisco left a refrigerated trailer full of corpses in two different neighborhoods of Guadalajara last month, residents were quick to complain about the fetid odors emanating from it.

Now it has been revealed that not only was the refrigeration system inadequate to store the bodies, the solution to overcrowded morgues was an expensive one.

The so-called “trailer of death” or “morgue-on-wheels” was storing 273 bodies, authorities later confirmed, although it was initially reported that there were 157 cadavers inside.

Although the trailer was refrigerated it was not designed to function as a morgue and had not been adapted for the purpose, the newspaper Milenio reported today.

The refrigeration capacity of the trailer was simply overwhelmed by the hundreds of bodies that were crammed inside. Hence the offensive stench.

Days after the gruesome contents of the trailer made headlines in Mexico and around the world, the former director of the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences (IJCF) — who was dismissed for his role in the case — revealed that there were in fact two trailers of unclaimed bodies in Guadalajara.

However, Luis Octavio Cotero Bernal denied responsibility both for the decision to acquire the trailers and for the instruction for one of them to be shuffled around the Guadalajara metropolitan area, declaring that the Jalisco Attorney General’s office (FGE) had the “sole and exclusive power” in the matter.

It has now been revealed that since 2015, the FGE has rented at least four trailers to store bodies at a cost of approximately 20,000 pesos (US $1,050) per trailer per week or over one million pesos (US $53,000) per year.

That means the state government has paid up to four million pesos (US $210,000) annually for the makeshift morgues.

Milenio reported that the trailers were supplied by Logística Montes, a company that is listed on the state government’s transparency portal as a supplier to several government departments.

However, the payments the government made to the company owned by Rafael Montes have never been publicly declared, Milenio said.

That the trailers were incapable of preventing the rapid decomposition of the corpses appears to have been of little concern.

“They [the FGE] never cared about where they were storing bodies,” Cotero said, adding that on more than one occasion he called Jalisco Governor Aristóteles Sandoval to alert him to the situation and to seek assistance to resolve it.

“I told [Sandoval] that there were bodies in a bad state, that many of them had larva coming out of the [body] bags,” Cotero said.

The governor, however, attempted to deflect blame for the affair, stating that it was caused by “erratic action on the part of authorities” and pledging to “make up for this episode by providing an assurance that we will hire the best qualified staff . . . to avoid instances of negligence and indifference.”

For family members of people who have disappeared in Jalisco and continue to search for their missing loved ones, the governor’s “assurance” is cold comfort.

Since Leonel Arámbula disappeared in October last year, his cousin Belén Torres has accompanied the victim’s mother to morgues in Jalisco to check whether his body has appeared.

To date they have had no luck in locating Leonel and Torres fears that her cousin’s body could have been among the hundreds that were stored in one of the trailers hired by the FGE.

“Just imagining that my cousin is there is infuriating . . . He’s a human being and that is not just [treatment]. It makes me angry to think that he’s in a trailer being trampled on because they go in and walk among [the bodies],” she said.

Guadalajara is not the only city in Mexico that has resorted to using trailers to store bodies amid rising rates of violent crime that have inundated morgues with the corpses of victims.

Authorities in Guerrero have purchased 10 refrigerated containers to relieve pressure on morgues in Acapulco, Chilpancingo and Iguala while their counterparts in Veracruz and Tijuana, Baja California have acquired one trailer each.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Subway to open 50 new restaurants next year

By

MND Staff

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October 8, 2018

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Sandwich chain Subway will open up to 50 new franchises in 2019, giving it more than 1,000 restaurants nationwide, the company’s Mexico director has announced.

Héctor Huerta said Subway has experienced 6% to 7% annual growth over the past three years, bucking the overall trend in the food market.

There are currently 980 Subway outlets in the country and 10 more are set to open before the end of the year, meaning that the 1,000th Subway will likely open in the first months of 2019.

“Next year we plan to pass 1,000 restaurants. We anticipate we’ll finish the year [2019] with around 45 to 50 new restaurants . . .” Huerta said.

He added that the company also plans to roll out more of its new-look restaurants, known as Subway Fresh Forward.

Speaking in Mexico City at a launch event for the new concept, Huerta said that Mexico has spearheaded Subway’s growth in Latin America thanks to maintained macroeconomic stability.

He told the news agency Notimex that there is room in the Mexican market for the brand to expand to 1,800 restaurants in the coming years, adding that the majority of the ingredients used in Subway products are now locally sourced.

Just two years ago, about 70% of ingredients were imported, mainly from the United States.

“. . . We’ve reduced that dependency through developing local suppliers. That allows us to have a solider and more sustainable business model in the long term, independent of the economic conditions that may arise,” Huerta said.

Subway first opened in Mexico in 1990 and for a decade focused its growth strategy on Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, but since 2000 the franchise has spread to all corners of the country.

Source: Notimex (sp)