Municipal candidate wounded in Quintana Roo attack

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June 11, 2018

Candidate Magaña, center and wearing red hat, was attacked on Saturday.

A candidate running for Isla Mujeres municipal council was the victim of an armed attack Saturday evening in Quintana Roo.

Rosely Magaña Martínez was at a campaign meeting in her home on the mainland when armed civilians entered and opened fire.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate and campaign worker Lizbeth Pasos Sarabia were wounded.

Both victims were transported to a nearby hospital but neither was in serious condition according to reports yesterday.

Authorities mounted an intense operation to locate the attackers but there have been no arrests.

Mayor Juan Carrillo Soberanis, who has taken leave to campaign for a second term, told a press conference that at least 10 of his associates have received threats during the present electoral process.

Carrillo announced he would file a formal complaint before the state Attorney General along with information regarding the identity of the person behind the threats.

As elsewhere, the current election period has been violent in the Caribbean state.

On Thursday, campaign workers with the Social Encounter Party (PES) in Puerto Morelos were attacked while riding a motorcycle. Four vehicles intercepted them, one of which struck the bike, whose riders were then threatened with beheading.

Nothing further transpired but the incident was enough to give one of the workers a nervous breakdown.

Souce: El Universal (sp), La Jornada (sp)

After 2 years, hidden grave body count is at 300 in Veracruz

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MND Staff

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June 11, 2018

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Searching for the missing continues in Veracruz.

More than 300 bodies have been exhumed from hidden graves in Veracruz over the past two years, according to members of a group dedicated to searching for missing persons in the state.

In August 2016, the collective Solecito, which is made up of families of kidnapping victims, began the grisly task of identifying sites on a 10-hectare piece of land near the city of Veracruz where bodies have been buried in makeshift graves.

Once the graves are found, officers from the Federal Police’s scientific division excavate the areas.

With the discovery of six skulls last week, the remains of 295 people have now been recovered from the Colinas de Santa Fe property.

By the middle of next month, search efforts at the state’s largest clandestine grave are expected to end and construction of a memorial for the victims will begin.

In the municipality of Omealca, Federal Police have recovered at least another 20 bodies and 12 skulls from four artesian wells.

Marcela Zurita, the leader of Solecito in Córdoba, said the search in Omealca started last month and will continue until all the detected graves have been fully excavated.

Two bodies exhumed in the municipality, which is located about 25 kilometers southeast of Córdoba, have been identified by their clothing and the personal documents found on their person but are still awaiting DNA testing for formal confirmation.

Following a meeting Saturday with the four candidates for state governor, Solecito member Lucía Díaz said that the state is living through “a humanitarian crisis.”

In February, the Veracruz government formally accused four high-ranking former security officials and 15 police officers of the forced disappearance of 15 people during the administration of former governor Javier Duarte.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ex-governor is awaiting trial on corruption charges and a Veracruz judge issued new charges against him last week, accusing him of being involved in the forced disappearance of at least 13 people.

Despite the arrests, Díaz charged that investigations into disappearances in the state are not thorough and that in some cases officials have refused to file the complaints lodged by victims’ family members.

She also accused the current state government of politicizing the investigations and warned that the haste to leverage a political advantage — the son of current Governor Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares is contending the July 1 election to replace his father — could result in errors which jeopardize the serving of justice.

“They’re playing with very dangerous issues because if they make mistakes in their electoral zeal and later they can’t properly try [the accused], they will have to pay in some way,” Díaz said.

She called on whoever becomes the next governor to head a government which treats victims and their families with dignity and conducts a thorough search for the disappeared persons.

The Solecito collective rebuked Veracruz Attorney General Jorge Winckler this month when he appeared in a soccer team photo with other officials from the FGE, the office he heads. The name of their team is Los Desaparecidos, or The Disappeared.

“It’s a mockery that humiliates [victims and their families] . . .” Díaz said.

Source: Milenio (sp), Animal Político (sp)

Flash flooding traps passengers in Guadalajara transit cars

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MND Staff

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June 11, 2018

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Rail cars under water yesterday in Guadalajara. informador

A strong storm struck Guadalajara, Jalisco, yesterday producing flash flooding that affected several parts of the city, including the light rail system from which scores of people had to be rescued.

Water up to four meters deep flooded the Dermatológico station on line 1 and trapped about 40 people inside the carriages of a stationary train.

Civil Protection personnel, firefighters and local residents all contributed to the rescue efforts.

In a video that was live-streamed on Facebook by one stranded passenger, people could be seen waist-deep in water and a distressed baby can be heard crying. In another video, passengers were attempting to swim to safety.

Authorities said that none of the affected passengers was injured but one person who showed signs of hypothermia received medical treatment.

Through the formation of a human chain, another rescue operation saved a man who was swept away by flood waters in the Nueva España neighborhood.

Elsewhere in the city, a canal running parallel to Patria Avenue in Zapopan overflowed and flooded the thoroughfare between the Américas and Acueducto avenues.

Several cars were left stranded in the floodwaters, according to social media posts.

Transportation authorities said that several other roads in the city were affected by the heavy rains including the tunnel on Washington avenue, Federalismo avenue and the city’s Periférico, or ring road, between Melchor Ocampo and Pino Suárez streets.

Fallen trees also blocked Vallarta avenue in both directions between Rafael Sanzio and Independencia streets and shut down other roads in the Jalisco capital.

[soliloquy id="54096"]

Shoppers in the Plaza Patria mall — located about 10 kilometers north of the city’s downtown — were forced to take shelter on the upper levels of the shopping center after its ground floor was inundated. Cars in the mall’s parking lot were also affected by the rapidly rising floodwaters.

Water was reported inside the Zoquipan and Zapopan hospitals, while the city’s Dermatological hospital also sustained damage.

Jalisco Governor Aristóteles Sandoval wrote on Twitter last night that there were no reports of injuries from the flooding and that Civil Protection services in all the municipalities of the Guadalajara metropolitan area were involved in clean-up efforts.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)

Category 3 Hurricane Bud will produce rain and wind on Pacific coast

By

Tony Richards

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June 11, 2018

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Hurricane Bud's forecast track. the weather channel

Hurricane Bud, the second hurricane in less than a week in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is expected to remain well offshore but will still deliver heavy rain and high winds to parts of the west coast.

The category 3 hurricane was situated about 425 kilometers southwest of Cabo Corrientes, Jalisco, and 760 kilometers south-southeast of the southern tip of the Baja peninsula at 10:00am today, said the United States National Hurricane Center (NHR).

Maximum sustained winds were 195 kilometers per hour. Bud was moving northwest at 11 kilometers per hour and was expected to remain offshore of the southwestern coast of mainland Mexico, the NHR said.

Some additional strengthening is possible today but a slow weakening should begin tomorrow.

A tropical storm watch is in effect between Manzanillo, Colima, and Cabo Corrientes.

The National Meteorological Service issued a forecast at 7:00am for intense storm conditions in Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacán, Colima, Puebla, Chiapas and Oaxaca.

Bud is expected to produce rainfall accumulations of 75 to 150 millimeters across much of southwestern Mexico and waves of three to four meters in Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco.

Aletta was the first hurricane of the season and went from a tropical storm to category 4 hurricane in just 24 hours last week but it too was located well away from the coast.

By this morning it was a tropical depression, the NHR said.

Mexico News Daily

Amazon’s convoys reduce highway robbery in Valley of Mexico

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MND Staff

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June 9, 2018

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Many Amazon trucks travel in convoys to avoid robbery.

Trucks transporting goods for e-commerce giant Amazon used to be a frequent target for thieves in the greater Mexico City metropolitan area, where the company has two distribution centers.

But thanks to the implementation of a successful anti-robbery strategy, Amazon hasn’t suffered any holdups on the roads during the past three months.

Since January, trucks leaving the company’s warehouses in Cuatitlán Izcalli, México state, have traveled in convoy, while security vehicles also accompany the trucks during times when robberies have been shown to be more frequent.

Amazon has also increased its cooperation with security authorities.

Consequently, robberies gradually became less frequent before stopping altogether.

The director of loss prevention at Amazon México told transportation news website T21 that the introduction of the new security strategy followed a meeting between directors of several other companies that were also suffering losses due to highway robbery.

“We analyzed the modus operandi [of the thieves], the common problem that we had, and drew up a risk map of the areas where they were stealing from us . . . the next step was to decide what joint actions we could take,” Héctor Coronado said.

“We activated the protocols among the whole group . . .The benefit is that we share intelligence and counter-intelligence,” he explained.

Before the strategy was put into action, Coronado said, Amazon was the target of at least one robbery a week and that theft from a single truck resulted on average in a loss of 5 million pesos (US $ 245,000) worth of merchandise.

Highway robbery is a growing problem in Mexico, with the number of reported cases affecting trucks almost doubling last year.

To combat robbery and improve security on the nation’s highways, federal Transportation Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said Thursday that the government is planning to have 5,000 kilometers of video surveillance installed by 2020.

Source: T21 (sp)

Anthony Bourdain had a deep love affair with Mexico and Mexican cuisine

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MND Staff

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June 9, 2018

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Bourdain with Abigail Mendoza, second from left, in Oaxaca.

“Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history.”

There could be no doubting chef Anthony Bourdain’s deep love of Mexico — and particularly authentic Mexican food — that was cultivated during several trips to various parts of the country and which he wrote about in a 2014 essay entitled Under the Volcano.

But the writer, television personality and celebrity chef’s love affair with Mexico — and many other countries around the world — has come to an end. Bourdain died in France yesterday by his own hand. He was 61.

After shooting to fame on the back of a 1999 confessional piece in The New Yorker in which he spilled secrets about the restaurant trade and then a follow-up book entitled Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain entered the world of television.

While filming for his first show, A Cook’s Tour, Bourdain made his first professional visit to Mexico, traveling to the hometown of a Mexican cook with whom he worked in the New York restaurant Brasserie Les Halles.

In Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, Bourdain learned about the elaborate process to make mole poblano, chowed down on escamoles (ant larvae) and enchiladas and sampled the viscous, pre-Hispanic drink of the gods made out of the fermented sap of the maguey plant, pulque.

An infatuation with real Mexican food that would last for years was born.

During visits to Mexico City, Bourdain ate tacos al pastor on the streets of the historic center, migas (a traditional soup) — washed down with a michelada — at La Güera in the notorious neighborhood of Tepito and fell in love with the cerdo en salsa verde and refried beans at the breakfast diner Fonda Margarita in Colonia del Valle.

He also visited the massive wholesale market Central de Abasto, enjoyed some of the capital’s famous cantinas and dined at the upscale restaurant Máximo Bistrot.

While making his second show, No Reservations, Bourdain visited Baja California where he ate tacos and drank mezcal in Tijuana and devoured a lobster lunch on the beach at Rosarito.

The highlight, however, was undoubtedly his visit to the seafood street stand in Ensenada called La Guerrerense.

The chef with Sabina Bandera of Ensenada. — The celebrity chef with Sabina Bandera of Ensenada.

There, Bourdain ate ceviche, scallop, sea snail, sea urchin and octopus tostadas and met the stand’s owner and namesake, Guerrero-native Sabina Bandera, whom he called a “genius.” He would later invite her to show off her culinary talents at a street food convention in Singapore.

Oaxaca was another favorite hunting and eating ground for the acclaimed television personality, whose death yesterday triggered an outpouring of emotion from fans around the world.

On his first visit to the southern state, Bourdain ate iguana and tamales while on a more recent visit he sampled tlayudas (a large, crispy tortilla filled with a variety of ingredients), squash blossom soup and atole (a hot corn-based beverage) with internationally renowned chef Abigail Mendoza in the town of Teotitlán del Valle. While there, he marveled at the delicateness of a Zapotec woman’s hands and the strength of her forearms as she ground corn to make tortillas.

Bourdain also ate at the renowned pasillo del humo, or smoky aisle, in Oaxaca City’s central market, where visitors are usually affected more by the delicious smells of the grilling meats than the wafts of smoke.

The New Yorker, however, was more than just a connoisseur of all kinds of weird and wonderful food from all over Mexico and beyond.

He was also a champion of the underdog who stood up for immigrants in the United States, aware that they are the backbone of some sectors of the economy.

“Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes [and] look after our children,” he wrote in his 2014 essay.

He also questioned why many of his compatriots embrace Mexican food, beverages, people and other products and aspects of the country but not Mexico itself.

“Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people — as we sure employ a lot of them . . .” Bourdain said.

“We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we,” as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them — and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films,” he continued.

“So why don’t we love Mexico?”

Source: El Universal (sp)

Weather creates water shortage affecting 900,000 in Mexico City

By

César Hernández

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June 9, 2018

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Trucks deliver water to thirsty neighborhoods of Mexico City.

Close to 1 million people in Mexico City have been left without running water mainly due to high temperatures produced by a high-pressure weather system.

The water shortfall is being felt in seven of the city’s 16 boroughs: Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, Tlalpan, Azcapotzalco and Venustiano Carranza.

City authorities blamed an atypical high-pressure system, damage to the power grid by high winds, the diversion of water to aid farmers and a spike in demand by as much as 20% because of the heat.

Relief is still at least a few days away as the heat wave recedes northward; moisture is expected to reach the city in the coming days.

The director of the city’s water system, who explained that the capital went through a similar dry spell 85 years ago, warned that even if it starts raining on Monday or Tuesday, water service won’t be fully restored until two or three days after.

In the meantime, the government has deployed a fleet of 390 tanker trucks to distribute water in the affected boroughs. Each will make three trips per day, with which authorities expect to be able to deliver 12 million liters daily until the shortage is over.

The city estimated that the flow of water from the Lerma aqueduct has declined by 700,000 liters per second, while the Cutzamala aqueduct is operating at 60% capacity.

Elsewhere in the country, it’s hurricane season.

The first named phenomenon on the Pacific coast, Hurricane Aletta, strengthened from category 2 to 4 in the lapse of 12 hours yesterday, with wind speeds reaching 270 kilometers per hour. But the storm has been located well off the coast and was rapidly weakening this afternoon, the United States National Hurricane Center said.

It was situated about 430 kilometers southwest of Socorro Island, in the Revillagigedo Islands, and 865 kilometers south-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California Sur.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Teachers withdraw blockades in Oaxaca, strike action cut back

By

César Hernández

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June 9, 2018

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Teachers had set up camp at the ADO bus terminal in Oaxaca city.

After four days of gridlocked traffic, most of the street blockades set up by unionized teachers in the greater Oaxaca city area have been lifted.

Almost all vehicle traffic had been halted at several points along the northwest-southeast axis created by federal highway 190 and its urban segment, known as Calzada Héroes de Chapultepec, as well as on the southbound federal highway 175.

The roadblocks impeded transit to and from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and Coast regions of the state and to the neighboring states of Veracruz and Puebla.

Passengers leaving from the city’s main bus terminal were forced to catch their buses elsewhere, due to the teachers’ roadblocks at the terminal.

The teachers have now pulled back to two areas as they continue their indefinite strike: the camp set up two weeks ago on some 10 streets in the city center and the road connecting highway 175 with Oaxaca International Airport, effectively stopping vehicles from entering or leaving the terminal.

Although the airport can be reached via an alternate vehicular entrance, the reigning chaos and confusion has forced some travelers to walk up to three kilometers to get in or out.

The state government has met three times with the teachers in the two weeks since the dissident CNTE union began their strike and protests.

Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa said the meetings had resolved some of the union’s demands but the chief one, repeal of the 2013 education reform, is outside the state’s jurisdiction.

The union’s Oaxaca local, Section 22, said after the most recent meeting, held today, members decided to carry on with the strike, but only 20% of the membership will participate.

While the union has described its strike and protests as “massive,” from what education authorities say it appears otherwise.

They say 94% of the state’s 12,000 schools have continued to operate normally.

Although city businesses have seen sales drop between 20 and 35%, enough to cause “serious economic damage,” it has not been as bad as past years.

Pedro Corres Sillas, the head of an association of small businesses, said teacher protests have meant a decline in sales in May and June for the last 35 years. The difference this year, he said, was the strike had little impact and few classes were suspended.

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

Anaya slams Peña Nieto, PRI for video accusing him of money laundering

By

MND Staff

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June 9, 2018

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Coalition members closed ranks around candidate Anaya, center. — Coalition members closed ranks yesterday around candidate Anaya, center.

Presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya has blamed the federal government for a video in which he is accused of money laundering and using the proceeds to fund his election campaign, triggering a war of words between the coalition he heads and the ruling party.

In the five-minute video released Thursday, Juan Barreiro — the younger brother of Querétaro businessmen Manuel Barreiro, who allegedly transferred 54 million pesos to Anaya as part of a bogus real estate transaction — describes the modus operandi of the money laundering scheme from which the candidate allegedly benefited.

In audio and video that was presumably secretly recorded at three alleged meetings with an unidentified Argentine businesswoman, Barreiro charges that Anaya provided “first-hand” privileged information to a group of Querétaro businesspeople — including his brother — which allowed them to purchase land at prices well below market value.

After it was developed, the land was resold at significantly higher prices and some of the profits were later funneled into Anaya’s campaign via illicit means, Barreiro explained.

He said the group has provided Anaya with “a lot of money so that he wins” and claimed that an Anaya presidency “will open the doors to us for whatever we want.”

Barreiro added that it has become very difficult to transfer more money to the campaign because “they’re checking everything,” citing authorities’ investigation into his brother’s alleged illicit dealings with Anaya as an example.

Asked by the woman whether it’s still worth investing in Anaya’s campaign, Barreiro said that doing so would be “complicated” but added that “there are always ways to do it.”

Since the allegations were first made against him in February, Anaya has denied any wrongdoing and accused the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of fabricating the allegations against him to damage his chances of winning the presidency.

In a video posted to his social media accounts Thursday, Anaya rejected the claims contained in the new video and accused the Enrique Peña Nieto-led PRI government of waging a “dirty war” against him by using “the same lies” as before.

“First, the content of this video is completely false. Second, it’s a strategy orchestrated and driven by the government of President Peña Nieto to damage my candidacy,” he said.

“Third, they’re attacking me because the day before yesterday [Tuesday] at Ibero [University] I said very clearly that Enrique Peña Nieto is corrupt and I repeated that when I am president, I will task myself with ensuring that he faces justice and if he’s proven to be guilty, that he goes to jail. Fourth, they’re also attacking me because I revealed that Enrique Peña Nieto and [Andrés Manuel] López Obrador have already made a pact . . .” Anaya added.

“Peña Nieto is helping López Obrador by attacking me, the only candidate who can beat him, and in exchange López Obrador promised to pardon him for everything. He even said it publicly. I know that the dirty war against me isn’t going to stop from here until election day,” he continued.

“To you, President Peña Nieto, I hold you responsible for my safety and that of my family. You’re not going to defeat me, I’m not going to surrender. We’re going to win, Mexico is going to change.”

Yesterday, Anaya denied knowing Juan Barreiro, contradicting the latter’s assertion in the video that the candidate had approached his family to ask for money.

Anaya campaign boss Jorge Castañeda, who this week accused frontrunner López Obrador of making a “pact of impunity” with the president, also charged that the video was “orchestrated from Los Pinos,” the president’s official residence.

National Action Party (PAN) president Damián Zepeda added that the video was a deliberate ploy designed to damage and distract Anaya’s campaign.

“. . . We’re not going to fall into the PRI’s strategy. They want us to waste time, for us to spend the last three weeks [before the election] clarifying this,” he said.

Zepeda also charged that the government’s attempts at intimidation have turned physical, explaining that a car Anaya had been traveling in was intercepted and attacked Thursday and the rear windshield was smashed.

Leaders of the two other parties that make up the Anaya-led For Mexico in Front coalition also spoke out against the government’s alleged interference and reaffirmed their support for their candidate.

Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) national president Manuel Granados said the possibility of an Anaya victory had made the government nervous, while the leader of the Citizens’ Movement party, Dante Delgado, condemned the government’s actions.

In response, Attorney General Alfonso Navarrete Prida said via Twitter that the federal government “strongly rejects” the claim that it has intervened in the electoral process.

“. . . [the federal government] demands respect from the political actors who are participating in this [electoral] contest by making unfounded accusations which tarnish the climate of civility that should prevail,” he wrote.

PRI candidate José Antonio Meade, who is languishing in third place in most opinion polls, also hit back at Anaya, responding succinctly on Twitter by writing in English: “Insulting and unacceptable.”

At a later press conference, he elaborated on his tweet, which repeated the exact words Anaya used to describe United States President Donald Trump’s assertion that Mexico will pay for his proposed border wall.

“What is unacceptable and insulting is to try to hide behind his candidacy in order to avoid accountability and transparency. Any of us . . . who has committed any kind of offense should be permanently ready to be held accountable,” Meade said.

PRI national president René Juárez Cisneros said the evidence in the video is damning and that the government has nothing to explain.

“. . . Who should be explaining is Ricardo Anaya, he shouldn’t be making excuses for himself for everything that Mexicans saw in the video, it’s clear evidence,” he said. “When you’re looking for arguments to justify defeat, these kinds of statements start.”

The presidential election is just three weeks away and López Obrador maintains a commanding lead over Anaya and Meade.

According to the newspaper El País, there is a 92% probability that he will be Mexico’s next president.

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

PRI candidate for federal Congress assassinated in Coahuila

By

Tony Richards

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June 9, 2018

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Purón, assassinated last night in Piedras Negras.

A lone gunman shot and killed a Coahuila candidate for federal Congress last night in Piedras Negras.

Fernando Purón Johnston, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and former mayor of the border municipality, was killed outside an auditorium at the Autonomous University of Coahuila after participating in a political forum.

Surveillance video captured the killer as he approached his victim from behind, pulled out a handgun and shot him twice at point-blank range, once in the head, before fleeing.

Purón died en route to the hospital.

Governor Miguel Riquelme told a press conference after the shooting that the involvement of organized crime was not being ruled out. He described Purón as a mayor who “fought against insecurity.”

The governor said someone at the scene of the murder attempted to follow the killer, who fired another shot before leaving in a vehicle.

Purón was mayor of Piedras Negras from January 2014 until last December when he took a leave of absence to run as a federal deputy. He married this year and leaves his wife and baby daughter.

Source: Vanguardia (sp)