Coahuila auditor files embezzlement complaints over 639 million pesos

By

-

October 2, 2018

The Coahuila auditor's office has filed 13 criminal complaints over missing funds.

During four months ending last April, the Coahuila Auditor’s Office (ASEC) filed 13 criminal complaints against a state government department and several municipalities for the embezzlement of almost 640 million pesos.

The agency said in a first-semester 2018 report that the complaints were made to the Coahuila Attorney General’s office between December 28, 2017 and April 26 of this year.

The ASEC alleges that a total of just over 636.6 million pesos (US $33.9 million) in public funds were misappropriated.

The state Secretariat of Finance was the biggest offender with more than 465.2 million pesos missing from its public accounts records for 2013, according to an ASEC complaint filed in January.

Chief auditor Armando Plata said the money was siphoned through shell companies and that additional funds disappeared from the same secretariat in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

The municipal governments of Acuña, Frontera, Jiménez, Sabinas and San Pedro are also accused of illicitly diverting funds ranging from 1.5 million pesos to 23.5 million pesos in 2014. The ASEC also detected irregularities in the 2015 accounts of the same five municipalities.

The amounts allegedly embezzled increased that year to between 11.6 million pesos and 31.1 million pesos. For the second year in a row, the municipality of Sabinas was the worst offender.

After receiving a special request from the state Congress, the ASEC also investigated the Sabinas municipal government’s accounts for 2016 and 2017, finding more irregularities that resulted in two more criminal complaints being filed in April.

Former Sabinas mayor Lenin Flores Lucio, two former officials and a government contractor have all been ordered to stand trial on charges of embezzlement.

At the time the embezzlement allegedly occurred, Rubén Moreira Valdés was governor.

Now a federal congressman with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he has been accused of receiving large cash payments from the Los Zetas drug cartel while in office in Coahuila.

According to a binational report released last November, Moreira and his brother and former governor Humberto Moreira Valdés effectively ceded control of the northern border state to the notorious criminal organization in exchange for the bribes they received.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Morena party seeks annulment of Puebla election for governor

By

César Hernández

-

October 2, 2018

0

Polevnsky and Barbosa: PAN's 'dirty hands' won election.

The Morena party wants election officials to annul the Puebla election for governor on the grounds that it was “plagued” with irregularities.

Party president Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz said the July 1 was manipulated by ex-governor Rafael Moreno Valle, “who only wants to pass along the power to his wife.”

Martha Erika Alonso Hidalgo ran under the National Action Party (PAN) banner and was declared winner of the election.

Polevnsky said the recount showed the levels at which the state elections were manipulated, “just like PAN did in the times of Felipe Calderón . . . .”

She told a press conference it was the same in the 2006 presidential election when Felipe Calderón snatched the win from Morena leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Polevnsky said it was “illogical” that voting trends in Puebla went contrary to those seen at the national level: “we know that Andrés Manuel López Obrador was a tsunami that gave votes to many, even those that weren’t well known . . . ”

PAN’s “dirty hands” are all over the electoral process, she continued, and the party continues to exert pressure on electoral judges.

Morena’s gubernatorial candidate, Miguel Barbosa Huerta, declared himself an optimist, stating he was convinced that the court’s decision would go in his favor, adding that the annulment request could be a done deal by late October or early November.

He lost the election to Alonso by 122,000 votes, or four percentage points. The results of the recount, meanwhile, are being kept under wraps due to the annulment request.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Autopsies in the street: Oaxaca doctor denounced for sidewalk surgeries

By

César Hernández

-

October 2, 2018

0

First it was a mobile morgue emitting unpleasant odors in Jalisco. Now it’s autopsies in full public view in the street of a Oaxaca town.

Problems faced by state forensic services have been the result of a shortage of space in morgues for victims of violent crime, but in Santiago Jamiltepec it was the absence of electric light that required a street-level autopsy, photos of which appeared on social media.

A forensic medical specialist from the state Attorney General’s office is seen performing an autopsy on the corpse of a man on the sidewalk outside the Jamiltepec cemetery. Vehicle headlights and a mobile phone are the only sources of illumination.

The doctor, identified only by his first name, Lázaro, is bent over the corpse and performing what has been described as necro-surgery on the head while streams of body fluids run down the street.

The reason given for conducting an autopsy outdoors was that there was no electricity inside the cemetery facilities.

When municipal officials arrived on the scene to investigate they demanded an explanation from the specialist, who refused to give one and rudely sent them away, according to local media reports.

Jamiltepec Mayor Efraín de la Cruz Sánchez denounced the doctor’s performance, stating that he had illegally performed a number of such procedures without the necessary sanitation measures.

” . . . As municipal authorities we demand that the doctor performs his work in a professional manner and in compliance with our municipality’s regulations,” said the mayor’s office in a statement, urging that he “be disciplined.”

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

50 years after Tlatelolco massacre, plaques honoring president come down

By

MND Staff

-

October 2, 2018

0

A plaque remembering Díaz Ordaz is removed in the Mexico City subway.

Fifty years after the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, plaques honoring the president who authorized the use of force against peaceful protesters are coming down and monuments to him could soon follow.

As many as 300 students were killed in Mexico City on October 2, 1968, amid rising social tensions and just 10 days before the opening of the Mexico City Summer Olympics, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered the use of military force against students demonstrating against authoritarian rule.

Army and police helicopters dropped flares on the square and snipers shot at students before soldiers and tanks opened fire on the gathered masses in Tlatelolco’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Square of the Three Cultures), located just north of the capital’s historic center.

Officials maintained that only 30 people lost their lives but based on witness accounts and reporting from foreign correspondents, it is believed that the real number was around 300 victims. More than 1,000 students were arrested during and after the massacre.

Last week, a federal government agency, the Victims’ Commission, recognized for the first time that the massacre was “a state crime that continued beyond October 2 with arbitrary arrests and torture.”

Yesterday, the day before the 50th anniversary of the atrocity, Mexico City Mayor José Ramón Amieva Gálvez announced that all plaques in the capital’s subway system recognizing federal or city authorities in power in 1968 would be removed immediately.

The metro system was built during Ordaz’s six-year presidency and its first line started operations in 1969, a year before he left office.

Amieva said that after taking into account the thoughts and feelings of citizens, he came to the conclusion that the time was right to remove references to the former president.

The plaques will be replaced with new ones that offer information about the construction of the metro but make no mention of the authorities who oversaw the project.

The move was praised by many on social media but others condemned it, not out of defense for Díaz Ordaz’s legacy but because it would erase one of the darkest chapters of Mexico’s history from citizens’ collective consciousness.

“The Mexico City government has ordered plaques with the name Gustavo Díaz Ordaz be removed. In the same spirit, Stalin ordered the faces of his adversaries to be removed from paintings and photographs. History is not altered by decree nor by erasing its testimonies. History is explained and discussed,” National Autonomous University (UNAM) academic Raúl Trejo Delarbre wrote on Twitter.

“Not by removing plaques with the name of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz from metro stations will it cease to be a historic fact that the SCT [subway system] was built in his six-year term. History is not . . . black and white. It has to be respected. Mexicans have a right to memory,” journalist Pascal Beltrán del Río said.

Ignacio Lanzagorta, an anthropologist and political scientist, argued that the plaques should remain but new ones should be added below to explain “who the hell Díaz Ordaz is” and “to broaden the perspective” about what happened during his administration.

In Nuevo León, academics and activists belonging to the 9 de Marzo Collective called on local authorities to pull down monuments that honor the former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) president and to change the name of any streets, neighborhoods or places that bear his name.

Members of the group recommended that “Martyrs of October 2, 1968” be used as a replacement name.

“The former president disgraced not just the Mexican army but the whole nation. During his fifth government report, on September 1, 1969, Díaz Ordaz declared that he was personally responsible [for the massacre] from the moral, ethical and historic point of view,” said Juan de Dios Sánchez Martínez, an activist in the northern state.

Members of the activist group presented a petition to the mayor of Monterrey to support their position and also submitted a list of all the streets, neighborhoods and monuments that honor Díaz Ordaz.

Marches will take place in at least 18 Mexican states today to commemorate the massacre but as always the largest protest will take place in Mexico City.

Thousands of people are expected to march from the Plaza de las Tres Culturas to the zócalo, Mexico City’s central square.

Among the participants will be the parents of the 43 students who disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014.

They took to the streets of the capital just a week ago to mark the fourth anniversary of their sons’ disappearance after meeting earlier with president-elect López Obrador, who pledged that the incoming government would find the truth of what happened and examine the role of the army and Federal Police.

Now, as in 1968, impunity continues to prevail in many cases of violence committed in the country.

The disappearance and presumed death of the 43 rural students provided a stark reminder that Mexico can still be a dangerous place for students, with powerful drug cartels presenting the biggest risk to the nation’s youth.

According to the federal government’s “historic truth” regarding the Ayotzinapa-Iguala case, the 43 students were killed by a local crime gang who later burned their bodies in a municipal dump.

This year, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) is believed responsible for kidnapping, torturing and murdering three film students in Jalisco.

“We are possibly worse off today. Young people are under attack, with the economy, inequality, there are fewer opportunities,” Enrique Espinosa, a participant in the 1968 protests, told the Associated Press.

“This is not the Mexico we wanted,” he declared.

Source: Animal Político (sp), Reporte Indigo (sp), El Universal (sp), AP (en)

Aeroméxico pilots’ strike delayed, but could happen Wednesday

By

MND Staff

-

October 1, 2018

0

A strike planned for today by Aeroméxico pilots over pay and working conditions was avoided but could still go ahead Wednesday.

The Association of Airline Pilots (ASPA) agreed to a request from federal Labor Secretary Roberto Campa to defer the work stoppage for 48 hours, meaning that it is now scheduled to begin at midnight on October 3.

The postponement will allow negotiations to continue with Mexico’s flag carrier over contracts for pilots who started working for the company in the past eight years.

ASPA last night rejected the collective labor agreement Aeroméxico is offering for 2018-2020, with salaries a key sticking point.

Under the airline’s proposal, pilots that were employed after 2010 will continue to receive salaries and benefits 40% lower than those who began their employment prior to that date.

ASPA agreed to the inferior pay and conditions for so-called “B Contract” pilots in 2010 when the global financial crisis was still affecting the airline industry.

But today the pilots believe that the economic situation of the sector — and Aeroméxico — is completely different from eight years ago and that the wage and benefits disparity should end.

“The dissatisfaction, anger and frustration of pilots on B contracts is real and in the face of the refusal of the company to grant adjustments . . . the [union] assembly rejected in their totality the terms of the negotiation,” ASPA said.

Aeroméxico said via its Twitter account last night that all flights are going ahead as scheduled.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Scarlet macaw chick is the first in 50 years to be born in the wild

By

MND Staff

-

October 1, 2018

0

The young macaw, born in the wild in Veracruz.

For the first time in 50 years, a scarlet macaw chick has hatched in the wild in the rainforests of Veracruz.

The birth is the result of a rescue plan by biologists at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in a jungle area of the state’s Tuxtlas region.

Experts from Nanciyaga Ecological Reserve, the Ancient Forest Association and the Xcaret Ecological Park also participated in the project.

Patricia Escalante, a researcher at the UNAM Institute of Biology, said the birth of a chick offers hope both for the success of the rescue plan and the conservation of the species in Mexico.

She added that there was no point releasing the macaws in the area if they didn’t reproduce, stating that “sooner or later” they would disappear again.

Before the conservation project began four years ago, the last time a scarlet macaw was seen in rainforest in the Tuxtlas region was in the 1970s, according to a report published by the university’s news portal UNAM Global.

To encourage the released birds to breed, the project team placed wooden nesting boxes in trees in four release locations that were later checked each month to see if they were being used.

The breeding season of the scarlet macaw, or guacamaya as the bird is known in Spanish, began in March but for three months there was no sign that they had used the boxes for the purpose for which they were intended: to lay eggs.

“We thought there would be no chicks because a lot of time had passed and we hadn’t found anything,” said Omar Gómez, an UNAM student who was responsible for checking the nests.

But in June, five eggs were discovered in a single nest and through observation, the researchers discovered that three macaws were looking after it.

“Two females laid eggs accompanied by the same male,” Escalante explained. But unfortunately, only one chick survived.

A camera was installed in the nest that allows the biologists to monitor the chick and all appears to be going well.

“We’ve left them to raise it on their own, we haven’t intervened and they have protected the chick from possible predators,” Escalante said.

She added that by leaving the chick to be raised without human contact a new generation of completely wild scarlet macaws could begin to inhabit the region.

The species is considered endangered in Mexico, with only about 250 birds estimated to be living in the wild.

The largest population of red macaws in the country live in the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas.

Source: Noticieros Televisa (sp)

Baby macaw captured on video

Nace primer guacamaya en libertad en los Tuxtlas - UNAM Global

Watch this video on YouTube

The new trade deal is a goal for Mexico. The score: Mexico 1, Trump 0

By

Raoul Lowery Contreras

-

October 1, 2018

0

Mexicans have taken United States President Donald Trump to the cleaners on NAFTA, the newly agreed-to United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. That is what the president calls it instead of NAFTA 2.0, which it is.

Certainly there was some tinkering but stipulating higher North American content in imported vehicles from Mexico and Canada helps those countries more than it helps the U.S. Higher North American content, from 62.5% to 75%, is not a big deal. Canada, for example, makes far more parts than exportable automobiles.

Providing Trump-insisted-upon manufacturing caps on parts and autos themselves means little when those caps are far above current or projected sales of those items to U.S. customers. No matter what the caps are, small cars like Nissan’s Versa and Sentra will still be 100%manufactured in Mexico because of costs, costs that are too high in the U.S.

In reality it means that more foreign companies, like Michelin, will build larger factories in Mexico to supply the market in which nascent Chinese car makers now producing a handful of cars in Mexico.

We don’t know yet what the details of the new agreement are but we know that the Trump demand that a five-year “sunset” provision be used in the “new” agreement was junked by Mexico and Canada and didn’t survive the negotiations.

No savvy business person or analyst can figure exactly what Trump had in mind when he demanded a five-year “sunset” provision because no business executive in his or her right mind would ever consider such an onerous provision. Why? Because it takes more than a year to build a factory, for example, sometimes two or three.

Business planning, therefore, has to cover long periods of time; using a five-year measuring period simply does not work in business, in manufacturing especially.

BMW’s largest factory in the world is not in Germany, it is in South Carolina. Does President Trump think that the planning, construction and employee training of that factory (plus full-blast manufacturing) could be done in a short five-year period?

The “Trump sunset provision” of an agreement with Mexico and Canada never stood a chance of being approved by anyone with a brain. So goal for Mexico and to a lesser extent Canada.

Mexico can thank President Trump for more new job creation as companies will flood into Mexico to build new facilities to build air bags, alternators, car radios and computer gear, windshields, windshield wipers, bumpers, etc., etc.

Most of Mexican-made or assembled goods that are exported are exported to the United States as is the case with food products; Canada too. So, no matter what claims the president made about NAFTA being the worst agreement in history the three countries’ trade amounted to over a trillion dollars in 2017.

Moreover, Mexico alone, with 124 million people, buys more from the U.S. than all of Europe (with 500 million people) and all of China (with over a billion people).

Any comments made by President Trump about Mexico ripping off the United States were untrue. How, for example, can a country one-third the size of the U.S. buy as much from the U.S. as the U.S. does from Mexico?

In the final analysis, Mexico wins, Trump and Canada tie. Nobel Prize winner and New York Times economics commentator Paul Krugman says, “My original prediction on Trump/NAFTA was that we would end up making some minor changes to the agreement, Trump would declare victory, and we’d move on. That’s what seems to have happened.”

That, Dr. Krugman, is being charitable.

Gooooaaaallll! Mexico 1, President Trump, 0.

Raoul Lowery Contreras is the author of The Armenian Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy,The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) & Mexicans (to be released November 1).

Morgues say there are no problems; families of missing have a different view

By

MND Staff

-

October 1, 2018

0

A morgue in Tamaulipas: 'more like a bunker.'

Mexico’s forensic services authorities are operating morgues without clear laws, denying access to the families of missing persons and even disappearing bodies shortly after they take possession of them.

That is the claim of groups made up of family members of disappeared persons, an allegation that contrasts sharply with the official position of the authorities themselves.

Earlier this year, the newspaper El Universal asked authorities in several Mexican states about the situation in their morgues. The majority responded that they didn’t have any problems despite many receiving an increasing number of bodies due to increases in violent crime.

Among those that said that there were no problems was the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences (ICJF), which operates 11 morgues in the state and made headlines two weeks ago for its “morgue on wheels,” revealing that there were indeed problems.

The institute was using two semi-trailers, including one that was shuffled around the Guadalajara metropolitan area, drawing the ire of residents who complained of fetid odors. The trailers were providing storage for about 300 unclaimed bodies.

According to former forensics chief Luis Octavio Cotero Bernal, who was dismissed for his role in the case, the Jalisco Attorney General’s office acquired the first trailer in 2013.

With more and more bodies arriving at morgues across Mexico that are already short on space, getting rid of them as quickly as possible has become a priority for some.

There is no law, El Universal reported, that specifies how long a morgue is required to hold an unclaimed body before it can be sent for burial in a common grave.

In addition, there is no federal authority that oversees the collection of DNA samples from unidentified corpses, meaning that states are free to act as they see fit.

In Tijuana, which with 1,559 homicide victims in the first eight months of the year was Mexico’s most violent city, the secretary of a Baja California association for families of disappeared persons said that bodies are quickly transferred from the city’s morgue to a municipal cemetery.

“. . . Authorities have turned it into a machine that practically disappears people. Out of necessity or because of negligence, the timeframes for sending bodies to a common grave are not complied with. If it was 30 days before, they reduced the time by half but now it’s not even that. [Bodies spend] between five and seven days in refrigeration and from there, they go into the ground,” Fernando Ortigoza said.

Geovanni Barrios, president of the Justicia Tamaulipas collective, said that morgues in that state are like bunkers because those looking for missing loved ones are prohibited from entering. Authorities argue that subjecting homicide victims to outside review amounts to re-victimization.

Barrios also said that people searching for family members receive little or no support from prosecutors’ offices across the country.

“They send you from one place to another, you even have to travel to Mexico City, they don’t realize that your life is in danger, they expose you,” he said.

In some states, authorities don’t have the personnel or resources to cope with the number of bodies they receive.

In Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most violent states, forensic experts have reported that they are forced to work at breakneck speed with limited resources, meaning they even have to reuse surgical gloves when carrying out examinations of corpses.

Until last year, there was only one forensic specialist working in all of Sinaloa.

With this year on track to surpass 2017 as the most violent year in recent history, morgues in many cities across the country are facing an increasing demand for their services, which in some cases they are not equipped to meet.

Statistics from the National Public Security System show that after Tijuana, the cities with the highest number of homicides in the first eight months of the year were Acapulco, Guerrero; Culiacán, Sinaloa; León, Guanajuato; Benito Juárez (Cancún), Quintana Roo; Irapuato, Guanajuato; Guadalajara, Jalisco; Reynosa, Tamaulipas; Tlaquepaque, Jalisco; and Morelia, Michoacán.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Business group forecasts 50% increase in exports with new trade accord

By

Tony Richards

-

October 1, 2018

0

Castañón: three sectors will drive increase in exports.

A leading business organization issued a strong vote of approval today for the new NAFTA, forecasting that Mexico’s exports to the United States and Canada would grow 50% in the next 10 years.

The Business Coordinating Council (CCE), an umbrella organization of several business groups, said the new United States Mexico Canada Accord, or USMCA, is more robust, more modern and more agile, which will allow trade to multiply between the three countries.

The agreement was finalized last night and will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.

CCE president Juan Pablo Castañón said in a telephone conference call the growth in exports will fuel employment and diversification in the production of Mexican products.

He cited three sectors that would lead the growth: food products, automotive and aerospace.

“. . . with the foundation of those three sectors of the economy, along with investment in energy, we are certain that we can grow our trade with the U.S. and Canada by at least 50%.”

One sticking point that was not resolved with the new trade accord were the tariffs imposed by the U.S. on steel and aluminum imports from Mexico and Canada, which U.S. President Donald Trump said today would remain in place for the time being.

But Castañón said the tariffs would be the subject of discussions this week. “This is now on the table . . . and conversations will begin this week to lift the imposition of these taxes on steel and aluminum, and on food products on Mexico’s part; we hope to have an announcement to make on the issue this week.”

Although many details of the USMCA have yet to be subject to outside analysis, it has been broadly welcomed for the fact that it ends more than a year of uncertainty for business and investors.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Cuernavaca tire removal campaign collects 46 tonnes’ worth

By

César Hernández

-

October 1, 2018

0

The seventh annual used tire collection drive in Cuernavaca, Morelos, removed 46 tonnes of discarded tires from streets, homes and businesses.

Known as Llantatón, the event was created by the local Sustainable Development Secretariat (SDS) and the Japanese tire maker Bridgestone.

Rainwater collects in used tires left in the open, becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The collection drive was designed to remove the hazard.

Tires were collected at the San Miguel Acapantzingo park in Cuernavaca, and in the neighboring municipalities of Ciudad Ayala, Huitzilac and Emiliano Zapata.

“Thanks to the participation of the citizens and the municipal governments in the Llantatón, we kept [the tires] from reaching rivers, ravines, streets or open air dumps,” said the environmental management director at SDS.

“We appreciate the support given by Bridgestone México, who have been unconditional allies in the protection of the health of the people of Morelos, and we invite the public to continue participating in initiatives like this, in support of the environment,” said Noé Náñez González.

In the seven-year history of the tire collection marathon it has rounded up 446 tonnes — an estimated 46,000 tires, which have been used as an alternative fuel in the cement industry or reused as furniture parts or an asphalt ingredient.

Source: El Universal (sp)