The federal government has agreed to provide 386 million pesos (US $20.5 million) to Nuevo León to build a new dam in the south of the state, the governor said yesterday.
Jaime Rodríguez Calderón said the federal money for the Libertad Dam – to be built on the boundary between the municipalities of Linares and Montemorelos – is expected to arrive shortly after Easter.
The state government will contribute another 386 million pesos to the construction costs, he explained.
The governor and former presidential candidate commonly known as “El Bronco” said that there will be a public tendering process to find a construction company for the project, which will supply water to as many as 750,000 people in the metropolitan area of Monterrey.
Earlier this month, the National Water Commission (Conagua) granted a 30-year concession for the San Fernando river basin to the state government, allowing it to move ahead with the dam project.
In the first stage of construction, an investment of 772 million pesos (US $41 million) will be needed to acquire more than 200 private and communally-owned properties in the area, and to carry out technical studies.
The dam will be built on a 2,292-hectare site and is expected to be completed in 2021.
Canada already has a strong presence in Mexico's aerospace industry with the Bombardier factory in Querétaro.
Mexico will sign an agreement with Canada this month to provide maintenance for Canadian planes, an air force general announced yesterday.
Rodolfo Rodríguez Quezada said the agreement will create new jobs in Mexico and bring a significant amount of foreign investment into the country.
The deal will be inked during the Mexico Aerospace Fair (Famex), which will be held at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base in México state from April 24 to 27.
“We’ve been working on this maintenance agreement for Canadian planes and airlines for more than 12 years,” Rodríguez said.
The general, who is also the president of the Famex organizing committee, explained that the agreement is backed by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) and also involves the Mexican Federation of the Aerospace Industry, the Civil Aviation Agency (DGAC) and private companies.
“This accord that we will sign with Canada will be of great importance to Mexico. It will bring thousands of jobs to the country and millions in foreign investment. The agreement reaffirms the alliance that Mexico has with that nation, a strategic ally,” Rodríguez said.
Meanwhile, the general expressed confidence that Famex will continue to be held at the Santa Lucía site even after it becomes Mexico City’s new airport.
Canada will be the guest country of honor at this year’s event, which will be attended by exhibitors from 40 countries.
A total of 17 bodies have been recovered from a property in the Zapopan neighborhood of Colli Urbano, part of the greater Guadalajara area, in the two weeks since Jalisco authorities started digging.
The state Attorney General’s Office was following a lead in the case of two missing persons that took them to an abandoned house on April 4. An initial search revealed two corpses that forensic specialists estimated had been interred between two and six months before.
Investigators returned to the scene last weekend and found another 15 bodies after four days of digging.
Unofficial reports have identified the Colli Urbano home as a drug distribution hub that later became a burial ground used by a criminal gang to dispose of the bodies of rivals.
The Jalisco coroner’s office has so far identified two of the 17 bodies. All were male.
Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez reported last month that the number of missing persons in the state was 7,117, nearly double the figure reported by his predecessor, Aristóteles Sandoval Díaz.
Five men arrested for homicide have spent almost 12 years in preventive imprisonment awaiting trial in Baja California.
They were accused of belonging to a gang and killing three individuals in Mexicali in 2007.
The 12 police officers involved said they arrested the men on the street but defense attorneys say the officers forced their way into their clients’ home to make the arrests.
The five were then transported to an unknown location where they were beaten before being placed them in custody, their lawyers claim.
They said the case has been plagued with incompetence and negligence as well as the implementation of the new criminal justice system.
In addition, they cited an earthquake in April 2010 that caused a hiatus of the entire state justice system, inquiries that were long and delayed and a heavy work overload in the justice system.
The attorneys claim that the defendants’ human rights have been violated due to the excessive time they have spent in preventive imprisonment.
A judge ruled four months ago that the case “should be resolved as soon as possible.”
The area in Veracruz where hidden graves have been identified.
A property with a large number of hidden graves has been located in Veracruz, the state attorney general said yesterday.
Jorge Winckler Ortiz said that authorities have so far only examined 10% of the surface of the land but have already detected 36 graves.
“The property has already been secured by the Attorney General’s Office and after a preliminary inspection in which specialized search technologies were used . . . 36 positive points of probable hidden graves have been found,” he said.
Located in the municipality of La Antigua in the center of the Gulf coast state, the site is difficult to access, Winckler said, adding that the exhumation of bodies won’t start until next week.
The attorney general explained that statements from people interviewed in relation to missing persons cases helped locate the property.
Winckler said it is believed that the site was used by a criminal gang to dispose of the bodies of its victims but the date when it ceased to be used for that purpose is unknown.
He added that the preliminary inspection of the property indicated that bodies could be buried at a depth of less than one meter.
The newspaper El Financiero reported that there could be more than 200 bodies in the makeshift graves, according to non-government sources who have seen the property.
National Search Commissioner Karla Quintana Osuna said that collectives made up of family members of missing persons will be invited to supervise further search efforts at the property.
Since President López Obrador took office in December, she added, around 100 hidden graves have been found throughout Mexico.
Several clandestine graves where hundreds of people were buried have been found in Veracruz in recent years.
In September, at least 174 skulls were exhumed from 32 graves on a property in Arbolillo, a sleepy fishing village on the Gulf of Mexico, and in 2017 more than 200 bodies were found in mass graves in Colinas de Santa Fe, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the port city of Veracruz.
The three CJNG members sentenced for drug trafficking and weapons offenses.
Three members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) who had been active in the Lagos de Moreno region of Jalisco have been sentenced to between 17 and 37 years in jail.
The three criminals operated as hitmen in collaboration with the Familia Michoacana cartel, targeting rival organizations such as the Gulf and Valencia cartels. The three were also known to be involved in a drug trafficking operation that extended to the greater Guadalajara area.
The judge found them guilty of possession of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine with intent to sell and possession of restricted firearms.
Jairo Josué N. was sentenced to 36 years and 11 months in prison and fined 47,782 pesos (US $2,500), while his accomplice, Genaro N.,, got 31 years and must pay a fine of 38,772 pesos.
Eduardo N. will serve 16 years and 11 months and pay a fine of 18,717 pesos.
The three men were arrested in 2011 by army personnel after an anonymous citizen’s report said a group of armed men was traveling in a vehicle between San Julián and San Diego de Alejandría.
The landfill fire that started Sunday in Guadalajara.
A fire at a landfill in Guadalajara, Jalisco, that had burned out of control since Sunday evening and triggered an air quality alert has been controlled.
State Civil Protection officials announced shortly after noon today that the fire had been controlled.
The agency reported that 134 firefighters from different fire departments had fought the blaze at the Los Laureles landfill.
The state health and transportation departments also responded to the emergency, distributing face masks and basic medical care.
Emergency crews also kept an eye on an apartment complex just 500 meters away from the fire.
Residents in the area blamed the blaze on a garbage company and government authorities, claiming that the landfill was supposed to have closed in 2008.
Contributing to the city’s air quality emergency, yet another fire broke out in Guadalajara’s Primavera Forest yesterday. Seventy firefighters and three helicopters worked to control the blaze, dumping thousands of liters of water from above.
Striking workers from the Autonomous Metropolitan University took over the Tlalpan toll plaza early this morning, adding to the chaos on the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway as thousands escaped the capital for the Easter vacation.
The workers asked motorists for a “voluntary” 50-peso donation to their cause, provoking wait times of more than an hour at the toll booths.
Yesterday, protesters took over toll booths on the Mexico City-Puebla and Mexico City-Querétaro highways.
The university staff ended their occupation at Tlalpan six hours after they began, but they were followed by a group of motorcyclists who said they were seeking funds victims of accidents and protesting new Mexico City legislation on helmets and other protective gear.
Both groups occupied the same toll plaza last week.
Mexican authorities have begun implementing stricter immigration policies amid pressure from the United States to stop the flow of migrants from Central America.
When he took office in December, President López Obrador pledged that his government would treat migrants more humanely than that of his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto.
In January, his administration issued around 13,000 humanitarian visas to migrants who entered Mexico at the southern border that month.
The visas allow recipients to work and access services in Mexico for up to a year or, if they choose, travel legally to the northern border to apply for asylum in the United States.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) issued a few thousand additional visas in February but none since, an immigration official who requested anonymity told the news agency Reuters.
According to other sources familiar with Mexican immigration policy who also spoke to Reuters, near-daily pressure from the United States government has resulted in the secretariats of the Interior (Segob) and Foreign Affairs (SRE) pushing the INM to adopt a tougher approach towards migrants.
Indeed, detentions of undocumented migrants for registration increased to 12,746 last month, according to unreleased INM data seen by Reuters, an increase of almost one-third compared to February and two-thirds compared to January.
The INM says that migrants staying at its facilities are not detained but being held for processing but rights groups and the migrants themselves say that they are not free to leave.
Thousands of migrants have been stranded in Chiapas, especially Tapachula and Mapastepec, as they wait to see if they will be granted humanitarian visas, or at least 20-day transit visas that allow them to legally travel through Mexico.
In the latter town, some of the migrants have been staying inside a makeshift shelter set up inside a sports stadium for almost three weeks, while others have camped in a field opposite.
Some 2,600 migrants are in this caravan that left Huixtla, Chiapas, this morning.
“It’s madness that they’re making us wait so long. For what? For nothing!” said Daisy Maldonado, a 26-year-old from Honduras who traveled to Mexico with her five-year-old daughter.
With migrants facing oppressive conditions in high temperatures – those camping in the field have no ready access to water, medical attention or government assistance – a coalition of more than a dozen human rights and humanitarian aid groups warn that there is a “humanitarian crisis” unfolding in Chiapas.
The coalition said that the detention center in Tapachula is severely overcrowded and that the confusion over whether visas will be issued or not is worsening the migrants’ plight.
“The government is responding with practices and repressive methods similar to the previous administration in terms of control and deportation, but in a way that’s even more disorderly [and] in some ways, it’s worse,” said Salva Lacruz, a coordinator of the Fray Matias de Cordova migrant advocacy group.
INM Commissioner Tonatiuh Guillén López said in a recent interview that a “stricter” immigration approach was being adopted in the south of Mexico due to the large number of arrivals but he denied that it was a result of pressure from the United States.
Whereas migrants were once effectively given free passage to travel through Mexico, the INM said yesterday that the migrants in Mapastepec would only be able to request seven-day visas that will limit their legal stay to Mexico’s southern states.
It is unclear when migrants in Tapachula might be issued visas as the INM office in that city closed following a riot last month. Thousands more migrants are stranded in cities on Mexico’s northern border.
In addition to detaining migrants, immigration authorities are also deporting them.
Two large groups of migrants – 204 from Honduras and 148 from Cuba – were deported from Mexico in recent days after they were located traveling through the country without having first regularized their immigration status.
“Migration officials are grabbing us like pigs,” said Erick Morazan, a 28-year-old Honduran migrant who traveled to Mapastepec at night in a “caravan of zombies” to avoid detection by immigration officials and the possibility of deportation.
For young Catholics in Tlalixtac de Cabrera, Oaxaca, preparations for the town’s ambitious Passion of Christ procession begin at least a year ahead of time.
The pageant depicts the final days of Christ according to Catholic tradition, beginning with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem before the Last Supper, his trial, crucifixion and death on Good Friday.
The 44th edition of the Tlalixtac event is expected to draw 10,000 spectators, the number who attended last year.
To be selected as one of the reenactment’s 100 participants, young hopefuls must meet a wide variety of strict requirements. These include attending mass every Sunday in the year leading up to the procession, actively participating in the devotional life of the church and demonstrating moral and ethical behavior in public and at home.
In addition, they must attend prayer meetings in May and June, attend organizational meetings for the procession every eight days and carry out unpaid community service projects. As a special condition, participants may not live with romantic partners out of wedlock.
For the past five months, the young men, women, boys and girls who will portray various biblical characters in the procession have prepared almost tirelessly, both mentally and physically, with the guidance of spiritual advisors from the church.
The physical preparations entail getting the youths ready to walk barefoot in the town’s streets for over seven kilometers.
Yuridia Vianey, 13, was selected this year to play the part of the Virgin Mary after she was personally inspired by a previous Passion of Christ event to ask for the role.
“I’ve come to see [the Passion] for years now. I liked the speech that Mary delivers to Jesus in the pageant, and so I said, ‘Some day that’s going to be me,’ and it’s finally my turn to give the speech. I have participated as part of the village for three years, and so last year I asked for the role of Mary and they gave it to me.”
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Carpinter Erick García Contreras, 23, will represent Jesus. He takes the role seriously, running several kilometers every day, eating healthily and regularly walking around town barefoot.
García has participated for 12 years in other roles in the procession, but he asked for the role of Jesus this year in the hopes of communicating his faith to spectators.
“I asked for the role to be able to get people to think about and understand what our Lord Jesus Christ did for us so they don’t do evil.”
