An estimated 3,000 people crossed the Suchiate river at the Rodolfo Robles international bridge between Tecún Umán, Guatemala, and Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, where immigration agents made no attempt to stop them given the size of the caravan.
Instead, they provided temporary shelters and humanitarian aid.
The first to cross were 350 people who arrived at about 3:30am and broke through a barrier at the border crossing.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) described their behavior as aggressive and hostile.
INM chief Tonatiuh Guillén said the latest arrivals make the situation even more complicated in the south of the country because there are already about 4,000 migrants in Chiapas from Central America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.
He also said it was worrying that the migrants are being encouraged by disinformation and manipulation that is triggering an increase in the number of families. He said it was irresponsible to expose children to such precarious conditions.
Guillén said there would be no visas issued to allow the migrants legal passage to the United States border, a practice that was implemented temporarily in January.
The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has denied that a shortage of gas caused two recent blackouts on the Yucatán peninsula, reiterating that the outages were due to fires.
CFE chief Manuel Bartlett ruled out further interruptions to electricity supply, stating that there is sufficient natural gas to generate the power needed for the peninsula.
“A [gas] shortage and blackouts are definitely not in sight,” he said.
Bartlett explained that the CFE continues to work closely with the state oil company and the National Natural Gas Control Center (Cenagas) to ensure that adequate gas supply is maintained to Mexico’s southeast.
Even during the spike in demand for electricity during summer, there will be sufficient generation capacity, he said.
Guillermo García Alcocer, president of the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), said Wednesday that the south of the country is at risk of suffering gas and electricity shortages due to a lack of infrastructure, while energy sector expert Edgar Ocampo Telléz said earlier this week that the real cause of the blackouts on the Yucatán peninsula was a lack of gas to generate power.
But Noé Peña, director general of the CFE transmission division, said the blackout last week and another last month were caused by the burning of sugar cane fields.
He explained that there are sugar cane plantations beneath 55 kilometers of transmission lines on the peninsula, adding that CFE personnel had met with more than 100 growers and reached an agreement so that the latter carry out future harvests without first burning their crops.
At his morning press conference yesterday, President López Obrador also said that fires were to blame for the blackouts but raised the possibility that they were deliberately lit to sabotage the transmission lines.
“There have been blackouts in the southeast and they are being investigated because it could have been sabotage . . .” he said.
“We can’t rule it out because the two blackouts have been related to fires in the same place,” López Obrador added.
Bartlett agreed with the president that transmission lines could have been deliberately damaged and said that security was being strengthened to ensure that the lines are permanently protected.
The CFE also announced yesterday that it is investing 2 billion pesos (US $106.5 million) to strengthen the electricity-carrying capacity of transmission lines between Ticul, Yucatán, and Escárcega, Campeche.
Peña said the project will be undertaken in two stages. The first, which is already under way, will be completed in May next year and the second will finish a year later.
The aim is to “double the capacity . . . of that route. We’re working on a double [transmission] line . . .” he said.
“What we’re doing is changing the conductors, technically they’re called high-temperature conductors. With the same structures, we’re going to give greater energy transfer capacity to the southeast [of the country] . . . It will give us greater [power] reliability . . .” Peña explained.
A new transformer bank will also be installed in Escárcega, he said.
The CFE supplies electricity to almost two million consumers on the Yucatán peninsula, of whom more than 1.6 million in Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche were affected by the April 5 blackout, which lasted for more than three hours.
Michel Salum, president of the Mérida Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Services, said that at least 20,000 businesses were among the CFE customers that lost power, causing losses in the millions of pesos.
A swarm of bees looking for a new home. Jesús Moreno
Mention the words ataque de abejas (bee attack) to anyone living in rural Mexico and for the next half hour you will surely hear story after story about relatives and friends whose brush with bees ended either miraculously well or tragically bad.
“We went on horseback to an old mill on our rancho,” María Cristina Barragán told me, “and bees swarmed out of a hole in the wall. They covered the faces of my teenage daughter and her friend and all four of us were stung again and again until we jumped into a canal full of water to escape them.
“That’s when they went straight for our horses. In the end, the four of us lived, but three of our horses and one of our dogs died.”
The so-called killer-bee problem began in 1957 when 26 Tanzanian swarms escaped quarantine in Brazil. They began breeding with local bees, resulting in the Africanization of bees throughout most of the Americas.
The new hybrid turned out to be a very sensitive and aggressive creature, quite ready to chase “invaders” of their territory for kilometers. In the late 1980s most of Mexico was Africanized and today the hybrid is slowing conquering the United States.
Africanized bees attacking in Texas.
According to The New York Times, the first U.S. citizen to die of an Africanized bee attack was Lino Lopez, an 82-year-old rancher who was stung to death in Harlingen, Texas, in 1993.
When I sat down with members of a special committee which was set up in 1991 to control Africanized bees in metro Guadalajara, I was amazed to learn that they receive between 200 and 300 bee-attack emergency calls every month, all year round. “And that is just inside the boundaries of greater Guadalajara,” they told me.
The reason I was meeting with this committee was because I too have experienced perhaps more than my share of bee attacks while beating through the bush looking for caves. On one occasion I was chased half a kilometer by a swarm and one of my companions ended up in the hospital after receiving over 60 stings.
This is why, some years ago, I took special interest in reports about a non-toxic spray called BeeAlert that could halt a bee or wasp attack and allow victims to slip away.
I looked up the inventor of BeeAlert, Will Baird of Houston, Texas, and asked him to tell me his bee-attack story.
“It wasn’t I who was attacked,” he told me, “it was my neighbor — a young man about to be married — and he died as a result. He was on a tractor pulling a huge grass mower and the noise upset the bees in his own hive, which he didn’t realize had become Africanized.
BeeAlert non-toxic spray is now in Mexico.
“They poured out of the hive and began stinging him viciously on his head and arms. As a result, he fell off the tractor and the mower blades cut off his legs. It was a tragedy, and I set out to find something that could prevent this happening to other people.”
During the following months, Baird decided to seek a way for people to defend themselves against an attack by Africanized bees. He began with smoke-generating devices on tractors and then had an inspiration: what about water vapor instead of smoke? He soon found out that bees have a defensive mechanism to prevent their drowning in a spray of water.
“Bees breathe through their thorax,” he explains, “and they have waxy hairs around the thorax which make the water bead up, so the flow of air is unimpeded.”
Baird next searched for a formula that would allow water to bypass the waxy hairs. Once he found it, he discovered that bees greatly disliked being caught inside a soapy mist. “They communicate among themselves,” he told me. “Those inside the mist immediately warn the rest of the swarm, which will then hover above the spray but no longer try to penetrate it.”
Because the bees are forced to stand off, their victims are given the precious moments they need to move away from the “hot zone” around an Africanized bee hive.
“What’s unique about this liquid,” says Baird, “is that it is completely non-toxic both to people and to the environment. It simply interferes with the bees’ breathing.” He points out that it can be safely sprayed directly on the body and face of a person covered with bees, unlike an insecticide or firefighting foam, both of which are toxic.
Spraying BeeAlert overhead with a circular motion produces a protective halo.
When I asked him whether he has received any feedback from his customers, Baird replied, “Just one week ago I got a phone call. ‘Is this Will Baird?’ asked the caller. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well, I want to thank you,’ said the voice. ‘You saved my life.’”
Baird’s caller had been operating a bulldozer. When he began to move some boulders, killer bees swarmed out and began stinging him. He jumped off the bulldozer and ran towards a Jeep where a friend was waiting.
The bees followed him and immediately attacked the friend and his dog, both of which were sitting in the unroofed vehicle. By chance, the friend had a can of BeeAlert aerosol in the car and sprayed it upward, in a circular motion. The bees then stopped their attack and after a few moments, the men and the dog left the scene, having received only a few stings.
“In short,” says Baird, “it works.”
This approach causes minimum harm to bees which are, of course, endangered. It seems to me Baird’s solution should be brought to the attention of organizations throughout the Americas dedicated to protecting the public.
Mexico has taken a step in that direction. In January of 2015, Jalisco’s Industrias Melder, pioneers in animal nutrition, decided to import BeeAlert from the U.S. in 14-oz. environmentally-friendly aerosol cans, especially for the benefit of their customers living on ranches where bee attacks are common.
[soliloquy id="76165"]
Scrupulously following Mexico’s complex import regulations, it took Melder nearly four years to obtain permission to bring this non-toxic, shampoo-like spray across the border and as a result, BeeAlert is now available in Mexico at Supervet stores in the Guadalajara area or can be ordered online for shipment anywhere in the country. For more information, call 018007137037.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
The federal agency responsible for transparency and freedom of information has ordered National Defense (Sedena) to release viability studies for the airport to be built at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base in México state.
National Transparency Institute (Inai) commissioners unanimously approved a request from a private citizen that asked them to direct Sedena to provide information about the airport project, including topographical and environmental studies and those related to the use of runways and airspace.
When asked directly by the citizen for the information, Sedena said it didn’t have the studies even though it has been given responsibility for building the airport.
Inai ordered the department to carry out an exhaustive search for the documents.
Commissioner Blanca Lilia Ibarra said it was essential for society to be informed about the construction of the Santa Lucía airport, which the federal government is pursuing after canceling the partially-built Mexico City airport.
Ibarra described the project as “urgent” considering the “saturation” of the current airport.
She cited data from the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT) showing that by 2021 airports in central Mexico will be required to meet the demand of 50 million passengers annually and 540 billion tonnes of cargo.
“That’s why we need a quality [airport] project that satisfies the transport needs of the center of the country,” Ibarra said.
The government also plans to upgrade the existing airport in Mexico City and the Toluca International Airport.
Alexandre de Juniac, general director of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said in February that operating three airports within close proximity to each other in Mexico City and México state will be “complex” and “challenging.”
Some aviation experts contend that the Santa Lucía site and the existing Mexico City airport are too close together to operate simultaneously because aircraft would be dangerously close to each other in the same limited airspace as they descend to land.
Despite concerns, the federal government remains committed to the project.
When he was sworn in on December 1, President López Obrador pledged that the 70-billion-peso (US $3.7-billion) Santa Lucía Air Force Base will be operating as Mexico City’s new airport in three years.
The president contends that canceling the airport initiated by his predecessor’s administration and pursuing the Santa Lucía project instead will save the government more than 100 billion pesos and solve the saturation problem at the current airport more quickly.
At left, opponents of the amendment pray while supporters wave the flag.
Yucatán lawmakers have rejected an amendment to the state’s constitution that would have allowed same-sex marriage.
The state Congress voted 15 to 9 against taking out wording in the constitution that affirms heterosexual marriage as the only union recognized by state law.
Article 94, which states that reproduction is the implicit goal of marriage, was added to the constitution in 2009 after a non-governmental organization, Red Pro Yucatán, gathered over 9,000 signatures urging Congress to pass legislation to ban same-sex marriage.
PAN congresswoman Rosa Adriana Díaz Lizama, who had previously made public her intention to vote against the amendment, proposed that the vote be anonymous and videos and cameras kept away from the chamber during the procedure.
Critical response to the decision soon followed.
A spokesperson for the Collective for the Protection of All Yucatán Families said the decision was an affront to families in the state.
“As long as there are families that are treated as second-class and don’t receive the same acknowledgement under the law, it cannot be said that there are protections for families in the Yucatán,” said Carlos Escoffié Duarte.
He said it was contradictory to argue against same-sex marriage under the pretext of protecting families, because the amendment’s failure will effectively mean that many families made up of same-sex couples will be prohibited from receiving a wide range of social benefits.
Several activists and lawmakers promised to fight the decision and a hashtag to help do so was launched on Twitter: #YaEsHoraYucatán (Now is the time, Yucatán).
Escoffié Duarte insisted that for his organization, the vote would not be the final word on the matter.
“This isn’t the end . . . We are going to continue and we aren’t going to disband until they recognize the rights of everyone to form a family.”
López Obrador, left, and the PRD's Soto, far right.
President López Obrador has been accused by his former party of pushing the country towards authoritarianism in a scathing attack published in a Mexico City newspaper.
In a full-page advertisement in Reforma, the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) said that López Obrador was undoing reforms implemented over the past 30 years that were designed to keep the power of the state in check.
“We’re in the process of restoring a presidential, centralizing and authoritarian system that weakens and suppresses the legislative branch and undermines the independence of the judiciary,” the PRD said.
“We are not exaggerating. This regression to authoritarianism is being revealed in many areas,” the advertisement read, and went on to cite eight.
Among them: striking a blow against federalism through the creation of powerful state delegates, the continued militarization of security, attacks against autonomous government agencies and a lack of transparency.
Today, the PRD’s Michoacán director explained that the party was issuing a call to “progressive forces” to create a united anti-AMLO front.
Antonio Soto Sánchez said López Obrador “has not delivered. It looks like he is still campaigning for election, so the PRD has decided to call on progressive forces to unite to form a progressive opposition force and act as a counterweight to the federal government . . .”
López Obrador held power as mayor of Mexico City for the PRD between 2000 and 2005 and subsequently stood as the party’s candidate at the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections.
However, after finishing as runner-up for the second consecutive time in 2012, he split from the party to form the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena party, taking thousands of PRD supporters and members with him.
The fortunes of the PRD have since dwindled and it fared poorly at last year’s elections.
López Obrador has held daily press conferences at the National Palace during which he aims to set the day’s political agenda and often criticizes his political, civil society and media opponents.
Grupo Reforma, which published yesterday’s ad, has often been described as “prensa fifi” (snobbish press) by the leftist leader.
The president has frequently taken aim at past presidents who held power during the so-called “neoliberal period,” accusing them of corruption and causing all manner of other problems faced by the country, including the poor financial position of the state oil company and high levels of violence.
López Obrador claims that he is democratizing freedom with his daily news conferences – his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto rarely fronted the media – and denies that he is aiming to install an authoritarian government.
“We respect freedoms and the right to dissent,” the president said on March 8, a mantra he often repeats.
Nevertheless, government opponents – and some analysts – continue to contend that López Obrador is concentrating power in the federal executive.
Shannon K. O’Neil wrote that from the beginning of his administration the president “has undermined democratic norms and checks and balances,” often choosing “to work outside the formal legislative process,” even though the coalition led by his Morena party has a majority in both houses of Congress.
López Obrador speaks at event remembering Emiliano Zapata.
Indigenous groups rejected the federal government’s Maya Train project at rallies in Chiapas yesterday to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata.
Members of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Indigenous Government Council (CIG) participated in protests in the southern state and vowed to stop the rail project that intends to link cities and towns on the Yucatán peninsula to Palenque, Chiapas.
Protesters charged that the federal government plans to “impose” the project on indigenous communities using the National Guard but pledged that they won’t be intimidated or silenced.
At a rally in San Cristóbal de las Casas, CNI and CIG members declared that the Andrés Manuel López Obrador-led government has lied to indigenous people and discriminated against them.
Indigenous communities on the Yucatán peninsula also rejected the Maya Train in a statement issued in November, declaring that nobody had asked their opinion about it.
Experts have warned that construction of the project poses environmental risks to underground water networks and the long-term survival of the jaguar, while the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think tank, said it could cost more than 10 times the 150-billion-peso figure (US $8 billion) estimated by the federal government.
Cancelation of the Maya Train was not the only demand of protesters in Chiapas yesterday.
Members of the CNTE teachers’ union continued to call for the total repeal of the previous federal government’s 2013 education reform.
In Michoacán, teachers made the same demand during a march through the streets of the state capital, Morelia, to commemorate the death of Zapata, who was assassinated in Morelos on April 10, 1919 – the penultimate year of the Mexican Revolution.
Teachers, farmers and others also marked the centenary of Zapata’s death in Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Mexico City, among other states, as did President López Obrador.
‘We are not radical conservatives,’ reads the sign addressed to the president, but ‘indigenous communities defending our right to life.’
He travelled to Cuernavaca, Morelos, to pay tribute to “one of the heroes in our history” and condemn those of the “neoliberal period” for deliberately promoting that history be forgotten, “turning historical dates into long, holiday weekends.”
It was the first time that the commemoration ceremony has been held in Cuernavaca. Normally it takes place in Chinameca, where Zapata was killed, or Cuautla, where he was buried.
But this year there were concerns that the event would be disrupted by protesters who are disappointed in the government’s decision to go ahead with a thermoelectric power plant in the area, so it was moved to the state capital.
While the president lavished praise on the revolutionary hero, power plant protesters held their own ceremony in Chinameca, equally generous in their praise, but with the belief that Zapata would have been on their side.
Semi with two trailers was an effective obstruction yesterday in Reynosa.
Gangsters were on the move in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, shutting down major streets and generating alarm among citizens yesterday.
Residents in the south of the city reported a confrontation between two groups of armed civilians at about 4:00pm.
But when police and military forces attempted to respond they found their way obstructed by blockades of cars, trucks, road spikes and burning tires.
State authorities reported that gangsters erected 11 blockades in the city to evade police pursuit. In several neighborhoods, young men forced residents out of their cars to use the vehicles to block roads.
In others, groups of young men laid out road spikes, damaging several vehicles on Morelos, Hidalgo, Colosio, Viaducto and Solidaridad avenues and the Matamoros-Monterrey highway.
Road spikes contributed to the chaos.
In the north industrial park in the maquiladora factory area, armed civilians commandeered water trucks to block a road and in the Puerta del Sol area another group erected a blockade using buses and set fire to a mound of tires to reduce visibility.
The local newspaper Hoy Tamaulipas reported that security forces were able to remove the vehicles and other obstacles a short time later.
Earlier yesterday, there were armed confrontations on the San Fernando highway and in the neighborhoods of Almendros, Paseo de las Flores and La Retama.
The motivation for the blockades and confrontations between armed groups was not clear, but unofficially the Escorpiones (the Scorpions), a branch of the Gulf Cartel, was involved.
No arrests were made and no injuries were reported as a result of yesterday’s incidents.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has been on the offensive in Veracruz since the new governor took office late last year, and police are among the victims of their violence.
Four police officers have been murdered in the Gulf coast state since Morena party Governor Cuitláhuac García was sworn in on December 1.
The CJNG is believed to be responsible for the abduction and murder of Yanga municipal police officer Edgar Hernández in December, and last month the cartel ambushed police on the highway between La Tinaja and Cosamaloapan, killing one officer and wounding four more.
The cartel also set up fiery blockades on several highways during the three-day period in an attempt to hinder police operations against it.
The offensive followed a successful police operation to dismantle a CJNG cell that was operating in the municipality of Tierra Blanca.
At the time, the governor said the violence was a response to police efforts against the cartel.
“What happened . . . was a propagandistic reaction . . . because we made some important arrests and seizures and they obviously reacted very angrily,” García said.
However, the violence has worsened in the first months of this year and there are fears that the security situation will deteriorate even further.
There were more than 400 intentional homicides in Veracruz during January, February and March, and almost 30% of all kidnappings in Mexico in 2019 have occurred in the state. It also leads in femicides, with 21 in the first two months of the year, up from 12 in the same period last year.
A collective made up of family members of missing persons found a hidden grave in the municipality of Río Blanco last month that contained 12 dismembered bodies.
Narco-banners have also appeared in different parts of the state.
On one narcomanta, the CJNG accused state Public Security Secretary Hugo Gutiérrez of being in cahoots with Los Zetas, while others that have been attributed to the Sinaloa Cartel warned of the return of the “old school” to the state and called for a truce between criminal groups.
“Align yourselves or I’ll align you,” said one banner, allegedly signed by Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Security chief Gutiérrez arrived in Veracruz from Nuevo León, where he was head of strategic operations in the Attorney General’s Office until he was let go under suspicion of being involved in extortion.
Twenty-eight police officers were also dismissed for the same reason.
The state’s Fuerza Civil, which is under Gutiérrez’s command, is under scrutiny by the Human Rights Commission. It has received three complaints of sexual abuse, forced disappearance and extrajudicial executions. Another 25 complaints accuse officers of excessive use of force.
The United States-based home improvement store Lowe’s announced that its nine-year venture into the Mexican market was coming to an end with the closure of its 13 stores.
Rumors of an impending closure first emerged in November when the firm was reported to be analyzing its options.
Yesterday, the exit was confirmed when Lowe’s México issued a statement declaring that “after several months of analyzing alternatives, [the firm] has decided to permanently shut down its operation in Mexico, effective today.”
An anonymous source told the newspaper Milenio that Lowe’s shutdown in Mexico is the result of the firm having failed to achieve adequate sales, and was unable to compete with competitor Home Depot.
