López Obrador revisits Chiapas to refine tree-planting project

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August 6, 2018

house on hill tijuana — Living on the edge.

Five houses in Tijuana, Baja California, have been deemed unsafe after the ground at the foot of a hillside was destabilized, presumably by an excavation.

One of the affected homeowners saw saw his backyard fall away and tumble down on to a street below in the Los Altos neighborhood on Saturday.

The word among neighbors is that the purchaser of a piece of land at the foot of the hill used a backhoe to remove some material in order to build a garage. The land above has started to give way.

The local Civil Protection office has ordered the evacuation of 33 people — including 12 minors — due to the risk presented by the unstable soil.

Five houses are at significant risk, and will probably be condemned.

Civil Protection chief José Rito Portugal said the landslide has only caused cracks in some houses, but there is a “very high probability” the the entire hillside will collapse due to the weight of the dwellings built on it.

One resident of Los Altos told the newspaper El Universal that “the earth will one day swallow Tijuana,” and he might not be far from the truth.

Saturday’s was the sixth such incident since December 2016, and according to the Civil Protection office, 300 houses have collapsed, affecting almost 750 people.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Michoacán blockades triggered by security operation against gang

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August 6, 2018

A vehicle burns at a Michoacán blockade. — A vehicle burns on a Michoacán highway.

Groups of armed civilians blocked highways and burned vehicles in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán yesterday in an attempt to obstruct a joint state and federal security operation.

Nevertheless, at least 40 presumed criminals were arrested and an undisclosed quantity of drugs seized, including 35 grams of a substance suspected to be methamphetamine.

Blockades were reported in the municipalities of Apatzingán, Mujica and Buenavista, all of which are known for the presence of organized crime. A bus was among at least three vehicles set on fire.

Cells of the Los Viagra criminal gang are believed to be behind the current wave of violence and instability plaguing the Tierra Caliente region.

In response to the blockades, state police carried out flyovers and increased patrols of the region to break them up, search for criminal targets and provide security to residents.

State and federal security forces — including the army, navy and Federal Police — also arrested suspected gang members in the municipalities of Villa Jiménez, Sixto Verduzco, Zacapu, La Piedad, Puruándiro, Lázaro Cárdenas, Arteaga, Uruapan, Apatzingán and Zitácuaro.

The arrests were made as part of the security mission known as Operación Limpieza (Operation Clean-up).

The state’s Secretariat of Public Security said the operation will continue in Lázaro Cárdenas, Apatzingán and Zamora in order to deter crime and maintain order.

Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles Conejo said in a Twitter post that the government “won’t drop its guard” in the face of the resistance criminal groups are putting up against the security operation.

“With coordinated and strong actions against crime, we will continue cleansing the Tierra Caliente region [of organized crime] within the framework of Operación Limpieza,” he wrote.

In addition to the arrests, yesterday’s deployment of more than 1,000 security officials also seized seven vehicles that had been reported stolen.

A further 89 people were given infringement notices for public disturbance offenses.

The Tierra Caliente, which is also made up of municipalities in Guerrero and México state, is notorious for violent crime, drug trafficking and lawlessness.

In March this year, the army sent in more than 1,200 troops to Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente area in response to violence unleashed by the Los Viagra gang.

Source: El Financiero (sp), La Voz de Michoacán (sp)

6-year-old’s arm amputated after reattachment rejected

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August 6, 2018

The Monterrey hospital where the operation took place.

The six-year-old boy whose left arm was reattached just over a week ago in Monterrey, Nuevo León, had to undergo surgery again late last week to remove the limb after his body rejected it.

He remains in intensive care.

The boy lost his arm on July 29 after putting it inside an operating washing machine.

Fast action by his mother, a nurse, to contain the bleeding along with quick response by Red Cross paramedics have been credited with saving the boy’s life.

After a 10-hour procedure, doctors at the Hospital of Traumatology and Orthopedics No. 21 successfully reattached the amputated limb, which had been placed in ice immediately after the accident.

Five days after the reattachment surgery, the youngster contracted a fever and his arm began to turn purple. Physicians decided to amputate the limb in order to avoid further health complications.

A source close to the case told the newspaper El Universal that the boy’s arm was severely injured after getting caught in the washing machine, and that getting the arteries and tendons to bond was a complicated task.

Source: El Universal (sp)

10 bodies uncovered so far in Guadalajara hidden grave

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August 6, 2018

Investigators outside the house where bodies were buried.

Ten bodies have been recovered from a clandestine grave in a house in Guadalajara since Friday after the owner alerted authorities of foul odors.

The bodies were discovered just a few streets from the city’s historic center in the Santa Elena de la Cruz neighborhood.

The owner was renovating the house in preparation for selling it when the fetid odors were detected from a patio area. On Friday, municipal police located one body at ground level and after some digging came across three more, all in an advanced state of decomposition.

Excavation with heavy machinery continued on Saturday, unearthing four more corpses. Sources close to the investigation told the newspaper El Universal that two more bodies were exhumed yesterday on the same property.

Autopsies are being carried out at the Guadalajara Forensic Medical Service (Semefo).

Until a week ago the house was rented to a man who one neighbor suspected of selling drugs.

Eighteen bodies were found in hidden graves at three different locations in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara during July. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel is suspected of being responsible.

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

Nudes in the seaweed is Spencer Tunick’s latest photography project

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August 6, 2018

A photo shot by Spencer Tunick Saturday in Tulum.

The masses of sargassum seaweed that have washed up on Mexico’s Caribbean coast beaches inspired an impromptu nude photoshoot Saturday by renowned New York photographer Spencer Tunick.

The 51-year-old photographer, known internationally for his large-scale nude shoots, told the newspaper La Jornada that he was having an early dinner in Tulum, Quintana Roo, when a new friend told him about the sargassum problem and suggested that it could be incorporated into a new photo project.

“At our table, there were about 12 people. That was when José Antonio Silva, representative of the Makers movement, sat next to me and began to tell me about the sargassum problem,” Tunick said.

“He even wanted me to do a piece that night. It surprised me a lot, then I looked around and thought it was possible, as there were other diners who could be asked to participate to form a larger group.”

Silva invited Tunick to take a walk on the beach, which opened the artist’s eyes to the extent of the problem and convinced him to follow through with the proposal.

“It was incredible, José said that the moment to act was now and that I could help by doing a spontaneous work. By pure luck I had a camera with me. In total, 25 people posed, enough to create a good piece, which is expected to make people aware of the problem and [lead to] possible solutions in the immediate term,” he said.

For the spontaneous shots, Tunick asked his naked subjects to partially cover themselves with fresher and greener sargassum collected near the water because the older, brown seaweed was smelly and infested with mosquitoes and their larvae.

Then the photographer got to work, shooting the participants in different poses while draped in the seaweed that has arrived on Quintana Roo beaches en masse this year, discoloring the turquoise waters and white sand that make the coastline so popular with tourists.

The sargassum “resembles a massive invasive organism that seizes the coasts and beaches of Quintana Roo and the Caribbean. What was once a pristine beach now looks like the Upside Down world from the Stranger Things series,” Tunick said.

The photographer later uploaded a short video of the shoot to his Instagram account with a caption that read: “Seaweed is invading the beaches and coastline of the Yucatán and Caribbean. It’s a Natural Disaster due to humans.”

Tunick, a frequent visitor to Mexico with his family, photographed 18,000 naked people in Mexico City’s central square — the zócalo — in 2007 and has remarked that “Mexicans are very open-minded” about baring all for the camera.

He also completed two projects in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, in 2014 and 2016.

The first featured 100 naked women wearing only garlands of orange marigolds in accordance with a Day of the Dead theme while in 2016 he shot 20 nude people standing on their heads in a work intended to illustrate the upside-down nature of the world order.

Source: La Jornada (sp), Yucatán Expat Life (en)

Seaweed is invading the beaches and coastlines of the Yucatan and Caribbean. It’s a Natural Disaster due to humans. Link to story in Profile. #SOSTulum #sargassum #globalwarming #sargasso #climatechangeisreal @letsallbemakers @lajornadaonline @lajornadamaya

A post shared by Spencer Tunick (@spencertunick) on Aug 4, 2018 at 7:43am PDT

Mexico finishes with record 341 medals at Central American Games

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August 4, 2018

Gold medalist Patricia Sánchez at the finish line of the women's 10,000-meter race.

Mexico finished the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, Colombia, with a total of 341 medals, the highest number ever won at the regional sporting event.

Mexico’s tally — which included 132 gold, 118 silver and 91 bronze medals — was 99 more than the number won by the Cuban team, which finished in second place with 242 medals, of which 102 were gold.

Colombia finished third despite winning 28 more medals than Cuba because it won fewer gold medals.

For Mexico, it was the first time that its team came out on top of the medal tally at a Central American and Caribbean Games at which Cuba also competed. At previous games it was only the most successful country when the island nation was absent from the competition.

The delegación azteca at this year’s event was made up of 675 athletes who competed across the whole gamut of sports that made up the event.

The team’s female athletes fared slightly better than the men, winning 180 medals compared to 161.

Valentín Yanes, an official with the National Sports Commission (Conade) told a press conference after the conclusion of the games that Mexico’s strong showing was the result of many years of hard work but added that greater challenges are still to come.

“We have to continue with our growth, with our hard work, we can’t be too sure of ourselves. The [2019] Pan American Games includes first-world sporting nations, such as the United States and Canada, and then the [2020] Olympic Games come and that’s . . . where we should be aiming,” he said.

Yanes also said that each medal winner will receive cash prizes of 50,000 pesos (US $2,700) for gold, 25,000 pesos (US $1,350) for silver and 12,500 pesos (US $675) for bronze, adding that multiple medal winners will only be eligible to claim once for their best result.

As the bumper medal crop indicates, the highlights for the Mexican team in Barranquilla were many but some performances stand out as being particularly memorable.

They include Diego del Real breaking a 20-year-old games record to win gold in the hammer throw, Juan Luis Barrios winning his eighth career gold medal at the games in the 10,000-meter running event to become the region’s most successful track athlete and Daniela Rodríguez winning Mexico’s first gold at the games and in the process becoming Mexico’s most successful ever taekwondo competitor at the games.

Madaí Pérez won Mexico’s final gold medal in Colombia during the final day of competition yesterday, crossing the line first in the women’s marathon in a time of two hours, 57 minutes and 55 seconds.

The women’s soccer team also took out gold beating Costa Rica 3-1 in the final, while the pool, the shooting range and the squash court were all among the happy hunting grounds for medals for Mexico’s team.

The next edition of the games will be held in Panama City in 2022 while the 2019 Pan American Games will be held in Lima, Peru, next July and August.

Source: El Universal (sp), Televisa (sp), Marca Claro (sp), Milenio (sp)

Police nab Pemex worker for speeding — and find a cargo of stolen gasoline

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Tony Richards

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August 4, 2018

Containers of gasoline were found inside vehicle driven by Pemex employee.

A Pemex worker has been caught red-handed with stolen gasoline in Tecate, Baja California, but only because he was speeding.

The pipeline pump operator was stopped by police after he was seen traveling at high speed on the Rumorosa-Tecate highway.

When police approached the vehicle the strong smell of gasoline triggered a closer look at what the man was carrying.

They found more than 1,800 liters of Magna in 39 plastic containers, stacked inside the vehicle.

The driver was taken into custody and his truck and cargo seized.

Corruption within Pemex is widely thought to be responsible for much of the petroleum theft in Mexico, but few employees have been caught.

Source: Milenio (sp)

AMLO effect? Consumer confidence spiked 14.8% in July

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August 4, 2018

Mexico’s Consumer Confidence Index spiked sharply in July to its highest level in more than a decade, immediately after Andrés Manuel López Obrador — known as AMLO — won a landslide victory in the presidential election.

The index rose 14.8% last month, the National Statistics Institute (Inegi) said yesterday, to reach 101.7 points.

The figure was well above the 90.4 median forecast of eight analysts surveyed by news agency Bloomberg and the highest since March 2008 when it hit 102.3 points.

The only comparable surge in consumer confidence came in February last year when the index increased by just over 13%.

However, that result followed the so-called gasolinazo of January 2017 when fuel prices rose sharply to put a major dent in confidence.

“Consumers have definitely given a positive vote to the electoral results,” said Joan Enric Domene, an economist at the brokerage firm Invex Casa de Bolsa.

“People haven’t seen a substantial improvement in their quality of life yet, but they are happy with the outcome.”

The index was also up 17.8% compared to July last year.

The Inegi data is based on the National Consumer Confidence Survey that the institute carries out during the first 20 days of each month in conjunction with the Bank of México.

Confidence about Mexico’s economic outlook over the next 12 months increased by 31.9% compared to figures from the previous month, the biggest single-month jump recorded in the history of the survey.

Respondents’ confidence in their own purchasing power over the next year also increased, albeit by a lesser 11.3%.

The percentage of people who said they currently had plans to buy furniture, a television, a washing machine or another domestic appliance increased by13% compared to June figures.

The peso has also fared better since López Obrador’s election, appreciating 6.3% against the US dollar. A greenback currently buys just over 18.5 Mexican pesos.

Following his July 1 triumph, the president-elect and his prospective cabinet sought to calm fears surrounding the next government’s economic plans, a move which analysts believe has reassured investors and contributed to the peso’s strong performance.

Although household consumer confidence is up, Domene said that the same confidence hasn’t manifested itself in the business community.

“There are loose ends that the private sector is waiting to see tied up by this new government,” he said.

“Surely, in the next few months, investment from the private sector will be more reticent than consumer spending.”

López Obrador will take office for a six-year term on December 1.

Source: El Financiero (sp), Bloomberg (en)

Tourism down 30-35% due to sargassum: Playa del Carmen mayor-elect

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August 4, 2018