Residents of a town in Guerrero detained 40 soldiers this week to demand that they halt operations to destroy opium poppies.
On Wednesday, residents of Campo Morado, a community in the municipality of Heliodoro Castillo, set up a roadblock to prevent the soldiers — presumably deployed to destroy poppy plants — from leaving the upper Sierra region.
Farmers called on the federal and state governments to provide assistance so that local farmers are not forced to cultivate poppies to survive.
The soldiers were allowed to leave the upper Sierra region yesterday.
State security spokesman Roberto Alvarez Heredia denied that the soldiers were actually detained, explaining that residents simply “took advantage of their presence to let them know their concerns.”
The Guerrero government said yesterday that officials from several departments and military personnel had met with representatives from several communities in Heliodoro Castillo.
Preliminary agreements were signed requiring the state to provide support to the communities, as well as machinery to to carry out roadwork.
Another meeting has been scheduled for April 25 in the state capital, Chilpancingo.
The farmers claim that the state government promised last November that drug crops would not be destroyed and that alternative means of support would be provided. Neither promise was kept, they say.
Prices for Mexican opium gum plummeted by as much as 80% last year due to the rise in demand for the synthetic opioid fentanyl among United States drug users, according to an independent study.
Protesting students in Chihuahua. The sign reads, 'You don't study with your hair.'
Can the length of a student’s hair have an impact on academic progress? For male preparatory school students in Chihuahua the answer is yes: they are not allowed in school if their hair is longer than two centimeters or if it is cut in what the principal’s office described as “modern styles.”
A crackdown yesterday on offending students attending at least one campus of the state-run Colegio de Bachilleres de Chihuahua (Cobach) sparked protests by students, who accused the principal’s office of violating their right to learn.
About 50 students mounted a demonstration outside the school.
State lawmaker Deyanira Ozaeta issued a statement asserting that no school’s rules should be “above the rights enshrined in the constitution,” and that denying the students entry was unacceptable and discriminatory.
The school says students — and parents — are aware of the rules and must sign off on them to be accepted by the school, which has the option to bar access if they do not comply.
The rules require that students tuck in their shirts, wear a belt, black shoes with socks and — for boys — wear their hair short.
The purpose of the rules “is to promote order, responsibility and respect among the youths,” and abiding by them “contributes to and guarantees a structure of appropriate relationships and behavior that promote the community’s development following a culture of legality.”
The school offers free haircuts to any student who wants one.
Teachers burn furniture and documents in Guerrero.
While members of the CNTE teachers’ union met yesterday with federal education officials to discuss civics classes in public schools, teachers from another union were vandalizing government offices in Acapulco.
The Guerrero teachers ransacked the offices as part of continuing demands for the repeal of the 2013 education reforms.
According to Education Secretary Esteban Moctezuma, the seventh meeting between federal authorities and CNTE leaders yesterday in Mexico City was the first time that the two parties have discussed potential changes to curriculum, such as civics, physical education and environmental science classes, with any substance.
Also substantial was the violent attack on the state’s finance department offices by teachers belonging to the CETEG, a Guerrero-based teachers’ union.
Hooded teachers armed with sticks stormed the offices, demanding that employees exit the building before proceeding to break glass in windows and doors, spray-paint the walls and burn chairs and government documents on the sidewalk outside.
The teachers also blocked the Miguel Alemán boulevard for two hours using four public buses before moving on to commandeer a toll booth on the Cuernavaca-Acapulco highway for another two hours.
In contrast, Moctezuma expressed satisfaction with the CNTE meetings, saying they helped clarify doubts about the curriculum laid out in the education reform.
“We believe that the [CNTE leadership] is truly interested in bettering many things in public education, and we want to cooperate so that anyone who has anything to say about public education in Mexico has a space to do so.”
Upon leaving the meeting yesterday, a legal advisor to the government told reporters that federal authorities “are very close” to an agreement with the teachers, who have been demanding the complete abrogation of the previous government’s education reforms.
Reaching agreements with the CNTE has been an objective for many previous governments — federal and state — but no accord has ever completely satisfied the union, renowned for its annual strikes and blockades.
Rodríguez speaks at a press conference yesterday after being announced as the head of the new National Guard.
An army general with extensive experience fighting and studying Mexico’s notorious drug cartels will be the commander of the National Guard, President López Obrador announced.
Luis Rodríguez Bucio, an expert in anti-narco strategy and intelligence, is currently in the process of retiring from the army but will begin his new post immediately.
The new security force was declared constitutional last month following the approval of the federal Congress and all 32 states. It will initially be made up of 60,000 members, including military police from the army and navy and Federal Police officers.
Rodríguez, a Michoacán native, has more than four decades of military experience since becoming a cadet in 1973.
In January 1989 he was transferred to the Estado Presidencial Mayor – the institution formerly charged with protecting the president of Mexico – and served as a deputy chief with responsibility for the planning and execution of logistics at events attended by then-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
In the early 1990s, Rodríguez rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and served as deputy chief of an operation to eradicate marijuana and opium poppy plants in the Golden Triangle, a region made up of parts of the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango.
Within army ranks, Rodríguez is considered to be the most experienced general in active service because of his expertise in military intelligence and counter-insurgency tactics, and extensive participation in public security tasks.
During his career, the 62-year-old has served as a commander of battalions deployed to operations in Temamatla, México state; Cancún, Quintana Roo; and Monterrey, Nuevo León.
Rodríguez was chief of military intelligence between 2004 and 2010 and between 2011 and 2013 he coordinated anti-narco operations in Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and San Luis Potosí.
The general also been the director of the military’s research and development center and until recently headed up the Council of Delegates of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington D.C.
In addition to his on-the-ground experience fighting drug cartels, Rodríguez has also studied them extensively.
Members of the National Guard coordinating body are, from left, are Núñez, García and Trujillo.
In 2003, he completed a master’s thesis entitled “Capacity of armed groups that have emerged in the country and their effect on national security” and in 2016 the general finished a PhD thesis called “The strategy to combat drug trafficking of president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.”
Rodríguez has also completed military training courses in Germany.
At his morning press conference yesterday, López Obrador also announced other appointments to leadership positions in the National Guard.
Xicoténcatl de Azolohua Núñez Márquez, an army general, Patricia Rosalinda Trujillo Mariel, a Federal Police commissioner, and Gabriel García Chávez, a retired navy admiral, will head up the security force’s operational coordinating body.
Public Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said “they will be in charge of the fundamental leadership duties of the National Guard” although they will be under the civilian authority of his department.
The military appointments triggered criticism yesterday from the president of the National Human Rights Commission.
Luis Raúl González Pérez said the commander of the force should ideally be someone with experience in civilian security forces.
And if the National Guard is to have leaders with a military background, they should have at least left their positions before being appointed to roles in the new security force, he added.
Rodríguez’s retirement from the army is expected to be formalized in August.
Non-governmental organizations rejected the current government’s plan to create the force, contending that it will only perpetuate the unsuccessful militarization model implemented by Felipe Calderón in 2006.
President López Obrador has announced that all customs personnel in Manzanillo, Colima, will be relieved of their posts in light of corruption.
“All of those officials are going to go away. We have very bad reports on customs in Manzanillo, and we’re going to wipe it totally clean,” the president told reporters in response to a question about Captain Héctor Mora Gómez, chief of customs in Manzanillo.
Several news outlets reported last week that Mora had not included several businesses he owns in his declaration of assets.
Investigations by the federal Attorney General’s Office and the United States Drug Enforcement Administration have linked him to money laundering, drug trafficking since the 1980s and possible ties to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Addressing reporters, López Obrador said that a fresh slate for customs in Manzanillo was just the beginning of a nationwide plan to purge corrupt officials from customs offices around Mexico.
“The days of profiting and scheming in customs are over, and in the case of Manzanillo, we’re going to completely clean it out.”
The president said a high-level commission had visited Manzanillo to investigate and discovered institutionalized corruption. He added that Manzanillo was far from being the only customs office guilty of questionable practices.
He called on corrupt officials to resign rather than to risk future scandals.
“Because if they cling to [their posts] thinking that they’re going to sneak by, they’re not going to get away with it, and taking care to follow procedure with dignity, sometimes they are going to be exposed and thrust into the spotlight. It’s not worth it — the days of corruption and impunity are over.”
Despite the investigations into Mora’s activities, the transportation secretary confirmed a week ago that he would remain in charge of Manzanillo customs. In January, López Obrador confirmed Mora’s posting, describing him as an honest person.
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.
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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.”
