The incoming secretary of finance yesterday called a new Cancún-Palenque train a proposal but today a newly-elected senator for Quintana Roo announced the 100-billion-peso project (US $5.23 billion) would begin next year.
José Luis Pech Várguez said the passenger train, intended to boost tourism in the south and encourage cultural tourism in the archaeological zones of Campeche and Chiapas, will take six years to build.
Fonatur, the national tourism fund, will be in charge of the project, the Morena senator said.
The project is one that had already been put forward by Morena party leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The proposed route would run from Cancún through Tulum, Carrillo Puerto and Bacalar in Quintana Roo and Calakmul in Campeche to Palenque, Chiapas.
The first stage, Pech Várguez said, would be Cancún-Tulum, a two-year project.
Government, the private sector and communal landowners would participate as partners in the rail line, he explained.
The project has been called a bullet train but would travel at an average speed of 130 kilometers an hour, somewhat slower than most such trains.
Women, children and youths forcibly recruited by organized crime would be the main focus of an amnesty law that could be adopted by Mexico’s next federal government.
The incoming administration’s security team today begins the process of developing the proposed law, whose objective is to reduce spiraling levels of violence.
Olga Sánchez Cordero and Alfonso Durazo, whom president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador has announced he will nominate as his interior and public security secretaries, told a press conference yesterday that they would summon experts and victims of violence to participate in citizens’ forums at which legislative proposals will be discussed.
They stressed that any amnesty law that is adopted would only apply to those who have been coerced into participating in criminal activities and that anyone who has been convicted of committing a violent crime would not be eligible.
Both Sánchez and Durazo also insisted that granting amnesty would not be at the discretion of the president and that legislation would have to be approved by Congress.
An amnesty law would also be subject to restrictions contained in international agreements that Mexico has signed, they said.
Loretta Ortiz, López Obrador’s human rights adviser and a member of his transition team, said the amnesty law would not apply to high-impact crimes such as forced disappearances, homicide, human trafficking, sexual assault and extortion.
“Boys, girls, young people and women coopted by organized crime could be subject to this amnesty, as well as farmers who have been drug producers and haven’t committed any violent crime, women known as [drug] mules, those who are imprisoned for political crimes . . . and also women who commit crimes out of love, who carry drugs or weapons to support their partner,” she said.
Sánchez Cordero said the president-elect had instructed the proposed security cabinet to “use all the legal instruments at our disposal for peace and justice” and that even pardons could be granted in “very special cases.”
Durazo said the amnesty law would be part of a “Mexican recipe for peace,” adding that it would help to bring young people who have been pressured into criminal activity or turned to it out of economic necessity into the legal economy.
“There could be hundreds of thousands of youth working as lookouts for organized crime,” he said. “We have to give them a way out.”
Durazo added that López Obrador had indicated he is willing to scrap the amnesty idea if victims of crime don’t support it because “since the campaign he said that he wouldn’t do it without the consent of the victims.”
He also stressed that an amnesty law would only be one of 10 main aspects of an overall security strategy aimed at returning peace to Mexico.
Durazo reiterated yesterday that better training for police and improving their pay and conditions will be a priority for the López Obrador-led administration.
The president-elect was attacked by his opponents during the campaign period for his amnesty idea but it didn’t stop him from winning a landslide victory in last Sunday’s election.
Yesterday, he told reporters that the amnesty plan is “about a process to achieve peace, but not with impositions, but rather convincing, looking for consensus.”
The objective, López Obrador said, is to “finish the predominating violence that sadly imperils the country.”
The Mexico City neighborhood of Roma, known for hip bars and trendy restaurants, has a new hot spot: president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transition headquarters.
Hordes of media have descended on Chihuahua Street in the inner-city neighborhood this week to capture the leftist leader’s every move as he enters or leaves the house in which he meets with members of his prospective cabinet and other political movers and shakers.
Supporters of the leftist leader, who won last Sunday’s election in a landslide, have also flocked to the street in the hope of catching a glimpse of the silver-haired 64-year-old or — if they are really lucky — shaking his hand or seizing a fleeting moment to snap a selfie with Mexico’s next president as he pops his head out of his car window.
Residents of the once comparatively quiet calle have discovered that at least for the time being, they will have to get used to living on the neighborhood’s busiest street.
Some of those who arrive want to congratulate the Morena party leader or give him gifts, while others seem to be happy just being in the vicinity of the president-elect — and telling their friends and family about it.
“You’ll never guess where I am! At the house where peje is,” one AMLO supporter boasted in a telephone conversation, using the nickname López Obrador was given because the pejelagarto, a kind of garfish, is common in his home state of Tabasco.
“I’m here with all the media. Turn on the TV!”
Others, however, have more serious intentions.
One lady explained to the newspaper Milenio that she used to work for the state oil company Pemex but said that she lost her job two years ago and hasn’t been able to find work since.
The woman, identified only as Martha, showed up at AMLO’s transition headquarters with a written petition to hand over to the president-elect and after a long wait, she was finally granted access to the premises.
After 10 minutes inside, she said on her way out: “I put it right into his hands, he was very nice but he looked very serious.”
That seriousness, perhaps, was due to his considering a matter that could go some way to defining his time in office: relations with the United States.
Who is the best person to deal with a United States administration led by a president who has been frequently antagonistic towards Mexico?
At the same time Martha arrived at the Roma address, López Obrador was meeting with former Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard and the man he had proposed to be his secretary of foreign affairs, Héctor Vasconcelos.
More than 10,000 years ago, distant ancestors of modern-day elephants roamed the land where the state of Oaxaca is today.
That’s the conclusion of Eduardo Jiménez Hidalgo, a scientist at the Puerto Escondido campus of the University of the Sea (Umar) after examining fossilized bone fragments found in the southern state.
“The remains found in San Martín de los Cansecos belong to a prehistoric animal that lived during the Ice Age, identified as a gomphothere of the Cuviernonius genus, distant relatives of the current elephants,” he said.
The bones — which included parts of a jaw, a rib, a shoulder blade and a pelvic bone — were discovered by Raúl Pérez Vega, a mine worker and former employee of the federal Mexican Geological Survey.
In the latter job, Pérez had learned how to identify fossil remains so when he fortuitously came across the bone fragments while walking with his family he instinctively knew that he had found something out of the ordinary.
Location where the bone fragments were found.
He subsequently sought expert opinion in a paleontology Facebook group through which he was able to contact Carlos Castañeda Posadas, a professor at the Benemérita Autonomous University of Puebla who in turn put him into contact with Jiménez Hidalgo.
Pérez sent photos of the bones to the Puerto Escondido-based biologist, who was able to confirm their significance.
In May, Pérez accompanied a group of municipal officials and paleontologists to the site known as El Palenque, which is located about 55 kilometers south of Oaxaca city.
There, the group collected the fossilized fragments so that they could be tested to determine their exact age and to learn more about the species.
After they have been treated to avoid deterioration, it is expected that they will be put on display in the same municipality where they were found.
Given the significance of Perez’s find, Jiménez said that at some stage in the future a fossil survey will be carried out in the region.
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He added that there is a long history of fossil discoveries in Oaxaca that span the Carboniferous, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleogene, Miocene and Pleistocene periods.
Researchers from the Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the National Autonomous University (UNAM) and other universities have all studied the fossils, Jiménez said.
“Various remains of marine and continental animals have been found, for example carboniferous trilobites, turtles and Jurassic marine reptiles . . . as well as a great variety of Pleistocene mammals such as bison, camels, horses, tapirs, terrestrial sloths, mammoths, gomphotheres and rodents.”
Former gangster 'El Mijis,' center, at a press conference.
Pedro Carrizales is not your run-of-the-mill politician.
The 39-year-old father of three, who is better known by his nickname “El Mijis,” won a seat in the San Luis Potosí state Congress in Sunday’s elections but his background is likely to be vastly different from those who will join him there.
Carrizales didn’t prepare for a life in politics by studying law or another academic pursuit or by working his way up the hierarchy within the machinery of a political party.
Instead he cut his teeth on the streets of the state capital, first as a member and later as a leader of local gangs. El Mijis admits himself that he was a young hothead on the wrong path in life.
But following the death of his mother, Carrizales gave up a life of drugs, street violence and crime to help young people who were heading down the same path that he once did.
In 2002, he joined a San Luis Potosí group that is dedicated to helping the city’s youth to lead more positive lives and since 2009 has led the anti-violence organization known as Un Grito de Existencia (A Shout of Existence).
He often gives talks at schools to warn students about the dangers of drugs and abandoning their education and has also created a range of social programs aimed at reducing gang-related violence.
But even though he has fought for positive change, social justice and better lives for youth for more than 15 years, his election as a state congressman has been controversial, and this week it triggered a barrage of posts on social media that saw #ElMijis become a trending topic on Twitter.
There have also been reports that Carrizales was imprisoned for crimes that he allegedly committed in his less than exemplary past.
But the congressman-elect, who ran for office under the banner of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Together We Will Make History coalition, told the newspaper El País that the reports are wrong.
“It’s false. I’ve never been in jail although . . . police have arrested me during raids,” Carrizales said, adding “I’ve never shot a gun.”
The former gangster chose a new path.
In a separate interview with Buzzfeed News México, El Mijis explained that eight or nine years ago police arrested him at his home on a charge of the attempted homicide of four people.
However, he denied any wrongdoing and explained that there was no evidence to convict him of that crime nor was he convicted of participating in the burning of a vehicle, of which he was also accused.
Instead of judging him on his appearance or actions in the distant past, El Mijis urged the public to form an opinion about him based on his recent work.
“I’m not going to say that I come from the cradle of Moses . . . but a lot of things [said about me] were false. I ask society to look at my work. I now have international prizes for my work with Un Grito de Existencia,” he said.
Contributing to the public perception of Carrizales is that, in many people’s minds, he still looks like a gang member.
El Mijis has 11 tattoos on his arms and chest and he continues to dress as he has done for much of his life: with a kerchief around his neck, a check shirt or singlet and sometimes baggy jeans.
But Carrizales brushes off the criticism and says it is not the first time in his life that he has been judged by and suffered discrimination because of his appearance.
“They’ve called me naco [low-class/ghetto], cholo [half-caste or gangster-like in appearance],” he said.
Carrizales told El País that he had planned to run as an independent but was subsequently approached to join the Morena party-led coalition, which was not only the vessel that swept López Obrador to a landslide victory in the presidential election but also won majorities in both houses of the federal Congress
“I can’t deny that López Obrador was a boomerang of support [for me] but I’ve done a lot of work that backs me up. I’m not from Morena, I was nominated by the PT [Labor Party],” he explained.
One of the first initiatives he plans to propose as a lawmaker is a policía de barrio, or neighborhood police force, so that young people are not criminalized based on their appearance.
“A few years ago, a security guard mistreated a dog and a lot of people were outraged. When they kill a chavo banda [young person with a stereotypical gangster-like appearance] they say, ‘he was surely on the wrong path.’ We have to change that,” Carrizales said.
“There should be more cultural and sporting activities [for young people]. We’re going to show that with work, the chavos banda can also do a lot of [positive] things,” he said.
The future congressmen estimated that there are more than 1,000 gangs in the state, each with at least 30 members, meaning that “we’re going to have a very big job” but he also stressed that everyone deserves a second chance.
“. . . I have diabetes and I have seen death many times. I got stabbed because I was a gangster, they butchered my liver, punctured my lung . . . I’ve been beaten, received death threats and now that I contested the election I was targeted again, but I haven’t cracked.”
Sinaloa Cartel boss Dámaso “El Licenciado” López Núñez was extradited early this morning from the border city of Ciudad Juárez to the United States.
López, 50, whose nickname means “The Graduate,” faces charges of conspiring to distribute cocaine and commit money laundering and could face life imprisonment if convicted.
Acting Attorney General Alberto Elías Beltrán told a press conference that López is potentially a key witness against Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, who is facing a trial in September in New York state.
“This extradition is fundamental for Mexican and United States authorities due to the testimonial contribution it might have regarding Joaquín Guzmán Loera, and represents a watershed in the cooperation between both countries, especially in the exchange of information,” said Elías.
He added that López’s criminal proceedings in Mexico will be suspended, pending a resolution of his legal status in the United States.
López was employed as the internal security director of the Puente Grande penitentiary in Jalisco between 1999 and 2000. One year later, it is believed, he was a key player in Guzmán’s escape from that prison.
After the prison break, he joined the Sinaloa Cartel and soon started rising in its command structure, becoming Guzmán’s second-in-command.
After Guzmán was re-arrested in 2014 he is believed to have passed his leadership responsibilities on to López, who has been identified by United States authorities as having “a significant role in international narcotics trafficking.”
López was arrested in Mexico City in May last year.
His son, Dámaso “El Mini Lic” López Serrano, was arrested in Mexicali last July and pleaded guilty to drug smuggling charges in January in San Diego, California.
The tapir seen in the Montes Azules biosphere reserve.
Two specimens of endangered species, a pregnant Baird’s tapir and a black-and-white hawk-eagle, have been sighted in the Montes Azules biosphere reserve in the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas.
The Natural Protected Areas Commission, or Conanp, reported that the female tapir was seen near the Tzendales River in video footage that showed the animal had been injured in one eye, probably in an attack by a predator.
Conanp did not estimate how far along the pregnancy was but the mammal’s gestation period is about 400 days.
For the first week of their lives, infant Baird’s tapirs are hidden in secluded locations while their mothers forage for food and return periodically to nurse them. Later, the young follow their mothers on feeding expeditions. At three weeks of age, they are able to swim.
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Weaning occurs after one year, and sexual maturity is usually reached six to 12 months later. Baird’s tapirs can live for over 30 years.
The species has been considered vulnerable since 1996, and is under threat from poachers and deforestation.
The hawk-eagle, meanwhile, is a bird of prey found throughout a large part of tropical America, from southern Mexico to northern Argentina.
It has been considered an endangered species by the Mexican government since 2010, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature has classified it as “a species of least concern.”
Conanp said the two sightings provide evidence that shows the Montes Azules reserve is in good health.
Conanp’s Conservation Program for Species at Risk (Procer) is responsible for biological monitoring and surveillance projects and programs. It also provides environmental education and awareness activities to inform communities of the importance of protecting endangered species.
In the Montes Azules reserve Conanp works with residents of the town of Reforma Agraria, in the municipality of Maqués de Comillas.
Counting the ballots in Sunday’s presidential election is complete, the National Electoral Institute (INE) said yesterday and confirmed that the Together We Will Make History coalition’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador was the winner.
The electoral authority said just over 30 million Mexicans voted for López Obrador, representing 53.1% of the total votes cast.
It is the highest vote count of any president in Mexico’s history.
Ricardo Anaya Cortés of the National Action Party (PAN) and candidate of the For Mexico in Front coalition obtained 22.2%, or 12.6 million votes.
José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, candidate of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its Everyone for Mexico coalition, won fewer than 10 million votes, obtaining just over 16%.
The first independent candidate in a presidential race, Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez Calderón, obtained just over 5%, a total of 2.3 million votes.
The results will be formalized at an official ceremony of the executive secretariat of the INE following which it will then notify the federal electoral court. It will conduct a final count to conclude the process.
For the next four days political parties will be able to file complaints and challenge the results. Electoral authorities will have until September 6 to resolve any outstanding issues.
The official count of ballots in the election for the federal Chamber of Deputies will continue until tomorrow, to be followed by the official tally of the vote for senators.
A security collective made up of more than 300 organizations and individuals has applauded the incoming government’s plan to gradually withdraw the military from public security duties on the nation’s streets.
The #SeguridadSinGuerra (Security without War) collective also said that it is pleased that president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed secretary of public security, Alfonso Durazo, has suggested that “training police [and] improving their socio-economic conditions” is a better path towards peace.
The proposed measures are in accordance with what “national and international organizations have recommended,” the group said.
In a television interview today, Durazo reiterated that the withdrawal process would be gradual and said that the new strategy would deliver results within three years.
“We can’t be naïve,” he added “because the only responsible way to withdraw the army from the streets is to train the [non-military] security forces.”
Durazo stressed that a key part of the strategy would be to put an end to the “vicious circle” of corruption that brings about more corruption as well as impunity and insecurity.
Although it praised the military withdrawal strategy, #SeguridadSinGuerra said that campaign promises to create a National Guard and to keep the Internal Security Law (LSI) — which formally authorizes the use of the military in domestic law enforcement — were cause for alarm.
“Independently of the possible resolutions of the Supreme Court about its constitutionality, the law doesn’t contribute to peace and its very existence threatens and inhibits the exercise of human rights as recent injunction rulings from the Supreme Court have indicated, and so its validity will continue to unnecessarily violate democratic order,” the collective said in a statement.
Durazo said the new government will wait for the Supreme Court’s definitive ruling before it decides what approach to take on the LSI but he stressed that whatever decision the court makes “we’re going to guarantee transparency, accountability and internal and external controls for all security forces.”
#SeguridadSinGuerra has spoken out on several occasions against the controversial LSI, which was passed last December, while international organizations have also warned that it increases the risk of human rights violations.
Mexico’s armed forces, including the army and navy, have previously been accused of forcibly disappearing civilians while carrying out public security duties and the United Nations said in May there are “strong indications” that federal security forces were responsible for the disappearance of 23 people, including at least five minors, in Tamaulipas between February and May.
In that case, it is suspected that the navy — which has long been considered the most professional and trustworthy of Mexico’s security forces — is responsible.
Former president Felipe Calderón launched Mexico’s war on drug cartels by sending the army into his home state of Michoacán shortly after he took office in December 2006 while current President Enrique Peña Nieto has also used the military for domestic public security purposes.
However, violent crime has only worsened.
More than 200,000 people have been murdered over the past 11 and a half years and 2017 was Mexico’s most violent year in at least two decades while this year is on track to be even worse.
#SeguridadSinGuerra added in its statement that the incoming government’s peace agenda must be backed by a coalition made up of a cross-section of society that includes victims of human rights violations.
It said López Obrador’s reconciliation process must build an agenda for peace with the participation of “the victims of our serious human rights crisis and those who accompany them, as well as academics, specialists and those who will form part of the new government and the next Congress.”
The collective also said the election results show that “the democratic mandate against corruption and impunity and in favor of justice and immediate peace-building has never been so clear.”
In addition, it said that all its members are willing to contribute to the peace-building process.
“We who form #SeguridadSinGuerra are fully ready to work with those who form the new government and with the elected lawmakers to overcome the [security] obstacles before December 1 and begin the most important process of ending the horror of more than 11 years of war.”
Durazo said the government will initiate a “comprehensive pacification project” that will include analyzing the possibility of an amnesty for some criminals, as López Obrador floated during the election campaign, although he stressed that it would ultimately be up to Congress to decide whether such a measure should be adopted.
Future interior secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero said this week that people who have committed high-impact crimes such as homicides, kidnappings and enforced disappearances would not be eligible for amnesty under any policy the new government might adopt.
A fire truck that was destroyed yesterday in Tultepec.
There were 24 people killed in yesterday’s fireworks explosions in Tultepec, state of México, 22 of whom were emergency personnel and others who had arrived on the scene to provide assistance after the first blast at about 9:24am.
There were four explosions in total — three came in quick succession 20 minutes after the first.
“The firefighters thought there would be no more explosions, but the biggest was still to come . . .” said a fireworks maker at the scene.
Seventeen people were killed in the explosions; the other seven died later in hospital. Another 49 people were wounded.
The state interior secretary suspended all fireworks manufacturing and sales in Tultepec, known as the fireworks capital of Mexico, in preparation for an investigation.
Alejandro Ozuna Rivero said civilian and military authorities, Civil Protection, state police, justice personnel and other government representatives had gathered in the municipality to conduct a full inspection of permits and check for irregularities in the production of fireworks.
There are an estimated 1,300 artisanal fireworks makers in Tultepec, about half of which are believed to operate within private homes without authorization issued by the Secretariat of Defense.
One resident said yesterday that gunpowder and other materials are stored in homes illegally and under dangerous conditions. Many are stockpiling supplies in preparation for the high season for fireworks between September and December.
Yesterday’s tragedy was the second worst in Tultepec’s history. The local fireworks market was destroyed in a blast that killed 42 in December 2016.
The Mexican Pyrotechnics Institute says 39 people have died and 135 injured in 56 fireworks explosions in the past year and a half. A large number of those explosions occurred in fireworks workshops that operate illegally thanks to corruption, the newspaper El Universal reported.
