Businesses in Veracruz are counting the days until the governor goes

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August 22, 2018

Veracruz clock counts the governor's days.

A group of business people in Veracruz are so eager to see the last of the governor they have set up a clock to count the remaining days of his administration.

The timepiece has been installed in a park in the state capital of Xalapa where it counts down the time — to the very second — left in Governor Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares’ administration.

The business owners claim the state has been in arrears with them since 2014, when the governor was Javier Duarte Ochoa. After Yunes took office in 2016 he pledged that he would pay off all the debts incurred by his predecessor.

Nearly two years later, with just over three months left in Yunes’s two-year term, the debt has actually increased to an alleged 300 million pesos (nearly US $16 million).

Close to 50 business people from around the state joined forces in late May and created Empresarios SOS, an organization to present a common front and press for what they are owed by the government.

During a press conference at the time, the members of the organization said that they were “on the brink of bankruptcy.”

When the clock strikes zero on November 30, the governor’s last day in office, Empresarios SOS plans to hold a party in downtown Xalapa to celebrate the end of “the worst administration of Veracruz.”

The organizers of the celebration have declared that if the state government pays up they will suspend the party.

Source: e-Veracruz (sp), Plumas Libres (sp)

8 years after Los Zetas’ massacre of 72 migrants, ‘no real investigation’

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MND Staff

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August 22, 2018

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Yesterday's ceremony at the site of the Tamaulipas massacre. — Yesterday's ceremony at the site of the San Fernando massacre.

Eight years after 72 undocumented migrants were killed in a massacre in Tamaulipas, authorities still haven’t conducted a “real investigation” into the crime, charges the head of an NGO that represents the families of 10 victims.

Ana Lorena Delgadillo, director of the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law (Fundación Justicia), told the newspaper El Universal that despite 11 people being charged in connection with the San Fernando massacre, allegedly committed by the Zetas drug cartel in August 2010, not one person has been sentenced.

“To date, we don’t really know what the truth is. There is no real investigation of the state to find out to what extent there could have been complicity of authorities,” she said.

Documents made public by the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) in 2014 revealed that local police had collaborated with organized crime in the murders.

At the time, Delgadillo said, the release of the information was an important step toward finding the truth, but lamented that the amount of information released was limited.

Now, she says, while the PGR has allowed Fundación Justicia to see its investigative file, it has repeatedly refused to furnish it with copies which, in turn, could be passed on to the families the NGO represents in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Brazil.

“For us it is very regrettable that this information doesn’t get to the families in Central America, they don’t have access to the information,” Delgadillo said.

One of the most recent developments in the case was the arrest of Martiniano de Jesús Jaramillo Silva, the presumed mastermind of the massacre, in Ciudad Victoria last November.

However, the regional leader of the Los Zetas Vieja Escuela criminal cell in Tamaulipas spent only two days behind bars before he died of kidney failure in a Mexico City hospital.

The massacre came to light when authorities found the bodies of the 58 male and 14 female victims on a farm in August 2010 after a survivor, a migrant from Ecuador, reported the incident.

He said they were offered work as gunmen for Los Zetas with a salary of US $1,000 every two weeks but were killed when they didn’t accept.

To mark the eighth anniversary of the massacre, representatives of Fundación Justicia along with human rights activists and priests yesterday participated in a ceremony to place memorial crosses on the ranch where the bodies were found.

Father Pedro Pantoja, an advisor at the Casa del Migrante (Migrant Shelter) in Saltillo, told El Universal that 72 crosses — one for each victim — were erected. He said a meeting with the wives of massacred migrants will be held at a later date in Guatemala.

“It wasn’t just a genocidal massacre . . . it was a cry of terror for all Central American migration,” he said.

“[Our] hearts are full of indignation, sadness and pain. As defenders [of human rights], we have to take on their pain, place ourselves in their flesh.”

Source: El Universal (sp)

Lightning strike blamed for fire that destroyed 11 houses

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Tony Richards

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August 22, 2018

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Remains of a home after this morning's fire. — A homeless family after this morning's fire.

Eleven families in the city of Veracruz were left with nothing this morning when fire destroyed their homes after a suspected lightning strike.

There were no casualties after lightning reportedly set fire to one house and the blaze spread to 10 more during an electrical storm early this morning.

The houses, built of plastic laminate, wood and cardboard, were located in a neighborhood in the north of the city in what was described as an illegal settlement.

Personnel from the DIF family services agency were on hand this morning to provide aid to the 40 victims.

Civil Protection officials said they had not been able to confirm residents’ reports that the fire was caused by lightning.

It’s been a bad month for lightning strikes in the state.

Two people were killed and four were injured during an electrical storm on a farm in the south of the state on August 10. All six were farmworkers who were taking cover under a makeshift shelter during the storm.

Source: e-veracruz (sp), Excélsior (sp)

Guadalajara could be site of Mexico’s first Ikea store

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Tony Richards

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August 22, 2018

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ikea store — Coming soon to Guadalajara?

“A little bit of Sweden” might be coming to Guadalajara next year, according to information published by retail furniture giant Ikea.

One of three Mexico job postings on the Ikea website lists a country communication and interior design manager who will be based in the Jalisco capital and be responsible for the first Ikea store in Mexico. The job begins early next year.

The company has had an office in Mexico City since 2017, the site says, and “we are determined to bring a little bit of Sweden to Mexico.”

The company has also posted the communications manager position on its LinkedIn account, where it explains that it is exploring the possibility of opening in Mexico, analyzing various formats in major cities.

“For now we can only say that we see enormous potential in Mexico for which Ikea will arrive as soon as possible.”

At present the company is focused on identifying the people who will form its team, the statement said.

Mexico News Daily

Mexico’s most livable cities are in Nuevo León, Coahuila and Sonora

By

MND Staff

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August 22, 2018

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San Pedro Garza García, Mexico's most livable city.

The five best cities in which to live in Mexico are all in the north of the country, according to the survey Mexico’s Most Livable Cities 2018 conducted by polling firm Gabinete de Comunicación Estratégica.

San Pedro Garza García, part of the Monterrey metropolitan area, came out on top as Mexico’s most livable city, scoring 74.56 out of 100 on an index which considered factors including education, housing, economy, employment, family life and happiness.

In second spot was San Nicolás de los Garza, also part of greater Monterrey, with a score of 69.71 while Saltillo, Coahuila, scored 69.28 to rank No. 3.

Rounding out the top five were Hermosillo, Sonora, and Guadalupe, Nuevo León, which is also part of the metropolitan area of Monterrey.

Mérida, Yucatán, previously ranked the most livable city in the country, could only muster ninth place in this year’s survey.

La Paz, Baja California Sur, ranked sixth; Mexicali, Baja California, seventh; Monterrey, Nuevo León, eighth, and Cajeme, Sonora, 10th.

At the other end of the scale, the worst city to live in Mexico is Chimalhuacán, an economically disadvantaged municipality in México state that forms part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area.

Neighboring Nezahualcóyotl was next worst followed by Ecatepec, both of which are also in México state.

Two Mexico City boroughs, Milpa Alta and Tláhuac, came in fourth and fifth.

The survey drew on the opinions of 30,400 Mexicans living in the 60 most populous municipalities in Mexico and the 16 boroughs of Mexico City.

The poll also found that cities in the north of the country have the best investment opportunities and the best outlooks for economic growth.

With regard to municipal services — including garbage collection, maintenance of roads, street lights and drainage — San Pedro Garza García again came out on top of the list followed by Mérida and San Nicolás de los Garza.

Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and Manzanillo, Colima, ranked fourth and fifth but none of the top five cities received a score above 60.

Services were worst in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, and Tapachula in the same state, the survey showed.

San Pedro Garza García, La Paz and Mérida took the top three spots for social cohesion while at the other end of the list were Chimalhuacán, Acapulco and Tehuacán, Puebla.

Residents of Mérida were happiest with their municipal authorities followed by those in the state capital of Chihuahua and San Nicolás de los Garza.

However, satisfaction ratings in the category didn’t exceed 55% for any of the top four cities and those ranked fifth to 10th all scored below 50.

Least happy with their local authorities were residents of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Xochimilco (a borough of Mexico City) and Tapachula.

Finally, residents of San Pedro Garza García were most likely to recommend moving to their city followed by those in Mérida and Saltillo.

On the other hand, residents of Chilpancingo, Iztapalapa (a borough of Mexico City) and Ecatepec were most likely to tell others to stay away.

The survey was conducted by telephone with 400 residents of each of the 76 cities between March 23 and April 14.

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

Union leader says paving over pipelines with concrete is ‘stupid’

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MND Staff

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August 21, 2018

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A soldier watches as a fire burns at a tap on the Tula-Salamanca pipeline in Guanajuato.

A project to pave over petroleum pipelines in Guanajuato as a means to combat the state’s massive fuel theft problem has been labeled “stupid and dangerous” by a union leader.

Juan Carlos Chávez González, president of the National Democratic Alliance of Petroleum Workers, made the comment in response to Guanajuato Governor Miguel Márquez’s announcement last week that state oil company Pemex would resume an abandoned project to cover the state’s fuel ducts with concrete.

Chávez said that project would be costly, charging that it would practically imply “building highways over the ducts” and that it would be dangerous because the concrete-covered pipelines could not be maintained.

He questioned why Pemex didn’t choose instead to use cutting-edge technology employed in other parts of the world, such as England and the Middle East, to protect its pipelines.

Such technology, Chávez said, can detect movement above the pipelines, alerting authorities to the presence of thieves.

According to a report published by the official news agency Notimex in January 2016, “a system to detect leaks and illegal taps on petroleum pipelines in real time” has been developed by the Mexican Institute of Petroleum and educational institutes including the National Autonomous University (UNAM).

But Chávez charged that Pemex has shown no interest in protecting its pipelines, which had entered into a state of “abandonment” due to neglect.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, he said, helicopter patrols of many of the major petroleum pipelines were carried out every three days but they stopped when former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari took office at the end of 1988.

Authorities detected 865 illegal taps on pipelines in Guanajuato in the first half of the year, a period in which violent crime increased significantly in the state.

When 59 people were killed in the space of just five days in May, state Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa said 85% of the homicides were related “in one way or another” to petroleum theft.

Governor Márquez said that Pemex CEO Carlos Treviño had committed to paving over its pipelines in the state during a meeting at which he expressed his concern about the rising levels of fuel theft and associated violence.

However, he added that he didn’t have any details about when the work might start.

Governor-elect Diego Sinhué Rodríguez Vallejo, who easily retained the governorship for the National Action Party (PAN), pledged last month that he would change course in fighting crime by adopting a new security strategy that would include strengthening municipal police forces and creating a financial intelligence agency to track flows of money related to petroleum theft.

Treviño said in April that the crime costs Pemex 30 billion pesos (US $1.6 billion) a year in lost revenue and there is evidence that some of Mexico’s notorious drug cartels have diversified into the lucrative trade of black market fuel.

Despite coordinated efforts to combat the crime, including the use of the military, the number of pipeline taps detected has continued to increase.

Meanwhile, another form of petroleum theft is appearing in three states. The president of the Tlaxcala branch of the National Chamber for Industrial Transformation (Canacintra) said in that state as well as Puebla and Veracruz thieves are now also targeting gas tanker trucks and trucks transporting gas cylinders.

José Luis Baltazar Santiesteban charged that the crime is a reflection of the insecurity in the notoriously dangerous region known as the Red Triangle.

Source: El Sol de Puebla (sp), El Sol de Tlaxcala (sp)

Mexico sends record number of firefighters to battle fires in Canada

By

Tony Richards

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August 21, 2018

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Some of the Mexican firefighters who have been sent to Canada.

Mexico continues to help battle Canadian wildfires in the biggest-ever international deployment of Mexican firefighters.

The National Forestry Commission says a record 434 professional firefighters have been sent to Canada so far this year under a bilateral support agreement. The previous record was set just last year when 270 helped fight Canadian forest fires.

Canada has called for help to battle fires in Ontario, where 39 were still burning yesterday but were under control, and British Columbia, where more than 500 fires are still burning and a province-wide state of emergency has been declared.

Eighty-five Mexican firefighters are currently working in the central community of Fraser Lake, where three huge, raging wildfires were racing across the region yesterday, CBC News reported.

“It’s dire here right now,” an official said.

Some of the Mexicans who were sent to Canada earlier have since returned home. One group, who fought fires near Renfrew, Ontario, returned with a sweet gift: hundreds of bottles of maple syrup, each one with a neck tag bearing a handwritten message saying, “Muchas gracias.”

Source: Notimex (sp), Renfrew Mercury (en), CBC (en)

10 years on and Mexico’s justice system is not yet world class

By

MND Staff

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August 21, 2018

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criminal court — Open court rooms became a reality in 2016.

Ten years after the New Criminal Justice System (NSJP) was first introduced, the system is still not “world class,” a high-ranking government security official has acknowledged.

Álvaro Vizcaíno Zamora, executive secretary of the National Public Security System (SNSP), said yesterday that one of the system’s main shortcomings is that it has created a “revolving door,” with people detained and released time and time again.

“. . . We still need to achieve better standards in order to be able to offer Mexicans the justice they deserve,” he said.

Speaking at the second International Forensic Sciences Symposium in Mexico City, Vizcaíno added that building the system “is not easy” because it requires the political will of all three levels of government as well as money, which, he explained, is usually not enough.

The new accusatory system, which replaced a Napoleonic system based on written arguments with trials in which evidence was presented orally, was approved constitutionally in 2008 but states were given eight years — until June 2016 — to make the transition.

Under the new system judges have more leeway to release suspects pending trial and increased power to dismiss a case if they believe a suspect’s rights have been violated.

Vizcaíno said the solution to the “revolving door” problem is “pre-trial units,” whose role is to conduct a risk analysis for each person accused of a crime.

The analysis could subsequently be used as the basis for a prosecutor’s argument to a judge regarding what precautionary measures should be adopted as the accused awaits trial, he explained.

“. . . If its preventative prison, then let it be imposed,” Vizcaíno said.

He explained that the pre-trial units were not created in the first years of the implementation process and now more work needs to be done to make them more effective.

“. . . Two years ago, only four states had this piece of the justice system [in place] at intermediate to optimal [levels]. Now there are 32 units but they have to mature and continue to advance,” he said.

Vizcaíno also said those charged with implementing the new system — such as police and officials in security and justice institutions — needed more and better training.

The SNSP chief is far from the first person to point out the shortcomings of the new justice system.

In July last year, one year after the NSJP went into full effect, National Security Commissioner Renato Sales said the system had descended into a “procedural hell” that had led to an increase in crime.

Automatic preventative custody for people found in possession of firearms was one adjustment that Sales suggested.

The Inter-American Development Bank said last year that the NSJP was being held up by deficiencies in the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) which inhibited the prosecution of crime, while a report published in the Washington Post in December said the system was in turmoil.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Crocodile hazard on Cancún golf course: man found dead

By

César Hernández

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August 21, 2018

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The body of a man found surrounded by crocodiles in a lagoon at a Cancún golf course late last week has been identified as a crafts vendor from Playa del Carmen.

The body was found near the 18th hole of the golf course, which is located in the city’s hotel zone.

Officials have determined that the man drowned after he was dragged into the water by a crocodile.

Video footage of the corpse being eaten by crocodiles later hit social media, and on Saturday family members in nearby Playa del Carmen saw it and identified the victim as a 44-year-old handicrafts vendor.

The newspaper El Universal reported on the weekend that the Nichupté lagoon system is overpopulated by crocodiles, whose habitat has been invaded by humans. This has caused ever-increasing reports of crocodile sightings in residential areas and golf courses located on the lagoon’s shores.

Non-governmental organizations have documented and studied the number of specimens and behaviour of several crocodile species, proposing handling measures and preventive actions that could lead to fewer encounters and attacks between humans and crocodiles.

Source: Noticaribe (sp), El Universal (sp), Tabasco Hoy (sp)

World’s biggest bead mosaic wins Guinness record for Wixáritari

By

César Hernández

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August 21, 2018

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The record-breaking mosaic in Guadalajara.

The Wixáritari people of Jalisco have won the state’s 31st — and Mexico’s 204th — Guinness World Record with the world’s largest bead mosaic.

Boasting an area of 81.55 square meters and a weight of two tonnes, the mosaic was painstakingly created over a period of nearly three months by 15 dedicated artisans from the northern sierra town of San Sebastián. They used 450 kilograms of small plastic beads known as chaquiras in the process.

The beads were affixed to 32 wooden boards using 48 kilograms of beeswax. The resulting mosaic depicts a female figure wearing the traditional attire of the women of Jalisco, accompanied by a male figure wearing a charro suit, popular among mariachi musicians.

The couple is adorned and surrounded by flowers and multi-colored shapes and figures.

The process was verified by staff from Guinness World Records, who paid close attention to ensure that no gaps existed during the process of joining the individual wooden boards.

This was crucial to consider the end product a single piece, said Guinness judge Carlos Tapia.

“The goal was to surpass a 71.33-square-meter mosaic created in New Orleans, but that was not made out of chaquiras, this is a new category. Speaking of mosaics [the one created by the Wixáritari] is currently the largest,” he told the news agency EFE.

“The Mexican people have great strength . . . when they set out to do something, they accomplish it. They come together as a people and always want to share this kind of handicraft with the world,” Tapia said.

The mosaic was presented during the International Mariachi Encounter at Guadalajara’s Liberación plaza. If the weather allows, the Wixáritari mosaic will be on exhibition there until September 2.

The event organizer, the local Chamber of Commerce, plans to auction the mosaic and use the funds to build a classroom in the Wixáritari town where the mosaic was created, in collaboration with the Iyari Alba foundation.

Source: El Universal (sp)