Artificial wetland in Sonora desert to help replace those that have been lost

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July 10, 2018

Oaxaca's Congress: the PRI has held the majority of seats, but now it will be Morena. — Oaxaca's Congress: most of these seats have been filled by the PRI. Now they will belong to Morena's coalition.

In the state of Oaxaca, where women are still struggling for equal rights in many municipal elections, women will outnumber the men in the state Congress.

The number of female deputies has nearly tripled in eight years, from nine in 2010 to 23 following the July 1 election. It is the first time in Oaxaca’s history that there will be more women than men in the 42-seat state legislature.

The change comes as a consequence of affirmative action within political parties.

For years, local politicians and activists have been pushing for gender parity regulations that have translated into electoral law. As a result, most political parties have assigned the top options for proportional representation congressional seats to women.

Local electoral advisor Nayma Enríquez Estrada says the results of the July 1 elections are a “collective conquest,” and that women in Congress have now to “make theirs a legislative agenda with a feminist perspective that focuses on human rights and interculturalism.”

Anabel López Sánchez, a member of the Collective for Women’s Citizenship, observed that parity must be reflected not only in the number of seats occupied by women, but in their election as members of congressional commissions, where the real decision-making takes place.

“We hope that [female Congress members] are not only assigned to conventional commissions, but that they can be part of budgetary, government [and] justice commissions; only then will we be able to talk about equality in representation,” she said.

Pending issues that must be addressed by the incoming legislature include the decriminalization of abortion, addressing obstetrical violence and allocating more funding to the prevention and sanction of gender violence, continued López.

Laws are needed, she added, so that vulnerable sectors of the society of Oaxaca — including women breadwinners and the indigenous and Afro-descendant population — can access employment and social security.

López said that once the 64th legislature is sworn in later this year, the collective will present a common agenda to the female lawmakers, one in favor of women’s rights.

The Oaxaca Congress will be made up of 32 deputies from the Together We Will Make History coalition led by the Morena party. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has been the majority party, will have six members, while the National Action, Democratic Revolution, New Alliance and Ecologist Green parties will each hold a single seat.

Source: NVI Noticias (sp), Proceso (sp)

Heavy rains create havoc in Morelia; at least 50 homes damaged

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July 10, 2018

Heavy overnight rain caused flooding and damage to at least 50 houses in Morelia, Michoacán, according to state Civil Protection officials.

Neighborhoods in the north of the city, especially those located close to the foothills of Cerro del Quinceo — including Ciudad Jardin, Solidaridad and Presa de los Reyes — bore the brunt of the damage.

There were reports of water reaching levels of between 20 and 50 centimeters inside affected homes, while in some parts of the state capital, floodwaters rose to as high as one meter. Authorities said that at least 16 streets were completely inundated.

Almost 30 cars were also damaged after either being swept away in floodwaters or hit by fallen trees or rocks. There were people inside at least three of the affected vehicles.

In the neighborhood of Infonavit Quinceo, a landslide caused significant damage to several homes.

There were no reports of fatalities but one woman reportedly suffered an injury to her leg after being hit by a fallen gate at her home. Four children and their parents had to be rescued from rising floodwaters.

[soliloquy id="56167"]

Municipal authorities set up a temporary shelter at the Servando Chávez Auditorium in the neighborhood of Mariano Escobedo to receive people who were forced to abandon their homes.

Authorities also activated the city’s contingency plan and municipal, state and federal emergency services contributed to efforts to remove water, mud and rocks from affected homes.

Morelia police and firefighters with Michoacán Civil Protection, the Red Cross and the army all helped to coordinate the response.

Source: Reforma (sp), Contramuro (sp)

Lluvia Sorprende a Morelia, Michoacán...🔘✔

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Hospital orderly did well selling job placements and body organs

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July 10, 2018

The alleged suspect with two of his luxury vehicles.

As an orderly at a Chihuahua hospital run by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), Jorge Alberto earned a modest salary that would have allowed him to live a comfortable life.

But Jorge Alberto wasn’t an ordinary orderly.

In addition to carrying out his day-to-day duties in the wards of the state capital’s Morelos General Hospital, Jorge — whose last name was not disclosed in a report published today by the newspaper El Universal — also had a lucrative side gig selling job placements to health care workers and body organs to prospective patients.

The racket was so profitable that the portly medical employee was able to buy 10 luxury sports cars. But it was also a scheme that led him to allegedly commit the even more serious crime of homicide, and not just once.

Among other IMSS employees, it was common knowledge that Jorge had contacts in high places within the social security workers’ union.

It was also well known that for a large sum of money the unscrupulous orderly could arrange for an IMSS employee to be appointed to a higher-paying, more-senior role in the agency.

That possibility proved to be too tempting for several IMSS employees including Laura Soto, an administrative assistant at a small medical clinic.

After watching several of her colleagues win promotions at record speed, Soto contacted Jorge and later handed over 80,000 pesos (US $4,200) to him, an amount that would supposedly ensure her appointment to a more senior role in the IMSS central offices.

Several weeks went by and the promised promotion didn’t materialize but Soto finally received a call from Jorge in December last year.

Soto was told that everything had been organized so she agreed to meet Jorge the next day to complete the necessary paperwork in order to obtain the new position.

On the morning of December 7, the young administrative assistant waited near the city’s municipal offices but instead of meeting with Jorge to sign some documents, Soto met her own death: she was shot at close range by someone in a passing vehicle.

According to today’s report in El Universal, “Jorge had tired of being bothered” by Soto, who had grown impatient when the promotion she paid for didn’t come through as quickly as she expected.

According to the Chihuahua Attorney General’s office, colleagues of Soto at the same small IMSS clinic paid Jorge Alberto a combined total of 600,000 pesos (US $31,600) in order to be installed in more lucrative jobs.

In some cases, the orderly kept his word and arranged for his “clients” to be given the promised roles but in other cases, he didn’t.

In addition, the orderly is suspected of murdering a male IMSS employee in January this year in a case with similar circumstances to that of Laura Soto.

IMSS employees are not the only people who have allegedly been deceived and ultimately met a gruesome fate at the hands of Jorge Alberto.

Daniel Gregorio Romero’s quality of life was rapidly deteriorating when his family contacted the IMSS orderly in a last-ditch attempt to secure an organ transplant.

Romero, who suffered from diabetes, had been waiting for months to undergo surgery to receive a new kidney but still remained near the bottom of the list.

However, Jorge — who was allegedly colluding with an unidentified doctor — promised Romero that he could get him a new kidney quickly and that the operation could be carried out at the hospital in which he worked, even though the latter didn’t have the required insurance to receive treatment at an IMSS facility.

Jorge, of course, wasn’t acting out of the goodness of his heart. The service he offered came with a hefty price tag of half a million pesos (US $26,400).

In an act of desperation the family made the payment but as in the case of Laura Soto, Jorge Alberto again failed to fulfill his promise.

On June 30, the Romero family arranged to meet with Jorge at their home to find out what was happening with the deal they had reached.

What happened next, according to authorities who have seen evidence in the form of security video footage, is that a man proceeded to murder five members of the family before stopping short of taking the life of a two-year-old infant who was also present.

While the name of the suspect has not been revealed publicly, El Universal said that “unofficially it is known that the man [who committed the homicides] was Jorge.”

The orderly has since been arrested and remains in custody.

Last weekend, state prosecutors told a judge that Jorge Alberto’s wife had also participated in the crimes that her husband allegedly committed. Her whereabouts, however, are unknown.

Meanwhile, the state branch of the IMSS said it has revoked Jorge Alberto’s employment contract and is carrying out an internal investigation to determine if any other employees are or have been involved in the sale of job placements.

Authorities are also seeking to arrest an IMSS human resources employee who allegedly received payments from Jorge Alberto and helped facilitate the placement of workers in the higher-ranked positions they paid to obtain.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Navy seizes 250 kilos of cocaine off coast of Guerrero

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July 10, 2018

The smugglers' boat, foreground, with its cargo of cocaine and fuel.

Navy personnel seized 250 kilograms of cocaine and apprehended two men aboard a small boat traveling off the coast of Guerrero yesterday.

Routine aerial surveillance spotted the vessel some 370 kilometers south of Acapulco.

A joint aerial and maritime operation resulted in the arrest of the two men found on board a “go-fast” boat, popular for smuggling drugs.

The boat was carrying 71 plastic canisters, 10 of which contained small packets of cocaine amounting to a total of 250 kilograms. The other 61 containers held 3,000 liters of fuel.

Another report today said the navy had detected fuel storage facilities in three states that are used to supply small boats running drugs up the coast. Mexican cartels ferry the fuel out to the smugglers, enabling them to remain outside the 200-kilometer limit. The fuel is delivered mixed with oil and ready to use in the vessels’ two-stroke engines.

It is either purchased legally or obtain from petroleum thieves.

Last week the navy detained three people aboard a small boat carrying 3,000 liters of fuel off the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán.

Between January and May the navy seized 6.7 tonnes of cocaine off the Pacific coast, the largest amount in any five-month period.

Source: Digital Guerrero (sp), El Universal (sp)

Armed gang attacks, robs tourists on Chiapas highway

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July 10, 2018

The highway where Sunday's robbery took place. — The highway on which Sunday's robbery took place.

Highway robbers attacked tourists traveling in Chiapas Sunday after they had visited the Palenque archaeological site.

The tourists were traveling in two vehicles on the highway between Ocosingo and Palenque when they encountered a roadblock near the town of Xanil in the municipality of Chilón.

At least 18 men armed with assault rifles approached the two vehicles and proceeded to take their belongings. When one driver tried to resist he was struck in the head and subdued by one of the attackers.

The thieves took suitcases, photographic equipment, jewelry, phones wallets and any other valuables the tourists were carrying before fleeing in a truck toward Palenque.

One of the vehicles carried a family from México state while the other was a tour company van carrying 15 Mexicans and three foreigners, one from the United Kingdom and two from South Korea.

One driver said the incident lasted about eight minutes and that the thieves were presumably indigenous, having used a local language to communicate among themselves.

The newspaper El Universal reported that robberies are continuous on the roads traversing the Altos, Norte and Frontera regions of Chiapas, and that thieves target the tourist circuits of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Toniná, Cascadas de Agua Azul, Misol Há and Palenque.

Source: SDP Noticias (sp), El Universal (sp)

Fuel prices to move with inflation and then come down in three years: AMLO

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July 10, 2018

fuel prices will come down: AMLO. — Prices will come down: AMLO.

Fuel prices will come down in three years, president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador said yesterday.

Speaking at a press conference following a meeting with members of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin), Mexico’s next president also said that there would be no steep fuel price increases, or gasolinazos, under the administration he leads.

“Not only will there not be gasolinazos but gas and diesel won’t go up by more than inflation for three years and after three years, when we have production of gasoline in Mexico, we’ll lower prices, imports will come down,” López Obrador said.

“We’re going to rescue the energy sector . . . production is falling and if we don’t intervene with a new plan, it could produce a crisis of greater intensity . . .” he added.

The leftist leader, who won the July 1 presidential election in a landslide, also spoke of the need to reactivate the economy given that growth in Mexico, at around 2%, continues to lag behind the global rate.

“We have to get out of economic stagnation and that’s achieved with a joint effort. We need the participation of the public, private and social sectors,” López Obrador said.

The president-elect, who will be sworn in on December 1, predicted annual growth of 4% during his six-year term which, if achieved, would beat the rates recorded during all of Mexico’s past five federal administrations.

López Obrador reiterated his proposal to reduce the value-added tax (IVA) and income tax in the northern border region, adding that his team was analyzing the possibility of implementing the same scheme in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca.

He also said he planned to move federal secretariats and other government dependencies to different regions of the country in order to achieve more equitable growth.

“There are regions like the Bajío, the Riviera Maya, some border cities and some regions in the center of the country that have growth of 5% to 8% but other places instead of growing, they decline,” López Obrador said.

“It’s not fair or advisable that public and private investment be concentrated only in some areas of the country.”

The first departments to be shifted will be the Secretariat of Tourism to Chetumal, Quintana Roo, and the Secretariat of the Environment to Mérida, Yucatán, López Obrador said.

He had already announced that the Secretariat of Economy headquarters would move from Mexico City to Monterrey, Nuevo León.

The president-elect added that he had agreed to meet every three months with the Concamin members as part of a strategy to “govern together and to have development with justice in our country.”

During the campaign period, López Obrador made a concerted effort to persuade the electorate and the private sector that he is not anti-business as his critics have long attempted to portray him.

While he has continued to rail against the nation’s political and business elite, whom he collectively dubs “the mafia of power,” AMLO — as he is commonly known — has also showed his willingness to cooperate with the private sector, as demonstrated by his announcement last week of an apprenticeship program backed by the influential Business Coordinating Council (CCE).

The president-elect and members of his prospective cabinet also sought last week to ease concerns about the next government’s economic plans, a strategy that analysts say contributed to the peso recording its greatest single-week gain in more than six years.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

30 seconds for Mexico: 15 passionate youths sought for course

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July 9, 2018

The selected students will travel to the Dalai Lama Center at MIT in Boston.

Fifteen young Mexicans will get a chance to attend a course at the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values in Boston, Massachusetts, to develop a technologically-based social or environmental-entrepreneurship project.

Telecommunications company AT&T México, business accelerator New Ventures and the Dalai Lama Center, located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), are the joint sponsors of the 30 Segundos por México (30 Seconds for Mexico) competition that launched today.

It is looking for “passionate young people who through the use of technology and innovation have a proposal to positively impact our country.”

The competition is divided into three stages.

Those interested in participating first have to go to the 30 Segundos por México website and upload a 30-second video in which they briefly outline their technology-based idea to overcome a social or environmental problem faced by a community in Mexico.

Participants also have to fill in a questionnaire to give more details about the project they wish to pursue.

From the videos that are uploaded, 50 young people will be selected to take part in workshops in several Mexican cities in October at which they will receive tips on how to improve their projects from the New Ventures team and a range of entrepreneurs.

Following the so-called boot camps, 15 would-be social entrepreneurs will be chosen to travel to the United States to undertake a course offered by the Dalai Lama Center at MIT in Boston, where they will have the opportunity to work with experts to identify the tools needed to further develop their projects.

“30 Segundos por México is a project that really excites us. It will allow us to find passionate young people who want to have a positive impact on our country using technology and innovation . . . Thanks to the alliance between AT&T in Mexico and The Center at MIT, the proposals of these young people could become reality,” said Armando Laborde, a partner at New Ventures.

Alejandra Menache, a senior manager at AT&T México, said the objectives of the competition are reflective of the company’s own values.

“. . . We’re looking for agents of change . . . We want to promote entrepreneurship in Mexico and social innovation through technology. Our social responsibility strategy is based on five pillars through which we want to generate a positive impact in the country,” she said.

Those five pillars — health and wellbeing, education, business acceleration, environment and security — will be taken into account when judging the competition entries.

The 30 Segundos por México registration period opened today and will close on August 31.

The basic requirements to be eligible to enter are to be of Mexican nationality, aged between 18 and 29, to have a passport and visa to enter the United States that are valid until May 2019 and be able to speak English at an intermediate level.

Source: El Universal (sp)

CORRECTION: This story has been edited to make it clear that the course the students will take is offered by the Dalai Lama Center at MIT and not MIT itself.

Calakmul jade mask has returned to Campeche after 14 years

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July 9, 2018

The jade mask is back in Mexico and will be on permanent display in Campeche.

The Calakmul jade mask, an iconic and representative object of the Mayan culture, has returned after 14 years to Campeche, where it will be on permanent display.

The jade mosaic mask had spent the last eight years traveling around the world as part of an exhibit of Mayan artifacts, and as an ambassador of Campeche and Mexico.

During the previous six years it was on loan to other cultural institutions.

“The mask had been on loan for 14 years in places around the world, and it finally is back in Campeche,” said Claudia Escalante Díaz, director of museums in Campeche for the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)

First discovered in 1984, the jade mask was part of the offerings left in the richest burial area in Calakmul, dedicated to King Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ak’, the last Mayan warrior king.

It was one of a set of 10 found in the tomb, along with other offerings that included jade ear ornaments, shell and bone beads, spiny oyster shells, eccentric obsidian blades, fine ceramics and the remains of wooden objects.

The burial of the king has been dated to the eighth century AD, and the presence of jade items has allowed archaeologists to theorize about the trading relationships the people had at that time.

The well-traveled mask is to be permanently displayed in the Museum of Mayan Architecture, housed in the Baluarte de la Soledad, an 18th-century fortification and the most important on the four gateways of the walled city of Campeche, called Puerta de Mar.

Source: Noticieros Televisa (sp)

Transpeninsular Cancún-Palenque train generates high expectations

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July 9, 2018