Amid the tangle of wires there might be one or two illegal hook-ups here.
It’s not just fuel thieves who are costing Mexico billions of pesos a year.
The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) announced today that during the first half of 2018, it lost revenue of 25.7 billion pesos (US $1.35 billion) due to electricity theft via illegal connections.
The amount of power stolen represents 5.7% of all the electricity it distributed in the six-month period, the CFE said.
But the bad news doesn’t end there.
Luis Bravo, the state-owned company’s director of corporate communications, said that an additional 5.9% of energy – equivalent to 34.25 billion pesos (US $1.8 billion) in monetary terms – was lost in the same period due to technical problems associated with its transmission.
All told, the CFE saw 59.95 billion pesos (US $3.15 billion) wiped off its bottom line due to “technical and non-technical losses.”
Bravo told a press conference that the CFE is carrying out an analysis to determine where the majority of electricity theft is taking place and once that has been established, measures will be taken to combat it.
“Is the process painful? Yes. Does it take time? Yes, but it’s necessary to do it,” he said.
Bravo stressed that new CFE chief Manuel Bartlett is committed to rescuing the company and returning it to its social calling.
Bartlett, an 82-year-old former governor of Puebla and federal interior secretary, whose appointment at the helm of the CFE was criticized by many, said last year that he would seek to introduce “social rates” that could see people on low incomes obtain government subsidies to offset their electricity costs.
An organization that promotes sustainable tourist destinations has named Querétaro’s Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve one of the top 100 most sustainable destinations in the world.
The only Mexican destination on the list, it was selected by Green Destinations in recognition of the conservation and sustainable tourism efforts of the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group, Sierra Gorda Ecotours and local and state governments.
The fourth edition of the Top 100 Sustainable Destinations selected the winners based on an analysis of efforts to encourage local communities to participate in tourism and environmental protection, as well as attractions for visitors.
The Sierra Gorda reserve will be recognized at Berlin’s International Tourism Fair in March.
The Sierra Gorda is part of the Western Sierra Madre, and its 383,000 hectares make up 32% of the state of Querétaro. It was officially declared a biosphere reserve in 1997.
On average, the reserve welcomes 218,000 tourists annually, representing economic spillover of 1 billion pesos.
The Sierra Gorda takes in semi-deserts to cloud forests, boasts mountains from 200 to 3,000 meters above sea level and is home to 100 different species of mammals, 300 kinds of birds, 650 different types of butterflies, and a large variety of other fauna, reptiles, amphibians, fish and vegetation.
The mayor of Acapulco has announced that she will seek to replicate the security model in place in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, where crime has fallen significantly over the past year.
At a meeting with business owners, academics and community representatives, Adela Román Ocampo called for “assistance” from all sectors of society to restore peace to the Guerrero port city, which has been plagued by violent crime in recent years.
“. . . I’m asking for the support of hotel and business owners to paint the facades of their businesses and install surveillance cameras that are connected to the C4 [security control center] to improve security in the port, just like they did in Los Cabos,” she said.
The Morena party mayor’s request for help followed a Mexico City meeting Tuesday with federal tourism and security officials as well as her counterparts from Los Cabos and Playa del Carmen, at which they discussed how security strategies and alliances could be strengthened.
Back home yesterday, Román lamented the deterioration of security in Acapulco, which was once Mexico’s most glamorous tourism destination but described by the Washington Post in 2017 as Mexico’s murder capital.
“It’s very sad to know that at a national level, they consider this beach destination a lost cause,” the mayor said. “I’m not Wonder Woman but I am a well-born acapulqueña who wants to rescue Acapulco’s negative image.”
Román attributed the violence in the port city to the arrest of some criminal leaders and the release from prison of other lawbreakers but stressed that the new municipal government, which took office in October, was not taken by surprise.
However, she added that 153 municipal police officers have not shown up for work this year so the government is taking steps to formally terminate their employment.
In September, federal and state police and the military took over policing duties in Acapulco for a short period after the entire municipal force was disarmed due to suspected infiltration by criminal gangs.
Román said that under her government there will be “zero tolerance” on crime and warned that bars, nightclubs and restaurants would no longer be permitted to violate the operating hours established by authorities.
A breastfeeding senator exceeded the limits of tolerance in Congress this week.
National Action Party (PAN) Senator Martha Cecilia Márquez is seeking the support of the Morena party leadership after the president of the Chamber of Deputies chastised her for taking her baby to a session of the Permanent Commission of Congress.
With baby in arms, she addressed the commission on Tuesday to present her party’s position on President López Obrador’s strategy to combat fuel theft and the resulting fuel shortages.
After she exceeded her allotted time, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo interrupted: “There’s a limit to the tolerance that can be given to a mother and her child.”
The 34-year-old senator from Colima, who is the author of a proposed law regarding protection for pregnant women, told reporters later that she saw Muñoz’s interruption as “violent and discriminatory.”
“I bring my baby to work because breastfeeding is a right, because she’s very young and because she breastfeeds — that’s why.”
The senator acknowledged that although the balance of maternity and career might be even more challenging to maintain in other professions, the challenges facing working mothers are essentially the same: eating with one hand, eating on the run and moving around a work space with baby in hand. She also pointed out the Senate’s lack of designated breastfeeding areas and changing stations.
Márquez called on the Morena party leadership to distance themselves from Muñoz, a Morenista himself, in light of his comment, saying that solidarity between lawmakers was of great importance in working to write better laws on behalf of women, “to ensure that these situations do not occur anywhere.”
The PAN senator charged that the president had been rude on various occasions, to men as well as women, and said she expected an apology, “not just for the comments made to me personally, but because this is a gender equality issue. For the first time ever there is gender parity in Congress, and that should be reflected in our attitudes.”
Trust in Mexico’s macroeconomic solvency is one of the reasons why the Spanish energy company Iberdrola will invest US $2.5 billion in electrical generation between 2020 and 2022.
The firm’s representative in Mexico said the investment in a series of projects currently in development will allow it to add 2,000 megawatts to the country’s power supply.
“We intend to continue developing projects in the country,” said José Enrique Alba.
Those projects include one in the northern state of Nuevo León, which may not be one of the most developed so far . . . but we are studying it,” he told an audience at the 4th Infrastructure Projects Forum in Monterrey yesterday.
It would be the third plant Iberdrola has in the state, one of which is already operational and supplies the power grid with 888 megawatts.
“Mexico has important qualities: a growing electrical market . . . a solvent macroeconomy, [central bank] Banxico controls the inflation and [the country’s] reserves [Mexico] has been doing things right,” he said.
As long as government institutions earn the people’s trust and the country fosters democratic certainty, foreign direct investment will continue to flow into Mexico, he continued.
Alba does not expect the energy sector to slow down anytime soon: “The next few years will be the same, because the market is thriving.” He observed that 60% of the energy produced is for the industrial sector.
Two major petroleum pipelines closed by the federal government as part of its anti-fuel theft strategy have reopened and two more are expected to follow soon.
The government announced yesterday that the pipeline between Tuxpan, Veracruz, and Azcapotzalco, a northern borough of Mexico City, had resumed service, while the Guanajuato government said the pipeline between Salamanca and León had reopened.
México state Governor Alfredo del Mazo Maza said yesterday afternoon that the pipeline between Tula, Hidalgo and Toluca would also reopen “within hours.” However, media reports this morning said the pipeline remained closed.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro announced this morning that the pipeline between Salamanca, Guanajuato, and Guadalajara would partially reopen on Saturday.
In a video posted to his social media accounts, Alfaro said he had spoken to federal Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle, who informed him of the plan to open the pipeline.
The Tuxpan-Azcapotzalco pipeline was “sabotaged” five times in less than a week, according to President López Obrador.
The closure of the line, which has the capacity to transport 170,000 barrels of fuel a day, was a major contributor to gasoline shortages in Mexico City and parts of México state.
López Obrador has committed to providing permanent security for the duct to ensure it does not have to be closed again.
National Defense Secretary Cresencio Sandoval said today that federal security forces stopped another attempted tap on the pipeline in the early hours of this morning.
In Guanajuato, the Salamanca-León pipeline resumed service at 11:00am yesterday after a 10-day closure. Five hundred military personnel and state and federal police are providing security.
A high-ranking official in the Guanajuato government told the newspaper Milenio that the security operation “will be permanent because we don’t want the pipeline to be closed again.”
Before yesterday’s reopening, it was inspected by Pemex and other authorities who determined that there were no unrepaired perforations.
Guanajuato is one of more than 10 states that have experienced gasoline shortages since the federal government began making greater use of tanker trucks to transport fuel rather than pipelines as part of the strategy to combat fuel theft.
Pemex employees told Milenio that it was also important to open the Tula-Salamanca pipeline to ensure that there is enough gasoline in Guanajuato to meet demand.
In México state, gasoline shortages are still affecting the metropolitan area of Toluca, which depends heavily on the pipeline from Tula.
The pipeline is targeted so frequently by thieves that federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo referred to it as a gasoline “drain.”
At a press conference this morning, López Obrador said the government’s decision to deploy the military to protect the nation’s pipelines is proving to be effective and pledged that gasoline supply throughout the country would return to normal soon.
“The deployment of the army and navy . . . has been very effective because it has allowed us to open pipelines that were controlled by [organized] crime,” he said.
The December National Survey on Urban Public Security reveals that more than 90% of the adult population in eight cities feel unsafe where they live.
Topping the list compiled by the national statistics institute, Inegi, was the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, torn by violence generated by warring drug gangs. There, 96% of inhabitants older than 18 feel unsafe.
Next up was Chilpancingo, Guerrero, with 93.8%, followed by 93.4% in the cities of Puebla, Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, and Ecatepec, México state.
Not far behind were Villahermosa, Tabasco, with a rate of 92.3%; Tlalnepantla, México state, with 90.4%; and Fresnillo, Zacatecas, where 90.1% of its adult population live in fear.
Some of the cities further down on the list were notable for the change since December 2017. In Piedras Negras, Coahuila, the rate was 61.9% but that’s up more than 20 points in one year.
Others were Guanajuato where the rate rose over 19 points to 79.6%; Guadalajara, where it increased more than 15 points and reached 86.8%; and Monterrey, Nuevo León, where the number of people who felt unsafe increased by more than 13 points over the previous year, reaching 84.4%.
Nationally, 73.7% indicated they felt unsafe.
Broken down by gender, 78% of women reported feeling unsafe. Among men the figure was 68.6%.
The national survey also found that over one-third of Mexican households have been victims of theft or extortion.
As for the future, there are great expectations.
While only 17% thought things would get better at the end of 2017, the number soared to 41.4% at the end of 2018, the highest rate ever recorded and one that probably stems from the public’s high hopes for President López Obrador.
At the bottom end of the insecurity spectrum lay the city of San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León, with 23.1%, the lowest rate in the country.
It was followed by Mérida, Yucatán, at 28.8%; Saltillo, Coahuila, at 30.5%; Puerto Vallarta, 38.7%; Durango, 39.5%; and Los Cabos, 42.3%.
The rough-hewn walls of Finca Margaritas’ main room are adorned with photos that trace the five generations of coffee farmers that worked this land.
Stalwart and serious, groups of men, women and children stand in front of this very same structure, built in 1871 and still standing almost 150 years later in Pluma Hidalgo in the southern Sierra Madre of Oaxaca.
Today, Adriana and Cole Ramírez are the last in each of their lineages to take over two wild tropical coffee plantations that dot one of the highest peaks in the area. Adriana’s sing-song accent, slightly distinct from Cole’s from growing up in coastal Puerto Ángel, is hypnotizing as she weaves the story of the plantation.
“My in-laws were the Romeo and Juliet of Pluma Hidalgo. They lived on neighboring fincas and Cole’s father’s uncle, Uncle José, hated Cole’s mother’s grandfather. So much so that when Tío José brought electricity to Pluma Hidalgo with his hydroelectric generator, Cole’s mother’s family was the only family in town without electric lights. When they were first married they lived in a large, modern building built by Cole’s mother’s family – and only their bedroom had electricity.”
These small-town dramas, the stuff of Gabriel García Márquez novels, fill the annals of Pluma Hidalgo. And the tropical vegetation and hint of sultry humidity in the air only add to the vintage charm. The town and the surrounding area has been a center of coffee production in Oaxaca for 150 years. Most Oaxacan towns were pre-Colombian indigenous settlements, but Pluma was different — it was founded strictly with the aim of growing coffee.
Cole Ramírez prepares coffee at Finca Margaritas.
In the 1800s businessmen from Miahuatlán, another municipality in the southern Sierra, were making a killing selling cochineal dye on the world market. Then in 1863 the Germans created the first artificial dyes and the market tanked. These wealthy men started looking for a new industry to invest in and discovered coffee as an emerging export in the state of Veracruz.
Cole’s family was one of the first to come to Pluma to plant café. His ancestors built the Swiss chalet-like Finca Margaritas in the middle of wild chestnut and papaya trees. The finca passed through various hands through the generations, and at one point was producing a 1,000 sacos of coffee a year (about 70,000 kilos).
But that heyday was pre-1992 when the International Coffee Agreement disintegrated (causing world prices to bottom out), and before Hurricane Paulina, which virtually deforested the mountain in 1994 and reduced production by 90%. Most plantation owners abandoned their land, no longer able to survive cultivating what was once one of the world’s best beans.
“My father told me when the hurricane came through that it would take 20 years for the land to recuperate,” says Cole, “It’s been just over 20 years and the old-timers in Pluma are saying the forest is finally returning to what it was.”
Typica, the first arabica bean variety brought to the Americas from Africa, is highly sensitive to strong winds, coffee leaf rust and insect plagues. But it is also considered some of the best coffee in the world and is grown in a limited number of places, among them Jamaica, Hawaii, Ethiopia and Pluma Hidalgo, Mexico.
While some of Pluma’s coffee planters have been persuaded to trade typica for hearty and higher-yield varieties, Adriana and Cole believe this high-quality bean is the key to growing gourmet coffee in Pluma.
Earlier generations of coffee farmers from Pluma Hidalgo.
“My husband’s No. 1 passion in life is coffee,” says Adriana, “He learned everything about growing from his maternal grandfather. When he was 16 he came here and he learned all the old, romantic traditions of coffee cultivation. Most producers just produce, they just do what they can to get by, but my husband has studied everything he can about coffee.
“The same thing that has happened with wine is happening with coffee. People are specializing in the production of excellent coffee and the drinking of excellent coffee. We are trying to control every part of the production chain in order to end up with the kind of excellent coffee that people are looking for.”
Pluma the town, a tranquil piece of mountain paradise with about 1,300 residents, was also deeply scarred by the coffee exodus of the 1990s, with many residents leaving for work in other parts of the country and the United States. Even today, Adriana tells me, it’s difficult to find enough workers for the harvest.
But perhaps the current “third wave” coffee connoisseurs will help bring investment and jobs back to Pluma. Francisco Villarreal, from the north of Mexico, is a young and ambitious investor who was drawn to the possibilities of the region.
“My family was already working with local coffee growers in Oaxaca and we had the chance to go to Europe and the United States to promote their coffee. In the majority of places where we went people asked us if we were selling Pluma coffee. When we returned from the trip we dedicated ourselves to investigating what and where Pluma coffee was.”
Upon discovering the region and tasting the coffee, Villarreal decided to purchase land for his own coffee plantation — Manto Niebla. He now owns 70 hectares of mountaintop where he has planted between 60,000 and 70,000 coffee plants since he started in 2016. He grows Geisha, Marsellesa and, of course, typica beans.
Luxurious camping in Oaxaca’s southern Sierra.
“It’s a really great sign that people are reactivating the plantations, even though it’s still a small percentage of what were abandoned. New varieties and growing practices are also allowing a greater control over leaf rust and allowing growers to have bigger and better production, therefore making the farms more successful,” says Villarreal.
The comeback is there, albeit slow and laborious, and the signs are everywhere. A brand of Pluma coffee was chosen by Starbucks for an exclusive coffee bar in Mexico City. Oxxo, the country’s biggest convenience store chain, announced it will now carry Pluma coffee as a nod to the traditional coffee-producing regions in the country.
And at least a few dozen tourists can be seen ambling through the streets of Pluma, stopping to buy a bag or two of the town’s famous beans.
The ecotourism of this region will be just as important as its coffee for its future. In biodiversity alone, it offers much for coffee and nature lovers. That’s why Adriana and Cole have set up a glamping (glamour plus camping) site on their property and offer weekly coffee tours and tastings to tourists who drive up in minivans from nearby Huatulco.
“I think the region’s towns have a big opportunity to prosper,” says Villarreal, “as much from the production and sale of coffee as tourism.”
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And really, who can resist the combination of the two? I know I was enchanted slipping from my luxury tent to sidle up to the coffee bar at Las Margaritas and have Cole hand me a steaming hot cup of Pluma typica with a dollop of steamed milk.
After years of performing tastings, his sense of taste and smell are far more sophisticated than mine, but sitting in the cool dampness of a Pluma morning, my hands wrapped around a steaming mug, I gave myself a break when I wasn’t able to pick out the scent of limes in my cup.
In delightful moments such as these, it’s better just to sit back and enjoy.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.
The Abkatun-A platform is one that has been attacked.
Pemex has not only been looted on land in recent years through illegal taps on its petroleum pipelines, but also at sea.
Attacks by pirates on the state oil company’s drilling platforms in the southern Gulf of Mexico increased fourfold over the past three years, according to declassified documents seen by the newspaper Milenio.
In 2016, there were 48 acts of piracy in the Bay of Campeche and off the coast of Tabasco but last year the number of attacks on Pemex’s offshore platforms soared to 197, a surge of 310%. In 2017, there were 147 attacks.
The increased incidence of the crime has occurred despite efforts by Pemex to prevent it, including the establishment of an agreement with the navy to help protect the platforms.
According to accounts from local fishermen, the modern-day pirates travel on fast boats to the drilling rigs, board them, threaten the workers with guns and knives and then steal objects of value that have included specialized equipment and building materials.
Among the pirates’ loot are drilling equipment, measuring instruments, batteries, firefighting and diving suits, wire rope, non-slip aluminum floor plates, hoses, ladders, lighting, gate valves, metal beams and even screws.
President López Obrador asserted this week that criminals are also stealing crude oil directly from drilling platforms.
Between 2016 and 2018, the pillaging cost Pemex 224 million pesos (US $11.7 million at today’s exchange rate), according to information obtained by Milenio through transparency laws.
But the real monetary damage to the company is undoubtedly much higher: Pemex didn’t reveal the losses incurred in 312 attacks – 80% of the total in the three-year period – stating that the information was “not available” or “unknown.”
According to Pemex, some attacks have been carried out by large numbers of pirates who arrive at their oil rigs in a flotilla rather than a single vessel.
On January 22, in waters off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, the Abkatun-A platform was surrounded by “23 motorboats,” the company said.
The perimeter lighting of the rig’s heliport as well as 84 meters of cable were stolen. In another incursion last year, thieves got away with a large portion of a 20-million-peso heliport from the Tsimin-B platform.
Although Pemex said that it was implementing measures to prevent piracy, it didn’t specify what those measures were, arguing that the information was classified.
While attacks on drilling platforms are on the rise, the financial damage they inflict on the state oil company is dwarfed by that wreaked by fuel theft from onshore pipelines.
López Obrador claims that the crime costs Mexico more than US $3 billion a year. In response, his government has implemented an anti-fuel theft strategy that has caused a prolonged and widespread gasoline shortage.
In the first 10 months of 2018, there were 12,581 illegal taps on pipelines, a 45% increase on the number recorded in the same period of 2017, but federal authorities say that the efforts to combat the crime, which have included closing major pipelines, are working.
López Obrador said billions of pesos have already been saved and the army general in charge of the deployment to protect Mexico’s pipelines asserted this week that the quantity of fuel stolen on a daily basis has fallen from 80,000 barrels in November to 2,500 this month.
Camp of people displaced by violence in territorial dispute.
Authorities at all three levels of government failed to help more than 5,000 people who were displaced from two municipalities in Chiapas due to violence, according to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH).
In a new report, the CNDH said that due to a lack of assistance, 5,266 people from several communities in the municipalities of Chalchihuitán and Chenalhó were forced to live in 11 different camps where their human rights were violated because they didn’t have access to health care and humanitarian assistance and their personal safety was placed at risk.
The people fled their homes in October 2017 after a longstanding territorial dispute flared up and a community leader was slain.
Conditions in the camps where the displaced indigenous Tzotzil people took refuge were precarious, the CNDH said, and municipal, state and federal governments did nothing to remedy the situation.
People slept on the ground in cold conditions at makeshift camps that lacked basic facilities and necessities such as toilets and clean drinking water.
At least four children and four elderly people died in the camps due to cold and hunger and a human rights center and the Catholic Church called the situation a humanitarian crisis.
In its report, the CNDH called on the state government of new Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandón Cadenas, the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims (CEAV) and municipal authorities to pay compensation to the displaced persons and for the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) to conduct a full investigation into the displacement and the violence that preceded it.
It also called on authorities to carry out a census to determine the exact number of people who were forced to flee their homes and to determine their current situation.
