Benefits for domestic workers eyed by Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court (SCJN) will examine a proposal next week that would make it mandatory to pay social security benefits to domestic workers.
Justice Alberto Pérez Dayán has recommended that the second chamber of the court rule against an article in the federal Social Security Law that states that paying benefits to housekeepers is voluntary.
The law as it stands has resulted in most domestic workers not receiving benefits that other employees are legally entitled to.
Pérez’s proposal argues that there is no constitutional justification to exclude the mostly female workers, commonly known as muchachas or maids, from the social security system.
“[It’s not just] a discriminatory action that perpetuates and reinforces the social marginalization of women who work in homes but also a violation [of their rights] that cannot be overcome simply because said workers can access the voluntary regime,” the proposal states.
The initiative recommends that the government and the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) introduce a pilot program over a period of 18 months that is easy for employers to implement and that Congress make the necessary legislative reforms to ensure that domestic workers’ right to access benefits is enshrined in the law.
The newspaper Reforma said today that it is unclear if a majority of judges will support the proposal because some have shown that they are not inclined to support court rulings that include recommendations or suggestions to other authorities.
The December 5 session will be the last time the second chamber of the SCJN sits in 2018, meaning that if the proposal is rejected, an examination of an amended version would not happen before the middle of January.
According to a 2016 employment poll conducted by the National Statistics Agency, 95% of domestic workers are women and only 4% of those workers are employed under the terms of a contract in which their rights and obligations are clearly stated.
The Mexican government has made a formal request to United States authorities to conduct a full investigation into the use of tear gas on Sunday against Central American migrants at the border between Tijuana and San Diego.
The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE) presented a diplomatic note to the United States embassy in Mexico to request the probe into what it described as non-lethal weapons.
In a statement, the SRE said that Mexico also “reiterated its commitment to continue protecting the human rights and safety of migrants at all times.”
United States authorities said that tear gas was only used after the group began throwing rocks at border agents.
Women and children were among those affected by the tear gas. British aid organization Oxfam described its use as shameful.
“Images of barefoot children choking on tear gas thrown by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol should shock us to our core,” said Vicki Gass, Oxfam America senior policy advisor for Central America.
The U.S. shut the border at San Ysidro, the busiest crossing in the world, for several hours following the incident.
The Mexican government said in a statement that it would “immediately deport” those who “in a violent manner tried to cross Mexico’s border with the United States.” The National Immigration Institute (INM) said yesterday that 98 people had been arrested and deported.
The INM said that more deportations will follow if investigations identify more migrants who participated in the attempted border breach.
United States Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan said that 69 migrants were arrested on the California side of the border after crossing illegally.
He also said that the border patrol’s use of force policy allows the use of tear gas and that there were no serious injuries, but added that the incident would be reviewed.
“As the events unfolded yesterday, quick, decisive, and effective action to close San Ysidro and – on the Mexican side, El Chaparral [border bridge] – prevented an extremely dangerous situation of hundreds and potentially over a thousand migrants seeking to rush the border through vehicle lanes,” McAleenan said.
On Twitter yesterday, United States President Trump urged Mexican authorities to deport “the flag waving migrants, many of whom are stone-cold criminals,” adding that the border could be closed permanently “if need be.”
Later yesterday, Trump defended the actions of border agents, describing the tear gas used as “very safe” and “a minor form” and declaring: “Here’s the bottom line. Nobody’s coming into our country unless they come in legally.”
More than 7,000 mainly Honduran migrants fleeing violence and poverty are currently in Tijuana or other parts of Baja California, according to Mexican authorities, and thousands more are farther south in the country.
They could face waits of several months or more to lodge asylum requests with U.S. authorities due to an existing backlog of claimants.
The migrants, most of whom are staying in a Tijuana sports complex, have overwhelmed local authorities, prompting Mayor Juan Gastélum to declare a humanitarian crisis last week.
In the market for a high-performance, luxury sports car? There’s no reason to look beyond Mexico.
Vuhl, a company created by the brothers Iker and Guillermo Echeverría, is designing and making ultra-light sports cars at a plant in Querétaro.
“Vuhl is a Mexican company formed by Mexican partners with Mexican capital and we make very high-performance cars,” Guillermo told broadcaster CNN.
The design of each car is personalized with an average weight of just 600 kilograms and a top speed of 245-255 kilometers per hour.
“The speed is achieved [by using] very light materials, carbon fiber, titanium, aluminum and high alloy steel with a highly optimized structural design,” Guillermo explained.
Although some parts are imported from Europe, Vuhl cars are made completely in Mexico by a 100% Mexican workforce.
“They’re not assemblers, these are people with a much higher level [of knowledge], even a different level of enthusiasm. The people at Vuhl are trained for years,” Guillermo said.
Currently, the company is making just one or two cars a month although it has the capacity to make around 60 vehicles annually.
However, Guillermo said that there were no plans to significantly increase production of the vehicles, which sell for between 1.6 and 2.2 million pesos (US $77,000 – $105,000).
Vuhl has sold vehicles in the United Kingdom and the Middle East but the Echevarría brothers hope to find new customers closer to home in Mexico and the United States.
In 2016, the company opened its own boutique dealership in Mexico City and the same year its Vuhl 05 model featured in the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, England.
Volunteers hand out food as part of federal anti-hunger program.
An anti-hunger initiative implemented by the current federal government failed to meet its key objective of ending food poverty, studies show.
President Peña Nieto announced the National Crusade Against Hunger (CNCH) in December 2012 as the main anti-poverty strategy of his administration.
The program, which had five main objectives including the total elimination of hunger through adequate food availability, was officially launched the following month at an event in Chiapas.
But almost six years later, there are still more than 20 million Mexicans who don’t have access to enough food, statistics show.
Several audits and assessments conducted during Peña Nieto’s six-year term revealed a range of problems in the design and implementation of the CNCH but the problems were not corrected, the newspaper Reforma reported today, and so the crusade failed to achieve its goals.
In addition to eradicating hunger, they included eliminating childhood malnutrition and increasing food production and income of small farmers.
Two years after the initiative was implemented, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval), a government agency, warned that the CNCH was not making progress on its key objective of eliminating hunger.
“In terms of . . . the impact of the crusade, a two-percentage-point reduction in extreme poverty is observed but no effect is observed in the indicator regarding a lack of access to food,” a Coneval 2015 report said.
Later in 2015, the Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF) said that there were problems in the design of the crusade, which was implemented by the Secretariat of Social Development (Sedesol), and that there was no clear information about how its budget was being used.
The ASF also warned that the crusade’s coverage was limited to less than 60% of the population it targeted and that 50 programs participating in it weren’t supplying any data that allowed the impact on people’s lives to be measured.
In its 2016 public accounts report, the ASF said that Sedesol failed to adequately follow up on the implementation of its CNCH programs and that it had again failed to report the total budget that had been allocated to the crusade.
Late last month, the auditor’s office advised Sedesol to modify or terminate the program because more than five years after it started it was still plagued by the same problems in its design and implementation that undermined its effectiveness.
Alejandro Gómez, an expert in social development policy, said the crusade could only be described as a failure.
“. . . The ultimate indicator of success of the crusade, precisely [levels of] food poverty and access to food, did not improve substantially . . .” he said.
Ramírez, Velasco and López Obrador announce new moral constitution.
President-elect López Obrador and members of his transition team today issued a call to all Mexicans to contribute to the creation of a so-called moral constitution.
The incoming government’s intention is to establish a document which sets out ethical and moral codes for all citizens.
It argues that the moral constitution is needed because decadent practices such as corruption have become engrained and normalized in Mexican society.
“We call on all Mexicans to contribute individually or collectively to the development of this code which will contribute to the transformation of public life in Mexico,” said Jesús Ramírez, spokesman for the new government, which will receive submissions from the public via e-mail between December 3 and April 30 before unveiling the definitive document next July.
Verónica Velasco, a member of the team charged with managing the initiative, said the moral constitution would seek to guide citizens in their personal conduct but stressed that it would not be legally binding.
“The moral constitution is not [a] legal [document], it’s not an attempt to regulate private life, it’s not a pretext to build an authoritarian model of government, it will not force or impose anything on anyone, it’s not catechism, there are no citizens’ commandments. We live in a secular state,” she said.
Velasco argued that burdens on society such as “dishonesty, corruption and violence” are responsible for Mexico’s underdevelopment, adding that while government officials have a particular responsibility to set an example, “the practice of ethical principles and values also applies to the private sector, trade unions and society in general.”
The moral constitution seeks, she said, to create “a catalog of principles and moral values that guide and inspire us to develop the respect in society that corrupt politicians have sullied.”
For his part, López Obrador defended the government’s right to create the moral constitution, asserting that it would not be a religious document nor would it encroach on people’s privacy.
“It’s thought that we shouldn’t get involved in these matters, that it’s not our place. There are those who think it’s a religious thing, a personal thing, an invasion of our privacy. But as has been evident for a long time, since the Greeks, morality is very important. Politics is an ethical imperative and the need to strengthen values must be considered,” he said.
“We believe that transformation requires advancing materially and advancing in our moral and spiritual values. There is a great richness of values in our people. In the face of epidemics, floods, earthquakes, corruption [and] bad governments, what has always saved us has been our culture or cultures . . .” the president-elect added.
Tamales are big in Tabasco — big enough to earn a world record.
Yesterday, the city of Villahermosa recaptured the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest tamal.
Making the tamal began on Friday when a section of Francisco I. Madero street in the historic center was closed off to traffic to allow the cooks to set up a custom oven.
The list of ingredients gives an idea of the magnitude of the chipilín tamal: 350 kilograms of corn dough, 100 kg of pork, 35 kg of chipilín — a native legume, 25 kg of chiles, 15 kg of coriander, 800 kg of lard and 200 kg of green peppers.
Chipilín tamales are served with a special salsa, which required 60 kg of tomatoes, 20 of onions and 30 of garlic.
The tamal itself was wrapped first with 1,000 banana leaves and then with five 400-meter rolls of aluminum foil.
No expense was spared: it was estimated that preparing this monster tamal cost between 58,000 and 60,000 pesos (between US $2,800 and 2,900).
The cooks were local gastronomy students led by chef Fabían Romero, and their efforts produced the longest single-piece tamal ever recorded, measuring 50.05 meters long.
The official measurement was taken by the Guinness World Records representative in Mexico, Carlos Tapia Rojas.
Organizers expected to share the longest tamal with 2,500 people.
Villahermosa first took the record in 2016 with a 31-meter tamal. Peru snatched it away with one that was 39.5-meters.
A chicharrones salesman works among thousands of vendors at the market in San Martín. Mark Oprea
It happened on a Tuesday. Merchants at the Tianguis of San Martín Texmelucan caught wind of a duo of thieves that had assaulted and robbed a clothing vendor as he was going home for the day.
Fed up with the impunity, the merchants caught up with the thieves, two middle-aged men, and took them to the nearby town of Matamoros. In the town’s center, the men were tied up, shaved and beaten. Police did not intervene in time.
Known in central Mexico as the largest unofficial open-air market in Latin America, the Tianguis de San Martín is a 35-hectare mecca for food and clothing vendors (dubbed the tianguistas), a dense and sprawling flea market bazaar packed with affordable produce, imitation brands and lax security.
Some San Martín inhabitants jocularly refer to their overpopulated market as the “New York Stock Exchange of central Mexico.”
Situated on the border of Puebla and Tlaxcala, the tianguis (“open-air market” in English) brings in upwards of 800,000 patrons per week who arrive by bus or van from four different states — Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Chiapas and México.
A seller of fruit-flavored water works in the center of the tianguistas, as the vendors are known. Mark Oprea
Neftalí Garzón Contreras, a former Puebla representative to Congress, told the newspaper Puebla Noticias in 2006 that this city-wide meeting spot was so dire to Mexican society that “it keeps 100,000 to 400,000 from poverty.”
“In view of the serious income problem of Mexico,” he said at the time. “it’s a priority to preserve and strengthen the market for the prosperity of our people. It belongs to everyone, and we must defend it, rescue it and restore it.”
Contreras was highlighting a tough and slightly controversial problem. Several governments have been trying to either perfect or shut down the Tianguis for just about the 45 years it has existed. Other than the 2016 humiliation incident in Matamoros, San Martín sees a large helping of normalized crime just about every week — from non-violent thefts to highway robberies.
In 2017, vendors threatened to hang a woman who stole 7,000 pesos, which led to a small riot. And upwards of 30 to 40 assaults nearby were reported that year, including violence between enraged vendors. Mexican blogger Jesús Contreras Hernandez explained the tianguis’s new politics — the fact that there’s not enough security to regularly keep justice — as its “anarchic functionality.”
None of this crime is denied by the municipal government of San Martín. Completely fresh since a change of administration in October (the last mayor, Rafael Nuñez Ramírez, “ran away,” according to a new official), the administration headed by Norma Layón says it has been taking rigid steps to curb the crime that has been growing in the past six months,
Measures run from funding safe shuttles to beefing up market security. The only problem, notes municipal secretary Lorena Migoya Mastretta, is that right now “we as a municipality are completely broke.”
The entrance to the tianguis of San Martín Texmelucan. Mark Oprea
“When you’re building a house, you need the bricks to sustain the house,” Migoya says. “And we are just doing that. Trying to analyze and diagnose what has to be fixed, and work from there. We see this as a huge opportunity to bring tourists to San Martín, but now the first thing we have to do is to bring order.”
With nearly one million people arriving solely for Tuesday event, the question as the tianguis continues to increase in size is simple: how can a brand-new, financially-deflated government promise to keep the tianguistas safe and coming back for more?
On a Tuesday morning in November, San Martín, a town of 70,000 people, has turned into a crowd-packed commercial metropolis. Individuals and families are hunting for deals on athletic shoes or women’s underwear. Walking further into the gigantic tarpaulin mass, there’s nothing a buyer couldn’t find: walls of plastic-wrapped shorts for 30 pesos each, vibrant mariachi suits for infants, glistening dresses, Disney princess bread cloths, mysterious health beans, products for girls’ hair. Witnessing the volume, it’s hard to believe that most of the clothing you see in the market is fake.
“I can sell each of these pants for 50 pesos,” says Raymond Rodríguez, the 52-year-old owner of a tiny jeans kiosk. Below him are stacks of hundreds of lookalike Levi’s and Tommy Hilfiger pants Rodríguez’s production facility imitates right down to the tag.
“Sure, all of this is illegal,” he says. “But no one really cares. The government, the police, they all know about this, and they don’t do a thing.” (“It’s not in our jurisdiction to fight illegal clothing. That’s a federal concern,” Migoya says.)
Born in San Martín, Rodríguez spent 24 years living in the United States, where he raised three children and ran a Mexican grocery store outside Pittsburgh. He returned a few years ago to work the tianguis with his wife, sister-in-law and brother, all of whom convene for the weekly market, paying about 300 pesos for their spot. To Rodríguez, who lives down the street, San Martín offers a simpler life than that in the U.S., despite the means with which he achieves it.
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“In Pittsburgh, you have to have two, three jobs at the same time,” he says. “But here? Yes, we compete, and you still have to work. I still have to sell six pairs [of jeans] to pay for my spot. But I like it.”
Oscar Sorea, 35, sells leather wallets for about 120 pesos each, and travelsfrom the state of México every Monday. His operation is similar to Rodríguez’s: sell product quick, keep an eye out for thieves and shady competitors (he’s had stuff stolen by other vendors). Sorea said he has been robbed once in the past year, an incident that made him question even participating at all.
“When we’re leaving [at the end of the day], there are always assaults,” he says. “Just a month ago, 25 trucks were robbed, and all the merchandise was stolen by a notable gang. And you know what? The police did nothing. There’s so much impunity here that people are starting to ask, ‘What happens if I’m robbed next?’”
The problem of criminal gangs, as noted by Migoya and San Martín’s government, is basically that the tianguis is too large a monster to properly control. Men in yellow shirts saying “Zona Segura” on the back walk around, but for the most part a heavy police presence appears minimal.
This summer, some of the tianguistas petitioned to have the market open on Sundays or Mondays, although the government rejected their plea on just these concerns of safety. Having hundreds of thousands of people arriving in the city more than once a week, Migoya says, wouldn’t just be hard to control. It would be near impossible.
“Imagine what it would be like with three days?” Migoya says. “And imagine the people living in San Martín. To them, it’s like having a mall inside your house. For many of these people, they just want tranquility.”
Around three o’clock every Tuesday, the market begins to shut down. Shoe salesmen push carts of sneaker boxes into the backs of trucks; racks of Pull & Bear coats are loaded into vans; women with sleeves of leather belts and buckles rest outside in the rain drizzle, others barrel through a crowd with a towering cart of tapestries.
The market is a commercial necessity that will be set up again in seven days, one that both San Martín and the tianguistas hope will be safer in future.
“Sure, we have flaws in our municipality,” she says. “But that’s not going to keep us from putting San Martín on the map.”
Lawmakers will meet with mining sector representatives this week before making changes to the federal Mining Law, the president of the Senate’s mining committee said.
A senator with president-elect López Obrador’s Morena party last week presented a bill that would require mining companies to obtain the consent of indigenous communities in order to be granted concessions.
Under the proposed changes, the Secretariat of the Economy (SE) would have authority to declare certain areas unviable for mining activities and to cancel concessions and permits that have already been granted if they had a negative social impact.
In an interview with the news agency Reuters, Senator Geovanna Bañuelos, whose Labor Party is a coalition partner of Morena’s, said the planned meeting with mining representatives is intended to allay concerns about the proposals and taking all perspectives into account.
“We want them to be calm. We will not [move forward] without listening to everyone,” the mining committee head said. “We are open to weighing all arguments.”
Grupo México, the country’s largest mining company, said it is analyzing the proposed bills, adding that much of their content is already covered by existing regulations.
“The content of the reforms is not innovative or disruptive,” said Jorge Lazalde, general counsel for Grupo México. “Many of the things in this series of initiatives are already in the law.”
Lazalde added that it was normal for industry representatives to work with lawmakers to analyze and improve bills.
“As a guild, as an industry, as a sector through the Mining Chamber, we will work closely with Congress and reconcile points of view,” he said.
Police used tear gas Saturday in Chiapas against members of the one caravan in Mexico whose destination is not the United States.
The caravan — made up of as many as 500 displaced indigenous people — had been marching from San Cristóbal de las Casas to the capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, arriving in time for the annual report to the state Congress by Governor Manuel Velasco Coello.
Police responded with tear gas when the marchers attempted to enter the building, which triggered a counterattack in which the latter threw rockets, stones and other projectiles at police.
The protesters also set fire to a truck and took down a section of the security fence set up around the Chiapas Congress.
Later, the Tzotzil people requested the intervention of the human rights commissions, alleging repression.
They weren’t the only ones with a beef against the government. Also on hand were health workers, teachers and teaching students who were demanding salaries and bonuses — and scholarships in the case of the students — that allegedly had not been paid.
Police disbanded the protest but several injuries were reported in the process.
Meanwhile, Governor Velasco gave his sixth and final report on the state of affairs in Chiapas while the protests continued outside.
He said he was leaving the state in healthy financial condition, with gains in tourism and security.
“Chiapas is no longer one of the 10 most indebted states in the country” and is also one of the safest, Velasco claimed.
However, it has not been especially safe for the marchers who arrived the same day from San Cristóbal. They were displaced from their homes in Chenalhó, Ocosingo and Zinacantán by attacks by armed civilians, and have been afraid to return.
Federal and state police implicated in Chihuahua extortion case.
Eight federal police were among nine officers arrested Friday in Chihuahua on suspicion of extortion.
The state Attorney General’s office (FGE) said an extortion victim filed a formal complaint that eight Federal Police and a state police officer had intimidated him and threatened him on the phone, demanding the payment of an undisclosed sum of money.
The victim works in a mall in Chihuahua city, which was where the police had arranged to collect the extortion money.
The state police was the first to be caught by FGE agents as he was leaving the mall. He was in possession of a firearm, while cocaine and methamphetamine were found in his vehicle.
The federal officers were arrested after they had contacted the victim to demand more money. Four had been involved in making the demands; the other four provided protection and surveillance.
