Seeking to build trust, the Federal Police have constructed and opened a new primary school in the Otomí town of San Francisco de las Tablas in México state.
Education facilities described as “precarious” triggered the move to build the school with the help of parents in the municipality of Chapa de Mota.
Eleven months later, the school is now catering to 11 students although the facilities are intended to benefit at least 70 families living nearby.
The 96-square-meter school has a 120-square-meter multiple-use area and a 160-square-meter soccer field.
Five computers will be available to start, along with a library containing 1,000 books. All these resources were donated by local residents, businesses and the Federal Police. One report observed that the school has electricity and running water.
This used to be the community’s primary school.
The plan for the school in future is to bolster social inclusion for the Otomí community, and promote the human rights of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, said Federal Police Commissioner Manelich Castilla Craviotto.
The force’s social proximity department has the task of strengthening citizens’ trust in police by improving social conditions and promoting active citizen participation in their own social development, the commissioner said.
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The Otomí people live in the states of México, Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Tlaxcala and Michoacán, and speak three distinct dialects of their language.
Some have proposed to use the name Hñähñu as a more formal or correct way to call themselves, but little traction has been gained. Hñähñú refers to the dialect of the language spoken in the Mezquital Valley region in central Mexico.
Site of a processing plant that was never built. el universal
At least 34 federal and state-funded agricultural infrastructure projects in Yucatán that were slated to be built between 2014 and 2016 amounted to nothing, according to the state’s College of Agronomists.
College president Lorenzo Alvarado Sosa said that 15 of the abandoned projects involved the installation of irrigation systems, while the other 19 included the construction of greenhouses, a solar-powered agricultural processing plant and an organic farm.
The Yucatán state government and federal agricultural authorities announced the latter two projects with pomp and circumstance four years ago.
But neither project went beyond the planning stage and thieves looted the few materials that arrived at the proposed sites in the municipality of Tahmek, such as solar panels and parts for an irrigation system.
Similar scenarios played out on the other projects which were planned for other rural areas in the state, with the money allocated ending up in the pockets of unscrupulous government officials and contractors, according to intended beneficiaries.
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“They cheated us, we thought that they would help us. We trusted them, that’s why we gave them the 450,000 pesos [US $21,850 at today’s exchange rate] from the checks. We cashed them, gave the project engineers [the money] and then they disappeared,” Tahmek resident María Cornelia Keb Canul told the newspaper El Universal.
She and at least 17 other producers from the area had planned to grow habanero chiles, citrus fruits and other crops to supply the planned processing plant.
Keb Canul said that two engineers — one each from the federal Agriculture Secretariat (Sagarpa) and the state government’s rural development department — personally accompanied her to a bank where she cashed the check and handed over the funds with the assurance that they would start the work quickly.
“That day [in 2014], after we cashed the check and gave them the money, they invited us to have breakfast . . . in Mérida. Then they brought us back to the farm and never returned,” she said.
The 54-year-old woman and her husband Silvino Puc Ek told El Universal that they didn’t report what had happened out of fear that they wouldn’t receive any government support in the future and because the engineers kept the documents related to the project.
Another factor that complicates accountability is that under Sagarpa rules, project beneficiaries are required to hand over the funds that they have been granted to officials or contractors, although it’s the farmers who remain legally responsible for the execution of the work.
A Sagarpa official who spoke to El Universal on the condition of anonymity said the absence of responsibility on the part of anyone but the beneficiaries of the projects had led to the practice of taking the cash and running, so to speak, becoming commonplace.
The same two state and federal officials who swindled Keb Canul also failed to deliver on a promised farm project after receiving funds in 2014 from a cooperative made up of eight farmers in Tahmek.
Alfonso Baas Casanova, an ejidatario, or communal landowner, and the cooperative’s head told El Universal that he cashed a check for 460,000 pesos and gave the proceeds to Máximo Paredes Rodríguez of the state government’s rural development department, and Sergio Muñoz de Alba of Sagarpa.
Again, the understanding was that work on the project would start soon but, as before, the farmers never saw the men again. The site that today should be a working, organic farm instead lies abandoned.
Alvarado Sosa, who worked for the state government before heading up the Yucatán College of Agronomists, said that frauds of this type are not only discouraging for farmers but also leave many with no other option than to abandon the countryside and look for opportunities elsewhere.
“There are more and more migrants who go to Mérida and Cancún, more migrants who go abroad, there are few or none who want to sow crops. The Yucatecan countryside yields profits but we have to be well-organized, apply the resources honestly and really get to work,” he said.
Six students from the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) came home with eight medals after participating in the fifth Robot Games Zero Latitud in Quito, Ecuador.
The young men returned with five gold medals, one silver and two bronze, earning a total of 59 points that ranked their team No. 2 at the event.
The IPN students competed against more than 500 of their counterparts from all over the world in three intense days that concluded earlier this month.
The mechatronics students won in the Mini Sumo RC category, the three-pound combat category, Autonomous Mini Sumo and 12-pound combat categories.
Along with bragging rights, the five victories gave the IPN roboticists international certifications to join prestigious international robotics competitions in six of 31 categories.
In just five years, the first international robotics tournament to be held in Ecuador has become the most important robotics competition in the region.
Candidate Magaña, center and wearing red hat, was attacked on Saturday.
A candidate running for Isla Mujeres municipal council was the victim of an armed attack Saturday evening in Quintana Roo.
Rosely Magaña Martínez was at a campaign meeting in her home on the mainland when armed civilians entered and opened fire.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate and campaign worker Lizbeth Pasos Sarabia were wounded.
Both victims were transported to a nearby hospital but neither was in serious condition according to reports yesterday.
Authorities mounted an intense operation to locate the attackers but there have been no arrests.
Mayor Juan Carrillo Soberanis, who has taken leave to campaign for a second term, told a press conference that at least 10 of his associates have received threats during the present electoral process.
Carrillo announced he would file a formal complaint before the state Attorney General along with information regarding the identity of the person behind the threats.
As elsewhere, the current election period has been violent in the Caribbean state.
On Thursday, campaign workers with the Social Encounter Party (PES) in Puerto Morelos were attacked while riding a motorcycle. Four vehicles intercepted them, one of which struck the bike, whose riders were then threatened with beheading.
Nothing further transpired but the incident was enough to give one of the workers a nervous breakdown.
More than 300 bodies have been exhumed from hidden graves in Veracruz over the past two years, according to members of a group dedicated to searching for missing persons in the state.
In August 2016, the collective Solecito, which is made up of families of kidnapping victims, began the grisly task of identifying sites on a 10-hectare piece of land near the city of Veracruz where bodies have been buried in makeshift graves.
Once the graves are found, officers from the Federal Police’s scientific division excavate the areas.
With the discovery of six skulls last week, the remains of 295 people have now been recovered from the Colinas de Santa Fe property.
By the middle of next month, search efforts at the state’s largest clandestine grave are expected to end and construction of a memorial for the victims will begin.
In the municipality of Omealca, Federal Police have recovered at least another 20 bodies and 12 skulls from four artesian wells.
Marcela Zurita, the leader of Solecito in Córdoba, said the search in Omealca started last month and will continue until all the detected graves have been fully excavated.
Two bodies exhumed in the municipality, which is located about 25 kilometers southeast of Córdoba, have been identified by their clothing and the personal documents found on their person but are still awaiting DNA testing for formal confirmation.
Following a meeting Saturday with the four candidates for state governor, Solecito member Lucía Díaz said that the state is living through “a humanitarian crisis.”
In February, the Veracruz government formally accused four high-ranking former security officials and 15 police officers of the forced disappearance of 15 people during the administration of former governor Javier Duarte.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ex-governor is awaiting trial on corruption charges and a Veracruz judge issued new charges against him last week, accusing him of being involved in the forced disappearance of at least 13 people.
Despite the arrests, Díaz charged that investigations into disappearances in the state are not thorough and that in some cases officials have refused to file the complaints lodged by victims’ family members.
She also accused the current state government of politicizing the investigations and warned that the haste to leverage a political advantage — the son of current Governor Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares is contending the July 1 election to replace his father — could result in errors which jeopardize the serving of justice.
“They’re playing with very dangerous issues because if they make mistakes in their electoral zeal and later they can’t properly try [the accused], they will have to pay in some way,” Díaz said.
She called on whoever becomes the next governor to head a government which treats victims and their families with dignity and conducts a thorough search for the disappeared persons.
The Solecito collective rebuked Veracruz Attorney General Jorge Winckler this month when he appeared in a soccer team photo with other officials from the FGE, the office he heads. The name of their team is Los Desaparecidos, or The Disappeared.
“It’s a mockery that humiliates [victims and their families] . . .” Díaz said.
Rail cars under water yesterday in Guadalajara. informador
A strong storm struck Guadalajara, Jalisco, yesterday producing flash flooding that affected several parts of the city, including the light rail system from which scores of people had to be rescued.
Water up to four meters deep flooded the Dermatológico station on line 1 and trapped about 40 people inside the carriages of a stationary train.
Civil Protection personnel, firefighters and local residents all contributed to the rescue efforts.
In a video that was live-streamed on Facebook by one stranded passenger, people could be seen waist-deep in water and a distressed baby can be heard crying. In another video, passengers were attempting to swim to safety.
Authorities said that none of the affected passengers was injured but one person who showed signs of hypothermia received medical treatment.
Through the formation of a human chain, another rescue operation saved a man who was swept away by flood waters in the Nueva España neighborhood.
Elsewhere in the city, a canal running parallel to Patria Avenue in Zapopan overflowed and flooded the thoroughfare between the Américas and Acueducto avenues.
Several cars were left stranded in the floodwaters, according to social media posts.
Transportation authorities said that several other roads in the city were affected by the heavy rains including the tunnel on Washington avenue, Federalismo avenue and the city’s Periférico, or ring road, between Melchor Ocampo and Pino Suárez streets.
Fallen trees also blocked Vallarta avenue in both directions between Rafael Sanzio and Independencia streets and shut down other roads in the Jalisco capital.
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Shoppers in the Plaza Patria mall — located about 10 kilometers north of the city’s downtown — were forced to take shelter on the upper levels of the shopping center after its ground floor was inundated. Cars in the mall’s parking lot were also affected by the rapidly rising floodwaters.
Water was reported inside the Zoquipan and Zapopan hospitals, while the city’s Dermatological hospital also sustained damage.
Jalisco Governor Aristóteles Sandoval wrote on Twitter last night that there were no reports of injuries from the flooding and that Civil Protection services in all the municipalities of the Guadalajara metropolitan area were involved in clean-up efforts.
Hurricane Bud's forecast track. the weather channel
Hurricane Bud, the second hurricane in less than a week in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is expected to remain well offshore but will still deliver heavy rain and high winds to parts of the west coast.
The category 3 hurricane was situated about 425 kilometers southwest of Cabo Corrientes, Jalisco, and 760 kilometers south-southeast of the southern tip of the Baja peninsula at 10:00am today, said the United States National Hurricane Center (NHR).
Maximum sustained winds were 195 kilometers per hour. Bud was moving northwest at 11 kilometers per hour and was expected to remain offshore of the southwestern coast of mainland Mexico, the NHR said.
Some additional strengthening is possible today but a slow weakening should begin tomorrow.
A tropical storm watch is in effect between Manzanillo, Colima, and Cabo Corrientes.
The National Meteorological Service issued a forecast at 7:00am for intense storm conditions in Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacán, Colima, Puebla, Chiapas and Oaxaca.
Bud is expected to produce rainfall accumulations of 75 to 150 millimeters across much of southwestern Mexico and waves of three to four meters in Michoacán, Colima and Jalisco.
Aletta was the first hurricane of the season and went from a tropical storm to category 4 hurricane in just 24 hours last week but it too was located well away from the coast.
By this morning it was a tropical depression, the NHR said.
Many Amazon trucks travel in convoys to avoid robbery.
Trucks transporting goods for e-commerce giant Amazon used to be a frequent target for thieves in the greater Mexico City metropolitan area, where the company has two distribution centers.
But thanks to the implementation of a successful anti-robbery strategy, Amazon hasn’t suffered any holdups on the roads during the past three months.
Since January, trucks leaving the company’s warehouses in Cuatitlán Izcalli, México state, have traveled in convoy, while security vehicles also accompany the trucks during times when robberies have been shown to be more frequent.
Amazon has also increased its cooperation with security authorities.
Consequently, robberies gradually became less frequent before stopping altogether.
The director of loss prevention at Amazon México told transportation news website T21 that the introduction of the new security strategy followed a meeting between directors of several other companies that were also suffering losses due to highway robbery.
“We analyzed the modus operandi [of the thieves], the common problem that we had, and drew up a risk map of the areas where they were stealing from us . . . the next step was to decide what joint actions we could take,” Héctor Coronado said.
“We activated the protocols among the whole group . . .The benefit is that we share intelligence and counter-intelligence,” he explained.
Before the strategy was put into action, Coronado said, Amazon was the target of at least one robbery a week and that theft from a single truck resulted on average in a loss of 5 million pesos (US $ 245,000) worth of merchandise.
Highway robbery is a growing problem in Mexico, with the number of reported cases affecting trucks almost doubling last year.
To combat robbery and improve security on the nation’s highways, federal Transportation Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said Thursday that the government is planning to have 5,000 kilometers of video surveillance installed by 2020.
Bourdain with Abigail Mendoza, second from left, in Oaxaca.
“Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history.”
There could be no doubting chef Anthony Bourdain’s deep love of Mexico — and particularly authentic Mexican food — that was cultivated during several trips to various parts of the country and which he wrote about in a 2014 essay entitled Under the Volcano.
But the writer, television personality and celebrity chef’s love affair with Mexico — and many other countries around the world — has come to an end. Bourdain died in France yesterday by his own hand. He was 61.
After shooting to fame on the back of a 1999 confessional piece in The New Yorker in which he spilled secrets about the restaurant trade and then a follow-up book entitled Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain entered the world of television.
While filming for his first show, A Cook’s Tour, Bourdain made his first professional visit to Mexico, traveling to the hometown of a Mexican cook with whom he worked in the New York restaurant Brasserie Les Halles.
In Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, Bourdain learned about the elaborate process to make mole poblano, chowed down on escamoles (ant larvae) and enchiladas and sampled the viscous, pre-Hispanic drink of the gods made out of the fermented sap of the maguey plant, pulque.
An infatuation with real Mexican food that would last for years was born.
During visits to Mexico City, Bourdain ate tacos al pastor on the streets of the historic center, migas (a traditional soup) — washed down with a michelada — at La Güera in the notorious neighborhood of Tepito and fell in love with the cerdo en salsa verde and refried beans at the breakfast diner Fonda Margarita in Colonia del Valle.
He also visited the massive wholesale market Central de Abasto, enjoyed some of the capital’s famous cantinas and dined at the upscale restaurant Máximo Bistrot.
While making his second show, No Reservations, Bourdain visited Baja California where he ate tacos and drank mezcal in Tijuana and devoured a lobster lunch on the beach at Rosarito.
The highlight, however, was undoubtedly his visit to the seafood street stand in Ensenada called La Guerrerense.
The celebrity chef with Sabina Bandera of Ensenada.
There, Bourdain ate ceviche, scallop, sea snail, sea urchin and octopus tostadas and met the stand’s owner and namesake, Guerrero-native Sabina Bandera, whom he called a “genius.” He would later invite her to show off her culinary talents at a street food convention in Singapore.
Oaxaca was another favorite hunting and eating ground for the acclaimed television personality, whose death yesterday triggered an outpouring of emotion from fans around the world.
On his first visit to the southern state, Bourdain ate iguana and tamales while on a more recent visit he sampled tlayudas (a large, crispy tortilla filled with a variety of ingredients), squash blossom soup and atole (a hot corn-based beverage) with internationally renowned chef Abigail Mendoza in the town of Teotitlán del Valle. While there, he marveled at the delicateness of a Zapotec woman’s hands and the strength of her forearms as she ground corn to make tortillas.
Bourdain also ate at the renowned pasillo del humo, or smoky aisle, in Oaxaca City’s central market, where visitors are usually affected more by the delicious smells of the grilling meats than the wafts of smoke.
The New Yorker, however, was more than just a connoisseur of all kinds of weird and wonderful food from all over Mexico and beyond.
He was also a champion of the underdog who stood up for immigrants in the United States, aware that they are the backbone of some sectors of the economy.
“Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes [and] look after our children,” he wrote in his 2014 essay.
He also questioned why many of his compatriots embrace Mexican food, beverages, people and other products and aspects of the country but not Mexico itself.
“Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people — as we sure employ a lot of them . . .” Bourdain said.
“We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we,” as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them — and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films,” he continued.
Trucks deliver water to thirsty neighborhoods of Mexico City.
Close to 1 million people in Mexico City have been left without running water mainly due to high temperatures produced by a high-pressure weather system.
The water shortfall is being felt in seven of the city’s 16 boroughs: Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, Tlalpan, Azcapotzalco and Venustiano Carranza.
City authorities blamed an atypical high-pressure system, damage to the power grid by high winds, the diversion of water to aid farmers and a spike in demand by as much as 20% because of the heat.
Relief is still at least a few days away as the heat wave recedes northward; moisture is expected to reach the city in the coming days.
The director of the city’s water system, who explained that the capital went through a similar dry spell 85 years ago, warned that even if it starts raining on Monday or Tuesday, water service won’t be fully restored until two or three days after.
In the meantime, the government has deployed a fleet of 390 tanker trucks to distribute water in the affected boroughs. Each will make three trips per day, with which authorities expect to be able to deliver 12 million liters daily until the shortage is over.
The city estimated that the flow of water from the Lerma aqueduct has declined by 700,000 liters per second, while the Cutzamala aqueduct is operating at 60% capacity.
Elsewhere in the country, it’s hurricane season.
The first named phenomenon on the Pacific coast, Hurricane Aletta, strengthened from category 2 to 4 in the lapse of 12 hours yesterday, with wind speeds reaching 270 kilometers per hour. But the storm has been located well off the coast and was rapidly weakening this afternoon, the United States National Hurricane Center said.
It was situated about 430 kilometers southwest of Socorro Island, in the Revillagigedo Islands, and 865 kilometers south-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California Sur.
