An amber alert was issued for eight-month-old Nancy.
Police in Mexico City are looking for a young woman who kidnapped a baby on Sunday from outside a hospital in the Doctores neighborhood of Cuauhtémoc.
María Magdalena Sánchez went to visit her sister in the hospital, accompanied by eight-month-old Nancy and her niece and nephew. Upon arrival, she was told by hospital staff that the children could not enter with her.
So Sánchez made a space for the children next to the main hospital entrance using blankets and bits of cardboard, entrusting her baby with Emiliano, 15, and Jenni, 6.
According to the police report, Emiliano said that at about 4:00pm his sister said she needed to go to the bathroom. A woman approached and offered to look after the baby while the two went to the washroom. When Emilio and Jenni returned, the woman and little Nancy were gone.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office has issued an amber alert and police have released a sketch of Nancy’s kidnapper based on Emilio’s description of a 25 to 30-year-old woman with white skin, oval face, thin, straight hair and about 1.6 meters tall.
The suspect in the kidnapping.
A photo and description of the baby, who has a scar on her left wrist, was also released.
Police ask Mexico City residents with any information relevant to the investigation to call 5200 9000 or 01800 745 2369.
Many other migrants who have been stranded in southern Chiapas in recent months while waiting to file visa requests with the National Immigration Institute decided to leave Tapachula at the same time, the newspaper El Universal reported.
There are around 7,200 migrants currently in Chiapas, according to the National Human Rights Commission, and another 1,600 are waiting to enter Mexico on the Rodolfo Robles bridge.
More than 3,000 are in Mapastepec, a town about 100 kilometers north of Tapachula, where some have been employed in a temporary government work program.
Among those who left Tapachula at 3:00am yesterday were a large number of minors as well as pregnant women, seniors and members of the LGBT community.
After walking for hours in temperatures as high as 38 C, some caravan members reached the outskirts of Huixtla in the afternoon where police tried to stop them from entering the town.
But a group of about 500 migrants ignored the police and walked into the center of Huixtla to camp in the town’s central square.
Municipal authorities told businesses to close and warned local residents not to leave their houses to avoid any possible confrontations.
Other migrants stayed at shelters outside Huixtla last night while yet more camped out in Huehuetán, a town around 20 kilometers to the south.
Federal Police stationed at a migration checkpoint in the latter town made no attempt to stop or detain the migrants.
A trans woman identified only as Nancy told the newspaper El Universal that she fled her Central American homeland because of discrimination, a lack of employment and abuse at the hands of gangs.
“I’ve been mistreated a lot because of my gender, I can’t get a job. I want to live in a free country where at least I’m treated better,” she said.
Earlier this year, the federal government issued more than 10,000 humanitarian visas that allow migrants to work in Mexico and access services for up to a year but the initiative has largely been discontinued, forcing new arrivals to run the risk of being deported as they travel towards the northern border.
The Immigration Institute said that 204 Hondurans were flown back to San Pedro Sula Sunday from Minatitlán, Veracruz, because their stay in Mexico was “irregular.”
Most of the deported migrants were families traveling with children, the agency said.
The Human Rights Commission called on federal and Chiapas authorities to guarantee dignified treatment and conditions for migrants and to speed up the processing of visas for people stranded in shelters.
Fleeing poverty and violence in their countries of origin, tens of thousands of migrants have entered Mexico in recent months, many of whom arrived as part of several large caravans that originated in Central America.
Migration continues to be a point of contention between the Mexican and United States governments, and U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to close the border if Mexico doesn’t do more to stem migration and drug flows.
The San Pedro Mártir Sierra where Kat Hammontre is missing.
The search continues for a United States citizen missing since last Thursday in the desert near San Felipe, Baja California.
Kat Hammontre, 68, was hiking at the entrance of the Diablo Canyon in the San Pedro Mártir Sierra with friends and her dog Tootsie, but grew tired and stopped to rest near a creek.
She told her friends to continue and that she would catch up later, but that was the last time anyone has seen her or her dog.
It wasn’t until later in the day when Hammontre’s friends returned from their hike and spoke with her husband, Warren Sundquist, that they realized she was missing.
Volunteers and Mexicali Civil Protection personnel, the fire department, the army, the Red Cross and five search and rescue dogs mounted a search that revealed two marijuana plantations but no sign of the missing woman.
Kat Hammontre.
It is believed that Hammontre cannot have strayed far from her last known whereabouts — where daytime temperatures have been reaching 32 C — due to poor health.
Yesterday evening, state Civil Protection chief Antonio Rosquillas announced the search was being called off and that the case had been turned over the state Attorney General’s Office (PGJE), which will continue to investigate and attempt to locate the missing woman.
“We suspended the search. We combed the area surrounding the spot where she was last seen . . . a five-kilometer perimeter, and we did not find her,” said Rosquillas yesterday evening.
Sundquist posted on Facebook early this morning that he met yesterday with PGJE officials and that he was to travel with them to the Diablo Canyon area today.
He also said he understood that Civil Protection personnel would continue to search after all.
Street vendors in the historic center of Mexico City have threatened to form a self-defense force if authorities don’t act to stop extortion, threats, kidnappings and murders allegedly committed by a notorious criminal organization.
An association of stall-holders and informal vendors based on two streets just north of the capital’s central square wrote to Mexico City Attorney General Ernestina Godoy to denounce the criminal acts they say are perpetrated by members of La Unión de Tepito, a gang based in the infamous neighborhood of the same name.
The vendors also criticized the Attorney General’s Office (PGJ) for not acting on the criminal complaints they have previously filed.
“. . . You must understand that everything has a limit and due to what is expressed above, don’t be surprised by the emergence of self-defense groups . . . in the face of the tardiness and inaction of the authorities responsible for security and law enforcement,” the letter said.
Association leader Raymundo Pérez López said that La Unión de Tepito charges cobro de piso, or extortion fees, that are so high that many vendors have been forced to abandon their businesses and lose their only source of income.
“Those of us who haven’t abandoned our activities continue to survive with a scant profit margin and with an economic situation that is increasingly miserable,” he said.
“The worst of all is that despite the existence of complaints and investigation files in several agencies of [the PGJ], no progress is achieved. We perceive this as a lack of capacity, interest or commitment from the authorities,” Pérez added.
The newspaper El Universal reported that Mexico City has evidence dating back to 2017 that shows that La Unión de Tepito has been extorting and attacking street vendors and shop owners in the capital’s downtown.
The gang is also believed to have taken possession of abandoned buildings in the historic center.
Data from the business organization Canacope shows that criminals collect at least 483 million pesos (US $25.6 million) annually in cobro de piso payments in Mexico City, and that three of every 10 businesses in the capital are targeted by extortionists for regular payments that allow them to continue operating.
In November, then-mayor José Ramón Amieva called on all small businesses that have been targeted not to be intimidated into silence but to file complaints with the PGJ.
The same month, Pérez filed a complaint about extortion and threats but nothing has come of it.
“Like my complaint there are surely thousands more that only form part of the statistics. I have . . . hundreds of signatures from citizens who work in the same activity as me and who suffer from threats, who are desperate, but up until today, these criminal groups continue to operate without the responsible authorities doing anything to stop the ambush . . .” he said.
La Unión de Tepito is also believed to be responsible for a number of kidnappings and homicides in and around Mexico City’s historic center, including a gun attack last September that killed four people and wounded six more in Plaza Garibaldi, a square known as the capital’s home of mariachi music.
'We're going to win,' says AMLO of his economic growth forecast.
The number of jobs created in the first quarter of this year was the highest in 10 years, President López Obrador said today.
“According to IMSS [the Mexican Social Security Institute], the number of insured workers grew in the January-March quarter – 269,143 jobs were created. The figure represents an increase not seen for 10 years in a similar period,” the president told reporters at his morning press conference.
López Obrador said the job numbers are indicative of a growing economy, adding that the government remains confident that economic growth will exceed the figures forecast by analysts for 2019.
“The bet is on with the experts, the banks, the financiers, who have forecast that we’re going to have lower growth than what we’re estimating,” he said.
“We accept the challenge and we’ll be here watching [the economic data] . . . We’re going to win.”
The Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) said earlier this month that it expected the economy will grow between 1.1% and 2.1% this year but López Obrador quickly rejected his own government’s figures, stating that they were too low.
The federal government says that it is targeting average 4% growth during its six-year term, a figure considered fanciful by most analysts.
Sandoval presents government's new salaries portal.
The salaries of around 3.4 million civil servants are now publicly accessible on a government website, the secretary of public administration announced today.
Irma Sandoval Ballesteros said that the earnings of 1.4 million employees of 290 federal departments as well as those of almost two million teachers can be consulted on the Portal Nómina Transparente (Transparent Payroll Portal).
The secretary explained that information on the site will be updated after each bimonthly pay cycle to ensure that the salaries of new appointments to government positions are available.
People curious to see how much a friend, family member, colleague or indeed anyone in the public service makes can simply enter their name into a search engine on the portal to find out.
Sandoval said that the site contains 10 or 11 times more information than that available on the portal of the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information (Inai).
Although she is no longer employed by the government, the salary earned by Yalitza Aparicio – star of the Oscar-winning film Roma – when she was a teacher in Oaxaca was revealed on the government portal, the newspaper El Financiero reported, although it now appears to have been removed.
The indigenous actress earned a monthly salary of 10,481 pesos (US $555) as a preschool teacher in the town of Tlaxiaco, around one-tenth of President López Obrador’s net salary of 108,305 pesos (US $5,735).
Anyone interested in finding out how much the foreign secretary, the Pemex chief, or their child’s teacher earns can consult the payroll portal by clicking here.
The president in Campeche, where he threatened to repeal education reforms by decree.
Complete abrogation of the education reforms implemented by the previous federal government would be a backward step for Mexico, experts said after the president threatened Saturday to do just that.
President López Obrador said he will issue a decree to repeal the reforms if his own education plan is held up in Congress by opposition lawmakers and the CNTE teachers’ union, which argues that it doesn’t go far enough.
The president conceded that there are groups who don’t view his education laws favorably, adding “we’re going to be talking with everyone until there’s an agreement but if it takes too long, I will bring out a decree to abrogate the badly named education reform while the new proposal is approved.”
López Obrador said that his government won’t persecute teachers “as the past administration tried to do” but made it clear that he intends to put an end to the practice of selling positions.
He also said that teachers’ salaries will be paid directly by the federal government to avoid “diversions of funds” to state governments and union leaders, adding that teachers won’t be subjected to compulsory evaluations as was the case under the Enrique Peña Nieto administration.
If a teacher has completed studies in education, he or she has sufficient training to teach, López Obrador charged.
Roberto Rodríguez Gómez, an education researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the National Autonomous University (UNAM), was among several experts who warned that if the president follows through with his repeal-by-decree plan, the consequences will be dire as Mexico would effectively return to the legal framework for education that existed before 2013.
“With this decision, the education sector would return to the hands of the union. [They would control] everything that has to do with the allocation of positions, the promotion of teachers . . . and transfers. It would also eliminate the possibility of having the best teachers, which is assured through evaluations,” he said.
Rodríguez also said the president doesn’t have the power to unilaterally cancel the past government’s education laws.
“To repeal the reform, the constitution needs to be modified but that cannot be carried out at the president’s will but rather it has to go through the legislative bodies – the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate and the state legislatures,” he said.
Marco Fernández, a researcher at public policy think tank México Evalúa, said that repealing the reform would amount to “a contradiction with what the president has said in disagreement with the practices of the inheritance and sale of [teaching] positions.”
He added that it was the “very legal framework” that existed before 2013 that “allowed these bad practices” to happen.
Carlos Arnelas, another UNAM researcher, said “the most negative part of the president’s proposal is that once again the union would colonize basic [pre-school to middle school] education,” explaining that “in other words it would have a very strong capacity for negotiation at a state level and no governor would have the power to confront them.”
Alma Maldonado, an education researcher at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) Center for Investigation and Advanced Study (Cinvestav), said the most worrying aspect of the repeal plan is the elimination of the National Education Evaluation Institute (INEE), “because it generates vital information about the education sector.”
Teacher evaluation as set out in the former government’s education reform was vehemently opposed by the CNTE union, which protested frequently throughout Peña Nieto’s presidency.
The investigation into a Querétaro businessman accused of money laundering came to an end last September when the federal Attorney General’s Office decided not to proceed.
The case involved 2018 presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya, who denied involvement at the time.
He claimed that the Institutional Revolutionary Party was behind the accusation that Manuel Barreiro Castañeda headed an elaborate money laundering ring that benefited Anaya.
The Attorney General’s Office said in February it had opened an investigation into the case after it received a report in October 2017 about the use of funds from illegal sources.
In September, it decided no criminal charges would be filed against Barreiro.
Ricardo Pico uses two horn-shaped vessels to estimate the alcohol content of the sotol he makes at his Chihuahua distillery.
The pickup truck rambles down a long rocky road. On both sides, a barren landscape stretches out as far as the eye can see, punctuated by the occasional yucca tree.
After seemingly forever, I arrive at a small outpost, the aroma of smoked wood thick in the air from pit ovens nearby. The intense desert sun beats down on Ricardo Pico and me as we hop out of the truck at the viñata, or sotol distillery, deep in the Chihuahuan desert.
Pico is the man behind Sotol Clande, one of the latest artisanal brands of sotol to emerge from Mexico. Born from deserts and dry forests of northern Mexico, the spirit brings smooth yet earthy flavours and a fascinating history to the table and bar.
While sotol has been around for more than 300 years, it has long been overshadowed by the more popular Mexican drinks tequila and mezcal. Why? Up until approximately 30 years ago, sotol production was prohibited, and the culture behind it nearly lost.
Today, a small group of enterprises, like Sotol Clande, are reviving sotol’s production and heritage and reintroducing it to the world.
A desert spoon plant, source of sotol, at the top of a ridge overlooking the vast desert.
Sotol was born during Mexico’s colonial era when the Spanish settlers used distillation techniques to get the “spirit” out of plants the indigenous people had already fermented. In the northern dry-lands and sierras of Chihuahua, this included the sotol or desert spoon plant.
Thus, sotol, like tequila and mezcal, embodies the mestizaje (mixing) process that gave birth to almost everything in Mexican culture. But interesting enough, this northern beverage’s fate was considerably marked by Mexico’s northern neighbour.
Sotol’s heyday likely came in the early 1930s when over 300,000 liters per year were made, most of it destined for the United States to quench the thirst of Americans parched by prohibition. Rumor has it that even the legendary gangster Al Capone smuggled sotol from Mexican border areas into the U.S.
The sotol boom didn’t last long as the Mexican government began a crackdown on artisan alcohol producers. At the time, the Mexican elites favoured European liquors such as whisky and brandy, eschewing locally-made beverages for alcohol they perceived as higher class.
Sotol got a reputation as a drink for peasants and drunks, and producers were persecuted, their stills often riddled by bullets. Occasionally they were even thrown in jail.
This persecution took its toll on the industry, and generations of knowledge and tradition were nearly wiped out. Only a few sotoleros, or sotol producers, persisted, moving around the countryside with their copper stills and donkeys, packing up their clandestine mobile operations and moving on when the government closed in.
Workers move the roasted desert spoon hearts from the underground pit.
However, with the lifting of prohibition in the early 1990s, sotoleros slowly started coming, quite literally, out of the desert. This has led to a renewed interest in the beverage, with both artisanal and industrial brands resurrecting the spirit and bringing it to the public.
***
“When we first started the Clande project, we wanted to rebuild the story of sotol,” Pico says. That story, forgotten by many urban residents of Chihuahua, lived on through the knowledge of just a handful of producers in rural communities around the state.
Pico estimates there are fewer than 30 sotoleros in all of Chihuahua and fewer than 10 in the neighbouring states of Durango and Coahuila.
These producers traditionally made sotol just for their local communities, where consumers are very knowledgeable about the final product. They can taste subtleties in the production process such as premature harvesting, overcooking, over-fermenting and adulteration with agaves and sugar cane.
The communities, along with the master sotoleros’ knowledge, are vital components in the final product of a well-crafted sotol, argues Faridy Bujaidar Ávila. “It’s very important to highlight that artisanal sotol and industrial sotol are vastly different.”
According to Bujaidar, “[Artisanal producers] can’t adulterate it in any way because they have a direct relationship with their clients. However, when you try some industrial sotols, and you have an educated palate, you notice that they include sugar cane, which totally alters the flavour and greatly lowers the quality of the product.”
A worker fills the still with water to cool the liquid.
Bujaidar, who holds a masters in anthropology and researched sotol culture, stressed the importance of keeping the traditional methods alive. Although some producers have wanted to replicate the success of the more industrially produced tequilas, she feels that they lack the nuances and cultural richness that artisanally made liquors possess.
“It’s not just about the quality of the final product, but the traditional knowledge of the person who produced it, and of the communities that consume it.”
Pico seems to agree. His brand has a more anthropological vision, relying heavily on the expertise of the sotoleros he works with, most of whom have learned their craft from the generations before them.
***
At the viñata, I come to learn that this region was chosen for the distillery due to the abundance of the sotol plant nearby. We take a quick drive up to a viewpoint overlooking the desert. Off in the distance, mountains loom over the landscape, and to the northeast, the border with Texas. In front of us, hundreds, if not thousands of desert spoon plants are rooted to the ground, growing freely.
Although similar in appearance to an agave plant, the desert spoon is actually a member of the asparagus family. Its mute green leaves contain sharp teeth, which protect it from predators.
To make sotol, the hearts of the desert spoon are separated from the rest of the plant and roasted in an underground wood-fired pit for up to three days before being milled by hand and left to ferment in open-air vats. Following fermentation, the liquid is transferred to stills for distillation.
Pico pulls a small amount of the distilled liquid from a bucket made by master sotolero Don Eduardo Arrieta and his son, Eduardo. Passing the liquid rapidly between two horn-shaped vessels, he watches for how the liquid bubbles, an indication of the alcohol content of the first distillation. By distilling the sotol two or three times, they can achieve the desired alcohol content, usually around 50%.
While the roasting and knowledge of the sotoleros play a significant role in the taste of sotol, perhaps nothing is more important than the environment the plant grew in. “Terroir is very important to sotol,” Pico mentions. “Different experiences the plant has over 15 years, going through droughts, floods and other natural events, gives the final product a lot of its flavour.”
Many sotoleros prefer to produce blancos, as an unaged spirit retains more of the earthiness of the plant than their aged brothers reposados and añejos. Some craft distillers, such as master sotolero Geraldo Ruelas of Oro de Coyame, take their products a step further. Ruelas infuses some of his offerings with everything from almonds and pineapples to marijuana and rattlesnake meat.
I sample some of the varieties at Ruelas’ distillery in Aldama, just outside Chihuahua. Instead of the smokiness of mezcal or the bite of tequila, I find a smooth, easy-drinking liquor, with little alcohol aftertaste despite the 48% alcohol level. Each of the infusions adds a subtle touch of flavor to the sotol without distracting from the earthiness.
Long confined to being discretely sold directly from sotoleros such as Ruelas, sotol is now making its way into the tasting rooms of Chihuahua and cocktail bars around North America as an alternative to tequila and mezcal.
At the same time, the traditions and culture of a region are being renewed, and the story of sotol is being rebuilt.
The federal energy secretary today named the gas station chains which sold the cheapest and most expensive fuel in Mexico last week.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s morning press conference, Rocío Nahle also revealed the states in which the filling stations with the lowest and highest gasoline prices were located.
For regular fuel – known in Mexico as magna – PetroSeven was the cheapest chain between April 6 and 12, with an average price of 18.74 pesos per liter (US $0.99, or $3.76 a gallon).
Arco was the next cheapest, selling magna for 18.91 pesos per liter on average, while Pemex affiliate Rendichicas was third, with a price of 19.18 pesos.
Shell sold the most expensive regular fuel last week, averaging 20.23 pesos per liter, followed by G500 and Full Gas, both of which had an average price of 19.89 pesos.
For premium fuel, PetroSeven was again the cheapest followed by Arco and Gulf, with prices ranging between 20.35 pesos and 20.54 pesos.
Shell also had the most expensive premium fuel last week, averaging 21.61 pesos per liter, followed by Walmart and Oxxo Gas, with prices of 21.24 and 21.2 pesos respectively.
Nahle said the 10 gas stations with the lowest prices for regular fuel were in México state, Tamaulipas, Campeche, Veracruz and Puebla. The lowest price seen was 14.28 pesos per liter, 24% less than PetroSeven’s average.
The 10 filling stations with the highest magna prices were in Nayarit, Durango, Sonora, Michoacán and Chihuahua. The highest price charged for a liter of fuel was 22.99 pesos.
The cheapest premium fuel was found at stations in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Puebla, Chihuahua and Guerrero (the lowest price seen was 16.56 pesos per liter), while the most expensive premium gasoline was sold in Guanajuato, Sinaloa and Chiapas (the highest price was 23.76 pesos).
López Obrador, who last week said the federal government could go into retail fuel sales if gas station owners don’t charge “fair prices,” reiterated yesterday that some of them are “taking advantage” of their customers.
“We’re ensuring that the [gasoline] price doesn’t increase but the distributors, not all of them, are taking advantage. It’s given to them at 16 pesos and they’re selling it at 19 or 20 pesos. They’re left with a profit margin that is higher than before,” he said.
The government has pledged that fuel prices will not increase beyond the annual inflation rate and last month increased a stimulus scheme for gasoline that is designed to alleviate the burden of the IEPS excise tax.
However, it appears that not all gas stations have passed on the savings to their customers.
