Trafficker in totoaba and drugs arrested in Baja California

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September 15, 2018

Two security guards were killed yesterday in Tehuantepec.

It was a violent payday yesterday in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca.

In two separate incidents thieves stole more than 10 million pesos (about US $530,000) in the towns of Matías Romero and Santo Domingo Tehuantepec and left two security guards dead.

In the first case, civilians carrying rifles and wearing balaclavas entered the Matías Romero municipal offices, threatened staff and made off with an undetermined amount of cash that was intended to cover employees’ paychecks.

In Santo Domingo, 10 people attacked four security guards as they were supplying a downtown bank machine with at least 9.2 million pesos (close to US $487,000) in cash.

The guards were transporting the bags of cash from an armored vehicle when the thieves attacked, killing two of the guards before fleeing with the loot.

Source: El Imparcial (sp), Milenio (sp)

Turn down the volume: Jalisco municipality works on noise bylaw

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September 15, 2018

Turn it down: businesses will be required to monitor noise levels.

Ocotlán is aiming to be one of the first municipalities in Jalisco to implement anti-noise regulations in line with statewide legislation that went into force last month.

On August 24, the so-called Ley Anti-Ruido (Anti-Noise Law) took effect in Jalisco although municipalities were given a period of 180 days within which they must modify their local bylaws to meet its requirements.

They include establishing a service to which residents can anonymously report excessive noise at any time of day and night and having the capacity to measure the levels of noise that have been complained about.

Noise restrictions apply to the hours between 9:00pm and 8:00am and those who don’t comply with the law — and didn’t obtain prior approval to exceed the permitted decibel levels — will have to reduce the volume within 30 minutes of being notified of the complaint or risk a fine of up to 50,000 pesos (US $2,640) and/or up to 36 hours detention.

Businesses which violate the law more than twice in the same year will face permanent closures.

The mayor of Ocotlán, a municipality around 80 kilometers southeast of Guadalajara near Lake Chapala, said this week that local authorities are already working on draft regulations that comply with the Anti-Noise Law, which was first proposed by state deputy Augusto Valencia, a member of the Citizens’ Movement (MC) party.

“In the coming days, we will be approaching the advisors of the deputy Augusto [Valencia] so that they review the draft and offer their opinion about it,” Paulo Gabriel Hernández said.

The mayor added that the aim is to have local regulations in place by December at the latest.

To inform the municipal bylaws, the council held a series of roundtable discussions Wednesday under the banner of “Turn down the volume, anti-noise Ocotlán.”

Municipal authorities will also seek input from residents and to set a positive example, fireworks will not be set off outside the hours established by the anti-noise law at official celebrations for Independence Day this weekend.

“With that, we will send the message that we’re the first to be complying with the law,” Hernández said.

Elsewhere in Jalisco, reaction to the new law has been mixed.

However, for some who are fed up with the cacophony of sounds that are a constant soundtrack to life in many parts of Mexico, extending into the late hours of night and wee hours of the morning, the law is a godsend.

“It’s perfect for me because I live in a neighborhood where the residents have parties every week but unfortunately we have to work, we get up early and [the constant noise] makes us very tired when we go to work,” said Guadalajara resident Miriam Vargas.

“For me, [the law] is perfect because now all the residents will be able to go to sleep early and we’ll perform much better in our jobs . . .”

Source: Decisiones (sp) W Radio (sp), Informador (sp), El Diario NTR (sp)

Gunmen dressed as mariachis kill four, wound six in Mexico City

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September 15, 2018

Strong police presence followed last night's shooting in Plaza Garibaldi.

Three gunmen dressed as mariachi musicians killed four people and wounded six more last night at a square popular with tourists in downtown Mexico City.

The attack occurred just before 10:00pm at a small bar in a corner of Plaza Garibaldi, a square known as the capital’s home of mariachi music.

Three men died at the scene of the crime while one more died after being taken to hospital, according to city government officials who spoke to the newspaper Milenio.

The gunmen arrived and fled on motorcycles.

The sicarios, or hitmen, are believed to be members of La Unión de Tepito, a criminal gang based in the notoriously dangerous neighborhood of Tepito, located just over a kilometer northeast of Plaza Garibaldi.

Gun violence has increased in the area since the arrest last month of Roberto Moyado Esparza, the suspected leader of the same gang

According to preliminary police reports, the victims are members of a rival criminal gang known as the Anti-Unión, which is involved in a turf war with La Unión de Tepito over drug dealing in the central Mexico City borough of Cuauhtémoc.

Police found more than 50 spent bullet casings at the business where the crime occurred, which according to the Mexico City Attorney General’s office has been used by the Anti-Unión to sell and store drugs.

“There were people apparently socializing in a business . . . [where the aggressors] arrived. There were three deaths there and people wounded, among those the woman who was running the business where the victims were found. In their escape, [the gunmen] wounded four more people and fled on three motorcycles,” said Mexico City police chief Raymundo Collins.

A man who has worked around Plaza Garibaldi for 30 years said that “nothing like this has ever happened before.”

A disabled woman who sells cigarettes in the square said that “people were screaming and running” as the gunshots rang out, which she initially thought were fireworks.

“You come completely relaxed and to have a good time and then suddenly there are gunshots. You don’t know if you’re going to get back home,” a tourist told the news agency Reuters.

“Now, you’re not going to trust mariachis because the gunmen were dressed as mariachis.”

Until 2014, Mexico City was largely spared the high levels of violent crime that have plagued other parts of Mexico.

But since then the number of homicides has surged and between January and April, the capital recorded its most violent first four-month period of any year of the past two decades.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp), DW (en)

UPDATE: Six people are confirmed to have been killed, and seven wounded.

Cuernavaca firm produces Mexico’s first robotic bar

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September 14, 2018

Mexico's first robotic bar. — It makes drinks but not small talk.

Fancy being served a shot of tequila or a margarita without having to make small talk with a bartender? A Mexican company has the solution.

Cuernavaca-based MiniFab has designed and produced a robotic bartender called Barbot, which is capable of serving shots of any liquor as well as making more elaborate mixed drinks and cocktails.

In fact, the robot can be programmed to serve whatever a customer wants, meaning that it’s not limited to alcoholic beverages.

MiniFab, whose core business is making 3-D printers and selling 3-D printing filament, is now selling its drink-serving robot, the first ever made by a Mexican company. The price: 38,000 pesos (US $2,000).

“There are machines that do the same thing in other countries but not with the same cost efficiency. There is a robotic bar on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship that does exactly the same thing but that machine costs US $2 million,” MiniFab founder Fabien Legay told the newspaper El Economista.

Barbot doesn’t completely replace the need for human bartenders, however.

While the robot can make and serve drinks with precision, it needs someone to change the bottles it uses. It is also incapable of garnishing drinks with the same intricacy as a human.

MiniFab has already sold 12 robotic bars and Legay is now considering making a few tweaks to his creation that will enable it to serve beer and accept electronic payments.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Excluding Ensenada from border-zone tax breaks would be ‘catastrophe’

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September 14, 2018

Port of Ensenada: exclusion from border zone could be costly.

Excluding Ensenada from the northern border free zone proposed by the incoming federal government will be an economic catastrophe for the city, says the head of a local business group.

President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador has said that his government will establish a zone extending 30 kilometers south of the Mexico-United States border in which the value-added tax (IVA) rate will be cut by half from 16% to 8%, the maximum income tax (ISR) rate will be reduced from 30% to 20% and the minimum wage will be doubled.

Under the plan, border cities such as Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juárez and Reynosa will get the benefits but cities in border states located further to the south, including Ensenada and San Felipe in Baja California, will not.

Ensenada is about 100 kilometers south of the border.

Alejandro Jara Soria, president of the Ensenada branch of the National Chamber for Industrial Transformation (Canacintra), charges that the plan proposed by López Obrador will effectively cut Ensenada off from the broader economic region and make attracting new investment nearly impossible.

“It would be catastrophic for Ensenada; since 1933 until today Ensenada has always been part of the border region. Ensenada doesn’t see itself not being part of it, it’s surrounded by sea and desert. There is no other city with which it can trade apart from the state of California and with Tijuana and Tecate,” he said.

“From the beginning, the tax benefits that Tijuana or Tecate will have, Ensenada won’t have. Therefore, we won’t be able to attract more investment, all the shoppers who come to Ensenada will buy in Tijuana, the businesses [here] can practically close [now],” Jara added.

The chamber leader charged that a 10% income tax saving and 8% saving on inputs would be too attractive for industry in Ensenada not to take up and they would consequently move their operations closer to the border, adding that there are 450 Canacintra-affiliated factories in Ensenada, generating 25,000 jobs.

“There’s no plan B in this, Ensenada is in a unique situation in the country. That’s why since 1933 the whole [Baja California] peninsula has been considered [part of the border region]. We are isolated . . .” Jara said.

He also pointed out that there are high levels of poverty in the municipality of Ensenada and that low-income workers such as jornaleros, or day laborers, will become even more marginalized.

Baja California Governor Francisco Vega told a press conference Wednesday that he had asked López Obrador to include Ensenada in the free zone plans.

But later the same day, López Obrador confirmed via Twitter that the zone would be limited to 30 kilometers south of the border.

The aim of the plan is to boost investment in 44 border municipalities in six states, he said.

Governor Vega said today it might be possible to include both Ensenada and San Felipe at a later date.

Source: Reforma (sp), Uniradio Informa (sp)

Mexico’s oldest woman — and perhaps oldest in the world — dies at 124

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September 14, 2018

Doña Soccoro might have been world's oldest woman.

Mexico’s oldest woman, Socorro Medrano Guevara, died yesterday at the ripe old age of 124 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. She might also have been the world’s oldest woman and the oldest person ever.

Born in San Luis Potosí on June 17, 1894, Doña Socorrito, as her relatives and friends affectionately called her, had 21 children, including sets of twins and triplets. The word among her family members is that Medrano had approximately 90 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Only four of her children are still alive; her husband died in 1975.

Medrano’s health started to deteriorate over the last few weeks. One of her daughters told the newspaper El Universal that when the elderly woman started to refuse meals, medical intervention was requested.

Another woman from Tamaulipas, Leandra Becerra Lumbreras, was Mexico’s oldest woman until she died in 2015 at the age of 127. She, too, might have been not only the oldest woman in the world but the oldest person in recorded history.

But neither is on the list of verified oldest women on Wikipedia. The oldest woman ever whose age has been verified was Jeanne Calment of France, who died in 1997 at 122. She has also been verified as the oldest person ever.

The oldest of the six living women on the list is Kane Tanaka of Japan, aged 115.

Source: El Universal (sp)

56 police assassinated in Guanajuato this year but arrests in just 7 cases

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September 14, 2018

Scene of one of this week's police shootings in Guanajuato.

Fifty-six police officers have been murdered in the line of duty in Guanajuato this year but only 12 arrests have been made in connection with just seven of the homicides.

The impunity rate for police assassinations in 2018 consequently stands at 87.5%, meaning the alleged perpetrators have only been apprehended in one of every eight slayings.

None of the 12 detained suspects has been convicted or sentenced.

This year is the most violent on record for police murders in Guanajuato, where the total number of homicides has also spiked sharply to make the central Mexican state one of the most violent in the country this year.

There were 1,847 homicides in the first seven months of 2018, according to statistics from the National Public Security System (SNSP), more than double the 831 murders recorded in the same period last year.

Many of the killings are believed to be connected to the crime of petroleum theft perpetrated by gangs of thieves known as huachicoleros who, like drug cartels, engage in turf wars and also sometimes clash with authorities.

“We know that [the attacks on police] are due to the fight against fuel theft. That’s the heart [of the problem] and . . . obviously, it has an impact on life in our society,” said Guanajuato Governor Miguel Márquez Márquez.

The worst month for police homicides was January with 10, followed by May, June and August, all of which saw seven police slayings.

There have already been a further six murders of police this month and only March, with two homicides, has recorded fewer than five police deaths in a single month.

Among the locations where the homicides have occurred are Salamanca, Salvatierra, León, Irapuato, Celaya, Apaseo el Alto and San Miguel de Allende.

On June 1, six unarmed traffic police were shot and killed in Salamanca in the single biggest multi-homicide of police. No one has been arrested for the crime.

In Apaseo el Alto and neighboring Apaseo el Grande, state police officers deployed to the region fear for their lives following the double-murder Wednesday of a single-command state police chief who was stationed in the area. An officer who was with him was also killed in the the attack in the municipality of Villagrán.

“He [the police chief] had reported that he had received threats and asked for a transfer but as always happens, they didn’t give it to him. They told him that the only option was to leave [the force],” a state police officer told the newspaper Periódico Correo.

“What do the rest of us think? Well, in any moment they could kill us as well and there is no support from . . . the bosses.”

Source: Periódico Correo (sp)

Nayarit Congress sanctions ex-governor Sandoval

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September 14, 2018

Sandoval, left, and President Enrique Peña Nieto in an undated photo.

The former governor of Nayarit faces accusations of misuse and diversion of public funds, violating fairness and impartiality in an election and violating the state constitution.

If found guilty, Roberto Sandoval Castañeda could be deemed unfit to hold public office in the state for close to 13 years.

Accusations against the former governor arose after the 2017 gubernatorial election, when a group of citizens found that funds from the state food security program were being offered in exchange for votes for Manuel Cota Jiménez, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate.

Cota lost to the National Action Party candidate, current governor Antonio Echevarría García.

A formal complaint against Sandoval was filed before Congress in October and a hearing followed, culminating in a majority vote.

Sandoval will have the opportunity to present a defense before a special commission, which will determine whether the proposed sanctions should be imposed.

The state Congress will then vote a second time to approve or reject the decision.

The process represents a political judgement against the former governor rather than a criminal one.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Bridge damaged by heavy rain, cutting off 2,000 people

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September 14, 2018