The president once again highlighted the contributions of Mexican emigrants to the U.S. economy during her Sunday speech. (File photo)
It’s a long way from Mexico City to Ontario but that didn’t stop the ramifications of the September 19 earthquake being felt by a watermelon farmer in the Canadian province.
Pete Gubbels, who has a 120-acre farm about 25 kilometers west of the city of London, has legally hired seasonal workers from Mexico for years to tend to and harvest his crops.
He welcomed more Mexican farm hands to his property this week but due to the partial collapse last September of a building in Mexico City that housed labor secretariat offices, some of the familiar faces he has relied on in past years were absent.
The paperwork and the database necessary to hire his regular workers were destroyed or lost in the rubble.
“Some of the guys we normally had aren’t coming because the paperwork was destroyed,” Gubbels told Ontario newspaper The London Free Press. “So they sent us new people instead.”
The farmer said he had filed the necessary paperwork in January but “from there it just turned into a nightmare for us.”
Gubbels also explained that he had been in regular contact with some of his previous employees who told him that they couldn’t travel to Canada to work without government approval and that their applications were bogged down in a slow bureaucratic process stemming from the earthquake.
The London Free Press said that “it was an unexpected glitch” for Gubbels and other local farmers who have come to depend on Mexican labor and “who are constantly on a deadline to plant, tend and harvest their crops.”
One of Gubbels’ most reliable workers finally made it to Canada this week, two months after he was supposed to arrive.
However, others who were slated to arrive in May and June are still waiting for their paperwork issues to be cleared up in order to board flights north.
“There’s nothing we can do on this end,” Gubbels said. “It all has to be done in Mexico.”
A spokesperson for the Canadian agency that helps farmers connect with foreign workers also said that there were no issues on the Canadian end.
Canadian farmers have been legally inviting Mexican workers to the fertile southern Ontario farm belt for decades.
According to Mexicans who have worked on Gubbels’ watermelon farm, working in Canada in a legal program with a mandated minimum wage is like winning the lottery compared to the exploitative wages and conditions illegal agricultural workers sometimes face in the United States.
All told, Gubbels said that he employs 14 foreign workers and 40 Canadians, who work either part or full time, but added that he still needs more staff.
“We cannot find enough Canadians to do this job, but the guys from Mexico would gladly do this,” he said.
A demonstration by relatives of missing persons in Nuevo Laredo.
Federal authorities have found the bodies of nine of 35 people who were reported missing in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, between February and May.
The United Nations said on May 30 that there were “strong indications” that federal security forces were responsible for the disappearance of 23 persons.
But the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) has now turned the focus of its investigation on to the Zetas drug cartel and suspects that the organization’s leader, Juan Gerardo Treviño Chávez, known as El Huevo, is behind the disappearances.
Members of cartel criminal cells who specialize in carrying out enforced disappearances are suspected of committing the crimes while wearing fake navy uniforms.
PGR personnel located the nine bodies at different locations in the northern border city and autopsies confirmed that the victims had been executed, presumably via gunshots to their heads.
Authorities also found a woman who was abducted but not killed. She said she had been let go by a criminal group.
The enforced disappearance investigation unit of the PGR has opened a total of 26 files in relation to the 35 missing persons. Four of the victims are women and five are minors.
Since the first disappearances occurred in February, victims’ family members accused navy personnel of carrying out the kidnappings. There are also claims that the real number of victims is higher than the 35 cases officially reported.
The Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee said it has documented 57 cases of disappearances in which the navy was allegedly involved.
PGR personnel have now inspected naval facilities in the border city but they didn’t uncover any evidence suggesting that marines were involved in the disappearances.
However, the federal agency has not yet interviewed navy personnel who were transferred to Mexico City from Tamaulipas while the investigation takes place.
As three PGR officers and seven experts who are contributing to the investigation left naval facilities in Nuevo Laredo Monday, they were attacked by armed members of the Zetas cartel, adding further credence to authorities’ suspicion that the criminal group was involved in the disappearances.
Soldiers and Federal Police officers who were guarding the PGR personnel returned fire and a lengthy gun battle followed, splintering into confrontations across several neighborhoods.
The newspaper El Universal reported that one soldier and four civilians not involved in the confrontations received non-fatal gun wounds. Among the victims was the driver of a city bus.
Nuevo Laredo residents posted videos of the gun battles — which took place in close proximity to shopping centers and restaurants — to social media, showing witnesses in a state of terror and some of them getting out of their cars and throwing themselves to the ground to take shelter.
Officials said that personnel working for the PGR’s enforced disappearance investigation unit as well as Federal Police and criminal experts previously came under attack on June 12.
Following Monday’s incident, the head of the PGR’s missing persons search unit said in a media interview that evidence was mounting that organized crime rather than the navy is responsible for the series of abductions.
“Now with the progress [in the investigation], with the direct attacks, we are corroborating the involvement of organized crime, wearing uniforms similar to those the navy uses, in the disappearance of the [35] persons,” Abel Galván said.
Happy birthday: a boy blows out the eternal flame in Guanajuato.
An eternal flame of liberty at a museum in Guanajuato is no longer burning: a six-year-old boy blew it out last week.
The youngster and his family were among visitors at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas museum, site of the first battle in the war of independence, for a celebration of its 60th anniversary.
Upon seeing the flame burning inside its cauldron, the boy kneeled in front of it and began blowing as if it were a candle on a birthday cake as his younger brother looked on.
His parents were standing nearby but made no effort to intervene. After the youngster finally succeeded in blowing out the flame, a guard approached and asked them to leave the area.
The flame will remain extinguished until July 28 when a monthly ceremony is held in which it is relit, a traditional renewal of the flame on the 28th day of every month.
The first independence war battle took place on September 28, 1810.
How the Mexico City-Querétaro train might have looked when it was first proposed.
Mexico’s next transportation secretary has breathed new life into the suspended Mexico City-Querétaro train project, declaring that it forms part of the incoming government’s plan for a new national railroad network.
Javier Jiménez Espriú told the newspaper El Financiero that the transportation plan also includes building a new railroad between Cancún and Palenque, modernizing the existing line between Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz and starting the construction of Guadalajara-Tijuana and Querétaro-Nuevo Laredo routes.
The current federal administration awarded a US $3.75-billion contract to a Chinese-led consortium in 2014 to build a high-speed rail line between Mexico City and Querétaro but the project was later postponed as part of budget cuts announced in January 2015 and it hasn’t been revived since.
But following Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in the July 1 presidential election, it would appear that the project is back on the agenda.
“Our idea is to establish a national railroad network; the network has different important sections and within those we will determine which sections [deserve] the most urgent attention based on the impact they will have at both a social and economic level, because the [different] sections will trigger regional development projects,” Jiménez said.
In a separate interview with the newspaper Milenio, Jiménez said that the next federal government will continue practically all the infrastructure projects that have already been started but added that the development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region in Oaxaca and the Maya area of Calakmul in Campeche would be priorities.
In the former region, the future cabinet secretary said, in addition to modernizing the train line between Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, and Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, work will also be undertaken to improve the highway network.
In addition, the ports in the respective cities and the airport at Ixtepec, Oaxaca, will be modernized, Jiménez said.
There are also plans to establish an extensive fiber optic network in the Isthmus region and López Obrador said yesterday that the possibility of establishing a free zone with a lower value-added tax rate is also being analyzed.
The projects planned for the region, which took the brunt of the powerful September 7 earthquake, will complement the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz that were established by the current government.
“The other big project is the passenger train from Cancún to Bacalar and Palenque to develop the Maya area, mainly Calakmul . . .” Jiménez said.
He added that during its six-year term, the López Obrador-led administration would prioritize the construction of paved roads in 250 municipalities that currently only have dirt-road access to their main towns.
The projects will create employment in rural areas and prevent communities from being cut off due to heavy rains that can make the dirt roads impassable, Jiménez said.
He also said that by the end of the next government’s term, the aim is for all Mexicans to have access to broadband internet services.
With regard to the new Mexico City International Airport project, the future communications and transportation secretary said the López Obrador transition team would first analyze its technical aspects — such as the suitability of the ground it is being built on — as well as environmental considerations to determine whether it is feasible in an operational sense.
The president-elect has previously threatened to scrap the project, charging that it is too expensive, corrupt, not needed and unfeasible due to its construction on an ancient lakebed.
Jiménez said that if it is determined that the project is technically feasible, the incoming administration would turn its attention to analyzing whether the contracts are in order and if it adds up financially.
If it doesn’t, “there is the solution of the other airport,” he added, referring to the proposal to adapt an existing air force base in México state for commercial use.
Whether the new government decides to continue with the current project or instead develop the Santa Lucía air base — located about 50 kilometers northeast of the capital — Jiménez said that a new airport must be ready by 2023 to alleviate pressure on the existing facility.
The new museum, located in the Centro de las Artes in San Luis Potosí.
The prisons cells of an old state penitentiary seem an unlikely place for museum exhibition rooms but that is exactly where you will find the recently opened Leonora Carrington museum in the city of San Luis Potosí.
This very surreal setting makes the perfect backdrop for the British-Mexican artist’s work, which drew upon Celtic, Irish and, later, some Mexican folkloric influence to produce fantastical figures and surrealist scenes.
Carrington, who would have turned 100 last year, has seen a recent surge in international notoriety with a number of books about her life being published in the United Kingdom and beyond. Her bronze sculptures adorned Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma in 2017 and the Museum of Modern Art inaugurated the exhibition of her work, Cuentos Mágicos, on April 21 to bustling crowds hoping to get the first look.
The Leonora Carrington opened in late March and has seen close to 45,000 visitors already. There is no doubt that the museum is helping to put San Luis Potosí on the map as a tourist destination.
Born in rural England, Carrington came to Mexico in 1942, where she lived and worked until her death in 2011 at the age of 94. Carrington’s early life was spent in rebellion from her upper-class family.
‘Mother Is Always Right:’ bronze sculpture by Carrington.
Her love for art started young and she moved to London to study at the Ozefant Academy. In London she met and fell in love with the German painter, Max Ernst, who was married and 26 years her senior, but despite the seemingly large obstacles she ran off with him to Paris when she was just 20 years old. Here she met and socialized with many of the well-known surrealists of the time and her love for the art form was solidified.
While seemingly the ideal muse for the many men of the surrealist movement, she vehemently rejected this position, holding her own and forging ahead with becoming an artist in her own right.
“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse,” Carrington is quoted as saying. “I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” When the Second World War broke out, Carrington’s beloved Max Ernst was captured and taken to a Nazi prison camp and Carrington’s deep distress at this led her to be institutionalized.
She escaped by marrying Mexican diplomat Renato Leduc (Ernst, at this point, was free and had married Peggy Guggenheim) and moving via New York to Mexico City, where she divorced Leduc and later married Emerico (Chiki) Weisz, with whom she had two sons.
Her son, Pablo Weisz, was involved in curating the Leonora Carrington museum, and some of his own artwork, which appears to draw heavily from his mother’s influence, is also exhibited there.
Leonora is said to have missed England and continued to drink English tea, served with biscuits, throughout her life in her house in the bohemian Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, where she befriended Spanish artist Remedios Varo and other well-known Europeans. Plans are in place to turn her house into a museum, but opening dates are still unknown.
Carrington at work.
Arriving at the museum in San Luis Potosi, the thick walls and castle-like turrets are the first sign that this museum might be a little unusual. The entrance is via a stunning open courtyard, with bright pink walls that are offset by San Luis Potosi’s impressive skies.
A few of Carrington’s sculptures sit around the courtyard to entice visitors to explore the museum, which is housed in one section of the Centro de las Artes. Once inside, the exhibits are set within old prison cells that now act as exhibition rooms, the Mexican pink walls belaying the fact that this was once the state penitentiary.
Many cell doors have been removed while others have been adorned with Carrington’s fairy-tale-like drawings. The metal staircases serve as a reminder of the building’s prior function and as a result the visitor never quite forgets.
The fact that Carrington’s work is pure escapism seems to sit both in complete contrast and in total harmony with the surroundings.
Carrington was a multimedia artist, something that is made clear when visiting this museum. There are rooms that contain her bronze sculptures in various sizes and others that display her paintings and drawings. Every room is dotted with beautifully lit quotes by the artist that demonstrate her strong character and illustrate just how much her art and the surrealist world that she created were entwined with her very being.
“The world that I paint, I don’t know if I invented it, rather I think it invented me,” one rather telling quote explains.
In addition to her sculptures and paintings, there are two small rooms that hold her silver work behind glass, and include elaborately surrealistic tequila bottles and fantastical figurines. The museum has gone further than just displaying the artist’s work, however, and director Antonio Garcia Acosta and his team got wonderfully creative in collaborating with other visual and sound artists to bring Carrington’s work to life.
‘Camaleón:’ another bronze.
The Hall of Mirrors enchants with an animated version of the first part of Carrington’s book, White Rabbits. The animation of the story set on the imaginary Pest Street, directed by Luis Cabrera, illustrated by Richard Zela and dramatized by Beatriz Cecilia, sees ghost-like figures and insects floating from mirror to mirror and is as eerie as it is delightful.
Carrington was also a rather surrealist cook, famously cooking up omelets made with her own hair. The museum has yet to open a café although it is in the plans, but hopefully this kind of culinary masterpiece will not be on the menu.
While it is unknown if Carrington spent much time in the city of San Luis Potosi, she certainly traveled to the state to visit her fellow countryman Edward James. Another surrealist artist and poet, he is best known for his construction of the surrealist garden, Las Pozas, near Xilitla in the tropical Huasteca region. James was a friend and patron of Carrington’s work and Carrington visited Las Pozas often.
It is, therefore, rather fitting that another Carrington museum is due to open in the town of Xilitla within the next few months. The two museums as well as Las Pozas and the ghost town of Real de Catorce will only combine to put San Luis Potosi well and truly on the map as Mexico’s most surrealist state.
Leonora Carrington Museum, San Luis Potosi
Location: Calzada de Guadalupe 705
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00am- 6:00pm
Entrance fee: 50 pesos (free entry on Wednesdays)
Cuentos Mágicos, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City
Location: Paseo de la Reforma , Bosque de Chapultepec I Secc, 11560 Miguel Hidalgo, CDMX
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:15am- 5:30pm (until September 23)
Entrance fee: 65 pesos (free entry on Sundays)
Susannah Rigg is a freelance writer and Mexico specialist based in Mexico City. Her work has been published by BBC Travel, Condé Nast Traveler, CNN Travel and The Independent UK among others. Find out more about Susannah on her website.
An estimated 70 migratory bird species travel every year to the wetlands of the Colorado River delta but the wetlands are running out.
The delta is considered one of the most important migration regions in the world due to the number of species but an estimated 80% of the original delta wetlands have been lost.
Now, government officials and environmentalists are hoping to give migratory birds from Central and South America a second chance with the Cucapá artificial wetland in Sonora.
“A big majority of birds that will benefit are aquatic, and northern shoveler ducks are the most numerous,” said the biological monitoring director at the northwest chapter of Pronatura, the largest environmental conservation group in Mexico.
Alejandra Calvo added that the peregrine falcon will also find a suitable habitat in the artificial wetland.
The project lies on the sands of the Gran Desierto de Altar, one of the major sub-ecoregions of the Sonoran Desert. Extending over 25 hectares, the wetland adjoins a municipal water treatment plant, source of the water that naturally infiltrates an underlying water table.
The manager of the plant, Raúl Campuzano, explained that the system used to replenish the aquifer is unique in Latin America.
The artificial wetland was officially dedicated by the municipal government of San Luís Río Colorado and Pronatura in March, and specialists affirm that its positive environmental impact can already be gauged.
Oaxaca's Congress: most of these seats have been filled by the PRI. Now they will belong to Morena's coalition.
In the state of Oaxaca, where women are still struggling for equal rights in many municipal elections, women will outnumber the men in the state Congress.
The number of female deputies has nearly tripled in eight years, from nine in 2010 to 23 following the July 1 election. It is the first time in Oaxaca’s history that there will be more women than men in the 42-seat state legislature.
The change comes as a consequence of affirmative action within political parties.
For years, local politicians and activists have been pushing for gender parity regulations that have translated into electoral law. As a result, most political parties have assigned the top options for proportional representation congressional seats to women.
Local electoral advisor Nayma Enríquez Estrada says the results of the July 1 elections are a “collective conquest,” and that women in Congress have now to “make theirs a legislative agenda with a feminist perspective that focuses on human rights and interculturalism.”
Anabel López Sánchez, a member of the Collective for Women’s Citizenship, observed that parity must be reflected not only in the number of seats occupied by women, but in their election as members of congressional commissions, where the real decision-making takes place.
“We hope that [female Congress members] are not only assigned to conventional commissions, but that they can be part of budgetary, government [and] justice commissions; only then will we be able to talk about equality in representation,” she said.
Pending issues that must be addressed by the incoming legislature include the decriminalization of abortion, addressing obstetrical violence and allocating more funding to the prevention and sanction of gender violence, continued López.
Laws are needed, she added, so that vulnerable sectors of the society of Oaxaca — including women breadwinners and the indigenous and Afro-descendant population — can access employment and social security.
López said that once the 64th legislature is sworn in later this year, the collective will present a common agenda to the female lawmakers, one in favor of women’s rights.
The Oaxaca Congress will be made up of 32 deputies from the Together We Will Make History coalition led by the Morena party. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has been the majority party, will have six members, while the National Action, Democratic Revolution, New Alliance and Ecologist Green parties will each hold a single seat.
Heavy overnight rain caused flooding and damage to at least 50 houses in Morelia, Michoacán, according to state Civil Protection officials.
Neighborhoods in the north of the city, especially those located close to the foothills of Cerro del Quinceo — including Ciudad Jardin, Solidaridad and Presa de los Reyes — bore the brunt of the damage.
There were reports of water reaching levels of between 20 and 50 centimeters inside affected homes, while in some parts of the state capital, floodwaters rose to as high as one meter. Authorities said that at least 16 streets were completely inundated.
Almost 30 cars were also damaged after either being swept away in floodwaters or hit by fallen trees or rocks. There were people inside at least three of the affected vehicles.
In the neighborhood of Infonavit Quinceo, a landslide caused significant damage to several homes.
There were no reports of fatalities but one woman reportedly suffered an injury to her leg after being hit by a fallen gate at her home. Four children and their parents had to be rescued from rising floodwaters.
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Municipal authorities set up a temporary shelter at the Servando Chávez Auditorium in the neighborhood of Mariano Escobedo to receive people who were forced to abandon their homes.
Authorities also activated the city’s contingency plan and municipal, state and federal emergency services contributed to efforts to remove water, mud and rocks from affected homes.
Morelia police and firefighters with Michoacán Civil Protection, the Red Cross and the army all helped to coordinate the response.
The alleged suspect with two of his luxury vehicles.
As an orderly at a Chihuahua hospital run by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), Jorge Alberto earned a modest salary that would have allowed him to live a comfortable life.
But Jorge Alberto wasn’t an ordinary orderly.
In addition to carrying out his day-to-day duties in the wards of the state capital’s Morelos General Hospital, Jorge — whose last name was not disclosed in a report published today by the newspaper El Universal — also had a lucrative side gig selling job placements to health care workers and body organs to prospective patients.
The racket was so profitable that the portly medical employee was able to buy 10 luxury sports cars. But it was also a scheme that led him to allegedly commit the even more serious crime of homicide, and not just once.
Among other IMSS employees, it was common knowledge that Jorge had contacts in high places within the social security workers’ union.
It was also well known that for a large sum of money the unscrupulous orderly could arrange for an IMSS employee to be appointed to a higher-paying, more-senior role in the agency.
That possibility proved to be too tempting for several IMSS employees including Laura Soto, an administrative assistant at a small medical clinic.
After watching several of her colleagues win promotions at record speed, Soto contacted Jorge and later handed over 80,000 pesos (US $4,200) to him, an amount that would supposedly ensure her appointment to a more senior role in the IMSS central offices.
Several weeks went by and the promised promotion didn’t materialize but Soto finally received a call from Jorge in December last year.
Soto was told that everything had been organized so she agreed to meet Jorge the next day to complete the necessary paperwork in order to obtain the new position.
On the morning of December 7, the young administrative assistant waited near the city’s municipal offices but instead of meeting with Jorge to sign some documents, Soto met her own death: she was shot at close range by someone in a passing vehicle.
According to today’s report in El Universal, “Jorge had tired of being bothered” by Soto, who had grown impatient when the promotion she paid for didn’t come through as quickly as she expected.
According to the Chihuahua Attorney General’s office, colleagues of Soto at the same small IMSS clinic paid Jorge Alberto a combined total of 600,000 pesos (US $31,600) in order to be installed in more lucrative jobs.
In some cases, the orderly kept his word and arranged for his “clients” to be given the promised roles but in other cases, he didn’t.
In addition, the orderly is suspected of murdering a male IMSS employee in January this year in a case with similar circumstances to that of Laura Soto.
IMSS employees are not the only people who have allegedly been deceived and ultimately met a gruesome fate at the hands of Jorge Alberto.
Daniel Gregorio Romero’s quality of life was rapidly deteriorating when his family contacted the IMSS orderly in a last-ditch attempt to secure an organ transplant.
Romero, who suffered from diabetes, had been waiting for months to undergo surgery to receive a new kidney but still remained near the bottom of the list.
However, Jorge — who was allegedly colluding with an unidentified doctor — promised Romero that he could get him a new kidney quickly and that the operation could be carried out at the hospital in which he worked, even though the latter didn’t have the required insurance to receive treatment at an IMSS facility.
Jorge, of course, wasn’t acting out of the goodness of his heart. The service he offered came with a hefty price tag of half a million pesos (US $26,400).
In an act of desperation the family made the payment but as in the case of Laura Soto, Jorge Alberto again failed to fulfill his promise.
On June 30, the Romero family arranged to meet with Jorge at their home to find out what was happening with the deal they had reached.
What happened next, according to authorities who have seen evidence in the form of security video footage, is that a man proceeded to murder five members of the family before stopping short of taking the life of a two-year-old infant who was also present.
While the name of the suspect has not been revealed publicly, El Universal said that “unofficially it is known that the man [who committed the homicides] was Jorge.”
The orderly has since been arrested and remains in custody.
Last weekend, state prosecutors told a judge that Jorge Alberto’s wife had also participated in the crimes that her husband allegedly committed. Her whereabouts, however, are unknown.
Meanwhile, the state branch of the IMSS said it has revoked Jorge Alberto’s employment contract and is carrying out an internal investigation to determine if any other employees are or have been involved in the sale of job placements.
Authorities are also seeking to arrest an IMSS human resources employee who allegedly received payments from Jorge Alberto and helped facilitate the placement of workers in the higher-ranked positions they paid to obtain.
The smugglers' boat, foreground, with its cargo of cocaine and fuel.
Navy personnel seized 250 kilograms of cocaine and apprehended two men aboard a small boat traveling off the coast of Guerrero yesterday.
Routine aerial surveillance spotted the vessel some 370 kilometers south of Acapulco.
A joint aerial and maritime operation resulted in the arrest of the two men found on board a “go-fast” boat, popular for smuggling drugs.
The boat was carrying 71 plastic canisters, 10 of which contained small packets of cocaine amounting to a total of 250 kilograms. The other 61 containers held 3,000 liters of fuel.
Another report today said the navy had detected fuel storage facilities in three states that are used to supply small boats running drugs up the coast. Mexican cartels ferry the fuel out to the smugglers, enabling them to remain outside the 200-kilometer limit. The fuel is delivered mixed with oil and ready to use in the vessels’ two-stroke engines.
It is either purchased legally or obtain from petroleum thieves.
Last week the navy detained three people aboard a small boat carrying 3,000 liters of fuel off the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán.
Between January and May the navy seized 6.7 tonnes of cocaine off the Pacific coast, the largest amount in any five-month period.
