There were protests in Sinaloa, Baja California Sur and Sonora in support of the anesthesiologist, whom authorities allege illegally purchased fentanyl via mail. (Luis Alberto Diaz/Twitter)
An anesthesiologist in the state of Baja California Sur is under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) for allegedly possessing illegal fentanyl.
Dr. Gustavo Aguirre Castro of Los Cabos insists he bought the drug for use in his work. He faces up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted of illegal possession.
Aguirre says that he has the required documentation, and that the fentanyl is for use in his work. (Gustavo Dardwin Aguirre Casto/Facebook)
The case has attracted national attention. At a Sunday protest in Tijuana, anesthesiologists held up signs reading, “We are doctors, we are not criminals! Full support for Dr. Aguirre Castro” and “Alleviating pain is not a crime.”
On Tuesday, President López Obrador addressed the case at his morning press conference, insisting that the doctor has nothing to fear if he indeed purchased the fentanyl for medical reasons.
“If you did not do it with the purpose of distributing it illegally, you do not have to worry,” the president said.
Though Mexican authorities must be proactive in fighting fentanyl distribution, AMLO said, “We do not commit arbitrary acts. We are not going to go against a doctor who is dedicated to anesthetizing with fentanyl.”
27 vials of fentanyl, alongside other drugs, were seized at Aguirre’s home in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur. (Todo Es Politica/Twitter)
On Tuesday, Germán Castillo, a specialized prosecutor with the FGR, claimed that Aguirre did not have the authority to acquire controlled substances, much less to store them at his home. The doctor, meanwhile, insists that he has all the proper paperwork.
Castillo said the investigation began after the Navy detected a parcel with narcotics sent from Jalisco to Baja California Sur. Officials followed the shipment to the anesthesiologist’s home.
“A federal judge authorized us to search the property,” he said.
The subsequent search found 27 vials of fentanyl, one of ephedrine, one of morphine and one of Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
Crime groups such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel press illegal fentanyl pills in Mexico using precursor ingredients imported from Asia and then smuggle them to the U.S. A total ban on fentanyl – including for medical uses – has been floated by President López Obrador. (National Guard)
He said the doctor did not have authorization from the federal health regulatory agency (Cofepris) to acquire such substances. And while acknowledging that a huge cache of drugs was not found, he said the question is not the amount, but the potential risks to health.
“This is how it began in the U.S. — diverting fentanyl from its medical use,” he said. “This is how addictions begin … So our duty is to do this, and it is not an isolated case.”
Aguirre’s relatives have protested, saying he has received unfair treatment from the government as the investigation has lasted for more than a month. No formal charges have been filed.
Doctors protesting in Tijuana noted that medical fentanyl is used for surgical procedures and for patients with severe pain, and differs from the fentanyl pills and powder responsible for the opioid epidemic in the United States.
“Medical fentanyl is a drug that helps relieve pain in cancer patients and is the anesthetic we use in 90% of our anesthesia,” they were quoted as saying.
In a video posted to social media last week, Aguirre claimed he has all the required documents. His lawyer backed him up, noting that the parcel contained 27 vials of fentanyl, which he had obtained authorization from Cofepris to buy.
However, authorities said while Aguirre is certified as an anesthesiologist, they have copies of his emails to Cofepris requesting other vital documentation — which they claim had been denied.
The San Miguel de Allende Festival of the Arts - which this year showcases Austrian culture - will run from the 4th to the 20th of this month. (FASMA)
The second edition of the San Miguel de Allende Festival of the Arts (FASMA) begins on Friday and will run through Aug. 20, celebrating the work of some of the best national and international artists dedicated to the fine arts.
With venues that include public gardens, churches, theaters and historical buildings of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, the FASMA will see more than 100 artistic events and workshops throughout the city. This year’s edition of the festival will have Austria as a guest country.
The fine arts festival will take place in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato – a UNESCO World Heritage site. (Unsplash)
Planned performances include dance, opera, classical music, literary conferences, jazz and visual arts exhibitions by 65 local artists and 40 Mexican and Austrian artists.
Eduardo Adame Godard, director of FASMA and president of the Casa de Europa en México foundation, said in a press conference that the events seek to draw all San Miguel de Allende residents, especially young children and low-income families.
According to Adame, FASMA is organized by 32 cultural organizations and receives support from the state and municipal government. “Some of the organizations have existed for almost 100 years,” he said.
To honor its guest country, the festival will have “an Austrian touch,” Adame said. The opera program, for example, will include arias and duets by two of the greatest Austrian composers of the Classical period, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The festival offers an array of music, including works by major European composers. (FASMA)
Lorenz Brunner, head of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Mexico, added that he was “delighted” to be representing this year’s guest country.
“We have a very fun program with Austrian artists from all artistic disciplines,” he said.
Among the surprises in store at the festival is the screening of silent films that will be accompanied by live music, with an orchestra and with opera singers, executive director of the Chamber Music Festival Luis Eduardo Quezada said.
Five institutions dedicated to the development and promotion of opera will participate in the FASMA, including local NGO Opera de San Miguel, led by Charles Oppenheim.
Events will take place a number of different venues across the city, throughout the 3 weeks that the festival takes place. (Quince/Twitter)
“The festival is very important [to Opera de San Miguel] because it allows us to offer concerts to promote this genre,” Oppenheim said.
Guanajuato Tourism Director Francisco Javier Valverde said that for this edition, there are 3,200 available rooms in San Miguel de Allende. “Last year we had some 6,000 local visitors, 1,200 regional visitors, 624 from different states of Mexico and 9,912 foreign visitors,” he said. “The goal is to double these figures.”
According to Valverde, San Miguel de Allende expects to see revenue of more than 6 million pesos (US $355,000) as a result of the festival. The program is available here.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López Gatell said Tuesday that hospitalization for COVID-19 remained negligible despite a rise in cases across the country. (lopezobrador.org.mx)
The Health Ministry has ruled out recommending a return to mass mask-wearing, following a statement by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) regarding an increase in COVID-19 cases.
At President López Obrador’s Tuesday morning press conference, Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell assured the public that the COVID-19 situation in Mexico is “calm,” with only 19 patients currently hospitalized with the virus across the entire country.
López-Gatell was responding to calls by the National Autonomous University to return to the use of face masks. He cited the fact that the university was using the government’s own figures, which authorities do not regard as alarming. (UNAM)
“There is no alert situation. [The increase] is part of the variability that endemic circulation of the virus can have,” he said, adding that increases have also been seen in other countries, including the United States.
On Monday, UNAMreleased a statement warning of a rise in the number of positive COVID-19 tests in recent weeks, “which reveals that the virus is circulating widely at the community level in much of the country.”
Although it stressed that the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths remain stable, the university advised its students to take precautions to limit the virus’ spread. These included wearing masks when spending more than 30 minutes with other people in an enclosed space and isolating if experiencing symptoms.
“It is important not to exaggerate the concern about something that the university presents very clearly and objectively,” López-Gatell said. “The statement’s main focus is the protection of the university community ahead of the coming start of the semester.”
Shoppers and vendors wearing face masks at a market in Mexico City in August 2020. UNAM has called for the return of masks for those with symptoms of COVID-19 to prevent numbers from increasing further, although their use is not currently required. (depositphotos)
He pointed out that UNAM’s warning of rising COVID-19 cases is based on the Health Ministry’s own figures, which in recent weeks has reached just under 360,000 cases nationwide, but without an increase in severe cases that would necessitate a return to mass mask-wearing.
“There is no problem with using [a mask], but we are not recommending mass, intensive use at this time because we must take into account that the winter season is coming and that people’s tolerance and fatigue could lead them to stop using [masks] just when it’s most necessary,” López-Gatell said.
The Health Ministry is preparing a vaccination booster program to protect the most vulnerable, such as the elderly and the chronically ill, from the expected increase in cases over the winter, he added, explaining that most of those currently hospitalized for COVID-19 in Mexico have not completed the recommended vaccination program.
López-Gatell also noted that hospital occupancy is less than 2% across all areas of the National Health System and that intensive care occupancy is at 0.5%.
It was a simple project, I thought: renovating a cat-scratching post made by a handy friend some years ago. My two cats had made much use of it, and the hemp rope needed to be replaced. An easy Saturday project, I thought.
Ever the optimist, I headed off to what I think of as my neighborhood hardware store. I’ve since learned that this kind of shop is actually called a tlapalería; more about that later.
Don’t get us wrong, the big-box hardware stores are great for a lot of things, but sometimes you don’t want to traverse hundreds of square meters and pay top dollar for some rope; your neighborhood tlapaleria is an easier, cheaper and often more social, solution.
Sure enough, in the back of the store were spools of different thicknesses of hemp rope. A salesman had spotted me as soon as I walked in and followed me to what is probably an unlikely area of the store for a gringa to be by herself. I confidently pointed to the rope I wanted and told him — also confidently — diez metros, or 10 meters.
Well.
Little did I know that hemp rope is sold by weight, not length, weighed on an old-fashioned scale hanging from the ceiling.
So, how much did I need? One of those funny foreigner-local exchanges ensued, with lots of hand gestures, laughing and shrugging of our respective shoulders. We eventually figured it out, and while I’ve forgotten what the final weight was of my 10 meters of ½-inch thick hemp rope, I wouldn’t be surprised if, when I go back next year to replace the rope again, the same employee is still working there and remembers how much I bought.
This is a ferretería. It knows what it is: a place to buy tools and accessories to build and repair stuff, and that’s usually pretty much it. (Rogelio Morales Ponce/Cuartoscuro)
The tlapalería is different from a regular ferretería — which is a much more basic hardware store and which carries many items for home repair, electrical and plumbing supplies and assorted other DIY accoutrement. It’s also different from Home Depot, which we’re all thankful for but — let’s face it — has a limited selection and often jacked-up prices.
In Mexico, a tlapalería offers a smorgasbord of household, hardware and other items, often sold in bulk, that branch off into numerous, seemingly unrelated directions.
The word tlapalería comes from the indigenous Nahuatl language, still spoken widely in Mexico today. While tlapali, the root of the word, means “colors” or “tints” — and one can indeed find paintbrushes and tarps at a tlapalería, though not usually the paint itself — the tlapalería, in the words of writer José Moreno Villa, is “not a clearly defined establishment,” more of a store or a bazaar “dedicated to all those coarse and obscure things necessary in homes.”
And so, like a bazaar or indoor tianguis, you kind of never know what you’ll find, but you’ll develop a sixth sense that there’s a good chance that what you’re looking for is in this kind of store — somewhere.
The writer’s favorite tlapalería in Mazatlán, La Casa del Campesino, is a cross between hardware store, general store and flea market. (Janet Blaser)
My favorite tlapalería here in Mazatlán is La Casa del Campesino, in a busy section of the city’s historic center. It’s a fairly big store whose aisles are crammed with a huge assortment of stuff.
Its sections may have started out organized, but after more than 40 years, divisions have become a little murky. So you’ll find things like a shelf of children’s drums under small bins of hooks and fasteners, with cheese graters hanging between the two and hummingbird feeders suspended above.
Here are some of the items I saw on a recent visit: machetes, dart boards, burlap bags, nails and screws by the ounce. Brooms, mops, (both in adult and children’s sizes), scrub brushes, specialty and common cleaning soaps, pastes and scrubs. Those weird wood folding cots. Shovels, rakes, garden sprayers, watering cans and fertilizer. Chain by the meter in many sizes, mouse traps, wire, loofahs, traditional tortilla baskets and wooden and metal tortilla presses.
Molcajetes — traditional volcanic stone mortar and pestles — are across the aisle from the birdcages. Why? Who knows! There are so many sizes and gorgeous birdcage styles, I seriously think about getting a couple of parakeets or canaries every time I’m there. Plus there’s everything you need to keep your budgies happy: nesting boxes, toys, feeding dishes. It’s a one-stop shop if you have a bird or are thinking about getting one.
Molcajetes galore are available at La Casa del Campesino. Don’t ask why, just buy one while you’re getting your duplicate key made. (Janet Blaser)
The wall behind the counter is — depending on your point of view — an exercise in chaos or a handyman’s dream: extension cords, flashlights, locks, zip ties in a myriad of colors and sizes. All kinds of tape, magnifying glasses, work gloves, fish hooks. Need a bell? This is your place: hand-held or wall-mounted, in various sizes.
I know that pretty much whatever I need in terms of household tinkering I can find at La Casa del Campesino. Although you may not see the word tlapalería on the sign outside the store, or anywhere, in fact, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you’ll know you’re in one.
Mexico City has long beguiled authors and filmmakers with its ancient history, dynamic street life and sprawling size. (Shutterstock)
There have been hundreds of movies made, books written and songs sung about Mexico’s teeming metropolis. The fact that Mexico City and its population are so hard to encapsulate or singularly categorize is what makes authors and filmmakers continue to work to find ways to express the overwhelming experience of living here.
There’s always more to discover — that’s what makes the city so fascinating — and so the list that follows is both extremely subjective and also just a fraction of what you need to understand CDMX.
While I’m fully aware that there will be those who cry foul at what’s missing, here are a few things I have read and watched that I think are excellent portrayals of the experience of Mexico City and its inhabitants.
Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico
Author Juan Villoro is a consummate chilango (Mexico City native), and while he has written extensively about his country’s politics, history and football, this book is dedicated to the capital and its particularities, idiosyncrasies and characters.
In Alfred MacAdam’s translation, Villoro takes readers through some of the most infamous elements of the capital – streetside tire shops, inner-city tianguis markets, government bureaucracy — as well as through memories from an earlier time, like when milkmen were seen as the ultimate seducers of local housewives.
This book will make you laugh and shake your head at the wonders of the country’s capital. While I can’t guarantee you’ll understand everything completely if you haven’t lived here, this is an important step on the journey.
La Capital: A Biography of Mexico City
A sweeping history of the city from before Spanish colonization up to the 1985 earthquake, Jonathan Kendall is nothing if not thorough about the city he once called home. Settling into the 600-plus-page book, even the most studious reader of Mexico City history will be surprised by the detailed compendium of information Kendall put together.
I urge anyone who plans to live here long-term to get to know some, if not all, of this important history: the presidents, revolutions and social moments that made the capital what it is today, as well as the corruption, the slums and the shimmy and shake below the surface. You’ll find yourself wishing for a modern sequel by the book’s end.
The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño’s meandering tale of the Visceral Realists, a group of bohemian poets, spans several decades. Its nonlinear story is rambling, weird, delightful and surreal in Natasha Wimmer’s translation. The first part of the novel in particular gives readers a picture of life in 1970s Mexico City as its protagonists wander from back alleys to late-night cafés to house parties.
A kind of Latin American beat poet, Bolaño is also writing here about his own time in Mexico City as a young broke poet in the 1960s and ‘70s. The Chilean-born writer haunted the bookshops and cafes of the capital and residents can have fun trying to identify them in the novel, like the famous Café La Habana, which “The Savage Detectives” presents as Café Quito, where all the local intellectuals hang out.
The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García
Food is an essential part of the Mexico City experience, and while Mexico’s big-name chefs have taken a lot of roads to fame, few were as bumpy and chaotic as that of Eduardo “Lalo” García, Mexico’s newest megastar chef, founder and chef at Mexico City’s acclaimed Máximo Bistrot.
In researching this new biography, author Laura Tillman spent five years sitting in staff meetings, hanging out in Máximo’s kitchen and interviewing García’s family and friends to learn the story of his life.
Lalo García’s Máximo Bistrot is one of Mexico City’s hottest dining spots. (Máximo Bistrot)
Like many Mexicans, Lalo’s story is one that crosses borders. More than expressing a single man’s journey to fulfill his passion for cooking, “The Migrant Chef” also touches on immigrant labor, life in the restaurant world and, of course, the culinary scene in Mexico City over the last 30 years.
Battles in the Desert
A classic coming-of-age story set in Roma, now one of the city’s most popular neighborhoods. But it was once just the playground of a young boy and his flights of fancy.
A novella about a boy who falls in love with his friend’s mother and the subsequent fallout that comes from confessing his love to her one afternoon, the text is threaded through with the memories of its author, José Emilio Pacheco, one of Mexico’s favorite sons and a longtime resident of Roma’s Calle Guanajuato. Katherine Silver’s translation of this classic is a great snapshot of post-WWII Mexico and of a neighborhood that was just beginning to gain its importance in the urban fiber of the capital.
Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned)
This is a film that every Mexican has seen and every foreigner should. A time capsule of Mexico City in an indeterminate year in the first half of the 20th century, the story follows a group of poor children living in the capital’s slums and the violence, neglect and poverty they face as part of daily life.
Still from Los Olvidados which was released in 1950. (Wikimedia Commons)
Probably the most important film of Spanish director Luis Buñuel’s Mexican period, the upper classes of Mexican society were scandalized by its portrayal of the city’s poverty and tried to keep the film from being shown in theaters. Some of the characters and crew even quit in protest over Mexico’s negative portrayal.
Public opinion shifted once the film started winning international acclaim and awards, but the movie is still considered a harsh, sometimes surreal look at life in 20th-century Mexico. Some famous scenes were filmed in the Roma neighborhood’s La Romita section.
Amores Perros
This incredibly dark and violent film is replete with the imagery and sounds of the dog-eat-dog capital in a way that is both heartbreaking and captivating. The second film of Gael García Bernal’s career, this movie is partly what made him into one of Mexico’s biggest movie stars; “Amores Perros” was also the directorial debut of the internationally renowned Alejandro González Iñárritu.
While its scenes of violence can be hard to stomach, this is also a layered tale of love — and dogs. Instead of slapping a bow on its connected vignettes, the movie’s ending leaves the watcher pondering the extent to which humans will go for love and revenge and how chilangos survive in the sometimes devastating landscape of their hometown.
Roma
This movie came along in 2018, in the midst of Mexico City’s tourism boom, which has maybe been felt most strongly in the Roma neighborhood. A multi-Oscar winner, “Roma” tells the story of one family and their complicated relationship with a young Indigenous woman who works as their live-in maid.
Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo with one of the children in her care. (Archive)
Set in 1970 and 1971, the movie’s urban scenery and the cinematography are a beautiful, sometimes drawn-out picture of life in the city during this tumultuous time. The first modern Mexican blockbuster to feature a young, Indigenous actress (Yalitza Aparicio) as its protagonist, “Roma” made waves in the Mexican film industry that rippled into the international arena, posing questions about how Mexico and its people have historically been represented in movies and how they will be in the future.
Ciudad Merced
This is a beautiful documentary of la Merced, one of Mexico City’s oldest and most vibrant neighborhoods. For 30 minutes, the viewer is transfixed by the life that overflows the edges of this incredibly layered part of the city.
With no dialogue, the music is at times ethereal, then lively or dramatic and overlaid with the sounds of the Merced: snake-oil salesmen on loudspeakers, the sizzle of frying meat on the grill, that distinctive metal trill of shop doors opening in the morning.
This film records la Merced during a single day and reframes the neighborhood away from its stereotypes of danger, dirt and poverty and instead presents its lively and complex reality. If you don’t walk away from this documentary in love with Mexico City, you never will be.
Crónica de Castas
A play on words referring to Conquest-era crónicas de Indias narratives (a generic term for the chronicles of the Spanish conquistadors in the New World) and the wordplay on the wildly racist 18th-century Spanish art genre that displayed the caste system of New Spain, “Crónica de Castas” (A Story of Castes) is a wide-lens look at the diverse class and race lines that run through one of Mexico City’s roughest downtown neighborhoods, Tepito.
If you’re not a Spanish speaker — or if it’s your second language — be prepared to miss some references due to the distinctly chilango accents and a realistic flood of slang and colloquialisms. While there are some cheesy, soap opera-y moments to this television series, it portrays so many things so distinctly chilango — the sport of frontón, diableros and life in a vecindad to name a few — that it’s worth the wade through anything slightly sappy for the Mexico City education you’ll get by watching it.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer and translator based out of Mexico City. She has been published widely both online and in print, writing about Mexico for over a decade. She lives a double life as a local tour guide and is the author of Mexico City Streets: La Roma. Follow her urban adventures on Instagram and see more of her work at www.mexicocitystreets.com.
Two taxi drivers were detained last Thursday in Cancún for assaulting what they assumed was a rideshare vehicle carrying foreign tourists (Twitter/Reporte Maya)
Quintana Roo business leaders have urged authorities to take action against continued violence from some taxi drivers after an assault on a private vehicle last week.
“The Caribbean Business Coordinating Council (CCE) expresses its deep concern over this incident which affects the image of our state and the reputation of good taxi drivers who are abiding by the law,” the head of the CCE said in a statement. “For this reason, we ask our authorities to sanction all who were involved.”
Ride-hailing services legally arrived in Quintana Roo in 2018, but taxi drivers say the services have an unfair advantage. (Elizabeth Ruiz/Cuartoscuro)
The suggested sanctions include the cancellation of concessions and licenses to operate a taxi.
To guarantee the safety of tourists and residents, the CCE has also called on authorities to carry out an exhaustive investigation to determine those responsible for the violent attacks.
Two taxi drivers were arrested in Cancún, Quintana Roo on Thursday for assaulting a van carrying foreign tourists, the latest episode in an ongoing conflict between some taxistas and rideshare services.
Footage posted on social media shows at least two uniformed taxi drivers whacking a Chevy Suburban with poles and other objects. The driver of the van attempted to escape with the vehicle’s tailgate open after the tourists’ luggage had fallen into the street, the video shows. Three women can later be seen retrieving their luggage from the side of the road.
Tourists were left stranded earlier this year when the state taxi union blocked access to Cancún International Airport in protest. The union condemns these recent episodes of violence, saying that there are more “good taxistas” than there are bad. (Cuartoscuro)
As observed in the footage, one of the women appeared to take refuge in the store of a local business owner who filmed the incident, while the taxi drivers continued to chase the driver of the Suburban down the street until he reached a police officer.
Local media reported that the Suburban was not hired via a ride-hailing app but through a local limousine service. Past incidents of taxi drivers attacking private vehicles in Cancún were provoked by the assumption that they were driven by people employed by Uber.
Angélica Frías, head of the Cancún branch of the Employers’ Confederation of Mexico (Coparmex), condemned Thursday’s violent incident and invited those involved in transportation services “to resolve their differences and conflicts through dialogue.”
“We are putting the international image of our tourist destination at risk,” she emphasized.
The U.S. issued a travel advisory in January warning that “disputes between these services and local taxi unions have occasionally turned violent, resulting in injuries to U.S. citizens in some instances.”
José Guadalupe Fuentes Brito (left) and his 20 year-old son were killed in the attack on the road to Acapulco. Fuentes' wife was severely wounded. (Twitter)
A businessman and his son were killed on Saturday night while driving toward Acapulco on the Autopista del Sol, in the state of Guerrero.
According to reports, José Guadalupe Fuentes Brito and his 20-year-old son, José Manuel Fuentes Calvo, were murdered by armed men, their Toyota Tacoma pickup was stolen and a woman identified as the wife and mother of the deceased was hospitalized with four gunshot wounds.
The crime occurred on a notoriously dangerous stretch of the highway between Cuernavaca and Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero where the businessman and his family resided.
According to media reports, Fuentes Brito, who worked in real estate and also owned a motorcycle shop, had political ties and was a promoter of Marcelo Ebrard in his bid to become the Morena party’s 2024 nominee for president. Fuentes Brito was the uncle of Rubén Fuentes Hernández, coordinator of the Guerrero governor’s office.
Ebrard, who stepped down as foreign minister last month to focus on beating out Morena frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum, expressed his condolences on social media and insisted officials take swift action.
“We demand that the State Prosecutor’s Office intervene immediately and this crime, like all others, be clarified and those responsible brought to justice,” he tweeted.
Marcelo Ebrard, seen here with his wife Rosalinda Bueso registering for the Morena party 2024 candidacy, has been touring the country since. Ebrard expressed his condolences on Twitter, and demanded justice for the victims of Saturday’s assault. (Marcelo Ebrard/Twitter)
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador addressed the murders in his Monday morning press conference, saying “there is still not much clarity about the case,” while also noting that a man driving a transport van in the same area was murdered around the same time.
“It is thought that [the driver] saw something about the [killing] of the man and his son, and that is why they also murdered him,” he said. “It is being investigated.”
Reports put the murders of Fuentes Brito and his son at between 7 and 8 p.m. between the Paso Morelos toll booth and Chilpancingo.
According to journalist Ricardo Castillo, director of Quadratín Guerrero, it is common knowledge that this stretch of road is very dangerous at night. Interviewed on the Fórmula radio network’s “Por La Mañana” show, Castillo said, “After 6, many people do not recommend traveling in this section … There are many entrances and exits from the highway to the communities that are nearby. It becomes very dangerous. There have been many assaults.”
Castillo did say that a National Guard unit is permanently deployed in the area.
The plant was identified by biologist José Viccon in El Charco del Ingenio reserve and botanical garden. (El Charco del Ingenio)
A new plant has been discovered in a popular botanical garden in the foothills of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato.
Biologist José Viccon, a professor at Mexico City’s Autonomous Metropolitan University, made the discovery during a routine walk through El Charco del Ingenio, a 165-acre reserve in the tourist destination.
The diminutive plant growing in the San Miguel nature reserve was apparently overlooked for years.
Perhaps a few of the reserve’s visitors had seen what Viccon did — a dwarf plant from the same family as the pineapple — but only he realized that it was a plant never before identified anywhere in the world. It grows on rocks and requires very little water to survive.
“They have a characteristic grayish-green color and trichomes, those little hairs with which they absorb the little humidity that there is in the environment,” said Viccon, who has spent a lot of time making his discovery official after first spotting it four years ago.
“It is not easy to discover a unique species, and even less so at a site studied in detail for 32 years,” said the researcher, based on UAM’s Xochilmilco campus, just south of Mexico City. “It is a great challenge.”
His discovery has been classified as Viridantha minuscula, although the newspaper El País speculated that regular folks will call it the “Charco bromeliad” because of the site of its discovery.
El Charco de Ingenio is a 165-acre nature reserve on the outskirts of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. (Orchid House Hotels)
El Charco del Ingenio — a semi-desert environment that includes a big cactus collection and other indigenous flora — is an easy drive from the tourist center of San Miguel de Allende, or a 30- to 45-minute uphill walk.
The bromeliad family of flowering plants includes about 3,700 known species. The pineapple is a bromeliad, as are many plants that adorn houses and gardens.
The stem of Viridantha minuscula is between 7 and 8 centimeters (2.75 to 3.15 inches) in diameter, and its green and yellow flowers are relatively large for a plant barely 2 inches tall. The flowers are enclosed in a calyx of pinkish spades (like the plume atop a pineapple).
While it is not edible, the plant could prove an extraordinary find for bromeliad collectors.
Viccon said the journal Phytotaxa has approved the finding, and noted that there is an agreement among biologists to not name a new species after the discoverer.
Mario Hernández, the Charco del Ingenio’s director, explained how Viccon made his initial discovery, then “had to wait months for it to flower to confirm that this plant had characteristics that were not entirely familiar to him.”
He then “summoned other colleagues to visit” the gardens, and “none of them were completely certain” of what they were seeing. Convinced, Viccon then began his quest to get the little plant certified as a new species.
Such a discovery is not uncommon. With thousands of biologists combing diverse territories all over the planet, and with nature always changing, annual discoveries of new plant species globally number from 1,850 to 18,000, according to various reports.
Spanish police believe that the removal of the man only identified as "Said" is likely to deal the cartel a serious blow. (Claudina Luna Pale/Twitter)
Spanish authorities have reportedly arrested the European leader of the “Los Zetas” cartel after a joint security operation in the capital, Madrid.
The announcement, made on Monday, said that Spanish police, in association with the Colombian National Police and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had detained a 54-year-old Moroccan national — allegedly identified as “Said” by news service EFE Noticias — who is believed to have been chief of operations for the Mexican organization in Europe.
Footage posted online showed bags of euro notes being discovered by police. (Screen capture)
Alongside a total of five arrests, 400 kilograms of cocaine, 220,000 euros in cash, and a number of important documents and telephones were also seized at the apartment where the raid took place. Video on social media shows officers engaged in the search of a property before discovering significant sums of cash.
“Agents of the National Police, in a combined operation with the National Police of Colombia and the Office of Investigations of the Department of Homeland Security in the United States (HSI), have detained the representatives of the Mexican organization los “Zetas” in Madrid,” the National Police said in a statement.
The operation to capture Said was complex, as he reportedly lived a nomadic life, attending many meetings every day — making him difficult for authorities to trace and difficult to know which figures he met with were relevant to their investigation. Spanish authorities also said that the suspect was highly active in the Netherlands — where the Rotterdam Europort, a key destination for drugs arriving onto the continent, is located.
Los Zetas, once Mexico’s most powerful cartel, are seen as responsible for the rise in extreme violence that has plagued Mexico in recent years. A splinter of the powerful Gulf Cartel, the group now operates in several states across Mexico despite a decline from the peak of their power in the early years of the 2010s.
At their height, Los Zetas were amongst Mexico’s most powerful cartels. Here, a team of Zeta “sicarios” (hitmen) are seen ambushing a police convoy in Fresnillo, Zacatecas, in 2009. (SSPF/Cuartoscuro)
The arrest of Said is the second such operation against Los Zetas in Spain. In 2016, Juan Manuel Muñoz Luévano — “El Mono Muñoz” — who was believed to be an important European ally of the group, was also detained in Madrid.
The police also reported that one of those detained was a Colombian citizen known as “El Repetido,” who is a person “well known in the world of drug trafficking.”
High temperatures and heavy rains will be the norm across much of Mexico on Monday. (Daniel Augusto/Cuartoscuro)
Don’t be deceived by the heat: rain and hail are forecast for Monday afternoon in Mexico City, according to the National Weather Service (SMN).
While the thermometer might hit 25 degrees Celsius (77 F) by 3 p.m., the sky will turn partly cloudy to cloudy with occasional heavy rains coupled with showers and hail in the north, south and west of Mexico City.
Extreme rains and hail in Mexico City on Saturday led authorities to activate emergency alerts in 16 boroughs. (Daniel Augusto/Cuartoscuro)
Rain is expected to begin at 6 p.m. and last until after 9 pm. Temperature during this time may drop to 17 C (62.6 F) with northerly winds of 15 to 30 km/h and gusts of 45 km/h. Toluca, México state, will see a minimum temperature of 8 C (46.4 F) and a maximum of 21 C (69.8 F).
Heavy rains and hail in Mexico City on Saturday led local authorities to activate yellow, orange and red alerts for 16 boroughs. Pedestrians and motorists shared images of the damage caused by the hail in some parts of the city via social media.
Meanwhile, the northern states of Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas will see scorching temperatures of up to 45 C (113 F), while Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Durango, San Luis Potosí, Nayarit, Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo will see temperatures between 30 C to 35 C (86–95 F).
The annual Mexican monsoon — also known as the North American Monsoon — will also cause heavy rains in northwestern Mexico, while a low-pressure channel in the southeast of the country and humidity from both coasts will cause showers in the Mexican northeast and heavy rains in Mexico’s central areas. Heavy rain is also forecast in the southeast of the country and the Yucatán Peninsula.
The SMN has also forecast the arrival of Tropical Wave 17, which will move over the south and west of the country, causing significant rainfall. (Hilda Ríos/Cuartoscuro)
The SMN has also forecast the formation of Tropical Wave 17, which will move over the south and west, while the south of the coasts of Colima and Michoacán could see the development of a tropical cyclone, which would lead to very heavy rains in Guerrero and in western Mexico.
