Foreign minister hits back at US ambassador over remarks on security

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August 31, 2022

Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard, center — Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard, center, insinuated that the U.S. hasn't done enough to help fight firearms flowing southward across the Mexico-U.S. border. Morena/Facebook

Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard has struck back at United States Ambassador Ken Salazar after he asserted earlier this month that recent violence in Mexico would have a negative impact on foreign investment.

After outbreaks of cartel-related violence in Jalisco, Guanajuato, Chihuahua and Baja California, Salazar said August 18 that “with insecurity, investment here in Mexico from the United States and other countries cools off.”

“That’s contrary to what should happen under the USMCA dream,” the ambassador said, referring to the free trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada. “There should be more investment, but insecurity is a big factor for business people,” Salazar said.

The ambassador also said it was time for the bilateral security partnership to yield results.

US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar — At a press conference on August 18, Ambassador Salazar said it was time for the U.S.-Mexico bilateral security partnership to yield results. Embajador Ken Salazar/Twitter

During a meeting with Morena party senators on Tuesday, Ebrard responded to Salazar’s remarks, insinuating that the United States hasn’t done enough to help reduce violence in Mexico because large numbers of firearms continue to flow southward across the two countries’ shared border.

“The United States ambassador said the other day that ‘it’s time for results in security.’ The question I would ask – and I’m going to ask the ambassador when we see each other – is: by how much has the United States reduced the illegal trafficking of arms?” the foreign minister said.

The Foreign Ministry said in 2019 that firearms from the United States were used in seven out of every 10 high-impact crimes committed in Mexico.

Ebrard highlighted that U.S. authorities committed to reducing the smuggling of firearms into Mexico when the two countries entered into a new security agreement – the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health and Safe Communities – late last year.

Morena senators' meeting — Ebrard made his remarks while addressing a work group meeting of Morena senators. Morena.senado.gob.mx

Announcing the framework last October, Mexico and the U.S. affirmed their commitment to work together to combat arms trafficking. In a joint statement, the two countries said they would work together on the detection and interdiction of firearms and consider new strategies to combat the flow of weapons across their shared border.

“… We affirm our support for current initiatives and the need to continue current efforts to stop firearms sold in the United States from reaching Mexico, and actions to identify, target and investigate financing, transportation and communication methods employed by smuggling networks in order to disrupt and dismantle their operations,” the statement said.

Ebrard said bluntly that the United States has an “obligation” to stop firearms crossing the border into Mexico. He also noted that Mexico’s case against U.S.-based gun manufacturers – in which the government accuses them of negligent business practices that have led to illegal arms trafficking and deaths here – is ongoing.

The foreign minister expressed confidence that the United States court considering the case will soon hand down a ruling in Mexico’s favor.

“If you want [your gun] to say ‘Jalisco New Generation Cartel,’ they’ll do it for you. How is that not reprehensible?” Ebrard said. “And at the same time, the [U.S.] ambassador asks me why violence hasn’t declined.”

With reports from Reforma

Governor says yacht’s owner will pay to clean up Balandra Bay oil spill

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MND Staff

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August 30, 2022

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Marines on cleanup duty at Balandra beach.

It’s not yet known whether the company that owns a yacht that contaminated a Baja California Sur beach will face fines, but it will cover the costs of cleaning up the coastline.

The luxury yacht Fortius caught fire and sank off the coast of Balandra beach near state capital La Paz on August 21. The calamity caused the beach – which has been described as the most beautiful in Mexico – to become contaminated with large quantities of oil, diesel fuel, ash and soot.

Baja California Sur Governor Víctor Castro Cosío said last week it would be up to federal environment authorities to decide whether the yacht owner would be fined. However, he stressed that the owner – a Jalisco-based company called Fortius Electromecánica – would pay to clean up the beach and the bay on which it is located.

“The owner of the vessel already committed [to pay], they’re hiring a company to help clean up,” Castro said. “Not just that, they have to recover the sunken vessel so that it doesn’t [continue] contaminating.”

The governor also said that the accident was “ the kind of thing that can’t be anticipated – it was a fire on a boat.”

“I think the whole community understands that it was an accident. This could happen with a car in the city and a gas spill. The owners, poor people, experienced losses as well,” Castro said.

A cleanup brigade of officials and more than 50 volunteers cleared 10 tonnes of waste last week, but nine days after the yacht fire and oil spill occurred, Balandra beach remains closed due to contamination.

A group of citizens protested on the La Paz malecón (seaside promenade) on Saturday to denounce the environmental damage and demand transparency in authorities’ response to it. The mainly young protesters held up placards with messages such as “Fortius, you messed with the wrong city,” “It could have been prevented, it’s not an accident” and “More action, more transparency.”

Meanwhile, the news website BCS Noticias reported that Fortius Electromecánica – which completes electrical installations and provides renewable energy solutions, according to the company’s website – was awarded 29 federal and state government contracts between 2007 and 2015. The value of the contracts was 92.9 million pesos (US $4.6 million at today’s exchange rate), said BCS Noticias, which obtained the information from QuiénesQuién.Wiki, a website that describes itself as Latin America’s “map of power.”

The state-owned Federal Electricity Commission awarded most of the contracts, which were for lighting and electricity projects in states including Jalisco and Coahuila.

Fortius Electromecánica is owned by David Alcalde Andrade. According to a report by the news magazine Zeta Tijuana, members of the Alcalde family constantly used the yacht to visit different destinations on the Mexican coast.

With reports from BCS Noticias

Only 12% of students in 2 states finish university; national average is 26%

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MND Staff

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August 30, 2022

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student at Autonomous University of Chiapas — This student at the Autonomous University of Chiapas is a bit of an anomaly: only 12% of students in his state will attend and finish university. UNACH

Students in poor southern states such as Chiapas and Oaxaca are much less likely to go to university and finish a degree than students in more developed entities including Mexico City and Nuevo León, government data indicates.

Among students who began primary school in Chiapas and Oaxaca in the 2004–2005 academic year, just 12% graduated from university at the end of the 2020–2021 academic year, according to the Ministry of Public Education (SEP).

Data published in a SEP report shows that just 15% of students from another poor southern state – Guerrero – graduated from university 16 years after they began primary school. Three other states – Veracruz, San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato – had university graduation rates below 20%.

Mexico City is at the top of the table for “school-based education system efficiency,” with 46% of students who began school in the capital in 2004 going on to get a degree last year.

Factory in Leon, Guanajuato — Guanajuato has a respected university in the capital and the city of León has multiple industrial parks occupied by several international companies. Yet, under 20% of the state’s students finish university.

Nuevo León ranked second with a graduation rate of 41% followed by Querétaro, 40%; Aguascalientes, 39%; Yucatán, 36%; and Coahuila, 36%.

A total of 19 federal entities had graduation rates at or above the national average of 26%, while 13 states were below the average.

Juan Alfonso Mejía, Sinaloa education minister between 2018 and 2021, told the newspaper El Universal that low graduation rates in southern states will persist without more targeted assistance for students.

“The scholarships that this [federal] administration is providing are welcome and very necessary for millions of Mexican children, but they’re not enough to maintain the education efforts of those children nor are they sufficient to achieve successful careers for the children,” he said.

elementary school student in Mexico City — Because she attends school in Mexico City, this elementary school student automatically has a better chance of one day finishing university than her peers in other states. SEP

“No matter how much money you give them, if children don’t understand what they’re looking at in the classroom, they’ll become frustrated, and in the long term, that frustration will make students not want to continue at school,” Mejía said.

He said that students need sustained academic assistance to overcome disadvantages and lamented the government’s decision to terminate a program that extended school hours for students at more than 25,000 schools. The former state education minister called on the government to reestablish the Full-Time Schools Program or create a new similar scheme.

“Children have a learning deficit that has worsened due to the pandemic. If that learning isn’t reinforced there won’t be enough scholarships to reverse the [education] deficit there will be in the coming years. Recovering [students’ required level of] learning is urgent and targeted strategies are needed for that,” said Mejía, who is also an education researcher.

“Eliminating the Full-Time Schools Program was a monumental error because the evidence shows that children are better off spending more time at school,” he added.

Alma Maldonado, another education researcher, said that states in Mexico’s south and southeast have long lagged the rest of the country in terms of educational outcomes. It’s a “historic problem” that no government has solved, she said.

“It has to do with abandonment [by authorities], it has to do with economic, social and political issues and conflicts with teachers. In reality, it’s due to the lack of interest in reducing this educational inequality. Scholarships are provided but there’s no targeted work. … Specialized attention is needed for the indigenous and Afro-Mexican population, but no in-depth attention to the education issue has ever been carried out,” Maldonado said.

With reports from El Universal

Efforts to locate miners to continue; gov’t agrees to erect monument, pay compensation

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MND Staff

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August 30, 2022

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Mexico Civil Protection Chief Laura Velazquez — National Civil Protection chief Laura Velázquez said a memorial would be erected at the site once the miners' bodies have been recovered. Twitter

The families of 10 presumably deceased miners who have been trapped in a flooded Coahuila coal mine since August 3 have reluctantly accepted a recovery mission that could take 11 months or even longer to execute.

Relatives last week rejected a plan to build a slanted tunnel into the El Pinabete mine via an open pit, but Civil Protection chief Laura Velázquez said Monday that they had agreed to the proposal, which will be carried out by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).

“We reached an agreement today, … the open pit will be excavated. We’ll start now, as soon as we can,” she said at the mine site, located in the municipality of Sabinas.

“I’ve just had a phone call with [CFE chief Manuel] Bartlett. We’re a couple of days away from starting this large project,” Velázquez said.

Pinabete mine recovery efforts in Coahuila — The government says it will take six months to build a slanted tunnel into the Pinabate mine in Sabinas, Coahuila. Civil Protection/Twitter

The Civil Protection chief predicted it would take at least six months to build a tunnel into the galerías, or horizontal passages, of the mine.

Hilda Alvarado, the wife of one of the trapped miners, told the newspaper El Universal that authorities left the families with no other option but to accept the open pit tunnel plan. She said the families were told that it could take up to two years to extract all the water from the mine, which flooded when excavation work caused a tunnel wall to collapse, allowing water to flow in from abandoned adjacent mines.

Alvarado complained that the authorities didn’t accept any outside help, although the federal government did seek advice from a United States company and a German firm. “It hurts so much, … it’s very difficult,” she said of the presumed death of the miners, who have now been underground for 27 days.

Velázquez — who has faced pressure to resign due to the failure to date to rescue the miners or recover their bodies — also said Monday that a memorial to the miners will be erected at the mine site after the recovery mission has concluded. She also said that the families will receive an unspecified amount of monetary compensation from the government.

RElatives of miners trapped in Pinabete mine in Coahuila — Family members were told they would be given compensation by the government for the loss of their relatives. Screen capture

An Associated Press report published Sunday said there was evidence that the government has “driven the revival of the dangerous, primitive mines that continue claiming lives” because President López Obrador enacted a plan two years ago to revive coal-fired power plants in northern Mexico and give preference to buying coal from the smallest mines.

Alvarado told El Universal that she wouldn’t accept any compensation until she has her husband back. “One has to think about the [miners’] children,” she added. “A lot have young children who are studying.”

In an interview with the newspaper Milenio, two sisters of trapped miners complained that the authorities only consulted with the wives of the men about the recovery and compensation plan and didn’t consider other family members such as siblings and parents.

“They spoke with the wives. [They said] they had reached an agreement, but they didn’t let any direct family member enter [the discussions],” Magdalena Montelongo said.

With reports from El Universal and Milenio

Left’s elder statesman voices his concern over economy, education, security

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MND Staff

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August 30, 2022

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Cuauhtemoc Cardenas speaking in Mexico to Grupo Plural — Cuauhtémoc Cardenas spoke Monday to Grupo Plural, a cross-party group of senators. Grupo Plural

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a former presidential candidate and co-founder of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), has expressed concern about a range of problems affecting Mexico, asserting that no “concrete action” is being taken or being proposed to address them.

“I’m very concerned about the situation we’re living, the situation that the country is going through,” he said during a meeting with a cross-party group of senators on Monday.

“There are many things that concern me,” added Cárdenas, who was a candidate in the 1988, 1994 and 2000 presidential elections.

Among the 88-year-old’s concerns are insecurity, poverty, a lack of economic growth and insufficient government funding in a range of areas including education and health.

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas candidate for chief of Mexico government 1997 — Cuauhtémoc Cardenas, right, in 1997. Cardenas achieved the PRD party’s first major election victory: mayor of Mexico City. Next to him is AMLO, president of the PRD at the time. El Ingeniero/INCIME

Cárdenas, who was governor of Michoacán in the first half of the 1980s and Mexico City mayor in the late ’90s, also cited social inequality as a problem. “We have a very high concentration of poverty [and] an economy that hasn’t grown for decades,” he said.

“… There is a matter than concerns me … and it’s that I don’t see in the political parties any serious proposal to seek solutions to the country’s problems,” said Cárdenas, son of former president Lázaro Cárdenas, who is best known for nationalizing Mexico’s oil sector in the late 1930s.

The party’s proposals are probably hidden away in their mission statements, “but they’re not in sight,” he said. “I don’t see any concrete action to address the serious problems that have been mentioned.”

Cárdenas said that criminal groups have used violence to seize control of yet more territory – a United States military official claimed last year that narcos control about one-third of Mexico – and charged that the government hasn’t invested enough to combat insecurity.

Children at primary school in Mexico City — Among concerns Cardenas raised at the meeting of senators: insufficient funding for education. SEP

The political veteran said last December that the state must retake territory controlled by organized crime in order to guarantee economic growth and social peace. At the time, he advocated “the establishment and expansion of [government] productive projects, schools, universities, clinics and technological innovation and work training programs in each portion of the national territory” where organized crime has a presence.

On Monday, Cárdenas was critical of President López Obrador’s plan to put the National Guard under the control of the army, asserting that it should remain under civilian command in accordance with the constitution.

“This doesn’t mean that a military man can’t participate [in National Guard operations] or be at the head of different [National Guard] programs, … as long as he’s in a civilian position,” he said.

The co-founder and former president of the PRD also spoke about the 2024 presidential election, repeating his belief that those who aspire to the presidency must make it clear why they want the nation’s top job.

member of Mexico's National Guard — Cárdenas was also critical of President López Obrador’s plan to put the National Guard under the control of the army. GN/Twitter

“The presidential succession game has been brought forward,” Cárdenas said, apparently referring to growing speculation about who the ruling Morena party’s candidate will be in 2024.

“I’m not concerned that the electoral situation is starting to move, but I am worried that those who have been mentioned [as possible candidates] or those who say they have an interest in reaching a representative position such as president are not telling us why they want to be president,” he said.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Shienbaum and Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard are the leading contenders to become Morena’s candidate, while there is less clarity about who the opposition parties might put forward.

It appears likely that the National Action Party, Institutional Revolutionary Party and PRD will back a common candidate, choosing a presidential aspirant from a field that could include current and former lawmakers, party officials and state governors.

Cárdenas stressed that he wouldn’t vote for anyone who hasn’t articulated why he or she wants to be president.

“If we don’t know why they want to be [president], I, for one, will not give them my vote,” he said.

With reports from Milenio, Reforma, El Universal and Aristegui Noticias

Blue corn festival celebrates botanical wealth of Michoacán

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MND Staff

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August 29, 2022

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A festival celebrating one of Michoacán’s culinary outliers, its visually striking blue corn, is set to take place in Uruapan this weekend.

The festival, known as Elote Azul Korhupo Anapu, aims to highlight the state’s botanical wealth and promote the trade of its emblematic blue corn. It will take place September 3–4 at the communal auditorium in San Francisco Corupo, a community in the municipality of Uruapan.

The region is known as the Purépecha Plateau, the agricultural heartland of the Purépecha people.

Organizers expect up to 1,500 people to attend the event, which could earn the community some 600,000 pesos (US $30,000).

The event will exhibit products derived from corn as well as cultural presentations of Purépecha tradition: the indigenous group has the historical distinction of never being conquered by the once-dominant Aztec Empire.

Dances originating from Querétaro and México state will be presented: both states are also producers of blue corn. Folkloric dancers from the U.S. state of Oregon will also perform, and indigenous ball games will be presented as well as an elevation of paper Cantoya balloons.

While there are more than 60 varieties of corn in Mexico, blue corn offers some distinct nutritional advantages: the unusually colored crop contains less starch and has a lower glycemic index than its more commonly consumed paler rival.

With reports from Agencia Informativa de México

INAH accuses San Miguel de Allende of damage to architectural heritage

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August 29, 2022

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The widening of a sidewalk in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, has upset the powers that be at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

In a statement issued Saturday, INAH said it had detected an unauthorized “intervention” in the historic center of the colonial city, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008.

It didn’t specify the unauthorized work, but reports identified it as the widening of a sidewalk on Juárez Street in order to improve access for people with disabilities. INAH said that the project altered “the urban image of the municipality” and could place the World Heritage designation at risk.

INAH said that personnel from its Guanajuato office confirmed last Wednesday the “execution of work without the authorization of the institute” and consequently suspended the project. However, workers ignored the suspension order and continued to undertake work to widen the sidewalk, it said.

San Miguel de Allende widening of Juarez Street — The federal agency ordered the sidewalk widening project shut down, but the city has continued work on it.

INAH said that municipal police refused to provide support and as a result it sought the assistance of the National Guard, which did manage to bring the work to a halt. But the caper didn’t end there as INAH received reports from citizens last Wednesday night alerting it that the project had resumed.

The institute noted that the San Miguel de Allende municipal government decided to undertake the work,“contravening … the collaboration and coordination agreement signed with INAH in December 2021.”

The aim of that agreement, it said, was to “join forces for the protection, conservation, restoration, recovery and dissemination of cultural, paleontological, archaeological and historic wealth.”

“INAH calls on municipal authorities to suspend the work carried out without the authorization of INAH, to respect the law and agreements signed and to … establish a working group in favor of the conservation of the cultural, historical and architectural heritage of San Miguel de Allende,” the statement said.

INAH’s exhortation apparently came too late as the institute’s Guanajuato director said that the project was finished in the early hours of last Thursday morning. Olga Adriana Hernández Flores said that the workers completed the project under the cover of darkness “like criminals.”

According to a La Jornada newspaper report, INAH filed a criminal complaint against the municipal government, but the institute made no mention of that in its statement.

Hernández said that the San Miguel de Allende government – currently led by Institutional Revolutionary Party Mayor Mauricio Trejo – has carried out other projects without the authorization of INAH.

“It’s probable that [San Miguel de Allende] will enter the list of cities that could lose the [UNESCO] declaration,” she said.

A local government official countered that INAH’s authorization wasn’t required for the sidewalk project because it fell under the category of maintenance.

“It’s maintenance work to pedestrianize the street, the section of sidewalk is too small,” said José Emilio Lara Sandoval, the municipal government’s director for the historic center and heritage.

For his part, Mayor Trejo said in a statement that the work complied with UNESCO recommendations. “One of the main objectives is the recovery of public spaces, making them more passable for pedestrians, generating pleasant environments where [historical] monuments are emphasized,” he said.

With reports from La Jornada

Ford México celebrates first car to be made only by women

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August 29, 2022

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Mexico’s automobile industry has a new achievement to celebrate after Ford México revealed its first car made exclusively by women.

The Mustang Match-E, a battery electric compact crossover SUV, has been built exclusively by women since 2020 at a Ford plant in México state.

During a visit to the plant in Cuautitlán, accompanied by Ford México CEO Luz Elena Castillo, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the factory was Ford’s most productive worldwide before boasting the all-female feat. “Another very interesting thing is the manufacture of this vehicle. It’s the first one manufactured exclusively by women. For the first time in the world all the manufacture of the vehicle is done by women,” he said.

Ebrard added that there are also women working at managerial levels at the factory and praised the company for its forward thinking ethos. “The gender perspective of Ford is very good. We are very happy that Mexico is exporting and producing these vehicles that are not the future, they are already the present,” he said.

Photos on the foreign minister’s social media show one of the Mustang Match-E vehicles, decorated with an image of a woman wearing a bright flower in her free flowing purple hair. The car’s design also bears the logo of Warriors in Pink, the company’s initiative to fight breast cancer.

Ebrard also looked ahead to September 12 for the High-Level Economic Dialogue (HLED) talks with a U.S. delegation. He said the government would unveil its strategy to convert half of the cars produced in the country to electric. “By September 12 we will know what the route is, what the next steps are and who has to do what. [That goes for] all the companies in the automotive sector, the entire energy sector of Mexico including the Federal Electricity Commission, and … the government,” he said.

With reports from Reforma and Infobae

Mexico, US to invest nearly US $500 million in Tijuana River cleanup

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MND Staff

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August 29, 2022

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Mexico and the United States will together invest almost US $500 million in a range of sewage treatment projects designed to clean up the heavily polluted Tijuana River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean just north of the border in San Diego County.

At a ceremony held earlier this month at the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve in Imperial Beach, California, Mexican and U.S. officials signed an agreement that commits to funding 17 priority projects. The International Boundary and Water Commission pact pledges almost $144 million in Mexican funding and at least $330 million in U.S. spending for a total outlay of approximately $474 million.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SE) said the San Antonio de los Buenos wastewater treatment plant in Tijuana will undergo a complete renovation while the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant just north of the border in San Ysidro will be expanded in order to double its current capacity. SE also said that pumping stations and other water and sewage infrastructure on the Mexican side will be upgraded.

“With this important agreement, the governments of Mexico and the United States commit to working together on the planning, design, [re]construction and rehabilitation of existing wastewater infrastructure in the region of Tijuana, Baja California, and San Diego, California, including the Pacific Ocean,” the ministry said.

[wpgmza id=”368″]

“The new infrastructure will provide for the conveyance, treatment, disposal and when applicable reuse of wastewater to reduce contamination in the Tijuana River basin.”

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the planned projects will increase sewage treatment capacity by 43 million gallons – or 162.7 million liters – per day. The overhaul of the Tijuana wastewater treatment plant is slated to be finished by 2027, and will reduce the quantity of untreated sewage discharged to the Pacific Ocean by 80%, the EPA said.

Scott Peters, a U.S. congressman who represents San Diego, expressed optimism that the overhaul of the Tijuana plant will be finished sooner than 2027.

The pollution of the Tijuana River and the Pacific Ocean off the coast of both northern Baja California and southern California has been a problem for decades, but has worsened in recent years as pressure on the sewage system continued to grow. Binational environment group Wildcoast said in 2018 that the Tijuana wastewater treatment plant was dumping 1,750 liters of untreated sewage into the Pacific Ocean per second.

Imperial Beach in San Diego, where the Tijuana River meets the Pacific Ocean, has been repeatedly closed in past years for unsafe levels of sewage in the water.

Raw sewage, chemicals and trash discarded in the Tijuana River in Mexico usually end up at Imperial Beach, where the waterway flows into the Pacific Ocean. Scores of U.S. border patrol agents reportedly became ill in 2017 after being exposed to contaminants while working in the vicinity of the border. Pollution of the coastline in southern California has forced the closure of beaches on numerous occasions.

Peters described sewage infrastructure in Tijuana as “really decrepit,” asserting that it lacked maintenance.

“The treatment plant is falling apart, so sewage is falling into the water — not through a pipe with partial treatment, but without any treatment,” he said. “They have a double problem — growing population and failing infrastructure,” the lawmaker added.

Baja California Governor Marina del Pilar said last week that the new funding agreement showed that governments on both sides of the border are committed to solving the longstanding pollution problem. “We’re taking a historic step that will transform the life and environment of our region,” she said.

With reports from The San Diego Union-Tribune, Agencia Informativa de México and Noro

Accused trafficker wants millions from Netflix for Spanish-language narco series

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MND Staff

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August 29, 2022

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Sandra Avila Beltran, known as the Queen of the Pacific — Sandra Ávila Beltran, who is often referred to by the nickname Queen of the Pacific, says the series' lead character is based on her.

La Reina del Pacífico (The Queen of the Pacific) believes the protagonist of the television drama La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South) is based on her, and she’s not happy about it.

Sandra Ávila Beltrán, a 61-year-old Mexicali native, is aiming to get a hefty payout from streaming service Netflix and television network Telemundo. She says that the lead character in the Spanish-language TV show — the fictional drug lord Teresa Mendoza — is an unauthorized portrayal of her.

Ávila, who is often referred to by the nickname La Reina del Pacífico, has been accused but never convicted of drug trafficking. However, she spent seven years in jail on money laundering and firearm charges

Legal documents obtained by the Milenio newspaper show that Ávila filed an administrative complaint against Netflix and Telemundo with the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) in January. Ávila argues that her image was used without her consent. According to her lawyers, the filing is the first step toward a legal case against the two U.S. behemoths.

Actress Kate del Castillo portrays the fictional Mexican drug lord Teresa Mendoza, a character that Sandra Ávila says is based on her. Twitter

La Reina del Sur premiered in 2011, ran for a second season in 2019 and will hit screens for a third season later this year. Those two companies named in the complaint co-produced seasons 2 and 3 of the drama, in which actor Kate del Castillo stars as Mendoza, a Mexican woman who becomes the most powerful drug trafficker in the south of Spain.

The series is not to be confused with an English-language remake of the series, entitled Queen of the South, which starred Alice Braga as Teresa Mendoza and ran on the USA network between 2016 and 2021.

Ávila, Milenio reported, believes that the similarities between her and the fictitious Mendoza are no coincidence.

“The resemblance between Teresa and Sandra is certainly there to interpret,” the newspaper said, noting that both are brunettes, attractive, norteñas (from northern Mexico), in their 50s and involved in the drug trafficking world. In addition, La Reina del Sur has been promoted as a series based on actual events.

In her IMPI complaint, Ávila claimed that Netflix and Telemundo “acted maliciously with the intention of discrediting me and obtaining an economic benefit based on that.”

She specifically cited a 2019 Telemundo news broadcast during which the network did a cross-promotion for the second season of La Reina del Sur that included footage of both Ávila and del Castillo as Mendoza, insinuating a link between them. A Telemundo reporter went further, saying that Ávila — a niece of Guadalajara Cartel founder Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and allegedly a go-between for the Sinaloa Cartel and Colombian cocaine traffickers — was the “muse” for the series.

If her complaint is successful, Ávila will seek in court an amount equal to 40% of the profits generated by the Spanish-language series, which could mean a multimillion-dollar payout given the drama’s estimated revenue.

Ávila’s lawyers said they decided on the 40% figure because the Supreme Court ruled last year that alcoholic beverage company Diageo México must pay actor Gael García Bernal 40% of the revenue it obtained from sales of Johnnie Walker whisky during the period that its Caminando con Gigantes (Walking with Giants) campaign ran in September and October 2011.

Ávila is a niece of Guadalajara Cartel founder Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, who had his own nickname: The Boss of Bosses. He’s seen here in an interview with Telemundo in 2021.

The company used García’s image without authorization in that campaign.

Ávila’s complaint asserted that “the use of [her] image” was not for an “informative or journalistic purpose” but for a “commercial” one. She and her lawyers say that Netflix and Telemundo have violated Mexican copyright laws as well as the Mexican constitution and international agreements.

“Nobody has the right to disseminate the image of a person, her anecdotes, life and essence without authorization,” Israel Razo, a lawyer for Ávila, said in a message sent to Milenio.

In an interview with Milenio Televisión, the lawyer asserted that his client has been defamed by the screening of La Reina del Sur because she has never been convicted of drug trafficking charges.

“It has a direct impact on her image … living with a drug trafficker moniker is very difficult,” Razo said.

Razo pointed out that Ávila has been acquitted of all drug trafficking charges against her. “Imagine going out to the street and having … [people] see you as a drug trafficker and separately having foreign companies exploiting that,” he said. “… What we want is to set a precedent [that] you can’t use people’s image carelessly,” Razo said.

The case could have broader ramifications given that numerous other accused and convicted narcos have been portrayed on screen, in many cases without any attempt to obscure their identity.

With reports from Milenio