After using power tools to slice through a bollard, smugglers can push the dangling metal beam out of the way and walk through.
The border wall between Mexico and the United States was breached more than 3,000 times during the past three years, with widely available power tools routinely used to cut through the binational barrier.
The Washington Post obtained unpublished U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) maintenance records that showed that drug and people smugglers sawed through new sections of wall built during the Trump administration 3,272 times between 2019 and 2021.
The CBP records also show that the U.S. government spent US $2.6 million to repair the breaches.
Smuggling gangs typically use inexpensive power tools such as angle grinders and demolition saws to cut through the border wall, the Post said.
“Once the 18-to-30-foot-tall bollards are severed near the ground, their only remaining point of attachment is at the top of the structure, leaving the steel beam dangling in the air. It easily swings open with a push, creating a gap wide enough for people and narcotics to pass through,” the newspaper said, linking to a video of a damaged section of wall.
People familiar with the smugglers’ tactics told the Post that they typically cut through the wall at night, covering themselves with blankets to hide the sparks and reduce noise. Lookouts alert them via radio when there are Border Patrol vehicles in the area.
More than 80% of the breaches during the past three years were detected in California, with over 1,800 in the CBP’s El Centro sector in the Imperial Valley and close to 900 in the San Diego sector.
While Donald Trump’s long-promised, albeit incomplete, wall was breached thousands of times, the Post noted that older mesh style fencing along the border has been even easier to penetrate.
One major breach of the new section in March 2021 allowed two SUVs carrying migrants to enter California. One of the vehicles subsequently hit a truck and 13 people were killed.
While cutting through the wall is common, CBP agents and U.S. ranchers say that climbing over it is now even more frequent. Ladders and ropes help migrants and smugglers climb the barrier and descend safely to the other side.
The president's morning press conference ended early after the Veracruz quake triggered Mexico City's alarm system.
A 5.7-magnitude earthquake with an epicenter in Veracruz struck at 8:40 a.m. Thursday, but there were no reports of damage.
The National Seismological Service (SSN) reported that the epicenter of the quake was 14 kilometers north of Isla, a town in the Gulf coast state’s southern region near the border with Oaxaca.
Veracruz Governor Cuitláhuac García said on Twitter that there were no reports of damage in Isla and surrounding areas, and that power plants in the region were functioning normally.
“We’re still monitoring and we urge [citizens] to follow the recommendations of Civil Protection [authorities],” he wrote.
Mexico City’s earthquake alarm system was activated by the quake, which the SSN initially reported was a 6.2-magnitude event. Government helicopters flew over the capital but didn’t detect any damage.
Epicenter of Thursday's quake in Veracruz.
“There has been evacuation of some buildings in accordance with protocols,” Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted, adding that the Metro, which suspended services to check for damage, had resumed operations.
The temblor, which many Mexico City residents reported not feeling, interrupted President López Obrador's morning press conference at the National Palace. A video showed officials leaving the space where the conference is held as the earthquake alarm sounded, but reporters remained in the room.
López Obrador later said that he had spoken with the governors of Veracruz and Oaxaca and they told him no major damage had been reported.
The SSN also reported a 4.7-magnitude earthquake at 8:54 a.m. with an epicenter 30 kilometers south of Atoyac de Álvarez, Guerrero.
Earthquakes are common in Mexico, which was struck by two powerful temblors 12 days apart in September 2017. The 7.1-magnitude Puebla earthquake on September 19, 2017 and the 8.2-magnitude Chiapas quake on September 7 together claimed the lives of almost 500 people.
Crime is down in Acapulco, but there are still not enough soldiers to contain violence in the Pacific coast municipality, according to a local army commander.
Despite an additional deployment of soldiers to Acapulco in recent months, “we don’t have the forces needed to guarantee security in the entire municipality,” he said.
That municipality extends along the coast and a significant distance inland to a shared border with the municipality of Chilpancingo de los Bravo, where the Guerrero capital is located.
“It’s difficult for us to be everywhere,” San Juan said. “The criminal also thinks; the criminal won’t commit a crime in front of me, he’ll do it behind me because I’m in a uniform.”
The general also said that some Acapulco residents have protested against the army because they are manipulated by organized crime groups. He noted that stall holders at the central market protested during two days last month, accusing the army of committing abuses in the port city.
Crime groups “didn’t want us to go into the market, but we did and we found drugs and weapons,” San Juan said.
“That’s why [organized] crime started to move people and carry out protests and block [the market] so we wouldn’t go in,” he said.
San Juan said it was unclear how many criminal groups are currently operating in Acapulco, described by The Washington Post in 2017 as Mexico’s murder capital.
The municipality was Mexico’s 50th most violent between February 2021 and January 2022 for homicides per capita with a total of 448, or 53 per 100,000 people, according to data compiled by the crime monitoring website elcri.men.
The volume of excess gas disposed of by the environmentally harmful practice of flaring increased 50% in Mexico between 2018 and 2020, according to an analysis conducted for the news agency Reuters.
Scientists at the Earth Observation Group (EOG) of the Colorado School of Mines analyzed NASA satellite images of flare sites across Mexico and determined that flaring has increased significantly since 2018, the year President López Obrador took office.
Many flare sites are facilities operated by the state oil company Pemex, such as the Cactus natural gas processing center in Reforma, Chiapas, a municipality on the border with Tabasco.
Data compiled by the EOG team showed that 5.8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas was flared in 2020, up from 3.9 bcm in 2018. The 2020 volume made Mexico one of the world’s top 10 flarers, Reuters said.
Pemex doesn’t publish data on gas flaring, but has acknowledged that reducing the high levels of excess gas burning is among its greatest challenges. It doesn’t appear to have made any progress so far.
Residents of El Carmen, a town near Pemex’s Cactus Gas Processing Complex in Chiapas, said that their town smells like sulfur and sometimes, ash falls from the sky, raising health concerns.
EOG data for the first 10 months of 2021 indicated that Mexico was on track to flare more gas than in 2020.
The burning of excess gas releases carbon dioxide and methane – a more potent greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere. Mexico has committed to reducing methane emissions and cutting flaring by 2030, but the EOG data suggests that the country is “moving in the opposite direction from a global push to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas production,” Reuters said.
Last year, the biggest flare volumes occurred in the states of Chiapas, Veracruz and Tabasco, and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, where many large oil fields are located.
Reuters reported that it never gets completely dark in the community of El Carmen due to a red glare created by frequent flaring at the Cactus gas processing center, Mexico’s largest. The facility doesn’t have the capacity to process the huge volume of gas that is emitted as a byproduct during oil production.
Flaring the gas the facility can’t process is cheaper than investing in infrastructure to capture, process and transport it for other uses, Reuters said.
Communities near flaring sites can be affected by pollution, while the emission of large quantities of greenhouse gases contributes to climate change. Reuters reported that three of the five largest flares in Mexico in 2020 were close to several communities, including El Carmen, which is located between the Cactus and Nuevo Pemex gas processing centers.
In a complaint sent to Pemex last September, El Carmen residents said that there had been six major environmental incidents related to flaring since July. They say that a lagoon used for fishing is polluted by oil residue, soil is contaminated, ash falls from the sky like rain and there is a sulfur-like smell in the town.
In its most recent quarterly report, Pemex said that 13% of gas created as a byproduct of oil production is wasted. That’s over six times higher than the 2% limit set by regulators.
When Aaron Carotta first picked up a canoe paddle, he had no idea what he was doing. But that didn’t deter him from embarking on a 5,000-mile journey down the Missouri River — North America’s longest river system — in a beat-up old canoe and a heavy plastic oar no experienced paddler would ever use.
“It started with a cancer diagnosis in 2008. It was my wake-up call,” he explained.
Having since conquered a solo 232-day journey down North America’s longest river system with just $37 in his pocket, limited supplies of mostly oatmeal and Spaghetti-Os and zero experience, Carotta and his canoe have expanded their horizons and decided to undertake an even bigger journey in 2021.
Carotta is making a solo worldwide trip in his rowboat, one that will take him from 3–5 years and that he’s documenting through a variety of media online in the hopes of educating viewers about the lives of people around the world.
Oh, and he also hopes to break a Guinness world record for the longest solo journey by canoe or kayak. Currently the record is 3,462.89 miles by Marcin Gienieczko of Poland.
Carotta at a sidewalk cafe in Zihuatanejo.
Not long ago, when friends told me that Carotta’s rowboat Smiles had anchored in the Bay of Zihuatanejo to repair a rudder, I knew I had to meet him. The burning question I had for him when I caught up with him in a sidewalk café in Zihuatanejo was why?
A failed relationship, along with his health issues, seemed to be the motivating factor for transforming himself into his current public persona, Adventure Aaron. “I believe in the power of this tiny rowboat,” Carotta said, “for the future motivation it can offer to my fellow friends here seeking their own in life, by simply rowing their boat.”
Carotta talked a lot about his spirituality as being a personal thing for him — not something he wanted to push on others, but more like a journey of finding his God. He started the journey as part of his spirituality. “It is a personal thing and a quest — not a mission to save the world. Humanity, communication and God are the three elements that define my life.”
However, Carotta does have a goal in mind that is bigger than himself: he is recording his worldwide journey in a variety of media – from social media to online video posts to podcasts to TV interviews and more, in part so that he can show his viewers how average people around the world live their lives. He calls this project See Level.
“We live in a world that’s influenced and polished in a way that makes it hard to know what’s actually going on out there,” he says on his fundraising page. “Not everyone in First World countries has the means or the knowledge to experience off-the-beaten paths in the world and personally connect with the communities there. They don’t know what other communities have or need in terms of food and supplies; they just go by what organizations tell them.”
Carotta’s plan besides everything mentioned above is to meet as many people as he can on his journey, and in some cases, hand out donations to random needy members he encounters in the communities he passes through. This is at least in part funded by patron donors, who contribute to his Fundrazr.com page.
A montage of Carotta’s adventures in Smiles the rowboat.
He has had several wake-up calls since he first set off on his adventure. Four days after departing from Ensenada, he encountered real weather, with 25–30 knot winds. As he said on his Facebook page, “What got calm, got real — real quick.”
“Waking up at 3 a.m., feeling the winds coming, I stayed out for 20 hours on the oars,” he added.
Trouble also hit as he was coming down the Gulf of California. Blown off course and adrift at sea for days without food, Carotta found himself having to turn to his only source of food left in the boat, a live chicken companion named “Red.”
“It was so hard eating that chicken,” he said, “especially since I had already named him … At one point, I thought that I was going to die,” he remarked. “But it was a peaceful, almost blissful, feeling, and I wasn’t afraid. Not that I wanted to die, of course, but I was okay with it.”
He survived thanks to a concerned boater who had not heard from him in a while and notified Mexico’s Coast Guard. They came to his rescue with a food drop and help repairing his boat.
While in Zihuatanejo, Carotta found himself enveloped in the active marine society that this fishing village is famous for. Since leaving, he has passed through Acapulco, and on Wednesday, according to the tracker map on his website, he and Smiles were near the coast of Puerto Escondido.
Carotta’s estimates the journey will take up to 5 years.
Before he left Zihuatanejo, I asked him what was next for him after rowing around the world. “I think I will experience a post-partum,” he said.
Elina Svitolina acknowledges the applause by spectators after Tuesday's game in Monterrey. She plans to give her prize money to the Ukrainian army.
A Ukrainian tennis player thrashed her Russian opponent at the Monterrey Open on Tuesday after initially refusing to play the match due to the Russian military invasion of her country.
Ranked No. 15 in the world, Elina Svitolina was unwilling to compete in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) event in Nuevo León until the international governing bodies of tennis said Russian and Belarusian players could only compete as neutral athletes.
The three governing organizations issued a joint statement on Tuesday condemning the invasion and banning Russian and Belarusian flags and hymns.
Wearing the blue and yellow colors of Ukraine’s flag, the 27-year-old Svitolina swept Russia’s Anastasia Potapova 6-2 and 6-1 in 64 minutes. After the match, she said would donate her prize money from the tournament to the Ukrainian army.
Svitolina added that she was fighting for her homeland from the court. “I was on a mission for my country … I think it’s my mission to unite our tennis community to stand with Ukraine, to help Ukraine because what we’re going through is a horrible thing for all Ukrainians … That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m playing for my country and doing my best to use my platform to try to invite people to support Ukraine.”
However, she said she harbored no ill feeling toward her opponent. “I don’t blame any Russian athlete … They are not responsible for the invasion of our homeland … I’m in a very sad mood, but I’m happy I’m here playing tennis.”
Svitolina, who won the tournament in 2020, will face Bulgarian qualifier Viktoriya Tomova in the second round in Mexico.
She has won 16 titles on the WTA tour and has reached two semi-finals in grand slam tournaments. Her highest rank was third.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has suspended the Russian Tennis Federation and Belarus Tennis Federation from international team competition and all ITF tournaments in Russia and Belarus have been canceled, while the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the Association of Tennis Players (ATP) boards have suspended their combined event that was to take place in Moscow in October.
Tridomex workers voted 1,126 to 176 in favor of the independent union.
Workers at an auto parts plant in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, have voted in favor of being represented by an independent union, ousting a company-affiliated union they accused of not supporting their fight for higher wages.
The Labor Ministry said in a statement Monday that 1,126 Tridomex workers voted in favor of the independent SNITIS union, while the SITPME union, part of the powerful Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), was supported by just 176 employees.
It was the second victory over an entrenched, undemocratic union that has suppressed wages after workers at the General Motors (GM) plant in Silao, Guanajuato, voted last month to replace another CTM-affiliated union with an independent one.
The votes at both factories came after the United States government asked Mexico to review whether workers’ rights were being violated at both GM and Tridomex, a subsidiary of the U.S. company Cardone.
Both requests were lodged under the North American free trade agreement, the USMCA, which stipulates that workers must be allowed to freely choose their union representation.
SNITIS, which won the opportunity to represent the Tridomex workers, was founded by Susana Prieto, a lawyer and federal deputy with the ruling Morena party. She said Tuesday that the vote represented the start of a new era for unions in Mexico.
“This is a new era in free democratic unions, in which they won’t steal from you, they won’t cheat you, where they are accountable for how they spend your union dues, and decisions are made with openness,” she said.
Prieto predicted that more old-guard unions will be ousted at factories along Mexico’s northern border.
The leader of SITPME, Jesús Mendoza, claimed that Monday’s vote was plagued by irregularities and pledged to lodge an appeal.
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, who together requested the Tridomex review, released statements on the vote on Tuesday.
“Workplace democracy is a cornerstone of the USMCA’s labor provisions. People on both sides of the border win when workers can choose their union representation in a free and fair manner – and without delay,” Tai said.
“We applaud our colleagues in the government of Mexico for assuring a fair and safe election, one where the voices of the workers could be heard. Yesterday’s vote demonstrates the strength of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s labor provisions,” Walsh said.
Many Mexican workers earn just 10% to 15% of what people make for similar jobs in the United States, the Associated Press reported.
“For decades, corrupt Mexican union federations like the CTM signed low-wage ‘protection contracts’ behind workers’ backs, often before plants were even opened,” the news agency said. “Union votes were held by show of hands, or not at all.”
Clear-cut jungle where workers confirmed they were preparing land for the train project. Facebook
A Quintana Roo-based environmental group has denounced the clearing of virgin forest for the new Maya Train route near Playa del Carmen.
The federal government announced in January that the route would be modified in the Riviera Maya region of the Caribbean coast state after the Playa del Carmen business community complained about the construction of the railroad parallel to Highway 307, arguing that the planned elevated tracks would effectively divide the city in two.
Environmental group Moce Yax Cuxtal said Tuesday that trees are already being felled for the new inland route even though the National Tourism Fund (Fonatur), which is managing the Maya Train project, hasn’t officially announced the modified route or the results of a study on its environmental impact.
Moce Yax Cuxtal took photographs and videos of the deforestation at one point about 12 kilometers northwest of Playa del Carmen near the municipal dump and at another point west of the coastal city.
Laura Patiño Esquivel, the group’s president, told the news website Animal Político that the organization received tip-offs from citizens about the clearing of the forest and sent a team to inspect the work. She said that they saw vehicles belonging to Grupo México, one of the companies contracted by Fonatur to build section 5 of the Maya Train railroad, and that workers told them that they were falling trees for its construction.
“It’s a complete ecocide,” said Laura Patiño Esquivel, president of Moce Yax Cuxtal. Facebook
Section 5 of the railroad will run between Cancún and Tulum with an intermediate station near Playa del Carmen.
Fonatur didn’t respond to messages from Animal Político asking whether the photos taken by Moce Yax Cuxtal indeed showed land cleared for the new railroad.
“In neither of the two places we visited did we see any sign that said what’s being built, … nor what the construction permits were,” Patiño said.
“That’s why we’re reporting [the deforestation] to the municipal environment department,” she said, adding that Moce Yax Cuxtal will also write to President López Obrador to demand that work on the new route be suspended.
Patiño said that no geological, hydrological or socioeconomic studies were carried out before the clearing of land began. “It’s extremely serious; it’s a complete ecocide,” she said.
“It’s very concerning that we are not aware of the environmental impact studies because we don’t know the viability of a project in an ecosystem that is tremendously fragile. … Below, in the subsoil, we have caverns, subterranean rivers and cenotes [natural sinkholes], and above there is a jungle with boundless flora and fauna such as jaguars,” Patiño said.
Laura Patiño Esquivel on the clear-cutting along the planned train route.
The absence of environmental studies prior to the commencement of construction work is not limited to section 5 of the US $8 billion project: the Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF) reported last month that the government hadn’t established the environmental impact of the railroad before construction began in 2020. It said that construction of sections 2 and 3 of the project, which will run through Campeche and Yucatán, started before environmental impact assessments had been completed.
The ASF also said that the haste with which construction was occurring posed a threat to the timely execution of work to protect archaeological assets along the route.
Numerous environmental and other concerns have been raised about the construction and operation of the 1,500-kilometer Maya Train railroad, along which tourist, commuter and freight trains are slated to run in Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Chiapas. Mayan communities have claimed “there’s nothing Mayan about” the railroad, complained about not being properly consulted about the project and questioned whether they will in fact benefit from it as the government says.
There are more people than ever earning the minimum wage.
The number of Mexicans earning the minimum wage has increased 39% in the space of a single month to 19 million, official data shows.
Data from the national statistics agency INEGI shows that 5.3 million additional people were earning the minimum wage in January compared to December 2021.
The minimum wage increased 22% in January to 173 pesos (US $8.40) per day, or 5,186 pesos (just over US $250) per month, in most of the country. The minimum in the northern border region is 50% higher at 260 pesos per day.
Since records began, there has never been such a high number of minimum wage earners, and for the first time ever they are the largest cohort of workers.
INEGI data also shows that the number of people earning more than the minimum wage but no more than double that amount decreased by 11%, or 2.3 million workers, to just under 18 million between December and January.
Only 2.3 million people earn between three and five minimum wages, down from 3.5 million in December, while just 800,000 earn more than five times the minimum, or over 865 pesos per day or 25,950 (US $1,260) per month. A month earlier in December that figure was 1.3 million.
Héctor Magaña, head of the economy and business research center at the Tec de Monterrey university, told the newspaper El Universal that wages have generally decreased because businesses have not fully recovered from the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
“They tend to offer positions with lower remuneration than … in previous periods,” he said.
Similarly, Raymundo Tenorio, an economist, said that small businesses rehired workers on lower salaries when they reopened after the pandemic shutdown.
“For example, a waiter’s assistant who earned a little more than the minimum wage was put down to just a minimum wage, or even less,” he said.
Magaña said that a glut of workers is suppressing wages, and people are accepting jobs with low salaries because they can’t find anything that pays better.
“For some time we’ve seen that the number of people earning an amount higher than [two or more] minimum wages is trending down,” he added, explaining that the trend began before the pandemic but was exacerbated by the coronavirus-induced contraction.
Magaña also said that underemployment has increased during the pandemic, while the number of people employed in the informal sector remains very high.
There were some 30.5 million informal sector workers in January compared to 25.1 million people in the formal sector. The former cohort, which includes street vendors and most domestic workers among many others, generally don’t pay tax and don’t have access to social security benefits.
A two time state champion chess player in Querétaro city is selling popsicles to cover his expenses for an international chess tournament.
Julio Adrián Ramírez, 28, is trying to make money to reach the capital of El Salvador for the Continental Absolute Chess Championship of the Americas from May 1-11.
Ramírez believes that with a minimum of 20,000 pesos (US $970) he can cover transport, accommodation and food costs. As street popsicles generally go for about 10 pesos each (US $0.48), he will have to sell 2,000 to pay the entire travel bill.
The 15-year chess player stands on a street corner in the city center each day from 1-7:30 p.m. with lemon, cookie, mango and other flavors of popsicle. He also invites customers to play a game of chess and offers private classes to earn extra cash.
If he achieves his goal of attending the contest, he has the chance to be one of four players to qualify for the world championships, but Ramírez said his first aim is to be recognized as an international master by the International Chess Federation (FIDE).
A medal winner at the National Olympiad, Ramírez explained what made him so passionate about the game. “Chess is a beautiful contest. It makes you go up against yourself, because it’s about doing the best you can. Then you have an opponent who is giving everything in the world. It’s a battle of minds. There is a lot of stress. In the games you feel a lot of adrenaline, you enjoy it and you suffer at the same time,” he said.
However, the game didn’t initially excite Ramírez, and it was only by doing a friend a favor that he fell in love with it. “My brother taught me how to use the pieces when I was a kid. The truth is that I didn’t like chess very much. Once I entered high school I started to be more interested. They opened a chess workshop … I was in the guitar workshop, but I asked to change because a friend wanted to be in the guitar workshop. We switched and from there I started playing chess.”
