The Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) opened in March of 2022. (Gob MX)
The opening of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) is apparently causing problems for air traffic controllers at the Mexico City International Airport (AICM), leading an international pilots’ federation to raise safety concerns.
The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) issued a safety bulletin advising that in the past month it has been made aware of several incidents involving aircraft arriving at the AICM with “low fuel states due to unplanned holding, diversions for excessive delays, and significant GPWS alerts where one crew almost had a controlled flight into terrain.”
A GPWS alert is a ground proximity warning system alert in which pilots are warned they are in imminent danger of flying into the ground or an obstacle.
IFALPA said that with the opening of the AIFA – which began operations on March 21, albeit with a limited number of flights – it would appear that air traffic controllers at the AICM have received “little training and support” as to how to direct flights operating in the new airspace configuration.
AIFA, a mixed civil/military airport built on an Air Force base in México state, is just 40 kilometers north of the AICM.
The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ safety recommendations for flying into Mexico City.
IFALPA said that crews flying into the latter airport “have received clearances that do not adhere to terrain avoidance restrictions” in accordance with standard terminal arrival route (STAR) procedures.
It also said that proper International Civil Aviation Organization phraseology is not being used by AICM air traffic controllers, “adding to confusion on altitude restrictions.”
The federation recommended that aircraft flying into Mexico City consider carrying additional fuel to allow for prolonged holding and possible diversions. It also advised airline crews to remember that the AICM is a high altitude airport – Mexico City is over 2,200 meters above sea level – and to be prepared to operate in that environment.
“It is also recommended that crews exercise heightened terrain situational awareness and strictly adhere to published altitude restrictions. If you receive a clearance that you find questionable, resolve the clearance to your satisfaction,” IFALPA advised pilots.
Humberto Gual, secretary-general of the Association of Airline Pilots of Mexico (ASPA), agreed that air traffic controllers at the AICM haven’t had sufficient training.
“Issues in the air have increased … [because], from my point of view, the controllers haven’t had [enough] training,” he told the newspaper El País.
ASPA has requested a meeting with aviation authorities, including Navigation Services for Mexican Airspace (Seneam), to deal with the problems occurring in control towers and the airspace above the AICM.
“Our passengers can be confident that ASPA pilots have the highest standards of … training, and under no circumstances would we compromise your safety,” the association said in a statement.
“… We call on Seneam to attend to the reports of Mexican and foreign pilots, seeking the safety of our air operations first of all and the efficiency of our air space.”
Questions have long been raised about the viability of three central Mexico airports – the AICM, the AIFA and the Toluca International Airport – operating in close proximity to each other, especially once flight numbers increase at the AIFA. But the way in which airspace is used was redesigned to enable their simultaneous operation.
Luis Enrique Ramírez, whose body was found on Thursday in Culiacán, ran the Sinaloa news website Fuentes Fidedignas.
A journalist was found dead in Culiacán, Sinaloa, on Thursday, state authorities said.
The lifeless body of Luis Enrique Ramírez Ramos, director of the Sinaloa-focused news website Fuentes Fidedignas and a columnist for El Debate, was found on a dirt road on the south side of the state capital.
Sinaloa Attorney General Sara Bruna Quiñónez Estrada told a press conference that the body of the 59-year-old journalist was wrapped in black plastic.
The Attorney General’s Office (FGE) said in a statement that an autopsy determined that Ramírez had suffered a brain injury due to blows to the head. “There were no signs of torture, except for the blows to his head that caused his death,” it said.
The FGE said that Ramírez left his home at approximately 3 a.m. Thursday and members of his family didn’t hear from him after that. Fuentes Fidedignas reported that he was abducted near his Culiacán home.
Ramirez’s dead body was found on a dirt road wrapped in plastic. Authorities said he’d suffered deadly blows to the head.
The FGE said that an investigation into his murder had been opened and that it would consider motives related to his work as a journalist.
Ramírez, an award-winning journalist who contributed to some of Mexico’s leading newspapers during a 40-year career, received threats in 2010 and went into hiding after three of his friends were murdered. He said in a 2015 interview that he and his slain friends were all privy to sensitive information about former Sinaloa governor Mario López Valdez and ex-government secretary Gerardo Vargas Landeros, who is now mayor of Ahome, a coastal municipality in the north of the state.
Ramírez said that the threats he received came from the state government. Quiñónez Estrada noted that he had spoken of being intimidated in media interviews but had not made any complaint to the FGE.
A complaint he filed with the federal Attorney General’s Office got nowhere, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha, who took office for the Morena party in November, lamented the death of Ramírez, who he described as a friend. He said in a Twitter message that he had spoken to the attorney general and advocated an “immediate, rigorous and exhaustive investigation” into the crime.
Ramírez is the ninth journalist killed in 2022 and the 34th to be murdered since President López Obrador took office in December 2018.
Ozone levels in Mexico City's Benito Juárez borough have reached nearly 100 parts per billion over the safety limit.
High levels of ozone pollution prompted Mexico City authorities to reactivate a phase 1 environmental alert on Thursday, forcing a large number of cars off the road on Friday.
The Environmental Commission of the Megalopolis (CAMe) reactivated the alert at 4 p.m., just 20 hours after a previous alert was lifted.
It said in a statement that ozone levels had reached 168 parts per billion (ppb) at a monitoring station in the borough of Benito Juárez and 155 ppb at a station in Iztacalco. The city government considers concentrations of ground-level ozone over 70 ppb to be unhealthy.
CAMe said that a high-pressure system over the Valley of Mexico regained strength on Thursday, intensifying atmospheric stability with “variable wind of weak intensity.”
The climatic conditions, including “intense solar radiation,” caused an increase in ozone concentrations, which resulted in “extremely bad” air quality.
Air quality in the metropolis as of Friday morning at 10 a.m. Índice Aire y Salud ZMVM
Air quality had improved significantly by 8 a.m. Friday, but the environmental alert remained in place. Air quality was “good” or “acceptable” at all monitoring stations in the greater Mexico City area with the exception of that in Chalco, México state, where the classification was “bad.”
Due to the reactivation of the alert, many vehicles are prohibited from using roads in the metropolitan area between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. Friday. Among the banned vehicles are a large number of those with license plates that end in 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 0. Hybrid and electric vehicles are exempt from the restrictions.
Despite the improvement in air quality on Friday morning, authorities are still advising residents of the metropolitan area to avoid outdoor activities including exercise between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. due to health risks associated with exposure to polluted air.
Hermelinda Bautista Bautista makes a colorful rug on a loom passed down through generations. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
Graciela Contreras Mendoza is a picture of concentration as she leans over her loom, deftly weaving different colored threads into a rug she’s making. “I made my first rug when I was ten,” she said.
She, and about 150 families in Teotitlán del Valle, a pueblo about 20 miles from the city of Oaxaca, are well known for the quality of their textiles, especially their rugs. Weaving in the pueblo dates back hundreds of years. “It is a work that we carry in our blood,” she said.
Teotitlán del Valle is a Zapotecan pueblo, but its current name is actually from Nahuatl and means “land of the gods.” Its original name was Xaquija, Zapotecan for “celestial constellation.”
Children start learning to weave here typically as young as eight or 10 years old.
“First, we learn how to comb the wool,” said Contreras. “Then we learn how to wash the wool and make the string.” Most of the wool that’s used here comes from sheep raised in other states, usually Puebla, Michoacán and Guererro.
It takes about a year to learn how to weave, says Marcela Cruz Lazo.
After combing, the wool is gathered into a ball and then made into string, using a spinning wheel. It’s then dyed a wide variety of colors. The dyes are all natural and organic, said Hermelinda Bautista Bautista, who was working with her friend Marcela Cruz Lazo in their small workshop. “We use things like shells from nuts, pomegranates and cochinilla,” Bautista said.
Cochinilla, an insect that lives on nopal, an edible cactus, is collected and ground using a molcajete, a traditional kitchen implement. It yields a deep red color.
Once the various dyes are ground into a fine powder, they’re boiled. The wool is then soaked in the dyes for three days, and then it’s all boiled again, so the wool grabs the color, said Cruz. After those steps are mastered, she said, it takes about a year to learn how to weave. There’s no formal teaching.
“There are no classes,” said Contreras. “We learn by watching. It is informal, more or less. We live with our parents, and we learn from them.”
The first rugs made are simple, just straight lines.
“To make a more complicated piece takes up to two years [of training],” said Rigoberto Martínez, a weaver whose family has a store in Oaxaca, across the street from the Santo Domingo Cathedral. “The large pieces are made by experts with more ability. All one needs is ingenuity — or that is to say — one must be very intelligent to make the designs. Some designs come from books and others from imagination.”
Teotitlán del Valle was one of the first pueblos settled by the Zapotecs, probably around 1465. Ruins of a temple, whose walls are carved with intricate designs, can still be seen here. Those designs are often incorporated into the rugs.
“There are ancient designs that are part of our history,” said Contreras. “We work with Zapotecan designs that are based on the ruins in the pueblo. But we also innovate, using something modern, and these are unique. I like to innovate and create new pieces because it bores me to make always make the same thing. I always prefer change.”
While some weavers will first draw their designs on paper, Contreras doesn’t. “My drawings are in my head,” she explained.
Each family has its unique set of designs and, according to the women interviewed, men make the most complex ones.
“The men make the most complicated designs because they’re dedicated to this work,” said Cruz. “The women do not have the time because they have to take care of their homes. They must clean, cook and care for their children.”
Weaving knowledge and the designs used aren’t the only things handed down through time. “The looms that we use have been passed down from generation to generation,” said Contreras. “We only do maintenance on the ones that require it.”
Children in Teotitlán del Valle learn to weave by watching their parents. Here, Graciela Contreras Mendoza shows her 8-year-old daughter Gracy Esmeralda the ropes.
Although Cruz believes that most of the pueblo’s youth have learned how to weave, she said that some have less interest in it. “The girls now make only a few [rugs] because they go to school,” she said. “Before, the women would weave from when they were little [and] they did not talk about going to school.”
Still, given that there are dozens of stores where rugs can be bought, it doesn’t appear that the craft is in danger of dying out.
The road leading into town from the main highway is lined with a number of stores, but Martínez said they’re not the best place to buy anything.
“At the entrance to Teotitlán, they sell their rugs at a very high price since they work with tourist guides.” He suggested continuing on into the pueblo, where he said rugs are sold for less.
But beautiful textiles aren’t the only attractions here. There’s a community museum, called Balaa Xtee Guech Gulal, Zapotecan for “Shadow of the Old Pueblo” or “House of the Old Pueblo.”
In addition to rooms with the expected exhibits about weaving and photographs of daily life in the pueblo, there’s an impressive collection of pre-Hispanic figures, bowls and intricately carved stones. Some of the pieces on display have Olmec designs and are thought to date to 500 B.C.
A short distance from the museum is the Preciosa Sangre de Cristo church, which was started in 1581 but wasn’t completed until 1758. The church was built on top of a Zapotecan temple, which was destroyed by the Spanish.
Several large stones with Zapotecan designs were incorporated into the exterior walls of the church. Directly behind it, there’s an archeological site where the remains of the indigenous temple can still be seen. The church’s interior contains a large number of lovely polychrome statues of saints.
The majority of residents earn their income from weaving, said Martínez. “It is better to make the textiles because sometimes in the field there is no harvest,” he said. “Textiles are more secure and we can also trade for what we need.” But most people still farm and that’s what helped them get through the pandemic. Like every city and pueblo in Mexico, Teotitlán del Valle was adversely affected by the pandemic. “There was no tourism, and we could not sell our carpets,” said Contreras. “The pueblo survived because we have agriculture.”
Teotitlán del Valle is a very traditional pueblo, one where, said Bautista, “everyone speaks Zapotecan.” In fact, she said, “We did not speak Spanish until we went to school, and we were afraid to learn it.”
Martínez is proud of his pueblo and his heritage.
“The valley of Oaxaca was Zapotecan, and they originated this type of work,” he said. “It is like a gift that our ancestors gave to us. We are lucky to be Zapotecans.”
The navy found the bodies of the victims — 58 men and 14 women — on a farm in August 2010.
Eighteen people convicted of the abduction of 72 migrants who were killed by the Zetas drug cartel in Tamaulipas in 2010 have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
The federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) announced Tuesday that a federal judge had sentenced 15 men and three women involved in the crime committed in San Fernando, a municipality south of Matamoros in the northern border state.
In August 2010, the navy found the bodies of 58 men and 14 women – mainly Central American and South Americans – on a farm after engaging in a gunfight with members of the Zetas.
Authorities were alerted to the massacre by a survivor, a migrant from Ecuador. The undocumented migrants were offered work with the Zetas but were killed when they didn’t accept, according to the Ecuadorian, who escaped after pretending he was dead.
The FGR said that the 18 people involved in the abduction of the migrants prior to their murder were all arrested in 2011. They were found guilty on charges including kidnapping, organized crime, possession of firearms and drug trafficking.
A composite image of some of the victims of the massacre. InSight Crime
However, none was convicted of the murder of the migrants. The guilty parties received prison sentences ranging from 13 years to 58 years.
Documents made public by the Attorney General’s office in 2014 revealed that local police collaborated with organized crime in the murder of the migrants.
The presumed mastermind of the massacre, Martiniano de Jesús Jaramillo Silva, was arrested in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, in 2017. However, the regional leader of the Los Zetas Vieja Escuela (Old School Zetas) criminal cell in Tamaulipas spent only two days behind bars before he died of kidney failure in a Mexico City hospital.
An additional 193 bodies were found in 47 clandestine graves in San Fernando in 2011. The victims – both men and women – were also killed by the Zetas.
The unprovoked attack was caught by a restaurant security camera.
A man is facing a charge of attempted murder after he attacked a teenager with a large stone in a Mexico City restaurant on Sunday.
A 39-year-old man identified as Sidartha N. hit 19-year-old Andro Nava in the back of the head with a stone slab in a taco restaurant in the trendy neighborhood of Roma. The restaurant’s security cameras captured footage of the brutal, unprovoked attack.
Nava, who was dining with his father when he was attacked, sustained head injuries and was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. He was discharged after a short stay but subsequently admitted to the National Institute of Neurology, where he was reported in stable condition on Wednesday.
Sidartha, who reportedly lived on the street in the Roma area, was arrested Monday on drug possession charges and remanded in preventative custody. The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ) announced Thursday that he had been ordered to stand trial on a charge of attempted murder.
“A period of two months was set for the completion of the complementary investigation,” the FGJ said.
Andro Nava and his father at the taco restaurant, before the attack.
Nava’s father, Manuel Nava, said in an interview that his son could permanently lose his sense of smell and taste as a result of the attack.
He said that he was discharged from the San Ángel Inn Chapultepec hospital after 30 minutes but on the way home his son realized that he couldn’t taste or smell anything when he was given something to eat. It is unclear whether he will recover those senses.
Manuel Nava said he was convinced that the intention of the aggressor was to kill his son.
“He told police that he did it because he was drugged. He’d been taking drugs for five days straight or something like that but he … [attacked my son] without remorse or anything,” he said.
Nava also said that at least two other people have reported attacks by the same man. One of the victims was a woman who suffered a broken leg.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, seen in a video she posted on Twitter Tuesday on the 1-year anniversary of the Line 12 crash.
The Mexico City government has rejected the final independent report about the causes of the subway accident that claimed the lives of 26 people last year and filed a civil complaint against the company that conducted the investigation.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum described the report prepared by Norwegian company DNV as “deficient” and “poorly executed.”
It has “technical problems” and is “biased and false,” she told a press conference Wednesday.
According to government sources cited by the newspaper Reforma, DNV’s final report, which hasn’t been made public, says that oversights, anomalies and irregularities in the maintenance of Line 12 of the Mexico City subway system during the governments led by Sheinbaum and former mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera – in addition to design flaws and shoddy construction work – contributed to the collapse of an overpass on the line on May 3, 2021.
Two cars of a train plunged toward a busy road in the southeastern borough of Tláhuac due to the collapse. In addition to 26 fatalities, over 100 people were injured in the disaster, the worst ever on Mexico City’s subway system. Line 12, the newest line, was built during the 2006–2012 Mexico City government led by Marcelo Ebrard, who is now foreign minister.
Its reputation as a world leader in investigating construction defects gave Sheinbaum confidence, she said when the city hired Norwegian company DNV.
Sheinbaum, who had touted DNV as a world leader in the investigation of construction defects, turned against the company earlier this year because it employs a lawyer who prosecuted a 2012 case against President López Obrador, her political mentor.
She claimed that DNV – a risk management and quality assurance company that operates in over 100 countries – was guilty of a conflict of interest as a result of his employment, an accusation the firm has rejected.
The mayor, a leading contender to become the ruling Morena party’s candidate at the 2024 presidential election, said Wednesday that DNV completed an analysis that “doesn’t correspond to what was originally proposed” and has political purposes.
“We’re not going to accept the distortion of reality. … Why choose this lawyer? Why do they completely change their view from the second to the third report?” Sheinbaum said.
She claimed that “there are a lot of interests behind” the report, asserting that DNV has links to the National Action Party (PAN) and Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, a nongovernmental organization that has exposed alleged corruption in the federal government.
Sheinbaum previously pledged to disseminate all of DNV’s findings about the Metro disaster but has not yet released the company’s third and final report. However, she said it would be made public in order to show “how it failed to comply with its own methodology.”
The subway overpass collapse in the capital’s Tláhuac borough killed 26 and injured more than 100.
The mayor also said that the firm’s contract with the government was being rescinded and threatened to file a criminal complaint against it.
Some opposition party politicians noted that Sheinbaum’s rejection of DNV was incongruent with her previous praise of it.
“Up to a few days ago, @Claudiashein was praising the Norwegian company DNV, which she contracted for the #Line12 technical studies. Now with the report in hand she changed her opinion and even wants to criminalize them because she didn’t like the results. What is the mayor hiding?” PAN national president Marko Cortés wrote on Twitter.
PAN Deputy Jorge Triana described the mayor’s about-face as “grotesque,” while Democratic Revolution Party national president Jesús Zambrano used the colloquial term “ah caray” to express his surprise about Sheinbaum’s new view about a company she hired due to its “international prestige. ”
One year and two days after it occurred, no one has been held accountable for the accident on the so-called Golden Line, although 10 former Mexico City officials face charges.
The line, which runs between Mixcoac in Mexico City’s southwest and Tláhuac in the southeast and has underground and elevated sections, was built by a consortium of companies that included Carlos Slim’s Carso Infrastructure and Construction, French company Alstom and Mexican firm Ingenieros Civiles Asociados.
The anti-inflation plan aims to stabilize prices for 24 common food items.
The federal government’s anti-inflation plan will only have a limited effect on reducing consumer prices, according to three financial institutions.
The government announced Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with the private sector to ensure fair prices for 24 basic food items over the next six months without resorting to price controls. The anti-inflation plan also seeks to spur greater production of staples such as corn, beans and rice in order to increase supply.
According to JP Morgan, price stability for 24 basic food items – among which are chicken, beans, milk and potatoes – will only shave 0.4% or 0.5% off Mexico’s end-of-year inflation figure, which is predicted to be 7%. The bank described such an impact as “modest.”
It noted that the prices of some key food products have increased in recent months and are not expected to rise further. The stabilization of the prices of such products at the current high level would therefore help stop inflation increasing further but wouldn’t apply much downward pressure.
BBVA México’s chief economist, Carlos Serrano, agreed that the anti-inflation plan will have a limited impact given that powerful supply shocks are affecting the whole world.
Numerous food industry representatives attended the president’s announcement of the anti-inflation measures on Wednesday.
“Despite the efforts of the government, reducing inflation will be very complicated,” he said.
“The government’s job is extraordinarily complicated because it’s very difficult if not impossible to detach an open economy from global inflationary processes,” Serrano said.
“We believe that the effect [of the plan will be] limited, not because we consider the measures to be bad but because reducing global inflation is very difficult. It’s not as if the United States, Europe, Canada and Latin America aren’t doing anything to reduce inflation. They’re all trying, but it hasn’t been achieved.”
The BBVA economist contended that providing additional financial support to low-income Mexicans would be a better idea than trying to put a lid on the prices of basic food items, an endeavor he described as very difficult. Serrano also suggested that the government should stop subsidizing gasoline because that measure mainly benefits people with higher incomes.
The financial services company Monex said in a note that the implementation of the anti-inflation plan will be a “significant challenge” because the participation of food producers, distributors and retailers will be voluntary.
That said, representatives of numerous food-related businesses indicated their support for the plan by attending President López Obrador’s Wednesday press conference, at which the would-be inflation-busting measures were announced.
Even if the plan is implemented successfully, there will be no immediate or drastic impact on inflation levels, Monex said.
The most recent official data showed that inflation was 7.72% in the first half of April, a figure well above the central bank’s 3% target: the Bank of México predicted in late April that inflation will drop to near 3% by mid-2023.
Ozone pollution is high this time of year in the capital, as the weather warms but the rains have yet to arrive.
A phase 1 environmental alert activated in Mexico City Monday due to high levels of ozone pollution was lifted at 8 p.m. Wednesday.
The Environmental Commission of the Megalopolis (CAMe) said that concentrations of ozone had declined due to a reduction in the intensity of a high-pressure system over the Valley of Mexico.
That development allowed for greater ventilation and assisted in the dispersion of ozone, a contaminant that can cause and exacerbate a range of respiratory conditions.
CAMe warned that in “ozone season” – the period of warm and dry weather before the annual rainy season – “the intensity and movement of high-pressure meteorological systems continually change, which could cause new increases in the concentration of ozone.”
The commission also said that other weather conditions can encourage the accumulation of ozone, which develops as a result of nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbon emissions. It consequently called on residents of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area to avoid using their cars as much as possible.
A reduction in the number of vehicles on the road will minimize the risk of air quality deteriorating to bad or very bad on Thursday, CAMe said, noting that “adverse conditions for the dispersion of contaminants” will prevail.
It noted that a maximum temperature of 29 C was forecast for the capital on Thursday as well as “high solar radiation,” which aids the formation of ozone.
In addition to calling on Mexico City residents to reduce vehicle use, CAMe advised capitalinos to avoid the use of products that contain solvents such as aerosols and paint, to repair any gas leaks in their home and to reduce the use of gas by taking short showers and using pots with lids for cooking.
Bodies of migrants smuggled into Chiapas by traffickers killed when their transport vehicle crashed.
Mexico has the fourth highest levels of criminality in the world, according to a new organized crime index.
Only the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia and Myanmar have higher criminality scores than Mexico on the Global Organized Crime Index 2021, described as the first tool of its kind designed to assess levels of organized crime and resilience to organized criminal activity.
Developed over the past two years by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Switzerland-based nongovernmental organization, the index measures organized crime in all 193 United Nations member states.
“The results, which draw from a comprehensive dataset informed by experts worldwide, paint a worrying picture of the reach, scale and impact of organized crime. It is a sobering thought, for instance, that nearly 80% of the world’s population today live in countries with high levels of criminality,” the index report said.
Mexico’s score on the index – made up of criminal markets and criminal actor components – was 7.56.
The report said Mexico’s drug-trafficking organizations are among the most sophisticated mafia-style groups worldwide, with military grade weapons and wide networks.
For criminal markets – which considers human trafficking, human smuggling, arms trafficking, flora crimes, fauna crimes, nonrenewable resource crimes and the trade of heroin, cocaine, marijuana and synthetic drugs – Mexico ranked first, or worst in the world, with an average score of 8.
In the criminal actor category – which looks at mafia-style groups, criminal networks, state-embedded actors and foreign actors – Mexico ranked 22nd with an average score of 7.13.
The index’s Mexico summary elaborated on a wide range of organized problems in the country, where large, powerful criminal organizations such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel operate.
It noted that Mexico is a transit country for human trafficking and that sex trafficking within Mexico and to the United States is “substantial.”
“The pandemic exacerbated collusion between corrupt officials and traffickers preying on migrants through forced engagement in criminal economies or extortion, with officials relying less on bribery and more on organized-crime links for profits,” the summary said.
It also said that Mexico has a well-established arms-trafficking market and that flora and fauna crimes are a significant problem.
“Drug traffickers control timber trafficking in Jalisco, forcing communities to pay quotas for protection,” the summary said.
“… Rosewood trafficking, controlled by Chinese mafias and other groups operating locally and regionally, is significant, and dozens of shipments, primarily destined for the Chinese furniture market, are seized annually across Pacific ports and the Yucatán Peninsula,” it said.
With regard to fauna crimes, the summary said that demand for Mexican wildlife has risen and sought-after species include jaguars, golden eagles, parrots, macaws and reptiles. It also mentioned the illegal trade for totoaba, a fish species whose swim bladder is considered a delicacy in China.
“The trade generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually, with one pound of totoaba swim bladder more valuable than cocaine. Mexico’s illicit sea cucumber trade is also significant, causing violence in Yucatán and Campeche,” the summary said.
Among the other non-drug crimes it mentioned were oil theft and illegal gold and silver mining.
With regard to narcotics, the summary said that most heroin sold in the United States originates in Mexico, especially the northern Golden Triangle region of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango.
Mexico was also cited for timber trafficking.
“Mexican cartels also partake in the production and transportation of methamphetamine and, increasingly, fentanyl. Both are increasingly popular in the U.S., where fentanyl claims tens of thousands of lives annually,” it said.
“… Mexico’s cocaine trade is less consolidated, due to internal fragmentation, but the market is large. Mexican actors serve as key brokers and transporters, and cartels have become more active in the Colombian and Central American cocaine industries. Much of the rival cartel violence relates to control of the northbound shipment routes.”
With regard to criminal actors, the summary said that Mexico’s drug-trafficking organizations are among the most sophisticated mafia-style groups in the world.
“Although cartel fragmentation reduced the number of groups with large international operations, those remaining have networks spanning most of the Americas, even stretching into Europe and Asia,” it said.
“… Drug-trafficking organizations focus on international drug trafficking, generating billions of dollars in revenue annually, but numerous revenue streams, including oil theft, illegal logging, human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion, are deeply entrenched,” the summary said.
It noted that cartels have firearms including military-grade weapons and that conflict is widespread between competing groups and state security forces, “with some groups marking their territory by displaying beheaded and mutilated corpses.”
“Drug cartels control territory in much of Mexico, co-opting the state through bribery and intimidation with the aim of facilitating illicit activity and influencing the democratic process. Politicians are frequently murdered or threatened by mafias attempting to ensure that cooperative politicians hold office,” the summary said.
The index also measured countries’ resilience to organized crime, which was defined as “the ability to withstand and disrupt organized criminal activities … through political, economic, legal and social measures.”
Mexico ranked 112th in that category, which gave each country a score based on 12 indicators including political leadership and governance, national policies and laws and law enforcement. Mexico’s score was 4.46, well below those of Finland and Liechtenstein, which ranked equal first on 8.42.
The Mexico summary said that the “militarized, strong-arm approach to tackling organized crime has produced mixed results.”
“Corruption is rife, causing collusion between law enforcement, judges and criminals. Organized-crime-related violence and criminal impunity are at a record high, with poor access to legal proceedings,” it said.
“… The government lacks a cohesive security strategy, with attempts to address corruption and organized crime seen as highly politicized or as efforts to embarrass past governments. The president is centralizing control across national institutions and has proposed new, technically illegal policies, such as having marines in charge of port customs activities.”
Mexico’s “militarized, strong-arm approach to tackling organized crime has produced mixed results,” the report said.
The resilience section of the summary also said that structural deficiencies in Mexico’s legal system hamper its ability to fight organized crime and that laws pertaining to organized crime are not well-enforced.
Mexico’s overall criminality score was well above those of its North American trade partners, the United States and Canada, which ranked 66th and 161st on the index, respectively. The country with the lowest criminality score was Tuvalu, a small island nation in the south Pacific.
