Citi will retreat from consumer and small and medium-sized business banking, which it mostly does via Banamex. Nara_money / Shutterstock.com
Citigroup will exit its Mexican retail banking business after nearly a century of operating in the country, in the latest sign of the lender’s shrinking global ambitions under chief executive Jane Fraser.
The group said it would retreat from consumer and small and medium-sized business banking, which it mostly does via its Banamex subsidiary. The move is part of Fraser’s “strategic refresh” of Citi, a sprawling international lender that is trying to close the profitability gap with its larger U.S. peers.
Citi said it could exit the businesses by selling them or spinning them off into a new public company. It will keep its investment bank and private bank in Mexico, along with its unit that caters to institutional clients in the country.
“Mexico is a priority market for Citi — that will not change,” Fraser said in a statement.
The bank, which has operated in the country since 1929, plans to redirect capital from the Mexico consumer business into areas where the lender has “core strengths and competitive advantages,” she added.
Investors have pressed Citi to sell its Mexican consumer unit for years but executives had until now contended that it was a strategically important market despite lacklustre returns.
The business accounted for roughly US $3.5 billion of revenue in the first three quarters of last year, or roughly 15% of overall consumer banking revenue. It generated about 11% of consumer banking profit.
The move follows Citigroup’s decision in April to retreat from most of its consumer businesses in Asia, Europe the Middle East and Africa. At the time, it identified 13 markets from which it wanted to pull back.
It has since reduced its presence in less than half of those markets, a process that has resulted in more than $2 billion of writedowns.
QroNosotras drivers with their pink outfits and two of their eight taxis.
A women-only taxi service operating in Querétaro city is meeting barriers in its path to success.
QroNosotras launched in 2019 and released an app in October 2021. Despite its unique selling point — offering women safer journeys — it only has eight vehicles, and is having difficulty attracting investors and more drivers.
The name refers to Querétaro and uses the feminine form for we to indicate who the service is for. Drivers, whose uniforms and vehicles are pink, are exclusively women who provide transport for other women and children under 15.
Co-founder Virginia Campos said the idea first came about in 2015 due to the better experience women drivers had when serving customers of the same sex. “As operators of yellow taxis at the time, we realized the needs of women, both operators and users … we saw that it is a good opportunity and a good source of employment …”
The company has reached agreements with six vehicle agencies that enable interested drivers to acquire vehicles. However, Campos said that sexism was preventing the business from expanding its driver base. “There are many women interested, but unfortunately in two out of 10 cases they don’t join because their husbands don’t allow it.”
Another co-founder, Angélica Reyes Servín, agreed that sexism was hindering their progress. “We are still lagging behind in the sense that the patriarchal system is imposing its sexism, but we are not going to stop … The advantage here is that women are becoming more and more empowered,” she said.
Reyes added that QroNosotras is part of a cultural shift to make society safer for women. “We are contributing to security, which we really do need … we are looking for those spaces that are free of violence for us,” she said.
QroNosotras is looking for investors to help grow the project, both male and female.
Underneath Acapulco's tourism glamour are ever-rising extortion, kidnapping and homicides, business owners say.
A plan to reduce extortion and homicide in Acapulco, Guerrero, is proving ineffective and working continues to be a dangerous activity, local business owners say.
Refuerzo 2021 (Reinforcement 2021) was announced on November 8, shortly after Morena party Mayor Abelina López took office. The plan coordinates federal, state and municipal security forces to enable more patrols and establish road checkpoints in high-crime areas.
But attacks on the workers most exposed to extortion have multiplied: eight transport workers were killed, and three service workers were murdered on the beach in López’s first 100 days as mayor, the newspaper Reforma reported.
From January through November, there were 1,260 homicides in Guerrero, of which 418 occurred in Acapulco, according to data from the National Public Security System (SENSP). The most violent state in the country, Guanajuato, saw3,239 homicides over the same period.
The head of the Acapulco federation of chambers of commerce, Alejandro Martínez Sidney, said the program’s failure was self-evident. “This operation has not provided any results, and the proof is that the violence is unstoppable because the murders, extortion and collection of rental fees continue.”
Guerrero state police reinforcements on Acapulco’s streets in late December. Guerrero state police
He added that at least 28 business people in Acapulco were being extorted by phone and that there was a spike in demands due to the commercial success of the holiday season. “This occurs at the end of the [festive] season. A great effort was made [by business owners] to have a successful season, and these criminals, taking advantage of the situation, have attacked our sector,” he said.
The leader of a taxi drivers’ collective in Acapulco, who remained anonymous, said a change in tactics was needed. “We are asking that the strategy to confront organized crime is applied with intelligence and that checkpoints in the streets are not installed. Wherever they are put, there are lookouts who warn their bosses,” he said.
Meanwhile, another business owner in Acapulco was killed on Sunday morning. Roberto Morales Silva, 48, the owner of a chain of 14 pharmacies, was found dead on the Acapulco-Coyuca de Benítez highway after being kidnapped the previous day.
It is likely that he was a target of extortionists.
For Lines 1–6, Metro control center employees without a functioning telemetry system rely on track monitors and calls from drivers to know where trains are located. CDMX Metro
Mexico City Metro employees are using dominoes to “imagine” the location of trains a year after a fire in the subway system’s downtown substation put train monitoring and communications systems out of action.
The operation and supervision of Lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the Metro system is “literally a board game,” the newspaper Milenio reported after visiting the subway system’s No. 2 Central Control Post (PCC2).
Metro employees known as regulators move dominoes on a paper map to simulate the movement of trains along those lines, the newspaper said. Train drivers notify regulators of their location via the WhatsApp messaging service.
One regulator conceded that “we can’t see the location of the trains in real time” before adding that train drivers “frequently call us to tell us where they are.”
“That’s when you put the domino in its place,” the employee said, adding that regulators use their imagination to determine the exact location of a train.
Emergency crews responding to the fire at the Metro’s PCC 1 control center on January 9, 2021. Twitter
Before they started using dominoes, the Metro workers used items such as erasers and pencils to depict trains, Milenio said.
“They later progressed to a domino system. Due to the loss of the internal Metro communications system, Tetra, they [train drivers and regulators] had to use the WhatsApp application to communicate … [despite] the risk that there are spaces in the Metro that don’t have [cell phone] service,” the newspaper said.
The introduction of dominoes is not the only “improvement” that has been made to the rudimentary train monitoring system.
Regulators previously used paper boards with hand-drawn representations of the Metro system, but they now use maps downloaded from the internet, which show the different lines in different colors as well as the location and names of stations.
The latter are “a little clearer,” said the employee who spoke with Milenio. Asked whether it was safe to operate the Metro with such a monitoring system — which was only recently enhanced by the installation of monitors that transmit footage from the subway’s lines — the regulator responded:
“… With dominoes or erasers, we continue [to work] blindly, imagining where the train is moving forward. … We assume that [the trains] are [at a certain location], but we don’t have the visualization. They [the drivers] tell you they’re between stations, but you don’t know where. … It’s not precise at all, but you imagine [where the train is], put the domino down and assume that it’s there.”
The Metro workers union says members work with rudimentary equipment while trying to avoid another incident like the collapse of an overpass on Line 12 last May. Government of Mexico
Due to the lack of precision, the number of trains running on Lines 1, 2 and 3 is now lower than it was before the substation fire on January 9, 2021, the employee said.
“Lines 4, 5 and 6 are operating normally; they’re relatively small lines. But the circulation [of trains] on the large lines … is 30% lower,” the regulator said.
The employee also said that the PCC2 is short-staffed due to coronavirus infections among its personnel.
“There are currently nine colleagues with COVID, and we’re working double shifts. There are times at which we don’t have support on the large lines … [and just] one supervisor controls the … [monitoring system]. … When a problem arises, communication [with drivers] takes a lot of time, … you have to call each one to notify them of the problem, and that’s very complicated for just one person who is controlling everything,” the regulator said.
The Metro workers union acknowledged in a statement that its members are working with rudimentary equipment while trying to avoid “another serious incident” on the subway system. Twenty-six people were killed last May after two carriages of the train in which they were traveling plunged toward a busy road due to the collapse of an overpass on Line 12.
The Metro workers union said that the lack of sophisticated monitoring and communications systems is “putting [drivers’] instincts to the test,” forcing them to rely on “the experience they have acquired in their years of service.”
It also said that the administration of the Metro system by former chief Florencia Serranía was “disastrous.”
The newspaper Reforma reported last May that a domino system was in place because the subway’s digital telemetry system hadn’t been repaired. The “Monopoly” system, as one Metro employee described it, was ridiculed by Reforma readers, with one calling it a “true embarrassment” and another describing it as criminal.
“Only in Mexico!” wrote one person. “Great Mexican technology,” another said ironically.
Mexican authorities say that drug seizures have increased in recent months. (US CBP)
Migrants desperate to reach the United States are crossing the Sonoran desert free with the help of traffickers. But there’s one catch: they have to carry 30 kilograms of drugs on their backs into U.S. territory.
Every day, migrants from Mexico, Central America and many of the world’s most impoverished countries cross the so-called ruta de la muerte (route of death). Temperatures hit 50 C in the day and dip below 0 in the early morning.
Some of those migrants — forced into an agreement by necessity — heighten the risk of an already dangerous trip by transporting illegal substances worth a small fortune. Halfway through their trek, they might see dead bodies and skeletal remains of people who previously attempted the passage.
At least 2,000 migrants have disappeared in the desert since 2019, according to the search organizations Madres Buscadoras de Sonora (Searching Mothers of Sonora) and the Arizona search and rescue group SOS. They have rescued some 200 people in the desert area, comprising 222,000 square kilometers across Arizona, Baja California and Sonora.
Before attempting the journey, migrants have to buy camouflage clothing that makes them almost invisible to the U.S. Border Patrol agents and paint their water bottles black to prevent them from reflecting light. They also wear garlic on their feet to prevent snakes from biting them, the newspaper El Universal reported.
Lucky migrants who made it through the desert at the US border wall in Yuma, Arizona. SOS Búsqueda y Rescate
The leader of Madres Buscadores, Ceci Flores, explained why so many languish in the desert. “These people disappear. Some die of thirst or fatigue or have heart attacks. There are different factors, and we can’t always know what caused their death,” she said.
Flores noted that most reports of disappearances are for people who came from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Josué, a 24-year-old migrant from Honduras, said he had little choice but to leave his country. “I come from Honduras. You get out of there because of crime: you can’t live, there is a lot of poverty, work is scarce and what you earn is very little. There is no improvement,” he said.
He added that risk-taking was the only way to reach the U.S. “It’s worth the risk because … the one who doesn’t take the risk doesn’t win.”
The president speaks to Tuesday morning's press conference via a video link.
President López Obrador has tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time in less than a year.
He announced Monday evening that he was infected, adding that he would remain in isolation even though he was only experiencing mild symptoms.
“I’ll only carry out office work and communicate virtually until I get through [my illness],” López Obrador wrote on social media.
“Meanwhile, Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández will represent me at the [morning] press conferences and at other ceremonies,” he wrote.
The 68-year-old, who has received three shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine, said Monday morning that he had woken up “hoarse” but expressed doubt that he had COVID.
López Obrador also tested positive for COVID-19 in late January 2021. The president, who takes medication for high blood pressure and suffered a heart attack in 2013, was treated with the antiviral medication Remdesivir.
Interior Minister López presided over AMLO’s regular news conference on Tuesday morning despite being in close contact with the president on Monday. He was one of several officials who met with López Obrador at the National Palace on Monday, the newspaper Milenio reported.
The president met last week with Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier, who announced Friday that she had tested positive for COVID. Environment Minister María Luisa Albores announced Monday that she had tested positive as well.
On Tuesday, cabinet ministers awaiting their turn at the podium sported face masks, a rare sight, while many of the government personnel who staff the daily press conferences appeared wearing masks for the first time. Unlike other government and public facilities, COVID protocols such as taking temperatures and offering hand gel have been largely ignored at the president’s daily mañaneras.
Meanwhile, political friends and foes of the president took to social media to wish him well after he announced that he had contracted COVID.
“I send you a caring hug from a distance. I hope that you get better soon because we’re standing before a great transformation, a great future, a strengthened and extraordinary Mexican nation that you lead,” wrote Senator Olga Sánchez, the former interior minister who took charge of the president’s press conferences when he was sick early last year.
“I sincerely wish you well,” wrote former president Felipe Calderón, an outspoken critic of the president.
Among the other political figures to send their best wishes to AMLO were Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, Morena party Senate leader Ricardo Monreal, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, former president Vicente Fox and 2018 presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya.
López Obrador’s illness comes as Mexico endures an omicron-fueled fourth wave of coronavirus infections. There are currently more than 157,000 active cases across the country, according to Health Ministry estimates.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard address Mexico's foreign diplomats on Monday.
Mexico is well-regarded around the world thanks to the leadership of President López Obrador and the federal government’s fight against corruption, Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Monday.
Speaking to Mexican diplomats at a meeting in Mexico City, Ebrard said that Mexico is respected “in all domains from the [United Nations] Security Council to all [other] multilateral spaces because it has moral authority and political prestige.”
“To a large degree that is due to who leads [the country] – President López Obrador — and the transformation he is championing. It must be said because it’s a fact,” he said.
“… We have a president who respects and values Mexico’s foreign policy,” Ebrard added.
“Mexico has weight [in the world] today, and we’re getting results … because the government has moral prestige. It has moral and political authority,” he said.
Ebrard told Mexican diplomats that President López Obrador was the reason that Mexico currently has moral authority in the world.
The foreign minister said that Chile’s president-elect Gabriel Boric and leaders of other Latin American countries had told him as much late last week. Ebrard met with Boric in Santiago last Thursday before attending a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Buenos Aires on Friday.
“They [Latin American leaders] respect Mexico’s fight against corruption and for justice,” the foreign minister told ambassadors, consuls and other government officials who joined the annual diplomatic gathering.
“… It was said we were going to be inward-looking, it was said we were going to have conflict with the United States. It was predicted we weren’t going to have a significant international presence,” Ebrard said.
A priority in 2022 and beyond, Ebrard said, will be to support multilateral diplomatic frameworks at at time when there are “significant geopolitical tensions” in the world.
Among worldwide fans of Mexico’s moral authority, said Ebrard, left, is Chile’s president-elect Gabriel Boric, right, who met with Ebrard in Chile on Thursday.
“… This is the task of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [SRE] during these [upcoming] months and years; we have to navigate a geopolitical reality that is increasingly difficult and intense,” he said.
The foreign minister, a former Mexico City mayor who has his own presidential ambitions, said that the defense of human rights and addressing migration issues will also be priorities for the SRE.
“[López Obrador] has asked us to defend human rights, but not just in discourse. … The investigation and dedication there has been in the Ayotzinapa [missing students] case and other [human rights] cases shows the Mexican government’s true concern for and prioritization of this issue,” Ebrard said.
However, the highest priority for the federal government as a whole, Ebrard stressed, is to reduce violence. To that end, SRE action is required to reduce the smuggling of weapons into Mexico, he said.
The vaccination certificate issued by the federal government.
The presentation of a COVID-19 vaccination certificate or a negative result from a PCR test will soon be compulsory for adults who wish to enter establishments such as bars and nightclubs in Jalisco.
The new rule will take effect this Friday, Governor Enrique Alfaro announced Monday.
He said that a negative test result must come from a test taken in the 48 hours prior to seeking entry to bars, nightclubs, casinos, stadiums and convention centers.
Jalisco will become the second state after Baja California to make presenting a certificate a prerequisite for entering certain public places. The rule took effect in Baja California last Wednesday.
People vaccinated in Mexico should present their official Mexican vaccination certificate when seeking entry to establishments in Jalisco. People inoculated abroad should present certificates or other proof of vaccination from the country where they got their shots.
Jalisco includes Guadalajara – Mexico’s second largest city, the resort city of Puerto Vallarta, communities on Lake Chapala and the magical town of Tequila, among other destinations popular with tourists.
The state currently has more than 5,000 active coronavirus cases, according to the federal Health Ministry. Case numbers are surging in Mexico as the highly contagious omicron strain continues to spread rapidly.
CORRECTION: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that restaurants were among the venues that would require a vaccination certificate or negative test result. Mexico News Daily regrets the error.
A visitor to the center witnesses a new turtle make its painstaking instinctual journey to the ocean after hatching.
Dozens of tiny, black sea turtles waddle towards the ocean waves. Their oversized flippers struggle across the sand, and some of these tiny creatures seem to give up before they start, the immensity of the few meters’ walk too much for their newly hatched bodies. Tourists watch, cheering them on, hoping for good luck on this, the first day of their lives, but their fight to survive has just begun.
Of every thousand of these turtles, rescued from beachside nests and kept safely within the nesting grounds until they hatch, only about 100 will survive until adulthood, so great are turtles’ adversaries – predators, ocean trash that chokes and entangles them and finally the poachers that come along in the moonlight to snatch their eggs and often the turtles’ shells, leaving their shorn bodies behind to bake in the dawn’s rays.
The Chiapas municipality of Emiliano Zapata, a community of only about 300 people made up of three or four families, used to be part of the problem. They joined other poachers in taking the turtles’ eggs and shells to sell on the market or cook as local delicacies.
But three years ago, a small cooperative of concerned community members decided it was their responsibility to protect these majestic creatures or watch them disappear forever.
“Our parents would talk about how there used to be sacks and sacks of eggs,” says Gerónimo Arias de la Cruz, a member of the community and our guide on this hot December day. “Later, as we got older, we found it was rarer and rarer to find them.”
Young visitors learn about turtles in the Emiliano Zapata turtle education center’s colorfully painted rooms. Sectur Chiapas
They knew if they didn’t do something that their children would grow up and never get a chance to see these natural wonders. The cooperative applied for a permit from the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (Conanp), asking if they might collect the eggs from the nests on the beach and protect them from poachers and animal predators in a fenced-in hatching ground a few hundred meters inland.
With the support of Conanp, they began to rescue the turtle eggs. This year, four years into their project, 46 nests — an average of 80 eggs in each — reached the hatching stage under their care.
Emiliano Zapata is part of the Encrucijada Bioreserve, a 35,000-acre expansive of territory that spreads across seven coastal communities in the south of Chiapas. Each has specific species that are endemic to this place, and nowhere else in the world.
Communities are now working with the local government to protect these species and the environments where they make their home, mainly the mangrove forests that line the coast.
The job doesn’t only include the five months of collecting turtle eggs and releasing them into the wild. They also work to prevent fires in the mangrove forest, to clean up the beach and to reforest areas that have been damaged or burnt.
Skulls of poached crocodiles line the walls of the Marine Turtle Environmental Educational Center, along with the bones of animals burnt in fires and the dried-out bodies of turtles left to suffocate on the beach without their shells. It’s a chilling scene, but one that the community hopes will build conscientiousness in the visitors about the important conservation work going on here.
The community’s turtle education center was created with help from the federal land protection agency Conamp.
They also want to bring ecotourism to their area — a region of Mexico that is one of the country’s poorest. Each member of the community receives only about US $150 for the entire five months he or she works with the turtles – going on patrols, retrieving eggs and guarding their hatching grounds from poachers.
“When they see someone that is paying attention, they tend not to come around,” says José Alfredo González, a local biologist who works with the coop giving tours. A tone of frustration can be heard in his voice when he describes the speed at which poachers can collect eggs on the beach with motorcycles and horses.
The community members are not vigilantes; they are just there to inform the local authorities and often invite them out on patrol so they can see what’s happening for themselves. They are currently raising money for a four-wheeler of their own in order to compete with the slick and fast-moving poachers that still haunt the shores.
While the community has no hard and fast numbers about how much of the sea turtle population has disappeared over the years, Arias says the difference between when he was a child and now is shocking.
“It was part of my childhood. Before, you could just walk out onto the beach and see them [laying their eggs]. Now that I am an adult, it’s not so easy. To find a nest, we have to walk five or six kilometers down the beach.”
Children run here and there throughout the beautifully painted rooms of the Marine Turtle Education Center. Walls are adorned with images of the five types of mangrove, the seven kinds of sea turtles worldwide and the elegant migratory birds that come every year to raise their own offspring in the bioreserve.
This small, low-income town of 300 in one of Mexico’s poorest regions also sees an opportunity in making itself an ecotourism destination.
The town’s children are absorbing from their elders that this a problem that must be addressed, and as they carry tiny turtles out to the sea in hollowed-out gourds, they aren’t just helping their own little swimmers; they are assisting the survival of an entire species, one turtle at a time.
• To arrange a visit contact Travis Tours in Chiapas which works directly with community members to support their project via ecotourism.
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Investigation into last year's accident also determined that maintenance of Line 12 was inadequate. deposit photos
A company subcontracted to work on the elevated section of Line 12 of the Mexico City Metro – part of which collapsed last May – only installed 65% of the required bolts, an investigation into the causes of the disaster has found.
A report completed by experts commissioned by the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ) said that J.J. Jiménez S.A. de C.V., a company subcontracted by Carso Infrastructure and Construction (CICSA), not only failed to use all the bolts it should have used but installed those it did use incorrectly and without respecting building codes.
As a result, the effectiveness of the bolts was just 20% of what it should have been, the report said.
According to the newspaper Milenio, which obtained a copy of the report, CICSA said in a submission to the FGJ that it purchased all the bolts required for the elevated section, but J.J. Jiménez did not use them all.
Ingenieros Civiles Asociados and French rail company Alstom were also part of a consortium that built the line, which includes an underground stretch and an elevated section.
The experts commissioned by the FGJ also found that maintenance on Line 12 was inadequate, but determined that wasn’t a factor in the collapse.
The report also cited welding deficiencies in the structure that supported the elevated section of Line 12, which runs from Mixcoac in the capital’s southwest to Tláhuac in the southeast.
The collapse was caused by the failure to comply with a range of Mexico City construction laws, codes and regulations, the report concluded.
The FGJ said in October that there were flaws in the design of the line and that construction work was shoddy. Metal studs in the overpass that collapsed were poorly placed and welding was deficient, it determined.
The Attorney General’s Office announced in October that it was opening criminal cases for homicide, injury (almost 100 people were injured in the accident) and damage to property in connection with the May 3 tragedy, the Mexico City Metro’s deadliest disaster.
