Journalist finds evidence of narco-pact between Sinaloa Cartel and Morena party

June 7, 2022

Los Chapitos, sons of jailed drug lord El Chapo, alleged to have made a pact with the president's party.

Members of the ruling Morena party entered into an “electoral narco-pact” with the Sinaloa Cartel last year, according to well known investigative journalist Anabel Hernández.

Writing for the German state-owned news outlet Deutsche Welle, Hernández said she had information that Morena members made a pact with Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, one of the sons of convicted drug lord and former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.

The pact was reportedly made in the lead-up to the municipal and state elections in Sinaloa in June of last year. Governor Rubén Rocha Moya won the governorship for Morena, easily beating PAN-PRI-PRD candidate Mario Zamora, and Morena triumphed in the majority of Sinaloa’s 18 municipalities.

Hernández, who has written extensively about Mexican criminal organizations and their links to governments, political parties and politicians including presidents, said “direct sources that know the events first hand” asserted that Morena made a deal with Iván Guzmán, who – along with his brothers, “Los Chapitos,” and uncles – controls a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations.

She wrote that “people who have been part of the close team” of President López Obrador corroborated the existence of a narco-pact. According to those people, the president is neither unaware of nor disapproves of the agreement, Hernández wrote.

The publication of the journalist’s claim last Friday came a day after veteran leftist politician Porfirio Muñoz Ledo accused President López Obrador of colluding with narcos, a charge he flatly denied.

Hernández said the purpose of the pact was for El Chapo’s sons and brothers to give their “blessing” to Morena along with that of Ismael Zambada García – “El Mayo” – the “maximum leader” of the Sinaloa Cartel. The deal ensured that Los Chapitos and their uncles would help Rocha win the governor’s office and support the election of Morena candidates to other positions, she wrote.

“In order for El Chapo’s family to operate in the election, key meetings were held with morenistas,” Hernández wrote referring to Morena party operatives including former interior minister Ricardo Peralta.

El Mayo Zambada and Governor Rocha: did the Sinaloa Cartel gives its blessing to his election?

She said at least two meetings with Iván Guzmán took place in Culiacán and at least one with “El Guano” and “El Mudo” – brothers of El Chapo – were held in the community of La Tuna in the municipality of Badiraguato at the home of Consuelo Loera, Joaquín Guzmán’s mother, “who AMLO personally greeted in Badiraguato, Sinaloa, in 2020, during the the worst moments of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

At one Culiacán meeting, El Chapito, as Iván Guzmán is known, “with a pistol on his waistband and protected by a large group of armed people,” gave instructions for videos in support of Rubén Rocha to be filmed and disseminated on social media, Hernández wrote.

Members of famous music groups known for singing narcocorridos, or narco-ballads, and “with influence among the population” appeared in the videos, the journalist wrote. “’The Rocha Moya musicians’ were part of the propaganda plan. In that meeting, Iván Guzmán’s people had already received promotional Rocha Moya campaign t-shirts.”

“… In April 2021, Rocha Moya himself filmed a video … thanking the musicians for the support of his campaign.”

Hernández said that other Morena candidates, such as current Badiraguato Mayor José Paz López Elenes, also used narcocorridos in their campaign advertising.

She wrote that El Chapito – one of four brothers for whom the United States has announced rewards of up to US $5 million each for information leading to their arrest – also “ordered narco-electoral actions,” explaining that “he coordinated violent operations in Badiraguato against the PRI mayoral candidate … in order to favor … López Elenes.”

“… Iván also mobilized people to promote the vote and hand out gifts to the electorate, and with intimidation counteracted … similar operations that other opposing candidates were carrying out,” Hernández added.

In Consuelo Loera’s home, Aureliano and Miguel Angel Guzmán Loera – El Guano and El Mudo – met with López Elenes and other Morena “electoral operators,” the journalist said, adding that the same house hosted one of the then-mayoral candidate’s campaign events. “… At the time of the pact with El Chapo’s family, the delegate sent to Sinaloa by Morena for the electoral process was the then [federal] senator Américo Villarreal,” Hernández wrote.

The president greets Consuelo Loera, grandmother of Los Chapitos, in Sinaloa in 2020.

Villarreal, who won the election for governor of Tamaulipas for Morena last Sunday, had knowledge of the pact with the Sinaloa Cartel and agreed with it, she wrote, adding that he is a personal friend of Governor Rocha. Hernández said that Los Chapitos and their uncles agreed to provide electoral support for Morena candidates in Sinaloa in exchange for the ruling party – which will soon govern 20 of Mexico’s 32 federal entities – agreeing not to go after them, including via arrest warrants issued for extradition purposes.

Ovidio Guzmán López, one of Los Chapitos, was released shortly after his 2019 arrest in Culiacán triggered a wave of cartel attacks that terrorized residents of the northern city. López Obrador said he personally ordered the release, asserting that more than 200 innocent people would have been killed had he not taken the decision. He said last month that his government looks after criminals by avoiding armed confrontations with them.

Hernández wrote that people with knowledge of the “electoral narco-pact” told her that the “successful model” used in Sinaloa at last year’s elections was also used in at least three states where citizens elected new governors last Sunday. “Direct sources” told the journalist that the Sinaloa Cartel supported the Morena party in Durango, Tamaulipas and Quintana Roo. Morena candidates won in Tamaulipas and Quintana Roo, but the PAN-PRI-PRD contender triumphed in Durango.

Hernández noted that Quintana Roo is a “key point” for the trafficking of drugs from South America and that the Sinaloa Cartel had criminal control of the state for many years before other cartels, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, caused a fracturing of that hegemony.

“Recovering it would be an advantage in the international drug trafficking business,” she wrote. Former Benito Juárez (Cancún) mayor Mara Lezama won the governorship of the Caribbean coast state.

Tamaulipas, Hernández wrote, is a state where the Sinaloa Cartel has never had a stronghold. “For 20 years it has fought to displace the Gulf Cartel and then its armed wing, Los Zetas, in a bloody war. But, despite military and police help from the governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, it hasn’t achieved it because local governments have historically supported the Gulf Cartel,” she wrote.

If the Sinaloa Cartel were to gain control of Tamaulipas via its apparent pact with incoming governor Américo Villarreal, it would – for the first time in its criminal history – control the four most important northern border states for the trafficking of drugs to the United States, Hernández wrote, noting that it already holds sway in Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua.

The journalist, who has previously exposed links between narcos and the three most recent former presidents, contended that AMLO and Morena are also in cahoots with other criminal organizations, including those involved in extortion and fuel theft – a crime the federal government has significantly combatted.

In exchange for “not combatting criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel,” Hernández wrote, the president and Morena demand “financial and operational help to increase their political hegemony in the country,” a claim similar to that made by Muñoz Ledo, a Morena lawmaker until last year. “At least that’s what the model that operated in Sinaloa shows,” she wrote.

Hernández charged that the establishment of pacts between parties in power and organized crime is a “cyclical” problem in Mexico that appears “sexenio after sexenio,” or from one six-year government to the next. Meanwhile, “tens of thousands of people will continue disappearing in Mexico [and] tens of thousands will continue being murdered, extorted, kidnapped, exploited and trafficked,” she wrote.

“Those who make agreements with organized crime to obtain power, handing over citizens like cattle to the slaughter, cannot be called a political party or government, not before or now,” Hernández added.

Her claims about Morena were rejected by the party’s general secretary, Senator Citlalli Hernández, who claimed that Hernández was guilty of writing “gossip without rigor.” The senator also claimed that the journalist has built a career and “certain credibility” only to lend that credibility to the “highest bidder.”

“The role of Anabel Hernández is really sad and disappointing,” she said.

With reports from Deutsche Welle and Infobae

As many as 15,000 migrants leave Tapachula, Chiapas, on long march north

MND Staff

June 7, 2022

Thousands of migrants left Tapachula, Chiapas, on foot Monday morning, beginning a long journey to the northern border with the United States, where they hope to claim asylum or cross into that country between official ports of entry.

Reports about the size of the migrant caravan varied, with estimates as low as 4,000 and as high as 15,000. Caravan organizer Luis García Villagrán put the figure at 11,000.

The National Immigration Institute (INM) hasn’t commented publicly on the caravan, which is mainly made up of Venezuelans, Cubans and Central Americans and includes pregnant women, children and people with disabilities.

Tired of waiting for months in Tapachula to regularize their migratory status, the migrants departed from the southern city shortly after 6:00 a.m. Monday and walked approximately 15 kilometers in the rain to the town of Álvaro Obregón, where they spent the night. They planned to walk some 30 kilometers on Tuesday to the town of Huixtla.

The migrants passed an INM checkpoint outside Tapachula but fears they would be detained proved unfounded. INM agents and members of the National Guard have broken up previous caravans by confronting them with force and detaining migrants.

Arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force and sexual violence are among the abuses committed against migrants by the armed forces and the National Guard, according to a recent report by six non-governmental organizations.

García Villagrán, director of the Centro de Dignificación Humana (Human Dignity Center), an NGO, said the first goal of the latest migrant caravan is to get to Tuxtla Gutiérrez and demand that the INM issue them with documents that allow them to continue their journey to the northern border legally. He said INM officials told the migrants their claims would be processed in the Chiapas capital.

García Villagrán and other migrant advocates said the departure of the caravan was timed to coincide with the Summit of the Americas, a regional meeting currently taking place in Los Angeles.

“Today we say to the leaders of the United States and each of the countries meeting at the Summit of the Americas [that] migrant families are not a bargaining chip for ideological and political interests,” García Villagrán said before the caravan left Chiapas.

“… Today we’re going to walk in the name of God … so that it’s seen that we’re free people with dignity who have the right to migrate. Migrating is not a crime,” he said.

The Associated Press reported that many migrants carried children in their arms and on their backs, and used sheets of plastic and blankets to protect themselves from constant rain.

Ruben Medina told AP that he and 12 family members left Venezuela because of the poor conditions in the country under the rule of President Nicolás Maduro, who along with the presidents of Cuba and Nicaragua didn’t receive an invitation to the Summit of the Americas, leading President López Obrador to decide not to attend the meeting.

“[We have] been waiting [in Tapachula] about two months for the visa and still nothing, so better to start walking in this march,” he said.

Nicaraguan migrant Joselyn Ponce said she was given an appointment with the Mexican refugee commission COMAR in August but couldn’t afford to wait in Tapachula, where there are few if any work opportunities for undocumented migrants.

“We had to walk around hiding from immigration, there were raids, because if they catch us they will lock us up,” she said, referring to the time she spent in the southern city, located about 40 kilometers north of the border with Guatemala, where thousands of migrants enter Mexico every day.

The Bajo la Bota (Under the Boot) report by the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law and five other groups asserted that “Mexico has opted for the implementation of a migration policy without a human rights focus, making use of the National Guard and other military forces as an apparatus of migration control even when this goes against migration regulations and international human rights law.”

It said that the use of the National Guard to combat the flow of migrants through Mexico is “one of the main institutional legacies” of the pressure imposed on Mexico by the administration of former United States president Donald Trump, who described at least one migrant caravan as an “invasion.”

Mexico deployed troops to its southern and northern borders in 2019 after Trump threatened to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican exports to the U.S. if the Mexican government didn’t do more to stem migration. Mexico has continued to detain migrants in large numbers since United States President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, but many have nevertheless made it to the northern border, with illegal attempts to cross the border currently at their highest level in decades.

Regional migration is scheduled to be the main topic of discussion at Summit of the Americas meetings on Friday. Noting that Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard would be in attendance, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that López Obrador’s absence would not hinder further efforts to cooperate on migration and other issues.

As thousands of migrants head north while simultaneously bringing renewed attention to the crime, poverty, political repression and other factors that forced them to leave their countries of origin, other would-be U.S. asylum seekers remain in Tapachula.

A group of migrants held at the Siglo XXI detention center climbed onto the facility’s roof Monday in an attempt to escape. However, police and the National Guard surrounded the center and prevented an exodus.

Approximately 70 detained migrants have been on a hunger strike in recent days to pressure authorities to allow them to leave.

With reports from El Sol de México, AP, La Jornada and Al Jazeera

Health authorities report 50% increase in COVID cases in one week

MND Staff

June 7, 2022

A health worker performs a COVID-19 test in Nezahualcóyotl, state of México. shutterstock

Active coronavirus case numbers have increased over 50% in the space of a week and almost 140% in the past two weeks, official data shows.

There are 23,891 estimated active cases across Mexico, the federal Health Ministry reported Monday, an increase of 8,206 or 52% compared to a week earlier. Estimated active cases have increased 137% since May 23 when the tally was 10,073.

The Health Ministry said in a statement Monday that an average of 1,684 new infections was reported between May 29 and June 4, a 60% increase compared to the previous week. Confirmed COVID cases spiked in 20 states, the ministry said.

“An increase was recorded in Aguascalientes, Baja California, Campeche, Mexico City, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Sinaloa and Yucatán followed by Baja California Sur, Colima, Durango, México state, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, Quintana Roo and Veracruz,” it said.

On a per capita basis, Baja California Sur has the highest number of active cases with about 130 per 100,000 people. Mexico City – which leads the country for total active cases with over 7,400 – ranks second with about 80 followed by Sinaloa with just over 60 active infections per 100,000 residents.

Due to the national increase in numbers, the ministry said it would return to reporting COVID data on a daily basis. It has only provided weekly updates since late April.

The ministry said the increase has not resulted in a higher number of COVID-19 fatalities and hospitalizations.

Mexico’s official COVID-19 death toll was 325,000 on Monday, an increase of 146 compared to a week earlier. That means an average of just under 21 fatalities per day was reported in the seven-day period.

Only 3% of general care beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently in use, while 1% of those with ventilators are occupied, the Health Ministry said.

It also reported that almost 209 million vaccine doses have been administered to 88.2 million people – about 70% of Mexico’s total population – since December 2020, when the first shots were given. More than 53 million booster shots have been given to adults.

The ministry said that 91% of adults are vaccinated but the rate is only 53% among adolescents aged 12 to 17. Children younger than 12 haven’t been offered shots.

Mexico ranks 76th in the world for population-wide COVID-19 vaccination coverage, according to The New York Times vaccinations tracker. It ranks 15th in the Americas behind Chile, Cuba, Peru, Nicaragua, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Panama, United States, Venezuela and El Salvador.

Mexico News Daily

Volaris announces direct flights connecting San Miguel and Mérida

MND Staff

June 7, 2022

Mexico’s second largest airline has announced new flights connecting two expat friendly cities, both renowned for their beauty and cultural offerings — San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and Mérida, Yucatán.

The new Volaris route from Mérida to Bajío Airport in Silao, the nearest airport to San Miguel de Allende at 90 minutes from the city, offers expats in Yucatán access to a cooler summer climate to unwind in a region famed for its wine production and art scene. It also gives expats in San Miguel de Allende an easy journey to the Maya region with some of the county’s best beaches, inspiring ruins and natural sights.

One key advantage of the new route is that travelers can avoid having to connect through Mexico City. “As of the moment, you can only get there [San Miguel de Allende] via CDMX,” San Miguel de Allende resident Lucinda Young told Yucatán Magazine.

From Mexico City, Young added, there are flights to Bajío airport or to Querétaro airport, where travelers can take a shuttle to San Miguel de Allende.

Young thinks the easy-going lifestyle in San Miguel de Allende will attract Mérida residents. “For the energetic, motivated and fit it’s a great walking city, with a plethora of European-style cafes and wine bars for refreshment stops … But unlike Mérida it’s also very easy to pick up a taxi anywhere and there’s a fixed in-city fare of 60 pesos,” she said.

Young added that the change of scenery and altitude could be a welcome change for people in Yucatán, as well as the food. “I think the combination of desert plateaus, rivers, and dramatic ravines might be pretty attractive to Yucatán folks who live at sea level with little change in topography … The city sits at the heart of one of Mexico’s most intensive agricultural regions and is also just a three-hour drive to the Pacific coast, so the quality of ingredients is stellar,” she said.

Volaris says the new route will begin operating before the end of the year. The frequency of flights and the fares have not yet been announced.

Meanwhile, Mérida airport registered an all-time record number of passengers for a single month in March, receiving 233,504 travelers.

Traffic is likely to increase. Several domestic airlines, including Viva Aerobus and Magnicharters, have announced they will be increasing their daily flights to Mexico City. There will also be new direct flights to Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, and Toluca, México state.

There is plenty of room for growth at Yucatán’s main airport: authorities say the existing facilities are still only operating at about 25% capacity.

With reports from Yucatán Magazine and Novedades Yucatán

Restrictions cut water service to six hours a day in Monterrey, Nuevo León

MND Staff

June 6, 2022

The dust and mud of a dry resevoir with a small amount of water visible in the distance. Even farther away in the background dry, rocky mountains are visible. — La Boca dam, one of Monterrey's water sources, seen here in March 2022. So far this year, dam water levels are lower than they were at the same time last year. File photo

Monterrey has a new surefire plan to deal with water shortages: to only make water available for six hours a day.

The taps of 5.3 million citizens living in Monterrey’s Metropolitan Zone and in neighboring municipalities have only been of use from 4-10 a.m. since Saturday, after the director of Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey, the company that manages water in Nuevo León, announced the strategy.

Juan Ignacio Barragán Villarreal said the new water schedule would replace the “Water for Everyone” program, which had seen water cuts for one day a week rotating around different areas of the city since March 22.

The battle for water in Nuevo León has been long-running: the state declared a state of emergency on February 3 due to a lack of rain, which has caused a shortage of water in the Cerro Prieto and La Boca dams.

El Plan Agua Para Todos tendrá una modificación: a partir de mañana, todos los días en todas las zonas, habrá agua de 4 a 10 de la mañana.
Seguiremos trabajando para hacerle frente a la sequía y salir pronto de esta, a ti te toca cuidar el agua y no almacenar de más. pic.twitter.com/94ttI5buUa

— Agua y Drenaje Mty (@AyD_ParaTi) June 4, 2022

The Nuevo León water services company shared the modified restrictions on Twitter Friday.

Barragán made the announcement after meeting with Governor Samuel García and mayors from the affected areas. He said the plan, which was “drastic but necessary,” would “give certainty” to citizens and would be in place until at least August.

Barragán previously announced that water pressure would be reduced at properties that are consuming more than 70 cubic meters of water per month, after reporting that 30% of people were using more water than before restrictions were introduced.

Barragán said that the worst offenders were people living in wealthy residential areas and pointed blame at companies in office buildings and owners of houses in suburban areas where green areas and fruit trees were watered. He also admitted that 61 neighborhoods had gone without water for two to five days at some point since measures were introduced.

Protests by people in the city about the water situation have recently become widespread and have involved demonstrators blocking traffic, the newspaper El Universal reported.

Water supply is a big challenge for authorities in Nuevo León, where droughts can be severe. More than 90% of the state was reported to have abnormal dryness, moderate drought or severe drought in the National Water Commission’s (Conagua) latest drought monitoring report, published on June 3.

With reports from El Universal and Expansión Política

Guadalajara native is first Mexican woman to travel to space

MND Staff

June 6, 2022

A 26-year-old Guadalajara native has become the first Mexican woman to travel to space, joining a passenger flight Saturday on a rocket built by Blue Origin, an aerospace company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Katya Echazarreta, an electrical and computer engineer and online science educator who was born in the Jalisco capital but moved to the United States at the age of seven, was selected from more than 7,000 applicants in over 100 countries as Space for Humanity’s first ever citizen astronaut ambassador, allowing her to travel to space without forking out a fortune.

Space for Humanity is a United States-based non-profit organization that is dedicated to broadening access to space travel.

Blue Origin’s New Shepherd rocket blasted off from the company’s west Texas launch facility Saturday morning and transported Echazarreta and five other passengers about 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface into an area considered the boundary of outer space.

The rocket spent just over 10 minutes outside the Earth’s atmosphere, time that Echazarreta used to study the overview effect, a cognitive change in consciousness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight. The young space traveler, a former NASA employee who took a Mexican flag and photos of her family with her on her voyage, told CNN Business that she experienced the overview effect in her “own way.”

“Looking down and seeing how everyone is down there, all of our past, all of our mistakes, all of our obstacles, everything — everything is there,” she said.

“And the only thing I could think of when I came back down was that I need people to see this. I need Latinas to see this. And I think that it just completely reinforced my mission to continue getting primarily women and people of color up to space and doing whatever it is they want to do,” said Echazarreta, who became the second Mexican to enter space after Rodolfo Neri Vela, a scientist and astronaut who was part of a NASA mission in 1985.

In addition to becoming the first Mexican woman to travel to space, the dual Mexican-United States citizen became the youngest American woman to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. The journey was the culmination of a long-held dream.

“Visiting space is a dream I’ve had for as long as I can remember,” Echazarreta said last month.

“I am honored to be representing not just Space for Humanity in this mission, but also all of the little girls and women out there who are dreaming of achieving something bigger, those that maybe just need an extra nudge or an example of someone who looks or sounds like them to help encourage them to take the next step towards their dream.”

Echazarreta, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in engineering at Johns Hopkins University, told the Associated Press that she was advised to give up her dream of traveling to space when she was a young girl.

“Everyone around me – family, friends, teachers – I just kept hearing the same thing: That’s not for you,” she said.

Now, as a young adult, she is one of only about 600 people who have traveled into space since cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering space mission in 1961. Among that number, fewer than 80 have been women and fewer than 40 have been Black, indigenous, or Latino, AP said.

Mexican parents with young daughters interested in traveling to space will no longer be able to tell them their dream is unobtainable, Echazarreta said. Instead, they’ll have to tell them, “you can do it, too,” she said.

With reports from Reforma, CNN and AP

Indigenous community wins 5-year battle against Oaxaca wind farm

MND Staff

June 6, 2022

An indigenous community in Oaxaca has won a five-year battle against the construction of a wind farm in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region.

The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) canceled contracts that would have allowed the French firm Électricité de France (EDF) to supply it with electricity generated at the Gunaa Sicarú wind park in the municipality of Unión Hidalgo.

The cancelation makes the project unviable because private and foreign companies need a partnership with the CFE to get their power onto the national grid.

It is the first time in 15 years that the federal government has canceled a wind project in the Isthmus of Tehuntepec following a legal challenge from a local indigenous community. ProDESC, a non-profit human rights defense association that provided legal assistance and representation to the community, acknowledged the decision in a statement.

“On Thursday, and after five long years defending their rights to land, territory and natural resources, the Zapotec community of Unión Hidalgo … announced that the … [CFE] had definitively canceled the energy supply contracts with French corporation EDF,” it said.

“With this, the wind park megaproject ‘Gunaa Sicarú’ has been definitively canceled,” the statement added.

“The decision was announced … at Oaxaca’s First District Court, where ProDESC has carried out … litigation regarding the wind park. Related to this litigation, [the federal Energy Ministry] SENER informed about CFE’s decision to cancel the energy supply contracts with EDF, as well as the corresponding electrical inter-connection contract,” ProDESC said.

“These cancellations show, according to SENER, that the wind park ‘Gunaa Sicarú’ is technically unfeasible “since this [wind park] is directly linked to the cancelled contracts,” it said.

The organization said the successful challenge to the project was “a milestone in the defense of land, territory and natural resources for agrarian and indigenous communities” and a “clear example” of how business accountability can be achieved not just in Mexico but across Latin America.

“’Gunaa Sicarú’ was a wind park project that would have been illegally built on communal lands, and it would have had 115 wind turbines with a total energy capacity of 300 MW. This would have made ‘Gunaa Sicarú’ one of the biggest wind parks in Latin America,” ProDESC said.

With reports from El Universal

‘Soldados o Zombies’ creators mix social commentary and zombie fun

Rich Tenorio

June 6, 2022

still from Amazon Prime Video series Soldados o Zombis — A still from the Amazon Prime TV series "Soldados o Zombies," created by Nicolas Entel and Miguel Tejada-Flores. Photos courtesy of Nicolas Entel

Lucas, the nine-year-old son of a Mexican cartel leader, is convinced there’s a shred of humanity remaining in one of his father’s subordinates, “El Perro.” Once, El Perro was Lucas’ designated babysitter. Now he has mysteriously become a growling, inhuman menace who needs to be restrained.

The youth begs him to remember their bygone days of playing with a toy walkie-talkie, but there’s a reason why Lucas’ pleas go unheeded: El Perro has become a zombie.

This is a scene from the surprise hit Amazon Prime TV series Soldados o Zombies, created by Nicolas Entel and Miguel Tejada-Flores. Released last year, it not only landed in the top five new releases on the streaming service in the United States, it was the only non-English-language series to do so.

Its audience reviews on Amazon Prime reflect its popularity.

Still from TV series "Soldados o Zombis" — The show’s explanation for the existence of zombies is rooted in a U.S. military supersoldier experiment with pigs gone horribly wrong.

“Over half loved it,” Tejada-Flores said in a Zoom interview. “They did not think it was going to be good. They want to see a sequel. They gave it the highest possible rating.”

He described the show as “a kick-ass zombie series” with a bit of everything.

“Politics, a jailbreak, narcos, government corruption, evil researchers, a whole lot of [stuff],” Tejada-Flores said. “It’s complex; it’s not your average Walking Dead.”

Soldados o Zombies — also known as S.O.Z. or Narcos vs. Zombies — reflects the increasing flexibility of the zombie genre.

Nicolas Entel and Miguel Tejada-Flores — “Soldados o Zombies” creators Nicolas Entel, left, and Miguel Tejada-Flores, right.

Since the 21st century’s start, the living dead have appeared in formats as diverse as a global outbreak thriller in World War Z, a 16th-century Korean period piece in Kingdom and a teen drama in South Korea’s All of Us are Dead.

Now they’ve made it to the U.S.-Mexico border: in one scene, a zombie pushes through the border wall in what might be Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.

“Many in the Mexican press get the joke,” Entel said. “They appreciate the fact that there are political consequences hidden under this — in a way — very silly show we’re trying to do. People were taken by the idea of America creating a government experiment where all the consequences of the American military are being paid by the Mexicans.”

“Obviously, it’s not a show for everybody,” Entel noted. “It’s a mix of genres. It’s very relevant, irreverent and politically incorrect.”

The drama begins on both sides of the border. In Hidalgo County, Texas, United States Army scientist Agustus Snowman is working to create zombie pigs as a first step toward genetically engineering the perfect soldier. Meanwhile, in Chihuahua’s Lomas Altas prison, Lucas’ father Alonso Marroquín plots a jailbreak.

Escaping through tunnels beneath the border wall, Marroquín and his subordinates reach their safe house in the U.S. – a drug rehab center called Paradiso. The Mexican SWAT unit pursuing them is not so lucky, encountering the zombie pigs, with disastrous results.

Others eventually fall prey to the zombies created by this incident – including members of Marroquín’s cartel, such as El Perro.

El Perro is played by veteran actor Silverio Palacios, whose credits include Y tu mamá también and The Legend of Zorro. Up-and-coming child actor Nery Arredondo plays Lucas.

The abovementioned scene involving Lucas and El Perro at the end of episode seven prompted a standing ovation from the cast and crew.

The show has its roots in a conversation Entel — who has written, directed and produced documentaries for Amazon, Netflix and HBO — had with the son of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. While Entel interviewed Escobar’s son for the 2009 documentary Sins of My Father, the younger Escobar remembered how while hiding out with his parents in the Colombian jungle, one of his parents entertained him with a spooky story and a Ouija board.

Entel’s creative juices started flowing. He enlisted the initially reluctant Tejada-Flores, who has an extensive screenwriting background in horror, including the film Screamers.

“He said, ‘Miguel, the title is Narcos vs. Zombies,’” Tejada-Flores recalled. “I go … ‘listo, I’m ready!’ The rest is history.”

Tejada-Flores praised Sergio Peris-Mencheta’s performance as Marroquín.

“He’s a Mexican native and a phenomenal international actor who does theater … You don’t see him in horror or on the horror scene. It’s part of the reason [Marroquín] is a complex character.”

As Tejada-Flores explained, “You can watch Narcos — it’s a good series — but all the real-life narcos are all stereotypes. We wanted to create a character who’s the opposite of a stereotype.”

Although he is a drug dealer, Marroquín is also a loving father who wants to dissuade Lucas from following his violent path. He also gives a heartfelt plea to God while escaping from prison.

Poster for TV series "Soldados o Zombis" — Creator Miguel Tejada-Flores said of his show, *Soldados o Zombies,* “it’s not your average ‘Walking Dead,’” referring to the popular U.S. zombie TV series.

“Describing him as a drug dealer is like describing Han Solo as somebody who moves merchandise illegally,” Entel said. “Star Wars is not about that. The character is not about that. You need to know that about him because he smuggles Princess Leia home.”

“In the context of Mexico, [Marroquín] is outside the law, he’s tough, he can use a gun — of course he needs to be a drug dealer,” Entel said, adding that he is not trying to “glamorize drug dealers. I suspect people [watching the show] are smarter than that.”

The series addresses key issues in Mexican society: narco violence, immigration, government corruption and freedom of the press — with the latter personified by the character of TV journalist Lilia Acal Prado (Fátima Molina), who pursues an interview with Marroquín at the cost of losing her job.

American characters like Snowman (Toby Schmitz) and DEA agent Joel Taft (Steve Wilcox) are described by Entel as more two-dimensional than their Mexican counterparts — for a reason.

S.O.Z. Soldados o Zombies (2021) | Official Trailer | Amazon Prime Video

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Trailer for the Amazon Prime Video series Soldados o Zombies.

“We wanted the Mexicans to be more multidimensional,” Entel said. “We wanted the Americans to be a little more flat and stereotypical … You [usually] see a Mexican guy [portrayed as] very two-dimensional in an American movie.”

The zombies, however, are anything but stereotypical: they share commonalities with insects — the army ants Snowman uses in his experiments. Their speech is based on Náhuatl. Two of them rekindle a romance that began back when they were still human.

In Soldados o Zombies, the zombie infection spreads from pigs to humans, which might make many think of COVID-19 and the idea that the coronavirus spread from animals to humans. However, the show was conceived pre-pandemic. “I wish I could say we saw it coming, [that] we actually anticipated it,” Entel said. “We didn’t.”

Asked about the show’s future, the creators said there are no current plans for a second season. The first season, however, burst expectations like a zombie breaking through the border wall.

“It did much better than anyone expected,” Tejada-Flores said.

Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.

Election results spell complications for the opposition in 2024

Christine Murray

June 6, 2022

Mexico’s opposition is on track to lose four state governorships to the ruling party after elections on Sunday, slowing its recent momentum against the country’s populist president and complicating its path to victory in major elections in 2024.

After defeating Morena’s radical energy reform in the lower house earlier this year, some political analysts believed the unified opposition could continue to gather momentum. But Sunday’s preliminary results serve as a bellwether of public opinion and show the group of formerly rival parties is struggling to convert congressional gains into electoral results.

“This strengthens Morena’s narrative . . . that they are powerful,” said Francisco Abundis of polling group Parametria, who noted that quick counts showed Morena likely won by more than 30 percentage points in two states. “[The opposition] should be worried, not just because they lost the governorships as expected but because of the margins.”

The ballots are the last broad electoral test before 2024, when the country will hold elections at all levels of government, including the presidency. The president is limited to one term but Morena’s dominance at the state level will give it advantages in terms of resources and visibility to help López Obrador’s chosen successor win.

Morena’s enduring electoral strength despite weak economic growth is partly down to voter identification with the president, who has approval ratings of almost 60%. His idiosyncratic agenda has married extreme fiscal austerity with combative anti-business rhetoric and regulatory decisions that benefit state companies.

Supporters laud his personal displays of austerity and believe he is standing up for the country’s poorest, while his critics say he has attacked fragile institutions and poses a risk to Mexico’s relatively young democracy.

The shift in power highlighted by Morena’s election victory in 2018 has transformed Mexican politics and significantly weakened the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), which had ruled uninterrupted for 70 years until 2000. Hidalgo state, which Morena also won on Sunday, was governed by the PRI and its predecessors since the party’s founding in 1929.

It now holds just a handful of the 32 governorships, two of which are due for elections next year.

Morena has managed to recreate some of the PRI’s dominance but with the key difference that the current elections are democratic, said Arturo Sánchez Gutiérrez, a politics professor at Tec de Monterrey university and former board member of the electoral authority.

“We have a map that looks much like the political system Mexico had before its transition to democracy,” he said, highlighting Morena’s strong majority. “That’s the democratic challenge the country has.”

Both the ruling and opposition coalitions will need to maintain unity in their campaigns to win in two years’ time, analysts said. Foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard and Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, Morena’s leading candidates, are already touring the country seeking votes. Senate leader and fellow Morena hopeful Ricardo Monreal has warned that the process for choosing the next candidate must be transparent.

Among the three-party opposition, a clear leader or potential candidate has not yet emerged. In another blow, the center-left Citizens Movement said on Sunday it would not join the alliance for state governorship votes in 2023.

“The opposition hasn’t managed to build an alternative narrative, much less position its candidates,” Sánchez said. “That’s maybe the biggest challenge they will have in the next two years.”

Tortilla shops, schools reopen after extortion threats in Zihuatanejo

MND Staff

June 6, 2022

Public transportation, tortillerías and other businesses and services are opening back up this week.

Tortilla shops and schools have reopened in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, after closing last week due to arson attacks and threats from organized crime.

Tortillerías – most of which closed last Thursday after receiving calls and messages demanding payments in exchange for not setting their businesses on fire – reopened Saturday, while students returned to classes on Monday. Tortilla shop owners also received death threats, the newspaper Reforma reported.

A Zihuatanejo hotelier told Reforma that public transit services – which partially shut down last week after two vehicles were torched – are also returning to normal.

State and federal security forces have ramped up their presence in the Pacific coast resort town amid calls from residents and politicians for more to be done to combat criminals, who also set a Zihuatanejo beer store on fire last Thursday.

Two public transport vehicles were burned in the wave of violence that swept the city last week. Twitter / @General_Beltran

Federal Deputy Ivonne Ortega said that a new security strategy is needed in Zihuatanejo and other parts of the country because President López Obrador’s so-called “hugs, not bullets” approach – which favors addressing the root causes of violence over combating it with force – is not working.

“It’s clear that the ‘hugs, not bullets’ thing has no validity for [organized] crime and only provides impunity to the criminals to harass and attack citizens,” the Citizens Movement party lawmaker said.

“More and more regions of the country are at the mercy of those who violate the law. A real security strategy is urgently needed, not just propaganda,” Ortega said.

Manuel Añorve, an Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) senator and president of the upper house’s justice committee, said it was regrettable that organized crime had partially shut down Zihuatanejo and declared that federal security forces “must strengthen their presence” in the popular tourism destination.

The National Guard, the army and the navy patrolled the city’s streets over the weekend alongside state police.

Añorve said that the federal forces must maintain a permanent presence in order to ensure security in a destination that “generates thousands of jobs for Guerrero.”

Zihuatanejo, a municipality that includes the resort town of Ixtapa, is the southern state’s second most popular coastal destination after Acapulco, located 250 kilometers to the south. It is currently governed by PRI Mayor Jorge Sánchez Allec, while the Morena party, founded by López Obrador, has been in power in Guerrero since October.

With reports from Reforma

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