Self-proclaimed shamans Juan Pablo, 41, and Juan Diego, 30, were arrested after the woman's death.
A woman died and two people were arrested in Sonora on Saturday after a shamanic detoxification therapy involving smoking frog venom.
Perla “N,” 31, was part of the ceremony near the border city of Nogales with six other people. She inhaled smoke from the venom from a Peruvian frog, the newspaper ElDebate reported. The exact cause of death is yet to be determined.
The woman’s husband said after he left her with her mother and sister she was taken to a ranch for the treatment.
Two men who claimed to be ancestral shamans were arrested. They admitted that Perla had participated in the ceremony.
The indigenous Seri culture from Sonora has a similar practice involving psychoactive toxins emitted by the Colorado River toad.
The sought out substance is 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic of the tryptamine class found in the glands of some amphibians.
It is considered an ancestral medicine with the capacity to treat a range of physical, emotional and spiritual ailments. It is commonly dried, mixed with tobacco and smoked to trigger “a powerful religious-like trip that lasts about an hour,” according to the web site Addiction Center.
Tamasopo Mayor Luis Alberto Abundis faces charges for firing a weapon during a horse parade. Screenshot
A mayor in San Luis Potosí faces charges for firing a gun in the air during a horse parade known as a cabalgata.
Luis Alberto Abundis was elected mayor of Tamasopo, a town in the indigenous Huasteca region, 245 kilometers east of San Luis Potosí city, last June.
A video reported to show Abundis went viral on January 24. Filmed from behind, he fired at least seven shots into the air while riding a horse along with at least 10 other riders. Children were present in the vicinity, the newspaper Milenio reported, and Abundis’ weapon is the only one visible in the video.
The spokesman for the San Luis Potosí Public Security Ministry, Miguel Gallegos Cepeda, said the ministry had filed a complaint to the state Attorney General’s Office for the possession of a weapon and for causing danger.
Gallegos said Abundis had jeopardized the faith of citizens. “San Luis is not in a position to have this type of act, especially by popular representatives … It is about the public having the certainty that everything is being done well, that no one is going to conceal anything and that in the new San Luis Potosí things have to change.”
Abundis allegedly fired at least seven shots during the parade.
He added that the mayor’s actions were not befitting of his post. “He drew a lot of attention for the irresponsibility with which he acted.”
The state Public Security Minister, Guzmar Ángel González Castillo, said he would ask for the federal Security Ministry to intervene.
Abundis ran for mayor as a candidate for the Green Party-Labor Party coalition.
Firing weapons into the air is more dangerous than some gun enthusiasts appreciate: during New Year’s celebrations, a pregnant woman was at risk of dying from a stray bullet. In a separate New Year’s event, one man was killed by the bullet that he himself fired into the air.
Health authorities in the United States have raised their risk assessment of the COVID-19 situation in Mexico to Level 4 “very high” and are advising U.S. citizens not to travel here.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) raised its warning level from Level 3 “high” on Monday.
“Avoid travel to Mexico. If you must travel to Mexico, make sure you are vaccinated and up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines before travel,” the CDC said in its updated advisory.
“Even if you are up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines, you may still be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19. … Follow all requirements and recommendations in Mexico,” the agency said.
Its warning to avoid travel to Mexico – which doesn’t require incoming travelers to be vaccinated, show a negative COVID-19 test result or go into quarantine – comes as Mexico nears the end of its worst month of the pandemic in terms of new case numbers.
Travelers with and without face masks at the the Mexico City International Airport.
The Health Ministry reported 950,446 confirmed cases in the first 30 days of January. Even before Monday’s case tally is announced, the figure exceeds the previous monthly record – set last August – by 89%.
Mexico’s accumulated tally currently stands at 4.93 million, while there are just under 268,000 estimated active cases.
An additional 6,465 COVID-19 deaths have been reported this month, a 25% increase compared to December but well below the pandemic high of almost 33,000 last January. The official death toll rose by 131 on Sunday to 305,893.
With case numbers surging as the highly contagious omicron strain continues to spread rapidly, the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) issued a statement calling on citizens not to drop their guard and continue wearing face masks in all public places, including schools and workplaces.
It also recommended that people wear masks in their own homes if a family member is ill with COVID or they suspect they have been in contact with someone who had the virus.
“With face masks we can breathe. Without face masks there is a risk that some people will require the use of nasal cannulas, oxygen masks or even artificial ventilators,” said the statement issued by IMSS nursing official María Isabel López.
José Viveros, left, gives a tour of his vineyard. Screenshot
White sand beaches, pre-Hispanic archaeological sites, wildlife-rich jungles, swimmable natural sinkholes, bustling nightlife, a year-round warm climate and locally made wine.
Which is the odd one out? In Quintana Roo – you probably guessed, it’s local wine.
But that is set to change as one family embarks on an ambitious mission to make vino in Felipe Carillo Puerto, a southern municipality in Mexico’s only Caribbean coast state.
The Viveros Aguilar family’s dream began with a single grape vine, bought to give shade to orchids they were growing.
“This project initially started because of my wife,” José Viveros told the newspaper Milenio.
Harvest time at Viñedo Viveros. Facebook
“She bought a plant as decoration … to provide a little bit of shade to our orchids in the garden. The man who sold it to us pruned it and fertilized it and in the first year it gave us 20 to 25 bunches … and in the second year it gave us 100,” he said.
However, the hot weather eventually got to the vine, causing it to shrivel up and die. But a seed had already been sown in Don José’s mind so he sought out an agronomist to help him with his grape-growing endeavor.
“An agronomist came, he thought the project was interesting, he knew about grapes and he said to me: ‘Look, … we’re not going to find anyone here in the region who’s a grape specialist, we’re habanero chile people, .. but let’s give ourselves a chance. Let’s learn between the two of us,’” Viveros said.
They planted vines on the Viveros Aguilar family’s property in the Mayan community of Noh-Bec a year ago and their first grapes reached maturity in June last year.
“What follows now is … to increase [the size of the vineyard] to four or five hectares in order to make wine,” Viveros said.
“… We want to make an authentic regional wine from Quintana Roo using … wood [for the barrels] from the Yucatán Peninsula,” he said.
“We’re going to do tests with caoba [mahogany], chechen, katalox, granadillo, chaktéviga, sakchacaj,” Viveros said, referring to different kinds of timber.
“All these kinds of wood we’ve used to make furniture and houses; we’re going to use them to make barrels and store wine to see which gives us a good result in aromas and flavors,” he said.
And thus Quintana Roo could become the 15th state in Mexico where wine is produced, aged, bottled and sold. Although wine is not yet being produced at the family’s property, tourists have already begun visiting to learn more about the project’s past, present and future.
A tour of the property, located just outside the community of Noh-Bec – situated about 60 kilometers south of the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto – costs 50 pesos per person.
The Viveros Aguilar family’s initiative has been recognized by the state government, which awarded the family second place in a 2021 tourism innovation and diversification competition.
Marco Margain's farm grows food for his Mexico City restaurant but it also offers several experiences seeking to connect visitors to the land. Hacienda San Andrés
“Agriculture is the fundamental root of all things,” said Marco Margain, chef and owner of Hacienda San Andrés, “because it has a direct relationship with what being present here means to all beings on this planet.”
Striking at the heart of the regenerative agriculture movement, which seeks to restore the land, Margain’s philosophy — and of those at Hacienda San Andrés — is to stabilize crop yields for sustainable production that can be shared with the community all year. Jumping away from the treadmill of modern consumption and urban routine and immersing oneself in nature, they argue, is critical to holistic health and plays a vital role in environmental awareness to boot.
Located one hour from Mexico City in Ayapango, México state, and 30 kilometers from Izta-Popo Zoquiapan National Park, the hacienda, originally established in 1535, has lived many lives. Used variously as the base for woodland exploitation, extracting timber used for the railway industry, as well as to house troops during the War of Independence, the site is steeped in the history of the land and of the peoples who have lived there since its founding.
Today, the hacienda is returning to tradition in order to cultivate knowledge of sustainable agriculture and nourish people through wholesome foods. Straddling history and the future, they are taking steps toward more time-honored farming techniques in order to produce unprocessed, organic food.
In 2014, Margain, the owner of farm-to-table restaurant Broka Bistrot in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood, began this project in which healthy food became the backbone. At Hacienda San Andrés, everyone involved decided that the growing of food here would be clean —meaning avoiding or minimizing the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and the causing of air, soil or water pollution — and would focus as much on restoring the land after decades of maltreatment and soil deprivation as it would on the items produced.
Part of Hacienda San Andrés’ mission is to inspire tomorrow’s environmentalists by instilling today’s children with a love of nature. Hacienda San Andrés
The upside of such an approach is that in the intervening years, the hacienda has grown a medley of nutritious fruits, vegetables and grains that taste better and are better. Its native corn, for example, has been sown according to tradition for 35 years; each year, they choose the best available seed to retain the quality and originality of their crop.
“The land,” Margain said, “already has more of the ingredients for cooking than you can possibly imagine. It only takes a little knowledge and some novel combinations to create something spectacular.”
Accordingly, he uses traditional techniques to create dishes based on ingredients grown at the hacienda — and if they have not grown it themselves, a local neighbor or friend has.
Margain and his kitchen team work according to the dynamic natural rhythms of the Earth, taking advantage of and consuming seasonal products. Organic waste from Margain’s restaurant, the renowned Broka, is returned to the hacienda to renourish the land, thereby creating a circular agri-food system that demonstrates the delicious possibilities of alternative food production and consumption.
Moreover, Hacienda San Andrés hopes to cultivate in others a knowledge of the land and of growing processes, with the purpose of generating an appreciation for the fruits of the fields. Artists, foodies of every variety and the merely curious are invited to stay and experience the farmland here, girdled by the peaks of Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl, the namesake volcanoes of the Izta-Popo park.
In particular, they are looking to show children the urgent need for society to change its eating habits and promote the development of healthy agriculture. What is most important to Margain is alerting young people to the work that goes into food production and the power that you harness by doing it well, under the idea that young people are the future of the planet and nurturing their sense of stewardship of it is key to Earth’s long-term health.
The site has front-row views of Mexico’s famous volcanoes, Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl. Mike and Iliana Alcalde/Mexico Natural
Modern food consumption has become a threat to food production systems, they believe at San Andrés, and in order to take a step away from that mode of existence, folks here hope to change people’s perspective using our largest tool: the planet.
Regenerative farming practices are by no means new to Mexico, tracing back to the nation’s indigenous communities. Margain, however, is turning a resurgent school of thought into an experience.
He makes no claims to being a philosopher, but he is poetic in his beliefs: “I believe that through the experience we have generated on the farm we have planted several little seeds. We hope that little by little, they will bear their fruits. And if you want to get spiritual, then you could say that the plants have given us a sensitivity we didn’t have before.”
All the activities on offer at the hacienda intertwine with knowledge of the natural world; there are tours of their cultivated labyrinth, of the hacienda’s farms, games, and watching sunsets in the volcanoes, to name but some.
More enlightening still are the “Seed to Table” workshops that educate visitors on the process of planting, nurturing and harvesting food, as well as the hacienda’s cooking classes, which culminate in a tasting menu based on ingredients harvested on-site.
The regenerative agriculture at Hacienda San Andrés is a living philosophy, but it is one completely rooted in terra firma.
The sprawling farm also provides a delivery service to Mexico City residents, who can order on their website. Mike and Iliana Alcalde/Mexico Natural
“It is,” said Margain, “about reconnecting with nature through the work of introspection into oneself and being close to the land as a vehicle toward [understanding] a little more about how we work. Ultimately, that’s how we perceive that the totality of everything works.”
'Va por Diego' by Mexican-American director Miguel Flatow won best phone feature film in the December edition of the Cannes World Film Festival. Instagram
A filmmaker from Chiapas won a prize at the Cannes World Film Festival for a movie he filmed on his cellphone.
Va por Diego (For Diego), by Mexican-American director Miguel Flatow, came first in the best phone feature film category in the December edition of the monthly awards.
Filmed in Chiapas, the 96-minute movie tells the story of a young man who is the victim of a hit and run and his family is unable to pay for the surgery needed to keep him alive.
Looking for a way to raise the funds, his brother forms a soccer team to enter a tournament for a 100,000-peso prize (US $4,850).
The film stars former soccer player Luis Hernández, Mexico’s joint-highest goalscorer in World Cups who once played for the now dissolved Chiapas Jaguars. It also features the actor Luis Guillén.
Guillén said the film’s success was a victory for Chiapas.
“What a way to start the year that winning this award. Triumphing worldwide. Congratulations to our great director Miguel Flatow … and the entire cast proudly from Chiapas,” he said.
The high stakes made for gripping entertainment, the director said.
“Each game represents life or death,” Flatow said. “If they win the brother is saved and if not, he dies.”
The monthly awards aim “to unearth rare gems, to highlight a new generation of emerging talents and a new wave of filmmakers,” according to the awards website.
Monthly winners are entered into the annual competition, with the chance to be screened at a historic cinema in Cannes.
Criminal groups from at least eight foreign countries including China, Russia and Colombia operate in Quintana Roo, according to a report by the newspaper Milenio.
Citing information from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Interpol and Mexican authorities, Milenio said the Caribbean coast state – home to popular tourist destinations such as Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum – has become crucial territory for Mexican and international criminal organizations.
The presence of criminal groups from Israel, Romania, Russia, China, Italy, Guatemala, Colombia and Venezuela has been documented in Quintana Roo, the newspaper said.
Mexico’s most powerful cartels, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel, as well as smaller local gangs, also operate in the state, which for decades has been used as an intermediate destination for cocaine headed to the United States from South America.
Florian “The Shark” Tudor allegedly led a Romanian criminal group that operated in Quintana Roo and other states. He was arrested in Mexico City last year.
A lucrative local drug market has also attracted criminal groups and triggered turf wars over that trade as well as extortion and human trafficking rackets.
“Local intelligence reports speak of close to 100 million pesos [US $4.8 million] of drug sales per month in the tourist zone of Cancún alone,” a federal government source told the newspaper Reforma.
“There is another area, la Quinta Avenida [in Playa del Carmen], that is also very lucrative. Some beaches are also highly attractive [for drug sales] and important and very dangerous [criminal] networks have been created [to serve them],” the source said.
Such violence is largely perpetrated by Mexican cartels and gangs, while members of foreign criminal groups are typically less ostentatious, a strategy that helps them stay under the radar.
In addition to the drug trade, foreign criminals that operate in the state are involved in crimes such as money laundering, arms trafficking, child pornography, extortion, currency forgery, bank card cloning and kidnapping, according to reports by Milenio and Reforma.
The suspected gunman in the Xcaret Hotel shooting was caught on camera wielding a gun. Two people have been arrested in connection with the incident, but the gunman remains at large.
The latter newspaper said the state has become a magnet for members of international criminal organizations as well as foreigners fleeing justice in their countries of origin.
“The appeal for fugitives,” Reforma said, “is that they can go unnoticed by traveling like tourists, enjoying the natural paradise of the Riviera Maya while making connections or closing deals with other groups of criminals.”
That appeared to be the intent of Canadians Robert James Dinh and Thomas Cherukara, who were murdered at the Xcaret Hotel on January 21.
They allegedly had links to the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. According to the Canadian Embassy in Mexico, at least 30 members of that organization have traveled to Cancún since October.
“Some of them were denied entry to the country but others managed to enter,” Reforma said.
According to a report by the Toronto Star, which cited a former member of a Canadian gang known as the United Nations, “Canadian Hells Angels bikers owned a luxury condo by Playa del Carmen that was open to all members.”
Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín said that the FBI did not participate in an investigation in his state — contrary to what President López Obrador said.
“It’s kind of like a clubhouse” inside a gated community protected by an armed guard, the former gang member told the Star.
“It was described … as their international clubhouse. It’s for business and pleasure. I met cartel guys at that actual house,” he said.
President López Obrador claimed last week that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had participated in an investigation into the murders at the Xcaret Hotel and indicated that his government would seek a report about its involvement from Ambassador Ken Salazar.
“… We’re not opposed to coordinated work against crime, but we can’t allow our sovereignty to be violated,” he said.
But Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín rejected the president’s assertion, telling Milenio Televisión it appeared that López Obrador had received “incorrect information” about the supposed presence of FBI agents in Quintana Roo. Rather, personnel from the FBI, the DEA and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will travel to the state in February to exchange information with local authorities, he said.
The foreign agencies won’t be carrying out any operations in the state, Joaquín said. But they will help Mexican authorities identify international criminal organizations operating there and look at ways to avoid incidents such as the murder of the two Canadian citizens.
The governor claimed in a separate interview that the perpetrator of the attack on the Canadians had returned to Mexico City. He was hired in the capital to undertake the murders, Joaquín said.
Two people have been arrested in connection with the attack, including a Canadian, but the man who allegedly perpetrated the killings – identified as Oscar Alanís – remains at large.
Juan Carlos López's mother said she was notified of his death more than a year after his body was found.
A mother in Guanajuato spent more than a year searching for her son only to discover his remains had been in a morgue all that time.
Juan Carlos López went missing on September 30, 2020 at the market where he worked in Celaya. Aurora, his mother, said Juan Carlos’ burned body was found about a month later, on October 29, in the community of Ojo Seco, 18 kilometers south of Celaya.
However, Aurora said, the state Attorney General’s Office waited more than 12 months to notify her that his remains were being held by the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo).
The grieving mother complained about the attention she received from the authorities.
“It’s a very sad thing when you go to the Attorney General’s Office. You go back and forth and there are no results, there is nothing … he spent a year in the Semefo and one goes back and forth investigating and they never said anything,” she said.
Aurora added that the criminal investigation seemed equally negligent.
“They were going to check the cameras, they already had a witness … [they said] that the cameras didn’t work, that they had nothing, no result, that there was no progress, ” she said. “If it took more than a year to give an answer, I’d say that they didn’t do their job as they should. How can it be possible that they found [his remains] after almost a month, why did it take a year to give information to me? Why put someone in that situation?”
Guanajuato was the most violent state in Mexico in 2021; it has held the undesirable title since 2019. Numerous criminal groups are fighting each other for control there, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel.
Celaya, a city of around half a million people, was the most violent place in the world in 2020, according to the report by a Mexican non-governmental organization, the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice.
However, despite the humanitarian disaster facing Mexico, authorities have admitted that that they are ill equipped to deal with past murders. Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas acknowledged in December that there were more than 95,000 missing people in Mexico, most of whom disappeared in the last 15 years.
Encinas conceded that the government doesn’t have the capacity to guarantee the identification of 52,000 bodies in common graves and morgues and to ensure they are returned to their families.
An aerial view of mangroves along the Canal del Infernillo channel, near Isla Tiburón. Conabio
Many mangrove forests have been damaged or threatened by tourism and industrial projects, including the construction of Pemex’s new refinery on the Tabasco coast, but pristine mangrove swamps located between the Sonora coast and Mexico’s largest island are still intact and growing thanks to the conservation efforts of a group of indigenous Comcaac people.
The Canal del Infiernillo – a channel between the southern Sonora coast and Isla Tiburón with mangrove estuaries, seagrass beds, seasonal creeks and small coral reef patches – was designated a wetland of international importance in 2009.
It is currently one of 142 sites in Mexico that have been designated as such in accordance with the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, an international treaty signed in 1971.
For mangrove forests in the coastal waters of the Gulf of California – located between the Mexican mainland and the Baja California Peninsula – dragnet fishing, furtive hunting for species such as sea turtles, illegal tourism and climate change are all threats, according to a report by the environmental news website Mongabay.
But the mangroves between the Comcaac, or Seri, town of Punta Chueca and Isla Tiburón have not been adversely impacted by man, said Alberto Mellado, an aquaculture engineer and conservationist.
He and other indigenous residents of southern Sonora are committed to maintaining that status quo while helping to increase the size of mangrove forests off the coast of Isla Tiburón, a 1,200-square-kilometer island with a human population of zero.
“Strangely and stupidly, man has … destroyed mangroves all over the world but here [we have] the last virgin ones in the northwest of Mexico,” Mellado told Mongabay.
“We’re still conserving 862 hectares of intact mangrove forest; they’re the northernmost mangroves and the most fragile in the entire continent,” Mellado said.
Along with his wife Erika Barnett, the Comcaac man put together an eight-person team dedicated to the protection and growth of mangroves and sea grasses in the Canal del Infiernillo, inhabited by scores of marine animals, including threatened sea turtle species.
The team’s work – which is not only a lifeline for endangered marine animals but also helps combat climate change – is supported by the Borderlands Restoration Network (BRM), a United States-based conservation organization.
“Mangroves are an important species [in the fight] against climate change,” Mellado said.
More than 4,000 mangrove seedlings were planted in the Punta Chueca area.
“They’re a natural breeding ground … where life happens and species reproduce. They’re like nurseries of the sea, … that’s where their importance comes from. They reduce the intensity of swells during storms, they reduce the intensity of wind. People who live near mangroves are more protected – they’re biophysical barriers,” he said.
To ensure the ongoing health of mangrove forests off the coast of southern Sonora, the team led by Mellado recently planted 4,200 seedlings. The mangroves were grown in a nursery built at his home with money provided by the team members themselves as well as funding from the BRM.
“The project begins with the collection of seedlings from the mangroves in August. They’re known as ‘seeds’ but they’re not, … mangroves are viviparous [life-bearing] plants and what emerges is a seedling almost ready to become a tree, it just needs a place where it can take root and establish itself,” Mellado said.
Once the seedlings have developed they are replanted in the ecosystem from which they they were taken. The 4,200 plants were reintroduced to the Canal del Infiernillo late last year.
“Recent research shows that mangroves and seagrasses … store more carbon that any land ecosystem so their conservation and restoration are recognized as strategies for the mitigation … of climate change,” said Laura Monti, a cultural ecologist and BRM board member.
“The Ramsar protected area within the Canal del Infiernillo is about 30,000 hectares and seagrass covers 9,725 hectares – in other words more than in any other place on the entire Pacific side of Mexico,” said Gary Nabhan, a noted agricultural ecologist and ethnobotanist who collaborates with the BRM.
“It captures approximately 46,000 tonnes of carbon per year; that’s more than in any place in the Gulf [of California]. The blue carbon capture of sea plants is greater per hectare than the majority of … forests and jungles on land,” he said.
Despite the immense benefits generated by the conservation of mangroves and seagrasses, the Mexican government hasn’t supported Mellado’s initiative.
“The National Forest Commission doesn’t consider mangroves as forest species … [worthy] of support for community work,” he said.
The conservationist said the lack of government support has prevented his team from undertaking its project on a larger scale. He said they and other environmental groups are unable to access the funding they need to carry out projects on a scale that would “truly provoke a transformation in the environment.”
While the Comcaac people’s guardianship of the mangroves in their ancestral waters is undoubtedly invaluable, the impact of replanting 4,000 mangroves per year is only “minor,” Mellado said.
Site of the bust in Carboneras, 42 kilometers northeast of Culiacán. Riodoce
Federal security forces seized nearly six tonnes of methamphetamine from a property in Sinaloa on January 27 in what authorities are calling “the most important seizure made under the current government.”
The army, National Guard and agents from the Attorney General’s Office collaborated in confiscating 5,833 kilograms of the highly addictive illegal stimulant in Carboneras, Sinaloa, 42 kilometers northeast of Culiacán. The drug was found in both crystallized and liquid form.
The Defense Ministry (Sedena) said it was the biggest methamphetamine bust in Mexico since President López Obrador took office in December 2018.
Although there were no arrests made, the huge seizure is a big coup for federal forces, and figures high in international terms. In October, more than 55 million methamphetamine pills and just under 1.7 tonnes of methamphetamine were seized in Laos, in what the United Nations called the largest ever single seizure of illegal methamphetamine in Asia, the region where production of the drug is most prevalent.
In November, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a massive almost eight-tonne bust at the U.S.-Mexico border at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego. A Mexican citizen was arrested on trafficking charges.
The drugs were found in a small building that authorities said was being used as a distribution center. Riodoce
The Defense Ministry said that confiscating the illegal substances would help protect the health of citizens. “This type of addictive substances is prevented from reaching Mexican young people and affecting their integral development … [the security forces] reaffirm their commitment to ensure and safeguard the well-being of citizens, helping the government guarantee the peace and security of Mexicans.”
