City police say better coordination, WhatsApp and security checkpoints have helped bring down homicide numbers.
Some of Mexico City’s most violent neighborhoods haven’t recorded a single murder in 2021, and others have seen an 80% decline in annual terms.
The borough of Gustavo A. Madero hasn’t seen a homicide this year in the neighborhoods of Candelaria Ticomán, San Bartolo Atepehuacan, Gabriel Hernández, despite being historically violent areas.
The Iztapalapa neighborhoods of Desarrollo Urbano Quetzalcóatl and Ejército de Oriente only registered five homicides from January through September this year: the same period last year saw a total of 51 murders in the five areas.
One major innovation is the use of WhatsApp as an official communication channel for citizens to make criminal complaints. The newspaper Milenio reported that better use of surveillance cameras and improved coordination with México state authorities had also helped transform the security situation.
Additional hands-on measures have played a role. In Candelaria Ticomán security checkpoints were introduced to search suspicious vehicles leaving and entering the neighborhood and in Ejército de Oriente round the clock patrols are in place.
The Mexico City Security Ministry representative for Candelaria Ticomán, Rogelio Albiter, said locals had supported the new measures. “People received them well. They got used to it little by little … no complaints are made by the neighbors,” he said.
Mexico City Police Chief Omar Garcia Harfuch said on November 18 that crime had fallen by 46% in the capital from October 2020 through September 2021. Extortion, he added, fell 82% while homicides fell 32%.
The two navy personnel were found by Puerto Vallarta police. SEMAR
Two marines were found alive in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, on Saturday, 320 kilometers from where they had been kidnapped on November 15 in a Guadalajara metropolitan area parking lot.
An unidentified navy captain’s secretary and driver were awaiting the captain in the shopping center parking lot in Zapopan when they were surrounded by an armed convoy. The vehicle in which they had been traveling, a white Jeep, was found abandoned days later.
They were discovered Saturday blindfolded and kneeling on the ground by a police patrol in the resort city.
They identified themselves to authorities as Ángela y Jorge but didn’t give details on their treatment or where they had been taken. They were reported to be in good health but were still taken to a hospital.
The Navy Ministry said that Jorge had been beaten and that Ángela “was found intact.”
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel is suspected of their abduction in retaliation for the arrest of the wife of the cartel’s leader, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes.
Rosalinda González Valencia was captured in Zapopan on November 15 by soldiers working in conjunction with the federal Attorney General’s Office and the National Intelligence Center.
Federal forces have since carried out an operation in Zapopan to locate and capture El Mencho’s daughter Laisha Michelle Oseguera González and her partner Christian Fernando Gutiérrez Ochoa, but neither was found.
Federal forces also searched for El Mencho in Jalisco, Nayarit, Michoacán and Guanajuato without success, according to military sources cited by Reforma.
Journalist San Martín outside the control tower at the Felipe Ángeles airport.
Four months before the new Mexico City airport begins operations, would-be users can get a feel for the new facility thanks to video footage posted to social media by a well known journalist.
Television, radio and print journalist Manuel López San Martín posted a series of videos to Twitter that show various parts of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) including its terminal building and control tower.
Built by the army on the Santa Lucía Air Force base located about 45 kilometers north of downtown Mexico City in the México state municipality of Zumpango, the airport is slated to begin operations in late March. Budget carrier Volaris announced last month that it would operate services to and from the facility starting March 21, 2022.
Above one video that pans across the exterior of the terminal building, López San Martín wrote that the AIFA “is not the disaster some people are selling.”
He described the 80-billion-peso (US $3.8 billion) airport as an “impressive” and “good-quality” project built in record time.
Lo dije hace 8 meses que estuve aquí, lo repito a 4 meses de su inauguración ✈️
President López Obrador, who canceled the previous government’s airport project after a legally questionable referendum, inaugurated work on the AIFA in late 2019.
López San Martín claimed that the airport will be a success as long as it has good, cheap and quick land connections to Mexico City. He posted one video that showed construction work on a new road that will link the airport to the capital.
“There are thousands of people working against the clock inside and outside of Santa Lucía,” the journalist wrote.
Another video shows a waiting area and functioning elevators and escalators inside the terminal, while López San Martín shot yet more footage from the 88-meter-high control tower, which was designed to resemble a Náhuatl weapon called a macuahuitl – a wooden club with embedded obsidian blades.
The journalist also published a video that shows a range of other infrastructure and attractions on the airport grounds, including a shopping center, hotel, hospital and a “cultural corridor” with three museums and repurposed historic train cars.
The architect who designed the airport, Francisco González Pulido, said in late 2019 that traveling through it will be a “memorable experience.”
Construction of the facility, which is about 80% complete, is part of a three-pronged plan to ease pressure on the existing Mexico City airport, which was used by 50.3 million passengers in 2019 before air traffic slumped in 2020 due to the pandemic. The federal government is also upgrading the Mexico City airport and that in Toluca, México state.
The AIFA will have an initial capacity of 20 million passengers annually but it could eventually handle up to 80 million.
✈️ Desde la Torre de control del #AIFA. Así se ve el nuevo aeropuerto
The former municipal government of Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo, allowed 35,000 tonnes of trash to accumulate at a transfer station on the small Caribbean Sea island, according to local officials.
Mayor Atanea Gómez Ricalde, who took office at the end of September, blamed her predecessor, federal Green Party Deputy Juan Carillo Soberanis, for the mess on the island, a popular tourism destination.
The National Action Party mayor said her government began cleaning up the dump as soon as it was sworn in and 11,350 tonnes of trash have already been shipped to the mainland. Gómez also said that 1,600 tonnes of garbage have been removed from the streets of Isla Mujeres over the past seven weeks.
“Cleaning up Isla Mujeres, keeping our island clean and creating a healthy environment is a priority,” she said. “We could no longer live with these kinds of focuses of infection.”
Santiago Quiñonez Hernández, the municipality’s public services director, estimated that the previous government allowed trash to accumulate at the transfer station – located adjacent to the sea – for two years.
“There was at least 35,000 tonnes of accumulated trash,” he said, adding that it generated leachates (liquids) that filtered into groundwater reserves and the ocean.
Quiñonez said that about 23,000 tonnes of toxic trash remains at the dump and it will take at least two months to transfer all of it to a dump on the mainland part of the municipality of Isla Mujeres.
Local authorities also said they have discovered 53 clandestine dumps on the mainland of the municipality, which adjoins Benito Juárez, where Cancún is located.
Gómez said Isla Mujeres has been used as a dump for Cancún and Puerto Morelos for years and the situation must change. She indicated she was prepared to take legal action to that end.
The mayor also said that Isla Mujeres is the second fastest growing municipality in the state and she has a responsibility to look out for its environment and residents, even though previous municipal governments neglected to do so.
Best Natural Destination was the Montebello lakes of Chiapas. mexico desconocido
Mexico’s finest cities, states, sights and dishes were recognized at the Best of Mexico awards ceremony at the Tianguis Turístico travel show in Mérida, Yucatán, last week.
Voting took place online from March 1-15, 2020, but the ceremony — held during Latin America’s largest tourism industry event — was delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zacatecas was the only state to win in two categories: La Quemada ruins won Best Tourist Experience in an Archaeological Area and Zacatecas city won Best Cultural City.
Otherwise, the winners were spread around states in all corners of the country. Oaxaca won the Best State to Live Original Experiences, followed by Zacatecas in second and Puebla in third. Best Beach was Balandra, Baja California Sur. The second best was Mahahual, Quintana Roo, and the third best was Costa Esmeralda, Veracruz.
The Best Tourist Route was the El Chepe train ride in Chihuahua; second place was the Art, Cheese and Wine route in Querétaro, and third place was the Coffee Route in Chiapas.
Best Dish was Hidalgo’s barbacoa. más méxico
The Best Adventure Destination went to La Huasteca, San Luis Potosí, and the Best Natural Destination was the Montebello Lakes, Chiapas.
More specialized categories included Best Artisan Work, which was awarded to Nayarit for its Huichol craftwork, and Best Dish, which went to Hidalgo’s barbacoa. The Best Magical Town for Culinary Experience was won by Zacatlán de las Manzanas, Puebla.
The Best Destination for Day of the Dead was Pátzcuaro, Michoacán; Orizaba, Veracruz, won the Best Magical Town With Surprising Architecture; the Best Magical Town for a Romantic Escape went to Bacalar, Quintana Roo, and the Best Magical Town with Ancestral Roots was awarded to Huamantla, Tlaxcala.
The awards program is sponsored by magazine and web publisher México Desconocido.
The federal government’s proposed electricity reform poses a threat to home solar energy installations, according to energy sector insiders, but Energy Minister Rocío Nahle denies that is the case.
President López Obrador sent a constitutional bill to Congress in October whose main objective is to guarantee 54% of the power market to the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE)
A vote on the bill is set to take place next April, but there is no guarantee it will pass Congress as the ruling Morena party and its allies don’t have the two-thirds majority required to approve constitutional reforms without the support of opposition parties.
López Obrador’s bill doesn’t specifically mention distributed generation – a term that refers to a variety of technologies that generate electricity at or near where it will be used, such as solar panels – but it does say that private sector electricity generation permits and contracts with the CFE to buy that power will be canceled.
Three energy sector experts who spoke with the newspaper Milenio believe that the reform – if passed in its current form – could spell the end for rooftop solar panels installed on people’s homes and on the premises and facilities of businesses.
About US $3.14 billion has been invested in solar panels, according to the Energy Regulatory Commission, and some 95% of them are installed at people’s homes and at small and medium-sized businesses. Solar is the source of 99.15% of more than 242,000 distributed generation points with wind, hydro, biogas, biomass, gas, diesel and cogeneration contributing to the small remainder.
Julio Valle, spokesperson for the Mexican Solar Energy Association, asserted that the electricity reform will affect distributed generation if it passes Congress.
“I’m aware that the [energy] minister and another person have come out and said that distributed generation won’t be affected but the initiative explicitly says something else,” he said.
Rocío Nahle, energy minister since the current government took office in December 2018, said on Twitter last month that the proposed reform doesn’t seek to eliminate the use of solar panels, while Morena Deputy Manuel Rodríguez González, president of the lower house’s energy committee, later made similar remarks.
Severo López, an energy policy expert and counsel with the law firm SMPS Legal, charged that Nahle’s assertion is wrong, claiming that distributed generation will be deemed “unconstitutional” if the proposed reform becomes law.
Carlos Tapia, CEO of the consultancy Balam Energy, said the wording of the bill is highly ambiguous and that the lack of clarity is cause for concern. The text of the proposed reform leaves open the possibility that homeowners’ contracts with the CFE will be canceled, he said.
The president tours the Dos Bocas refinery last fall with Energy Minister Nahle.
But Rodríguez, the deputy, said that homeowners with solar panels won’t be affected because they don’t sign contracts but rather enter into service agreements with the CFE. He did acknowledge that companies that generate their own energy will be affected if the bill passes.
López said that houses with solar distributed generation capacity need to connect to the CFE grid so that they can tap into the state-owned company’s power, or their stored electricity, when the sun isn’t shining. He disagreed with Rodríguez’s choice of language, describing the pact between homeowners and the CFE as an interconnection contract.
Special meters are installed at people’s homes to measure the quantity of energy injected into the national grid via their solar panels and the quantity of power used. Based on the measurements, a homeowner either gets a bill or a payment from the CFE each billing period.
One person who has benefited from installing solar panels at his home is Jorge Musalem. Fed up with paying up to 2,500 pesos (US $120) per month for power, he spent 50,000 pesos (about US $2,400) to install solar panels on his rooftop.
His monthly bills declined to just 150 pesos (US $7), allowing Musalem, who shares his home with five family members, to recoup his investment in less than two years. Thousands of other Mexicans have similarly cut their power bills by putting solar panels on their homes’ rooftops.
Nahle said in her October 6 tweet that the federal government has been a supporter of distributed generation since it took office in late 2018.
“It has promoted its use and funding via the Trust for Electrical Energy Savings,” she wrote, referring to a private trust set up by the CFE in 1990. “The electricity reform doesn’t considering eliminating this,” Nahle added.
More broadly, the government is considered by many to be an enemy of the renewable sector because it has enacted or is attempting to enact policies and reforms that favor the CFE and are detrimental to private renewable energy companies.
'We’ve applied the formula of banishing corruption,' President López Obrador told the UN this month.
The former head of Mexico’s state oil company, Emilio Lozoya, was extradited from Spain more than a year ago over alleged bribes. But it was only after pictures of him eating Peking duck in an upscale restaurant triggered public outrage last month that prosecutors requested he be put into pre-trial detention.
President López Obrador called the lavish dinner “provocation.” Lozoya’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment, though local media has reported he denies wrongdoing. But for the government’s critics, the saga was illustrative of the Mexican authorities’ approach to fighting corruption: a strategy deeply influenced by politics and little to show for it.
Speaking at the United Nations this month — his second trip abroad in three years — López Obrador said that corruption in “all its forms” was “the biggest problem on the planet.” He added: “[In Mexico] we’ve applied the formula of banishing corruption and put the money saved into helping the people.”
But analysts say there are few advances back home to shout about. Mexico has long been plagued by corruption, from payoffs to avoid speeding tickets to multimillion-dollar theft from public works contracts. Each year, Mexicans pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to public officials for basic day-to-day paperwork such as starting a company or paying car taxes, statistics body INEGI estimates. Transparency International ranks Mexico in 124th place of 180 countries.
The federal anti-corruption prosecutor has only managed to secure two sentences for offences in more than 2 1/2 years in the job, one expert said. High profile cases are slow to advance.
In terms of transparency, Mexico is in the red.
“They don’t have a criminal prosecution policy . . . they choose cases for very unclear reasons,” said Eduardo Bohórquez, head of Transparency International in Mexico. “That arbitrariness is a bad sign in a prosecutor’s office.”
More worrying is the apparent pattern of exoneration of political allies and the pursuit of government critics and political opponents by both the administration and the nominally independent federal prosecutors.
“Before, corruption wasn’t being fought so that people in power could make money illegally,” said Miguel Alfonso Meza, a former civil society lawyer who now works in the municipal government of Monterrey, run by an opposition party. “Now corruption isn’t being fought to allow the group in power to consolidate itself but also to hurt democracy and pursue critics.”
López Obrador insists corruption is being fought in his government and that more than 200 criminal complaints have been made. “No one is being protected,” he said. The Attorney General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
The president’s image of being personally uninterested in amassing money for himself — something even many opponents believe is real — gives him credibility with voters on corruption. The problem is that institutions lack the independence or resources to sustain a real anti-corruption fight, activists said.
Thousands of accounts blocked by the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) have produced scant results in criminal cases. Earlier this month its head, Santiago Nieto, resigned after being rebuked by the president for his lavish wedding in Guatemala.
Other key oversight bodies like the Federal Auditor’s Office — part of the lower house of Congress — have presented far fewer criminal complaints during this administration than in previous years.
López Obrador has also undermined the National Anticorruption System — meant to co-ordinate different institutions — by calling it the “last straw” in a “pretend” anti-corruption fight.
“We still have the same problem, we don’t have institutions . . . that really work,” said Edna Jaime, director of think tank Mexico Evalúa. “The president hasn’t invested any of his political capital or resources, it’s not part of his project to strengthen these institutions.”
At one of his daily morning press conferences last month, López Obrador promised to publish details of those who have been sanctioned or accused of corruption. The subsequent release said thousands of officials had been barred from government and hundreds of criminal complaints had been made, but didn’t mention a single criminal conviction.
Defense Minister Sandoval: 'Contributing to the fourth transformation is a badge of honor.' sedena/twitter
National Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval has come under fire after publicly expressing support for the “transformation” President López Obrador and his government are carrying out in Mexico.
Speaking at a ceremony on Saturday to mark the 111th anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, Sandoval said the “fourth transformation” currently underway has the nation’s best interests at heart.
In that respect it’s like the previous three transformations, he said, referring to independence from Spain, 19th century liberal reforms and the revolution.
Despite differences of opinion about the federal government – colloquially known as the 4T for “fourth transformation” – Mexicans need to unite and support the “national project” it is carrying out, Sandoval said.
López Obrador has given the military a prominent role in the transformation he claims to be executing, assigning it a range of non-traditional tasks such as public security, infrastructure construction and management of the nation’s ports and customs offices.
The defense minister said the military “will continue putting all its efforts into compliance with the visions and tasks entrusted to us because we’re sure that this is the path for our country to continue developing.”
“… The army, air force, navy and National Guard are present in the entire country providing security to citizens, we’re present where the public’s assets and safety are at risk due to a disaster, we’re present where we can contribute to actions being carried out to avoid corruption … [and] we’re present where we’re needed to support progress and well-being,” the army chief said.
“… Being able to contribute to the transformation … is a badge of honor,” Sandoval said before echoing the president’s claim that the groundwork for such a monumental change has already been laid.
He said that actions being carried out by López Obrador and his administration are forging a “freer” and “more democratic” Mexico and addressing the “legitimate needs of the majority of Mexicans.”
“… On the verge of beginning the second half of the administration and in the context of the 111th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, the soldiers, marines and National Guard members affirm our loyalty [to the president] and commitment to continue working with honesty, integrity, discipline and professionalism in the projects entrusted to us,” Sandoval said.
At the same ceremony, López Obrador declared that members of the armed forces are loyal to the constitution and government institutions. There was speculation two years ago that there was a rift between the top ranks of the armed forces and López Obrador, leading military leaders to pledge loyalty to the president at the 2019 Mexican Revolution ceremony.
The president Saturday’s event in Mexico City: ‘The Mexican soldier will never betray the homeland.’ sedena/twitter
“They [members of the armed forces] haven’t belonged nor will they belong, I’m sure, to the oligarchy. They come from below, their origin and identity is deep Mexico,” AMLO said Saturday.
“A soldier is a common man in uniform, that’s why he doesn’t betray the people and he will never betray freedom, justice and democracy. The Mexican soldier will never betray the homeland,” he said.
Sandoval’s remarks attracted criticism from academics and lawmakers. Catalina Pérez Correa, a law professor and researcher at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, described his support for the 4T and his call for all Mexicans to back its political project as “very concerning.”
“I have no memory of any general openly supporting a political project in this way,” she wrote on Twitter, asserting that the army chief’s remarks were even worse given the power the military has been assigned.
Jacobo Dayán, a criminal law expert, said it was “regrettable” and “very worrying” that the armed forces had expressed explicit support for one side of politics and that Sandoval had called on Mexicans to join the 4T.
National Action Party Senator Lily Téllez and independent Senator Emilio Álvarez were also critical.
“Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval took sides with the 4T. How unfortunate,” Téllez wrote on Twitter.
Álvarez said on the same platform that the armed forces had shown they are “no longer a neutral institution of the state” but rather a “bastion of the 4T.”
“Sandoval’s call to join the 4T is concerning,” he added.
Governor Barbosa speaks at the funeral service for the three agents. twitter/miguel barbosa
The municipal police chief, his bodyguard and 12 officers have been arrested for the murder of three state investigators in Tecamachalco, Puebla.
After an attack on a Coppel store in the city on November 19, state investigators were called to the scene but were shot in the head by municipal police. Members of the force are allegedly linked to criminal organizations, the newspaper El Sol de México reported.
Minutes after the confrontation, state investigators arrested the 12 municipal officers and and Chief Alejandro Santizo,Santizo later turned himself in.
The victims worked for a department of the state Attorney General’s Office which specializes in high incidence crimes.
Mayor Ignacio Mier Bolaños initially said the attack was the result of confusion.However, Governor Miguel Barbosa confirmed at a ceremony for the victims on Sunday that the investigators were murdered intentionally. “It was an execution …”
Attorney General Gilberto Higuera Bernal said the three investigators were shot from a strategic position, supporting the murder hypothesis. “It is evident that there was a specific firing position to shoot our personnel, who at no time fired [their weapons],” he said.
Barbosa observed that the different public institutions must be synchronized to work effectively. “Society works due to the fact that the three orders of government are articulated, coordinated, and seek to maintain … the well-being that we all aspire to, but if something fails in that coordination of the public powers, the situation becomes complicated,” he said.
The youth hit the man three times on a sidewalk in Guadalajara.
A group of youths assaulted a senior in Guadalajara for no apparent reason last Thursday and shared a video of the attack on social media.
The video shows one of the youths approach the senior, who is waiting for a bus and doesn’t notice them. The youth struck the senior three times in the head before he fell to the ground.
The attack took place near the Alcalde Market in the city center, and the perpetrators were identified on social media.
Three of the four youths and their parents turned themselves into the state Attorney General’s Office. Two of them were identified as Jesús “N” and Alonso “N” through their social media profiles, but their names have not been officially confirmed, the newspaper Informador reported. The news website Reporte Índigo identified the youth who filmed the attack as Alan “N.”
Governor Enrique Alfaro confirmed that the senior was well and said the attack was the sign of a wider social problem.
Dos de los cuatro adolescentes señalados como probables partícipes en la agresión a golpes a un adulto mayor afuera del mercado Alcalde, ya comparecieron ante las autoridades correspondientes y se encuentran individualizados en torno a lo ocurrido. pic.twitter.com/r6iWDEZDAi
“The youths without conscience or values, who hit an elderly person for simple fun outside the Alcalde Market, are the harsh reality and consequence of when social decay spreads like cancer,” he said.
