Mission president Alfredo Zanudo and his wife Guadalupe were threatened with a knife in the attack. Church of Latter-day Saints
Seventy Mormon missionaries in Torreón, Coahuila, were robbed by armed men last Friday.
The attackers, who the church’s spokesperson Sam Pernod said in a statement entered a church meetinghouse in the Ampliación Los Ángeles neighborhood, demanded cell phones, tablets, watches and wallets from the 57 men and 13 women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mission president Alfredo Zanudo and his wife Guadalupe were threatened with a knife. Some missionaries in the group were hit and kicked, but no one required medical attention, Penrod said.
Penrod added that the men were carrying guns but did not say that they were used to threaten the missionaries.
The head of the local Attorney General’s Office, Maurilio Ochoa Rivera, said that the assailants’ movements had been tracked after they tried to withdraw money using a stolen bank card.
Torreón’s Chief of Police Manuel Pineda Rangel said the crime was the first of its kind, according to police records. “We checked the crime statistics, and there are no reports of a similar event,” he said.
He added that patrols would be increased around religious sites and places where large groups gather to avoid any further large-scale robberies.
Penrod said that the Church of Latter-day Saints was taking additional precautions.
“Missionaries have been removed from the area where the incident occurred and instructed to be extra cautious. A church security officer is in Torreón to evaluate the situation,” he said. “Our prayers are with these missionaries and their families as they recover from this frightening and traumatic experience.”
Coronavirus case numbers declined during 16 consecutive weeks to early November, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s regular news conference, López-Gatell said case numbers declined 7% in epidemiological week 44, which ran from October 31 to November 6.
“[We’ve had] 16 continuous weeks of reductions,” he said before acknowledging that the week 44 decline wasn’t as significant as those recorded in previous weeks.
Mexico is currently in week 46 but data for the two most recent weeks is not considered reliable for epidemiological purposes because it may be incomplete and subject to change.
López-Gatell also said that hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients continues to trend down. Compared to the hospital occupancy peak in January – the worst month of the pandemic for COVID-19 deaths – the number of patients current receiving hospital treatment is down 90%, he said.
The deputy minister also reported that 129.8 million vaccine doses have been administered across Mexico. He said 75.5 million people have received shots and 84% of that number are fully vaccinated. López-Gatell also said the government will offer vaccines to youths aged 15 to 17, although he didn’t say when inoculation will begin.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated case tally is currently 3.84 million after 775 new infections were reported Monday. The official COVID-19 death toll rose by 57 to 291,147. There are 22,113 estimated active cases, including more than 3,000 in Mexico City and over 2,600 in Baja California, the only high risk orange state on the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight map.
González is believed to be a financial operator of the CJNG.
The wife of the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) was arrested in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, Jalisco, on Monday.
Rosalinda González Valencia, wife of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, was captured in Zapopan by soldiers working in conjunction with the federal Attorney General’s Office and the National Intelligence Center.
The Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) said in a statement that soldiers were acting on an arrest warrant issued against González for several crimes.
It said that evidence suggests she is linked to the “illicit financial operation of an organized crime group.”
The arrest of González, who was previously detained in Zapopan in 2018 on money laundering charges but released from prison on bail of almost 1.6 million pesos (US $77,000), is a “significant blow for the financial structure of organized crime in the state of Jalisco,” Sedena said.
The ministry said she was transferred to a federal women’s prison in Coatlán del Río, Morelos.
The arrest of González, who authorities said in 2018 was the “administrator of the economic and legal resources” of the CJNG, came just days after her brother, José González Valencia, was extradited to the United States from Brazil on drug trafficking charges. He is alleged to be a member of Los Cuinis, a gang considered the CJNG’s financial arm.
Another brother, Abigael González Valencia, former leader of Los Cuinis, was arrested in Puerto Vallarta in 2015 and is collaborating with federal authorities on the case of the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014. Two other brothers were given prison sentences for drug and weapons charges in late 2019, while yet another brother was arrested in 2016.
Rosalinda González’s son is also in prison on cartel-related charges.
Meanwhile, Oseguera – wanted in both Mexico and the United States, where a US $10 million reward is on offer for information leading to his arrest — remains at large.
The cartel he heads – generally considered Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization – is notorious for violence and engaged in vicious turf wars in several parts of the country, including Michoacán and Guanajuato. Authorities expressed concern that the arrest of Oseguera’s wife could trigger reprisal attacks.
El Mencho and other former members of the Milenio Cartel formed the CJNG in 2010 with the aim of seizing control of drug trafficking and other criminal activities in the states of Jalisco and Michoacán.
Eleven years later, it is a transnational criminal organization with contacts in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Central America and the United States.
The cartel, a major mover of drugs such as cocaine and fentanyl, is believed to operate out of at least 24 Mexican states including Jalisco, Michoacán, Baja California, Veracruz, Chihuahua and Mexico City, where it allegedly carried out an attempt on the life of the capital’s police chief last year.
Committee members meet with government representatives in Mexico City on Monday.
The United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) has begun a 12-day “historic visit” to Mexico during which it will assess the country’s capacity to respond to the missing persons crisis in which more than 94,000 people have disappeared.
Headed by Peruvian lawyer Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana, the committee is made up of a group of experts who monitor the implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Mexico is party.
The CED has been seeking to come to Mexico since 2013 but the previous federal government rejected its requests to visit despite pleas by victims’ family members that it be allowed to enter the country.
“This is a historic visit, requested since 2013,” Villa said Monday during an event with federal officials.
The CED is slated to visit 12 states and meet with municipal and state officials, relatives of missing people, civil society representatives and National Human Rights Commission officials, among others.
The U.N. experts will also attend exhumations carried out by authorities and victims’ families, accompany search brigades on missions to locate missing people and visit prisons to examine their registration systems.
Villa said her team has two main objectives: to help Mexico prevent enforced disappearances and to contribute to the fight against impunity.
Mexico has extremely high impunity rates for numerous crimes, including abductions and homicides. In addition, due to a lack of forensic experts and money, authorities have struggled to keep up with the immense task of identifying the bodies of victims of crime.
According to data disseminated by Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos (Movement for Our Missing People), a non-governmental organization, there are more than 52,000 unidentified bodies in morgues.
Speaking at Monday’s event, Deputy Interior Minister for Human Rights Alejandro Encinas acknowledged that the federal government has a missing persons “crisis” on its hands.
“It was at the beginning of this government that the state opened itself up to international scrutiny and supervision and recognized the crisis of the disappearance of people that today adds up to more than 94,000 missing people,” he said.
“This is the most painful legacy the government of Mexico faces and one in which we have to make the greatest effort … to overcome [it],” said Encinas, who has previously described Mexico as an “enormous hidden grave.”
“I want this visit to be beneficial, for it to have good results,” the deputy minister said, explaining that the government is open to hearing the CED’s recommendations.
“… The success of your mission will imply the success of the policies we are implementing. We’re willing to open the doors to the entire federal government so that you can fulfill your mission,” he added.
The CED is scheduled to hold a press conference on the final day of its visit to Mexico – November 26, and will publish a report on its findings next March.
An electrical storm Sunday night provoked rain and hail that left a layer of icy, snowy precipitation on the ground. Facebook
Puebla city residents woke to a novelty on Monday: a snowfall followed a heavy storm the night before.
The streets of the city’s historic center and the Paseo Bravo park were lined with hard, icy snow that formed after an electric storm provoked rain and hail.
Snow is unusual in Puebla and hadn’t been seen for years, the newspaper El Universal reported. What’s more, the cold weather phenomenon is out of season: meteorological winter doesn’t start until December 1.
Many delighted residents posed for photographs, and children took the opportunity to build small snowmen and make attempts at snow angels. However, some local business owners were all work and no play and arrived with shovels to remove the snow from entrances.
The chilly spell is set to continue due to a cold front affecting north, central and eastern Mexico, which has already brought 6-degree temperatures to Puebla city, the newspaper El Sol de Puebla reported.
Mazatlán's warm climate and economic living were the writer's original reasons for moving to Mexico. eskystudio/Shutterstock
Why am I here?
Sixteen years ago, when I moved to Mexico, my reasons were very basic: affordable lifestyle and warm weather. I was rather shallow in that regard.
I never gave much thought to the culture I was about to drop into, other than how comfortable I have felt whenever spending time south of the border. It’s the composition of the culture that catalyzes my feelings of peace and contentment.
But I guess it could also just be the cold beer and the endless opportunities for Mexican food.
My first couple of years here, I suffered from a transitional brain fog, where the only thing I was vaguely aware of was the warm weather and the reasonable cost of living. My gringo-ness still hovered about me like an aura that colored all my interactions with the culture. However, the complex process that incrementally flavors the core of your psyche happens whether you are aware of it or not.
Early signs: when you’re not spending Cinco de Mayo pounding tequila in a place like this, then your transition from gringo into expat has begun. deposit photos
The transformation from slightly confused immigrant to entrenched expat has been a work in progress from the very start. Of course, there have been the epiphany moments when you string together your first complete sentence in Spanish or when you suddenly understand which hand gestures make people smile and which could endanger your life. But most cultural transition happens over weeks, months and years until it no longer feels like you are living in a foreign country.
So what is so enticing about this culture? Why does the prolonged exposure to Mexico tend to soften the soul, or take the edge off life in general?
There are subtle but portentous indicators all along the twisting path of cultural acclimation by which you can gauge your progress. These are a few of mine:
When you find yourself slowly sipping an excellent tequila and not pounding shots of José Cuervo on the Cinco de Mayo holiday with your buddies at a Mexican-themed bar, you’re getting close. Just the realization that there are tequilas that are smooth and tasty was an epic moment in my cultural odyssey.
Another watershed moment came at an intersection waiting for the light to change when a transito, the car of a traffic cop, pulled up behind me.
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the light bar on the roof and the stern countenance of the officer behind the wheel, and I felt no fear, no anxiety, not the slightest uptick in my heartbeat. In my previous life in the United States, no matter how carefully I drove, in an automobile that was 100% compliant with local regulations, any law enforcement presence in my rearview mirror would always spark some level of apprehension.
The writer spent the ’60s hoping people like the Indian guru Paramahansa Yoganada could teach him how to live in the present.
North of the border, when people meet each other for the first time, they invariably ask each other, “What do you do?” Your profession is so much a part of your persona in the U.S. that it shapes how the world sees you.
When you become a seasoned expat, you will still have some of this persona, but it will not be the preeminent factor of who you are in Mexico. Here, you will be judged by your day-to-day synergy within the culture.
It wasn’t until eight or so years into my Mexican life that I realized that my sense of time had adapted. This revelation occurred while having a few beers with two friends at our favorite beachside bar.
I asked a simple question: “What day is it?”
There were several moments where we debated whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday because none of us knew for certain. A quick look at a phone confirmed things, but this was a breakthrough moment in which I realized that time is superfluous to my life in Mexico.
For many Mexicans, time does not exist; only clocks exist. One of the things that I have found fascinating about this culture is the deeply ingrained propensity here to fully live in the moment.
One thing the writer was glad to escape in the US was how your profession is used to define you as a person. Marten Bjork/Unsplash
I, as well as others from the 1960s, spent years studying how to live in the moment and then attempting to incorporate it into my life, from Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums to the story of spiritual teacher Paramahansa Yogananda’s impressive journey to Be Here Now, the book by Richard Alpert (better known as Ram Dass), as well as other tomes we all devoured in the quest for enlightenment back then — or in other words, the quest to live perfectly in the moment.
Had I known that a simple culture change could achieve such a profound awakening, the library of my youth would have been significantly smaller.
There has been a profusion of things written about the meaning of the word mañana. A Spanish dictionary will simply say it means “tomorrow.” However, the culture of this country has embraced mañana as a defining component of a Mexican lifestyle, one that values giving yourself over completely to the present, even if it means you’ll put something else off until tomorrow.
It is one of the most difficult aspects of this culture for most expats to embrace. Many transplants here view the mañana perspective as a cultural flaw when it is in fact one of the cornerstones of this laid-back country.
So, as I look back through the years of being an expatriate, I realize I still enjoy the warm weather and the affordable lifestyle, but I now know that the preeminent reason for my continuing to live in Mexico is purely cultural.
The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half-wild dog. He can be reached at [email protected].
The situation has pushed pay levels as high as 100,000 pesos a month in northern states. canacar
Commercial supply chains are under threat in both Mexico and the United States due to a shortage of truck drivers.
Mexico’s National Chamber of Trucking (Canacar) puts the shortfall at 50,000 drivers, while the International Road Transport Union (IRU) said the shortage in Mexico grew 175% in 2021, the equivalent of 87,500 drivers.
The United States is facing the same pressure, according to the American Trucking Association (ATA). It said last month the driver shortage had risen to 80,000, an all-time high, and predicted that 100,000 more drivers would be required by 2023.
(A report published last week by Quartz disputes the ATA’s claim, arguing that there is no shortage of drivers but a shortage of “good trucking jobs.” It said there has been a shortage for 16 years due to extremely high turnover because truckers can find better working conditions and pay elsewhere.)
In Mexico, the shortage has raised pay levels. Before the coronavirus pandemic, drivers earned 20,000-45,000 pesos a month (about US $2,340 at the higher end), but in northern states they can now earn 70,000-100,000 pesos a month (as much as $4,800).
In the U.S., private fleet truck drivers earned an average of $86,000 a year before the pandemic, which has increased to $100,000 since, and comes with a signing bonus, the newspaper Reforma reported.
The head of a logistics think tank in Querétaro said the knock-on effects of the pandemic had transformed the industry. “With the pandemic and the saturation in ports, the salaries of drivers have increased around 20%,” said Carlos Canseco of Cilqro. “The northern states of Mexico are where salaries have increased exorbitantly and where companies suffer most from the flight of drivers to the United States,” he said.
The Road Transport Union said Mexico’s shortfall was due to a lack of qualified truckers, difficult working conditions, migration to the United States and a failure to attract young people to the trade.
The vice president of Canacar, Refugio Muñoz, added insecurity on the highways and health risks to the list, which he said included obesity, high blood pressure and drug consumption to meet the physical demands of the work.
Muñoz added that the labor shortage was causing wider economic damage: “[It] forces [companies] to stop their investment and growth plans …”
Trucker Rocío Hernández, 38, who has 10 years’ experience in the industry, said the working conditions made the job a hard sell: “This is a job where we do not have set hours, we are away from home for long periods of time and we do not always receive the treatment we deserve despite the importance of our work. Sometimes that bad treatment comes from employers and their clients,” he said.
This is the address of one of the firms awarded a contract. The building is residential and contains no offices.
The National Defense Ministry’s outlay on contracts awarded without a competitive tendering process increased 64% in 2020, data shows.
Data collected by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), a think tank, and compiled in its Corruption Risk Index shows that the National Defense Ministry (Sedena) spent 6.33 billion pesos (US $304 million) on contracts awarded directly last year.
The ministry’s total outlay on purchases was also up, rising 62% to 17.46 billion pesos (US $838.6 million). That means that 36% of its total expenditure was via directly awarded contracts.
The newspaper Reforma said that Sedena awarded contracts directly to companies that had recently been created and/or with addresses where there is no sign of commercial activity.
It said that Angar Azcapotzalco and Soluciones Integrales en Gestión de Riesgo de Desastres (Comprehensive Risk Disaster Management Solutions) stand out among Sedena’s five biggest suppliers since the current federal government took office in late 2018.
The former company was directly awarded a contract in October 2019 to supply 2,200 pickup trucks for 1.21 billion pesos (US $58.1 million), while the latter won a 1.17-billion-peso contract to supply ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to information on CompraNet, the government’s online transparency platform, the ventilator contract awarded directly to Soluciones Integrales is the only pubic contract the company has received.
According to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, a non-governmental organization, the company is owned by former Institutional Revolutionary Party Senator José Maria Tapia Franco.
IMCO said that Sedena awarded contracts worth 199 million pesos last year to companies that were less than one year old.
Reforma reported that Distribuidora Yovic was established at the end of June 2020 and went on to win 10 contracts worth 1.9 million pesos in the second half of the year. It was invited to participate in a restricted tendering process that sought to find a supplier for heavy machinery parts just three weeks after it was established. Reforma said it visited its tax address in Tlalnepantla, México state, and confirmed there is no company there, only a private home in a working class neighborhood.
Losequi, a company directly awarded a 10.4-million-peso contract to supply protective equipment and other contracts worth some 15 million pesos, was also formed just before it began doing business with Sedena, and its tax address is an apartment complex in the Mexico City neighborhood of Del Valle.
The recent formation of companies that won contracts and the lack of commercial premises in some cases raises questions about their legitimacy. Front companies and shell corporations have been used before to divert government resources, such as the so-called “Master Fraud” embezzlement scheme in which 11 federal agencies diverted over 3.4 billion pesos in public money during the administration led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
The current government, however, has eliminated corruption from within its ranks, according to President López Obrador.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell announced the government's turnaround on youth vaccination at the president's Tuesday press conference. Presidencia
The federal government has made a significant change to its national COVID-19 vaccination strategy, announcing Tuesday that it will offer shots to all youths aged 15 to 17.
But Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell set aside such concerns on Tuesday morning, telling President López Obrador’s regular news conference that adolescents aged 15 to 17 will be able to preregister for a shot on the government’s vaccination website starting this Friday.
He didn’t say when the shots would begin nor did he offer a detailed explanation as to why the government had changed its policy.
López-Gatell did, however, say that the risk of COVID complications begins to increase from the age of 15, although the likelihood of teenagers getting seriously ill remains very low.
The deputy minister said that just under 9,500 people between the ages of 15 and 19 died last year but only 249 of those deaths were caused by COVID.
“This shows that … the risk of dying of COVID for adolescents is very significantly less than dying of other very common risks for that age [group],” López-Gatell said, apparently referring to dangers such as accidents.
The modification of the vaccination policy partially complies with a court order instructing the government to vaccinate all youths aged 12 to 17. It comes as something of a surprise given health officials’ past remarks and an announcement last week that the Health Ministry was challenging the injunction.
The government to date has only offered vaccines to minors aged 12 to 17 if they have an underlying health condition that makes them vulnerable to serious disease.
López-Gatell said that some 1 million children with health conditions were expected to come forward to get a shot, but less than 10% of that figure have turned up at vaccination centers. Minors are getting shots of the Pfizer vaccine, the only vaccine approved for use on children in Mexico.
Irineo Mújica accused the institute of being the most corrupt federal agency in history.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) accused the leader of the migrant caravan that left Tapachula, Chiapas, on October 23 of lies and manipulation to turn the migrants against the authorities.
The INM said Irineo Mújica of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, whom it called the “self described leader” of the largely Central American convoy, had put the health and safety of the migrants at risk. It accused him of creating “animosity against the personnel of various government agencies who, when trying to approach to provide support, have been met with rejection and even attacks with sticks and stones.”
The agency compared Mújica to a human trafficker and said it was “regrettable that the migrants who belong to this march are victims of particular interests,” without providing details.
In response, Mújica said he was more trustworthy than the INM. “I never called myself a leader, but a human rights defender who has credibility and who during all my years of work has earned the respect of the migrant community and many other people, no matter what the institute tries to say … They [the INM] have terrorized the caravan, had women aborted, participated in the kidnapping of migrants, and it is the most corrupt organization in the history of federal agencies,” he said.
The INM also said almost 1,500 migrants had received humanitarian visas which provide the right to work and freedom of transit in Mexico for a year. That marks a successful if strenuous trip for those migrants who were not able to process asylum applications through the refugee agency COMAR, which had buckled under the weight of an unprecedented number of applications.
What has complicated the INM’s efforts to contain the caravan and process visas is mistrust: many of the contingent have passed through the agency’s prison-like detention centers — some held for months — after being involuntarily “rescued” by immigration agents.
President López Obrador responded to questions about immigration at his morning press conference on Monday. “We help the migrants, we respect them, protect them, take care of them, their rights are not violated, and when there are abuses, those who commit these excesses are punished,” he said.
The president failed to directly address a question on why COMAR’s budget was not increased despite the unprecedented number of asylum applications, which the agency had failed to process. Instead, he replied, “There is no country that is allocating so many resources in proportion to its economic capacity … to help its people, especially poor people,” he said.
Nevertheless, the president offered some encouragement: “We are also in solidarity with migrants,” he said.
