LP gas distributors cease operations in protest against price ceiling

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August 4, 2021

Independent distributors declared an indefinite strike on Tuesday.

Many LP gas distributors went on strike in Mexico City and México state on Tuesday to protest against price ceilings set by the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) on Sunday.

The National Gas Workers Union called on crews that distribute gas to go on an indefinite strike to protest the price controls, which caused prices to drop by almost 11% on average across Mexico and 24% in Mexico City. Gas workers said the strike could expand to other states.

The CRE published maximum LP gas prices for 145 regions across the country after the Energy Ministry instructed it to do so last week, a directive deemed illegal by Mexico’s antitrust regulator. The current price caps on LP gas – used by almost four in five Mexican households for cooking and to fuel water heaters – will remain in effect until Saturday but controls will continue for six months.

President López Obrador, who is aiming to keep all fuel price increases below the level of inflation, has railed against recent gas price hikes, asserting they have occurred “unjustifiably.”

Last month he announced the creation of a new state-owned company that will distribute LP gas, much of which is imported, at “fair prices.”

Many gas distributors say that the price caps announced by the CRE will hurt their earnings and make their jobs unviable. On Tuesday, trucks owned by small independent distribution companies and their crews blocked entrances to gas tank farms in greater Mexico City to protest the price ceilings.

Experts had warned that imposing price caps would likely lead to gas shortages because distributors could refuse to operate if the government sought to limit their profits. Ricardo Sheffield, chief of the consumer protection agency Profeco, warned that gas distributors could be stripped of their licenses if they didn’t respect the new price ceilings.

The Mexican Association of Gas Distributors, another organization that represents gas tank farms and large distribution companies that own fleets of trucks, didn’t support Tuesday’s strike.

It distanced itself from “the actions by groups of independents who work on commission, who do not hold distribution permits and who are blocking plants, preventing us from going out and working to supply homes and businesses that need gas.”

Photos published by media outlets showed masked men smashing the windows of some small gas tank trucks in an apparent attempt to force their crews to join the strike, which left many gas consumers in the Valley of México, including business owners, without gas.

Some residents of Tlalnepantla, a México state municipality that borders the capital, went to the neighborhood of San Juan Ixhuatepec, where several gas vendors are located, to try to purchase the fuel. But many were unsuccessful because the companies were closed or out of gas.

Ascención Ávila, a housewife, was unable to buy gas at four different companies she visited.

“Obviously it’s something basic we need to do our [household] activities,” she told the newspaper Reforma. “… I’m surprised that none of the gas companies have any. … I see that I’m not the only one [without gas], there are a lot of people in this situation.”

Some small-scale gas distributors who didn’t heed the advice to strike also found themselves unable to purchase gas.

“The instruction was to strike but a lot of us live day to day. … Today we won’t earn anything,” one distributor said.

In Nicolás Romero, another México state municipality that is part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area, an employee of a small gas distribution company told Reforma that López Obrador had not shown a willingness to talk to gas companies about their prices.

“Ultimately, [gas] companies have to make some profit. If they don’t, how will they pay employees, gasoline and everything else they have to use in order to provide service,” he said.

UPDATE: The union called off the work stoppage on Wednesday afternoon, telling reporters at a press conference that participating distributors had resumed gas deliveries.

With reports from El País, Reforma and AP

12,800 migrants sought asylum in July as monthly figures continue to climb

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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Immigration agents and migrants: more than 64,000 application have been made for asylum this year.

The number of people seeking asylum in the first seven months of the year is close to becoming a record for the highest yearly total as growing numbers of migrants choose to stay in Mexico, although it is unclear how long they intend to remain.

The Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) has registered 64,378 applications for asylum so far this year. July alone saw 12,804 asylum requests, 11,023 more than in July 2020.

In 2019, which saw the highest number of asylum applications since 2013, 70,405 applications were received, only 6,027 higher than this year.

The comparable seven-month period in 2019 recorded a relatively modest 40,158 requests.

In 2013, when record keeping began, only 1,296 migrants made asylum applications. The figure spiked in 2019 when far more than double requested asylum compared to the previous year. The total receded in 2020 due to limitations on cross border movement in the Covid-19 pandemic, only to spike again this year.

applications for asylum — Applications made during the first seven months of the last three years. comar

Since 2019, migrants from Honduras have made the most requests.

Large numbers of asylum seekers have also come from Haiti, Cuba, El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala and Nicaragua since 2019. The vast majority of applications for asylum are made at the Tapachula, Chiapas, office at the Guatemalan border.

In the first seven months of the year 19,383 asylum applications were processed. Venezuelan migrants’ applications were approved in 97% of cases, requests from Salvadorans were approved in 87% of cases and applications from Hondurans in 85% of cases. In contrast, asylum requests from Haitians were normally rejected: only 32% were granted.

With reports from El Economista

Suspected thief tied to tree and set on fire in Chiapas

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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The suspected thief — The suspect who was apprehended by a mob in Chiapas.

A suspected thief was set on fire in the ejido of Matamoros, Chiapas, close to the Guatemala border, in an act of mob justice on Monday.

Antonio “N,” 29, was apprehended by around 60 people at his home who beat him, tied him to a tree and set him on fire, saying they would bring him to justice as authorities would let him off without punishment.

Some of the group managed to aid him by stripping him of his flammable clothes and eventually brought water to put the fire out. Hours later he was found near a river with third-degree burns.

The assailants had accused him of stealing more than 10 motorcycles including a violent robbery in a nearby municipality, from which he fled on the vehicle.

A video was uploaded to social media in which Antonio could be heard screaming as he rolled on the ground burning. A voice can be heard shouting “Bring water, bring water,” before the flames were extinguished.

While Antonio was captive, police officers arrived to try to liberate him, but the mob refused to hand him over and pledged that they would do justice without the help of authorities.

With reports from Milenio and La Silla Rota

International environmental fest will plant 45,000 mangroves in Mexico

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Shannon Collins

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August 3, 2021

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El Corchito Ecological Reserve, Mexico — Mangroves at El Corchito Ecological Reserve in Progreso, Yucatán. deposit photos

This week, between August 2 and 8, Mexico will be at the forefront of the Plastic Oceans’ Trees & Seas international festival, celebrating the importance of forests and the oceans and the places where they intersect.

Building on Plastic Oceans’ BlueCommunities initiative, which strengthens local environmental action, the Trees & Seas festival will take place in more than 30 communities internationally, a number of them right here in Mexico.

This year, the primary hub for the event will be Chiloé Island, Chile; a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Patagonia. A number of satellite locations will also be holding events across the globe, including four in Mexico, making the nation one of the global forerunners for progressive community conservation in the program.

The inaugural year of the weeklong festival will see more than 100 beach and forest cleanups globally, more than 50 youth workshops and more than 20 panel discussions streamed via Zoom, plus the planting of more than 90,000 trees. This total includes 45,000 mangroves in Mexico, where there will be a significant drive to aid the restoration of this most remarkable of ecosystems through forest and coastal cleanups and educational workshops.

“We wanted to create awareness about the connection between ocean and forest conservation, which too often are thought of as separate entities that have nothing to do with each other,” says Salvador Ávila, executive director of Plastic Oceans Mexico. “At best, people see them as distantly related. There needs to be a shift in perspective toward viewing them as connected parts of a whole, so we created a global reforestation event in collaboration with semi-aquatic communities.”

Trees & Seas youth workshop — Part of the Trees & Seas festival’s events this week will be a number of youth workshops.

The importance of conserving mangrove ecosystems in Mexico cannot be understated. To geographers, mangroves are known as “watershed terminal ecosystems,” meaning they are critical boundary points at which the land and the sea interact. They have functional characteristics that determine how human communities exist within them — for example, acting as natural boundaries against seaborne weather systems and filtering runoff from the land into the ocean.

As of 2017, official studies determined that more than 18,000 hectares of mangrove forest had been lost in Mexico as a result of infrastructure and urban and tourism development significantly compromising their ecological benefits. Yet, rising sea levels and increasingly extreme weather patterns as a result of climate change, expected to worsen over the coming years, mean that the restoration of mangrove ecosystems along the Mexican coastline is more important than ever.

On a broader level, the restoration of mangroves in Mexico also offers the opportunity to meet 2030 carbon reduction targets, set as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.

Given that current government policies mean that Mexico is already failing to meet its 2020 pledge of a 30% reduction, it is essential that conservation work that encourages carbon sequestering is brought to the fore. Moreover, mangroves are key to the strengthening of coastal protection and the recovery of marine ecosystems.

Alongside the year-round work done by Plastic Oceans to conserve marine environments, the Trees & Seas festival will support workshops, webinars throughout the week and cleanups hosted by ecological groups of every variety.

In the Yucatán Peninsula, where the waterways are already a focal point for conversations around sustainable ecosystem management, participating organizations will be running a wide array of events, including a Snorkel4Trash in the Riviera Maya with the non-profit Saving Our Sharks; reforestations in Akumal, Playa del Carmen and Campeche and educational and cultural events at the latter location.

The promise of such wide-ranging engagement in the festival’s inaugural year speaks to the value of the existing work being done by the BlueCommunities of the Yucatán and to increasing public awareness about the oceans’ plight in the face of chemical runoff and oil spills, rising global temperatures and the 10 million tonnes of plastic waste that finds its way into ocean currents every year.

Nevertheless, Ávila is keen to share the importance of the community work already being done by the organizations across Mexico and the globe in raising awareness for the conservation of all kinds of environment: oceans, forests, parks and beyond.

“The willingness and enthusiasm of the organizations involved in this event really highlight the importance of coming together in our communities — as a global entity, no less — to raise awareness about the interconnection of ecosystems on our planet,” he said.

The Trees & Seas festival will build on the cornerstone of grassroots environmental activism: using people power to foster a healthier planet. Increasingly across the world, networks that have a real impact on the global environment are being built through this formation of relationships, where commitment to making a positive change becomes a driving force irrespective of creed, color or religion.

Against the often harrowing environmental news we consume daily, focusing on the amazing work being done by so many people on the front lines can perhaps be a shot in the arm for catalyzing our renewed efforts to combat ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss and, of course, the ever-changing climate.

• For more information about the festival, including how to get involved, visit Plastic Oceans’ Trees & Seas festival web page.

Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.

Film brings to life the suffering of a mother searching for her missing child

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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An award-winning Mexican film about a mother’s search for her missing son will begin screening in cinemas this Thursday.

Sin Señas Particulares (rendered in English as Identifying Features) is a low-budget film directed by Fernanda Valadez that won best picture at the 2020 edition of the Morelia International Film Festival.

It recounts the story of Magdalena, a mother whose son disappeared while traveling north from Guanajuato to seek a better life in the United States. She also heads north but to try to find out what happened to her son. During her journey she comes across other people who are also looking for their missing loved ones, a common situation in Mexico where there are more than 90,000 missing people.

“Magdalena embarks on a journey to find her son, who disappeared on his way to the Mexico-U.S. border. Guided by her strong will, she travels across the desolate landscapes of today’s Mexico, where victims and perpetrators wander together,” says a Morelia film festival synopsis of the movie.

Magdalena, who has never before left her home town and doesn’t know how to read or write, is confronted with a “corrupt and saturated [justice] system,” according to a review by the newspaper El País.

Identifying Features – Official Trailer

Watch this video on YouTube

Despite what she is told by the authorities, she refuses to accept that her son is dead because files she is given about his supposed death make no mention of his identifying features.

The film, which also won prizes at the Sundance and San Sebastián film festivals, takes viewers on an “almost hypnotic visual experience,” El País said. It has a soundtrack capable of accelerating or slowing down the pace of the film at will.

The script was co-written by Valadez and Astrid Rondero, who was once a student of the first-time feature film director.

The former said that the film alludes to the period after former president Felipe Calderón launched the militarized war on drug cartels in late 2006. Thousands of people subsequently disappeared, and kidnappings remain a major problem in Mexico today, although the crime was down 29% in the first half of 2021.

“Mothers of the victims became detectives and activists, and they obtained more information than the authorities at times,” Valadez said, referring to the years when Calderón was in office.

Magdalena is played by Mercedes Hernández, who won the best actress prize at last year’s film festival in Morelia.

Unlike some other Mexican films that are based on true stories, Sin Señas Particulares tells a fictional story albeit one that is comparable to countless real-life ones.

Valadez said the acclaim for the film was unexpected. “We weren’t prepared [for that]. It’s a very small film with a small budget. … As we didn’t have expectations, we had the freedom to tell a story without thinking about what would happen later at festivals or with an audience,” she said.

Two other Mexican films that explore themes of violence have also won critical acclaim recently. La Civil and Noche de Fuego (Prayers for the Stolen) both won prizes at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Hernández also appears in La Civil, which received an eight-minute-long standing ovation at Cannes, as well as Somos, a Netflix series based on a story published by investigative news agency ProPublica that revealed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s role in setting off a massacre in northern Mexico in 2011.

With reports from El País

Angry bull breaks out of enclosure, injures 10 at illegal rodeo

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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Video frames reveal havoc in the bullring Sunday.

A bull went on the rampage among spectators at an illegal rodeo in Puruándiro, Michoacán, on Sunday after it escaped from its enclosure.

Witnesses reported that at least 10 people were injured by the bull at the “La Salud” bullring, even though such events are officially banned due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Videos of the incident, which were uploaded onto social media, showed the bull jump over the weak fence which was meant to contain it. A number of people were knocked down including a woman who was trapped underneath the animal. Spectators close to the barrier were rammed and others screamed and fled.

Women and children were among the crowd.

Panic spread around the arena while staff tried in vain to contain the animal. In one video an onlooker can be heard shouting that one of the people in danger was a man in a wheelchair.

Embestida de toro deja al menos 10 lesionados durante jaripeo en Puruándiro, Michoacán

Watch this video on YouTube

Municipal authorities have admitted that a license was granted for the event and have stated their commitment to investigate why it was granted. The rodeo involved the sale and consumption of alcohol, dancing and a performance of music typical to the region.

Michoacán went from green to yellow on the coronavirus stoplight map on July 19.

With reports from Uno TV, El Universal and Infobae

97% of hospitalized Covid patients haven’t been vaccinated: Covid czar

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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Ninety-seven percent of Covid-19 patients who are currently hospitalized haven’t been vaccinated, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.

Speaking at President López Obrador’s regular news conference, the coronavirus point man noted that just over 48 million Mexicans have received at least one vaccine shot, a figure that represents about 53% of the adult population.

“The vaccine has a very, very significant protective effect, especially in reducing serious Covid situations. Ninety-seven percent of people that are in the hospital today due to Covid didn’t get vaccinated,” López-Gatell said.

“… Getting vaccinated is very important,” he said, urging people who have not yet had a shot to do so.

“… There is a positive effect of vaccination [shown] in real data,” the deputy minister said while presenting information that showed declining Covid-19 death rates. “Vaccination reduces the impact of Covid-19.”

Mexico has the fourth highest official Covid-19 death toll in the world – 241,279 as of Monday – but fatalities during the third and current wave of the pandemic have been significantly lower than those recorded in the first and second waves.

There were more than 17,000 reported Covid-19 fatalities in each of June, July and August last year as a result of the first wave, while the second, and worst, wave caused death tolls of almost 20,000 last December, nearly 33,000 in January – the worst month of the pandemic in terms of both cases and deaths – and over 27,000 in February.

July of this year was the second worst of the pandemic in terms of reported cases – almost 329,000 – but Covid-19 deaths last month, at 7,859, were 76% lower than the January peak.

Hospitalizations have trended upwards recently as the coronavirus – especially the highly contagious delta strain – finds vulnerable people to infect, but occupancy rates haven’t reached the levels seen at the peak of the second wave.

Nevertheless, the Covid-19 wards in many hospitals have reached maximum capacity. Federal data shows that 124 hospitals across Mexico have 100% occupancy rates for general care hospital beds. The rate is 90% or higher in 34 other hospitals.

In Guerrero, hospitals in Acapulco, Chilpancingo, Ometepec and Zihuatanejo are all under extreme pressure, according to Governor Héctor Astudillo, while hospitals in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, are in the same situation, said Governor Enrique Alfaro.

Bahía de Banderas hospital in Nayarit has been overwhelmed.

Hospitals in Vallarta have come under increased pressure because the IMSS #33 hospital in nearby Bahía de Banderas, Nayarit, is overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients.

Federal data shows that saturated hospitals are located in many states, including Guanajuato, Mexico City, Guerrero, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí, Durango, Jalisco, Nayarit, Baja California Sur, Yucatán and Puebla.

“… As is the case in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, the vast majority of hospitalized people in Puerto Vallarta are young people and those older than 40 who haven’t been vaccinated,” the Jalisco Health Ministry said in a statement.

The percentage of Covid-19 patients infected with the delta strain is unknown but given that the highly infectious variant is spreading widely in Mexico it is likely to be high.

An internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document that was made public last Friday said that delta spreads as easily as chickenpox and disease caused by the variant is “likely more severe” than that caused by other strains.

The United States public health agency cited research in Canada, Singapore and Scotland that showed that people infected with the delta strain were more likely to be hospitalized than Covid-19 patients infected with other variants earlier in the pandemic.

But disease experts who spoke with the Reuters news agency said the research in all three countries was based on limited study populations and has not yet been reviewed by outside experts.

“… The experts said more work is needed to compare outcomes among larger numbers of individuals in epidemiological studies to sort out whether one variant causes more severe disease than another,” Reuters said.

In Mexico, ensuring that hospitals have enough capacity to accommodate another influx of Covid-19 patients is of more immediate concern than determining conclusively whether delta causes more severe illness or not.

To that end, López-Gatell said Tuesday that the country is once again in the process of reconverting hospitals to increase their capacity to treat Covid patients.

The Health Ministry reported Monday that 48% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are occupied while 39% of those with ventilators are in use. However, those rates could increase quickly as tens of millions of Mexicans remain unvaccinated even as the delta strain fuels a growing third wave.

According to Health Ministry estimates, there are currently just over 120,000 active cases across Mexico, down from a record high of almost 138,000 on Saturday, but that number will likely spike on Tuesday afternoon after new confirmed cases are reported. Throughout the pandemic, reported case numbers have dipped on Sundays and Mondays due to a drop-off in testing and/or the recording and reporting of test results on weekends.

Mexico’s accumulated case tally currently stands at 2.86 million, while the Covid-19 fatality rate here based on official numbers for infections and deaths is 8.4 fatalities per 100 cases. Among the 20 countries currently most affected by the pandemic, Mexico has the second highest case fatality rate after Peru, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Mexico’s mortality rate is the 21st highest in the world at 189.1 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 people. Peru ranks first on that list followed by Hungary and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

With reports from Reforma, El Universal, Milenio and Reuters

Fishermen claim illegal fishing out of control in Yucatán

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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A Yucatán fisherman with lobster, the most popular species among poachers.

Illegal fishing off the northern coast of Yucatán is out of control but authorities are doing little to stop it, according to local fishermen.

The problem is particularly bad in the southern Gulf of Mexico off the Costa Esmeralda, or Emerald Coast, a stretch of coastline where towns such as Progreso, Telchac Puerto, Dzilam de Bravo and Río Lagartos are located.

“Poaching is terrible, that’s the reality. … There are no longer any fish,” Carlos Puga, leader of a fishing cooperative in Río Lagartos, told the newspaper Milenio.

He said illegal fishermen work day and night throughout the whole year and are depleting stocks of fish and other marine creatures that legal fishermen depend on for their livelihood. Authorities carry out few operations to clamp down on the practice, he said.

“We can patrol at day but how can we at night?… It’s terrible and now there’s not just a few of them [illegal fishermen], there’s excessive poaching and now they’re attacking us from two sides,” Puga said.

yucatan fishermen — Fishermen say authorities are doing little to stop poachers.

“They come here from the west [Campeche] and they’re starting to arrive from the east [Quintana Roo]. There is illegal fishing in Quintana Roo and they come as far as here, Río Lagartos,” he said.

Puga said that illegal fishing will remain a problem while wholesalers continue to buy seafood such as lobsters and octopus during the closed season for those species. Most of the illicitly-caught product is shipped to Mexico City, Guadalajara and foreign markets, he said.

“… There’s a mafia, that’s the truth,” Puga said, adding that large-scale illegal fishing has been occurring for “three or four seasons.”

Milenio accompanied two Río Lagartos fishermen/lobster divers on a recent fishing trip, and while they were able to catch some 20 kilograms of lobster and grouper they recalled catches of 40-60 kilograms at the same time in previous years.

José Santiago Vallejos Marrufo, the fishing boat’s owner, and Gaspar Medina Gómez, his right-hand man, said they sometimes return to shore empty-handed because stocks are so depleted by illegal fishing.

“… There are good days and bad days. … We know we can fail but we can also win,” said Vallejos.

Asked whether illegal fishing angered him, he responded: “Well, yes but what can we do.”

Milenio sought to discuss the issue with the Yucatán delegate of the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Commission last week but Mauro Cristales Márquez said he couldn’t offer any comment in the lead-up to Sunday’s referendum over whether past presidents should be investigated for crimes they may have committed while in office.

Similarly, President López Obrador claimed in May that the government couldn’t respond to the nationwide drought because election silence rules in the lead-up to the June 6 elections prevented it from doing so.

Dulce María Sauri, president of the federal Chamber of Deputies and a former interim governor of Yucatán, was prepared to speak, telling Milenio that illegal fishing is an “extremely complex” issue but one that must be combatted.

The ministries of the Environment, the Navy and Economy all have responsibilities in the fight against the practice, she said.

Illegal fishing also occurs in other parts of the country – including the upper Gulf of California where the critically endangered vaquita marina porpoise lives. The United States NGO Oceana revealed in June that the practice was putting endangered species at risk in seven protected areas. Scorpion Reef, located due north of Progreso, was found to be the worst affected area, with 106 vessels recorded in a place where no type of fishing is allowed.

While much of the illegal fishing off the coast off Yucatán goes unpunished, there have been some arrests and seizures of illegally caught seafood. Most recently, two men were arrested last weekend by Yucatán police while transporting 720 kilograms of octopus, whose extraction is currently prohibited due to a closed season in the state.

With reports from Milenio

Teachers protest in Colima after state pleads insolvency, misses payroll

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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Traffic backed up Saturday on the Colima-Guadalajara highway.

Teachers in Colima blocked a highway in the state capital on both Saturday and Monday to demand the payment of their salaries after the outgoing Governor José Ignacio Peralta said last Thursday that no money was available.

The protesters used tractor-trailers, cars and other vehicles to obstruct traffic for more than three hours on both days on Colima-Guadalajara highway.

The local head of the SNTE teacher’s union, Heriberto Valladares Ochoa, said the money for salaries for the second half of July was used instead to pay off bank debt. “Insensitively, [Governor Peralta] preferred to take the resources already budgeted by Congress for our pay to deal with the liabilities with the banks,” he said.

The governor said last Thursday that the state was too short of funds to pay salaries for state workers and pensions, affecting 8,000 people. “We are not in a financial position to to pay the second half of July,” he said, and argued that the insolvency was due to the Covid-19 pandemic rather than financial mismanagement. He added that the pandemic had necessitated the use of 1 billion pesos (about US $50 million) for short term loans.

“I know the repercussions this generates, people have payment commitments … but we have explored each and every possible option,” he said. He added that federal law left him with no choice but to pay off the loans before the end of his mandate.

The state Congress has summoned Peralta and former state finance minister Carlos Arturo Noriega to appear before Congress on Wednesday to explain the hole in the public purse.

Peralta’s mandate ends on October 31. For the first time in more than 70 years, Colima elected a governor from a party other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the June 6 election. Morena candidate Indira Vizcaíno Silva will assume the post.

With reports from Reforma and AF Medios

Deputy minister reprimands Congress over delay in lawmaker’s sexual assault case

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MND Staff

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August 3, 2021

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Encinas, left and Monreal clashed over a delay in removing a federal deputy's immunity.

A senior federal official has rebuked lawmakers for not moving quickly to revoke the legal immunity of a federal deputy accused of sexually assaulting a minor.

Saúl Huerta, a deputy with the ruling Morena party, is accused of assaulting a 15-year-old boy at a Mexico City hotel earlier this year. Authorities in the capital filed an application with the federal Congress to remove his immunity so that they can proceed against him.

Speaking in the Senate on Monday, Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas criticized senators and deputies for delaying a vote over whether Huerta should be stripped of his immunity from prosecution, a process known as desafuero.

“… We very much regret that the matter of desafuero of the Deputy Saúl Corona, accused of rape and sexual abuse, has been excluded from the extraordinary period of [Congress] sessions,” he said.

Encinas asserted that lawmakers are sending a “very negative” and “contradictory” message in not moving quickly to strip the deputy of his immunity because government and elected officials have a responsibility to be the main proponents of the eradication of sexual assault.

Deputy Huerta is at the center of a sexual assault case.

The process has been delayed several times since it began shortly after the assault accusation surfaced, triggering accusations by opposition politicians that the Morena party was attempting to slow the process.

Huerta, who represented Puebla in the lower house of Congress, has maintained that he is innocent and that the crime he is accused of was fabricated to harm his reputation. He didn’t contest the June 6 elections and will leave public office at the end of this month.

An audio recording of Huerta speaking to the mother of the boy he allegedly assaulted was published by Imagen Televisión in April.

“Don’t destroy me,” he pleads with her on repeated occasions. “Let’s reach an economic agreement. … I’m begging you, help me; you’re going to destroy me. I’m a good person,” Huerta said. His alleged victim was working on his campaign for reelection as a flyer distributor.

Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the Senate, rejected Encinas’ reprimand, asserting that the Congress will not tolerate impunity.

“No! I don’t accept your complaint, Mr. Alejandro Encinas,” he said. “… We’re not going to allow any impunity. … For your knowledge, there won’t be impunity in the Congress and in the Senate we won’t protect anyone, no one at all.”

The senator said the Congress’ permanent commission will convene on Tuesday to schedule a new extraordinary period for next week at which the desafuero of Huerta and Mauricio Toledo, a Labor Party deputy accused of illicit enrichment, will be considered.

“I give you my word, nobody’s case will be shelved, and that’s why I don’t accept your complaint. We’re doing our job [and] as we respect your job, we would also like our job to to be respected,” Monreal said.

“Decisions here are taken by a qualified or simple majority. Once again I give you my word that we won’t cover up for anyone,” he said, adding that Morena will take “pertinent decisions in benefit of justice so that nobody [who committed a crime] goes unpunished.”

Prior to Encinas’ appearance in the Senate, Mexico City Attorney General Ernestina Godoy was critical of the Congress’ failure to promptly consider the desafuero of Huerta and Toledo.

“At the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office we don’t accept the determination adopted by the permanent commission … to exclude from the schedule … analysis and a vote on … the withdrawal of immunity,” she wrote on Twitter last Friday.

“There is still time to correct this terrible determination if all the political parties decide to place this issue on their priority agenda. Politics cannot be divorced from justice,” the Attorney General’s Office said in a separate tweet.

With reports from El País and Milenio