Since the middle of May, investigators have been digging up floors of the house where the suspect lived. There is a possibility that even more human remains will be discovered as they now intend to excavate soil beneath several other rooms that Andrés N. rented out on the same property in Atizapán, part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area.
According to some media reports, the suspect has admitted to murdering as many as 30 women over the past two decades.
Authorities have also found women’s belongings such as shoes, makeup, cell phones and voter IDs at his home as well as notebooks filled with women’s names.
The México state Attorney General’s Office (FGJEM) said in a statement that the bone fragments “are being subjected to lateralization studies, which include carefully cleaning each one, identifying what part of the body they are and then placing them in their anatomical position, providing a method for determining the approximate number of victims.”
“This analysis indicates that, up to now, the bone fragments found may possibly be those of 17 people,” the FGJEM said, adding that experts are examining the fragments to determine if DNA can be extracted from them to identify victims. It also said that it is looking at 600 missing person files from the past 30 years.
Andrés N. is in custody and has been ordered to stand trial on the murder of 34-year-old Reyna González Amador, the police commander’s wife. The suspect was a friend of the victim’s family, who considered him a kind of “charity case,” according to a report by the Associated Press.
González went to the man’s house the day she disappeared to pick him up for a shopping trip. After she failed to return home, her husband confronted the suspect and found his wife’s remains at his house. Police swooped in to arrest Andrés N., and investigators subsequently found ample evidence of his alleged crimes, including video and audio recordings of his victims and their murders.
If it is proven that he killed 17 women, the septuagenarian will become one of the most murderous serial killers ever captured in the Mexico City area, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Juana Barraza Samperio, a former professional wrestler dubbed “La Mataviejitas” (The Little Old Lady Killer), was arrested in 2006 and confirmed to have killed 17 women, although she likely murdered many more.
Three years ago, Juan Carlos Hernández Bejar and Patricia Martínez Bernal – known as the “Monsters of Ecatepec” – were arrested and convicted of nine femicides, although the couple was suspected of killing some 20 women.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard's 15-page response to a New York Times article accusing him of rushing the building of the city Metro's Line 12 said that the city's next government was notorious for poorly maintaining the Metro's tracks.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard claimed Sunday that his responses to questions posed to him by The New York Times about a Mexico City Metro line that was built while he was mayor and on which a devastating crash occurred last month were “completely ignored.”
Ebrard, mayor between 2006 and 2012, made the claim even though a Times investigation that concluded that shoddy construction work on an overpass on Line 12 caused it to collapse on May 3 did in fact cite several of his responses.
In a Twitter post, the foreign minister also said he would share his “assessment of the technical assertions and the political intent” of the Times probe after official reports into the cause of the crash that claimed the lives of 26 people have been released.
In a 15-page response, which Ebrard published online on Sunday, the former mayor addressed 13 questions put to him by the newspaper.
While the Times omitted much of the detail in his lengthy responses, it did acknowledge that “Mr. Ebrard said that ‘the issues observed’ during construction of the Metro line did not affect its operation” because “all observations” from federal auditors “were resolved.”
The newspaper also acknowledged that “he suggested the cause of the crash may have been tied to maintenance, saying it was impossible to know whether his successor [Miguel Ángel Mancera] ‘conducted all of the maintenance work required in the event of earthquakes of a certain magnitude.’”
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake caused extensive damage in Mexico City on September 19, 2017, and affected at least one support column on the elevated section of Line 12.
There was a “notorious lack of timely preventative and corrective maintenance of tracks,” Ebrard said, referring to the 2012–2018 period when Mancera was mayor.
The Times — which said that the rush to finish the so-called Golden Line before Ebrard left office resulted in “a frenzied construction process that began before a master plan had been finalized and produced a Metro line with defects from the start” — also said that foreign minister “noted that using ‘as built’ plans, in which companies draw up blueprints as they build, was common and ‘allowed for technical flexibility’ without ‘compromising the integrity or safety of the project.’”
Nevertheless, Ebrard — considered a leading contender to succeed President López Obrador — evidently believes that his responses were given short shrift by the newspaper.
One response that the Times omitted was Ebrard’s remarks with regard to accusations that the construction of Line 12 was rushed to ensure that it was completed before he left office in order to increase his chances of contending and winning the 2012 presidential election. The Times said the “heralded expansion” of the Mexico City Metro system “could boost his credentials for a possible presidential run” but didn’t publish Ebrard’s thoughts on that issue.
Mayor Sheinbaum sees hidden interests behind New York Times story.
In his statement to the newspaper, he wrote:
“The accusation doesn’t have the slightest support. The inauguration of the project occurred on October 30, 2012, four months after the presidential election won by Enrique Peña Nieto. Since November 2011, I rejected any ambition to a candidacy and expressed my support to the now President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.”
The Times also reported that Enrique Horcasitas, the Line 12 project director, said the companies building the line faced a fine of about $120 million if they did not finish well before Mr. Ebrard’s term ended.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who could face a backlash or worse if a lack of maintenance is found to have contributed or caused the May 3 disaster, also responded to the Times report.
“About the article … and the assertion that some people have made that the information came from the Mexico City government, I categorically clarify that we’ve never used leaks to journalists to inform or to do our job. And especially not to a media outlet that has sought to confront the fourth transformation,” she wrote on Twitter, using the term López Obrador uses to refer to the profound change he says he is bringing to Mexico and which also functions as a byword for the federal government and the ruling Morena party.
“We’ve been very responsible in waiting for the professional technical reports. It’s not our style to leak information and it never will be. We’re characterized by telling the truth directly without any intermediaries,” Sheinbaum said.
“The most important thing for us is to attend to the victims in a comprehensive way, as we have been doing, and to find out the causes [of the crash] in a professional way in order to attend to the repair of Line 12 as soon as possible,” she said. “[Applying] sanctions corresponds to other authorities. One has to wonder what hidden interests are behind this article?”
The middle class population in states that elected new governors. 'Nac.' stands for national. el universal
The middle class — which President López Obrador characterized last week as a political opponent — forms 41% of Mexican households.
About 14.5 million families belong to that segment of the population, according to the 2020 census and data from the Mexican Association of Market Research Agencies (AMAI).
The ruling Morena party fared poorly in the June 6 midterm elections in states and in boroughs of the capital which have large middle class populations.
Since the elections AMLO, as the president is commonly known, has spent time dissecting the outcome at his morning press conferences and on Friday, the middle class became a new target for criticism. He branded the segment “aspirational and selfish” and suggested middle class Mexicans want “to succeed at all costs.”
But they are not generally fans of Morena, at least not any more.
López Obrador observed that members of the middle class with higher educational qualifications were “very difficult to convince” of his political project.
Morena prospered in the governors’ race, but lost in states with a large middle class. The opposition took Nuevo León, where 56.1% of households fall in that bracket, the highest proportion in the country. It also triumphed in Chihuahua and Querétaro where 48.5% of households are defined as middle class.
Similarly, in Mexico City nine of 16 boroughs went to the opposition, where overall 51.1% of homes sit within the middle class bracket.
The ruling party took five states where middle class presence is low: Guerrero, with 24.8%; Campeche, 33.8%; Tlaxcala and Michoacán, both with 37.6%; and Nayarit, 39.4%.
However, in one state with the middle class segment measuring 38.8% of households voters opted for a rival left wing opponent: a Green Party-Labor Party coalition won in San Luis Potosí.
Morena secretary general Citlalli Hernández says the party’s losses in Mexico City show that it is out of touch with voters in the segment. “We have have been losing the ability to create a narrative that connects with the middle class that traditionally supported us,” she said.
She also referred to a “dirty war” by traditional media against the administration, an idea that the president has consistently promoted, and disagreed that the intensity of the Covid-19 pandemic in the capital or the Metro disaster in May, which killed 26 people, were decisive.
Statisticians have a hard time delineating class brackets for population analyses. The national statistics institute, Inegi, uses a range of qualitative variables, like educational level, alongside household spending and income.
However, Inegi says purely econometric studies have placed a similar proportion of the households in the middle class segment. One such study, published for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, defined the middle class by a monthly income range of $6,260 (about US $300) to $16,700 ($840).
A memorial to the victims of the Line 12 accident at Los Olivos Station, near where an overpass collapsed, killing 26.
A New York Times investigation has found serious flaws in the construction of the Mexico City Metro overpass that collapsed on May 3, causing two train cars to plummet some 12 meters toward traffic below in an accident that claimed the lives of 26 people.
Published Sunday, the Times investigation said the subway disaster threatens to ensnare two of Mexico’s most powerful figures: Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who was Mexico City mayor when the Metro line where the accident occurred was built, and billionaire businessman Carlos Slim, whose company Carso Infrastructure and Construction built the section of Line 12 that collapsed.
The Times said that its probe, which was based on years of government records, interviews with people who worked on construction of Line 12 and expert analysis of evidence from the site of the crash, “found serious flaws in the basic construction of the Metro that appear to have led directly to its collapse.”
Thousands of photos of the crash site, located in the southeast of Mexico City, were reviewed by several leading engineers who reached the same conclusion, the newspaper said: “The steel studs that were vital to the strength of the overpass — linchpins of the entire structure — appear to have failed because of bad welds, critical mistakes that likely caused the crash.”
The Times said it was told by people familiar with the official investigations that the conclusion that bad welds of metal studs connecting steel beams to a concrete slab caused the overpass to collapse is one of the main explanations for the crash that is under consideration by city officials.
The purpose of the studs installed during construction was to secure the overpass to its support beams and strengthen the overpass’ integrity.
The apparently shoddy construction may be the result of rushing to complete construction because Ebrard wanted to open Line 12 before his term as mayor concluded in 2012 in order to boost his future political prospects, the newspaper said.
The approximately US $2 billion line, which runs across southern Mexico City from Mixcoac in the west to Tláhuac in the east, has been plagued by problems since it opened, and about half of the line was out of service for months in 2014 as structural repairs were carried out.
The rush to finish the so-called Golden Line resulted in “a frenzied construction process that began before a master plan had been finalized and produced a Metro line with defects from the start,” the Times said.
It noted that federal auditors determined that the Mexico City government “authorized poor quality work” even as construction was taking place and that the new line was certified as safe less than an hour before it opened. That despite the fact that “thousands of pieces of work had not been completed, according to a 2014 investigation by the city’s Legislative Assembly.”
The Times also noted that the Mexico City government found errors in the section of the line built by Carso – which had no prior experience on rail projects – after a major earthquake in September 2017. According to an unreleased 2017 government document, those construction errors included incorrectly poured concrete and missing steel components.
A teenage girl who was badly injured in the crash and whose sister was killed told the Times that the Metro was shaking so much on the day of the tragedy that “it was like it was dancing.”
In the days following the overpass’ collapse, Mexico City residents protested on Tláhuac avenue for justice for the accident’s victims.
In 2014, then Metro chief Joel Ortega made eerily similar remarks. “The line was dancing” and the train “was floating over the tracks,” he said. After the line shut down that year, Ortega acknowledged that passengers’ safety had been placed at risk on the line, which serves mainly poor neighborhoods in Mexico City’s southeast.
Jorge Gaviño, Metro director when the 2017 earthquake occurred, said that Line 12 “was born with cancer.”
“The definition of hidden defects is that you can’t see them — on the surface, everything looks good, but there are problems underneath,” he said.
Ebrard, considered a leading contender to succeed President López Obrador, told the Times in a statement that problems associated with the construction of the new line didn’t affect its operation. The foreign minister suggested that the crash could be linked to maintenance, asserting that it was impossible to know whether his successor as mayor, Senator Miguel Ángel Mancera, “conducted all of the maintenance work required in the event of earthquakes of a certain magnitude.”
“Line 12, which for years has benefited millions of people, is perhaps the most audited public work in the history of Mexico,” Ebrard told the Times.
Countering his remarks, The Times said that “evidence from the crash site indicates that the Metro’s flaws ran much deeper than maintenance.”
The Times suggests that apparently shoddy construction on Line 12 may be the result of pressure on workers to finish construction before the term of then-Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard, right, ended in 2012.
“… Photographs of the rubble point to a fundamental lapse during construction: The welds holding everything together were far too weak. Photographs show that the studs broke clean off the steel beams, creating what engineers called an unstable structure incapable of supporting the train,” it said.
But Carso Group CEO Antonio Gómez García told the Times that he believed that the metal studs only detached after the overpass collapsed. The studs – and the apparent failure to weld them properly to the steel beams – “were not the cause of the accident,” he said.
Gómez added that maintenance – rather than a lack thereof – could have caused the crash because equipment and materials used during repairs in 2014 were heavy and might have placed too much stress on the overpass.
“But several independent experts rejected that explanation, noting that the photographic evidence points directly to the weak welds as the likely cause of the accident,” the Times said.
The Mexico City government contracted a Norwegian company to conduct an independent investigation into the May 3 tragedy.
If poor construction is determined to be the cause, much of the blame would fall on Ebrard’s shoulders, potentially leaving the foreign minister with legal questions to answer and possibly derailing his presidential ambitions. The consequences for Slim and his company, which is building a section of the government’s Maya Train project in Mexico’s southeast, could also be dire.
At his Monday press conference, AMLO said in response to a question about the article that the conservative media was trying to “score political points.”
Current Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a López Obrador protégé and another leading contender to succeed him, could face serious consequences if a lack of maintenance is found to have contributed to or caused the crash.
President Lopez Obrador, when asked about the article at his press conference Monday morning, did not respond directly to any of the details of the story, instead implying that it was the result of leaked information and saying that the “conservative media” was using “sensationalism and yellow journalism to score political points.”
He said the official investigation’s report would be out this week “We have to wait for the findings … It will be resolved this week and let’s not rush,” he said.
Sheinbaum said Sunday on Twitter that her government had not leaked any information to The New York Times and that it was “responsibly” waiting for the professional technical reports into the cause of the crash.
“It’s not our style to leak information and it never will be. We’re characterized by telling the truth directly without any intermediaries,” she said.
López Obrador: people have the feeling that he's on their side.
As Latin America’s presidents battle a pandemic that has hit their people and economies harder than any other region, something uniting them is their unpopularity.
Chile’s Sebastián Piñera and Colombia’s Iván Duque have approval ratings of roughly 18%; Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro’s rating stands at 24% and Argentina’s Alberto Fernández is at 32%, according to recent surveys. Peru has gone through four presidents in a year. Social unrest is sweeping the region.
Long but ineffective lockdowns, scandals over early vaccinations for the well-connected, overloaded public health services and inadequate support for the most vulnerable have fueled popular anger. Even before the pandemic, most Latin Americans had little faith in their governments.
“In May, 80% of Latin Americans said their country was on the wrong track,” said Jean-Christophe Salles, Latin America chief of the pollster Ipsos. “In this context, Latin American presidents appear with a very low level of approval.”
The exception, he added, was Mexico.
Nearing the midpoint of his six-year term on Sunday last week, President López Obrador and his allies won a string of state governorships and a fresh congressional majority — victories his peers in the region could only dream about.
As he revelled in his electoral successes at a news conference on Tuesday, López Obrador heard his ministers announce that almost one in three of Mexico’s adult population had been vaccinated and schools were reopening.
“As we faced the pandemic and there was an economic crisis … what did they ask me to do?” the president said, referring to Mexico’s elite. “To rescue those at the top — and we opted to support from the bottom up, because that is how it should be, for the sake of humanism, social justice and security.”
López Obrador is famous for his rhetoric and the skillful messaging conceals more awkward truths: Mexico’s excess death toll during the pandemic has been one of the world’s highest, and the government’s refusal to take on extra borrowing has limited its ability to support those hurt most by the pandemic.
Much of López Obrador’s approach to the pandemic has been idiosyncratic: he initially played down the pandemic, was slow to impose lockdowns, made them less restrictive when they did occur and resisted calls to splurge on stimulus spending.
So far, Mexico has suffered the world’s fifth-highest excess mortality percentage since the pandemic began, according to a Financial Times analysis of published data comparing death rates to the historical average.
Yet Alicia Bárcena, head of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, said Mexico’s government remained much more popular than its peers because of “the perception of the veracity of the commitment which the government has declared since its inauguration to giving priority to attending to the needs of the poor.” In addition, López Obrador was seen as “an austere leader who is not corrupt or corruptible,” unlike some of his predecessors.
“For the majority of the population, who are used to not being well served by their governments, this president arrives with a message of ‘I’m here for the people and my government is not for the elite,’” said Stephanie Brewer, director for Mexico at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Regardless of whether his policies are the best, they have the feeling that he’s on their side.”
A recent World Bank survey found that fewer households in Mexico experienced food insecurity or loss of household income last year than in most other countries in the region.
Martha Bárcena, Mexico’s former ambassador in Washington, said López Obrador had given priority jabs to the most vulnerable and had converted many hospitals into specialist Covid-19 treatment centers. “The poorest and most vulnerable saw that they were attended to in equal conditions to the middle and upper classes,” she added.
As they contemplate protests along the Andes, even some of López Obrador’s harshest business critics admit to a grudging respect for the social peace he has bought Mexico amid the pandemic.
“We may not like López Obrador’s economic policies — in fact, we hate them,” said one banker in Mexico City. “But we have to recognize that he has delivered a few years of political stability, which has spared us from the mess engulfing countries further south.”
Little remains of the four-bedroom house in Zacatepec, Puebla.
The Puebla sinkhole that emerged late last month has grown to swallow most of the home that initially stood a few dozen meters from its perimeter.
Only one bedroom and part of the outer wall of the the Sánchez Xalamiahua family home remain in tact after most of it collapsed on Friday night. The property was initially 50 meters away from the 10-meter sinkhole that appeared on May 29 in Santa María Zacatepec, 20 kilometers northwest of Puebla city.
The giant pit has gradually expanded to measure 126 meters at its widest point and is 56 meters deep, most of which is filled with water.
Family member Heriberto Sánchez, originally from Veracruz, told reporters that the risk to the property made their situation precarious. “We have nothing. We’re not from here. We have no relatives. We’re alone,” he said.
Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa has announced that the local council will donate a piece of land to the family where the state government will build them a new home.
😱¡El socavón sigue creciendo! 😱
Ya cayó la casa que se encontraba junto al socavón en Zacatepec.
Another state intervention saw two dogs rescued on Thursday after they had become trapped inside the pit. Spay and Spike had spent more than 72 hours stuck inside the hole.
Meanwhile, three local residents have created a cake depicting the sinkhole. The “Memory of the Sinkhole” confection has two dog figurines on top of an ice cream filling at its center. It was created by Citlali Moreno and her father César at the Don Lucho bakery, with help from local ice cream man Ángel Cortez.
A cumbia song by Sin Razzon about the sinkhole has also gained traction: it received 1.2 million views in four days. However, songwriter Armando Martínez Valdez received complaints that the song’s premise was insensitive to the Sánchez Xalamiahua family.
Orlando Mendoza of Hola Code, which trains returned migrants and deportees in software coding, is one of the connections New Comienzos has made since it began. Erika Schultz
Israel Concha — a noted resident in Mexico City’s Little L.A. barrio and a Mexican national who was abruptly deported to Mexico in 2014 three decades after his parents illegally brought him to the United States at age 4 — fervently believes he and other returnees like him “can live the American dream” in Mexico.
But he admits it is anything but easy.
Mexico receives thousands of repatriated Mexicans every month, mostly deportees from the United States. One category of these repatriated Mexicans, known as “Dreamers,” has gotten a lot of press over the past decade or so. They arrived in the United States as children and because of that received controversial protection under a program called Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (often referred to as DACA) and then, just as controversially, lost it.
Since the Obama administration, the repatriation of these young people to Mexico has been a large enough phenomenon to merit press attention on both sides of the border. These returnees to Mexico who were raised in the United States alternatively call themselves “Dreamers” or “binationals,” with the latter used to include people with different backstories.
The main difference between these particular returning Mexican nationals and others is that their many years living north of the border give them a distinct identity. And for this reason, many returnees’ experiences in Mexico parallel those of more traditional immigrant groups.
Israel Concha began New Comienzos in 2015.
Binationals in Mexico face culture shock, legal and bureaucratic issues, discrimination and even bullying and violence because of how they speak Spanish (or don’t at all), because of their appearance and because of their economic connections to the United States. Most issues come from the idea that they are Mexicans and shouldn’t have these problems.
But they do, and many of the solutions that they develop use their ties back in the United States to create economic opportunities and create social organizations to help them advocate for their needs.
The largest organization of this type is aptly named New Comienzos (New Beginnings), based in Little L.A., which is located in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City. The organization’s name is apt both because it focuses on integrating returnees into Mexican society and because the name is in Spanglish.
“The Mexican dream does exist, it’s you!” proclaims New Comienzos’ website. Concha, the organization’s founder, was deported from the United States after a traffic stop. His backstory and why he created New Comienzos has been well-documented in the Mexican press as well as in Time magazine.
The organization draws heavily on the experiences, skills and personality of Concha, who studied business administration and started a transportation company in the United States. Like most other returnees, he found his way to Mexico City, one of the country’s major economic centers.
Over the past decade or so, U.S. companies have set up call centers in Mexico’s capital to take advantage of bilingual returnees, and these centers have become big business. The Mexican Institute of Telemarketing estimates that 190,000 people work in call centers in Mexico, most of them bilingual.
A business owner putting up a New Comienzos sign in support of binationals in Mexico City’s Little L.A. section.
If someone in the United States calls for customer service, Concha says, even if it is just to order a pizza, there is a good chance they are talking to a returnee Dreamer in Mexico City. These jobs are not perfect by any means, but they provide at least an initial lifeline for returnees to pay the rent. While the pay is low, it is better than at many other jobs.
Concha began New Comienzos in 2015 while working at one of these call centers, sensing a need to provide support for the thousands of binationals coming into Mexico City and elsewhere. His entrepreneurship skills have served the initiative well. He worked out agreements with call centers to refer new employees, and in less than five years he reached out to federal, state and local governments in states where many binationals live.
However, he says, working with Mexican authorities has proven frustrating to say the least.
New Comienzos has had the most luck at the local and state level, especially in the state of Guanajuato and, to some extent, the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City, where Little L.A. and most call centers are located.
As important as English-related employment opportunities like call center work and teaching are, they’re not enough to make sure that thousands of returning Mexicans are able to integrate into Mexican society. More options are needed, he believes.
During the Peña Nieto administration, he says, there was much interest in supporting the binational community, with even formal agreements signed by several agencies. However, when it came time to access the money for initiatives such as business loans, the money disappeared. Like many politicians, they were more interested in being seen as supporting binationals for their votes, Concha says.
It is even worse under the López Obrador administration, which has been hostile to nonprofits and will not talk to New Comienzos. In addition, the coronavirus pandemic has decimated many nonprofit organizations, and New Comienzos has felt the pinch as well, losing the offices they had in Little L.A.
This, and the lack of governmental backing, has led to the decision to send Concha to the United States to work on alternative sources of support. His arrival in the U.S. in May 2021 was heralded by the Los Angeles newspaper La Opinión.
Concha aims to spend the next year or so in the U.S. meeting with activist groups, the Mexican ambassador to the United States and academics and businesses to find new alliances for binationals in Mexico and those facing deportation in the future.
The organization also welcomes volunteers and other supporters of all nationalities. You can reach New Comienzos through its website and via its Facebook page.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
A Washington, D.C. court has sentenced Jessica Oseguera, daughter of drug kingpin Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, to two years and six months in prison for crimes carried out on behalf of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Oseguera, 34, was also ordered to pay a $20,000 fine. She has already served 16 months and could walk free in the summer of 2022.
Oseguera pleaded guilty in March to five charges of willfully engaging in financial transactions with businesses on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklist, businesses linked to the CJNG and considered to be “specially designated narcotics traffickers.”
U.S. prosecutors had asked for a sentence of more than four years while the defense requested that Oseguera be released on parole, based on time already served.
Before her sentencing, Oseguera read a statement expressing remorse and saying that her time in prison had been an opportunity to reflect on her mistakes.
“This has been a big life lesson for me. Being locked up during a pandemic has been very difficult. For more than a year, I have been alone 23 hours a day,” Oseguera said.
Defense lawyer Steven McCool had previously argued that Oseguera’s income as stated by the prosecution was incorrect and said she was an “excellent mother,” and that being away from her family had been difficult.
However, prosecutor Brett Reynolds said the accused had lied about prior illegal activities. He said there was proof that she had provided accounting services to her father’s cartel. He added that her father had put Oseguera in charge of running Las Flores Cabañas, a luxury spa in Jalisco. Oseguera said she had not seen her father since she was 11.
The defense asked for a reduced sentence but the judge said the case was special due to the relationship with the CJNG, and reminded the defense that Oseguera had once entered the U.S. carrying $10,000 in cash.
The court chose the intermediate sentence of two and half years, citing Oseguera’s lack of prior convictions and that she had demonstrated remorse for her actions.
A shooting at a Cancún beach left two Mexicans dead and a U.S. tourist wounded on Friday.
The incident occurred around 2 p.m. at Playa Tortugas, an area with a number of hotels that is frequented both by tourists and locals. According to witnesses, two people fired at two street vendors, both of whom died. A woman from the U.S. was hit in the shoulder by a stray bullet and taken to the hospital. The aggressors fled on personal watercraft.
“Two males lost their lives due to gunshots. A foreign woman was injured and was taken to the hospital to receive medical attention. Police activated search protocols to find the aggressors,” wrote the Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office on Twitter.
The state is both a destination for drug sales and a transfer point for drug shipments.
Violence has declined in the state since its peak in 2018 and 2019. There were 209 killings in the first four months of 2021, compared to 266 in the same period of 2020.
The president analyzes election results during Tuesday's press conference. office of the president
By the time the National Palace opened on Monday, a clear picture of Sunday’s mid-term elections had formed. Voters had selected 15 fresh governors and a new House of Deputies in what was widely seen as a referendum on President López Obrador’s political project.
The early count predicted a check on the administration’s momentum. The loss of the two-thirds majority shared with allies in the Chamber of Deputies would be a significant blow, impeding constitutional reform. The race for governors told a different story, where the ruling party Morena looked set to win at least 10 of the 15 available. However, it was bad news for the party in Mexico City, where it braced for big losses.
As for the mañaneras, the electoral silence had ended. Any content — propagandistic or otherwise — was fit for broadcast once again.
Monday
The elections were at the top of the political agenda, so the weekly fuel price updates had to wait their turn.
“The people behaved very well,” said the president in school-masterly fashion, assessing conduct at voting booths. “Those who belong to organized crime, in general [behaved] well. Very few acts of violence in those groups,” he added, giving thanks for moderation among otherwise violent criminals.
The electoral silence had ended, allowing the administration to discuss its national infrastructure projects. Each update was accompanied by a spokesperson through video link to confirm all was going swimmingly. Santa Lucía airport, the Dos Bocas refinery in Tabasco, the Maya Train, the Toluca-Mexico City train, the trans-isthmus corridor project and the Lake Texcoco ecological park were all given an airing.
AMLO, as the president is commonly known, showed little concern that a two-thirds majority in the lower house of Congress was out of reach. With admirable agility, he addressed another topic: bad faith reporting in the media.
Still, nothing could spoil his Monday morning pep. “The result is going to favor the transformation of Mexico … so you can imagine how I feel: happy, happy, happy.”
Defeats in Mexico City were owed to the “dirty war,” he said, which was all the more rampant in the capital. “It’s propaganda day and night against us,” he remarked.
Tuesday
Conjecture made an early appearance on Tuesday. The president announced election results would be explained in depth, and offered his reasoning: “Most of the conventional media are inclined toward the conservative party, it is public knowledge,” he claimed.
Vaccine updates followed. Health Minister Jorge Alcocer announced that soon every one in three Mexicans over 20 would be vaccinated. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard was quick on his heels: “Mexico is sixth place this week in millions of doses administered … sixth place,” he said.
Graphics appeared on screen for the president to lay out the election results. Skimming over the House of Deputies result where the ruling party suffered losses, he focused on the governors’ races. “What’s the name of the coalition? … Let’s go for Mexico? Go for Mexico?” asked the president, taking the opportunity to ridicule his rivals and their right-wing coalition, which failed to install a single governor.
The conference closed as it began. AMLO denounced the Wall Street Journal for branding him a “threat to democracy.”
“What objectivity … what professionalism,” he chided.
Wednesday
The great and the good found their way to the National Palace on Wednesday. The ambassadors of Canada and France and the directors of two international train companies attended the conference to sign a contract for the Maya Train in a live broadcast.
Foreign dignitaries, contractors and officials watch as the president signs a contract for the Maya Train.
Before long, the elections returned to the fore, specifically to disseminate misinformation. “Remember Goebbels … ‘A lie which is repeated many times can become true,’” the president said, employing one of his favorite quotes.
“They still say … that we did really badly [in the elections] … There were elections for governor in 15 states and the movement that I belong to, the movement of the transformation, triumphed in 11,” he related, confidence in check.
Breaking into a swagger, the president took the chance to taunt a political rival. Calling for a toast, he asked Ricardo Anaya, former leader of the National Action Party, for permission to drink a caguama of beer (a 32-ounce bootle) to celebrate his party’s success. (Anaya later granted permission, observing he was enjoying a beer in Mexico City, where the opposition did well, and would have another in Querétaro, where his own party dominated).
Before closing, the president ran short on expletives and appeared to get stuck in a loop, apparently thrilled by the Tuesday meeting with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. “[The meeting was] great … very beneficial … good meeting … good meeting … so good … very good meeting … it was very good, a very good meeting … it was very good, a very good meeting … she’s an extraordinary woman,” he said.
Thursday
First, the president commemorated the 50-year anniversary of El Halconazo, when nearly 120 student protesters were killed by the military in Mexico City.
Then, to the floor. Reacting to an unrelated question, the president set off on a tangent. A meme of a map showing Mexico City, divided by its voting preference, had caught his eye. In the west of the capital the opposing coalition had taken control, while Morena held strong in the east.
The western neighborhoods were labelled “those that pay taxes” and in the east “those that receive welfare.”
“[Here is] the prejudice of a very conservative and racist class,” the president concluded, incorrectly blaming his least favorite newspaper, Reforma, for its publication.
The subject of violence was raised. Can we call Guanajuato a failed state? one journalist asked.
“We are fighting for peace and tranquility in the whole country, but it’s a long, complex process,” reflected the president, without naming any specific strategies. One city in Guanajuato was reported as the most dangerous in the world last year and another came fifth.
Friday
The conference was short on Friday as the president had a flight to catch. Due to his particularly talkative mood, only one journalist managed to pose questions.
The chosen journalist pressed hard on behalf of the miners’ families for details about the mine’s contract holder and whether a national protocol for mining disasters would be implemented.
“You will see everything, everything … we are working constantly,” the president said, turning to blame his “corrupt” predecessors.
Before closing for the weekend, AMLO showed his selective side and excused his friend Alberto Fernández, the president of Argentina, for his controversial observations on Latin American ancestry.
“The Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came from the jungle, but we Argentinians came on boats, and those boats came from Europe,” Fernández had said.
“He committed an error in expression,” the president concluded generously, shortly before heading for the airport.
