General News

Around 200 teachers and sympathizers took to the streets to protest working conditions and pay on National Teachers Day. Demonstrators marched down Avenida 16 de Septiembre in Guadalajara and gathered in the Plaza de Armas to hold a demonstration class to secondary school students. 

Friday, May 1 is Dia del Trabajo in Mexico and a national holiday.  All government offices, schools, diplomatic missions and many stores will close. Many towns and villages hold morning May Day parades through their centers. Guadalajara’s parade usually features labor unions and workers’ organizations, some of whom take the opportunity to highlight Mexico’s inequalities.  Department stores, shops in malls and most restaurants will remain open. The Reporter will be on sale at almost all its usual locations.

Despite repeated infringements of electoral laws, the polemic Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) won’t – for now at least – be stripped of its right to remain a political party but will banned from airing TV spots for the last three days of its campaign. 

An investigative journalist has reported that security forces executed at least 16 unarmed civilians during a confrontation in the western state of Michoacan in January.

Aeromexico will launch a new direct daily flight between Mexico City and Vancouver on December 9.

Mexico ranks second to last, after the Philippines, in an international study of impunity in 59 countries.

Developed by the University of the Americas in Puebla, the Global Impunity Index slammed security, justice and human rights systems in Mexico, finding them slow and ineffective. 

A significant drop in the murder rate in Mexico last year is not only good news for the nation’s beleaguered president but a positive trend as Mexicans cling to the hope that the cycle of violence that has characterized so much of the last decade will eventually end.

In a TV interview about the robbery of US$8.5 million of gold from a Sinaloa mine, CEO Rob McEwen came out with the remarkable statement that his Canadian company, McEwen Mining, enjoyed a “good relationship” with drug traffickers in the state. 

“If we want to go explore somewhere, you ask them, and they tell you ‘no’, but then they’ll say: ‘come back in a couple of weeks when we’ve finished with what we are doing’” McEwen said, before admitting that the cartels might be harvesting drugs.

His comments created a media storm on both sides of the border, forcing McEwen to later backtrack, explaining in another interview that his company was not in regular contact with the cartels.  He clarified that his remarks referred to the difficulty in getting things done in remote areas of the state without coming into contact with cartel members.

No one has been arrested for the theft but the Sinaloa cartel is a likely suspect.

McEwen said the robbery was carried out by about eight masked, heavily armed people who stopped a number of workers on their way to the mine. Once in the property, “they captured a couple of other security people and put them in the lunch room, and broke into the refinery and drove away with 7,000 ounces of gold concentrate.” 

McEwen described the robbery as “very well planned,” since the thieves were able to gather all of the people with keys together to open the multiple locks and safes. 

“They knew the layout of the operations and they seemed to have a good knowledge of inside our refinery,” McEwen added, implying they had inside help. The company will revise its security strategy.