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Mexican forces raid police precinct, find 20 officers had drug trafficking ties

Fri, 26 May 2017 08:00:00 -0400

Following the detention of the entire municipal police force in the Mexican city of Zihuatanejo, a pleasant U.S. expat hotspot on the Pacific coast, 20 alleged drug traffickers were found to have been masquerading as cops.

Last Tuesday’s bust was conducted by state and federal police, along with the Marine Corps. Acting on mounting evidence of corruption in that precinct, they detained all 246 officers and officials until they could provide official credentials.

At the end of the operation, 51 arrests were made, including three high-ranking officers, but 31 were later released on charges of operating without full accreditation. The remaining 20 were charged with ties to organized crime and impersonation of public officials.

TWO INDIGENOUS BROTHERS WHO DEFENDED TRIBAL LANDS FROM CARTELS KILLED IN MEXICO

“Many of them are real police officers, but who we believe have strong ties to organized crime in the region,” Zihuatanejo’s Public Security Chief Carlos Cruz told Fox News. “The cartels are very powerful in the state of Guerrero, and we are working to purge our public bodies of links to drug trafficking.”

Since last week’s operation, the Pacific resort’s municipal force has been taken off duty, leaving the state police and Mexican military to patrol the streets.

“It was a shock,” said David Claassen, originally from Ohio, but who has lived in Mexico for the past three years. “We had no idea this was going on, as Zihuatanejo is such a peaceful and friendly place.”

Both the town’s mayor Gustavo Garcia and the Municipal Police Chief David Nogueda refused to comment, yet sources close to the government said it is only a matter of time before the Municipal Police force is disbanded and control of Zihuatanejo is handed over to state authorities.

“The municipal police will cease to exist once this scandal dies down,” said one magistrate who declined to be identified. “They are extremely corrupt and have only made organized crime worse in Zihua.”

The magistrate, who works in the police station and was a daily witness to organized crime’s infiltration into the force, said he needs to change his phone number once a month to avoid threatening calls from local gangsters.

MEXICAN JOURNALISTS CAUGHT IN CROSSFIRE OF RIVAL CARTELS

“Whenever a narco was brought to me after being arrested, I would receive a call from the street boss demanding his immediate release. I had to comply because they know where my family lives and would threaten me terribly,” he said.

“I would fine the gangster $25 for his arrest, but the money would be collected by my bosses here in the precinct and never arrive where it should have,” he told Fox News. “There’s nothing anyone can do, because if you speak out against the corruption, your life is in danger.”

One narco masquerading as a police officer, known as ‘El Cadete’ (The Cadet), had been recruited into the municipal police force just 20 days before the bust, but was already well-known to the long-serving officers — he has been arrested numerous times in possession of illegal firearms in the past, a felony which usually carries a minimum 10-year prison sentence in Mexico.

Suspicions over local narcos masquerading as cops were first aroused in early April, when three municipal police officers disappeared from the precinct after protesting about their colleagues’ activities.

Weeks later, on April 25, those three men were killed when police officers who later turned out to be fake attacked a security outpost in neighboring Ixtapa.

“The killers were the same men who I saw every day in the precinct,” the magistrate told Fox News. “They killed the young men in broad daylight and later laughed about it.”

Guerrero state, which is the world’s third most prolific producer of opium gum, all of which is sent north to fuel the U.S. heroin epidemic, is currently Mexico’s most murderous region.

The state is home to more than half of the 62 drug cartels known to be operating in Mexico today, and while the majority of the crime is centered on Acapulco, Zihuatanejo is going through a spate of violence that has seen nine murders in the seven days since the raid on the town’s municipal police.

“There are two gangs operating here: the Sangre Nueva Generacion (‘New Generation Blood’, a group aligned to Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel), which controls the beachfront and touristic areas, and the Fulana group controls the villages and wider region around the town,” one local newspaper reporter told Fox News.

MEXICAN REPORTER AND NARCO-EXPERT KILLED IN SINALOA – 5TH JOURNALIST THIS YEAR

While the locals in Zihuatanejo were taken by surprise at the sudden operation, few were shocked by the arrests made.

“You can’t trust the cops here, the only people they take care of are the tourists,” said Miguel Angel Romero. “They don’t care about the terror the locals live with in the neighborhoods away from the beach.”

A street level municipal police officer in Zihuatanejo earns $360 a month, a wage few are likely to risk taking a bullet for by defying local gangsters, who offer additional compensation for the authorities’ silence.

“Now we have the state police on patrol, things can improve,” the magistrate said. “They are not afraid to shoot when they come across the narcos, but things will only get better if they are up for the fight, otherwise it will be business as usual.”

Experts warn 800 species, many endangered, affected by border wall

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 11:41:00 -0400

A study by Mexico’s top university has revealed that at least 800 species of wildlife will be adversely affected by President Trump’s planned 2,000-mile border wall with Mexico.

Research published by ecologists from the Mexican National Autonomous University has shown that an impassable physical barrier placed into ecosystems inhabited by jaguars, black bears and bighorn sheep will so disrupt patterns of migration as to cause a “natural catastrophe.”

“The U.S.-Mexico border is made up of mountains, jungle, coastline and many other diverse ecosystems,” Professor Gerardo Ceballos, who led the investigation published last week, told Fox News. “Wildlife has populated these regions for millions of years, and has always had freedom of movement to hunt, reproduce and migrate. To make these animals suffer as a result of man’s political agenda is entirely immoral.”

Of the 800 species that will be affected by President Trump’s border wall, 140 are in danger of extinction, including the bald eagle, grey wolf, armadillo and jaguar, a big cat of which remain only 10 in the highlands of the Sonora Desert that straddle Arizona. Those animals whose range will be halved by the border wall’s construction will be impeded in their ability to reproduce with other members of their species, thereby creating a shallower gene pool and heightening the chance of inbreeding.

“It goes against the very principles of evolution that has created these amazing natural environments,” said Professor Ceballos, who has spent the last six months traveling the length of the border, from Tijuana to Texas.

“If the wall is being built to prevent illegal immigration from Mexico into the U.S., then there are more effective and less harmful ways of achieving this goal,” he said.

“Aerial surveillance in areas known for their high density of illegal crossings can be simply achieved by placing thermal cameras on the top of high poles, and working to shorten Border Patrol response times,” he told Fox News. “You can also increase Border Patrol presence in areas where at the moment little exists, and all for a far lower price tag than a border wall, and with no damage to the local ecosystem.”

The U.S. Border Patrol gave Donald Trump its first ever formal endorsement to a presidential candidate during 2016’s election campaign, and while agents from California to the Gulf of Mexico wait for construction to start on the barrier, many local authorities feel the reported $1.5 billion cost that President Trump will ask for in his upcoming federal spending bill could be better spent elsewhere.

TRUMP BUDGET CALLS FOR BILLIONS FOR BORDER WALL WITH MEXICO

“When we catch illegal immigrants, they go to detention centers where their pleas for asylum mean 90 percent remain in the U.S. anyway,” one Border Patrol agent in southeast Texas, where 18,000 illegal immigrants (many of them children) were captured in a five-month period in 2015, told Fox News on condition of anonymity.

“They are always finding new ways to cross, and a five-meter wall isn’t going to pose much of a barrier to someone fleeing the gangsters in Guatemala.”

Leonora Esquivel is the founder of AnimaNaturalis, Mexico’s leading animal rights organization, which recently succeeded in banning the use of animals for performance in circuses throughout the country. She says her organization will fight the process of construction at the border wall should U.S. Congress approve it in the federal spending bill this month.

“Animals have no concept of political boundaries created by humans, and to impose a physical barrier that impedes their movement is entirely wrong,” she told Fox News.

“The border region is a massive area of natural beauty and diversity,” she said, “to destroy its ecosystems with a wall when other alternatives are available is unfair to the innocent wildlife which has been there far longer than us.”

While Mexico makes up just 1 percent of the Earth’s total land surface, it is home to 10 percent of all land species known to science, many of which are shared across North America. In the past, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has worked closely with Mexico’s CONABIO (Commission for Biodiversity) over conservation projects of shared fauna. Most recently, the Wildlife Without Borders program has sought to promote bi-national reintroduction and recovery of California condors, prairie dogs and other species shared by the neighboring nations.

“International cooperation with the U.S. has always been very strong in terms of wildlife conservation, as we both occupy a very beautiful region of diverse ecosystems right in the middle of our shared continent,” said Professor Ceballos.

“It would be a very great shame to see this shared interest fall by the wayside because of the current political agenda in Washington.”

Drug cartels in Mexico being taken over by ruthless, but charming, women

Thu, 30 Mar 2017 08:30:00 -0400

When the body of Joselyn Niño was discovered hacked to pieces and crammed into an ice cooler on the U.S.-Mexico border in 2015, the ongoing war between the drug cartels’ most secretive and efficient killers took a turn for the worse.

Known as “Las Flakas” (Skinny Girls), young Mexican women are taking up lives of crime alongside their male counterparts, becoming extremely effective agents for the cartels’ cause.

“They are ideal killers; young, beautiful and reckless,” said Andrew Chesnut, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “By keeping a low profile they avoid suspicion where men doing the same job would quickly find themselves in trouble,” he told Fox News.

DRUG LORD 'EL CHAPO' LAST OF A DYING BREED AS MEXICAN CARTELS ENTER NEW ERA

Joselyn Niño was a notorious assassin for the Gulf Cartel. She was very active on social media, where she would boast of her bloody achievements. She was murdered and butchered by another young woman, La Gladys of the Zetas, who remains at large terrorizing the communities of northern Mexico.

Today, all of Mexico’s major criminal cartels have female “Flaka” death squads. While the woman’s traditional role within drug trafficking organizations was to launder drug money and raise the children, many young women already connected to drug trafficking choose the lives of assassins and are deployed for missions where subtlety and infiltration are more important than brute force.

CARTELS, SMUGGLERS EXPLOIT BORDER WALL FEARS AHEAD OF TRUMP PRESIDENCY

“The Flakas come into the work through a series of different routes,” said Chesnut, who is a leading expert on La Santa Muerte (Saint Death, also known as La Flaca), a scythe-wielding patroness to drug traffickers. “Many come in through the traditional path of low-level lookout work for the cartel, while others arrive through prostitution, birth into cartel families, or are recruited during short spells in prison.”

“These girls are all active on social media, and in seeing images of the drug traffickers’ lifestyles, they naturally want a piece of it themselves,” he added.

Since Mexico’s drug war started in 2007, the crackdown on the feared sicario death squads made the work of The Flakas more valuable, allowing them to be sent on work then deemed too dangerous for the male cartel soldiers.

MEXICAN OFFICIAL: CARTELS SEND $64B IN DRUGS INTO US ANNUALLY

The Flakas disguise themselves as ordinary Mexican girls to pass unsuspected by aggressors, yet they typically undergo cosmetic surgery to enhance their features and get undisputed male attention. They gain the trust of their marks through charm.

Operating in squads of three or four, they generally target other women belonging to rival cartels, seeking dominance within their territories.

“There’s an inextricable link between sex and death in the culture of these female killers,” said Chesnut, “in seeking to be the most desired by the narco men, they seek also to be the most brutal among their group of peers. It’s gone as far as having them worship the image of Saint Death in their own likenesses, dressed in lingerie.”

CARTELS REVIVING SEALED TUNNELS ALONG U.S.-MEXICO BORDER

Last year, one female killer known as "La Peque" was captured by the authorities for her work for the Sinaloa Cartel in northwestern Mexico. Having admitted to the murder of at least five men, she added that she enjoyed both drinking the warm blood of her victims and having sex with the dead bodies following the homicide.

Yet the success of Las Flakas within the male-dominated world of drug trafficking has produced tension. Once notoriety has been achieved, their lives tend to be cut short due either to capture by police, betrayal by their own, or murder at the hands of rival cartels.

“Joselyn came to a grisly end because she made herself famous over social media, gloating over her achievements,” Chesnut said.

“These girls know that they have to keep a low profile for their work, but for many the temptation to post on Instagram and Twitter is too great and they end up making themselves targets.”

One Flaka who has been successful in balancing her work with her life has been “La Malandra” (The Thugette), an agent of the brutal Zeta cartel who regularly posts pictures armed with a bulletproof vest and a long-wave radio. During a nine-year career in the industry, she remains at large, still passing for an ordinary young Mexican throughout the country.

“They all have a very strong sense of fatalism,” said Chesnut. “Young people’s lives don’t last long when they’re surrounded by organized crime, so for these young women the only option is to fight. If they do it wisely, they can survive a lot longer than their male counterparts.”

Deportees back in Mexico offered free training to become English teachers

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 09:28:00 -0500

A progressive initiative in Mexico City is giving U.S. deportees the opportunity to obtain English language and teaching qualifications, in an effort to help them rebuild their lives following ejection from their American homes.

An entirely free program, the joint effort between the city’s government and citizens’ council, offers a four to six week teacher training course, culminating in an official TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) exam, after which successful candidates will be qualified to teach in Mexican schools.

“We have a massive influx of deportees to this country, a pool of talent that is almost entirely ignored by the Mexican authorities,” said Luis Wertman, the president of the Mexico City Citizens’ Council, which brought the idea to fruition. “Yet we have a deficit of over 80,000 qualified English teachers in Mexico, and these people are perfect candidates to fill posts we desperately need.”

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SIGNAL THEY WOULD PREFER DETENTION OVER DEPORTATION

The program’s first course begins on Saturday, and although it has capacity for 100 trainee teachers, so far only 25 spaces on the class have been filled. The Citizens’ Council has been spreading the word of its strategy through advice kiosks at the city’s airport and four major bus terminals, as well as its citizens’ hotline, but has struggled to convince potential candidates of its benefits.

“It seems to be a win-win situation and we are trying to get the word out,” said Wertman, “but unfortunately deportees are not a community who are very trusting of the government.”

Mexico City currently receives three flights of deportees from the United States a week, an average of 350 arrivals, 10 percent of whom choose to remain in the capital. Those who make up this 10 percent are generally young men to whom Mexico is a foreign country, with little cultural or family connections having been taken to the U.S. as young children. Finding themselves alone, without official documentation and spurned by the city’s residents, many end up homeless.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT DEFENDED IN PHOENIX PROTESTS IS DEPORTED TO MEXICO

“The deportees live extremely difficult lives,” said Marco Castillo, the founder of IIPSOCULTA, a humanitarian organization that works, among many other projects, to improve the lives of U.S. deportees in Mexico.

“This city is very intense, competitive, angry and expensive. For someone who has been through the psychological stress of deportation from a country they call home, it can be too much.”

Jesus Navarro left his home state of Nayarit with his parents at the age of three, and grew up in California. After being deported two years ago, he said his arrival in Mexico City was a very difficult time.

“I barely spoke Spanish, and no one here was interested in knowing a chicano (a slang term for Mexican-Americans),” he told Fox News outside the Teletech call center in downtown Mexico City, where he and many other deportees have found work. “I was torn away from my family and friends, it was a very depressing time.”

Tomas Perez, who grew up in Chicago, had a similar experience when he was deported 12 years ago. Now a butcher in a quiet neighborhood of the capital, he said this new program for deportees would have been welcome when he first arrived.

“I had no papers, no one would even give me a job sweeping a floor,” he told Fox News. “It’s good that this initiative will help deportees, but it’s not much good to me. After so long living here I’ve completely lost my English.”

While many deportees find work in call centers where their English fluency can be put to use, the pay is rarely more than the $4.30 daily minimum wage, as employers take advantage of the deportees’ legal limbo status.

Wertman said the English teacher training program aims to show respect to its candidates, and offer them an opportunity at building a sense of self-esteem that is rarely afforded to deportees.

“We refer to them as Returning Mexicans, not deportees, as we want them to think of themselves as belonging to this country,” he told Fox News. “Not only do we aim to train a new generation of English teachers who can benefit Mexican society, but we will offer our participants all the legal help they need to get their Mexican paperwork in order.”

Despite his optimism, the Citizens’ Council president nevertheless feels concerned about the threats of mass deportation by the Trump administration.

“So far we haven’t seen an increase in deportees arriving in Mexico City,” he said, “but we are employing a popular Mexican saying: we are prepared for the worst, but hoping for the best.”

As the news spreads of the government initiative, the Citizens’ Council hopes to include the deportees in the future.

“As a society we feel to a certain extent that we have failed these Returning Mexicans,” he told Fox News. “They left this country to seek a life elsewhere for a reason, and when they return they can feel rejected and without identity or value.

“But solidarity is a Mexican value,” he said with a benevolent smile, “and we have to extend that to all members of our society.”

Trump presidency shifting political forces in Mexico — toward the left

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 09:18:00 -0500

As the U.S. looks back over one of the most divisive presidential elections in recent memory, Mexico’s own leadership battle is getting underway. As candidates for the top job come forward, the country’s main concern comes to the forefront: who can handle Donald Trump?

Enrique Peña Nieto will step aside on June 4, 2018. The most unpopular leader since records began, his replacements are already campaigning in the president’s heartlands, with man-of-the-people Andrés Manuel López Obrador leading the pack.

Known as AMLO, the firebrand populist has already been defeated in two presidential elections, yet, undeterred by ejection from his party and protesting fraud by political opponents at every turn, his anti-graft cause is building a head of steam as he tours marginalized Mexico.

“We will bring down the Mafia of Power that has destroyed this country,” he shouted to the crowd in Ecatepec, the most murderous town in Mexico, in a rally last week. “Our politicians have betrayed us, lying and stealing, and allowing the United States to punish the poorest for their mistakes.”

Being a career politician hasn’t stopped AMLO from tearing a few pages out of Donald Trump’s playbook. He has used his high-profile defeats to personify the thorn in the government’s side, a role which resounds with the growing number of Mexicans (and was effective with a great number of Americans) who feel betrayed by their politicians.

The candidate is highly active on social media, releasing YouTube videos and tweets that highlight national issues to his millions of followers and strengthen an outsider image that has been carefully constructed since his ejection from his own party.

Unwilling to be put out to pasture following the 2012 defeat to Peña Nieto, he founded his own National Regeneration Movement party, MORENA, and won a small number of congressional seats. His was the only party to vote against the New Year gas price hikes that resulted in riots and looting across Mexico, and he has used this stance to highlight his Trump-tackling credentials.

“We have invited foreigners into Mexico, to our gold mines, oil wells and rich jungles, and we have handed our country’s resources over without question, resources that belong to you and me,” he shouted, touching at Mexico’s wounded nationalism, an injured pride rubbed raw by the insults that Mexicans see as having swept Donald Trump into the White House.

“Our ancestors taught us to respect authority, but I have a better idea: we will only respect those who show us respect in return. I will break down the barriers that lie in Mexico’s path.”

President Peña Nieto’s current approval ratings, which languish below 17 percent, have been a godsend for López Obrador. The invitation of Donald Trump, who López Obrador speaks of as a petulant bigot, during last year’s presidential campaign was disastrous for Peña Nieto, while crime and violence have worsened in the country’s poorest areas, where AMLO’s natural voters predominate.

MEXICAN CATHOLIC CHURCH CALLS US IMMIGRATION POLICIES AN 'ACT OF TERROR'

“I don’t know who runs this town,” he said with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek (Ecatepec is governed by the PRI, the López Obrador’s fiercest opponents), “but whoever they are, they’ve done a terrible job.” Cue boos and whistles from an impassioned crowd, directed at the speaker’s red-faced police escort.

The populist now campaigns on two principles: putting President Trump in his place and tackling the corruption that has been allowed to seep into all corners of Mexican society.

“You clean corruption like you clean a set of stairs: from the top down,” he tells a community living with rates of murder, kidnap, extortion and femicide that are all four times the national average, and where the police are seen as apathetic, if not involved.

MEXICAN CONGRESSMAN CLIMBS BORDER FENCE TO PROVE A POINT

Telling people what they already know is working out well for AMLO. He leads in the polls, is gathering endorsements from political heavyweights, and strengthens his anti-establishment credentials with every rally.

“He tells it like it is,” Fernando Vilchis, the local waste management union leader told Fox News during the rally. “He represents honesty, dignity and moral authority, values we see as badly lacking in Mexican politics today.”

“Andres understands us,” says mother-of-two Maura Morales, 32, who battles daily with the fear of armed robbery on the public buses, as she commutes to clean the houses of the capital’s upper-middle class, the same voters who baulk at Obrador’s pledges to eradicate the “monstrous inequality” of Mexican society. “Other candidates have come through Ecatepec, but they have no idea of the daily struggle of living here.”

“He can unite Mexico, because he doesn’t give up,” says Vilchis, who believes that if change is going to come in Ecatepec, that it must be an effort on the part of the entire community. “We need a leader who speaks for the angry and marginalized, just like the United States has with President Trump.”

US wrestler strikes gold by making Trump the 'villain' in lucha libre matches

Fri, 17 Feb 2017 08:43:00 -0500

A professional wrestler from Pennsylvania has become the lucha libre’s most notorious villain, by playing the part of Donald Trump’s Number One Supporter to thousands of furious Mexican spectators.

Sam Polinsky, 27, from Pittsburgh, has quickly ascended to the top of the Mexican wrestling entertainment industry as Sam Adonis, enraging audiences by waving an immense Stars and Stripes with the U.S. president’s face blazoned across during his entire performance.

MEXICAN 'LUCHA LIBRE' WRESTLER DIED ALMOST IMMEDIATELY,
AUTOPSY FINDS

“Professional wrestling is a lot like movies or comic books, people really appreciate the bad guys,” he told Fox News before a recent appearance at the Arena Mexico, lucha libre’s greatest stage.

“It was an obvious move to become the ‘Donald Trump supporter’ character, and it got the exact response I was hoping for from the audience.”

Armed only with his Trump-spangled banner, Adonis is the center of attention in every bout he appears in, attracting the hatred, abuse and often projectiles of the audience as he works them into a fever pitch.

“I pride myself on the ability to make people go absolutely crazy,” he said. “People scream curse words at me, throw their beers at me.”

“I know I’m doing my job when someone who had been perfectly calm five minutes before suddenly wants to jump the barrier and help the other Mexican wrestlers in beating me up.”

MEXICAN WRESTLING MEETS BURLESQUE

“I hated him, and his flag especially, he made me very angry,” said father-of-two Rafael Cruz, 50, who had flung pieces of jellied pork skin at the wrestler during his performance. “I was glad to see his own teammate hitting him, because I really wanted to beat him up too.”

“The audience lives vicariously through Sam Adonis, venting their anger at Donald Trump through me,” the wrestler told Fox News.

Sam Polinsky had spent five years wrestling professionally in the United Kingdom before his arrival in Mexico, where many of his friends in the industry had recommended lucha libre.

“I had played the villain in London as well, playing the very patriotic American and talking down to the rest of the world,” he told Fox News. “I’ve played the bad guy for so long that the Trump situation would have been stupid to ignore. When I got to Mexico, I just turned it up a notch.”

While the wrestler plays the villain as Donald Trump’s Number One Fan on stage, Sam Polinsky says his own politics aren’t far from what he does in the ring.

'SUPER MOJADO,' GOOD-GUY WRESTLER FOR UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS, BEATS 'INS'

“I definitely have a lot of respect for Donald Trump, particularly in that he doesn’t change who he is for people that don’t like him. He is the way that he is and stands by it,” he told Fox News.

“I can’t claim to be the world’s biggest Trump supporter, but I definitely supported him more than Hillary Clinton.”

As the Mexican audience became more animated against Sam with every wave of his Trump flag, the show made uncomfortable viewing for many Americans who were in the audience.

“I hated it,” said Amy Johnson, a tourist from Seattle visiting Mexico City for the week. “I was excited to leave America and not have to think about the Donald Trump situation, yet I get here and it’s immediately in my face.”

“As an American it’s very embarrassing,” she said.

Marlon Torres, also from Washington State, took a more sympathetic view of Sam’s performance.

“He’s a professional wrestler who’s making the most of the current political feeling in Mexico, so I feel like, good for him,” he told Fox News after a show last week. “You have to do what you have to do, and the show needs a villain. Who better than a Donald Trump surrogate?”

“It was a great show, I loved getting my aggression out.”

The day of Sam’s performance also saw tens of thousands of Mexicans take to the streets of 20 cities across the country to march in protest of Donald Trump.

Mexico City in particular saw 20,000 protestors surround the capital’s iconic Angel of Independence, half a mile from the Arena Mexico, where the CMLL lucha libre show puts on performances three nights a week.

“At the end of the day, I feel like I’m taking a negative situation and turning it into a positive one,” said Sam.

“Our attendance across the various arenas has gone up significantly since Sam Adonis started performing,” said Sandra Granados, spokeswoman for the Mexican Lucha Libre Council. “Our regular audience members have responded very well to him, as they love to get up and vent their anger at Trump through this character.”

“We put on shows to entertain and let people get out a bit of aggression, and Sam Adonis does both very well,” she said, “although to keep the crowds happy he’s going to have to lose more often than he wins.”

Sam Adonis performs at the Arena Mexico every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

Teenage whizzes invent a 'thermoelectric spoon' that heats up food on the go

Mon, 16 Jan 2017 14:33:00 -0500

A team of teenage Mexican students have come up with an invention that is turning quite a few heads: an electronic spoon that heats up your meal one spoonful at a time – or reheats it all at once if you choose to stir it.

hey are hoping their innovation can offer an easy solution for hungry consumers on the go.

The PoliCuchara (PolySpoon), designed as part of their freshman year Creative Development course at Mexico City’s National Polytechnic Institute, won first prize at a countrywide innovation fair last week, and has already been patented by the school.

Equipped with three 9-volt batteries inside the wooden handle, the spoon’s ladle reaches up to 140 F, enough to heat a meal but not enough to burn the user.

The innovative new tool allows a hungry consumer to heat anything from soup, rice, pasta and other bite-sized pieces of food in the time it takes for a microwave to perform the same task.

“We came up with the idea while riding the Mexico City subway,” said Maria Caudillo, 15, the youngest member of the four-girl team, whose electrical engineering studies allowed the idea to become reality in just two months of twice-weekly classes.

“So many commuters bring food with them on public transport, but have to wait until they reach a place with a microwave oven if they want a hot meal,” she told FoxNews.com. “The idea for a thermoelectric spoon seemed obvious to us.”

“Microwaves focus energy on heating water molecules, which leaves the food soggy, and besides that, they aren’t always available,” said Andrea Moreno, 17, who believes the product could become a bestseller in Mexico. “We wanted to design something portable which would deliver reliable results.”

The spoon has a single heat setting and users can choose between heating their meal fully ready for eating, or warming each individual mouthful as they go. The batteries can last up to a month of daily use twice a day.

“We took the product to the streets and the people we interviewed loved it,” said Cinthia Padilla, 16, who discovered in the course of her inquest that roughly half of Mexicans take homemade packed lunches to work or school, the majority in Tupperware-style containers.

“We were very encouraged by our market research, and with a few changes we hope to be able to sell the PolyCuchara commercially soon,” she told FoxNews.com. “It would be wonderful to see people using an invention of ours in their everyday lives.”

With the help of the college and a few modernizing adjustments to the spoon, the girls are hoping to bring the PolySpoon to the Mexican market by mid-2017 to retail at $10 apiece. The manufacturing costs are just $3.50 per unit.

“We will have to install a rechargeable battery and make it look a bit neater, but we believe it will appeal throughout Mexican society and that it will sell”, said Tania Yolotzin, 17, who designed the new product’s logo. “Babies, hospitals, office workers, school children; there are a lot of potential users.”

“It could even be used as a hair curler when the user has finished eating,” she joked. “It has been designed by Mexicans, with Mexicans in mind.”

“I’m extremely proud of the students,” said their teacher Maria Rivera, who had encouraged the 22 design teams in her classroom to solve problems they face in their everyday lives. “It bodes well for their futures that they have already gained such nationwide recognition for their work, and after less than a semester at the college.”

Other teams in the girls’ class came up with a blow-operated microwave system, aromatherapy-infused pet toys and a walking cane that allows users to answer phone calls hands free, via Bluetooth, preventing loss of balance while fumbling in pockets to find the phone.

The National Polytechnic Institute, a Mexican state-run trade school for students from underprivileged backgrounds, has a long history of innovation and invention.

The institute is responsible for color television, weight-loss chocolate, the air-cleaning light bulb and a phone charger that uses the kinetic energy from knee movement to replenish a cell phone battery.

“We have a lot more ideas for innovative products,” said Andrea Moreno, “but they will be surprises later on. For the moment it’s very satisfying to put all our energy into this to see how far it can go.”

Expats in Mexico facing anti-American sentiment weigh their options

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 09:41:00 -0500

After nine months in the crossfire between Donald Trump and the many Mexicans who felt offended by his campaign’s rhetoric, the U.S. expats who call Mexico home were hoping November 8 would put an end to the wave of anti-American sentiment felt across the country.

One million American citizens reside south of the border – the highest density of U.S. expatriates anywhere in the world – and many have expressed fears that the current surge of antipathy, physical threats and vandalism resulting from local anger at Trump’s election, will make their new lives in Mexico unendurable.

“It was horrifying, I had people in tears in front of me, terrified for their livelihoods”, said Barbara Franco, who runs the non-profit American Benevolent Society, a 150-year-old organization that offers help to U.S. citizens throughout Mexico. “Mexicans are very scared of what a Trump presidency means for their country, and those fears are easily turned into prejudice.”

Mexicans have been quick to ridicule Trump since his appearance on the political scene. Children’s parties have hammered at Trump-shaped piñatas, donkeys have been dressed up as the property magnate during town festivals and protest marches across the country followed Trump’s surprise election victory.

“When I first introduce myself to Mexicans, I almost immediately tell them I voted for Hillary,” said Larry Pihl, a regional chairman of Democrats Abroad in Guadalajara. “As American expats we want to distance ourselves as much as possible from Donald Trump.”

“Americans have always been very difficult neighbors [to Mexico], and those of us who live here are emissaries of our culture,” he told Fox News. “Trump based an entire campaign on insulting a place we now call home, and it’s vital to make it clear that we share Mexico’s outrage.”

Larry’s organization Democrats Abroad, an official overseas wing of the party, held voter registration drives throughout Mexico prior to November in an attempt to galvanize the overseas vote, and says that the overriding sensation following election night was one of “shellshock.”

“Many Mexicans see all Americans as representative of Trump’s ideology, no matter how we voted,” he said. “I have many good friendships here, but you can’t keep apologizing for something you didn’t do.”

Yet for Trump voters living in Mexico, the reality of having cast their ballot for the property magnate is far worse than frosty looks and cold shoulders.

“I’m getting the hell out of Mexico as soon as my lease is up in January,” said Jefferson O’Kysen, a Trump voter who currently considers himself the most unpopular man in San Miguel de Allende. “I was dancing in the streets after on election night, but I had to put a stop to that to avoid bad confrontations.”

Originally from California, O’Kysen moved abroad seven years ago and says San Miguel de Allende, where the town council declared Trump persona non grata in September, is no longer a place where he feels safe talking openly about his political views.

“They think Trump’s the devil down here, and I’ve learned the hard way to keep my mouth shut and try to avoid the topic,” he told Fox News. “I could handle a few dirty looks, but it makes people very angry and I’ve been in some very nasty situations.”

“I’ve gotta get out of this town,” he said.

A popular spot for the younger American expat crowd, Dan Defossey’s Pinche Gringo BBQ in Mexico City held sold-out events for the presidential debates and election night, the last of which turned sour when the pro-Hillary crowd began to realize the implications of a Trump presidency for Mexico.

“We had people crying throughout the joint when they realized what was happening,” said Dan, who watched the country’s peso lose 10 per cent of its value overnight. “It was a very nervous few days following the result.”

The founder of Pinche Gringo - a common phrase used to express frustration with Freakin’ Gringos - Dan’s close friends advised him to change the name of his business for fear of vandalism and retributions.

“I refused to do it,” he told Fox News. “Mexicans think Americans are cultureless loudmouths, and the name comes with a spirit of humility that aims to bring people together.”

His decision appears to have paid off. Pinche Gringo BBQ held a Thanksgiving celebration at the end of last month, which was attracted over 1,000 diners, most of whom were Mexicans eager to experience the American holiday tradition for the first time.

“Mexicans don’t tend to judge people based on their political beliefs like we do up north,” he said. “In the U.S. you’re either Democrat or Republican, but in Mexico that’s not so important.”

As for the manager of the American Benevolent Society, Barbara Franco expects expat Americans’ fears in Mexico to subside with time.

“The truth is that as expats, we are as disconnected from the current political climate in America as the Mexicans we live alongside,” she told Fox News. “None of us could understand the result, but we don’t live the lives of average Americans down here.”

“I see Donald Trump in the White House the same way I saw moving to Mexico in the first place”, she said. “We will have to learn to live with it.”

With Fidel Castro gone, Cuba's Catholics hope to regain ground lost to Santeria

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 10:06:08 -0500

For many Cubans, especially the elderly, being forced to practice their Catholic faith in hiding is still a fresh, painful memory.

As the country’s president and supreme leader, Fidel Castro tried to eradicate the Catholic Church from the national consciousness, discouraging younger generations from attending mass with their parents and sending priests to re-education camps. He also eradicated holidays from the calendar and prevented the faithful from holding state jobs.

“My father had to always keep our annual Christmas tree away from the windows,” one parishioner at the Church of San Francisco in Old Havana, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Fox News Latino. “My parents were determined that our traditions would not be lost.”

With Castro now gone, many here are confident of a religion comeback in the coming years.

Nuns from Havana’s Madre Isabel monastery say their congregation has more adherents than ever.

“The monastic life is very attractive to many [female] Cubans, who have suffered for years under the oppression of men, and are now looking to devote themselves to the work of God,” one told FNL.

“Seminary schools across Cuba in particular are attracting more would-be priests than ever before.”

Shortly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, church services started being watched closely by the communist regime — so much so that police and military officials would be posted at the doors of churches to monitor sermons and record attendance.

“In the 70s, my mother would take me to churches in neighborhoods where we weren’t known in order to avoid being recognized,” the parishioner who requested anonymity told FNL. “No provisions were given for the priests, and we often had to improvise the sacramental wine, because none was available.”

Rene Santos, now 70, also recalls the years of oppression.

He was just 13 years old when the revolution rolled into Havana, he said, and changed his life forever. His Catholic faith became a burden.

“I was told by my university that if I wanted to study medicine and become a doctor, that I would have to recant my Catholicism,” he told FNL on Havana’s famous waterfront, the Malecón. “The idea was unthinkable. I didn’t see what one had to do with the other.”

“The government didn’t care that the older people kept their faith, but they encouraged the younger generations to reject it,” he said. “Many of my friends did, but, in the face of poverty and hunger, my faith was one of the only things that kept me going.”

Castro also forced the closure of a number of Franciscan monasteries in Havana, institutions that were founded soon after the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, repurposing some of their buildings as offices for “Defense of the Revolution” neighborhood groups — which were often the ones that went around reporting to the government which residents were displaying religious symbols like Christmas trees in their homes.

Castro’s war against Catholicism created a vacuum which was partially filled by Santería, an Afro-Caribbean religion mixing elements of Catholicism and African traditions.

Once a back-room faith, Santeria now proliferates in Cuba — santeros are easy to spot in Havana, as they dress entirely in white and they often seem to outnumber members of more traditional faiths.

Their “cleansing” and “mounting” ceremonies, which frequently involve animal sacrifices, tend to attract younger Cubans who grew up in austerity.

Late in his rule, however, Castro began to ease restrictions on religious practice, much of which was concessions to the Vatican that allowed Pope John Paul II to visit the island in 1998.

A few monasteries and convents reopened their doors in the years since, including Madre Isabel and the Convent of Santa Brigida.

Castro remained a modest proponent of the Church after handing over power to his brother, Raúl in 2006, and every pope since has visited Cuba.

In 2014 the current pontiff, Pope Francis, acted as a mediator between the U.S. and Cuba to begin discussions to re-establish diplomatic ties, a move that paved the way Barack Obama’s state visit as president.

This would explain why the Cuban dictator found an unlikely set of mourners among the island’s Catholic population.

“Fidel Castro made it very difficult to be a Catholic in Cuba, but we are still sad to see him pass away,” said the parishioner at the Church of San Francisco in Old Havana.

Part of that is pride, she explained. “Those Catholics who remain in Cuba today can celebrate having remained strong in their faith despite great external pressures.”

Grandsons of Mexican revolutionary hero vow to press the Zapatista cause

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 12:30:28 -0500

One hundred years after the death of one of Mexico’s greatest folk heroes, the descendants of Emiliano Zapata have picked up the legendary peasant revolution where their illustrious ancestor left off.

Enraged by what they perceive as “corruption and impunity at all levels of government,” the grandsons of the legendary Mexican revolutionary are uniting forces across Mexico in the hope of challenging the federal government.

“Today we are living with a powerful minority imposing unjust laws upon a feudalized population,” Jorge Zapata told Fox News Latino in the family’s hometown of Anenecuilco, south of Mexico City. “It’s almost exactly what my grandfather saw and rebelled against a century ago.”

“When my grandfather saw the wealthy abuse their power over the poor, he rose up and took decisive action,” Zapata said. “We’re going to make history repeat itself.”

The leader of a peasant uprising that engulfed southern Mexico during its 1910 revolution, Emiliano Zapata carried out a guerrilla campaign against the hacendados (landowning descendants of Spanish colonialists) in the highlands of his home state of Morelos.

Emiliano Zapata, 1879–1919. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

Starting with a band of just 24 men, Zapata’s message of “Better to die on my feet than to live on my knees,” gained him an army of more than 50,000 men and an enduring legacy of communities owning shared land that is enshrined in Mexico’s constitution.

Sporting a wide-brimmed sombrero, an enormous moustache and a thousand-yard stare, he remains a symbol of Mexican pride, community and social justice. In the 1990s, guerilla fighters in the state of Chiapas took up the Zapatista banner, and even today Zapata's name is a byword for anti-government groups across the south, particularly in sierra-dwelling indigenous communities that feel abandoned by the federal government.

Those are the communities Emiliano Zapata’s grandsons say they will mobilize to take the battle to Mexico’s powerbrokers.

“We don’t want armed fight at the moment," said Jorge Zapata, who alongside his cousins Galdino and Benjamin, forms the head council of the 21st-century Zapatista movement. "But we certainly aren’t ruling it out."

“It’s a great pride to be a Zapata,” 78-year-old Galdino told FNL, “but it also means an obligation to fight for social justice and underprivileged Mexicans everywhere.”

All three men go to great pains to imitate their famous grandfather – dressing in the "ranchero" style, sporting large sombreros, shouting in gruff voices and rough manners and, of course, cultivating enormous moustaches.

“It’s our brand trademark,” says Benjamin, who takes great pains to wax his impressive whiskers every morning. “I can’t imagine being a proud Zapata without the facial hair – how else would we get recognized?”

The family is renowned in Anenecuilco, where a large golden statue of their grandfather dominates the central square, although the cousins travel throughout Mexico to attend demonstrations and rally protestors to their cause.

“We have connections throughout the south of Mexico, everywhere where the memory of our grandfather is alive,” says Jorge, who says he has been frustrated by the bureaucracy involved in legal action. “In Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacán – when the time comes we will take back what is ours.”

“The land belongs to those who work it,” he said, quoting his grandfather. “I will die a slave to my principles – not a slave to men.”

Yet before the overthrow of the federal government can take place, the Zapata cousins have a more pressing issue closer to home.

A Spanish thermoelectricity conglomerate has set up a plant on the outskirts of Anenecuilco, polluting the groundwater the local farmers use.

The Zapatas held a sit-in protest on the site of the plant’s intended pipeline route and continue to obstruct the facility’s activities.

“Mexico has everything we need: food, water, petrol, minerals, wildlife, the best beaches, but the government has sold everything to the highest-bidding foreigner,” Jorge told FNL. “The only remaining industry that isn’t either monopolized or nationalized is drugs – and yet they wonder how the cartels attract so many young Mexican men from impoverished backgrounds.”

He went on, “I see a very bleak future for Mexico, and we have to put an end to this before the situation becomes irreversible. If those in government don’t want to listen to the public, then they must live with the consequences – and if it comes to armed conflict, we are ready.”

How truly prepared the cousins are for armed conflict, or how sturdy the support is that they can muster across Mexico is unclear, yet the grandsons' conviction in the legacy of their iconic, machete-wielding ancestor is unshakeable.

“Our grandfather gave up a comfortable life in order to fight for the rights of others, and we are willing to do the same,” Jorge vowed. “We were born with this – the obligation is in our blood.”

Tijuana braces for huge influx of deportees, some 15K per month, under Trump

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 13:30:19 -0500

Since Donald Trump’s promise to “immediately deport two to three million undocumented immigrants,” the Mexican city of Tijuana has been preparing to bear the brunt of an immigration exodus on a scale never before seen in the country.

Nicknamed Mexico’s “deportee capital,” Tijuana has received 40 percent of all U.S. deportations since 2010 – an average of 7,500 a month – and officials say they are expecting this number to double under a Trump presidency.

“We are expecting U.S. deportations to Tijuana to grow to 150,000 annually in the next two years,” Rosario Lozada, the head of Tijuana’s Migrant Attention program, told Fox News Latino. “We are concerned by the situation, because we struggle to cope with the volume of deportees we currently receive.”

Lozada heads up a local government program that seeks to help deportees rebuild their lives following ejection from the United States. Rosario and her team offer counseling and temporary accommodation, with the final goal of encouraging deportees to leave Tijuana, an aim she says has become more difficult in recent years.

“We always encourage deportees to leave the border, but those who remain usually have no connection to Mexico, with their lives and family in the United States,” she said. “Proximity to loved ones and the hope of re-crossing will keep people here, despite the dangers of life on the border.”

Mass deportations like those Trump has proposed would be disastrous for Tijuana, Lozada says.

“We struggle to cope with the volume of deportees at the moment,” she said. “There is no funding to move deportees on, temporary accommodation is already past capacity and local organized crime preys upon the vulnerability of the deportees.”

“The arrival of hundreds of thousands of undocumented people in the space of a few months would plunge Tijuana into chaos,” she told FNL.

When asked about Trump’s plans for a border wall, Lozada less worried.

“Tijuana already has three layers of fence and buffer zones between Mexico and the United States,” she noted. “Our main concern is the volume people coming back the other way.”

Of the 100,000 deportees who are ejected across California’s San Isidro border sector annually, an average of 26 percent choose to remain in Tijuana.

Large slums, dominated by drug cartels, have sprung up along the border line in and around the city. Today, neighborhoods like Zona Norte have become no-go zones even for locals.

“Things have been so bad here at times that I’ve wanted to go and punch a cop, just to get put in prison and taken away from here,” Rubén Robles, a deported U.S. army veteran who now lives 50 yards from the border fence, told Fox News Latino.

“There’s a huge divide between locals and deportees here,” said Julio Lujano, who was deported last year from San Jose, California, and remains in Tijuana in the hope of re-crossing. “The Chicano deportees are looked down upon in a lot of places.”

Edward Haase is a San Diego-based deportation defense lawyer, and he says that the legal community is very curious to see what Trump’s immigration policy actually looks like.

“I would say that the deportation of three million immigrants is an impossible task,” he told FNL. “Firstly, I don’t know where he’s getting the numbers. We have no evidence that there are so many ‘criminal aliens’ in the country, to use his term.”

“How will you judge what constitutes a bad enough crime to warrant deportation? To where exactly will you deport these people? Who will cover the costly legal battles that will inevitably arise? What if a deportation candidate has been here for ten years, has three U.S.-citizen children, and pays taxes?”

“These are all issues that Trump hasn’t addressed.”

Despite Haase’s practical doubts over Trump’s positions, he says he has seen a climate of fear develop in immigrant communities since the election.

“With Trump, it’s impossible to predict what will happen, and that uncertainty has left people scared,” he told FNL.

Tijuana has a number of charities that seek to help the deportee population. Father Pat Murphy of the city’s Casa del Migrante (“Migrant Shelter”) says that increased ejections from the U.S. in recent years has forced the group to change its charity model.

“In the last eight or nine years we have shifted from being a casa for migrants to a casa for deported people,” he said at the charity house, a 120-capacity shelter which already struggles to handle the increased volume of daily arrivals.

“Deportations have increased significantly in the past decade, and that doesn’t look like changing with Donald Trump in the White House,” he said. “We have to look at the bigger picture, and that is the fact that deportations have been on the rise for the past decade. This isn’t the result of a recent political movement.”

Originally from Kansas City, Father Murphy believes deportation has a negative effect on the United States in the long term.

“The vast majority of deportees are FNL. “I can only imagine that in the coming years we’re going to bear the brunt of the effects these kids have [experienced] because dad left them.”

People who advocate for large-scale deportation, he argued, “are leaving out the human factor ... These aren’t just numbers, they are people with real lives and real families.”

Exotic animals, symbols of macho power for cartel honchos, end up discarded

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 15:26:54 -0500

What could be more macho than buying a lion or tiger or leopard for a pet?

In Mexico, exotic animals are the pet of choice for cartel leaders who buy big cats to show off their power.

But after two months, animal rescue workers say, the narco-traffickers end up having buyer’s remorse. They come to realize the reality of living alongside a dangerous and destructive predator.

“Big cats are seen as status symbols, particularly within the organized crime community,” said Eduardo Serio, the founder of the Black Jaguar White Lion Foundation in Mexico City, the world’s largest rescue center for big cats with more than 260 predatory felines on its 140-acre grounds. “But seriously? Who wants a lion for a pet? They’re the most beautiful animals on the planet, but they’re extremely dangerous.”

The foundation has exotic animals from circuses and zoos that have closed. But some of the animals come from cartel leaders who didn't realize how much trouble it would be to own them.

“You can get a lion for $1,000, but the novelty is quickly outweighed by the reality of living with a dangerous animal,” Serio told Fox News Latino. “Having a lot of money gives a person a great opportunity to show the world how stupid they are.”

Serio sees himself as a father to the 260 cats on his ranch in the hills above Mexico City, and refers to himself as the "Papa Bear."

“People don’t have the knowledge to care for a tiger," he said. "They give them toys, which they tend to eat rather than play with, so when they arrive here we generally have to perform surgery to remove squeaky balls from their stomachs.”

Since its founding in 2013, the center has become a social media phenomenon, with 6 million followers on Instagram alone, due to the extraordinary videos of Serio playing with the foundation's big cats as if they were harmless puppies. Celebrities have also helped make it popular spot – Khloé Kardashian, Debra Messing and Paris Hilton, among others, have trekked to Mexico City to take photos with Serio’s exotic animals.

But it’s not without its critics.

It has been slammed by animal-rights groups that accuse it of being more of a backyard breeding program than a sanctuary.

“Overall, I’d say that Black Jaguar White Tiger is nothing more than an ego project from a well-meaning, but seemingly delusional man…” wrote 911 Animal Abuse. “Sadly, like so many animal hoarders, he can’t see the harm he’s doing. This situation is only going to get worse, I’m afraid, especially with the lack of laws in Mexico regarding exotic animals as pets.”

Serio takes pride in bottle-feeding the cats.

“You have to remember that most of my kids have known me all their lives,” he told FNL. “There’s always a risk, but I’m happy to take it.”

The sight of Serio playing with the animals is extraordinary. Standing in the center of a grassy compound, surrounded by top predators pacing impatiently in their enclosures, he raises his arms to signal that the door to their pens be opened.

Eduardo knows each cat by name, and, as the portal to the first cage opens, he calls to a 600-pound male lion named Han (after Han Solo from the "Star Wars" movies), who bounds out of his confinement at a sprint to tackle "Papa Bear" to the ground.

“They’re jumpy and angry at me, because I haven’t been around for the last 10 days,” he explained as he wrestled to keep the male’s jaws away from his neck and face.

Eduardo established the center in 2013 when a friend in possession of a black panther cub was thinking of selling it to a pet store.

“I went crazy and convinced her to give Cielo to me,” he told FNL. “I came back to Mexico City. Three months later they sent me a tigress, then a leopard, then a lioness and 260 big felines later – here we are.”

The foundation has the backing of Mexico’s environmental protection governmental agencies, and it is currently planning to expand its operation from 140 to more than 300 acres, he says. Some have criticized it because it does not meet the standards of the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, which requires the sanctuary to meet stringent criteria.

Eduardo says there is no limit to the amount of big cats he will rescue, and prides himself on the fact that the Black Jaguar White Lion Foundation has never refused an animal.

“If I don’t do it, who’s going to do it?” he said. “I can’t complain about the world going to hell if I’m not doing my part ... I sold my watches, my cars, my art collection to save these animals.”

Apart from his personal resources, the foundation relies upon donations from its 8 million social media followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“I have always said that I built my foundation with my heart, my iPhone and Instagram,” he says. “Without those three, none of it would exist.”

Mexican officials scramble to deal with Trump’s election as U.S. president

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 12:25:55 -0500

The morning after the citizens of the United States elected Republican Donald Trump as the country’s 45th president, elected officials and others in the corridors of power in Mexico scrambled to get a hold of the situation.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who publicly vowed that his country would never pay for the border wall that Trump made a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, tweeted a series of messages about Trump's victory.

“I congratulate the U.S. on its electoral process, and I repeat to [Trump] our willingness to work together to improve our bilateral relations.”

During his early-morning victory speech, Trump stated, ”I want to tell the world community that, while we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone. All people and all other nations. We will seek common ground, not hostility, partnership, not conflict.”

Perhaps in response, Peña Nieto posted, “Mexico and the U.S. are friends, partners and allies who must continue to collaborate for the competitiveness and development of North America … I am confident that Mexico and the United States will continue to expand their ties of cooperation and mutual respect.”

The U.S. is Mexico's largest trade partner, and Trump has threatened to rescind the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"The relationship of Mexico and the U.S. is uncertain," Isidro Morales, of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, told the Associated Press. "Donald Trump is not a person of institutions. Surely it will be a unilateral policy worse than [George W.] Bush and we don't know what to expect."

On Wednesday morning, before the Bolsa, Mexico’s stock market, opened, the country’s Finance Minister, José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, and the head of the Bank of Mexico, Agustín Carstens, issued a joint statement asking for calm in the financial markets.

They assured citizens that Mexico has at its disposal enough liquidity and the means by which to avoid an economic crisis. The men added that the federal government “will take all necessary measures to maintain the proper functioning of the markets.”

Nevertheless, the equivalent of the Dow Jones index in the Bolsa, the IPC, dropped 1,900 points in a few minutes after trading began.

Mexico's currency appeared to track Trump's rising and falling fortunes throughout the campaign, and it fell sharply Tuesday night. According to Banco Base, the peso dropped 9.56 percent, its biggest daily loss since 1995.

"I think we have to be calm," Jorge Castillo, a Tijuana-based economist who works at the College of the Northern Border, told Fox News Latino. "We can't paint too dark a picture. We know there are checks and balances. There's too much business between Mexico and the U.S."

He believes that the federal government will have to take at least some emergency measures. "[Banco de Mexico] will have to intervene," he said. "But it's a short term situation. The best way to help the peso is to have a strong economy, to develop, to have trade flows."

The currency on Wednesday seemed to be stabilizing without any extraordinary actions having been taken.

Eduardo Martinez, a financial advisor in Mexico City, told FNL, “The weakening peso is a gut reaction from the markets, but we are the U.S.'s biggest trading partner, and that isn't likely to change."

“It may be an uncertain time,” Martinez added, “but it probably won't be as bad as everyone is thinking today.”

"[Trump's] campaign caused instability, but it was a campaign," Jorge Heriberto, an economist based in Guadalajara, told FNL. "In practice, it will be different. I don't think he will be as radical."

"The market has calmed down a bit and given the benefit of doubt to a more conciliatory Trump," Marco Oviedo, an economist at Barclays in Mexico City, told Reuters.

That sense of hope extends all the way down to the street level.

Jafet Florentino, a resident of Mexico City, believes that “a Trump presidency could be either very good or very bad for Mexico. We can't judge what will happen on the basis of 12 hours.”

Not everybody agrees.

International ratings agency Fitch has indicated that it may add risk to its economic forecast for Mexico.

"Very hard times are coming to Mexico," analyst Gabriela Siller of Banco Base told Reuters.

Across the country, people were scratching their heads in wonder at the results of the election.

“It’s a very confusing time, knowing that our neighbors across the border in Texas chose a candidate who has spoken so hatefully about us, particularly of the situation on the border in cities like ours,” Patricia Ortiz, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen.

For Ortiz, it isn’t Trump’s border wall that worries her, it’s some of his other hardline immigration proposals, like the immediate deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., many of whom are of Mexican origin.

“The Americans have already built two very large walls separating us from Texas,” Ortiz said. “What concerns us are his plans to send undocumented migrants and workers back here, as these people can create very bad problems for the Mexican border cities in places where drugs and crime are a problem.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Spooked by violence, Mexicans staying away from cemeteries for Day of the Dead celebrations

Thu, 27 Oct 2016 12:30:49 -0400

Alarmed by the possibility of violent crime, this year Mexico City residents are shying away from the capital’s cemeteries for traditional Day of the Dead rituals. They’d rather honor their ancestors from the safety of their own homes.

Following a pre-Hispanic custom of bringing food, drink and offerings to the gravesites of deceased relatives, the Day of the Dead celebrations see thousands of visits to cemeteries across the country from Oct. 29 to Nov. 2.

But following a spate of break-ins and robberies at the Iztapalapa graveyard in Mexico City, one of the capital’s most dangerous districts, many members of ground staff say they have seen a significant drop in visitors to family gravestones.

“The graveyard has become notorious as an easy place to commit a crime and get away with it,” graveyard supervisor Benjamin Mendoza told Fox News Latino. “Residents feel off their guard while kneeling at their loved ones’ gravesides.”

On the night of Oct. 19, criminals broke the chains on the front gate of Iztapalapa Municipal graveyard, where over 5,000 people are buried, before raiding the storeroom, front office and a number of graves belonging to the wealthiest families in town.

It was the fourth break-in during the last three months.

“The night watchman was asleep through every incident,” according to Mendoza, who says he gave up investigating the crime spree following the first break-in.

Robbery has also been known to occur at gravesides during the five-day celebration of the Day of the Dead, when praying families are an easy target for thieves.

Ninety-year-old Raúl Mendez was robbed at gunpoint two years ago as he paid his respects at his parents’ graveside. He says the experience shocked him but has not stopped him from returning.

“Two hooded men put a gun in my face and told me to give them everything I had, down to my jacket,” he told Fox News Latino with tears in his eyes. “I could not believe people could stoop so low as to rob an old man in a graveyard.”

“But to stop coming would be to let those sons of b***s scare me off a beautiful Mexican tradition,” he said. “Since the incident, I have not brought any valuables with me to the graveside.”

The Iztapalapa graveyard received just 12,000 visitors during the 2015 Day of the Dead celebration, down from an estimated 31,000 who visited their ancestors at the same cemetery a decade ago.

“I can understand why people wouldn’t want to visit once they’ve been through something like that,” Mendez said, “but if you’re going to be shot, where better than a graveyard?”

The Iztapalapa graveyard is an ideal site for would-be robbers. The tightly packed gravesites and single-story shrines, combined with the crowds that visit the area during the ceremonial days, allow criminals to vanish within seconds of a robbery.

It’s not only the rough districts of Mexico City that have suffered from this crime wave. A spree of grave robberies have occurred throughout the capital, particularly in the more affluent western districts since 2014, leaving police and residents at a loss of how to handle graveyard security.

Rosa María Alorón and her mother, Graciela Cruz, say they prefer to hold their gravesite visits weeks ahead of the festival days to avoid the risk of robbery.

“We come to their graves beforehand to pray a rosary while we can feel safe,” she said. “Many of my friends have been robbed here, so it’s better to come earlier.”

“We hold our actual ceremony at home, where we put out a candle for each relative as well as offerings of the things they enjoyed,” Alorón told FNL while putting out fresh flowers at her father’s grave.

The Iztapalapa government has reacted to the robberies by sending police officers to patrol the graveyard during the higher-density periods of the festivities, but many say it is a difficult area to police.

“We’re stepping up security again for this year, but it’s a difficult place to police” says Mendoza, who has been the graveyard supervisor for the past six months.

“The robbers here know the cops stick to the paths,” the 90-year-old Mendez said, “and so they concentrate on people in the trickier areas to reach, where you have to dodge around other graves.”

He added, “They will wait until the cops are out of sight, but even then there are multiple entrances, and a 20-year-old robber is always going to get away from a policeman in a maze like this.”

“The only thing the graveyard cops actually do during the Day of the Dead is stop you from enjoying a beer or tequila beside your dead relatives,” he said.

Tough-love drug rehabs in Mexico have ‘kidnapping teams’ to help addicts recover

Fri, 21 Oct 2016 14:00:29 -0400

An extreme form of drug and alcohol rehabilitation in Mexico is beginning to attract U.S. citizens, many of whom believe that a tough-love treatment may succeed where 12-step programs have failed.

Known as “anexos” or “granjas” (“annexes” or “barns”), informal Mexican rehabilitation centers have sprung up around the country that are run by former addicts and favor hardline treatments and mental toughness over sympathy and submission to a higher power.

“Many of us have done the 12 steps, but Mexican culture is not as forgiving toward recovering addicts as our northern neighbors,” Jesús Tapia, director at Tijuana’s Casa Recuperación, told Fox News Latino. “Here we find it’s a lot more effective for patients to feel they have fully atoned and paid for their wrong doings.”

The anexo phenomenon began in the 1980s when former addicts, disillusioned with the lack of Mexican state concern for their disease, established private rehabilitation centers.

The anexos, most of which are independent institutions charging around $500 for a three-month program, have proliferated in Mexico, and word of them has reached the United States.

The past two years have seen a surge in U.S. citizens – particularly Mexican-Americans – at Tijuana and other border city facilities.

“Our U.S. patients generally arrive for two reasons,” said Jesus. “U.S. rehab is very expensive, and are difficult for Mexican immigrant families to afford, but also many Latino families have more faith in a less sympathetic, more punitive, form of recovery.”

“We feel that being treated by former addicts is more effective than by medical professionals,” he said. “Rather than following set medical procedures, we try to reach patients on an emotional and spiritual level, by sharing our own experiences.”

While purporting to focus on recovery, the anexos have gained a notorious reputation in Mexico as violators of human rights, where patients are held against their will, suffer both physical and mental torture, and suicides are common.

“'Welcome to hell,' was the first thing they said to me when I arrived,” said Moises Tevez, who had been taken across the border against his will by his family from his home in the Walnut Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, and checked into Una Nueva Vision in Tijuana’s Zona Norte.

“I had been through the 12 steps in L.A., but quickly slipped up,” he told Fox News Latino from Una Nueva Vision. “The Mexican model is much more extreme.”

“The only steps they concentrate on are four and five,” he said. “The first thing when you arrive is being forced to admit all the terrible things you have done, and then you are constantly reminded of that throughout the process.”

Steps four and five of the 12 step program are:

4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

“Humiliation plays a big part,” Tevez said. ”They wear you down before you can be built back up again.”

Asked whether he felt the program would keep him away from narcotics upon completion, Tevez was unsure.

“There’s definitely less sympathy on this side of the border,” he told FNL, “so I suppose that makes the personal accountability more real.”

Despite Tijuana having one of the highest densities of rehabilitation centers in Mexico (at least 110 centers, with over 200 AA groups around the city), the rates of patient regression hang at 95 percent.

“Most of our patients are crystal meth users, which can be nearly impossible to resist for recovering addicts,” said José Morales, director at Una Nueva Vision where Tevez is a patient. “Over half of all the meth that reaches the U.S. market comes through Tijuana, and narcotics are available on every corner.”

“If our patients return to their old routines when they leave, a return to use is almost a certainty,” Morales said.

“We have less contact with our North American patients when they go,” he told Fox News Latino, “but we assume the same is true north of the border.”

Unlike AA-run rehab centers in Tijuana, the anexos are not controlled by any organization, and patient treatment is subject to the whims of ex-addict "padrinos" (godfathers) behind closed doors.

Dr Julio César Ramírez, chief of medical staff at the $1,000-a-month Durango State-run Mision Korian, says the anexos are dangerous places.

“You simply don’t know what you’re getting if you check into an anexo,” he told Fox News Latino. “Programs run by former addicts are unpredictable, and there’s no guarantee of a patient’s safety.”

Many notorious anexos falsely use the AA logo in order to trick concerned families into bringing their family members, while others have "kidnap teams" which specialize in forcing addicts into the institutions against their will.

Cuauhtémoc Avellano, 56, the day manager of the Fundación Durango anexo in Central Mexico, was forced into the rehab center against his will 11 years ago by a kidnap team employed by Fundación Durango. A recovering crystal meth addict, today Avellano heads up the kidnap team himself, forcing the more belligerent drug addicts into the center on the request of their families.

“It was a real fight to get me in, but they eventually overpowered me,” he told FNL. “Looking back, it was the only way I was ever going to go into rehab, and I see it was for my own good, but it was very stressful at the time.”

He says the kidnapping of patients is a relatively easy operation. “We make sure their families take away any guns or weapons they might have, and they tell us where they will be at a specific time.”

“Six of us arrive and forcibly abduct them. It can be very stressful for everyone involved.”

Mexico’s authorities pay little attention to the anexos, given that the majority are based out of private properties in residential areas, and legal jurisdiction is more complicated than with public institutions.

“The anexos are successful in giving patients a sense of the pain and suffering they have often caused others, but patients’ families must be very careful about which organization they choose,” said Jesus Tapia. “A three-month stay can be very a long time if you’re in the wrong place.”

Thousands of goats killed in Mexican town for sake of tradition, and local mole dish

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 14:30:41 -0400

A Mexican town’s annual fiesta has locals slaughtering thousands of goats, in a bloodbath faithful to local indigenous traditions.

The town of Huajuapan in Oaxaca state celebrates its ancestry in the second half of October, and custom dictates the preparation of the seasonal Mole de Caderas ("Stew of Hips") dish, a vital ingredient of which is cured goat meat.

“It’s a brutal sight, but the result is very delicious,” Isidro Ponce, a Huajuapan shopkeeper whose entire family gets involved in the annual slaughter, told Fox News Latino. “It’s a wonderful bonding activity for the community.”

The mass slaughter of goats here is a rite predating the Spanish arrival in Mexico. At La Matanza ("The Killing"), a ranch on the edge of town, the goats are killed, skinned, butchered, cured and sold in an operation involving more than 100 people.

“It makes sense to kill the goats after the summer, when they are fat from grazing,” the ranch’s owner Guillermo Maza told FNL. “We sell the cured meat throughout Mexico in the coming months, as out method of preparation has made us famous.”

Mole de Caderas

Ingredients:
4 lbs         cured goat meat
½ gallon    water
½ lb         Costeño chilis
½ lb         Green tomatoes or tomatillos
1 bunch     Pepicha herb
1 lb         Guaje beans
                 Salt to taste

Method:
-       Boil goat meat in lightly salted water for 2 hours to make a broth
-       Grind Costeno chilis to fine pulp and mix with chopped green tomatoes. Mix in half gallon of water.
-       Fry chilli and tomato mix in large pot until reduced to ¼ gallon.
-       Add goat meat with broth and bring to a boil.
-       Tie Pepicha bunch with string, so it doesn't get lost in the stew, and add to pot.
-       Grind Guaje beans to paste and add to the mix
-       Cook at a rolling boil for 90 minutes, stirring constantly.

Serve with white corn tortillas. Serves 4.

Once at their desired weight, Huajuapan goats are prepared for slaughter by being fed salt, denied water and herded a minimum of 15 miles from the hills surrounding the town to the slaughterhouse.

“The salt makes their blood very thick and their muscles very sinewy,” said Maza, who is the third generation of owners at the slaughter facility. “It’s a vital aspect of the process for achieving the final flavor we want.”

Once the goats are brought into the slaughter yard, pandemonium ensues. Workers are divided into the roles of "grabbers" and "stabbers." The former catch the terrified animals, hold their heads back by the horns as the latter cut into their windpipe just above the shoulders.

Schoolchildren sit on top of the walls surrounding the yard, staring in amazement at the nightmarish scenes below.

After a few minutes of rushing, stabbing and bleeding, the killing floor is bright red with the goats' blood, which is taken away in buckets to be made into a traditional taco sauce.

Pregnant she-goats don’t escape the knife, and, once slaughtered, are removed quickly to an unoccupied corner of the killing floor where a caesarean section is conducted. Few newborn kids survive, but nothing goes to waste; even the dead fetuses are consumed.

The dead goats are taken into the skinning area in wheelbarrows, where the grabbers and stabbers set to work skinning them.

The ranch sees up to four rounds of slaughter in one afternoon, as many as 1,400 goats, all of which are processed on the same day.

“It’s a huge operation,” Maza said. “Everyone needs to know their role very well if things are going to go smoothly.”

Nothing goes to waste from the carcasses. The pelts are sold for pillowcases, the horns are ground for medicinal use, the teeth go into baby rattles, the hooves are boiled for broth and the udders are hung out to cure in the sun to make a translucent leather that is very smooth except for the pockmarks created by the teats.

The goats’ innards are cleaned, a messy process that involves emptying its stomach, before being taken to the frying room, where they are cooked in the rendered fat of animals that were slaughtered before.

After being butchered, the more valuable meat is left to sit overnight in a covered concrete pool. The following morning, it will be shoveled out and placed on straw mats in a wide courtyard to absorb the sun’s rays.

“Our process is entirely natural,” says slaughterhouse manager Norio Flores, who oversees the curing process. “The goats eat natural food grazing the hills, and we use no preservatives other than salt and sun.”

The curing process is a four-day affair, with the meat set out daily in the baking heat, where it is salted and eventually turned browned by the process.

When ready, the meat is sold by the kilo at the shopfront or turned into the ranch’s own Mole de Caderas by head cook Adelina Soriano.

“People come from across Mexico to eat our Mole de Caderas,” Soriano told FNL. “Oaxaca is famous for its delicious food, and our signature dish is definitely one of the highlights.”

The goat slaughter is accompanied by a festival in which Huajuapan residents dress in Mixteca indigenous garments or like demons – a traditional warning to any belligerent neighboring adversaries.

Unsurprisingly, the tradition has caught the attention of animal rights groups, who claim it is barbaric and unnecessarily violent.

“These are innocent creatures that are being murdered in a terribly cruel way,” said Leonora Esquivel, the founder of AnimaNaturalis, an animal rights group which successfully lobbied for a ban on the use of animals in Mexican circuses. "The idea of tradition is no excuse for what is going on.”

“Ultimately the market will decide,” Maza, who says he is not worried by animal cruelty activists, told FNL. “When people refuse to work here, and the meat and Mole de Caderas stops selling, that’s when the tradition will come to and end.”

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Trump-Clinton race causing tension among U.S. expats, locals in Mexican town

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 04:00:46 -0400

The tourist town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico has a growing population of American expatriots. The locals and expats have enjoyed relatively smooth, though sometimes rocky, relations since the Americans, now 14,000 strong, began coming over decades ago.

But the presidential race north of the border is threatening to further fracture relations between the two groups.

It all began when council members in San Miguel de Allende, which has a population of about 140,000, became so fed up with presidential candidate Donald Trump that they passed a resolution declaring him “persona non grata” – effectively banning him from the region.

On Sept. 16, Mexican Independence Day, the municipal council led by the opposition National Action Party (PAN), voted on the resolution.

“The government and people of San Miguel de Allende declare that Mr. Donald Trump is persona non grata, and is not welcome in this territory,” the resolution read.

San Miguel de Allende council leader Gonzalo González told Fox News Latino that the town’s government considers Donald Trump “a threat to peace” in the town.

“We are the first town in the world to take an official stand against Donald Trump’s message of hate and in doing so we hope to set an example, that the rest of Mexico might make a stand,” he said. “San Miguel was the birthplace of the Mexican Revolution, and the town has always retained this rebellious nature.”

Yet some Americans in San Miguel have expressed fear that the decision may cause an unintended backlash against the local expat community.

An important colonial settlement during the Spanish imperial era, San Miguel de Allende first became a haven for American expats when artist Stirling Dickinson convinced a number of military veterans to establish a community in the town following World War II.

Attracting writers and artists from across the U.S., Dickinson eventually established an art school in the town, and attracted retirees in the hope of boosting the town’s struggling economy. Today, over one tenth of the town’s population is U.S. expats.

“There has always been a tension between the natives and the expat Americans in this town,” said Jefferson O’Kysen, a Trump voter who moved from California seven years ago.

A former hedge-fund manager, O’Kysen said he now feels scared to express his political views for fear of aggression.

“As a Trump supporter I have been left feeling very isolated by this decision to outlaw a political opinion,” he told FNL. “Trump hasn’t broken the law either in the U.S. or Mexico, and I think banning him because of his views goes against freedom of speech.”

There is certainly an undercurrent of resentment among the town’s natives toward the expatriate community in San Miguel. Fox News Latino interviewed a number of Mexican residents who professed unease at the growing expat community.

“Prices in town have gone up immensely since the expat community has grown,” says Rodrigo Hernández, the owner of a local barbershop. “The economic boost has been good for the town, but the best bars and restaurants have become inaccessible for the locals as a result.”

Trump’s candidacy, and his harsh rhetoric about Mexico, has only deepened tension between the groups.

Council members said the resolution, while it may have ruffled some feathers, needed to be passed.

“There has been xenophobia and aggression against Mexicans as a direct result of Donald Trump’s rallies,” González said. “We believe that his message of hate is fomenting racism within our town and we have decided to send a message of solidarity to our community.”

But he noted that, on average, most of the town’s residents were supportive of the resolution.

“We have received a great deal of compliments from our North American community following our decision,” he told FNL.

Surely, there were some expats who were glad the town passed the resolution – even if it’s largely symbolic.

“It’s a reaction to the vile things [Trump] has said about Mexicans,” said Terry Smith, a retired building contractor from New Hampshire who has lived in San Miguel de Allende for six years. “He’s perpetuating racism and bigotry all over the world, and I think it’s very positive that the town’s leaders have taken a stand against it.”

Still, unease is building in this small town because of a political race happening several thousand miles away, in another country. Some expats are angry at the city council’s decision and believe it was the wrong thing to do.

“Ultimately I don’t think banning Donald Trump will make any difference, and may end up reflecting badly on the town’s administration,” O’Kysen said. “It’s a small town in Mexican terms, and for expats it’s effectively a retirement community.”