Dozens of tortilla shop owners shut down their businesses on Saturday and have remained closed

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Organized crime has left several neighborhoods in Celaya, Guanajuato, without tortillas for the last four days.

Dozens of tortilla makers in the southwest of the city shut down their businesses on Saturday and have remained closed to protest against the presence of violent criminal gangs that charge extortion payments known as cobro de piso, and to demand government action.

“Due to intimidation and the possibility of retaliation, those affected haven’t in all cases reported the extortioners but [instead] chose to close because their incomes are not sufficient to cover the fees that criminals demand from them,” a local tortilla makers’ association said in a statement.

Among the neighborhoods where tortillerías were closed yesterday were Lagos, Las Flores, Santa Isabel, Jacarandas, El Ejidal and Monte Blanco, the newspaper El Universal reported.

“People have been walking around looking for a place to buy [tortillas]. A lot of businesses are closed. It’s very unfortunate, very sad, never before have we reached such extremes,” said Fernando Arellano, a priest at a church in Las Flores.

“All the tortillerías are closed,” said 65-year-old Mariana, who walked seven blocks searching for tortillas. “What are we going to do now? Well, go to [the supermarket] Mega, surely there are tortillas there.”

One store that was closed yesterday was tortillería La Indita, a 57-year-old family business in the neighborhood of Lagos.

However, the shop’s owner didn’t close as part of the protest against violence and extortion.

Virginia “N” and two female employees were shot dead by a suspected extortion gang on Monday as they worked, an attack that has left other tortilla shop workers fearful for their own lives.

“Of course, we’re afraid,” said a young woman working yesterday at one of only two tortilla shops that were open in Celaya’s southwest.

“What can you do? We have to work, right?”

Source: El Universal (sp).

US Congresswoman Denies Guatemala is a Safe Country

US Congresswoman Norma Torres said in Guatemala City that this country is not prepared to shelter thousands of people, referring to the ”safe third country” agreement recently signed with the United States.

‘I have been very clear in my opinion about this and it is personal,’ Torres said in a press briefing after she concluded an eight-hour visit that brought her back to Guatemala, the country where she was born, along with a bipartisan congressional delegation, led by its leader, Nancy Pelosi.

The congresswoman said they talked about the issue with several social actors but ‘We still don’t know the details of what it is about.’

She had very emotional words for the personnel of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) who remain in the country, the mandate of which President Jimmy Morales unilaterally interrupted.

Pelosi, on the other hand, was very satisfied with the program of meetings with non-governmental organizations, a child refuge, representatives of civil society and judges, which offered them an intersectoral vision of the country and possibilities of working together.

The delegation traveled to El Salvador and will later be in Honduras for the weekend before concluding the tour in McAleen, Texas, where they will once again verify the conditions in which undocumented persons arrested at the border are detained.