by Mexico News Daily

The Mexican government on Monday presented its case in favor of the reopening of a US $10 billion lawsuit against United States-based gun manufacturers and expressed confidence that its arguments will be “well received.”

The federal government sued gunmakers, including Smith & Wesson and Barrett Firearms in August 2021, accusing them of negligent business practices that have led to illegal arms trafficking and deaths in Mexico, where U.S.-sourced firearms are used in a majority of high-impact crimes such as homicide.

Mexico’s case — championed by former foreign affairs minister Marcelo Ebrard until he left that position last month — was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in September 2022, prompting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) to file an appeal in March.

The SRE noted in a statement on Monday that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston had “heard Mexico’s oral arguments in its lawsuit against gun manufacturers.”

“… The Mexican Government seeks to reverse the Sept. 30, 2022, ruling in which the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissed the lawsuit,” the ministry said.

The SRE noted that the federal judge who dismissed the lawsuit, F. Dennis Saylor,  ruled that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) “grants immunity to the defendant companies, even if the damage caused occurs in Mexican territory.”

It said that its appellate brief argued that the federal district court “erred in defining the focus of the PLCAA so broadly and in such absolute terms and thus granting immunity to the gun companies.”

The SRE said that in the appeals court on Monday, lawyers for the Mexican government made two points.

– There is no provision in the PLCAA explicitly stating that it can be applied to damages caused outside the U.S. territory, therefore, it does not grant immunity to the companies for damages caused in Mexico.

– Alternatively, even if the PLCAA is again held to be applicable, the actions and omissions committed by the gun companies fall under the exceptions to PLCAA immunity, so the Mexican case should be allowed to continue.

“The appeals panel that heard Mexico’s arguments was made up of one female and two male judges considered to be liberal and progressive in their outlook,” the SRE said.

“The Mexican Government is confident that its arguments will be well-received by the court. Should Mexico win the appeal, the case will return to the lower court to be judged on its merits.”

Steve Shadowen, a lawyer for the Mexican government, said that a favorable ruling by the appeals court would allow Mexico to not only seek damages from gun manufacturers but also a court order that could help combat the thousands of murders perpetrated every year with weapons illegally smuggled into Mexico from the United States.

“What we want is an injunction to make these defendants start paying attention to their distribution systems,” Shadowen said. “And it’s only U.S. courts that can provide that injunctive relief.”

The Mexican government claims that some 500,000 guns are smuggled into Mexico from the United States every year and that over 68 percent of that number are manufactured by the companies it sued, which also includes Beretta USA, Colt’s Manufacturing Co. and Glock Inc.

Noel Francisco, a lawyer for Smith & Wesson, argued that Mexico’s lawsuit lacked allegations that gun sales by the accused gun manufacturers did anything that created an exception to the broad protections provided by the PLCAA.

“You have licensed manufacturers that sell to licensed distributors that sell to licensed retailers that sell to individuals who satisfy the requirements of federal law, but some of them happen to be straw purchasers,” he said.

A ruling from the Boston-based appeals court is expected in the coming months, the news agency Reuters reported. However, Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, the SRE’s legal advisor, said that a decision might not come for six to eight months. He added that the government was “optimistic” that it will receive a favorable ruling.

“The simple fact that … [people] in Mexico, in the United States and around the world are paying more attention to … [Mexico’s] legal arguments is already a victory in itself,” Celorio said.

In its 2022 lawsuit, Mexico alleged that U.S. gun companies were aware that their business practices caused illegal arms trafficking in Mexico.

Colt’s, for example, manufactured a pistol embellished with an image of Emiliano Zapata, a hero of the Mexican revolution. That weapon was used in the 2017 murder of Chihuahua-based journalist Miroslava Breach.

The government argued that other arms manufacturers also design weapons to appeal to criminal organizations in Mexico, among which are drug cartels such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Separately, the government filed a lawsuit against five gun stores in Arizona last October. In that case, which is ongoing, Mexico alleged that the five stores “routinely and systematically participate in the illegal trafficking of arms, including military-style ones, for criminal organizations in Mexico, through sales to straw purchasers and sales directed to arms dealers.”

With reports from Reuters and El País 

photo: Baseball in Mexico may not be as popular as in the early 20th century, but still draws big crowds in modern stadia. (Diablos Rojos/Cuartoscuro)

by Leigh Thelmadatter

On April 29, I made the mistake of taking Line 9 of the Mexico City Metro just as fans from a game between the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants left the Alfredo Helú Harp Stadium. Although I had seen advertisements for the game, I never took Mexico for a baseball country.

We may have to rethink that at some point.

Without a doubt, soccer is king here, but baseball does have an important presence.

Several cities in the country claim to be the site of the first baseball game in Mexico: Guaymas, Sonora, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Cadereyta Jiménez, Nuevo León and even the port of Veracruz. All are good candidates since they had significant contact with the United States, either through railroad construction or “visits” from the U.S. military. Another early introduction was in the Yucatán Peninsula, though this was via fans from Cuba.

By the early 20th century, baseball had become Mexico’s most popular sport, with Mexican teams regularly playing those from the U.S. and Cuba. In 1925, Ernesto Carmona established the Mexican League of Baseball, which is still Mexico’s most important league.

Mexican baseball’s golden age extended from the 1920s to the early 1950s in no small part due to the efforts of brothers Bernardo and Jorge Pasquel. In the 1940s into the 1950s, they raised the status of the sport, regularly recruiting players from Cuba, U.S. Negro leagues and occasionally from the “white” Major Leagues as well.

However, after World War II, they were unable to match the rising salaries in the U.S and in the post-Pasquel decades, the game experienced slower growth here, with 20 professional teams at its height.

These days, Mexican professional players are clearly focused on getting lucrative contracts in the United States, especially after the “Fernandomania” of Mexican pitcher Fernando Valenzuela during the 1970s and 1980s.

Mexican leagues have also struggled with the wild popularity of soccer and, at times, boxing. There are several theories why this is so.

Baseball’s appeal was always concentrated in certain sections of the country. As much as the U.S. influences Mexico’s culture, Europe is a major influence as well, and the sport there is soccer.

The shift in baseball players going off to play for U.S. teams certainly had an effect on baseball here as well. This talent drain hasn’t happened quite so much in professional soccer, where Mexican players divide their time playing for foreign and domestic teams, as well as represent Mexico in international tournaments.

But the work of the Pasquel brothers is important because it established a connection between baseball and Mexico’s industrial enterprises. For decades, Mexican companies have been essential in conserving and reviving the sport here.

The Cuauhtemoc Brewery established the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973 in Monterrey, Nuevo León. Years later, the Alfredo Harp Helú Foundation (created by one of billionaire Carlos Slim’s relatives) moved it to its current building in the massive Fundidora Park, also in Monterrey.

The Slim/Helú family has been at the forefront of Mexican baseball for several decades now, promoting it both in Mexico and the United States. Their passion for the sport comes from their childhoods — some are old enough to remember the tail end of Mexican baseball’s “golden age.”

In 2011, Carlos Slim gave a rare interview with Puro Beisbol Magazine during the Red Sox/Yankee World Series, where he declared himself a “…fan of the Diablos Rojos [the Mexico City team], of the Yankees and of Babe Ruth.”

The family’s efforts consist of dominating professional baseball in Mexico and getting a foothold in the MLB. Harp Helú, opened the Alfred Harp Helú Stadium in Mexico City — home of the Diablos Rojos — and in 2009, Slim’s foundation built the Telmex Bicentennial Sport Center in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, México state, on a reclaimed landfill. A multisport center for use by the community, it includes baseball fields.

More importantly, the family has established baseball institutions to encourage an interest in baseball among the young and support their careers, such as the Alfredo Harp Helú Academy in the city of Oaxaca, and the Telmex-Telcel Baseball League, aimed at promoting baseball for kids aged 13–15 all over Mexico through tournaments in which locally organized teams can register to participate. According to the league’s website, it has served as feeder source for teams at the national level.

The purpose of these institutions is to find promising young talent and offer them academic and athletic scholarships. Students pay no tuition, but costs for educating them — covered by corporate benefactors — run around 30,000 pesos per student, per month. The Oaxaca academy has been quite successful, placing about 20% of its graduates into professional teams in Mexico and the United States.

Other industrialists and professional teams have followed suit, not only seeing a way to develop talent but improve community relations. They include the Pastejé Academy, founded by the industrial group of the same name, located in northern México state; the academy of the Charros de Jalisco professional baseball team in Guadalajara, owned by the Gonzalez-Iñigo family, behind seed industrial giant Sesajal; and the Tigers Academy in Quintana Roo. The Tigers team were bought in 2017 by none other than Fernando Valenzuela, with the help of a group of business owners.

Harp Helú bought Mexico City’s Diablos Rojos in the 1990s, and a stake in the San Diego Padres in 2012. There is no doubt that the long term goal is to integrate Mexican baseball at a much higher level internationally, something that just might be of benefit on both sides of the border.

Over in the U.S., the MLB has had its own issues with losing market share to (American) football, and since the 2010s, has been working to broaden the sport’s appeal internationally, especially in Europe and Latin America.

The Giants vs. Padres game I ran into was part of these efforts in collaboration with the Slim/Helú family. The game brought in an impressive number of live fans and was broadcast internationally — and turned out to be an insane 27-run classic.

Without a doubt, there is big money backing the sport in Mexico, but it remains to be seen if slow-paced baseball can make a comeback in a fast-paced world, or whether it will remain a sport with a niche following both in Mexico and the United States.

Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico over 20 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.

NOTE: This article originally misstated the owner of the Mexico City baseball team Los Diablos Rojos. The owner is Alfredo Harp Helú.