San Carlos has just come off another Semana Santa. I decided a while ago that I would miss this one and go back to my roots in Chicago and visit my last remaining aunt and the multitude of cousins I have there. Upon my return I was told by many local Mexicans and a few local gringos as well that this year was less people, less “desmadre”. Apparently there were no traffic jams either during the Thursday to Saturday peek desmadre time.
What clearly has not changed is the poor governance San Carlos receives from Guaymas. I finally had the chance to meet with our newly elected Comisario Enrique. I wanted to chat with him about the San Carlos 2019 budget. Or more precisely the lack there of. When I finally did run into Enrique , at the Rotary Carne Asada in the ranchitos last month, he had no idea what the official budget was for San Carlos in 2019. Informally he has been told it is around 7.5 million pesos.
When I come up with a copy of what our official budget is for San Carlos I have a sinking suspicion Enrique will find that document to be quite revealing. I have obtained two official budgets from San Carlos over the last 5 years. Both are linked here. One from 2015 when Otto Claussan was the mayor of Guaymas. The other budget is from 2017 when Lorenzo DeCima was mayor. What should grab you right from the get go, especially in the budget from 2017 is the shear number of employees that the office of the Comisario supposedly has here in San Carlos. It is easier so see in the first budget because their are fewer employees listed but you can clearly see that the Comisarios of San Carlos back in 2015, on paper mind you, had a personal chauffeur. Take a look at 2017 and you will see once again the comisario has a chauffeur. What is very striking about the budget for Lorenzo De Cima is that it shows that the comisario’s office in San Carlos had dozens of employees. Just go down to the office and you will see there are never more than 4 people there and one of them quite often is the cleaning lady. It will be interesting to see when I can get us a copy of the 2019 or 2020 budget for San Carlos. Could it be that Enrique has a chauffeur he didn’t even know about? I suspect the government of Sara de Valle to be embezzling money just like the last two administrations by using employees that don’t exist. Where does the money go for these non existent jobs? Maybe they use it for other projects in Guaymas or maybe it just goes into the pockets of the mayor and their cronies.
I think it will be obvious that Sara Valle our current mayor is continuing the practice of taking money from the San Carlos budget
I have begged journalists in Guaymas to write about this, but realistically what is the point. In Mexico institutions are week. Especially the office of the ministerio publico/district attorney. No self respecting ministerio publico in Guaymas is going to try to prosecute a sitting mayor for budgetary malfeasance. I don’t think corruption in Guaymas has changed since the new leftest mayor has been elected. As far as Mexico’s newest president goes one of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (AMLO) biggest promises made from the Morena party was to curb government corruption. I can’t say for sure if our current mayor of Guaymas Sara Devalle is corrupt. But she has been accused of nepotism for appointing many family members to city positions. AMLO made specific promises about ending nepotistic appointments in Mexico. Apparently Sara didn’t get the memo on that. What I do know for sure after my talk to Enrique is the current mayor of Guaymas made plenty of promises to our Comisario Enrique and most of them have been unfulfilled.
The water company still sucks by the way!
The water company or as we like to say La Maldita CEA is still dealing with water leaks in the typical manana fashion. It took months but the oasis that existed on our street just down from TELMEX finally dried up. It appears that their strategy, turning off the water all over town on different days, to deal with the failing infrastructure is probably working and they are most likely loosing less water into the desert than before. But if you look around closely you can still find plenty of places in San Carlos that are as green as a Chicago suburbs lawn on a summer day!
What about the violence? When AMLO was ushered into office he unilaterally declared the drug war in Mexico to be over. Unfortunately the drug cartels working out of Guaymas, San Carlos and Empalme didn’t get that memo either. I have lost count of the number of killings reported in our area. During Semana Santa I know a group of police were ambushed on the highway by the bridge to San Carlos with one officer shot dead on the spot and the other left in critical condition. Another man was murdered during broad daylight in Guaymas. I would say on average 2 or 3 people a week go murdered or missing in Guaymas. Actually now that I think of it just a few days ago I was shopping at Ley and I ran into a friend who got an alert on her phone as we were chatting in the vegetable section about an incident in Guaymas that turned out to be a kidnapping. Some how a miracle took place and the police actually rescued the victim, which happens so rarely here.
What happened to the San Carlos movement to break away from Guaymas and form a new Municipio?
What about the move for San Carlos to become it’s own
Municipio? This movement is far from over and has made a huge advancement. I just interviewed Juan Carlos Gonzales, the head of the committee that is still actively working on the project. He has not only completed the report on how San Carlos should go about breaking from Guaymas but also submitted the report to the state legislature in Hermosillo. Click here to view a few pages of the report. The biggest gap in the report that Juan Carlos has been working on was what was the official amount of money San Carlos contributes to Guaymas. That number is finally known for sure. All it took was about a year of getting jerked around by the state and municipal government. After both the state and city refused to give Juan Carlos the information he filed a freedom of information act in Mexico City and was rewarded with the 5 years of official numbers. So between the years of 2013 – 2018 San Carlos paid each year on average in total revenue 70 million pesos. This is not to terribly far from our original estimates of 100 million pesos. So how would that 70 million pesos of money that San Carlos pays to Guaymas translate if San Carlos where it’s own city. Again we can thank Juan Carlos for that info. Here is how it works. For ever pesos of money collected in local taxes the state and federal government put in 2.5 pesos. So 70 million pesos collected in San Carlos translates to 150 million pesos of budget. To put that into perspective San Carlos exists at the moment on around 7 million pesos. That money goes mostly to employees that only exist on paper and a bunch of corrupt cops. To be fair pretty much all cops are corrupt in Mexico because they get paid shit for a salary. Just imagine what San Carlos could do with 150 million pesos a year.
If San Carlos were it’s own city it would have a budget of around 150 million pesos a year
Juan Carlos Gonzales San Carlos Comite Municipio 73
For San Carlos to become it’s own city what really needs to happen now is up to the people of San Carlos. If a strong group of local residents, perhaps 100 or so from a population of around 7000, pushed very hard San Carlos could break away from Guaymas within a year or so. Anyone who is interested in that should contact Juan Carlos Gonazales!
I live here full time for 21 years & became a Mexican citizen. Let me know what I can do to help
Ok thanks for that!