With lines for vaccination like this one earlier this month in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, some Mexicans who can afford the cost are opting to travel to the US to get a jab.
At least 50 Mexican travel agencies are offering holiday packages to the United States that include vaccination against Covid-19, according to the Mexican Association of Travel Agencies (AMAV).
Association president Eduardo Paniagua told the newspaper Milenio that the agencies began selling the packages two weeks ago.
About 120,000 packages – which cost approximately 20,000 pesos (about US $1,000) per person – have been sold in that period, according to AMAV data.
A package includes return flights to the United States, airport transfers, a short hotel stay and vaccination registration for travelers, Paniagua said.
Vaccine tourists are traveling from cities such as Mexico City, Guadalajara and Cancún to U.S. destinations in states such as Texas, Arizona and Florida.
One travel agency offering a vaccination package is Ticket Travel in Aguascalientes. It has a package called “Vacúnate en Texas” (Get Vaccinated in Texas) that costs 19,900 pesos and includes vaccination, a three-night hotel stay in Dallas and return flights to Aguascalientes city.
The agency said that initial interest was from individuals but entire families, including children and grandparents, have purchased packages in recent days.
Eduardo del Real, president of AMAV Zacatecas, said that Mexicans are buying the packages because of the simplicity they bring to the process of traveling to the United States to get vaccinated.
“There is a significant segment of people going to the United States to get vaccinated, … what they don’t want is to struggle [with the process]. The importance of the travel agency is that it combines all the services,” he said.
For a fee, travel agencies can make vaccination bookings for their customers at pharmacies or Walmart, del Real explained. They can also advise customers how to do it themselves if they want to avoid the additional charge when purchasing their holiday packages, he said.
One person who completed the process herself is Laura González of Monterrey, Nuevo León. She recently traveled to Las Vegas to get vaccinated and found the online registration process very easy.
“They don’t ask for your passport or visa and on the day of application the only thing they requested was a photo ID card to note my age and verify that I was the person on the register,” she told Milenio.
Almost 230 million vaccine doses have been administered in the United States whereas only 16.4 million shots had been given in Mexico by Sunday night. Vaccination in Mexico hasn’t yet reached the general population aged below 60, making a trip to the United States an attractive option for Mexicans who can afford it.
In some U.S. states, vaccination is available to all adults regardless of whether they live there or not.
Multiple polls conducted by the newspaper El País and the website Oraculus agree: around 45% of respondents plan on voting Morena in upcoming elections for the lower house of Congress.
The ruling Morena party has a commanding lead in the polls six weeks before voters will elect 500 deputies to sit in the lower house of the federal Congress.
Results of polls conducted between December 1 last year and April 23 and collated by the newspaper El País show that 46.9% of voters intend to cast their ballots for Morena, the party founded by President López Obrador that swept to power in the 2018 elections.
A “poll of polls” collated by the website Oraculus shows a similar result: 44% of respondents intend to vote for Morena, which currently has a slim majority in the Chamber of Deputies on its own and a two-thirds majority with its allies.
The El País analysis and the poll of polls both show that Morena has more than twice the support of the two main opposition parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
According to the newspaper, 17% of voters will vote for the conservative PAN and 16.5% will support the PRI, which held office between 2012 and 2018. Only 4.2% of poll respondents will vote for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), while the Ecological Green Party (PVEM), the Citizens Movement (MC) and the Labor Party (PT) will attract the support of 3.8%, 3.1% and 3% of voters, respectively.
The poll of polls collated by Oraculus.
The PVEM and the PT are Morena party allies. The three parties together will attract the support of 53.7% of voters at the June 6 elections, according to El País.
Oraculus, which collated the results of 67 polls, predicts that the Morena-PVEM-PT alliance will win 337 of the 500 lower house seats, 300 of which are elected directly and 200 by proportional representation.
The PAN, the PRI and the PRD have formed their own alliance to contest the elections. According to El País, the three-party alliance will attract the combined support of 37.3% of voters. Oraculus predicts that the coalition will win 152 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the other 11 seats will go to the Citizens Movement party, which currently has 25 federal deputies.
Oraculus’s poll also shows that López Obrador currently has an approval rating of 63%. He has maintained a high approval rating despite widespread criticism of the government’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 300,000 lives in Mexico, a sharp economic slump in 2020 and the failure to combat high levels of violence, including homicides and femicides.
Among López Obrador’s four most recent predecessors, only Felipe Calderón, who represented the PAN between 2006 and 2012, had a higher approval rating after 28 months in office. Calderón’s rating two years and four months after he was sworn in as president was 67%, according to Oraculus.
Vicente Fox, who held office for the PAN between 2000 and 2006, was the third most popular president after 28 months in office with an approval rating of 58%.
According to Oraculus, President López Obrador has an approval rating of 63%.
Ernesto Zedillo, who held office for the PRI between 1994 and 2000, had a 54% approval rating after 28 months while Enrique Peña Nieto, who also represented the PRI, only had 41% support in April 2015, seven months after the disappearance of the 43 teaching students in Guerrero, a crime that significantly hurt the popularity of the then-president and his government.
The strong standing of Morena and López Obrador in the polls is likely to instill confidence not only in the party’s candidates for deputy but also in at least some of its contenders for thousands of municipal and state positions. In addition to renewing the lower house of federal Congress, voters will elect councilors, mayors, state representatives and governors in 15 states on June 6.
According to the results of a survey conducted by the polling company Massive Caller, Morena is ahead in the gubernatorial races in nine states: Baja California, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tlaxcala and Zacatecas.
In two of those states, Guerrero and Michoacán, the party doesn’t currently have a candidate for governor because the two men it put forward were stripped of their candidacies for failing to report precampaign expenses.
The other states where voters will elect new governors this year are Baja California Sur, Campeche, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí.
Morena currently holds the governorships of five states — Baja California, Chiapas, Puebla, Tabasco and Veracruz — and is also in power in Mexico City, where the government is led by Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
The PRI is in power in 12 states and the PAN holds office in nine. Quintana Roo and Michoacán have PRD governments, the MC is in office in Jalisco, and the Solidary Encounter Party — a Morena ally — holds power in Morelos. Independent governor Jaime Rodríguez, who contested the 2018 presidential election, heads Nuevo León.
Fights, prostitution and gang intimidation are rife in a prison in Puebla where the state government has dismissed two wardens since it took office in August 2019.
The Center for Social Reintegration (Cereso) located in Lomas de San Miguel, Puebla, has been investigated by both state and national human rights commissions.
One inmate died and five others were injured in a fight on December 28 when 15 inmates protested against a ban on visitors due to the pandemic. When other prisoners refused to join the demonstration, a brawl broke out. The inmate died while being treated by doctors, and state police were sent in to restore order.
Two days later the Puebla Human Rights Commission opened an investigation, but has yet to issue any recommendations.
Prison guards allowed parties involving prostitution in the facility on weekends during 2019, according to the National Human Rights Commission. During the parties, female inmates were allowed into the male wards where they exchanged sexual favors for money.
The commission instructed the Security Minister Raciel López Salazar to open an investigation and identify the authorities responsible. However, Salazar was dismissed from his position on April 16 before complying.
Relatives of inmates say they fear for the lives of those inside the facility. “The situation inside San Miguel prison is getting worse and worse because the violence and fights that put our families at risk is continuing. My brother is serving a sentence for a minor crime and he has told us that he has been beaten by inmates without deserving or anticipating it,” said the relative of a prisoner.
Another relative said that some inmates are members of the “El Cachibombo” gang, and according to what was also revealed by a ministerial source, they charge inmates for protection.
“This group asks for money to protect the inmates and, if they don’t pay them, they threaten them with death and beat them. There are times when we have had to get the money so that my brother gives it to them and they don’t hurt him. It really is scary what they live through there,” he said.
Both of the men agreed it was essential for state authorities to take full control of the prison.
There were 2,944 homicides last month, 316 more than in February.
Homicides rose 12% in March compared to February, but the overall number of murders in the first quarter of 2021 declined almost 5% in comparison to the same period in 2020, official data shows.
Nevertheless, the number of women murdered in March was the highest monthly total on record.
There were 2,944 homicides last month, 316 more than in February and 109 more than in January. The average number of daily homicide victims in March was 95, slightly higher than the 93.9 average for the 28 days of February.
All told, there were 8,407 homicides in the first three months of 2021, a 4.6% decline compared to the first quarter of 2020.
Just over half of the homicides — 50.7% or 4,262 — occurred in just six states. Guanajuato was the most violent state in the first quarter of the year with 926, followed by Baja California (806), Jalisco (668), México state (655), Michoacán (621) and Chihuahua (586).
Among the 2,944 homicide victims in March were 267 women. That figure — a 28.3% increase compared to February — represents the highest number of female murder victims ever recorded in a single month in Mexico, exceeding the previous record, set in April 2020, by one.
There were also 92 victims of femicide — women and girls killed on account of their gender, meaning that 359 females were murdered in March.
The combined total of 3,036 victims of homicide and femicide is the 11th highest monthly total in the 28 months since President López Obrador took office in December 2018. The number of monthly murders only exceeded 3,000 on three occasions during the 2012–2018 presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto.
In the first quarter of this year there were 715 murders of women and girls, a figure that accounts for 8.5% of all homicides.
Baja California recorded the highest number of murders of women with 99 between January and March, according to National Public Security System data published Sunday.
Chihuahua ranked second with 75 female victims of murder, followed by Guanajuato (69), México state (67), Michoacán (61) and Jalisco (52).
Per capita data for murders of women also shows that Baja California was the most violent state for women in the first quarter of the year. Chihuahua, Colima, Zacatecas and Michoacán followed.
In addition to the 715 murders of women and girls, there were 234 murders classified as femicides nationally in January, February and March, a 2% decline compared to the first quarter of 2020.
México state recorded the highest number of femicides in the first quarter of 2021 with 35, followed by Veracruz (21), Mexico City (18), Jalisco (13), Chiapas (12), Morelos (12) and Sonora (11).
However, on a per capita basis, the numbers look different: Morelos saw the highest number with 1.13 per 100,000 women, followed by Sonora (0.7), Sinaloa (0.56), Aguascalientes (0.54), San Luis Potosi (0.54), Baja California Sur (0.5) and Veracruz (0.48).
There were 5,809 reports of assaults against women in March, a 29.1% increase compared to February. The figure includes 2,020 cases of rape, the highest monthly total in six years.
Other crimes that increased in March compared to February included domestic violence (up 30.2%), extortion (+25.8%), burglaries (+14.8%), muggings (+12.8%), vehicle theft (+11.1%) and small-scale drug dealing (+7%).
Three Mexicans have won an Oscar in the best sound category for their work on the rock inspired film Sound of Metal.
Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc and Carlos Cortés are the Mexican sound engineers behind the film, which tells the story of Ruben, played by Riz Ahmed, a rock drummer whose hearing begins to deteriorate, forcing him to choose a new path in life.
Ruben is told that even with costly surgery his hearing will not recover, and he should decide whether he wants start over in a deaf community, or risk all by continuing to drum.
Sound engineer and dubbing mixer Jaime Baksht previously worked on Pan’s Labyrinth, Herod’s Law and Abel. He has won three Ariel Awards and one Goya Award in the best sound category.
Michelle Couttolenc specializes in cinematic sound and worked on Pan’s Labyrinth, The 4th Company and I’m No Longer Here.
Sound engineer Carlos Cortés previously worked on The Noble Family and the documentary Tempestad, which won him an Ariel in 2019.
Mexican names dotted the nominations at last year’s Oscars too. Mayes Rubeo for best achievement in costume design for Jojo Rabbit and Gastón Pavlovich as producer and Rodrigo Prieto for best achievement in cinematography in The Irishman.
Sound of Metal also won in the best achievement in film editing category, and was nominated for best motion picture of the year, best performance by an actor in a leading role, best performance by an actor in a supporting role and best original screenplay.
The film can be seen on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.
The blockade that has shut down the coastal highway in Puerto Escondido.
A decades-old territorial dispute has flared up in the city of Puerto Escondido, halting traffic on the coastal highway, the main arterial route on the state’s coast.
As with most of the state’s disputes over land — and there are hundreds, the protagonists are two neighboring municipalities fighting over land, in this case the jewel in the crown that is Puerto Escondido, a popular tourism and surfing destination.
On Friday, the mayor of Santa María Colotepec issued a declaration of war and installed a protest camp on Highway 200 at the city’s chief intersection.
“We are not going to give up even a centimeter of our land [and] we’re not going to allow the continuing harassment on the part of [San Pedro] Mixtepec … from here we say to the state government and the agrarian court that we don’t want rulings that have been paid for that put at risk the stability of the port,” declared Carmelo Cruz Mendoza according to a report by the newspaper El Imparcial.
The mayor warned that the blockade would remain until Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa and agrarian officials hear their concerns.
According to other officials in Colotepec, their counterparts in Mixtepec have “cunningly” engaged in attempting to influence agrarian officials in favor of the latter municipality, a process that began when lawyers for Mixtepec presented a constitutional argument before the agrarian court in 2018.
Colotepec officials accused both agrarian and state officials of colluding with “the criminal” Fredy Gil, mayor of San Pedro Mixtepec.
The highway blockade remained in place Saturday afternoon but there was a report that Governor Murat had arrived in the city to address the situation.
The majority of those who do read say they were encouraged to do so as children.
The percentage of Mexicans who read has declined to a record low, according to a national survey, but those who do read are reading more.
Among literate adults, 71.6% read a book, magazine, newspaper or internet page in the 12 months ending February 2021, according to the results of a survey published this week by the national statistics institute, Inegi.
The percentage of literate adults who read has been declining since 2016, a year in which Inegi found that 80.8% of such people had read something in the previous 12 months. The latest result, a 0.8% decline compared to last year’s survey, is the lowest since the statistics institute began canvassing citizens’ reading habits.
The most recent survey also found that Mexican adults read an average of 3.7 books in the 12-month period, an increase of 12% compared to two years ago and 3% compared to one year ago. The average among women was slightly higher, at 3.9, and slightly lower among men, at 3.5.
Just over four in 10 respondents – 43% – said they had read at least one book during that time, an increase of 1.9% compared to the previous survey. That figure is 2.9% lower than that found by the 2016 survey.
Mexicans who have studied to a university level are much more likely to read than those who didn’t complete their basic school education, Inegi found.
Among the former cohort, nine of 10 said they had read a book, magazine, newspaper or internet page in the previous 12 months while only five in 10 of the latter cohort said the same.
People with a university education read for an average of 50 minutes per reading session while those who didn’t finish their school studies read for only 35 minutes.
About four in 10 respondents – 41.6% – said they mainly read for pleasure while 25.1% said that they read for professional or educational purposes. Just under one in five respondents said they read for “general culture” purposes – to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world or to have topics of conversation with friends – while 11.6% said that the motivation for their reading was religion.
The survey also found that the percentage of people who read e-books has increased from 6.8% in 2016 to 21.5% in February 2021. A similar percentage of respondents – 21.3% – read online newspapers, up from 5.6% in 2016.
However, the printed word is still far more popular than the digital one, Inegi found. More than 70% of respondents prefer physical books, magazines and newspapers over digital ones.
More than three-quarters of adults who read said that they received encouragement to do so at home and/or school, underscoring the importance of promoting reading among children.
“The promotion of reading at school and home is a path for social development,” Inegi said, adding that reading allows people to develop critical thinking skills and brings them closer to “expressions of culture.”
Among the respondents who said they hadn’t read anything in the previous 12 months, the most commonly cited reason was a lack of time. Other reasons for not reading included a lack of interest, a lack of motivation and a dislike for the practice.
"Mujer Pájaro en la selva" (Bird Woman in the Rainforest), from the Mujer Pájaro series by Baja California artist Alejandra Phelts.
The border looms large for all Mexicans who live near it whether or not they cross, says artist Alejandra Phelts, simply because there is a concept of “another side.”
“They say that we in the north are agringado (gringofied) … that we are a mix — a mezcla … We are, but we also have many ‘national’ [Mexican] values that are more strongly seen because we contrast ourselves with ‘the other.’”
Phelts’ work reflects this by being both strongly international and Mexican at the same time.
The movement of peoples nationally and internationally defines the north, especially Baja California. Phelts, born in 1978 in Mexicali, the youngest of five girls, is an example of this: her father migrated to the city when he was very young, eventually founding a university-level school there; her mother came later from Sonora.
Art was in the cards for young Alejandra — her parents met in an art history class and as she grew up the house was filled with books about the subject — but it took time to find her passion. Her first creative endeavor was singing classical music in churches and at events.
“Habana Nights” from the Car Series.
She blames the lack of art education in Mexicali for her not thinking about the visual arts at an earlier age.
When she was 17, she decided she wanted to leave Baja and see something of the world. Her family has European heritage, including an aunt who speaks French and encouraged her to study the language.
Studying in France became the logical choice, and she attended the Institut Privé de Philosophie et Théologie Saint Jean in 1998. Here, she had more exposure to the visual arts, going to museums to see classic works and meeting a sculptor who lived in her building.
Phelts says now that her purpose in going to France was not to see the world but rather to find out something about herself.
Upon returning to Mexicali, she still did not dive right into making art. The city had a new art education program, allowing her to get a credential in teaching all kinds of arts to children. Older and able to travel regularly to Tijuana, she gravitated to the Centro Cultural Universitario de Tijuana (CECUT), the region’s main arts center.
She first went to check out the classical music but wound up in the workshop of artist and teacher Alvaro Blancarde, a major figure in promoting the visual arts in Baja. It was the first time she saw a professional artist’s studio in her home state.
Tijuana artist Alejandra Phelts in her studio.
Both it and the man impressed her. He was also impressed with her, stating unequivocally that while teaching art is noble, she needed to be producing as well.
Since 2001, Phelts has worked in installation, photography, painting, drawing and more. Her first exhibition was in Tijuana, and then came an opportunity to create a mural at the University of California in San Diego, boosting her confidence.
Since then, her work has been exhibited in various parts of Mexico, the United States, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Peru, the Middle East, France and Canada. She was invited to present at TEDx Tijuana in 2013, and in 2016 she represented Mexico as a cultural attaché during a meeting of the G20.
Her creative output focuses on human relationships to the environment and each other. Much is related to her family life — both while growing up and as the mother of two today.
Her work now focuses on the human body (and its accoutrements), but even an early series on automobiles had a family link inspired by vehicles she and her mother owned and how they interacted with others on the road.
Two of her series illustrate Phelts’ worldview best: Costura (Sewing) is a tribute to her upbringing. She calls her mother, Susana Ramos, who taught all her five daughters to sew, “an artist with fabric and a sewing machine.”
“Las Bordadoras” (The Embroiderers), from the Retratos Iluminados (Illuminated Portraits) series.
“I grew up in a world of color and forms without realizing it,” said Phelts. The clothing in the series reflects her heritage and experience in Europe, but the colors reflect the cross-border world of Baja California.
The series Retratos Iluminados (Illuminated Portraits) continues to examine the feminine but with more emphasis on faces and body language than in Costuras.
Both series are deeply personal, nostalgic and interested in the female experience. But they are also a strong reflection of the mixed and ever-changing world in which Phelts lives. Neither series looks “Mexican” at first glance until you look at them as a continuation of the work of Mexican artists like Frida Kahlo, Remedio Varo and María Izquierdo, who in various ways looked at the world around them and their role in it as women.
Phelts’ work continues examining what it means to be a woman in Mexico, but with a cross-cultural twist.
Today, she lives and works in a Tijuana suburb only four blocks from the ocean. It is curious to see an internationally recognized Mexican artist continue in the northwest of the country, but Tijuana offers pros as well as cons.
A benefit is that she has ready access to the U.S. art market, especially that in southern California, and does a lot of her business in English. A downside is that the local art market is weak and that Mexico’s art world is centered almost entirely on Mexico City.
“Confidencias” (Secrets) from the Costuras (Sewing) series.
Although Phelts cannot guarantee that she will always live here, she says that “Tijuana is a very, very interesting place.”
“As an artist, it offers you a kind of movement that an artistic sense needs to create.”
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 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.
After years of complaints of animal abuse by activists, carriage drivers in Mérida, Yucatán, said they are ready to use electric carriages if authorities help pay for the change, according to Eduardo Echeverría, president of the carriage drivers’ union.
However, “we definitely do not have the economic means for this investment,” Echeverría said, noting that each electric vehicle would cost upward of 700,000 pesos (US $35,280).
With regard to animal abuse, Echeverría said there had only been isolated incidents and not a pattern of abuse.
“Animal abuse does not exist, it is the ideology of a group of people who demonize us. Our job is legal and one of the oldest professions in the city. It’s dignified work,” he said. “ The horse doesn’t work all day or every day, only seven or eight hours. We have an agreement with the Autonomous University of Yucatán for professional horse care. They have a good life, good food, good care.”
Echeverría noted that an animal rights group protested last weekend, demanding that the carriages be changed from horse-driven to electric.
“We would be in agreement, but we don’t have the money to invest … the municipal and state authorities would have to help us,” he said.
The first electric carriage began to circulate in Mérida in November 2019. It was a project funded by the local Green Party.
Archbishop Coppola leads a procession Friday through Aguililla, Michoacán.
Organized crime thrives where the state is absent, the Vatican’s ambassador to Mexico said Friday, offering a critical assessment of the federal government’s response to insecurity during a visit to the violence-stricken town of Aguililla, Michoacán.
“In Italy we know that the mafia flourishes where the state isn’t [present]. Private interests appear that try to impose themselves,” Archbishop Franco Coppola, papal nuncio to Mexico, said in Aguililla, where he met with locals, including victims of crime, and celebrated Mass.
Aguililla, a Tierra Caliente municipality 270 kilometers southwest of the state capital Morelia, has been plagued by violence in recent months as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cárteles Unidos vie for control but Coppola, an Italian who has been nuncio to Mexico since 2016, noted that the situation there is not unique.
“Unfortunately violence is not [just] characteristic of Michoacán [but] all of Mexico,” he said.
Indeed, 2020 was the second most violent year on record – despite the pandemic – with more than 34,000 homicides.
Coppola said the state does have the capacity to improve the security situation but must have the will to do so. The security contingent that accompanied him during his journey to Aguililla from Apatzingán on a highway that was impassable until earlier this week due to blockades set up by organized crime was evidence of that capacity, the nuncio said.
“If [the state] wants to, it can,” he declared. Referring to a procession through the streets of Aguililla in which he, other Catholic Church leaders and townsfolk took part on Friday morning, Coppola said: “These streets, overtaken by crime, have been walked on by the people with resurrected Christ.”
“I shared the photos on Facebook because I wanted my friends in Italy to see what happened but Facebook blocked the photos,” he told reporters.
“So I said, we’re going to go there and we’re going to flood the internet with what’s happening in Aguililla. … It’s very important that what’s happening is known. Bad people take advantage of silence.”
At a press conference after Friday’s Mass, Coppola, who has previously represented the Vatican in Burundi and Chad, said that former federal government officials had asked him not to talk about the high levels of cartel violence in Mexico so as to not scare off tourists. The warning came in 2018 during the government of then president Enrique Peña Nieto, he said.
Coppola: ‘We’re going to flood the internet with what’s happening in Aguililla.’
“… They said to me in the Foreign Ministry: ‘Monsignor, please don’t talk so much about the violence in Mexico, which is harmful to tourism, then people don’t come out of fear,’” Coppola said.
The apostolic nuncio also said he was generally surprised at the lack of public discussion about the security situation in Mexico, home of 18 of the 50 most violent cities in the world, according to a study published this week.
He said he wanted to visit Aguililla – where he was greeted by residents holding white balloons symbolic of their desire for peace – to show the Catholic Church’s support for the town.
“The duty of the church is to be on the side of the people, those who suffer, so I want to be here,” Coppola said.
The only other recent official acknowledgement of the troubles facing the community was a tour of the area earlier this month by Governor Silvano Aureoles. But the highlight of the visit proved to be an incident in which he was caught on video shoving a man protesting the violence in Aguililla.
To reach the town, Coppola passed through no fewer than five security checkpoints on the 84-kilometer-long Apatzingán-Aguililla highway, which was blocked for about four months by trenches, stones and vehicles, cutting off residents and interrupting supply chains for basic goods such as food and gasoline. Michoacán police and soldiers manned the various checkpoints to ensure the archbishop’s safe arrival in Aguililla.
Along the way, Coppola – accompanied by Apatzingán Bishop Cristóbal Ascencio, who invited him to visit Aguililla – waved to and blessed the residents of several small towns who lined the highway to welcome him.
The Jalisco cartel, which now has considerable influence in Aguililla – the municipality where its leader, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, was born – and other parts of Michocán as well as numerous other states, is accused of carrying out the drone attack, which injured two officers.
