Dams across Mexico are at well below full capacity. The Solis dam in Acámbaro, Guanajuato, hasn't been at full capacity since 2018.
The National Water Commission (Conagua) has called on citizens and all three levels of government to use water responsibly as more than 70% of the country is currently in drought.
There has been little rain in Mexico in the first months of 2021, prompting Conagua chief Blanca Jiménez Cisneros to urge people to implement water-saving measures.
According to the federal water agency, many of the nation’s dams are at below 50% of their capacity.
At a press conference on Thursday, Jiménez said that people’s water use has generally increased during the coronavirus pandemic due to the increase in washing to control spread of the virus. That trend, coupled with the lack of rain, has caused dam levels to decrease significantly, she said.
Among the states most affected are Guerrero, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Oaxaca, where farmers have had limited water for irrigation.
The average capacity of the main dams that feed the water system supplying Mexico City and México state is at 45.2%, the lowest level in 25 years and a 23% reduction compared to a year ago.
With water in short supply in much of the country, Conagua has delivered almost 40 million liters of drinking water to vulnerable communities so far this year. Drought conditions are expected to continue in 2021 although the rainy season, which usually begins in May or June, should bring some relief.
Jiménez said that Conagua is implementing a plan to mitigate the drought’s effects and that the commission will launch a publicity campaign to promote water-saving measures in a variety of settings.
A private sector doctor protesting in Mexico City on Wednesday.
Private sector health workers who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19 continued to protest this week, but President López Obrador is maintaining his position that they must wait their turn to get a shot.
There were protests in Mexico City and several other states on Wednesday, but the turnout was nowhere near as large as expected. The organization Yo Soy Médico 17 had called for mass marches and rallies in 76 cities in all 32 states across the country.
López Obrador pounced on the low turnout at his regular news conference on Thursday.
“They organized a demonstration yesterday, [but] people didn’t gather,” he said. “It’s not that I’m against [private sector health workers], it’s that saying ‘vaccinate me’ is not fair. No! If it’s not your turn [according to the age-based vaccine schedule], no!”
López Obrador criticized private sector doctors for putting on their white coats and taking their complaints about not being vaccinated to the media.
At least 137 doctors who work in private practice have died from Covid-19, according to Unifacc, a national union that represents private sector doctors.
“… We have to vaccinate seniors [first]; they’re the most vulnerable,” he said, despite the government’s initial announcement that all healthcare workers would be vaccinated before anyone else.
The president claimed that there is a smear campaign against his government because many private sector health workers have actually been vaccinated.
“Public and private sector doctors and nurses were vaccinated [in the first stage of the rollout], … there is a lot of manipulation,” López Obrador said.
However, according to Vacunas Médicos MX, an organization advocating the early vaccination of all health workers, there are more than 31,000 private sector health workers who haven’t been inoculated.
Many of them are doctors who work in private practice, including doctor’s officers attached to pharmacies, where they may not face the same risk of exposure to the coronavirus as those who work with Covid-19 patients in hospitals but nevertheless run the risk of being infected.
At least 137 doctors who work in private practice have died from Covid-19, according to the president of Unifacc, a national union that represents private sector doctors.
“They’re making us invisible in a cruel way; it’s as though we don’t exist,” Óscar Zavala told the newspaper El Universal.
“They tell us to wait our turn, but in … this pandemic we’re also part of the army that has confronted it. Now they’re accusing us of creating campaigns against the government. They are lies; our demand is just. … We can’t deny [patients] consultations. We can’t close doctors’ offices … and for those who work in the pharmacy doctors’ offices, [the equation] is simple: if they don’t work, they don’t eat,” he said.
“We can’t ask people with a cough or with respiratory illness symptoms to bring a negative Covid-19 test result,” said one doctor who works in a clinic that adjoins a pharmacy.
“I’m 44 and I haven’t had the vaccine. I thought that I would be included in the [early stages of] the vaccination plan because I’m a health worker, but it seems that we don’t count. I don’t go out to protest, and I don’t go to [the president’s] morning press conference but not because I’m not against [the decision not to vaccinate all private sector medical personnel],” he said. “But if I don’t work, I don’t earn a salary.”
Vacunas Médicos MX said on Twitter that it was continuing to lobby the government to gain access to vaccines for private sector workers who haven’t yet been given shots. Vaccination has the potential to save lives, it added.
Fifteen private sector doctors initiated legal action against the government because they haven’t yet been given the opportunity to get a shot, and a México state court issued an injunction ordering federal authorities to make Covid-19 vaccines available to them.
Despite appeals by private sector medical workers to vaccinate them against Covid-19, the president is insisting that seniors must be inoculated first.
López Obrador said Thursday that the government will comply with any court orders for it to make vaccines available but also took a swipe at the doctors who requested the injunction and the judge who granted it, claiming the intention was to attack the government.
“Judges are acting expeditiously when it’s a matter of damaging us or [if] they think they’re harming us,” he said. “If there is an injunction and a judge orders us to vaccinate a person, we’ll have to vaccinate him because we have to comply with the law.”
“But I say to the people [who requested the injunction]. Is it fair? Is it a legal matter? Don’t you think it is a moral issue? … Why do we go to church? Why do we take communion? Why do we confess if we don’t act with integrity, if we want to be first?” López Obrador said.
He criticized those who prioritize themselves over the greater good, asserting that it was the attitude that prevailed during the decades before he took office.
“That was the neoliberal way of thinking: individualism, egoism, influence, corruption. That is no longer permitted,” the president said. “… We have to vaccinate seniors [first] …”
Archaeologist Joseph Mountjoy with examples of Huichol petroglyphs that he, with help from National Geographic, documented for exhibit at the Casa Cultura in Mascota.
One day, I received in the mail a most interesting book entitled Arte Rupestre en Jalisco (Rock Art in Jalisco) by archaeologist Joseph B. Mountjoy. It had been kindly sent to me by the author himself after I asked him perhaps one too many questions about petroglyphs.
Joe suggested I might find many of the answers I sought in the pages of this richly illustrated, 48-page book (all in Spanish), and I certainly did.
If anyone ought to know rock art, it’s Dr. Mountjoy, who registered his first pintura rupestre (rock painting) back in 1964 and has analyzed some 20,000 glyphs since then.
To fully appreciate his insights, you really need to visit the first-class museum he has set up in the Casa de Cultura of Mascota (140 kilometers west of Guadalajara), where you will find a whole room dedicated to petroglyphs, a project carried out in collaboration with National Geographic magazine.
If you ask, the caretaker of the museum will even lend you a little guidebook to the place in English.
The Casa de Cultura in Mascota is the perfect place to study petroglyphs.
Between now and your trip to Mascota, here are a few insights on petroglyphs that I gleaned while reading Arte Rupestre en Jalisco:
The great majority of rock-art designs, says Mountjoy, are related to ceremonies aimed at obtaining rain from the sun god for the benefit of those plants and animals that ancient peoples depended on for their sustenance.
The ceremonies had to do with that critical transition from the dry to the rainy season, and the drawings were destined for a god rather than for fellow human beings.
As for the meaning of most rock art, Mountjoy says, “Approximately 98% of the petroglyphs [in western Jalisco] can be explained by only three intimately related factors: sun, water and fertility.”
In respect to the age of most Jalisco petroglyphs, the great majority were made during the Postclassic Period (900 to 1500 AD), although a few may go back to the time of Christ.
A deer with baby, in Ocotillo Canyon near Mascota. J. Mountjoy
What are these interpretations based on? “In Jalisco, the main source of ethnographic information for interpreting rock art is the Huichol culture,” says Mountjoy. “They have preserved their culture, customs and beliefs quite well,” he points out, adding that the religious symbolism of the Huicholes was the subject of an extensive study carried out in the 19th century by ethnographer Carl Lumholtz.
Many of the rock-art designs we see could be interpreted as the physical manifestations of prayers offered up to the sun god to obtain some practical benefit. As the walls of some Catholic shrines are filled with milagritos, testimonials giving thanks for favors received from on high, many ancient petroglyphs were chiseled in rock begging for such celestial favors.
Perusing the book’s many color photos of rock art, I learned that the symbol for the sun god is often a set of concentric circles, sometimes surrounded by rays, but it can also be as simple as an unadorned pit carved in the rock.
The more elaborate designs can also have arms, legs and a tail, representing either the god in anthropomorphic form or a shaman who carries out rites supplicating the sun god.
As for that other commonly seen symbol, the spiral, Mountjoy says it is “the physical manifestation of a ceremony during which the Sun God was entreated to send rain.”
Since many petroglyphs are a prayer for water, it’s not surprising he’s found them to be most abundant in areas where rivers and pools typically dry up during the course of the dry season.
What the petroglyphs look like without the help of chalk.
One of the most commonly depicted animals in west Mexican petroglyphs is the deer.
In Ocotillo Canyon near Mascota, Mountjoy found hundreds of petroglyphs representing an important ceremony that is still practiced today among the Wixárika (Huichol) people: the Sacred Deer Hunt.
The original purpose of the Sacred Hunt in ancient times was not to kill or eat deer but to catch them alive, tie their legs together, carry them to a ceremonial site and finally to prick their ears in order to obtain a few drops of their blood.
“In Huichol mythology,” says Mountjoy,” this hunt was ordered by the gods Father Sun and Uncle Fire for the purpose of anointing ritual objects with deer blood,” says Mountjoy. “It was the last stage of the pilgrimage to obtain peyote in order to make sure the sun keeps shining …
“The deer’s blood was also essential for the toasted corn ceremony, the last ritual of the dry season. So it can be seen clearly how the Huicholes related sun, water and fertility with deer, peyote and corn.”
The Sacred Deer Hunt took place somewhere between January and March and may have lasted as long as a month. According to ethnographer Robert Zingg, the hunters had to come back with the number of deer specified by their shaman in his dreams.
Simple patole (note jaguar head) at La Cañada near Lake Chapala.
During the hunt, the shaman would call the deer with the help of a megaphone made of tree bark. Dogs would be used to drive the deer into a narrow canyon, where they would then be trapped in nets and carried off.
These elements of the Sacred Deer Hunt can be seen again and again in Mountjoy’s photos of rock art in Mascota’s Ocotillo Canyon.
A fascinating section of the book is dedicated to a kind of rock engraving called the patole. This is the ancient equivalent of board games like backgammon or snakes and ladders.
The “board” was engraved on a flat, horizontal rock, and for dice, the Aztecs used big beans painted with white dots and known as patoles.
The oldest patole petroglyphs go back to 300 A.D. and are found in places like Teotihuacán and Palenque. There was an elaborate kind of patole shaped like a rectangle with a cross in it with 52 spaces where your token could land (representing the Mesoamerican century).
A great many of these were recently unearthed at La Presa de la Luz near Arandas, Jalisco.
Patoles are engraved on two rocks in Mascota’s Mesa del Durazno.
As proof that the ancients were board game fans, “abbreviated patoles” have also been found with only 12 spaces.
Mountjoy encountered both styles in the Mascota area.
“I should mention,” he says, “that for the Aztecs, playing patole also included drinking alcoholic beverages and gambling for high stakes.”
At the end of the book, we are reminded that most petroglyphs were considered sacred by their makers and that visiting sites with rock art should be considered like stepping into a temple or a church.
Damaging petroglyphs or making fires near them (which can cause the rock to fragment) would be very offensive to native peoples.
Arte Rupestre en Jalisco is a thin, magazine-sized (27 by 21.5cm), 48-page paperback with 44 photos, almost all in color, beautifully printed by Acento Editores of Guadalajara.
A shaman, representing the sun god, lifts a deer. J. Mountjoy
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
Joseph Mountjoy with engravings of two oncillas, “tiger cats,” in a display at the Guachimontones Museum.
A simple bowl carved in rock is a prayer for rain.
A hunter-shaman calls deer to a Sacred Hunt through a megaphone. J. Mountjoy
Each spiral is the physical manifestation of a ceremony praying for rain.
Joseph Mountjoy with engravings of two oncillas, “tiger cats,” in a display at the Guachimontones Museum.
Arte Rupestre en Jalisco has 48 pages and 43 illustrations.
Signos Vitales accuses the government of having achieved few results and says AMLO uses press conferences to control the agenda and rebuke critics.
A non-governmental organization has delivered a scathing assessment of President López Obrador and the federal government in a new report, asserting that the former constantly lies to the Mexican people and the latter has achieved few “visible and tangible results” during the more than two years it has been in office.
Signos Vitales (Vital Signs), which describes itself as a nonpartisan civil society body, is highly critical of López Obrador’s propensity to be loose with the truth, especially at his weekday morning press conferences, at which he aims to set the political agenda and delivers blunt rebukes of government critics.
“Truth is one of the most important values in human relationships, and it is also, sadly, one of the most denigrated, groped, and mistreated by the federal government through Mexico’s president,” begins the report, entitled The Value of Truth: A Third of the Way.
(The latter part of the title acknowledges that AMLO, as the president is best known, has completed about a third of his six-year term.)
Signos Vitales (SV) asserts that the president concocts lies, falsehoods and half-truths at his daily mañaneras, as his morning press conferences are known, and presents “nonverifiable data” to back up his claims.
The English-language cover to Signos Vitales’s report on AMLO.
“On average, according to Spin Organization [a political communication firm], the president lies 80 times during each of his morning conferences. In two years, López Obrador is about to duplicate the seemingly unattainable 23,000 lies that The Washington Post accounted for Trump throughout his term,” the report says.
Behind this “professional montage,” according to SV, is “an unquestionable truth: the Mexican government has been unable to give visible and tangible results in various issues that afflict Mexican society.”
The report criticizes the government for its management of the coronavirus pandemic (Mexico’s Covid-19 death toll is the third highest in the world), its failure to resolve medication shortages, its “contempt” of women and the issues they face — such as high levels of gender violence — its lack of action on climate change, its management of the economy (the GDP slumped 8.5% in 2020), its failure to remedy education inequality and its lack of progress on reducing poverty and violence, among a range of other shortcomings.
“… The government lacks policies that truly combat or contain the problems holding back the country’s development,” SV asserts.
The organization — whose executive committee members include former health minister Julio Frenk, María Amparo Casar, president of the organization Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, and United States-based Mexico expert Duncan Wood — briefly acknowledges “some isolated achievements,” including the increase to the minimum wage and the implementation of the new North American free-trade agreement, the USMCA, but quickly returns to criticizing the president and his government.
López Obrador, “in his ambitious desire to erase any trace of previous governments in the country, has been able to carry out “far-reaching transformations” because the Congress — in which the ruling Morena party has a majority in both houses — has become a “validator for any instruction that comes from the executive,” the report says.
As a result of the Congress acting on the president’s instructions, “key institutions for Mexican democracy have been weakened,” SV says.
“ … This … government is increasingly seen as that of a single man who makes decisions unilaterally without asking anyone for permission,” it adds.
“One of the main indicators that the government moves around the unique vision of the President is the frequency with which it has resorted to issuing decrees [such as one that ordered the military to continue carrying out public security tasks until 2024]. This … makes it possible to implement its government program expeditiously, often illegally, characterized by an intense concentration of powers in the federal executive,” the report says.
“The president has weakened the different institutional counterweights and the capacities they built over the years. The three ways identified [to achieve] this institutional destruction are budget reduction, colonization of the autonomous branches’ governing bodies, and the disappearance or subordination of autonomous institutions to federal government agencies.”
SV also criticizes the government for not improving the situation in Mexico with regard to the right to freedom of speech and the right to information.
“[Press freedom advocacy organization] Article 19 has reported that 17 journalists have been assassinated during the current administration, six of these in 2020,” the report says.
Former Minister of Health Julio Frenk is a member of Signos Vitales.
SV acknowledges that AMLO has put the fight against corruption and impunity at the center of his government’s political agenda but notes that “indicators on the perception of corruption and impunity show the persistence of these evils.”
“… One additional warning sign that has remained for several years is the country’s level of governance. The degree of public insecurity, fractures to the rule of law, levels of impunity, and increasingly tense relationship between the local and federal executives seem to put the Mexican state on the verge of a true governance crisis,” the report says.
“As has been repeated on numerous occasions, insecurity has been considered one of the main concerns of Mexican society during the last 13 years. The significant increase in high-impact crimes committed in the country has maintained its upward trend,” SV says, referring to crimes such as homicides, which reached record levels in 2019 — López Obrador’s first full year in office — and declined by just 0.4% last year despite the pandemic.
“The confrontation between the federal executive and some local [state] executives, which originated due to financial reasons, has been exacerbated by the pandemic’s management and the selective attack on crime.”
In the conclusion to its report, SV — which says that one of its objectives is to “serve as a guiding light that displays the direction that Mexico is taking” — reiterates that the results achieved by the federal government in its first two years in office are “scarce.”
The government’s self-anointed nickname is the “fourth transformation” — a designation that seeks to put the importance of the López Obrador administration on a par with independence from Spain, the Mexican Revolution and 19th-century liberal reforms — but “millions of Mexicans are still waiting to feel improvements in governance, income, energy, environment, security and social needs such as health and education,” the report says.
“… With insufficient and incorrectly designed plans and projects, the country is guided and oriented based on indications that the president may have [come up with] each morning in his press conferences. It seems that President López Obrador governs from communication and not from public action with programs, projects, and accountability,” SV says.
“… It is not acceptable for the government to try to substitute ‘its truth’ for reality, manipulating and spreading false or misleading information, which does not allow society to make adequate and accurate decisions regarding the planning of a better future for each of its members.”
Biology students from the Autonomous University of Morelos (UAEM) have organized volunteers and experts to rescue wildlife impacted by the Tepoztlán forest fire.
The fire, which began last Sunday, burned more than 350 hectares, including natural protected areas. The wildlife in the area includes white-tailed deer, volcano rabbits, sparrows, reptiles and butterflies, among others.
The students put out a call for travel cages, cardboard, sacks, fruit, seeds and other supplies for the animals’ care. They are also looking for IV re-hydration supplies and vehicles to transport volunteers and the animals.
State authorities have said that if animals do not have broken bones, they should be left in their natural habitat. It asked that people who find an injured animal call the federal environmental protection agency, Profepa, so that its veterinarians can care for the animal.
By Thursday, the fire was 100% under control, according to the state government.
The pre-Hispanic artifact will be reunited with its 'twin' at the Museo de los Altos.
A Mayan urn used for rituals in what is now Chiapas will be returned to Mexico after spending 50 years in the U.S. The urn was found in 1969 by professor Marvin Vann, who donated it to Albion College in 2003. In 2009, negotiations began for the urn to be repatriated to Mexico.
Representatives of Albion College and officials from the Mexican Consulate in Detroit signed the agreement for repatriation this week. The urn will be in Mexico in a matter of days, according to Elizabeth Palmer, head of the Albion College archives. It will be on display with its twin at the Museo de los Altos in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
“The recovery of this Mayan urn and reunification with its twin artefact represent an act of great importance for Mexico and its historical heritage,” the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The urn was stored for years in the Albion College archives until it was found by Joel Palka, a professor and Mayan art expert. He realized it was identical to one at the Museo de los Altos, which had been created between the years 900 and 1600. Using chemical analysis, researchers were able to establish that the urn in Michigan was made with the same materials and came from the same time period as the Chiapas urn. According to Josuhé Lozada of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the urn “was made with the same clay and, probably, by the same artisan.”
Lozada said the urn was of great value due to the rarity of twin artifacts from the Mayan period, in addition to being a unique piece in terms of the iconography portrayed. The artifact shows a god related to trade and the underworld. The top part of the urn has a niche for the ritual burning of the aromatic wood copal, which “initiated communication with the deity.” The smoke acted as a conduit for prayer and requests, according to Lozada.
Lozada told the newspaper El País that the urn is also unusual because of the time in history when it was created. Most Mayan historical research focuses on the period of growth that the Mayan culture experienced between the years 600 and 900, and often involves the Mayan pyramids. This urn, however, is an example of popular culture from a later period, and has a different design. It could give insight into a lesser-known period of Mayan culture.
“Repatriations are not always sad stories,” Lozada said, noting that the urn was taken from Chiapas in 1969, just before a 1972 law declared that artifacts could not be removed from the country without authorization from the INAH. On the contrary, the return of the item could serve as an example for other nations.
Around 9,000 pre-Hispanic art objects can be found scattered through European and American museums, according to a 2012 study. Mexico has engaged in ongoing efforts to bring Mexican artifacts back home, and in 2020 Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, historian and wife of President López Obrador, toured Europe asking for various Mexican archaeological items to be loaned back to their country of origin. Mexico also recently secured the return of 280 artifacts from the U.S., mostly stone objects taken from present-day Sonora.
The dinosaur's mom looks decidedly cheerful despite having to wait in line.
With seniors age 60 and above being eligible for coronavirus vaccination, the elderly are lining up to get their shots. But the process takes some time: they must wait in line then stay after the shot for observation.
So to alleviate the stress of the long wait, one man decided to accompany his mother as she waited for her vaccination — dressed as a dinosaur.
Mardonio Rivera showed up with his mother at their Tamaulipas vaccination center in full T. Rex regalia. He said that after he realized some seniors were waiting up to 24 hours to get their shots, he decided that the costume would be a way to lighten the mood and hopefully get a few smiles.
In other parts of the country, vaccine volunteers have come up with creative ways to entertain the seniors as they wait. In Mexico City, some challenged the waiting crowd to show their best dance steps. At another vaccination site, government health workers led exercise programs for the crowd. Though the city government has asked the vaccine candidates not to arrive before their appointment time, many do so, hoping to receive the vaccine sooner.
According to the Ministry of Health, 505,000 people received vaccines on Thursday, making for a total of nearly 13 million shots administered to date. In addition to seniors, health workers and teachers continue to receive vaccinations.
The Senate voted 80-25 in favor of extending Arturo Zaldívar's term.
The federal Senate has approved a proposal to extend the term of the chief justice of the Supreme Court by two years, a move that critics say is a coup d’etat by the government against the judiciary.
The move opens the way for Arturo Zaldívar, considered an ally of President López Obrador, to stay in the position until the end of the current government’s six-year term.
The proposal to extend Zaldívar’s term was presented by Green party Senator Raúl Bolaños at a session on Thursday and supported by a majority of lawmakers with the ruling Morena party and its allies as well as some opposition senators.
Eighty senators voted in favor, 25 voted against and four abstained.
The Senate also approved a proposal to extend the term of the members of the Federal Judiciary Council (CJF), which is led by Zaldívar, until 2026.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar.
After the Senate session, the CJF said in a statement that it had not requested any extension to the terms of the chief justice or its members.
Senator Dante Delgado, leader of the Citizens Movement party in the upper house, claimed that the extensions are related to a desire by López Obrador’s to control the judiciary. He called on Zaldívar to refuse the extension to his term, which he described as a “legal aberration.”
A reform cannot be passed by the Congress for the benefit of one person, Delgado said.
“This cannot be allowed,” the senator said, adding that his party will “report the brutal violation of the division of powers” to international authorities.
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Senator Claudia Ruiz Massieu said her party hadn’t heard of the proposal before it was presented and was taken by surprise. Some PRI senators voted in favor of the extension of the chief justice’s term because they weren’t well-informed about the proposal, she said.
Ruiz asserted that the extension violates the constitution, which stipulates term lengths for judges.
José Ramón Cossío — an academic and former Supreme Court judge — and constitutional lawyer Diago Valadés also claimed that the extension of Zaldívar’s term was unconstitutional.
“The period of the president of the court cannot be extended. Chief Justice Zaldívar is a serious constitutionalist who doesn’t deserve to be the object of maneuvers that expose him to unfavorable comments,” Valadés wrote on Twitter.
National Action Party Senator Damián Zepeda claimed that the government had carried out a takeover of the judicial branch.
“[It was] a coup d’état on the judiciary … because they’re trying to take control of that power by illegal means,” he said.
Zepeda said the chief justice’s term extension could be a precursor to a proposal to extend López Obrador’s term, which ends in 2024.
Morena’s leader in the upper house, Senator Ricardo Monreal, ruled out that possibility, saying that the president was elected for six years and there are no legal grounds for extending it.
Senator Dante Delgado, leader of the Citizens Movement party in the upper house, called the extension of Zaldívar’s term “a legal aberration.”
López Obrador, who has been accused of seeking to concentrate power in the executive, distanced himself from the issue.
“It’s a decision that the senators took,” he told reporters at his regular news conference on Friday.
“The initiative will now go to the Chamber of Deputies to be debated and approved as the case may be. I have confidence in him [Zaldívar]. I consider him an upright man, an honest person,” López Obrador said, adding that he supports the extension of his term so that he can continue to lead an overhaul of the judicial system.
“But I’m not going to decide; the lawmakers will,” he said.
A soldier cuts marijuana plants as part of military efforts to eradicate the crops.
As Mexico nears full legalization of marijuana, some illegal growers are worried about what will happen to their livelihoods. With legislation awaiting final Senate approval for recreational use and sale, some growers have already seen their sales shrink, according to a report by the Associated Press.
For María, a marijuana grower near Badiraguato, Sinaloa, that means half her crop is sitting in storage when it should have already been sold. She attributes the change to the pending legalization, which has shaken up the illegal market. Demand had already been falling as many U.S. states legalized marijuana and drug cartels added fentanyl and other more profitable synthetic drugs to their portfolios.
For María and her family, marijuana pays for everything except the food they grow for themselves. Clothing and her children’s education have all been financed by the crop. But the years of plenty were accompanied by periods of violence, when rival groups sought to control the area.
Some growers are diversifying into opium poppies to balance the risk that their marijuana crops will not sell in the new business ecosystem created by legalization. That is the strategy that María and her family took.
“Since we heard they were going to legalize [marijuana] we began to make the poppy plots larger,” María said. But their efforts to grow opium were stymied by a government operation that sprayed herbicide over her fields.
The next strategy was to grow a high-quality strain. The family hopes it will be easier to sell.
The marijuana they sold from the previous harvest yielded US $500, or about $25 per kilogram. The destroyed poppies would have netted the family about $5,000.
Another man in the area, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said he also grows a strain with higher psychoactive content that normally sells at 10 times the price of standard Mexican marijuana. Two harvests normally yield $15,000, he said. But it is not easy money. He has to fight for water and pay a fee to dealers in order to sell in their territory in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa.
Both he and María were less concerned about legalization than sales.
“If they pay me the same — or almost — being legal, well great. We’ll work more at ease,” he said.
Mexican politicians commonly cite reduced violence as a motivation for legalization.
Zara Snapp is an international drug policy consultant and co-founder of Instituto RIA, a public policy think tank in Mexico. She said that violence will not be reduced overnight, and the legislation needs a strong social justice component.
The objective “is not to end the illegal market, because that’s not going to happen in the first years,” but rather reduce it as much as possible, said Snapp. “If the communities decide not to [move to the legal market] it is because there aren’t sufficient economic reasons.”
Morelos firefighter Jacobo Rivera López said he felt fear and loss as he fought fires in the national park.
“What’s happening to our forests hurts, … the oak trees, the ocote pine trees, the strawberry trees and the grasslands. We love the vegetation; we have a lot of affection for it.”
Those are the words of firefighter Jacobo Rivera López after at least 350 hectares of the Tepozteco National Park in Morelos were burned by a forest fire this week.
In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, he recounted the fear he felt while fighting the fire and his devastation at the loss of forested land in the national park, which adjoins the tourist town of Tepoztlán.
Rivera said that the flames were 10 to 15 meters high, and he and his fellow firefighters didn’t know whether they would escape with their lives. At least six firefighters were hospitalized, one with third-degree burns.
“[Despite the risks] we had to fight the fire. We went up to the mountain because of the affection we have for the countryside and the vegetation,” Rivera said.
He said that he and many of his colleagues did indeed come close to losing their lives as the fire closed in on them. But luckily they all survived, some only because helicopters doused the approaching flames with water.
“I felt death. The fire came out of a gully and the wind blew it toward us and we were trapped, it was a matter of minutes [before we would die but] we managed to get ourselves into another gully, and we waited for the fire to pass,” Rivera said.
The firefighter said that his body filled with fear and adrenaline during his close encounter with the blaze, adding that he gained extra motivation to keep fighting it in order to save as much of the forest as he could.
The cause of the fire is unclear, but a lack of recent rain in the area allowed it to spread quickly. It approached some inhabited areas, but there were no reports of property damage or loss of life.
The forest fire, one of scores burning across different parts of Mexico, was fully under control and 90% extinguished on Thursday morning, according to the National Forestry Commission.
