Government signed 4 contracts to conduct cell phone espionage

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April 15, 2021

Federal Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero oversaw the purchase of surveillance systems from the Neolinx company in 2019 and 2020.

During the past two years, the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) purchased software that allowed it to conduct cell phone and internet espionage on a massive scale, according to a report by the newspaper El País.

The FGR signed at least four contracts worth US $5.6 million with the company Neolinx de México in 2019 and 2020, according to government documents. It purchased programs that allowed it to track cell phones and collect data on internet users, the newspaper said in a report published Wednesday.

Neolinx has previously acted as a representative for the Italian IT company Hacking Team, which allegedly sold cyber espionage programs to former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012–2018 government, but it has represented the Israeli firm Rayzone Group in more recent times.

According to El País, the programs the FGR purchased from Neolinx during the current government are not illegal and, according to the authorities, are used to combat organized crime.

However, they can be used arbitrarily in a way that violates people’s right to privacy and the presumption of innocence, as R3D, a digital rights defense network, has warned in several reports.

While the invasion of people’s privacy by the government is not prohibited in an absolute sense, said R3D director Luis Fernando García Muñoz, there are strict limits on the type of surveillance activities it can carry out. The government’s capacity to conduct cell phone and internet espionage on a massive scale is highly problematic, he said.

“Massive surveillance is not compatible with the principles of necessity and proportionality,” García said.

The FGR signed its first contract with Neolinx on May 30, 2019, via its organized crime unit SEIDO. According to a government report that contains details of the US $2.4 million deal, the FGR gained access to a program that allowed it to track cell phones in real time on 135,000 separate occasions.

The PGR, the FGR’s predecessor, also purchased access to the same Rayzone Group geolocation system, which is called Geomatrix.

A 2019 report by R3D and the news website Reporte Indigo said that the PGR had used the system indiscriminately.

Rayzone Group markets the product as “a unique solution that enables intelligence and law enforcement agencies the ability to locate … [mobile phone] subscribers covertly virtually anywhere in the world, all in real time, using a very friendly GUI [graphical user interface] and with flexible capabilities of GIS [geographic information system] mapping.”

On its website, the company also says the Geomatrix system “stealthily ascertains status, location and movement of targets of interest from anywhere in a city and/or area to the entire country and beyond borders, pinpointing them with high accuracy in real time.”

El País said the FGR spent US $1.1 million on Rayzone’s ECHO system in 2019 and $1.7 million in 2020. The newspaper didn’t reveal details of FGR’s fourth contract with Neolinx.

According to Rayzone, ECHO is a a global virtual signals intelligence system that “utilizes a fully stealth method of collection on any internet user.”

“ECHO is agnostic to the device type, operating system or version, and does not require preinstallation of any physical equipment. ECHO provides a web-based platform that allows users immediate access to perform simple queries as well as complex investigations. ECHO provides the benefits of both a target-centric approach (collecting information on a particular point of interest) and data-centric approach (mass collection of all internet users in a country).”

El País said that it didn’t receive a response when it asked the FGR how it was using the Rayzone products.

The revelation of the purchases came the same day that President López Obrador, defending a plan to establish a national registry of mobile phone users, said the government had no interest in spying on anyone. He has said previously that his government hasn’t used any espionage programs.

One of the many scandals the Peña Nieto administration faced was the revelation that it had purchased cyber espionage programs, including the spyware suite Pegasus for US $32 million.

It used that software to attempt to spy on journalists, human rights defenders and other government critics.

Source: El País (sp)

Zapotec author captures the troubled duality of modern indigenous life

By

Rich Tenorio

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April 15, 2021

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Author Pergentino José was born in 1981 in a Zapotec village. He is a champion of the Zapotec language and writes his books in his mother tongue.

A Zapotec priestess named Yezari loses her powers of divination after giving birth to her daughter. As Yezari seeks to recover her abilities, she dreams that she becomes a mountain lion.

Terrified, she tries to scream. Instead, she lets out the roar of the big cat in an onomatopoeic expression that is its name in the indigenous Sierra Zapotec language: “Nkui nkuau, nkui nkuau.”

This is part of the plot of “The Priestess on the Mountain,” a short story in the collection Hormigas rojas (Red Ants) by Zapotec writer Pergentino José.

Published in English by Deep Vellum Press, the collection represents a groundbreaking step: it is the first literary translation by a publisher of Sierra Zapotec fiction into English.

“I think there is a great vitality in the Zapotec way of thinking, a unique way of thinking about things that have been very little appreciated, because in general there has been scant dialogue on how reality is thought about from an indigenous language,” José said.

José reading a chapbook of one of his stories at an event at the Libros Schmibros free lending library in Los Angeles, California.

Sierra Zapotec is José’s mother tongue, and he is a champion of keeping Zapotec languages alive. When he worked for nearly a decade as an elementary school teacher in San Agustín Loxicha, Oaxaca, he translated books for children into his language and often visited K-12 schools to talk to children about Zapotec culture.

He uses the expression yanayee, yanabànd — a tree that is green, a tree that is alive — to denote what he calls a Zapotec way of thinking about life itself.

For José, Sierra Zapotec reflects a vast oral tradition, including storytelling, and he writes fiction in his mother tongue to channel this orality.

A challenge, he said, is conveying the Zapotec culture’s orality through written Spanish. Yet this intersection represents his work’s starting point.

The stories in Red Ants are set in the Oaxaca highlands, where José was born in 1981 in a Zapotec village. He has gone on to a career of achievement in literature, including being published in the México20 anthology honoring the country’s top young fiction writers, while earning membership in a government-run fellowship program for writers and artists, the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.

His influences include writers Juan Rulfo, Franz Kafka, the Japanese novelists Junichiro Tanizaki and Dazai Ozamu and the Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato.

His next upcoming book involves the duality between an actual Zapotec town named Quelobee, the setting of some of the stories in Red Ants, and its fictional urban counterpart, Tepexipana.

For the cover, Deep Vellum is seeking to acquire the rights to an image by the late Mexican artist Martín Ramírez, a migrant who was confined to a psychiatric hospital in California.

Ramírez did all his paintings from the hospital, and his collective work, José said, “shows … the descent into the underground and the alienation that results from being transplanted into a different culture.”

Some of Red Ants’s stories were originally written in Sierra Zapotec, and others were originally in Spanish. All were written between 2009 and 2011 and originally published in the journal Almadia of Oaxaca in 2012. In Deep Vellum’s collection, the stories were translated by London-born writer Thomas Bunstead.

The challenge of translating Zapotec into English was augmented by the stories’ stylistic approach. They have been described as magical realism, but for José, something else is at work:

“In my stories, there is not magical realism. What exist in my stories are atmospheres, spaces of indetermination, stories that take the structure of a dream, something close to the oneiric,” he explains.

José at the opening of a school library named after him in San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca. He regularly visits K-12 schools.

He notes that one such story, “El témpano,” was particularly difficult for Bunstead to translate. In this story, all that the reader is left with is the facade in which a long wait transpires.

A stream of Sierra Zapotec names, places and expressions flows through the stories.

In “The Priestess on the Mountain,” the main character Yezari has a Zapotec name, while the city priests pray and sacrifice to two Zapotec swamp gods, Mbdan and Mbsiand.

In “Room of Worms,” a Zapotec expression is used to describe workers destroying bamboo trees on a coffee plantation — “the murmur of people moving closer, ñee mend mbchas mbii mend, as though they were floating on the air.”

When José uses a Zapotec expression in a story, he follows with its translation. “[If] the conversation continues in Zapotec without a translation, this would simply disappear from the comprehension of the reader,” he said.

His characters are heirs to an indigenous culture rooted in the natural world, but their customs and language are at risk.

Relocating to urban housing is offered as an alternative to their traditional lifestyle, but it disconnects them from nature while introducing threats such as unemployment, violence and exploitation.

In “Room of Worms,” for example, the coffee plantation workers cut down the bamboo because the owner, Don Elpidio Alonso, decides only to grow coffee trees.

Although Don Elpidio has not paid his workers in some time, they are so eager to complete the job that they enlist children to help. They hack away with machetes and burn the bamboo, startling the birds and butterflies.

The titular story “Red Ants” also involves arduous work on a coffee plantation. A woman named Georgina Navarro spends a day collecting coffee beans with her young daughter, Lubia, who only speaks Zapotec. They do the work in a driving rain, and all they have to protect them are plastic bags that the owner gives them to wear. Gnats assail Georgina, she loses track of her daughter and things take a mysterious turn when the narrator later encounters Georgina in a courtyard.

José uses imagery of chairs, ferns and thorn-covered creeping vines in the courtyard to symbolize the characters’ desperate life.

“This allegory represents the reality of marginalization and exploitation in which indigenous communities live,” José said.

As José explains, red-colored ants symbolize ill fortune and the inevitability of death in the Zapotec cosmic vision, while yellow ants represent long life. Zapotec children try to capture and keep them in matchboxes for good luck.

“I think there is a great vitality in the Zapotec way of thinking, a unique way of thinking about things that have been very little appreciated." — “I think there is a great vitality in the Zapotec way of thinking, a unique way of thinking about things that have been very little appreciated.”

In the titular story, red ants swarm the chairs, ferns and vines of the courtyard where the narrator goes in search of the missing Georgina.

“[Because] the stories speak of abandonment, mothers who have lost their children, broken agreements, long waits and rupture [caused by waiting], it seemed appropriate to call the book Red Ants,” he said.

The ill fortune these ants symbolize is present throughout the collection, including in José’s favorite story in the book — “Threads of Steam,” in which the protagonist participates in a fake employment agency that is actually a kidnapping ring preying on the unemployed.

“There is an intention, aesthetically and through social criticism, [to address] the problem of unemployment in Mexico, and an even more serious problem — disappeared persons in the country,” he says of the story.

Although José said that “Threads of Steam” reflects a stylistic distancing from the themes of the other stories in the book, he sees commonalities across his characters.

“My characters are on a continual search,” he said. “They have all lost something. These characters show themselves through literary fiction to be part of a world shaken by violence, heartbreak, certain rules of the Zapotec gods to which they have submitted themselves.”

He calls his characters “individuals embodied by hopelessness, facing the state of being spiritual orphans, living in an upheaval in which they cannot speak their mother tongue.”

Now, English-speaking audiences are getting a chance to learn about the Sierra Zapotec language and the wider culture it represents.

“The book has had a good reception,” José said. “It has created expectations that it is possible to write in an indigenous language while complementing it with the Mexican literary tradition.”

Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.

Sargassum arrivals leave low to moderate accumulations on Quintana Roo beaches

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MND Staff

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April 15, 2021

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Brigade worker clears sargassum from a Quintana Roo beach.

The annual sargassum season is well and truly underway: large quantities of the seaweed have washed up on beaches in Quintana Roo destinations such as Playa del Carmen, Tulum and Cozumel.

Tourists are encountering hundreds of tonnes of the unsightly seaweed on beaches in Tulum, according to a report by the newspaper El País.

The beaches in Mahahual and Xcalek, located in the south of the state, are also currently affected by large amounts of sargassum, which emits a fetid odor as it decomposes.

The chief of the Cancún sargassum monitoring network told El País that there is so much sargassum that containing it is impossible.

“We have a significant arrival. In a single day, millions of cubic meters [of sargassum] can arrive, which translates into thousands of tonnes. Managing it is very complicated,” Esteban Amaro said. “… Collecting it [all] isn’t humanly possible.”

Tourists in Playa del Carmen enjoying themselves in the ocean waters despite the sargassum floating toward shore around them.

According to the monitoring network’s most recent sargassum map, there are abundant quantities of the weed at 20 beaches in Quintana Roo and moderate amounts at 32 others. No beaches currently have excessive levels.

As is the case every year, brigades of workers are clearing the plant from affected beaches while navy vessels are removing masses of it from the sea and installing barriers to stop it from reaching the coast. It can be frustrating work.

“They’re removing a lot of sargassum, but even though they clean [the beaches] in the morning, it accumulates again and it might be necessary to collect it again in the afternoon,” Mara del Rayo Ramírez, a tourism worker in Playa del Carmen, told the EFE news agency.

The annual arrival of sargassum on Quintana Roo’s famous white sand beaches is a recurring nightmare for tourism-sector entrepreneurs but even more distressing this year because they are trying to recover from the sharp coronavirus-induced slump in 2020.

In order to attract tourists to beachfront hotels, restaurants and bars, they have little choice but to spend money on hiring temporary workers to remove the sargassum.

“It doesn’t only have a negative effect on tourism,” Amaro, a marine biologist noted. “When it decomposes, it releases toxic organic substances that affect coral reefs and marine fauna and flora that live along the coastline.”

Brigades clear sargassum from affected Quintana Roo beaches.

He said that larger quantities of sargassum have been reaching the Quintana Roo coastline in recent years due to higher ocean temperatures caused by global warming.

“[Climate change] changes the sea currents, the winds and the temperature of the sea, which encourage the growth of sargassum,” Amaro said.

He also said that chemicals used in agriculture, industry and mining flow into the ocean via rivers and provide nutrients that help it reproduce.

The worst year on record for the arrival of the seaweed in Quintana Roo, most of which drifts up from the southern Atlantic Ocean, was 2015, but marine biologists and other experts believe that 2021 could be even worse.

“At the moment in the Lesser Antillles, there is an incredible amount of sargassum that can’t be managed. The trend is that it [first] arrives [at the start of] spring, increases in April and there is a significant peak in May. It will increase even more in quantity and frequency in the summer,” Amaro said.

Source: EFE (sp), El País (sp)

Study finds higher Covid mortality rate in public sector healthcare

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MND Staff

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April 15, 2021

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A Covid patient waits in December to be admitted outside Hospital General de La Raza, one of Mexico City’s largest public hospitals. — A Covid patient waits in December to be admitted at Hospital General de La Raza, one of Mexico City’s largest public hospitals.

Coronavirus patients admitted to public hospitals in Mexico are far more likely to die than those who are treated in private hospitals, according to a study commissioned by the World Health Organization.

More than 50% of coronavirus patients admitted to Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) hospitals died in 2020, according to data cited in Mexico’s Response to Covid-19: A Case Study by the Institute for Global Health Sciences (IGHS). Approximately 30% of Covid patients treated in other types of public hospitals, those operated by the federal Health Ministry and by the State Workers Social Security Institute (ISSSTE), succumbed to the disease.

Yet only about 20% of Covid-19 patients admitted to private healthcare facilities lost their lives to the disease.

Jaime Sepúlveda, the executive director of the IGHS and one of the authors of the study, told the newspaper Reforma that the high mortality rate in the public health system was due to the lack of medical personnel who knew how to operate mechanical ventilators and treat severe respiratory illness.

The government added beds in public hospitals, but the higher capacity was not accompanied by an increase in sufficiently trained health workers, he said.

Increasing the number of beds in the public health system, including critical care beds, was “probably necessary” but the measure wasn’t enough on its own to save the lives of many patients.

“A lot of patients arrived at IMSS [hospitals] … in an advanced stage of the disease; they [basically] arrived to die,” he added.

Sepúlveda also said the federal government hasn’t invested sufficiently in the public health system and has favored health policies that result in minimum intervention in the treatment of coronavirus patients.

“In summary, the government failed,” he said.

The same IGHS study found that about 190,000 deaths could have been avoided in Mexico last year if the government had managed the coronavirus pandemic better.

Sepúlveda acknowledged that the current government is not entirely responsible for the poor state of the public health system, noting that it inherited a broken system that has faced chronic underinvestment since 2016. But the current government has made further aggressive funding cuts. In some cases, it has not exercised all resources allocated to different parts of the public health sector, he said.

Covid patients admitted to IMSS public hospitals had a 50% chance of dying from the disease, compared to a 20% mortality rate in private ones.

“We’ve seen institutional erosion, … poorly executed reforms … such as [the creation of] Insabi,” Sepúlveda said, referring to the National Institute of Health for Well-being, a new federal agency that manages the universal health plan that replaced the Seguro Popular program.

He also criticized the government’s centralization of the process to purchase medications, a move that critics say has caused or exacerbated shortages.

The IGHS study also noted that more than half of all Covid-19 deaths in Mexico last year occurred in people aged below 65, whereas people under that age only accounted for 19% of fatalities in the United States.

Sepúlveda said the high number of Covid-19 fatalities — the official death toll rose to 210,812 on Wednesday but the Health Ministry has acknowledged that the real toll is above 300,000 — is largely due to serious deficiencies in the federal government’s communication with the public during the pandemic and its overall failure to manage the crisis effectively.

Among the government’s communication shortcomings are that it has never been a forceful advocate of face masks and that early in the pandemic it encouraged people not to seek medical treatment in the hospital if they didn’t have serious Covid-19 symptoms.

The IGHS chief also said the government has effectively privatized management of the pandemic.

“[The government] has left the management of the pandemic to the highest bidder — local and state governments, civil society. That’s effectively privatization of a public emergency,” Sepúlveda said.

He said that the nation’s poorest, people who work in Mexico’s vast informal sector and citizens who lived in crowded homes have been hit hardest.

“They’re the ones who have suffered from this government inaction and incompetence the most,” Sepúlveda said.

He urged the government to listen to health experts from outside its ranks — the IGHS study found that the government hadn’t done that when making key decisions — and to “correct the course” with regard to management of the pandemic.

“In 2021, we’ll unfortunately still have a prolonged pandemic, but interventions and public policies can still be made that … reduce [virus] transmission chains and avoid the extremely high morbidity and mortality rates,” Sepúlveda said.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Michoacán governor confirms that Aguililla being held hostage by feuding cartels

By

MND Staff

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April 15, 2021

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Cartels control highway access to Tierra Caliente municipality. — Cartels control highway access to the Tierra Caliente municipality.

Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles has finally conceded that the town of Aguililla is being held hostage by two feuding criminal organizations.

In an interview with Milenio Television, Aureoles publicly acknowledged for the first time that the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cárteles Unidos are engaged in a turf war in the town, located about 270 kilometers southwest of Morelia in Michoacán’s notoriously violent Tierra Caliente region.

His acknowledgement comes after weeks of clashes between the two criminal groups in Aguililla, including one in which the CJNG is believed to have killed as many as 27 members of the Cárteles Unidos.

The governor said the dispute is affecting ordinary residents who have nothing to do with either criminal group.

Aguililla has been “highjacked” and cut off by the cartels, Aureoles said, asserting that both organizations have blocked access to the municipality.

There is a military presence but soldiers are not authorized to use force.

According to residents who spoke with the newspaper Reforma, the Cárteles Unidos has been blocking access to Aguililla for at least four months to stop further CJNG incursions. The former group is only allowing people in and out of the municipality via one road at specific times, they said.

“They only open it twice a day [in the morning and evening], it doesn’t matter if someone is dying,” a resident said.

The blockades have created shortages of essential products such as food, medicines and gasoline and forced prices up. Residents also complained that they can’t access health and financial services.

“We’re without gasoline, banks, even municipal police,” a resident said. “Someone could die from a scorpion sting because of the [long] transportation times and because there is not enough medicine in the municipality.”

The root cause of the violence, the blockades and the consequent shortages of basic goods is that both the CJNG and the Cárteles Unidos want to control production of synthetic drugs in Aguililla as well as trafficking routes running through the municipality, Aureoles said.

“This region has a decades-long history of the cultivation of illicit plants but now … [the main activity] is the production of synthetic drugs” such as fentanyl, the governor said, explaining that chemical precursors – many of which are shipped to Pacific coast ports from Asian countries – come into Aguililla and manufactured synthetic drugs go out.

a poster that greeted Aureoles' arrival in Aguililla this week. — ‘Mr. Governor, travel by land so you can the reality we are living,’ read a poster that greeted Aureoles’ arrival in Aguililla this week. The governor flew in by helicopter.

He said the state government is in talks with municipal authorities and federal security forces to find a solution to the conflict and the blockades that have effectively turned residents into “hostages.”

The governor called on President López Obrador to provide more federal government support.

“It’s necessary. … It’s a very complex issue that is obviously [created by] organized crime,” he said, adding that it is very difficult for the state government to combat the problem on its own because of the immense firepower of the cartels, their high levels of organization and their ample economic resources.

Although some media reports have said that the CJNG has seized Aguililla, Aureoles said that neither it nor the Cárteles Unidos has full control. They are in a battle to try to drive each other out, he reiterated.

The only way to defeat them is to “go in together … with federal forces,” he declared.

However, that is unlikely to happen because of López Obrador’s desire to avoid violent confrontations with criminals, Aureoles said, adding that it will be difficult to control or contain the cartels “only with calls to civility or dialogue.”

“Political dialogue is difficult with these guys; dialogue is possible with communities in conflict, with social groups but talking with criminals is very difficult,” he said.

Despite those remarks, the governor expressed confidence that the problem will be resolved within days.

The three levels of government are putting together a plan to deal urgently with the shortages of food, medications and other essential goods, he said.

“I believe that we’ll soon resolve this blockade problem, that’s been going on for weeks. … It’s a matter of days,” Aureoles said.

The president told reporters Wednesday that efforts to address insecurity in Aguililla “have been advancing” but continued to insist that the use of force is not an option.

Source: Milenio (sp), Reforma (sp)

Broadcasters merge to launch Spanish-language streaming service

By

Jude Webber

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April 14, 2021

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The two media companies' merger seeks to create a "global leader in Spanish-language media."

Mexico’s top broadcaster Televisa and Univision of the United States have agreed to a US $4.8-billion content merger backed by Japan’s SoftBank that is aimed at launching a Spanish-language streaming service to take on the likes of Netflix.

The deal, which had been widely hinted at in recent days, sent Televisa’s American depositary receipts in New York soaring 8.7% in after-hours trading.

The companies said in a statement that Televisa would combine its media, content and production assets — from soaps to sporting events — with Univision, the large U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster, creating the “global leader in Spanish-language media.”

The new company will aim to launch a global streaming service early next year to tap into a market of 600 million consumers.

“As the definitive global leader in Spanish-language media, Televisa-Univision will have the operating assets, financial scale and audience reach to accelerate its digital transformation and deliver a differentiated streaming proposition to the underserved global Spanish-language population,” the groups said in a statement.

Televisa, which will hold 45% of the merged company, will contribute content valued at US $4.8 billion as well as its four free-to-air channels, 27 pay-television outlets, its Videocine movie studio and Blim TV video-on-demand service.

Univision will pay US $3 billion in cash and $1.5 billion in Univision stock, with the remainder funded by other sources. This will enable Televisa to pay down debt.

The deal was expected to significantly reduce combined net debt leverage and boost margins, the companies said.

As part of the financing for the transaction, SoftBank’s Latin America Fund will lead a US $1 billion debt issue with participation from Google, the Raine Group merchant bank and the venture capital and private equity firm ForgeLight, a current investor in Univision.

Univision’s assets include the Univision and UniMás networks, nine Spanish-language cable networks, 61 television stations and 58 radio stations, as well as a recently-launched streaming service, PrendeTV.

“This strategic combination generates significant value for shareholders of both companies and will allow us to more efficiently reach all Spanish-language audiences with more of our programming,” said Emilio Azcárraga, executive chair of Televisa.

Content will largely be produced in Mexico, and “the combined financial strength will allow the company to invest in the anticipated launch of its global streaming platform, which is expected in early 2022,” the statement said.

Wade Davis, Univision chief executive, will lead the merged company, with Televisa’s Alfonso de Angoitia as executive chair. Marcelo Claure, chief executive of SoftBank, will become vice-chair.

The companies have been closely connected for more than two decades, and Televisa said it expected the deal would enable it to “strengthen our balance sheet and focus on growth opportunities at our telecom business”, which it will retain, as well as production facilities and Mexican licenses.

Mexico’s unwritten driving rules not unlike those for supermarket shopping

By

Joseph Sorrentino

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April 14, 2021

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Expect the unexpected when you're driving on Mexico's roadways. Valentín Zavala

There’s only one rule for driving in Mexico: there are no rules.

Well, I guess to be correct there are rules, but there aren’t any you must follow if you really don’t feel like it.

And you can change which ones you feel like following daily, hourly or on the spur of the moment. Pretty much just for the hell of it.

At the same time, Mexican drivers expect everyone else on the road to follow both the spirit and the letter of each and every rule because, after all, isn’t that simply being courteous?

It took me a couple of trips to Mexico before I realized that there is actually a flow to traffic here. Maybe “flow” isn’t the right word; “swirling eddies” is probably more accurate. Let’s see if I can explain what I mean.

Mexicans apparently treat driving a car like, say, pushing a shopping cart in a supermarket. That may be because they’ll drive their cars into supermarkets if they have to, but that’s another matter.

What I mean is, you know how when you’re pushing a shopping cart down an aisle and someone’s blocking it with their cart, you simply go around? Or how people shuffle along, moving from one side of the aisle to another, cutting in front of or behind each other, passing people on either the left or right side?

There aren’t any “rules” per se. Do people yell and get into fights if someone cuts in front of them in a supermarket, stops dead in the middle of an aisle or passes them on the right? No.

And I think that’s the way Mexicans view driving. To them it’s simply like being in a supermarket. When driving, they think it’s perfectly normal to weave in and out, cut in front of other vehicles or even stop if they see a friend. One major difference, of course, is that, unlike Mexican drivers, Mexican shoppers don’t lay on a horn for every minor or perceived infraction.

There is one thing that Mexicans do that really scares the hell out of me. You know how in the United States it’s perfectly legal to make a right turn on red? Well, in Mexico, you can make a left on red. Or, if the spirit moves you — and you’re in a rush — you can go straight on red.

I’m pretty sure these are both illegal, but they happen so often that they may not be.

I’ve been in cars, taxis, buses, all kinds of vehicles where the driver waits a few moments at a red light and then, tiring of the wait, drives right through or hangs a left; often it’s in front of an oncoming vehicle, which causes me to rethink my aversion to religion and the possibility that there really is a hereafter.

But what’s really strange is that, given the lunacy of the driving here, it’s rare to see an accident. I’ve seen exactly one fender-bender in Mexico City.

Oh, there are plenty of crosses marking places where someone died in an accident on highways, and I have seen a few burned-out vehicles on the slopes of mountain roads. But in cities, given the way people drive, you’d expect a veritable trail of crosses and a convoy of smashed-up vehicles.

Then again, that would be bad for the tourist trade, wouldn’t it? Maybe Mexico’s just really good at cleaning things up.

Joseph Sorrentino, a writer, photographer and author of the book San Gregorio Atlapulco: Cosmvisiones and of Stinky Island Tales: Some Stories from an Italian-American Childhood, is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily. More examples of his photographs and links to other articles may be found at www.sorrentinophotography.com He currently lives in Chipilo, Puebla.

Senate approves cell phone users registry that will collect biometric data

By

MND Staff

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April 14, 2021

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Under the new law, anyone buying a mobile SIM card will be required to submit identifying information such as fingerprints or iris scans to the government.

With the aim of reducing crimes facilitated by the use of cell phones, the federal Senate has approved the creation of a national registry of mobile phone users that will collect biometric data such as fingerprints and images of people’s irises.

Supported by most ruling party senators, the reform to the Federal Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law passed the upper house of Congress on Tuesday.

The reform, passed by the lower house last December, makes it mandatory for people to join the registry — which is expected to be created within three years — when they purchase a SIM card or acquire a new prepaid mobile telephone line.

The objective of the reform is to reduce the incidence of crimes such as extortion and kidnapping (including asking for ransom), which are often aided by the use of unregistered cell phones. Many crimes facilitated by the use of phones have been traced to Mexican prisons.

According to the reform, people purchasing a new SIM or seeking to activate a prepaid mobile phone will have to present ID, proof of address and one form of biometric identification. That could be their fingerprints, images of their irises or a range of facial features.

The failure to provide the required documents and data is punishable by the definitive cancellation of the telephone line in question and the imposition of a fine of almost 90,000 pesos (about US $4,500).

The reform states that the registry will remain confidential and people’s personal information will be protected by existing federal data protection laws, but those laws don’t make specific mention of biometric data.

Digital rights activists and opposition lawmakers were critical of the reform, especially the inclusion of biometric data.

Luis Fernando García, director of R3D, a digital rights defense network, said that existing laws to protect people’s data are “very bad,” adding that personal data is “systematically violated” in Mexico.

Miguel Ángel Mancera, leader of the Democratic Revolution Party in the Senate, said the creation of the registry would violate numerous sections of the constitution.

“[The reform] is a cocktail of constitutional violations,” he said, adding that it would affect a range of civil guarantees.

Mancera predicted that there will be a flood of injunction requests against the reform and expressed doubt that it will help to reduce crime.

Institutional Revolutionary Party Senator Claudia Ruiz Massieu said the obligation for cell phone users to hand over their biometric data is a violation of their fundamental rights, including their right to privacy. She also said the establishment of a national registry could lead to people being wrongly accused of a crime.

“The registry violates the [right to] the presumption of innocence … because if a telephone number is used to commit a crime, it presumes that the owner of the registered line is guilty; the user is left in [a state of] complete defenselessness,” Massieu said.

National Action Party Senator Xóchitl Gálvez claimed that the purpose of the registry is to keep an eye on the country’s more than 100 million cell phone users, although President López Obrador says that his government is not interested in spying on anyone.

“This project impinges on privacy and the protection of personal data and violates freedom of communication,” she said.

With the establishment of a national registry, the government would become a kind of “Big Brother,” Gálvez said, referring to the mascot of the omnipresent surveillance state in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Independent Senator Emilio Álvarez Icaza said the establishment of a national registry of cell phone users is a hallmark of authoritarianism.

“It hinders the right to anonymous expression and facilitates the monitoring and control of the population in violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms,” he said.

“There are only 17 countries that have a registry of this nature, all of them authoritarian, all with regimes that violate human rights: China, Afghanistan, Venezuela, … [now] we’re going to include Mexico.”

López Obrador defended the plan, saying its purpose is to “look after” mobile phone users.

“It’s a matter of security,” he told reporters at his news conference on Wednesday, adding that telecommunications companies don’t like the idea because of the bureaucratic burden it places on them.

People already have to provide ID and biometric data such as fingerprints when signing up for other services such as banking, but the telecommunications companies are opposed to having to collect personal information because they think it will affect sales, López Obrador said.

“… This is for the safety of the people, it’s not selling peanuts. It’s selling a [SIM] card to have communication and which can be used for extortion, kidnapping [or] to commit crimes. … It’s completely a matter of security for the protection of Mexicans.”

The president added that people shouldn’t have any concerns about providing their personal and biometric data for inclusion in the registry.

“… We’re never going to carry out actions of espionage against anyone,” he said.

Source: El Universal (sp), Animal Político (sp), Milenio (sp)

Canadian airlines extend their suspension of Mexico flights

By

MND Staff

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April 14, 2021

0

WestJet plans to resume flights to Mexico on June 4.

Two Canadian airlines have extended their suspension of flights to Mexico.

WestJet announced Tuesday it was extending its suspension of flights to destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean until June 4, while Air Canada said it wouldn’t take passengers to sun destinations in May as had been planned.

“We are extending our suspension with the clear expectation that as more Canadians are vaccinated, government policy will transition,” WestJet president and CEO Ed Sims said.

“… Alongside an accelerated and successful vaccine rollout, this policy transition will support the safe restart of travel and help stimulate the Canadian economy, where one in 10 jobs are tourism related.”

WestJet, Canada’s second biggest airline after Air Canada, is one of four carriers that suspended flights to sun destinations at the request of the Canadian government. The suspension took effect January 31 and was to conclude April 30.

According to Air Canada’s upcoming schedule, flights from Toronto and Vancouver to Mexico City will begin in the first week of May and services between Montreal and the Mexican capital will begin May 10.

But spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick told the website Travel Pulse Canada on Wednesday that the airline won’t operate passenger services to Mexico and other sun destinations in May.

“Air Canada will extend its suspension of sun flying throughout May. We will continue to operate some flights to Mexico City, Barbados, and Kingston, but these would not carry passengers south. Instead, they will provide essential services, for example carrying cargo and in some cases on northbound flights, temporary foreign workers and Canadians currently abroad,” he said.

“We will continue to monitor the situation and adjust our network as appropriate, as well as work with the government to develop a safe reopening plan and restore travel.”

Air Transat, one of the other Canadian airlines that suspended flights to Mexico, has announced it will resume services on June 14. Sunwing, which also agreed to the January-April suspension, said earlier this month that all flights to sun destinations would remain suspended until June 23.

Mexico News Daily

Let’s forget about optics, Mr. President, and vaccinate all frontline workers

By

Sarah DeVries

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April 14, 2021

0

Private-sector doctors and dentists in Mexico City last week protesting the fact that they have yet to be vaccinated.

I’m seriously considering going home to Texas for a few weeks this summer in order to get vaccinated.

I really had been planning on just waiting it out here. But at the rate things are going, it seems like it could be at least a year before my turn is up. (I won’t be 40 for another few months and just barely miss the cutoff for that age group.)

According to the newly adjusted vaccination plan, my age group that should have been up during the summer is now projected for “sometime between August and March 2022.” Well, hell.

Call me pessimistic, but I’ve learned through experience here that projected timelines even for important projects, like building bridges, get thrown out the window fairly quickly.

It’s like that clown trick where they pull out a handkerchief that’s actually a never-ending string of handkerchiefs. I’m not falling for that one again.

Still, though, I want to be careful about where my criticism lands.

No one invented this horrible pandemic that we’re all stuck in, and I want to show due respect and awe, especially for those who’ve been on the frontlines in a myriad of ways: healthcare workers, people who have worked so hard to figure out ways to push the death toll down, those who’ve continued to work in essential jobs to make sure that the rest of us are not lacking in groceries or medicine or transportation on top of everything else.

Society has managed to keep on running, and not because of me.

No government caused or wished for the pandemic; the pandemic simply happened, and we’ve all been left to deal with it.

Could we all have done things differently? Well, of course. Could Mexico have handled things better, or could it begin right now to handle things better? Oh, certainly.

The reality, however, is that only a few countries with a very specific combination of geographical isolation, political culture, and societal and medical norms have emerged from this relatively unscathed.

And while the speedy vaccine has been nothing short of a miracle of science, we modern humans have come to fully expect speedy miracles, generally becoming grouchy and unappreciative when they’re not delivered right away or lack 100% guarantees.

That said, we can certainly handle this vaccine issue better and be more strategic about who gets it. Here I was, for example, foolishly assuming that all healthcare workers — yes, even private-practice dentists, gynecologists and podiatrists — had been vaccinated before they started on the 60+ group.

Nope! Turns out, that is not what happened at all. So what gives?

President López Obrador, as we all know, is all about fairness …. his version of what he thinks fairness is, but still. It’s a quality that I’d long admired in him but that has left me quite jittery lately since I’ve discovered that we have some fundamental differences between us on whom we consider to be the losing parties among the various dichotomies of Mexican society.

While I’m no scholar on the president, I can confidently say this: AMLO is a man who tolerates few grey areas; everything is black and white. Media = bad. Private industry = bad. Not poor people = bad. (I’d say “rich people,” but even the ever-shrinking middle class seems to not garner much sympathy.)

Is his heart in the right place? Honestly, I still believe that it is, as misguided as I believe many of his ideas to be. But his unwillingness to be flexible really throws buckets of unnecessary wrenches into things. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: no one can be a genius expert on everything, and that’s OK.

Being a good leader, then, means surrounding yourself with people much smarter than yourself for specific policy advice in those areas where you’re lacking.

Of course, make sure that they have similar values to yours: a respect for human and environmental rights and an eye toward the ultimate goal of a peaceful and just society, for example. But from there, tag-team it, people. You need a lot of brains on these things. No one expects you to be an all-knowing supreme leader. Citizens vote for leaders, not gods. Loosen up.

A couple of weeks ago, my dismay was focused on the government’s insistence that the CFE was the “little guy victim” in the energy sector. This week, my alarm is directed toward the fact that so many healthcare workers, especially private healthcare workers, have not been vaccinated; indeed, the president told them last week to “wait their turn” (by age group).

At this point, I’d like to tell you what percentage of healthcare workers the private sector represents, but, surprise! I can’t.

You know why not? Because the government doesn’t have a good headcount. The government doesn’t have a headcount. Private healthcare associations are trying to scramble together a census on their own.

I’m sorry, what?

The implication of what the president said — at least in the way I interpreted it — is that private healthcare workers are undeserving of prioritized vaccines because they’ve chosen to make money off sick people rather than selflessly help them through the public system instead, which is about the most cynical message I think I’ve heard all month (and there have been some doozies!).

The rest of us know, however, that the public system is severely lacking in many areas. As is, there are simply too many people in need of too much care within an institution that doesn’t have nearly enough resources to adequately care for them all. The quality of the workers is fine; there just aren’t enough of them or enough space or enough medicine.

Mexico’s various public systems have many hardworking, dedicated people in them. But just like the education sector, the infrastructure sector and the energy sector, they simply can’t adequately meet the demand on their own. There are too many of us and not enough of them, nor a robust and efficient enough system to accommodate everyone.

So what do we do? If we can, we make space by enrolling our children in private schools. We pay a toll to use the nice highway. We buy a car to avoid overcrowded buses. And instead of waiting one to six months to see a doctor at the public hospital, we go to Dr. Simi (i.e., the pharmacy) or, if we feel it’s more serious, we see a private specialist.

As often happens, AMLO’s teammates were left to explain how what the president told private healthcare workers was both right on the money and also wrong at the same time. According to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, for example, there is no distinction in the vaccine rollout between private and public healthcare workers; they’re simply trying to get to the “frontline” healthcare workers first and only have accurate registries for those in the public sector.

OK, fine. So they have to “wait their turn” by age group because somebody else forgot to identify all the workers? Then say that, Mr. President — or at least say that you’re on it because it’s important; don’t say that those who’ve been working tirelessly for over a year as they watched countless patients and loved ones drop dead around them are acting like petulant children for insisting they deserve something they don’t. They do.

Can we also talk about what “frontline” means? Yes, by all means, get to the people who are working directly with coronavirus patients first. Agreed! But even though other medical specialists don’t specifically treat them, just the sheer volume of people they come into contact with daily in enclosed spaces greatly increases their risk of catching the disease, as it does for everyone that must come into contact daily with large swaths of the public.

Can we get grocery store workers and market vendors next in line?

Let’s forget about optics for a while and go for the biggest impacts. Send brigades to every hospital and clinic to camp out for a few days (start with the biggest, or the hardest hit — just make it fast). Do the same at grocery stores and markets. Put out a call for all private practitioners in a community to receive their vaccines just by showing their professional documents.

The virus is evolving and putting out new variants, and we’re running out of time.

Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com.