A former soccer star considered one of Mexico’s best ever players died in Mexico City Tuesday after being hospitalized for a pulmonary embolism.
Tomás Boy, a midfielder who represented Mexico on more than 50 occasions and captained his country to the quarter finals at the 1986 World Cup, fell ill while in Acapulco, Guerrero, and was transported to the capital for medical treatment.
The acclaimed futbolista, described as a “legend of soccer in Mexico” in a tribute posted to the Liga MX Twitter account, also coached more than 10 professional Mexican teams as well as the California-based San José Earthquakes.
“We will always remember you as the great jefe [boss] you were in Mexican football,” the message said, referring to Boy by his nickname. “Rest in peace, Tomás Boy.”
— Club Tigres Oficial 🐯 (@TigresOficial) March 9, 2022
A video tribute to Tomás Boy by his longtime club the Tigers.
Born in Mexico City in June 1951, Boy was the oldest of eight siblings and a sports lover from a young age.
He started his professional career for Mexico City-based club Atlético Español in the early 1970s but will be best remembered for his more than 400 appearances for the Nuevo León Autonomous University Tigres, or Tigers, with whom he won two league titles and the Copa México.
Boy scored over 100 goals for the club before leaving in 1988 to take up his first coaching position with the Earthquakes.
Among the Mexican league clubs he coached were Querétaro, Monterrey, Atlas and Mazatlán, which he led during the 2020-21 season.
Despite managing clubs for over 30 years, he never won a title as a coach, but will be remembered for his exuberant celebrations when one of his players managed to get a shot past the opposition’s goalkeeper.
Boy is survived by his wife and children, who were at his side in his final hours. “Today a jefe arrives to heaven and from here we send a hug to him and his family,” his beloved, long-term club, the Tigres, said on Twitter.
Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero has claimed that the media is guilty of criminal extortion after leaked recordings suggested that he has improperly intervened in a court case related to the 2015 death of his brother.
Recordings of conversations between Gertz and a colleague were leaked late last week and reported widely in the Mexican media.
Gertz and Juan Ramos López, head of the federal crimes unit of the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR), speak about a case in which the wife of the the attorney general’s brother and her daughter are accused of “homicide by omission” for failing to provide adequate medical care to him before his death at the age of 82.
The Supreme Court (SCJN) will consider the case next week. The leaked recordings suggest that Gertz had an agreement with the SCJN that would ensure that the two women are not acquitted.
However, the attorney general and Ramos claimed that the court intended to break the agreement and free Alejandra Cuevas Morán, the 69-year-old daughter who has been imprisoned for over a year on homicide charges. Gertz apparently received an advanced copy of the proposed SCJN ruling, which Cuevas’ son described as a serious crime.
In a radio interview on Wednesday, Gertz confirmed that the recordings are authentic but denied any wrongdoing.
“We’re facing a true criminal media extortion, let me repeat it – criminal media extortion in order to lynch the attorney general,” he said.
“… [It’s claimed that] two officials are pressuring a [Supreme Court] justice and [I’m] using my position to gain an advantage … in a personal situation. This is absolutely false,” Gertz said.
He backed up that claim by asserting that his dealings with the SCJN are part of his personal defense of his brother, rejecting the suggestion he has acted in his official capacity as attorney general. Nothing has gone through the Attorney General’s Office because the case “doesn’t concern the FGR,” Gertz said. “It has nothing to do with [the FGR], it concerns Mexico City,” he said.
He claimed that people are trying to “bring me down emotionally” and discredit him in order to strip him of the moral authority he needs to do his job. Asked whether he knew who recorded his conversations with Ramos, Gertz said the FGR is investigating and he can’t comment further because he is the victim.
Opposition politicians have called on Gertz to resign, but the attorney general ruled out that possibility, while indicating that he is willing to appear before the Senate to explain his actions and remarks.
“It doesn’t cross my mind to quit the position,” he said. “… One has to leave the position [if there are] reasons that are sufficiently important, that’s what the constitution and the law say. [Resigning] has to be for some reason, but not because they’re extorting me,” he said.
The successful vote to decriminalize abortion in Sinaloa was taken by legislators on Tuesday, International Women's Day.
The Sinaloa Congress decriminalized abortion Tuesday in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling in September.
With 28 votes in favor, two against and nine abstentions, Sinaloa is the seventh state to decriminalize abortion for up to 13 weeks of pregnancy. It did so to the dismay of pro-life protesters who had gathered outside the Congress.
The Pacific state joins Mexico City, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Baja California and Colima, leaving 25 states where the practice remains illegal. It is still allowed in those states in cases of rape, in some cases where there is a risk to the woman’s health, when the fetus is in poor health and in some cases of extreme poverty.
Morena Deputy Nela Rosiely Sánchez has called the criminalization of abortion “a type of gender violence.”
Senate President Olga Sánchez Cordero celebrated the decision. “No longer will women go to prison for taking the decision to abort. The green tide has progressed to Sinaloa,” she said, using the name for the pro-abortion movement in Latin America.
Las morras festejando la despenalización del aborto afuera del Congreso de Sinaloa es LO MÁS CHINGÓN que hemos visto en estos días tan duros 🥺😍.
Por esto sí voté, por esto sí votamos, compas.
¡Larga vida a la izquierda en Sinaloa!
Súbanle al 🔊y disfruten.
🎥: @sthefanyreamxpic.twitter.com/MDag2moclz
Legal abortion supporters outside the Sinaloa Congress react joyfully to the news.
Sánchez said in a recent debate that there were 1,500 clandestine abortions in Sinaloa every year.
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Deputy Luis Javier de la Rocha spoke against the bill. He said that while he wasn’t against decriminalizing abortion in principle, lawmakers should understand their responsibility to women when granting the new freedom. He also complained that lawmakers weren’t informed enough to vote, having only received the text of the bill 12 hours earlier.
The Supreme Court effectively decriminalized abortion in Mexico in September, ruling it unconstitutional in response to a challenge to abortion restrictions in Coahuila.
At least 10,000 marched in Guadalajara on Tuesday.
Thousands of women took to the streets across Mexico to participate in International Women’s Day marches and demonstrations on Tuesday.
Protests at which women called for an end to gender-based violence were held in more than 20 states, the newspaper Milenio reported.
Mexico’s largest cities – Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Tijuana, León and Puebla – all saw marches, as did numerous smaller cities including Morelia, San Luis Potosí, Saltillo, Cancún, Mérida, Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Los Cabos, Veracruz, Zacatecas, Hermosillo, Tlaxcala and Chilpancingo.
Anti-violence slogans such as “Ni una más” (not one more femicide victim) and “Si soy la próxima, quiero ser la última” (If I’m the next I want to be the last) reverberated across the nation, where thousands of women are murdered, abducted, raped and sexually assaulted every year.
More than 10,000 women took to the streets in Guadalajara, including family members of victims of kidnapping and femicide. Vandalism was reported at the University of Guadalajara.
In Monterrey, members of radical feminist groups broke into the Nuevo León government palace at the conclusion of a march, vandalizing its interior and setting fire to windows and doors.
Governor Samuel García said on social media that he understood women’s anger, “but in this palace we’re not your enemies, we’re your allies.”
“Here you don’t have to break or burn doors because the doors are open to you,” he wrote.
In Morelia, at least eight women were arrested at the conclusion of the march, and videos posted to social media showed police hitting some of them.
San Luis Potosí city saw one of the biggest protests in the country, with some 10,000 women and girls marching from the central square to the state Attorney General’s Office, where they demanded justice for victims of violence.
About 8,000 women protested in front of municipal government offices in León, where they rebuked authorities for not doing enough to guarantee women’s safety.
In Hermosillo, thousands of protesters demanded justice for victims of violence including Marisol Cuadras, an 18-year-old woman killed outside the Guaymas municipal palace while attending a protest against gender violence last November.
Women protesting in Cancún charged that gender violence in Quintana Roo is seen as nothing more than a phenomenon that threatens the state’s tourism industry.
A large march was also held in Ecatepec, México state, one of the country’s most populous municipalities and one of the most dangerous for women. Among the participants were members of feminist collectives and mothers of femicide victims.
In Los Cabos, one of the country’s top tourism destinations, female hotel employees took to the streets to denounce sexual harassment at work.
Offices of the national statistics agency INEGI and the Ministry for Women were vandalized and looted in Oaxaca city during a march, and authorities reported that over 90 businesses and homes sustained damage. A protest in Tlaxcala was also marred by anti-social behavior, Milenio reported.
The export price per barrel rose US $3.96 to hit $119.62 on Tuesday, the highest price in 13 years.
The price of Mexican crude oil for export reached its highest level in 13 years on Tuesday.
The cost of a barrel rose US $3.96 to hit $119.62. In July 2008, it was just over $13 higher, at $132.71.
Tuesday’s hike means Mexican crude has jumped 35.1%, equivalent to US $31.09, in the 12 days since Russia commenced military operations in Ukraine on February 24.
Global benchmark prices are even higher than those of Mexican crude: West Texas Intermediate rose to $123.70 on Tuesday while Brent hit $127.98.
The May price for a barrel of crude oil in the futures market — where a price is agreed to in advance — reached $200 for Brent.
Economic sanctions on Russia, more than the conflict itself, have caused prices to surge: the United States announced the banning of Russian oil and gas imports on Tuesday, limiting the supply available to the world’s biggest economy. The U.S. gets 7% of its oil from Russia.
Meanwhile, the U.K. said it would stop imports of Russian oil and the European Union presented a plan to phase out Russian gas.
Russian authorities said that global prices could rise to $300 due to the sanctions. The country produces more than 10% of global crude.
A global strategist for investment site eToro, Ben Laidler, said that rising oil prices signaled a pessimistic short-term global economic outlook, producing inflation and slowing growth.
Inflation in Mexico hit a 20-year high in November, at 7.37% and has remained above 7%. The economy grew over 5% in 2021 but experts surveyed by the Bank of México forecast 2.2% growth in 2022. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted 2.8% growth for this year.
However, rising oil prices could be a blessing for Mexico, which is the 14th-biggest producer in the world.
A police woman and a participant in Tuesday's march share a hug.
An estimated 75,000 women marched in Mexico City on Tuesday to protest gender-based violence on International Women’s Day.
The march – which denounced crimes such as femicide and rape as well as high levels of impunity for such offenses – was largely peaceful, although some incidents of violence and vandalism were reported.
Women and girls gathered at the Angel of Independence monument on Reforma Avenue and the nearby Monument to the Revolution on Tuesday afternoon before making their way to the zócalo, Mexico City’s central square.
Chanting anti-violence and pro-justice slogans while carrying placards with messages such as “we want to live” and “together, free and without fear,” the protesters were accompanied by police women, some of whom were given flowers in appreciation of their work.
On Eje Central, the main thoroughfare that divides the capital’s historic center, a police commander called on her subordinates to join the march in solidarity with the protesting women, an instruction that was met with overwhelming approval.
Mexico City government secretary Martí Batres said the vast majority of women protested peacefully, but acknowledged that the march was infiltrated by violent groups.
“We carried out several operations that allowed … the effects of these violent groups to be inhibited,” he said.
Police seized almost 300 items with the capacity to inflict physical and material damage, including hammers, pipes, chisels, flares, sticks and paint.
But a contingent of women dressed in black known collectively as el bloque negro, or the black bloc, nevertheless went on a rampage ahead of the main group of protesters, vandalizing public property and attacking at least one police woman.
Two members of the bloc were injured when glass fell on top of them while vandalizing the Hidalgo Metro station, while a police woman was attacked with an ice ax, El Universal reported.
The aggressor was not detained due to orders from the Mexico City government not to arrest radicals, the newspaper said, adding that the attack would have been considered attempted murder in other circumstances. There were also clashes between police officers and aggressive protesters in the zócalo, which was filled by women in the late afternoon.
La policía consciente se une al contingente. Jefa Andrómeda: con o sin uniforme todas somos mujeres. pic.twitter.com/Ed6a3lUh0P
Six police women and the two members of the black bloc cut by glass were taken to hospital for treatment, Reforma reported. Paramedics treated 40 people for injuries sustained during the march, Batres said.
Radical protesters also attempted to topple barricades erected to protect public buildings and monuments, and set fire to photographs of rapists and perpetrators of femicide. The Mexico City government denied that tear gas was used against hostile protesters in the zócalo, but there was evidence to the contrary, Reforma said.
On Twitter, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum chose to focus on the positive rather than the negative.
“Today, on International Women’s Day, thousands marched peacefully for equality and the eradication of violence against women. The police … did extraordinary preventative work,” she wrote in a post accompanied by a photo of a protester and a police officer embracing.
Campeche's La Olla de La Pagoda was a focal part of its community before the pandemic, and that helped it survive COVID's economic downturns. photos by Underhemp Balloo
The pandemic has taken its toll — on lives, on the economy, on businesses. But as society reemerges, it is starting to be clear that some businesses were better placed to survive than others.
In many cases, businesses that were a focal part of their community have managed to hold tight, and are now coming back stronger than ever. In Mexico’s south, in the heart of Campeche, is one such business: La Olla de la Pagoda.
Located just outside Campeche’s historic center, this restaurant at the heart of its community is leading the way in demonstrating how social and environmental responsibility can be amplified effectively and with humanity.
A veritable institution in the capital city, it opened in 1993 when Adriana Richaud and Carlos Lara moved here from the municipality of Hopolchen. Looking to save money to send their daughter to school, they began La Pagoda as a worker’s canteen, serving affordable, high-quality meals. Today their daughter Lol-Be Lara Richaud runs La Pagoda with an attention to service and detail rarely surpassed in the city.
We often speak in earnest about the value and significance of neighborhood restaurants to the community in which they exist, but it’s rare for them to achieve true synergy between establishment and community in the way that La Pagoda has.
La Olla de la Pagoda, a veritable institution in Campeche, was opened in 1993 by Adriana Richaud and Carlos Lara.
At no point was this more evident than at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which saw a freefall in the fortunes of the global hospitality industry.
Reflecting on the pandemic, Richaud says, “It was especially difficult when the [downtown] center was closed to the public, because people weren’t allowed to move around and no circulation meant no business for us, which naturally affected us a lot.”
However, demonstrating their continual adaptability and innovation, La Pagoda’s team bucked the negative trend and prevailed, switching to a delivery-only service in order to keep themselves afloat. It would turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
Before they had even formally announced any changes, they were contacted by locals about deliveries, such was their value to their horde of regulars. And now these days, alongside the frequently packed tables again inside the building, a fleet of La Pagoda delivery drivers can be seen in barrios throughout the city at all times of day, zipping meals off to eagerly awaiting households.
“It was odd,” Richaud says. “We expected the pandemic to affect us as adversely as it did many other businesses in the city. In fact, though, what we saw was a real elevation in the number of people who wanted to try our food: the delivery was what got the business off the ground again.”
And La Pagoda is aware of and honors their role within the city: they are exemplary members of Campeche’s Empresa Verde (Green Business) program due to its disposable waste reduction techniques and the fact that the team separates for collection the waste it generates.
La Pagoda prioritizes locally sourced ingredients and finds as many ways as possible to reuse and recycle.
Their limes, lettuce heads and carrot peelings are either fed to animals or composted down to contribute quality soil for growing fruits and vegetables, which are then harvested and reinserted into the restaurant chain. Through such actions, La Pagoda contributes to a series of circular economies in which the end of one product’s life cycle can act as a springboard for the cycle of another.
On top of this, La Pagoda prioritizes sourcing ingredients from local producers: the vegetables in dishes such as its Pechuga a La Pagoda and its traditional Mayan poc chuc dish come from the local market. Their locally-sourced horchata de coco is creamy enough to rival any in the city.
“It is a rare privilege to be able to work alongside a business that — at its heart — is driven by values that they and the rest of the Empresa Verde scheme would like to see reflected at a societal level,” Yvette Griffiths of the Empresa Verde program says. “And to pair environmental and community responsibility with high-quality service and food that never fails to impress? That’s the golden formula.”
In an industry where recognition often bypasses establishments that quietly serve their community for years, La Pagoda is a rare gem of enduring success. And in a time of turmoil for the hospitality industry globally, the business is harnessing the power of community and family values to continue building on the strength of 30 years of experience.
If nothing else, maybe the pandemic has taught us how to shape real values-led businesses that will stand the test of time and crisis.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Investigators at the site of the hidden graves in Sonora.
Eleven bodies were discovered in clandestine graves in Sonora just a few kilometers from the United States border on Sunday and Monday.
Search collectives formed by the relatives of missing people led authorities to the graves on a stretch of desert near a garbage dump in San Luis Río Colorado, across the border from Yuma, Arizona.
Investigators used backhoes to uncover the remains of nine men and two women.
The search collectives were accompanied by security forces and investigators to recover the bodies, clothing and some personal items belonging to the victims.
The state Attorney General’s Office said the bodies were “badly decomposed” but would be identified through genetic and forensic tests. Relatives of missing people can have their DNA samples taken to compare them to the DNA of the victims.
There are more than 98,000 missing people in Mexico. Most are thought to have been killed by drug cartels and their bodies dumped into clandestine graves.
The government has struggled to identify even the bodies that have been found: some 52,000 await identification and Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas conceded in December that the government doesn’t have the capacity to guarantee the identification of bodies and ensure they are returned to their families.
The president of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana, said in November that Mexico faced a “forensic crisis,” while the committee she leads concluded that an inadequate security strategy, poor investigations into missing person cases and impunity were key factors in the persistence of abductions in Mexico.
A proposed law intended to clamp down on the use of a steroid-like synthetic drug to fatten cattle and other livestock has reached the federal Senate.
Giving clenbuterol to farm animals is illegal, but politicians and scientists agree that it’s an open secret that that drug is used in Mexico’s ranching sector, according to a report by the newspaper El País.
A bill that would reform the Animal Health Law to stipulate greater vigilance of the sector was presented in Congress in 2018 and has finally been passed to the upper house for revision. The outcome of the Senate’s consideration of the proposed law is unclear, El País said.
It seeks to mandate increased supervision of ranches, slaughterhouses and meat distribution centers via collaboration between the ministries of Agriculture and Health. The objective is to sanction anyone guilty of using clenbuterol to fatten farm animals as well as people or companies that have contact with such animals at other points along the supply chain.
Between 2002 and 2017, only four sentences were handed down for using the drug to promote weight gain in cattle, according to the Federal Judiciary Council.
Morena party Senator Nancy Sánchez, a leading proponent of the proposed law, told El País that a lot of meat contaminated with clenbuterol comes out of “clandestine abattoirs” in rural and suburban areas.
The drug is also given to pigs and poultry, she said, explaining that consumption of contaminated meat has a negative impact on human health.
Inadvertent consumption of clenbuterol is especially harmful to young and elderly asthma sufferers who use that drug to treat the disease because it can cause excessive amounts of it to build up in their bodies, El País said. The drug has also been linked to heart conditions and cancer.
Health problems associated with clenbuterol intoxication have been detected in Jalisco, which El País described as “one of Mexico’s cattle fattening epicenters.”
“The substance is deposited in the flesh of the animal but also in the liver and eyes, and all that is eaten in Mexico,” the newspaper said.
Athlete Guadalupe González tested positive for a steroid similar to clenbuterol. She claimed it was from eating Mexican meat.
Athletes including American football players were warned in 2016 to mind their meals while in Mexico due to the high risk of inadvertently ingesting beef and chicken containing the drug, while a 2017 study by the National Autonomous University detected clenbuterol in 29 of 433 samples of raw and cooked meat.
José Zorrilla, a livestock researcher at the University of Guadalajara, told El País that the detection of clenbuterol in meat is made difficult by the fact that similar substances, such as zilpaterol, are legally used to fatten animals.
“That really complicates the identification … of clenbuterol, which continues to be used because it’s effective and cheap,” he said.
“Zilpaterol and other substances that aren’t harmful for humans were authorized at the start of the century, but the companies that make it limited sales to ranchers,” Zorilla said.
“… Those who didn’t have access to it sought out alternatives such as clenbuterol. These substances have to be mixed well and controlled in animal feed and specialized teams are needed for that. The companies that sell it [zilpaterol] don’t want the product to be discredited – that’s why they didn’t provide access to all the ranchers, only those who have the technology and sufficient control.”
Zorrilla said the use of clenbuterol is less of a problem in the north of the country than other parts of Mexico.
“The preference for fatty meat in the north has avoided this [practice] to some extent and in those states there is a lot of export [of meat] to the United States, which must have its respective health record,” he said.
Enrique López, an official with the Mexican Association of Meat Producers, played down the clenbuterol problem, but nevertheless acknowledged that up to 30% of Mexican meat sold locally could be contaminated.
He expressed his support for greater vigilance of the industry, as the bill proposes.
“In a corral of 3,000 or 4,000 head [of cattle] they take samples from 60 or 70 animals,” López said, referring to random inspections by agriculture sanitation authority Senasica.
“If that’s not enough, do more inspections. We’ve always asked lawmakers for more funding for Senasica and for sanitary safety in general. And also for [health regulator] Cofepris, which is in charge of [health inspections at] municipal markets,” he said.
Sukarne, a Culiacán-based company that is Mexico’s largest meat exporter, suggested that greater vigilance of its suppliers was unnecessary. It told El País that its meat passes all established health controls, allowing it to ship to the United States, Canada, Asia and Africa.
“Mexican meat that comes from the formal industry doesn’t contain clenbuterol,” the company said in a statement.
Estefanía Monserrat García Sánchez, 18, filed a complaint against San Miguel de Allende's municipal police on Monday.
At least one male and three female police officers who were filmed assaulting various people on Sunday in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, during an arrest — including that of an 18-year-old woman who suffered visibly serious injuries before being taken into custody — have been suspended.
A phone camera video filmed by spectators at the arrest shows one of the officers arresting a woman on the ground while a group of about 10 unarmed people who appear to be on a night out stand close by, watching, filming and at times trying to intervene.
At one point, a brawl breaks out, and at least three officers can be seen beating people with batons and kicking them. The woman on the ground is violently grabbed by her hair.
“They’re not doing anything to them … asshole police,” people can be heard shouting in the video.
It’s not clear how many people were arrested in the incident. But one of the alleged victims, Estefanía Monserrat García Sánchez, 18, presented a complaint against the officers in a wheelchair on Monday.
Spectators can be heard in the video telling the officers that they are being filmed.
Her brother, Andrik García Sánchez, told the newspaper La Jornada that his sister was hit in the head, face, throat and mouth.
“She can’t eat solid foods. We have to blend food because they damaged the inside of her mouth and she uses braces.” He also said that police attacked his sister brutally enough for her to lose consciousness and wake up in a patrol car, spitting up blood, for which he says an officer in the car yelled at her, telling her that she was staining the vehicle.
Estefanía later had to pay 500 pesos (US $23) to be released from custody.
The incident began soon after the woman had been in a cantina that evening in the city’s historic center, along with eight friends. Security personnel had thrown everyone out because there were underage customers inside. The police were called to the area due to reports that people were vandalizing cars.
Mayor Mauricio Trejo Pureco said he was committed to securing justice and that the officers had been suspended.
“… even if the arrest was justified, the way in which these citizens were detained is totally reprehensible. They violated all the rules and protocols regarding the use of force,” he added.
An independent human rights prosecutor in Guanajuato, PRODHEG, opened a complaint against the municipal police department, in which Estefanía participated.
PRODHEG’s lead attorney, Vicente Esqueda Méndez, said the victims’ human rights could have been violated.
