Dante has been a popular ambassador for the National Guard.
A police dog working for the National Guard has won fans on social media for his interactions with the public and his memorable style.
Dante, a dark Xoloitzcuintle, is trained in security work but evidently welcomes the public’s attention.
The proud, athletic pup was pictured at the Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City in November wearing a marigold flower necklace and posing for photos with spectators.
The canine crowd-pleaser can also be seen in a video uploaded by the National Guard. In the video, he stands stoically tall with his ears upright, composed in the presence of women dressed up as Katrinas, families, people burning copal and performers dressed in Aztec attire.
The Guard published a slogan on a link to the video: “We’re strengthening the link between authorities and citizens!” Dante was certainly playing his part toward achieving that aim.
Xoloitzcuintles are a breed of hairless dog. The name comes from the god of fire and lightning, Xolotl, that according to ancient narratives is the breed’s creator, and itzcuīntli, meaning dog in Náhuatl.
In ancient times, Xolos were often sacrificed and then buried with their owners to act as guides to souls on their journey to the underworld.
Two weeks of tennis at Monterrey’s Club Sonoma. There are two tournaments, a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) female players competition until March 6 followed by a second division Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) men’s tournament.
Players featuring over the fortnight include Elina Svitolina, Victoria Azarenka, Pablo Andújar and Feliciano López. Tickets are 200 pesos (US $9.80) and up.
A workshop on how to integrate humor into prose. The Uses of Humor in Narrative Prose with Signe Hammer will take place at 6 p.m. on March 8 on Zoom. Hammer’s memoir, By Her Own Hand: Memoirs of a Suicide’s Daughter, was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. Participation costs 80 pesos.
Learn how to transform a manuscript from long time award winning editor Wendy Call. The Self-Editing Toolkit teaches writers the four levels of editing to take “dreadful early drafts into masterworks.” The Zoom workshop starts at 6 p.m. on March 9 and costs 80 pesos.
• Enter Light Art Exhibit, Mexico City (Now-March 12)
Enter Light plays with light and photography on canvas to explore impaired vision and how colors, natural shapes, and forms influence us. Fine art photographer Doug Winter was inspired to develop the project due to his visual impairment and his father’s blindness. See the exhibit at Calle Lucerna 1, Interior 100, Colonia Juarez.
Bring your best shoes for a 80 kilometer ultra marathon through part of the Copper Canyon, a region populated by the Raramuri people, who are famed for their natural running abilities and play a prominent role in the event.
The kite festival at Tequisquiapan, Querétaro, runs from March 5-13.
The weekend annually attracts 1,200 endurance runners from over 20 countries. There is also a marathon race for those that don’t want to go the whole distance. The main event starts on March 6 at 6:30 a.m.
A kite festival in the Magical Town of Tequisquiapan, 60 kilometers east of Querétaro city. Entrance costs 100 pesos ($4.90) and there’s a kite making workshop for an additional 100 pesos.
Face painting, music, and clown and puppet shows will also keep the kids entertained.
A festival of lights, colors and plenty of fireworks that has run since 1989. Regional music and folkloric dancing line a packed bill and on March 8 the willing can be surrounded by exploding fireworks on all sides at the Toros Pirotécnicos (Pyrotechnic Bull) run.
Pahkalli Xeripa advertises itself as a center of magic, cleansing and tradition. The center is inviting people to realign with their ancestry over three days with native ceremonies, dances, concerts, ancestral medicines, temazcales, conferences and more near the town of San Buenaventura Nealtican.
• Cumbre Tajín, Papantla de Olarte, Veracruz (March 18-20)
A celebration of Veracruz’s Totonac heritage featuring the famed Papantla Flyers. The special guest at this 23rd edition will be the Guatemalan human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú, who will lecture on indigenous womanhood.
The program is rich with ceremonies, discussion of identity, traditional medicines, discussion of language, cinema, dance and music. The event is held at the Takilhsukut park, close to the Magical Town of Papantla.
An Ibero-American music festival at Mexico City’s Foro Sol in Iztacalco borough, focused mainly on indie and rock music. This year features Groove Armada, Pixies, Gary Clark Jr. and many more.
An astronomical event at some of the country’s most vaunted ancient ruins. Enthusiasts can see the solar festival, when when the sun sits vertically above the equator, making day and night equal across the planet, at Teotihuacán, Chichén Itzá and Bernal.
Alberto Flores, founder of Jalisco winery Bodega Gravitas. Facebook
Mexican wine is having its moment in the sun, with more variety, more demand and better-quality wines on the shelves. Every year, new regions across the country and new states join Mexico’s winemaking map.
One of those newcomers is the Bodega Gravitas winery in the state of Jalisco, a pioneer in a region where the main alcoholic beverage has long been tequila. Owner and Jalisco native Alberto Flores worked for more than three years in wineries in Germany before returning to Mexico and creating Bodega Gravitas with a group of friends.
Although a relatively new winemaker, he was clear from the start about the kind of wine he wanted to produce, one that had as little artificial intervention as possible. To produce fruity and expressive wine, he believes in longer fermentation times, avoiding fertilizers and other chemicals as much as possible and eschewing manufactured yeasts and additives like sulfates.
When he first began planning his business, Flores knew it would take several years for his winery to start producing bottles. So he began his enterprise on two fronts.
First, he found an existing vineyard in Sonora with the qualities necessary to produce the wine he wanted: fresh, fruity vintages that wouldn’t require barrel aging. At the same time, he began building his winery in Jalisco and planting his first grapevines there.
Bodega Gravitas’ 2020 Zinfandel.
Bodega Gravitas’ first vintage went on sale in 2017 and the winery made its debut at the Festival of Mexican Wine in Guadalajara in 2018 with a cabernet sauvignon, a zinfandel, a white zinfandel and a pinot noir. The response from judges and attendees was extremely positive, and Bodega Gravitas’ wines have since seen a growing market presence. These vintages — along with a newer pinot noir rosé and a barrel-aged chenin blanc — can these days be found in some of the country’s best restaurants.
Within the next two years, Flores plans to finally harvest their own grapes in Jalisco and expand their line, first with a syrah. They will also continue searching for grapes that adapt well to the local climate, Flores said.
Here are some tasting notes from Bodega Gravitas’ excellent 2020 vintages:
Sauvignon blanc
This is a fresh, citric wine, pale yellow in color with golden lines and with a balanced mouthfeel. It’s ideal for drinking cold on hot days with young cheeses and fresh fruit.
White zinfandel
Despite this wine’s nice level of acidity, it shows no loss of fruitiness, with pleasant strawberry and raspberry notes. It has a very balanced mouthfeel and begs to be paired with grilled and buttered shrimp, paella, cochinita tacos, fish, chicken or pork al pastor. Also, enjoy it with semi-mature cheeses, especially cotija.
Zinfandel
A potent red that’s deep violet in color, this wine leaves notes of plum, figs and fruit compote in the nose. In the mouth, its structure and potency meet expectations. Tannins are present without being aggressive, with a long finish. I recommend decanting it before drinking. This wine pairs well with meat and grilled sausages or with cheese and cured meats accompanied by berries and dried fruit.
Pinot noir
This memorable wine has a soft red hue and an aroma that hints of strawberries, cranberries and currants and a mocha finish. Soft in the mouth, velvety and subtle, this excellent wine is very agreeable without hard edges.
López Obrador’s remarks at his regular news conference came after the European Union’s decision on Sunday to close its airspace to Russian airlines and other Russian-owned aircraft. They also followed Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco’s publication of a widely-condemned tweet inviting Russian flag carrier Aeroflot to fly into Mexico City.
Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco welcomed the Russian air carrier Aeroflot to Mexico in a since-deleted tweet. Daniel Schwen / CC BY-SA 3.0
“Warm greetings to our friends at the prestigious airline @aeroflot, hoping for prompt connectivity between nations and of course to Mexico City. I remind you that tourism is a synonym of peace, friendship and understanding between people,” Torruco wrote Saturday in a tweet he later deleted.
The tourism minister posted nine other tweets about Russian tourism to Mexico that remain on his Twitter account, noting that visitor numbers and spending were up last year compared to 2020, among other tidbits of information.
“The armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine could represent a series of economic sanctions by the international community on the government of the Russian federation, which would cause the 2022 program of flights to be affected,” Torruco said in a final tweet on the subject.
Twitter users described his tweet to Aeroflot, and his Russian tourism-related posts more broadly, with unflattering descriptors such as “unfortunate,” “lacking empathy,” “stupid” and “inopportune.”
The European Union and Canada have banned Russian flights from entering their airspace but the United States remains open.
“The plane is there, it already has permission to be there a considerable time, and we’re going to continue with these kinds of actions. We’re obliged to bring our citizens home safe and sound,” he said.
López Obrador also indicated he would be willing to grant asylum to Ukrainians fleeing the violence in their homeland.
“Mexico is a … country that protects, that takes care of refugees, persecuted people, people seeking to save themselves from war and confrontations,” he said.
The president predicted that Russia’s full-blown assault on Ukraine – now in its fifth day – won’t have much of an impact on the Mexican economy.
“People shouldn’t worry about this invasion situation. … It’s very regrettable, yes. … We can’t be unaware [of it], we can’t turn our back, but the effects it might have on the national economy are minimal,” he said.
A Santiago Niltepec farmer harvests indigo plants. Fidel Ugarte Liévana / INAH
Oaxaca indigo producers are hoping that recent interest from German and North American investors could be the beginning of a revival for the ancestral crop.
A German company reached out to Santiago Niltepec, a small town in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in search of an organic dye for its fabrics and garments. Indigo has been produced in the region’s indigenous Zapotec towns since the 18th century, the newspaper Milenio reported.
But the pandemic hit the clothing industry hard and cultivators of the crop struggled as prices dived, said Advir Vásquez Fuentes, a spokesperson for the indigo producers.
Now, the area’s fortunes appear to be changing. Vásquez said the investors approached municipal authorities for 500 kilograms of indigo for textile companies in Germany and confirmed that the producers were also in conversations with a North American company. While those negotiations are carried out, the state government has helped organize the distribution of the dye to local artisans.
Vásquez added that there were more than 100 hectares of land planted with jiquilite seeds in Santiago Niltepec ready to produce the organic ink, which producers hope will create more than 1,000 kilos of organic indigo and generate profits of more than 300,000 pesos (US $14,700). The first indigo plants should be ready before April.
Niltepec indigo producers agitate the giant tubs of water and plant material by hand to extract the dye.
The process to produce the dye is not simple, Vásquez explained. Once the seed is planted, it takes 100 days for the plant to reach maturity. If a young indigo plant is harvested too soon, it is useless. Dye producers cut up the mature plant, place it in giant tubs of water and then can begin extracting the first “curds” of unrefined dye. The traditional labor-intensive process makes for “unrivaled” quality, Vásquez said.
The natural dye is used in the design industry to give color to threads, silk, wool, embroidery or denim jeans. A kilogram of organic indigo can dye more than 10 kilograms of wool or cotton.
Airbnb has more than a fifth of the short-term rental market in Quintana Roo, and even more in popular destinations, according to short-term rental analytics company AirDNA.
The accommodations platform Airbnb now has more than 30,000 listings in Quintana Roo, according to a provider of data and analytics for the US $140 billion dollar short-term rental industry.
AirDNA data shows that there are 31,134 Airbnb lodgings in the Caribbean coast state, compared to the 107,128 hotel rooms there were at the end of last year, according to Tourism Ministry statistics. Airbnb properties account for 22.5% of the combined offerings across the state, and considerably higher percentages in some popular destinations.
They represent 43.5% of the combined accommodation offerings in Tulum, 43% in Bacalar, 35.5% in Lázaro Cárdenas, which includes Isla Holbox, and 31.5% on Isla Mujeres.
Their share of the Playa del Carmen market is a more modest 21.8%, while it’s just below 20% in Cozumel and Cancún, 12.7% in Puerto Morelos and 10.2% in the state capital Chetumal.
There are a broad range of Airbnb listings including single rooms, apartments, houses, bungalows and more.
Airbnb listings range from bare basics to ultra-luxe. This Puerto Morelos listing, which boasts a private cenote, falls into the latter category.
One luxurious Airbnb property ensconced in jungle near Puerto Morelos has its own cenote, or natural swimmable sinkhole.
One of Quintana Roo’s Airbnb entrepreneurs is Rafael Solís, who rents out rooms in a residential building on the main tourist strip of Playa del Carmen.
“The new mode of workers is to be a digital nomad,” the former hotelier told the newspaper Milenio.
“In other words, people who are working remotely during the pandemic and who decide to move continually to work in a tourist destination,” Solís said.
In Tulum, where there are more than 6,200 Airbnb listings compared to just over 8,100 hotel rooms, the growth of offerings in the former category has been spurred by new construction.
Casa Tau, another high end Mexican rental located in Nayarit, is advertised as the most expensive Airbnb in the world.
The number of residential developments in the municipality, located in the southern portion of Quintana Roo’s Riviera Maya, increased from 123 to 625 between May 2020 and July 2021, according to the Mexican Association of Real Estate Professionals.
David Ortiz Mena, president of the Tulum Hotel Association, said that the rapid growth has caused problems.
Due to a lack of planning, growth in Tulum has been “complicated,” he said, explaining that sustainability has been threatened by the increased number of residents and visitors. Providing the services needed by the growing number of visitors has also been a challenge, Ortiz said.
Rodrigo, an Airbnb host with four apartments in Tulum, told Milenio that demand for short-term accommodation has increased in the resort town during the pandemic, and that the number of people seeking to buy a property and rent it out on Airbnb has also risen.
“A lot of people want to work in Tulum. For some reason they want to go to the beach … so they generally book long stays,” he said. “We get a lot of reservations for two months … a lot of them are foreigners from Europe.”
Rodrigo said the price of Airbnb accommodation makes it more attractive than hotels for a lot of travelers.
“Airbnb apartments are extremely cheap, … the average price for an apartment for seven people with a private pool is about 3,000 or 4,000 pesos [US $145-$195 per night], when … it would be a thousand times more expensive in a hotel,” he said.
Ortiz said the increase in violence and drug trafficking in Tulum could be related to the Airbnb boom.
“All this comes … from demand. If nobody buys drugs of course we wouldn’t have this sequence of problems. In the case of Tulum I think it’s important that this makes us reflect about the kind of tourism we’re promoting. … If one bets on party tourism, logically this type of consequence will follow,” he said.
“If on the other hand, we seek to promote sports, leisure, wellbeing, gastronomic or cultural tourism, I think it would be very difficult for this kind of [violent] atmosphere to permeate.”
Thanks to the high prices they command, avocados are sometimes referred to as ‘green gold.’ Jose Castanares/AFP via Getty Images
To the relief of avocado lovers from coast to coast, the recent drama between the United States and Mexico was fleeting.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture banned imports of the fleshy fruit from Mexico on February 11 after an employee of its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, who was working in Mexico, received threats after refusing to certify a mislabeled shipment of avocados.
With only a two- to three-week supply stored in U.S. warehouses, any extended disruption to the avocado pipeline would have been quickly felt.
Eight days later, the ban was lifted, and cooks could resume smashing avocados into guacamole, blending them into smoothies and smearing them onto bread without trepidation.
Yet to me, this disruption – however brief – reveals just how reliant the U.S. has become on its neighbor for a product that has seen its demand soar. When I was working on my book Avocado: A Global History, I was struck by the extent to which this lucrative trade has evolved over the past 25 years, making it an attractive business possibility for both legitimate and criminal enterprises.
Mexico’s cash crop
Avocados from Mexico have been fueling America’s taste for the fruit since 1997, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture lifted a 1914 import ban, which originally was implemented due to fears over pests like seed weevils infesting U.S. crops. At the time, Southern California produced about 90% of the avocados eaten by Americans.
Since then, per capita avocado consumption in the U.S. has ballooned from 2 pounds in 2001 to nearly 8 pounds in 2018.
This increase in the popularity of avocados, coupled with the limitations of domestic sources, has allowed Mexican avocados to dominate the American market. Today, Mexico – specifically, the Mexican state of Michoacán, which is the only state certified to sell the fruit to the U.S. – supplies about 80% of the 60 million pounds of avocados eaten north of the border each week.
Avocados are sometimes referred to as “green gold” because of the price they command in international commodity markets. Exports of avocados from Mexico were valued at nearly US$3 billion in 2021, ahead of both tequila and beer, two other popular Mexican exports. The average price of an avocado is up 10% from a year ago; during the brief ban, the price of a carton of the fruit catapulted to nearly $60, up from around $30 a year ago.
Currently, less than 1% of avocados eaten in the U.S. come from places other than Mexico and the U.S. Countries like Peru and Colombia also produce the fruit.
A TV ad for Mexican avocados aired during the 2022 Super Bowl.
Cartels want their piece of the pie
In Mexico, the high profit margins of the avocado trade attracted the interest of crime cartels, and those operating in Michoacán began to infiltrate the avocado business more than 20 years ago.
As various cartels have vied for control of the avocado industry, violence and extortion have escalated in the region. In the beginning, cartels were content to extort farmers, packers and exporters – in essence, taxing them for the ability to do business without interference from the cartels.
But a bloody turf war has intensified in recent years.
In 2019, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel killed nine people in Uruapan, Michoacán’s hub of avocado distribution, hanging their corpses from a prominent overpass in the city. They dumped seven more bodies on the side of a road, leaving a banner at the scene that taunted a rival gang, the Viagras. There are even reports of cartels using drones to drop bombs as part of their efforts to control the economy of the region.
Threats directed at inspectors have happened before. While no individual cartel has been directly tied to a specific threat, U.S. officials seem to think the threats are linked to increased cartel participation in the avocado trade.
In 2019, a team of USDA inspectors working in Ziracuaretiro, a city just west of Uruapan, were robbed and threatened with violence. Later that year, the USDA wrote a memo stating it would suspend inspection activities if threats of physical violence and intimidation against inspectors continued. After the most recent threat, the USDA referenced this memo when announcing the temporary import ban.
The Hass holds all the cards
President López Obrador dismissed the notion that the suspension was due to cartels associated with the avocado trade. Instead, he blamed unspecified political interests in the U.S. and pressure from other countries who want a share of the lucrative American avocado market.
Members of a self-defense group guard an avocado plantation from drug cartels in Michoacán. Enrique Castro/AFP via Getty Images
One of the reasons the U.S. began allowing Mexican avocados to be imported over the objection of domestic growers was NAFTA. The U.S. wanted the ability to send corn and other agricultural goods to Mexico under the rules of the 1994 free trade agreement. But the Mexican government demanded some sort of agricultural export quid pro quo to help balance trade between the two countries, and avocados were ripe for the job.
The recent brief disruption underscores the risks of being so heavily reliant on a product that comes from one region in one country that’s rife with violence and corruption.
Yet it isn’t easy to simply open up an avocado spigot from another country. Americans really prefer just one variety of avocado: the Hass, which is the type imported from Mexico. While the U.S. allows Hass avocado imports from Peru and Colombia, wholesalers prefer not to sell them because they’re thought to be lower quality. Hass is the dominant variety grown in California, too, but American growers can’t grow nearly enough to meet the demand.
Greenskin avocados, which are grown in Florida and the Caribbean, along with many other countries, aren’t nearly as popular with consumers due to textural differences and the fact that they don’t change color to indicate when they are ripe. Greenskin avocados could ease U.S. dependence on Mexican avocados, but until they gain acceptance by avocado eaters, they won’t help wean Americans off the Hass avocados grown in Michoacán.
Avocados might be a source of political tension, but their unicorn status as a creamy, delicious food that’s considered healthy makes most people willing to put politics aside and pass the guacamole.
Mercado Libre plans to invest in digitization and financial inclusion.
The Argentina-based e-commerce and online auctions company Mercado Libre is set to invest almost US $1.5 billion in Mexico this year, 34% more than it invested in 2021.
The $1.47 billion the company plans to invest in the country is equal to 67% of what it has invested in Mexico in the last five years.
The funds will go toward innovation and technology, strengthening logistical operations and reaching new customers.
The head of Mercado Libre in Mexico, David Geisen, said the company has confidence in the country.
“Mexico is a priority country for us. We believe in it and its talent, so we’ll continue to speculate with a constant and growing investment that allows us to add value and build better opportunities for our users,” he said.
Geisen added that serving customers with improved technologies and promoting financial inclusion were priorities.
“This year we will focus on bringing sellers closer to buyers, promoting digitization and providing financial tools to Mexicans in an innovative and sustainable way … For us, fintech development is essential to continue democratizing access to financial services in the country. Therefore, we are working on new online and offline solutions that we will make available to everyone and thus contribute to generating true financial inclusion,” he said.
One way that the company has promoted such inclusion is through the Mercado Crédito (Market Credit) payment option, whereby customers can borrow small sums of money to pay for individual products.
The company said that during the pandemic more than 288,000 Mexican families drew their principal income from the platform. In 2020, more than 38,000 small businesses in Mexico joined Mercado Libre, according to a study carried out last year by market research organization Euromonitor.
Mercado Libre was Latin America’s highest valued company in late 2021, the newspaper The Financial Times reported in October.
Pallets of onions were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after finding packets of methamphetamine hidden in the shipment. U.S. CBP
United States authorities seized almost US $3 million worth of methamphetamine hidden in a shipment of onions in San Diego, California, on February 20.
Officers from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Otay Mesa border crossing between Tijuana, Baja California, and San Diego stopped a 46-year-old Mexican national driving a tractor-trailer.
A CBP canine team screened the truck and trailer and a sniffer dog indicated there was contraband on board. CBP officers unloaded more than 606 kilograms of methamphetamine in 1,197 small packets in sacks that were alongside the onions.
The packages of the the highly addictive illegal stimulant were shaped into small globes with a white covering, designed to blend in with the onions they were hidden with. The CBP estimated that the narcotics had a street value of around $2.9 million.
The driver was handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations.
The drug packets were shaped into globes with a white covering, designed to blend in with the onions. U.S. CBP
CBP’s director of field operations in San Diego, Sidney Aki, gave the criminals some credit for their efforts.
“This was not only a clever attempt to try and smuggle in narcotics, one I haven’t seen before, but also time consuming to wrap narcotics into these small packages, designed to look like onions,” he said.
It shows “the lengths drug trafficking organizations are willing to go to as they try to smuggle narcotics into the U.S. While we have certainly seen narcotics in produce before, it’s unusual for us to see this level of detail in the concealment,” he added.
Mexican federal security forces seized nearly six tonnes of methamphetamine from a property in Sinaloa on January 27 in what authorities called “the most important seizure made under the current government.”
In November, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a massive almost eight-tonne bust at Otay Mesa. A Mexican citizen was arrested on trafficking charges.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Mexico has delivered a letter to Congress asking the federal government to send arms and ammunition to help repel the invading Russian forces.
Oksana Dramarétska delivered the letter Sunday to Ricardo Monreal, the ruling Morena party’s leader in the Senate.
“Russian troops are attacking peaceful Ukrainian cities from several directions. … This is an act of war, an attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, a grave violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of the fundamental norms and principles of international law,” says the letter, which was endorsed by 240 signatures.
“We ask the government of Mexico to break diplomatic relations with Russia, immediately adopt strong economic and financial sanctions against Russia, help the Ukrainian army with arms and ammunition and support the United Nations’ peace maintenance operation,” it says.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said late last week that Mexico intended to maintain diplomatic relations with Russia.
Protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City.
Mexico has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for an immediate ceasefire but, unlike many countries, hasn’t announced any sanctions on Russia or the Russian government. Mexico officially follows a policy of nonintervention in the affairs of other countries, meaning that it would be highly unlikely to provide arms or ammunition to Ukraine.
Among the sanctions urged in the letter signed by Dramarétska was an embargo on gas and oil trade with Russia.
“We are representatives of different nationalities — Mexican, Ukrainian, Guatemalan and others. We demand help for the Ukrainian people,” the missive says.
“We’re asking that the governments of the world — including the Mexican one — help Ukraine with everything possible to stop the Russian aggression. Not just the very existence of the Ukrainian state but also the security of Europe and the future of the world order depend on our common response.”
Marta Koren, an organizer of the Ukrainian community’s protests against Russia in Mexico City, said it was regrettable that a Mexican Air Force flight that departed Sunday to pick up Mexicans who had fled Ukraine to Romania didn’t carry any humanitarian aid.
“We hope that in the future we can … help Ukraine in a humanitarian way,” she said.
Mexicans who fled Kyiv, Ukraine, to Romania. The first flights to Mexico left Romania on Sunday.
