Eleven Mexico City transit police officers have been suspended after they were caught on video in an altercation on Friday evening with cyclists protesting the deaths of fellow riders.
The video of the chaotic incident showed several officers targeting individual cyclists and punching and kicking them while they were restrained.
After Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum instructed Police Chief Omar García Harfuch to investigate, the 11 officers, including four commanders, were suspended Satruday pending further analysis by the police department’s office of internal affairs.
García said the investigation is looking into whether additional officers besides the 11 who were suspended had assaulted civilians and that that any found to have attacked demonstrators would be fired.
Several cyclists were injured and needed treatment on the scene by paramedics. On a video captured by the ForoTV network and circulated widely on social media, several police officers could be seen running at cyclists to restrain them, then punching them and throwing some to the ground and kicking them.
¿Qué decías que no volvería a ocurrir en la CDMX, @PPmerino?
Repudio la salvaje represión de @Claudiashein contra ciclistas.
¡Que los abusos y excesos policiacos NO queden impunes!
The cyclists were riding as a group in the Nápoles neighborhood of the city as part of a demonstration for greater safety for cyclists, protesting recent deaths of fellow biking enthusiasts.
The confrontation occurred as the cyclists attempted to access the second level of Mexico City’s Anillo Periférico beltway, which is prohibited to bicyclists. After police prevented the cyclists from getting onto the highway, the situation on the street escalated.
The road remained closed for a long period afterward so that paramedics could treat the injured.
Sheinbaum, who called for the officers involved to be fired, said that some of the demonstrators did assault police. However, she said, the officers’ behavior was “unacceptable.”
“At no time can we have the aggression that we saw on the video by officers toward protesters,” Sheinbaum said. “It’s for things like this that much training has been done with the police. It’s about containing, not assaulting [civilians], but in this case, there was police action that shouldn’t have happened.”
The president shares a happy moment with reporters Monday.
Two weeks after he announced he had tested positive for Covid-19, President López Obrador returned Monday to his favored position at the front and center of Mexican political life, appearing at the National Palace for his regular morning press conference.
“We’re back on our feet and fighting,” the unmasked president told reporters after thanking the foreigners and “all the Mexicans, men and women, who were concerned about my disease, my Covid infection.”
“We’re going to continue the transformation. It’s fundamental for Mexico to put an end to corruption so that the country is moralized and we can live with well-being and happiness,” López Obrador said.
The president, who was replaced by Interior Minister Olga Sánchez at the morning news conferences, noted that Health Minister Jorge Alcocer led a medical team that monitored his health and revealed that he participated in an experimental Covid-19 treatment study.
“It was decided that I’d participate in an Institute of Nutrition research process. I accepted … to try certain treatments. They gave me an antiviral medication and anti-inflammatories from [January 25 – the day after he tested positive]. Fortunately they gave good results,” he said.
Echoing the remarks of government officials who provided brief updates on the president’s health over the past two weeks, López Obrador said he only experienced mild symptoms such as body aches and a low-grade fever while he remained in isolation at his apartment at the National Palace in downtown Mexico City.
“I came out of it with the treatment. I started to exercise, to walk and do breathing exercises,” he said.
“I thank Jorge Alcocer [and the medical team he led]. They’ll be checking up on me. I want to thank all the doctors, all the public [health] institutes. … They gave me special treatment because of the affection with which they treated me.”
López Obrador, who has a history of high blood pressure and suffered a heart attack in 2013, said that one of two reasons he contracted Covid-19 was that he chose not to get inoculated before the broader population has access to Covid vaccine.
“Why did I get sick? Firstly because I didn’t get vaccinated, I didn’t take advantage [of my position]. I could have gotten vaccinated, there are heads of state, presidents, who have been vaccinated, they’ve been the first,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to set a bad example and that everyone should be be treated equally.
“… Secondly, why did I get infected? Because, like millions of Mexicans, I have to work. There’s no way that I could stay shut away the whole time, you can’t live locked up. I looked after myself, I maintained a healthy distance but it [the virus] got me. Fortunately, I was able to get over it,” López Obrador said.
The president returned to the press conference podium after a two-week absence.
The president, who played down the threat of the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic and said on several occasions that Mexico had passed the worst of the outbreak even as the country hurtled toward new peaks, is one of almost 2 million Mexicans who have tested positive for Covid-19, although the real number of cases is believed to be much higher due to the low testing rate.
López Obrador has opposed hard lockdown measures that impinge on people’s freedoms and has not advocated forcefully for the use of masks even as evidence showed they could have a significant impact on slowing the spread of infection.
Instead, he has placed faith in the capacity of vaccines to bring the pandemic to an end and put a stop to a daily Covid-19 death toll that has regularly exceeded 1,000 this year.
While cooped up in isolation, the president released a video message in which he predicted that all senior citizens will have received at least one dose of a vaccine by the end of March, noting that Mexico will receive shipments of Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V and CanSino shots this month and next.
But to meet that target – there are some 15 million seniors in Mexico – hundreds of thousands of doses will have to be administered on a daily basis once the vaccines get here, a mammoth logistical undertaking that could prove to be difficult to achieve.
As things stand, only about 713,000 Pfizer vaccine doses have so far been administered, mainly to health workers, and there are only about 53,000 unused shots in the country.
In comparison, the U.S. has been giving more than 1 million injections per day for more than two weeks.
Asked on Monday morning if he was planning to begin wearing a face mask, the president said no and suggested that the mask issue was a political one promoted by opponents of his administration’s transformation of the country.
He said his doctors had told him he was not contagious.
Beaches throughout Quintana Roo are now operating at 30% capacity.
Coronavirus cases surged on Mexico’s Caribbean coast in January and early February after large numbers of tourists descended on beach destinations over the Christmas-New Year vacation period, forcing authorities to implement tighter restrictions across Quintana Roo as of Monday.
Between the start of January and February 5, the state of Quintana Roo, home to popular destinations such as Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, recorded 3,176 confirmed cases of the virus, according to local health authorities.
Not since the middle of last year, when 3,114 confirmed cases were recorded between June 15 and July 15, had Quintana Roo seen so many cases in such a short period of time.
State authorities attribute the upsurge in new infections to the influx of domestic and international tourists in December – more than 400 flights per day were arriving at and departing from the Cancún airport in late 2020 – as well as end-of-year gatherings of family and friends, large clandestine parties and events and people relaxing their observance of health rules such as keeping one’s distance from others and wearing a mask.
The arrival of international visitors, many of whom came from the virus-ravaged United States, brought much-needed revenue to Quintana Roo, whose economy relies heavily on tourist dollars, but bequeathed an unwanted legacy: tighter restrictions that will cause more economic pain for the state’s residents.
Governor Carlos Joaquín González announced Sunday that all of Quintana Roo would be high risk orange on the state coronavirus stoplight map as of Monday. The northern part of the state, where Quintana Roo’s main tourism destinations are located, switched to orange from medium risk yellow in the last week of January and now the southern half is also painted that color.
(The state has been orange on the federal map since mid-January but the Quintana Roo government has its own stoplight system that it uses to guide the easing and tightening of economic restrictions.)
Businesses across the state will now have to respect shorter opening hours while a 30% maximum capacity level for beaches, parks, cinemas, theaters, shopping centers, casinos, hair salons, factories and places of worship applies equally in Cancún in the north and Chetumal in the south as well as in all other cities and towns.
Hotels, restaurants, archaeological sites, theme parks, golf courses, gyms and sports centers can operate at a higher maximum capacity of 50% while the orange light designation remains in place but bars and nightclubs in all 11 municipalities must remain closed.
The state’s schools, like those across the country, are still shut almost a year after they closed at the onset of Mexico’s coronavirus outbreak.
Governor Joaquín announced Sunday that the southern part of the state would revert to orange on Monday.
Quintana Roo has recorded 19,286 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, and almost half the cases were detected in Benito Juárez, the municipality that includes Cancún.
Othón P. Blanco, which includes state capital Chetumal, ranks second for cases followed by the municipality of Solidaridad, where Playa del Carmen is located.
Hospital occupancy in Quintana Roo is currently 26% for general care beds and 24% for beds with ventilators, according to federal data.
The occupancy rate is slightly higher in the north while there are more active coronavirus cases in the south, Governor Joaquín said Sunday, adding that authorities will ramp up Covid-19 testing as a result of the statewide orange light designation.
The health care facility that has come under more pressure than any other in Quintana Roo during the pandemic is the Cancún General Hospital, where 47% of general care beds are currently taken.
“We’re stressed because my colleagues on the front line against Covid are fatigued, … there have been increases [in hospitalizations], new admissions to the hospital,” a nursing director told the news agency EFE.
Identified only as Luis Alberto, the nursing chief said that coronavirus patients’ medical reports indicated that they recently relaxed observance of health measures and traveled to different parts of Quintana Roo and/or gathered with friends and family.
He said there has been a recent increase in admissions of younger Covid-19 patients and called on the public not to let their guard down and continue to follow the measures designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“It sounds disturbing to say it but sometimes it’s not until those dying are people we know that we understand the gravity of the situation,” Luis Albero added.
More than 2,200 people have lost their lives to Covid-19 in Quintana Roo, according to official data, including more than 200 since the start of 2021.
In recording an increase in case numbers in January, the Caribbean coast state suffered the same fate as Guerrero, where coronavirus restrictions were also eased in tourist destinations for the end-of-year vacation period. That state switched to maximum risk red on the stoplight map in late January amid what the governor described as “the worst moment of the pandemic.”
There are currently 13 red light maximum risk states on the federal stoplight map, which will be updated at the end of this week.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated case tally rose to 1.93 million on Sunday with 6,065 new cases reported while the official Covid-19 death toll increased by 414 to 166,200.
Positive spin has been applied to vaccine shipments. The president insisted they were delayed to make supplies available to poor countries. Pfizer said it was due to an upgrade to its factory in Belgium.
On his first day in isolation after contracting Covid-19, President López Obrador had a call with Vladimir Putin.
Whereas his first call with President Joe Biden, three days earlier, had been “friendly and respectful,” López Obrador gushed about the “genuine affection” from the Russian president as Mexico prepared to receive 24 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.
Foreign diplomacy does not usually interest López Obrador, but this time it was urgent: Mexico, one of the world’s worst-hit countries, faced a three-week halt in vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and needed more fast.
Well before Sputnik V published peer-reviewed clinical trial results, Mexico dispatched Hugo López-Gatell, the coronavirus czar, to secure unpublished information on the jab from Argentina, where it is being rolled out. That fueled fears that political expediency had prevailed — López Obrador wants a third of the population vaccinated by midterm elections in June.
It was typical of the mixed messaging that has plagued Mexico’s pandemic management. As early as last April, the populist López Obrador was claiming to have “tamed” Covid-19. He said an amulet protected him, refused to enforce mask-wearing or lockdowns and continued traveling around the country.
Even amid record death tolls, Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero, who has been acting president while López Obrador convalesces, said the pandemic was “absolutely contained, with a slight fall.”
The health ministry has long been accused of trying to put a positive spin on its handling of the pandemic by conducting few tests and counting only confirmed cases.
But even the autonomous state statistics office, Inegi, which acknowledged far more Covid-19 deaths than the health ministry has reported, faced flak.
Inegi attributed 108,658 deaths to Covid-19 between January and August last year. But Mario Romero, a researcher into Mexico’s pandemic toll, believed all of 184,039 excess deaths recorded in the period were caused by Covid because other leading conditions — heart attacks, diabetes and influenza or pneumonia — also posted unusual rises.
He and Laurianne Despeghel, an economic consultant, have combed through death certificates and estimate that Covid-19 deaths are 2.85 times under-reported — putting the current death toll at some 430,000, higher even than in the U.S. Based on that research, Mexico City’s excess death toll is “already the worst [city] in the world, by a large amount,” he said.
“I think they’re being intentionally confusing,” said Romero.
López Obrador gives a video message from the National Palace last week.
The spin does not stop with the numbers. Faced with no BioNTech/Pfizer deliveries until February 15, López Obrador insisted the pause was to free up vaccines for poor countries — a global call for which he claims credit.
The drugmaker said the delays were because of the revamp of its plant in Belgium, designed to increase the group’s production capacities. As a result, it is locked in a bitter dispute with the EU over deliveries.
Mexico has so far administered just under 715,000 vaccine doses, well behind Brazil which began inoculations later. An online system for over-60s to sign up for the shot crashed soon after launch.
Despite that, the president said in a video message: “For February, we are going to have 6 million doses and for March double that, 12 million, no problem.”
His announcement on January 24 that he had caught Covid-19 also sparked questions: had he traveled on a commercial flight while knowingly ill?
His spokesman, Jesús Ramírez, initially said the president felt unwell and was tested in the northern city of Monterrey on the eve of his return home. Ramírez later said he had misunderstood other aides and insisted the president “felt a bit fluey” the day of his flight back and was tested later in Mexico City.
In the face of harsh criticism from experts, López-Gatell has talked of a strategy rethink. Experts say that is urgent: Arturo Erdely, a mathematician tracking the data, expects Mexico to hit 600,000 deaths by the end of June.
“What they need to change is to tell us the truth and give clear messages,” said Sergio Aguayo, a political analyst.
Nopal with mint salad, one of the recipes in James Oseland's new cookbook, World Food: Mexico City, focused on the capital's cuisine. All photos courtesy of Ten Speed Press
As the former editor of Saveur magazine and a cookbook author, veteran food writer James Oseland has traveled the world for over 30 years, visiting international cultures and their cuisines, but his passion for travel and food began in Mexico.
Although he traveled with his family as a child, his first real experience outside the United States began as a wild idea, a road trip through Mexico with his father. They drove from the Texas border to Chiapas and back over the course of three weeks, stopping in Mexico City on the way down and back.
“I knew the moment that I stepped foot out of that station wagon and onto the zócalo [main square] that I had become someone that I wasn’t before.”
What changed? Mexico gave him the sense of being “someplace else,” a place where there were similarities but also differences as to what a culture and society are.
“A fire was lit,” he says.
Milanesa, or breaded meat patties.
Oseland has had a long and distinguished career writing about food, passionately believing that you can understand a culture through its cuisine. As a U.S. citizen, he has had the “great fortune of living next door to what for all intents and purposes is the Latin American version of Italy in terms of richness, complexity and interestingness.” But developing a career before the internet era meant needing to live where the publishing world is, and for about three decades that was New York.
Not that he abandoned Mexico.
“I always had the idea in my back pocket that when I need a break from whatever I was doing in the United States, I can just go to Mexico in four to five hours by plane and I can be in this other place.”
While he strove to get to know as much of the country as he could, he has lost track of the number of times he has returned to Mexico City.
So, when he succeeded in negotiating a series of cookbooks on the cuisines of the world, the obvious place to begin was Mexico’s capital to repay “a debt of gratitude I have for the knowledge and experience I received.” Oseland returned to Mexico City, rented out an apartment in the historic center and worked out 75 recipes there.
The result is World Food: Mexico City, a curious mix of recipes, stories and cultural information as it applies to food.
Oseland’s “World Food” cookbook series covers international cuisines.
It is an unusual take on Mexican cooking, one that avoids much of the cliché that appears in many Mexican cookbooks, demonstrating Oseland’s decades-long relationship with the country. The book seeks to engage home cooks who look to have a little taste of a faraway world, a kind of armchair travel in the kitchen, through both anecdotes of everyday people and recipes adapted to foreign kitchens.
As a 12-plus-year resident of Mexico City with a chilango (Mexico City native) husband, I recognized most of the recipes, including comfort foods such as lentil soup with bacon, tamales, enchiladas, Mexican-style shrimp cocktail, and carnitas (pork confit). These are the foods Mexicans eat at home, in cantinas, in local restaurants and on the street. There are a few creative recipes that give a nod to the city’s well-developed dining scene, Oseland says, but “I wanted to focus on home cooking because here the truth of the culture is revealed.”
Oseland also believes that “in Mexico City, you have the cuisines of Mexico.” To bolster this point, he includes dishes such as birria (stewed beef or goat from Jalisco), tlayudas (Oaxaca’s “pizza”) and miners’ enchiladas (San Luis Potosí and north).
Some dishes, such as carnitas (Michoacán), shrimp cocktail (the coasts) and pozole (Guerrero) have become completely adopted into Mexico City cuisine. However, I should note that the integration of dishes from the provincia follows migration patterns into Mexico City. For this reason, lacking are dishes from the Yucatán and the north of the country.
The book balances the cookbook’s need to categorize types of recipes and the cultural elements that make Mexican food special. One section is dedicated to corn prepared in different ways, from stews to tamales, with tacos downplayed. The appetizer section pays homage to the chile pepper. Although Mexico City is located on a high mountain plateau, the book includes an extensive section on seafood.
This may seem odd, but Mexico City, as the center of an empire and country, has been the destination for much of the country’s food production. Today, it is home to the world’s second-largest seafood market after Tokyo.
James Oseland’s 30-year career as a food expert includes editing the magazine Saveur.
My favorite section is the platos fuertes (main courses). These are the meals cooked in homes and small family restaurants.
Appropriately, the book does not have a section on baked goods. Mexicans love their sweet bread, but since the colonial period their creation has been the purview of local bakeries. Home baking is simply not a thing.
Oseland came to Mexico City to work on the book and nothing else, but that idea did not last long.
“Maybe at the subconscious level I was thinking about making the move, but it wasn’t until then when I started connecting the dots and realized, ‘Oh, I can live here in this wonderful place. I don’t have to just visit now. I can shop at the markets I love and bring home those fruits and herbs and put them in my own kitchen in this wonderful place that inspires me and energizes me.”
The writer now focuses on basic Mexican home cooking for his everyday life, cooking beans in clay pots and charring vegetables on comal griddles. He cannot imagine doing it any other way.
Although his professional focus is still global, with the second book in the series focused on Paris, the shift to living in Mexico still has an effect. Many of the French recipes were tested working with the cooks he admires from the Mexico City book. It makes sense given that the idea is to make the recipes accessible to cooks unfamiliar with the cuisine.
The series is an ongoing, open-ended project. Asked if he would come back to a Mexico-related topic in a subsequent book, he said, “We’ll see. Because Lord knows there are such complex and rich stories of regional cuisine in Mexico that could be told.”
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes in various Mexico-based publications and her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
San Caralampio, a third-century saint and martyr, is revered in Comitán for protecting the population from disease. He gets a lively procession each year.
Chances are you’ve heard of one- and two-syllable saints in Mexico like San José or San Pedro, Juan, Lucas or Martín.
Chances are equally good that you’ve never heard of the saint whose name would figure as the winning Jeopardy! question: “The saint with the most syllables in his name” — San Caralampio.
Boy, do we need him now.
San Caralampio was adopted in the mid-19th century as the patron saint of a ranch on the outskirts of Comitán, Chiapas. It is said that there was not a single case on the ranch of smallpox or cholera, then ravaging far-larger Comitán.
Promoted to the big leagues as the patron saint of Comitán itself, San Caralampio soon worked his magic on the future Pueblo Mágico and is revered today as a miracle worker.
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I live in Guatemala, and when I want to “get off the Rock,” as Gibraltarians say, I head for Comitán for safety, orderliness, mariachis and Mexican food.
You should too.
Neighbors think I’m crazy to head to Mexico for safety, just as Mexicans in Comitán think I’m crazy to ask about gangs, kidnapping or even where I can leave my car overnight: “On the street, of course.”
Long overshadowed by relatively nearby San Cristóbal de las Casas for tourism, Comitán is a well-kept secret.
Dining outside by the immaculate central park, listening to mariachis, approving of the teenagers with their tablets accessing the city-paid, park-wide Wi-Fi (at least in the old normal), Comitán feels like how Mexico “used to be” — the old-old normal.
If you are lucky, or plan well enough, you’ll be handed a candle, leave your table and be invited to join the happy throng headed for Caralampio’s church on his saint’s day.
By day in Comitán, you can traverse the “Boulevard” and count the emblematic statues, one for each state in Mexico. During the “old normal,” the city would set up an ice rink in December, and the laughing Tzotzil and Tzeltal indigenous folk — unlike the Canadians who are born wearing ice skates — take their first tentatively wobbly steps on skates and fall like you did (unless, again, you’re Canadian).
Chiapas, at least at present, ranks as one of Mexico’s most pandemic-free states.
San Caralampio?
Carlisle Johnson writes from his home in Guatemala.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned Friday that the latest move in Mexico’s quest for energy sovereignty directly contravenes its commitments under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
President López Obrador sent a bill to Congress last Monday that makes major changes to the electricity market that favor the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and deals another blow to the renewable energy industry.
It was the boldest move yet in the government’s efforts to change the rules in the energy sector and give preference to the CFE and the state oil company, Pemex.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice president Neil Herrington described the bill as “deeply troubling” and cautioned that it would open the door to reinstating a monopoly in the electricity sector. He also predicted the changes would result in a significant increase in the cost of electricity and limit access to clean energy.
“Unfortunately, this move is the latest in a pattern of troubling decisions taken by the government of Mexico that have undermined the confidence of foreign investors in the country at the precise moment enhanced foreign direct investment in Mexico is needed more than ever. As the country emerges from its worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, nothing will prove more vital to its recovery than the jobs and growth that U.S. and other foreign investors generate.”
Herrington urged Mexico to withdraw the bill from consideration and work with the private sector to find solutions to bolster the energy industry.
The legislation is likely to be approved by the Morena party-controlled Congress but another recent development suggests it might not survive a legal challenge.
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday against key elements of a federal energy policy that also seeks to reshape the electricity market in favor of the CFE.
It struck down 22 provisions of the policy on the grounds that they violated the constitution in areas of free competition and sustainability.
The Chamber of Commerce criticism came after Mexico’s leading business lobby launched an unusually strong rebuke of the latest attempt by the government to reverse measures that went into force with the previous government’s sweeping energy reforms.
The Business Coordinating Council described the bill as an “indirect expropriation” that violates international trade agreements. It warned that it would raise energy prices and “irredeemably” damage regulatory and contractual certainty in Latin America’s second largest economy.
The minister of energy responded by denying that any firm would be expropriated and repeated a previous argument that energy reforms had put the CFE in a straitjacket with policies that forced it to buy electricity it didn’t need.
Juan Rubén Antúnez teaches guitar to students in poor neighborhoods for free.
Juan Rubén Antúnez, affectionately known as “Juanito Zihua,” has been a musician for 25 of his 46 years. Born in Mexico City, Juanito’s first job was as a metal worker on an assembly line, a position he detested so much that he begged his father to allow him one year to prove himself in the music industry.
Although he had little formal training — just a few months at the Libre Nacional de Música — music was fast becoming his passion.
With his father’s blessing and armed with a guitar and repertoire of just six songs, he headed across Mexico before arriving in Zihuatanejo as a full-time musician for most of 25 years. During that time, Juanito managed to buy a house, a car, and a motorcycle and support his wife and two children with money earned from performing at various clubs, restaurants and events.
While he was heading to a gig in the village of Troncones, located 45 minutes from Zihuatanejo, he noticed the many local children hanging out at the pool halls in the late afternoon. When he finished his show at 10 p.m., those same kids were still where he had last seen them.
As a father, it disturbed him. A conversation ensued, and he learned from the kids themselves that they had nothing better to do — it was either the pool hall or the beach.
One of Antúnez’s students at practice.
Juanito decided he would give lessons to any kid who wanted them, and so a makeshift school began with just a couple of students. The class was free, and they only had a couple of guitars, but as word and interest grew among the youth, people shared.
At one of these classes, an American woman who lived in the village took notice.
“At first, she was very suspicious, and she kept staring at me and asking me what I was doing with the children.”
Juanito says he can laugh now, but the encounter scared him as he recalled the questions about his intentions.
“I want to help kids and give them something to do. I didn’t want money. I’m not doing anything wrong. I want to teach these kids music,” he told her.
A couple of days later, Wendy returned, this time with other Americans who lived in the area. They observed the class without saying a word. The following week they came again, this time with an offer to buy guitars. The class grew.
“I believe this project could go all over the state, maybe even all over Mexico,” he says.
Although they insisted, Juanito refused to take any pay, but he accepted gas money for his car, with reluctance.
“I tried to explain that I was coming to work anyway, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Sadly, the program was disbanded as parents of students, who ironically paid zero to have Juanito teach, began to question him about his pay and even his motives. He decided at that point that it was time to walk away.
Although the parents then tried to put together something on their own and find other teachers to step in, the last thing that Juanito heard was that the project failed and was disbanded.
Discouraged, he looked around his neighborhood and realized that children were always on their phones and tablets. Still feeling that the program was doable, he started to teach in his own colonia, and once more for free.
As before, he immediately saw the positive difference the classes were making in his students’ lives, but they lacked guitars. He decided to approach the mayor of Zihuatanejo, Jorge Sánchez, for help.
Antúnez says he’s also teaching students to feel valued and to believe in themselves.
At first, they declined his proposal, citing location issues or possible conflict with the local Casa de Cultura. Discouraged but determined, Juanito mentioned it to Carol Romain, director of Por Los Niños, an educational charity run by mostly foreigners in Zihuatanejo.
Immediately she saw the value of the program, and together they returned to the mayor’s office with an offer to pay half for guitars, the cost of printing, and anything else the kids would need.
Juanito came up with the idea that instead of using government space and having the children come to one location, he would go to the neighborhoods where they lived on a once-a-week basis.
“There would be no excuses as to why a kid that signed up couldn’t make the class. And no worries about bus money since some of these kids had a long way to go to arrive downtown,” he said. “Every community has a concha [town gazebo], and it’s covered. They don’t have to sit in the rain or hot sun. And it’s already built, and it’s free.”
That argument, combined with someone else’s clout paying half the bill, convinced the local government to try out the project on a three-month basis. In total, they purchased 42 guitars. Still, with no pay, Juanito taught classes.
“The program is finished now, and it doesn’t look as if the city wants to continue especially with growing food shortages for some people,” he said. “But I believe this program is worthwhile on many levels. The children are our future, and education is everything.” He said his next step would be to approach the governor’s chief of staff.
One of Antúnez’s six neighborhood guitar classes.
“I believe this project could go all over the state, maybe even all over Mexico,” he said. “We could hire work musicians to give classes in the offseason when they don’t have work. It would create employment and help kids stay out of trouble. And we are following all social distancing safety guidelines, mask-wearing and washing hands and guitars.
“This is more than just teaching kids a few chords so they can play a few songs. We play games, do trivia riddles and work on dynamics. Most of all I teach them to feel valued and that someone believes in them. And how to believe in themselves. So that every day, the desire to master the guitar becomes stronger.”
And even though the classes are free, the children still come, he said.
“I teach them discipline. My classes are strict too,” he added. “If you’re late, you get one chance. If you’re late again, you’re out. There’s no talking when I’m teaching unless it’s about the music — no wasting time. We are here to work and to focus. But we have fun, too. It’s the same in life. Find out what you want to do and then go out and get it.”
It’s too easy to fall into the wrong crowd when you’re poor and you have nothing to do, he said.
“That’s why I want to do this project — to give kids hope and options,” he said. “Because there is a saying, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. But teach him to fish and, you feed him for life.'”
Let’s hope the powers that be believe it too.
• If you want to get involved, you can contact Juanito Zihua directly on his Facebook page.
The writer divides her time between Canada and Zihuatanejo.
Federal health officials were confident Friday that deliveries of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will arrive soon enough that people who have had their first shot will receive the second one on time.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell told the nightly press briefing that Pfizer had advised it was unable to send more vaccine any sooner than February 15 following an appeal by President López Obrador that deliveries be hastened.
However, he said those who were given their first shot since January 13 — 530,959 healthcare workers — will get their second within 35 days, given that the second injections will begin on February 17.
The initial recommendation was that the second jab be given within 21 days but López-Gatell has said that the time frame can be extended to 42 days.
Health Ministry spokesman Ruy López Ridaura told the press conference that some 511,000 doses are expected between February 15 and 22.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Healthcare workers and some state governors expressed concern earlier this week that further delays in vaccine shipments would prevent the timely delivery of the second inoculation.
The week also brought frustration for senior citizens attempting to register for vaccination at a new federal website. Swamped with citizens wishing to obtain the vaccine, the site was unable to handle the volume.
However, as of Saturday the site — https://mivacuna.salud.gob.mx/ — appeared to be functioning well and Mexico News Daily successfully completed a registration.
Meanwhile, the number of new Covid cases and fatalities continue to rise, although the rate has declined significantly in the past week.
There were 13,051 new cases reported Friday, bringing the total to 1,912,871, and 1,368 deaths, raising that total to 164,290.
Mexico City will remain maximum risk red on the coronavirus stoplight map next week but some restrictions will be eased.
Although hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients have trended down in recent days, Mexico City will remain red until at least Monday, February 15, the city government announced Friday.
Hospital occupancy in the capital, which has recorded almost half a million confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and just under 30,000 deaths, is currently 78%, according to the Mexico City government. It had been close to 90%.
Although the red light designation will remain in place, department stores and shopping centers will be permitted to open around the clock as of Tuesday. However, their capacity will be limited to 20% of normal levels and shoppers and workers must wear masks.
Both department stores and shopping centers are required to close on Mondays and admission on other days should be limited to people shopping alone.
Restaurants will be permitted to open for an additional three hours as of next week, with the new closing time at 9:00 p.m. However, the requirement for restaurants to seat in-house diners in outdoor areas remains in place. Eateries with no outdoor dining space will remain limited to takeout and delivery service.
Also under the new rules, Monday replaces Sunday as the designated day of rest for businesses in the capital.
While tourism remains well below pre-pandemic levels, Mexico City’s tourist bus, “el Turibús,” will once again take sightseers around the streets of the capital as of next week. Tourists must sit on the open-air upper deck and wear a face mask while enjoying the sounds, sights and smells of the metropolis.
The easing of restrictions is undoubtedly good news for businesses that have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, government restrictions and the virus-induced economic downturn but many are expected to continue to struggle and more closures are predicted in the coming months.
To help businesses survive, a Mexico City lawmaker has proposed a law that would require property owners to lower rent for commercial spaces while coronavirus restrictions remain in place.
Presenting his bill this week, Ricardo Fuentes of the Morena party said that many property owners have rejected businesses’ requests for rent to be lowered so a law forcing them to do so is necessary.
An application for emergency approval of the CanSino vaccine has been made to the federal health regulator.
“There hasn’t been agreement between landlords and tenants, and because of the pandemic a lot of businesses have had to close,” he said.
Fuentes’ bill stipulates that rent would return to the normal level once the authorities declare that the coronavirus is no longer a threat. The bill was sent to Mexico City Congress committees for debate.
In other Covid news:
• Researchers at the University of Guadalajara are continuing to study four possible cases of a possible Mexican variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Natali Vega, head of an emerging diseases lab at the university, said that scientists are also looking at other cases detected in Jalisco over the past month to determine if any of those could be a new strain.
She said researchers are completing genetic sequencing work of the possible new strain and that results will be available within two weeks.
• Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced Friday that CanSino Biologics, a Chinese vaccine company, has made an application to health regulator Cofepris for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine. He said on Twitter that the vaccine had been successfully administered to 14,425 volunteers in Mexico since last October.
“This vaccine is a single-dose vaccine and will be packaged in Querétaro. What good news!” Ebrard wrote.
If approved by Cofrepris, the CanSino vaccine will be the fourth to receive authorization in Mexico after the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Sputnik V shots.
• A paramedic dressed in her work clothes was attacked with bleach in an industrial area of Puebla city on Thursday. According to a report by Puebla digital newspaper Periódico Central, aggressors shouted “You’re infected!” at the young woman before dousing her with bleach.
The woman said on social media that the skin on her face was slightly irritated as a result of the attack. She posted a photo of her uniform, which sustained substantial damage.
There have been several reports of attacks against health workers in Mexico during the coronavirus pandemic, most of which occurred shortly after the virus was first detected here almost a year ago.
