The Supreme Court sided with actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna against Johnnie Walker. (Wikimedia Commons)
Two Mexican actors have won a decade-long legal dispute with a whisky maker over image rights.
Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna were featured in caminando con gigantes (walking with giants) advertising campaign for its whisky brand Johnnie Walker in 2011.
Under federal copyright law, the use of a person’s image in an advertising campaign without his or her permission is illegal. The value of the compensation owed to the actors is yet to be determined.
García won a separate victory against Johnnie Walker owner Diageo in the Supreme Court in November. That ruling earned him 40% of the revenue from sales of Johnnie Walker during the period of the campaign. The actor’s lawyers said the commercial was played at least 22 times from September 3-October 6.
In early hearings, Diageo argued that the campaign was not intended as publicity for the company but a means of featuring “great personalities” to encourage Johnnie Walker consumers to strive to reach their goals. A press release issued by Diageo in 2011 said the campaign, introduced in 1999, was intended to “showcase a series of pioneering ideas which could help the world take a step forward.” It won several international awards.
The two actors starred together en Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 film Y tu mamá también (And Your Mom Too). Since it was released, they have been known collectively by their fictional shared nickname in the movie: Los Charolastras (space cowboys).
Journalists and supporters protest Tuesday in Michoacán.
Protests were held across Mexico on Tuesday to demand justice for three journalists murdered this year.
Journalists, members of civil society organizations and other citizens took to the streets in at least 35 cities including Tijuana, Mexico City, Ciudad Juárez and Acapulco, according to a report by the newspaper Reforma.
The protests came after the murders of news website director José Luis Gamboa in Veracruz city on January 10, photojournalist Margarito Martínez in Tijuana on January 17 and reporter Lourdes Maldonado in Tijuana last Sunday.
Dozens of journalists, photographers and supporters participated in a protest march in Tijuana, while demonstrators gathered in front of the federal Interior Ministry in Mexico City.
“We are emotionally devastated” by the murders, Sonia de Anda, a member of a journalists’ group in Tijuana told the Associated Press. “We go out and work, because we have to” but there is “a lot of fear,” she said.
Photos of murdered journalists on display at the National Palace in Mexico City.
AP reported that approximately 200 journalists attended the Mexico City protest. Some held candles in silent vigil while others held signs demanding an end to the murders of journalists, the news agency said.
Images of slain journalists were projected onto the facade of the Interior Ministry and protesters chanted “Justice!” and “You are not alone!”
“What they give us is a damned panic button, and you know what that button is? It is the number of the municipal police supervisor who is corrupt and sold out,” she told AP.
In Chilpancingo, Guerrero, journalist Alina Fernández told Reforma that reporters are not only under siege by criminal groups but also the government.
The federal government, and President López Obrador in particular, make frequent attacks on the media, generating what the Mexico representative for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has described as “a climate of significant polarization” and “a division between good press and bad press.”
Jan-Albert Hootsen said in late 2020 that attacks on the media can have serious repercussions for journalists, explaining that reporters who have been criticized by the president at his weekday news conferences have received thousands of adverse and hostile messages on social media and even death threats.
Press freedom advocacy group Article 19 said in 2019 that López Obrador’s “stigmatizing discourse” against the media “has a direct impact in terms of the … risk it can generate for the work of the press because [his remarks] permeate in the discourse of the rest of society and can even generate attacks.”
Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world to practice journalism, according to Reporters Without Borders. Almost 50 journalists have been killed since López Obrador took office in December 2018.
Resolution for the murder of any journalist or activist in Mexico remains unlikely: impunity reigns in more than 90% of such murder cases, Deputy Human Rights Minister Alejandro Encinas said in December. The impunity rate is in fact 95%, according to the CPJ.
According to the national statistics agency INEGI, Mexicans on average paid 13 bribes per minute in the second half of last year. deposit photos
Mexicans pay almost 18,500 bribes per day to police officers and public servants, a new survey suggests.
Based on the results of the most recent National Survey on Urban Public Security, the national statistics agency INEGI estimates that 2.9 million people paid some 3.4 million bribes in the second half of last year.
The estimate equates to the payment of 771 bribes per hour or 13 per minute.
Known in Mexico as mordidas, bribes are frequently sought by employees at government offices who deal with members of the public seeking to complete bureaucratic procedures and by police officers who have stopped people for offenses such as running a red light or drinking in the street.
The INEGI data shows that the payment and receipt of mordidas continues to be the most ubiquitous form of corruption in Mexico.
Last March, a phone video captured a Puebla city transit cop allegedly soliciting a bribe from a citizen, apparently a common occurrence in the city. Twitter
At the municipal level, the payment of bribes was most prevalent in Puebla city, INEGI determined, while at the state level, the practice was most frequent in Mexico City.
The statistics agency estimates that over 145,000 bribes were paid to police and public servants in the Puebla capital in the second half of 2021. INEGI believes that more than 100,000 bribes were also paid between July and December in Tijuana, Baja California, and the La Laguna metropolitan area, which includes Torreón in Coahuila and Gómez Palacio in Durango.
Among the other bribery hotspots identified were Ecatepec and Toluca in México state; Gustavo A. Madero and Iztapalapa in Mexico City; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Mexicali, Baja California; and León, Guanajuato.
More than half a million people are estimated to have paid bribes in Mexico City in the second half of last year, while approximately 445,000 México state residents are believed to have handed over mordidas to police and bureaucrats.
Other states with high numbers of victims included Jalisco, Chihuahua and Nuevo León.
While individual bribes are usually small — perhaps 50 to 200 pesos — the prevalence of their payment means huge quantities of money change hands.
According to Transparency International Mexico, transit cops are often required to hand over a percentage of the bribes they collect from motorists to their superiors. Andrea Quintero Olivas/Shutterstock
“There is the idea that administrative corruption is a small form of corruption, but there’s nothing more fallacious than that,” said Eduardo Bohórquez, head of the international nonprofit organization Transparency International in Mexico.
“Transit police operate in networks, … it’s a pyramid structure,” he said, meaning that officers have to hand over at least part of what they collect to their superiors.
“The corruption that affects homes is measured in millions of cases, … it’s not a minor issue. In fact, … administrative corruption is connected to the large wheels of corruption in many cases,” he said.
Marco Fernández, a researcher with think tank México Evalúa and an academic in the school of government at the university Tec de Monterrey, asserted that official data underestimates Mexico’s bribery problem because many people are wary of revealing that they have been victims.
“A lot of the time it’s politically or socially difficult to publicly accept that you gave a mordida, so a lot of the time these numbers are underestimated,” he said.
In 2020, corruption made national news when a video emerged showing two former Mexican Senate officials allegedly receiving cash for influencing lawmakers’ votes.
Both Fernández and Bohórquez told Milenio that governments need to focus on eradicating corruption networks within public agencies in order to combat the bribery problem.
“In general, corruption networks that operated in the past and that operate in the present haven’t been broken up,” the former said.
“… We [Mexican authorities] are bad [at implementing] the different aspects that an anti-corruption policy should have,” Fernández said.
“With that, the possibility of dissuading swindlers [from asking for bribes], getting them to think twice and not commit crimes of this nature is practically nonexistent.”
There have been long lineups for COVID tests as the omicron variant has spread.
By early Wednesday morning, more than 200 people had lined up outside a Mexico City Metro station. Many were double masked, some had bloodshot, tired eyes, others came prepared for a long wait with stools and hot drinks. They all wanted a COVID test, and there were not enough to go around.
“There’s a lot of people that look pretty bad that I think definitely shouldn’t be here . . . it’s pretty worrying,” said César Becerril, a 44-year-old chauffeur who arrived at 5.30 a.m.
From workers off sick to long lines for tests and more patients in hospital, a new wave of COVID-19 in Mexico is showing what happens when the highly contagious omicron variant hits a country with low booster rates and a fragile, underfunded public health system.
Positive tests are at new daily records in the last week, with official numbers — which are believed to dramatically undercount the true figure — reaching 60,000 cases. In the capital, the number of COVID -19 patients in hospital has more than tripled in two weeks.
Several Latin American countries have had devastatingly high death tolls during the pandemic, and Mexico has had the fifth-highest excess deaths per capita in the world, according to a Financial Times analysis.
“The pandemic has punished Mexico hard, more than other countries,” said Alejandro Macías, an infectious disease doctor who helped lead Mexico’s response to the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009. “Right now, I think we’re a little overconfident that omicron will be milder.”
The country’s poor performance was because of a multitude of factors from a historically underfunded, unprepared public health system to a lack of clear, scientifically sound messaging from government, experts said.
Mexico has taken an unorthodox approach to the pandemic. It is one of few countries that never closed its borders, it does not require a COVID -19 test for entry and has performed so few tests that it has the highest cumulative positivity rate in the world, according to Our World in Data.
President López Obrador this month caught COVID -19 for the second time. Hours before his test he gave a press conference with symptoms of a cold and said that for most vaccinated people omicron was like a “little COVID.” During his time in isolation, he posted a video of himself maskless in his office with two cabinet members, who sat at a distance.
“It’s a terrible message for everyone,” Francisco Moreno Sánchez, an infectious disease specialist and head of internal medicine at the private ABC Hospital in Mexico City said. “[Health workers] give everything to try to save patients and the message from the government is ‘this is a little cold.’”
However, unlike other world leaders who have played down the disease, Mexico’s government has promoted vaccination as a way out of the pandemic.
Mexico has at least partially vaccinated the population, the level of 63% lagging behind regional peers but slightly above the world average of 60%, according to Our World in Data. It has given out a little under 11 million boosters, equivalent to about 8% of the population.
It has used a wide range of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna to Russia’s Sputnik and China’s Sinovac.
There have been long lines for tests in the capital in recent weeks, and in the industrial city of Monterrey some even queued overnight to guarantee one. Official advice in Mexico City is now to isolate if you have symptoms and not seek out a test.
Despite the issues, the president’s popularity remains among the highest in the world.
“The authorities aren’t the problem, it’s the people who don’t look after themselves,” 27-year-old Andrés García, who was too far back in the line to get a test Wednesday morning, said. “Now we’re seeing the consequences.”
Among those consequences is an economic contraction in the third quarter. Supply chain bottlenecks and a local labour reform had probably pushed Mexico into a recession, analysts at BBVA said this week, with the latest wave of COVID -19 cases an additional growth risk.
Across the country workers are having to take time off work, said Ricardo Barbosa Ascencio, president of the labor commission at business lobby Coparmex.
On average, Coparmex’s figures showed around 10-13% of companies’ workforces had been off with COVID -19 in this wave, he said. At some factories, up to 20% of the workforce is sick, with autos and electronics particularly hard hit.
“All the big cities in Mexico . . . have the same problem,” he said, adding that restaurants in some beach destinations did not have enough wait staff.
In Mexico, formal workers get their sick pay from social security body IMSS, which also runs a large health system. In the second week of January, IMSS had more than 90,000 people on temporary sick leave, higher than at any other point in the pandemic, Mauricio Hernández, the institution’s head of economic and social benefits wrote on Twitter.
IMSS, the president’s office and the health ministry did not respond to requests for comment. In his morning news conference on Monday, López Obrador said that while other countries had opted for curfews, fines and arrests to contain the pandemic, he had trusted people to be responsible, and that it had “worked well for us.”
The lack of clear guidelines has been a criticism of the government all through the pandemic in Mexico. In recommendations on its coronavirus website, the government says people should keep their houses clean and ventilated but does not mention masks.
In a recent government video posted on social media, a man dressed as a giant coronavirus is beaten by a man dressed as a giant corn with the message that healthy eating is the best way to fend off the virus. Authorities are still often seen spraying disinfectant on people queueing for tests.
Even with clearer, scientifically sound messaging, though, the country’s deeper structural problems will take longer to fix.
“One of the lessons we should have learned from the last pandemic is that our intensive care wasn’t going to be enough and that the health system wasn’t prepared,” Macías said. “None of what’s happening is a surprise . . . we already knew all this.”
A beach club manager was shot dead in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, on Tuesday just hours after the U.S. government issued a security alert for the state.
Federico Mazzoni’s body was discovered at around 6 p.m. inside Mamita’s Beach Club, where he was the manager, in an area surrounded by luxurious hotels.
Two men entered the establishment and spoke with Mazzoni before they killed him in a bathroom and fled on a personal watercraft, the news website Infobae reported.
Quintana Roo Attorney General Óscar Montes de Oca said there was no sign that the killing was due to extortion and that it was unlikely to be linked to the murder of two Canadians with criminal histories on Friday at Xcaret Hotel, 11 kilometers away.
Colleagues and friends praised Mazzoni for his dedication to his work.
The beach club whose manager was killed Tuesday.
The owners of Mamita’s Beach Club said they didn’t want to jump to conclusions about what happened. “We are waiting for the result of the investigations and collaborating with the corresponding authorities for total clarification,” they said in a statement.
The beach club advertises itself as upmarket venue with a restaurant, family area, pool, VIP area, resident DJ and a spa and fitness center.
The travel alert by the U.S. Consulate General in Mérida, released hours before the killing, highlighted tourist hotspots for their criminal activity. “In light of recent security incidents and criminal activity in popular tourist destinations including Cancún, Playa Del Carmen, and Tulum, U.S. citizens are reminded to exercise increased caution when traveling to the state of Quintana Roo. Criminal activity and violence may occur throughout the state, including areas frequented by U.S. citizen visitors,” it read.
However, the governor, Carlos Joaquín, said crime in the state has fallen.
The incident was the fifth beachfront shooting in Quintana Roo since last October. The uptick in violence triggered the deployment in December of a new tourism security battalion of the National Guard.
The president said the previous Fonatur director didn't have the necessary enthusiasm for the US $8 billion project.
President López Obrador admitted Tuesday that the Maya Train railroad project is behind schedule and blamed the former head of the National Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur) for the delays.
Speaking at his regular news conference, López Obrador asserted that Rogelio Jiménez Pons, who as Fonatur director had responsibility for the US $8 billion railway, had not sufficiently applied himself to the project.
The president removed Jiménez from the position earlier this month and replaced him with Javier May, the former welfare minister.
“We need to finish these [government infrastructure] projects and we need responsible people who are completely committed, who don’t stop for anything and who fully apply themselves,” López Obrador said.
“In order to carry out a project, a manager and permanent, constant supervision is needed,” he said.
The president removed Jiménez from the position earlier this month and replaced him with Javier May, the former welfare minister.
“… We have a commitment to the transformation of the country. … We can be really fond of a person, but if that person, this person [Jiménez], doesn’t apply himself, isn’t enthusiastic, doesn’t have sufficient convictions, doesn’t internalize that we’re living in a historic time, a stellar moment in the public life of Mexico, an interesting time, and he’s thinking that it’s the same routine life of government, that everything is orthodox, … that the passage of time doesn’t matter, then he’s not understanding that a transformation is a profound change,” the president said.
He went on to praise army General Gustavo Vallejo and Energy Minister Rocío Nahle for their commitment to the new Mexico City airport, currently under construction north of the capital, and the Dos Bocas refinery, which is being built on the Tabasco coast.
Vallejo is at the Felipe Ángeles Airport “day and night” while Nahle “isn’t wasting time” at the refinery, López Obrador said. The airport will be finished on time in March, and the refinery will be completed as scheduled in July, he declared.
“… We’re grateful for what Rogelio did,” he said, despite his earlier rebuke. “He left the route open, cleared the path, but what we need now is more action.”
Luis Mario Cuenca gets some mole straight off the fire at the San Pedro Yancuitlalpan pre-Hispanic food fair. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
San Pedro Yancuitlalpan, a tiny pueblo of 3,000 about an hour directly west of Puebla city, is starting to get some notice as a destination for people interested in authentic, ancestral foods, as evidenced by the town’s first pre-Hispanic food fair, held in mid-December.
The event was held so that visitors could learn about the region, said Ignacio Amozoqueño Ochoa, who served as the fair’s emcee.
“The idea was to promote our pre-Hispanic products, to spread and preserve our culture,” he said. “It is important that the products are primarily from here. We have a great variety, very extensive.”
Pre-Hispanic staples like tomatoes, beans, squash and chiles continue to be used daily in Mexican kitchens, but none of these defines the national cuisine — or are as integral to it — as corn. As a popular saying goes, “Sin maíz, no hay país” — without corn there is no country.
Corn was likely first domesticated in southern Mexico between 9,000 and 10,000 years ago. Although there’s still some debate about its original ancestor, it’s generally believed that it was derived from a wild grass called teosinte.
Lucila Cuenca and son Luis Mario Cuenca taste María Cecilia Ramos Álvarez’s tejocote fruit jelly.
Although that may be scientifically true, indigenous Mexicans believed that corn was a gift from Quetzalcoatl, a Mexica god of, among other things, agriculture.
Apolonia Atenco Mexica stirred a large clay pot filled with what I thought was soup. She gently corrected me. “It is atole.”
Atole is made with masa — the same stuff used to make tortillas and tamales. While atole is often a sweet drink, Atenco’s atole, made with squash and peanuts, wasn’t. But it was hot and delicious and especially appreciated on a rather cool day.
The clay pot she used is the traditional way to prepare food. According to many cooks, it gives food a better flavor.
Sangre de mi Sangre (Blood of my Blood), a small company based in San Mateo Ozoclo, just a short distance away, had a table that sold food made from one thing: blue corn.
“It is a corn that many people have forgotten,” said owner Juan Hernández Jerónimo. “It is much better than white corn. We plant, harvest and make it all.”
He sells a lot of tostados (a crunchy tortilla dusted with sugar), totopos (corn chips) and churritos (small, crunchy snacks also made with corn). Pointing to the foods spread out before him on the table, he said, “From the land to here.”
A short distance away, María de los Santos Martínez Pinoco stood over a comal, a traditional cooking implement, moving around the chilacayote squash seeds she was toasting. She used wood for her fire, which she said gives the food better flavor.
“We always cook with firewood; it is normal for us,” she said. “We have our own charcoal, our own wood.”
No food fair anywhere in Puebla would be complete without mole sauce, and here they had a special one made with fruits like peaches, pears and apples as well as ancho chiles, according to Leticia Corona Durán. But one ingredient made it special: chapulines (grasshoppers).
“Chapulines are a very important part,” Corona continued. “The recipe has been handed down through the generations: grandmother, great grandmother … many generations. We make it so we do not forget.”
In front of the cazuela (a large clay pot) in which her mole was simmering were several metates, a pre-Hispanic type of mortar made from volcanic rock, in this case, unearthed near the pueblo. They’re still used, as they were in ancient times, to grind corn.
Next to where Corona stirred her mole, Liliana Ivette Minero Atenco and others were making tortillas by hand. “Our grandparents made them like this,” she said.
Some people believe that tortillas made by hand taste better, but Minero wasn’t so sure. “There is not much difference in flavor,” she said. “We make them like this because it is a tradition.”
She handed me one, and when I saw that Corona was ladling her mole onto them, I stepped up for my share. I’ve avoided eating chapulines — not because I’m squeamish but because I’m a vegetarian — but mole’s one of my favorite dishes, and I figured that if I was going to write about a pre-Hispanic food fair, I had to try it.
It was really good, sweeter than other moles I’ve had, although that was certainly due to the fruits and not the chapulines.
Tejocote is a fruit that’s grown in abundance around the pueblo. Its name comes from the Náhuatl word texocotl, which has been translated as “a hard fruit with a sour taste.” Because of that fact, the fruit is usually cooked, which renders it sweet.
Obdulia Meléndez and Leticia Corona Durán stir mole.
María Cecilia Ramos Álvarez makes a tejocote jelly that tastes a lot like peach. She also sold conservas (preserves) made from the fruit. Nearby, Columba Sánchez Popoca was selling a liquor made from tejocote.
“We boil the fruit with sugar and alcohol and then let it rest for one month,” she said. “It is better to let it age longer, like wine. The flavor changes.”
She also makes the liquor using peaches, walnuts, apples, plums and pears. “All the fruits and nuts are from this area,” she said.
Esther Cortés Rojas stirred a drink made from cacao in a pot that was sitting over a small fire. A group of 20 people or so stood in a semicircle in front of her as she explained how important cacao was in pre-Hispanic cultures. Considered by those cultures to be another gift from their gods, it was used in many religious rituals and ceremonies.
“This is a pre-Hispanic food fair,” Cortés explained, “and cacao is the most pre-Hispanic food.”
Jamie Vázquez, his wife Lucila Cuenca and his son Luis Mario Cuenca made the trip here from Puebla city because they like traditions.
“Like a good Mexican, we always want to promote our culture through events like these,” Vázquez said. “We want to promote our roots. I like the diversity of food, the pulque, conservas, cacao, all of it.”
San Pedro residents are justifiably proud of their culinary traditions. “This is the healthiest food,” said Octavio Tepetitla, who stood behind a table displaying the foods of his company, Productos Agropecuario de Teotón.
There were bags and jars of conservas, atole, and mole poblano, among other foods. “It’s semi-organic, like our grandparents [made it]. We do not use chemicals or anything. This is the way pre-Hispanic cultures ate. We want to preserve this.”
Amozoqueño, the emcee, said the pueblo planned to make the fair an annual event. “Next year, we will have it on the first days of November,” he said. “It is to spread the word about what we have here.”
The food and drink offered at this fair are only available in the pueblo, but if you’re interested in tasting them before next year, the town is small enough that everyone knows everyone and is friendly enough that people will point you in the direction of the right house.
Darker countries on the map are those with higher corruption rankings. transparency international
Any progress in the federal government’s fight against corruption over the past year is not reflected on the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published by the non-governmental organization Transparency International on Monday.
Mexico’s score and position are both unchanged on the new index, touted as “the most widely-used global corruption ranking in the world.”
It remains in 124th place out of 180 countries with a score of 31 out of 100. Three other countries – Gabon, Niger and Papua New Guinea – share 124th position with Mexico.
A country’s score is the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean. Each country’s score is a combination of at least three data sources drawn from 13 different corruption surveys and assessments answered by experts and businesspeople.
The data sources, collected by institutions such as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, cover 10 manifestations of public sector corruption:
Bribery
Diversion of public funds
Officials using their public office for private gain without facing consequences
Ability of governments to contain corruption in the public sector
Excessive red tape in the public sector which may increase opportunities for corruption
Nepotistic appointments in the civil service
Laws ensuring that public officials must disclose their finances and potential conflicts of interest
Legal protection for people who report cases of bribery and corruption
State capture by narrow vested interests
Access to information on public affairs/government activities
Mexico’s score rose one point after President López Obrador’s first full year in office – 2019 – and an additional two points on the 2020 CPI before stalling. It is four points below the national high of 35, achieved on the 2015 index when former president Enrique Peña Nieto was in office.
AMLO, as the current president is best known, has made combatting corruption the central priority of his government – and frequently claims to have made great great strides forward. But three years into his term many analysts say little progress has been made.
In its CPI summary for the Americas, Transparency International said “despite the president’s strong anti-corruption rhetoric, major corruption cases in the country have gone unpunished.”
Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya and ex-cabinet minister Rosario Robles have been accused of corruption, but while both are in preventative custody neither has been convicted of wrongdoing.
“The lack of recovered assets and the growing number of scandals involving close associates of the president partly explain Mexico’s [CPI] result,” Transparency International said.
Lozoya and Robles: major corruption cases remain unpunished.
In the Americas, Mexico ranks among the worst countries for corruption, although it is ahead of nations such as Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua. Its CPI score is eight points below the regional average of 43, which is unchanged.
Canada ranks first in the region with a score of 74 followed by Uruguay (73), Chile (67) and the United States (67).
Denmark, Finland and New Zealand are equal first on the 2021 CPI with scores of 88, while Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany also appear in the top 10.
South Sudan ranks last on the index with a score of 11. Somalia and Syria share 178th and second last place with scores of 13.
“Despite commitments on paper, 131 countries have made no significant progress against corruption over the last decade, and this year 27 countries are at a historic low in their CPI score,” Transparency International said.
The U.S. government has issued a security alert for Quintana Roo due to the recent spate of violence in the state.
The U.S. Consulate General in Mérida issued the alert, which highlighted tourist hotspots for their criminal activity. “In light of recent security incidents and criminal activity in popular tourist destinations including Cancún, Playa Del Carmen, and Tulum, U.S. citizens are reminded to exercise increased caution when traveling to the state of Quintana Roo. Criminal activity and violence may occur throughout the state, including areas frequented by U.S. citizen visitors,” the alert read.
The warning instructed travelers to pay attention to local news, to avoid crowds, to be aware of their surroundings, to review their personal security plans, to follow directions from local officials and to call the U.S. Consulate or Embassy for assistance or to call 911 in case of an emergency.
The alert comes four days after two Canadian men with criminal histories were shot dead and a Canadian woman was injured at the Xcaret Hotel between Playa del Carmen and Tulum.
The incident was the fourth beachfront shooting in the state since last October, when gunfire left two tourists dead in Tulum. Another incident saw two drug dealers shot and killed on a beach in Puerto Morelos in November.
In December, shooters arrived on a Cancún beach in personal watercraft, fired weapons into the air and fled.
The increase in violence triggered the deployment in December of a new tourism security battalion of the National Guard.
The U.S. Department of State’s travel advisory for Mexico was last updated on December 8 and set the country at Level 3, advising citizens to “reconsider travel to Mexico due to COVID-19.”
It said violent crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery are “widespread and common in Mexico,” and instructed citizens not to travel to Colima, Guerrero, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Michoacán.
Travelers to Quintana Roo and 14 other states were urged to exercise increased caution. The U.S. State Department said to reconsider travel to 11 states, while two states only required normal precautions: Yucatán and Campeche.
Only nine of the approximately 100 people involved in a lynching in Puebla in 2020 have been arrested, the lawyer representing one victim’s family said this week.
Arturo Nicolás Baltazar said about 100 people were involved when Edmunda Adela Martínez Velázquez and a man identified as Antonio were confused for child abductors and lynched in October 2020 in San Nicolás Buenos Aires, 90 kilometers east of Puebla city.
Martínez and Antonio were tied to a pole and beaten while their attackers tried to set them on fire. The lynching was filmed and went viral on social media. Martínez, a 43-year-old lawyer, was travelling to León, Guanajuato, to visit two of her five children.
“If justice is done, there would have to be at least 100 people detained, because it is proven that there were about 100 residents who participated in these heinous events,” Baltazar said.
“Not punishing all the participants creates impunity and means this type of event will be repeated,” he added, and insisted that more people should be arrested for the crime.
The lawyer also accused justice authorities of not taking the case seriously and said judicial process had not been properly respected.
Baltazar thinks the trial will take place in about eight months.
Puebla is the second worst state in the country for lynchings, behind México state. In 2020, there were nine lynchings and 148 attempted lynchings in Puebla, the newspaper Milenio reported.
