Mexico’s accumulated case tally rose to almost 4.26 million, while estimated active cases hit a new high of over 257,000. The official COVID-19 death toll increased by 148 to 300,912.
Baja California Sur remains the country’s COVID epicenter with more than 1,000 active cases per 100,000 people. Mexico City, which has around 60,000 active infections, ranks second with over 600 per 100,000 residents.
Twelve other states have between 200 and 400 active cases per 100,000 people. They are San Luis Potosí, Quintana Roo, Zacatecas, Colima, Yucatán, Tabasco, Nayarit, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Baja California, Querétaro and Durango.
Orange and yellow are creeping back onto the most recent risk map, which took effect on Monday.
In other COVID-19 news:
• The national occupancy rate for general care beds in COVID wards increased by two points to 26%, the federal Health Ministry said Thursday. The occupancy rate for beds with ventilators rose one point to 16%.
• Almost 938,000 vaccine doses were administered Thursday, lifting the total number of shots given to over 154.6 million. About two-thirds of Mexicans have received at least one vaccine dose, while around 60% are fully vaccinated. More than 80% of adults are vaccinated.
• The Health Ministry is now recommending that people suspected to have COVID-19 isolate for seven rather than 14 days.
Infectious disease specialist Alejandro Macías said on Twitter that the omicron variant “enters and leaves quickly,” meaning that infected people will generally develop symptoms shortly after exposure and get better soon.
He said that a return to work after an isolation period of seven days is “reasonable.” With a 14-day isolation period, “we will be left without people to work,” he tweeted Thursday.
• Health regulator Cofepris has granted emergency use authorization to Paxlovid, the anti-viral COVID pill produced by the United States pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
Cofepris said in a statement Friday that it is the first health regulator in Latin America to approve the drug. It also said that treatment with the medication can reduce death and the need for hospitalization by up to 88%.
Marines rescue a whale caught in fish net a few years ago off Acapulco.
Three whales, including a young calf, are free after a close call with a fishing net off Acapulco, Guerrero, on Thursday afternoon.
A 911 call alerted authorities to the situation, and the marines arrived soon after to rescue them.
When a citizen called to report whales trapped off Barra de Coyuca, north of the city center, emergency services forwarded the information to state Civil Protection.
Residents of the area also reported seeing the whales close to the coast, almost in the shorebreak, but said the whales were not trapped.
A boat of marine personnel freed the animals and herded them away from shore. It was the second incident in as many days: on Wednesday, a humpback whale calf was found stranded on the beach in Acapulco, disoriented and dehydrated. Residents threw water on it and later helped authorities push it back into the water despite heavy surf.
Farther south, a whale rescue group has been trained by the International Whaling Commission.
The Assistance Network for Entangled Whales (RABEN) in Huatulco, Oaxaca, includes 20 team members and 40 fishing cooperatives.
Their first job after their training in December was to begin removing illegal fishing nets that could cause whales to become stranded. The team will also track the whales that arrive in Oaxaca to understand their route and destination. Personnel and four boats stand ready to implement Incident Command System (ICS) training to save any whale that becomes stranded as it passes through the area.
José María Cruz speaks at a DIF family services agency event.
The director of a municipal family services agency, one of whose activities is combating substance abuse, is out of a job after a drunken spree ended in his arrest in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
José María Cruz Morales’ night on the town in Villa de Álvarez, Colima, went wrong when he and a companion began to fight at the strip club where they were drinking. When Cruz drew a weapon and began shooting into the air, club employees called the authorities.
Cruz and his companion fled when state police and marines showed up, but the pair were chased down and arrested. Police confiscated a handgun and ammunition.
Cruz’s dismissal from the family services agency was announced on Thursday afternoon. Villa de Álvarez Mayor Esther Gutiérrez Andrade called his actions inconsistent with the principles that should guide the officials in her administration.
“The behavior of all functionaries in this government should be exemplary, following the principles of honesty, transparency and trust … that will guide our behavior until the last day of my term,” Gutiérrez said.
Canyoneers working their way down the 26 falls. Luigi Medina
Matatlán is a little town located 20 kilometers east of downtown Guadalajara, perched on the brink of a deep canyon with nearly vertical walls. Throughout its entire history — which goes back to pre-Hispanic times — the people here have known of the wonderful hot pools and hot river on the canyon floor.
Tragic proof that post-conquista people have often scaled these walls can be found in numerous crosses erected at various points. Old and rotting ropes still mark La Ruta De Las Cruces (The Route of the Crosses), as it came to be called, which was in use right up to very recent times, when canyoneers appeared on the scene carrying modern gear for rappelling with nylon ropes.
In 2007, Guadalajara-based canyoneer Luis “Luigi” Medina heard that La Barranca de Las Cruces was muy padre (very cool) and some 600 meters deep where it begins, with a river running down its entire length.
“But,” he told me, “no one ever mentioned that there were hot springs down at the bottom.”
Medina was the leader of the Jalisco canyoneering community in those days and was ever on the lookout for waterfalls, so he and three friends decided to go check the place out.
Video blogger Luigi Medina reports from a natural hot pool in Matatlán Canyon.
“It was November and really cold,” recalls Medina. “We left town at 6 a.m. with two 50-meter ropes and, just in case, we took along another one, 100 meters long. We went straight to the river and rappelled down a 15-meter waterfall. Then we walked 20 meters and came to a second cascada 15 meters high. We went down it and walked another 30 meters, and there we found a 10-meter fall … and so it went. Would you believe there were 26 waterfalls in that canyon?”
After 17 drops, the canyoneers came to the edge of a really deep fall. When they tried to put a bolt (a permanent anchor to which a rope can be attached) in the walls on either side of the river, they couldn’t.
“The rock was too soft,” Medina explained, “so I had to lean out over the edge with my friends holding onto me, and there I found rock that was somewhat more solid. From that position, I could see the bottom, and it looked like it was an 80-meter drop!”
Let me explain here that every time canyoneers lower a rope, they double it. The midpoint of the rope is clipped into a carabiner (a metal link with a gate) that is attached to a bolt, allowing them to later pull the rope down so it can be used again in the next descent.
The problem with this approach is that once they have pulled the rope down, it’s no longer possible to go back up.
“I had no way of knowing whether our 100-meter rope, doubled, would get us all the way to the bottom of that big fall,” explained Medina, “or whether the rock was solid enough to hold our weight. So we stopped and spent an hour looking for ways we could get out of the river by climbing our way up or down … but the walls were vertical at this point, and there was no escape: we had no choice but to do the rappel.
Medina’s team slogs its way through the icy waters. Luigi Medina
“Well, luck was on our side. The two ends of the doubled 100-meter rope reached to a point exactly one meter above the base of the fall … and the bolt held.”
By now, night was falling and the temperature was dropping.
“None of us wanted to be in the water anymore,” said Medina. “Since the canyon had widened considerably, we decided to scramble down the sides of the remaining falls so we could completely avoid getting wet.”
As a result, the team never discovered that some of the following falls were flowing with hot water.
“We just headed down the canyon until we came upon a big vertical water pipe, which we figured had to be coming from the town of Matatlán up above. So we simply followed the water pipe up to the town and exited the canyon 17 hours after we had entered it.”
In following expeditions, canyoneers discovered that the water was hot in four of the 26 cascades, and word eventually reached the general public that 400 meters below Matatlán there was a hundred-meter-long río caliente with hot pools and a natural toboggan slide: a delightful spa located in an area so pristine that you could, according to Medina, “hobnob with eagles and swim side-by-side with otters, just to mention two of the 368 species of wild animals down there.”
Medina’s latest video series is entitled “John Pint’s Magic Circle.”
The canyoneers launched several new expeditions and, naturally, published a few videos on YouTube. As a result, small groups of adventurers — who were not experienced canyoneers — headed for Matatlán, where the locals told them “Claro que sí, there’s agua caliente down there. Just follow the water pipe all the way; it’s easy!”
Following the pipe was indeed easy, but the climbing part, both down and then back up the sheer canyon wall, was something else. One of those adventurous explorers, who goes by the name of “Panzer,” described his experience in this canyon.
“We followed that water pipe, grabbing onto whatever we could while staring down drops of up to 70 meters below us. We were holding on to the rock face with our hands, our fingers, our teeth and our nails … and then we started coming to ropes. But what ropes! There were all kinds: old ropes, new ropes, and a few rotten ropes, tied onto trees here and there.
“This climb, both up and down, is what I call ‘extreme’ in my book, without a doubt the hardest route our team has ever followed, but at the same time the most beautiful.”
Recently — eight years after Panzer’s experience — entrepreneurs in Matatlán decided to make the water pipe route a little easier, welding ladders to the steel pipe along the most difficult parts of the trajectory and also constructing an unbelievable open-air spiral staircase that twists its way down the cliffside and is guaranteed to get the user’s heart pumping overtime.
In December of 2021, Medina decided to give this new route a try.
View of Matatlán Canyon from the La Arboleda campsite. Jalisco Desconocido
“Just outside Matatlán, right at the edge of the cliff,” he told me, “I found a campsite called La Arboleda with full facilities like showers, toilets and an open-air kitchen. This is also the place where you can begin your descent to the agua caliente, starting with a very steep trail and followed by the caracol (spiral staircase) and, after that, a great many ladders welded to the pipe, most of them accompanied by railings.
“There is, however, a long stretch where the pipe is almost horizontal and you are supposed to walk along the rungs on top of it. These are more like horizontal slats, but here there are no railings, nothing at all to hold onto. If you slip, or maybe a bee flies into your face, you might only fall a meter and a half — but it would probably hurt. And, of course, if you lose your concentration or your balance, you are definitely going to fall.”
So, should you visit the hot river of Matatlán?
“Well, it’s a killer!” Medina said. “But if you are in good shape physically and you are used to hiking in the mountains, it’s definitely worthwhile climbing down those ladders. The local people told me that a prep school class went down there recently. Bueno, the students had no problems whatsoever, but it just about wiped out the teachers! So, when the bunch of them got back up on top, the teachers all said, “Wow! The place is incredible, but jamas regresamos! We’re never coming back!”
To visit the Matatlán hot river virtually, watch Luigi Medina’s lively YouTube video. It’s all in Spanish, but just fast forward to the eighth minute to follow the route down the cliffside, and no matter what language you speak, I guarantee you will feel an adrenaline rush!
You can reach La Arboleda campsite by asking Google Maps to take you to PRMP+7X Matatlán, Jalisco. The climb, which you should try only if you are in superb physical shape — and at your own risk — takes about an hour each way.
Matatlan - LAS CASCADAS DE AGUA 💦 TERMAL MÁS ALTAS DE JALISCO. ⛺️Campamento La Arboleda 🏕
Luigi Medina’s YouTube video about Matatlan Canyon.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
The recently constructed spiral staircase — not recommended for the faint-hearted — provides “easy” access to the hot river 400 meters below.
Parts of the new route have no railing and require strict concentration as well as good balance.
The natural hot water slide. Luigi Medina
The 400-meter climb takes less than an hour for those who are fit, according to Luigi Medina. Jalisco Desconocido
The deepest of the hot pools found at the bottom. Jalisco Desconocido
INAH director Diego Prieto first announced the plans for the book "México, Grandeza y Diversidad" in September 2021.
One book that flatters President López Obrador and another that is critical of one of his pet hates – neoliberalism – are to be distributed to primary and middle schools.
México Grandeza y Diversidad (Mexico Greatness and Diversity) celebrates AMLO’s “crushing victory” at the 2018 presidential election in one chapter and describes the president as a leader who inspires the confidence of millions of Mexicans.
Morena, the ruling party founded by López Obrador, is different to other political parties and “committed to the people,” writes author and academic Armando Bartra in the chapter entitled “A new hope.”
Published by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) with public money, the book will be distributed free of charge to primary and middle school libraries as well as history, civics and social studies teachers.
It will also be dispatched to municipal libraries, INAH director Diego Prieto told a press conference. An initial print run will see 120,000 copies of the book produced, he said.
Another book bound for school libraries is Historia del Pueblo Mexicano (History of the Mexican People), which was produced by the federal government and has a foreword by López Obrador.
The book, which is available free as a PDF document, has chapters on events such as the Spanish conquest, independence and the Mexican Revolution.
It is also highly critical of Mexico’s neoliberal period, defined by AMLO as the 36 years between 1982 and 2018. Inequality and discrimination both increased as a result of neoliberalism, contends the book, which will also be sent to teacher training colleges.
“The neoliberal governments affirmed that upon opening up the Mexican economy in order to participate in a trade agreement with the United States and Canada we would have growth, employment and prosperity. What there is is stagnation, unemployment and migration,” the book says.
Ironically, López Obrador is an ardent supporter of the USMCA, the North American free trade pact that succeeded NAFTA.
Still, he frequently rails against neoliberalism, blaming it for all manner of ills that have plagued, and continue to plague, Mexico.
The publication of México Grandeza y Diversidad and Historia del Pueblo Mexicano comes nine months after the federal government entrusted a group of teachers, teaching students and retired teachers with the task of writing textbooks that are free of “authoritarian discourse.”
Concerns were raised at the time that the new textbooks wouldn’t contain quality educational material and wouldn’t be neutral in a political sense.
Lime prices in particular have seen dizzying increases. This past week, they cost an average of 70 pesos nationally. Last January they cost 18 pesos. Government of Mexico
In the midst of record inflation, prices are on the rise. One tragic victim of the increases is guacamole: avocado, lime and chile, three key ingredients of the beloved green dip, have become significantly more expensive.
In Mexico City, chile prices ranged from 40 pesos (US $1.97) for a kilo of jalapeños to 125 pesos (US $6.15) per kilo for green chile de árbol, according to Mexico’s consumer protection agency Profeco. Avocados cost 67 pesos (US $3.30) per kilo on average, and a kilo of Colima limes cost an average of 62 pesos (US $3.05).
Lime prices in particular have seen dizzying increases in the past several weeks, hitting 80 pesos (US $3.94) per kilo in many areas of the country. In the second week of January, limes cost an average of 70 pesos (US $3.44) per kilo nationally. During the same period in 2021, the same quantity cost 18 pesos (US $0.88).
Grupo Consultor de Mercados Agrícolas (GCMA), an agricultural consulting group, blamed the price increase on low production. In some areas, limes are out of season, they said. In other places, like Michoacán, the fruit is in season but production is abnormally low this year due to a variety of problems, including unusual climate events and hurricane-damaged fruit.
Lime prices have also taken a hit due to the removal of a government subsidy and a lack of natural disaster relief, the group said.
The price spikes come in the midst of high inflation in Mexico and around the world. Nationally, annual inflation hit 7.37% in November, its highest level in more than 20 years. In December, the Bank of México forecast a 7.1% end-of-year inflation rate.
Maximum, minimum and average prices of a variety of goods in cities around the country can be referenced on the Profeco website.
The military was one target of criticism: the national human rights commission received nearly 4,000 complaints of military abuses from 2013 to 2020, and the military has been implicated in extrajudicial killings.
The international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has lambasted Mexico in a new report, asserting that a wide range of human rights violations have continued since President López Obrador took office just over three years ago.
“Human rights violations – including torture, enforced disappearances, abuses against migrants, extrajudicial killings, gender-based violence, and attacks on independent journalists and human rights defenders – have continued” under López Obrador, HRW said in the Mexico section of World Report 2022: Events of 2021.
“Impunity remains the norm. Legal reforms enacted in 2017 and 2018 have been slow and ineffective in addressing torture and impunity,” the NGO said.
In 12 sub-sections, HRW’s report evaluated the human rights situation in Mexico. In the first of those sub-sections it said that the criminal justice system routinely fails to provide justice to victims of violent crimes and human rights violations.
“Only 5.2% of crimes committed in Mexico are solved, the non-governmental group México Evalúa reports. Causes of failure include corruption, inadequate training and resources, and complicity of prosecutors and public defenders with criminals and other abusive officials,” the report said.
“… Police and prosecutors commonly use torture to obtain confessions. … Prisons are notoriously unsanitary and overcrowded,” it added.
In the Military Abuses and Extrajudicial Killings sub-section, HRW noted that the National Human Rights Commission received 3,799 complaints of military abuses between 2013 and 2020.
“In July 2020, 12 civilians were killed in a shootout with soldiers in Tamaulipas state. A video leaked to the press in August showed a soldier giving the order to kill a civilian. … In March 2021, a lawyer for the families of victims told Reuters that no soldiers had yet been detained, despite the video evidence,” the report said.
“In September 2021, the Defense Ministry admitted that at least 47 people had been killed or injured by the armed forces during the López Obrador presidency. … The Defense Ministry has paid compensation to families but has not sanctioned any soldiers or reported the cases to police or prosecutors for criminal investigation.”
Torture, HRW said, is widely used by Mexican authorities to obtain confessions and extract information.
“It is most frequently applied after victims are detained, often arbitrarily, but before they are handed to civilian prosecutors. Victims are often held incommunicado at military bases or illegal detention sites,” the report said.
‘The police are covering it up because they are all murderers and rapists,’ read a banner last year when Yucatán residents protested the rape and murder of a young man.
HRW asserted that authorities often fail to investigate allegations of torture and noted that 64% of prisoners surveyed by the national statistics agency INEGI in 2016 reported physical violence at the time of arrest, including electric shocks, choking, and smothering.
Under the Disappearances heading, the NGO noted that thousands of people vanish every year in Mexico and that police, the military, and criminal groups are responsible for many abductions.
“More than 23,000 are listed as having disappeared since President López Obrador took office,” the report said.
In the Attacks on Journalists and Human Rights Defenders sub-section, HRW noted that such people often face attacks, harassment, and surveillance by government authorities and criminal groups, “particularly those who criticize public officials or expose the work of criminal cartels.”
“Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, on par with war zones like Syria and Afghanistan in number of journalists killed,” the report said.
“… Authorities routinely fail to investigate crimes against journalists adequately, often preemptively ruling out their profession as a motive,” it said.
“… Mexico is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world for human rights defenders. From January through September 2021, the Mexico Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported 10 human rights defenders killed. As with journalists, violence against human rights defenders is rarely investigated or prosecuted.”
HRW asserted that Mexican laws don’t adequately protect females against gender-based and sexual violence.
“Some provisions, including those that peg the severity of punishments for sexual offenses to the ‘chastity’ of the victim, contradict international standards,” it said.
“… Women and girls continue to face alarming rates of gender-based violence. In 2020, the government reported nearly 1,000 femicides – killings of women because of their gender. Women’s rights groups say femicide is likely under-reported,” HRW said.
The report also touched on crimes against migrants: criminal cartels, common criminals, and sometimes police and immigration officials regularly target people migrating through Mexico to rob, kidnap, extort, rape, or kill them.
Migrants are particularly vulnerable to abuse both by criminals and authorities.
“These crimes are rarely reported, investigated, or punished,” it added.
“The López Obrador administration has actively participated in abusive U.S. immigration policies. It failed to provide police protection or access to justice, work, health care, and education for the over 71,000 asylum seekers, including many families with children, sent to Mexico under the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. Many suffered abuses from criminal cartels or Mexican authorities. President López Obrador said the program had produced ‘very good results,’” the report said.
“The López Obrador administration has been illegally expelling thousands of asylum seekers to Guatemala without due process, including many who were first expelled from the U.S. into the custody of Mexican authorities. … In September 2021, National Guard troops and Mexican immigration agents violently detained a series of caravans of asylum seekers in Chiapas state, leaving many injured.”
Mexico fared much better in the report’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity sub-section.
HRW noted that same sex marriage is legal in a majority of Mexico’s 32 states– currently 26 – and acknowledged that the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a lesbian couple from Aguascalientes should be allowed to register a child born to one of the women as a child of both.
“Seventeen states have passed laws creating a procedure permitting transgender people to change their names and gender markers on birth certificates through a simple administrative process,” the report said.
A Tijuana couple celebrates after same-sex marriage was approved in Baja California in 2021. The HRW cited sexual and gender identity rights as one bright spot in Mexico’s recent human rights record.
With regard to the protection of the rights of people with disabilities, “serious gaps remain,” HRW said.
Under the rule of the current government, they lack access to justice, education, legal standing, legal capacity, protection from domestic violence, and informed consent in health decisions, the report said.
“… The only policy to assist people with disabilities is a non-contributive disability pension that reaches only 933,000 people of the 6,179,890 who live in the country. Its distribution is opaque and discretionary,” HRW said.
The NGO also excoriated the government for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, asserting that it has failed to take many of the basic steps recommended by global health authorities to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Not paying tolls is encouraged by associations that illegally occupy toll plazas.
An estimated 18 to 19 million motorists per year are passing through toll plazas without paying, generating losses of over 1.5 billion pesos (US $73.9 million) for highway concessionaires.
The newspaper El Universal, which cited those figures in a report published Thursday, said the avoidance of paying tolls is encouraged by members of associations that dedicate themselves to the illegal occupation of toll plazas, a relatively common practice in Mexico.
A broad range of groups – including students, teachers and the unemployed – occupy the plazas as a form of protest and/or to raise funds by charging motorists an unofficial toll.
Marco Frías, director of the Mexican Association of Highway Infrastructure Concessionaires, told El Universal that the non-payment of tolls – official ones at least – is most prevalent on the eastern side of the Valley of México metropolitan area, which includes Mexico City and surrounding municipalities of México state.
One such plaza is the Las Américas Caseta on the Circuito Exterior Mexiquense (México state Outer Loop Road) in Ecatepec, he said.
According to the Mexican Association of Highway Infrastructure Concessionaires, toll evasion represents a loss of US $73.9 million in revenue a year. Santiago Castillo Chomel/Shutterstock
The practice of not paying tolls causes a “significant decrease” in income for highway concessionaires and consequently affects the tax revenue collected by authorities, Frías said.
“The capacity of governments and in particular the federal government … to generate resources that can be used for education, for vaccines, for health care and so on,” is adversely affected, he said.
Frías said that a broad range of motorists pass through toll plazas without paying, apparently even when they are not occupied by protesters.
“The incidence of motorcycles [not paying] is growing a lot,” he said, adding that in eastern México state, truck drivers and public transit drivers are also guilty of the practice.
A group called Resistencia Civil Pacífica, or Pacific Civil Resistance, is one of the main promoters of the non-payment of tolls, El Universal said, adding that it uses social media to encourage the practice.
“If you go onto Facebook you can see a series of videos, even tutorials, about how to avoid tolls,” Frías said.
Como ahorrar en casetas en México
One of numerous online tutorials on how to avoid paying tolls on Mexican roads.
In one such video on YouTube, a motorist teaches a maña, or trick, to avoid paying.
“We’re going to see the trick one learns here due to extreme poverty,” a man says as he approaches a toll booth in Sinaloa.
He then avoids paying a toll by passing through the plaza when the boom lifts for the vehicle directly in front of him.
“You put yourself glued to the car [in front] as if you were being towed with chewing gum, and when the guy [in front] goes, you go with him,” the man tells his viewers after joking that the trick won’t work if the person in front of you has the same idea.
Frías said that not paying tolls has become a trend in Mexico and other countries such as Spain and Chile. However, he acknowledged that “the vast majority” of motorists are responsible and do the right thing.
“They’re aware … that when you pay a toll you get the [accident] insurance … that the highway grants, they’re aware that driving on a toll highway … [is] much safer and more efficient,” Frías said.
The US is expected to buy more than US $350 million worth of avocados for this year's Super Bowl.
A record-breaking 140,000 tonnes of Mexican avocados are expected to be shipped to the United States in the lead-up to the 56th Super Bowl, to be played in Los Angeles on February 13.
José Luis Gallardo, president of the Mexican Association of Avocado Producers, Packers and Exporters, told the newspaper Milenio that about 25,000 tonnes of avocados are currently being shipped to the U.S. per week, while exports will ramp up in early February.
Avocados are in high demand in the United States prior to the National Football League championship game, largely because guacamole is a popular snack for football lovers glued to their screens.
“An event like the Super Bowl is very important; we’re prepared in Michoacán, which right now is the only state that can send avocados [to the U.S.],” Gallardo said.
Juan Anaya, CEO of agricultural consultancy GMCA, estimated that avocado exports for the big game will be worth US $356 million, or 10% of annual revenue from the U.S. market. “Demand increases 30% or 40% in February,” he said.
Gallardo said that just under 1.12 million tonnes of Mexican avocados were shipped to the United States last year, up from 962,000 tonnes in 2020. “It’s a product that is very well accepted in the United States,” he said.
“… The pandemic hasn’t hurt us, we continue working in Michoacán, the shipments keep leaving every day and the product continues to sell very well.”
President López Obrador looks on as Garciá refutes media reports.
A prominent journalist has written an open letter to the federal government’s fake news debunker, warning her that she’s destroying her future and urging her to change course.
Ana Elizabeth García Vilchis has been presenting the “Who’s who in the lies of the week” segment at President López Obrador’s Wednesday morning press conference since the middle of last year.
“I don’t know you. I heard about you in June last year when the awful section you lead every Wednesday was created,” the letter starts.
“… I just know that you’re 32, you were the web coordinator at a news site and you studied social anthropology at the Puebla Autonomous University,” Uresti wrote.
Azuna Uresti urged García to research and write her own script rather than read what she has been told to read.
“… Why am I writing you these lines? Firstly because of my unsuccessful attempts to set up a journalistic interview with you; secondly because you have referred to me with lies from the National Palace; and thirdly and most importantly because I believe – and hopefully I’m wrong – that you’re destroying your future,” she wrote.
Uresti told García that she was writing not to defend herself but to offer advice as if she were her friend, sister or mother.
“… Every week that I see you there standing in front of everyone at the National Palace, reading a script that isn’t yours, I feel sad,” she wrote.
“… You don’t take ownership of the script either because you stutter, overact, sweat [and] your voice trembles. And that tells me that deep down you don’t feel comfortable with what you’re doing. Those who promised you that you would be the defender of the truth lied to you; those who promised to catapult your political career … lied to you,” Uresti said.
She acknowledged that journalism has its faults but asserted that all journalism “must be free and branding critical journalists as traitors or coup plotters is an attack against that freedom.”
“… You’re too young to mark your professional future in this way and to each week be the target of such brutal violence while the men who write what you read hide behind the president,” Uresti wrote, apparently referring to online abuse.
The day after Uresti’s open letter, García called out the journalist for supposedly making a false claim on Twitter. Presidencia de la República
“You have time to change course, to fight your own battles and not become a single-use cartridge, to remember that their adversaries are not necessarily yours,” she said.
“Say what you believe and have researched, defend the government in which you have placed your trust but don’t allow yourself to be an instrument of politics or revenge. Be free and let it be your choice that determines your path. With female solidarity, Azucena Uresti.”
A day after the letter was published, García took aim at the journalist in her weekly appearance at the National Palace, asserting that she had made a false claim about the governor of Veracruz on Twitter.
She concluded her remarks with a “reflection” on the segment she has been presenting for the past six months.
“This section was begun to provide a service to the public, to bring to light and refute the fake news that involves the federal government. Neither media outlets nor journalists are stigmatized here, we only cite lies and expose the replicators of falsehoods. If media outlets and names of journalists appear it’s for didactic purposes, it’s not anything personal,” García said.
“There is a clear campaign of disinformation to undermine the projects and works that this government is carrying out. … But even though they defend hidden economic or political interests or simply have bad faith, time will put everyone in their place.”
