An example of a Levi's pair of jeans, left, and a Mazateca design that Mexico is accusing the company of plagarizing. Ministry of Culture
A large clothing company has once again been accused of appropriating Indigenous Mexican designs, but it did collaborate with a collective that employs Mazatec women from Oaxaca.
The Mexican subsidiary of Levi’s released a premium collection of jeans and jackets that incorporate “embroidered elements belonging to the Mazatec culture of the community of San Felipe Jalapa de Díaz,” the federal Ministry of Culture said in a letter to the company.
San Felipe is located in the northeast of Oaxaca near the border with Veracruz and Puebla.
The Culture Ministry wrote to Levi’s México and the Draco Textil collective, which collaborated on the manufacture of the Levi’s Premium Original Trucker Jacket collection, to denounce their use of Mazatec designs without obtaining permission from the community first.
It sought an explanation from both Levi’s and Draco and said that “fair economic reward” must be paid to the rights holders of the designs, which are protected by law.
An example of a Mazateca embroidery design created by the Oaxaca artisan collective that issued the original complaint. (Texturas de Oaxaca/Twitter)
“We invite you to develop respectful work with the Indigenous communities within an ethical framework that doesn’t undermine the identity and economy of the [Indigenous] peoples,” the Culture Ministry said.
Levi’s México announced its new collection, and the opening of its first store in Oaxaca, in a social media video earlier this month, while a group of female Mazatec and Cuicatec artisans called Texturas de Oaxaca issued a statement last Thursday denouncing its collaboration with Draco Textil as “another exercise of cultural appropriation and concealment of the people and communities behind the embroidered pieces.”
“The companies and visual artists behind the project are named but the names of the artisans that did the embroidery work are omitted,” the women said.
Two days later – the same day the Culture Ministry sent its two letters – Draco said on Facebook that it was “grateful” to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Levi’s and thanked its team of Mazatec embroiders by name.
“We want to take the opportunity to mention that the intervention of these embroideries took place in our workshop in Oaxaca,” the collective said, adding that it was very proud of its all-female workforce.
Levi’s México hasn’t publicly responded to the Culture Ministry letter.
Among the other designers and clothing companies that have been accused of plagiarizing or appropriating Indigenous Mexican designs are Zara, Anthropologie, Patowl, Zimmerman, Isabel Marant, Carolina Herrera, Mango and Pippa Holt.
The Culture Ministry held an event in Mexico City last week to support Indigenous textile creators and fight cultural appropriation, but Texturas de Oaxaca said its members were not invited to participate.
New coronavirus cases and COVID-19 deaths remain well below the levels seen in recent months as the third wave of the pandemic tapers off.
The Health Ministry reported 916 new cases and 53 fatalities on Monday. A total of 57,067 new infections were reported in the first 22 days of November for a daily average of 2,594. That’s a 44% decline compared to the daily average in October and an 84% drop compared to August, which was the worst month of the pandemic for new cases.
COVID-19 deaths in the first 22 days of the month totaled 4,159 for a daily average of 189, a 46% decline compared to October and a 68% decrease compared to August.
As of Monday, Mexico’s accumulated case and death tallies stand at 3.86 million and 292,524, respectively. Estimated active cases number 17,729.
The federal government has offered vaccines to the entire adult population and is now inoculating those who chose not to get vaccinated or were unable to do so when shots were first made available. It is also planning to inoculate youths aged 15 to 17.
Over 80% of adults are vaccinated, according to the Health Ministry, and large numbers of Mexicans not included in that figure traveled to the United States to get a shot. All told, almost 131.2 million shots have been administered in Mexico, according to the latest data.
Hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients are also down. There are currently just over 2,700 patients in COVID wards. According to Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, hospital occupancy levels are down almost 90% compared to the peak of the second wave.
“In populations with a high vaccination coverage, the number of serious cases is lower because vaccines reduce hospitalizations and deaths,” he wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
A street in the New York borough of Manhattan has been renamed Mexico-Tenochtitlan in recognition of the large number of Latino residents.
Mariachi music accompanied Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at a ceremony on Monday when they pulled a chord to unveil a freshly minted street sign on the intersection of 116th Street and Second Avenue.
México-Tenochtitlan Avenue is in East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem, an area once known as the Italian Quarter.
In the mid-20th century, the area housed Puerto Ricans and later, increasing numbers of Dominicans. In recent decades, the percentage of Mexicans in East Harlem has also greatly increased, with newcomers taking advantage of the relatively low rents and the area’s proximity to Manhattan’s work opportunities.
Ebrard called the new street name a “recognition of the efforts of the Mexican community.”
Tenochtitlán was the name of the capital of the Mexica empire, and was located where Mexico City now sits.
De Blasio said Mexicans had a central role to play in New York’s future. “It has not been recognized enough [that] … New York is a Mexican city too. It is a growing community, strong and beautiful … The strength of this community will help determine the strength of this city in the future,” he said.
He added that U.S. identity was in a moment of evolution, and that Latinos were set to form the majority. “Americans have to understand that we are changing as a country and that in a few decades this is going to be first and foremost a country of Latinos. That is part of our development and evolution, and it will be led by our Mexican-American community,” he said.
In New York, renaming any street requires a public vote with a 75% margin in favor. The proposal is then sent to the city for a vote.
In Harlem, one street was renamed Malcolm X Boulevard and in other parts of the city pedestrians can stroll down Bob Marley street and Martin Luther King street thanks to name changes.
According to municipal data, some 300,000 Mexicans live in New York. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens have the largest Mexican population in the city, while in Manhattan, most Mexicans live in East Harlem.
The ceremony wasn’t Ebrard’s primary motivation for visiting the Big Apple: on Monday he also spoke to the United Nations Security Council about small arms trafficking, which he said was “a threat to international peace and security.”
Youths in a juvenile detention center speak of their lives in organized crime in the Mexican documentary Adrenalina.
A 16-year-old boy in a youth detention center reenacts the brutality of gang life and his torture by authorities. A mother whose daughter is kidnapped by a drug cartel launches a one-woman vigilante effort. Actors embedded in the Mexico City police force discover the vicissitudes of police authority. In the Sonora desert, a young journalist tries to reveal the links between corruption, environmental devastation and impunity that enable illegal gold mining and the harassment and murder of landowners.
These four films — Adrenalina (Adrenaline), La Civil, (The Civilian), Una Película de Policías (A Cop Movie) and Tolvanera (Dustcloud) respectively — are examples of a key trend in Mexican filmmaking: they are films about the major calamities facing Mexico today, such as organized crime, state violence, forced disappearances, deadly violence against women, internal displacement, near-total impunity for crime and forced migration, topics that more Mexican writers and directors are taking on in their work.
And these creators are not interested simply in provoking discussion but also action: most of these films have been paired with social impact campaigns, an increasing practice designed to generate political and social pressure and contribute to the achievement of justice in a country where state authorities and formal legal and social processes can rarely be relied on.
The production company for the 2018 Oscar-winning Alfonso Cuarón film Roma, for example, held a campaign to support domestic workers in Mexico after its story of the fictional Cleo, an indigenous maid working for a rich family in the 1970s, raised awareness of ongoing exploitative conditions for domestic workers in Mexico.
For the documentary short Adrenalina, directors Alberto Arnaut and Diego Rabasa teamed up with Documenta, a Mexican nongovernmental organization that supports young people imprisoned within Mexico’s youth justice system. The 30-minute short shows young people talking about being caught up in organized crime, working as sicarios (assassins) and drug runners and then enduring the consequences of being arrested and imprisoned in an equally violent system.
La Civil | Trailer
Trailer for the film La Civil by Teodora Mihai.
A 16-year-old in the film describes his experience being arrested and detained, saying, “It’s not like they just capture you. They catch you and they torture you. You see things others don’t see. They make you suffer, and they treat you like a dog.” The film also shows Documenta’s work in the youth detention center, as advocates hold theater workshops and other activities aimed to encourage the young prisoners to take responsibility for their actions, understand the cycles of violence and impunity that blights much of Mexican urban life and start their lives again after prison.
The drama La Civil was not attached directly to an NGO or an impact campaign but sought a more general amplification of its themes by telling the story of Cielo, a mother whose daughter is kidnapped by a drug cartel that fails to return her even after Cielo pays the ransom.
The plot is modeled on the real story of Miriam Rodríguez who, through an extraordinary solo mission of some six years, successfully tracked and captured several members of the drug cartel that kidnapped and murdered her 20-year-old daughter Karen before Rodríguez was killed outside her home on Mother’s Day, 2017.
A high-profile production involving luminaries such as Michel Franco — director of 2020’s class warfare drama New Order — as well as a screening at Cannes this past July, La Civil has many of the major tropes and figures of Mexico’s real-life social drama: clandestine mass graves, community-based searchers and forensics analysts, rogue authorities and steely, grieving mothers, fighting to find their disappeared children.
Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Una Película de Policías takes on the ambivalent task of showing the inside world of Mexico City cops who, like their counterparts throughout the country, are well-known for corruption and violence, running enforcement for criminal groups that extort businesses and kidnap and torture civilians. The job itself is also rather deadly — as the NGO Causa en Común reports: just this year some 350 police officers in Mexico have been killed.
The film — which skirts dizzyingly around genres, including docudrama, action film and mockumentary — combines a compelling romantic and professional real-life police partnership and the immersion of two somewhat skeptical actors (Mónica Del Carmen and Raúl Briones) into police training in unexpected ways, in the process revealing the world of the Mexico City police force, where officers have disparate duties, somewhat unclear direction, minimal schooling, exposure to hatred and violence and the kind of brotherly comradeship that law enforcement forces the world over are known for.
Una película de policías | Tráiler oficial | Netflix
Trailer for Alonso Ruizpalacios’ genre-bending film A Cop Movie.
The film’s chaotic portrayal of capital law enforcement reflects real-life criticisms: last year, a Human Rights Watch report urged Mexico to overhaul its police forces, noting that they are “infamous for their corruption, their use of torture and violence, and their ties to organized crime.”
Producer Elena Fortes told the media outlet Indiewire that “the project was born both as a work of art but also as an impact campaign to ignite new conversations regarding how Mexican society interacts with the police.”
A.R. Melgoza’s documentary Tolvanera brings together several matters of social justice as the young director and journalist traces the story of communal landowners in the community of El Bajío, located in the Sonora desert, who have been subject to violence on the mining site on their land, including the recent murders of environmental activists José de Jesús Robledo Cruz and María de Jesús Gómez Vega.
The documentary chronicles the landowners’ battle with the Mexican mining company Minera Penmont as well as Melgoza’s own attempts to explain the legal, social, cultural and political forces that have allowed the company to continue mining for gold on communally-owned land without the landowners’ permission. It also documents Melgoza’s efforts to stay alive in the process of making his film.
Tolvanera is produced along with the El Bajío landowners and has also been promoted by the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining, generating widespread awareness and support for the landowners in their fight against the mine.
Films such as this, deliberately aimed at making a social impact, are fast becoming the new normal in Mexican filmmaking. This is perhaps hardly surprising: the scale of social destruction and pain related to the war on drugs (350,000 deaths and 72,000 disappearances over the past 15 years) in Mexico, the domination of repressive foreign policy and the economic wreckage of global neoliberal capitalism all beg the need for social support and accompaniment, the fomentation of collective hope and the building of routes to justice and accountability that leave the rotten structures of the state and organized crime behind.
TOLVANERA | TRAILER
Trailer for A.R. Melgoza’s documentary Tolvanera.
Against this scene, storytelling on international screens may well carry the best hope for justice in Mexico, making the growing movement of social impact films one to watch.
The 2020 lottery awarded 100 prizes of 20 million pesos each.
A preschool in Chiapas might be questioning its luck after a lottery win brought a shooting and death threats to the community, forcing local people to abandon their homes and travel to a nearby town to protest.
The José María Morelos y Pavón preschool in the Tzeltal community of El Nacimiento, Chiapas, won a 20-million-peso (about US $940,000) prize in the presidential airplane lottery on September 15, 2020.
Parents at the preschool, which has just over two dozen students, began planning how to spend the winnings on upgrades to the school.
But the small fortune attracted the unwanted attention of a gang called Los Petules, who demanded that the parents spend the money on guns to attack villagers from the neighboring community of El Carrizal.
They refused and spent part of the money on a new roof for the school. The parents decided to use the remaining 14 million pesos for public works projects in the community.
In response, Los Petules put out death threats against four people connected to the school, and one local resident was shot in the stomach.
The situation escalated further in October when the gang reportedly attacked women and children in the village.
About 28 Tzeltal families traveled to San Cristóbal de las Casas, 80 kilometers west, to complain that they were forced out of the community. A spokesman for the families, Melesio López Gómez, said they were removed by force. “They threw us out of our homes,” he said.
The families demanded that members of Los Petules be disarmed so they could safely return to El Nacimiento to tend to their lands and cattle.
One member of the parents’ association said the community had lost “cattle, our homes, refrigerators, our corn and bean harvests, our chickens.”
A few days ago, Los Petules were accused of attacking the bases of militant groups that control large parts of Chiapas, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS).
Security Minister Rodríguez at Monday's press conference.
Homicides declined 3.9% in the first 10 months of 2021 compared to the same period of last year, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez reported Monday.
There were 2,714 homicides in October, lifting the accumulated total for 2021 to 28,101. Murders last month declined 2.2% compared to September and 8.2% compared to October last year.
Guanajuato was once again the most violent state in the country last month in terms of total victims, recording 295 homicides.
Michoacán ranked second with 258 followed by México state, Baja California and Jalisco, with 246, 205 and 173 murders, respectively.
Baja California Sur, which was plagued by violent crime up until just a few years ago, didn’t record a single homicide in October, while there was just one in Yucatán, four in Campeche and seven in Coahuila.
On a per capita basis, Zacatecas was the most violent state last month with 8.4 homicides per 100,000 people. The northern state has also been plagued by violence this month.
Morelos, Baja California, Michoacán and Sonora were the second to fifth most violent states on a per capital basis. Each recorded between five and six homicides per 100,000 people.
Rodríguez told President López Obrador’s regular news conference that 50% of homicides this year occurred in just six states: Guanajuato, Michoacán, Baja California, México state, Jalisco and Chihuahua.
She said homicides in the 50 municipalities identified as Mexico’s most violent, across which the federal government bolstered security efforts in late July, recorded a 2.2% decline in homicides between August and October compared to the same period of 2020. Murders went down in 26 municipalities, up in 22 and remained steady in two.
Tijuana remains the most violent city in the country followed by Ciudad Juárez, León, Cajeme (Ciudad Obregón) and Fresnillo.
The security minister also reported that femicides – the murder of women and girls on account of their gender – declined 14.8% in October compared to the same month of last year. There were 69 femicides last month, the second lowest monthly total since the federal government took office in December 2018.
There were 842 femicides in the first 10 months of the year, 133 fewer than in all of 2020, which was the worst year on record for the crime. Mexico is currently on track to record more than 1,000 femicides in a year for the first time ever.
Rodríguez also presented data for a range of other crimes.
Among those that decreased in the first 10 months of the year compared to the same period of 2020 were financial crimes, tax crimes, organized crime offenses, drug trafficking, firearms offenses, cattle theft, business robberies, vehicle theft and burglaries.
Among those that increased were human trafficking, electoral offenses, crimes committed by public officials, theft on public transit, muggings, carjackings, extortion and rape.
Half of the lights that will be sold for Christmas decorations this holiday season will be purchased on the black market and do not meet safety standards, says an industry spokesman.
Alberto Larios Segura, president of the Northern Electric and Solar Expo 2021, explained that of the 60 million units estimated to be sold this year, 50% fall short of official standards, or NOM, which he said can cause short circuits and fires, with serious consequences.
Analysts from the electrical sector, quoted by the newspaper El Universal, said buying bootleg lights could cause a number of hazards. “It’s a serious mistake to acquire a Christmas tree and lights on the black market, since normally these types of decorations do not have any certification that guarantees greater safety for the user.
Like any electrical appliance, a failure in the lights, or [a failure through] overloading the home’s electrical system, can generate short circuits, electrocution, burns or fires.”
To reduce the risk, the analysts recommended buying an artificial tree with a “fire resistant” or “non-flammable material” label.
However, the problem isn’t isolated to lights: 50% of sales for extension cords are also made on the black market, which also fall short of safety standards, Larios said.
The black market lights are produced in China and are not exclusively sold in informal market environments, but also in hardware stores and by formal vendors, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, the concerns of legitimate sellers go beyond safety. The economic damage is also substantial: the Christmas light market is worth 6 billion pesos (about US $283 million), of which 3 billion will go to the black market.
The economic damage is growing as Christmas lights become an increasingly popular festive decoration: sales of all Christmas lights are expected to increase 10% this year, meaning about 60 million units, according to Conacomee, a business group representing sellers of electronic goods.
Gun makers see a clash of national values. Leonardo Emiliozzi Ph / Shutterstock
United States-based gun manufacturers asked a U.S. federal court to dismiss a lawsuit brought against them by the Mexican government in August, arguing that it is not valid for a variety of reasons.
The federal government filed its lawsuit in the United States District Court in Massachusetts on August 4, accusing the gunmakers of negligent business practices that have led to illegal arms trafficking and deaths in Mexico.
In a 58-page joint memorandum filed with the court on Monday, nine firearms manufacturers and one distributor noted that the Mexican government is seeking to hold them legally responsible for violence perpetrated by drug cartels in Mexico.
“The complaint, however, does not allege that any of the moving defendants, who are law-abiding members of the business community in the United States, sell their firearms to the cartels. Nor does it even allege that they sell to any others who sell to the cartels,” the memorandum said.
“Instead, Mexico’s theory is that a series of third-party intermediaries in the United States legally or illegally sell and resell defendants’ firearms, which are then illegally obtained by criminal ‘straw purchasers,’ then illegally smuggled across the Mexican border, where they are eventually illegally used by drug cartels to commit criminal violence, which then gives rise to various financial harms suffered by the Mexican government,” said the defendants, among whom are Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Glock, Beretta and Sturm, Ruger & Co.
“For multiple reasons, the law cannot be stretched to impose liability over this spatial, temporal, and causal gulf.”
Mexico “does not have Article III standing to bring this case,” the memorandum said, referring to a prerequisite for a plaintiff to have a personal stake in the outcome of a lawsuit.
The defendants added that “it is a cardinal rule of standing that an injury is not fairly traceable to the defendant when,” according to a precedent, “it ‘results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.’”
“… Second, even if Mexico had standing, federal law would bar its claims at the threshold,” they said, noting that “federally licensed firearms manufacturers and sellers enjoy broad immunity against lawsuits claiming harms ‘resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a [firearm]’ by a ‘third party.’”
The defendants also said that Mexico’s lawsuit “does nothing more than put a new coat of paint on a recycled and discredited set of claims” and that authorities have made it clear that “the firearm industry owes no common-law duty to Mexico.”
“Even where corporations directly sell harmful products to foreign citizens, courts routinely reject claims that they have any legal duty to protect foreign sovereigns from derivative harms. The absence of duty is especially clear here, where Mexico does not even allege that the defendants make private sales in Mexico,” the memorandum said.
Speaking at the UN Security Council on Monday, Foreign Minister Ebrard called for self-regulation by arms manufacturers to prevent illegal trafficking of guns.
“Fifth, Mexico fails to state a ‘public nuisance’ claim. Numerous courts in multiple contexts, including in cases involving firearms, have held that the public-nuisance doctrine does not apply to the manufacture and sale of lawful products,” it said.
“Finally, Mexico cannot invoke Mexican tort law to impose liability that would not be allowed under U.S. law. Under bedrock principles of international law, a foreign nation cannot use its own law to reach across borders and impose liability based on conduct in another country that was lawful when it occurred there,” the defendants said.
“By trying to do so, Mexico is effectively seeking to impose its own gun control policies on U.S. firearms companies … At bottom, this case implicates a clash of national values. Whereas the United States recognizes the right to keep and bear arms, Mexico has all but eliminated private gun ownership,” they said.
“Mexico can, of course, impose gun control within its own borders. But in this case it seeks to reach outside its borders and punish firearms sales that are not only lawful but constitutionally protected in the United States.”
The memorandum claimed that Mexico is seeking to bankrupt U.S. gunmakers and trying to “use the judiciary as a tool for circumventing an active diplomatic dispute between the United States and Mexico about the international effects of U.S. firearms policy.”
“This court need not play along. It should dismiss the complaint,” the defendants said.
The Mexican government has until January 31 to respond to the defendants’ arguments.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told the United Nations Security Council on Monday that the U.N.’s efforts to combat illegal arms trafficking have fallen short.
Much effort has gone into strengthening international cooperation to “prevent and counteract illegal practices in the weapons markets and their terrible consequences,” he said.
“However, we must recognize that our efforts have been insufficient.”
He said better mechanisms are needed to monitor and prevent the international trafficking of arms and called on private companies to contribute to the fight.
“Private actors must contribute with decisive self-regulation actions and monitoring in their distribution chains for the purpose of avoiding the diversion and illegal trafficking of weapons they produce and sell … to ensure that those they make in accordance with the law don’t reach criminal hands,” Ebrard said.
“… It’s not about questioning the rights of countries and private individuals to sell weapons legally but about denouncing negligent practices,” he said.
The presidential decree will protect government infrastructure projects in a wide variety of sectors. Government of Mexico
President López Obrador has moved to protect and fast-track the federal government’s infrastructure projects from legal challenges and scrutiny by issuing a decree that establishes them as matters of public interest and national security.
Published in the Monday evening edition of the government’s official gazette and taking effect Tuesday, the decree drew criticism from several analysts, opposition politicians and others, who broadly agreed that it is indicative of an increasingly authoritarian government and will be detrimental to transparency.
The decree shields from scrutiny the construction of infrastructure projects in a wide range of sectors, including transportation, telecommunications, customs, water, tourism, health, the environment and energy.
It cited article 26 of the Mexican constitution, which says the state has a responsibility to organize “a democratic planning system for national development” that provides “strength, dynamism, competitiveness and equity to the growth of the economy and the political, social and cultural democratization of the nation.”
The decree also covers all projects whose construction is deemed a priority and strategic for national development. It protects signature infrastructure projects such as the new Mexico City airport, the Maya Train railroad and the Dos Bocas refinery, all of which have faced legal challenges.
National Action Party Senator Xóchitl Gálvez was among many political observers who said that the new decree is a blow to accountability by the federal government. Mexican Senate
The newspaper Reforma said the decree will allow the federal government to avoid having its projects halted by injunctions and other legal instruments.
It instructs government agencies to grant provisional authorizations and permits to projects deemed to be of public interest and national security in a maximum period of five working days so as to ensure their timely execution. If that period elapses without provisional authorization having been granted, the application “will be considered resolved in a positive sense,” the decree states.
Provisional authorization will be valid for 12 months after which a project will require definitive authorization to continue.
The requirement for agencies to issue expedited temporary approval to projects will come at the expense of environmental, feasibility and accountability review processes.
José Antonio Crespo, a political scientist, said the publication of the decree reveals the authoritarian character of the federal government and leaves those affected by its infrastructure projects – Mayan communities on the Yucatán Peninsula in the case of the Maya Train, for example – without the opportunity for legal recourse.
“It’s the authoritarian way of doing things because in a democracy, the possibility of litigation is accepted,” he said.
Crespo also said the publication of the decree shows that the president knows that his infrastructure projects have numerous deficiencies.
“[There is] certainly corruption, … there are a lot of direct allocations [of contracts], there is surely a lot of missing money,” he said.
“… It suits him [López Obrador] to declare projects of national security [importance] so that the injunctions of people who are being affected, groups whose interests are possibly being violated, don’t work,” Crespo said.
Alberto Aziz Nassif, an academic at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, said the decree will affect people’s ability to access information about infrastructure projects, representing a blow to transparency.
The National Defense Ministry refused in 2019 to release the master plan for the new Mexico City airport on the grounds that doing so placed national security at risk, even though López Obrador had pledged that all information related to the construction of the airport would be made public.
The Maya Train project, seen here in this rendering, is among many high-profile construction projects now shielded from scrutiny. Government of Mexico
If an application for information is submitted to the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information (INAI), it will be blocked as a result of the decree, Aziz said.
“How much was spent on an infrastructure project and who carried it out won’t be known,” he said, adding that public works will be shrouded in darkness. “[The decree] is a backward step [for transparency],” Aziz said.
Jacqueline Peschard, a former president of the INAI and the National Anti-Corruption System, also said the move was a setback for transparency, asserting that it violates transparency provisions in the constitution.
“All public projects, everything related to public resources must be public. It can’t simply be something that is decided arbitrarily,” she said.
Valeria Moy, director of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think tank, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a National Action Party (PAN) senator, agreed.
“[It’s] another blow to transparency and accountability by the 4T [fourth transformation],” Gálvez said, referring to the government by its self-anointed nickname.
“This government is increasingly heading towards authoritarianism. … It won’t have to consult with indigenous peoples nor present environmental impact statements and will be able to jump over municipal and state [requirements for] permits,” she said.
Fellow PAN Senator Damián Zepeda predicted that the “illegal infrastructure decree” will face a challenge in the Supreme Court but lamented that López Obrador will have enough support in the court to defeat it.
Independent Senator Emilio Álvarez Icaza said Mexico has moved dangerously to a “state of emergency” due to López Obrador’s overriding of existing legislation.
“Today’s presidential decree favors conduct by the authorities that is outside the law,” he wrote on Twitter. “… His authoritarian character and disdain for the law are his essence.”
Paolo Salerno, a managing partner of the energy consultancy Salerno y Asociados, took aim at the instruction for government agencies to grant provisional authorization for projects in just five days.
“How can it be determined in five days whether there is an environmental, social or human rights violation? What happens if the final ruling is negative and measures with irreversible impacts have already been implemented?” he asked.
The president said on Tuesday the directive was aimed at stopping bureaucracy from holding up projects, allowing the government to bypass environmental and other regulatory checks.
“Its very troubling because for a government that says it’s committed to transparency and accountability this decision is anything but,” said Arturo Sarukhán, former Mexican ambassador to the U.S., saying that the rules had set the tone for the second half of López Obrador’s term.
“What you’re going to see, and this is one of the first signals, is a president that is actually going to double down on his pet peeves, his pet projects,” he said.
Eleven Mexican restaurants have been judged among Latin America’s 50 Best while another eight made the top 100 for 2021.
The best restaurant in Mexico — and not for the first time — is Pujol, in the up-market borough of Polanco in Mexico City, which was ranked fifth best in Latin America. Quintonil, also in Polanco, is considered Latin America’s eighth best restaurant.
Four more Mexico City eateries made the top 50:Sud 777 (Álvaro Obregón) in 12th place, Rosetta (Cuauhtémoc) in 27th, Máximo Bistrot (Cuauhtémoc) in 33rd and Nicos (Azcapotzalco) 35th.
Pangea in Monterrey, Nuevo León, was rated 15th, Alcalde in Guadalajara, Jalisco, was 32nd, Le Chique in Cancún, Quintana Roo, was 38th, Corazón de Tierra, near Ensenada, Baja California, was 40th and Amaranta in Toluca, México state, took 44th place.
However, Peru triumphed as Latin America’s best destination for foodies: its restaurants took first, second and fourth place on the list. La Central in Lima was declared the best place to satisfy your appetite in all of Latin America.
Baja California had a strong showing among Mexican restaurants that ranked between 50th and 100th. Ensenada’s Manzanilla and Laja took 62nd and 79th place respectively; Deckman’s in Valle de Guadalupe was 98th.
Guadalajara’s La Docena was in 57th place, Mexico City’s Merotoro (Cuauhtémoc) was in 72nd place and Dulce Patria (Polanco) 85th.
Oaxaca bolstered the south of Mexico with Casa Oaxaca at 63 and Pitiona at 95, both in Oaxaca city.
What constitutes best was left to the 252 regional industry experts to decide, among whom 34% are chefs and restaurateurs, 33% are food writers and 33% are “well-travelled gourmets.” Each votes for 10 restaurants, at least four of which must be outside their own country.
The competition, often described as the Academy Awards of gastronomy, is organized by William Reed Business Media.
