Ash falling from the skies. Hundreds of people evacuated. The destruction of federally protected land. These are some of the consequences of one of the worst forest fire seasons in a decade.
According to a report by the National Forestry Commission (Conafor) Mexico had recorded 1,684 forest fires as of March 11, affecting 29,559 hectares of land, the third most extensive loss of forest lands in Mexico in a decade, the report said.
And the fight is by no means over: last month, Conafor issued a warning that Mexico was in danger of experiencing a critical forest fire season this year. As of Wednesday, the federal agency said Mexico was battling 61 active forest fires in 20 states, representing 11,478 hectares of land.
That’s up from 52 fires in 17 states on 14,160 hectares on Tuesday. Conafor said 2,844 firefighters were at working on the blazes.
A major reason for the high number of fires is Mexico’s wide-ranging drought. As of March 15, the National Water Commission (Conagua) said that 1,694 of Mexico’s 2,643 municipalities, or 83%, were in drought conditions. In December, the agency declared seven of Mexico’s northeastern states to be in a state of natural disaster due to drought.
A firefighter at work at one of 61 active fires burning in Mexico.
Meanwhile, this year’s La Niña weather phenomenon is only increasing drought conditions.
The consequences of such dry conditions are clear in two northern states, where fires in the Sierra de Arteaga region of Coahuila and the Sierra de Santiago region of Nuevo León have destroyed more than 2,000 hectares of land and displaced 400 people, according to Forbes México. In Monterrey last week, residents saw ash falling from the sky due to that fire and an ongoing fire in the nearby Cumbres de Monterrey protected reserve, where 2,100 hectares of land were threatened.
Cumbres de Monterrey is just one of 14 federally protected reserves that currently have areas on fire, according to Conafor. Another is the Sierra de Manantlán, which in the last few years has been identified as part of Mexico’s jaguar corridor.
Meanwhile, Conafor is working with a continually shrinking budget and financial resources that states battling wildfires could normally turn to for help have been dismantled in the last year. In 2016, Conafor’s budget was 7 billion pesos, according to the newspaper La Jornada. This year’s budget is a mere 2.76 billion, an 8.6% cut from last year. Meanwhile, President López Obrador eliminated the Natural Disaster Fund, known as Fonden. It was one of more than 100 trusts, or fideicomisos, eliminated by the federal government.
There doesn’t seem to be much good news on the horizon for emergency crews in the coming days: a high-pressure weather system is expected to keep temperatures hot in the northeast and in many other areas of the nation.
Attolini's statement generated a lot of comments on social media. Among them: 'The brown-nosing is out of control.'
A Morena party candidate for deputy in Coahuila has been both criticized and praised after comparing President López Obrador to Jesus Christ and some of the world’s most revered leaders.
Antonio Attolini, who wants to represent the city of Torreón in the lower house of Congress, made the comparison in an interview broadcast on Monday, saying that López Obrador could be described as “similar to the greatest leaders in history” because of his dedication to “the idea of sacrifice in the name of something bigger.”
Probed about the leaders to whom he was referring, Attolini told the program Tragaluz:
“Jesus Christ, of course, Mahatma Gandhi, [Martin] Luther King, [Nelson] Mandela; he’s at that level.”
Attolini, 30, also said that AMLO, as the president is commonly known, has been inspired by Mexico’s “great leaders,” including former presidents Benito Juárez and Lázaro Cárdenas and independence hero Miguel Hidalgo.
“There hasn’t been a social leader in this country who dedicates so much time of his life to thinking about others,” he said.
The candidate, a former aspirant to the Morena party national presidency, said that he was speaking of his own accord, asserting that the National Palace – the seat of executive power – had not instructed him what to say and what not to say during the interview.
His Jesus-AMLO analogy triggered an outpouring of commentary on social media.
“I met Attolini when he was the complete opposite of what he is today; people change when they cross the line of opportunistic fanaticism. Their reasoning is clouded and they say complete nonsense,” Angélica de la Peña, a former Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) senator and deputy, wrote on Twitter.
Fernando Belaunzarán, another former PRD lawmaker, wrote on the same platform that it’s known that the president likes to be flattered and for that reason “the brown-nosing competition is out of control.”
Alejandro Rosas, a writer, simply called the candidate an “idiot” while comedian and YouTuber Chumel Torres wrote that Attolini’s remarks made him want to give him a “good whack.”
In contrast, political analyst Abraham Mendieta described the candidate’s performance on the program as “excellent.”
Navy marines, described as a humanitarian rescue group, parade through the streets of Villahermosa on Tuesday.
More than 35,000 migrants have entered Mexico over the past three months via the border with Guatemala in Tabasco, the head of the National Immigration Institute (INM) said Tuesday as the federal government held talks with its United States counterpart to canvass ways to reduce migration to the Mexico-U.S. border.
Francisco Garduño said Central American migrants, guided in some cases by criminal groups, are entering Mexico via the Grijalva River in Tabasco. He said that INM personnel, supported by the army, navy, National Guard, state police and Civil Protection authorities, will bolster security on the southern border to stem the rising flow of migrants attempting to reach the United States to seek asylum or enter that country illegally.
“We have to patrol El Ceibo [a border community in Tabasco] and Tenosique [a municipality that borders Guatemala],” Garduño said during a visit to state capital Villahermosa.
“A lot of migrants are now passing in boats via the Grijalva River. They’re taking another route [to enter Mexico], it’s no longer the Ciudad Hidalgo route,” he said, referring to the southern border town south of Tapachula in Chiapas.
“Every time we patrol a regular or irregular access point, the smugglers or [human] traffickers obviously take other paths and surveillance becomes more difficult.”
The INM chief said that security needs to be bolstered on the southern border to combat human trafficking as well as drug trafficking and other crimes.
“We’re applying the law of controlled, safe migration,” Garduño said, adding that adult migrants are using children as “passports” to travel though Mexico to the United States.
He said that last weekend alone more than 1,000 migrants entered the country illegally via the border in Tabasco. They face a range of dangers, Garduño added.
“It’s a dangerous area of snakes and jaguars; they reach the river and hire some boats to travel to dry land. That’s what we have to avoid,” he said.
Some migrants walk for about a week to reach Palenque, Chiapas, after entering the country in Tabasco, facing additional risks, including dehydration, along the way.
Garduño said that federal authorities will target people who profit off migrants by promising to guide them into Mexico and to the United States.
Immigration chief Garduño said migrants face a range of dangers, such jaguars, snakes and dehydration.
“We must attack networks that organize [migrant] caravans,” he said, adding that they charge migrants – “honest people with desires and new hopes” – up to US $4,500.
The federal government closed the southern border to nonessential traffic last Friday, ostensibly as a measure to control the spread of the coronavirus virus. But although both Mexico and the United States denied there was a quid pro quo, the move was widely seen as a concession to the U.S. government, which announced that it would send 2.5 million Covid-19 vaccines to Mexico the same day the closure was announced.
It remains to be seen how effective the southern border closure – currently scheduled to remain in force until April 22 – will be in stemming the flow of migrants to the northern border, where large numbers of people, encouraged by the change in the U.S. government, have recently arrived to attempt to seek asylum.
The Washington Post reported that the new U.S. government is “desperate for help from Mexico to contain what’s on track to be the biggest surge in irregular migration in 20 years.”
In that context, a United States delegation led by southern border coordinator Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico, traveled to Mexico City on Tuesday to meet with officials, including Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
According to Emily Horne, a U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman, the U.S. officials were seeking to “develop an effective and humane plan of action to manage migration” with their Mexican counterparts.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Ebrard and Jacobson discussed “mechanisms of cooperation that promote orderly, safe and regular migration in the region.”
The United States Embassy in Mexico subsequently published a voice message to social media in which Jacobson urges migrants not to travel to the U.S. because “the border is closed.”
The meeting came a day after Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval announced that 8,715 army and National Guard troops had been deployed to the southern and northern borders to detain undocumented migrants.
That number was reported as a significant bolstering of border security but according to Sam Storr, a Mexican military scholar who is a consultant to the the citizen security program at Ibero-American University, it’s only just above the average of 8,058 troops that were deployed to the borders in 2020.
In contrast, some 15,000 troops were deployed to the northern border alone in 2019 after former U.S. president Donald Trump threatened to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican goods if Mexico didn’t do more to stem the arrival of migrants.
As Garduño indicated, Central American migrants have continued to flow into Mexico via informal, rural border crossings despite the closure of the formal border last Friday.
Brenda Ochoa, director of the Fray Matías de Córdova human rights center in Tapachula, told the Post that the National Guard had deployed to the Suchiate River, which separates Guatemala from Mexico in Chiapas, but warned that the bolstered security there would likely push migrants to try to cross the border in more remote and dangerous areas – as has been occurring in Tabasco.
“They will look for other ways to get in and take more risks,” she said.
Irregular migration to the U.S. border from countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador decreased significantly after Mexico ramped up enforcement to stave off the tariffs threatened by Trump but has surged recently due to a range of factors including coronavirus-induced economic crises, destruction caused by two powerful hurricanes that slammed into Central America last year, the end of strict coronavirus lockdowns and a belief that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden will be more welcoming to migrants.
Vaccine that turned up in Campeche appeared to be Sputnik V.
More than 1,000 people were injected with a fake Covid-19 vaccine allegedly imported by a Pakistani man with business interests in Campeche.
According to a report by the newspaper Reforma, fake Sputnik V vaccines were imported by Mohamad Yusuf Amdani Bai – considered one of the richest people in Honduras – and administered to workers at a Campeche textile factory he owns.
Fake vaccine doses were also reportedly given to other people close to Amdani, including company executives and politicians.
In addition, taxi drivers and merchants, some of whom are from Mérida, Yucatán, and Mexico City, received shots of the fake vaccine, Reforma said.
People close to Amdani, who has cultivated relationships with Campeche politicians since he began investing in the Gulf coast state at the start of the century, were reportedly given the fake vaccine shots at a hotel he owns in Campeche city as well as a private medical practice, also located in the state capital.
They were administered starting March 10 at the Ocean View Hotel and the clinic and March 15 at Grupo Karim’s textile factory. Reforma spoke to two people who received fake shots, both of whom expressed concerns about the health consequences of being injected with an unknown substance.
News of the fake vaccine shots comes after customs at Campeche airport last week seized 5,775 doses of fake Sputnik V vaccine hidden beneath a shipment of soft drinks.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund, the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, thanked Mexican authorities for the seizure of the fake vaccines.
“Analysis of the photographs of the seized batch, including the design of containers and labels, suggests that it is a fake substance which has nothing to do with the original vaccine,” the fund said in a statement.
After the seizure of the fake doses, Amdani’s textile factory closed its doors and workers were given vacations until April 4, Reforma said.
The businessman is under investigation by the federal Attorney General’s Office in connection with the fake vaccines.
American Composer David Serkin Ludwig will assess four Mexican conservatory students' works in an online webinar which the public can watch free.
What does an emerging student composer have to learn from an older, more established one? Under the right circumstances, a great deal.
Consider the young, unknown Leonard Bernstein, studying composition with the already famous Aaron Copland. Copland could be merciless, once telling Bernstein his new piece was merely “warmed-over Scriabin” (the Russian composer), apart from two good bars.
“He’d say, ‘Take these two bars and start from there,’” Bernstein recalled years later.
Such insights did not discourage the young composer — they exhilarated him.
On Thursday, music students and enthusiasts can share in that same kind of exhilaration as American composer David Serkin Ludwig, whose choral work, The New Colossus, was performed at President Obama’s second inauguration, will give an online master class in composition to four young composers from music schools at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) and the National Institute of the Fine Arts (INBA).
Composer Maria Granilla, a professor of music at UNAM, will present to Ludwig works by her students Nicolas Hernández and Óscar Solís.
During the two-hour class, which the festival will stream for free for the general public to watch in a webinar format, Ludwig will be evaluating the students’ pieces. A question-and-answer session will follow.
Ludwig’s seminar is the latest in a series of online master classes presented jointly by the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the San Miguel Chamber Music Festival in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato. The monthly online series, which began in September, has thus far been devoted to instrumental performance – clarinet, piano, cello, flute, and viola. Ludwig’s composition class is the first of its kind for the festival.
The series of classes has been very well received by music schools and students alike and has had as many as 125 observers throughout Mexico, said festival board member Mick Lockey. It also allows the Curtis Institute of Music, one of the most prestigious music conservatories in the world, to see the talent in Mexico, he said.
“The virtual master class is something very positive that has come out of this pandemic,” said Helenmarie Corcoran, festival president. “This is going to be an ongoing feature of the festival, a chance to spread our influence beyond weekend master classes with visiting musicians.”
During the class, professor María Granillo of UNAM will be presenting her students, Nicolas Hernández and Óscar Solís, with their works. Hernández’s work is “Danza en espacio gris” (“Dance in Gray Space”), for alto saxophone and piano. Solís’ work is titled “Glosolalias: 5 movimientos para quinteto de maderas y piano” (Glossolalias: 5 Movements for Woodwind and Piano Quintet”).
From the Escuela Superior de Música of INBA, professor José Enrique González Medina will present his students’ works: Erick Rodríguez’s “Café,” for saxophone quartet, and Alejandro Heredia’s “Recuperando el aliento” (“Catching My Breath”), for wind quintet.
David Ludwig, whose work The New Colossus was performed at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration.
Previously in the series, all the online classes, presented over Zoom conference calls, have been conducted in Spanish. Ludwig’s class will be presented in English with the festival administrative director, Florencia Ojeda Carbajal, providing Spanish translation.
Free advance registration to watch Ludwig’s class is required.
World-class chamber musicians are tentatively scheduled to perform at this year’s festival, scheduled for August 12–28, although no decision has been yet made on whether there will, in fact, be live music this year.
Whatever transpires, the collaboration with the Curtis Institute, born of the pandemic, will remain a part of the festival’s mission to offer high-quality music instruction to the next generation of talented Mexican students.
Frederic Dannen writes about the music business for Billboard.
The president fields reporters' questions at the daily press conference.
President López Obrador’s weekday press conferences constitute “a worrying instrument of misinformation,” according to a press freedom advocacy organization.
The president appears before reporters every weekday morning to respond to questions at a press briefing that sometimes lasts as long as three hours. He uses the mañanera, as his morning presser is colloquially known, to promote the government and deride his critics and political opponents, setting the daily news agenda in the process.
Reporters known to be friendly to the government are often given preferential treatment when it comes to the opportunity to query the president while those who ask critical questions run the risk of being branded as members of the “elitist” or “conservative” press.
In its 2020 annual report published Tuesday, Article 19 said that the content of López Obrador’s press conferences is little more than government propaganda.
“Over time, the mañanera has moved away from being a true space of information, transparency and accountability and become a space in which the agenda of the executive is … positioned [in a positive light] at any cost, even by sacrificing the truth about government performance,” said the report, entitled Distortion: Discourse against Reality.
“… We additionally note that it represents a worrying instrument of misinformation,” Article 19 added.
The organization also said that 2020 was the worst year ever for violence against media workers with a total of 692 acts of aggression, an increase of 13.6% compared to 2019. Article 19 partially attributed the rise to verbal attacks against the media by López Obrador and other federal officials.
Such attacks cause a “cascade effect” that leads to harassment, threats or worse, the organization said, noting that six journalists were killed last year and 17 have been murdered since López Obrador took office in late 2018.
Article 19 also criticized the government for not responding adequately to information requests made by members of the public. On 389 occasions last year, the government provided clearly incompetent responses to citizens’ questions, the group said.
“… This strategy to avoid compliance with its obligation shows that [access to government] information … is closed,” it said.
Six investigative journalists who spoke with the newspaper El Economista last month warned that incorporating the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information, an autonomous body, into a government ministry or department would make accessing public information more difficult and pose a threat to their profession.
Monreal will consult with constituents on his smoking ban.
A day made all the difference for Morena party Senator Ricardo Monreal, who on Monday proposed a ban on smoking in private vehicles — and a day later made an abrupt about-face, telling journalists that he had withdrawn the idea and planned to consult his constituents first.
“There are other priorities,” he told the newspaper Reforma Tuesday in an interview.
The proposal would have fined smokers who lit up inside a vehicle 14,000 pesos (US $675).
“Although the health of minors and pregnant women is also important, I am going to listen to the opinion of citizens before presenting the bill formally, as I do with controversial initiatives,” he said,
Monreal has a habit of coming up with such initiatives, which he then generally withdraws. In the past, he has made proposals for merging the regulatory bodies in the energy and telecommunications sectors, regulating social media networks, reducing bank commissions, and imposing tougher regulations on credit rating agencies.
When he proposed the idea on Monday, Monreal said he was seeking to protect minors, pregnant women, and senior citizens from exposure to second-hand smoke, adding that around 8 million people are killed each year worldwide from exposure to tobacco, and 1.2 million of them are killed by second-hand smoke.
“Passive intake of tobacco causes series cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses since the smoke from these products contains around 4,000 known chemicals, of which 250 are harmful, and more than 50 are considered carcinogens to human beings,” he said.
On Tuesday, Monreal told Reforma that despite his polarizing announcement, his plans had not yet actually translated into a concrete initiative. “We’re going to listen to citizens’ opinions,” he said. “At the moment, the priority is the attention to health and the proper dynamic of economic reactivation.”
Monreal’s controversial proposal came in the context of Mexico’s lawmakers considering 16 wide-ranging changes to the nation’s tobacco control laws, many of which seek to put new restrictions on the consumption, sale, packaging and advertising of tobacco products, as well as prohibitions on the use, import and export, sale and manufacturing of e-cigarettes and vaping products.
Among the changes being proposed is a ban on the latter in public spaces.
Proponents of the reforms point to, among other things, the high cost of Mexico’s tobacco use: according to the Pan American Health Organization, smoking-related illnesses costs the government 80 billion pesos a year (US $3.85 billion) and result in disabilities and early death for more than 65,000 persons annually.
Opponents, among which are several business associations, say the reforms would hurt small business owners and would cause a rise in black-market sales of cigarettes at cheaper prices, which would lead to more consumption by minors not subject to age verification. They also point to what they say is the irony of Mexico putting such restrictions on cigarettes when it has just legalized marijuana.
Site of a checkpoint installed by the Los Correa Cartel on a Michoacán highway last month.
Authorities in Michoacán have identified a new drug cartel with roots in illegal logging in the east of the state.
According to a report by the news agency EFE, the Michoacán government last month launched a new security operation supported by the army and National Guard to locate narco-camps and members of a criminal organization called the Los Correa Cartel. All-terrain armored vehicles and helicopters are supporting the operation led by Michoacán state police.
EFE, which obtained information from the Michoacán Security Ministry, said Los Correa has been involved in illegal logging in the state for two decades.
The organization is reportedly led by Daniel Correa Velázquez, known by the alias “El Tigre” (The Tiger). His family’s first foray into the criminal world, according to the EFE report, was illegal logging. In more recent times the cartel has allegedly moved into marijuana cultivation, the production of synthetic drugs, extortion, kidnapping and other criminal activities.
It is currently believed to have an alliance with the Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel that has operated in Michoacán for years. Both organizations are engaged in a conflict with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is seeking to expand its presence in the state.
Michoacán police and federal security forces have been pursuing Los Correa since at least September last year, making 310 arrests and seizing 81 stolen vehicles and 42 weapons in a six-month period to mid-March. The authorities have also destroyed 43,600 marijuana plants allegedly grown by Los Correa, EFE reported.
In addition, authorities located four narco-camps in forested areas of the municipalities of Zitácuaro and Hidalgo that were used by Los Correa hitmen.
In the latter municipality, state police and federal forces clashed gangsters hiding out at a narco-camp near the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. One cartel sicario was killed in the gunfight and a member of the National Guard was wounded. The authorities arrested three other cartel members and seized vehicles, weapons and 20 kilograms of marijuana.
An alleged chief hitman of the cartel known by the nickname “El Feo” (The Ugly One) was arrested in México state last Thursday on charges that he murdered a Michoacán police commander in late February and wounded another officer.
US producers are unhappy with a campaign in Mexico that disparages US corn-based sweeteners.
President López Obrador has ruled out changing his administration’s agriculture policies after more than 20 United States agricultural groups wrote to the U.S. government to raise concerns about trade with Mexico.
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and 26 other agricultural organizations sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Monday that noted that “the food and agriculture trade relationship with Mexico has declined markedly.”
The organizations said the implementation last July of the USMCA, the new North American free trade agreement, has not reversed that trend and urged Vilsack and Tai to address “this important but quickly deteriorating trade relationship.”
The groups, among which are also the American Feed Industry Association, the National Corn Growers Association, the National Potato Council and the U.S. Grains Council, raised concerns about Mexico’s plan to stop importing genetically modified corn and phase out the use of glyphosate, a controversial herbicide.
They also voiced opposition to increasing obstacles to dairy trade, an organic export certification requirement, Mexico’s “state-sponsored campaign of disparagement of corn sweeteners from the U.S.” – which the government has described as “poison,” meat industry market access rules, food labeling requirements and a potato import ban that has mostly shut American potato farms out of the Mexican market.
In addition, the agricultural groups asserted that the Mexican government has created “significant uncertainty for agricultural biotechnology” by halting the review and approval of biotechnology applications since May 2018.
“As a result, Mexico has become a significant barrier to launching new biotechnology products within North America, potentially restricting U.S. farmer access to new technologies that will assist in addressing critical issues such as sustainability and climate change,” the letter said.
“We are eager to work with you to address challenges in the Mexico trade relationship, which is critical to U.S. farmers, ranchers, producers, and workers,” it concluded.
Dave Salmonsen, AFBF senior director of congressional relations, told the agricultural newspaper Capital Press that some issues, such as the potato import ban, have been going on for years while others are fairly recent.
“Things just aren’t getting addressed,” he said, adding that it seemed like a good time to address the issues again given that a new government is in office. Salmonsen said Mexico has been a good market for U.S. producers and noted that it’s the leading market for some commodities such as corn and dairy products.
“It’s been a growing market, and we want to keep it growing,” he said.
Speaking at his regular news conference on Tuesday, López Obrador said the government would not alter its agriculture policies in light of the concerns.
“We very much respect those who raise these issues, that’s their right, but we’re applying a policy to put an end to corruption and boost the countryside to achieve food self-sufficiency and not harm the health of Mexicans at the same time,” he said.
“There are agro-chemicals that harm the health of farmers, producers and consumers and we’re not going to allow our people to be poisoned,” López Obrador said.
“… We have to make sure that the consumption of food matches health recommendations; we’re not going to allow genetically modified corn and in the case of glyphosate we’re regulating its entry [into Mexico] because it’s proven that it causes harm – it’s a herbicide, a chemical and we have to look after people’s health.”
Probed as to whether the government could tweak aspects of its agricultural policies to appease U.S. farmers, the president responded:
“No, it’s the same policy – to try to produce in Mexico what we consume so that we don’t have to buy corn, beans and rice. We’ve reached an extreme of buying [from abroad] 85% of the rice we consume; every time we’re at the table with a plate of rice we think that unfortunately it wasn’t produced in Mexico yet before it was.”
“The productive activity in the countryside was abandoned [by past governments], now we’re supporting the producers, that’s why we have the guaranteed prices [for five agricultural products],” López Obrador added.
Ikea's new store is located in the Encuentro Oceanía shopping center near the airport.
After a delay in opening last fall due to Covid-19, Ikea is set to open its first store in Mexico. But you’ll have to make a reservation to go shopping.
The retail giant announced that doors will open at its three-story, 23,500-square-meter store on April 8 in the Encuentro Oceanía shopping center. But to maintain Covid-19 social distancing measures, the store is requiring that visitors go online to schedule a visit.
Until Mexico City’s color on the national coronavirus stoplight map changes, only 7,500 people will be allowed inside the store at a time, 30% of the store’s capacity. However, customers can order items online and pick them up in the store, officials said.
Customers wishing to enter the store will be able to make a reservation — through the webpage or its mobile app — starting April 1. Members of the Ikea Family club — a rewards club for customers — will be notified when they can make a reservation, Ikea México said.
Director Malcom Pruys said the store has been the most challenging to set up due to Covid-19. The store was originally supposed to open in October, but the coronavirus pandemic pushed that date back.
Among other issues the company has faced in opening, said Pruys, is lower-than-normal store inventory: Ikea stores normally carry 7,400 different articles for sale, but the Mexico store will start with only 5,300 because of logistics delays.
The company also faced logistics issues when it opened its online store in October. Demand was immediately so high that within days the company was running out of products and the site was warning customers that deliveries could be delayed as much as a month.
Like other Ikea stores, the Mexico City branch, located near the Mexico City airport, will include a restaurant with a Swedish menu. What is less usual is that it will have inventory that the company says is meant to help customers create more environmentally sustainable homes. The building itself is equipped with solar panels and a rainwater capturing system.
The store will also have a customer service area where visitors can meet with home interior design experts.
