Thursday, July 17, 2025

Coronavirus stoplight map changes color as new case numbers show decline

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coronavirus stoplight map
Next week's stoplight map is noticeably less red than the current one. ministry of health

Mexico will have just two maximum risk red light states as of Monday, according to the updated coronavirus stoplight map presented by the federal government on Friday, a reduction of 11 compared to the map currently in force.

Health Ministry official Ricardo Cortés said that only Guanajuato and Guerrero will remain red next week, while the other 11 maximum risk states will switch to high risk orange.

Orange is the predominant color on the updated map, with 21 of Mexico’s 32 states painted that color.

The orange light states for the next two weeks will be Mexico City, México state, Nuevo León, Jalisco, Querétaro, Hidalgo, Morelos, San Luis Potosí, Puebla, Nayarit and Colima – all of which will switch to that color from red – as well Baja California Sur, Coahuila, Zacatecas, Veracruz, Michoacán, Aguascalientes, Oaxaca, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Tlaxcala, which are already orange.

There are eight medium risk yellow light states on the updated map and one at low risk green – Chiapas, which will return to that color on Monday four weeks after it regressed to yellow.

Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio

The yellow light states for the next two weeks will be Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and  Tabasco – all of which will switch to that color from orange – as well as Campeche, which is already yellow.

Each stoplight color, determined by the Health Ministry using 10 different indicators including case numbers and hospital occupancy levels, is accompanied by recommended restrictions to slow the spread of the virus but it is ultimately up to state governments to decide on their own restrictions.

The publication of the updated stoplight map, on which no state regressed to a higher risk level for the first time this year, comes as new case numbers are trending downwards.

There are currently 67,688 active cases in the country, according to Health Ministry estimates, whereas the figure was above 110,000 in late January. The average number of daily cases reported in the first 12 days of February – 9,558 – was 32% lower than the daily average in January.

Cortés highlighted that the national positivity rate – the percentage of Covid-19 tests that come back positive – had recently declined 4% to 34%. The national hospital occupancy rate for general care beds is 45% and only two states – Mexico City and México state – have a rate of 70% or higher whereas several states were recently above that level.

But while there is evidence that Mexico is coming through the worst days of the pandemic – January was the worst month to date for both new case numbers and Covid-19 fatalities – the daily death rate remains very high.

The Health Ministry reported a daily average of 1,168 fatalities in the first 12 days of February, an increase of almost 11% compared to January.

Mexico’s accumulated case tally rose to almost 1.98 million on Friday with 10,388 new cases reported while the Covid-19 death toll increased to 172,557 with 1,323 additional fatalities registered.

As the spike in case numbers in January was largely attributed to family and friends coming together over the Christmas–New Year holiday period, authorities are understandably urging people to not gather in large numbers for Valentine’s Day celebrations this Sunday.

In Mexico City, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum called on citizens to not organize or attend parties or family gatherings this weekend, advising people to wait until “we’re all vaccinated” before celebrating with loved ones.

Mexico’s vaccination efforts have virtually stalled as there is a very limited number of doses currently in the country, but about 1.5 million AstraZeneca and Pfizer shots are expected to arrive over the next two days, allowing the inoculation of seniors to begin.

To date, Mexico has administered just over 726,000 Pfizer vaccine doses, mainly to the country’s frontline healthcare workers.

Source: El Universal (sp) 

Stoplight to turn orange for Mexico city, México state after 8 weeks at maximum risk red

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Mexico City residents will see some restrictions eased but must keep up their guard.
Mexico City residents will see some restrictions eased.

After remaining at the red light maximum risk level on the coronavirus stoplight map for eight weeks, Mexico City and Mexico state will switch to high risk orange on Monday as hospital occupancy rates trend downwards in both entities.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced Friday that the capital would transition to a virus control stage she called “orange stoplight without dropping our guard.”

Hospital occupancy in Mexico City has fallen to just below 68%, government official Eduardo Clark told a press conference Friday. The rate had risen to as high as 90% and numerous hospitals in the capital reached 100% capacity in recent weeks.

Clark said that daily case numbers and the positivity rate are also on the wane. Mexico City has recorded more than 514,000 confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and 31,655 Covid-19 deaths, far more in both categories than any other state in the country.

Once the stoplight switches to orange, Mexico City restaurants will be permitted to stay open an additional hour until 10:00 p.m. but they will remain limited to outdoor dining for in-house customers.

Mayor Sheinbaum
Mayor Sheinbaum: ‘Don’t drop your guard.’

Theatrical productions will be permitted in outdoor spaces, and gyms and public swimming pools will be allowed to reopen, although group classes will remain prohibited. Churches and other places of worship will be permitted to reopen between 7:00 a.m and 7:00 p.m. but religious services cannot be held.

Department stores and shopping centers were allowed to reopen this week at 20% of their usual capacity.

Announcing the switch to orange in México state, Governor Alfredo del Mazo noted that new case numbers and hospitalizations have begun to fall. Hospital occupancy for general care beds is 69%, according to federal data, and 58% for beds with ventilators.

Del Mazo said that all commercial establishments that are already open, including department stores and shopping centers, will be permitted to operate at 30% capacity until 9:00 p.m. every day of the week starting Monday. He said that restaurants will be permitted to operate at 30% capacity in indoor spaces and 40% in outdoor areas until 10:00 p.m. seven days a week.

Party halls and nightclubs must remain closed and large events are still prohibited, the governor said.

“We have to be very responsible with the reopening. We have to find the balance that allows us to keep looking after our health, which is the main priority, and at the same time support families’ economies,” del Mazo said.

“… It’s the time to continue being careful and to maintain the preventative measures. [We have to] continue looking after the health of our families, especially the elderly.”

México state ranks second among the 32 states for both coronavirus cases and Covid-19 deaths. It has recorded more than 203,000 of the former and almost 20,000 fatalities.

Including Mexico City and México state, there are currently 13 red light states on the federal stoplight map but the Health Ministry is due to present an updated map Friday night and it appears likely that some additional states will lose their maximum risk status.

Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro said Thursday that the risk level in that state had declined to orange light high and asserted that, according to federal government criteria, it was even close to switching to medium risk yellow.

He said that there has been a “significant” reduction in all the indicators the federal government uses to assess the coronavirus risk level, including case numbers and hospitalizations, and claimed that the restrictions implemented by his administration were behind the decrease.

“There is clear evidence that the right thing was done,” Alfaro said.

mexico city covid poster
‘We’re on stoplight orange,’ reads the notice. ‘Don’t drop your guard, use face masks [to] protect yourself and others.’

Coronavirus case numbers are also on the wane nationally compared to January, which was the worst month of the pandemic with almost 440,000 new cases. However, Covid-19 fatalities have increased this month.

The Health Ministry reported an average of 9,482 new cases per day in the first 11 days of February, a 33% decline compared to the January average. The accumulated case tally currently stands at just under 1.97 million.

An average of 1,154 Covid-19 deaths were reported each day between February 1 and Thursday, a 9% increase compared to the daily average last month. The official Covid-19 death toll is 171,234 and the case fatality rate is 8.7, the highest among the 20 countries currently most affected by Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Mexico has administered more than 725,000 Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine doses, mainly to health workers, using 95% of all the shots it has received. There were only about 40,000 doses left in the country Thursday night but about 1 million AstraZeneca/Oxford University shots are expected to arrive Sunday and a shipment of almost 500,000 Pfizer doses is slated for delivery on Monday.

The arrival of those two shipments will allow the vaccination of the country’s approximately 15 million seniors to begin. People aged 60 or over who live in large and medium-sized cities have been invited to register for vaccination on a government website.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp), Animal Político (sp) 

Guadalajara homicide numbers drop, but neglect to count bodies in hidden graves

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Hidden graves in El Salto
Hidden graves in El Salto yielded 131 bodies yet there were only 49 homicides recorded during the year.

Murders in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, Jalisco, declined 12% in 2020 but the statistics don’t include victims found in hidden graves and therefore paint only a limited picture of the security situation in Mexico’s second largest city.

There were 1,369 victims of homicide and femicide last year in the nine municipalities that form the metropolitan area of Guadalajara (ZMG), 184 fewer than 2019.

While any reduction in homicides is welcome, high levels of violence continue to plague Guadalajara, said Jorge Tejeda, a security expert at the city’s ITESO university. In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, he noted that bodies found in clandestine graves are not included in the murder statistics when they really should be.

“For the study of criminal incidence, which is used to design public policies against insecurity, these discoveries should be counted as homicides,” Tejeda said.

During 2019 and 2020, 406 bodies were found in hidden graves in the ZMG, according to state government data. The municipality of El Salto, located southeast of downtown Guadalajara, provides a stark example of how the perception of security in a particular area can be altered by not including those bodies in the official statistics.

According to the National Public Security System, there were only 49 homicides and femicides in El Salto last year. But in a period of just three months between October and December, state authorities recovered 131 bodies from a mass grave in the municipality, the largest ever found in Jalisco.

Guadalajara has long suffered from violent crime, and residents of the city were reminded this week that an outbreak of violence is liable to occur at any time. An attack on a building in Tlaquepaque claimed the lives of five people on Wednesday while a restaurant in an exclusive Zapopan neighborhood was the site of an armed confrontation between civilians on Monday that left one person dead, at least three injured, and one person kidnapped.

Security analyst Alejandro Hope said the recent armed attacks don’t constitute an “escalation of violence” because such incidents have long occurred in Guadalajara.

“It’s a pattern that’s been repeating for years, it’s not limited to the current government,” he said.

Tejeda said the response to the attacks in Tlaquepaque and Zapopan showed that there is a lack of coordination between the different authorities.

“With regard to the incident on Monday, it stands out that there was not an appropriate operational response, considering that [Zapopan] is among the municipalities in the country with the highest number of municipal police officers. In the area where [the incident] occurred there is a high concentration of police,” he said.

“During the escape – via very busy avenues – there was nobody who blocked [the aggressors’] way,” Tejeda said.

“Less than 500 meters from the place where this shootout occurred there are always Zapopan police officers and it’s relatively easy to stop traffic and keep track [of fleeing criminals] via the C5 [security] cameras.”

Source: El Universal (sp) 

Protection sought for witnesses who testified against former Nayarit governor

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A restaurant belonging to a witness burns Monday morning in Nayarit.
A restaurant belonging to a witness burns Monday morning in Nayarit. Firefighters said it was deliberately set.

The federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has offered to provide protection to 10 witnesses who testified against former Nayarit governor Roberto Sandoval and his attorney general Édgar Veytia.

A restaurant owned by one of the witnesses was torched early Monday morning in an apparent act of revenge.

Sandoval, governor between 2011 and 2017, is sought by Mexican authorities on charges of embezzlement and wrongful performance of duty. He is also accused by United States authorities of corruption and receiving bribes from drug cartels.

Veytia was sentenced in 2019 to 20 years in jail in the United States on drug trafficking charges.

The 10 witnesses accused the former governor and attorney general of orchestrating and participating in kidnappings and torture while they were in office. Since speaking to federal authorities last December they have been victims of reprisals, including fabrication of crimes and the arson attack.

The newspaper Milenio reported that the FGR wrote to the 10 witnesses on Thursday to seek their authorization for the government to provide security to them.

One of the witnesses is Agustín Magallanes, who alleges he was abducted and tortured by Veytia, nicknamed “The Devil,” in 2013. He also says the state government dispossessed him of a parcel of land and imprisoned three of his sons on fake charges.

In the early hours of Monday morning, Magallanes received a telephone call alerting him that a restaurant he had recently finished refurbishing and was about to open was on fire.

Located in Nayarit beside the Tepic-Puerto Vallarta highway, the restaurant “was completely roasted,” he told Milenio, adding that firefighters told him that the blaze was deliberately lit.

Magallanes said he was expecting to be targeted in one way or another as a result of the accusations he made last December. “It was for what happened on December 16,” he said.

On that date, the witnesses told the FGR what they knew about the cases of 39 people who disappeared in Nayarit during the government led by Sandoval. Seven of them said they had been abducted by state police and taken to Nayarit Attorney General’s Office facilities where they were beaten and tortured, including by Veytia himself.

roberto sandoval
Sandoval is wanted for embezzlement but his whereabouts are unknown.

Rodrigo González Barrios, president of the Nayarit Truth Commission and one of the 10 witnesses, told Milenio that ever since they spoke to the FGR, the Nayarit Attorney General’s Office, headed by Attorney General Petronilo Díaz Ponce, has been opening investigations against them for fabricated crimes.

He said there are people within the Nayarit Attorney General’s Office who worked closely with Veytia and are afraid that they could be implicated in his crimes by the declarations the 10 witnesses made to the FGR.

González said the arson attack on Magallanes’ restaurant, the imprisonment three weeks ago of another witness on fabricated kidnapping charges, and the issuance of arrest warrants against the witnesses’ lawyers for alleged involvement in the torture committed by former government officials “are directly related to Roberto Sandoval, Édgar Veytia and a group of people in the [Nayarit] Attorney General’s Office who are criminalizing us.”

The reprisals are due to the fact that the witnesses have shown that the Nayarit police committed kidnappings and took victims to state government buildings where they were tortured by Veytia and other officials, he said.

González had already filed several complaints against Sandoval and Veytia prior to speaking to FGR officials in December, and has been the target of three attacks as a result.

The FGR’s security offer comes after the United Nations last month urged the government to provide protection to witnesses who testified about abuses committed in Nayarit during the 2011-2017 administration led by Sandoval.

González said the witnesses were invited to meet with federal Interior Ministry officials on Friday to discuss the security and protection measure the government will offer them.

Source: Milenio (sp) 

Mexico’s popular homeopathic remedies: are they placebo powered?

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Montfort 36 is a popular homeopathic remedy for acute stomach and intestinal problems. Chemically, the “chochos” contain nothing but sugar and alcohol.
Montfort 36 is a popular homeopathic remedy for acute stomach and intestinal problems. Chemically, the “chochos” contain nothing but sugar and alcohol.

Before I moved to Mexico, I had never heard of homeopathy, an approach to medicine developed by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796.

After living here only a few months, I found that every time I had a cold, someone would say, “You are getting a gripa [a cold]? You should take Aconitum,” or “That bruise will feel a lot better if you take Arnica,” and then they would hand me a bottle of little sugar pills soaked in alcohol, popularly known as chochos.

So I learned that my friends, relatives and neighbors claimed they could cure anything from a stomachache to a bone spur (I kid you not) with homeopathy — all except people with a medical degree. They, on the contrary, thought the whole thing was hilarious:

“Homeopathic Aconitum napellus is made by putting one drop of extract of highly toxic wolfsbane (matalobos) into a liter of potable alcohol and agitating the bottle vigorously. Then the homeopath takes one drop from that bottle and puts it into another liter of alcohol and shakes that up and so on … Ho, ho, ho, how could it possibly work?”

Homeopaths reply that the vigorous agitation creates in the alcohol a molecular memory of the presence of the wolfsbane and that this grows stronger, not weaker, with every new dilution and shaking. The chochos themselves don’t cure anything, they say, but merely tell the mind what it needs to cure, unlike modern medicines, which aim to physically affect blood, tissues, bones or whatever.

My relatives and friends with medical degrees (including the head of a nationwide chain of pharmacies) typically pooh-pooh homeopathy right up to the day that one of their children gets deathly sick with the worst case of diarrhea known to humanity and — in utter desperation — they resort to the chochos handed to them by a neighbor. After that, a bottle of Montfort 36 (a mix of five homeopathic remedies) quietly appears at the back of their medical cabinet, well hidden from prying eyes.

Just why chochos often work is a question I have thought about for three decades, in the course of which I somehow contracted salmonellosis, which kept coming back year after year with devastating consequences. Each time I went to a “proper western MD,” he or she would prescribe antibiotics, which would apparently rid me of the infirmity; but it would return the following year with a vengeance until I finally said to my IMSS doctor, “Please tell me why this keeps coming back,” and he ordered a study to be carried out.

After a thorough examination, the doctor told me, “The salmonella bacteria are hiding in your spleen where antibiotics can’t get to them. That’s why the salmonellosis keeps coming back. Most of the time those bacteria will cause you no problem, but you’ll be able to see their presence in every sample of your blood, even when you are feeling fine. I don’t know of any way to get rid of them completely, so you are going to face future attacks again and again.”

When “proper medical science” fails I, like so many Mexicans, turn to chochos. So I made an effort to find myself a respected university professor of homeopathy. He said he could solve my problem and put me on a special treatment: two different kinds of chochos to be taken at different times of the day over a period of several months, two weeks on and two weeks off.

“Go get a blood test once a month,” said Dr. Roberto Ibarra. “When your salmonella count goes down to zero, you will know the bacteria are gone for good.”

Now, that’s what I like. A bit of hard lab science to balance the mumbo-jumbo.

To make a long story short, each month the blood samples showed less salmonella bacteria until the number actually reached zero … and I’ve never had another attack of that miserable malady.

I kept wondering why homeopathy sometimes works so well until I came upon a report describing an experiment in “placebo surgery” carried out in 1994 by Doctor J. Bruce Moseley, associate professor of orthopedics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Ten men with the same painful knee problem were taken into the operating room for surgery and the next day sent home with crutches and a painkiller. Two of those men underwent standard arthroscopic surgery (flushing with a saline solution and scraping of the knee joint), three got only the flushing and five got nothing more than small cuts in their skin. To add realism to the simulated operations on the latter, a tape recording of the real procedure was played while these five patients were under sedation.

To the great surprise of Dr. Moseley, the results inside the knees of all 10 patients were identical. The patients who had not been operated on felt great and were up and walking around just like those who had had the surgery — and their knees are pain-free even today.

This incident led researchers to look upon the placebo with new eyes and considerable curiosity.

It seems to me these people were cured by what is popularly called the immune system but which might be better named the body’s self-healing system. It appears that the simulated operation — with all the drama and trappings of the real thing — gave the following message to the self-healing system: “Attention please! I have a problem in my knee. Fix it!”

I propose that the “molecular memory” of Aconitum in the chocho presents a similar message: “Attention please! I have symptoms similar to those caused by what’s in this chocho. Fix me up!”

This mechanism should be familiar to all of us. If not, it soon will be when you get your Covid-19 vaccination: “Pay attention, body! I want you to cure me of anything resembling the stuff they just injected me with!”

As far as I can see, vaccinations are a great example of the often-repeated homeopathic principle of “Like cures like.” Stimulate the body’s self-healing system, and it might just heal you … without the need to take expensive drugs with a five-mile-long list of appalling side effects. Let’s have more studies of placebos for better health!

The curious case of the kneecap operations, by the way, led to the formation of the Harvard Placebo Study Group in 2001. You can follow some of their fascinating discoveries in the documentary film “Placebo: Cracking the Code.”

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years and is the author of “A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area” and co-author of “Outdoors in Western Mexico.” More of his writing can be found on his website.

Guardsman averts tragedy, pushes burning vehicle away from gas pumps

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The burning truck is pushed away from the pumps at a gas station in Tlaxcala.
The burning truck is pushed away from the pumps at a gas station in Tlaxcala.

The identity of a National Guardsman who prevented a potentially large explosion at a gas station in Tlaxcala on Wednesday may be unknown, but that hasn’t prevented him from becoming a social media star.

The man, whose action the guard publicized with a video on its Twitter page Thursday but did not name, has received hundreds of congratulations and good wishes from social media users after he used his patrol car to push a burning truck away from the station’s gas pumps.

The guardsman had responded to an emergency call about the truck being in flames. After he pushed it out of the way, other emergency personnel arrived to put the fire out. There were no injuries.

Guard officials praised the officer for “not worrying about the risk and avoiding a major incident.”

“These actions reinforce our conviction to protect the public at all times.”

Social media users responded enthusiastically to the man’s actions, with commenters calling him brave, saying he deserved a medal, and thanking him for his service to Mexico. Some called upon the guard to identify him so he could be publicly recognized.

One user commented, “That is the true call to service, and he ennobles the institution. Congratulations to that [guardsman].”

Sources: El Universal (sp), TV Azteca Noticias (sp)

Despite Covid, new flights from US announced for Cancún, Cozumel

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cozumel airport
Three new routes will link Cozumel with the US.

The Quintana Roo tourism sector will get a much-needed boost amid the coronavirus pandemic with new international flights to Cozumel and Cancún.

The Quintana Roo Tourism Promotion Council (CPTQ) announced three new routes to Cozumel, an island off the coast of Playa del Carmen, and several new flights to Cancún, the state’s premier tourist destination.

American Airlines will soon fly once per week between Philadelphia and Cozumel while Frontier Airlines will commence Saturday flights between Denver and the small Caribbean island tomorrow. Southwest Airlines will begin daily flights between Houston and Cozumel on March 11.

The CPTQ said that Portuguese flag carrier TAP will begin flying three times per week between Lisbon and Cancún on March 27 while Spanish charter airline Evelop will recommence weekly flights from Madrid to the resort city on March 8. The frequency of the the Evelop flights is expected to increase to three per week over the summer.

The Portuguese airline Orbest will also resume weekly services between Lisbon and Cancún at the end of March.

Frontier Airlines began operations Thursday on a new route that will operate four times per week between Orlando and Cancún while the same carrier will commence five times per week services from Miami on March 7. Frontier will also start a weekly service from Cincinnati to Cancún on March 13 while Southwest will begin operations on a daily route between Phoenix and Cancún on March 11.

CPTQ director Darío Flota Ocampo noted that Air France, Switzerland’s Edelweiss Air, British Airways and Germany’s Lufthansa are currently still flying to Quintana Roo despite the pandemic. He also said that Chetumal remains well connected because there are regular flights from the Quintana Roo capital to Mexico City and Guadalajara.

Although the number of international tourists who came to Mexico last year slumped 46% to 24.3 million, the number of United States visitors to Quintana Roo increased in 2020. State authorities blamed a recent increase in coronavirus cases on an influx of domestic and international tourists in December.

Quintana Roo is currently orange light high risk on both the federal and state stoplight maps. Hotels, restaurants, archaeological sites and theme parks are currently operating at 50% capacity but bars and nightclubs are closed.

Source: El Economista (sp) 

18 bags of human remains discovered in Zapopan, Jalisco

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A body was found wrapped in a tarp in Tonalá on Thursday.
A body was found wrapped in a tarp in Tonalá on Thursday.

A human limb led police to more human remains in the Guadalajara metropolitan area this week: nearby were 18 garbage bags containing human remains.

Municipal officers on patrol saw the limb and began a search, finding the bags among the weeds in a ravine in Zapopan. The bodies were taken to state forensic officials for analysis.

It was the fourth find of dumped or buried bodies in the greater Guadalajara area in a month: on January 13, police found 17 bags of human remains on two farms in Tlajomulco and a clandestine grave on a farm in another neighborhood in the same municipality.

The discovery of the remains on Thursday closes out a violent week in the metropolitan area that saw the shooting deaths of 10 people in three separate incidents in San Pedro Tlaquepaque, Zapopan and Guadalajara.

In addition, police on Thursday located a body wrapped in a tarp in the city of Tonalá, also part of the metropolitan area. Social media users speculated that the body was that of the man kidnapped from a Zapopan restaurant on Monday. However, police denied those rumors and said the body had had yet to be identified.

Sources: Animal Político (sp), El Financiero (sp)

Tampon ban surprises many of capital’s 5 million women residents

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plastic bags
Plastic bags were banned first. Now it's tampons.

First it was plastic shopping bags. Then straws and cups. Now the latest victims to fall under Mexico City’s drive against single-use plastics are tampons — and the capital’s women.

Since the beginning of the year, the capital has banned the sale of the menstrual products until their plastic applicators are replaced by more environmentally-friendly materials. The city government said the decision was a key part of the green agenda it has pursued since taking office two years ago. But it has nonetheless taken many of its 5 million female residents by surprise as the sanitary products disappeared from shelves this week.

“This is punishing women,” said Chiara Gómez, a student. “I didn’t know they were going to do this — a lot of people depend on them. And it’s a bit strange that they are starting with tampons when there are other things that use a lot of plastic, like unnecessary packaging.”

Mexico City’s ubiquitous juice stands now urge customers to bring their own containers or buy plastic bottles, but many markets in the capital still use plastic bags or serve food with plastic forks and coffee shops still often put plastic lids on takeaway beverages.

Pharmacies and supermarkets this week displayed sanitary towels and menstrual cups, but no tampons. Applicator-less tampons are not generally available or used: they can be purchased online, via sites such as Mercado Libre and Amazon, but prices as high as US $3.40 per tampon put them out of reach of many in a country where women work more but earn less than men and are more often employed in informal jobs.

Lillian Gigue
Lillian Gigue: ‘We all have to do our bit.’

One pharmacist in the capital laid out the official ruling to explain why tampons had vanished from shelves — “We’re not allowed to display tampons” — before quietly offering to sell some under-the-counter “while stocks last.”

Feminist organizations, which are separately pushing to make sanitary protection free of value added tax, say the government should have taken a more gradual approach before imposing the ban.

“Of course we understand the environmental side of this,” said Anahí Rodríguez, spokeswoman for Menstruación Digna (Dignified Menstruation), an NGO. “It’s the government’s responsibility to take steps to protect the environment. But they should have made sure there were tampons available with applicators that used an alternative to plastic, at an accessible price, before they withdrew them.”

Men also criticized the move. “As if women didn’t have enough problems, now the government has given them another: no tampons,” Carlos Elizondo, a political science professor at Tec de Monterrey university, wrote on Twitter. “In other countries, they have zero VAT. Here, they are banned — and in the middle of a pandemic too.”

Lillian Guigue, director-general for impact regulation and environmental regulation at the city’s environment ministry, insisted the ban had been announced long in advance as part of the green policy agenda of Claudia Sheinbaum, the city’s first woman mayor and a climate change scientist.

Guigue said she had been negotiating with producers but Covid-19 was slowing down their ability to reformulate applicators without using plastic. Until then, “we all have to do our bit . . . if we don’t make an effort with the products we consume, we are destroying not only our future but that of all generations after us,” she told the Financial Times.

For many, especially young women, that means reusable menstrual cups. Michelle Schad, a student, said these were safer and she applauded the move to ban plastic tampon applicators “because they contaminate a lot and do a lot of damage.”

But in a country where the coronavirus pandemic has pushed an estimated 10 million more people into poverty, some cannot afford them and, in any case, 260,000 homes in Mexico City lack running water.

Dignified menstruation “becomes a privilege, not a right, with these measures,” said Rodríguez.

Her NGO has been fighting to have Mexico’s 16% sales tax waived from sanitary protection — a move backed by Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico’s interior minister. Legislators refused last year, but the Supreme Court this month agreed to review whether the tax was unconstitutional.

In the meantime, Guigue urged women to “rally behind the cause” for the sake of the planet. “It’s not about stopping having the products we need,” she said. “It’s about making better choices.”

© 2021 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Please do not copy and paste FT articles and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Rumanian Mafia: leading bank card skimmer alleged to operate in Mexico

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bancomer atms
Cyber crime specialists developed system to fleece cash from ATMs.

A Romanian criminal group that allegedly runs one of the largest bank card skimming operations in the world collaborated with Mexican hackers, Venezuelan cyber crime experts and a Quintana Roo cartel boss to aid its criminal activities in Mexico.

According to a report by the newspaper Milenio based on Mexican and United States intelligence, a Romanian mafia led by Florian “The Shark” Tudor forged criminal alliances to maintain its operations in Mexico and facilitate its cloning of bank cards, hacking of ATMs and money laundering activities.

In March 2017, the criminal organization stole 150 million pesos (US $7.5 million at today’s exchange rate) in a period of just 24 hours from ATMs in the Riviera Maya of Quintana Roo, Mexico City and México state. More on that later.

Among the Mexican hackers that worked with the Romanian group were members of an organization known as Bandidos Revolution Team, which was dismantled in 2019 when eight people, including the gang’s leader Héctor Ortiz Solares, were arrested in León, Guanajuato.

That hacking group is accused of stealing more than 400 million pesos (US $20 million) from accounts with several financial institutions including Banorte and Inbursa. In addition to arresting the eight bandidos, authorities seized 27 luxury vehicles, motorcycles, more than 20 million pesos in cash, drugs and weapons.

According to a federal security cabinet intelligence report, Tudor also entered into alliances with at least three Venezuelan cyber crime specialists, or hackers. The Venezuelans are accused of developing the method used by the Romanian mafia to fleece cash from ATMs.

An international and Mexican investigation published last June found that the Romanian crime syndicate has been operating in Mexico since 2014, when the gang formed a front company, Top Life Servicios, and persuaded the Mexican bank Multiva to allow them to install their Intacash brand of cash machines.

A separate investigation found that that Bluetooth devices had been placed inside the ATMs to clone the cards and that members of the mafia needed only to walk up to the tampered cash machines with a cell phone to download the stolen data.

That investigation, conducted by United States journalist Bryan Krebs, found compromised bank machines in several Quintana Roo locations including Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

Another person who collaborated with the Romanians, according to Mexican and U.S. authorities, was Leticia Rodríguez Lara, a crime boss known as Doña Lety who was arrested in August 2017. Law enforcement sources told Milenio that Doña Lety, who was allegedly the leader of the Pacific Cartel in Cancún, and The Shark had a business relationship and were also personal friends.

Rodríguez, whose criminal group seized control of Cancún and Playa del Carmen from Los Zetas, allowed the Romanians to conduct their illicit activities on the turf where she held sway.

Alleged gang leader Tudor and suspected Quintana Roo cartel boss Doña Lety.
Alleged gang leader Tudor and suspected Quintana Roo cartel boss Doña Lety.

In November 2017, federal authorities seized two safes containing 2,000 fraudulent cards that were allegedly used by the Romanian mafia as well as Rodríguez and her son to illegally withdraw cash from ATMs.

Eight months earlier, in a 24-hour period between March 16 and 17, 2017, the Romanians used cloned cards to steal 150 million pesos from BBVA Bancomer ATMs in Quintana Roo, Mexico City and México state.

Intelligence documents reveal that the criminal group used just 11 cards to complete the audacious heist, which was supported by one of the Venezuelan hackers. Milenio said that the cards were modified in such a way that enabled them to be used for limitless withdrawals. As a result, the Romanian mafia was able to withdraw an average of 6.25 million pesos (US $312,000) an hour or about 104,000 pesos (US $5,200) per minute.

A federal security cabinet document obtained by Milenio indicates that the Romanian mafia also stole similarly large amounts from Citibanamex, Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and TD Bank ATMs. It is unclear where those heists occurred.

Security cabinet documents also allege that a network of politicians from several parties as well as officials at the Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office have protected and collaborated with the Romanians. An investigation by journalist Héctor de Mauleón found that the Romanians have also been protected by police and judges in Cancún.

One of the alleged co-conspirators is Remberto Estrada, a former mayor of Benito Juárez, the Quintana Roo municipality that includes Cancún.

He told Milenio that he has never had any dealings with members of the Romanian crime organization, which is believed to be responsible for about 10% of all card skimming activity worldwide.

“I don’t know them, I’ve never met any person of that nationality in my entire life,” Estrada said. The ex-mayor, in office between 2016 and 2018, added that he knew nothing of the Romanians’ card cloning activities and ATM thefts until he read about them in the media.

The Romanians engaged in money laundering to “clean” their ill-gotten cash, according to United States and Mexican investigations. The FBI asked the Mexican government’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) to investigate the group’s money laundering activities and 79 bank accounts were blocked as a result.

Tudor – who has repeatedly denied that he engages in criminal activity, claiming he is only a businessman – and most of his alleged accomplices remain at large. However, about 100 Romanian citizens were detained for four days at Cancún International Airport last week before the majority were allowed to enter the country. Milenio suggested that the Romanians were detained as a result of travel alerts that may have been related to cyber fraud and bank card cloning but Mexican authorities didn’t confirm that information.

According to the UIF, the Romanian criminal syndicate has now expanded to other tourists destinations in Mexico, including the Riviera Nayarit, Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta.

Source: Milenio (sp), Infobae (sp)