Hidalgo woman, 75, dies 40 minutes after receiving Covid vaccination

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March 12, 2021

A healthcare worker administers a vaccine shot in Hidalgo.

A 75-year-old woman died in Hidalgo on Thursday shortly after receiving a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine but preliminary post-mortem results indicate that her death was not linked to the shot.

Several media outlets reported that the woman died 15 minutes after receiving a dose of the Chinese-made Sinovac at a vaccination center in Metepec but the federal Health Ministry said that she passed away 40 minutes after inoculation.

According to the newspaper Milenio, the woman began to feel weak minutes after receiving the vaccine and fainted when she got up to go to the washroom. She was taken to an IMSS clinic in Metepec but was dead on arrival.

Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell told the government’s coronavirus press briefing on Thursday night that preliminary results of an autopsy indicated that the woman’s death was not related to the application of the vaccine, one of four that have been used in Mexico to date.

He said the autopsy determined that the woman had chronic heart disease and suffered heart failure.

“… There is no evidence that suggests that the vaccine could have contributed to the death of this person. What was found … was chronic heart disease that is closely associated with a disease called rheumatic fever,” López-Gatell said. “… That’s the finding now, it’s not a [final] ruling.”

The deputy minister said further studies will be undertaken next week and stressed the importance of disseminating their results to avoid encouraging conspiracy theories or “distortion of information.”

Such misinformation could seriously damage confidence in the government’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, López-Gatell said.

He added that there is no evidence that links the application of Covid-19 vaccines to serious illness or death, asserting that the shots are safe and effective.

Almost 3.8 million vaccine doses had been administered in Mexico by Thursday night, mainly to health workers and seniors.

Data presented by the Health Ministry showed that there have been 11,439 reports of adverse reactions in people who have received a jab in Mexico but only 71 cases were considered serious. Just over 96% of the adverse reactions –11,030 – were reported among people who received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which has so far been the most widely used vaccine in Mexico.

There have been 361 adverse reactions to the AstraZeneca/Oxford University shot, 39 to the Sputnik V vaccine and nine to the Sinovac shot.

Mexico has received just under 5.5 million vaccine doses, of which about 70% have been used. The government has agreements to acquire 232 million mainly two-shot vaccine doses and more than 100 million are expected to arrive before the end of May.

Official statistics show that Mexico’s pandemic has continued to wane in March, with the average number of confirmed cases and Covid-19 deaths reported in the first 11 days of the month down 27% and 30%, respectively, compared to the daily average in February.

However, thousands of case and hundreds of deaths continue to be registered every day. The accumulated case tally rose by 6,470 on Thursday to 2.15 million, the 13th highest total in the world, while the official death toll increased by 654 to 193,142. Only the United States and Brazil have recorded more deaths than Mexico, where excess mortality data suggests that the real Covid-19 death toll is much higher.

Source: Sin Embargo (sp), Milenio (sp)

12 dead after transit bus, tanker truck collide in Nuevo León

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Michelle Aguilar

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March 12, 2021

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Thursday's accident near Salinas Victoria, Nuevo León.

An early-morning accident on Thursday involving a bus and a gas truck carrying 40,000 liters of fuel in central Nuevo León left 12 dead and five injured amid a large conflagration that shut down traffic.

The crash occurred before dawn on the Colombia Highway in the municipality of Salinas Victoria. While authorities did not confirm the cause of the accident, the newsmagazine Proceso reported that the truck and bus crashed after they both went around a pronounced curve in the highway.

The bus, which the newspaper El Heraldo de México said had been heading to the city of Monterrey, was left on its side with its front section nearly detached, according to Proceso.

The gas truck, which authorities said exploded upon impact, was engulfed in flames, and diesel fuel leaked for several meters around it.

The driver of the truck was among the dead, authorities said.

The highway was shut down while state and local emergency personnel doused the flames and rescued the injured, who were taken to various hospitals in the area, according to Miguel Perales, head of Nuevo León’s Civil Protection agency.

The fire was out by around 6:15 a.m., authorities said.

Source: El Universal (sp), ADN40 (sp), Proceso (sp), El Heraldo de México (sp)

Duo’s images of Mexico’s biodiversity aim to encourage conservation

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Shannon Collins

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March 11, 2021

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Alcalde and Huerta's photos are an attempt to get Mexicans to care about the environment by letting them see it with their own eyes.

Conservation can take many forms: from direct action to lobbying to protection of particular spaces, but perhaps a little-recognized body of work relates to winning hearts and minds, the brass tacks of simply making people care.

“Fifteen years, I think?” replies Iliana Huerta when asked how long she has been making her unique, otherworldly, unquestionably stunning books about Mexico’s landscape, flora and fauna. “Time just passes, you know, and all the more when you inhabit these geographies that measure time completely differently. Out there, you lose sight of who you are and become part of that bigger whole.”

Iliana — or Ilo as she is often known — is part of a wife-and-husband team (alongside partner Mike Alcalde) working across the entire range of Mexico’s deep landscapes since the early 2000s, studying and understanding the very vivid and present challenges faced by land and life in Mexico while at the same time making exquisite, old-school coffee table books. They’re the kind of books you could sit on the couch with for days at a time, looking at a single page.

Especially today, with most of the world severely limited in their ability to travel and a rise in digital fatigue as a result of endless hours working in front of computer screens, people are increasingly looking to physical representations of the natural world for a little respite.

As the world hurtles headlong towards a series of climate tipping points that signal a path of no return and as the pandemic pause shows us what slowing down can do for the natural world, bridging the disconnect between our daily lives and the world we live in has become almost a psychological need for many. This perhaps explains how books made by Ilo and Mike, collectively working under the México Natural signature, have become so popular in recent months.

Iliana Huerta photographing monarch butterflies. — Iliana Huerta photographs monarch butterflies.

Nominally, México Natural is a cultural and environmental community initiative that uses stunning photography and cinematography to disseminate Mexico’s spectacular natural heritage.

In particular, the work uses a holistic approach to engage, inspire and — especially — co-opt allies in the preservation of the cultural history and vulnerable ecosystems of Mexico. They use documentaries, educational projects and, most principally, books.

It is easy to forget, given the daily travails of the nation, that Mexico is the third-largest country in Latin America by land area and boasts some of the highest levels of biological diversity of anywhere in the world.

Mexico is uniquely located across the Tropic of Cancer, which effectively splits the land into two zones — one temperate, one tropical. Altitude, latitude and seasons all play a role in shaping Mexico’s landscape.

Given all this, the books are nothing if not a photographic odyssey that takes the reader on an expedition through this land. Jungles, forests, wetlands, seas all boast their own edition, containing technicolor pictures of some of the most beautiful, and most threatened, ecosystems in Mexico.

“I have learned that the only body of work that is genuinely able to invoke change is education,” Huerta says. “Not school or formal learning — rather the kind of education that makes you double-take, look at an image or problem or incident so that taking your eye off it makes you feel as though you would lose a piece of yourself in the doing. It’s about establishing a visceral connection and, really, it’s not about teaching this or teaching that but about letting people know and showing them the incredible scope of the natural world. It is really that simple.”

Mike Alcalde stands by a display of the duo's photos. — Mike Alcalde stands by a display of the duo’s photos.

For those who have witnessed some of these most unique of spaces, there is little doubt she has a point. Simply seeing some of the landscapes of the north of Mexico — Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila, among countless others, or even the diametrically opposed tropical south — is not something easily shed.

The experience links notions of the land and Romantic notions of religious experiences, which is not to say you have to believe in a deity but that merely being present in these landscapes inspires the awestruck feeling of the sublime.

Global recovery post-Covid places us at a critical juncture in conservation. To ensure that we are all actively playing a role in the preservation of the natural world going forward, familiarization with the challenges and pressures faced by the most biodiverse areas of our planet is absolutely essential.

The books are at once a legacy project — documenting the multitudinous nature of Mexico’s biodiversity — and a song for the future, hoping to initiate a change toward social responsibility and a union between human living and the natural world.

The pair’s books can be purchased by contacting them directly at [email protected].

Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.

Court rules archaeological institute must repair historic Mexico City church

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MND Staff

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March 11, 2021

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A fire at the Santa Veracruz church last August.

A Mexico City court has ruled that the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) must immediately begin repairs to a 16th-century church that was damaged during two earthquakes in 2017 and two fires last August.

Located in the historical center of Mexico City, the church of the Santa Veracruz, the capital’s second oldest church, was severely damaged by two blazes on August 31 that were allegedly caused by the lighting of a fire by homeless people taking shelter inside.

Stained-glass windows, the pipe organ, paintings and the bell tower were charred or destroyed in the blazes. The church also sustained structural damage in the September 7 and 19, 2017, earthquakes that shook central and southern Mexico, toppling countless buildings and killing hundreds. It was also damaged in the massive earthquake that rocked Mexico City in 1985.

The court ruling came in response to an injunction request filed by Álvaro Rocha Arrieta, a member of a citizens’ collective whose main aim is to defend Mexico’s historical and cultural wealth.

“It’s not about whether they want to or can, there is now a legal order and they have to get to work at INAH. We understand that money is scarce but something has to be done. The money will have to come from somewhere,” he told the newspaper Reforma.

The church of the Santa Veracruz is Mexico City’s second oldest. leigh thelmadatter

INAH said earlier this month that it hasn’t begun work on the damaged bell tower because it lacks resources.

“It’s a very complex job due to the height and the … instability of the tower. … We haven’t been able to do it. It’s part of what will be done with the money that the insurance company pays out,” said INAH official Antonio Mondragón.

Although the damage from the fires was severe, an INAH assessment determined that most of it can be repaired.

Rocha said he is prepared to give INAH some time to begin the repair work but warned that if it is unduly slow in complying with the court order he will report the violation and seek the imposition of administrative or even criminal sanctions.

“The first step is to demand compliance with the measure handed down by the district judge,” he said, adding that he feared the church, which was closed to the public in 2017 after INAH deemed it “a high-risk and uninhabitable property,” could collapse.

“I’m not an architecture expert or anything like that but it’s obvious that this church, partly due to the earthquakes in 2017 and neglect, is at grave risk,” Rocha said.

Xavier Guzmán Urbiola, a historian and architect, told Reforma that the church of the Santa Veracruz has been neglected for the past 50 years due to a lack of money. He also said that construction of Line 2 of the Mexico City Metro destabilized the building and work to stabilize it again was never completed.

Guzmán said that repairs are possible, asserting that the technical work required is “fairly easy” but acknowledged that INAH needs access to resources to be able to do it.

Source: Reforma (sp)

NASA’s hunt for life’s origins on Mars echoes an ongoing search in Mexico

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Omar Vidal

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March 11, 2021

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The Cuatrociénegas Valley is believed to contain clues to how life evolved. © David Jaramillo

This week, Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn aligned with the moon.

Images of Mars shared last week by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) filled me with emotion, pride, and hope. They proved, once again, that there are no questions too big, nor frontiers too great for science and technology.

The colors of Mars’ landscapes and the sounds of the Martian wind make me dream of visiting that reddish-brown planet one day. It doesn’t matter to me that it is so far away, that it is desert-like, dusty, cold, and that all its volcanos have perished.

Mars’ valleys resemble seas, fluted by tiny wavelike curls. Mountain ranges and myriad craters with hallucinatory shapes. Mars is a place of dusty, gloopy, serpentine lands, its chocolate-brown dunes sculpted by fanciful winds over billions of years.

Martian winds have planetary echoes. It is a celestial body attended by two twin brother moons — Phobos and Deimos — the sons of Mars, the god of war, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

The Red Planet is 228 million kilometers from the sun it circles. This is more than twice the distance between our blue Earth and that star filled with hot gases that keeps our solar system bonded, its planets in tow.

Mars, the planet where a year — the time it takes to complete an orbit around the sun — lasts two earthling years. Mars, where the largest volcano of the entire solar system lies.

The sad news, at least for us, is that 96% of Mars’ atmosphere is carbon dioxide, implying that, most probably, humans will never be able to live there. Bummer.

Partly due to similarities to Mars, some regions on planet Earth have fascinated scientists for a very long time — regions such as Antarctica, Hawaii, Arizona, northern Mexico, and the Atacama Desert in Chile.

One of those places, my favorite one, is in the Chihuahuan Desert, in the mind-blowing Cuatrociénegas Valley. The Chihuahuan is North America’s largest desert, and it is also one of the most biodiverse deserts in the world — together with the Sonoran Desert in Mexico and Arizona. The Chihuahuan Desert spreads over more than 600,000 square kilometers through the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Durango, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It is a desert that does not recognize the contrived, geopolitical borders created by humans.

Those NASA images of Mars brought me to Cuatrociénegas, a valley embedded in the state of Coahuila at 740 meters above sea level, between the Sierra Madre Oriental and Sierra Madre Occidental. It’s a magical spot that looks more like Mars than Earth, the place where I walked during a red sunset through white hydrated calcium sulfate plaster dunes, washed millions of years ago by the primeval Tethys Sea.

Cuatrociénegas Valley at times looks more like Mars than Earth © David Jaramillo

Not far away, the footprints of the women and men who walked this region more than 10,000 years ago were found some years back. Tethys, that ancient sea honoring a goddess, sister and companion of Oceanus. Together, they gave birth to countless rivers and lakes.

Silent stromatolites swarm in the hundreds of blue, Martian-like pools of Cuatrociénegas. Primitive forms of bacterial life, resembling reef-sized piles of Berber carpets, are the refugial surviving populations of one of Earth’s earliest life forms. They are the oldest fossil evidence of microbial life, possibly the first living organisms to exhale oxygen into our atmosphere.

Without stromatolites, animals, including us, might never have evolved on planet Earth. The oldest fossils of stromatolites are from 3.5 billion years ago, from Australia. When I gazed at the stromatolite-filled pools of Cuatrociénegas, it filled me with the sublime wonder of another world.

It is no coincidence that NASA found love at first sight in the Cuatrociénegas Valley. Together, a team of Mexican scientists led by Dr. Valeria Souza of Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) and NASA have studied the geology and life of this area for over two decades. It is the valley that my friend Souza describes as “an ecological time machine, a microbial oasis in the desert, the belly button of the planet, a lost world.”

Cuatrociénegas is a unique place where we can study astrobiology on Earth — that scientific discipline that investigates the origin and evolution of extraterrestrial life in the universe.

Unlike on Mars, where life as we know it seems nonexistent, in Cuatrociénegas there reigns a magnificent and unique assemblage of biological diversity. Species endemism in the 84,000 hectares comprising the Cuatrociénegas Fauna and Flora Protection Area is matched only in the Galapagos Islands.

Widespread plants include those locally known as lechuguilla, cucharilla, candelilla, siempreviva, ocotillo, sangregado, saladillo, mesquite and Mexican tea. There are also many endangered species of fauna and flora, such as the Jibali pincushion cactus, carp, perch, mojarra, softshell turtle, Mexican black-headed snake, beaver, porcupine, black bear, tlalcoyote (American badger) and the kit fox.

Currently, the Mars rover Perseverance is exploring a massive ancient lake known as Jezero, now dry as dust. And with less and less water each year, as human usage drives the water table ever lower, the aquifers that feed the pools of Cuatrociénegas also are on a dangerous course to fading away.

We know a great deal about Mars, thanks to the Martian meteorites that have landed on Earth, our telescopes and the images captured by spacecraft that have visited the planet. We know much more about the amazing Valle de Cuatrociénegas thanks to the long walks, detailed collections, experiments, studies and countless sleepless nights of scientists such as Valeria Souza.

We must conserve this lost world for ourselves, and for any fellow companions with whom we might one day be traveling through our wondrous universe.

Omar Vidal, a scientist, was a university professor in Mexico, is a former senior officer at the UN Environment Program, and former director-general of the World Wildlife Fund Mexico.

40% of Mexico’s police are not officially certified and shouldn’t be working

By

MND Staff

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March 11, 2021

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Only 10% of the 88,000-strong National Guard have been certified as fit to work.

Almost half of Mexico’s municipal and state police officers are not officially certified as required by the law and shouldn’t be working while the numbers are even worse at the federal level.

The National Security Council granted an 18-month extension in July 2019 for the certification of police officers after it was deemed that the original three-year period was insufficient.

The term of the extension ended Wednesday, according to information obtained by the news website Animal Político, but 46% of police officers at the municipal and state levels are still not properly accredited.

National Public Security System data shows that there are 305,231 municipal and state officers but only 164,534 have been certified.

That leaves 140,697 police without certification, a status that is intended to show that they are trustworthy, competent, physically able to carry out their job, meet performance standards, have undertaken initial training, don’t take drugs, don’t have a criminal record and have no links to organized crime.

Querétaro stands out as the only state in the country to have certified all of its municipal, state and ministerial police, while Campeche, Coahuila and Durango have certification rates between 80% and 90%, Animal Político reported. The other 28 states all have rates below 80%.

Guerrero ranks last with just 26.4% of its police certified while the rate in Baja California Sur is only slightly better at 30.7%.

Veracruz, Tlaxcala, Yucatán, Zacatecas and Hidalgo all have rates below 40%, while just over half of the officers in the Mexico City police force are certified.

While one might expect the federal government to set a good example to the states and municipalities by ensuring that members of its security forces are certified, its own rates are in fact worse.

Just 12.2% of 5,352 federal agents attached to the federal Attorney General’s Office are certified while only 9.6% of just over 88,000 National Guard members have the paperwork to prove they’re fit to be in the force. Some former military members transferred into the National Guard lack the basic training to work in the civilian force, according to an analysis by the Federal Auditor’s Office.

The 2019 law that authorized the creation of the National Guard, which effectively replaced the Federal Police, stipulates that all members must be certified within two years. That period expires on May 27, meaning that the force has about 2 1/2 months to certify about 80,000 guardsmen.

Of municipal police, only 46% have passed muster.

Mayra Hernández, a public security expert, told Animal Político that a range of factors have contributed to the low certification rates. She said the process has never been a budget priority, noting that less than 20% of federal funds allocated to state and municipal police forces has been been designated for certification.

Far more money has gone to the purchase of police equipment and materials, she said.

The lack of a consistent certification strategy has also contributed to the national failure rate, according to the security expert. Hernández said that states have provided reports to federal authorities about their progress in certifying officers, but they contain imprecise information and no one really reviews them.

Hernández added that police certification has been tainted by corruption, explaining that many officers have had to pay their superiors for access to the evaluation process to ensure that they can keep their jobs.

“Police who earn 10,000 pesos [US $485] a month have had to pay up to 55,000 pesos [US $2,670] to be evaluated. [The authorities] will have to look closely at that so that … [certification] doesn’t end up being a business,” she said.

The coronavirus pandemic has also affected the results, according to authorities, because some officers belong to vulnerable sections of society and haven’t been able to complete the process due to the risk of infection.

Given the large number of uncertified officers, the National Security Council should grant another extension so that “illegal officers” are not patrolling Mexico’s streets, Hernández said. Federal officials consulted by Animal Político said that another extension will likely be granted, possibly as soon as this week.

“It has to be an extension with greater joint responsibility,” Hernández said.

“The states and the municipalities should report punctually every month about their progress … in order to comply with certification within a maximum of one year,” the expert said, adding that funding for the process must be increased.

Source: Animal Político (sp)

Mexico City announces events to celebrate fall of Tenochtitlán

By

Michelle Aguilar

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March 11, 2021

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Mexico City authorities have announced a series of cultural events to take place throughout the year to mark the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlán, capital of the Aztec Empire, and the capital city’s founding by the Spanish.

The events will also celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s independence from Spain.

“According to historians, the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlán was in 1523, but that is not a fixed date,” said Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum. “Our city has a deeply rooted history of more than seven centuries …”

“Mexico-Tenochtitlán, Seven Centuries of History” will begin on March 21 and feature activities in the zócalo, at archaeological sites, in historic neighborhoods and at other points around the city until December 24.

They range from a celebration of the equinox at the Cuicuilco archaeological site to events marking moments in Mexico City’s history to academic discussions about Mexico’s history involving researchers from a variety of disciplines who, Sheinbaum said, would take a reflective, critical look at prevailing accounts of the city’s history and the myths about the historical record that have arisen over time.

Among the ways the city will mark the anniversary is by changing the name of Puente de Alvarado Avenue to Mexico-Tenochtitlán Boulevard, the mayor announced at an event on Wednesday.

Pedro de Alvarado participated in the conquest of Mexico with Hernán Cortés and is notorious for having ordered the slaughter of several people at the indigenous Templo Mayor while they were celebrating a religious event.

By changing the name of the road, Sheinbaum said, “We rescue our origins and open the discussion” in the historical reconstruction of the city, a process in which original peoples will be participating, she said.

Appearing to be addressing potential concerns about what could be perceived as a celebration of Mexico’s takeover by the Spanish, Sheinbaum said that a goal of the commemoration activities was to reflect on the 500 years of “the so-called Conquest,” as she put it.

“… What we want is to highlight the great diversity and what the Mexica culture represented …”

“If indeed the destruction of Mexico-Tenochtitlán occurred 500 years ago, what is also certain was the resistance of the original people, and we must not forget the violence of those years …” she said.

Sources: El Universal (sp), El Heraldo de México (sp), La Jornada (sp)

Judge suspends new electricity bill on competition, environmental grounds

By

MND Staff

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March 11, 2021

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solar panels — Renewable energy takes priority once again as a result of judge's ruling.

A federal judge has ordered the provisional suspension of the new Electricity Industry Law, ruling that it could harm free competition and cause irreparable damage to the environment because it favors traditional energy sources over renewable ones.

Judge Juan Pablo Gómez Fierro made the ruling Thursday in response to suspension requests filed by renewable energy companies.

A reform to the law that favors the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission by prioritizing the injection of power it produces into the national grid over that generated by private and renewable companies was approved by Congress last week.

President López Obrador promulgated the law by decree on Tuesday and it took effect Wednesday.

Julio Valle, spokesman for the wind and solar power associations Amdee and Asolmex, said more than two dozen proposed injunctions had been filed as the industry united in opposition to the law.

“We’re happy, but this is just the first battle,” Valle said. The provisional ruling could still be struck down and the law is expected to face further constitutional challenges.

“I think here the big question is what happens when this gets to the Supreme Court,” said Lourdes Melgar, a deputy minister of energy at the time of the landmark energy reforms in 2013-2014.

“Given all the precedents at play here, it’s not really surprising that injunctions were granted less than 48 hours after the ‘reform’ was published,” said Pablo Zárate, managing director at FTI Consulting.

The president’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment, and companies were treading cautiously, the Financial Times reported. “We don’t want to inflame a confrontation because our president then just gets more obstinate,” said one senior player in the sector who asked not to be named.

The federal judge ordered that the law in force before the publication of Tuesday’s decree be reapplied. That law, which stemmed from the previous government’s energy reform, guaranteed free competition in the electricity sector, sustainable development and protection of the environment whereas its successor does not, Gómez said.

“This district court warns that the modifications made to the Electricity Industry Law could damage free competition in the electricity sector,” he said.

The judge said suspension of the new law would result in more competitive electricity prices for consumers – private companies generate energy at a much lower price than the CFE – and allow Mexico to meet its goals for the generation of clean and sustainable energy.

Gómez said the government’s modifications and additions to the law “move away from the objectives of the energy reform and are thus apparently contrary to articles 25 and 28 of the constitution.” Article 28 states that all monopolies are prohibited in Mexico.

“… On the other hand, it is deemed that the rules that have been challenged could produce imminent and irreparable damage to the environment because they promote the production and use of conventional energies and disincentivize the production of clean energies, ” the judge said.

He also said the new law could prevent Mexico from meeting international environment and climate commitments given that it prioritizes energy produced by the CFE, which mainly uses natural gas, coal and fuel oil to generate power, over private companies’ renewable energy.

The court will rule next Thursday whether the order will become definitive. A constitutional hearing on the case has been set for April 27.

That the government’s electricity reform was challenged so soon after it was approved was not surprising given that private and renewable companies have already challenged other moves by the government to concentrate control of the electricity sector in the hands of the CFE.

President López Obrador, a staunch energy nationalist determined to “rescue” the CFE and state oil company Pemex from what he describes as years of neglect and mismanagement before he took office, insisted last week that the new law doesn’t violate the constitution.

But many legal experts say otherwise. Lawyers also say that it violates the new North American free trade agreement and international trade treaties.

The International Chamber of Commerce’s Mexico chapter said Wednesday that it expects the law to trigger a flood of lawsuits, legal appeals and and international investor-dispute arbitration panels. The chamber said that provisions in the law violate the constitution, which enshrines the right to free competition and a healthy environment.

Several analysts have said that the law will scare off foreign and domestic investment because of the privileged position it grants the CFE in the electricity market.

Source: Milenio (sp), Sin Embargo (sp), Financial Times (en)

Project maps opium poppy cultivation; production centered in 59 municipalities

By

MND Staff

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March 11, 2021

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There are 59 main opium poppy-growing municipalities across six states, according to a new project that mapped production of the illicit crop in Mexico, one of the world’s largest heroin producers.

Produced by Noria Research in alliance with Mexico United Against Crime, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and the magazine Espejo, the Mexico Opium Project determined through data analysis that the efforts of the National Defense Ministry to eradicate poppies between 2003 and 2019 were concentrated in 59 municipalities in three large regions.

Twenty-nine are located in the northwestern region that includes parts of the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Durango and Nayarit.

Among the municipalities are Ocampo and Guadalupe y Calvo in Chihuahua, Culiacán and Badiraguato – the municipality where convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was born – in Sinaloa, Canelas and Topia in Durango and La Yesca and Compostela in Nayarit.

Twenty-three of the municipalities are located in the southwestern region, which encompasses a group of Guerrero municipalities and two in Oaxaca. Among them are Eduardo Neri, Leonardo Bravo, Chilapa and Chilpancingo in Guerrero and Coicoyán de las Flores and San Martín Peras in Oaxaca.

The third region, with seven poppy-growing municipalities, is located in Oaxaca. Its municipalities are Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz, Villa Sola de Vega, San Carlos Yautepec, San Juan Lachigalla, San Pedro Quiatoni, Santa María Tepantali and Santiago Xanica.

The report said the mountainous geography of the three regions is similar, with elevations of up to 3,400 meters in the southern and southwestern regions and up to 3,200 meters above sea level in the northwestern region.

It said that on average one hectare of opium poppies was recorded as destroyed in the 59 municipalities for every 38 hectares of legal crops planted between 2003 and 2019.

Presented on Wednesday, a section of the report entitled Why is opium production crucial to better understand the War on Drugs in Mexico? noted that poppies have been cultivated in the Golden Triangle region of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango for over 60 years and for almost 40 years in Guerrero.

“This activity is deeply integrated into society. In poppy-growing territories, between 70% and 95% of the population – men, women, and children – work in, or earn their living through, activities directly or indirectly related to opium,” it said.

The report, which is also based on 15 months of fieldwork in opium-producing states, also said that the army reported destroying poppies in 835 of Mexico’s 2,465 municipalities between 2003 and 2019. That means that poppies have been grown in at least one-third of the nation’s municipalities.

The main areas of poppy production in Mexico. noria research

“The U.S. government affirms that in 2016 Mexico had 32,000 hectares of opium production, which increased to 44,100 in 2017,” the report said.

In a “key facts” section, the report also said that heroin produced in Mexico is exported almost in its entirety to the United States and Canada, where it represents around 90% of the consumption market.

While opium gum prices plummeted in recent years partially due to the rise in popularity of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, prices recovered in mid-2020, the report said. The Mexico Opium Project estimated that growers are currently paid up to 21,000 pesos (about US $1,000) for a kilogram of opium paste.

The report said “illicit economies constitute one route for escaping from a subaltern position in a context of chronic economic and social crises in the Mexican countryside.”

However, “in the productive chain of heroin, much of the money generated is captured by legal and illegal intermediaries. This means that the fantastic profitability of the final product has an almost null structural impact on inequalities, discrimination, criminalization, or the lack of state investment.”

Many poppy growers say they are forced to cultivate the crop due to a lack of other opportunities and government support. Farmers in Guerrero have appealed to López Obrador to legalize the cultivation of opium poppies for use in the manufacture of legal pharmaceuticals.

The president indicated earlier this week that the government is prepared to consider legalization of the crop for that purpose.

“With regard to the commercialization of marijuana and poppies, the decision has been taken to initiate a thorough analysis of these crops considering that [the growers] are being left behind and they’re being used for the production of [illicit] drugs,” he said.

Interior Minister Olga Sánchez, who said before the current government took office that López Obrador had given her a “blank check” to explore the possibility of legalizing drugs as well as any other measures that could help restore peace to the country, said in January that legalization of poppy production for medicinal purposes was possible.

“This opiate could be regulated by legislation so that we can obtain all kinds of medicines,” she said.

Guerrero Governor Héctor Astudillo supports legalization of poppy production, which he says could help to reduce violent crime, but an initiative to that end has stalled in the state Congress.

Mexico News Daily

Quintana Roo to levy visitor tax on foreigners starting April 1

By

Michelle Aguilar

-

March 11, 2021

0

quintana roo tourists — Visitors from abroad will pay a bit extra to visit Quintana Roo.

Starting April 1, foreign visitors to Quintana Roo will have to pay a new tourism tax for the privilege of visiting the state.

The state expects the 224-peso levy (US $11), proposed by Governor Carlos Joaquín González and approved by the state Congress last year, will generate 600 million pesos (US $29.1 million) this year.

But not all visitors will be taxed equally. A subsidy will allow tourists from Belize to pay 10% less due to the large number who regularly cross the border to visit nearby Chetumal for short-term visits, said Rodrigo Díaz, director-general of the state tax administration.

Tourists will be able to pay the new tax electronically when they book their trip, during their stay or upon exiting the state via a new website called Visitax. The payment is obligatory for all foreign visitors over 15. There will be also an option to pay in cash at terminals set up in airports.

“It’s expected to be an agile and simple transaction that won’t complicate visitors’ stay,” Díaz said.

The purpose of the tax is to help fund more tourism industry development in the state.

“The budgetary resources that this [tax] provides will permit the state of Quintana Roo to generate jobs and promote the generation of economic centers which will, in turn, produce mainly tourism jobs, which will make our state a strong visitor attraction,” reads text accompanying the law.

The amount was determined by multiplying the Unidad de Medida y Actualización (UMA), a base reference amount determined by the federal statistics agency Inegi and used to calculate the amount of everything from fines to employee bonuses, by 2.5. The current daily UMA is 89.62 pesos.

When the tax bill was passed, state lawmakers expected that it would generate a “conservative” amount of 900 million pesos (US $43.6 million) based on the expectation that the state would see 4.5 million international visitors in 2021. However, with the delay of the tax’s implementation due to the pandemic, that estimate was reduced to 600 million for this year, Díaz said.

Source: El Economista (sp)

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that visitors to Quintana Roo from Belize will pay 10% more than other foreign visitors.