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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
As lawmakers debated inside the Chamber of Deputies, pot smokers toked up outside.
After a marathon 14-hour debate, the lower house of Congress approved a bill early Thursday to legalize recreational marijuana, bringing Mexico one step closer to becoming the world’s largest legal cannabis market.
The Federal Law for the Regulation of Cannabis passed the Chamber of Deputies with 250 votes in favor, 163 against and 14 abstentions.
The legislation, which legalizes possession of up to 28 grams of marijuana for personal use and the cultivation of up to six plants in one’s home, has now been returned to the Senate for ratification of the changes made by the lower house.
The Chamber of Deputies made seven changes to the law after approving it in general terms on Wednesday afternoon.
One proposed by the ruling Morena party makes possession of more than 5.6 kilograms of marijuana punishable by three to seven years imprisonment and fines of up to 26,886 pesos (US $1,300).
Among the other six changes is one that gives the Agriculture Ministry the exclusive power to grant licenses for the industrial use of cannabis and another that makes it illegal to convert forested land into marijuana plantations.
The bill passed by the lower house eliminates the Senate’s proposal to create a Mexican cannabis institute to regulate the legal marijuana market, giving that authority to the National Commission Against Addictions (Conadic).
Among the responsibilities of Conadic will be to issue, and if necessary revoke, licenses for the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for recreational purposes.
The legislation recognizes the right of people aged 18 and over to consume marijuana recreationally as long their use doesn’t affect others, especially children.
It proposes allowing the establishment of cannabis clubs or associations whose members would be permitted to cultivate up to four plants each in a common space or clubhouse as long as total production doesn’t exceed 50 plants. Such spaces would be required to have separate areas for the cultivation and use of marijuana and couldn’t be located in close proximity to schools, cultural institutions, sporting facilities or churches and other places of worship.
Bricks and mortar stores with the appropriate licenses would be permitted to sell marijuana for recreational purposes but the sale via vending machines, over the phone, online, or in any other way that is not face-to-face would be prohibited.
With some restrictions, this will be fully legal after Senate approval and promulgation.
The Chamber of Deputies’ approval of the bill comes two years after the Supreme Court ruled that the ban on recreational marijuana was unconstitutional.
However, an organization that opposes the prohibition of drugs says the legislation doesn’t comply with the Supreme Court’s order to eliminate the ban on recreational marijuana.
Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD) said in a statement that recreational marijuana users could still be criminalized because there is a lack of clarity about what penalties apply to possession of different quantities of the plant.
“[The legislation] maintains a system of tolerance thresholds that generate legal uncertainty for users because it’s difficult to understand when a crime and when an administrative offense is being committed,” MUCD said.
“… The simple increase in the quantities for which criminal sanctions apply doesn’t eliminate the space for extortion nor the possibility of the police arbitrarily detaining people due to suspicious appearance,” the organization said.
MUCD was also critical of the legislation because it doesn’t decriminalize the cultivation of marijuana by people with low levels of education and extreme economic needs – mainly small-plot farmers who have long grown cannabis to support themselves and their families.
“In this way marginalization and the criminal punishment of our campesinos is perpetuated. [Campesinos are] the people most affected by prohibition and they should be integrated into the legal market, not kept in illegality,” the group said.
“… We mustn’t create a legal market that only prioritizes the economic benefit of those who participate in the sale [of marijuana] and excludes other less advantaged actors,” MUCD.
It called on the Senate to “correct” the legislation and comply with the mandate of the Supreme Court.
With a population of almost 130 million, Mexico is set to become the most populous country in the world to legalize the recreational use of marijuana nationwide.
Manlio and Sylvana Beltrones investigated for corruption.
A former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) chief as well as his wife, daughter and a close associate are under investigation in connection with multi-million-dollar deposits to bank accounts in Andorra, according to a report by the newspaper El País.
Published Wednesday, the report said the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) is investigating Manlio Fabio Beltrones, PRI national president between 2015 and 2016 and a former senator, deputy and governor of Sonora, his wife Sylvia Sánchez, his daughter Senator Sylvana Beltrones Sánchez and Alejandro Capdevielle, a former federal deputy.
El País said they are under investigation for presumed irregularities in relation to hidden accounts held with the Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), located in the tiny principality that borders both Spain and France.
The report said that Beltrones Sánchez, daughter of one of the “most influential figures in Mexican politics,” deposited US $10.4 million in BPA accounts between 2009 and 2010.
It noted that Beltrones Sánchez was just 26 at the time and didn’t have a job. Her father was the powerful coordinator of the PRI faction in the Senate, El País said.
The report also said that in 2015 a judge in Sonora placed embargoes on accounts held by the senator and both her parents due to suspicion of money laundering.
“Despite the gravity of the circumstances, the case remained hidden from the public,” El País said.
The newspaper said that a money laundering investigation in Andorra was shelved in 2018 after the PGR, as the Attorney General’s Office was known before President López Obrador took office, said in a report that the time within which a probe must take place had expired.
Under the leadership of Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, the FGR opened a new investigation due to alleged irregularities in its predecessor’s probe.
Capdevielle, who like the Beltrones family is from Sonora, told El País that the new investigation violates “fundamental human rights.”
“The new investigation consists of once again determining the legality of the resources deposited in Andorra. And they’re investigating the same people – the Beltrones family and me, for the same actions. They’re violating fundamental human rights. This is a tried and resolved case. Everything has already been cleared up,” he said.
Capdevielle, a newspaper editor who headed up the Mexican Association of Newspaper and Magazine Editors between 2003 and 2007, said the money deposited in BPA accounts came from a $10-million sale to broadcaster Televisa of Aviso de Ocasión, a classifieds publication.
But a judge in Andorra claimed that money came from payments to Manlio Beltrones in exchange for the approval in 2006 of the so-called Televisa Law, which allowed the broadcaster – which has long had a very cosy relationship with the once omnipotent PRI – to broaden its activities into areas such as telecommunications, internet and radio.
Manlio Beltrones rejected the accusation, telling El País that it is ridiculous and false.
“We [the PRI] didn’t have a majority in Congress. Besides I’ve had moments of friction with the broadcasters … [because] we reformed the electoral law and we removed their right to sell advertising to [political] parties. That was a reform of great importance that cost us a lot,” he said.
Sylvana Beltrones told El País that she opened an account with BPA in 2009 to in order to receive money that Capdevielle owed her after the closure of a homewares store they operated together in Mexico City.
The senator rejected claims of wrongdoing in a statement posted to Twitter on Wednesday afternoon and said she no longer has any BPA account. She asserted that the accusations against her are politically motivated, noting that elections are drawing near.
Luisa Arroya Vicenta, a Tenango embroiderer, is working with a Mexico City NGO on an internet sales initiative for Otomí and Nahua textile artisans.
If anything good comes from this pandemic, it may be that the Mexican artisan community “discovers” the internet.
Even before Covid-19, traditional artisans’ greatest challenge has been to get fair prices for their creations. Essentially, the problem is that they almost always live in poor, rural areas, far from urban and international markets where the people with the money and desire to support them can be found.
Traditionally there have been two ways for artisans to sell: the first is to middlemen, those who know where to buy crafts and where to sell them. The second is to travel to fairs and cultural events and pay for the right to sell there. Middlemen are often vilified, especially when the price they pay for crafts is compared to the retail price. There certainly are unscrupulous cads (including the government!) who take advantage of the artisans’ desperate need to bring money into the household. But to be fair, it is expensive to travel to the various small villages to buy small quantities of goods, then turn around and sell them to small niche markets.
Over the decades, there have been public and private initiatives with the aim of getting around this problem. Various museums have shops where they sell works on consignment, and the federal government has FONART, an agency to sell fine Mexican handcrafts. However, these have come under fire not only for underpaying artisans but for corruption as well.
Small private initiatives seem to do better. The Feria Maestros de Arte, for example, has operated for 20 years, holding an annual sales event at a yacht club at Lake Chapala in Jalisco. It is a nonprofit run by a group of Mexicans and foreigners that pays artisans’ travel expenses, arranges free sales space and lodges the artists in members’ homes. Selected artisans pay nothing to participate.
Traditional Jalisco burnished vase by Angel Ortiz Gabriel of Tonalá. His work is available on the Feria Maestros de Arte website.
However, one resource that had been seriously ignored was the internet, despite the increasing demand for online purchasing. Then came Covid.
Early in the pandemic, Mexico News Dailyreported on the disaster and the sense of panic that set in among artisans and those dedicated to supporting them. The need was so great and so sudden. Few, if any, artisans or organizations had the technical and marketing knowledge to start online selling from scratch. However, after various fits and starts, several initiatives seem to have hit their stride, and more are coming.
On March 8, 2021, the nonprofit Ayuda Mutua, Psicología y Derechos Humanos (Psydeh) and four indigenous women’s groups in the state of Hidalgo will officially inaugurate Bordamos Juntos (We Embroider Together), to support Otomí and Nahua textile artisans who live in the Tenango region, famous for embroidery of the same name.
Like the Feria, Psydeh is shifting from an event model to an online one. But Bordamos Juntos looks not only to help with immediate economic needs but also “… to disrupt this narrative by fostering a [from the] ground-up, women-led social enterprise project that offers immediate and long-term results…” So it is no coincidence that it launched on International Women’s Day.
Such efforts to give women more political and social power through income have worked in projects such as the Zongolica weaver’s cooperative, but it remains to be seen if the goal of having sales support community organizing work will pan out. However, Psydeh takes donations through several crowdfunding sites and is legally registered with the Mexican government.
“Popotillo” (similar to straw) painting by Roberto Mejía, whose work is available on the Feria Maestros de Arte website.
Bordamos Juntos is slated to run in March and April, longer if sales are good. Embroiderers will receive a direct payment of 1,000 pesos per piece, with the hope of making it permanent by the fall.
One interesting question to ponder is, what could be the fate of middlemen and events as the pandemic drags on? Feria Maestros de Arte founder Marianne Carlson, whose event is canceled for 2021, says that her organization looks to continue developing online solutions for artisans. As for middlemen, Carlson believes that the effect on them “… depends on the ethics of the middleman. There are costs in online selling that may force them and others to raise prices,” she said, citing the need to update websites and, most importantly, to create high-quality photographs since patrons can’t see a piece live. She recognizes that this is a huge challenge for many artisans so used to a face-to-face model.
These challenges make efforts by all of these organizations extremely important in the short and mid-range time frame. It is more than just setting up a Facebook page; it is changing how the artisans think about their businesses. The Feria, FOFA, Ayuda Mutua, and Psydeh programs recognize this need and are developing more holistic approaches.
Government agencies are way behind, fretting about opening hours on stores. The internet is a cheap way to present crafts to markets, but it does not solve the logistics of shipping. If the government really wants to help, it should focus on revamping its postal service to this end.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
