The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and its new tank in the community of El Aguaje.
A video in which members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) show off an armored “narco-tank” apparently seized from a rival criminal organization has surfaced on social media.
The video shows an armored vehicle emblazoned with the CJNG initials towing a homemade tank, which was seized from the Viagras crime gang in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán, according to local media reports.
Six heavily-armed men and one women ride on the stolen tank as it is paraded in broad daylight down a street in El Aguaje, a town in the municipality of Aguililla.
“Another little gift,” one of the men says, while other cartel members declare that they are “pura gente del señor Mencho,” or “only Mencho’s people.”
El Mencho is the nickname of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the fugitive leader of the CJNG and Mexico’s most wanted drug lord.
— Meganoticias Zamora (@MeganoticiasZAM) March 2, 2021
The CJNG, widely considered Mexico’s most powerful and dangerous criminal organization, frequently makes videos to show off its vast firepower. One posted online last July showed some 75 masked gunmen alongside a long convoy of armored vehicles.
The Jalisco cartel is involved in vicious turf wars with other criminal organizations in different parts of Mexico including the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel in Guanajuato and the Viagras in Michoacán.
The CJNG has recently gone on an offensive in Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente, attacking several towns in the region. Just last week, a drone captured footage of 11 armored CJNG vehicles moving into the municipality of Tecaltepec, which borders Aguililla, from nearby communities in Jalisco.
According to local media reports, the cartel is attempting to capture or kill Juan José Farías, allegedly a criminal/self-defense force leader known as El Abuelo (The Grandfather) who heads up the eponymous Cartel del Abuelo.
Michoacán was Mexico’s sixth most violent state in 2020 in terms of the number of homicides. The only states with more murders were Guanajuato, Baja California, México state, Chihuahua and Jalisco.
Armored vehicles similar to those that appear in the new cartel video have been seen previously in Michoacán and other parts of the country. Just over a year ago, the army seized a “narco-tank” in Michoacán nicknamed “El Monstruo” (The Monster) that allegedly belonged to the Viagras. Another “monster” was found by community police in Guerrero in 2019.
Youths toke up at the pot market adjacent to the Senate building in Mexico City.
A bill that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, possession of up to 28 grams for personal use and the cultivation of up to six plants in one’s home could be approved by the lower house of Congress as soon as next Tuesday.
The justice and health committees of the Chamber of Deputies will debate and vote on the proposed Federal Law for the Regulation of Cannabis on Monday.
If a majority of members of those committees support the bill, as is expected to occur, it will likely be presented at a plenary session of the lower house on Tuesday. The Supreme Court had set a deadline of December 15, 2020, for deputies to debate the bill but granted an extension due to the law’s complexity.
Approval of the bill is considered inevitable because of a 2019 decision by the Supreme Court, which ruled that laws prohibiting the use of marijuana are unconstitutional, and broad support for legalization from the ruling Morena party, which leads a coalition with a majority in the lower house.
Vendors sell joints, cookies, brownies and other marijuana-related products at a market outside the Senate.
The newspaper Milenio, which obtained access to the draft law, reported that the bill rules out the possibility of creating a Mexican cannabis institute as a body to regulate a legal marijuana market. It proposes instead that the National Commission Against Addictions (Conadic) regulate the sector.
Conadic would have the authority to issue licenses for the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for recreational purposes.
The bill also proposes jail time of five to 15 years for anyone who produces, transports, sells or supplies more than 5.6 kilograms of marijuana without government authorization.
It states that any person over the age of 18 has the right to use marijuana for recreational purposes as long as his or her 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.
Advertising and other promotion of recreational marijuana would be banned if the proposed law passes as would cannabis-related sponsorship deals. People found violating provisions in the law would face hefty fines among a range of other penalties.
Meanwhile, people who have been gathering in a “cannabis garden-cum marijuana market” known as Plantón 420 outside the federal Senate building in Mexico City for the past year continue to act as if recreational marijuana has already been legalized and few if any restrictions apply to its use and commercialization.
Milenio reported that marijuana is sold and smoked openly in the Luis Pasteur park despite the presence of police, who turn a blind eye to the illicit activities. Among the products on sale are marijuana cigarettes, or joints, cannabis cookies, cupcakes, brownies, candy, “gummies” and tea as well as bags of high-grade pot known by the nickname Pablo Escobar, for the deceased Colombian drug lord.
A range of marijuana paraphernalia such as papers, pipes, bongs and scissors are also for sale right next to the Senate building, located on Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s most emblematic boulevard.
Some pro-pot senators have visited the marijuana tolerance zone, where wafts of aromatic smoke are a constant, but the Senate itself asked the Mexico City government almost two weeks ago to remove it and its occupants. To date, however, it hasn’t acted on the request.
Mezcal Rambhá's founder Rosario Ángeles comes from a family of tomato farmers in Oaxaca who thought she was crazy to start a distillery.
Most of us will think back on this year of pandemic and think only of the negatives, but the truth is there are also lots of positives if you know where to look. The struggles of the Covid outbreak have provided opportunities — of time, of space, of necessity — and many projects have been birthed over the last 13 months.
Here are five of my favorite pandemic projects created in the last year in Mexico and the people whose passions started them in this year of uncertainty.
Barrote
A 23-year-old soon-to-be-architect, Raúl Gomez Iturribarria, decided to make furniture during the pandemic.
Before all this started, he was just an architecture student at the National Autonomous University, but one who grew up with an engineer for a father and a love of making things. When his sisters — one of whom is a partner at Mujeres Incendiarias, another place where you can see his work — moved into a huge new house during the pandemic, they didn’t have much of a budget to furnish it, so he offered to make them some things: a kitchen table, a few bookshelves.
Barrote’s style is well-done but simple furniture that “doesn’t hide anything.”
Gómez’s photographer girlfriend convinced him to put pictures of the furniture he made on Instagram and @barrote.mx was born.
“I was sure it was just going to be a couple of my sisters’ friends ordering, maybe a couple of mine, and that would be it,” he said. “But then people started getting in touch with me that I didn’t even know,” he explained. “Then those people’s neighbors.”
Not only did the pandemic give him time to daydream about carpentry, it gave other people time to look around and hate their old furniture, it turns out.
The Barrote style is simple — naked. Raúl uses natural wood, plain metal framing, and screws in the joints you can see. It’s rustic and very urban at the same time.
“The idea is that the pieces are well-done, pretty, but don’t hide anything. You see all the details,” he said.
Despite his success, the future of Barrote after the pandemic is still up in the air. But for as long as it lasts, Gómez is enjoying working from his home office.
“I literally just have to put on pants and go up to the roof to work. I don’t have to drive anywhere or do anything else. And my parents don’t seem to mind that the house is full of wood.”
Interstellar Brewery
Ever ask yourself, if Mexico City was a beer, what would it taste like?
Yeni and Glen from Interstellar Brewery sort of know now. Their Wild Saison beer is made from yeast collected from flowers and plants in gardens all throughout the capital.
“We did dozens of experiments and some of them were just a disaster and just absolutely nasty. Other ones showed some signs of hope. In the end, it was a blend of the ones that were the best flavors for the kind of style we wanted,” Glen said.
While the Saison makes no promises to cure local allergies, the same quirky scientific approach to its creation is what runs through everything Interstellar does — from the Fibonacci sequence-numbered Nebula series to limit-pushing style experiments such as a grapefruit IPA and a vanilla-infused 13% alcohol stout.
Mexico City’s Interstellar Brewery tries out bold brewing experiments such as their grapefruit IPA or their vanilla-infused, 13% alcohol stout.
“We want to take you into an imaginary world,” Glen said. “We’re both into sci-fi and retro stuff, and we wanted something where we could connect with our creativity.”
While starting a brewery in the middle of a pandemic isn’t for everyone, the Interstellar tanks and equipment arrived in January 2020 after several years of planning had already passed. So when the world shut down, Glen and Yeni just decided to go ahead with their plans, pandemic be damned.
Certain aspects of the business were made more complicated — like getting together with other brewers to mull over collaborations — and others worked in their favor. They echo what many have said about the pandemic — it gave them the time and space to focus on something they love.
This brewery rocks not only because it has beers named Energon Cube — a reference to the children’s television cartoon, TheTransformers — but also because you can go online and buy three beers or 30 and have them delivered … for free. Their small but consistent production also means that beers are always fresh, but you’ll have to grab them before the photon satellite bus leaves the station.
Mananá World Deli
“We decided from the beginning that it was going to have a heavy New York-style Jewish deli bent but not exclusively,” said Nick Gilman about his pandemic project with business partner Sebastian Manterola, the Mananá World Deli.
Many of Mananá World Deli’s offerings evoke the tastes of Manhattan.
The pair had a pop-up food business in prepandemic times. After a few months of quarantine, they decided they needed to get back to cooking even if they couldn’t gather 30 people in a room at the same time anymore.
So they went dark kitchen and started an online deli. According to Gilman, almost every single ingredient on the menu is made by hand — the pastrami, the bacon, the bread, even the peanut butter and mayo. Beyond the traditional New York deli-style sandwiches, they offer items like a Cajun chicken sandwich, an Italian meatball sub and even a Bombay India sandwich.
“We’re trying to do authentic, traditional recipes without messing with them too much,” Gilman said. They are also committed to sustainability — using recyclable packing materials and local and organic produce when they can.
The Mananá World Deli is already getting accolades from Food and Travel magazine and other international media, but the proof is truly in the pudding (or in this case, the potato salad) and it’s there. By far the best pastrami sandwich I’ve had in years, their fare is a comfort-food lifesaver in these uncertain times.
Mezcal Rambhá
When Rosario Ángeles opened her distillery, Mezcal Rambhá, last April she faced more than just the pandemic. She was also up against her family and her entire community, everyone rooting for her to fail.
In a town of mezcal makers in Oaxaca, Ángeles’ family was made up of tomato farmers. Since mezcal is a family business in Oaxaca, when this young entrepreneur decided she was passionate about making the liquor and dreamed of opening a distillery, people said she was crazy.
“I don’t know how it is now, but if you were to ask then about me in town, they would say, ‘Why are you going out there? It’s not any good. She doesn’t even know what she’s doing,’” she said.
Even her family told her it was stupid to try and make mezcal on her own — with no background knowledge, all alone and a woman to boot. But the truth was, she was a strong and determined young woman who was even willing to be ostracized to see her dream come true.
Ángeles’ family finally started to come around as the buildings went up for the Rambhá distillery and she started her first distillations: high-proof mezcals that reflect the complexity of the local maguey.
“They figured it was better to be with me and help me than be against me, I guess,” she said.
That first distillation in April was right when the pandemic started to get scary around the world.
The Rambha distillery specializes in high-proof, complex mezcals.
“At that point, we still weren’t exactly sure how big of a problem this would be for us,” Ángeles said. “I just started and was like, ‘OK, whatever happens happens.’”
Now Ángeles is days away from being certified to sell commercially and has started hosting tours of the property for the newfound fans of Rambhá mezcal. She survived her community’s judgment, is surviving the pandemic and is making one hell of a mezcal.
Bep Vietnam
Patricia Rosenthal is the result of successive immigrations around the world: born to a Vietnamese mother who fled the country in the 1950s, Rosenthal was raised in France and spent lots of time in the kitchen with her maternal grandmother, who spoke little French but conversed deeply through the medium of food.
Landing in Mexico as an adult, prepandemic Rosenthal and her husband were hosting culinary events with their business Limbico Lab — offering classes, tastings, cooking courses and catering for events. Their menu was a mix of styles and cuisines, with a special focus on traditional mezcal, a passion they both shared.
“I had cooked Vietnamese for a few friends and a couple times with Limbico, and people always really liked it,” she says, “When our events got canceled in March and my Airbnb income dried up, I thought, ‘Well, what am I going to do now?’”
Patricia Rosenthal grew up in France and moved to Mexico City. Her food business, Bep Vietnam, features the food of her mother’s heritage.
So she decided to get back into the kitchen, this time to reconnect with her roots and channel her grandmother, Mamie Paris. She started out making nems (a kind of Vietnamese egg roll), her most beloved recipe because it’s what her mother used to make for parties when she was young. From that simple dish grew Bep Vietnam, a food delivery and pick-up service with a limited but authentic menu of Vietnamese Pho soup, bahn mi sandwiches, and bo kho in addition to the famous nems.
“For me this is very intimate, very personal,” says Patricia, “to share this part of my history with other Mexicans. Food reveals so much about your roots.”
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Authorities in Jalisco will implement a range of special measures over the Easter vacation period to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Health Minister Fernando Petersen announced Wednesday that health checkpoints will be set up on highways and in airports and bus stations to detect possible cases.
He also said that people will only be allowed on beaches in the state between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. during Holy Week and that hotel occupancy in tourist destinations such as coastal resorts, magical towns and the Lake Chapala area will be limited to 66%. Restaurants and bars will be required to close by 11:00 p.m.
All large-scale religious activities such as processions, pilgrimages and re-enactments will not be allowed but churches will be open with strict capacity limits in place.
In the lead-up to Good Friday, the Jalisco government will deploy officials to seafood markets to ensure that people respect the health protocols and that entry is restricted to avoid overcrowding. The government will also ramp up Covid-19 testing over the Easter period to detect and isolate cases.
Government official Alejandro Guzmán said that all businesses across the state will be required to strengthen their health protocols over Easter, a time during which their customer levels might increase.
Jalisco has recorded more than 223,000 coronavirus cases, according to the state government, which unlike the federal government counts the results of rapid tests and those from private laboratories. The state’s Covid-19 death toll is 10,512, the third highest in the country after Mexico City and México state.
The occupancy rate for general care beds set aside for coronavirus patients in Jalisco hospitals is 20% while 29% of beds with ventilators are in use.
The pandemic has hit Guadalajara harder than any other municipality in the state, with 35% of all cases in Jalisco detected in the state capital. The municipalities with the next highest number of cases – Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, Tonalá and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga – are all located in the Guadalajara metropolitan area.
Puerto Vallarta, the state’s premier tourist destination, ranks sixth for case numbers with 6,562 as of Wednesday.
The activist, feminist, dancer and writer has a clear vision for her life.
A 15-year-old activist, feminist, dancer and writer in Oaxaca is living proof that it’s never too early to start working toward a more peaceful and equitable world.
While many teenagers might not have much of an idea of what they want to do with their lives, Aleida Ruiz Sosa already has a clear vision for hers: she wants to do all that she can to eradicate violence against girls and women on top of fighting for equality and women’s rights more broadly.
And she isn’t sitting around waiting to get started. Ruiz has already imparted a six-month dance course in a women’s prison near Oaxaca city, written a collection of short stories that seeks to educate people about violence against women and help eliminate sexist stereotypes and served as a “peace ambassador” for the Ibero-American Human Rights Commission.
While she was giving the dance course at the Tanivet women’s prison, Ruiz became aware that the 170 prisoners had very limited access to feminine hygiene products so she turned her focus to fundraising and was able to secure enough funds to buy and donate 11 menstrual cups.
Entitled Arcoíris, or Rainbow, her collection of short stories, published with the support of the Oaxaca Attorney General’s Office, also raised much-needed funds – in this case for children who lost their mothers to femicide.
Ballet dancer Ruiz gave a six-month dance course at a women’s prison in Oaxaca.
“The money from every book sold went to girls and boys [whose mothers were killed] because when a woman dies, she doesn’t just die and that’s it. It affects the children who are left without a mother and grandmothers who are left without a daughter. It affects an entire chain [of people],” Ruiz told the newspaper Milenio.
But Ruiz is not resting on her laurels: she has now turned her focus to the issue of child marriage in Oaxaca while also preparing to perform in a dance routine to raise funds to buy more menstrual cups for the female prisoners.
Her anti-child marriage campaign – called “let girls be girls, not wives” – seeks to raise awareness about the law in Oaxaca that forbids marriage before the age of 18 and ensure that it is not violated.
Ruiz told Milenio that there have even been cases in which minors and young women have been raped, become pregnant and forced to marry their aggressors.
As for her dance performance next Monday – International Women’s Day – the young activist hopes to sell enough “virtual access” tickets to buy 150 menstrual cups for female prisoners.
Given her work to date and obvious passion for girl’s and women’s rights, it’s not surprising that Ruiz is already thinking about a career in the field, telling Milenio that she would like to take on an ambassadorial role one day. A position with the United Nations or a Mexican or international human rights organization would appear to be a natural fit.
“I consider myself a feminist insofar as I firmly believe in equality and in the right for men and women to have [equal] opportunities,” Ruiz said.
“… The female gender is clearly disadvantaged and we have to work to reach an equilibrium. In my family I have more male cousins that female ones [but] we’ve always been treated the same; there’s no favoritism or anything.”
Average Mexicans' easy access to a wide variety of high-quality foods is one of the everyday signs of its slowly but steadily growing affluence.
Prior to actually living in Mexico, I thought it to be a third-world country, with all the attendant problems faced by a nation with that bottom-of-the-heap moniker: government systems crippled by chronic corruption and a lethargic economy. Dirt roads and dusty towns, with most vehicles looking like they were ready for the crusher, people spending long hours of toil with little to show for the effort.
Having traveled around western Mexico and Baja for decades, I look back at the lack of prosperity that seemed to overshadow the culture 50 years ago. The country was so mismanaged, the value of the currency was predisposed to plummet at any given moment, all but wiping savings out. Even those who grew their own food and raised some livestock were impacted by the rampant incompetence which ensured the economic failures.
Around the margins of most modern-day Mexican cities and small towns, the tar paper shacks and shanties are a stark reminder of the poverty which still seems so brutally persistent. However, the statistics over the past 20 years show a Mexico that is coming of age within the contemporary world’s economies, with the poverty rate overall steadily declining since the late 1990s.
There are also large billboards in Guadalajara and Mexico City that implore the public not to bribe tránsitos, along with a free number to report corruption. The steps are small and progress is slow, but it’s a positive effort to transform the shady side of Mexico.
After relocating from Idaho to Mazatlán, my first few years were spent getting to know the town, the culture and, of course, the people. One thing instantly apparent was that most automobiles were of a late model and in good condition. Another indicator of growing prosperity was the ongoing construction of both commercial and residential buildings, which was happening throughout the municipality.
Further revelations included the numerous clean and well-stocked supermarkets that would be an anomaly in a supposed third-world country — places where the floors are always being cleaned and the food handlers wear sanitary masks (pre-Covid) and gloves. These 30,000-square-foot temples to abundance would not be found in any of the truly third-world countries where food holds more value than the swiftly declining currency.
Even in the crowded centro mercado, the quantity and quality of both fresh and processed food is impressive.
Of course, the main reason decent automobiles and major appliances are now within reach of the average Mexican is that first-world invention called easy credit. Buying big-ticket items with credit is a relatively new concept in Mexico.
With prevailing interest rates from 20% to 45%, people are funding their prosperous lifestyle with yet-to-be-earned pesos. Hopefully, the moneylenders won’t corrupt this open and friendly culture with the continuing cycle of debt that has become a way of life in some first-world nations.
The entrepreneurial spirit flourishes in Mexico; small businesses and individual vendors are literally everywhere. If there were not an expanding economy, these enterprising people would not be so numerous. While the trinket vendors swarm the tourist beaches of both coasts, most vendors peddle their wares in neighborhoods throughout Mexico, focusing on the needs of residents.
Coming from a culture where the automobile is an essential shopping accessory, I have found servicio a domicilio to be quite refreshing. The list of goods and services that can be delivered to your door is indeed phenomenal, from agua to zanahorias (carrots).
Want to have a party? The beer distributors will deliver all the beer you and your friends could possibly consume, as well as a sufficient quantity of tables and chairs to accommodate the bottles and bodies of the drunken mob.
Need ice for all that beer? No problem. For a very reasonable price, the ice company will drop off enough blocks to build a small igloo. Is your fiesta going to be on a hot day? Just have carpas (tents) delivered. How about some music? A fully loaded Rockola jukebox or an eight-piece band is just a phone call away. (For large parties in certain parts of Mexico, body bags and a professional cleanup crew can also be arranged.)
But for the rest of us, bottled water, fruits, vegetables, fresh seafood, homemade tortillas, ceviche, tamales, along with a host of both recognizable and obscure goods, are available for home delivery throughout modern Mexico. These inventive vendors are friendly and energetic folks who have created an economic niche by providing convenience at a reasonable price.
There are auto mechanics and tire repair people who, along with many doctors, will also make house calls. Try finding a doctor north of the border who would willingly come to your home — certainly not in this century.
The only professional service persons who do not come to you are the dentists, but I am sure someone is working on that.
In the countries north of the border, the driving forces to compete and succeed have imposed an economic servitude upon their citizens, which can negatively impact the overall attitude of the population. However, here in Mexico, it appears that even many of the poor people are content with their lives and country.
There is not the sense of despair and hopelessness that is rampant in most of the true third-world nations. Just because you live in a first-world country does not necessarily mean that your overall sense of well-being is greater than the average Mexican citizen.
Mexico is a struggling country with both economic and social problems to overcome, and Covid-19 has certainly left its mark, but the overall outlook is promising. The greatest resource this country has is its companionable and compassionate people. Even government corruption and poverty are taken in stride as this emerging nation jockeys for position within the world community.
So, if you still think Mexico is a third-world country, go spend a couple of weeks in Somalia.
The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half-wild dog. He can be reached at [email protected].
Security Minister Rodríguez: criminal influence is most prevalent at the municipal level.
The federal government has identified seven states with an elevated risk of interference by organized crime in the electoral process leading up to municipal, state and federal elections on June 6.
“In the states of Morelos, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Sinaloa and Jalisco we see more risk that candidates will be co-opted by [organized] crime,” Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez said at the president’s news conference on Thursday.
She also said that more than half of the incidents of political violence in the pre-campaign period have occurred in seven states: Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Veracruz, Guerrero, Morelos, Baja California and Jalisco.
Rodríguez said that organized crime and white-collar criminals “have a varied repertoire of actions to influence these elections,” explaining that they include “strategies of complicity or violent pressure.” She added that President López Obrador has described criminals seeking to influence the elections as “the crime party.”
“They establish campaigns of fear to intimidate the political class and people in general,” the security minister said.
The most recent victim of political violence was Ignacio Sánchez, who had sought to run for mayor of Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo. He was murdered in February.
“They murder, threaten, co-opt, install [candidates] and fund [political campaigns]. Among their strategies of violence are homicide, kidnappings, intimidation of families, the burning of homes and extortion,” Rodríguez said.
“They also co-opt by approaching pre-candidates, colluding with other political actors of the parties or local governments and before the electoral process [begins] they offer financing, donations or to provide protection and labor for their campaigns. In some regions, [organized] crime is trying to designate municipal candidates. They take control of [parties’] finances, extort and ask for bribes and tithes from governments and their suppliers.”
The minister said that criminal influence is most prevalent at the municipal rather than state and federal level. More than 21,000 elected positions will be up for grabs at the June elections, the vast majority of which are municipal roles including mayor.
Rodríguez said that protection will be provided to candidates who request it and that security will be bolstered in parts of the country where there is an elevated risk of political violence.
According to the risk analysis firm Etellekt, there were 151 acts of political violence in the pre-campaign period between September 7, 2020 and February 16, including 46 murders. Ten of those slain were aspirants to elected positions.
Incidents of violence increased 4.1% in the recent pre-campaign period compared to the same period three years earlier during which there were 145 acts of political violence in the lead-up to the 2018 elections.
Etellekt director Rubén Salazar told the newspaper El Economista that there has been an atmosphere of uncertainty during the 2020-2021 pre-campaign period, explaining that there has been a lot of movement of people between political parties and that has created tension that is conducive to violence.
He said that candidates, including people already in elected positions, may be tempted to resort to violence (most likely by colluding with organized crime) to improve their political prospects if they believe they are destined to lose the election.
Salazar said that state-based prosecutor’s offices tasked with investigating political violence are politically biased and that situation fosters impunity, which only encourages violence.
“Work has [supposedly] been done for years so that the prosecutor’s offices become autonomous but it’s a ploy because governors choose the prosecutors – [prosecutor’s offices] are only autonomous on their letterhead. There are prosecutor’s offices that are focused on investigating acts of corruption due to alleged links between opposition politicians and drug trafficking … but [the investigations] are always about the opposition, … they don’t investigate within their own party,” he said.
The president’s ‘polarizing daily discourse’ has contributed to division and violence, says a political observer.
Arturo Espinosa, general director of the political consultancy Estrategia Electoral, told El Economista that the aggressive and divisive discourse of politicians at all three levels of government encourages political violence.
(López Obrador, who dubs virtually anyone who doesn’t agree with him as an adversary, a conservative or member of the old “mafia of power,” is notorious for making remarks that do far more to divide the country than unite it.)
Espinosa said that political speech should promote tolerance rather than division, asserting that such discourse would help to avoid acts of violence against political actors.
“I believe that the [federal] government with its polarizing daily discourse, which rarely shows tolerance toward the opposition and those who think differently, has increased this division and violence that we see a lot and which is unnecessary,” he said.
Four Oaxaca police officers in a municipality most recently known for coronavirus czar Hugo López Gatell’s vacationing there without a mask have been suspended after they were accused of violently enforcing the local mask law.
A two-minute video captured the four San Pedro Pochutla municipal police officers attempting to arrest a young couple in the downtown area, physically restraining them while they resisted.
Local officials said they had suspended the officers because they had not behaved “in an empathetic manner with citizens.”
“While the use of masks is obligatory, the agents in charge of enforcing this measure should act first by example and understand that in the Covid-19 epidemic, the battle is against the virus, not against ourselves,” officials said in a statement.
Pochutla is where Zipolite Beach is located, where Deputy Health Minister López Gatell was photographed without a mask in December.
— El Universal Oaxaca (@ElUniversalOax) March 4, 2021
Witnesses who saw the incident told the newspaper El Universal that they thought the police overreacted. One told the newspaper that the couple were warned about not wearing masks and were on their way to a pharmacy to buy them, but the officers came along and proceeded to detain them.
Another witness said the couple claimed to have just arrived in the city.
“There are communities in [the area] where there is no internet or radio and they’re not informed about the fine that the municipal government has imposed,” said one witness.
Due to concern about rising numbers of cases, the municipality went to maximum-risk red on the coronavirus stoplight system on February 15 until March 15, even though the state of Oaxaca is currently at high-risk orange, which is one level below.
According to state figures, San Pedro Pochutla had an accumulated Covid case tally of 209 as of Wednesday, with five currently active cases and 17 deaths in total.
Cancún airport, where immigration processing has been improved.
Mexico’s immigration department is assuring the public that visitors can enter the country through Cancún’s international airport in two minutes or less.
“The INM is working to maintain and offer rapid service, with quality and warmth,” the National Immigration Institute said Wednesday.
At its busiest hours on Tuesday, airport checkpoints processed nearly 9,000 visitors arriving on dozens of flights, the INM said.
The improved service follows a meeting between the INM and various government departments in response to concerns about long lineups. The institute agreed to provide 100 agents to process arrivals, up from just 13 before.
Mexico can be attractive for international visitors: a favorable exchange rate and few limits on travelers, who do not need to provide evidence of negative Covid-19 tests or commit to any isolation period upon arrival. Over the last Thanksgiving holiday, the number of Mexican destinations booked by Americans were higher than those booked in Europe, according to the insurance company Allianz.
Passengers heading to Mexico need only complete a form about their risk factors for Covid-19 and provide their contact details, but since Mexico has little ability to do contact tracing, the procedure is little more than an empty formality.
Passengers could also be screened for Covid-19 symptoms upon arrival in Mexico, but with a promised two-minute maximum transit time through immigration, even that seems unlikely.
March could provide Cancún and other Quintana Roo vacation destinations such as Tulum, Cozumel and Playa del Carmen with a badly needed infusion of cash with Holy Week falling between March 28 and April 3. Spring break travelers may be another factor but their numbers are not expected to be anywhere near as high as in previous years.
All of Quintana Roo’s major beach destinations are listed at medium-risk yellow on the coronavirus stoplight risk map, allowing hotels to book at 60% occupancy and some restrictions to be eased. And for the moment, beaches in Quintana Roo are open with a 60% capacity limit as well, although bars and clubs statewide are not open.
A boost in visitor numbers would be welcome: January arrivals at Cancún’s airport — one of Mexico’s busiest — were only 1.3 million in January, 54.7% lower than the same month in 2020, when about 2.3 million passengers arrived there. On the other hand, domestic tourism did considerably better, with domestic flights to the Cancún airport only down about 18%.
Still, the state has a long way to go to recover the level of tourism it had before the pandemic: tourism ministry figures show that Cancún and Puerto Morelos combined saw an average hotel occupancy of only 35.6% in January this year, compared to 80.8% last year. That represents a 45% decrease.
In the same period, other Quintana Roo destinations saw sharp decreases as well: Cozumel saw a 44% decrease while Isla Mujeres saw a decrease of 30%.
Majority of widows are left in precarious financial situations.
Almost 45,000 Mexican women were widowed between between 2010 and 2019 due to violence, according to data collected at last year’s census.
An average of 12.3 women lost their husbands to violent, mainly drug-related crime every day in the 10-year period between the start of 2010 and the end of 2019. All told, 44,905 women were left widows.
In the same period, 3,043 men were widowed due to violence, meaning that attacks, most of which were perpetrated with firearms, destroyed a total of 47,948 marriages during the period. Violence widowed 26,508 women and men in the preceding decade, meaning that 74,456 people have lost their husbands and wives to crime since the year 2000.
More than 6,250 people were widowed in Guerrero due to violence between 2010 and 2019, more than in any other state. Of those, 94% were women and 6% were men.
México state ranked second with 4,742 people widowed in the decade-long period followed by Chihuahua (3,979), Guanajuato (3,699), Michoacán (3,047), Jalisco (2,924) and Mexico City (1,634).
One of Mexico’s “narco widows” is a Michoacán woman identified only as Azucena by the newspaper Milenio. Her husband, a state police officer, was shot and killed in March 2019 on the highway to Tocumbo, a Michoacán municipality that borders Jalisco.
Azucena told Milenio that she has struggled to rebuild her life since her husband’s death, explaining that the state government hasn’t paid out on his life insurance or provided educational scholarships for her children.
“We live in uncertainty. I have a 13-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son who have faced a lot of deprivation.”
“The pain and the despair are permanent,” Azucena said, referring to the emotional distress of losing her husband.
Another widow is Maritza, a Guerrero woman whose husband’s body was found in a hidden grave after he was murdered. She said she also lost her home, her friends and her peace of mind as a result of her husband’s violent death. In addition, Maritza received a death threat that warned that she would be “disappeared” like her husband.
Left without the financial support, Maritza opened a business on two occasions but was forced to close both due to threats she received. She now lives in hiding and has closed her social media accounts and constantly changes her cell phone number.
A University of Guadalajara study found that the majority of women who are widowed are left in precarious financial situations and that many of them lack the education levels required to get good-paying jobs and get ahead. As a result, they’re often forced to work low-paid jobs to support themselves and any children they might have as best as they can.
The study also found that many widowed women have difficulties accessing pensions and payments they should receive due to their husbands’ deaths and that some have had to flee their homes due to threats, as was the case with Maritza.
Violent crime has long plagued Mexico but worsened in recent years. New records for homicides were set in each of 2017, 2018 and 2019 and only declined 0.4% in 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Data shows that the number of people widowed on an annual basis due to violence declined at the start of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 term after rising above 5,000 in 2010 and 2011 during the presidency of Felipe Calderón, who launched a militarized “war on drugs” after taking office in late 2006 that has been blamed for increasing bloodshed.
However, the number of people widowed due to violence rose above 5,000 again in 2017 and reached 5,816 – the highest level of the decade – in 2018. The figure declined in 2019, President López Obrador’s first full year in office, but only by 0.8% to 5,678.
