The president of a nightclub owners association said that clubs should refrain from playing music that encourages a sexualized style of dancing known as perreo, or twerking.
Bars and nightclubs shouldn’t play reggaeton or other styles of music that encourage violence and a lack of respect for women, according to the head of an association of nightclub owners in Morelos.
Humberto Arriaga Cardoza, president of the ADICE nightclub owners association, recommended that bars and nightclubs in the state capital of Cuernavaca remove such music from their playlists.
“It’s just a recommendation; it will be up to the owners of nightclubs and bars to pay attention to the musical preferences [of their establishments] because the lyrics [of reggaeton] encourage a lot of things such as violence [against women] and … femicides,” he said.
Arriaga also said that nightclubs and bars should turn off music that encourages a sexualized style of dancing known as perreo, or twerking.
He said he agreed with Mexican singer-songwriter Aleks Syntek, who has been highly critical of reggaeton for generating a culture of disrespect for women.
BAD BUNNY - YO PERREO SOLA | YHLQMDLG (Video Oficial)
Yo perreo sola, or I twerk alone, by recording artist Bad Bunny.
Originating in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, the music style is popular around the world, especially in Latin America. Among the best known reggaeton artists are Daddy Yankee, Bad Bunny and Maluma.
Arriaga said that his recommendation is not directed at members of the association he heads because they don’t play music that incites violence and fosters disrespect for women. He said he wanted all bar and nightclub owners to be more responsible to avoid damaging the reputation of Cuernavaca and frightening off Mexican and foreign tourists.
“We must recover the status we [previously] had because as citizens we watch the downfall of the municipality with sadness,” he said.
That remark referred to violence in recent years in the Morelos capital, located about 80 kilometers south of Mexico City.
Arriaga also said that the coronavirus pandemic has taken a heavy toll on entertainment venues in Cuernavaca.
“Unfortunately there’s no night life [at the moment]. The majority of the traditional discos closed their doors due to the pandemic but the idea is that the city will have that [economic] activity again. Now that [mayor-elect] José Urióstegui Salgado is coming in we hope that there is a strong recovery,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists are expected for Day of the Dead in Michoacán.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, at least 250,000 tourists are expected to travel to Michoacán for Day of the Dead celebrations.
The municipalities of Pátzcuaro, Tzintzuntzan, Erongarícuaro and Quiroga are preparing for an influx of visitors, according to the newspaper Milenio.
The state government said that strict health measures will be in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at cemeteries that are popular with Day of the Dead tourists.
Michoacán, one of the country’s most popular Day of the Dead destinations, has recorded more than 72,000 confirmed coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic and over 7,800 COVID-19 deaths.
In other COVID-19 news:
• The Health Ministry reported 4,797 new cases and 386 additional COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday. Mexico’s accumulated tallies are currently 3.79 million and 287,274, respectively. Estimated active cases number 28,700.
• More than 118.8 million vaccine doses have now been administered after over 793,000 shots were given Wednesday. Four in five Mexicans have received at least one shot.
In Nilchi, Campeche, an ancient Maya Day of the Dead tradition of caring for the bones of the departed is still practiced but is slowly fading into obscurity. photos by Underhemp Balloo
“Day of the Dead here is not the way it used to be — Nilchí is not the way it used to be.”
Lucía Peniche has lived in the old hacienda town of Nilchí, 35 kilometers east of the city of Campeche, since she was born. Growing up, she took part in the annual Day of the Dead celebrations, notable for its bone washing tradition and for the culinary and social festival which took place around the start of November. These days, however, celebrating Day of the Dead is a muted affair here.
Families are fractured mostly across the capital city. Lucía lives alone with her elder sister, and family members visit when they can, with decreasing frequency. Cultural ceremonies, when they occur, are now largely outsourced to contracted priests, caterers and shamans rather than undertaken by residents.
The disintegration of this small, rural community is manifest in its appearance: increasing numbers of abandoned buildings choked with vegetation surround the square. The children’s play area contains disused swings in full sunlight, little else. Behind it, there is a 50-meter stone tower with a citrus tree growing, seemingly against the odds, at the very top.
“They tried to take [the tower] down with the rest of the hacienda to sell the stone for new buildings,” explains Lucía. “They tied wire around it and tried to pull it down with a truck, but it simply wouldn’t budge, so they just had to let it stand there. It’s a little piece of the town’s past that refuses to go away. Most everything else is long gone.”
The impact of more and more residents abandoning Nilchí for nearby Campeche city can be seen in unkempt tombs at the local cemetery.
Mostly. The truth is that the past in Nilchí is not entirely gone, although Lucía’s perception that it has disappeared is damning enough for the town and its future.
Some of what is left centers around Day of the Dead, which still holds a unique place in this town’s cultural life, primarily focused on the tradition of washing the bones of those recently departed. A visit at any time of the year, in fact, demonstrates this, with deceased ancestors on full display in the graveyard niches in the cemetery, usually made up of their bones wrapped in a sheet and placed in a wooden box.
Even this most unique of cultural traditions, however, has taken a hit in recent years with encroaching disarray as more of the dead are forgotten and tombs are unkempt.
“We don’t make the pibipollo [a centuries-old Maya dish of the Yucatán Peninsula made with chicken and homemade tortillas] ourselves anymore — somebody else usually comes in to do it,” says Lucía. “And if you want a priest to pray for your dead, you have to hire him, and then he’ll add you to the list.”
As Lucía tells of the slow strangulation of the tradition in this town, another community member wanders over from across the neglected children’s play area. She, too, has lived in Nilchí since she was born and remembers a time when Day of the Dead was an overwhelming event that each year reminded the community of the importance of its history and of where its members are all going.
She tells of the hacienda next to which she and Lucía are standing, in which she lived as a child and which year by year and piece by piece was dismantled so that the resources stored in the infrastructure could be used to tide the family over in hard times.
A small children’s playground in Nilchí has seen better days.
Pomuch, a community in the north of the state, is now internationally recognized for its bone washing tradition; people flock to the town for Day of the Dead to witness the act and to see the colorful graveyard in which the bones reside throughout the year.
Though the fears that the ancient Mayan tradition will be lost are prevalent even there, Pomuch is the preservation-of-tradition foil to Nilchí. The cemetery in which the ritual bone-cleaning takes place is large and well-maintained year-round. It attracts tourists from across the country who help fuel the local economy and perpetuate the importance of the Day of the Dead ceremonies, to the point that it increasingly exists as a kind of theme park.
By contrast, the graveyard in Nilchí is small, and no one outside the community comes to visit. They did not last year; they will not next year either. And looking around now, the feeling here is of a town at the edge of the known world — isolated, hidden in plain sight.
Before leaving the town, the graveyard draws you in one more time, as if its voices are calling to you in their loneliness. In one tomb, the bones of somebody’s beloved are simply lying on the ground surrounded by litter. The box in which they should have resided has disappeared, or maybe never existed in the first place because it cost someone too much.
Just outside the cemetery, a lone child hops onto a bench, running with a plastic bag containing a Coca-Cola bottle in one hand and a clinking pot of change in the other, the face of modernity in a disposable plastic bottle that infects the space where once stood a community.
Far from having departed, the dead and the forgotten, it seems, are walking here among us in small rural towns across the country.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Houston Astros pitcher José Urquidy. Courtesy MLB México
Houston Astros pitcher José Urquidy became the first Mexican pitcher to win two World Series Major League Baseball games on Wednesday after playing a key role in his team’s 7-2 victory over the Atlanta Braves.
The 26-year-old Mazatlán native struck out seven batters over five innings in Wednesday’s game at Minute Made Park in Houston. The series is now tied at 1-1.
Urquidy’s first World Series victory came in Game 4 of the 2019 series between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals. The Nationals won that series 4-3.
“It means a lot,” Urquidy said after Wednesday’s game. “This is something that I have worked for a long time, when I was a kid, when I [played] in Mexico. I’m living the dream,” he said.
“I know there’s a lot of Mexican people … in the stands tonight … supporting me. It makes me feel even more motivated and focused knowing that I have to do a good job, and it makes me proud to represent the country that I’m from.”
The only other Mexican pitchers who have played in World Series game wins are the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela (1981), the Detroit Tigers’ Aurelio López (1984) and the Dodgers’ Víctor González and Julio Urías (2020). However, none of those pitchers has played in two World Series game victories.
A select group of just 12 Mexican-born baseball players have won a World Series title, including González and Urías last year. Urquidy, who debuted in the Major League in 2019, now has the opportunity to become the 13th.
Game 3 of the series will take place in Atlanta Friday while the seventh match, if required, is scheduled for next Wednesday.
Abigail Montes, right, faces off against Claressa Shields.
Mexican fighter Abigail Montes won a surprise victory over the United States’ Claressa Shields in a mixed martial arts (MMA) bout in Florida on Wednesday.
Montes, a 21-year-old from Guadalajara, prevailed via a split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28) in the Professional Fighters League showdown with Shields, a two-time Olympic winner who is widely considered the world’s greatest living female boxer.
It was just the third professional MMA fight for Montes and her first outside Mexico. She now has a 3-0 record.
It was Shields’ second professional MMA bout and her first loss. She announced her plans to transition into MMA last year and had her first fight in June.
Abby Brave, as Montes is nicknamed, was particularly dominant at the tail end of the third and final round, landing 15 unanswered blows.
“Montes went for broke in the final minute, positioning herself on top of Shields and letting her hands go,” the website Boxing Scene reported.
“I’m ecstatic to get such a big opportunity. I’m at my mental and physical peak and getting such a big fight is the perfect opportunity for me to seize,” she said.
In the Montaña region of Guerrero, 40,000 pesos (about US $2,000) is enough to buy a young bride.
An umbrella organization of children’s rights groups has condemned the federal government for downplaying the seriousness of Mexico’s child trafficking problem, which includes the sale of young girls for marriage.
The Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico (REDIM) said Tuesday that human trafficking, including the sale of girls, is a crime that the Mexican state must investigate and eradicate.
“We condemn the prevalence of this practice, which under the argument of laws and customs of indigenous communities objectifies girls and adolescents in several entities of the country, such as the Montaña area of Guerrero,” REDIM said in a statement endorsed by executive director Tania Ramírez Hernández.
REDIM rejected the federal government’s “permanent disregard” of its responsibility to guarantee Mexican children’s rights. “It’s unacceptable that the authorities, with an adult-centric vision, minimize and downplay situations as serious as the sale of girls,” it said.
REDIM charged that the government’s attitude has led to “an intentional failure of the state to deal with this terrible practice,” referring to the sale of girls, which it said precedes crimes such as sexual violence and child marriage.
It also came shortly after a case came to light in which a 15-year-old girl sold into marriage at the age of 11 was jailed for 10 days after she fled the home of her father-in-law, who allegedly attempted to rape her.
Visiting the Montaña region last Sunday, López Obrador said a media campaign had made the sale of girls for marriage or prostitution appear to be a bigger problem than it really is.
“I’m not here to look at that because it’s not the rule,” he said. “There are a lot of moral, cultural and spiritual values in the communities. It might be the exception, but it’s not the rule.”
REDIM said in its statement that child trafficking is an underreported problem but nevertheless a growing one. Statistics show that at least 1,463 minors — 1,054 girls and 409 boys – were victims of human trafficking between January 2015 and July 2021, the organization said.
REDIM also said that the number of child trafficking victims increased 45.8% to 261 in the first eight months of 2021 compared to the same period last year. Just under 70% of the victims between January and August this year were girls.
“The minimization of this problem is unacceptable” given that statistics show that 2020 and 2021 are the worst years ever for femicides, human trafficking and child pornography, REDIM said.
It also said that 6.8% of girls aged 15 to 17 and 0.6% of girls aged 12 to 14 were married or living with their partner in 2020. The figures for boys of the same age were 2% and 0.3%, respectively.
The percentages are higher in certain states, including Guerrero. Data from the National Statistics Institute shows that 11.8% of girls in Chiapas aged 15 to 17 are married, while the figures for Guerrero and Michoacán are 11.1% and 10.2%, respectively.
Migrants say a prayer together before leaving Huixtla early Wednesday morning. Ben Wein
The migrant caravan traveling north from Tapachula, Chiapas, hiked 17 kilometers to Villa Comaltitlán on Wednesday after making slow progress due to an unusually large contingent of pregnant women and children. Organizer Irineo Mújica confirmed that most caravans reach Huixtla on the first day: this time it took three days.
The convoy assembled at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday outside Huixtla’s Catholic church. Many migrants spent Monday night at a cramped sports facility, but were transferred Tuesday to the streets outside the church, where women and children were provided shelter.
Mújica prevented the caravan from leaving Huixtla until the trash on the streets was cleared. He then led a prayer, with each line called back by the crowd: “Our father, we are leaving from this town … touch the hard hearts of the politicians … don’t criminalize our liberty … a government that demands respect but imprisons you without conscience … and the women and children too, who are condemned to live in the streets, to suffer from hunger … [the government] is taking its dollars stained in blood,” he said.
The caravan approached a National Immigration Institute (INM) checkpoint some three hours later, where the migrants halted, fearing repercussions. After a short standoff, the convoy surged forward unopposed and the barrier was raised, sparking celebrations and cries of “Freedom! Freedom!”
Migrants pass through an INM checkpoint in Chiapas on Wednesday. Ben Wein
Soldiers, immigration officials and private security guards admired the spectacle of the enormous crowd, taking photos and videos on their phones as it passed the checkpoint barrier, about 10 kilometers north of Huixtla.
A private security guard named Eric who worked at the station said he was on the side of the migrants. “They should be free to transit … so that their dreams can be realized,” he said.
Numerous travelers collapsed on the highway under particularly intense heat, with temperatures above 38 C, the news agency EFE reported. There was only one Health Ministry ambulance available to serve at least 2,000 people, although organizer Luis Rey García Villagrán quoted a much higher total of 4,000 migrants, 1,250 of which were minors, he said.
The organizers instructed the convoy to pause about four kilometers from their destination, where they rested under mango groves for a few hours before arriving at Villa Comaltitlán around 5 p.m.
Here they were met with an unexpected welcome — the corpse of an unidentified man lying in the park where they set up for the night. But municipal police officers removed the body from the park, where most of the convoy stayed, while others were housed by a Catholic church after it opened its doors to women and children.
Rights organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) appear to have left the convoy; representatives from the Mexican Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and INM medics were present in Villa Comaltitlán, but not readily available on the highway. Chiapas rural health organization Mother Earth Mexico provided medical attention and water at the entrance to Villa Comaltitlán.
Terminal 1 of the future Felipe Ángeles International Airport.
Volaris is the first airline to confirm that it will operate services to and from the new Mexico City airport currently under construction on an air force base north of the capital.
The low-cost carrier announced Wednesday that it will begin flights to and from the Felipe Ángeles International Airport on March 21, 2022.
That’s the date by which the federal government has said the airport – which the army is building on the Santa Lucía Air Force base – will be ready to begin operations. Volaris said it will initially operate daily flights to and from Tijuana and Cancún.
The airline said in a statement that its decision to begin using the airport was based on a “comprehensive analysis” that considered a range of factors including construction progress, advances in the certification process and safety.
“The airline concluded that operating at this airport will be viable,” Volaris said. The airline said the new flights to Tijuana and Cancún will be additional to services it currently operates out of the existing Mexico City airport.
It said there is a market of 4.8 million potential passengers in the immediate proximity of the new airport, located about 45 kilometers north of central Mexico City in the México state municipality of Zumpango.
Volaris, which operates at 43 Mexican airports and flies internationally, said it currently transports about 25 million passengers per year.
“Our leadership in the domestic Mexican market and experience in operational safety were crucial in the decision to reach a new destination to continue democratizing air transport in Mexico,” said Volaris general director Enrique Beltranena.
The army general responsible for the construction of the new airport welcomed the airline’s decision.
“Receiving the support of the airline with the greatest growth in the national territory … is an honor,” Gustavo Ricardo Vallejo Suárez said.
Tickets for the first flights to arrive at and depart from the new airport are on sale on the Volaris website.
If the CFE becomes a monopsony, it could determine the price of electricity, who is permitted to buy it and any conditions for its sale, says one critic.
Carbon emissions and power generation costs will both increase substantially if President López Obrador’s proposed electricity reform passes Congress, according to a United States government agency.
Sent to Congress at the start of October, the constitutional bill would guarantee 54% of the power market to the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE).
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, said in a report that giving the CFE a bigger share of the electricity market – the company says it currently holds 38% – would cause a decline in the use of energy generated at Mexico’s wind and solar farms.
As a result, Mexico’s emissions would increase between 26% and 65% and electricity generation costs would rise between 32% and 54%, the NREL said.
A draft of the agency’s study seen by Bloomberg News said the electricity reform “could potentially distort the principle of economic dispatch, increasing production costs, and threatening the country’s short-term climate change commitments.”
Mexico has pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions by 22% by 2030. But the NREL’s study said that emissions “significantly increase under all scenarios” if the electricity reform is approved by Congress.
Before sending the bill, López Obrador took several steps to increase state control over the energy sector.
“The government wants to return to a gasoline monopoly,” said energy sector sources cited by the newspaper Reforma.
The NREL’s findings were rejected by López Obrador at his regular news conference on Thursday.
“With all respect they don’t have information about what is being done in Mexico,” he said.
Asked explicitly whether it is false that carbon emissions and power generation costs will go up, the president responded:
“It’s false, false, false and it doesn’t sound logical, it sounds metallic. What doesn’t sound logical sounds metallic.”
López Obrador said the aim of his reform is to “put order” to the electricity sector.
“Among other things politics was invented to put order to chaos and to avoid war. What we’re going to do is put the electricity market in order,” he said.
“… If this disorder, this chaos, continues, then we could have blackout problems and above all increases in the cost of electricity,” López Obrador said.
President López Obrador called the NREL’s findings false at his Thursday press conference.
The NREL’s findings were also dismissed by a CFE director who spoke with Bloomberg. Mario Morales Vielmas, director of intermediation of legacy contracts, said the CFE doesn’t expect any increases in power generation costs or higher emissions if the electricity form passes Congress.
He also said the CFE would have ample capacity to meet customers’ energy needs if the reform is passed and its market share is increased. “We see clearly that it’s a benefit for all,” Morales said.
The reform won’t force private companies out of the electricity market but it will level the playing field, according to the state-owned firm.
However, the reform would revoke existing power generation permits. It would also give national grid priority to energy produced at CFE’s aging hydroelectricity plants, which the federal government plans to modernize.
Power generated at CFE’s nuclear and gas-fired plants – which also burn fuel oil, a highly contaminating energy source – would also be above privately produced electricity in the national grid pecking order. Power generated by private companies using renewable sources such as wind and solar would be close to the bottom of the list, just above privately generated fossil-fuel power.
Montserrat Ramiro, former head of the Energy Regulatory Commission, said the CFE would have majority control of the electricity market, and be the sole purchaser of privately generated electricity as well as the only power retailer.
Therefore, there would be a monopsony in the electricity market and the CFE would be able to determine the prices it pays for the power it buys from suppliers and the conditions under which it makes those purchases, Ramiro said.
Having only one power retailer would be dangerous because the CFE could decide not to sell electricity to businesses that were exercising some kind of political pressure and continually complaining about service, he said.
The CFE could switch off the lights in an entire state or industry, Ramiro warned.
Óscar Ocampo, energy coordinator at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think tank, said the reform would increase electricity prices and the prices of other products would increase as a result.
Unsurprisingly, private and foreign energy companies that operate in Mexico are concerned about the proposed reform. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Mexico said earlier this month that the reform will have “dire consequences” if approved by Congress, asserting that it will destroy investments of Canadian companies in the electricity sector and other areas of the economy.
However, there is no guarantee that the bill will get through Congress as constitutional reforms require two-thirds support. The ruling Morena party lost its lower house supermajority after elections earlier this year and has never had a supermajority in the Senate.
López Obrador said earlier this month that the government will attempt to convince all opposition political parties to support the reform – with the Institutional Revolutionary Party a particular target – but none has indicated they will.
In addition to predicting higher emissions and electricity generation costs, the NREL said the reform could increase the probability of blackouts by 8% to 35%. It used Mexican power system generation data from September 2020 to August 2021 to complete its study, which was conducted on behalf of the 21st Century Power Partnership, an initiative of the Clean Energy Ministerial, a high-level global forum to promote policies and programs that advance clean energy technology.
Bloomberg noted that the study took into account production costs, emissions and system reliability to generate various scenarios under the proposed reform.
Mexico could have a new Grand Prix location in Cancún if a Saudi-backed group of investors is successful.
A Saudi-Arabian backed group of entrepreneurs wants to bring the Grand Prix to Cancún, Quintana Roo, and hopes to tie up a five-year deal.
The Mexican investors — alongside five foreign investors — plan to present a letter of intent at the Mexican Grand Prix on November 6-7. It will be addressed to Jean Todt, president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), and Stefano Domenicali, the CEO of Formula 1 (F1).
LP gas magnate Tomás Zaragoza of Zeta Gas and Eduardo Orozco, president of restaurants Wendy’s México and Applebees, are leading the investors.
Senator Antonio Garibay, the father of F1 driver Sergio “Checo” Pérez, said he met last weekend in Austin, Texas, with Todt to see the details of the new circuit. He added that, if approved, construction would begin in a matter of months.
The newspaper Reforma speculated that the events could be hosted in the 2025-2030 seasons. The newspaper also said the group would not look to stage the event early in the season, in order to avoid any clash with the Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City.
