His parents, Santiago Albino and his wife, Elisa, who laid their son Lazarito to rest on Saturday in Tlatlauquitepec, have filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission, which has begun investigating the city of Puebla’s La Margarita hospital — the IMSS hospital where Lazarito was born — for medical negligence.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of what actually happened with regard to Lazarito’s birth,” the parents said in a statement.
Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa has also requested that federal and state prosecutors investigate the case.
Santiago Albino accused the hospital, where his son was born on October 21, of negligence.
“I hold the doctors that attended to [my wife] directly responsible,” he said. “They left Elisa alone for 15–20 minutes at a time and they walked by her looking at their cell phones without attending to her even when they could hear my wife screaming with childbirth pains.”
IMSS officials stated that the 23-week-old newborn had been declared dead after assessing him according to established medical protocols for extremely premature newborns. He had shown no vital signs, they said.
The hospital had the baby’s father sign a death certificate and transported Lazarito to the morgue, where he remained in a storage refrigerator until Albino and family members arrived to pick up the body for burial. While verifying the child’s identity, morgue staff realized he was alive, Albino told the newspaper El Universal in October.
Immediately following the discovery Lazarito was transferred back to the neonatal intensive care unit at La Margarita Hospital, where doctors said from the beginning that they could not guarantee his survival.
The president continues to enjoy a strong approval rating. buendía & laredo/el universal
The ruling Morena party has a clear advantage over its two main rivals just six months out from the 2021 midterm election while President López Obrador continues to enjoy the support of a strong majority of Mexicans, according to two new polls.
A survey conducted by the polling firm Buendía y Laredo for the newspaper El Universal between November 12 and 18 found that 32% of respondents would vote for Morena if the midterm election, at which all 500 seats of the lower house of Congress will be up for grabs, was held today.
That result gives Morena a 2-1 lead over both the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which attracted 17% and 16% support, respectively.
None of the other seven parties to contest the June 6, 2021 election attracted the support of more than 5% of respondents.
Of the 1,000 people polled, 4% said that they would vote for each of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), the Ecological Green Party (PVEM) and the Labor Party (PT) while 3% said they would cast their ballot for the Citizens Movement (MC). One in six respondents – 17% – declined to reveal their voting intention.
While the poll indicates that Morena is the most popular political party in the country, its support has declined 20 points since February 2019. Meanwhile, support for the PAN and the PRI increased nine and eight points respectively from 8% in February last year.
Only 27% of respondents to the new poll were aware that an election to renew the Chamber of Deputies will be held next June, indicating that most voters are not yet paying close attention to the upcoming electoral process.
Preferences are prone to change as the election date approaches and voters tune in more closely to the platforms parties are running on and who their local candidates are. Nevertheless, Morena is in an enviable position.
While 32% of respondents said they planned to vote for the party founded by López Obrador, 54% said that they had a very good or good opinion of it. Only 23% of those polled said that they had a bad or very bad opinion of Morena, leaving the party with a positive over negative differential of +31.
Among the seven parties with at least 3% voter support, only two others have a positive opinion differential. They are MC, with a +14 differential, and the PT – a Morena ally – at +6.
The PRI, which was in power from 2006 to 2012 and most of the 20th century, has the worst opinion differential at -31 – a figure that is perhaps unsurprising given the number of scandals that plagued the previous federal government – followed by the PRD (-12), the PAN (-11) and the PVEM (-1).
Morena is the clear leader in voters’ preference for Congress. buendía & laredo/el universal
Another positive for Morena is that López Obrador’s approval rating remains strong almost two years after he took office. The poll commissioned by El Universal found that 64% of respondents approved of the president’s performance while only 25% disapproved.
His approval rating, however, has declined 21 points since February 2019 when it was 85% just two months after he was sworn in.
A notable finding of the El Universal poll is that 64% of respondents approve of López Obrador’s performance but only half that number – 32% – said they would vote for Morena at the midterm election. The discrepancy apparently indicates that a sizable portion of the population support the president, who will celebrate two years in office on Tuesday, but want Congress to keep him in check rather than act as a rubber stamp for his proposals.
A poll commissioned by the El Economista newspaper also found a strong approval rating for AMLO, as the president is best known.
Conducted over the internet with a much large sample size of 87,735 respondents, the poll found 58.4% approval of the president’s performance.
Approval was highest in Guerrero, Tabasco and Tlaxcala, where more than 70% of respondents supported López Obrador, and lowest in Aguascalientes, Chihuahua and Colima, where fewer than 40% of those polled approved of the president’s performance.
The combined 58.4% figure is more than 10 points higher than in June when AMLO’s approval rating dropped to 47.5%, according to an El Economista poll conducted that month.
The president’s 47.5% rating, recorded the month after Mexico’s coronavirus restrictions were eased following a two-month suspension of nonessential economic activities, was his lowest since taking office in December 2018. His highest, according to El Economista polls, was 67.1% in February 2019.
López Obrador’s current approval rating is the third best among Mexico’s six most recent presidents after they served two years in the job.
Carlos Salinas, president from 1988 to 1994, had a 67% approval rating after two years in office, nine points higher than AMLO, while Felipe Calderón, president from 2006 to 2012, had a rating of 61% two years into the job.
López Obrador’s approval rating is 17 points higher than that of his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, who had a 41% rating two years after taking office. AMLO is four points ahead of Vicente Fox, president from 2000 to 2006, and one point ahead of Ernesto Zedillo, who served from 1994 to 2000.
If the 2018 presidential election was held again today, 48.9% of respondents to the El Economista poll would vote for López Obrador. That level of support is just below the 53.2% of the vote he attracted in July 2018.
However, removing the 14.1% of respondents who declined to say who they would vote for, support for López Obrador rises to 56.9%.
The “effective” support for AMLO is more than double that of Ricardo Anaya, who represented a PAN/PRD alliance at the 2018 election, and more than triple that of José Antonio Meade, who ran as the PRI candidate.
A similar percentage of respondents – 57.2% – said that they intend to vote for López Obrador to complete his six-year term at a “revocation of mandate” referendum slated to be held in 2022.
Asked how they would evaluate the president’s performance in a range of specific areas, 51.5% of respondents said that he has reduced corruption a lot or quite a lot. Although only just over half of those polled commended his performance in the area, it was López Obrador’s best result.
However, the result doesn’t exclude respondents who declined to offer a positive or negative assessment. Therefore the “effective” result for the president in that area and the 17 others respondents were asked about would be higher.
The president’s second and third best results were in “strengthening democracy” and “protecting citizens’ rights” while his worst results were in the areas of “achieving peace” – 2020 is on track to be most violent year on record, “combatting crime” and “reducing poverty.”
Cabrito is grilled goat kid, popular in Monterrey. Alejandro Linares García
Not exactly vegetarian-friendly, the north of Mexico loves meat cooked over a fire.
Such images of vaqueros (cowboys) cooking over open fires lead some culinary experts to think that there is nothing here to offer, but they are wrong.
Perhaps the best example of a deceptively simple food is roasted or grilled goat. It is to Monterrey what barbecue is to the southern United States and sausages to Germany. No visit is complete without trying it.
The most common name for the dish is simply cabrito (little goat), but more descriptive are names like cabrito asado (grilled goat) or cabrito al pastor (shepherd’s-style goat). Like tacos al pastor, the meat is traditionally cooked over a flame in a semi-upright position; the similarity ends there.
The dish in Mexico goes back about 450 years to the early colonial period. The Spanish crown sent unwanted Jews, as well as Portuguese and Arabs to settle this desolate and, frankly, dangerous area. These peoples brought with them their Mediterranean tastes for lamb, goat and spices such as oregano. In fact, today, Nuevo León is the most important producer of oregano in Mexico.
Cabrito on a spit. Courtesy of Ivan Martinez (CC)
Simply put, cabrito is a kid, in the original sense of the word, that has never been weaned before it is slaughtered. The carcass is sold in markets such as Mercado Juárez in the historic center of Monterrey and usually weighs about 10 kilos. It’s often sold whole and trussed, with the innards removed.
It is a simple preparation, but most regios (residents of Monterrey) jealously guard their recipes and cooking techniques. The goat is soaked in a brine both to hydrate and salt it. Purists insist this brine has only water and salt, but there are cooks who also add cumin and/or pepper. The animal is then trussed on a metal spit to lay flat, much like a spatchcocked chicken.
The most traditional way to cook cabrito is to jam the long end of the spit into the ground at an angle such that the meat hovers over a mound of hot mesquite coals. This technique requires four hours of cooking time and that the meat be turned frequently to avoid hot spots.
Along with whole goats, it is not unusual to see other spits with “stuff” wrapped around the cooking end. These wrapped bundles are called machitos, innards such as the liver and heart wrapped in the stomach and/or intestines and cooked the same way as the rest of the goat. The kidney, with its high fat content, is particularly prized. North of the border, machitos are called “Texas haggis” and, like a lot of things many people won’t eat, are said to be an aphrodisiac.
There are plenty of places that make cabrito in this manner, but modern living can make such cooking impractical. One alternative is to cook the goat in a special oven instead, one made from adobe in an igloo shape. This innovation has led to another name for the dish, cabrito al ataúd (coffin goat).
Diners usually select the part of the goat they want, very much like ordering chicken. The meat is pulled off the bone and eaten in tacos, generally accompanied by red salsa and frijoles borrachos (drunk beans). Monterrey is both corn and flour tortilla country, so it is likely you will be asked which you prefer. Cold beer is recommended for washing it down.
Herding goats in Guanajuato. Courtesy of Arriero (CC)
The al pastor name comes from the fact that this was the food of shepherds, who often ate the excess males born to nanny goats.
Over time, it became popular in markets and weekend roadside stands much the way that barbacoa is in the center of Mexico and birria is in Jalisco. Some market stalls that sold the fresh meat exclusively, like El Pipiripau in Mercado Juárez, started serving cooked meat, starting the dish’s popularity in the city.
Cabrito has become something of a mania in Monterrey, with full sit-down restaurants specializing in it. Most of these, of course, claim to have the best in town. Well-known restaurants include El Pastor, Los Principales, El Rey del Cabrito (with three locations), and El Tío, which was the first of its kind.
Most of the cabrito raised in Nuevo León comes from small farms south of Monterrey, but these small producers cannot come anywhere close to meeting the demand. About 1 million goats are eaten here each year, so animals are brought in from all over the north of the country.
Although by far associated with Monterrey, the eating of cabrito extends west into Coahuila and as far as Baja California, although availability may be spotty. Because of migration, the dish can also be found outside of its home range, especially in Mexico City.
Cabritos at a fair. Courtesy of Alejandro Linares García
Although cabrito al pastor is the most popular goat dish, it is not the only traditional preparation. For example, the cabrito may be stuffed with a mixture of rice, saffron, raisins and nuts, showing its Mediterranean and Sephardic heritage.
Cabrito en salsa is cooked with tomatoes, onions, garlic, serrano chiles, oregano, cumin and bay leaf.
For the more adventurous, there is frittata de cabrito and cuajitos de cabrito. Both are preparations of goat meat, using tomatoes, tomatillos and spices, but both include goat blood as an important ingredient.
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 weekly on Mexico News Daily.
The coronavirus has not deterred pilgrims from traveling to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. However, there will be no public celebration this year as the basilica will close from December 10-13.
Coronavirus case numbers spiked 8.3% in the two weeks ending November 23, the federal Health Ministry said Friday, when a new record was set for the number of cases registered in a single day.
Ministry spokesman Ricardo CortésAlcalá said the increase in case numbers was based on preliminary data and the number could go higher yet.
He pointed out that there had been no increase in the number of deaths.
The higher numbers have been recorded in eight states with Mexico City leading the way, largely due to a concerted effort to do more testing.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Twenty-six new testing stations were announced two weeks ago, providing the city with the capacity to test up to 10,000 people a day.
Meanwhile, federal health authorities said another 12,081 cases were registered on Friday, the highest single-day number since the pandemic began. The figure, which doesn’t necessarily reflect cases detected in the previous 24 hours, pushed the accumulated case number to 1,090,675.
There were 631 deaths registered for a total of 104,873.
Not wearing a face mask in Nayarit is punishable with 36 hours in jail.
Two more states have passed laws that make the use of face masks mandatory as Mexico faces a surge in new coronavirus infections while Mexico City is on the verge of regressing to the red light “maximum” risk level on the Covid-19 stoplight system.
Lawmakers in Nayarit and Morelos passed laws on Thursday that make face masks mandatory in those two states.
In Nayarit, members of Congress unanimously approved a bill put forward by Governor Antonio Echevarría García. People not wearing face masks in public places or who fail to follow social distancing recommendations can now be arrested and held in custody for 36 hours or alternatively face fines of up to 1,700 pesos (US $85).
Citizens can also be sanctioned for spitting, coughing or sneezing without making an effort to prevent the spread of respiratory droplets.
Nayarit has recorded 7,127 confirmed coronavirus cases and 924 Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic. The federal government estimates that there are 223 active cases in the Pacific coast state, where the risk of coronavirus infection is currently yellow light “medium” on the stoplight system.
In Morelos, 17 lawmakers in the 20-seat unicameral Congress voted in favor of making masks mandatory. Residents of the state will be required to wear them in all open-air and enclosed public spaces including their workplaces.
Mask scofflaws could be reprimanded, ordered to undertake community work or fined, according to the law. Businesses where owners or employees are not wearing masks could be temporarily closed.
Morelos has recorded a total of 7,772 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,288 Covid-19 deaths. There are currently an estimated 352 active cases in the state, which like Nayarit is currently yellow on the stoplight map.
Six states have now legislated to make masks mandatory during the pandemic. The others to have done so are Chihuahua, Colima, Sonora and Zacatecas. The governors of many other states have ordered the use of masks by decree while some municipalities around the country have done the same.
In Mexico City, where masks are ostensibly obligatory but their use is not enforced, 196,028 people have now tested positive for Covid-19 and the infectious disease has claimed 17,259 lives. Those figures account for 18% and 16.5%, respectively, of Mexico’s accumulated case tally and official death toll.
The Health Ministry estimates that there are 16,273 active cases in the capital.
Mexico City’s contact tracing system has been extended to pharmacies and supermarkets.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced Friday that Mexico City will remain at the orange light risk level “with alert” next week but warned that the capital is on the “limit” of switching to the “maximum” risk level.
“Hospitalizations have increased. … [We’re] on the limit of the red light,” she said.
Sheinbaum warned last week that there is a risk that hospital occupancy next month will reach reach the peak levels seen in May. Mexico City authorities have tightened restrictions in recent weeks, limiting the opening hours of many businesses and ordering bars and cantinas to close.
A prohibition on alcohol sales that applied last weekend in half of the capital’s 16 boroughs will take effect at 6:00 p.m. Friday in the other eight and remain in effect until 11:59 p.m. Sunday. The so-called ley seca, or dry law, will apply this weekend in Álvaro Obregón, Azcapotzalco, Benito Juárez, Coyoacán, Cuajimalpa, Cuauhtémoc, Milpa Alta and Venustiano Carranza.
The Mexico City government also announced that street vendors in the historic center will only be permitted to sell until 5:00 p.m. after which they will be moved on by police.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
In addition, it said that a new contact tracing program will be extended to pharmacies and supermarkets. Citizens scan a QR code with their phones so that their number is registered and they can be contacted if they are found to have had contact with an infected person at stores and restaurants.
North of the capital in Querétaro, Governor Francisco Domínguez announced a range of new coronavirus restrictions on Thursday. He said the capacity of shopping centers will be reduced from 50% to 30% of normal levels and they will be required to close by 8:00 p.m.
Supermarkets and convenience stores will also be limited to 30% capacity and must close by 10:00 p.m.
Domínguez said that restaurants can operate until 10:00 p.m. at 50% capacity but are limited to providing takeout and delivery on Sundays. The sale of alcohol is prohibited in Querétaro on Sundays and only permitted until 10:00 p.m. Monday to Saturday.
The governor said that face masks are mandatory in all public places and reiterated that events that seek to gather more than 100 people are banned.
“We can’t relax, we can’t allow the disease to get away [from us],” Domínguez said.
Querétaro has recorded 20,578 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Thursday and 1.457 Covid-19 deaths. The Health Ministry estimates there are currently 2,715 active cases in the state, where the infection risk level is orange light “high.”
Along with Mexico City, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Zacatecas and Aguascalientes, Querétaro has been identified by federal health authorities as at high risk of going red on the stoplight map.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s national case tally rose to 1,078,594 on Thursday with 8,107 new cases registered. More than 10,000 cases were registered on both Tuesday and Wednesday, the only two days since the start of the pandemic on which a five-figure tally of new cases has been reported.
Health authorities have stressed that not all of the cases reported on a daily basis were actually detected in the preceding 24-hour period.
The official Covid-19 death toll increased to 104,242 on Thursday with 645 additional fatalities. Mexico’s coronavirus mortality rate – deaths per 100,000 inhabitants – is 82.6, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The rate here is higher than those of the United States, Brazil and India, which are the only countries to have recorded more Covid-19 deaths than Mexico.
Mexico’s case tally and death toll are widely believed to be much higher than official statistics show due to Mexico’s low testing rate.
The strange beauty of this Michoacán cave hides dangerous bat guano droppings.
Having explored caves in such far-flung places as Jamaica, France and Saudi Arabia, I naturally wanted to keep the tradition when I moved to Mexico in 1985. The first thing I tried to do upon settling in the hills outside Guadalajara was to find a caving club in Jalisco.
However, when a letter to the editor of México Desconocido magazine produced no results, my wife and I founded our own club, named Zotz, which is Mayan for “bat.”
In every pueblo we visited, we asked whether there were any caves nearby. If we got a sí, it would inevitably be accompanied by one of the following remarks: a) the cave is full of treasure or b) The cave is full of mal aire (bad air). If this article were about the treasure, I wouldn’t have much more to say, but mal aire turned out to be very real indeed and impacted our lives again and again.
“Cuidado,” they would tell us. “More than 30 people in our town have died over the years from breathing the air in that cave.”
It didn’t take long for us to find out that it wasn’t the air that was bad but something floating in it: the tiny spores of the fungus histoplasma capsulatum, which loves to grow on guano, the droppings of bats or birds. The spores are invisible to the eye, and you won’t know they’ve found their way to your lungs until 11 days after you’ve visited the cave — the typical incubation period in western Mexico.
Thousands of tequila bats inhabit this cave near Guadalajara.
Once your immune system discovers the invader in your lungs, it tries to encapsulate it. You experience a cough, perhaps accompanied by chest pains and a fever; the symptoms vary tremendously. One person may experience what seems like a passing cold while another may be hospitalized for a year. Yet another may die from histo while still others may notice nothing and then come down with a persistent cough years later.
Naturally, it occurred to us that people entering a cave should wear masks to prevent breathing in the spores. So we tried that … and the following case indicates our results: in 1988, a group of 17 people, both adults and children, many of them with no previous experience in cave exploration, visited a cave with a small vertical entrance.
Most of these erstwhile explorers were from Mexico, but two were from the United States. Many of them wore a simple cloth face mask that they removed for photos while in the cave.
Eleven days later, the leader of the group, Mario Guerrero, started receiving phone calls.
“How do you feel? Do you have something like the flu?”
Mario soon discovered that everyone, including himself, had similar symptoms: headache, a fever up to 40 C, exhaustion, respiratory congestion and, for most, a hacking cough. He contacted a Social Security (IMSS) clinic, which asked all 17 of the explorers to come in for X-rays.
Histoplasma capsulatum is a lung disease caused by this fungus.
“You all have histoplasmosis,” said the doctor. “Please go tomorrow to IMSS headquarters for more tests.”
The next day, in Mario’s words, “they examined our blood, our stools, our urine and our spit … and then they again told us to come back tomorrow.”
“What about the medicine?” Mario asked. “What should we take?”
“There is no medicine,” the doctor said. “You should rest, eat well and wait. It will probably go away in two weeks.”
“What?” members of the group exclaimed. “So why should we come back tomorrow?”
“Oh, we’ve never seen a case like this before,” the doctor answered. “Seventeen people with histo … It might be a record! What a great opportunity for a study!”
Histoplasmosis spores can travel long distances, even in very wet caves.
Later, Mario told me, “Sixty days after entering that cave, everybody in the group felt normal … and ready to go off and explore another one.”
Questions about masks and histo later provoked lively debate among members of the U.S. National Speleological Society. Tests were carried out, with the conclusion that masks can indeed protect a caver from histo spores but only if that mask is sealed around the edges to the wearer’s face; that’s bad news for bearded spelunkers.
A few years later, IMSS Guadalajara had a second case of numerous individuals infected with histo, only this time they had not been in a cave. Instead, they all worked for the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). They were put into the hands of the late Dr. Amado González Mendoza, who learned that all of them had been digging ditches in a certain place.
Dr. González discovered that dirt taken from one meter below the surface in that area contained numerous histoplasma capsulatum spores which, it was surmised, had been present in guano dropped by bats flying over the place long, long ago. Nevertheless, the spores were still alive and able to grow.
Dr. González then had a study done of the subsurface around Jalisco. He discovered histo spores in many places. When he showed me a map of the worst areas, I told him, “Doctor, your map looks like a guide to the caves of Jalisco. These are exactly the places with large outcrops of limestone.”
While doctors typically prescribed no medicine to the victims of histoplasmosis 30 years ago, today the situation is much improved. Says a doctor at Guadalajara’s Hospital Civil:
Thirty people are said to have died after entering Paso Real Cave in Jalisco.
“My husband is a speleologist, and after years of caving in Mexico he ended up with a persistent cough that hounded him day and night for months. They x-rayed his lungs and found nothing, but when they gave him an MRI, they found a nodule, which was calcified, in one lung.
“A biopsy revealed a great deal of inflammation in this nodule, as well as the presence of other smaller nodules. So he was put on itraconazole, which is effective against fungi not only in the lungs but in the throat, nails or skin. The treatment is oral but slow. After several months, the cough disappeared.”
At first, we thought only caves filled with tons of guano presented a serious risk to visitors. As time passed, however, we realized that any dry, dusty cave or mine probably hosts the fungus.
Then, unfortunately, a group of visitors to a very wet river cave came down with histo, every one of them triathlon athletes.
We could only surmise that currents of air from the lower part of the cave 100 meters downstream, where bats roost, had carried spores all the way to the nostrils of those unfortunate young visitors.
Our final conclusion: you can’t be sure that any cave is completely safe — and Jalisco might just be the histo capital of the world.
Guano samples being collected for analysis by IMSS researchers.
Even a tight-fitting mask did not prevent this caver from suffering for a year.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years, and is the author of “A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area” and co-author of “Outdoors in Western Mexico.” More of his writing can be found on his website.
State and federal government entities say they will distribute more than 2,500 tonnes of provisions over the next few days to communities affected by severe flooding in Tabasco.
The army, the navy, and the state’s Civil Protection agency say they have already given out 72,000 individual packages of food and other supplies to affected residents from a staging center in Villahermosa. Trucks are shipping out oatmeal, beans, powdered milk, sugar, and other nonperishable foods divided into large plastic garbage bags for distribution.
Members of the armed forces are also helping to evacuate people who live in the vicinity of the Usumacinta River in southeastern Tabasco, particularly in the municipality of Tenosique.
Areas throughout southern Tabasco have been flooded for over a month now due to Hurricane Eta and heavy rains from two cold fronts. The Usumacinta has risen to a record 12.87 meters, nearly three meters above a level considered critical, forcing more evacuations of people around the river to temporary shelters. Officials believe the river will soon rise even higher.
The federal government has declared 17 Tabasco communities to be in a state of emergency.
It’s been a wet month in Tabasco.
At the staging center, two buildings have been converted into warehouses, receiving supplies from the federal government and private Mexican donors and international sources. A navy spokesman said they have received 150 tonnes of supplies from a federal government fund as well as from donations by countries like Spain, Turkey, Germany, and Argentina.
“Everything here is being taken to the affected municipalities,” he said.
The unpredictable Baja 1000 racecourse covers every surface from hard pack to soft sand, with deep ruts and rocks. Racers carry food and water in case of a breakdown.
It’s Thursday, November 19 on the eve of the Baja 1000. The streets of Ensenada are silent, save the usual hustle of daily life. But this year, there are no big crowds or vendors packing the streets with churros and colorful trinkets. It’s a ghost town. But while there may be no fanfare or crowds to cheer them on in this uncertain world of 2020, there’s one thing you can always rely on: racers will race.
Through the serendipity of the small world of racing, a friend had introduced us to Francisco Septian, owner of Moto Garage 730 and a local hero and multi-time winner of the Baja 1000, the Baja 500 and other off-road races. He invited us to join his chase team that would follow him and two other racers, Shane Esposito and Justin Schultz, in a couple of chase vehicles.
Ordinarily, the Baja 1000 has riders leaving Ensenada and barreling down to La Paz, over approximately 1,000 miles, but this year, because of Covid-19 restrictions, it was an 898.40-mile loop through the mountains of Baja California. This course was widely considered the most technically difficult to date and 187 entries from 14 countries showed up to meet the challenge.
The chase van arrived outside our hotel at 3 a.m. “Are you ready for 24 hours of craziness?” Francisco’s head mechanic grinned back at us.
Racers in the motorcycle and quad classes started at 4 a.m., released in one-minute intervals. Trophy trucks and UTVs gridded up at 10 a.m., giving riders a head start to gain a margin of safety. Having a 1200-horsepower trophy truck pass your motorcycle on a narrow road, kicking up rocks the size of your head, isn’t an ideal situation for a rider. This year, spectators, including the rider’s own team, were banned from the grid, so each rider launched into the dark unknown, their high-intensity discharge headlights blaring, to the quiet applause of a handful of officials. And then we were off. The crew ran to the van, loading up as quickly as possible, and peeled out onto Baja’s Highway 1.
Being in a chase vehicle is a race in itself. If you don’t get to each pit stop before your racer does, he will lose invaluable time that could cost him the race.
Chase crews are well-oiled machines. Every moment affects a racer’s finish time.
Our first stop was at a restaurant an hour from town. The mountains were dark silhouettes in the distance until the headlight of rider 1x lit up the mountainside. He descended the hills, then roared up a steep jump into the pit area. His bike bucked and slid its way onto the highway as quickly as it came. Moments later, to the crow of roosters under the pre-sunrise glow, our rider on 370x emerged from the trail. In a split second, Shane dismounted the team’s Honda CRF450X bike, Francisco hopped on and the crew swapped on the daytime headlight. With one last spin of a T-handle, Francisco began a six-hour marathon.
Having done many Baja races, Francisco pre-organized all of his pit locations. Everyone knew exactly where to go, where to set up, and what to do when the rider arrived. Any second lost could mean losing the race, so this took away all the guesswork. As soon as he was off, our van weaved through Baja traffic, taking the bonus lane past trains of semis and cutting red lights by skirting the road in the dirt. The regular world going on around the race continued to operate as if nothing were happening, but the racing teams were on the ride of their life.
Francisco slid both tires through a turn, threading a needle into a tunnel beneath the highway as his route crossed ours. On the next stop, his teammate tossed him his daytime goggles, amidst the glaring reflection of the desert sand. We followed the Pacific Coast to San Quintín, then the course hooked back north.
Six hours and 300 miles down, we set up in a quarry. The team avoided flying rocks as Francisco crunched through them and onto the mat. Within a minute, a new rear wheel was mounted. That’s when Shane took over, riding into the most challenging section of the course; we were back on the move.
While the next 100 miles could take as long as four hours, the next pit stop required a long haul over a twisting mountain pass of washboards. However, it was noon now, and every car in the Baja seemed to be out running errands. The lines of trucks were endless as our driver carved around the caravans, screeching tires through turns.
Officials mark the racers’ engines to ensure that they’re not changed mid-race, but teams carry spare bikes for allowed parts changes and loan each other parts.
For hours, we twisted through desert hills, passing Picacho Del Diablo, the highest peak in the Baja. Each jolt to the suspension reverberated through my spine, but we couldn’t slow down. As we passed a small town, families stood outside their gates, jumping up and down and waving at every chase vehicle that drove by.
The Baja racers really are heroes here.
Our van barely arrived in time to meet Shane. He came barreling into the pit before they even had time to set up; perhaps this was partly because his front brakes had gone out. They swapped the air filter while Shane showed us the failed brakes. But with no way to fix it, he had to continue with only a rear brake to rely on. We followed behind him with our emergency flashers on, rolling at 60 kilometers per hour, the mandated speed for riders on all the paved motorways. It was all we could do.
Ten miles more down the road, we got a surprise: Francisco waved us into the dirt. Even on this level, racers never hesitate to help each other, and so another racer had offered us his spare Honda to use for parts. Within minutes, the master cylinder and brake lines were stripped from the parts bike, installed on the race bike and ready to go. Shane got back on, tearing into the course to make up time. Next stop: the Sea of Cortés.
The chase truck drove to the southern end of San Felipe’s loop, whereas our van went north. There wasn’t enough time to get from one pit to the next if we stuck together, so having two chase vehicles came in handy. The sun set behind us at mile 660 as we sat parked at the bottom of a sandy jump. Hundreds of people were set up on either side of the course, campfires burning, mariachi music blasting and laughter filling the air. We continued to wait.
The last tire change of the race happened under headlamps around midnight.
Three hours passed. Still no sign of our rider. Meanwhile, the “weatherman” played over the radio, a channel where crew members can call for updates on their riders. That’s when we heard it: “370X-ray is stopped at mile marker 567.”
We pulled up live tracking through the Score app, made for fans to follow the Baja 1000, the Baja 500 and the San Felipe 250. On the app we could see that our rider was stopped, but no one knew why. As we continued watching, we realized he was veering off course: he was lost! But with no way to communicate, all we could do was sit helplessly and wait. A rider getting stranded out in the middle of the desert is a real risk, so much so that it’s required that riders bring enough food and water for a couple of days.
We lost a half-hour before he got back on course. But then he was blazing through the night at nearly 50 mph, making up for lost time. When he arrived, we got the scoop: a truck parked on the course had thrown him off track. The bike didn’t have GPS, and he had accidentally followed signs left standing from a Baja 500 race. When the tire tracks turned to cow tracks, he realized he was going the wrong way. Additionally, the brakes failed again, but with another parts bike, they swapped the entire brake system, and Francisco took over.
It was midnight when we arrived at the next stop. With 20 hours in, we had 200 miles left to go. At the fueling station, where Francisco eventually came skidding in, there was nothing wrong with the bike this time. Just one more stretch. The riders swapped, and Shane sped off. There was only one person he needed to pass to take the victory. We raced another hour down the road, just to make sure he was in good shape, but as he blasted by us within inches of the van, we knew he had it handled.
I fell asleep on the two-hour drive back to Ensenada. The whole van did. We pulled into Moto Garage 730 at 5:30 a.m. Shane rolled in shortly afterward with the elation of someone who had just finished 898.40 miles of one of the most intense, dangerous, and grueling races in the world. The total race time? 24:32.19.
At the end of the day, it’s not where you finish in the Baja that matters. It’s that you finished at all. Sure, everyone wants a coveted spot on the podium, but to simply stand on your own two feet, alive and successful after all those hours of rocks and sand and mishaps is the greatest victory of all. While I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the fanfare of prepandemic times, for the racers themselves it’s still every bit as satisfying.
But our team did take first in its class; so winning is pretty great too!
Fernández argues his point at a meeting of the National Electoral Institute.
A federal lawmaker came under heavy criticism on Thursday after he refused to wear a face mask while speaking at a session of the National Electoral Institute (INE).
Labor Party Deputy Gerardo Fernández Noroña, never one to shy away from a controversy — or create one, removed his mask when he was given the opportunity to speak, prompting INE president Lorenzo Córdova to remind him that the protocols of the institute make the use of face masks obligatory while inside its premises.
“I know that you want me gagged,” Fernández responded. “I will speak without a gag. Besides I drink a lot of water, I use a lot of energy when I’m speaking.”
The deputy, who is currently the secretary of the energy committee in the lower house of Congress and the Labor Party’s new representative at the INE, attempted to justify his decision to remove his mask by asserting that he wasn’t sick, pointing out that he was at an appropriate distance from other participants and saying that the space where the session was being held was ventilated.
Fernández also noted that Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, the government’s coronavirus czar, has questioned the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of the virus.
Fernández alone in the council chamber after everyone else left.
The INE representatives of the National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) among others protested Fernández’s obstinacy and demanded that he follow the mask rule or otherwise remove himself.
INE officials called a recess, allowing attendees to leave and subsequently join the session virtually. Fernández remained in the INE meeting room, the only person to do so, and proceeded to speak without a mask once the session resumed.
After the conclusion of the session, Córdova took to Twitter to once again point out INE’s rules with regard to face masks.
“In light of the events that occurred in the general council session today, it’s important to remember that the protocols for the return of face-to-face activities at INE during the Covid-19 pandemic mandate the obligatory use of face masks,” he wrote.
Former PRD deputy Fernando Belaunzarán lumped Fernández together with United States President Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and President López Obrador, all of whom have played down the threat of the coronavirus and largely eschewed the wearing of masks.
“Trump, Bolsonaro, AMLO and his minion Noroña [are all] against face masks and science. … The fight is against obscurantism. Not even 100,000 official [Covid-19] deaths (about 300,000 real ones) make them correct [their positions],” he wrote on Twitter.
“How can we ask people to respect the rules when our deputies fight against complying with them?” he asked his 167,000 Twitter followers.
Similarly, Citizens Movement Deputy Martha Tagle said that lawmakers must respect the coronavirus rules and set an example for others.
Addressing Fernández’s refusal to wear a face mask at his regular news conference on Friday, López Obrador said that “the most important thing is freedom.”
“People have to decide freely [what to do] and have confidence in [their fellow] Mexicans because they always act wisely, the people are wise,” he said.
His remarks came a day after he presented a government ethical guide, which provides advice about how people should conduct themselves in their personal relationships and society.
Families of missing persons with their new shovels.
The mayor of Guaymas, Sonora, is under criticism after presenting mothers of missing persons with shovels and buckets to help them dig up clandestine graves.
In a ceremony on Wednesday meant to honor the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women, Mayor Sara Valle Dessens gave the Women Warrior Searchers group shovels, buckets and gift baskets containing face masks, latex gloves, antibacterial gel and bottled water.
Members of the Guaymas municipal council publicized the event on social media, where commenters from all over Mexico were soon posting derogatory comments toward the mayor and the council, expressing outrage at what they said was the ceremony’s insensitivity.
“What little empathy you have,” said one commenter on Facebook. “May these shovels never be used to look for one of your own relatives.”
“On the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women, we give them buckets for digging up bodies,” said another commenter. “How sinister.”
“Today we have a Fourth Transformation that is geared toward addressing the emotional first,” the Morena party mayor said during the ceremony. “Many years of injustice have brought us violence of all types, but now we want to eliminate them.”
The gift also drew criticism on Twitter from Sonora’s National Action Party president.
“The insensitive and indolent [politicians] of the Fourth Transformation think that their failings can be compensated for with public money,” Ernesto Mauro said. “To those who lost a loved one due to the administration’s ineffectualness, they are giving a shovel so that they can go find them themselves.”
According to government numbers, more than 4,000 clandestine graves have been found throughout Mexico since 2006, including 143 in Sonora, although groups like the Women Warrior Searchers and The Searchers of Obregón believe that the real number is much higher.
