Would-be candidate Trejo has denied allegations of corruption.
He’s accused of embezzlement but as he prepares to go on trial, a former mayor of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, also has one eye on running as a candidate for his old job.
Mauricio Trejo Pureco, Institutional Revolutionary Party mayor between 2012 and 2015, confirmed last Wednesday that he would participate in the party’s internal selection process to seek to be its candidate in June’s election for mayor of San Miguel, which has been governed by the National Action Party for the past five years.
That announcement came just two days before a state judge ordered Trejo to stand trial on charges he embezzled municipal resources.
The newspaper Reforma, which obtained access to the former mayor’s case file, said that Trejo is accused of putting two “aviators” – people who collect a pay check without actually working – on the municipal payroll when he headed up the local government.
The two municipal treasury “workers,” who Reforma said provided “personal services” to the ex-mayor in the private sector, were paid a combined 778,136 pesos (US $38,850 at today’s exchange rate) between January 2013 and December 2015, money that allegedly ended up in Trejo’s pockets.
In a video message to announce his intention to become mayor again, Trejo denied allegations of wrongdoing but warned that his political adversaries would still attempt to discredit him.
“In recent years I’ve seen that San Miguel de Allende and its residents have been wronged in various ways just as they tried to wrong me in the past five years by inventing legal complaints and inventing supposed frauds that never happened and were never proven because there wasn’t, there isn’t and there won’t be anything illegal in my conduct,” he said.
“All these affronts … oblige me not to be just a spectator and that’s why I’m going to participate in my party’s [candidate selection] process. This decision will frighten and annoy those who are in government today and they’ll attack my daughters, the mother of my daughters, my family, my friends and me with false information, with audio and video taken out of context as they usually do … but I’m not scared,” Trejo said.
The former mayor claimed that “everything worked a lot better” in San Miguel de Allende when he was in office and asserted that there were “great achievements” in the areas of the economy, tourism and security.
“… I don’t have the slightest doubt that we’re going to recover San Miguel de Allende from those who are selling it and those who are killing it. … Let’s together recover San Miguel de Allende, San Miguel without fear,” he said.
It is impossible to find tampons in any of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs as a result of the ban on single-use plastics that took effect January 1.
The newspaper Milenio reported that it was unable to locate the feminine hygiene products anywhere in the capital but noted that they are widely available in neighboring México state, where disposable plastics remain legal.
Mexico City Environment Minister Mariana Robles asserted in January that single-use plastics, among which are disposable cutlery, cups and straws – and tampons with plastic applicators – are “not really essential.”
But many women disagree with tampons’ “nonessential” classification and have taken to social media to voice their opposition to their prohibition.
“Stop legislating with privilege, tampons are essential products,” one Twitter user said in a post directed to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Alessandra Rojo de la Vega, a Mexico City lawmaker with the Green Party, said that menstrual cups are an “excellent alternative” to tampons, adding that they are environmentally friendly.
“Let’s incentivize their use to reduce contamination,” she said, asserting that the government should distribute them to women free of charge.
But another Twitter user took umbrage at lawmakers telling women what menstrual products they should and shouldn’t use.
“Suggesting the use of a menstrual cup is not the solution,” Twitter user Miss Maple said in a post directed to Mayor Sheinbaum and the Mexico City government.
“I can’t believe how idiotic we are in Mexico,” tweeted Daniela García, a journalist in Nuevo León, above a link to a news report on the absence of tampons on the shelves of Mexico City stores.
“As if women didn’t [already] confront all kinds of problems, now the government imposes a new one on them – no tampons,” tweeted Carlos Elizondo, an academic at the Tec de Monterrey university.
“In other countries they have zero value-added tax. Here they ban them in the middle of a pandemic.”
Mexico's president Vincente Guerrero was descended from African slaves.
In the narrative of abolitionism in the United States, northern destinations figure prominently: slaves in the American South followed the North Star on the Underground Railroad to the free states of the northern U.S. and Canada, for example.
Yet a new book holds that there was also an overlooked but important movement south — to Mexico, which abolished slavery decades before the U.S.
History professor Alice Baumgartner of the University of Southern California makes this case in South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War. The book shares the individual accounts and wider narrative of enslaved Black people who crossed the border into Mexico. Baumgartner also shows the political dynamics that affected the narrative, including the history of abolitionism in Mexico and its hostile responses in the U.S.
In Baumgartner’s opinion, American hostility toward Mexican abolitionism helped cause the Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War, and ultimately the American Civil War.
Although the number of slaves who fled northward is much larger, Baumgartner estimates that 3,000–5,000 people escaped to Mexico during the period of the book, which extends from the era of New Spain to the French intervention.
“I think it’s very conservative,” Baumgartner said of the figure she cites.
Slaves in U.S. states along the north-south border, such as Virginia or Maryland, would typically go north, whereas slaves in Louisiana and Texas would look southward.
In these latter states, Baumgartner said, “Canada was quite far. Going to Mexico was quite easier.”
Baumgartner came across the topic in the summer of 2012 while doing research into a separate issue in northern Mexico. She found documents reporting that slaveholders from the United States were entering Mexico to kidnap fugitive slaves and bring them back across the border — and that Mexican authorities tried to prevent such raids.
The discovery of this history sparked what Baumgartner describes as her nonstop efforts over the next eight years, efforts that culminated with the book.
“It took pretty much every waking moment between then and now,” she said.
Historian Alice Baumgartner’s book “South to Freedom” details how enslaved Africans in the United States frequently escaped to freedom in Mexico.
Regarding studies of the topic, Baumgartner found few precedents. Rosalie Schwartz’s book Across the Rio to Freedom: U.S. Negroes in Mexico was a rare exception. Baumgartner did research in Texas, Louisiana and Mexico while learning more about escaped slaves who found refuge south of the border.
Some not only made the journey safely but were protected by their new fellow citizens.
In 1852, a fugitive slave in northern Mexico was kidnapped by a slaveholder, but four townspeople confronted and killed the kidnapper. Other accounts did not end so successfully, including for Jean Antoine, a slave who stowed away on a ship bound for Veracruz. After he was discovered on board, the ship returned to its point of origin, New Orleans, where Jean Antoine stabbed himself instead of going back to slavery.
Slaves in the U.S. learned about their abolitionist neighbor to the south in several ways, including Mexican laborers working in the area and already-escaped slaves in Mexico who returned to the States to free family members. One example of the latter was a man who settled in Coahuila and went back north to free his brother.
In Mexico, slaves generally gravitated toward one of two opportunities, Baumgartner says: they could live in a military colony on the northern border, built to protect Mexico from U.S. aggression and raids by Native Americans or they could enter the labor force.
“Both had a certain risk,” Baumgartner notes. “Obviously, enslaved people who joined the military colonies had to risk their lives in military duties.” But their counterparts in the labor force faced a cash-poor economy and adverse employment practices such as indentured servitude. However, their adopted country allowed these formerly enslaved people “to have land and an opportunity for citizenship in a very straightforward way.”
She describes freedom for escaped slaves in Mexico as similar to that in the northern states of the U.S. In Mexico, she says, escaped slaves could “engage in a measure of political participation that was unheard-of in the U.S.”
These opportunities existed because of Mexican abolitionism, which Baumgartner describes as a post-independence means of distancing the new nation from Spain and its slave traders and conquistadors.
“Newly independent Mexico was inspired by liberal rhetoric of equality for all,” Baumgartner said. “It was cast in a very different mold, distinguishing Mexico from Spain. [It was] an important reason for the early surge of antislavery in Mexico.”
Mexico’s president Vicente Guerrero was a descendant of African slaves. Between 1824 and 1827, over half of all Mexican states had either abolished slavery outright or established gradual emancipation laws, and it was abolished nationwide in 1837 after Texas, Mexico’s northern colony that held slaves, broke away in 1836.
Abolitionism had put Mexico at odds with Texas.
Anglo settlers had brought their slaves with them, classifying them as indentured servants to circumvent Mexican laws. Baumgartner lists tensions over slavery as a reason for the Texas Revolution. She also sees the Mexican nationwide ban on slavery as stemming from its defeat by Texas.
The New York Times Book Review calls Baumgartner’s research “masterful.”
“Mexico was unable to stop Texas from declaring independence,” she said. “Half of its territory was stolen from them. They were able to forge victory from defeat by ending slavery, to show they were morally upright in a way the slaveholding U.S. was not.”
With Texas joining the United States as a slave state, American presidential administrations continually sought to negotiate a treaty with Mexico that would extradite fugitive slaves. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, the Mexican government repeatedly refused.
Predating these demands from Washington was the U.S. invasion that led to the Mexican-American War. Slaveholders envisioned it as a way to spread slavery into newly conquered territory, but the United States government eventually held that it could not establish slavery where it had been already prohibited under Mexican law. It was a victory for abolitionists — but a source of resentment for slaveholders as tensions simmered and the U.S. approached the American Civil War.
Baumgartner described the Civil War as “one of the most American conflicts” in her nation’s history.
“I’m not surprised that people are skeptical of the idea of a neighboring country having such a profound effect on that national conflict. It took me a long time to recognize that myself,” she said.
The contemporaneous crises of the Civil War and the French intervention upended longstanding policies. The U.S. finally abolished slavery — first in rebellious southern states with the Emancipation Proclamation, then throughout the country with the 13th Amendment. Following the end of the Civil War, defeated Confederates were welcomed to Mexico by the emperor Maximilian, who was criticized for allegedly wishing to reintroduce slavery.
Ultimately, he was toppled and executed under president Benito Juárez in 1867. By then, the end of slavery was confirmed in both Mexico and the United States.
As for the descendants of escaped slaves, Baumgartner says that some continue to live in cohesive communities, such as El Nacimiento in Coahuila, whereas others are more dispersed nationwide.
“Fugitive slaves who got jobs in Mexico tended to [live in] much less concentrated communities,” Baumgartner said. “Their descendants are much harder to trace. Nacimiento is the place where those descendants are still present. They still have a lot of oral traditions and oral histories.”
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The social media bill's proponent, Senator Monreal.
The ruling Morena party has announced a plan to regulate social media platforms, raising a warning by an industry group that it would violate the new North American free trade agreement.
Drawn up by Morena’s leader in the upper house of Congress, a proposed amendment to the federal telecommunications law would require social media sites with more than 1 million users, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, to request authorization from the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT), the telecoms regulator, in order to continue operating in Mexico.
Senator Ricardo Monreal’s draft law also stipulates that social media companies could face fines of up to US $4.4 million if they violate users’ right to free speech.
Anyone whose social media account is blocked, suspended or canceled would have the right to appeal the decision, according to Monreal’s bill. The Associated Press (AP) reported that the appeals would first have to be made to the companies’ internal committees and they would have a period of 24 hours in which to confirm or overturn the account suspension.
If they are not happy with the decision they receive, users could file an appeal with the IFT and if they’re not satisfied with its ruling either, they can find further recourse in the court system.
Monreal is planning to submit the proposal to Congress in the coming weeks, AP said. It appears to be at least partially motivated by the decision of Facebook and Twitter to suspend former United States president Donald Trump’s accounts in light of the attack on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. President López Obrador criticized the companies for censoring his former counterpart, and even proposed creating a national social media network to avoid the possibility of Mexicans being censored. In addition, he said he would take the social media censorship issue to the next meeting of the G20.
“One of the things that affects freedom of expression occurs through impeding the right to receive information, by blocking content, as has happened in recent cases with Twitter,” says the draft law Monreal published on his website.
AP said the proposed law could violate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which says “no party shall impose liability on a supplier or user of an interactive computer service on account of … any action voluntarily taken in good faith by the supplier or user to restrict access to or availability of material that is accessible or available through its supply or use of the interactive computer services and that the supplier or user considers to be harmful or objectionable.”
But Monreal says that clause of the three-way pact, which took effect last July, won’t apply to Mexico until the second half of 2023, suggesting that an amendment to the telecommunications law could remain in effect for 2 1/2 half years if it is passed soon by the Congress, in which Morena leads a coalition with a majority in both houses.
The draft law recognizes that social media sites have their own rules governing use and community behavior but says “it is necessary that these [internal] procedures be regulated by law, so that based on [a] decision [to suspend an account], an administrative or legal appeal can be made, in order to enforce users’ human right to justice.”
It also says that social media companies cannot use algorithms to resolve disputes over account suspensions, instead obligating committees of human employees to evaluate contested decisions.
The Latin American Internet Association (ALAI), which counts Facebook and Twitter among its members, said in a statement shared with the news agency Reuters that Morena’s proposed amendment would violate the USMCA.
The requirement for social media companies to request IFT authorization to continue operating would create “unjustified trade barriers that are not required in the U.S. or Canada, generating legal uncertainty and limiting the cross-border flow of data,” the group said.
ALAI told Reuters that it had expressed its concerns to Monreal, but in his proposed bill the senator said the amendment wouldn’t breach USMCA because its intention is to regulate the actions of social media platforms “with regard to content related to freedom of expression, which does not mean invading the sphere of free trade.”
In a video message published on Monday, the lawmaker said that social media companies have become powerful entities and that nation states shouldn’t allow themselves to be sidelined by them.
“The time has come” to regulate social media, Monreal said, pointing out that states have a responsibility to protect people’s human rights – such as the right to free speech – and asserting that social media companies should have the same obligation.
He said that he won’t present his proposed law in Congress until he has received feedback on it and for that reason posted it to his personal website. “I believe that the time has come not to run away from this debate,” Monreal said.
The senator, a former governor of Zacatecas who is also at the forefront of the efforts to legalize recreational marijuana, has previously floated the idea of raising taxes for highly profitable social media companies.
Monreal is an avid social media user with more than 3 million followers across Facebook and Twitter. The president, who has breakfast with the Senate leader on a semi-regular basis, is also a fan of the unfiltered access social media gives him to his supporters.
He has described social media networks as “blessed” or “holy” and was clearly irked when Trump, with whom he maintained an unlikely friendship, was kicked off Facebook and Twitter.
Social media companies have turned into “global institutions of censorship” and are carrying out a “holy inquisition,” López Obrador said in January.
“Since they took these decisions [to suspend Trump], the Statue of Liberty has been turning green with anger because it doesn’t want to become an empty symbol,” he quipped. “Freedom in the case of the United States is the First Amendment in their constitution.”
El Salvador President Bukele with López Obrador at the 2019 announcement of the Central American aid program.
As part of efforts to stem the flow of migrants through Mexico, the federal government spent almost 900 million pesos in El Salvador and Honduras last year to provide employment to more than 11,000 people via two social programs.
The Mexican International Cooperation Agency for Development (Amexcid) used 885.66 million pesos (US $44 million) from a government trust fund known as Fondo México to pay 11,184 scholarships to Hondurans and Salvadorans enrolled in the “Youth Building the Future” apprenticeship scheme and the the “Sowing Life” reforestation program.
Forbes México, which obtained Amexcid documents, reported that 6,538 young Central Americans received US $180 monthly payments via the apprenticeship program, which provides work experience and training through registered employers. About 4,000 of that number are in El Salvador and the remainder are in Honduras.
People from those two countries, especially Honduras, have traveled through Mexico in large numbers in recent years as part of migrant caravans whose final intended destination was the United States.
Amexcid paid US $250 monthly payments to 4,646 participants in the Sembrando Vida program, through which fruit and timber-yielding trees are planted. There were 4,079 beneficiaries of the program in El Salvador last year and 567 in Honduras.
The apprenticeship and reforestation schemes, flagship social programs of the federal government, have provided jobs for more than a million people in Mexico. Both have faced accusations of corruption.
The allocation of money for the operation of the schemes in El Salvador and Honduras was approved in September 2019 by a technical committee of Fondo México, which is managed by the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
López Obrador has said that migration should be an option not a necessity, and that investment in development and social programs will allow Central Americans, and Mexicans, to stay at home “among their people and culture” instead of seeking work opportunities in the United States.
The federal government vowed to treat migrants traveling through Mexico with respect before it took office in late 2018 and issued thousands of humanitarian visas in its first months in power.
López Obrador spoke to new U.S. President Joe Biden in December, and during the call they discussed their shared desire to address the root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and southern Mexico, according to a readout published by the latter’s transition team.
Crowds throng the parade route at a previous version of carnival in Veracruz.
For the first time in its 96-year history, the city of Veracruz will celebrate its annual carnival virtually due to Covid-19.
“To protect the health of all,” as the festival’s official website puts it, “the 2021 Veracruz Carnaval will arrive at your home.”
Event organizers debated for months before deciding against an in-person event, said Veracruz Mayor Yunes Márquez.
“… it was impossible to do an in-person carnival, impossible to do it in February, and also impossible to do it in the summer,” he said. “We had the hope that vaccinations would happen faster, but the reality is that … vaccination is happening extremely slowly. The responsible thing to do is to not make it an in-person event.”
The festival, which will take place February 25–28, joins countless other festivals across Mexico that have adopted a virtual format in 2020 and 2021 in order to avoid spreading the coronavirus. It also follows the lead of other 2021 festivals in Veracruz state going virtual this year, including the annual Candelaria (Candlemas) festival earlier this month in Tlacotalpan and the upcoming Cumbre Tajín festival this spring in Papantla.
Carnival committee president José Antonio Pérez told the newspaper Milenio that the virtual version will involve several recorded videos, using footage from previous years to create various profiles on former years’ parades, the previous kings and queens of the festival, and costumes used by participants in previous events. The festival will also name an honorary king and queen.
The change to a virtual event, say organizers, will cost city businesses an estimated 250–300 million pesos in lost visitor revenues.
Last year, according to the Veracruz city government’s website, the event attracted a total of more than 1 million attendees, with 135,000 people alone attending its parades, bringing a total of 260 million pesos to city businesses. Hotels reached an average 86% occupancy that weekend, according to the Mexican Association of Hotels and Motels of Veracruz-Boca del Río.
However, Veracruz also faced daunting Covid-19 numbers: the city has seen 10,843 Covid cases, more than 20% of the total number of cases statewide. The state is currently at the high-risk orange level on the nation’s coronavirus stoplight map at least until February 14.
Tamaulipas state prosecutors told a judge Monday that they have ample evidence that 12 state police officers participated in the killings of 19 undocumented migrants whose charred bodies were found inside a truck on the side of the road in Camargo on January 22.
The judge agreed, and the officers, who participated in their arraignment via videoconferencing from jail in Ciudad Victoria, will stand trial on charges of premeditated homicide, abuse of authority, and falsifying evidence.
The victims’ bodies were found in a small Camargo community after an anonymous call. Although only 16 of the 19 have been identified, authorities believe all the victims were migrants hoping to reach the United States. Fourteen have so far been identified as Guatemalan and two as Mexican.
The case attracted much attention in Guatemala and ended up involving Guatemalan consular officials in Mexico.
State prosecutors said they can prove that the officers altered the crime scene, removing spent ammunition shells from the scene, and provided false information that suggested that the killings had taken place elsewhere. Initial reports had said that the truck showed no evidence of taking gunfire, although the bodies all had gunshot wounds.
However, prosecutors said, the truck had actually been shot at 113 times.
In addition, they said, there were other contradictions they did not specify between the official reports filed by the officers, the sttorney general’s own investigations and accounts given by other officers who had knowledge of the incident.
Prosecutors said their case is built on evidence from geolocation and call records, expert analysis and video surveillance footage. They also said they believe that other officers may have been complicit in the killing.
In a related note, the National Immigration Institute (INM) earlier this month fired eight employees in its Escobedo, Nuevo León, office after determining that one of the two vehicles found burned at the Camargo crime scene had been confiscated in a separate case in December, in which Escobedo police raided a home where 66 foreign migrants were being held captive.
Escobedo Police Chief Hermengildo Lara told the newsmagazine Proceso earlier this month that he had turned over the confiscated vehicle and the 66 migrants to INM officials, which prompted federal officials to make inquiries as to how the vehicle ended up in Camargo.
According to the INM, its internal affairs department conducted an investigation and found that after the vehicle was turned over to its office in December, the eight fired employees did not follow required administrative protocols regarding seized vehicles and incorrectly allowed it to be released from custody.
Suspension of flights from Canada could mean 1 million fewer tourists.
Canada’s three-month suspension of flights to Mexico will inflict further pain on the ailing Mexican tourism industry, which suffered its worst year in living memory in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions.
A report by the newspaper Milenio gives an idea of the impact the suspension of flights from Canada – Mexico’s second largest source country for tourists after the United States – will have on the tourism sector by looking at a range of statistics about Canadians’ travel habits during the past two years.
According to the Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT), 3.67 million air travelers from Canada came to Mexico in 2019, an average of about 306,000 per month. As a result of the pandemic, the number fell 50.6% in 2020 to 1.81 million, an average of about 151,000 Canadian tourists per month.
Based on an average of those statistics, Mexico will miss out on tourism revenue from some 685,500 Canadians who could have been expected to travel here if flights weren’t suspended between January 31 and April 30.
Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco said last week there could be up to 791,000 fewer tourists as a result of the coronavirus prevention measures announced by the Canadian government, which also includes mandatory hotel quarantine for people entering Canada, and that tourism sector revenue could drop by US $782 million.
Cancún has been the most popular destination for Canadian visitors.
However, statistics published by Milenio suggest that the number of Canadian travelers who don’t come to Mexico between February and April will in fact exceed 1 million. Canadian airlines brought 1.48 million passengers between February and April 2019 and 1.05 million in the same period of 2020 even as the coronavirus was spreading around the world.
The flight suspension affects the most popular month for travel to Mexico from Canada as well as the fourth and fifth most popular months.
SCT data shows that Canadian airlines brought almost 557,000 passengers here in March 2019 and just over 539,000 in January of the same year. December was the third most popular month for Canada-Mexico travel with more than 537,000 passengers followed by February and April with just under 524,000 and about 403,500, respectively.
Four of the five Mexican destinations that will be most affected are coastal resort cities. Cancún, Quintana Roo, received more than 331,000 passengers from Canadian cities last year – a 63% decline compared to 2019 – while the Mexico City airport ranked second with more than 180,000.
The third most popular destination was Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, where almost 134,000 travelers touched down in 2020. Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, ranked fourth with more than 53,000 travelers from Canada, while Huatuclo, Oaxaca, ranked fifth with 19,500 Canadian arrivals.
As Torruco indicated, Mexico is set to miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars of tourism revenue during the three-month flight suspension. Canadians spent US $1.33 billion here in 2019, a figure that accounted for 6.3% of tourism revenue. Canadians spent an average of $1,084 while in the country, 22% more than the average tourist.
The Mexican government has called for the suspension to be lifted as soon as possible in order to prevent “a profound economic crisis in the North American region” but it appears extremely unlikely that Canada, which also placed a halt on travel to Caribbean countries, will make any changes as new, more contagious strains of the coronavirus remain a threat to public health.
The United States’ requirement for incoming travelers to present a negative Covid-19 test result and quarantine on arrival also deals a blow to the tourism sector in Mexico but air travel between the neighboring countries remains active.
Guadalupe José Medina's shoeshine business makes him 300 pesos a day, the absolute minimum amount that will feed his family. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
On a good day, before the pandemic set in, José Mejía Morales earned between 150 and 200 pesos (about US $7.50–$10) selling peanuts and chapulines (roasted grasshoppers) from his two buckets.
“Now, there are days when I earn nothing, when there is no income,” says the Cholula, Puebla, street vendor.
His chapulines, he claims, are the best because they’re caught in the wild. His peanuts are also the best because they come from Chiapas. He calls himself a chapulinero — a person who sells chapulines, and corrected me when I called him an ambulante (mobile vendor) and told me he’s an itinerante — an itinerant worker. Ambulantes, he explained, have a specific spot from which they sell their products, while itinerantes roam the streets, selling their wares.
He’s roamed the streets in Cholula for 30 years now, carrying his buckets “from the pyramid to the center. I work six, seven hours a day, sometimes nine or 10. I work every day,” he says.
A couple of blocks away, across from Tlachihualtépetl, Cholula’s pyramid, José Felix Huítzil Guerro stands in front of the stall he’s had for 32 years, one of many that occupy one side of a small park. Like all the stalls there, his features goods that tourists are interested in: sombreros, along with a variety of Cholula souvenirs. Because of the pandemic, the municipal government is now restricting the days he can work.
“Now, there are days when I earn nothing,” says vendor José Mejia Morales about his business selling snacks on Cholula’s streets.
“We can only work Monday to Friday,” he said.
Only three or four people a day stop by his stand now, whereas before he could expect to see 40 or 50.
“Tourism is down,” he said. “We live on tourism, and if there is none, there is no money. I don’t know how much longer we can survive.”
He’s been forced to accept financial help from his children who work in Puebla.
“It is difficult to accept their help,” he admitted, “but I have no other choice.”
All businesses in Cholula are hurting.
Ascención Alcántara Vásquez used to average 2,000 pesos a day in sales. Now there are days when he only comes home with 100 pesos.
The municipal government closed nonessential stores for a couple of weeks in January and allowed only takeout at restaurants. Stores have recently reopened but only on weekdays. Restaurants still offer takeout and on weekdays can put a few tables out on the sidewalks. And while these businesses are struggling, most have websites allowing them to sell a few things and earn a few bucks. People like Mejía and Huítzil — itinerantes and owners of small stands — have no such options.
Mejía works in what’s known as the informal economy — the sector occupied by street vendors, young men washing windshields at intersections and people who sell flowers from wheelbarrows or tamales from small carts. Like Mejía, they earn a few dollars a day and try to scratch out a living. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have an impact on Mexico’s economy.
It’s estimated that nearly 60% of Mexican workers are employed in the informal economy and contribute about 30% to Mexico’s gross domestic product. If they’re unable to earn a living — and it’s clear that that’s becoming increasingly difficult — it’s certainly going to impact Mexico’s economy.
Mejía said that in normal times, if he didn’t have money, he would exchange things with other itinerantes and sometimes with stores.
“Maybe we can exchange for bread or tortillas with stores,” he said, “but with the pandemic, that is more difficult. I eat only one [type of] food a day now, maybe a vegetable or nopal (cactus).”
Guadalupe José Medina Tima also works in the informal economy. He’s a boleador — someone who shines shoes — and he works six days a week in the park in Cholula’s center. He carries his shoeshine box, the one bearing the name “Andy” — his daughter’s name — through the park for 11 or 12 hours a day.
With the Covid-19 pandemic bringing hard times, José Felix Huítzil Guerro has been forced to accept financial help from his children in Puebla.
“I earned 500 pesos a day before the pandemic,” he said. “Now I earn about 300. I need 300 pesos to survive, and that’s what I’m doing now: surviving.”
The 300 pesos he makes supports his wife and two young children. He’s aware of the virus and the need to wear a mask but doesn’t always do so.
“I am not afraid of the virus,” he said. “For sure, we will all die. If we do not die from the pandemic, we will die from hunger.”
Vendor stalls line another section of the park, most of them offering ice cream and candy.
“Galletas Santa Clara are very popular,” says Ascención Alcántara Vásquez, who has sold candies and cookies there since 1987. “Also, camote poblano and borrachitos nuez.”
Before the pandemic took hold, he’d sell to about 100 people on Saturdays.
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“The majority were from other countries,” he said. “There was a lot of tourism. Now, tourism? Nothing. International tourism? Nothing. Now maybe 10 or 20 people and they’re almost all Mexicans.”
Like all the others I interviewed, Alcántara’s income has dropped off dramatically.
“On a Saturday, I would earn 2,000 pesos on average,” he said. “Now, maybe 100 pesos, maybe 500.”
Although the federal government has done very little to help outside of some loans to businesses, Alcántara said that Cholula’s municipal government is doing what it can to help and he greatly appreciates it.
“They gave us 4,000 pesos once,” he said. “They might do it again, but I do not know how much or when. The government is not charging for lights, for trash, for cleaning the streets. [And] they gave us some rice and beans.”
Despite the aid, he continues to struggle.
This empty park was once filled daily with tourists.
“Before, I would go to a restaurant to eat. Now, I bring my own food. I cannot buy shoes, clothes. What we earn now is to eat and nothing more.”
Although the municipal authorities have helped people like Alcántara, they’ve done nothing for intinerantes like Mejía.
“We get nothing from the government, not even water,” he complained. “I have to buy my own mask, my own gel.”
Mejía takes precautions as he totes his buckets through Cholula because he knows how dangerous the virus can be. His mother died of Covid-19 in November, followed soon after by his father and his wife.
“Of course I am afraid,” he said. “The fear is the virus, but the bigger fear is not having any kind of help and not having a vaccine or a cure. The fear is not having any food. It is for this that we work every day … for food. It is a question of getting food daily. Mexicans do not buy food for the week, we buy food for the day. That is our battle: to get food for the day.”
Joseph Sorrentino, a writer and photographer, is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily. More examples of his photographs and links to other articles may be found at www.sorrentinophotography.com He currently lives in Chipilo, Puebla.
Masks should be obligatory in all federal and state facilities, say 400 signatories to a letter to the president.
More than 400 academics, scientists, writers, lawmakers and others have signed a letter to President López Obrador that proposes making face masks mandatory on federal and state-owned property among other measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
Published by an organization called Propuestas para México (Proposals for Mexico), the letter – entitled Our Only Grand Project Must be to Save Lives – offers seven recommendations to the president.
It calls for the government’s so-called “mega-projects,” such as the new refinery on the Tabasco coast, the Maya Train on the Yucatán Peninsula and the new Mexico City airport, to be temporarily suspended so that a portion of the resources allocated to them can be redirected to the purchase of proven Covid-19 vaccines in order to immunize the entire population.
The letter says that another portion of those funds should go to scientific research and innovation, which are “essential to produce vaccines in Mexico, not just against the virus that causes Covid but also in anticipation of other pandemics that will undoubtedly appear in the future.”
It proposes that the government’s General Health Council guarantee and supervise the rollout of vaccines to ensure that people who need them the most get them first and they are not used for political purposes, and recommends that the progress of the vaccination campaign be published on a daily basis on a publicly accessible website.
Making masks mandatory is not a restriction on freedom but a means of protection for everyone, says Alma Maldonado.
The penultimate proposal is that “the use of face masks become obligatory in all federal and state facilities” and that high-quality masks be distributed to people who need them.
Finally, the letter says the government should develop a quarantine program for people arriving in Mexico from countries with high numbers of cases and require incoming travelers to present a negative Covid-19 test result.
Alma Maldonado, an academic and one of four leaders of Propuestas para México, tweeted on Monday that making masks mandatory on government property, as the letter proposes, doesn’t restrict people’s freedoms – as López Obrador argues – but “protects all of us.”
She noted that the letter is supported by many academics at the National Autonomous University, the Metropolitan Autonomous University and the National Polytechnic Institute, “many of whom voted for López Obrador.”
Maldonado encouraged members of the general public to add their name to the letter at the Propuestas para México website, a call already heeded by thousands.
The publication of the letter came as López Obrador returned to his morning press conferences on Monday after recovering from his own Covid-19 illness. He appeared unmasked at the presser and promptly declared that he wouldn’t begin wearing a mask to help slow the spread of the virus.
“According to what the doctors say, now I’m not contagious,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s coronavirus case tally and Covid-19 death toll continue to rise, although the numbers reported so far this month represent a decline compared to January.
The Health Ministry reported 3,868 new cases on Monday, pushing the accumulated tally to almost 1.94 million, while an additional 531 fatalities lifted the death toll to 166,731.
