Cancún's hotel zone has limited capacity, says Fonatur.
The Spanish hotel chain Riu Hotels & Resorts has filed an appeal against a court ruling that ordered the definitive suspension of construction of a 530-room hotel in Cancún’s hotel zone.
A district court in the Caribbean coast resort city last month ordered the chain to permanently halt the construction of the US $95.6-million Hotel Riviera Cancún, saying the company reneged on promises it made to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities at a cost of 60 million pesos (US $2.9 million).
Rui’s legal team said the injunction request that resulted in the court order was related to the alleged destruction of flora and fauna and not the management of wastewater and therefore the definitive suspension is invalid.
Lawyers also said that Riu has authorization from the federal Environment Ministry to build a wastewater treatment plant within the hotel complex. The plant will allow the hotel to manage ecologically its wastewater without using the city’s treatment facilities, they said.
As a result, public treatment plants won’t be placed under any additional pressure by the operation of the hotel, the legal team argued.
The district court judge had noted that Cancun’s three municipal wastewater treatment plants are at their limit and can’t handle the extra load the hotel would generate.
Riu’s legal defense also said that the company has fully proven that the hotel project won’t damage the environment and claimed that false accusations stemming from a conflict with the owner of a neighboring property have been made against it.
The recent suspension order is not the first legal obstacle Riu has faced to build the hotel, which would be the chain’s fifth in Quintana Roo. The project was suspended in 2016 due to concerns about the impact it would have on adjoining mangroves.
However, it subsequently got the green light to proceed.
Riu also faces opposition to its project from the National Tourism Promotion Fund (Fonatur), which created Cancún as an affordable, sustainable vacation spot for Mexicans in 1974 and remains in charge of municipal facilities.
He said that Fonatur had offered land to the developers of the Grand Island hotel, a US $1-billion, 3,000-room project, and the Riviera Cancún in other destinations “where new hotel investment really is needed,” such as Huatulco, Oaxaca, and other resort cities that were developed by the tourism fund as planned projects.
Jiménez threatened to put an end to Fonatur’s management of Cancún if such projects were permitted to go ahead.
Fonatur legal director Alejandro Varela has also expressed opposition to the development of new projects in Cancún’s hotel zone.
“Fonatur is dead against over-densification of Cancún that doesn’t respect its original planning goals,” he said in February. “We believe that the number of rooms they are proposing far exceeds the capacity of services that Fonatur offers.”
President's plane takes on a whimsical appearance.
A presidential plane was put up for raffle again, but this time it was a lot less controversial.
The plane in question, raffled Wednesday, was actually a whimsical painting of Mexico’s presidential plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Oaxaca artists Sergio Xross and Ángel Pacheco Soriano created the painting, which depicts the plane as an alebrije.
It was raffled off to benefit people with disabilities in Santa María Huatulco, Oaxaca, along with a series of other paintings by the artists.
The raffle poked fun at the fiasco surrounding President López Obrador’s attempts to dispose of Mexico’s presidential plane since he was elected in 2018. Calling the $130-million luxury jet “an insult to the people,” López Obrador has refused to use it and has flown commercial throughout his presidency.
The paintings’ raffle beneficiary was the nonprofit organization Acceptando mi Destino (Accepting My Destiny), which raises funds for people with disabilities in Huatulco.
The nonprofit’s president, Octavio Ramírez, said they conceived of the raffle because the organization’s normal fundraising figures have been affected this year by the coronavirus.
Troops at a plaza in México state Thursday morning.
The federal government has sent out 2,000 National Guard troops to take back control of hijacked toll plazas in several states.
In the Mexico City borough of Tlalpan, where toll booths have been repeatedly hijacked, National Guard members arrived in anti-riot gear to assume control. A similar scene was repeated on the Mexico-Pachuca highway, the Mexico-Puebla highway and the Mexico-Toluca highway.
At a toll plaza on the Mexico-Cuernavaca highway, guardsmen prevented a group that had arrived in two trucks from Guerrero from taking over the toll booths.
Guard patrols also showed up at the Circuito Mexiquense loop and the Arco Norte bypass in México state, as well as at toll booths in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa.
According to the Reforma newspaper, some 600 toll plaza hijackings have been recorded in the country this year.
The hijackings, which often last only a few minutes until the hijackers get wind that the authorities are coming, can nevertheless be very lucrative. In other cases, usually meant to call attention to a cause, occupations have gone on for weeks.
In most instances, the persons occupying the toll booths ask drivers for “voluntary contributions” instead of tolls. Some ask for less than the actual toll, but there have been instances where motorists refused to pay and protesters became aggressive to demand payment. Many drivers have told media outlets that they feel intimidated by the hijackers.
Some toll booth occupations have allegedly been controlled by cartels. Others have been taken over by people who say they are merely doing what they can to get by since the coronavirus pandemic put them out of work.
The number of Covid patients in state hospitals is at its highest level since the start of the pandemic.
A two-week curfew on nonessential commercial activities designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus takes effect Thursday in the state of Chihuahua.
Governor Javier Corral announced Wednesday that the curfew will apply between 7:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. on weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday.
The manufacturing sector, which is considered essential, can operate without restriction on weekdays but must shut down completely on weekends.
Among the businesses and services that are not subject to the restriction on operating hours are hospitals and other healthcare facilities, pharmacies, veterinary clinics, gas stations, airports, small grocery stores, butcher shops, bakeries, tortilla shops and convenience stores.
Most other businesses including supermarkets and department stores are subject to the commercial curfew.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Corral said that public transit will be “practically suspended” this weekend and next, explaining that the only services that will run are those that go to hospitals and other healthcare facilities. People will only be allowed to disembark at the final destination, he said.
The governor described the new restrictions as “drastic” but “completely necessary.”
He said authorities are confident that the measures, if complied with, will help to reduce hospitalizations of coronavirus patients and avoid deaths. Their effectiveness will be evaluated at the end of the 14-day period.
Corral also said that he would send an initiative to the state Congress that would make the use of face masks mandatory by law.
Chihuahua, currently classified as a red light “maximum” risk state on the federal government stoplight system, has recorded 27,293 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and 2,146 Covid-19 deaths, according to state data.
The state Health Ministry reported 443 new cases and 70 additional deaths on Wednesday. It also said that there are currently 1,165 coronavirus patients in 27 hospitals across the state including 159 on ventilators.
The number of hospitalized coronavirus patients is the highest since the start of the pandemic.
Corral announced that the state is collaborating with the federal government to bolster the capacity of hospitals in Chihuahua to respond to the pandemic. Approximately 220 additional beds are expected to be available to coronavirus patients in the next 15 to 20 days.
Meanwhile, the national coronavirus case tally increased to 943,630 on Wednesday with 5,225 new cases reported by the federal Health Ministry. The official Covid-19 death toll rose to 93,228 with an additional 635 fatalities registered.
Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía presented data that showed that 12,435 coronavirus patients are currently in hospitals across Mexico. The figure is 32% lower than the peak of 18,223.
Data showed that one-third of general care beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while just over a quarter of those with ventilators are in use.
The burned remains of a missing Los Angeles firefighter have been identified through DNA tests.
The body of Frank Aguilar, 48, a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department whose disappearance on August 20 triggered investigations by both the FBI and Mexican authorities, was identified through forensic DNA testing, according to Baja California Attorney General Hiram Sánchez. The remains were found October 23 in a remote field 50 kilometers south of the Tijuana–San Diego border.
Two suspects, identified only as Santos “N” and Fanny “N,” were arrested in connection with the case on October 8 after they were found in possession of Aguilar’s credit cards, which had been used for purchases in Ensenada, Rosarito and Tijuana.
Aguilar was last heard from in late August when he went to check on a northern Baja condominium property he owned in San Antonio del Mar, near Rosarito.
According to Sánchez, Fanny “N” had had repeated interactions with Aguilar. He said the woman had arranged to meet Aguilar near a club in Rosarito and that when the firefighter arrived, another vehicle blocked Aguilar’s path. Aguilar reportedly exited his SUV and tried to run away but was shot.
In September, Mexican investigators said they had found signs of violence in Aguilar’s home and that surveillance cameras had picked up images of people on Aguilar’s property. They also said at the time that witnesses had reported seeing the firefighter in a bar with people that prosecutors said were likely responsible for his disappearance.
The arrested pair continue to deny any involvement in Aguilar’s death.
“We are looking at the evidence, and we’re trying to figure out if we have enough to charge the suspects with both Aguilar’s disappearance and his murder,” Sánchez recently told the newspaper Border Report. “We know on that day, August 20, when they tried to kidnap him, Frank tried to escape, and because of it he lost his life.”
The Marant cape at left and a Purépecha cape at right. The first retails for 14,251 pesos, the second for 1,500.
A fashion designer has once again raised concerns over the plagiarism of indigenous designs.
Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto has written to French designer Isabel Marant to question her use of indigenous Mexican patterns in her latest fall-winter collection.
Frausto told Marant that she has used designs from the Purépecha communities of Michoacán as well as those of indigenous people in México state, Tlaxcala, San Luis Potosí and Oaxaca.
“In the 2020-21 Etoilé winter-fall collection designs that belong to the Purépecha culture of Michoacán appear. Some symbols that you took have a profound meaning for this culture. … These symbols are very old and have been conserved thanks to the memory of the artisans,” she wrote.
The minister made specific reference to a cape in Marant’s collection, saying it “imitates the geometry and proportions of Mexican sarapes and jorongos,” which are long, blanket-like shawls.
“I ask you, Ms. Isabel Marant, to publicly explain on what grounds you privatize a collective property, making use of cultural elements whose origin is fully documented,” Frausto wrote.
She also asked the designer to explain how her use of traditional Mexican designs benefits the communities that first created them. Protecting the rights of people who have historically been “made invisible” is an “urgent issue” that must be publicly discussed around the world, Frausto said.
“From the Culture Ministry of Mexico we invite you to carry out respectful work with the indigenous communities within an ethical framework that doesn’t undermine the identity and economy of the people,” the minister told Marant.
The news agency Reuters said that Marant didn’t immediately respond to its request for comment on the issue but noted that her company’s website says that it is committed to ethical and responsible behavior.
Frausto’s letter to the designer comes after a group of senators accused her of plagiarizing indigenous designs.
At a press conference in late August, ruling party Senator Susana Harp said it was the second time that Marant has appropriated Mexican designs, recalling that she was accused in 2015 of copying a blouse designed in Tlahuitoltepec, Oaxaca.
The senator called on Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard to forge an agreement against cultural appropriation with France, which she described as “the country that has plagiarized us the most.”
Frausto has previously called out Venezuelan-born designer Carolina Herrera and French fashion and luxury goods company Louis Vuitton for appropriating traditional Mexican designs without acknowledging their creators or passing on any benefits to indigenous communities.
She sent letters to both last year, asking for explanations and calling on them to work with the indigenous communities whose work they have appropriated.
Several other designers and fashion labels including Michael Kors, Zara and Mango have also been accused of copying Mexican designs.
Family members at the scene of last year's massacre.
A year after nine members of his family were murdered by a heavily armed gang that attacked their convoy outside La Mora, Sonora, Adrian LeBaron is questioning Mexican authorities’ commitment to investigating the attack.
The high-profile murder of members of the extended family of fundamentalist Mormons with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship drew international attention to violence in Mexico. The ambush killed three mothers and six children, including LeBaron’s daughter and four grandchildren.
Since the killings, the family has met with President López Obrador on four occasions to discuss the case.
But it’s all been for nothing, Le Baron said. “There has been no progress in the case for six months.”
In an interview with the newspaper Reforma Tuesday, LeBaron blamed corruption in the government.
Adrian LeBaron: ‘I smell a lot of corruption.’
He lamented that after a year only one person has been charged with the murder of his daughter and grandchildren, even though several people have been arrested by the government in connection with the case as recently as January of this year, including a police chief in Janos, Chihuahua, located near where the killings occurred.
(The federal government announced today that an arrest had been made in the case. The suspect is believed to be a member of the gang known as La Línea.)
“The investigator that did the most work on the case, José Alberto Mancilla Copado, the one that detained everyone [in the case], his contract as an investigator for the federal Attorney General’s Office was not renewed,” LeBaron said. “And since his contract was not renewed, nothing has happened, and I smell a lot of corruption in this department.”
Last month, LeBaron appealed to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to investigate his family’s case, claiming that the Mexican government is not doing its due diligence.
Although 12 people in total were initially detained by authorities in connection with the attack, only one of them was actually charged in connection with the killings.
Remittances from Mexicans abroad continue to rise.
September was another good month for remittances sent home by Mexicans working abroad.
The Bank of México reported that remittances totaled US $3.56 billion in September, the highest amount ever recorded for that month and the third highest for any month since records began in 1995.
The only months during which Mexicans working abroad, mainly migrants in the United States, sent more money home were March and August of this year when remittances totaled $4.02 billion and $3.57 billion, respectively.
With the three best months ever for remittances occurring in 2020, it’s no surprise that the influx of such money was the highest ever for a January to September period.
A total of $29.96 billion flowed into Mexico in remittances up until September 30 despite the negative impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on the economy and employment. The amount is 10% higher than the total sent to Mexico in the same period last year.
Gian María Milesi-Ferretti, a deputy director at the International Monetary Fund, described the record remittances as a “ray of sunshine” amid the pandemic gloom.
He said that it showed that migrants always do their best to send money back to their loved ones no matter the circumstances they face.
“Migrants always make a significant effort to help their countries of origin when they are going through difficult episodes. … People sacrifice a lot to keep sending money,” Milesi-Ferretti said.
According to the Bank of México, the average remittance sent home by Mexicans abroad last month was $346, the highest level since October 2008.
Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs, said the high average remittance and the exchange rate resulted in recipients getting 22% more in pesos in September than in the same month last year.
The peso fell 9.3% against the US dollar in September.
Some 1.8 million families in Mexico regularly receive remittances from abroad and much of the money is promptly injected into the local economy.
“Remittance flows have been adding support to the current account and to private consumption, particularly for low-income families, who have a high propensity to consume and are the overwhelming recipients of such transfers,” Ramos said.
President López Obrador has described Mexican migrants as “heroes” and praised them in his second annual report for increasing their transfer of money to family members during the difficult economic times.
The Mexican economy has been hit hard by the pandemic and associated restrictions, contracting sharply in both the second and third quarters compared to the same periods last year.
However, there are early signs of recovery – GDP increased 8.6% between July and September compared to the previous three months, according to preliminary data published last Friday.
Joseph Sorrentino agreed to help pick flowers for a Día de Muertos altar in hopes of some good photos.
I started out so excited. I was going with Alberto to collect flores de muertos in the nearby hills.
I was staying with Alberto and Anna in San Augustin Etla, a village outside of Oaxaca. I was there to photograph Day of the Dead. Although Alberto had promised me there wouldn’t be any problems with my doing this, the locals were initially skeptical about my presence.
Day of the Dead celebrations in this and neighboring pueblos feature elaborate costumes, dancing and skits. The skits are kept secret — rehearsals were literally behind locked doors — and people apparently believed that I’d steal the skits and tell neighboring pueblos about them. It didn’t occur to anyone that my Spanish wasn’t good enough to do that.
But during an evening of beer and mezcal, everyone loosened up and welcomed me. That evening, Alberto turned to me.
“Would you like to come with us tomorrow morning to cut flores de muertos?” he asked in a low voice, lending it such an air of mystery that I immediately said yes.
“We leave at five,” he said.
Flores de muertos are flowers cut for Day of the Dead — brilliant yellow and deep red ones. I was going along to photograph and help cut the flowers.
When I awoke at just past six, I decided to mosey on downstairs and see what was shaking. Alberto and Cristina, another friend, were sipping coffee at the kitchen table.
“What’s up?” I asked. “Are we going to cut flowers?”
“We’re waiting for the truck,” said Alberto. “Have some coffee.”
We sat around for several minutes, sipping coffee and making small talk. I was glad we were delayed. The light would be so much better for taking photographs. After maybe 10 minutes, Alberto got up and walked outside but quickly returned.
“We have to go,” he said. “The truck is here, and we have to meet the second truck.”
We clambered into the truck and were soon hurtling up the road to the mountain, Alberto’s trusty dog Washi running alongside. I didn’t see a second truck.
We pulled off on what had now turned into a dirt road. Alberto shut the engine and got out. Cristina and I followed. After a few minutes, I asked what was up.
“We have to wait for the key,” said Alberto.
There was a chain across the road, blocking access. I leaned casually against the truck, hoping I didn’t look too annoyed. Washi had caught up to us and was curled on the ground, asleep. I watched a Volkswagen Beetle with four large men in it make its way around the gate and up the mountain.
“We have a truck,” I thought, “Why aren’t we doing that?”
The Day of the Dead flowers that proved elusive.
Half an hour later, the second truck pulled up and the gate was quickly unlocked. Cristina, apparently sensing what this trip was going to be like, headed home, but not me. I was headed up a rutted mountain road to photograph people cutting flores de muertos.
The hard-packed dirt road turned into soft soil, and although Alberto’s truck was often spinning its wheels, we still made progress. The second truck soon left us behind.
Alberto, refusing to believe that his truck couldn’t make it up that mountain, simply kept the gas pedal on the floor every time the truck got stuck and smiled at me broadly every time we got unstuck. Washi trotted along a little behind us. The first time the road forked, Alberto slowed a bit, looked at both roads and muttered something in Spanish. He shrugged, muttered some more and then pressed on the gas, heading up the right fork.
He followed the same ritual at the next fork. Washi the wonder dog was nowhere in sight, but Alberto was untroubled.
“She loves to run,” he said proudly. “She will find us,” he said. “I hope.”
An hour later, we found the second truck. The men were all combing the hills for flores de muertos, but there were hardly any. The fields of yellow and red I’d been promised were nowhere in sight.
“There are no flowers,” Alberto said.
I had already figured this out. We walked around for a few minutes, picking the occasional flower. It was clear the photographs were going to be pretty damn boring. Washi, who had indeed found us, was lying on the ground, panting heavily.
“We have to go to another place,” said Alberto.
We climbed back into the trucks and headed down the mountain, Washi again trotting slowly behind. Alberto stopped the truck after a few minutes and opened the back door to let in Washi, who had fallen far behind, her love of running apparently sated for the day.
“Last year,” Alberto explained, “the fields were covered with flowers up here. Well, maybe there will be many down below.”
I didn’t bother to mention we hadn’t seen any fields bursting with yellow and red flowers on the way up.
We found the other truck pulled off by the side of the road. The men were sitting around, looking bored. Alberto parked, got out and also proceeded to look bored. I trotted out, trying to not look pissed. It was almost nine o’clock, and we’d only collected a handful of flowers.
I sidled up to Alberto and asked why we were waiting.
“Gordito,” he said.
“Gordito?” I asked.
“He is back there,” he explained, “cutting flowers.”
I decided not to point out that we had just been back there and that there were no flowers to cut.
Someone pulled out a radio. After fiddling with the dials and antenna for a minute, he settled on a station that was mostly static. He then turned up the volume as loud as possible and sat with the rest of the men in a small hut.
We waited. We ate some tortillas and cheese and waited some more. Finally, an hour later, Gordito showed up with a fistful of yellow flowers.
“Let’s go,” Alberto said.
We drove down the mountain, faithful Washi lying down in the back. We arrived at the house, five hours after we’d left, with a couple of bunches of flowers.
Later that afternoon, we constructed the tapeta for Day of the Dead, a structure placed with the altar that bears flowers topping an image of the maker’s choice. To make this item, a drawing was first made on a large sheet of plastic. Chicken wire was placed above that, and flowers were placed in the chicken wire.
We had a large drawing of a skull, and it was clear that there weren’t nearly enough flowers. A couple of the young men helping with the tapeta drove off in a truck and returned a half-hour later.
And, of course, the back of their truck was crammed full with flores de muertos.
Joseph Sorrentino is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Grieving mourner Katleen Chávez won first place in the annual contest.
There is plenty to cry about in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic continues to take a heavy toll on Mexico and many other countries around the world.
Accordingly it’s perhaps not surprising that an annual Day of the Dead mourning contest in Querétaro attracted double its usual number of participants this year.
Held virtually due to the risk of coronavirus transmission, the San Juan del Río Concurso de Plañideras (Mourners Contest) received video entries from 27 contestants.
First held 14 years ago, the contest, which is sponsored by a local funeral home, was created to pay tribute to women known as plañideras who were once hired by well-off families to cry at the burials of loved ones.
The San Juan Tourism Bureau announced last month that it would accept entries by email this year and soon after the tears started flowing and the videos flooded in.
The quality of entries was high, leaving the panel of judges with a difficult job to select a winner but they eventually settled on Princesa Katleen Chávez Arce of La Paz, Baja California.
Chávez, who won a prize of 3,500 pesos (US $167), submitted a slickly produced video which shows her clad in black and sobbing while lying beside a dead man’s tomb.
“But to forget you? Never, never, never, never,” she says before breaking down.
Chávez, an actor who moved home after the pandemic affected her work opportunities in Mexico City, said that she had never cried professionally before but admitted she shed a lot of tears after returning to La Paz in September.
“The crisis hit me,” she said. “So yes, I cried, and for about a week I did absolutely nothing,” she said.
The second place winner was María Silveria Balderas Rubio of Tequisquiapan, Querétaro.
According to the New York Times, Balderas’ daughters heard about the mourning contest and convinced their mom to enter. The 58-year-old runner-up said that she took inspiration for her performance from inconsolable mourners she has seen at funerals.
Balderas’ entry was shot on a cellphone in a single take, the Times said, adding that although there is no coffin in the footage, her “anguished weeping, hyperventilated breathing and insistence that she ‘just saw him yesterday’ seem startlingly real.
Juan Carlos Zerecero, a theater teacher and member of the judging panel, noted that “the the video is very homemade, and all she does is cry” but added: “That’s what we’re asking them to do, no? To me, she’s crying in a very truthful way.”
María Ofelia Ramírez Arteaga, a local San Juan del Río woman, took third place for her mock mourning of the death of the local mayor – who is still very much alive.
According to local news outlet Crónica Regional, her performance was filled with comedic and sarcastic elements.
An Aguascalientes woman also put in a comedy-filled performance, bewailing the onset of menopause and addressing her laments to her absent period.
“You were always so punctual and then one day, without saying anything, you never came back,” she bemoaned.
Another entrant was Brenda Anakaren Torres Villarreal, who submitted a video that the Times described as “perhaps the most relatable entry.”
The 31-year-old took inspiration for her mourning from 2020, a year she said left people “depressed, out of work and in quarantine.”
“It is without a doubt one of the worst years that we have ever lived,” Torres said, explaining her inspiration. “If you’re not crying about 2020, you’re not crying about anything.”
She added that the idea wasn’t to dwell on misery but to laugh at it. “Mexicans always have the capacity to find comedy in tragedy – to find the good part of it, even if that doesn’t exist.”
Similarly, the head of the San Juan del Río Tourism Bureau said that “laughing at death is part of Mexican culture.”
“It’s a way of confronting the problem and feeling less vulnerable,” Eduardo Guillén said.
He said that only women have been invited to participate in the mourning contests due to tradition but added that local authorities are open to allowing men to compete in the future.
Any would-be wailers have just about a year to get ready for next year’s event, which will hopefully be held once again in front of a live audience.
