Imco's index: dark green is high, light green is adequate, yellow is medium high, orange medium low, red low and dark red very low.
Mexico ranked 37th of 43 countries on a Mexican NGO’s International Competitiveness Index 2021.
That represents a two-place drop for Mexico, which occupied 35th place in the last ranking, and finds itself among a group of countries categorized as “low competitiveness.”
The Mexico Institute for Competitiveness (Imco) measures the ability of economies to generate, attract and retain talent and investment based on 85 indicators and 10 sub-indices. Norway topped the list while Nigeria was at the bottom in 43rd place, the only country considered to have “very low competitiveness.”
In five of 10 sub-indices Mexico fell in the rankings. Those were innovation, international relations, political system, society and environment. It improved its positioning under market conditions and economy.
Imco named health, energy and technological connectivity as factors that are limiting the country’s competitiveness and said the net decline in foreign investment and a fall in the trade freedom index have affected the attractiveness of the economy.
In terms of energy, although Mexico signed the Paris Agreement with the expectation it would generate 35% of its energy from clean sources by 2024, it only achieved 21% in 2019, slightly above last-place Nigeria at 18.8%.
In healthcare, Mexicans cover 42% of their costs. In Denmark, by comparison, citizens only pay 14%.
Problems in technological connectivity are best demonstrated by a dearth of mobile phone networks and a low penetration of technology in the financial system, Imco said.
Among Imco’s recommendations to improve competitiveness are reducing and modernizing government bureaucracy, improving training for police officers, strengthening analysis of evidence in trials, supporting small and medium sized business entrepreneurs, and better connecting the Yucatán Peninsula with the rest of the country.
Others suggestions are directing university education to the labor market, simplifying public university curricula, allowing domestic shipping in the Gulf of Mexico, widening lists for political candidates, designing a national system of care for young and old and the disabled, and redesigning clean energy certification.
The airport was more than two-thirds complete as of last week.
The army will spend almost 22 million pesos (about US $1.1 million) for a statue at the entrance of Mexico City’s new airport (AIFA)
The 10-meter, 200-tonne cast bronze figure of revolutionary general Felipe Ángeles, for whom the airport has been named, will stand on a traffic circle connecting roads leading to the passenger terminal.
It will be crafted by sculptor Edysa Ponzanelli, who has a track record of creating government sponsored sculptures, such as singer Juan Gabriel in Acapulco and ex-president Miguel Alemán in the president’s causeway at the former presidential residence Los Pinos.
The contract for the sculpture states a completion date of March 9, 2022, shortly before the planned inauguration of the AIFA on March 21.
The contract also stipulates that the sculpture will have a guarantee of five years during which any unreasonable damages must be repaired. Ponzanelli must also carry out a first maintenance at no cost in 2022, including structural analysis, and an inspection of rust and deterioration. The artist will also provide training to clean its surface.
Sculptor Edysa Ponzanelli has been contracted to create the statue.
The AIFA, which is being built by the army at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base, will have an initial capacity of 20 million passengers annually but it could eventually handle up to 80 million. In addition to the airport, the army is also building a maintenance base, a hotel and a terminal for travelers on private jets as well as rail and highway links to the facility. The Finance Ministry has estimated the total cost at about 85 billion pesos (about US $4.27 billion).
The airport is located around 45 kilometers north of downtown Mexico City, and was confirmed to be more than two thirds complete at the president’s news conference last week. It is part of a plan to reduce pressure on Mexico City Airport, which was used by 50.3 million passengers in 2019, making it Latin America’s busiest. The federal government is also upgrading AICM and the airport in Toluca, the state of México.
The airport projects are a replacement for the canceled, partially built Texcoco airport, which was destined to serve the capital. The president scrapped construction in 2018 on the grounds that the project was corrupt, too expensive, not needed, and being built on land that was sinking.
Meanwhile, another artistic endeavor for the AIFA — the airport’s logo — was widely panned when it was released in April. The logo featured the somewhat obscured letters AIFA, an airplane, a runway, a control tower and even a mammoth in recognition of the large number of mammoth bones that have been found on the site. Their discovery also led to the decision to build a mammoth museum at the new airport.
Miguel Díaz-Canel with President López Obrador during a visit to Mexico in October 2019.
The president of Cuba will be the guest of honor and give a speech at Thursday’s Independence Day celebrations, becoming the first foreign leader to address the event.
President López Obrador confirmed Tuesday that Miguel Díaz-Canel would speak at a ceremony prior to a military parade in downtown Mexico City to celebrate the 211th anniversary of the beginning of the fight for independence in Mexico.
Speaking at his regular news conference, López Obrador defended the Cuban leader’s participation in the Fiestas Patrias, emphasizing that Mexico has friendly relations with all the world’s nations.
However, the president has a special affection for Cuba, declaring in July that the Caribbean island nation is an “example of resistance” and the whole country should be declared a World Heritage site.
He also called for an end to the United States trade embargo as a way to end large protests in Cuba earlier this year, and sent three ships carrying diesel, medical supplies and food to the country in what experts described as Mexico’s biggest aid run to the country in three decades.
At his press conference on Tuesday, López Obrador also responded to criticism from former president Felipe Calderón, who said that it was unacceptable for a dictator to take a central role in Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations.
“ … It’s good that he doesn’t like it!” the president said before accusing his longtime foe of hypocrisy because he met with former Cuban president Raúl Castro while he was in office.
López Obrador also said Tuesday that United States President Joe Biden wouldn’t come to Mexico this month to join celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the end of the 11-year War of Independence against the Spanish.
“President Biden was invited for the 27th [of September]. He can’t be here, but the head of the United States Department of State will be here,” he said, referring to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
López Obrador said there is an open invitation for Biden to come to Mexico because a face-to-face meeting with his counterpart – rather than via video link – is important.
Returning to the topic of this week’s Independence celebrations, the president invited citizens to watch Wednesday night’s “El Grito” (Cry of Independence) ceremony on television because the event, which usually attracts large crowds to Mexico City’s central square, won’t be open to the public.
“We have to protect ourselves from COVID-19 infections,” López Obrador said before pledging that the event will be a “civil spectacle of the first order” and “a great surprise.”
Children aged 12–17 from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, arrive in Maverick County, Texas, for COVID-19 vaccination under an agreement between the two states.
The coronavirus pandemic is on the wane in all 32 states, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.
“The epidemic curve of estimated cases shows that the reduction of the epidemic at a national level is continuing,” he told reporters at President López Obrador’s morning press conference.
“The 32 federal entities are now showing a clear trend in the reduction of cases,” the coronavirus point man said, adding that the vast majority of cases are mild due to high levels of vaccination, even though most new infections are presumably detected among unvaccinated people.
López-Gatell also said that over 95% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are not vaccinated.
“For that reason we make a renewed call for people to get vaccinated,” he said. “Vaccination against COVID is the most important specific protection element. The vaccine achieves protection of up to 100% against the possibility of serious cases and of course against the danger of dying from COVID.”
Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez Gatell said the majority of current new COVID-19 cases are mild thanks to vaccination, although most new infections are presumably among the unvaccinated.
The deputy minister said that all the vaccines used in Mexico are “highly effective” in preventing serious disease and death.
More than 92.7 million vaccine doses have been administered, according to the latest Health Ministry data, and almost 70% of the adult population has had at least one shot.
López-Gatell also said that hospitalizations of COVID patients have declined during six consecutive weeks. He presented data that showed that 41% of general care hospital beds in COVID wards are occupied, while 37% of those with ventilators are in use.
In other COVID-19 news:
• The Health Ministry reported 12,929 new cases on Tuesday and 1,046 additional COVID-19 deaths. Mexico’s cumulative case tally is now just under 3.53 million while the official death toll is 269,015.
There are an estimated 84,785 active cases across Mexico, a 3% increase compared to Monday.
• One thousand children from the border city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, crossed into Texas on Tuesday to get a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The cross-border vaccination trip for adolescents aged 12 to 17 – all of whom are sons and daughters of factory workers – was supported by the Coahuila government.
State Health Minister Roberto Bernal Gómez said Monday that manufacturing companies with a presence on both sides of the border obtained the shots via donations.
Mexican health regulator Cofepris has authorized the use of the Pfizer vaccine to immunize youths between 12 and 17, but the federal government hasn’t announced any plans to extend the vaccine rollout to all children in that age group.
However, López-Gatell said that one million children with underlying health conditions that make them susceptible to serious disease would be offered shots.
“We have identified one million people between 12 and 17 with cancer, renal or hepatic insufficiency, HIV/AIDS, transplanted organs, congenital diseases and other [conditions] that diminish the immune system,” he told the newspaper La Jornada in an interview published Monday.
• The number of adults aged 40-49 at vaccination centers in León, Guanajuato, early on Tuesday was lower than expected but picked up somewhat later in the day, the newspaper Milenio reported.
Zulma Gonzalez, 12, a Type 1 diabetes sufferer who challenged the government to inoculate her, celebrates her first vaccine shot on Tuesday in Banderilla, Veracruz.
Second shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine are being administered this week in Guanajuato’s largest city and eight other municipalities in the Bajío region state.
• Zulma González García, a Type 1 diabetes sufferer who earlier this month received a court injunction to be given a COVID-19 vaccine but challenged López-Gatell in a video to tell her where and when she could get inoculated, received her first shot today in Banderilla, Veracruz, according to journalist Azucena Uresti, who reported the news via her Twitter account.
As recently as Monday, González had given a radio interview defending her right to get vaccinated, asserting that she has the same risk of serious illness as a senior.
“I’m not taking a vaccine away from anyone, and no one is taking it from me because I have the same risk as a 60-year-old person,” she said, replying to a statement last week by López-Gatell who said vaccinating youths meant taking away vaccine from older, more vulnerable people.
González and her family had been taking precautions to avoid exposure to the coronavirus, explaining that they limited outings to once-a-week trips to the supermarket.
“… All of us should be vaccinated because that’s our right, the right to health – a human right, … age doesn’t matter, we have to be vaccinated,” she said in the interview.
• Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday that Mexico will send vaccines to Nicaragua this month but didn’t reveal how many doses would go to the Central American nation led by increasingly authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
Ebrard told reporters that the shipment was part of Mexico’s efforts to distribute vaccines to Western Hemisphere countries including Honduras, Bolivia, Jamaica, Paraguay and Belize.
The city of Oaxaca will be the site of Indigenous Encounters. (Roman Lopez/Unsplash)
Oaxaca is set to host a binational music, cinema, literature and design event to share its indigenous cultures and exhibit the traditions of indigenous Canada.
Indigenous Encounters Canada-Oaxaca 2021 will include both in-person and virtual activities from September 20 to October 8. The artistic offering includes 26 screenings of films, documentaries, short films and animations, the exhibition of works by eight artists, concerts by 14 musicians and performances by 18 poets. Immersive virtual reality modules will also be installed to offer a view into life in indigenous communities, and a large mural will be painted in Jalatlaco, Oaxaca city.
The Canadian Embassy in Mexico, in collaboration with 15 Canadian and Oaxacan organizations, announced the initiative, saying it will be a platform for the dissemination of art created in the indigenous communities of both countries and a link to foster dialogue and reflection on the challenges they face.
The initiative promises to connect “distant villages more than 4,000 kilometers away, united by their cultural wealth,” the embassy added.
“We are designing … an ambitious program of cultural exchange between indigenous artists and creators from Mexico and Canada,” Ambassador Graeme C. Clark said. He added that the program would provide a space to showcase the gastronomic and natural wealth of Oaxaca.
Governor Alejandro Murat said the state had a strong cultural offering. “Oaxaca will always be home to all the peoples of the world … We are deeply proud of our history, our roots, our artistic expressions and the culture of our 16 ethnic groups, which are 16 worlds with their own worldviews,” he said.
For chef Enrique Ortiz, conversation with diners is a crucial part of Farm to Table's concept. Photos by Ernesto Cámara
Stooped over an open fire, chef Enrique Ortiz turns cobs of blue corn until they are cooked to perfection. There is a low level of bustle as plates of food are delivered from fireside to tabletop and cocktails are shaken in a corner opposite the makeshift outdoor kitchen. Beyond the hum of diners’ conversation, the only noises to be heard are the songs of the birds and the crackling of embers.
Walk through the stone archway of this courtyard on the outskirts of Campeche city and you’ll find yourself in the El Refugio Xaman Ek cultural center as well as the El Campanario sustainable growing space — where the produce currently sizzling under Ortiz’s watchful eye was planted, nourished, and harvested.
This is Farm to Table, a monthly event grown as organically as the vegetables on offer that was established at the beginning of 2021. The concept took root through a partnership between Ortiz’s regionally renowned restaurant in Campeche city, La María Cocina Peninsular, and El Campanario.
At Farm to Table, there is personal, human investment in every stage of the production process. Ingredients are grown organically with no chemical fertilizers, and organic waste produced at Ortiz’s restaurant during the week is composted to nourish the soil.
The day before the event, Ortiz and the invited chefs for the month visit El Campanario to take a look at the season’s offerings. Dishes are then innovated and flavors harnessed based on the produce available.
Corn cooking on the open-air grill during Farm to Table’s maize and mezcal dining event in August.
The meals they create are rendered more unique by being entirely vegetarian and vegan, a breath of fresh air in a local cuisine otherwise saturated by meat dishes.
“It can be difficult in Campeche to find vegan and vegetarian food,” Ortiz remarks. “People ask us, ‘How do you manage to present with just vegetables?’ But they’re always amazed by the experience. We used to think that you couldn’t make really full, nice meals with just vegetables, but we’ve proven that we can go down that line.”
And it is certainly not just the food that is different. What distinguishes Farm to Table from other sustainable restauranteering is the experience itself; diners do not merely know the journey of the food from origin to plate, they also make the journey to the food’s origins.
Farm to Table is a model example of a growing movement in Mexico that pushes for food autonomy as more consumers begin to question what they consume and the origins of their food. Knowing the quality of one’s food and the values of the producers is taking a front seat in sustainable food debates. Amplifying individual values to a business scale allows La María to responsibly coexist with the local society and environment while delivering high-quality experimental dishes grounded in local cuisine and techniques.
The team at La María has always held fast to these values, buying from local producers, supporting small-scale local businesses rather than large supermarkets where possible and aiming to source plastic- and chemical-free food where possible. Farm to Table simply gives Ortiz and his team the opportunity to bring these values to a pinnacle. The material conditions might differ from those inside the restaurant, but methodologically, the values remain the same.
Of course, cooking outdoors for an audience requires constant attentiveness to the idiosyncrasies of your environment. Halfway through the August event, the heavens open. Tables, chairs and dishes with half-eaten meals are hurriedly moved into a sheltered overhang.
Ortiz’s experimental style for the monthly event is committed to creating sustainable vegetarian haute cuisine using local in-season ingredients.
Reflecting on this rainy interlude, Ortiz laughs: “The way I live is a bit chaotic. I like to live without complete control, and this was a manifestation of that, with the rain and everything, trying to change the whole setup in a minute.”
But if the rainy season throws its share of challenges at outdoor events, so, too, does it bring its rewards. Once the rain has stopped, diners fan out across the field to finish their meals with a renewed appreciation for the air and for the motley crew of rescued animals that live on the premises and have reemerged after the storm to wander among the diners — from horses to goats and enthusiastic piggies. Some sporadically attempt to sneak fireside to sample the cuisine.
Imagination-capturing moments like this are a joyful consequence of Farm to Table’s concept and provide the perfect opportunity for Ortiz to have tableside conversations with diners about the dishes and the values that inspire them.
“I try to say to everyone: look at what we’re doing. As Mexicans and as local people, we need to start to look for projects that are actually doing something for the environment. I think that as a restaurant, we can be the bridge to these ideas and values.”
What Farm to Table offers through Ortiz’s avant-garde culinary creations is a fully immersive opportunity to see that ethical consumption can be as appetizing as it is environmentally conscious. By journeying back to the origin of the food it uses, the monthly event disrupts existing systems that offer no point of contact between consumers and the meals they eat.
It might require a little extra quick-thinking and preparation, but the rewards are ultimately greater for all parties involved. It makes for a one-of-a-kind event.
“For me,” Ortiz says, “and for the chefs who are invited, we want to see if we can do it. It’s a challenge — not just on the culinary side, but on the values side. We feel as though we are cooking in the future, a place in which all of society has rethought their food values and where everything comes right back to the simple, beautiful relationship between the farm and the table.”
One of the lots up for auction. Its estimated price is 3,000 euros, or US $3,540.
The federal Culture Ministry and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have filed a complaint against a German auction house that intends to sell 74 Mexican artifacts at an auction next week.
The two entities filed the complaint with the federal Attorney General’s Office against the Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger society, an international dealer and auction house based in Munich.
The Culture Ministry said Monday that it also asked the legal division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide diplomatic assistance with the intention of stopping the event.
Furthermore, Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto Guerrero wrote to the auction house to inform it that INAH has determined that 74 of the archaeological relics it intends to sell “are property of the Mexican nation, in accordance with the Federal Law on Monuments and Archaeological, Artistic and Historic Zones,” the ministry said in a statement.
The auction catalogue includes numerous pre-Hispanic clay figurines as well as masks and other artifacts of the Olmec, Mayan, Mexica and Mixtec cultures, among others.
Frausto told the auctioneer that the sale of such objects constitutes a crime in accordance with Mexican law and promotes trafficking of archaeological artifacts by transnational organized crime groups.
The culture minister asked the auction house to take the necessary measures to stop the sale “for [the purpose of] their eventual recovery,” the Culture Ministry said.
The federal government has previously attempted to stop the sale of Mexican artifacts at auctions in Paris and New York but failed. It has claimed that objects put on the block were looted from archaeological sites and/or illegally removed from the country.
Rev. Hernández, center, apologizes for remarks made during Sunday's sermon.
A Coahuila priest offered an apology on Monday a day after after he suggested that women who have abortions should be killed because they’re “useless.”
Delivering a sermon five days after the Supreme Court effectively decriminalized abortion across Mexico, Rev. Lázaro Hernández Soto also told his congregation at the La Salle church in Monclova that women who abort are morally “empty” and embittered by the experience of ending their pregnancy.
“Abortion is legal, everyone is very happy: ‘We’re going to kill all the children because they hinder us’ … an [unborn] child can’t defend himself,” he said during his homily, which was filmed and subsequently uploaded to social media where it garnered a mixed but mostly negative reaction.
“… We destroy him from the mother’s womb. Why don’t we kill the mother who won’t be of any use either? A woman who aborts is useless. She’s morally, physically and psychologically empty – a woman who will always be bitter, a woman who probably won’t have children and will complain to God,” Hernández said.
The priest suggested that fathers could be responsible for killing their daughters if they had or were thinking about having an abortion.
Flanked by two other priests at a press conference on Monday, he apologized for his remarks, asserting that his intention wasn’t to offend women but simply to urge them not to have an abortion.
“Things were misinterpreted. I was preaching about dignity and family rights. I spoke about the domestic church, which is the family, where the values of the Gospel, of faith and love, are taught,” Hernández said.
“… To speak of the family is to speak of children, adolescents, women, men – that’s where I was going, [I was] awakening consciences about the importance of life, not of death,” he said.
“Yes, the example came up of why are we killing children who can’t defend themselves and letting murderers free who can defend themselves? But I didn’t say ‘we’re going to kill women,’ [my sermon] didn’t attack women.”
Hernández also said that women have an important place in society and noted that “we all come from them.”
“[In the church] we have the figure of the holy virgin, I praise the greatness of women,” he said. “I apologize, it was not my intention to offend anyone,” the priest added before railing once again against the sin of abortion.
Women have to be given a “legal framework so they feel protected and don’t feel compelled to take a decision like that,” Hernández said.
“We know what it means for the mother to commit the sin of taking the life of a defenseless child she is expecting.”
The 38th Mexico City Marathon and the 14th Mexico City Half Marathon are returning to the capital, city government officials announced Monday.
The 42-kilometer foot race will take place on November 28, offering runners only a short training period to prepare. The 21-kilometer Half Marathon is set for December 19.
Both events will be held with COVID-19 safety measures and have a limit of 20,000 participants. The Marathon will begin at Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, in the south of the city, and finish in the capital’s symbolic central square, the zócalo. The Half Marathon will start at the statue of Charles IV of Spain near the Bellas Artes building in the historic center, and finish at the Monument to the Angel of Independence on Reforma Avenue.
Participants will have to pay 650 pesos (US $32) for a place in the Marathon and 500 pesos ($25) to take part in the Half Marathon.
Mexico City Education Minister Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez said health advances have made holding the event possible. “It was very exciting for me to participate for the first time in the organization of a marathon in 2019, then came the pandemic and in 2020 we couldn’t do it … the situation has changed, first because now we have vaccinations with a very important advance in the city, and we have rapid tests,” she said.
Ruiz also provided details of the sanitary measures which would be put in place: “The pandemic is not over, so all participants will be asked to present their proof of vaccination, and a test from no more than 72 hours before they participate … at all times, except when they are running, the participants and the organizers must wear masks … Some that have not been vaccinated, young people, can take a test and present their proof to be able to participate,” she said.
A visual artist from San Luis Potosí has refashioned a BMW 2 Series, marrying elements of Mexican and German culture to achieve a vibrant, unique design in celebration of a new production line of the model at the BMW plant in the state.
The artist, who goes by the name Bosco, transformed the car with help from two of the plant’s paint specialists, Luis Esquivel and David Fernandes. Eight different colors of paint —6.1 liters in total — and 2.5 liters of transparent coating were applied to the vehicle’s exterior.
The front of the car features a blend of German and Mexican flags. The back of the vehicle is decorated with orange paint to symbolize the marigold flower in reference to the Day of the Dead, the annual celebration in which it is used to adorn altars. An abstract nopal cactus appears on the side of the vehicle and a pair of human silhouettes pay compliment to the plant’s workers.
The seven-week artistic process was completely manually. Bosco applied layers of paint color by color, leaving a drying time of 30 minutes between each layer. It required strict control of humidity, temperature and air purity.
“What I sought to do through this work was to translate the colors of Mexico and integrate it into the spirit of the car. This work is totally different from what I am used to doing. That is why it was very important to work together with Luis and Daniel, who supported me with their technical experience,” Bosco said.
President of the plant, Harald Gottsche, said artistry is part of the plant’s daily life. “This artistic work undoubtedly exhibits the talent that exists in Mexico … We wanted to tell this story in a different way and what better way than to do it through art to capture all our emotions. Vehicle production in the BMW Group is an art of its own. The artists are our partners, who assemble each car with the help of the most sophisticated technology,” he said.
The plant kicked off production of the 2 Series on August 26. Exports of the new models to North America are expected to begin by the end of this year, with European sales set to start in early 2022, the company said in a statement.
