These Mexico City labs offer PCR tests to travelers who require them

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January 20, 2021

If you’re traveling from Mexico City to the United States or Canada you’ll need a Covid-19 test to prove that you’re not infected.

(Travelers to the U.S. who have recovered from Covid-19 are exempt but must provide documentation showing they have recovered in the 90 days preceding travel.)

However, there are some Mexico City laboratories, mostly private, that are able to offer international travelers test results quickly, in some cases as soon as 24 hours.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico, for example, has testing laboratories experienced with providing all kinds of test results.

In general, travelers to the U.S. should present to airlines and possibly immigration officials test results that clearly state the name of the traveler, the date of the test, the type of test done and the test result.

Travelers to Canada are advised to have results that clearly state the complete name of the traveler, their date of birth, the date of the Covid-19 test, the name and address of the laboratory where the test was conducted, the type of test, and the test result.

Here are some laboratories in Mexico City that offer PCR tests:

Clinica del Viajero (Travelers’ Clinic)

Cost: 3,000 pesos.
Delivery time: 24 hours
Results delivery: via email
For more information: 55 4313 0190; WhatsApp: 55 6748 9375 or [email protected]
How to get an appointment: online
Payment: done online during the application process.

This clinic is associated with the National Autonomous University. Covid-19 tests are not being done at the clinic’s normal location but at the Instituto Conde Valenciana in the Obrera neighborhood (Chimalpopoca 14). Information is available on their appointment site.

International travelers should check the viajero internacional (international traveler) and the requiero certificado medico de viaje (I need medical traveling certification) options during the online application process.

Once you have applied for a test online, the website says they will call you to make an appointment, but you can call 55 6748 9375 to confirm receipt of your online application. The fee covers the consultation before your trip, the certified test results and follow-up via email or social media while you are out of the country and after you return.

You should come to your testing appointment with proof of your travel itinerary (including layovers) with evidence of hotel reservations or airline tickets.

Salud Digna

Cost: 950 pesos
Delivery time: 48–72 hours
Results delivery: via their website or WhatsApp
For more information: 52 55 39566729 or consult their website
How to get an appointment: online
Payment: done online during the application process.

You must go to your appointment with official identification, proof of payment made online, and proof of your appointment time.

This private laboratory also has locations in most major Mexican cities but not all may offer Covid-19 testing.

Laboratorio Médico del Chopo

Cost: 3,195 pesos
Delivery time: 24–72 hours
Results delivery: online portal and via email
For more information: 55 1104 4875 or consult their website
How to get an appointment: online
Payment: done online during the application process.

Note: This private laboratory also has locations in many major Mexican cities. Not all offer the Covid-19 PCR test.

Hospital Médica Sur

Cost: 3,949 pesos
Delivery time: 24–48 hours
Results delivery:
For more information: 55 5424 7200 Ext. 3991 (Covid laboratory call center, open 24 hours) or Ext. 6805 (hospital customer service line) or their website
How to get an appointment: online
Payment: done during the online appointment scheduling process

Testing can be done inside the hospital’s Covid laboratory or drive-through without leaving your vehicle. Two testing sites are available, one in Toriello Guerra and another in Lomas-Virreyes.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Mexico registers record number of Covid deaths; nearly half a million people vaccinated

By

MND Staff

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January 20, 2021

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Federal health official Alethse de la Torre presents new Covid data on Tuesday.

Mexico recorded a new single-day record for Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday and its third highest total for new cases, while the number of vaccines administered against the infectious disease rose to almost half a million.

The federal Health Ministry reported 1,584 additional Covid-19 fatalities, lifting Mexico’s official death toll to 142,832. The number of deaths registered Tuesday exceeds the previous record (set a week earlier) of 1,314 by 270, or 20.5%.

The ministry also reported that Mexico’s accumulated case tally had increased by 18,894 to just under 1.67 million. The only days on which a higher single-day tally of cases was reported were last Friday and Saturday when new case numbers exceeded 20,000.

There are currently an estimated 102,797 active cases across Mexico while the national hospital occupancy rate for general care beds is 60%. Eight states have an occupancy rate above 70%. They are Mexico City, 89%; Guanajuato, 87%; México state, 85%; Hidalgo, 84%; Puebla, 82%; Nuevo León, 81%; Morelos, 75%; and Nayarit, 71%.

Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell reported that 498,122 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine have been administered to health workers. Of that number, 488,513 doses, or 98% of the total, were administered as the first of the two required shots. Only 9,609 health workers have received both of the required doses.

Mexico received a shipment of almost 220,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday but no further consignments are scheduled until February 15 because the United States pharmaceutical company is currently upgrading its plant in Belgium in order to boost production capacity.

Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday that millions of doses of the Sputnik V, CanSino biologics and AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccines will arrive in the coming weeks and that the government expects to inoculate almost 14.2 million people by the end of March.

After all health workers have been vaccinated, Mexico intends to inoculate more than 12 million seniors in a period of about two months. The government’s 32-billion-peso (US $1.6-billion) plan to vaccinate Mexico’s entire population of almost 130 million is expected to conclude in March 2022, the newspaper El Universal reported.

In other Covid news:

• The Michoacán Congress approved a law on Tuesday that stipulates that people can be fined, ordered to complete community work or even placed under house arrest for failing to wear a face mask in public places including stores and public transit. According to the law, police or state health officials should first give a verbal warning to mask scofflaws. If they subsequently decline to put on a mask, a written warning should be issued. If a person continues to refuse to wear a mask, he or she can be fined up to 1,344 pesos (US $68).

People issued fines can choose to complete community work in lieu of paying them, according to the law, which also stipulates that such work should not last for more than three days. Authorities can also order mask scofflaws to stay at home for up to 36 hours in addition to the other sanctions.

Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio

Businesses and public transit operators can be fined up to 2,688 pesos (US $137) if they don’t comply with the mandatory face mask law. Businesses could also be temporarily or permanently shut down.

Governor Silvano Aureoles praised the new law in a Twitter post.

“Today Michoacán has taken another important step in the management of the health crisis,” he wrote.

Lawmakers in several other states including Morelos, Chihuahua and Colima have also approved laws that make the use of face masks mandatory and establish penalties for those who don’t comply.

Michoacán, currently high risk orange on the federal coronavirus stoplight map, has recorded more than 37,000 confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic and 3,113 Covid-19 deaths.

• Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat announced that an agreement has been reached with business leaders for commercial establishments in the state capital to close on a staggered basis and reduce their business hours as part of efforts to slow the spread of the virus. Restaurants, supermarkets and markets are among the businesses that will open later, close earlier or both.

The statewide hospital occupancy rate in Oaxaca is 53% for general care beds, according to federal data, but 14 of 49 Covid-designated hospitals have reached capacity and the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients in Oaxaca city reached a new peak this week.

The southern state, currently orange on the stoplight map, has recorded almost 32,000 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and 2,234 Covid-19 deaths. About 30% of the cases were detected in Oaxaca city.

The state government has launched a new social media campaign to encourage citizens to follow the measures designed to stop the spread of the virus such as the use of face masks and staying at home as much as possible.

• Authorities in Guasave, Sinaloa, ordered the closure of bars, cantinas, party halls, sports centers, street markets and beaches due to a recent increase in case numbers and deaths. Active case numbers have almost tripled in the municipality this year, rising from 56 on January 2 to 154 on Tuesday.

Located about 150 kilometers north of the Sinaloa capital Culiacán, Guasave has recorded 68 Covid-19 deaths this year. Mayor Aurelia Leal López said that stricter restrictions were necessary because the coronavirus situation has worsened as a result of gatherings and parties over the Christmas-New Year period.

In addition to closing some businesses, local authorities will ramp up inspections to ensure that supermarkets, department stores, banks and other commercial establishments are complying with health rules. Municipal police have been instructed to break up any large private gatherings and parties and ensure that people don’t try to access local beaches.

Guasave authorities didn’t say when they expected to lift the tighter restrictions. The municipality has recorded almost 4,000 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and more than 550 deaths.

The accumulated case tally in Sinaloa, currently an orange light state, is just over 29,000 while its Covid-19 death toll is 4,457.

Source: El Universal (sp), Reforma (sp), Milenio (sp)

A power outage dims climate change hopes in Mexico

By

Jude Webber

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January 20, 2021

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pemex tanker — In Mexico, fossil fuels are in.

It was mid-afternoon on the Monday after Christmas when the messages started flooding Twitter: power cut. No lights. First the reports came from different parts of Mexico City, then across the country.

As 10.3 million users had their electricity abruptly shut off, it soon became clear that this was not the usual kind of local outage in a country where utility poles are often tangled with illegally-connected wires used to steal electricity — known as “little devils.”

This was a significant event. The CFE, the state electricity company — which perhaps advisedly seems to have stopped advertising itself as “a world-class company” — tweeted that cutting off users was necessary to avoid pulling the plug on the entire national grid.

According to Manuel Bartlett, CFE’s director, in numerous press briefings, the culprit was renewable energy. Because renewable power is intermittent — sunshine and wind are not constant — and must be backed up by other sources, it puts strain on the system. It is an argument the government has used repeatedly in its attempt to reduce renewable energy producers’ participation in the sector.

Yet, back in 2015, the White House hailed Mexico as “setting an example for the rest of the world” after it became the first developing nation to submit climate change pledges, including generating 35% of electricity from clean energy by 2024, ahead of the landmark Paris agreement.

wind farm — Renewables are out of favor today in Mexico.

President López Obrador’s championing of fossil fuels has changed all that. Only about 6% of Mexico’s electricity comes from renewables even though the cost of green generation is less than half that of gas-fired or other thermal power plants. The government has spent months trying to force through ways to squeeze private players in favour of the CFE.

Mexico skipped a summit last month designed to take stock of the world’s progress towards the Paris climate goals. Two weeks later, in a cosmic come-uppance, the power cut happened. It seemed to underscore López Obrador’s determination to impose his statist vision on Latin America’s second-biggest economy even if, quite literally, the lights go out.

Independent energy experts say the government’s aversion to green power generation is political — many other countries rely heavily on renewables. They say that the problem with the grid has more to do with under-investment in transmission lines, which are under CFE control.

For the president and Bartlett, the CFE is unfairly criticized. López Obrador says the neoliberal policies of his predecessors would have privatized the sector and killed off the CFE. Officials last year repeatedly tried to ram through rule changes, including increasing transmission tariffs on companies generating their own electricity and stalling permits. Courts have blocked the attempts, but investors are alarmed.

Now Bartlett has seized on the outage to have another go. The former minister is notorious for another system crash: the vote count in the 1988 presidential election, which he was in charge of. It suspiciously failed as the ruling PRI party was lagging behind. When the system came back up, the PRI won.

The December 28 power cut was similarly tainted by fraud allegations. The CFE said the outage was triggered by a fire under transmission lines in the northern state of Tamaulipas and presented a letter, purportedly from the state Civil Protection agency, to support its claims. But the letter was fake — as the CFE and López Obrador were finally forced to admit.

Bartlett stuck to his core assertion: the real reason the transmission lines were so strained was because of renewables. As a result, the supposedly independent electricity market operator, Cenace, would be “obliged” to remove some renewable generation. Meanwhile, López Obrador is building a new oil refinery. He has vowed to boost coal-fired generation and wants green power to come from CFE-owned hydropower plants. Mexico’s Paris pledges now look out of reach.

Back when Washington was lauding Mexico, Joe Biden was vice-president. As he enters the White House, López Obrador’s policies look more like those of climate change deniers such as outgoing President Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

The AMLOve affair is over: why I’ve changed my mind about the president

By

Sarah DeVries

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January 20, 2021

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With López Obrador's election in 2018, the writer’s hopes were high.

So, y’all ever been wrong before?

Man, I sure have. About a lot of things, of course, most of them (mercifully) not too consequential.

One thing I am deeply saddened to have been wrong about is our president.

Don’t get me wrong; I want him to do well because I want Mexico to do well. But, gosh, it’s become so hard to defend him.

Even when he did or said things I didn’t really like, I let them slide, thinking, “Well, at least he’s not a cynic. At least he sincerely seems to be trying to do what’s best for Mexico, which is more than I can say for most other presidents.”

But his choice of friends disturbs me.

El Chapo’s mother? What was that? When I saw the picture of him greeting her warmly, it was the kind of slap in the face that one might feel upon finding their spouse on a romantic dinner date with someone they (with very good reason) deeply dislike.

And Trump. Trump! What is it that President López Obrador finds so appealing about him?

At first, I thought he was simply trying to appease Trump because that’s the smart thing to do when your neighbor is both very powerful and very mentally unstable and unpredictable. After all, if Trump were to get mad, there’s presumably a lot of damage he could have done to Mexico, especially regarding trade. That’s what I told myself too when López Obrador stood conspicuously back as all the other world leaders congratulated Biden on his win.

But no; AMLO seems to genuinely like the guy.

The thing that I hate, hate, hate being wrong about is this: that Trump and AMLO do, in fact, share many similarities, from their open dislike and disparagement of the “mainstream media” to the demonization of anyone not “with” them politically. Another sad similarity is their insistence that only they have the solutions.

Given these similarities, it’s thankfully not a perfect parallel. AMLO, for example, actually had experience governing before becoming the president. I also still believe that, however misguided I think he is now, he at least believes that he’s doing what’s best for his country. While I am starting to seriously doubt that he cares about the way so many Mexicans are suffering with no economic help during the pandemic on top of their health woes, I do believe that he at least took office with the desire to improve citizens’ lives.

I haven’t lost hope that he might come to his senses — I’m not writing him off — but, man, am I sad about how this presidency is going.

The situation with former defense chief Salvador Cienfuegos is also something that’s knocked a few other torches I’d carried for AMLO out of my hand. I’m no crime expert, but I have absolutely no doubt that the U.S. came to the correct conclusions about who Mexico’s ex-defense minister was. The fact that Cienfuegos was determined innocent once back in Mexico without so much as a trial knocked me off my feet.

The issue here seems not to be his guilt or innocence but hurt pride that the U.S. went after him without Mexico’s cooperation or knowledge. And if there’s one thing I know about Mexican culture, it’s that hurt pride, especially when it involves powerful men, is not often tolerated.

But I can’t say I blame the U.S. for leaving Mexico out. After all, corruption often reaches the top levels of government, and any message to the wrong person could tip off exactly the right person, and then it all goes to hell and the bad guy gets away.

I was sure that AMLO was solidly against impunity, but with this, the veil has been lifted. I would so love to know what the president thinks privately; surely he doesn’t really believe that Cienfuegos is an innocent man. Is he embarrassed because he’s given the military so much power lately? Is it that admitting the possibility of corruption in the military means admitting that maybe he made a mistake or two by putting them in charge of so much?

It seems, too, that through his public upset, the president is trying to whip up some anti-U.S. sentiment. Why? Most analyses I’ve read liken him to a growling dog, warning Biden as he comes into office that he doesn’t want the United States to be involving itself in matters down here.

So this is it. I’ve officially fallen out of AMLOve. I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that there were certainly many good things that I just wasn’t aware of that might even cancel out the bad, that perhaps my problem was that I didn’t fully understand the things I thought he was doing wrong. It truly has been like ending a relationship: the hardest step is going from assuming things can be fixed to finally deciding that they can’t.

Oh, how I long to be told, “Don’t worry. The grown-ups are here. They’ll take care of things.”

From the looks of things around here, it could be a while.

Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com.

Water shortage creates emergency for 15,000 farm families in Tamaulipas

By

MND Staff

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January 20, 2021

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Sorghum growing season is at risk in the northeastern area of the state.

Fifteen thousand farming families in northeastern Tamaulipas could go bankrupt because they can’t plant new crops due to a lack of water for irrigation, according to the president of a local landowners association.

Jorge Luis López Martínez, president of the Regional Union of Rural Landowners and a member of the Río Bravo Basin Council, told the newspaper Milenio that the water shortage in irrigation district 025 is becoming more and more serious.

Encompassing the municipalities of Matamoros, Valle Hermoso, Río Bravo and part of Reynosa, the irrigation district is one of Mexico’s largest and the country’s biggest sorghum producer. Farmers have already incurred losses of 2 billion pesos (US $102.1 million) due to the lack of water, López said.

He said water that should be flowing from Chihuahua to the Rio Grande on the Tamaulipas-Texas border has been unlawfully withheld, and criticized the National Water Commission (Conagua) for not intervening to stop what he called the illegal retention.

“We’re in an emergency that is becoming increasingly serious and causing a crisis,” López said, adding that the occupation of the La Boquilla dam by Chihuahua farmers opposed to the diversion of water to the United States resulted in about half of the water that should have been sent to Tamaulipas not arriving.

“Now even less is being received [and] new economic losses are being added to those [Tamaulipas farmers have] already suffered. … It’s unfair. They’re illegally retaining 1.1 billion cubic meters of water in the upper part of the … Conchos River in Chihuahua, they’re not allowing it to pass.”

López said the situation has been exacerbated by a dry winter caused by the La Niña weather phenomenon, adding that significant rainfall is not expected until April or May.

He said the water shortage has placed the sorghum sowing season – Tamaulipas is Mexico’s largest producer of the grain – at extreme risk. Farmers have gone into debt in order to be able to plant new sorghum crops but the lack of water will prevent them from recouping the money they have invested, López said.

“If they don’t plant, the losses will be incalculable,” he said.

Among the communities that are directly affected are Anáhuac, Santa Apolonia, Empalmes, Magueyes and El Realito, López said, adding that the entire northern region of Tamaulipas is indirectly impacted.

The landowners’ representative said that water from Tamaulipas was used to repay Mexico’s water debt to the United States and that the state of Chihuahua didn’t respect agreements to replenish Tamaulipas’ stocks.

“The consensus was to replenish” the water sent to the United States from Tamaulipas with water from Chihuahua and distribute it to farmers, López said.

“But it wasn’t done. … Natural resources should be distributed fairly … and that’s not happening, they are giving Chihuahua more” water than Tamaulipas, he said.

“… Last year there were even injunctions … to avoid paying the United States with water from Tamaulipas but it was done anyway. … It’s an injustice whichever way you look at it because Chihuahua is stealing water and now Conagua is giving it the right to more,” López said, referring to a water commission authorization that allows Chihuahua to use hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water from the Conchos River and deep wells for irrigation purposes.

“It’s a double illegality,” he charged. Chihuahua has a massive surplus of water “while Tamaulipas is dying of thirst.”

Source: Milenio (sp)

New federal loan program to aid small businesses hurt by Covid

By

MND Staff

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January 20, 2021

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The federal government will provide loans to 60,000 small businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic and recently imposed economic restrictions, Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier announced Tuesday.

Distribution of the 25,000-peso (US $1,275) loans is expected to start in February and conclude before the April start of the midterm elections campaign period.

A total of 1.6 billion pesos (US $81.6 million) has been set aside for the program, the government’s second small business loans program during the pandemic. The first program also offered 25,000-peso loans, an amount that was widely criticized for not being enough.

Its announcement came after a new political group opposed to the government published an analysis that showed that the pandemic and the lack of support to mitigate its economic impact have significantly increased inequality in Mexico.

Clouthier told a press conference that 20,000 of the new loans will go to small businesses managed by women. Another 20,000 will go to businesses that haven’t laid off any workers during the pandemic and the same number will be granted to “micro-enterprises” that didn’t receive a government loan last year.

“The objective … is to support small businesses … that were affected by the impact of Covid-19 on our economy,” she said, adding that the aim is to avoid their closure and the loss of jobs.

The economy minister also said that loans of up to 250,000 pesos (US $12,740) will be made available to restaurants, which have been hit hard by the pandemic. In addition, the government will provide support for tortilla shops, or tortillerías, Clouthier said.

“We’ll provide support to tortillerías that have between one and 50 employees and need liquidity,” she said. “We’ll support them with equipment so that they become more efficient and can reduce their costs.”

Clouthier, who was President López Obrador’s 2018 campaign chief and a federal deputy before becoming economy minister earlier this month, also said that the government is seeking to attract investment from the Ford Motor Company, which recently announced the closure of three plants in Brazil.

The new small business loans scheme was endorsed by the presidents of the Concanaco and Concamin business organizations but the head of the National Council for the Development of Small Business was far less enthusiastic.

Gerardo Cleto López Becerra described the program as “half an aspirin for the cancer that micro and small businesses are suffering,” adding “we expected a more elaborate plan to match the negative [economic] impact” of the pandemic that caused 1 million small businesses to close.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Unsafe cities: 68% of Mexicans feel unsafe where they live, down from 73%

By

MND Staff

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January 19, 2021

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Almost seven in 10 Mexican adults feel unsafe in the city where they live, according to a new security survey that found that Fresnillo, Zacatecas, is seen as the least safe city in the country.

Conducted by the national statistics agency Inegi in December, the 29th National Survey on Urban Public Security found that 68.1% of adults believe that where they live is unsafe.

The figure is 4.8% lower than that detected by Inegi’s December 2019 survey.

The most recent survey found that 72.6% of women and 62.7% of men believe their city is unsafe.

The perception of insecurity was highest in Fresnillo, where 94.8% of respondents said they felt unsafe. According to Mayor Saúl Monreal Ávila, the municipality of Fresnillo – where nine people were shot dead and three people were kidnapped by armed gangs overnight Monday – has been “overtaken” by organized crime activity.

Ecatepec, a densely populated México state municipality that borders Mexico City and is notorious for femicides and crime generally, ranked as the second most dangerous city. Almost nine in 10 Ecatepec residents who were surveyed – 89.9% – said the municipality is unsafe.

Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz; Cancún, Quintana Roo; Cuernavaca, Morelos; and San Luis Potosí city ranked third to sixth as the most unsafe cities among the 70 whose residents were surveyed by Inegi. Between 87% and 89% of residents of those cities said they were unsafe.

Conversely, San Pedro Garza García, an affluent municipality in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, Nuevo León, ranked as the safest city. Only 11.7% of survey respondents said they felt unsafe living there.

The popular tourism destination of Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, ranked second with just 17.3% of respondents saying it is unsafe. The security situation has improved markedly in recent years after being plagued by high levels of violent crime up until 2018.

Just under a quarter of the residents polled in Mérida, Yucatán, said they considered their city unsafe, making the state capital the third safest in Mexico. Saltillo, Coahuila; La Paz, Baja California Sur; and San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, ranked as the fourth to sixth safest. Just over 30% of residents of those three cities consider them unsafe.

In a report published Tuesday, Inegi noted that the perception of insecurity increased by a statistically significant amount in some cities in the 12-month period to December 2020 and declined by a significant amount in others.

San Pedro Garza is Mexico's safest city, — San Pedro Garza is Mexico’s safest city, according to residents.

Among the cities in the former category are Méxicali, Baja California, up 9.2% to 63%; Colima city, up 12.3% to 71.8%; and Zacatecas city, up 8.1% to 85.9%.

Among the cities where the perception of insecurity declined considerably are Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, down 17% to 64.7%; Chihuahua city, down 12.4% to 60.7%; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, down 16.8% to 73.7%; Morelia, Michoacán, down 8.2% to 72.7%; and Puebla city – which was seen as the least safe city in the country a year ago – down 10.5% to 82.2%.

The urban security survey also found that 28.1% of those polled had either been a victim of robbery or extortion themselves in the second half of 2020 or lived with someone who had.

Those crimes plague Iztapalapa, a sprawling, impoverished borough of Mexico City, more than anywhere else, Inegi found.

Almost half of Iztapalapa residents surveyed – 47.1% – said that they had been a victim of robbery or extortion, or lived with someone against whom one of those crimes were committed between July and December last year. Just over eight in 10 Iztapalapa residents said that they considered the borough an unsafe place to live.

Ranking behind Iztapalapa in terms of the percentage of victims of robbery and extortion were Atizapán, México state; Tláhuac, Mexico City; Cuautitlán Izcalli, México state; and Magdalena Contreras, Mexico City. The percentage of victims in those locations was also above 40%.

The survey also found that 12% of respondents came into contact with police in the second half of last year, of whom 47.9% were victims of corruption.

Just over 14% of respondents were victims of sexual harassment or assault between July and December. The percentage was 21.6% among women and 5.7% among men.

Mexico News Daily

Former ambassador to coordinate border policy in Biden administration

By

MND Staff

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January 19, 2021

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Jacobson leaves the US Embassy in 2018. — Jacobson leaves the US Embassy in Mexico City in 2018.

Former United States ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson will be the southern border coordinator for the new U.S. administration to be led by Joe Biden.

News website Foreign Policy said Monday that it had learned that Jacobson, ambassador to Mexico between 2016 and 2018, would be named coordinator for the southwestern border on the United States National Security Council (NSC).

Juan Sebastián González, Biden’s primary Latin America adviser, tweeted the Foreign Policy report and appeared to confirm the former diplomat’s appointment to the incoming administration.

“I’ve always looked up to Ambassador Roberta Jacobson. Respected, experienced, and capable, few care as deeply or have worked as hard to advance a U.S.-Mexico relationship that lives up to its full potential. There is no one better to lead this challenging task,” he wrote.

Foreign Policy reported that in the newly-established NSC position, Jacobson will play a key role in implementing the Biden administration’s proposed reforms to the national asylum system, which according to a transition team spokesperson will aim to “restore order and a fair asylum process while prioritizing public health.”

“… We will build a new immigration system that is fair, humane, and keeps families together,” the spokesperson said, adding that it will take months, not days or weeks, to construct it.

“It will not be like flipping a light switch. Migrants should not believe those peddling the idea that now is the time to come to the U.S.”

Foreign Policy also said that Jacobson would be involved in managing national security challenges stemming from Mexico and Central America countries.

Jacobson, who worked in the U.S. State Department for more than 30 years, will also help manage Washington’s relations with Mexico and Central American nations, Foreign Policy said.

President López Obrador appeased United States President Donald Trump by agreeing to ramp up enforcement against migrants traveling through Mexico en route to the U.S.

He deployed the National Guard at the southern and northern borders in 2019 after Trump threatened to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican imports if Mexico didn’t do more to stop the flow of asylum seekers and agreed to an expansion of the United States “Remain in Mexico” policy which involves making U.S. asylum seekers wait in dangerous northern border cities until their cases are resolved.

During a visit to a section of the border wall in Texas last week, Trump bragged about the deployment of Mexican troops to the border region.

“I want to thank the great president of Mexico. He is a great gentleman, a friend of mine. And President Obrador — he is a man who really knows what’s happening. And he loves his country, and he also loves the United States. But I want to thank him for his friendship and his professional working relationship,” he said.

“We actually had 27,000 Mexican soldiers guarding our borders over the last two years. Nobody thought that was possible. And they made it very, very difficult, and that’s why the [migration] numbers were able to plunge, even during the construction of the wall.”

While López Obrador and Trump have maintained a surprising friendship, the former’s relationship with Biden and his administration could be more strained.

López Obrador made a veiled warning to Biden to stay out of Mexico’s affairs in a belated congratulatory letter he sent to the president-elect last month, and the case of former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos, who was arrested on drug trafficking charges in the United States and later exonerated here, has the potential to be an obstacle to harmonious bilateral relations.

López Obrador accused the U.S. of fabricating evidence against the ex-army chief and declared Monday that his government won’t remain silent in light of the “irresponsible” investigation.

Jacobson, however, could help to foster a positive relationship between the López Obrador and Biden governments, at least on border and migration issues.

The experienced diplomat has a deep love for and understanding of Mexico and declared in a farewell video when leaving her ambassadorial post in 2018 that the United States and its southern neighbor “have a lot more that unites us — food, family, culture, history — than what divides us.”

Source: Foreign Policy (en), EFE (sp)

For Joe Biden, contentious issues lie ahead in Mexico-US relationship

By

Jude Webber

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January 19, 2021

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trump, amlo and biden — Dynamic of the relationship is about to change.

U.S. experts monitoring Mexico’s compliance with the tough labour provisions of the USMCA free trade treaty issued a stark warning before Christmas: “No more business as usual.”

Although they were referring to Mexico’s slow progress in implementing commitments under the NAFTA replacement, the phrase could just as well describe bilateral relations as Joe Biden enters the White House.

Strained security co-operation will loom high on the agenda between the neighbouring countries, overshadowing their US $600-billion trade relationship, as will the two leaders’ diametrically opposed views on climate change and renewable energy.

Mexico’s worsening business environment — with independent regulators and respect for contracts under threat from President López Obrador — promises to pile on the pressure.

“A Biden presidency could be quite uncomfortable for AMLO,” said one member of the U.S. transition team, using the Mexican leader’s nickname. López Obrador kept things sweet with Donald Trump in exchange for little U.S. “interference” with his domestic agenda, the person added.

Biden’s approach will be more institutional and “there’ll be no Jared for anyone to call.” The outgoing president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was a frequent interlocutor with Mexico on migration and development co-operation.

Trump’s threats to withdraw from NAFTA and impose sanctions on Mexican exports unless it cracked down on migrant flows strained relations at times, but López Obrador refused to engage.

Despite Trump’s insults towards Mexicans and insistence that the country pay for his border wall, López Obrador broke his self-imposed ban on foreign travel to meet the U.S. president at the White House.

By contrast, Mexico’s president took six weeks to congratulate Biden on his election victory, eventually sending an uneffusive letter in which he reminded the president-elect he must respect Mexican sovereignty.

Jeffrey Davidow, a former U.S. ambassador, has likened Mexico’s at-times prickly relationship with Washington to that of a porcupine facing a bear.

“With Biden, López Obrador intends to be a porcupine again — he didn’t show his spines with Trump, but he’s going to now,” said Denise Dresser, a political scientist and professor at Mexico’s Itam university.

“It’s as if López Obrador were pre-emptively trying to create a straw man to fight with … using anti-Americanism and nationalism to score political points in Mexico, particularly in an election year,” she added. Mexico holds midterm elections on June 6.

Mexico delivered two slaps to the U.S. this month. It offered political asylum to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whose extradition the U.S. is seeking from the U.K. to face charges over the massive leak of classified documents in 2010. Then it accused Washington of fabricating drug trafficking charges against its former defence minister, General Salvador Cienfuegos.

Tensions in the energy sector, where U.S. firms have big investments, have also been rising for months as Mexico has sought to clamp down on permits, curb renewable energy generation and favour its state oil and electricity companies, Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission. López Obrador is a fossil fuel champion, whereas Biden wants to make the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2050.

In a January 11 letter to their Mexican counterparts, outgoing secretary of state Mike Pompeo, energy secretary Dan Brouillette and commerce secretary Wilbur Ross warned that “hundreds of millions of dollars” of U.S. public investments in Mexico could be at risk as a result of Mexican policy.

“While we respect Mexico’s sovereign right to determine its own energy policies, we are obligated to insist that Mexico lives up to its USMCA obligations, in defence of our national interests, which include investments funded by the U.S. taxpayer,” the letter warned.

Labour relations including collective bargaining agreements and union rights, preconditions for securing U.S. Democrats’ support of the USMCA trade deal, are expected to provide more friction.

“I think it’s only a matter of time before the first case is presented [against Mexico under USMCA],” said Juan Carlos Baker, managing director of Ansley Consultores, who helped negotiate the revised treaty as deputy foreign trade minister. “The message could not be more ominous.”

Vice president-elect Kamala Harris voted against the USMCA when she was a senator for California, and Baker expected that the two countries, whose economies are closely intertwined, “are going to clash very, very quickly.”

López Obrador has already scrapped a partially built U.S. brewery and renegotiated gas pipeline contracts he considered too onerous. Now he is taking aim at Mexico’s independent regulators, which he wants to amalgamate with ministries, something experts say could infringe on the new trade pact.

Indeed, Ariane Ortiz-Bollin, a sovereign analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said Mexico risked undermining the trade advantages it enjoys under the treaty because of a climate hostile to investment. “There is the potential for this to be a lost opportunity,” she added.

Security co-operation, a major part of the bilateral relationship, has also flared into a serious row.

Mexico last month rushed through a law demanding U.S. drugs agents share information in what was seen as retaliation for the shock arrest of Gen. Cienfuegos. It has toned down the law, but one senior former military official said it remained a “non-starter.”

López Obrador, for whom the military is a crucial domestic ally, pulled diplomatic strings to get the U.S. drug trafficking and money laundering charges dropped; Mexico then speedily closed its own case. Ratcheting up tensions further, the U.S. threatened on the weekend to halt co-operation on criminal investigations in Mexico after the president released all the evidence U.S. prosecutors had provided, calling it flimsy.

Between Covid-19 and the economy, Biden will be stretched thin. But analysts say Mexico should not assume it will get a free ride.

“The big question,” said Dresser, “is how much political capital will Biden be willing to spend to get Mexico to behave like a responsible North American partner and not like a national political enemy south of the border?”

Best-case scenario for tourism this year is 26% fewer visitors than 2019

By

MND Staff

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January 19, 2021

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International tourist numbers will increase 33.7% in 2021 compared to last year in a best-case scenario, according to the federal Tourism Ministry (Sectur), but even if that upturn is achieved tourism would still be well below 2019 levels.

According to Sectur’s most optimistic projection, 33.1 million international tourists will come to Mexico this year, 8.3 million more than in 2020 when tourism slumped due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, 33.1 million visitors would be 26% lower than the record 45 million international tourists who traveled to Mexico in 2019.

In a “conservative” scenario, 30.4 million international tourists will visit Mexico this year, Sectur said in a statement Monday, while in a “pessimistic” scenario the figure will be 25.2 million.

The figure for the latter would represent a 1.5% increase compared to 2020 but a 44% decline compared to 2019.

Sectur said that whether an optimistic, conservative or pessimistic scenario unfolds will depend on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic around the world as well as progress in the application of Covid-19 vaccines, “which has already begun in our country and the main markets for tourists to Mexico.”

Spending by international tourists while in Mexico is predicted to be US $16 billion in 2021 in the best scenario, which would be an increase of 42% or $4.7 billion compared to 2020. However, that level of expenditure would represent a decrease of abut 35% compared to 2019 when international tourists spent $24.8 billion here.

In a conservative scenario, international tourists will spend $14.4 billion in 2021 while in a pessimistic one the outlay will be $11.5 billion, Sectur said.

The Tourism Ministry predicted that average hotel occupancy across 70 Mexican destinations will be 56.6% in 2021 in an optimistic scenario.

That would be 4.7% lower than the average in 2019. In a conservative scenario, average occupancy will be 50.9%, 10.4% lower than in 2019, Sectur said, while in a pessimistic scenario hotels will be 46.1% full, a decline of 15.2%.

Mexico News Daily