President needs to demonstrate that environment is a priority

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October 19, 2020

The president waves the starter's flag at inauguration of construction of the Maya Train in June.

In these times of quarantine, I watched Soylent Green (1973) again. It was one of the science fiction films that troubled me most at the time.

It depicts a futuristic society that, in the middle of an unprecedented environmental crisis, dehumanizes itself: a fertile breeding ground for despair, authoritarianism, and all manner of social and economic calamity. The story takes place in New York City in 2022, a metropolis of 40 million souls.

Overpopulation, pollution, soaring temperatures, and intolerable overcrowding combine to cloister a small elite, who retain tight economic and political control — and that also has the luxury of eating fresh meat and vegetables and drinking clean water every day.

The rest of the population, the countless faceless proletariat, can afford only government-issued green and red “cookies” to survive upon. Those who wish to escape this chaos willingly go “Home,” to be killed painlessly while dreaming awake — a sort of laboratory, but one in which you can die peacefully, hallucinating green forests and birds, listening to wondrous music while immersed in colors that quiet one’s soul.

A singular moment and ephemeral passage, spiced with sensational images of oceans, forests, translucent streams, and wildlife — all that no longer exists since the environmental hecatomb. At the end of the film, we understand that the corpses of those dreamers are the raw material of which the nutritious cookies that feed the still living are made.

This film comes to mind now as we approach the year 2022. And it makes me think about how the governments of the three most populous nations in the Americas see the environment. Or better put, how they don’t see it. The U.S., Mexico and Brazil are home to almost 690 million people and a vast biological and cultural diversity legacy. Can we fight together as one, for a just and sustainable future for the generations to come?

In less than four years in the United States, President Donald Trump has dismantled most of the public policies and institutional foundations needed to curb global warming and protect the environment. Regulations for carbon dioxide emissions, toxic chemicals, and air and water pollution have been rolled back.

He has stopped payments to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations program to assist developing countries in reducing carbon emissions, and he is also withdrawing the U.S. from the pivotal Paris Climate Agreement. President Trump has undermined regulations on protected areas, wetlands, fisheries, and protection of endangered species of marine mammals, sea turtles, and migratory birds, to mention just a few.

Mr. Trump has turned the Environmental Protection Agency into an environmental executioner, one with the aim of erasing everything related to the environmental legacy of former president Barack Obama.

The environmental situation in Brazil isn’t much better. In less than two years, President Jair Bolsonaro has become the main instigator of the fires that in 2019 and 2020 devastated the Amazon. In 2019, Mr. Bolsonaro claimed the Amazon was “his.” Not to leave any doubt how serious he was, he devoted himself with fervor to weakening environmental regulations, encouraging farmers and loggers to initiate fires, and promoting mining on ancestral indigenous lands.

He continues reviling indigenous peoples who oppose destruction of the Amazon and cynically blames environmental organizations for starting the fires in a sick attempt at twisted logic. Just two months ago, 29 organizations, including financial institutions from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Norway, and Japan managing trillions of dollars in assets, warned Brazil that further escalation would seriously impact their investment appetite in the region.

Nevertheless, just a week ago, the country’s own national institute for space research announced that they detected more than 29,000 fires in Brazil’s Amazon region in August 2020, the second highest number in a decade and only slightly fewer than last year’s count of 30,900 fires. Yet Mr. Bolsonaro doesn’t seem to care about the Amazon, or the environment, or Brazilians.

And between the U.S. and Brazil there lies a distant neighbor — Mexico. My country. Not much can be said in favor of the environment after two years of President López Obrador’s administration. It doesn’t seem to be a priority for him either, though I’d love to be proven wrong.

Promises to avoid major environmental damage that gargantuan government development projects would trigger, like the so-called Maya Train, so far haven’t convinced environmentalists and independent scientists. President López Obrador has already been through three environment ministers in a row, and environmental agencies continue to be dismantled. Without the necessary budget and staff to maintain them, protected areas rapidly languish. And the relationship with environmentalists is as polarized as ever.

Mexico still has an option, though, to avoid going down the same destructive paths of the U.S. and Brazil. Despite ideological differences, environmentalists are not against the López Obrador administration; but they have learned to fight for Mexico as hard as he does.

López Obrador can build bridges and call them to a national dialogue, demonstrating that our nation’s environment and natural resources are indeed a priority for his government. There are some respected environmentalists in his cabinet who could trigger such a national dialogue: Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard, Deputy Minister for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights Martha Delgado and Education Minister Esteban Moctezuma are among them, as is Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s mayor.

It is not too late. Such an inclusive dialogue could capture and multiply the efforts of many to preserve our most precious common good: a thriving natural environment, one of the richest on Earth.

The writer is a former senior officer of the United Nations Environment Program and former director-general of the World Wildlife Fund. This piece originally appeared in El Universal.

Border closure to nonessential traffic extended another month

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Michelle Aguilar

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October 19, 2020

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mexico us border — Essential traffic only.

For travelers wanting to cross the Mexico–United States border by vehicle or on foot, the wait for an open border continues: the two nations have agreed to keep their land borders closed for another month, until November 21.

“After reviewing the development of the spread of Covid-19, Mexico proposed to the United States the one-month extension [allowing] only essential land crossings at its common border,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted on its Twitter account Friday.

The extended land-crossing ban expires November 21 but it has been extended every month since it was first implemented in March.

Movement between the two countries — except for reasons of commerce and essential travel — was banned by mutual agreement by both governments on March 21 in order to halt the spread of Covid-19.

Mexicans with legal permission to work in the U.S. will continue to be allowed entry, and air travel between Mexico and the U.S. will still be allowed.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Covid-19 on the rise in 8 states but deaths are on the wane nationwide

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MND Staff

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October 19, 2020

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Few masks are evident among these fans at a ball game in Sinaloa.

New coronavirus cases increased in eight states in early October, official data shows, but Covid-19 deaths are on the wane across the country.

Ruy López Ridaura, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control Programs (Cenaprece), presented data at the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing on Sunday that showed that Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Querétaro and Zacatecas recorded a spike in new case numbers in epidemiological week 41, which ran from October 4 to 10.

Durango saw the biggest increase among those eight states, with new case numbers rising 46% compared to epidemiological week 40.

The next biggest increases were in Chihuahua, Querétaro and Zacatecas, where new case numbers increased by 37%, 35% and 23%, respectively.

Aguascalientes, Nuevo León, Coahuila and Hidalgo recorded increases of 20%, 13%, 12% and 5%, respectively.

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

The risk of coronavirus infection in all eight states where new cases increased between October 4 and 10 is orange light “high,” according to the federal government’s stoplight system.

Nationally, new case numbers declined 1% in epidemiological week 41 compared to the week before.

However, López said that it is “very probable” that new case numbers actually increased in week 41 because cases from that week are still being registered by health authorities.

An increase in new case numbers between October 4 and 10 would bring to an end a decline that was maintained for several weeks from mid-August.

With regard to Covid-19 deaths, numbers declined in all 32 states in week 41 for a national reduction of 51% compared to the previous week.

Campeche and Chiapas didn’t record a single death between October 4 and 10, according to data presented by López.

Earlier in the press briefing, the Cenaprece chief announced that Mexico’a accumulated tally of confirmed cases had increased to 851,227 and that the official Covid-19 death toll had risen to 86,167.

The Health Ministry registered 4,119 new cases and 108 additional fatalities on Sunday. It estimates that there are currently 44,083 active cases across Mexico.

Mexico City continues to lead the country for accumulated cases and Covid-19 deaths, with 146,952 of the former and 14,379 0f the latter.

México state, which includes numerous municipalities in the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City, ranks second in both categories. It has recorded more than 91,000 confirmed cases and 10,218 Covid-19 deaths.

Nuevo León and Guanajuato rank third and fourth respectively for accumulated case numbers, each state having recorded more than 40,000.

Veracruz has the third highest official death toll among Mexico’s 32 states, with 4,638 fatalities as of Sunday. Puebla and Baja California rank fourth and fifth for total deaths, with 4,540 and 3,710, respectively.

Figures for both coronavirus cases and Covid-19 deaths are widely believed to be significant undercounts due to a lack of testing.

Fewer than 17,000 people per 1 million inhabitants have been tested in Mexico. By comparison, about 379,000 people per million have been tested in the United States and the rates in each of Canada, France and Chile are above 200,000 per million residents.

Despite its low testing rate, Mexico ranks 10th in the world for cases and fourth for Covid-19 deaths behind only the United States, Brazil and India.

Mexico News Daily

Conquistadores — greed, gold and guilt in a revisiting of colonialism

By

Jude Webber

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October 17, 2020

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Conquistador Cortés and President López Obrador.

When Hernán Cortés finally conquered the Aztecs on August 13, 1521, it should have been a glorious triumph for the Spanish invaders, who had suffered an ignominious rout the previous year.

Tenochtitlán, the monumental Mexican capital constructed on a lake, which had so awed the conquistadors when they first sighted it in 1519, had been starved into submission during a weeks-long siege, and Cuauhtémoc, the Aztec emperor, had at last surrendered.

Yet the mood, according to an enlightening new book on the Spanish Conquest of the Americas by Fernando Cervantes, a Mexican historian at the University of Bristol, “was not even remotely celebratory … Although a great victory had been won, the price was disproportionately high.”

The extraordinary half-century following Christopher Columbus’s discovery, in 1492, of what he maintained to his dying day was in fact Asia, fueled guilt as well as greed. The conquistadors’ callous and extreme cruelty plagued the Spanish crown even as it relied on a stream of New World gold to fund its imperial ambitions in a fast-changing Europe.

Cervantes details the adventurers’ venality and brutality as they pushed through the Caribbean to Mexico, Central America, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and what is now the southern U.S.

But while Conquistadores unflinchingly narrates the excesses of Cortés and others, including Francisco Pizarro, who conquered Peru, Cervantes argues for a “badly needed re-evaluation [that] should also allow us to see through the persistent condemnations of the legacy of the conquistadors as directly responsible for the ills that afflict modern Latin America.”

That view is unlikely to go down well with Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The president maintains that the deeply ingrained corruption, which he is on a crusade to eradicate, all stemmed from Cortés, whose fraudulent activities included siphoning off a third of emperor Moctezuma’s gold for himself.

López Obrador, a history buff who lives in the National Palace that was originally built as Cortés’s second residence, has declared 2021 the “Year of the Independence and Greatness of Mexico” — marking the historical triple whammy of the 700th anniversary of the founding of Tenochtitlán, 500 years since its fall to the Spanish and 200 years since the culmination of Mexico’s lengthy independence struggle.

The government is euphemistically rebranding the anniversary of Cortés’s conquest the “memory of Tenochtitlán” — indeed, Zoé Robledo, the president of a commemoration commission, told a news conference last month “we have to give it a new meaning.”

Days before the October 12 Columbus Day anniversary, a statue of the explorer in Mexico City was taken down for maintenance and Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum called for a “collective reflection …. on this vision of the discovery of America that we all learn, as if America didn’t exist before Columbus arrived.”

Events in 2021 will include a revindication of indigenous rights and apologies for “atrocities committed in the colonial invasion,” said López Obrador, who has already made waves by demanding that Spain apologize for the events of 500 years ago.

In a letter to Pope Francis, delivered by his wife in an audience with the pontiff at the Vatican earlier this month, he also said the Catholic Church should join the Spanish monarchy and the Mexican state in issuing a public mea culpa to indigenous peoples “who suffered the most reproachful atrocities in sacking their goods and land and subjugating them, from the Conquest of 1521 until recent times.”

The president is a staunch advocate for indigenous Mexicans but polls show that most Mexicans see no need for a formal apology from Spain.

Cervantes is not insensitive to such concerns. He is a member of the advisory board of the Las Casas Institute, named after the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, who first traveled to the New World in 1502 and went on to chronicle Spanish abuses and become an ardent defender of indigenous rights.

In his book, Cervantes puts the conquistadors in the context both of the medieval religious culture that shaped their beliefs and the medieval legal tradition that helped Cortés, an experienced notary, erect “a convincing veneer of legality” to justify his actions in Mexico to the Spanish crown.

Conquistadores taps into the same pre-anniversary interest in the Conquest as Hernán, an Amazon Prime series on the life of Cortés. Cervantes details the Spanish adventurers’ venality and brutality as they pushed through the Caribbean to Mexico, Central America, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and what is now the southern U.S.

Their “disordered avarice” and chaotic corruption repeatedly landed them in legal hot water but, as Cervantes puts it, “this was a world that saw no inherent contradiction in the attempt to establish forms of governance that were simultaneously high-minded and shamelessly lucrative.”

His conclusion that the roots of Latin America’s enduring social ills lie with 19th-century liberal reforms rather than with the Conquest is an intriguing argument slipped into the penultimate page, and one that he could have developed further.

But, for a vivid portrayal of a clash of very different cultures, each equally astonishing to the other, and a group of men who “whatever their myriad faults and crimes …succeeded more or less through their own agency, in fundamentally transforming Spanish and European conceptions of the world in barely half a century,” Conquistadores makes for fascinating reading.

Jude Webber is the Financial Times’ Mexico and Central America correspondent.

Thousands of marigolds will be ready for Day of the Dead in Querétaro

By

Susy Buchanan

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October 17, 2020

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Workers tend marigolds at the municipal nursery.

After being tended for four months since germination, some 59,000 marigold plants are ready to be transplanted to the gardens and plazas of Querétaro’s historic center, just in time for Day of the Dead.

Erika Zepeda, administrator of the municipal nursery located in the Geoplaza neighborhood, says that this year’s crop of marigolds is double that of last year’s.

The flowers, with their vibrant orange color and pungent scent, are thought to guide spirits of the deceased to the altars that family and friends erect in their honor.

Each month, nursery workers care for 67,000 plants and flowers of 30 different varieties to keep the city in full bloom.

“I started working here without knowing anything about gardening, Here I learned everything and now I love my job. It is a great pride for all of us who work in the nursery to dedicate so much time to the flowers and plants that we will later see in different public areas of the city, it is very gratifying,” nursery worker Gabriela Cabrera said.

Marigolds add color to the city's historic center. — Marigolds add color to the city’s historic center.

As soon as the marigolds leave the nursery for transplanting around the city, workers will begin producing another traditional flower, the poinsettia, for the Christmas holidays.

Although the production of seasonal flowers to adorn the city is a race against time, Cabrera says she is proud of her work.

“It is very sastisfying to walk through the historic center and see your flowers. I get excited and tell my children, ‘Look, those flowers are mine, I prepared them so that they would be that beautiful.’”

However, the satisfaction of seeing her flowers adorning the city is at times tempered by sadness when the flowers are crushed, trampled or broken.

“Yes, it makes me very sad to see the broken flowers, trampled on because people do not cross in the right places and prefer to step on the flowers that we worked so hard to produce. I would ask society in general to respect our work. Each flower that they see in a park or a planter took a long time and a lot of care to make it look pretty …” Cabrera said.

She and her 21 colleagues have worked through the coronavirus pandemic to produce this year’s crop of marigolds, to make sure the city would be properly adorned for this year’s Day of the Dead holiday.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Mexico City’s best-known haunted houses, real and fake

By

Leigh Thelmadatter

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October 17, 2020

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Casa Negra in Colonia Roma, where screams from inside have been reported. leigh thelmadatter

While no one should ever confuse Day of the Dead with Halloween, at this time of the year thoughts turn to the hereafter. With over 500 years of modern history and thriving civilizations that came before that, it is no surprise that Mexico has an abundance of ghost stories.

All colonial cities have their haunted places, but perhaps Mexico City even more so. Paranormal investigator Antonio Zamudio of the paranormal investigation agency AMIP says not only is the city’s history written in blood, probably all of the buildings in the historic center are haunted.

For the classic “haunted house” there are several notable stories, but only one in the historic center. Don Juan Manuel Solórzano lived on República de Uruguay 90. According to the story, he was convinced his wife was cheating on him, and he sold his soul to the devil for the chance to kill her lover.

The devil told him to stand outside his house at 11:00 p.m. and kill the first man that passed by. This Don Juan Manuel did, but the devil told him it was the wrong man. He would have to repeat the process until he received a sign indicating that he got the right one.

But the sign never came because his wife was faithful. Today it is said that the don sometimes appears and asks passersby for the time. If you answer 11:00 p.m. he replies, “Fortunate is one who knows the hour of his death” and disappears.

Casa de Don Juan Manuel, whose resident made a deal with the devil. leigh thelmadatter

The Casa Negra or Casa de Montenegro is located on prime real estate in upscale Colonia Roma. Actually, there are two abandoned houses here which date back to the late 19th century. The one with graffiti is assumed to be the haunted one, but Zamudio says it is the other.

It has seen attempts to convert it into a restaurant, but never with success. Its story is that it was used for patients during an outbreak of typhoid in the 1930s but the neighbors wanted it gone so they set it on fire with the patients and doctors inside. There are reports of screams coming from the house to this day.

The case of the La Moira house is relatively recent, dating from the 1970s. This ordinary looking abode is located in San Miguel Chapultepec, west of the historic center. A child named Marco found the house with its door open and decided to go in. There, he found the body of another child hanging in one of the rooms. He was terrified, but his parents never believed him.

As an adult, he decided to return but never walked out. Instead, his body was found hanging from a beam. The owner of the house today is known as La Moira. With an interest in the paranormal, she has invited artists to paint what they want inside. The works deal with themes of sadness, desolation, and even suicide. It is said that there are at least three ghosts in the place, including Marco’s.

The other two famous houses, Zamudio says, are not really haunted. He says these stories are “fake news” repeated only because they got into the press.

The Casa de las Brujas (Witches’ House) is located on Rio de Janeiro 56 in Colonia Roma and its story centers on Barbara Guerrero, who lived in the building. She was reputed to be a witch or shaman who performed rituals and even “sadistic” healings as late as the 1960s.

House of the Witches, so named because its roof looks like a witch's hat. — The Witches’ House, so named because its roof looks like a witch’s hat. leigh thelmadatter

Its reputation for being haunted likely comes from its appearance, an English-style construction of the very early 20th century. Guerrero died in 1979 and was declared a fraud, but people began to report hearing laments, screams, and the movement of tables and chairs at odd hours.

The other concerns a large mansion on the western edge of Chapultepec Park overlooking a ravine. This is the Casa de la Tía Toña (Aunt Antonia’s House), which supposedly belonged to a rich woman with no family. She decided to adopt poor children to raise there.

One version of the story said she went crazy and killed the children, hiding their bodies in the house. Other versions say the children made fun of or mistreated her, so Tía Toña threw them into the ravine, before or after losing their lives. The stories agree that the woman’s ghost is still with the house, either inside and/or on the nearby grounds, with images of a woman in the windows and/or sounds of children crying or a woman scolding.

One story that Zamudio says is real but does not get the attention it deserves involves the House of the Tiles, better known today as the Sanborn’s restaurant near the Palace of Fine Arts in the historic center. This is a popular tourist location, with its fine blue and white talavera tiles distinguishing it from the other buildings in Mexico City.

According to Zamudio, it is best not to go into the women’s bathroom alone. There have been four reports from four different decades of a woman dressed in fine clothes from the colonial era. The stories are remarkably similar. Women report seeing something in the bathroom mirror, but when they turn around the image disappears or screams.

Paranormal investigator Antonio Zamudio.

Mexicans are just as fond of ghost stories as anyone. Last year the Turibus had a special run to haunted places in the city (suspended this year due to Covid-19). Zamudio’s investigation agency still has its Tour Insólito (Unbelievable Tour). It is not meant to be a fairgrounds, haunted house-type scare but visits places with paranormal histories so that participants can investigate for themselves.

The collective nature of such a guided investigation makes it “safer,” but Zamudio does not recommend it for the faint of heart.

Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexico and her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears weekly on Mexico News Daily.

Winter is coming but will there be a southward migration this year?

By

Janet Blaser

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October 17, 2020

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The votes are in and the verdict is loud and clear: 66% of Mexico News Daily readers believe that most travelers will feel it’s too soon to vacation in Mexico compared to 26% who think that a fair number of visitors will make the journey.

Just 8% of readers think “it should be a good season, all things considered” in response to the October 5th MND Poll which asked, “Will the tourists come this winter or will it be too soon for most travelers?”

Before they dig out the sunscreen and pack their bags, there’s a substantial list of things for vacationers to consider: the continued spread of coronavirus everywhere; Mexico’s lack of or sub-standard health care and infrastructure; what the real Covid-19 case numbers might be where they’re going; will their health insurance cover Covid-19 care; and the fact that many are in the increased risk category because of their age.

That’s a lot of not-fun planning for some time in the sun. Or is it?

The poll question attracted over 1,300 votes and 34 comments. One of those was Laura, a Oaxaca resident for 20 years who went back to the U.S. when the pandemic began.

“We’re all dealing with the question of how much risk is acceptable; we know the consequences. I’ve been floating the idea of returning to Oaxaca in January, but as each month passes, I push the time farther out.”

Whether tourist, snowbird or residente permanente, it seems we’re all considering and reconsidering our travel plans this season.

“Very scary times!” wrote Alberta. “When you consider the age of snowbirds, myself included, we are at most risk. As much as we’ll miss our time in the Baja, we’ll respect the health of everyone and stay home in Canada.”

“We would be celebrating our 10th year in Mazatlán and dearly love this city and her people, but I have family at home that I need to think of,” shared Shirley. “Too soon. Too risky.”

Mexico is actively courting tourists, offering attractive incentives that go beyond low prices on airfare and hotel stays. Despite the pandemic, Mexico has a shockingly easy entry process for airline travelers: no quarantine upon arrival, no online forms for contact tracing and no Covid-19 testing requirements before traveling or upon arrival.

Nonetheless, for snowbird Sharron this will be the first time in 26 years she hasn’t gone to Mexico for the winter because she can’t get health insurance that covers Covid. Winn canceled a trip with extended family for Christmas because it still felt “too risky.”

Enjoying the beach despite the coronavirus.

“It’s very disappointing,” added Winn. “This new reality is stark in its power to humble us all.”

That may be the thing we wish we could forget: this pandemic is affecting travel everywhere — not just to Mexico — for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t think we really know yet when it will be safe to move about the world,” mused Adriane in response to a Oaxaca blog. “I know people who have been flying, but you never know. Abundance of caution is how I see it.”

Nonetheless, some readers are going anyway. Expat Facebook pages all over Mexico are filled with posts from those who’ve just arrived for a vacation looking for things to do and returning snowbirds happy to be back.

“We will be there and we can’t wait!” wrote Celestial on the MND Poll page. “So tired all of the BS in the States. It’s time to get away and spend time with all our friends in San José.”

Russ, who’ll go to Mexico in December, may stay permanently this trip. “I have a great place to be as isolated as I choose,” he wrote. “Life is short. I will die there, sooner or later.”

grim reaper lifeguard — A lifeguard goes for levity.

Those living in Mexico full-time shared their worries and concerns about visitors, especially for holidays like Day of the Dead, Christmas and Carnaval that traditionally attract thousands of out-of-towners, whether nationals or foreigners.

“Tourists are roaming the streets and the villages; restaurants are open,” wrote Kalisa on a Oaxaca blog. “Oaxaca is back to orange [on the government’s stoplight risk map] but it has no meaning. Tourists and many locals simply are tired of masks and rules.”

“Thinking of or have plans to visit Oaxaca this Día de los Muertos, or have friends in that category?” Alvin Starkman, owner of Oaxaca Mezcal Educational Tours, offered a caution to readers in a local blog. “Know that for the city, there will be no cemetery visits, no parades, no cultural events or altar displays, no culinary events, no costume contests, etc., etc., etc. Stay home and come next year (assuming it’s more or less behind us by then).”

In Mazatlán, the maskless mayor has begun scheduling public events like a recent folklorico performance with a live band and more than 50 dancers encouraging bystanders to join in. And the Sinaloa governor has announced that Carnaval 2021 — a week-long event that brings tens of thousands of tourists from around the world — will go ahead as usual. “People know how to act, what to do,” he said. “This kind of event is OK.”

While the stoplight risk map offers a broad guide to conditions state by state, it doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s happening on the ground. Writing on a Puerto Vallarta Facebook page, Christine recounted her visit to Sayulita on a recent weekend.

“We didn’t even get out of the car,” she wrote. “It was completely packed and not a single mask, no distancing whatsoever. I’m not exaggerating when I say packed with zero masks — we specifically tried to find ONE just to say we did. Nope.”

John, writing on the same Facebook page, said coming to Mexico now is “a roll of the dice.”

“It’s not yourself you need to consider, but more so who’s cooking your food, cleaning your room, serving your drink, driving your taxi or bus and who you’re standing beside in the queue,” he wrote. “And then, what will you do if you do catch Covid-19 far from home?”

From Mexico City — with the country’s consistently highest number of Covid cases — a reader shared the reality of everyday life.

“I remain in profound cuarentena, only shopping in chain stores with strict rules, thermometer checks, distancing marks and mask rules,” wrote Patrick. “It all takes the bloom off the rose.”

In the face of a cold, grey winter, and an ongoing case of “Covid Fatigue,” who wouldn’t want to be back in warm, sunny Mexico? We’re tired of being quarantined, tired of this “new normal,” tired of masks and worry and the stress around all of it. Yet the pandemic remains real, and is the main reason so many are choosing not to travel this season.

“NOTHING HAS CHANGED,” Patrick continued. “And nothing will change for the next two to three years. A return to normalcy is not even on the horizon. Hunker down and wear your mask. This virus is still amok. It has not only taken the silly bloom off the complicit roses, but it also has taken the bloom out of millions of human lives.”

“I normally spend winters in Mexico, but I’m not a fan of Russian Roulette,” said Paul. “I can survive one season in Canada.”

Lisa, who has a home in San Miguel de Allende but is in the U.S. for now, is keeping a positive outlook despite it all.

“This time of year, I always feel such a strong, palpable urge to head southward,” she wrote on an expat blog. “Stay safe everyone! We WILL return!”

Mexico News Daily

Paracyclist to ride 950 kilometers from Mexico City to Oaxaca

By

Susy Buchanan

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October 17, 2020

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Paracyclist González was to hit the road Saturday. — Adrián González was to hit the road Saturday.

Paracyclist Adrián González Díaz has been readying himself this week to cycle some 950 kilometers, traveling from Nezahualcóyotl, a borough of Mexico City, to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca on back roads, one of the longest such rides attempted in Mexico, he says.

He told Mexico News Daily he plans to hit small town after small town on the 30-day odyssey that was to begin Saturday at first light.

The 38-year-old athlete has triumphed in other sporting competitions for people with disabilities and is eager to show people that for the disabled, life does indeed go on.

“I have always been passionate about extreme sports,” González told the newspaper Milenio.

“I practiced athletics, cycling and when I was 25 I had the accident. I fell from a height of six stories. I was drunk and I did not know what happened. When I woke up I was in the hospital with a spinal cord injury that left me paralyzed, but that did not stop me, I have been adapting to this new life,” he said.

“I have participated in several competitions; at first it did not go so well, but later I began to win medals, trophies, and I dedicated myself to giving talks on personal motivation to people with disabilities,” he said.

Making the trip is an adventure in itself, and González has created a Facebook page to document the journey to Oaxaca and the sights he sees along the way. But also important to him is promoting adapted cycling, which is a way for people with disabilities to remain independent.

González also works on creating adaptive devices that are affordable as much of the technology and devices available are out of reach financially for many people with disabilities.

He says he strives to “be an example for young people, so that they value what they have and do not live [just] to live; we have to break paradigms,” he said.

González is accepting donations to defray the cost of the trip on his Facebook page.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Oaxaca mayor warns anyone not wearing face mask will be jailed

By

Susy Buchanan

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October 17, 2020

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Mayor Fredy Gil: 'authorities need to do something forceful.'

Jail time awaits people who refuse to wear masks in the municipality of San Pedro Mixtepec, Oaxaca, the mayor has warned.

“More than about law, it is about justice, because it is not fair that we continue to spread the virus if the authorities do not do something forceful, something that really shakes up the citizens,” Mayor Fredy Gil Pineda Gopar said.

The measure, which went into effect Friday and will remain in place for 30 days, replicates the actions of other coastal Oaxaca municipalities, such as San Pedro Pochutla and Santos Reyes Nopala.

“We are working hard so that as of this Friday no one goes without a mask on the street.” The penalty for not wearing a mask will be six hours of jail time or three hours of community service. Up to 50 people can be jailed at any one time, with a maximum of 10 people per cell. Jail cells will be regularly cleaned and sanitized, the mayor said.

Pineda says he is aware of the political cost he may face. “I am willing to assume it because we have to keep order. Someone has to face this pandemic with a strong and firm hand, and we want to be pioneers in the fight against the pandemic.”

Tourism should not be affected in the municipality, which includes part of the resort town of Puerto Escondido, and the mayor says he has not considered closing beaches, restaurants or bars.

That is not the case in the neighboring municipality of Santa María Colotepec, which also includes parts of Puerto Escondido. Last week, the municipal government announced 13 new coronavirus mitigation measures that will remain in place for the rest of the month due to “a large scale outbreak of positive Covid-19 cases in our municipal jurisdiction.”

Beaches and bars have been closed, the sale of alcohol banned, and restaurants and hotels can only operate at 20% of capacity, among other preventative measures.

That move triggered a flare-up in a decades-old spat between the two municipalities. Authorities in San Pedro say Santa María is in violation of a court ruling by suspending activities in the area that includes the town’s famous surfing beach, Zicatela.

Source: Diario Marca (sp)

8,000 doses of stolen cancer medications recovered

By

Susy Buchanan

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October 17, 2020

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The bags of cancer meds, dumped on a sidewalk in Azcapotzalco.

After nearly 38,000 doses of cancer medication were stolen from the company Novag Infancia in Mexico City on October 4, one-fifth of the pilfered medications were recovered on a street in the borough of Azcapotzalco Friday morning.

Twenty-seven bags were discovered after residents saw men in a truck dumping them on the sidewalk and alerted authorities to their find.

Inside the black garbage sacks were 8,144 boxes of the chemotherapy drugs raunorubicin, fluorouracil and cyclophosphamide made by Argentine pharmaceutical company Laboratorio Kemex. The packages were marked with the legend “Property of the Health Sector. Sale is prohibited.”

Authorities say they have identified at least three suspects.

Parents of children with cancer, who have long fought with the government for access to the life-saving drugs, did not believe the robbery actually occurred after hearing repeated excuses about why the medications were in short supply.

“First [the government] said that the shortage of medications was caused by a monopoly, then because … [of] corruption, then because there was an international shortage and now they come out with … [the story] that the medications were stolen. Would you journalists believe this tale?” said Israel Rivas, spokesman for a national group of parents of child cancer patients at a press conference after the theft was announced.

The spokesman, whose daughter has cancer, said that almost 1,700 children have died due to cancer medication shortages.

Upon learning that a portion of the stolen medication had been found, Ivonne Venegas, whose daughter suffers from high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia, called the recovery of the drugs a “mockery.”

“I left my job, I left everything because my daughter was ill, just so the government could make fun of us like this, it is not worth it. We are not so ignorant that they can tell us one day the [medications] are lost, and the next day they have appeared.”

Source: El Universal (sp), La Silla Rota (sp)