Mexican airlines Volaris and VivaAerobus fared poorly in a new ranking.
Three Mexican airlines were rated as among the worst international carriers operating in the United States in an analysis by travel website usebounce.com.
The analysis of 71 airlines placed VivaAerobus second from the bottom with a score of 3.6 out of 10. Its in-flight entertainment, meals and seat comfort were all rated one out of five, and its staff service was awarded two out of five.
Volaris was third from the bottom in 69th place with a score of four. It gained one point for in-flight entertainment and two points for meals, seat comfort and staff service. Despite its superior ranking, Volaris received 379 complaints to VivaAerobus’ 27 from January through June.
Both airlines were seen as unusually stingy on their maximum free baggage allowance: VivaAerobus offers 15 kilograms of free luggage, while Volaris only gives 10 kilograms.
Interjet, which has been shut down by financial problems, was fifth from the bottom with 490 complaints and one out of five for in-flight entertainment.
They all fared better than Colombian budget airline Viva Colombia, which was declared the worst international airline operating in the U.S.
The top of the list was dominated by Asian carriers who occupied the first nine positions. Japan’s Ana All Nippon Airways, Singapore Airlines and Korean Airlines were rated as the top three.
The scores were calculated based on punctuality, maximum free baggage allowance, the number of complaints received by airlines from January through June, staff service, meals, in-flight entertainment and seat comfort.
The bottom of the barrel rankings for Mexican airlines will come as no surprise to thrifty travelers: the consumer protection agency Profeco took action against VivaAerobus and Volaris earlier in November, accusing them of committing an “abusive practice” by charging for carry-on baggage.
Bounce, the company that conducted the study, helps travelers find and reserve luggage storage in airports.
Fed up with the unstoppable force that is manhole cover thieves, authorities in Querétaro have sought to make the circular metal plates immovable objects.
The Querétaro State Water Commission (CEA) has begun setting Querétaro city’s manhole covers in concrete to prevent thieves from removing them and selling them as scrap metal. The covers are commonly made of copper and iron.
In addition, missing manhole covers are currently being replaced with concrete ones, the CEA announced on Twitter. “The new ones are concrete to avoid them being stolen again,” it said.
Querétaro city Mayor Luis Nava said that his government is also planning a crackdown on businesses that buy stolen manhole covers.
“We’re going to coordinate with the Attorney General’s Office so that businesses that buy these types of material are penalized very severely,” he said, adding that sanctions could included enforced closures.
Removal of the covers endangers pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, warned a spokesman for the Querétaro Citizens Transport Observatory. One cyclist died after riding into a cover-less manhole in the borough of Santa Rosa Jáuregui.
The theft of metal manhole covers has also been a problem in other parts of Mexico, including Puebla, Mexico City and Veracruz.
In the capital, 50-kilogram manhole covers sell for about 250 pesos (US $11.50) each, according to a report by Forbes México, but their theft over the past three years has forced the government to spend millions of pesos to replace them. Drain grates and other metal components of water and sewerage infrastructure are also frequently stolen.
Missing covers have also caused accidents in Veracruz city, including one recent one that claimed the life of a 13-year-old boy. The youth fell into an uncovered Federal Electricity Commission manhole and was electrocuted.
President López Obrador speaks at a recent press conference. Presidencia de la República
President López Obrador’s new decree that fast-tracks government infrastructure projects and protects them from scrutiny and legal challenges is part of “a cynical power grab” and possibly an “act of desperation,” according to an opinion piece published Monday by The Wall Street Journal.
The decree, published in the government’s official gazette last week, shields from scrutiny the construction of infrastructure projects in a wide range of sectors by declaring them pertinent to national security.
Columnist and WSJ editorial board member Mary Anastasia O’Grady claimed that AMLO, as the president is best known, “pronounced himself above the constitution” by issuing the decree.
“It felt for some like the beginning of the end of the Mexican democracy,” she added in a piece published under the headline “López Obrador courts the Mexican military.”
“… The decree designates the development of large parts of the Mexican economy as pertaining to ‘national security.’ Think Donald Trump’s steel tariffs – justified on the same grounds – on steroids,” O’Grady wrote.
“… Under current Mexican law, once a project is deemed necessary for national security, no-bid contracts are permitted and the terms of those contracts may be shrouded in secrecy,” she said.
O’Grady, a frequent critic of the president, said the decree is likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court (SCJN), and asserted: “This suggests that it is an act of desperation rather than a sign of strength.”
She claimed that a court decision against the decree “will be useful in further inflaming” AMLO’s base after the president’s “most ardent disciples” bemoaned obstacles to his proposed electricity reform, which seeks to guarantee more than half of the power market to the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission.
O’Grady noted that AMLO “has been drawing the military closer by giving it contracts to build pet projects,” such as the new Mexico City airport and sections of the Maya Train, as well as “money making opportunities” via future management of those projects and others, such as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor.
“Under the guise of national security, the new decree widens the scope for similar military contracts,” she wrote.
“To make his projects run smoothly, Mr. López Obrador’s diktat shoves aside independent agency reviews that would normally ensure project feasibility, environmental protections and transparency,” O’Grady added.
“… Authorizations not given within five days will be ‘considered resolved in a positive sense.’ Translation: Whatever AMLO wants, AMLO gets.”
Continuing with her denunciation of the decree, O’Grady noted that Mexico has long been considered one of the world’s most corrupt countries and asserted that “classic liberals have tried to overcome this problem by building institutions.”
“Their efforts have been only partly successful, as evidenced by serious allegations of graft during the presidency of President Enrique Peña Nieto from 2012 to 2018. Yet using the imperfection of institutional checks as an excuse to demolish them is a cynical power grab,” she wrote.
(AMLO is also seeking to eliminate two energy sector regulators with his electricity reform and has outlined plans to incorporate other autonomous organizations such as the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information into federal ministries and departments.)
“Mr. López Obrador’s real problem is that, although he remains popular, the country is also flush with interests that don’t always share his views – from Mayan communities that oppose his train through their lands to energy investors with signed contracts,” O’Grady opined.
“In other words, AMLO is running head-first into pluralism, where the limits on executive power, lawfully imposed by Congress and the courts, threaten to slow his agenda in the second half of his term. If his supporters respond with physical confrontation, or what they call ‘participatory democracy,’ Mexicans had better fasten their seat belts.”
The president and legal counsel Estela Ríos after her appointment in September.
Members of President López Obrador’s legal counsel need to be careful what they put on display: no tattoos or piercings can be shown, and no opinions about the president can be posted on social media, according to a set of rules obtained by the newspaper Reforma.
The six-page document, titled Dress Code and Coexistence in the Office, was allegedly sent by the president’s top legal counsel, Estela Ríos.
However, her office denied having sent the document and said the Code of Ethics that governs the behavior of its members is available online. The president’s office said it had launched an internal investigation to determine its origin.
In the document published by Reforma, the section “Clothing outside the code” lists shoes without socks, t-shirts and earrings as poor etiquette for men. For women, crop tops — shirts that don’t cover the midriff, strapless tops, miniskirts and leggings are all banned. Faded or ripped jeans, piercings, and visible tattoos are against the rules for both sexes.
The document states that a suit and tie are expected for men and a tailored suit should be worn by women. It features models wearing designer suits, scarves and bags to offer an example of “business casual” dress, which is only appropriate for Fridays.
Rules on dress could be relaxed for pregnancy, travel, illness, disability, extreme weather and special days or events.
As for behavior, volume on headphones should be kept low and odorous foods like seafood, onion and garlic should not be consumed. On social media, employees were told to avoid making political comments, not to take photos of famous visitors to the National Palace, and not to publish photographs of areas of the palace where public doesn’t have access.
Ríos took over as top legal counsel on September 2 after Julio Scherer Ibarra left the post.
Sampling the wines at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles Mexico Edition in Chihuahua in 2020. Concours Mondial de Bruxelles
Five years ago, Mexico hosted its first national edition of one of the wine world’s most important events: the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles. The competition’s first Mexico edition, held in the state of Guanajuato, was one of the most important wine competitions in Mexico to date.
On December 1–3, the competition circles back to Guanajuato, this time to the beautiful town of Mineral de Pozos.
The return of the Mexico edition of the prestigious competition here is clearly a recognition of Guanajuato’s growing importance in Mexico’s winemaking industry.
As the third largest wine-producing region in the country, the state is vying to be an important player in the national wine market. Today Guanajuato has 46 wineries in production.
The state is interested in promoting such world-class competitions in an attempt to revitalize the economy after the effects of COVID-19. Wine tourism has become an important element of that economic revitalization.
Guanajuato’s vineyards in the Bajío region are the third-largest producer of wine in the country. Concours Mondial de Bruxelles
It’s not a bad bet. Guanajuato is not only gaining rapid recognition for its wine region, it’s also growing rapidly: according to Sandra Vázquez, Guanajuato’s tourism marketing head, the number of wineries and land dedicated to cultivating grapes in Guanajuato is expected to increase a hundredfold in the next five years. Also in agreement with Vázquez is Carlos Borboa, director of the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles México edition.
Mexico in general is experiencing a high point in its winemaking. Next year, Mexico will also host the 43rd World Congress of Wine, one of the most important global events for the industry, put on by the Mexican Winemakers’ Council.
The increasing importance of Mexico in winemaking can also be deduced from the sommeliers who have been chosen as judges in the Concours’ Mexico edition. They are a laundry list of international wine celebrities, including Doug Frost, director of Echolans Winery in Oregon and president of the Best USA Sommelier Association.
Other judges include a who’s who of wine experts, ranging from sommeliers, denomination of origin directors for wine regions around the world, respected industry journalists, winemakers, and haute cuisine restaurateurs.
Among those representing Mexico include Laura Santander, Mexico’s best sommelier of 2019; Andrés Amor, Mexico director for the Rías Baixas wine-producing region of Galicia, Spain; and Raúl Vega, owner of gastronomy tour company Terravid and the Mexico City’s Mesa 19 wine restaurant/club.
This year’s Mexico edition of the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles will be held in the picturesque Guanajuato town of Mineral de Pozos. Government of Mexico
The competition will launch on November 30 in Mexico City at the Concours’ own affiliated Wine Bar, located next to the Marriot Mexico City Reforma Hotel in the Juárez neighborhood, before moving to the La Antigua Escuela Modelo in Mineral de Pozos, where three days of judging begins.
The Wine Bar is open year-round, incidentally, and offers much more than wine: customers can also partake in mezcals, sotols and many other high-end Mexican liquors. It even offers excellent coffees from Puebla and Veracruz and teas and infusions for non-drinkers in your party.
It also offers a menu of tapas, small plates and finger food, as well as some of the country’s best chocolate from Alma Chocolate, whose exquisite cacao truffles are an excellent pairing with the bar’s drink list.
Land has been cleared in various states so as to qualify for the Sembrando Vida social program.
Trees have been cut down on more than 1,000 parcels of land in Quintana Roo in order for the land to be used for the Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) reforestation program, according to an investigation by the newspaper El Universal.
The newspaper obtained information about the location of 5,142 of some 10,000 parcels of land authorized for inclusion in the federal government’s tree-planting employment scheme in the Caribbean coast state.
By consulting land use maps, it determined that 2,426 of the parcels are located in areas classified as jungle, and 2,651 are on agricultural land.
Via an analysis of satellite photos, El Universal discovered that deforestation had occurred on at least 1,032 parcels. Their combined area is more than 2,500 hectares, or four times the size of Mexico City’s Chapultepec Forest. El Universal said it was unable to determine whether trees had been cleared on an additional 907 plots of land.
A reporter for the newspaper subsequently visited many of the parcels to corroborate the findings of the analysis.
Google Earth images show the same plot of land before and after entering the Sembrando Vida program.
“We had to cut down … trees to enter [Sembrando Vida],” said one beneficiary in the north of Quintana Roo who has planted trees on land classified as jungle.
El Universal sought comment about its findings from the federal Welfare Ministry, which manages Sembrando Vida, but received no response.
It’s far from the first time a deforestation accusation has been leveled at the program, which pays some 440,000 people 5,000 pesos (US $230) per month to plant timber-yielding and fruit trees in poor, rural areas.
El Universal said in a report published in June 2020 that cases had been identified in which people deforested parcels of land in order to participate in Sembrando Vida and collect a monthly salary from the government. The practice – known in the context of the scheme as sembrando muerte, or sowing death – occurred in several municipalities where the program operates, the newspaper said.
A Bloomberg report published in March said that forested land had been cleared in Yucatán and Campeche so that saplings could be planted where mature trees formerly stood, while the World Resources Institute, a United States-based environmental non-profit organization, determined via an analysis of satellite images that people had also cut down trees in Veracruz, Tabasco, Quintana Roo and Chiapas so they could participate.
A recent report by the magazine Gatopardo also highlighted that the program’s requirement for trees to be planted on unforested land was driving farmers to clear their land to join it.
Sembrando Vida, one of President López Obrador’s signature initiatives, has also faced accusations of corruption.
In addition to reforesting land – López Obrador describes Sembrando Vida as the world’s largest reforestation scheme – a central aim of the program is to provide opportunities that dissuade people from migrating in search of work, especially to the United States.
Mexicans Darío Castro and Eloy Sánchez took first and second place, ahead of Kenyan Rodgers Ondati in third.
Two Mexicans dominated the 38th Mexico City marathon on Sunday, taking first and second place.
Darío Castro and Eloy Sánchez, both of whom are soldiers in the Mexican army, crossed the finish line together to return Mexico to the podium after a 12-year absence ahead of third-place finisher Rodgers Ondati of Kenya. Castro won the race with a time of 2:14.51 and Sánchez finished just a second after. Ondati recorded a time of 2:17.31.
The last Mexican to win the marathon was Edilberto Méndez Hernández from Tlaxcala in 2009.
More than 15,000 runners lined up early on Sunday morning outside the Olympic University Stadium in Coyoacán, in the south of Mexico City, for the 42-kilometer race to the historic center, ending at the city’s central square, the zócalo. They awaited Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who fired the starting pistol.
Castro said that despite his victory, the Mexico City marathon was no walk in the park. “I think that here … the conditions in Mexico City, the altitude, pollution and other influencing factors make the marathon difficult, but it motivates us to keep working and to look for another marathon that gives us the conditions to run faster,” he said.
Sánchez was ahead for most of the race and described the moment that Castro caught up. “I slowed down and he caught up with me. We got back to competition rhythm side-by-side. We were talking, supporting each other. I told him ‘This race belongs to us Mexicans,’” he said.
In the women’s event East Africans dominated a historic race: Kenyan Lucy Cheruiyot broke the record by more than six minutes, and was followed by Ethiopian Amare Shewarge Alene, who finished almost 10 minutes later. Kenyan Leah Jebiwot Kigen came in third.
In the wheelchair categories, Mexican Ivonne Reyes won the female competition and Colombian Francisco San Clemente won the men’s contest in record time.
Government needs a comprehensive strategy, says Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances.
An inadequate security strategy, poor investigations into missing person cases and impunity are key factors in the persistence of abductions in Mexico, according to the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED).
Speaking on Friday at the conclusion of a 12-day visit to Mexico, CED president Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana said “disappearances are not just a phenomenon of the past” but an ongoing scourge.
She noted that more than 95,000 people are currently considered missing in Mexico, and estimated that more than 100 probably disappeared during the CED’s tour of 13 states to meet with authorities and assess the country’s capacity to respond to the crisis.
“The profound causes of disappearances haven’t been dealt with. The security approach that has been adopted is not only insufficient but also inadequate. Impunity is almost absolute,” Villa told a press conference.
The Peruvian lawyer said that searching for victims and investigating missing person cases are not always priorities for Mexican authorities.
Villa also said that the federal government needs a comprehensive strategy to deal with the multiple causes of impunity, among which she cited the ineffectiveness of investigations, inaction of authorities and a law enforcement system that “conserves the inertias of the past.”
She said a range of factors inhibit people’s capacity to access justice in missing person cases, including a lack of legal assistance for victims’ families and geographical obstacles.
“We recognize that the challenge is enormous. No process or mechanism can be successful if it doesn’t have political will [and] effective participation of victims as well as sufficient financial resources and duly trained, competent and committed personnel,” Villa said said.
The CED chief also raised concerns about the lack of coordination between attorney general’s offices, the federal government’s militarized public security strategy and the “forensic crisis” of more than 52,000 unidentified bodies in morgues and common graves.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who met with the CED members on Friday, said the federal government recognizes that it faces a range of challenges in the area. He said the CED, which is due to deliver a report on its findings next March, could help Mexico strengthen its capacity to prevent disappearances, investigate missing persons cases and search for victims.
As things currently stand, there is no “clear policy from the current government” to confront the problem, a member of Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos (Movement for Our Missing People), an NGO, told the newspaper Milenio.
“There might be [political] will but that doesn’t translate into actions and of course it doesn’t translate into a clear and convincing budget that can help build a better Mexico” in which disappearances decline, said Martín Villalobos.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell emphasized that much remains unknown about the new omicron strain.
While countries around the world impose new travel restrictions in light of the emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, Mexico is not currently planning to introduce any additional measures to stop the arrival and spread of the highly mutated strain.
President López Obrador, who downplayed the threat of the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic, said Monday that there was no cause for concern about the variant, first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) from South Africa last Wednesday.
There is scant information about the new strain – which has not been detected in Mexico – and what there is is not yet confirmed, he told reporters at his regular news conference.
López Obrador said his government is not planning to impose new restrictions, suggesting they are not required because most Mexican adults are vaccinated.
“We’ve made a lot of progress with vaccination, we’re still vaccinating and we’re going to ramp it up,” he said.
“We’ll report about this variant tomorrow but I’ll say to all Mexicans that we’re monitoring [information about the strain] and there is no evidence for us to worry about.”
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus czar, said Saturday that some data suggests that the omicron strain is more transmissible than previous variants but stressed that “it hasn’t been proven that it’s more virulent or that it evades the immune response induced by vaccines.”
“Travel restrictions or border closures are not very useful measures,” he wrote in a follow-up Twitter post.
“They affect the economy and people’s well-being. The information disseminated about the risks of the new variant is disproportionate with respect to what existing scientific evidence shows,” López-Gatell wrote.
Unlike many other countries, Mexico has never barred international flights from entering the country and has not imposed any restrictions on incoming travelers. The absence of restrictions has been blamed for fueling coronavirus outbreaks in tourism hotspots such as Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur.
To mitigate the risk of the omicron variant taking hold, health experts consulted by the newspaper El Universal advocated a range of measures, including the testing of incoming travelers and limiting entry to fully vaccinated people.
The first image of the omicron variant, produced and published by the Bambino Gesù Hospital in Rome, shows that it has substantially more mutations than the Delta variant, compared to the original coronavirus strain. Whether omicron is more (or less) virulent than other strains remains to be seen.
Alejandro Macías, an infectious disease doctor and member of the National Autonomous University’s coronavirus commission, said that conveying the message that the pandemic is not over is also important.
“We must [continue] to promote the use of face masks, avoid crowds of people, work from home if you can, ventilate enclosed spaces and most importantly get vaccinated,” he said.
Xavier Tello, a health policy analyst who recently predicted that a fourth wave of the pandemic would begin in late 2021 or early 2022, and Andreu Comas, a virologist and researcher at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, agreed that the federal government should immediately offer booster shots to health workers and the elderly. In addition, they urged the government to accelerate the rollout of vaccines to minors.
The government announced two weeks ago that it would offer shots to youths aged 15 to 17, while López Obrador said last week that health authorities will consider the possibility of making third, booster shots available to some sectors of the population, including seniors. But the government hasn’t announced any plans to vaccinate children younger than 15, which Tello thinks is a mistake.
“We have to begin vaccinating adolescents and even young children, like they’re doing in the United States and Europe,” he said.
With regard to its messaging about the pandemic, Tello charged that the government is guilty of “terribly irresponsible behavior,” asserting that it has sought to “create an environment that doesn’t exist” via its coronavirus stoplight map, on which 27 of 32 states are currently painted low risk green.
At his press conference Monday President López Obrador said there are no plans to impose new travel restrictions, and suggested that such restrictions are unnecessary given that most Mexican adults are vaccinated.
“Having a country painted green is telling people to gather, to have parties, to go to the zócalo,” he said, apparently referring in the last instance to the rally López Obrador will hold in Mexico City’s central square on Wednesday to celebrate the third anniversary of his government.
Both Tello and Comas predicted that case numbers and hospitalizations will increase with the inevitable arrival of the omicron variant, although the latter said that the impact probably won’t be as severe as that seen last winter, when the second wave of the pandemic peaked and the vast majority of Mexicans hadn’t yet been vaccinated.
The three experts who spoke with El Universal agreed that information about omicron is limited but expressed concern that it could replace delta – which fueled a large third wave in Mexico – as the most dominant strain. They also said that the effectiveness of existing COVID-19 vaccines against the new variant is unknown.
“… This variant seems to be dangerous not because of the number of mutations it has, but rather because it’s capable of replacing the delta variant,” Macías said.
“Until now no variant had been capable of that; the implication … is that [the coronavirus] could once again enter countries that were already punished by the delta variant, like Mexico,” he said.
The WHO said Sunday that the omicron variant presents a “very high” global risk due to the possibility that it spreads more easily than other strains and might be resistant to vaccines and natural immunity.
Northern states have turned yellow on the new coronavirus map.
Meanwhile, Mexico is starting the new working week with all but five states painted green on the stoplight map. The northern states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Chihuahua and Coahuila are all medium risk yellow on the new map, which was published by the Health Ministry last Friday and will remain in effect through December 12.
The risk level was downgraded from high risk orange in Baja California and increased from green in the other four states.
Baja California ranks first among the 32 states for active cases on a per capita basis with almost 90 per 100,000 people, according to Health Ministry data published Sunday. Sonora, Baja California Sur, Coahuila and Chihuahua rank second to fifth, respectively.
Estimated active cases across Mexico total just over 22,000, including more than 3,000 in each of Baja California and Mexico City. The national accumulated tally currently stands at 3.88 million, while the official COVID-19 death toll is 293,897.
More than 76.6 million Mexicans – about 60% of the total population – are vaccinated and about 85% of that number are fully vaccinated, the most recent data shows.
The target of the attack is thought to be municipal police Chief Andrés Humberto Cano Ahuir, officials said, despite a feminist protester being among the victims and the mayor of Guaymas being present outside the palace.
A delegate from the state Attorney General’s Office, Francisco Sergio Méndez, said the large arrest operation on Sunday in Guaymas and the nearby town of San Carlos involved 120 navy personnel, 34 state police officers and 24 federal agents.
He added that the arrests were made for possession of narcotics.
One of the victims, Marisol Cuadras, an 18-year-old feminist protester, was identified as the daughter of a navy official. A member of the mayor’s security team, Antelmo Eduardo, 40, was killed, as was an armed, unnamed criminal suspect. Another young protester, Jovanna, and a municipal official were wounded.
Cuadras was one of several people who had gathered outside the palace for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Navy Minister José Rafael Ojeda ruled out the possibility that the attack was aimed at Mayor Karla Córdova, who had left the palace with Cano to address the protesters, and said Cano was the target.
“It was not an attack directed at the mayor … they were going for the captain,” he said on Friday.
State Attorney General Claudia Indira Contreras Córdova confirmed the protesters were not targeted. “What was shared by the delegate and the prosecutor clearly leave the certainty that the aggression was not for the feminist group,” she said, and added that Cano had been the target of threats.
