An 18th century play about the conquest of Mexico has been published seven years after an academic received a message from a collector in possession of an intriguing manuscript: he believed it might have been written by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a nun and poet who is an iconic figure in Mexico.
José Herrera Alcalá, a Catholic priest, wrote to Alberto Pérez-Amador, a viceregal literature researcher and Sor Juana expert, on the social media network to ask him to offer an opinion on the text.
“Although it sounds incredible, a collector who thought he had a Sor Juana manuscript in his private collection contacted me on Facebook,” Pérez-Amador told the newspaper El Universal.
“That, of course, provoked my immediate surprise and curiosity. He sent me some photographs of the manuscript and after reviewing it it was clear to me that it couldn’t be by Sor Juana because the style is very different, much later, but it was clear that it was of particular value because the manuscript is complete, that’s unusual,” he said, explaining that most old texts are missing pages, damaged by water or have been eaten by insects.
“In this case we have a manuscript that is complete in all parts of the text, the only thing we’re missing is the author, it doesn’t say anywhere who the author is,” Pérez-Amador said.
He explained that Herrera thought the 68-page manuscript – a play about the Spanish conquistadores’ defeat of the Aztec empire that relates such events as the arrival of the Spanish in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán and the capture of Moctezuma II – might have been written by Sor Juana because it was previously held in the library of Mexico City’s San Jerónimo Convent, where the 17th century nun and poet lived for much of her life.
“It’s the only play from the viceregal period we’ve found with this theme,” added Pérez-Amador, who described the work as a “very important” find.
“Of course we have a lot of theater pieces from the Viceroyalty [of New Spain] but this is the only one with this theme … and that’s something valuable.”
The play has 18 characters and is technically complex, the Metropolitan Autonomous University academic said.
“It’s not by a beginner or a [theater] enthusiast who wrote something but rather by someone who really knew the rules of versification and the tradition of Novohispanic and Spanish theater, and knew how to manage characters on a stage and how to … surprise the audience with unexpected situations, [how to construct] plot twists to maintain the audience’s attention,” he said.
“It’s by an 18th century Spaniard, the handwriting is irregular, the grammar and spelling is of a Spaniard of that period,” Pérez-Amador said.
He said Herrera agreed to lend the manuscript to him so that it could be digitized, which allowed the writing to be magnified and more easily understood. The digitized version was subsequently edited by the researcher and submitted to the federal government-affiliated, non-profit publishing group Fondo de Cultura Ecónomica, which published the play as part of its prestigious Biblioteca Americana Collection.
“All the works of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Bartolomé de las Casas, Sor Juana – let’s say the classics – are in that collection,” Pérez-Amador said.
Published under the title La Conquista de México por Carlos Quinto. Una comedia anónima novohispana desconocida (The Conquest of Mexico by Charles V. An Unknown Anonymous Comedy from New Spain), the publication was officially launched during a virtual event on Thursday.
Total remittances to Mexico hit US $41.46 billion from January to August this year. (Archive)
The Mexican government is highlighting a record number of remittances sent back to the country by citizens living in the United States this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but organized crime groups have long exploited these transfers to launder ill-gotten proceeds.
The central bank, Banco de México or Banxico, reported that more than US $28 billion in remittances has been sent from the United States during the first seven months of 2021.
The figure represents a 23% increase from the almost $23 billion in remittances sent during the same time period in 2020, according to Banxico data. By the end of 2020, Mexico received a record $40 billion in remittances from the United States, according to government data. This year is on pace to surpass that amount.
After a small drop in remittances sent in April 2020 — one month after the World Health Organization (WHO) classified the COVID-19 health crisis as a “pandemic” — those payments bounced back, according to the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington DC.
Mexico has more emigrants living in the United States than any other country in Latin America. Indeed, 97% of international migrants who were born in Mexico live in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of United Nations and U.S. government data.
InSight Crime analysis
Organized crime groups in Mexico have shown a remarkable ability to adapt amid the global health crisis, and the record number of remittances sent back to the country from the United States presents a clear money laundering opportunity.
To be sure, Mexican criminal groups have long co-opted remittances sent through U.S. banks for their own interests. In 2017, for example, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Banamex USA’s (BUSA) anti-money laundering monitoring system “issued more than 18,000 alerts involving more than $142 million in potentially suspicious remittance transactions” sent between 2007 and 2012.
Organized crime groups often use such transfers to launder money and hide its illicit origins. Yet BUSA “conducted fewer than 10 investigations and filed only nine” Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) during that time, and didn’t file a single report on suspicious remittance transactions between 2010 and 2012, according to U.S. prosecutors.
More recently, amid financial disruptions brought on by the pandemic, Mexican crime groups have had to seek out a variety of different money laundering techniques. These include bulk cash deliveries moved over the border, “wire transfers, shell and legitimate business accounts, funnel accounts, and structured deposits with money remitters in order to move money while concealing the routing of the illicit proceeds,” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment.
While money laundering risks in the United States are relatively low in a global context, according to the Basel Institute on Governance’s 2020 Anti-Money Laundering Index, remittances will remain a key money laundering tool for Mexican crime groups so long as U.S. banks struggle to step up controls.
Reprinted from InSight Crime. Parker Asmann is a writer with InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.
Author Juan Villoro has spent his life as a resident of the nation's capital.
Celebrated Mexican novelist Juan Villoro compares his home of Mexico City to an onion or a lasagna — in either case, it’s multilayered with a history going back to indigenous times.
His latest work, a nonfiction book, focuses on the many, ever-unfolding layers of the city’s past, present and future.
Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico is Villoro’s paean to a place he knows intimately, ranging from childhood explorations of tramways to conversations as an adult with prominent poets in coffeehouses. Published in English in March, it was named a top 10 best nonfiction book of the year by The New York Times en Español.
The book’s title is a reflection of the earthquake threat that has led Mexico City’s architects to traditionally build outward, not upward. In it, Villoro shares his love of bike tacos and his frustrations with cheering for the Mexican national soccer team.
He also discusses the multiple tragedies Mexico City has suffered, including the earthquakes of 1985 and 2017 and the current COVID-19 crisis. Each time, Villoro has seen the city and its residents, or chilangos, show resilience.
Villoro on the streets of Mexico City.
Comparing the coronavirus pandemic with Mexico City’s earthquakes, Villoro said, “The COVID emergency has been quite different. After the quakes, it was urgent to do something, and the people came together.”
That included himself, as shown in a heart-wrenching chapter on the 1985 earthquake. But “in the present circumstances,” he said, “the most useful thing is to avoid other people, a challenge for a gregarious society.”
The book reflects that gregariousness by depicting the individuals, fiestas and destinations that have enlivened Villoro’s pre-COVID experiences of the Mexican capital, going back to his childhood.
As Villoro explained, “My father was born in Barcelona and my mother in Mérida (two separatist places: no wonder they got divorced!). I had no sense of belonging. Suddenly, playing in the streets, riding illegally on a tramway — discovering the labyrinth — became my most important existential experience. I decided to be part of that place.”
Mexico City is a place with many historical connections: from the Aztecs to colonial Spain to Mexican independence to the 20th and 21st centuries.
“To some extent,” Villoro reflected, “the Aztec city is a hidden, underground citadel. It is impossible to dig a hole in midtown Mexico without practicing a kind of archaeology. Then you have the colonial city, built by the Spaniards in imitation of the Renaissance utopias; the modern; the postmodern; even the futuristic city that has been the ‘natural’ location for such films as Elysium and Total Recall.
“You cannot achieve a global description of so many historical influences, but you can give a taste of them.”
The book conveys its author’s ongoing relationship with the capital in a complex way. Each chapter represents a separate story, yet all are interrelated in depicting the vibrancy of Mexico City. The chapters are divided into categories such as “City Characters,” “Ceremonies” and “Places.”
“The structure of the book resembles the way we move through huge cities like London, Sao Paulo or New York,” Villoro explained.
Yet, he noted, “it is impossible to write a comprehensive narrative map of such a gigantic place as Mexico City. I decided to follow different paths, similar to the lines you take on the subway.”
He called his experience of the capital “both personal and foreign.”
“Some places belong to my sentimental education, and others have to be investigated,” he said. “Some reading ‘lines’ of my book belong to an intimate approach of the city. Others depend on a journalistic survey.”
Villoro’s book, Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico, was published in English in March. Angrama
One of Villoro’s continuing fascinations is the city’s many unique fiestas, from the traditional Independence Day celebrations to the more recent Zombie Parade. He even explores the legendary 1965 gathering to await a parade of UFOs that somehow never arrived.
On Independence Day, “People don’t take the streets to celebrate the national identity or with claims to recover Texas. Independence Day is a great opportunity for being together,” he noted.
“The same happens with the Zombie Parade,” he added. “Believing in the underworld and in the living dead are less important than assuming a dress code to be part of the crowd. There is a strong sense of carnival in our public gatherings; you can feel the energy of the multitude that creates a provisional community.”
“The end of the gathering and the empty streets raise an unsolved mystery,” he said. “Where does that energy go?”
It was not the streets but the underground that inspired the first reflection included in the book — a meditation on the Metro and its connection to Mexico’s indigenous people. Villoro wrote it in May 1994 while teaching at Yale University, a few months after the Zapatista uprising broke out in Chiapas.
“The Zapatistas put the life of the Maya and other original people of Mexico on the current political agenda,” he said. “For centuries, the Indians were regarded as part of the past, the ‘disappeared’ builders of pyramids. The Zapatistas said, ‘Let us belong to modern Mexico.’
“The structure of the book resembles the way we move through huge cities like London, Sao Paulo or New York,” says Villoro. Victor Benítez
“At that time, I was asked to write something about Mexico City and decided to recreate the subway system, taking into account the Zapatista claim.”
In the book, he notes that there is a pre-Hispanic pyramid at one Metro station — Pino Suárez — while other stations have Aztec names, from Tacuba to Coyoacán to Iztapalapa. “All pre-Hispanic mythologies start and end in underground places,” he said.
“Suddenly, the ancient past became incredibly modern to me!” he reflected. “I never thought I was starting a book, but this new approach to the Mexican traditions was instrumental to begin a series of texts that, eventually, would lead to Horizontal Vertigo 25 years later.”
During the past quarter-century, Villoro and the city that was his constant subject each experienced significant developments. In 2004, his novel El testigo, or The Witness — a novel about a Mexican intellectual who returns to his homeland after living abroad for two decades — won him the Herralde Prize, a Spanish-language award given annually by the Barcelona-based publisher Anagrama.
Five years later, in 2009, he witnessed Mexico City challenged by a pandemic that eerily presaged the current one — the swine flu outbreak that occurred during an interchange in the capital by the then heads of state Barack Obama and Felipe Calderón. In the book, Villoro records scenes that sound familiar today, such as calls for mask-wearing and social isolation.
Although the book was published before Mexico City’s latest tragedy, the Metro disaster on May 3 that killed 26 people, when asked about it, Villoro called the tragedy “the chronicle of a death foretold.”
“It was dubbed the Golden Line and covered the longest path in the subway system,” he noted. “But it was designed to accomplish political ambitions, not to serve the people. Neighbors knew that [the accident] could happen anytime.
“It is the third disaster in a short period of time. Are our politicians capable of caring about something else than winning an election?”
As for the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, he reflected, “We have survived in strange isolation. The main lesson is that we have acknowledged how much we need ourselves.”
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The Temple of Ehécatl, part of the new exhibition in Mexico City. luis torres/inah
A new exhibition showcasing archaeological relics of the Aztec (or Mexica) capital of Tenochtilán and Spanish colonial times opened in Mexico City this week.
Called Pabellón de Ventanas Arqueológicas (Pavilion of Archeological Windows), the exhibition is spread across several streets and 16 buildings in the historic center of the capital. It is part of a program of events to celebrate the history of Tenochtitlán on the 500th anniversary of its fall and also commemorates the 30th anniversary of the federally-run Urban Archaeology Program.
Through 42 “archaeological windows,” visitors can admire the remains of Mexica palaces and temples, ancestral homes of Spanish conquistadores, churches, residences occupied by officials of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and relics of the 19th century, according to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which organized the exhibition in conjunction with the Museum of the Templo Mayor.
The main exhibition venue is the Palace of the Marqués del Apartado, a colonial era residence that now houses INAH headquarters.
Five large Mexica sculptures and two skulls from the Huei Tzompantli – a pre-Hispanic skull tower dedicated to the war, sun and human sacrifice deity Huitzilopochtli – are also part of the exhibition, which is complemented by videos and scale models of Tenochtitlán.
At the inauguration of the exhibition on Monday, federal Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto Guerrero said the pavilion pays homage to the men and women who have dedicated their lives to archaeology in Mexico City and uncovered many of the relics on display.
The exhibition is now open to the public on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturday between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Tickets must be purchased at the Templo Mayor Museum, located behind the northeastern corner of the Metropolitan Cathedral in downtown Mexico City.
Remittances sent to Mexico hit a new monthly record of US $4.54 billion in July, a 28.6% increase compared to the same month last year.
It was the second time this year that a new monthly record was set after Mexicans working abroad, mainly in the United States, transferred $4.51 billion in May.
It was also the 15th consecutive month that remittances – a key driver of the Mexican economy and the country’s second biggest source of foreign currency after auto exports – increased on an annual basis.
The central bank reported that remittances sent to Mexico in the first seven months of 2021 totaled just under $28.19 million, a 23.5% increase compared to the same period of 2020. A 12-month-record of $45.97 billion flowed into the country between August 2020 and July 2021.
A recovering United States economy and government stimulus in that country have driven record levels of remittances this year.
Line graph indicates the annual variation. opportimes/bank of méxico
“Stronger growth in the U.S. than in Mexico increases remittances to Mexico. And this is precisely what we have seen,” said Carlos Capistrán, a Bank of America economist.
“We expect remittances to continue strong for the rest of the year and probably next [year] as well,” he said.
The Bank of México said that 99% of remittances between January and July were sent electronically. There were 11.6 million transactions in July with each worth $391 on average.
The central bank also reported that $95 million in remittances flowed out of Mexico in July, a 60.3% increase compared to the same month last year.
Delivering his third annual report to the nation on Wednesday, President López Obrador boasted of record remittances as if they represented an achievement of his government, according to the head of a United States-based migrants’ group.
But he should in fact be ashamed of the record-breaking remittance levels because they were sent by Mexicans who couldn’t find work in Mexico or fled violence, Carlos Arango, president of the Frente Nacional de Inmigrantes (National Immigrants Front), told the newspaper El Universal.
He also said that López Obrador should be ashamed of boasting about remittances when his government has not adequately supported Mexico’s consular network in the United States. Consulates are not offering passport services and have no funds to repatriate the bodies of Mexicans who have died in the United States, said Arango, whose organization represents some 20 migrants’ groups with a combined membership of more than 1 million.
The president, who frequently refers to Mexican migrants as heroes, is taking credit for the work of millions of Mexicans who live and work abroad, he said.
“It is now his custom to say that it is an achievement of his government every time there is an upturn or record [in remittances], but we’re abandoned here without consular protection, facing raids to deport compatriots and he says nothing. His discourse is a farce,” Arango said.
“I believe that it’s a lack of respect. He only remembers migrants when there are remittances and he remains silent when there are abuses against Mexicans [abroad].”
A delivery truck burns at a highway blockade in Michoacán as teachers continue to protest unpaid wages.
A teachers’ rail blockade in Michoacán has now been in place for more than a month, generating losses for industry to the tune of at least 1.6 billion pesos (US $80.1 million).
Members of the CNTE teachers union began blocking tracks in Caltzontzin, a community in the municipality of Uruapan, on July 31. They claim that the state government has failed to pay wages owed to some 28,000 teachers.
According to the Michoacán industry association AIEMAC, companies are losing a combined total of approximately 50 million pesos each day that the railway is blocked because they can’t get goods to or from the port of Lázaro Cárdenas.
Rail operator Kansas City Southern de México told the newspaper Reforma that eight trains loaded with 36,551 tonnes of goods destined for central and northern Mexico are currently stranded.
Many other freight train services have been canceled due to the long-running blockade, a form of protest that is commonly used by CNTE teachers in Michoacán.
Teachers block tracks in Uruapan.
“They’re trains that should have been scheduled but haven’t been scheduled because we can’t operate, we can’t get through,” said Iker de Luisa, head of the Mexican Railway Association.
“The impact is great because fuel oil, chemicals, steel, cement, containers with general freight and supplies for the agricultural industry can’t be moved,” he said, adding that the state oil company Pemex is one of the affected firms.
Reforma reported that rail tracks in Michoacán have been blocked for a total of 52 days this year.
One group calling for federal intervention to clear the tracks is the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin), which made an appeal to President López Obrador earlier this week.
Blockades are affecting the transport of goods, certainty for investors, the supply of raw materials for thousands of companies and hundreds of Mexican workers who have been unable to work and see their jobs at risk, Concamin said in a statement.
The group said there have been 21 separate rail blockades in Michoacán this year, causing huge losses for industry and turning the state into an entity where the rule of law doesn’t exist. That affects Michoacán’s capacity to attract new investment and create jobs, Concamin said.
The organization said it had made an “energetic call” to the federal government and López Obrador to end the rail blockades.
“… Shipments by industries such as iron and steel, agro-industry, automotive and fuel are today paralyzed and companies are starting to look for alternative routes to complete the transport of goods and finished products,” Concamin said.
“These blockades have an impact on the entire supply chain for the North America region and thus impact on the trade relationship with the United States and Canada. Mexico should provide guarantees to its trade partners that it is willing to resolve issues that place the integration of supply chains at risk,” it said.
“It’s worrying that these kinds of actions are beginning to be normalized in the country. We can’t afford to continue [allowing] economic losses for Mexico and Mexicans to add up,” said Concamin transport commission president Felipe de Javier Peña Dueñas.
Without the intervention of authorities, the current blockade doesn’t appear likely to end any time soon. Local CNTE leader Benjamín Hernández said the Michoacán government has told the union that it is not in a position to pay the unpaid wages so the blockade will continue.
Union members have also used more aggressive tactics to demonstrate their discontent. The so-called “power base” faction of Section 18 of the dissident union hijacked at least two private delivery trucks on Wednesday and set them alight on the Uruapan-Pátzcuaro highway.
“Silvano, pay us now” was graffitied on at least one of the seized trucks. Silvano Aureoles is the governor of Michoacán.
CNTE teachers also blocked at least two other roads in Michoacán on Wednesday and held a protest march in Pátzcuaro. In addition, disgruntled teachers who say they are owed at least a month’s wages continued to block a state government building in Huetamo, a town about 200 kilometers south of the state capital Morelia.
'With disappearances there is no transformation,' read the t-shirts of human rights activists.
Human rights experts and activists have rejected President López Obrador’s claim that such rights are no longer violated in Mexico, asserting that migrants and journalists are among those who continue to suffer abuses.
“The constitution is now respected, there is legality and democracy, and freedom and the right to dissent are guaranteed,” López Obrador said.
“There is complete transparency and the right to information [is upheld], nobody is censored, human rights are not violated, the government doesn’t repress the people and electoral fraud isn’t organized from federal power,” he said.
But two human rights experts who spoke with the newspaper El Universal and the Centro Prodh human rights organization described the president’s remarks on human rights as false.
“What he said about human rights matters in his third annual report doesn’t correspond with reality at all,” said Emilio Álvarez Icaza, an independent federal senator and former president of the Mexico City Human Rights Commission.
He said it was concerning that López Obrador appeared to be living in a “bubble” or “alternate reality.”
Álvarez told El Universal that Mexico’s human rights crisis has in fact significantly worsened since the president took office in December 2018.
“One example is the very shameful actions of his government against Central American and Haitian migrants,” he said.
The agents were suspended but Álvarez asserted that “there aren’t exemplary punishments for those who brutally attack migrants.”
López Obrador and Human Rights Commission head Rosario Ibarra, whose agency has been largely silent on rights issues.
The treatment of migrants is “so bad that the United States Border Patrol seems civilized compared to the National Guard and Mexican immigration agents,” he said.
Álvarez also noted that numerous journalists have been murdered during the term of the current government – 22 to date – and suggested that López Obrador is partially responsible for the high incidence of acts of aggression against individuals and companies in the Mexican media because he discredits and verbally attacks them on a daily basis.
He also highlighted that a record number of human rights defenders and environmental activists have been murdered in the almost three years since the president was sworn in.
“Forced disappearances are continuing in this six-year term of government,” Álvarez added. “In just three years of the current government there have been almost 23,000.”
The senator claimed that the government has turned its back on and betrayed victims of crime, asserting that the Commission for Attention to Victims has been “disassembled” and the National Search Commission “only does symbolic work.”
Women have been neglected because the government has cut off funding for shelters that offer refuge to victims of crime, Álvarez said.
José Perdomo Galicia, a law academic at La Salle University who specializes in human rights matters, also claimed that Mexico is facing a human rights crisis under López Obrador.
The National Human Rights Commission – which has been accused of covering up crimes against migrants including murder, torture, mass kidnappings and rape – has been effectively absent during the term of the current government, he said.
“In the current six-year term, we’re doing very badly on human rights,” Perdomo said. “… [We have] a country submerged in violence and insecurity with a militarized National Guard that attacks and detains migrants. I don’t believe the [human rights] reality is as pretty and smooth as President López Obrador says.”
The academic described López Obrador’s address as a presidential monologue devoid of self-criticism and containing statements that contradict the reality the country is facing.
For its part, Centro Prodh said bluntly that the president’s assertion that human rights are no longer violated in Mexico is “false.”
In a series of Twitter posts, the human rights organization provided a range of evidence to back up its claim.
It said the army, National Guard and municipal and state police have continued to unnecessarily use “lethal force” in states such as Quintana Roo, Guanajuato, Jalisco and Tamaulipas and that the “serious crisis of disappearances” endures with more than 90,000 missing persons, including over 20,000 who have disappeared since López Obrador took office.
“Recent events, such as those against migrants in Tapachula, provide proof that the [government’s] migration policy continues to be contrary to human rights,” Centro Prodh said.
The group also claimed that the government failed to fully comply with its obligation to consult with indigenous communities in a free and informed way prior to the execution of large-scale infrastructure projects such as the Maya Train, and described the increasing militarization of security and the empowerment of the military as alarming.
It charged that the federal Attorney General’s Office has failed to properly investigate and “reverse impunity” in a range of high-profile cases, including the disappearance of the 43 students in Guerrero in 2014, the army massacre the same year in Tlatlaya, México state, and the use of spyware against journalists, activists, politicians and others during the 2012-18 government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
“In addition, the National Human Rights Commission is in open retreat,” Centro Prodh said. “Not recognizing the [human rights] reality and asserting that profound problems have already been resolved distracts from the tasks that must be undertaken.”
A Mexico City woman with her vaccination certificate. States would like them to be a requirement for inbound travelers.
State tourism ministers are going to press for international travelers to be screened for COVID-19.
Mexico’s association of tourism ministers will ask the federal government to implement a policy that requires incoming travelers to present a COVID-19 vaccination certificate or a negative test result.
Oaxaca Tourism Minister Juan Carlos Rivera Castellanos, who heads up the association, said the proposal will be taken to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs next week.
Mexico has never closed its air borders or required incoming travelers to go into mandatory quarantine. The absence of restrictions has been blamed for fueling coronavirus outbreaks in tourism hotspots such as Cancún and Los Cabos.
Rivera said in an interview that the proposal has the support of all state tourism ministers, who believe that the measure will help reduce the spread of the virus in Mexico.
If the federal government approves the proposal, a plan for its execution will have to be developed in conjunction with the Health Ministry, he said. One matter to consider, the minister said, is whether vaccinated travelers will be allowed into the country regardless of the COVID-19 vaccine they received.
Some countries are only allowing unrestricted entry to travelers vaccinated with approved vaccines. The European Union, for example, has only approved those made by Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
In other COVID news:
• The Health Ministry reported 17,337 new cases on Wednesday, lifting Mexico’s accumulated tally to just under 3.37 million.
An additional 1,177 fatalities were reported, increasing the official death toll to 260,503. There are an estimated 107,520 active cases across the country, a decrease of 17% compared to a week ago.
• Almost 60,000 children and adolescents tested positive for COVID-19 in July and August, according to official data. The figure accounts for about 38% of cases detected among children since the start of the pandemic, attesting to the greater risk of infection posed by the highly contagious delta strain.
The National System for Protection of Children and Adolescents reported that 758 minors have lost their lives to COVID-19. Just over 54% were boys.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday that serious COVID-19 illness and death is not a major threat to children, highlighting that fatalities among minors are much more likely to be caused by accidents.
Tiffany Pence checks the grapevines at a Querétaro vineyard. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
“We wanted to get out of the States for years,” said Tom Pence as he drove down a highway in the state of Querétaro, where he and his wife Tiffany have made a business for themselves giving tours of the area’s vineyards. “Money started to not go as far as it used to.”
In addition, the wine store Pence owned in Orlando, Florida, was losing customers.
“As my customers got older, they were told to stop drinking wine for health reasons,” he explained. “Millennials … wanted to do everything online.”
Less business and a hankering for something different led Tom and Tiffany, who was a wine rep, to look for options. They’d traveled extensively for years and decided in 2018 to make the move to Mexico.
“We decided on Querétaro because of its high standard of living, low crime and its international airport,” Tom said. They also loved the weather, the opportunity to explore the plethora of nearby Pueblos Mágicos (Magical Towns) and its burgeoning wine industry.
A desire for something different and a better quality of life led Tom and Tiffany Pence to move in 2018 to Mexico.
“We weren’t looking for a wine region to move to,” Tiffany said. “We were looking for something international, so the wine region was a bonus. Basically, we moved here to have a better quality of life.”
Things were going well for them until COVID-19 hit and their revenue streams dried up. “We had to start worrying about how to earn money,” Tom said.
With a combined total of 37 years of experience in the wine industry, it was fairly obvious what they needed to do. “We’re right in the middle of wine country,” he said. “We figured we’d start talking to the wineries.”
A number of companies offer tours of Querétaro’s Art, Wine and Cheese Route, and that seemed like a good way for them to get to know the area and its wineries. “When we first got here, we did take one of the tours,” said Tiffany, “and it was a very nice introductory tour. But we felt that, for us, we wanted to spend more time at certain parts of the tour than they were offering.”
Too much time was spent sitting around waiting for other vans filled with clients to arrive, and the tours were overly structured and moved along too quickly, Tom said. “We didn’t have enough time in the Pueblo Mágicos,” he said, “or any quality time or experience with any of the nicer-quality dairies or wineries.”
They discussed their experiences and decided to start a tour of their own, one that was different, more personalized.
“We wanted to do smaller tours where, even on the fly, if a client says I want to spend some more time here, fine, no problem,” Tom said. “We decided we’d go to smaller wineries, ones that we felt offer a higher quality product.”
And so Heart of Mexico Wine Tours was born.
“Our tours are highly customized, but we have also created wine tours that are already set,” Tiffany said. “We’ve also designed a Pueblo Mágico tour. We spend time in Bernal, have a nice lunch, go to Tesquiquipan [another Pueblo Mágico]. It’s more customized so you can actually spend time where you want.”
They also wanted their tours to be flexible. “If you fall in love with a Pueblo Mágico and you want to stay, you can,” Tom said. If reservations have been made to stop at a winery after that, Tiffany will call them and arrange for a later time.
In addition to the wineries, their tours make stops at some of Querétaro’s artisanal creameries.
Cava de Quesos Bocanegro opened eight years ago. In addition to selling typical Mexican cheeses like quesillo, manchego and queso fresco, they have begun introducing aged, stronger-flavored cheeses. One creamery I found particularly interesting was Queso La Biquette, a small producer that sells only goat cheeses. Their products range from the fresh, mild cheese I was used to, to an aged Tomme, which has a rich, earthy flavor I find particularly tasty.
The Pences have expanded their personalized tours to include tours of the many Magical Towns in the state of Querétaro, like the village of Bernal, seen here.
The Pences may offer in the future a tour that focuses solely on creameries.
All of the wineries and creameries offer tastings, and I highly recommend them. Sitting at a table on a balcony overlooking a vineyard on a summer afternoon or sitting at a table sampling some delicious cheeses isn’t a bad way to spend some time.
The Pences also have what they call cultural tours. “We can tour the local markets, we can buy food, come back to the house and cook with clients. We can teach them how to make masa (the corn flour dough that tortillas are made from) from scratch.”
Right now, they’re offering smaller tours and taking people around in their car. Four is the maximum number that can fit in the vehicle, although they’re able to rent a van if a larger group wants to book a tour.
Currently, the tours are all in English but, Tom said, “We want to have bilingual guides eventually.”
The Pences have extensive knowledge about wines and have come to know Querétaro well. During a tour, they’ll explain the challenges that wineries face here and how those challenges make the region’s wines exceptional.
They also know the owners of these wineries and creameries well. Accompanying them on a visit is like being among a group of old friends. And the couple knows, and loves, the Magical Towns that dot the state.
But beware: take a tour with them and you’ll start thinking about relocating to Querétaro.
The president delivers his report to a small crowd of invited guests at the National Palace.
The federal government’s cessation of the “privatization trend” favored by previous administrations was hailed as a major achievement by President López Obrador in his third annual report to the nation on Wednesday.
In an almost hour-long address at the National Palace in Mexico City, the president also outlined a range of government achievements, many of which he previously highlighted in his first and second annual reports.
“The transformation [of Mexico] is in progress,” López Obrador declared at the start of his speech before asserting that there is a need to continue exposing “the great neoliberal farce” of previous governments and conceding that more needs to be done to “foster a change of mentality” among the nation’s citizens.
“… We’re banishing vices and dishonest practices in the management of government,” he said.
“A decisive measure was to stop the privatization trend in its tracks. We stopped delivering concessions to private companies in mines, water, hospitals, ports, railways, beaches, jails and public works. But the most important thing is that we’ve stopped privatization in the energy sector – in oil and electricity,” López Obrador said.
The government’s new energy policy aims to make the country self-sufficient in gasoline, he said, pointing to the modernization of Pemex’s six refineries, the construction of a new one on the Tabasco coast and the purchase of one in Texas.
“It’s worth remembering that a new refinery hasn’t been built in our country since the beginning of the neoliberal period 42 years ago. The last one [built] was that in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, which began operating in 1979,” AMLO said.
With regard to the electricity sector, the president said he would send a constitutional reform proposal to Congress this month that will allow “grave damage” caused by privatization to be repaired.
“… While the market … was opened up … to national and especially foreign private companies with the delivery of subsidies, among other privileges, the Federal Electricity Commission plants were completely abandoned,” he said.
“Now we’re modernizing the hydroelectric plants to reduce the use of fuel oil and coal in the production of electricity. Energy produced with water is clean and cheap,” he said.
López Obrador also highlighted the government’s infrastructure construction agenda, noting that it’s building numerous projects including highways, dams, hospitals, state-owned banks, universities, schools, water treatment plants, bridges, railroads, airports, military barracks, libraries and stadiums. All the projects are being built without entering into partnerships with private companies and without taking on debt, he said.
López Obrador and his wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez, before his address in the National Palace.
Just three large infrastructure projects – the new Mexico City airport, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor and the Maya Train railroad – are creating more than 143,000 direct jobs and over 277,000 indirect ones, López Obrador said.
Among a wide range of other government initiatives, actions, achievements, policies and agreements exalted by the president were the new North American trade agreement; the creation of a northern border free zone; the national COVID-19 vaccination program; the reopening of schools 17 months after they closed at the onset of the pandemic; the stability of gasoline and electricity prices; welfare and social programs; the delivery of loans to small businesses during the pandemic; improved tax collection; the defense of human rights, including those of migrants; and the absence of conflict with foreign governments.
“There is social peace and governability in our country,” López Obrador said after asserting that stores haven’t been looted during the pandemic because “desperation due to hunger” has been avoided.
“The industrial sector is in clear recovery, so is retail, tourism, the restaurant sector, aviation and other services. Almost all forecasts agree that the economy will grow about 6% this year. Foreign investment in the first half [of 2021] was US $18.43 billion, 2.6% higher than in the same period of last year and the highest [level] in the history of the country,” AMLO said.
He touted “historic records” in a range of areas including remittances, foreign investment, the increase of the minimum wage, the stability of the peso, the value of the stock market and central bank reserves.
He noted that his government holds security cabinet meetings every weekday morning and declared that the “fruit of this joint work” is a reduction in the incidence of a range of crimes including fuel theft, homicides (still at near record levels), vehicle theft and kidnappings. However, the president conceded that femicide and extortion are among the offenses that have increased since he took office in December 2018.
It wouldn’t be an AMLO speech without a liberal dose of praise for the government’s corruption-fighting credentials – and, as expected, Wednesday’s address didn’t disappoint.
“From the first year of government we managed, among other measures, to eliminate the cancellation of taxes for large taxpayers [who were] beneficiaries of cronyism, and corruption was categorized in the constitution as a serious crime … in which the accused is not granted the possibility of obtaining bail,” the president said.
“… It’s demonstrable that not allowing corruption and impunity helps to free up funds for the wellbeing [of the Mexican people] and the development of the country. That’s the formula – don’t allow corruption, govern with austerity and don’t allow impunity: moralize the public life of Mexico.”
In the two years and nine months since taking office, the federal government has saved 1.4 trillion pesos (US $70 billion) due to austerity and the elimination of corruption in purchases and contracts, López Obrador said.
“… With this formula of combatting corruption and governing without luxuries or frivolities we’ve been able to meet our commitments to not put the country into debt, not raise taxes and not increase fuel prices,” he said.
Tercer Informe de Gobierno | Presidente AMLO
“And the most important thing [is that the government’s] new economic policy, built on morality, has allowed us to finance social programs for the wellbeing of our people, especially for the poorest and most marginalized.”
The president, a tireless orator and avid traveler, also highlighted that he has held 685 morning press conferences since he was sworn in and visited every state of the country, some as many as 28 times.
“… It’s going well,” López Obrador said, referring to his almost three-year-old government.
“And I’m sure that at the end of March next year the people are going to vote in favor of me continuing my constitutional period [as president] until the end of September 2024. Of course this is not the only thing I need to fulfill my mission: what nature, science and the Creator say is also needed, we can’t be arrogant,” he said.
“But if I’m lucky and I finish [my term], I believe that we’re going to complete the job of transforming [Mexico] and we won’t leave anything outstanding. When I’m handing over the presidential sash I will only say … mission accomplished! I’m going to [my ranch in] Palenque, I leave you my heart.”
