The Mazatec huipil, left, and the Australian design house's product, right.
An Australian fashion brand has withdrawn a dress from its 2021 collection after facing accusations by members of the Mazatec community in Oaxaca that it plagiarized the design of a traditional huipil, a loose-fitting tunic commonly worn by both indigenous and non-indigenous women in Mexico.
Mazatec people from the Cañada region of the southern state took to social media to denounce Zimmermann, a fashion house that has stores in several countries including the United States, England, Italy and France.
They claim that the company, founded in Sydney by the sisters Nicky and Simone Zimmermann in 1991, copied a Mazatec huipil design to make its Riders Paneled tunic dress, which was part of its 2021 Resort collection and retailed for US $850 on the Zimmerman website before it was withdrawn due to the criticism.
The cut of the Zimmermann garment, the birds and flowers embroidered on it and its colors all resemble a traditional Mazatec huipil.
Changes made to the original design – the Zimmermann dress sits above the knees and unlike a huipil is not intended to be worn with pants or a skirt – are disrespectful of the Mazatac culture and world view, according to members of the Mazatec community.
The Oaxaca Institute of Crafts also condemned Zimmermann and called on the brand to clarify the origin of its design.
Zimmermann subsequently issued a statement on social media, acknowledging that the tunic dress was inspired by huipiles from Oaxaca
“Zimmermann acknowledges that the paneled tunic dress from our current Swim collection was inspired by what we now understand to be a traditional garment from the Oaxaca region in Mexico,” it said.
“We apologize for the usage without appropriate credit to the cultural owners of this form of dress and for the offense this has caused. Although the error was unintentional, when it was brought to our attention today, the item was immediately withdrawn from all Zimmermann stores and our website. We have taken steps to ensure this does not happen again in future.”
It is far from the first time that a large fashion house has been accused of plagiarism of indigenous Mexican designs.
A 4 1/2-century-old “child” called the Niñopa is the most important religious icon in Mexico City’s borough of Xochimilco and the star of an upcoming celebration.
Despite its age and the pandemic, this image of the infant Jesus continues its important role in this formerly agricultural area. At 51 centimeters tall and weighing 600 grams, it looks much like any other baby Jesus that appears in manger scenes all over Mexico. But this statue is the star of Mexico’s last hurrah of the Christmas season – Candlemas on February 2, marking the presentation of the infant Jesus to the temple — these days done at a church.
This representation is indeed special, even with its own name — the Niñopa (or Niñopan). The niño part is from the Spanish word for “child,” but the “pa/pan” part is in dispute. It may be a shortening of padre (father) or patrón (patron), or it could be from the Náhuatl word for “place.”
What is known is that this image and the popular rites associated with it have a long history.
The Niñopa was created in 1573. Although legend says it was brought from Spain and made of orange tree wood, it was created in Xochimilco from a local tree, most likely by an indigenous artisan. There are several stories about how and why the image has its highly venerated status. One says that it belonged to the last indigenous ruler of Xochimilco, Martín Cortés de Alvarado.
The Niñopa dates back to the 16th century.
The historical context indicates that it was part of an effort by evangelists to substitute Catholic imagery into indigenous rituals. It is known that Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, was worshipped here in the form of a child. So it would not be too difficult to substitute one “child” with another. In fact, one of the persistent tales told about this image is that it hides a figure of Huitzilopochtli inside.
Like other famous religious images and statues, the Niñopa has been credited with miracles. These tend to be related to health, domestic peace and economic help. Almost all claims of miracles are local, but some have come from as far away as the United States, supposedly just from seeing the statue’s image on television.
In many ways, this image is thought of as a real child. Many believe that it comes alive at night, playing with donated toys and even wandering around outside. People state that in the morning they find the Niñopa’s belongings strewn about the room in which it sleeps, small footprints in the earth outside or its dirty clothes.
The Niñopa is indeed cared for as if it were a living child. It does not reside in the parish church; instead, each year, a family becomes the child’s “nanny” for 365 days.
The child is “laid down to sleep” each night and “woken” each morning with music before being dressed for the day. Care of the Niñopa, as well as ensuring that it does its official duties — such as attending Mass — is the responsibility of the family hosting him, who are called mayordomos.
Becoming a mayordomo is a serious and expensive undertaking. Chosen families prepare for years, even decades, for the honor of spending a year as the official caretaker of the statue. A room is dedicated to the child, often added to the house. In normal years, this room needs to be accessible so that the public can easily visit, and the image is taken out daily to visit the sick, go to Mass, and appear at festivals. Even routine outings are done with great fanfare, with the mayordomos footing the bill for dancers, food for everyone and more.
The Niñopa in its current location until February 2.
Important festivals related to the Niñopa are Children’s Day (April 30), the posadas before Christmas (December 16–24) and Kings’ Day (January 6). But by far the most important event is Candlemas, when the image moves onto a new family and home. The festival is important enough that it is covered every year by Mexico City media.
Concerns about preserving the condition of the centuries-old statue have led to some changes in how it is handled and how it performs its duties. Clothing cannot have zippers or other metal. Worshippers cannot touch the image directly, only its clothes. It has been on “sabbatical” on several occasions for restoration work by the National Institute of Anthropology and History — locally called “going for a check-up with the doctor.”
The year 2020 has not been normal for anyone, the Niñopa included. As you can imagine, the pandemic has all but shut down festivities related to the image, and visits at the mayordomo’s home are not permitted either. When the transition to the new mayordomo household occurs on February 2, few people will be authorized to attend the ceremonies in person.
However, the current mayordomos, the Paredes Valverde family, says the transfer will be shown live online. This promises to be a positive long-term development, maybe a precedent that will make the child even more accessible to more believers and those of us who are fans of Mexican culture.
There are several Facebook pages dedicated to the Niñopa, but the official is updated regularly with new photos and videos, and believers leave heartfelt messages in the comments section.
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 Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
At left, how the road is supposed to look; at right, the damaged road in San Pedro Yolox.
A recently built road in Oaxaca that was part of a highly promoted federal program to connect remote towns to more populous areas in the state may have to be relocated.
A stretch of highway that connects the municipality of San Pedro Yolox, located in the northern Sierra region, to the rest of the state has sustained severe damage since it was opened just four months ago.
At least 30 meters of the 9-kilometer hydraulic concrete road is collapsing due to a geological fault, according to the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI).
The federal Ministry of Communications and Transportation is currently inspecting the damage to determine whether the road can be repaired or if it should be relocated.
INPI director of infrastructure Vladimir Ortiz Sánchez promised there would be a plan of action by January 18. The choices available to officials are either finding a way to contain the earth in and around the road or reroute that section of the highway.
Despite the collapse, the road has not been closed, and vehicles still travel on it despite the difficulties presented by the damage, authorities said.
The program that built the road has been touted by President López Obrador as a means of providing local employment and keeping infrastructure spending in the communities that benefit.
However, he has also been criticized for not using relevant specialists.
In some reports, poor drainage was cited for the damage in Yolox but a Oaxaca-based civil engineer said it was due to a lack of technical supervision and a failure to control the quality of materials used to build the road.
In 2019 and 2020, 58 roads have been built in Oaxaca under the initiative.
Photo that appeared on hunting ranch's website until yesterday.
Federal environmental authorities have launched an investigation after a photograph appeared Tuesday showing two men next to an American buffalo they had killed in Coahuila.
The photo was taken from the Facebook and Instagram accounts of a hunting ranch near the northern border city of Piedras Negras that offered hunting trips for protected species such as American bison, as American buffalo are also known, and white-tailed deer.
The newspaper El País reported that several photos of bison that were apparently hunted between 2011 and 2015 were posted to the social media accounts of the Buena Vista ranch. The ranch’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well as its website featuring more images of slain wild animals, have now been deleted.
The circulation of the image showing two men posing next to a slain bison, one of whom is toting a firearm, came just days after Environment Minister María Luisa Albores celebrated the successful reintroduction of a second herd of the large mammals, in northern Mexico, writing on Twitter that the “beautiful animals” have returned to the plains of Coahuila after an absence of almost 100 years.
El País said there was no evidence that the buffalo that appears in the photo was reintroduced as part of Mexico’s conservation efforts but the hunting of the animal was nevertheless heavily criticized on social media.
The federal Environment Ministry said in a statement that it checked its records and determined that authorization to hunt bison had never been granted to the Buena Vista ranch.
The ministry said it was collaborating with the environmental protection agency Profepa and the Coahuila government to “clarify the facts,” adding that if it is proven that bison were illegally hunted those responsible will be held to account.
“The government of Mexico is committed to the conservation of this species and its habitat,” the statement said. “We are working for its recovery and … the inquiries to clarify the facts and enforce the environmental law will continue.”
Tens of millions of American bison once roamed Mexico, the United States and Canada but by 1880 there were only about 1,000 of the mammals in the wild in Mexico due to destruction of their habitat, disease and hunting, according to the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (Conanp).
A herd of 23 bison from the Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota was reintroduced to the Janos Biosphere Reserve in Chihuahua in 2009, while a herd of 19 of the mammals from Janos was released into the El Carmen nature reserve in Coahuila last year.
“The establishment of herds in Mexico contributes significantly to the recovery of the species on a continental scale,” according to Conanp.
His worship is punished for an allegedly substandard water tank.
Eschewing long, bureaucratic legal processes to hold him accountable, residents of a southern Chiapas municipality decided to take direct measures against their mayor for what they said was a public works project so poorly done that it was useless.
They tied him to a tree.
Residents of 11 neighborhoods in Frontera Comalapa told the newspaper Diario de Chiapas that they secured Mayor Óscar Ramírez Aguilar to a tree in a public area to expose him to the rest of the town as a “bad public servant” who should not be reelected.
The townspeople say the municipal water storage cistern — whose installation they say was a campaign promise — is in such poor condition that it does not comply with water safety requirements. It currently has no water, they said, due to leaks, and the residents accuse the government of merely patching the tank — badly — to stop them.
In a video on social media, residents showed how the concrete patch job is already chipping away and easily crumbles.
“He promised us that this would be a public works project worthy of Comalapa residents, but [this tank is] a farce; the water system doesn’t work well. It’s an old problem that he should have attended to properly and should have been a priority during his administration because he came to see us in our homes with this promise, and now he doesn’t want to live up to it,” a resident told the newspaper.
After he was released, Ramírez posted a video on his official social media account to counter the residents’ version of the story.
“They did not tie me up,” he claimed. “The meeting was with 11 representatives of Comalapa neighborhoods in order to agree upon details regarding a major public project, the introduction of potable water.”
However, photographs clearly showed the mayor standing before a tree with his hands behind his back.
Three years ago, another local official suffered a similar fate after allegedly failing to deliver promised funds. He was bound to a post in the the central plaza of Comalapa.
A battle is brewing between the federal government and the National Electoral Institute (INE) over a possible ban on the transmission of President López Obrador’s daily press conferences during the lead-up to elections in June.
INE president Lorenzo Córdova said Monday that the broadcast of López Obrador’s morning pressers, known colloquially as mañaneras, must be suspended from April 4 because they constitute government propaganda.
But the president may continue holding his press conferences in the lead-up to state and federal elections on June 6, he said.
“Nobody has proposed suspending or canceling them,” Córdova said.
However, transmission of the conferences – which López Obrador uses to attack opponents as well as tout government programs and policies – must be suspended because the president uses them to promote the achievements of his administration, the INE chief said.
“They constitute government propaganda whose dissemination is prohibited during [election] campaigns by our constitution,” he said.
Córdova noted that the INE applied the law in the lead-up to previous elections and that governments and the media abided by it. He insisted that it is not an attempt to censor or silence the president.
“Freedom of speech prevails in Mexico … but conditions of equity and legality in political competition must also be maintained,” Córdova said.
“The INE will preserve them in accordance with its constitutional responsibilities, just as happened in 2018 [the year of the most recent presidential election], 2019 and 2020. And it will guarantee that citizens can freely vote this year, that their votes are respected and that the conditions of equity are maintained so that we once again have fully democratic elections,” he said.
(The entire lower house of federal Congress will be renewed on June 6 and voters will choose new governors in 15 states and new lawmakers in 30.)
INE councilor Ciro Murayama also spoke out in favor of suspending transmission of the president’s press conferences, which are broadcast on López Obrador’s personal social media accounts, including his popular YouTube channel, as well as government accounts and by media outlets.
The daily press conferences are generally a platform for promoting the government.
“#NoEsCensura [It’s not censorship]. The constitution orders the suspension of all government propaganda during election campaigns. The exception: health, education and civil protection issues. In this way the constitution protects the right to information and avoids government interference in elections,” Murayama wrote on Twitter.
López Obrador takes a very different view, which he outlined at his mañanera on Tuesday.
“Yesterday it was announced that the INE president is proposing the cancellation of the transmission of [press] conferences during two months. As censorship is now in fashion at a global level, they want to silence us,” the president said, apparently referring to the recent suspension of United States President Donald Trump’s social media accounts, which he criticized.
“It really is an attitude of great intolerance. How can they take away the right to freedom of speech? … How can they take away people’s right to information?”
López Obrador told reporters that his government would launch legal action if the INE goes ahead with the plan.
“It would be an act of censorship, an affront, an attack on freedom; this [plan] cannot succeed from a constitutional point of view, from a legal point of view,” he said.
AMLO, as the president is best known, called on Mexicans to express their opinion on whether the INE’s plan is a good idea.
“Is it OK in Mexico, in our country, that the president can’t speak, can’t inform?” he asked.
López Obrador asserted that Córdova shouldn’t be concerned about the transmission of his press conferences during the campaign period because his administration is different from the corrupt governments of the past and wouldn’t seek to use them for electoral gain.
“We’re not the same, we come from a struggle in which we always faced anti-democratic practices that he [Córdova] endorsed, … he always turned a blind eye to electoral frauds, to violations of the law,” AMLO said.
(Córdova has been at the helm of the INE since 2014, overseeing the 2015 midterm federal election at which the president’s Morena party finished a distant fourth.)
López Obrador asserted that he wouldn’t allow the government to use public money to promote itself in the lead-up to the election, which he claimed happened in the past without any opposition from the INE chief.
“We have principles, ideals, we’re not going to do anything that affects democracy. On the contrary, we’re going to promote it. What does that mean in practice? … The government won’t … [interfere] in the electoral process [and] won’t use the government budget” to boost its electoral prospects, he said.
Following his remarks, some opposition lawmakers called on the president not to distort information, asserting that his claim that the INE is trying to silence him is false.
Verónica Juárez, leader of the Democratic Revolution Party in the lower house of Congress, and National Action Party Senator Juan Antonio Martín del Campo said that the INE’s intention is simply to ensure a level playing field for the various political parties.
Juárez said that López Obrador uses his pressers to promote the government and attack his opponents and to do so in a broadcast from the presidential lectern during the campaign period would be illegal.
Martín expressed his support for the possible ban and affirmed that at no time have electoral authorities said their aim is to silence the president and his government.
For his part, Deputy Raúl Eduardo Bonifaz of the ruling Morena party said that Córdova’s intention is misguided because the president uses them to inform the public about government actions – López Obrador said this week that the national transparency watchdog is not needed because his administration maintains “permanent communication” with citizens – and not for promotional purposes.
“We’re in a health emergency and the people must be informed. The INE is violating … the constitution and making a very serious mistake.“
A Guanajuato state legislator who was hoping to run for mayor of Juventino Rosas was shot in the back and killed Tuesday morning.
Authorities said Juan Antonio Acosta Cano’s killers shot him seven times from behind, then left him for dead in his exercise clothes on a downtown street in the city of Juventino Rosas.
Acosta, 55, had registered as a National Action Party candidate for mayor of the municipality, where he had served two previous terms from 2006–2009 and 2012–2015.
“I profoundly lament the killing of state Deputy Juan Antonio Acosta Cano and vehemently condemn these deeds,” Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo said on social media. “I call on the state Attorney General’s Office to investigate this case and bring justice to those responsible.”
Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa Aguirre has assigned the case to a specialized, high-impact-crimes unit for investigation, according to a statement by his office.
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Acosta is the second precandidate for the 2021 elections to be killed. Antonio Hernández Godínez, a Democratic Revolution Party hopeful for mayor of Chilapa de Álvarez, Guerrero, was shot and killed on November 25 at his construction materials business.
It was just a few weeks after he had announced his intention to run for office.
Acosta’s killing cut short a diverse political career. In addition to serving as mayor of Juventino Rosas, he had also served as director of municipal services and as director-general of the DIF family services agency for Guanajuato.
State PAN president Román Cifuentes Negrete said Guanajuato had lost a man committed to Mexico.
Violence in the state, which led the country in homicides last year, has carried on into the new year: 119 people were killed in the first 11 days, including nine members of a family attending a funeral last week in León for a man believed to be a lower-level member of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. The man himself had been shot and killed the day before.
Juventino Rosas, considered by many to be territory of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, is bordered to the south by Villagrán and to the southeast by Celaya.
State lawmaker Acosta was killed while jogging in Juventino Rosas.
The two municipalities were the sites of five firefights between security forces and presumed members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel on Monday that left 10 dead, including one state police officer.
Police attributed those attacks on police to the CJNG and said they had found messages to another unidentified criminal group afterward among the vehicles, explosives, and weapons they confiscated.
There were 9,459 Covid patients in hospitals in the Mexico City metropolitan area Tuesday night.
The number of coronavirus patients in hospitals in the Valley of México metropolitan area is just 53 short of the maximum predicted by the Mexico City government, while the national Covid-19 death toll hit a new single-day high on Tuesday.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said in late December that government modeling showed that 9,512 beds could be occupied by coronavirus patients in January in a worst case scenario.
As of Tuesday night, there were 9,459 patients in hospitals in the metropolitan area, which includes the 16 boroughs of Mexico City and many municipalities in neighboring México state. Of that number, 7,205 are in general care beds and 2,254 are in intensive care beds.
There are 6,912 patients hospitalized in Mexico City itself, according to a government report published Tuesday, yielding an occupancy rate of 87%. Federal data currently shows a 91.5% occupancy rate for general care beds in the capital and an 87% rate for beds with ventilators.
A total of 929 beds in Mexico City hospitals remain available to coronavirus patients, of which 225 have access to ventilators.
Authorities in the capital have added just over 2,000 additional beds to the health system over the past four weeks, increasing overall capacity by 38%. Another 300 beds will be installed in hospitals by the end of January, Sheinbaum told a press conference Tuesday.
The mayor emphasized that increasing hospital capacity doesn’t just involve installing new beds but also ensuring that there are enough medications and healthcare workers to treat the patients that occupy them.
Authorities in Mexico City and México state are aiming to have a total of 10,500 Covid-designated beds by next week but it remains to be seen if their efforts to increase hospital capacity in the Valley of México area will be sufficient in the coming weeks. The coronavirus is spreading more quickly now than at any other time in the pandemic, and a group of Mexican and United States academics predicted last month that the outbreak in the capital would overwhelm its health system this month.
A daily average of 10,827 new cases was reported during the first 12 days of January, a 7% increase compared to December, which was the worst month of the pandemic in terms of new infections with more than 312,000. The single-day record for case numbers was broken on four consecutive days last week, peaking at 16,105 on Saturday.
The Health Ministry reported 14,395 new cases on Tuesday – the second highest single-day total of the pandemic – pushing Mexico’s accumulated tally to 1.55 million.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Mexico City leads the country for confirmed cases with almost 375,000 followed by México state with just over 158,000.
Health authorities also reported a record 1,314 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, a figure that exceeds the previous single-day high of 1,165 by 149, or 13%. Mexico’s official death toll now stands at 135,682, the fourth highest total in the world.
Hospital occupancy across the national health system is 58% for general care beds and 49% for beds with ventilators. Federal data also shows that only 92,879 people – mainly health workers – have received a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine since the vaccination program began three weeks ago, but that number should now increase more rapidly as almost 440,000 doses arrived Tuesday and were to be distributed to all 32 states.
A wider rollout of the vaccine is urgently needed as Mexico contends with a growing coronavirus outbreak largely fueled by gatherings and parties over the Christmas-New Year vacation period and braces for a possible outbreak of the new, more contagious strain of the virus first detected in the United Kingdom in September.
Unlike many countries, Mexico didn’t restrict flights from the U.K. in light of the emergence of the new strain, which is considered up to 70% more transmissible than other strains.
One confirmed case of the new strain and a possible one have already been detected here, the former in Tamaulipas and the latter in Nuevo León.
Nuevo León Health Minister Manuel de la O Cavazos said Tuesday that a man infected with a virus that was 96% similar to the B117 strain had died. Aged in his 60s, the man suffered from diabetes and passed away in a Pemex hospital, the health minister said.
A U.K. citizen confirmed to be infected with the new strain of the virus remains in serious condition in a Tamaulipas hospital. While the new strain of the virus is more contagious than others, health experts say there is no evidence that it causes a more serious Covid-19 illness.
Local police at the scene of a party in Puerto Escondido.
The state of Oaxaca is currently at the orange high risk level on the country’s coronavirus stoplight map, but that is not stopping a wave of beach parties at bars and clubs in Puerto Escondido and the surrounding area.
Residents who say they organized themselves into a group to report such events to municipal authorities after a massive event on Zicatela Beach on January 2 told the newspaper El Universal that such large events have continued to take place and that officials have been slow or ineffectual in responding, even when provided with video evidence.
The videos, which they also shared with the newspaper, show that large parties hosted by beachfront bars and clubs have continued despite Oaxaca’s orange level meaning a prohibition on large gatherings.
“These are big money-making events, and they encourage people to gather in the middle of a full-blown pandemic with no protection, until five or six in the morning,” residents told El Universal. “They even have afterparties.”
In one clip, people can be seen dancing and socializing in close quarters at a scheduled event this week at Xcaanda Club on Zicatela Beach, which was the location of a live electronic music event at La Piedra de La Iguana, a private club in which dozens of people celebrated New Year’s weekend without masks or observing social distancing guidelines. Videos of the event were posted on social media.
According to the group, police did show up at the Xcaanda Club event this week but merely encouraged organizers to end activities. The club was not subsequently shut down or sanctioned, the residents said.
Even more troubling, said the group, is the fact that members believe the event was a replacement of another event that authorities had shut down in advance, one that was supposed to take place January 7–10.
It to be a multiple-day affair titled “Sono Escape to Paradise,” involving 10 deejays and activities at swimming pools and beach areas from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., with an after-party in an undisclosed location until 5 a.m.
Residents point out that the name of the event at the Xcaanda Club, “Escape to Xcaanda,” was similar to the canceled event and that promotional materials for the two were very similar.
Evelio Santos, local tourism director in Santa María Colotepec where Zicatela Beach is located, said that officials shut down operations at bars on the beach this past Tuesday, but residents countered that authorities only did so at 11 p.m., and that when the group tried to call police to investigate partying going on late into the night, no one answered.
The baseball stadium in Palenque that is slated for an upgrade.
President López Obrador’s brother and a large sum of money are being mentioned in the same sentence for the second time in less than six months.
Pío López Obrador found himself in the media spotlight last August after two videos emerged showing him receiving large amounts of cash in 2015. The payments were not corrupt but rather “contributions” from ordinary people to strengthen the Morena party, said AMLO, as the president is widely known.
Now, AMLO’s younger brother is in the news again after the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Urban Planning (Sedatu) awarded an 89-million-peso (US $4.5-million) contract for the upgrade of a stadium in Palenque, Chiapas, that is the home ground of a professional baseball team he founded.
Anti-graft group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) revealed Monday that Tuxtla Gutiérrez-based company Alz Construcciones was awarded a contract to upgrade the home stadium of the Guacamayas (Macaws) of Chiapas. The stadium is owned by the Palenque municipal government.
MCCI reported that Sedatu disqualified 26 bids because they didn’t meet the established criteria. Among them was one proposal to complete the upgrade for 33 million pesos less than the winning bid and another that was 12.5 million pesos cheaper.
The president with members of the Guacamayas at their home stadium in Palenque.
The upgrade includes the construction of team dugouts, dressing rooms, new grandstands and boxes, commercial spaces and public washrooms as well as improvements to the playing surface.
While the money is not going directly to the hands of Pío López Obrador, as was the case with the political “contributions,” the president’s brother, who is also the director of the Guacamayas, lists the Palenque baseball stadium as the club’s business address.
That his brother’s team stands to benefit from a lucrative government contract does not look good for AMLO, who has made combating corruption a central aim of his administration.
The president, who in 2018 posted a video to Twitter that showed him training with the Guacamayas in the lead-up to the presidential election he won, has repeatedly asserted that his government, unlike its predecessors, doesn’t permit nepotism, cronyism or any other forms of corruption.
His commitment to that position was questioned by government critics who charged that the allocation of funds for the stadium upgrade is evidence of hypocrisy and misplaced priorities.
“Mexico is going through one of the worst crises in its history. The health system is on the brink of collapse and thousands of people have lost their jobs. Even so, the López Obrador government prefers to allocate 89 million pesos to a baseball stadium of a team founded by Pío López Obrador,” National Action Party Senator Xóchitl Gálvez wrote on Twitter.
“There are powers above the general interest,” political scientist and columnist Denise Dresser said on Twitter, citing “Pío López Obrador, money and baseball stadiums” as one of several examples.
Her post came in response to a Tuesday morning presidential tweet that asserted that nothing comes before the general interest of the people.
It’s not the first time that López Obrador has come under fire for federal government spending on baseball, which just so happens to be his favorite sport.
He was heavily criticized in 2019 after the government agreed to pay the state of Sonora more than 1 billion pesos to purchase two stadiums that will become baseball schools.
López Obrador faced more condemnation last April when the government ponied up 511 million pesos to complete the purchase of a stadium in Hermosillo at a time when health workers were struggling to find personal protective equipment and supplies to respond to the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic.
