The coronavirus pandemic continued to wreak havoc on Mexico’s tourism industry in November, new data shows.
International arrivals declined 54.3% in November compared to the same month of 2019, while visitors’ total expenditures dropped by an even higher amount, the national statistics agency Inegi reported Monday.
Inegi said that just under 3.92 million visitors entered Mexico in the penultimate month of last year, 4.66 million fewer than in November 2019.
The visitors spent US $856.6 million while in the country, a 54.8% decline compared to November 2019 when the total outlay was just under $1.9 billion.
Of the 3.92 million visitors, 2.09 million were classified as international tourists. That figure represents a 45.6% decline compared to November 2019.
Airport arrivals declined 55% to 726,258 while land border crossings into Mexico fell 33% to 258,645. Visits by “border tourists” – people entering Mexico for a short period of time from the United States, Guatemala and Belize – declined 40.1% in November to just over 1.1 million.
The Mexico-United States border is supposedly closed to nonessential travel but U.S. tourists have reportedly had few problems traveling south.
Spending by the 2.09 million international tourists totaled $248.4 million, a 69.2% annual decline. Spending on an individual tourist basis by passengers who arrived by air was down 4.9% in November to $878.
Inegi data also shows that the number of Mexicans traveling abroad decreased significantly in November. There were just under 2.25 million departures, a 68.9% decline compared to November 2019.
The decline in international arrivals is a double-edged sword for Mexico. While fewer tourists is in one respect welcome because it inevitably means fewer cases of the coronavirus are imported, the reduction in visitor numbers also means lower or no income for the millions of people who work in the tourism sector, which before the pandemic contributed to almost 10% of GDP.
The reduction in tourist numbers has not affected Mexico’s tourism destinations equally. Quintana Roo, for example, has recently experienced an influx of visitors as U.S. tourists, locked out of European countries and other popular tourism destinations around the world due to the raging coronavirus pandemic at home, flock to the Caribbean coast state.
Mexico’s tourism industry began to reopen in June after shutting down for over two months due to a nationwide suspension of nonessential economic activities.
Quintana Roo, home to popular destinations such as Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, and Baja California Sur, where Los Cabos is located, are currently “medium” risk yellow on the coronavirus stoplight map. Both states are open for tourism although limits on capacity at hotels and restaurants remain in place.
Two other states, Veracruz and Aguascalientes, are yellow while two, Campeche and Chiapas, are “low” risk green. There are five “maximum” risk red light states – Mexico City, México state, Baja California, Morelos and Guanajuato – while the 21 other states are “high” risk orange.
Mexico is currently going through its most difficult time of the pandemic, with daily case numbers and Covid-19 deaths at or near record levels in recent days. The accumulated case tally is 1.53 million, the 13th highest total in the world, while the official death toll is 133,706, the fourth highest total behind those of the United States, Brazil and India.
The Vicente Guerrero hospital where senior staff have quit.
Citing shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and little government support in their ongoing battle against Covid-19, five department chiefs at a Social Security Institute (IMSS) hospital in Acapulco have resigned since December.
In the last month, medical staff in charge of the Vincente Guerrero hospital’s surgical, anesthesia, X-ray, emergency, and internal medicine departments have all quit, beginning on December 18 with the resignation of the chief of the emergency department, who had contracted Covid-19 in 2020 and had since returned to duty.
But the resigning chiefs have not been relieved of their duties, according to a statement by doctors, nurses and other workers at the hospital, “because no one wants to take [the positions].”
Medical staff said they have reached the limit of their abilities to treat Covid patients, given the protective equipment shortages and a lack of government support.
Staff also warned that they have seen increased numbers of Covid cases arriving at the hospital, in part due to people who are coming from other Guerrero municipalities, and even Mexico City, looking for treatment.
“These are people are coming from Mexico City because the hospitals there are full,” one worker, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the newspaper Milenio.
As of last week, Mexico City’s IMSS hospitals had only six general care beds left, although it did have 200 beds with ventilators, 183 of which IMSS said could be used by patients who don’t require intubation. Some experts have predicted that the city’s hospitals will run out of Covid beds this month.
Elsewhere in Guerrero, IMSS and State Workers Social Security Institute hospitals in Iguala were full or close to it last week. There were beds available in a provisional Covid unit, but no medical personnel to treat patients, according to Mayor Antonio Jaimes Herrera.
Coffins may soon be in short supply, warn funeral directors.
Crematoriums and funeral homes in major cities are overflowing with bodies thanks to the acceleration of Covid-19 infections.
Mexico City’s 17 crematoriums told the newspaper Reforma that they are running extra shifts and performing cremations into the early hours of the morning and still can’t keep up with the demand. Some said they are running more than 48 hours behind schedule and that the situation is only worsening.
Typically, families receive ashes from a funeral home or crematorium on the same day or within 24 hours.
“This second wave [of the pandemic] is very worrying for the funerary sector. It’s alarming,” said David Vélez, president of the Association of Funeral Home Owners and Embalmers in Mexico City. “Although we have worked hand-in-hand with authorities to streamline all the necessary procedures, regrettably we can’t keep up with the demand.”
Vélez estimates that the number of dead in Mexico City has risen more than 100% since the city’s first wave of outbreaks.
The situation is similar in other cities: in Monterrey, Nuevo León, employees at the Protecto Deco Santa Catarina funeral home said that the delivery of ashes to families is now taking between 15 and 30 days. They said that another branch in the center of the city used to receive no more than five bodies per day, and now it seeing 10–12.
The ashes of one 73-year-old woman’s ashes cremated there who died December 26 from Covid-19 were only delivered to her family Saturday, they said.
Meanwhile, in Guadalajara, the city’s municipal director of cemeteries told Reforma that public crematoriums (for those on the Mexican social security system) have seen more than a 161% increase in the number of bodies cremated this year. The city processed 2,013 bodies in 2020, compared to 769 in 2019.
“It’s more than double,” said Alberto Martínez. “We have the four cremation ovens working at 100% capacity,” he said.
The handling of thousands of bodies without pause over the 10 months of the pandemic has also taken its toll on staff at Mexico City’s funeral homes and crematoriums, Vélez observed. Up to 20% of employees in the field have died since the pandemic began, he said, and 50% have come down with Covid.
“I don’t know if I’m stressed out or if I’ve gone mad; it’s that bad. It’s really hard to comprehend it when someone is begging you for your services,” he added.
The increase in bodies has affected bureaucratic processes as well. The process of certifying a death and releasing a body to family members used to take 10 minutes but now takes about 12 hours, Vélez said.
Another effect may soon be seen in the availability of coffins. A shortage of steel and wood may see funeral homes run out if there isn’t a decline in death numbers in the next few months, said the national association of funeral directors.
Funeral homes and crematoriums have long been the canaries in the coal mine throughout the pandemic. During May’s first wave of the virus, a Reuters survey of funeral homes in Mexico City reported that they were seeing unprecedented increases in the number of bodies. One Mexico City funeral director told Forbes México in May that demand for his services had quadrupled compared to 2019.
Smoke billows from the Mexico City Metro building in the historic center on Saturday.
Six lines of the Mexico City Metro remained out of service Monday morning after a fire broke out in the subway system’s downtown substation on Saturday, claiming the life of a female police officer.
A fire began at the Buen Tono substation in the Metro system headquarters in the capital’s historic center before 6:00 a.m and subsequently spread to other floors of the building. Lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the system were shut down as a result of the blaze, which was apparently caused by an oil spill.
The Mexico City government said that a policewoman died as the result of a fall from the subway building during the fire. She was identified as María Guadalupe Cornejo, a young mother of a 3-year-old child.
More than 30 people, including Metro workers and on-site police, were rescued from the building and transferred to hospital for treatment for smoke inhalation. At least one firefighter who responded to the blaze also required medical treatment.
Smoke that billowed out of the Metro building on Saturday morning filled the sky above Mexico City’s downtown and was visible from various points across the capital.
The blaze was eventually brought under total control almost 12 hours after it started, although Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said that it was 90% extinguished at about 9:00 a.m. Saturday.
The mayor and Metro director Florencia Serranía said at a press conference Sunday that work to restore service to lines 4, 5 and 6 would take 48 hours once it started. It was unclear how long it would take for services to be resumed on lines 1, 2 and 3, which are the oldest and busiest of the system. The newspaper Milenio reported that it could take up to three months to fully repair the damage caused by the fire.
Bus services are currently running along the routes of all six lines that were knocked offline. The other six lines of the Metro are operating normally.
A former director of the Metro who is now a Mexico City lawmaker said the substation where the fire occurred should have been modernized 20 years ago but was not.
“These installations should have been replaced 20 years ago [or] at least changed gradually [but] that wasn’t the case,” Jorge Gaviño, a deputy with the Democratic Revolution Party, said in a television interview.
“They’re old, obsolete systems that definitely have to be given adequate maintenance to avoid … risks to passengers.”
Police vehicles were pressed into service to help move stranded Metro passengers.
Gaviño said the Mexico City Congress will ask the Metro system’s management to supply the maintenance records of the substation so that they can be analyzed to determine why the fire broke out and how a similar event can be avoided in the future.
“We have to find out if … this regrettable accident was foreseeable or not,” he told Milenio Television.
One thing was made clear at Sunday’s press conference — the head of the Metro was not responsible. Serranía said “it’s necessary to reiterate that by statute maintenance programs are the responsibility of installations management …”
When a reporter asked if she was not responsible for that particular area and had no responsibility for the fire, Serranía said, “… I’m only the director general of the Metro.”
The federal Attorney General’s Office has launched investigations into the death of the police officer and the cause of the fire.
It is the first time that multiple lines of the Metro have been shut down for a prolonged period of time. About 5 million trips per day were taken on the system prior to the coronavirus pandemic but ridership declined significantly in 2020 and remained below normal levels when Saturday’s fire occurred. Still, more than 1 million passengers were affected by Saturday’s shutdown.
Line 1 of the Metro – one of the largest subway systems in the world – began operations in 1969 while lines 2 and 3 opened the following year. The system’s newest line – 12 – began operations in 2012 but was partially shut down from March 2014 to December 2015 due to structural problems.
For many, social distancing and other protective measures have not been a priority.
The coronavirus is spreading more quickly now than at any other time in the pandemic.
The federal Health Ministry reported 107,945 new cases in the first 10 days of January, including a single-day record of 16,105 cases on Saturday.
The confirmed case tally over the 10-day period represents an 8% increase compared to the final 10 days of 2020, during which 100,179 cases were reported.
The rapid pace at which the virus is now spreading is emphasized by the fact that the single-day record for case numbers was broken on four consecutive days last week: 13,345 cases were reported last Wednesday, 13,734 on Thursday, 14,362 on Friday and 16,105 on Saturday.
New cases spiked in November and have been high ever since. milenio
Health authorities also registered a five-figure case tally on Sunday, with 10,003 new cases pushing Mexico’s accumulated total to 1.53 million.
Weekly case figures also illustrate the gravity of the current situation. A total of 80,492 new cases were reported between January 3 and 9, more than in any other seven-day period of the pandemic.
The final full week of November marked a clear beginning to the dire situation Mexico is now facing. The Health Ministry reported 68,715 new cases between November 22 and 28, a 133% increase compared to the previous week’s tally of 29,435.
The weekly case tally surpassed 60,000 in every subsequent week, rising above 70,000 in the second and third weeks of December before a new record in excess of 80,000 was set last week.
Malaquías López, a public health professor at the National Autonomous University and spokesperson for the university’s Covid-19 commission, told the newspaper Milenio that it’s not surprising that case numbers have recently spiked. He attributed the increase to end-of-year celebrations and a relaxation of coronavirus restrictions in some states.
Mexico’s Covid-19 death toll has also increased at a rapid pace this month. Authorities reported 7,899 additional fatalities over the first 10 days of 2021, a 9.5% increase compared to the final 10 days of last year.
More than 1,000 fatalities were reported on five consecutive days between last Tuesday and Saturday, including a single-day record of 1,165 deaths last Wednesday. The death toll now stands at 133,706 after 502 fatalities were added on Sunday.
Further cause for concern is that the more contagious strain of the coronavirus first detected in the United Kingdom in September has made its way to Mexico. The Tamaulipas Health Ministry reported that the B117 variant of the virus, considered to be up to 70% more transmissible than most other strains, was detected in a 56-year-old man who traveled to Matamoros via Mexico City, arriving in the northern border city on December 29.
Federal health authorities said Sunday that the man confirmed to have been infected with the new virus strain is a citizen of the United Kingdom who was recently in that country. Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that the man is in hospital receiving treatment and intubated.
Tamaulipas Health Minister Gloria Molina Gamboa said that crew and other passengers on the Mexico City-Matamoros flight were tested for the coronavirus and their results came back negative.
Meanwhile, federal government communications coordinator Jesús Ramírez – President López Obrador’s spokesman – said Sunday that he had tested positive for Covid-19.
“I am in good health but I’ll be working from home following all the sanitary protocols,” he wrote on Twitter.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Ramírez appeared with López Obrador on Friday, passing a microphone to him at the president’s regular news conference. Neither man was wearing a face mask.
Despite his close proximity to Ramírez, López Obrador hasn’t gone into isolation. He held his regular news conference on Monday morning, announcing that an ambitious program to vaccinate more than 12 million seniors by the end of March will begin in February.
The president appeared to recognize that his government’s efforts to control the pandemic have failed.
“The only option we have, the only alternative to combat the pandemic, is the vaccine,” he said.
Muzquiz's Mascogo community is descended from Black Seminoles in the U.S.
Tucked away in a corner of the state of Coahuila, only a couple of hours from the United States border, lies a municipality with an open secret: two communities — one of African descendants (called Mascogos in Mexico) and one of Kickapoo, both who fled the United States in the 19th century.
The twin communities are both called Nacimiento, referring to the birth of Jesus, but distinguished from each other not so subtly with the appendages de los Negros and de los Indios. Both communities belong to the municipality of Muzquiz, a coal mining and ranching area.
The two ethnicities share similar stories: both were displaced on multiple occasions in the 19th century as the United States expanded and consolidated its hold on territories west and into Florida. Both groups would find at least a measure of asylum in Mexican territory, generally in exchange for military services. Both groups have familial and tribal connections to the United States.
Their communities are separate from the main town of Muzquiz, and only partly connected to the rest of the world. Traditional life for both revolves around farming, livestock and semiautonomous communal governing systems. Both groups have received attention from U.S. academic publications and press.
Although many in Coahuila consider both the Kickapoo and the Mascogos to be somewhat hostile to outsiders, both are important to the identity of Muzquiz. The municipality became a Pueblo Mágico, or Magical Town, in 2018 in large part due to their presence.
Traditional Mascogo building style appears to owe a debt to U.S. log cabins.
Both groups wound up here because Muzquiz began as a fort in 1737 to protect Spanish settlements from Comanche attacks. The current name was given to the municipality in 1832 in honor of an interim president of Mexico who was from here.
However, there are important differences in the stories of the two groups. The Kickapoo were forced south from their native Wisconsin during the 18th and 19th centuries. They splintered into different bands, which have descendants in various parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
The group that made its way to Coahuila was first allowed into Mexican Texas in 1824, but protection was not assured. The U.S. put diplomatic pressure on Mexico on various occasions during the 1800s to “return” Kickapoo to be settled on reservations. When Texas broke off and joined the Union, some Kickapoo went south to Coahuila, gaining permission in exchange for scouting and other services to the Mexican government.
Continued efforts by U.S. troops to “repatriate” these Kickapoo led to the Mexican government granting them communal lands to bolster their legal status.
Interestingly, in the early 20th century, a group of 200 Kickapoo left Nacimiento — not for the United States but for Tamichopa, Sonora, joined by a group from Oklahoma. This Sonoran Kickapoo community still exists today.
The Kickapoo have had success in maintaining their identity and bloodlines. Everyone in Nacimiento de los Indios speaks Kickapoo, the only non-native Indian language spoken in Mexico. They also speak Spanish or English or both.
A store selling Kickapoo products.
Their community is more isolated than that of the Mascogos, only partially on the grid. They still take their drinking water directly from the headwaters of the Sabinas River, the cleanest river water I have seen in Mexico. Some gas and electricity (from generators) are used, but most communications and other services must be obtained in Muzquiz or Eagle Pass, Texas.
Religious life remains strong for the Kickapoo and relatively unchanged. Like the Huichol indigenous people of Mexico, the deer figures prominently in Kickapoo beliefs. Men still traditionally hunt, with deerskin moccasins and other apparel highly prized. In Nacimiento, they have adapted to farming and livestock raising but keep a nomadic element to their lifestyle. They have seasonal moves between Nacimiento and various parts of the United States, often arranging with the neighboring Mascogos to care for their property while they are gone. This migration now figures into their religious ceremonies as well.
Their strong ties and conservation of identity mean that this group is recognized by tribal authorities in the United States. Nacimiento Kickapoo automatically have dual Mexican and U.S. citizenship and can travel freely between the two countries.
The Mascogos, or Negro Mascogos, are the descendants of Black Seminoles. This ethnicity arose with escaped slaves making their way to Spanish Florida, then intermarrying with native Seminoles. When the United States took Florida, all Seminoles were forced west. The people who became the Mascogos (the name probably derived from “Muskogee”) were led into Coahuila by the Black Seminole leader John Horse in the 1850s.
Like the Kickapoo, the Mascogos were allowed into Texas, and later Coahuila, in exchange for military services, which also included land as compensation. The Mascogos worked as scouts for both the Mexican and U.S. armies, and for this reason, they are divided between Nacimiento and Brackettville, Texas, with family ties maintaining a connection between the two communities.
Their African-American heritage is visible in their cuisine (a mix of Mexican and Deep South foods and cooking techniques), their traditional houses (based on log cabins) and their Protestant Christian beliefs. They spoke English until a couple of generations ago when it became relegated only to hymns and the very old.
African American influence shows up in these Mascogo-style ribs.
The Mascogos consider themselves a tribe, and in 2017 the governor of Coahuila recognized them as an indigenous group with the hope of gaining support for them from Mexico’s National Institute of Indigenous Peoples. However, unlike the Kickapoo, the Mascogos do not have recognition by the Seminole tribe in the U.S., nor the citizenship privileges that go along with it. This is mostly likely due to their mixed ancestry, which continues as Mascogos intermarry with local “Mexicans.”
Neither community has more than a couple of hundred members, so their futures are questionable at the very least. In addition to assimilation into Mexican society, the other factor working against them is the economic draw of migrating north across a border that is tantalizingly close. Efforts such as Pueblo Mágico status have been made in the hopes of somehow maintaining their heritage only five to six generations after their arrival.
For Mexicans such as Fernando Mendoza, promotor of Pueblos Mágicos in Mexico, Muzquiz’s history in coal mining, livestock and leather is as important as its Mascogo and Kickapoo communities (who often do much of the same work). But I think Americans like me can be forgiven if we are drawn more strongly to our “lost brethren” forced to flee to another country so long ago.
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.
Members of the Rastreadoras del Fuerte at work, searching for their loved ones.
Verónica López Álvarez sinks a long, T-shaped rod into the soft earth, pulls it out, smells it and screws up her face. Six other women flock around to sniff too, reeling back in horror at a stench like rotting fish.
Then it’s action stations. “We’re going to dig here,” says Delfina Herrera Ruíz. “It’s a body.”
With their shovels, the women — mostly housewives in their 40s and 50s, some manicured and made-up in the sticky morning sun — start sifting the earth with shallow, careful movements. The banter en route to El Teroque Viejo, in Sinaloa in northwest Mexico has given way to a grim focus.
Mirna Medina Quiñonez, the group’s leader, hits a bone with her spade. Among butterflies fluttering in the breeze and birds singing, these mothers and sisters are hunting for their dead — what Medina calls their missing “treasures.” Their group is known as the Rastreadoras del Fuerte (the searchers of El Fuerte) — a reference to the place where Medina’s son disappeared.
Their “treasures” are among the more than 82,000 people recorded as having disappeared and not been located in Mexico since 2006, when the government declared a war on drug cartels, unleashing terrible, seemingly unstoppable violence. Notwithstanding Covid-19, 2020 may prove to have been the deadliest year on record. As of November there had been 31,871 murders, compared with a record 34,648 in 2019.
Rastreadoras del Fuerte: hunting for the dead.
These women have been rescuing their loved ones’ memories in more ways than one. Together, they have created Recipes to Remember, a book of favourite dishes of some of the missing. Each dish has the name of the person it was made for and the date they disappeared. It was the idea of Zahara Gómez Lucini, a Spanish-Argentine photographer who has documented the group since 2016.
The book has only recently been published and when I show it to Herrera, it is the first time she has seen it. It gives her goosebumps just to hold it, she says. Turning to the recipe for shrimp ceviche that she contributed in memory of her youngest brother, Luis Reinaldo Herrera Ruíz, she smiles. Then sorrow clouds her face: Luis Reinaldo disappeared in 2016, aged 51. With her baseball cap bearing the message “Where are you, you old bastard?” she has been looking for him ever since.
The women’s shovels have unearthed some shredded orange plastic, sometimes used to tie victims up. At the sight of the bone, the mood becomes tense. Medina expertly teases it free. A heady stench hangs in the air. More bones emerge.
But it is a false alarm. These are the ribs of an animal — they are too big, and the smell is not that of a decomposing human body, she says. “Still, we have to rule everything out.” The women fill in their hole, pack up their shovels, and set off to search somewhere else.
According to official data, Mexico has counted 4,092 clandestine graves and exhumed 6,900 bodies since 2006. Sinaloa is notorious as the home of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, once Mexico’s most powerful drug baron, now locked up in a maximum-security jail in the U.S. The city of Los Mochis, where the Rastreadoras are based, is currently in the grip of Fausto Isidro Meza Flores, known as El Chapo Isidro.
The Rastreadoras give short shrift to the idea that they could turn to the authorities for help, rather than searching for victims themselves. As shown in the mass disappearance of 43 Mexican students in 2014, which rocked the country, municipal police have a terrible reputation for being infiltrated by cartels. “They won’t help us — they’re the same ones who are involved,” scoffs Reyna Rodríguez Peñuelas, whose son, Eduardo González Rodríguez, disappeared in 2016.
‘The recipe book enables the Rastreadoras to connect with the memory of their loved ones through food and brings the readers closer … It weaves empathy:’ Mexico City chef and restaurateur Enrique Olvera.
Since taking office in 2018, the government of President López Obrador has stepped up efforts to locate missing people and identify bodies. It says the number of reported disappearances for 2020 was trending down. But the government acknowledged in November that in 2019, a record 8,804 people had been reported missing and not been found.
Worse, says Karla Quintana, head of the National Search Commission, a government agency spearheading efforts to find Mexico’s missing, “there have only been 25 sentences passed for forced disappearances in Mexico … and we’re still missing more than 82,000 people.”
Many, like Rosa Elvira Cervantes Meza, whose son Víctor Ulíses Acosta Cervantes has been missing for “four years, two months,” count the time with the precision of a new mother measuring her baby’s age to the week.
Ofelia Flores Moreno succeeded in finding the body of her husband, José Candelario Espinoza Ochoa, a month after he disappeared in 2017, but not thanks to the police. “They say they’ll investigate, but do nothing. If I went there now, they’d say the same thing,” she says, speaking in the Rastreadoras’ offices where the walls are plastered with missing-person notices.
The women have gathered to be presented with copies of the book. Jessica Higuera Torres speaks of her son Jesús Javier López Higuera, who disappeared in 2018, in the present tense. For the book, she prepared a soup with pork rind because “he loves it — when I was cooking, I felt as though he was by my side.”
On the other hand, Esther Preciado no longer cooks chile ribs, her recipe for her daughter’s father, Vladimir Castro Flores, who has been missing since 2013. “That one’s just for the memories now,” she says.
Mirna Medina founded the Rastreadoras after her son disappeared in 2014. She found his remains three years later.
A former nursery-school teacher, Rastreadoras founder Medina, 50, talks fast, fuelled by “about 20 cups of coffee a day.” She founded the organization after her son, Roberto Corrales Medina, disappeared in 2014, leaving three daughters and another child on the way. “I kept looking for Roberto because they left him somewhere,” she says simply. Three years to the day after he went missing, she located bone fragments that proved to be his. Having found him, she sports a green shirt with “Promise Kept” on the back. Those still hunting wear white ones that read: “I’ll look for you until I find you.”
“You get addicted to searching,” she says. The 120 or so Rastreadoras have found 68 people, but only about a quarter of those are their missing loved ones. She acknowledges many victims may have got into trouble because they sold or used drugs; others were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Despite being the driving force behind the Rastreadoras, Medina says she almost didn’t meet the deadline for the book. Her recipe for pizadillas, meat and cheese-filled tortillas, was the last to be included and, she says: “I’m terrible at cooking.” Yet preparing it, she felt her son’s eyes on her “and that relieved some of the pain.”
For the Rastreadoras, food strengthens community — and, as Gómez says, “the book is a tool for building ties.” After coming back empty-handed from today’s search, the women pull out a table and share a meal.
“This recipe book is very important because it’s an exercise in collective memory and that’s very necessary,” says Enrique Olvera, the chef and restaurateur behind Pujol in Mexico City and Cosme in New York and a sponsor of the book. “It enables the Rastreadoras to connect with the memory of their loved ones through food and brings us, the readers, closer … It weaves empathy.” Olvera donated proceeds from dinners organized with two other Mexican chefs, Lalo García and Óscar Herrera, to help fund the book’s publication. Half of its proceeds go to the Rastreadoras.
Demonstrating her friend Susy Atondo Gastélum’s favourite dish, Erika Acosta González de-veins shrimps, chops cucumbers and squeezes lemons. She sprinkles the seafood with coarse salt — “Susy said it doesn’t pickle properly otherwise” — and follows her friend’s preference for red, not white, onion, plus green serrano chiles.
“I said when she comes back to see me, this is the first thing I’ll make her,” she smiles, although it has been more than seven years. “I dreamed she’d died and I’d find her. I dreamed of her eight days in a row. But she’s never told me where she is.”
Jude Webber is The Financial Times‘ Mexico and Central America correspondent.
A lot hinges on Mexico's Covid vaccination program.
Pandemic, pandemic, pandemic. You could be forgiven for thinking that there was little else on the table this coming year, and what a long, lonely year it already feels like, as we stand atop the winter summit and look down onto the lowlands of the year ahead.
But is there only darkness before us? Or are there surprising chinks of light in the months to come in Mexico’s deep south?
Of course, the impact of the pandemic across the region in 2020 can hardly be overstated; not just in terms of the effect of the Covid virus itself, but how it has highlighted existing systemic issues in state economies, healthcare systems, and the wider society which underpins these. Mérida and Yucatán have perhaps suffered most, regionally, with high-profile clusters and deaths, but the Yucatecos have always had bounce-backability, and the city of Mérida remains an international hub for industry and tourism (even with the reduced numbers we are seeing), medical infrastructure, agriculture, and new industries.
Though it has suffered, and its people have suffered, so has everyone else: look to Mérida to come back strong and likely announce surprising, innovative initiatives to spring forward ahead of the national and regional competition.
Added to which, the current economic downturn is likely to fuel a perhaps unrealistic hope that the construction and implementation of the Maya Train will be a cure-all for the region’s ills. Most politicians would have us believe that this is so, but scratch the surface and there is still widespread general unrest and often downright anger at how the project has been forced on — in particular — indigenous communities and their territories. If we can be sure of anything this coming year it is that regional politicians will be waxing lyrical about the transformative capabilities of the train, over a thin veneer of general unrest.
The open question is not whether the train will get built. Despite flaws in established national and international protocol, the federal government has pinned its coat to this particular mast, so the only real question is how the conflict will play out — because conflict there certainly is; one doesn’t have to look too far to find it. Current strategy seems to be to downplay or even ignore dissenting voices, which — rather than heal the wounds — irritates the wound further.
Talking of open wounds, on October 2020, at the 38th UN session of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, representatives from the 33 countries in the region signed a political declaration aimed at a sustainable and inclusive recovery from Covid-19. The declaration acknowledges the relevance of inequalities, and promises an increase in social protection.
You may be forgiven for thinking that these are promises we have heard before. Consequently, though it remains to be seen whether the political will of a handful of representatives can be translated into meaningful, equitable action, there are nonetheless signs of burgeoning change in the region, in particular among women’s groups and the social impact they are having.
Of course, although no physical legislation has been passed in Mexico’s south, the legalization of abortion in Argentina has been seen by feminist groups as a sign that their activism is on the up, and that they need to push on, because although reproductive rights are an aspect of the topic, at heart the actual topic is gender equality.
The increasing recognition of the rights of women in several parts of the world is coinciding with the emergence of a generational voice in Latin America who are demanding that governments address gender inequality, femicide and domestic violence by enshrining it into their statutes, just as Chile did following the October 2020 referendum. The women of the Yucatán see and hear this, and are a part of it.
Recovery in most Latin American economies after the Covid-19 downturn is expected to be slow, partly due to the systemic economic and political weaknesses across the region which preceded the pandemic, and partly due to the severity of the damage inflicted upon the labour market.
Despite this, the outlook for most of the region is hopeful; most countries are expected to return to their pre-pandemic GDP in the second half of 2022 (though forecasts for Mexico and Argentina stretch into 2023 and beyond) with GDP in the six largest economies in the region expected to grow by 4.1% in 2021 after falling an estimated 7.7% in 2020.
Of course much of this is dependent on the practical emergence of one of a number of vaccines currently being sanctioned, as well as their mass take-up, because without this happening .…
Maybe this colossal roll-out, more than any other, is the real challenge for governments in 2021. They have showed structural promise in dealing with the pandemic to date, but reaching the vast majority of citizens with effective, safe, functional vaccines?
Well, good luck 2021. We wish you all the best, for all our sakes.
Shannon Collins is environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Brothers Julian, left, and Edmond Benloulou emigrated to Mexico from Canada.
Of the many reasons to visit Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, dining out is sure to top the list. You can find the incredible food at any number of restaurants that range from burger-selling street carts to mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall spots to fine dining establishments. When it comes to searching for good food in this part of Mexico, most people will agree it is nearly impossible to get a bad meal.
Although Ixtapa is quite different from Zihuatanejo — the former is more resort and hotels while the latter is a bustling community — there is an almost overwhelming choice of places to dine.
However, two standouts are Bistro Soleiado in Ixtapa, owned by Edmond Benloulou, and El Mediterraneo in Zihuatanejo, owned by his younger brother Julian. Both say that the restaurant business is in their blood, thanks to their family being in the business for a long time.
Born and raised in North Africa under the French government in Oran, Algeria, the family first moved to Marseille, France, in 1962. After 10 years there, they emigrated to Montreal and became Canadian citizens.
In 1980, Edmond, who trained as a chef in Montreal and Mexico City, grew tired of Canadian winters and decided to move to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. Once here, he worked at several restaurants before opening a few of his own, including his current venture, Bistro Soleiado. With over 40 years in the industry, it is safe to say that he is one of the oldest restaurateurs in the area.
Bistro Soleiado features live music in the evenings.
Meanwhile, Julian followed his brother to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo in 1999 for much the same reason: to escape the cold.
He opened the first El Mediterraneo restaurant on the malecón, the waterfront walkway closest to the pier, but later moved to its current location next to the Catholic church on Cinco de Mayo.
Although the two brothers’ restaurants are similar in some ways — primarily in that both restaurants specialize in Mediterranean food — the differences in style and menu and décor offer patrons a unique experience at each.
Bistro Soleiado is mostly an open patio filled with plants, with tables under umbrellas or sheltered by a canopy. A large replica of the Eiffel Tower at its entrance lights up by night, and it is easy to imagine you’re at a sidewalk cafe in Europe for breakfast or a candlelit romantic dinner.
During the evenings, you will find local musicians playing on a small stage set to one side. The restaurant also boasts a small boutique that carries exquisite purses, clothing, jewelry and various gift items made by Mexican artists. The hallway walls are adorned with articles written about Edmond’s restaurant and photos with famous patrons such as Pierce Brosnan (of James Bond fame) and numerous Mexican actors and celebrities.
In contrast, El Mediterraneo, which also gives off a definite European vibe, consists of two dining areas and a bar. The first dining room closest to the street is the perfect place to people-watch, while the bar is an excellent spot for a quiet drink or as a place to wait until your table is ready. A stunning 3-D print takes up one wall depicting a famous street in Italy’s Lake Como area; it is easy to imagine stepping through it to another time and place.
A long dining table at El Mediterraneo.
The second dining area is breezy and expansive, open to the sky and featuring plenty of plants to allow the gentle air to flow through. Throughout the restaurant, you will find paintings for sale by local artists, including Julian’s wife, Gloria Hernandez, as well as artist Oscar Armenta and the late Kristy Alopaeus, a painter from Finland.
Julian supports the arts and local organizations in various ways, whether as host for a charity dinner, presenting a night of opera or showcasing dancers and local musicians throughout the dinner hours.
No matter your preference, you’ll want to try them both.
• For reservations:
Bistro Soleiado (in front of the Hotel Park Royal)
Blvd. Paseo Ixtapa, Zona Hotelera, Ixtapa
Call: 755 553 0420
El Mediterraneo
Av 5 de Mayo 4, Centro Zihuatanejo
Call: 755 554 1202
The writer divides her time between Canada and Zihuatanejo.
Mexico City ambulances are finding it hard to locate beds for Covid patients.
New coronavirus case numbers broke the record for the third day in a row Friday.
Health officials said last night that 14,362 new cases were registered, bringing the accumulated total to 1,507,931 since the pandemic began early this year.
It was also the fourth consecutive day on which Covid-19 deaths exceeded 1,000. There were 1,038 fatalities registered, bringing that total to 132,069.
Rising case numbers continue to put pressure on hospitals in Mexico City, where the virus has hit harder than any other region of the country.
As of Friday, 89% of general hospital beds and 84% of those with ventilators were occupied, while figures for México state were only slightly lower.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
“The whole system is completely saturated. There’s no room in the public or private hospitals now,” said paramedic Daniel Reyes, decked from head to toe in protective gear, including eye goggles and a thick face mask.
He said ambulances are forced to spend hours driving around looking for a hospital bed.
Sometimes, after fruitlessly searching for a hospital with room, there is no other option but to take the patient home.
Then the problem turns to locating oxygen, for which heavy demand has pushed up prices and stretched supplies.
Meanwhile, Puebla has announced it will extend an alert that was to conclude January 12 in a bid to avoid what the governor called “the collapse of the healthcare system.”
Miguel Barbosa told a press conference Friday that the maximum alert will continue until January 25, prohibiting the opening of nonessential businesses.
Industrial activity considered essential must not operate at more than 30% capacity, and an increased police presence in the streets will enforce compliance with the restrictive measures.
The state is painted medium-risk yellow on the coronavirus stoplight map, although Puebla city and its metropolitan area is currently designated maximum-risk red.
If hospitalizations continue at the current rate, the system will be saturated by January 18, said Health Minister José Antonio Martínez.
Hospital occupancy in the state on Friday was just 10 patients shy of the peak reached in July, when 1,018 beds were occupied.
