New warning labels now required on packaged foods

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October 1, 2020

Mexicans working abroad continue to send significant amounts of money home despite the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Remittances totaled US $3.57 billion in August, according to the Bank of México, a 5.3% increase compared to the same month last year and 1.2% more than July.

Between January and August, Mexicans working abroad, mainly in the United States, sent $26.39 billion home, the highest total on record for the first eight months of a year. The amount is 9.3% higher than the first eight months of 2019.

Remittances hit an all-time high in March at just over $4 billion and reached their second best level ever in June at $3.54 billion.

But the June level was exceeded by $30 million in August, meaning that month is now the second most significant in terms of money sent to Mexico from abroad.

According to the central bank, an average of $323 was sent in each remittance in August. The amount was the same as each average transfer in July.

Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs, said in September that the economic downturn and rise in unemployment in the United States due to the pandemic didn’t appear to have impacted the flow of money south of the border.

Generous income support programs in the United States, the exchange rate and a deep contraction of economic activity and employment in Mexico may have acted as both “push and pull drivers” of dollar remittances, he said.

GDP contracted almost 20% in the second quarter and millions of people lost their jobs, making remittances even more important to the Mexican economy and low-income families, many of which have family members working abroad.

President López Obrador has described Mexican migrants as “heroes” and praised them in his second annual report for increasing their transfer of remittances to family in Mexico during the difficult economic times.

Source: Milenio (sp) Reuters (sp)

On list of Covid deaths per capita, Mexico is No. 10 at 61.5 per 100,000

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October 1, 2020

Coronavirus deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. johns hopkins university/bbc

With more than 77,000 confirmed Covid-19 fatalities, Mexico has the fourth highest pandemic death toll in the world after the United States, Brazil and India.

But in mortality rate (deaths per capita) rankings, Mexico fares somewhat better: it is No. 10, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University or No. 12 if the micro-states of San Marino and Andorra are included on the list.

Data shows that San Marino and Andorra rank first and fifth for Covid-19 deaths per capita but the tiny European states have only recorded 42 and 53 fatalities, respectively.

Among larger countries, Peru has the highest mortality rate with 101.3 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Belgium and Bolivia follow with rates of 87.7 and 70.2 respectively.

Six other countries have higher mortality rates than Mexico. They are Brazil, Spain, Chile, Ecuador, the United Kingdom and the United States. Those countries have recorded between 63 and 69 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official data.

Based on the official death toll of 77,646, Mexico’s rate is currently 61.5 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants.

With regard to case fatality rate, Mexico ranks third among 168 countries listed by Johns Hopkins University.

With 743,216 confirmed coronavirus cases and 77,646 Covid-19 deaths as of Wednesday, Mexico’s fatality rate is currently 10.4 per 100 cases.

Only Yemen, which has a fatality rate of 28.9, and Italy, with a rate of 11.4, have recorded more deaths among people confirmed to have Covid-19.

Mexican authorities have blamed the high fatality rate here on the prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity, but Mexico’s lower testing rates would also have an effect.

With regard to confirmed coronavirus cases, Mexico ranks ninth for sheer numbers behind the United States, India, Brazil, Russia, Colombia, Peru, Spain and Argentina.

Former health minister Chertorivski: government has not responded to suggestions for fighting the virus.

As for testing, Mexico has the 29th lowest rate among 31 counties included in a graph published by the German statistics portal Statista.

Only 15,102 people per 1 million inhabitants have been tested for Covid-19 in Mexico, the government having focused on testing people with serious coronavirus-like symptoms, meaning that many mild and asymptomatic cases have gone undetected.

Mexico’s Covid-19 death toll is also widely believed to be much higher than official statistics indicate, mainly due to the low testing rate.

Six former federal health ministers called on the government to ramp up testing in a document published last month that set out a new national strategy to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Salomón Chertorivski, one of the ex-ministers, said in an interview Wednesday that it was regrettable that the government hasn’t provided a formal response, although Hugo López-Gatell – who has described widespread testing as “useless, impracticable and very expensive” – publicly mocked and criticized it.

“We haven’t had a response from the government. … We fulfilled … our responsibility to continue contributing to the public debate. In any democracy, in the spirit of plurality, [the contribution] should be well-received but in effect we haven’t been heard,” Chertorivski said.

He said the document he and the other former health ministers penned is not of a political nature but rather contains a “serious analysis” of the situation Mexico faces and a strategy to control the pandemic.

“[It’s] a document that speaks of facts, of evidence, there are no adjectives. [It contains] a serious analysis and timely recommendations. Anyone who reads them will realize that the recommendations [widespread testing, mandatory use of face masks, localized lockdowns] are obvious,” Chertorivski said.

Countries that have had success in controlling their coronavirus outbreaks have implemented them and the World Health Organization promotes them but in Mexico “we’ve decided to ignore them,” he said.

Chertorivski, health minister in the final year of the 2006-12 government led by Felipe Calderón, noted that the government’s “catastrophic scenario” – 60,000 Covid-19 deaths – became a reality more than a month ago and asserted that the strategy to manage the pandemic must change.

“The catastrophic scenario came true long ago. … We’re approaching 80,000 official deaths, there could be more because we know about the excess death [reports]. Unfortunately, we could be talking about 240,000 direct and indirect deaths,” he said.

“This should make us move in a different way.”

Source: BBC Mundo (sp), Milenio (sp)

Mexico hopes US, Canadian visitors will reactivate tourism this winter

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October 1, 2020

Mexico hopes US and Canadian visitors, weary of lockdown, will look south. — Mexico hopes US and Canadian citizens, weary of lockdown, will look south.

Authorities are counting on tourists from the United States and Canada in the coming months to reactivate the sector, which has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a joint press conference Wednesday night with Deputy Health Minister and coronavirus point man Hugo López-Gatell, Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco noted that vacationers from the U.S. and Canada make up 66.4% of all visitors to Mexico, whose proximity makes the country a prime destination.

He said the coronavirus pandemic has changed the way people look at travel. Tourists are reevaluating travel plans and opting for destinations that can be reached by flights of no longer than 4 1/2 hours, which could make Mexico a prime vacation spot.

Mexico is potentially easily accessible from 22 Canadian cities, Torruco said, including Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, Winnipeg and Regina with destinations such as Cancún, Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta and San José del Cabo.

Visitors from the United States, which eased a travel advisory on Mexico in mid-September, have even more options with 37 such routes possible from cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco to destinations like Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, Querétaro, Mexico City, Huatulco and Oaxaca.

While tourism in 2020 is down by around 50%, that could change before the end of the year as travelers weary of lockdown and looking to escape the colder months turn their attention south.

“There could be a pretty interesting rally, especially as Canadians have their winter season from late October to mid-April,” Torruco said.

Should the country move to a yellow light on Mexico’s coronavirus stoplight system by the end of this year, hotel occupancy rates could reach 42.8%, which is slightly higher than the 40.7% predicted two months ago under the same scenario, Torruco said.

If the country remains at an orange level through December, the occupancy estimate drops to 32.9%.

Last year Mexico welcomed 19.6 million international tourists, and projections for 2020 see that number dropping to 6.8 million. Torruco reports that 86% of tourists visit six destinations — Cancún, Mexico City, Playa del Carmen, Los Cabos, Nuevo Vallarta and Puerto Vallarta in order of popularity.

Overnight tourism along the border area, which saw 21.2 million visitors making quick trips into the country in 2019, is expected to drop to 12.3 million this year.

On October 5, Torruco announced the Tourism Ministry will present a strategy to encourage domestic tourism as well by promoting Pueblos Mágicos, or Magical Towns, as attractive destinations for Mexicans to visit.

In 2019, 102.6 million domestic tourists traveled to different destinations within the country. This year Torruco says 59 million Mexicans will travel within the country.

Torruco also announced that the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association is working with Mexico on health protocols to restart the cruise ship industry in November and December.

In 2019 nine million tourists visited Mexico as part of a cruise, a number that is projected to drop to just over three million this year. And whether the cruise industry will start back up any time soon remains to be seen.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced yesterday that they have extended a ban on cruises originating from U.S. ports to at least October 31.

Source: Sipse (sp), Axios (en)

AMLO announces new airport for Tulum, Quintana Roo

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October 1, 2020

Tulum will get an airport, although no details have been offered.

As part of efforts to stimulate the economy in Mexico’s south and southeast an airport will be built in Tulum, Quintana Roo, President López Obrador said Thursday.

“A new airport will be built in Tulum, it will help [the economy] a lot,” he told reporters at his regular news conference.

López Obrador didn’t provide any details about when the project might start or where in Tulum it would be located.

His announcement comes 10 years after former president Felipe Calderón announced that a 3.2-billion-peso airport would be built in the popular beach destination.

But the project never got off the ground and as a result most people travel to Tulum from Cancún, located about 130 kilometers north.

Before López Obrador’s announcement, the Quintana Roo representative of Fonatur, the National Tourism Promotion Fund, said that federal authorities were considering the construction of two new international airports to complement the Maya Train project, which is expected to be completed in 2022.

Raúl Bermúdez said that one of the facilities would be located in Tulum and the other in Mérida, Yucatán.

However, López Obrador’s announcement this morning may have caught authorities in Quintana Roo by surprise: Tourism Minister Marisol Vanegas said Wednesday that she had no knowledge of an airport in Tulum.

In addition to having an air link, Tulum will be connected to the Gulf of Mexico coast via Palenque, Chiapas, the president said, explaining that the Maya Train will run between those two cities and then on to Escárcega, Campeche, from the latter.

López Obrador, who says the Maya Train will spur economic and social development in Mexico’s long-neglected southeast, predicted that Quintana Roo will be one of the first states to recover from the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

“Its tourism activity is a creator and distributor of wealth,” he said.

“A lot of tourists arrive and there is economic growth. [Tourism] provides a lot of work for transportation, hotel and restaurant workers. [Quintana Roo] is very prosperous … in normal circumstances.”

If the Tulum airport is built, it will be the Caribbean coast state’s fourth airport. The commercial airports currently operating in Quintana Roo are located in Cancún, Chetumal and Cozumel, an island off the coast of Playa del Carmen.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp), Mega News (sp)

Drunk driver plows into baby shower, expectant mother loses child

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October 1, 2020

The baby shower in Coatzacoalcos came to a sad and sudden end.

A joyous occasion turned to tragedy on Monday in Veracruz when a drunk driver plowed into a crowd of people at a baby shower, injuring eight and causing the expectant mother to lose her unborn daughter at 39 weeks of pregnancy.

On Monday afternoon, Esmeralda Muñoz and her husband invited friends and family to their home in Coatzacoalcos to celebrate the imminent birth of their second child, a girl the couple had decided to call Yazmin. They had already begun stockpiling diapers for the little girl and had even picked out the outfit she would wear home from the hospital.

Guests gathered on the cordoned-off street outside the home which had been decorated with pink and white balloons to mark the occasion. A gift table had been set up with Yazmin’s name spelled out in large pink letters. A clown was hired to entertain the children.

The peaceful gathering was shattered around 6 p.m. when a 54-year-old man driving a pickup truck drove head-on into the crowd at a high rate of speed, running over at least seven people and killing a dog before ramming into a parked car where the vehicle came to a stop.

Neighbors were able to detain the driver, who appeared to be drunk, until police arrived.

Six women and a child under the age of 8 were taken to the hospital by emergency workers who encountered a chaotic scene littered with the injured, an overturned stroller and broken chairs and tables the truck left in its wake.

“The person came, he let himself come at us at full speed and if it had not been for the white car he would have killed us, he would have taken out all of us,” the clown told a reporter.

Although Esmeralda Muñoz was not directly hurt in the incident, the shock of what happened to friends and loved ones took its toll.

The following morning she began to experience abdominal pains and was taken to the hospital where Yazmin was pronounced dead just days before she was due to be born.

Later that day, Yazmin’s body was turned over to her family and a wake was held at the home where 24 hours earlier they were celebrating her upcoming birth. A tiny white casket was placed on a table adorned with gladiolas while Muñoz remained hospitalized.

Her mother fears that the driver will soon be released from jail because direct injuries from the crash were relatively minor.

“They told us that the man was going to get out in 48 hours and was only going to pay for injuries that could be verified. I have my other 11-year-old daughter bedridden, she can’t even move,” she said.

The driver, also a neighbor of the Muñoz family, was scheduled to appear before a judge on Thursday.

Source: Infobae (sp), La Silla Rota (sp)

Police clash with teachers in efforts to clear rail blockades

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October 1, 2020

Police on the tracks in Uruapan, Michoacán.

Law enforcement and protesters in Uruapan and Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, clashed Wednesday over control of the railway tracks, leaving 14 police officers injured and seven protesters arrested as authorities removed rail blockades.

The protesters are teachers and teaching students, known as normalistas, who have blocked the railway on and off for the past three weeks, demanding the payment of bonuses and scholarships and the automatic allocation of jobs to more than 2,000 recent graduates.

The teachers, who are affiliated with the CNTE teachers’ union, were briefly removed last week under pressure from state police, but by Friday blockades were back in at least seven municipalities.

In yesterday’s clashes, state police and the National Guard moved in on teachers in Caltzontzin and Pátzcuaro after negotiations broke down.

Footage of the confrontation appears to show authorities launching flash bangs and tear gas at protesters.

The normalistas responded by throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks and rocks at authorities who forcibly removed them from the tracks.

Ten state police officers and four members of the National Guard were injured in Caltzontzin, and seven protesters were arrested in Pátzcuaro.

Blockades on the tracks have interrupted the transport of goods to and from the center of the country, which is causing economic losses estimated at 50 million pesos (US $2.27 million) per day.

Michoacán Industry Association president Carlos Alberto Enríquez Barajas says that regardless of whether the teachers’ demands are legitimate, “this can no longer be the way to function in Michoacán.”

The blockades also scare off investors and drive up logistical costs that reduce Michoacán’s competitiveness, Enríquez said.

Currently, 12 trains are reported stranded in different parts of the state and the country, unable to reach their destinations due to the blockades.

In 2019 normalistas blocked the railway tracks in Michoacán for a total of 62 days.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Health minister promises free medications, specialty healthcare as of December 1

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October 1, 2020

Opposition members greeted Health Minister Alcocer, center, with signs reading 'Stop corruption' and 'Too much ineptitude.'

Medications and medical care at all public healthcare facilities including specialty hospitals will be free effective December 1, Health Minister Jorge Alcocer said Wednesday.

Speaking in the Senate, Alcocer said the government was complying with its commitment to make specialty health care free as of that date.

“We’re working so that it happens on that date or before if possible,” he said.

The government launched a new universal healthcare scheme known as Insabi in January but to date it has only provided free services at primary and secondary health care facilities, not tertiary level ones such as national health institutes and other highly-specialized hospitals.

Patients who qualify for the Insabi scheme and their family members have complained that they have had to purchase medications when hospitals should have provided them free of charge. Alcocer ensured that will no longer be the case by December 1.

The health minister acknowledged that providing free medical services at all levels of care will be expensive but stressed that the government sees spending in the health sector as an investment rather than a burden.

He said the government’s central aim is to reduce healthcare inequality by ensuring that all people without health insurance such as that provided by the Mexican Social Security Institute and the State Workers Social Security Institute can access free of charge all the medical services and medications they require.

Earlier in his Senate appearance, Alcocer defended the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in the face of harsh criticism and difficult questions from opposition party senators.

“The government response … has focused on saving lives,” he said, highlighting the various measures that were implemented to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Alcocer said that the government’s pandemic response has avoided a “collapse” of the health system and has taken people’s rights and dignity into account. (Unlike many countries in the region, a hard lockdown was never enforced in Mexico.)

The health minister said the government inherited a health system with incomplete infrastructure and a shortage of more than 200,000 workers but nevertheless quickly prepared it to receive an influx of coronavirus patients. In a few short months, 969 public hospitals were equipped to treat Covid patients, Alcocer said.

Services provided by tertiary level facilities such as national health institutes and other highly-specialized hospitals will become free.

An analysis published by Amnesty International at the start of September said that more health workers have died in Mexico after contracting Covid-19 than in any other country but the health minister rejected that was the case.

Citing per capita figures rather than sheer numbers, Alcocer said that Mexico ranked 12th for Covid-19 deaths among health workers, not first.

He asserted that new coronavirus case numbers have been on the wane for nine weeks and highlighted that half of the country’s 32 states are close to green light status according to the federal government’s stoplight system to assess the risk of infection.

(Sixteen states are currently considered yellow light “medium risk,” 15 are orange light “high risk” and one – Campeche – is green light “low risk.”)

During Alcocer’s appearance in the upper house, National Action Party Senator Alejandra Reynosa said that the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis constituted a “crime” given that so many people have lost their lives.

She asserted that the death toll is undoubtedly much higher than the official number, which as of Wednesday was 77,646.

Sylvana Beltrones of the Institutional Revolutionary Party asked Alcocer what it would take for the government to reconsider its strategy and undertake a widespread Covid-19 testing campaign. Would a death of toll 80,000 convince the government that its strategy is not working, she probed.

Verónica Delgadillo of the Citizens Movement party asked Alcocer how many more people would have to die before he and Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus czar, would resign.

She asked him why he had permitted “the errors and negligence” of López-Gatell and inquired: “Aren’t you ashamed to know Mexico has the highest mortality rate in the world?”

Acocer responded correctly that according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Mexico in fact has the 12th highest mortality rate (deaths per capita) in the world, although if the micro-states of San Marino and Andorra are excluded it ranks 10th.

Source: El Universal (sp), La Jornada (sp)

Fake companies used to syphon millions of pesos from federal programs

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September 30, 2020

Homes on this street in Monterrey were listed as the addresses of some of the shell companies.

Shell companies with links to drug traffickers were used to syphon millions of pesos from federal programs during the government of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, according to a report by the newspaper Reforma.

The Software Industry Development Program (Prosoft), established during the 2000-2006 presidency of Vicente Fox, was one of those targeted by the illicit scheme.

A network of illegal companies in Nuevo León received 152.8 million pesos (US $6.9 million at today’s exchange rate) from the government via the program, Reforma said.

The illegal companies were created out of thin air, the newspaper said, adding that people who lived in poor neighborhoods in and around Monterrey were listed as directors or shareholders without their knowledge.

Some of the shell companies vanished after they received government funding. Others still appear on suspicious company lists prepared by the federal tax agency SAT.

Prosoft distributed 3.3 billion pesos (US $149.2 million) to companies and individuals during Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 term, meaning that there was plenty of scope for corrupt activity.

It is unclear how much of that amount went to fake companies but in Nuevo León, where just under 338 million pesos was distributed, almost half of the funds distributed by Prosoft went to such firms.

Reforma and Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), an independent anti-graft group, revealed in an article published Tuesday that SAT has launched a money laundering and tax fraud probe into a network of at least 45 shell companies that operated in the northern state.

The network of companies was used by leaders of the Zetas drug cartel, the Peña Nieto administration and several state governments, Reforma and MCCI said. Some of those companies illegally siphoned Prosoft funds.

The United States Department of Treasury also detected that companies within the illicit network were involved in suspicious operations.

The Peña Nieto government, which was plagued by corruption scandals, allegedly made extensive use of shell companies to divert public money.

Eleven federal agencies allegedly diverted billions of pesos through shell companies between 2013 and 2014. Former cabinet minister Rosario Robles was arrested in connection with the so-called “Master Fraud,” which syphoned money via contracts with public universities. She remains in prison awaiting trial.

The Ministry of Defense during the Peña Nieto government allegedly paid almost 2 billion pesos to 45 shell companies to which it awarded supply contracts related to construction work at the cancelled Mexico City airport project.

Chief Auditor David Colmenares said earlier this year that there were was a question mark over the use of 50.94 billion pesos (US $2.2 billion) during 2018, the final year of the previous government’s six-year term.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Residents fined for filling Oaxaca city potholes: they didn’t have a permit

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September 30, 2020