Professing humility and taking a few swipes at his “conservative adversaries,” President López Obrador was keen to demonstrate his approval rating in comparison with other world leaders on Wednesday, insisting that Mexican news media would never publish the story and that the public should know.
The international data intelligence company Morning Consult ranked López Obrador in second place among 13 world leaders, second only to India President Narendra Modi, as of December 22.
The Mexican leader’s rating on the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker was 29, the difference between the number of people who approve of his performance and those who disapprove.
Modi, with a rating of 55, has been the top ranked world leader since the beginning of the year. López Obrador also held second place at the start of the year but by June he had dropped to just 16, ranking sixth place among world leaders.
But he has made a slow but steady comeback since then.
The president’s rating is in green on the global leaders rating tracker. morning consult
His current rating on the Morning Consult survey is the same as that on Oraculus, a “poll of polls” that compiles a monthly average of all the principal opinion polls in Mexico.
The president’s December approval rating stands at 61% and his disapproval rating at 32%.
He expressed gratitude for the public’s support and confidence “in spite of the campaign against” him.
López Obrador has frequently used his morning press conference to claim that he has been attacked in the news media more than any other president.
But he he has spent more time attacking the media and his “conservative adversaries.”
Candidates for Covid vaccination line up at a military hospital in Mexico City.
Some frontline healthcare workers waited for up to 10 hours for a Covid shot Wednesday only to find they weren’t on the list.
Doctors and nurses charged disorder in the vaccination process at the El Vergel military hospital in Mexico City after arriving in the early hours of the morning only to find later in the day they were not on the list of candidates.
Among them was an emergency Covid nurse who said the vaccine was being administered to cooks, dentists and administrators while frontline workers were not eligible due to the organizational problems.
There was a similar situation at a military hospital in Naucalpan, México state, where night-shift workers faced long lines and long waits after going straight from work to the hospital for their vaccination appointments.
When they complained to military personnel they were advised that the federal Ministry of Health was responsible for setting up the appointments.
The armed forces have been put in charge of distributing and administering the Covid vaccine in a national vaccination program that kicked off last week.
The program has designated healthcare workers who are in contact with Covid patients as its first priority, but others have been jumping the line for a shot.
The director of the Adolfo López Mateos medical centre in Toluca, México state, has been temporarily relieved of his duties while he is investigated for having members of his family inoculated.
The case was denounced during Wednesday’s presidential press conference.
President López Obrador said Thursday that thanks to such denouncements there should be no further cases of jumping the vaccination line.
He expects people will not do so for fear of being shamed by a public denouncement.
Runners in the ultramarathon in Urique, Chihuahua. Photos courtesy of ESPN
In recent years, the world has grown increasingly familiar with the indigenous Mexican community of the Tarahumara, or Rarámuri. A source of that familiarity has been the Tarahumara prowess in ultrarunning, in which athletes regularly log ultramarathon-type mileage in the Copper Canyon of Chihuahua.
Yet, the attention they have received is in some ways a mixed blessing. International runners who flocked to Chihuahua for training or recreational purposes encountered some tensions while competing in ultramarathons against indigenous runners eking out a subsistence living amid conditions of organized crime and narco-violence.
In 2015, these tensions erupted prior to an ultramarathon, resulting in frustration among the Tarahumara, the visiting runners and the local government of the town of Urique. This story is part of the narrative of The Infinite Race, a new documentary by Mexican filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz, whose past works include Harvest Season, a look at Mexican migrant workers in the California wine counties of Napa and Sonoma; Kingdom of Shadows, which focuses on drug violence on the U.S.-Mexico border; and a piece on Latino baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente for the PBS series American Experience.
The Infinite Race premiered on December 15 on ESPN 30 for 30 sports documentary series in the US and on the ESPN Deportes channel in Mexico.
“Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Ruiz, whose family has also welcomed a new baby during this time. “Audience response has been very, very good.”
Guanajuato-born Ruiz, a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States, traveled to the hard-to-access Copper Canyon to meet the Tarahumara. He captured the mountain scenery in gorgeous aerial shots from a Cessna aircraft while compiling multiple perspectives on the community, including through three of its members: famed ultrarunner Silvino Cubesare Quimare, activist Irma Chavez and student-athlete Catalina Rascon.
“A complex situation deserves more than one voice,” Ruiz said. “Silvino Cubesare is a veteran runner, kind of a legendary runner … Irma Chavez is an activist who is very critical of the ultramarathons Silvino has participated in. Catalina Rascón is a young up-and-comer representing a new generation, the only Tarahumara student in her high school at the time we were filming. She’s since graduated.”
Ruiz explained, “As a filmmaker, I am really drawn to stories where you don’t just hear one protagonist but voices of different perspectives.”
Yet he describes The Infinite Race as not a typical sports film but “a very different kind of film. I think it speaks to what 30 for 30 is trying to do, and is doing, in the last few years.”
Like the aerial images of the Copper Canyons, he wanted to focus a wide lens on the Tarahumara — not just on their impressive accomplishments in running, which include long-distance games with a ball, but also the increasing dangers they face from the criminal activity around them.
He learned about these dangers from “Drug Runners,” a 2017 Texas Monthly magazine article by Ryan Goldberg that looked at how organized crime groups in Chihuahua encroached on Tarahumara settlements and land.
“They’ve also been conscripting Tarahumara runners,” Ruiz explained.
According to the film, Cubesare was charged with attempting to smuggle drugs into the U.S.
Hunger and poverty are also issues for the Tarahumara, Ruiz says.
“That part of Chihuahua suffered from some very severe droughts in recent years. Illegal logging and deforestation make it harder for people just eking out a living as subsistence farmers and small agricultural producers.”
Silvino Cubesare, a Tarahumara ultramarathoner in the race that was featured in the film, won the bronze medal in the inaugural Indigenous World Games in 2015.
That’s why some of them run, he says.
“The race we documented [in Urique] offers an opportunity to receive vouchers for corn and other basic foodstuffs. Some runners are running for food.”
Over a decade ago, Tarahumara runners achieved fame through the bestseller Born to Run by Chris McDougall. The book also chronicled American ultrarunner Micah True, nicknamed “Caballo Blanco,” (White Horse). He was one of a few outsiders who have visited the Copper Canyon to learn how to run with the indigenous community.
A result of the book was an interest in barefoot running or minimalist footwear, which some say is a Tarahumara tradition, although this gets disputed in the film.
After getting to know the Tarahumara, True decided to create an ultramarathon that would serve several purposes, including benefiting the community.
“He had very noble intentions,” Ruiz said. “It was a kind of creation of coexistence that, in his view, would help the Tarahumara. After publication of the book in 2009, the race became a kind of bucket-list item for international runners. One American runner said the book became a kind of bible.”
True died while running in 2012, but the ultramarathon continued, named Ultra Marathon Caballo Blanco in his honor and run by professional race organizers in partnership with the local government of Urique.
Ruiz says this partnership fractured during the 2015 event because of tensions related to the race and a worsening security situation. Prior to the race, he says, there were “reports of gunfire, a kidnapping, even an execution. Race organizers were put in an impossible situation.
Copper Canyon, where the Ultra Marathon Caballo Blanco takes place.
“What I find interesting is that for a lot of international runners, the race was a kind of paradise, utopia. [And] here you had the violence of northern Mexico, Chihuahua, kind of a rude interruption. Worlds collided. It ended up becoming a pivotal moment in the film.”
In part by using footage obtained from Canadians in town for the race, Ruiz shows the differing reactions of multiple groups to the decision to cancel the official event.
“I understand the organizers [were concerned about] liability and safety,” Ruiz said. “They did not want people to get hurt.” However, he adds, “the local government in Urique asked, ‘Who are these guys telling us to cancel? This is our town. They’re only here a few weeks, then fly out.’”
Ruiz describes the Tarahumara’s collective response as: “It’s nothing new for us. We deal with narco-violence on a regular basis. This is our chance to run and get vouchers for our families’ survival.”
“Every group in the film sees it very differently,” Ruiz reflected. “As much as possible as a filmmaker, you try — I try very hard — to not pass judgment on people but rather think about how they’re seeing the situation. I tried very hard to see everyone’s position.”
The ultramarathon continued after 2015, with some changes. Since then, the event has been “organized almost exclusively by the Urique government, the local government,” Ruiz says, with less participation from international runners, while the “previous organizers, the people who organized it from 2012 to 2015, no longer organize it as a result of the tensions that erupted in 2015.”
Ruiz could not confirm whether the ultramarathon took place this year — “I believe there was a limited race, I’m not quite [sure],” he said. “The race usually started in March, [which this year] was kind of a few weeks after the U.S. [went into] a kind of lockdown.” The next such race is scheduled for March 2021.
Bernardo Ruiz, director of “The Infinite Race” documentary, on ESPN this month.
Asked whether he himself did any running with the Tarahumara, Ruiz replied, “I was chasing after scenes.”
He explained that he worked with a very small team, including one particular colleague who is “in better shape than I am, a better runner.”
Yet he did end 2020 with a strong finishing kick for his film on one of the world’s biggest platforms.
“It was nice to kind of close the year with a broadcast on ESPN,” Ruiz said.
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The witch stood silent as gasoline was poured around her, her unflinching gaze aimed over the heads of the people who had gathered to watch her burn. A spark flared at the bottom of her dress, and flames slowly spread. As the flames moved upward, a cheer went up from the 2,000 people surrounding her, and soon she was completely engulfed in flames.
Happily, she wasn’t a real witch but La Befana, and the burning of the 4.5-meter-tall figure that represents her, called la quema, is a tradition observed in Chipilo, an Italian pueblo in Puebla.
La Befana made her way to Chipilo from the Véneto region of northern Italy, which is where the people that settled the pueblo originally came from in 1882. The tradition is observed on the night of January 5, but it wasn’t celebrated in Chipilo until Eduardo Piloni Stefanonni, the director of the town’s Casa d’Italia, visited Véneto in the mid-1990s and witnessed the ritual.
“I thought, ‘Why don’t we have this in Chipilo?’” he says. “It is part of our culture.”
Grupo La Befana builds the figure in Francisco Berra’s carpentry shop.
The name La Befana comes from the Greek word for “epiphany.” The holiday of Epiphany, celebrated on January 6, commemorates the arrival of the Three Wise Men coming to see the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
There are many stories about how La Befana came to be. In one version, the Three Wise Men lost their way as they traveled to Bethlehem and stopped to ask an old woman for directions. She didn’t know but gave them food and shelter. When they were leaving the next day, they invited her to join them, but she refused. She later changed her mind but couldn’t find them and now wanders the world giving candy to good boys and girls.
Although she’s a figure found throughout Italy, her reputation differs greatly depending on the region. In some areas, she’s a bad witch. But in parts of northern Italy and in Chipilo, “She is a good witch,” said Zuri Merlo, director of the Chipilo Nostro, a festival celebrating the town’s founding. “She has the power to get rid of bad things and bring good things.”
Her treatment varies as well.
“It is the custom in the north of Italy to burn her,” said Piloni. “From the central to the south, she is not burned. But in our region, Véneto, they burn her.”
And so they burn her in Chipilo as well.
The ritualized burning of La Befana, which chipileños call “la quema”.
Last year, beginning on October, 24 men belonging to the Grupo La Befana gathered in Francisco Berra’s carpentry shop to build the witch. Throughout the month and into November, the large room resounded with Spanish and the Venetian dialect as the men switched easily between the two.
“We’re a group of friends,” said Héctor Mazzocco Sevenello, the group’s leader. “We each pay 200 pesos for general costs. We meet on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, about an hour each day.”
La Befana starts as a simple metal frame that’s then covered with strips of wood, cardboard and newspaper. She takes on a different look each year.
“Before, she was painted,” said Berra, “but now she’s dressed and we gave her hair. It’s more real.”
In addition to preserving a tradition from their homeland, La Befana has another purpose.
“It is the pleasure of being together,” said Mazzocco. “Many members are married, and they broke their routine to work on this. It is our culture, our tradition, our language and habits. They are all being lost, and we as members are motivated by these activities to continue preserving what came before.”
Early on January 5, La Befana was taken from Berra’s shop and placed in front of the church where she stayed until that evening, when her final journey began. She was loaded onto a trailer and driven slowly down the pueblo’s main street to the baseball field, accompanied by the ringing of a handbell and trailed by several dozen people.
At the ballfield, she was placed in the center of a large circle, surrounded by a large crowd. After she was doused with gasoline, Mazzocco began the countdown with the crowd joining in. At “uno,” she was set on fire and soon became a tower of flames.
Each fall, chipileños build La Befana, a nod to the town’s European roots. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
“Some say the fire guides the Wise Men to Jesus,” said Mazzocco.
“Others say that it’s to bring light to the world,” Merlo added. “La Befana is a way to say good-bye to winter, to say good-bye to bad things in the past year. She takes all the bad things I want to get rid of.
And it is a time to meet, to be with others.”
When La Befana was nothing more than a large pile of smoldering ashes, members of Grupo La Befana handed out bags of candy to children. As the crowd drifted away, Merlo reflected on La Befana’s significance for the pueblo.
“These are traditions that bring chipileños closer to their roots. But it is also to share it with people from outside the pueblo.”
She then paused and added, “And it is a great chipileña party.”
Joseph Sorrentino is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
A healthcare worker goes door-to-door to conduct Covid-19 tests in Mexico City.
The number of coronavirus deaths reported on Tuesday hit the highest level recorded this month, federal health officials said.
The day’s death toll, which includes deaths that occurred previously but had not immediately been attributed to Covid-19, reached 990, pushing the accumulated total to 123,845.
The total number of cases registered since the pandemic began last March is now 1.4 million, up 12,099 since Monday.
Deputy Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell said there were 18,893 Covid patients in hospitals across the country, although the majority — close to 10,000 — are in hospitals in the Valley of México.
The government’s coronavirus point man also said that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had been administered to 18,519 healthcare workers in Mexico City, Coahuila and Nuevo León.
It is the first vaccine to arrive in Mexico but others are expected to follow soon.
President López Obrador said Wednesday that he expects the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine to arrive in March following its approval Tuesday by the United Kingdom.
Mexico already has a contract to purchase the vaccine while the Carlos Slim Foundation has an agreement with AstraZeneca to aid in its production and distribution in Mexico and Argentina.
Hospital Central, where Dr. Rugerio has been working on the front lines against Covid-19.
Just in time for Christmas, Dr. Alejandra Rugerio Trujillo was vaccinated against Covid-19 Thursday, giving her an even better holiday gift: the chance to see her 10-year-old daughter again for the first time in eight months.
Rugerio, chief of the intensive therapy department at Mexico City’s Central Military Hospital, sees some of the most serious cases of Covid-19. She received the vaccination as part of one of the nation’s first wave of immunizations against the coronavirus for medical personnel.
One day after being administered the vaccine at a city hospital, she saw her daughter on Christmas Day.
“She was so big, because a child in eight months grows a lot and, well, now she’s almost a young lady, almost my size despite being only 10 years old, and she was so pretty,” she told Reforma newspaper. “She recognized me, though. She ran up to hug me and her father and, well, that day was just marvelous. We gave her what Santa had brought her under the Christmas tree, which were some dolls that she wanted. We spent the whole afternoon together; we ate pizza. We had a great Christmas Day.”
Because she and her husband are both doctors with the Mexican military, treating patients with Covid on a daily basis, they sent their daughter Camila to live with family eight months ago to reduce the risk of infecting her with the disease they have seen ravage so many people.
“It was very complicated. She is my only daughter,” Rugerio said. “We are only my husband, my daughter and myself. And with the uncertainty that existed with the pandemic, we made the difficult decision to have her be with our family in Sinaloa.”
Despite the sacrifices she’s had to make as a frontline worker, Rugerio, who has been a military doctor for 18 years, said she has experienced moments of pride, satisfaction, and even happiness watching some of her patients in critical condition overcome the coronavirus.
“It’s been very arduous work, not just for the doctors but for all the staff — the orderlies, the cleaning personnel — but it has its rewards, to give families their parents back or to watch our patients recover despite having been in grave condition; that is a great compensation,” she said.
But the most encouraging moment of the pandemic for her so far, she said, has been the day she received the vaccine.
“After so many months of uncertainty, it has given us a bit of light in our work,” she said.
Mexico's coronavirus vaccination program is under way in three states.
The national Covid vaccination program has opened new opportunities for corruption, revealing that the battle against the scourge has not been won quite yet.
In Mexico City, leaders of the government workers union attempted to jump the line and get on the list of healthcare workers due to be vaccinated, despite not being employed in the health sector.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said leaders of union local Section 12 who tried to obtain Covid shots will be identified and punished.
“I want to be very emphatic about this: the president has been very clear about it [and] I’m totally in agreement: there are rules to receive the vaccine. The first to receive [it] are healthcare personnel on the front line in treating Covid …
“… there is [to be] no influence peddling here.”
In México state, an investigation is under way at a military hospital where a doctor has been accused of obtaining Covid vaccinations for his family.
President López Obrador confirmed Wednesday that the army had been accused of allowing the vaccination of a doctor’s wife and one or two of his daughters.
The president urged citizens to denounce such acts of influence peddling.
Also in México state, the director of a hospital will be punished for having arranged the vaccination of two family members.
The state health minister said José Rogel Romero of the Adolfo López Mateos medical center would be sanctioned and that the filtering of candidates for vaccination would be reinforced.
It wasn’t revealed whether the two family members would be allowed to get the second shot necessary for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
In Coahuila, 29 medical personnel who allegedly have no contact with Covid patients were vaccinated, the newspaper Milenio reported.
More Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine arrived in Mexico today from Belgium, bringing the total to 53,625 doses.
Mexico’s vaccination program has begun in three states with the inoculation of healthcare workers on the front lines of the battle against Covid-19. Senior citizens will be up next. Their shots will begin in January.
The Tepoztlán toll plaza has been a popular target for hijackers.
While toll plazas in many Mexican states have been repeatedly hijacked by more or less peaceful groups of people collecting “voluntary tolls” from drivers, a violent robbery of a plaza in Morelos early Monday suggests that criminals may be upping their game in response to increased security measures against the takeovers.
An armed gang of about 10 people attacked employees on duty at the Tepoztlán toll plaza, tied them up and stole 150,000 pesos (US $7,500) in cash from the toll booths and vault, as well as electronic equipment and cell phones.
By the time the National Guard arrived, the thieves had fled. The toll plaza employees were taken to a hospital in Cuernavaca and treated for injuries.
Employees union leader Martín Curiel told the newspaper Reforma that the plaza has been targeted for takeovers several times but never with such violence. He attributed the nature of the robbery to would-be hijackers changing their tactics.
“In my view, this You are not allowed to view this event. stems from … the battle by the National Guard and the federal roads and bridges administration [Capufe] against the [toll plaza] takeovers,” he said. “This toll plaza was constantly being taken over, but now it’s been several weeks since they’ve dared to. Now, direct robbery is the strategy …”
Curiel said his union is worried about its members’ safety and has sent formal letters to Capufe, demanding information about what measures the government is taking to avoid more such robberies.
Government-built homes are often too small for families and lack amenities.
When I was a kid, there was a period of time when I was semi-obsessed with strangers’ houses. Whenever someone would drive me somewhere in a car, I’d fixate on the outside of different homes and wonder what it would be like to live there.
More than that, I’d wonder how I would fix it up if I lived there myself. How would I make it a nice place to live? If the house were ugly, I’d think about how I could make it into something I could feel proud of and comfortable within. For me, improving lives always starts at the physical level: how can we turn what’s around us into the best possible place so that we can be the best, happiest and most productive possible versions of ourselves?
Those who read my column regularly will have recognized by now that I have a special place in my heart for design, aesthetics and the urban landscape. To a great extent, I still mentally practice the same childhood pastime I described above. Drop me into any neighborhood and I can immediately list at least six things in under 30 seconds that I’d do to improve it.
Not to insult Mexico, but at least in my city this is a very easy exercise to do; sometimes I can get up to 12 things, especially when passing through housing developments that look like the zombie apocalypse has already come and gone. It made me very unproud and frustrated to learn that the Matt Damon movie Elysium’s futuristic dystopia was filmed in modern-day Mexico City. To be fair, it was filmed in a dump that’s now closed, and other utopic parts were filmed in the wealthiest parts of the same city. But still, that site isn’t abandoned. People lived there when it was a dump, and people still live there.
I do this same activity from within homes: what would I do with this space if I lived here? I’ve seen a lot of odd construction in this country, but the projects that confuse me the most are the social housing units, many of which are constructed and sold through Infonavit (the National Workers’ Housing Fund).
It’s one thing if an overly enthusiastic individual designs and builds a house himself and ends up with some odd features; it’s quite another when these homes number in the thousands, are situated in areas without basic services and are the result of gigantic government contracts.
Because of my own interest in the topic, the recent article on a planned housing restoration project immediately got my attention. The picture that went with it is dismal: a row of abandoned houses, all of which look too small for more than one or two people.
I just don’t get it. Didn’t any of these people play the video game Sim City when they were kids? You can’t just plop down a bunch of houses in the middle of nowhere and expect happy families to magically insert themselves. You need stores, yo. You also need schools, hospitals and a basic façade of security. For the most part, I feel that Mexico far surpasses my home country of the United States on this front as most urban neighborhoods here are at least somewhat self-sustainable: they have stores and places to buy things like bread, tortillas and school supplies.
Among some of the reasons these social housing units have been abandoned are that “… they’re too small for growing families, they’re far from work centers, they lack access to basic services and they’re located in areas with high levels of violence.” My, that does put a damper on things.
Infonavit director Carlos Martínez Velázquez admitted last year that “… many of the housing projects were not feasible from their inception. But construction permits were granted regardless.”
When the municipality doesn’t prioritize comfortable, safe and well-planned communities (either new or current ones), it shows, and I’ve found that many Mexicans have simply resigned themselves to the idea that rather than counting on the government to fix potholes or paint speed bumps, they’ll just have to focus on not tripping over them (especially at night when streetlamps may or may not be present or working).
This is a problem that needs to be fixed.
Recognizing it is the first step, though I’d still like to reserve at least five minutes of our time for jumping up and down in rage that someone actually gave out construction permits and lots and lots of money to create these useless space-suckers; the money came from somewhere, and there was a lot of it — my best and only guess is that it involved corruption, i.e., that people in power’s not-very-smart nephews were awarded lucrative contracts for designing and creating places that turned out to be not worth the materials used.
OK, that’s done. Thank you for indulging me. Now, let’s please focus on improving the communities where people live already and then move on to creating new ones that are intentionally great.
A visit to Mexico’s Alliance for Urban Regeneration website shows both hope and that they have the right idea. After all, I can drone on all day with my own bourgeois ideas about what houses and neighborhoods need and should have, but ultimately the input and participation of those who actually live in the community is the magic ingredient. This is an idea that doesn’t seem to have been implemented much in Mexico in general — those in power actually asking people what they want and need rather than assuming that they know best.
But even before we get to that point, surely we can agree on the necessity of a few basics: paved roads, sidewalks, hookups to water and electricity, drainage, streetlights, schools, stores, doctors, trash pickup, a police station, parks and playgrounds, a community center, public transportation routes and — not to get too ahead of myself — maybe even some closets and counter space in the kitchens and a shelf in the bathroom to set your towel and soap upon. How about bedrooms that are accessible without having to walk through another bedroom?
People know what they need and want, and protocols exist for involving them in the community-building process. So, instead of just demolishing old structures and renovating others, let’s get some input from the people who might actually live there.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com.
Mexico bid a sad and nostalgic farewell Monday to the legendary composer and performer Armando Manzanero, who died at 85 of renal failure after losing a battle with Covid-19.
Manzanero’s songs are known around the world in several different languages, having been recorded by legends themselves, from Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Dionne Warwick to Andrea Bocelli.
The English version of his song Somos Novios, recorded as It’s Impossible by Perry Como, was nominated for a Grammy. He won a Latin Grammy in 2001 for his album Duets, a lifetime achievement award from the organization in 2014, and another lifetime achievement award at the 2020 Billboard Latin Music Awards. He also won many international music awards.
Born in Yucatán, Manzanero started out his career as a musical director for the Mexican branch of CBS International in 1957 and as a music promoter for the EMI record label. His own recording career began after an RCA Victor executive convinced him to record an album of romantic songs.
Many of his decades-long catalog of over 600 songs have been hits not only for himself but also for several successive generations of Mexican musicians.
“A song has to be written with sincerity,” Manzanero told Billboard in 2003. “It can’t be written with the desire to have instant success or passing success but wanting to have a song forever. It’s like when you do a painting. You have to do it right so that painting remains on the wall forever. That’s been my secret.”
“We celebrate his life and work,” said the Latin Recording Academy in a statement issued after Manzanero’s death. “An irreplaceable loss for the Latin music world. We are with the Manzanero family in their grief.”
Perhaps another testament to Manzanero’s impact on Mexican culture was President López Obrador’s remarks on his death.
“Armando Manzanero was a sensitive man, a man of the people. That’s why I lament his death. He was also a great composer.”
The artist was hospitalized on December 17 after being treated at home for five days following his diagnosis with Covid. Once under hospital care, Manzanero’s symptoms appeared to be improving as recently as December 27. However, doctors said that renal complications did not improve and ultimately caused his death.
Manzanero received the Covid diagnosis just six days after attending the inauguration of Casa de Manzanero, a museum in Mérida displaying his instruments, awards and other mementoes of his career.
He also served as president of the Society of Authors and Composers of Mexico, taking on the post in 2010 after having served in other posts within the association from the 1980s onward, fighting for his fellow composers’ rights.
Manzanero: ‘An irreplaceable loss for the Latin music world.’
