A Mercado Libre plane is 'baptized' during the launch of the e-commerce firm's new fleet.
Amazon rival Mercado Libre has unveiled a fleet of four cargo planes that will operate out of the Querétaro international airport and speed up the delivery of products to destinations across Mexico.
The Argentine company’s logistics director, Omar Ramírez Reyes, told an event at the airport Thursday that 1 billion pesos (US $50.5 million) is being invested in the fleet and that its operation will generate 6,000 direct and indirect jobs.
“The formal operation of our air fleet is starting in Querétaro; it forms part of Mercado Libre’s logistics network,” he said
“Our fleet of cargo planes couldn’t have a better home than Querétaro. Thanks to them the products of our enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses and artisans among other Mercado Libre vendors will reach their destination in 24 hours, which translates into better businesses and opportunities.”
The four MeLi Air planes, each with a 40-tonne capacity, will operate on four different routes within Mexico. The company decided to purchase the planes and operate its own air routes due to an increase in demand for home delivery of online purchases brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
Ramírez said that Mercado Libre, which was established in 1999 and now operates in 18 countries, is well prepared to respond to consumers’ needs amid the ongoing pandemic.
“Everything we’ve done in the past two decades, including our entry into logistics, allowed us to be prepared for the new normal,” he said.
Querétaro Governor Francisco Domínguez said that Mercado Libre and the state government will together “take off towards a more competitive Mexico.”
“[Mercado Libre] will consolidate itself here … as the largest e-commerce company in Latin America,” he said.
The governor noted that the large package delivery companies FedEx, DHL and UPS also operate out of Querétaro.
“From here you will connect with the whole country in just a few hours to the benefit of your customers,” Domínguez told Mercado Libre executives.
“… With your arrival in Querátaro a lot of entrepreneurs will send quality products to every corner of Mexico, reducing time and costs.”
Security forces seize stolen fuel in Hidalgo earlier this year.
Petroleum theft is on the rise after remaining below 2019 levels for most of the year.
There were 1,103 illegal taps on Pemex pipelines in September and 1,077 in October, according to information on the government’s online transparency platform.
In September, thieves stole 93 full shipments of fuel that were injected into the pipeline network and siphoned off another 106 in October.
On September 5, for example, Pemex injected more than 44,000 barrels of diesel into a pipeline that runs from Tuxpan, Veracruz, to Azcapotzalco, Mexico City. None of the shipment reached its final destination because fuel thieves tapped the pipeline and extracted the diesel somewhere along the way.
Among the shipments stolen in October was one of more than 60,000 barrels of diesel injected into a pipeline in Cadereyta, Nuevo León.
In the first 12 days of November thieves got away with 41 shipments of fuel including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
In that 12-day period, the newspaper El Universal reported, Pemex injected 423 shipments of fuel into the pipeline system and 177 of them – 41.8% of the total – were either partially or completely stolen.
Pipelines running through the states of Veracruz, Durango, Baja California, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Sonora, Puebla, México state and Yucatán are among those that are frequently targeted by fuel thieves, some of whom work for drug cartels that have diversified into the lucrative racket.
Pemex data shows that 8,919 illegal pipeline taps were detected between January 1 and November 24. In the first month of year there were 886 illegal taps, a 43% decline compared to January 2019.
The number of monthly taps remained below 2019 levels until September while the figure in October – 1,077 – was up 22% compared to the same month last year.
The data shows that fuel theft has continued at high levels throughout the first two years of the federal government although President López Obrador has claimed that the problem, which has cost Pemex billions of pesos, has been “practically eliminated.”
Vehicles abandoned by crime gangs in Michoacán are towed by authorities Thursday.
Firefights between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and rival criminal group Cárteles Unidos raged in four municipalities in western Michoacán on Wednesday night, leaving six dead, two arrested and several vehicles and weapons abandoned and confiscated by police.
Members of the two cartels moved between Los Reyes, Cotija, Tocumbo and Tingüindín at different times and exchanged fire between each other or with security forces for extended periods beginning late Wednesday afternoon and into the evening.
In the first community targeted, Los Reyes, cartel hitmen arrived Wednesday around 5 p.m. in about 40 vehicles and began a bloody shootout as the CJNG attacked a Cárteles Unidos safe house, leaving five people dead. Six persons were also taken hostage, according to local media, although this was not confirmed by security officials.
It appears that the Cárteles Unidos, an alliance of the Sinaloa Cartel and other criminal organizations, were at least temporarily victorious in Los Reyes, as authorities later found a message there directed at CJNG leader Nemesio Osguera “El Mencho” Cervantes.
“Here in Los Reyes, don’t come in, Mencho. Tell your people to come get your narco-tanks; we left them full,” it said.
A glimpse of the lethal back & forth the Michoacán-Jalisco border area has been under for years – and that's only picking up steam as we near next year's elections. 100s of displaced just these past four weeks – and thus far no notable coverage of this acute humanitarian crisis. https://t.co/FUq08TbStj
CJNG forces eventually moved on to the municipalities of Cotija, Tocumbo and Tingüindín where local media reported a total of seven more people killed. However, the state Ministry of Public Security said that only six people were killed in total.
The ministry also reported a separate incident in Tingüindín, where they said there was an armed confrontation between civilians. Footage online purportedly filmed at the incident, however, shows state police forces in a shootout with unseen gunmen.
Security forces also came under attack by a sniper near Cotija the next morning as they were towing confiscated vehicles on the Tocumbo-Cotija highway. According to police, the unknown sniper attacked from a distant hill, injuring a police officer in the foot.
The man was hospitalized and was in stable condition, said Michoacán Public Security Minister Israel Patrón Reyes. No one else was injured in the attack, and authorities quickly regained control of the situation, Patrón said.
As of yesterday, state and federal security officials were regularly patrolling the communities where the shootouts took place, all located near the state of Jalisco border, at the request of residents.
All four municipalities where the shootouts occurred — as well as the nearby municipalities of Buenavista, Coalcóman and Tepalcatepec — where residents recently dug trenches in the roads to prevent CJNG members from taking control of their community — are widely considered disputed territory between the two cartels.
Michoacán battleground: the five municipalities being disputed by cartels.
Over the last several weeks at least 500 people in communities around the municipalities of Aguililla and Buenavista, fearing for their lives, have abandoned their homes, and another cartel cell, Blancos de Troya, has taken over the towns over and based its operations there. In Tepalcatepec, according to police reports made public, citizens have been warned to barricade their homes and the entrance to their community in anticipation of an eruption of cartel violence.
Meanwhile, in several communities in coastal Michoacán, where the Cárteles Unidos have an alliance with a local gang leader, Juan José “El Abuelo” Fariás, the situation is similar.
According to one observer, the escalating violence has left the state worse than it was when self-defense groups formed in the absence of official action against criminal activity.
“We are worse off than before,” Hipólito Mora, founder of the state’s self-defense groups, told the newspaper Milenio, explaining that violence has escalated steadily since 2014.
“The people are afraid because they see that organized crime is growing more powerful than the authorities. The police, the federal forces are going crazy, not knowing where to run because everywhere you look there are confrontations,” Mora said.
He accused authorities of knowing who the leaders of the crime groups in Michoacán are but doing nothing to arrest them.
“I think that the violence will grow even more,” he said. “The issue doesn’t seem to matter to the politicians.”
He said the practice has been used for tax evasion purposes and to avoid paying workers the benefits to which they were entitled.
But the business sector says that the proposal presented by the president discourages job creation and threatens economic growth. The Business Coordinating Council (CCE), an umbrella organization representing 12 business groups, said last month that it was both surprised and concerned about the initiative, and that the government had violated a commitment to consult the private sector.
Government officials including López Obrador have now met with business representatives three times to discuss the proposal, including an almost three-hour-long meeting Thursday night. But they have still not ironed out their differences.
Outsourced jobs are in yellow, total jobs in blue. Figures at the top indicate the percentage increase of outsourced jobs every five years. milenio/manpower group
After leaving the National Palace meeting on Thursday, CCE president Carlos Salazar told reporters that while agreement remained elusive progress had been made.
“We’re advancing, the issue is obviously complex and it’s taking more time than we would have liked,” he said.
Salazar said that the complexity stemmed from the fact that the government’s proposal would overhaul the labor market in which some 4.1 million workers – 11.5% of the formal sector workforce – were subcontractors or hired as outsourced labor in 2019.
The CCE chief said that business leaders will meet again with the president and other officials next Wednesday.
“The way in which the dialogue has been carried out has been very positive. The understanding of our concerns has been very good,” Salazar said.
However, the business leader used curt language earlier on Thursday to describe what he believes the government is trying to do with the proposed outsourcing ban, telling a press conference that it is aiming to dismantle an entire hiring system just because parts of it have been misused by a small number of companies.
“To remove a rotten apple” the authorities are trying to fell the entire tree, Salazar said. “Don’t fuck around.”
Francisco Cervantes, president of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers, said after Thursday night’s meeting that the private sector and the government were continuing to negotiate over when the proposed outsourcing legislation would take effect.
“We’re asking for six months [to prepare] … so that everything’s ready and productivity isn’t lost,” he said.
Among the government officials in attendance at Thursday’s meeting were Labor Minister Luisa María Alcalde, Economy Minister Graciela Márquez and Mexican Social Security Institute Director Zoé Robledo.
Once the two parties reach an agreement, lawmakers will have the opportunity to make amendments to the proposal before it faces a vote in Congress.
The remains of a home gutted by fire Thursday in Tijuana.
Four Baja California border communities were hit by fires Wednesday night and Thursday morning that burned 56 homes to the ground and left one person dead.
Seventy-five separate blazes, driven by Santa Ana winds that reached 100 kilometers per hour in some higher elevations, either destroyed or did serious damage to homes in Tijuana, Playas de Rosarito, Ensenada and Tecate, forcing residents to flee.
Many were left with little more than the possessions that they could grab while fleeing, such as one couple observed by an El Universal newspaper reporter as they walked to a shelter in Tijuana with nothing more than a teacup, some porcelain items, and a couple of blankets.
Tijuana resident Dalila Gallegos described the fires as “an inferno.”
“That’s the only way I can describe it; it was an inferno,” she said while organizing a collection center created spontaneously by neighbors Thursday to provide fire victims with supplies. “When I got there, the scene was like a movie: people running, in tears, shouting, ‘Have you seen my father?’ ‘Have you seen my brother?’”
A friend of hers lost her mother, she said, after their home suddenly caught fire and they had to evacuate. After making sure that the children were safely outside, the woman decided to go back into the house and died when the building exploded in flames.
Gallegos said she saw the woman’s family walking around the area afterward, asking everyone they could if they had seen their mother. Later the woman’s daughters searched for her among the ashes.
“They found their mother’s body under some burnt wood,” she said.
Tijuana’s municipal government set up three temporary shelters and was planning on distributing 8 million pesos to help victims. State Civil Protection officials reported that the Santa Ana winds are expected to continue until sometime this weekend.
Mayor Arturo González Cruz cited the Santa Ana winds — which at times sounded like the roar of jet engines, witnesses said — as well as a lack of water in some areas as reasons why the blazes ended up intensifying and impeding emergency officials’ ability to respond quickly.
The winds, which surge from the east and south, bring hot and dry weather creating a fire-friendly environment for wildfires in both Mexico and the U.S. from around October through as late as March.
A long line of customers at a Best Buy store on Thursday.
The launch of a liquidation sale by electronics retailer Best Buy on Thursday morning generated such fervor that the store’s website crashed and the company had to close all of its 41 stores early after lines of customers waiting outside prompted concerns about overcrowding.
“For Best Buy México, the most important thing is your security and health and for this reason, due to the high numbers of customers at stores today, we have decided to close our physical stores before normal closing times,” the company announced by mid-afternoon on social media.
The retailer announced November 24 that it would begin closing its stores in Mexico at the end of the year. The liquidation sale, both online and at brick-and-mortar stores, was offering discounts of up to 60%, which caused customers to storm its website last night. Many popular items were sold out by morning.
At one point the online store went down, which caused more problems at some physical stores when even more customers showed up looking for deals. As a result, by Thursday morning people were lining up outside stores in cities all over Mexico on a level seen only at Black Friday sales in the U.S.
In Mexico City’s Cuauhtémoc neighborhood and in the city of Querétaro hundreds of customers were waiting at the doors before the stores even opened. By later in the day, lines were winding all the way through the malls where the stores are located.
“All the stores must be full to the brim; there’s an enormous line,” remarked Emmanuel Parra, a customer waiting in line outside a Best Buy at the Forum Buenavista mall in Mexico City around 1 p.m. “Who knows when we’re going to leave here and if we’ll even manage to buy anything.”
Aminadat Maciel, waiting in the same line as Parra, was one of many customers hoping to get the Nintendo Switch at a deep discount.
“[It] costs approximately 10,000 pesos, [and] is on sale for 3,500 pesos, including a game,” she explained. “You can also get games, which are normally 1,800, for 500 pesos. Everything is at a super discount.”
In Querétaro’s Paseo Querétaro mall, health officials also showed up after hundreds of customers formed lines that eventually wound back all the way to the shopping center’s entrance.
The company said on social media Friday morning that to avoid large crowds forming it would adopt a more orderly approach and announce discounts by product category.
Public health facilities began inoculating people against the flu in early October.
The start of winter is less than three weeks away but many doctors in the private health sector are unable to get their hands on influenza vaccine, a situation that increases the risk that the flu will spread widely in the coming months while the coronavirus continues to run rampant across much of the country.
The quadrivalent vaccine, which is designed to protect against four different flu viruses including two influenza A and two influenza B, is not yet available in most private hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices, according to a report by the newspaper Milenio.
The public health sector began inoculating people against influenza in early October and will end its vaccination campaign on December 31.
But concern is growing in the private sector because vaccines have still not been distributed whereas at this time in the past they had.
Vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur México manufactured in Mexico 35 million doses of a trivalent influenza vaccine, which protects against two influenza A viruses and one influenza B virus, but only imported 300,000 quadrivalent vaccines from the United States – the number it usually imports – despite higher demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The former, distributed by the state-owned company Birmex, are used in the public health sector while the latter are used in the private sector. The application of vaccines manufactured for the public sector is prohibited in the private sector.
Sanofi Pasteur medical director Alejandrina Malacara told Milenio that distribution of the quadrivalent vaccine began on November 15, two weeks later than normal. But almost three weeks later many private sector doctors who normally administer the vaccine still have not received it.
One company that distributes the vaccine to the private sector after buying it from Sanofi Pasteur – Bio Tec Vacunas – said on November 18 that it won’t have availability until January.
A private practice doctor told Milenio that he didn’t expect to have access to the quadrivalent vaccine until the end of this month at the earliest.
“They tell us that there are vaccines but they’re importing them in small batches and that by government order they have to be distributed to private hospitals and clinics in the first instance. … According to the importation and distribution program, they’ll be supplying private doctors’ offices at the end of December and start of January,” he said.
The doctor said he had been offered vaccines of doubtful origin but rejected them, explaining that he would never place his patients at risk or violate his own ethical values.
He advised people to go to a public hospital to get a flu shot, “even if it’s the trivalent,” in order to be at least partially protected against the influenza threat.
A private sector geriatrician told Milenio that he has been unable to get vaccines from private sector distributors.
He said that by this time of the year he normally would have vaccinated patients against influenza but Sanofi Pasteur distribution companies, “which usually have the best price,” have not yet received their allotments.
“We haven’t been able to find it. They don’t even answer [my calls] anymore because they got sick of me looking for them,” he said. “In my practice I administer [the vaccine] to the elderly in their homes … but that’s been impossible this year.”
Two mothers who spoke to Milenio said that they were unable to get the influenza vaccine for themselves and their young children at the private clinics they attend.
Another doctor blamed the federal government for the lack of influenza vaccines in the private sector.
“The [lack of] the influenza vaccine is another link in the chain of inefficiency in health matters of the so-called fourth transformation,” said Rafael Pérez Huacuja, referring to the government by its self-anointed nickname.
He claimed that the government’s “lack of awareness, inefficient administration and lack of planning” caused the vaccine shortage problem.
“The threat that diseases that were controlled will reappear [to cause] great harm to the population is regrettably real,” Pérez said.
He noted that the government has also struggled to ensure access to cancer medications for children and “other basic supplies for the operation of the health system.”
“… The fact is that obtaining an influenza vaccine is currently a very difficult challenge when until two years ago [when the federal government took office] it was accessible for the majority of the population,” Pérez said.
“It was promised that that the quadrivalent vaccine would arrive for private practices in the middle of October but only 200,000 doses were given exclusively to shifty distributors who sold all [their vaccines] before they had them in their hands. … With the Covid-19 pandemic … it’s possible that this winter we’ll face two devastating diseases that we won’t be protected against.”
But Malacara, the Sanofi Pasteur director, said that January – when the quadrivalent vaccine is expected to be more widely available in the private sector – will not be too late to get immunized against the flu.
“Reviewing the epidemiological distribution of influenza through the different seasons … we see that more than 70% of cases occur in the first quarter of the year – January, February and March – so we still have time and that’s good [news] for the Mexican public.”
Alfonso Romo will continue to be his chief link with the private sector, said President López Obrador.
President López Obrador announced Wednesday that his chief of staff was stepping down but would continue to be his “main link” to the private sector.
López Obrador said on Twitter that Alfonso Romo, a business tycoon with interests in several sectors and a former olympic equestrian, agreed to serve two years in his government and that period has now concluded.
“He has helped me and will continue helping. He’s an independent and honest man, committed to just causes. In addition, he’s my friend,” he wrote.
“I will never forget that he was the first businessman to support the transformation movement,“ López Obrador said, referring to his government.
In addition to serving as the president’s chief of staff, Romo has headed up the National Council for the Promotion of Investment, Employment and Economic Growth.
He has pushed strongly for Mexico to take advantage of the trade war between the United States and China in order to attract greater investment. Romo has also said that Mexico has a signifiant opportunity to benefit from an increased regionalization of supply chains due to the coronavirus pandemic and the entry into force of the new North American free trade agreement, the USMCA.
The government has nevertheless implemented some policies, most notably in the energy sector, that are not seen as being particularly friendly to private investment.
It remains to be seen what impact, if any, Romo’s departure has on future policy decisions.
After López Obrador’s announcement, several business groups acknowledged the role the outgoing chief of staff has played in linking the business sector to the government.
“In complex circumstances, he acted as a translator [and] interlocutor” between the two parties, said Gustavo Hoyos, president of Coparmex, the Mexican Employers Federation.
“He was the brake on many [government] ideas,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that he had kept the “radicals” in check.
The Business Coordinating Council, an umbrella organization of 12 business groups, described Romo as a valuable member of the government and an “open-minded interlocutor” with whom “sincere dialogue” was always possible.
“He will certainly continue working for the good of Mexico in his upcoming duties. We will miss him.”
National Search Commissioner Karla Quintana: her task is to find 79,000 missing people.
Karla Quintana has a gargantuan and unenviable task: leading the search for more than 79,000 missing people, most of whom have disappeared since former president Felipe Calderón launched the so-called war on drugs in late 2006.
But despite the myriad challenges she faces, the National Search Commission (CNB) chief is determined to make progress and help bring justice to the countless family members tirelessly looking for their missing loved ones – even if it takes 10 or 20 years.
A report published Thursday by The Washington Post delves into the challenges Quintana is confronted with, looks at the context of Mexico’s missing persons crisis and paints a portrait of a woman intent on doing all she can to help lessen the pain of the many people who have never found out what happened to their disappeared sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.
A 41-year-old lawyer with a degree from Harvard, Quintana was appointed to the search commissioner role in February 2019, two months after President López Obrador came to power. The CNB was created at the tail end of the previous government’s 2012-2018 term and when Quintana took the reins it was severely underfunded.
One human rights activist said that she had taken on “the most impossible job in the country.”
Quintana was given a US $22-million budget to work with in her first year in the position, which the Post described as “significant but hardly enough,” explaining that in order to exhume and identify bodies buried in hidden graves – which are all too common in Mexico – she would have to rely on a corrupt and underfunded justice system.
However, Quintana “saw reasons for hope,” the Post said. Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas, a close ally of López Obrador, was her boss, and the president had promised to get to the bottom of Mexico’s most infamous recent missing persons case – that of the 43 students who were abducted and presumably murdered in Guerrero in 2014.
“Many people think human rights defenders should always be in opposition to the government,” she said. “I’d say there are moments in which it’s necessary — there is no other option – but to be in the government.”
Quintana knew that funding for the commission would not be boundless even though López Obrador had said “there is no budget limit, no financial ceiling” but she was nevertheless cautiously optimistic, stating: “For the first time, maybe in a limited manner, the state, as a state, is trying to give a response.”
Quintana’s appointment to head up the CNB, however, was not met with great enthusiasm by family members of missing persons – mainly mothers – who have been searching for their loved ones for months, years or decades with scant support from the authorities.
Silvia Ortiz, the leader of a group dedicated to searching for missing persons near the northern city of Torreón, Coahuila, is one such person.
A search brigade at work.
“What if she’s the kind of woman who just sits behind a desk?” was her initial thought when she heard about Quintana’s appointment.
But the search commissioner dispelled that notion by joining Ortiz and others as they searched through graves uncovered in the desert outside Torreón, where a decade ago members of the Zetas cartel discarded their victims’ remains after dismembering and burning them.
While proving that she wasn’t averse to getting down to the nitty gritty of searching for missing persons, Quintana, the Post noted, fired questions at Ortiz and a state forensic expert.
How long had they been digging? Four years. How much help had they received from the government? Not much. How many bodies were in each grave? Up to 10 pounds of pebbles — around three humans.
Quintana has also accompanied on-the-ground search efforts in other locations including Guanajuato, currently Mexico’s most violent state.
Back at CNB headquarters, Quintana found there were 40,000 names of missing persons in what the Post called “a crazy quilt of Excel documents and Word files, replete with duplications and typos.”
Quintana hired a team of people to create a consolidated and updated database of the disappeared and they started contacting state Attorney General’s Offices for their latest figures. But many declined to send their data and the records of some were a complete mess.
The CNB nevertheless put together a more accurate albeit incomplete database with more than 60,000 names. The figure has now risen to more than 79,000.
A year after she was appointed search commissioner, Quintana had a workforce of 89 employees – a huge increase compared to when she started – and had helped established government search commissions in every state in the country. In August, Mexico finally recognized the authority of the United Nations to conduct missing persons investigations – recognition that the armed forces had long opposed.
But Quintana also ran into obstacles: a CNB proposal that it be given access to information from all government departments including the federal Attorney General’s Office was blocked by justice officials who said that investigations could be compromised.
Family members of missing persons noted that López Obrador’s promise to involve “all the institutions” in the search for the disappeared had not been fulfilled.
Although Quintana doesn’t have a mandate to investigate crimes to establish who is responsible for the abductions and presumed murders of thousands of Mexicans, she is planning to undertake an endeavor that would aid the investigative process, at least in a small way.
Searchers dig up a clandestine grave in Sonora.
The Post said that “she was trying to set up a unit within her commission to write the histories of the disappeared” in order to “identify the patterns, the perpetrators in different regions.” The newspaper noted the justice system’s “abysmal” record of just 39 convictions from more than 11,7000 forced disappearance investigations between 2006 and 2019.
Quintana said she hoped that the histories could one day be presented as evidence for a judicial process or truth commission.
During the war on drugs years, which endured through the 2012-2018 presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, security forces including the military were linked to forced disappearances but drug cartels also carried out abductions and continue to do so.
The Post said that by the time Quintana took on the commissioner role it was “obvious that they [drug traffickers] often worked closely with corrupt officials.”
The newspaper said it is easy to blame the criminal groups but asserted that “the truth is more complicated.”
It said that after the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s 70-year-long authoritarian, one-party rule ended in 2000 Mexico as a fledgling democracy “failed to build a professional justice system, with well-trained and well-equipped police and prosecutors.”
As a result, impunity today is rampant, giving criminals confidence that they won’t be held accountable for their wrongdoings.
“The use of violence is less regulated than it was before,” said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, the co-founder of Noria Research, a collective of researchers and analysts that studies international affairs and conflict. “Many more people are using violence.”
Indeed, 2020 is on track to be the most violent year in recent history. Reported disappearances, at just over 6,000 to date this year, are lower than in each of 2019, 2018 and 2017 but are still no doubt very high.
Mexico may have a competent and committed search commissioner but given the enormity of her task that is likely cold comfort for the countless citizens who have had no closure to their living nightmares and courageously carry on searching for their missed loved ones, day in, day out.
Responding to an anonymous tip, local, state, and federal authorities broke up a massive quinceañera block party Wednesday that had closed down an entire street in an Acapulco neighborhood, according to municipal government sources.
The illegal party in Puerto Marqués had attracted 500 guests and featured live music and guests without face masks, said officials, who arrived at around midnight to break up the party. In a video, guests could be seen beginning to leave as soon they saw the authorities — which included members of Civil Protection, state police, the National Guard, and the army.
“We urge the populace to be responsible and not relax the preventative measures of the Ministry of Health,” said municipal authorities in a press release.
Quinceañeras are a traditional way of celebrating a 15-year-old girl’s birthday, not unlike a sweet-16 party. They are often lavish events featuring live music, dancing, and spectacles put on for guests. The guest count is often large, and the event is not unlike a wedding.
