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.
Highway construction projects are among those in the plan.
The public-private plan to build 68 infrastructure projects with an investment of almost 526 billion pesos (US $26.4 billion) will have a limited impact on the Mexican economy, according to analysts who spoke to the newspaper Reforma.
The infrastructure plan includes highway, energy and public transit projects.
Alejandro Saldaña, chief economist at the financial company Ve por Más, noted that the investment associated with the projects is only equivalent to 2.3% of GDP and therefore will not have a large impact.
“We need to remember that the investment in these projects is spread out over the course of their development, which will take years,” he added.
Saldaña said that there will be some economic benefits from the investment but they will be seen in the medium rather than short term.
“We see this [plan] as insufficient for investment to return to the levels there were before [2018] – more than 20% of GDP,” he said.
Saldaña also said that the resources the private sector will invest are not yet set in stone and that it is not certain that the government has the funds needed for the projects in which it will have majority participation.
Roberto Ballinez, senior infrastructure director at HR Ratings, said that public resources earmarked for the projects could be reallocated if the coronavirus pandemic worsens.
“The issue of the health emergency and the purchase of vaccines is extremely important,” he said. “… If there is a significant increase in infections, … it could have indirect effects for these projects.”
Ballinez said it was positive that the government and private sector are working together but noted that the number of projects announced is well short of the 1,600 potential projects identified by members of the latter last year.
In a best case scenario the economic benefits of the projects won’t be seen until the second half of 2021, he said.
Saldaña said the government should be trying to attract more investment to sectors such as renewable energy and oil, which in fact have been made more difficult to enter due to policy decisions taken by an administration led by a staunch nationalist president and fierce critic of the 2014 reform that ended the state energy monopoly.
“Economically speaking, we believe that there are not many arguments not to be more aggressive and take advantage of the potential the country has to attract investment in these sectors. This would also help to generate more confidence in the economic policy,” he said.
Ricardo Trejo, director general of business information company Forecastim, predicted that private investment in the energy sector will be minimal because the government is seeking a more dominant role for state-owned companies such as Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission.
“There are no signs at the moment that it will allow more private sector investment to arrive in this area. The production and exploration of hydrocarbons will continue to be Pemex or government [activities] and there will only be opportunity for investment in liquefaction or logistics.”
The Programa Paisano launch in Tijuana on Wednesday.
Despite a Covid-19 travel ban across the Mexico-United States land border, Mexico’s Programa Paisano got up and running yesterday for the winter season, preparing to welcome home an expected 500,000 Mexican nationals for holiday visits.
The year-round program’s mission is to facilitate the transit of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. and Canada while they visit their home country. The program has special campaigns during the summer and winter, the busiest times of the year for Mexicans living abroad to come back to visit. In 2019, it served 4 million people. This year, it has so far served 600,000, a decrease which officials attribute to the pandemic.
Many of those visitors, living permanently in the United States and Canada, are expected to cross the land border into Mexico which, by agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, is supposed to be closed in both directions to all but essential travel until at least December 21 in order to slow the spread of Covid-19.
But officials with the National Immigration Institute (INM) say it would be impossible to stop Mexicans coming home to see family during the holidays.
“You can’t prohibit a Mexican from exercising his right to return to his home country,” said commissioner Francisco Garduño, adding that the institute will be taking all necessary health safety measures at the border.
Last month, Mexico surpassed 1 million Covid-19 cases. Virtually every state in the country is at least at yellow status on the national coronavirus stoplight map.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently called for “prudence” and encouraged Mexicans to avoid border crossings between Mexico and the U.S. for reasons of recreation, tourism, or “the celebrations that traditionally take place in these months,” but the tone seemed far from authoritative.
“We know that despite the recommendation, they are going to cross the border, so we have to be ready to attend to the needs of migrants who may come to visit their families,” said Luis Gutiérrez, head of the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, a federal agency.
While crossing into the U.S. is generally agreed to be vigilantly monitored to make sure travelers have a valid reason to enter, many report that the situation is not the same going in the opposite direction. In recent months, citizens and lawmakers alike in border states have called upon Mexico to enforce the travel ban supposedly in place. That the Programa Paisano will carry on more or less as usual seems indicative that the situation is not likely to change.
Certainly, at INM’s official launch of the program’s winter campaign this week in Tijuana, attitudes seemed welcoming and even encouraging of Mexicans coming home for the holidays: officials played an upbeat video featuring President López Obrador, who highlighted the contributions of Mexican migrants during times of uncertainty, implicitly referring to billions of dollars in remittances that Mexicans send home each year.
“We are going to protect you and care for you because you are Mexicans, because you are coming to your country, because you help us; and in these times, more than ever, you are supporting us. You deserve the best of treatment, to be received like heroes — our migrant countrymen,” said López Obrador in the video.
The ethane plant that has been effectively shut down by the government.
The federal government has cut off the supply of natural gas to an ethylene plant in Veracruz that is majority-owned by a subsidiary of Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht, intensifying a dispute between the two parties.
President López Obrador told reporters at his news conference on Wednesday that the supply contract with Braskem, a Brazilian petrochemical firm that has a 70% stake in the Etileno XXI plant, has ended.
“There’s no more natural gas for the company because the contract has ended,” he said.
López Obrador said there was no possibility of renewing the contract because it allowed the sale of ethane gas to Braskem at below-market prices to the detriment of public coffers and the state oil company Pemex, the supplier.
The National Gas Control Center (Cenagas), the government’s gas pipeline administrator, informed Braskem-Idesa on Monday that the contract for the supply of natural gas to the plant in Nachital, Veracruz, would not be renewed.
Grupo Idesa, a Mexican petrochemical company, has a 30% stake in the plant.
“It’s a contract with Odebrecht, a company that is famous for extortion and corruption,” López Obrador said. “… [The contract] wasn’t terminated, it reached its end date and it won’t be renewed.”
Odebrecht has been embroiled in corruption scandals in several Latin American countries including Mexico, where it admitted to paying bribes to the previous federal government in exchange for lucrative contracts.
The decision to cut off the supply of natural gas to its subsidiary effectively puts the Veracruz plant out of business.
“Cenagas’s actions have caused the total suspension of the plant’s processes,” Braskem-Idesa said in a statement without saying when operations might resume.
The consortium accused the government of placing the safety of the plant and its employees at risk by cutting the gas supply abruptly instead of providing 48 hours of reduced supply that would have allowed operations to be shut down safely. It also said that the decision would have an impact on the national petrochemical industry and the economy as a whole.
Braskem-Idesa claimed that its “rights, including multiple current legal provisions” have been violated and pledged to take action to defend them.
The consortium also said it has “repeatedly expressed our willingness to discuss with the authorities the issues that are raised … in relation to the operation of Braskem-Idesa and its contracts with Mexican state companies, bringing proposals for solutions.”
“We ask for respect for the rule of law,” it added before calling on the government to “rectify” the decision taken by Cenagas.
Relations between the federal government and Braskem-Idesa were already strained before the supply of natural gas was cut because the former has been seeking to renegotiate a separate contract for the supply of ethane for the manufacture of ethylene and in turn polyethylene, the most common plastic in the world today.
Signed in 2010 by the government led by former president Felipe Calderón, the contract obliges Pemex to supply ethane to Braskem-Idesa at US $0.16 per gallon until 2034. At the time, the two parties entered into the agreement, ethane had a market price of 50 cents per gallon.
López Obrador has also branded the deal as unfair, asserting that it has cost the government millions of dollars.
A senior official in the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office was found dead Wednesday in Culiacán in his car, which was riddled with over 100 bullet holes.
Ramón Muñiz, commander and coordinator of the Special Unit for Apprehensions, had just left his house and was on his way to work when, according to security cameras in the area, he was attacked in his Nissan Sentra in the Balcones de Valle neighborhood by at least two men with automatic weapons. Authorities found Muñiz’s car on the sidewalk.
The National Guard arrested a male suspect outside Mazatlán later in the day.
Muñiz, who in his 24-year career with the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office served on units related to everything from cattle theft to narco-crime reduction, is the eighth security officer in 2020 to be killed in the state.
The most recent case was in October, when a security officer identified as Salvador “N” was found shot to death by a river in Culiacán, near his burned-out car.
Commercial space left vacant by the closure of one of a million small businesses.
More than 1 million small and medium-sized businesses have closed permanently since the middle of last year, mainly due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study by the national statistics agency Inegi.
The agency determined that 1,010,857 businesses have shut their doors for good since May 2019, a figure that represents 20.8% of the 4.86 million small and medium-sized businesses counted by Inegi that month.
Inegi president Julio Santaella told a virtual press conference that business closures increased during the pandemic period, which in Mexico’s case began in March.
“We can’t confirm the cause [of the closures] but we can definitely say that the pandemic is a factor,” he said.
José Luis de la Cruz, director of the Institute for Industrial Development and Economic Growth, a think tank, said the “massive closure” of businesses was “historic” and indicative of the depth of the impact of the coronavirus on the economy.
The businesses that closed employed almost 3 million people, while those that continue to operate have reduced the size of their workforces by 1.15 million positions. All told 4.12 million jobs have been lost since May 2019.
On a more positive note, almost 620,000 new small and medium-sized businesses have opened since Inegi’s 2019 economic census. Those businesses created 1.23 million jobs.
The net result is that there are now 4.46 million small and medium-sized businesses, 8% fewer than in May 2019, and 11.77 million people are employed by them, a reduction of 2.89 million or 19.7%.
Inegi also determined via a survey that 86.6% of businesses in Mexico were negatively affected in some way by the coronavirus pandemic. Almost 80% of companies surveyed said that their revenue decreased, 51% said that they faced low demand during the pandemic and 23% said they had difficulties obtaining supplies and products.
Almost 16% of businesses said that they would only be able to continue operating for another three months if their revenue remained at the current level. Almost half – 46.6% – said that they could survive the next three to 12 months without an increase in income while 37.6% expressed confidence that they will be able to continue operating for more than a year even if their revenue doesn’t pick up.
Marco Arias, an analyst with the Monex financial group, said there is more optimism among businesses now than when Inegi conducted the same survey in April.
“But beyond the improvement, the impacts of the virus [on business] are very serious and profound,” he said.
The most recent Inegi survey also found that the vast majority of businesses received no financial support from the government to help them weather the coronavirus storm.
Only 5.9% said that they received support – the government offered small loans to small businesses but refused to help larger companies – while 94.1% said they did not.
Just over 61% of businesses surveyed by Inegi said that the assistance they most require to survive the pandemic is fiscal support. Just over 40% said the postponement of loan repayments and the payment of services such as electricity would help them while 30% said that they need new loans.
Almost 38% of businesses said they expected they would be late in making debt repayments in the coming months, although that figure dropped to 19.3% among large companies.
President López Obrador dismissed the findings at Thursday’s press conference, saying he was not worried by them.
“… I have information showing that private consumption hasn’t fallen, jobs are being recovered, there are no food shortages, there isn’t a high cost of living, there is no devaluation of the peso, we haven’t put ourselves in debt, taxes haven’t increased.”
The president indicates his approval ratings at Wednesday's press conference.
President López Obrador presented a federal government poll on Wednesday showing that 71% of respondents want him to continue in the nation’s top job until the end of his six-year term in 2024.
The poll – which the president referred to in a speech Tuesday to mark his second anniversary in office – was conducted by the Ministry of the Interior over the telephone with 2,500 people, López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference.
“Yesterday I announced that we did a poll last weekend and [in response] to the question asking if you want me to continue or to quit we have 71% [of respondents] in favor of me continuing,” he said. “I think that about 25% are against [me continuing as president] and 4% didn’t say.”
López Obrador, best known as AMLO, intends to hold a “revocation of mandate” referendum in early 2022 and has vowed to step down if a majority of citizens vote in favor of him leaving office. The president suggested that was unlikely to happen, although two recent newspaper polls found that his support is closer to 60% than 70%.
“I always have other information and we know what is happening,” said López Obrador, who has a tendency to label polls and media reports he doesn’t agree with as biased.
“It was a telephone poll, it couldn’t be done face to face; maybe if it was done directly we’d do better,” he said, explaining that only 20% of people in Chiapas – where the president is popular – have landlines.
The government poll also found that 60% of respondents believe that López Obrador is a better president than his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, while 17.5% think he is worse.
However, not all of the poll’s findings were flattering for AMLO. Almost half of the respondents – 47.2% – said that their economic situation has worsened under the current government and only 12.8% said they were better off. About four in 10 respondents said their financial situation hadn’t changed.
López Obrador also revealed that the poll respondents gave him an average score of 6.6 out of 10 for his performance as president. While hardly a ringing endorsement, the president said that his grade was higher than that of Peña Nieto, whose government was plagued by corruption scandals.
AMLO said he will present the government’s own polling results from time to time, saying: “As there is freedom of course anyone can do a poll – we’ll announce our [results] periodically.”
It remains to be seen whether he will have additional information to counter the “other information” should the future results not be to his liking.
Often associated with birthdays, piñatas also feature in Christmastime posadas. Joseph Sorrentino
The procession for the posada begins, as do virtually all processions in San Gregorio Atlapulco, Mexico City, with cohetes (bottle rockets) exploding overhead.
“Cohetes announce the beginning of the procession,” said Aristides Norberto Enriquez Nieto. “It’s like when the church rings its bells. It is also to give thanks.”
Posadas take place each year all over Mexico from December 16–24 and are reenactments of Mary and Joseph’s search for a place to sleep. As far as I can tell, though, there is no mention in the Bible of them using cohetes during their search.
Posadas were begun in Mexico in 1587 when Fray Diego de Soria, the director of the San Agustín de Acolman monastery (located in what is now the state of México), obtained permission from the Pope to hold special Masses during nine days in December. Although posadas originated in Spain, they are most closely associated with Mexico. Like many Mexican celebrations, they have underlying elements of indigenous culture and religion.
The Aztecs celebrated the birth of Huitzilopochtil, their god of war, during the month called Panquetzaliztli, which corresponds to our month of December.
Posada processions through the neighborhood are a candlelit affair.
“There were 20 days of ceremonies to honor Huitzilopochtil,” says Javier Marquéz Juaréz, who has studied Aztec history. These ceremonies included celebrations in homes, processions and special foods.
“December 21, the winter solstice, was considered to be the birth of Huitzilopochtil,” Marquez continued.
Aztec celebrations culminated on December 25.
The nine days of posadas each represent one month of Mary’s pregnancy. “The first eight are organized by mayordomos [lay religious leaders],” says Marquéz. “The ninth and final one, on December 24, is organized by the padrino del niño del pueblo.”
Before the procession begins, people gather in the large yard in front of Enriquez Nieto’s home; he’s the padrino.
“I waited three years to be a padrino,” he said. “My father and my grandfather were padrinos. To be a padrino, one needs to ask the current one … one must follow the rules and regulations of the church. You’re an example of the church. I did it to thank God.”
There is food — lots of food — a band, drinks and a piñata, which is traditionally included during posadas, hanging from a wire.
Chinelos are costumed dancers who are part of posada processions.
“The piñata is a Christian symbol,” explained Marquéz. “It is a star with seven points, each point representing one of the cardinal sins.”
Children whack at the piñata with a small stick, hoping to break it open, releasing the candy inside. “It is broken to destroy the sins,” said Marquéz.
After the piñata is dispatched, cohetes are lit.
“Cohetes let the Chinelos know it is time to come and form the procession,” said Enriquez. Chinelos are dancers famous for their colorful flowing costumes, large hats and masks. They originated in Morelos during the colonial era as a way to mock European dress and mannerisms, and over time their popularity has spread to other Mexican states.
There are now groups in Xochimilco (which is where San Gregorio is located) and Milpa Alta, two boroughs in Mexico City, where Chinelos often participate in celebrations. They perform a simple dance called the brincón (jump), which involves a sort of jumping up and down in place to music and which they are somehow able to perform for hours.
Chinelos are another element of posadas not mentioned in the Bible, but, said Enriquez, “Chinelos add more joy to the fiesta.”
A local boy and girl play the parts of Mary and Joseph seeking a place to stay the night.
As the procession leaves Enriquez’ home, his niece and nephew, dressed as Mary and Joseph, are lifted onto a donkey that they’ll ride to the church. Enriquez, as padrino, gently places a figure of the baby Jesus onto a white cloth which he and his wife carry.
More cohetes and other fireworks — some of them surprisingly large and dangerous-looking — are lit as the procession makes its way through the pueblo, where the streets are lined with people holding candles and sparklers. The procession makes several stops along the route, and each time it does, there’s a bit of theater. And when the procession pulls up in front of the church or a chapel or a person’s home, the crowd asks for permission to enter. Like Mary and Joseph in the Bible, they’re denied entrance at all except the last stop, where the doors are finally opened.
On nights where the final stop for a posada is the church, a Mass is held. On December 24, the Mass is held at midnight. But on nights where the final stop is a person’s home, more food and drink are served and the fiesta continues.
Joseph Sorrentino is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
A government-owned power plant on the Pacific coast will soon generate electricity with fuel oil rather than coal even though the former contaminates more than the latter and generation costs will increase.
Electricity generation at the Plutarco Elías Calles plant in Petacalco, Guerrero, was suspended two weeks ago after the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) decided that it would no longer use imported coal to fire it.
The decision came after CFE chief Manuel Bartlett said on October 27 that the coal used at the plant, supplied by the Swiss company Glencore, is “imported and extremely expensive.”
The CFE now intends to fire the plant, located just south of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, with surplus fuel oil produced by the state oil company Pemex during the oil refining process.
While purchasing the fuel from its petroleum sector counterpart will no doubt be cheaper for the CFE than buying imported coal, the cost of generating electricity with the former will be considerably higher.
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According to Energy Regulatory Commission data, generating one megawatt-hour of electricity at CFE plants with coal costs 1,678 pesos. But generating the same quantity of power with fuel oil costs 2,627 pesos, 56.5% more.
Another downside to using fuel oil is that it is a lot more contaminating than coal, which is hardly a poster child for environmentalism itself.
Energy sector expert Rosanety Barrios told the newspaper Reforma that getting fuel oil from Pemex refineries to the Petacalco plant will also be difficult, explaining that there is no established route between the facilities.
“This is a strategy to offload large quantities of fuel oil that Pemex generates … but almost no one in the world uses fuel oil to generate electricity,” she added.
Elie Villeda, another energy sector expert, said the situation at the Petacalco plant is “very concerning,” noting that it has been operating since 1993, already has high generation costs and is harmful to the environment.
Now the costs are set to increase further and the impact on the environment will potentially be greater.
Villeda suggested that the government should be looking to generate electricity in the region with other more environmentally-friendly sources.
Fishermen in La Unión de Isidoro Montes de Oca, the municipality where the plant is located, told Reforma that they are concerned about the contamination the use of fuel oil will generate.
Gilberto Barrera Reyes, representative of an umbrella group of fishing cooperatives, said that fuel oil leaked into the ocean from the Petacalco plant last Friday, causing a “pool” of contamination in a local bay.
“Coal and fuel oil are both contaminants but fuel oil contaminates a lot more,” he said.
Jesús Campos Albarrán, leader of the La Boba fishing cooperative, claimed that contamination from the power plant has caused dozens of cases of cancer over the past 27 years.
As of last year the plant produced 7% of Mexico’s electrical energy.
Activist Leydy Pech, leader of a coalition opposed to the use of genetically modified seeds, has been recognized for her work in stopping the agrochemical company Monsanto from growing genetically modified soybeans in seven states.
The head of Sin Transgénicos (Without Transgenics) has been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for North America.
A beekeeper by trade, a Mayan by identity, Pech, 55, united farmers, beekeepers and nongovernmental organizations in a fight to get the government to revoke permits granted to the company in southern Mexico, saying its seeds were contaminating crops and the nation’s honey supplies with genetically modified material.
Mexico is the sixth-highest producer of honey worldwide.
The Goldman Prize, awarded by the Goldman Environmental Foundation, annually recognizes environmentalists from each of the world’s six inhabited continents, honoring environmental activism and leadership. Pech and this year’s other winners were honored on Monday in a virtual ceremony hosted by actress Sigourney Weaver.
“Even in the face of the unending onslaught and destruction upon our natural world, there are countless individuals and communities fighting every day to protect our planet. These are six of those environmental heroes, and they deserve the honor and recognition the prize offers them — for taking a stand, risking their lives and livelihoods, and inspiring us with real, lasting environmental progress,” said foundation president John Goldman.
Pech founded Sin Transgénicos after Monsanto began planting Roundup Ready GMO soybeans in her home state of Campeche. Mexico had given Monsanto permits to grow the GMO beans in Campeche, Yucatán — which produces 40% of Mexico’s honey — and five other states without consulting local communities, an omission that Sin Transgénicos successfully argued before the Supreme Court, claiming it violated the Constitution and Mexico’s obligations with the United Nations International Labour Organization.
In 2015 the court ruled in their favor. Two years later, in 2017, the government revoked Monsanto’s permits to grow the crops in all seven states.
Roundup Ready crops are controversial because they are genetically modified to withstand spraying with Roundup, a herbicide developed by Monsanto that contains glyphosate, identified as a probable carcinogen that has been linked to birth defects and miscarriages. The crops have also been shown to contaminate seeds of crops planted nearby with their genetic material.
