Tiendita owner Andrés Arias has adopted a policy of taking care of himself and his clients to counter the coronavirus.
The small corner stores known as tienditas are more than just a place to shop, they are neighborhood gathering places that bring communities together, and they have been hit hard by the crisis generated by the coronavirus.
But a private initiative called My Safe Store has been launched to help the stores gain customers’ trust and business. Supporters of the program include Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Mars, Mondelēz México and PepsiCo together with Mexico’s Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco), and the Mexican Employers Federation (Coparmex).
“In Mexico, there are 1,200,000 small businesses and 700,000 are grocery stores. We have 700,000 shopkeepers who may be in danger,” says Luis Inchaustegui, director of the Institute for Social Research, noting that each business has an average of 2.5 families who depend on it for their livelihood, potentially putting 2.5 million families at risk.
According to the National Alliance of Small Merchants, more than 150,000 small businesses have closed in the last four months.
The initiative, which began in May, includes marketing campaigns and other tools to help shopkeepers keep their businesses up and running.
Coca-Cola México has produced and distributed 50,000 plastic partitions and more than 200,000 masks to help protect shopkeepers and their customers.
Stores also receive weekly information with information on topics such as how to change a store’s layout, ways to limit interactions with customers and suppliers, and the establishment of cleaning and hygiene protocols.
The initiative also advocates for using electronic payment terminals to avoid receiving cash, shorter business hours and the option of home delivery.
The program is currently operating in Mexico City, Tijuana, Monterrey, Mérida, Querétaro y Guadalajara, but could expand to other areas of the country in the future.
The historic center of the city of Querétaro, which has been deemed a safe place to travel.
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) granted the state of Querétaro the Safe Travels stamp, which certifies the state as a safe destination for tourists.
In 2019, Querétaro welcomed some 2.5 million tourists who spent 12 billion pesos, around US $534 million at today’s exchange rate. This year, just 98,000 tourists have visited the state, the Ministry of Tourism reports.
Baja California Sur, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tamaulipas and Yucatán have already received the Safe Travels stamp, granted with the intention of assuring that destinations are safe despite the presence of the coronavirus.
“Ultimately, we envision a future of travel which is safe, secure, seamless, and provides an authentic and meaningful experience to the traveler across the journey,” the WTTC says. “The specially designed stamp will allow travelers and other travel and tourism stakeholders to recognize destination authorities and companies around the world that have implemented health and hygiene protocols that are aligned with WTTC’s Safe Travels protocols.”
The governor congratulated the state’s tourist industry for obtaining the designation.
“My recognition to all members of the tourism sector in our state for this distinction, the result of their organization and commitment. To travel through Querétaro is to travel safely,” Francisco Domínguez Servién said.
The guidelines established by the World Travel and Tourism Council follow standards issued by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and have the support of the United Nations World Tourism Organization. In order to be granted the Safe Travels stamp, tourism destinations must come up with a set of health protocols that meet with the WTTC’s approval.
The president speaks to representatives of the Yaqui people on Thursday.
President López Obrador announced on Thursday the creation of a justice commission for the Yaqui indigenous people which will be responsible for returning expropriated land to them, delivering basic services and rerouting a gas line.
The president made the announcement during a meeting in Vícam, Sonora, with the leaders of eight Yaqui towns in the northern border state.
He also apologized to the Yaqui people for repression committed by previous governments, indicating that Mexico owes a large debt to the indigenous community.
Residents of the towns have blocked train tracks and a highway in recent weeks to demand that the government compensate them for ceding land for a range of infrastructure projects and fulfill social development commitments.
Accompanied by a group of high-ranking government officials, López Obrador told the community leaders that his administration wants to deliver justice to the Yaqui people.
“That’s why I’m here with the cabinet members,” he said, noting that agricultural, water, welfare and indigenous rights officials were with him.
The president said that officials from those areas would be members of the justice commission and work to turn the government’s good intentions into deeds.
“I will preside over the justice commission … and my stand-in will be Adelfo Regino, general director of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples,” López Obrador said.
Land that the Yaquis lost as the result of a land redistribution carried out by former president Lázaro Cárdenas 80 years ago will be returned, the president said.
He said the commission would investigate to determine who is occupying the land the Yaquis lost and whether they have papers proving ownership.
López Obrador said there are many ways to resolve the situation including restitution via presidential order and payment of compensation.
The president also committed to delivering reliable water services to the eight Yaqui towns as well as improving drainage, healthcare, education, housing and public spaces.
In addition, he said that the Guaymas-El Oro gas pipeline will be diverted so that it doesn’t run through Yaqui land.
Construction of the pipeline has been stalled since 2017 due to the opposition from residents of Bácum, one of the eight Yaqui towns.
López Obrador concluded his meeting with the community leaders by thanking them for their confidence and assuring them that his government wouldn’t betray or fail them.
“We will fulfill all the commitments; it’s not just for you, it’s historical justice, delivering justice to the people,” he said.
At least one Yaqui leader who attended the meeting wasn’t convinced that the president would keep his word.
Alfonso Valenzuela, Sonora leader of the National Union of Autonomous Regional Farmers Organizations, told the Reforma newspaper that López Obrador offered “a lot of words” but didn’t sign anything to back them up. He described the meeting with the president as “a lost opportunity.“
As López Obrador was smoking the peace pipe with the Yaqui leaders, other members of the Yaqui community blocked federal Highway 15 between Guaymas and Ciudad Obregón.
But data from Coneval, the federal government’s social development agency, shows that the fatality rate in Mexico’s 427 poorest municipalities is 14.1.
By contrast, the coronavirus fatality rate in the country’s 54 wealthiest municipalities is 8.1, meaning that people who live in impoverished parts of the country are almost twice as likely to die if they become sick with Covid-19 than those who live in affluent areas.
The difference between the fatality rates of some poor and rich municipalities paints an even starker picture of the situation.
The case fatality rate in the Mexico City borough of Miguel Hidalgo, home to the upscale neighborhoods of Polanco and Lomas de Chapultepec, is eight whereas the rate in Motozintla, located in Chiapas on the border with Guatemala, is 34.
In Benito Juárez, a Mexico City borough where the United Nations says human development is virtually on a par with Switzerland, the coronavirus fatality rate is 9.4 whereas in the predominantly indigenous municipality of Tlachichuca, Puebla, the rate is 30.
In San Pedro Garza García, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, Nuevo León, that was last year rated as the most livable city in Mexico, just over four people per 100 who have tested positive for coronavirus have died.
In Tlapa de Comonfort in Guerrero’s Montaña region the fatality rate is more than five times higher – 22 of every 100 people who tested positive lost their lives to Covid-19.
The differences between the two municipalities, located at opposite ends of the country, don’t end there.
In San Pedro Garza García, dubbed Saint Peter by some locals, there are three first-rate private hospitals and an IMSS clinic among other health care facilities. Residents also have access to other hospitals in the Monterrey area and can even fly to Texas in just an hour to seek medical attention if they have the means to do so.
In Tlapa, the health care situation is very different. There is just one third-rate hospital in the municipality that is treating coronavirus patients, Milenio reported, and getting there is an ordeal for residents who live in isolated rural communities.
Indigenous Mexicans – many of whom also live in poverty – infected with coronavirus have also died at a much higher rate than the population in general.
Data from the national statistics agency Inegi shows that 3,527 people who identify as indigenous have tested positive for Covid-19 and 650 of them died. Those figures yield a fatality rate of 18.4 per 100 cases, well above the national rate of 10.9.
Yucatán, which has a large Mayan population, has recorded the most Covid-19 deaths among indigenous people with 163. That figure accounts for 25% of the indigenous Covid-19 death toll.
Oaxaca, home to a range of indigenous groups, has recorded 101 fatalities among indigenous residents, while México state ranks third for total indigenous deaths with 69.
The sinkhole and the sophisticated tunnel found beneath it.
Authorities have discovered “the most sophisticated [drug] tunnel in U.S. history” in San Luis, Arizona, a small town on the Mexican border near Yuma, Arizona.
The incomplete tunnel, measuring nearly 1 meter wide and 1.2 meters high, had its own ventilation, water and electrical systems and a railway. It extended 136 meters into San Luis Colorado, Sonora.
The tunnel had no access on the U.S. side, officials said.
“Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and our esteemed law enforcement partners swiftly and effectively worked together to uncover and dismantle a cross-border tunnel for smuggling purposes into the United States,” said Scott Brown, special agent in charge in Phoenix. “Despite the international pandemic, HSI and our law enforcement colleagues remain resilient and committed to pursuing dangerous criminal trans-border smuggling activities along the southwest border.”
Agents first discovered a sinkhole in the desert at the border fence and began drilling on July 27, turning up scraps of wood and water hoses as well as a cavernous space. A remote camera inserted underground allowed them to discover the tunnel.
“This appears to be the most sophisticated tunnel in U.S. history, and certainly the most sophisticated I’ve seen in my career,” said a border patrol agent.
Border tunnels, most often used to smuggle drugs into the U.S., are found fairly frequently and this was the seventh discovered in the Yuma area.
In March, contractors working on the border wall found boards that appeared to shore up a tunnel underneath a sinkhole. HSI agents coordinated with Mexican counterparts who discovered a similar sinkhole on the Mexican side, as well as a two-meter-long ladder nearby.
The governor of Tabasco has announced he will introduce an initiative similar to the one approved Wednesday in Oaxaca, which prohibits the sale or distribution of junk food to minors, effectively putting overly sweet products in the same category as alcohol and cigarettes.
Oaxaca was the first state to take such a step.
“We are also working on a reform initiative to the General Health Law so that the sale of bottled soft drinks, industrialized sugary drinks and food that some say is junk is not allowed in schools,” Adán Augusto López Hernández said Thursday, adding that early in his administration he did the same thing with hospital vending machines.
“We must return as much as possible to [eating] traditional food, and we must start with the children so that they are educated,” López said.
The Oaxaca measure, which was backed by the United Nations Children’s Fund and other international organizations, has drawn criticism from business owners.
Cuauhtémoc Rivera, president of the National Association of Small Merchants (Anpec), commented that in a state where 66% of the population lives in poverty “you are asking them to have a California diet.”
Rivera also warned that Oaxaca’s 58,000 corner stores could lose at least 50% of their sales due to the measure and urged Governor Alejandro Murat to veto the bill.
Small shops are already having a rough time of it. A study by the consultancy Bain & Company revealed that during the first half of the year, around 150,000 corner stores closed across Mexico, and if conditions do not change another 50,000 could close each month.
The average corner store inventory is 70% soft drinks and packaged foods and a decrease in the sale of these items would represent a significant burden for shopkeepers.
According to Anpec, “prohibiting the sale of these products is a measure that will close many of the small businesses in Oaxaca, causing job losses, more business closings and despair in the families that make a living from their sale,” the association stated. “With this initiative, in Oaxaca a 17-year-old will be able to work, drive a vehicle or complete military service but not buy chocolate, a pastry or a soft drink at their neighborhood store.”
The enactment of the law comes as health authorities blame Mexico’s high coronavirus death toll on diet-related diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Deputy Health Ministry Hugo López-Gatell, who has declared his support for the Oaxaca law, last month described soft drinks as “bottled poison.”
The governor of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa, joined the Tabasco governor in praising Oaxaca’s anti-junk food law and said that he, too, might consider such a measure.
A patient with coronavirus symptoms is admitted to a Puebla hospital.
As Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll passed 50,000 on Thursday, the federal government’s coronavirus czar declared that it’s time to move to a “second phase of response” to the pandemic.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell reported Thursday night that the death toll had increased to 50,517 with 819 additional fatalities registered.
He also reported that Mexico’s accumulated case tally had risen to 462,690 with 6,590 new cases recorded by the federal Health Ministry.
Earlier on Thursday, López-Gatell met virtually with state governors and federal cabinet members and told them that it’s “essential” to transition to “side B” or the “second phase of response.”
He stressed that a transition to a new phase of management of the pandemic doesn’t imply that the response to date has failed.
“In a review of what we’ve done up to now, we identified elements that allow us to conclude that the management [of the pandemic] has been correct … and compatible with international recommendations and standards,” the deputy minister said.
López-Gatell said the fact that the government carried out a review of the strategy to date – which included a two-month-long national social distancing initiative and the enforced closure of most nonessential businesses between late March and the end of May – doesn’t mean that it regrets the way in which it responded.
Instead, the government is acknowledging the “need to prepare ourselves for a phase which, due to its duration and the burden it has on the economy and society, requires other complementary approaches,” he said.
The deputy minister said that in the “second phase of response,” a balance needs to be found between stopping the spread of the coronavirus and reactivating the country’s economic and social life.
Avoiding an increase in hospital occupancy levels and reducing Covid-19 deaths will continue to be part of the government’s strategy moving forward, López-Gatell said.
He said that a review of the government’s coronavirus stoplight system – used to assess the risk of infection in each of the the 32 states and establish which mitigation measures should be tightened or eased – is also needed.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
Federal health officials will meet with members of the National Health Council on Monday to look at ways that the stoplight system can be improved. The views of governors, some of which have rejected the federal stoplight system, will be taken into account, López-Gatell said.
He reiterated to governors at Thursday’s virtual meeting that the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to end any time soon.
“To my knowledge there is not a specific prediction about the length [of the pandemic] or an end date,” he said, adding that it could last two or three years with new outbreaks interspersed with lulls.
“There is no doubt that it is going to be a long epidemic. A prediction about a possible end point is extraordinarily difficult to make.”
He also renewed his warning that the flu season, which runs from October to March or April, could coincide with new outbreaks of the coronavirus. That situation would place even greater pressure on Mexico’s health system.
At last night’s press conference, López-Gatell said that 43% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients and 38% of those with ventilators are currently occupied.
More than 13,600 coronavirus patients are currently in hospitals across Mexico while almost 4,000 are on ventilators, according to federal data.
Nayarit, Nuevo León and Coahuila have the highest occupancy rates for general care beds, at 79%, 71% and 65%, respectively.
Nuevo León has the highest occupancy rate for beds with ventilators, at 65%, followed by Colima and Tabasco, where 59% and 53%, respectively, of those beds are in use.
Mexico’s death toll doubled from 25,060 on June 25 to 50,517 on Thursday, a period of 43 days. In that period, an average of 592 Covid-19 deaths were reported each day.
While Mexico has now officially tallied more than 50,000 Covid-19 fatalities, several studies have concluded that there have been tens of thousands of deaths in excess of the official count. A low testing rate means that the number of people who have been infected with the coronavirus is almost certainly much higher than Mexico’s official case tally shows.
Even as the coronavirus situation worsened, President López Obrador, who came under fire early in the pandemic for downplaying its seriousness, has claimed that the outbreak has been controlled and has said repeatedly that the country would soon overcome it completely.
However, several Health Ministry forecasts about when new case numbers would reach their highest point were proved wrong and just this week the Pan American Health Organization predicted that the outbreak would peak in August.
López Obrador has predicted a quick recovery but many economists are forecasting that the Mexican economy will decline by 10% or more in 2020, which would be the country’s worst economic performance since the Great Depression.
Friday is International Beer Day and it’s an event that Mexicans can celebrate: the beer industry is recovering after it was shut down during April and May due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Cerveceros de México, the national brewing industry association, exports are currently at 70% of 2019 levels, production is at 80% and distribution is at 90% of what it was last year.
Beer’s production chain, which has 55,000 direct and 600,000 indirect employees, was disrupted during the coronavirus lockdown as it was considered a nonessential business and was ordered to close down, leading to beer shortages across the country and skyrocketing prices of existing stock.
Despite the shutdown, all 55,000 employees have remained on the job, said Karla Siqueiros, director of Cerveceros de México.
However, faced with a slow reopening of restaurants, bars and sports activities, the Mexican beer industry expects a staggered recovery, she said, as it struggles to make up for lost time amid the current economic crisis.
Beer industry chief Siqueiros: returning to normal.
“Our challenge is to meet our international commitments as an export power, to maintain production,” Siquieros explained, adding that the industry represents 1% of Mexico’s gross domestic product and 25% of agro-industrial exports.
Beer is, indeed, a major industry in the country. The largest exporter and fourth-largest producer of beer in the world, Mexico produced 124.5 million hectoliters of beer in 2019, of which 40 million were exported to 180 countries.
Judging by the near panic that broke out in some regions of the country as beer supplies withered and black-market beer smuggled in from the United States sold for 300% more than pre-pandemic prices, beer is an important product for Mexicans, although not an essential one in the government’s eyes.
According to market researcher Kantar Media, Mexicans consume between 22 and 23 liters per capita each year.
In the first quarter of this year, before the coronavirus hit, production was up 7% and the industry is hopeful it can regain that momentum and end the year at pre-coronavirus levels.
“Yes, the pandemic had a strong impact; we are trying to return to normality as soon as possible, to the capacity, production [and] the numbers that we were driving … and if we do not achieve it we hope to be close to what we obtained in 2019,” Siquieros stated.
The United States has lifted its blanket warning to U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic but continues to warn Americans not to travel to Mexico.
“Do not travel to Mexico due to Covid-19. Exercise increased caution in Mexico due to crime and kidnapping. Some areas have increased risk,” says the August 6 travel advisory.
“Travelers to Mexico may experience border closures, airport closures, travel prohibitions, stay at home orders, business closures, and other emergency conditions within Mexico due to Covid-19.”
The advisory also says that violent crime – homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery – is widespread in Mexico.
The State Department also advised U.S. citizens not to travel to Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán and Sinaloa due to crime and to Tamaulipas due to crime and kidnapping.
The travel advisory says that U.S. citizens should reconsider travel to Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Jalisco, México state, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Sonora and Zacatecas because of crime.
Notwithstanding the Mexico-wide “do not travel advice,” U.S. citizens are urged to exercise increased caution in the 16 other states.
Among those where it recommends “increased caution” are Guanajuato, Mexico’s most violent state; Quintana Roo, home to the popular tourist destinations of Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum; Mexico City; and Yucatán.
More detailed information for each state is included in the travel advisory.
The advisory states that the United States government has limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in many areas of Mexico because travel by U.S. government employees to certain areas is prohibited or significantly restricted.
It also says that U.S. government employees may not travel between cities after dark, may not hail taxis on the street, and must rely on dispatched vehicles, such as those from app-based services like Uber or from regulated taxi stands.
In addition, government employees mustn’t drive drive from the U.S.-Mexico border to interior parts of Mexico or vice versa, with the exception of daytime travel within Baja California, between Nogales and Hermosillo on federal Highway 15D, and between Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey on Highway 85D.
United States Ambassador Christopher Landau acknowledged on Twitter that the U.S. had eased its blanket advice against international travel, in place since March 19, “because some countries have relatively low infection rates.”
In another Twitter post, Landau wrote that in Mexico, “the government itself acknowledges that infection rates are still relatively high.”
“In fact, the entire country has a red or orange stoplight [on the government’s stoplight system to assess the risk of coronavirus infection]. For now Mexico (like a lot of the world) remains at level 4 [do not travel]. The warning will be continuously reviewed during the pandemic,” the ambassador said.
Mexico is one of more than 50 countries to which the Department of State is advising U.S. citizens not to travel. Other countries with large coronavirus outbreaks including Brazil, India and Russia are also on the list.
As of Thursday, Mexico has recorded 462,690 confirmed coronavirus cases, the sixth highest tally in the world, and 50,517 Covid-19 fatalities, the third highest death toll.
Unlike many countries, Mexico has not banned the entry of foreign travelers even as the coronavirus pandemic worsens here and in many nations around the world.
The Maya Train will run on electricity on approximately half of the 1,500-kilometer railroad to be built in Mexico’s southeast.
It was announced in June that the tourist train would be powered by diesel rather than electricity in order to keep operating costs down but the head of the National Promotion Tourism Fund, which is managing the rail project, said Wednesday it had been decided that the Mérida-Cancún and Cancún-Chetumal sections would be electrified.
Rogelio Jiménez Pons said a tendering process to find a company to install electrical infrastructure is being prepared and will be launched in early 2021.
He said the electrification of the two sections, which are expected to be the busiest in terms of services and passenger numbers, will be the second most expensive process in the entire Maya Train project.
“After several analyses, we opted for … electrification where there will be greater activity,” Jiménez said.
Fonatur chief Jiménez said the Mérida-Cancún and Cancún-Chetumal sections will run on electricity.
He added that electrification of the two sections – expected to cost about 25 billion pesos (US $1.1 billion) – will raise the overall price of the project but save money in the long term because maintenance will be easier.
Jiménez said the cost of the project, including construction of tracks in Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Chiapas, was estimated at the end of the second quarter to be 156,000 billion pesos (US $7 billion).
That amount, which doesn’t include the 25 billion pesos for electrification, is 12% higher than an estimate in April because the cost of widening the highways between Mérida and Cancún and Cancún and Chetumal was added.
But Jiménez said he was in discussions with Finance Ministry officials to have the highway work costs excluded from the Maya Train project.
If the Finance Ministry agrees to that, the total cost including electrification will be about 165 billion pesos, (US $7.4 billion), he said.
López Obrador has pledged that the project will be finished by October 22 and create 80,000 jobs this year and 150,000 in 2021.
The Mexican company ICA will build a section of track between Izamal and Cancún, while a consortium led by billionaire businessman Carlos Slim won the contract for the construction of a stretch between Escárcega and Calkiní in Campeche.
A consortium led by Portugal’s Mota-Engil and the China Communications Construction Company won the contract to build a section between Palenque, Chiapas, and Escárcega, Campeche.
Jiménez said Wednesday that seven separate tender processes will also be held to find companies to supply and install the actual tracks. The first tender process, that for the Palenque-Escárcega section, will be launched on September 24, he said.
“We decided to call for bids for the tracks by section so that there’s no cannibalism among the companies. The experience that we had in the previous tenders is that the competition is resulting in good discounts for the government …[while] always meeting quality and experience standards.”
The rail project has been opposed by many indigenous groups on environmental and cultural grounds – and some communities have taken legal action against it – but federal authorities deny that it will have an adverse impact.
According to López Obrador, the Maya Train, which was endorsed by a controversial consultation last December, will spur economic and social development in Mexico’s long-neglected southeast.
