Residents of a small town in the Mixtec region of Puebla have found two pre-Hispanic stone monuments and scores of glyphs on the peak of a nearby rocky hill.
Townsfolk in Santa Cruz Huehuepiaxtla, a town about 150 kilometers southwest of Puebla city in the municipality of Axutla, found two stelae, or etched stone columns, on the summit of the Cerro de la Peña as well as 87 engraved glyphs on its stone floor and walls.
Believed to have been carved by Zapotec or Teotihuacán people, the archaeological relics have been dated to about 500 AD. Archaeologists believe that the site at which they were found was dedicated to a god of the underworld.
The best preserved stelae shows a person with horns and claws dressed in a loincloth. There are also stones engraved with images of an iguana, a bird that appears to be an eagle and a dios murciélago, or bat god, in the form of a woman.
Remains of pre-Hispanic ceramic vessels have also been found on the rocky path to the hill’s summit. Getting to the top is an arduous climb of about 2 1/2 hours.
José Alfredo Arellanes, a researcher with the National Institute of Anthropology and History, told the news agency EFE that initial studies have concluded that there were once seven pyramids at the site as well as a ball court.
“When we reached the summit, we could see the ceremonial area; in other words, where the temples and palaces of the rulers were located,” he said.
Arellanes said that some of the engraved stones feature logographic Mixtec writing known as escritura ñuiñe.
Aracely García, a municipal councilor, told EFE that it is a source of pride to have so much pre-Hispanic history in the area.
“Images carved in stones is what makes the place special and that’s why we invite people to visit our archaeological center, better known as Cerro de la Peña.”
A small pyramid at the ruins near San Gregorio Atlapulco, Mexico City.
San Gregorio Atlapulco is a pueblo originario, an original pueblo, which means it has held onto its indigenous traditions. Every major fiesta in the Mexico City pueblo features Aztec dancers and drummers, and usually several groups of them.
Pilgrimages are taken yearly to places like the Villa Guadalupe in Mexico City and Chalma in the state of México and although both are now recognized as Catholic shrines, they were originally important indigenous religious sites, something most people undertaking the pilgrimages are aware of.
Virtually all Catholic ceremonies held during the year have indigenous underpinnings and symbols, and all are examples of the pueblo’s deep indigenous roots. But perhaps what most clearly shows those roots are the unexcavated ruins in the nearby hills.
Javier Márquez Juárez, who has researched and written about the ruins and is an expert on all things pertaining to San Gregorio, has taken me there many times. We always find something new.
Juan Rafael Zimbron, an archaeologist who has also visited and written about the ruins, said they span different eras, from the pre-classic to post-classic. “That is to say, there are some that are 2,000 years old and others that are 700 years old, depending on the location and the designs.”
A curandera, or healer, performs a ceremony at the monoliths.
The structures and carvings found there contain elements of the Teotihuacán, Xochimilca and Mexica (Aztec) civilizations.
Two of the most striking elements in these ruins are the monoliths located on the crest of a hill called Xilotepec, giant carved boulders depicting a priest of the Mexica god Xipe Totec (at least one archaeologist believes the carving is of Xipe Totec himself) and the other depicting a fertility goddess.
Xipe Totec was the god of agriculture, spring and war (among other things) and he faces east to greet the sunrise. The figure is depicted wearing the skin of a sacrificial victim, which symbolizes rebirth. Next to him is a carving of the Mexica fertility goddess, Cihuateteo (locals call her La Malinche, the name given to the indigenous woman who aided the conqueror Hernán Cortés).
She’s kneeling with her hands clasped around her stomach which, according to María Teresa Herrera Ortiz, the director of the Museo Antropología Xochimilco in Santa Cruz, symbolizes pregnancy. This monolith lies on its side. “It was knocked down by Spanish friars in the 18th century, probably around 1770,” said Márquez Juárez. “The friars found that residents of the pueblo, and especially pregnant women, continued to perform rituals there.”
The friars may have thought that knocking her down would stop the rituals but they were wrong. Flowers are still placed on or around the monoliths as offerings and rituals are sometimes performed by curanderos, traditional healers).
Not far from the monoliths are temazcales (sweat lodges) and these structures — many of them still standing — are found throughout the ruins, indicating that parts the area were most likely used for religious ceremonies. There are also structures that appear to have been used as observatories, some that may have been houses, and at least two small pyramids.
One monolith depicts a fertility goddess. It was knocked over by Spanish friars.
There are many carved stones scattered among the ruins that Márquez Juárez and archaeologists who have viewed them believe are maps that in some cases may show the locations of wells and lakes. Often, there are carvings on the rock’s face that depict the terraces (still extant) built into the hillsides and used for planting.
Small to medium-sized holes (called positas) are almost always found on top of these stones. It’s believed that liquids — either water or the blood of sacrificial victims — were poured into these wells. The liquids then flowed down over the carved terraces in a ritual aimed at ensuring a good harvest.
One day, Márquez Juárez was walking alone through the ruins and misstepped, hurting his knee. He sat down on a rock to assess the damage — fortunately, he was all right — and when he looked closely at the stone on which he sat found that it was carved with a cruz puntada, a dotted cross. Such crosses are found in Teotihuacán and other Mesoamerican sites and were used for astronomical purposes.
Another large rock he found is carved with two concentric circles which, according to a book by Eric Saloma García and Nadia Leon Guzmán, might represent water or, possibly, snails. Such symbols are found around the world and are among the oldest symbols yet discovered, the ones in Central Asia dating back 4,000 years. They’ve been interpreted as representing the sun, symbols of reproduction and the universe.
The ruins cover a very large area. Márquez Juárez and I have walked through them for up to four hours and there are certainly carved stones and structures yet to be discovered. Unfortunately, this may not happen because the ruins are deteriorating. Some of that is simply due to the elements wearing down the stones over hundreds or even thousands of years but much is also due to people destroying structures.
“Sometimes people will take stones from a structure because they need to build something for themselves,” said Márquez Juárez. “Sometimes they will destroy something because they believe it is evil; there are many superstitions.”
Sadly, the Institute of Anthropology and History simply doesn’t have the funds to preserve the multitude of ruins spread across the country. It’s particularly distressing in this case because this was clearly an area that was dedicated to Xipe Totec, an important Mexica god.
Also, Márquez Juárez is convinced that the site was where tributes from conquered tribes were brought before being sent on to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital.
Joseph Sorrentino writes from his home in San Gregorio Atlapulco. He is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Officials celebrate the new pension reform Wednesday at the National Palace. Business leader Carlos Salazar, wearing a mask, heralded the reform as 'momentous.'
President López Obrador presented a plan on Wednesday to reform Mexico’s pension system to avoid what he called a crisis in which current workers would not have a “dignified retirement.”
Under the plan, which was to be sent immediately to the lower house of Congress, obligatory pension contributions will increase from 6.5% of a worker’s salary to 15% over a period of eight years. Employers’ share of the contribution will increase from 5.15% to 13.87%.
As a result, workers’ pensions in retirement will increase by an average of 40%, Finance Minister Arturo Herrera said at the president’s news conference on Wednesday morning. Workers who earn low wages will see even bigger increases under the proposed scheme.
“It’s about radically changing retirement conditions,” Herrera said although he stressed that government contributions to workers’ pensions will not increase above the current rate of 0.225%.
Government contributions will, however, be redirected to benefit the lowest wage earners.
The pension reform also seeks to reduce the length a time a person has to work to in order to access their pension from 1,250 weeks, or about 25 years, to 750 weeks, about 15 years. The age at which workers can access their pension is proposed to remain unchanged at 60.
Herrera said that approximately 82% of the population will have access to a guaranteed pension. The overall goal, he added, is to increase workers’ pensions so they come close to the salary they earned just prior to retirement.
López Obrador said the reform is needed because the current pension system, in place since 1997, will leave current workers with limited pensions in retirement.
“A reform was carried out some years ago and it came up short, to say it kindly. If that reform is not corrected, workers upon retiring would receive less than half their salary. This would keep getting worse over time, … there would be a crisis down the track,” he said.
“Those who would suffer the most would be current workers; it would erase the possibility of a fair and dignified retirement. That’s why a commitment was made to make a new reform to the pension system and it has the support of the business sector and the labor sector,” López Obrador said.
The president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), an umbrella organization representing 12 business groups, lavished praise on the reform and said it was the result of collaboration between the private sector and the government.
The goal is to increase workers’ pensions so they come close to the salary they earned prior to retiring: Finance Minister Herrera.
“I consider it an historic achievement for Mexico. It is truly momentous, we’re going to touch the lives of more than 20 million Mexicans. … This is enormously important and shows that we’re all interested in the wellbeing of Mexico,” Carlos Salazar Lomelín said.
The CCE chief added that the creation of the new pension plan shows that it’s possible to find solutions to “old problems” by working together.
Creating the plan while the country is going through the biggest health crisis in “our generation” makes the achievement “much more momentous,” Salazar said.
The business sector — Salazar included — has clashed with the government amid the coronavirus pandemic because it believes that federal authorities are not doing enough to support the economy.
The current pension system, which totals some US $266 billion, is “completely unfair” to workers, he said, adding that the new one will allow Mexico to meet international standards.
The Financial Times reported that the pension reform is not expected to meet significant opposition in Congress, which is dominated by the ruling Morena party and its allies. However, the plan is not seen as foolproof in its current form.
Some analysts said that raising employers’ pension contribution entails a risk that Mexico’s already large informal sector, in which workers and businesses don’t pay taxes or receive benefits, will swell.
“This [reform] just makes being in the formal sector even more expensive,”said Valeria Moy, head of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think tank.
Mariana Campos, a budget specialist at México Evalúa, another think tank, said the reform proposal “needs some extra ingredients or employers will just say ‘I’m going into the informal sector.’”
Walking down the streets of Xalapa, things are eerily quiet. Peak into any restaurant, store, or bank, and you’ll see people standing far apart with their faces covered, the usual buzz of commerce suspiciously absent.
In a taxi last week for a necessary trip to the grocery store, I found myself staring in wonder from behind my mask at the music video on the driver’s cell phone. It was a song from the 90s, and featured crowds dancing around in a mall. I felt like a mourning historian, peering into a world that will not exist again.
At the grocery store, one person is allowed in at a time, and we must stand far apart from each other while waiting in the line to get inside. Masks are of course required, temperatures are taken, antibacterial gel dispersed, and carts are wiped down. I often wonder now what everyone looks like behind those masks. When inside, I feel annoyed if someone invades my “personal space” which is now a good two-meter bubble around me. How quickly things have changed!
My city decided to close many downtown streets until July 31, setting up roadblocks in a handful of strategic places to discourage people from going out just for the fun of it. However, nonessential businesses are still being allowed to open, which is mixed messaging if I ever saw it.
There are many versions of the same around the country, like the governor of Oaxaca encouraging people to self-confine for 10 days. I think most people would be willing to do so, but they’ve still got to eat, Governor. Are you going to pay their salaries while they’re not earning anything? Follow-up question: who are the customers supposed to be for those open businesses if everyone is supposed to say home?
It reminds me a bit of some of the national drug laws: consumption of a certain amount is fine, but you can’t buy or sell them. The policy for now seems to be to allow businesses to open because the owners and workers have to eat and we so far haven’t abolished money, and also to discourage anyone from patronizing said businesses. While the coronavirus is not the fault of government officials, the idea that its prevention and the economic system we’re used to can co-exist is demonstrably preposterous, as I wrote a couple weeks ago.
When I see groups of people — especially groups without masks — I find myself staring, along with others, wondering if they already live together or if they’re deciding to take the bold risk of sharing breathable air. Watching them, I find myself feeling both contemptuous and envious.
The main activity in which I participate that allows me to see other people is a daily walk or run around the nearby lakes. At first, I followed the advice that said masks were unnecessary when running, and simply made a point of keeping my distance when I passed someone (OK, who am I kidding: when they passed me). I’ve also been strategic about when I breathe in and out when passing another person, and have gotten into the habit of turning my head down and to the side. As cases have begun to rise exponentially in Xalapa, however, I’ve started wearing a mask around my neck and pulling it up over my face when I get within 10 meters of someone.
I hate masks, but I wear them anyway, as do most of us; I feel like I can barely breathe in them even when I’m sitting down, and wearing one for too long gives me a headache. My policy for now is to behave as if I had the coronavirus myself (knock on wood — I don’t think I do or have in the past, though I could certainly be one of the 80% of people who don’t show symptoms).
Another reason I hate masks: while my Spanish is generally excellent, I don’t hear well, and as good as it may be, it’s still my second language. Trying to understand people in masks has made me realize the extent to which I look for clues in communication from their facial expressions, and even by reading lips.
But we still need them. I roll my eyes at people on both sides of the border insisting that their faith will protect them; dudes, if the gods are letting 3-year-olds with leukemia die, I very much doubt there’s much hope for your defiant self.
So, good readers of Mexico News Daily: what say you? Is all hope lost?
Presumably this will be over at some point. But what will be left by then? Stores, restaurants, parks … any place that thrives on foot traffic will someday be in demand again. What do we do in the meantime? How do we help those who can no longer work in the meantime?
I hope that most people can admit that even before this hit, things weren’t going well for a lot of people. I often find myself fantasizing about this “rock bottom” as a transformational moment on a societal scale. Wages were low, jobs that offered decent salaries with benefits were few and far between, and so many of us have been working as freelancers, not because we want to, but because it’s the only option.
No one that I know in my age group (I’m one of the older millennials, nearing 40) owns their own home or has any kind of significant savings that others, usually their families, didn’t either outright give them or subsidize heavily. Economically, we were already in a plane rushing swiftly to the ground while those around us insisted that it couldn’t be, because — look! — we were still in the air, after all!
But now the gig is up, and it’s time for the terrifying task of deciding how we’ll create our society anew. I’d say we’re probably all open to ideas. Let’s think hard about them while we sit behind our masks, glancing at each other from afar.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Residents of El Aguaje, Michoacán, say the smell of at least seven decomposing bodies has permeated their neighborhood due to cartel violence on the weekend.
The dead civilians, believed to have belonged to the Viagras crime gang, have been left to rot inside shot-up homes and on the streets in the community, located in the municipality of Agulilla in the Terra Caliente region.
The victims were likely killed in confrontations between Los Viagras and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in recent days.
As a result of ongoing violence, the neighborhood has almost become a ghost town as hundreds of residents have fled the former agricultural community where there is now no electricity, water or internet, according to the newspaper El Universal.
Businesses have also been boarded up in what has become a gangster battlefield.
Gun battles have been going on for months and only those who had nowhere else to go — and the dead — remain.
A clash last Friday between gangsters and the military in the Aguililla-Buenavista-Tepalcatepec corridor left five of the former killed during a battle that lasted several hours, the army said.
Since the weekend, outbreaks of gunfire have been frequent.
Residents who remain say the Jalisco cartel left a message on one of the dead bodies of a rival cartel member, claim responsibility for his killing.
El Aguaje is the birthplace of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” leader of the CJNG, who is on the list of most wanted criminals in both Mexico and the United States.
A cave in northern Mexico was visited by humans about 30,000 years ago, according to a group of researchers, a date some 15,000 years before people are generally believed to have arrived in the Americas.
A paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature details the discovery of about 1,900 stone artifacts in the Chiquihuite Cave, located 2,750 meters above sea level in the state of Zacatecas.
The paper’s authors say that an archaeological analysis of the artifacts – among which are blades and projectile points – and a DNA analysis of sediment in the cave provide evidence that Chiquihuite was occupied by humans between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago.
The claim, a controversial one considering that humans are generally thought to have arrived in the Americas from northeastern Siberia via a land bridge approximately 13,000-15,000 years ago, has been questioned by some archaeologists but the paper’s authors are confident that their findings stack up.
Ciprian Ardelean, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Lorena Becerra Valdivia, an archaeological scientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia and DNA scientist Professor Eske Willerslev of the United Kingdom’s University of Cambridge – the paper’s lead authors, say the stone artifacts were made out of a kind of limestone that hasn’t been found in the cave and is therefore believed to have been taken into Chiquihuite by humans.
Team members sampling the different cultural layers in the cave. Devlin A. Gandy
During an excavation of the cave, the researchers also discovered charcoal in the layers of sediment which originates from materials that radiocarbon dating determined was burned between 12,000 and 32,000 years ago.
It is possible that the charcoal originated from a naturally occurring event but the researchers believe that humans that visited the cave may have built fires inside it.
The researchers didn’t find any human remains and only uncovered a few animal bones but they did detect the presence of human DNA in the cave’s sediment. However, it is unclear whether the genetic material was left by ancient people or whether the researchers’ excavation was contaminated by DNA from modern humans, National Geographic reported.
Dr. Mikkel Winther Pedersen, a geneticist from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark who also contributed to the research paper and visited the cave, said that DNA from a wide range of animals, “including black bears, rodents, bats, voles and even kangaroo rats,” was also identified.
“We think these early people would probably have come back [to the cave] for a few months a year to exploit reoccurring natural resources available to them,” he said, adding that their visits likely occurred when herds of large mammals were in the area.
Those animals would have “had little experience with humans so they would have been easy prey,” Winther said.
Stone tools are made from a type of greenish crystallized limestone that was collected from outside the cave. Ciprian Ardelean
Willerslev, who is also director of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Center at the University of Copenhagen, also said that the people believed to have visited the cave some 30,000 years ago were unlikely to have occupied it continuously.
“We think people spent part of the year there using it as a winter or summer shelter, or as a base to hunt during migration. This could be the Americas’ oldest ever hotel,” he said.
The evolutionary geneticist noted that “people have passionately debated when the first humans entered the Americas” for decades and acknowledged that “Chiquihuite Cave will create a lot more debate as it is the first site that dates the arrival of people to the continent to around 30,000 years ago – 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.”
While the researchers say that they have evidence that the cave was occupied, the identity of the early Americans is a mystery, said Ardelean, who has spent months living in the cave over the past decade while carrying out painstaking excavation work.
“We don’t know who they were, where they came from or where they went. They are a complete enigma. We falsely assume that the indigenous populations in the Americas today are direct descendants from the earliest Americans, but now we do not think that is the case,” he said.
“By the time the famous Clovis population [people considered to be the ancestors of most of the indigenous cultures of the Americas] entered America, the very early Americans had disappeared thousands of years before,” Ardelean said.
View of the Sierra El Astillero mountains where the Chiquihuite Cave was found in 2012. Devlin A. Gandy
“There could have been many failed colonizations that were lost in time and did not leave genetic traces in the population today. The peopling of the Americas is the last holy grail in modern archaeology. Unconventional sites need to be taken seriously and we need to go out and intentionally look for them,” he said.
“This site doesn’t solve anything, it just shows that these early sites exist. We are dealing with a handful of humans from thousands of years ago so we cannot expect the signals to be very clear. We have literally dug deeper than anyone has done in the past.”
The earliest human DNA discovered in the Americas dates back 12,400 years, Ardelean said before claiming that he and his fellow researchers have now “shown the previously long held date of human presence is not the oldest date for populating the Americas.”
Rather, “it is the explosion date of populating the Americas,” he said.
Ardelean said the Chiquihuite team is currently working on another paper and expressed confidence that new data to be included in it will provide further support for their conclusions.
For his part, Willerslev said the “implications of these findings are as important, if not more important, than the finding itself,” adding that “this is only the start of the next chapter in the hotly debated early peopling of the Americas.”
Team members entering the Chiquihuite cave. Devlin A. Gandy
Some experts have doubts about the researchers’ claims, questioning whether the stone artifacts were actually made by humans or whether they were created by natural geological processes inside the cave.
Loren Davis, an archaeologist at Oregon State University who has reviewed the paper published in Nature, told National Geographic that cave environments can naturally fracture stones which can subsequently be misidentified as human-made artifacts.
“The thing to remember is that humans don’t have a monopoly on the physics required to break rocks,” he said.
Davis also said that he was skeptical of the researchers’ claims because they didn’t find other signs of human occupation such as hearths and animal bones with cut marks.
“You can have a big list of all the things you might expect to see in a site, and [the Chiquihuite researchers] don’t have anything except for some broken rock,” he said. “And if you take the rocks away, there’s really nothing.”
Davis described the research as “intriguing” but added that he was reserving his judgement on its reliability.
Assistant professor Mikkel Winther Pedersen from the University of Copenhagen sampling the cave sediments for DNA. Devlin A. Gandy
Dennis Jenkins, an archaeologist and University of Oregon professor, said he had doubts about many of the purported stone blades because, judging by the photos published in Nature, they don’t look very sharp.
However, he added that “there were some that definitely looked like potential artifacts.”
Jenkins also said the fact that the stone came from outside the cave supported the claim that humans collected it and used it to make artifacts.
The archaeologist said that one thing he is sure of is that the Chiquihuite researchers’ claim that humans arrived in the Americas much earlier than is generally believed will be “voraciously” contested.
Plays, dance, concerts and more have been offered by El Cervantino over the course of 49 years.
Art festivals have become precarious in the time of the coronavirus, and Guanajuato’s International Cervantino Festival (FIC) scheduled to be held in October is no exception.
On Monday, Mexico’s Ministry of Culture announced that the 48th edition of the popular event would still take place, but in a virtual manner in order to safeguard the health of all concerned.
El Cervantino, as it’s popularly called, is one of Latin America’s biggest cultural events. Celebrating the life and work of Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, in the past it has hosted plays, dance, concerts, film screenings, workshops, readings, book releases and more.
Performers have included Ray Charles, Lila Downs and Rudolf Nureyev.
But this year, although the show will still go on, no guest artists will be invited. The events will also be condensed into four days, from October 14 through 18.
Although details about how a virtual Cervantino will play out are still sparse, a crew of 50 people has been working on putting this year’s festival together and information and schedules should be forthcoming.
El Cervantino’s director, Mariana Aymerich, said that compensation would be made to the capital city of Guanajuato due to lost income from festival-goers.
El Cervantino will be accessible to virtual concert-goers around the globe through the broadcasting of events on social media, which may mark a new normal on how the public attends major events. The new format will allow audiences worldwide to take part in classes, workshops and performances on the festival’s website.
“The pandemic experienced on a global scale opened new opportunities to explore formats adapted to our reality, not only to transfer cultural expressions to the screen but to adjust digital resources to the needs of artistic expressions and their creators,” Aymerich said.
The bear that was captured in a video on Monday continues to show interest in humans.
A black bear had another close encounter with a woman in Nuevo León’s Cerro de Chipinque Ecological Park, where such interactions with humans are occurring on an increasingly frequent basis.
In a video clip of Tuesday’s incident, a woman is approached by the medium-sized bear who sniffs her and lightly paws at her while her husband films the scene, urging her to stay calm. “What should I do?” the woman asks the man, who replies, “Don’t move, stay there.”
The man remarks that the bear appears very playful, but the tension in his voice escalates as the bear grabs the woman’s leg with its paw. “Bear, bear, come here,” the man says before the clip ends.
Over the weekend the same bear, recognizable by a tag in its ear, approached a small group of women who were running in the same area, standing up on its hind legs at one point to smell a woman’s hair as she snapped a selfie.
“This type of approach by the black bear to the visitor is abnormal behavior caused by human beings,” said representatives from the park in a statement. “The interaction shown in the video should have been avoided; what is recommended is to move away when detecting the presence of the bear and not approach.”
The bear in question has already been captured twice and released at the request of neighbors, the park said, but as the animal appears to have lost all fear of humans, it will need to be recaptured and sent either to a zoo or an area less populated by people.
Gustavo Treviño, general director of Parks and Wildlife in Nuevo León, told the newspaper Milenio that 26 bear sightings have been reported in the municipalities of San Pedro, Santa Catarina and Monterrey. He urged citizens to avoid all contact with them and not to feed them or take photos.
“The natural behavior of a bear toward people is always to run away. What we have seen in the videos is what we call totally aberrant behavior; it is no longer a natural behavior of a bear and can lead to aggressive behavior and pose a risk to the safety of people,” said Rogelio Carrera Treviño, coordinator of the wildlife laboratory at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León (UANL).
He noted that the bear in the videos is a young adult between 3 and 4 years old that learned from its mother that humans can be a source of food.
Yelling or making noise is the best way to scare off a bear, which is Mexico’s largest carnivore. “It is a predator that can be dangerous, it is a wild animal and its behavior can be unpredictable, that’s why we must keep distance,” Carrera said.
The black bear is an endangered species and is protected in Mexico, which is why it will be sent to a zoo or wildlife center. In the United States bears that exhibit this kind of familiarity with humans are often euthanized.
Obesity has been a factor among coronavirus victims, yet spending on programs to address the problem have been cut.
At a time when spending on health is arguably more important than ever due to the coronavirus pandemic, the federal Health Ministry’s budget has been significantly reduced.
The ministry’s budget was cut by 1.88 billion pesos (US $84.5 million at today’s exchange rate) between January and May, according to Finance Ministry reports.
A total of 128.83 billion pesos (US $5.8 billion) was expected to be allocated to the ministry in the first five months of the year but it only received 126.94 billion, a 1.5% reduction. The spending cuts were spread across a range of areas.
The Health Ministry’s epidemiological surveillance program saw its budget slashed from 249.4 million pesos to 152.5 million, a 39% reduction, while the department headed up by coronavirus czar Hugo López-Gatell, the office of the deputy minister for disease prevention and control, saw its funding reduced from 192.7 million pesos to 145.7 million, a 24% cut.
Funding for Health Ministry programs aimed at preventing and controlling obesity and diabetes, two of the most prevalent health problems among people who have lost their lives to Covid-19, was cut from 451.3 million pesos to 219.2 million between January and May, a reduction of 51%.
A federal deputy with the Citizens Movement party said the reduction in funding for obesity and diabetes prevention programs was among the most concerning budget cuts in the first five months of the year.
Martha Tagle said that it was “inconceivable” that spending on programs directed at dealing with some of the main health problems in Mexico had been reduced.
She said that the government is collecting billions of pesos in revenue from taxes on soft drinks and junk food, and that money should be directed at programs to combat obesity and diabetes. Preventing and treating those problems among children should be a priority, Tagle added.
The deputy health minister said that if people had diets free of junk food and sugary drinks – which he described as “bottled poison” – the impact of any virus on the population of Mexico would be less.
As of Tuesday, 40,400 people had lost their lives to Covid-19 in Mexico, according to official data.
Based on confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths, Mexico’s fatality rate is 11.3 per 100 cases, well above the global rate of 4.1.
Juanita Pérez's son Dylan has been missing since June 30.
Twenty-three children were rescued during a search for a missing 2-year-old in a raid on Monday at a house in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. The missing child was not among them.
Most of the children ranged in age from 2 to 15, but three babies of 3 to 20 months of age were also found. The children, who were being held by three women, all showed signs of significant malnutrition, authorities said.
The focus of the raid, Dylan Esaú Gómez, was kidnapped from outside a San Cristóbal market by a teenager on June 30.
“None of the children rescued is my son,” his mother said, sobbing. “I haven’t heard anything about my son.”
Neighbors told the police they had not noticed any abnormal activity, and that it was common for large families to rent houses in the area.
Authorities said the children were being forced to sell candy and trinkets on the streets and had to meet a sales quota before returning home in order to receive food and a place to sleep, which appeared to be no more than sheets of cardboard and blankets on a cement floor.
The three women found at the scene were arrested and charged with human trafficking.
The children have been turned over to the DIF family services agency while authorities search for their relatives. The DIF posted photos showed them enjoying a boxed lunch after their rescue.
Meanwhile, Juanita Pérez, Esaú’s mother, continues to plead for help in the search for her missing toddler and has stationed herself in front of the National Palace in Mexico City, carrying a banner bearing an image of her son’s face and asking the president for help finding him.
“I have no news of my son, so I come here to ask for the support of Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador to help me in this search,” the mother said through tears.
“I want justice, I want to find my son and I want to find him well. The people who are doing this to me one day are going to pay for it. I want them to give me back my son, that’s what I want,” she said. “He is barely 2 years old.”
At least 12,755 children are missing in Mexico, according to the National Registry of Missing Persons (RNPDNO) published by the National Search Commission (CNB), and 1,416 of those are under the age of 4.
Seven children go missing in Mexico each day, abducted for illegal adoptions, forced labor or sexual exploitation, activists say.
“It is regrettable that in Mexico there is not, as in other countries, a police force that is committed to the thorough investigation of the allegations of theft of children,” said Guillermo Gutiérrez, president of the Stolen Children Foundation, earlier this month.
