Alcohol sales will be banned in 8 boroughs this weekend.
Mexico City will remain orange light “high” risk on the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight system next week but some new restrictions will apply due to a further rise in hospitalizations.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced that a prohibition on alcohol sales will take effect in eight of the capital’s 16 boroughs at 6:00 p.m. Friday and remain in place until 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
The so-called ley seca, or dry law, will apply in Gustavo A. Madero, Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, Magdalena Contreras, Miguel Hidalgo, Tlalpan, Tláhuac and Xochimilco this weekend.
“It’s eight boroughs one weekend and the other eight boroughs next weekend,” Sheinbaum said.
Restaurants are permitted to sell alcohol with meals but only until 7:00 p.m. The mayor reiterated that restaurants are only permitted to operate at 30% capacity in indoor dining areas and 40% outdoors. They must close by 10:00 p.m.
Gyms, sports clubs, 10-pin bowling centers, cinemas, theaters, museums, casinos, hair salons, theme parks, shopping centers, department stores and most other nonessential businesses must close at 7:00 p.m.
Such businesses had been permitted to remain open until 10:00 p.m. but the government ordered them to shorten their opening hours until the end of the month.
Sheinbaum said last Friday that bars and cantinas, which were allowed to reopen in August as long as they offered food and table service to customers, would have to close for two weeks starting last Monday. But many in the historic center of the capital have continued to operate.
Sheinbaum said earlier this week that parties, family gatherings and the operation of bars were probably the main cause of higher coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations.
She said Friday that there were 3,427 coronavirus patients in hospitals in the capital including more than 800 on ventilators. In the Valley of México metropolitan area, there were 4,519 Covid patients in the hospital, Sheinbaum said.
The hospital occupancy level in Mexico City hospitals increased from 42% to 49% between November 12 and 19, the mayor said, adding that as many as 200 new coronavirus patients per day were admitted over the past week.
“If this trend continues until the end of December we’ll have the same hospital occupancy as [the peak in] May,” Sheinbaum said.
As of Thursday, Mexico City had recorded 183,253 confirmed coronavirus cases and 16,677 Covid-19 deaths. Those figures account for 18% and 17%, respectively, of Mexico’s accumulated case tally, which is currently just above 1 million, and death toll, which passed 100,000 on Thursday.
Saying it didn’t matter that the store had made an error, representatives from Mexico’s consumer protection agency, Profeco, told staff at a Morelia, Michoacán, Walmart this week that it had to let eight shoppers buy tequila at the advertised price of 19 pesos per bottle.
In total, the shoppers were allowed to purchase 81 bottles at the low price after they called Profeco to say that Walmart’s staff had refused to sell them the 990-milliliter bottles of José Cuervo at the 19-peso price on a sign in the store. After refusing to sell them the liquor, Walmart management then asked the customers to leave, Profeco said.
The agency arrived at the store soon afterward. By the time Profeco approached Walmart management about the issue, staff had already hung up a new sign for the tequila at a price of 169 pesos per bottle. However, Profeco told the store it had to honor the price anyway for those eight shoppers who had tried to buy the liquor while the sign was still on display.
“[The complainants] showed us photographs and a video where the displayed price could be observed,” a Profeco representative told Milenio newspaper.
Having prevailed, seven of the shoppers bought 10 bottles each of the tequila, while the eighth bought 11, Profeco said.
A superior spot to view Lake Chapala is from the El Chante Glider Launch Point.
I had expected to follow up my list of great places to camp in western Mexico with a selection of wonderful hot springs and rivers where you might soak away your troubles. Due to the pandemic, however, most of those delightful sites are temporarily closed to the public. So what to do and where to go in time of Covid-19?
How about a mirador, or lookout point, where you could enjoy a picnic with a view? In western Mexico, such spots are found not only atop mountains and volcanoes but often at the edge of huge, gorgeous canyons.
In none of the places suggested below are you likely to find more than a handful of people, so you should be able to breathe in fresh air without a mask while soaking up the great vibes of a wide panorama stretching as far as the eye can see; just what you need to recharge your batteries after a week of Zoom meetings and shopping via internet.
El Chante Hang Glider Launch
Our first belvedere is located 600 meters above El Chante, at the northwest corner of Lake Chapala. From the hang glider launching spot at the south end of an open meadow, you will enjoy a spectacular 180-degree view of Mexico’s biggest lake and the villages dotting its shore. While this is one of the best places to see the lake, note that it takes a two-hour hike to get up there. However, Gerry Green, who wrote the book on hiking in these hills, comments that the trail is “wide, well used and not too steep.”
If you prefer lookouts closer to where you left your car, see below. To check out the trail, just Google: “Fuentes-GliderLaunch-Chante Loop Wikiloc”.
From Etzatlán’s mirador, get a nice view of the world’s biggest crochet canopy. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records. Photo courtesy of Xataka.com.mx
The Etzatlán Mirador
The charming little town of Etzatlán lies 65 kilometers northwest of Guadalalajara. It is perhaps best known as the gateway to the celebrated silver and gold mines of the Amparo Mining Company and home of its mint, but it made the news in 2019 when Guinness World Records certified that the townspeople had created the world’s largest crochet canopy, measuring nearly 3,000 square meters.
A four-kilometer drive along a well-paved highway will take you to Etzatlán’s mirador, where you’ll have a good view of the town and surrounding hills … and perhaps a bird’s eye view of the giant crochet canopy as well. Ask Google Maps to take you to “QW38+6R Etzatlán, Jalisco”.
Ceboruco Volcano
An old-timer in Nayarit once told me that the most beautiful sight he had ever seen was the view from the top of Ceboruco Volcano, so I think it deserves high marks among the miradores of western Mexico. The volcano is located right along the toll road from Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta and a well paved cobblestone road will take you up to the very top. Along the way you can appreciate dramatically changing flora and you’ll even come upon a fumarole or two. When you’ve gone as high as you can possibly go, you’ll be at the foot of huge microwave antennas. Park and walk to the other side of the antennas for the spectacular view.
A view of the 170-kilometer-long Río Verde from the walkway at La Leonera.
La Leonera
Jalisco’s Rio Verde has carved a magnificent canyon over 170 kilometers in length and one of the best places to view it is from La Leonera, located 40 kilometers northeast of Guadalajara, near the town of Acatic. The mirador is just a few steps from where you park your car, but you can see a lot more of the canyon far below if you walk along a wide footpath which leads to 60-meter tall Velo de la Novia Waterfall.
To get there, let Google Maps take you to “R3PM+42 Acatic, Jalisco.”
Mirador el Filete
The Manantlán Biosphere Reserve straddles the Mexican states of Jalisco and Colima and is home to an astounding variety of flora and fauna. One of the reserve’s most beautiful attractions is the view from Mirador el Filete, which means something like Knife Blade Lookout. From this thin slice of rock, they say, you can see the Pacific on a clear day. To reach the spot, you must walk for half an hour, but you will be walking through a cloud forest, so along the way you are going to see so many wonderful things — from bromeliads and orchids to blue mushrooms and Spanish moss — that the walk will surely turn out to take far longer than you expected.
To visit this lookout point, head for El Terrero, Colima. Once you are there, ask one of the local people to guide you to El Filete.
Taking in the view from a rock at El Divisadero
Mirador Cruz de los Volcancillos
Also known as The Hermit’s Cross and El Divisadero, this is one of the most spectacular lookout points in Jalisco’s Sierra de Tapalpa, home to many a fine mirador. There’s a giant cross here, identical to many others on Mexican cliffs and hilltops, but just a few meters beyond it, there is a truly awesome place where you can sit on a rock overhanging a sheer drop of … well, I calculate a full kilometer and a half. Yes, it’s just about a mile straight down, and in the good old Mexican tradition, there is no railing to be seen anywhere. I swear this is one mirador you are not likely to forget!
Ask Google Maps to take you to “399R+6X Techaluta de Montenegro, Jalisco.” When you are about a kilometer from El Divisadero, you may have to park and walk if the road looks bad. If you have a high clearance vehicle and the weather is dry, you can drive all the way to the lookout point.
Las Águilas
Las Águilas has been called Mexico’s Stonehenge. The site is located 129 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara, near the town of Cuautla, Jalisco.
Whether Las Águilas once served as an astronomical observatory or whether it is a “power center,” as Carlos Castaneda supposedly claimed, I really can’t say, but simply wandering among its tall, majestic monoliths is an experience worth having. On top of that, there is a great view from the sheltered belvedere constructed by locals.
For the route to this site, Google: “Las Aguilas Cuautla Jalisco Wikiloc.”
The antennas atop Ceboruco Volcano, Nayarit, seen from below.
A local guide gazes out at the countryside from Mirador El Filete.
The monoliths of Las Águilas, near Cuautla, Jalisco.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years, and is the author of “A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area” and co-author of “Outdoors in Western Mexico.” More of his writing can be found on his website.
Authorities in Mexico will face one of their biggest anti-corruption tests yet after a bombshell deal was brokered with the United States to drop the federal drug charges that led to the unprecedented arrest of the country’s former defense minister.
Federal Judge Carol Amon granted the request to dismiss the case against Mexico’s former military chief, Salvador Cienfuegos, at a November 18 hearing. This followed a shocking November 17 announcement from U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Mexico Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero that prosecutors were seeking to withdraw the charges.
“In recognition of the strong law enforcement partnership between Mexico and the United States, and in the interests of demonstrating our united front against all forms of criminality, the U.S. Department of Justice has made the decision to seek dismissal of the U.S. criminal charges against former [minister] Cienfuegos, so that he may be investigated and, if appropriate, charged, under Mexican law,” the two top prosecutors said.
A motion filed November 17 by U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme clarified that “the United States … determined that sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant.”
However, the New York Times and Vice News reported that Mexican officials threatened to boot the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from the country and limit anti-drug cooperation if the case was not dismissed.
Still, DuCharme said during the November 18 hearing that his office “stands behind” the case and had “no concern” with it, but the decision came from the highest levels of the Justice Department and Attorney General Barr.
Cienfuegos’ mid-October arrest at Los Angeles’ international airport sent shockwaves through both the United States and Mexico, with the latter’s government being blindsided by the capture and unaware of the investigation into the former top security official.
U.S. prosecutors charged Cienfuegos with three counts of drug conspiracy and one count of money laundering in an August 2019 indictment that was made public at the time of his arrest. Authorities said he colluded with a breakaway faction of the Beltrán Leyva Organization, which law enforcement called the H-2 Cartel, and helped them “operate with impunity in Mexico” between 2015 and 2017 in exchange for bribes.
Not only that, the former defense minister, whom authorities dubbed “El Padrino,” or the “Godfather,” was accused of protecting the group from law enforcement scrutiny, securing safe transport for drug shipments and notifying its members of military operations, among other crimes.
Attorney General Barr said his office is cooperating with its Mexican counterparts and has already shared evidence collected as part of the case. Cienfuegos was sent back to Mexico a free man.
InSight Crime analysis
The U.S. government’s decision to dismiss the charges against Cienfuegos is virtually unprecedented. It raises serious questions as to how the United States went from carrying out a secretive multi-year probe behind the backs of Mexican authorities to trusting them enough to conduct their own investigation.
Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former head of international operations, told InSight Crime he had “never seen anything like this” in his 31-year law enforcement career.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said officials are now investigating the former general, but Cienfuegos has yet to be formally charged at home, and only came under investigation after his unexpected arrest north of the border. At the time, President López Obrador said no investigation against him existed in Mexico.
It’s highly unlikely the U.S. Justice Department would have filed such explosive charges against Cienfuegos if they didn’t feel they could support them. In fact, U.S. Attorney DuCharme reiterated that the evidence in the case is “strong” in the November 17 court filing and again during the November 18 hearing.
In court documents, U.S. prosecutors cited “thousands of [intercepted] Blackberry Messenger communications” among the evidence backing up the allegations that Cienfuegos used his public position to protect the so-called H2 Cartel. Prosecutors also said they had communications where Cienfuegos is “identified by name, title and photograph as the Mexican government official assisting” the powerful organized crime group.
However, DuCharme said that the charges were ultimately dropped “as a matter of foreign policy” so that “Mexico could proceed first with investigating and potentially prosecuting the defendant under Mexican law for the alleged conduct at issue, which occurred in Mexico.”
Security analyst Alejandro Hope told InSight Crime the dropped charges show “recognition from the United States that the army is the prime institutional actor in Mexico in everything connected to organized crime, and that the United States doesn’t want to antagonize them.”
Hope added that if the case had moved forward, U.S. cooperation with Mexico’s military, which has been at the heart of the fight against organized crime for over a decade, would have “become much more difficult for some time.”
Indeed, the initial arrest had soured the anti-drug alliance and broader bilateral cooperation between the two nations. Some former U.S. officials even went so far as to say that maintaining strong U.S.-Mexico relations was more important than such a high-profile arrest.
Now, Cienfuegos will take his chances in Mexico, where authorities have long struggled to successfully prosecute high-level officials — as well as notorious drug traffickers — accused of corruption, colluding with criminal groups and grave human rights abuses, among other crimes.
A number of police officers and local government officials have evaded capture in Mexico only to be charged and prosecuted by the U.S. government. To be sure, Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s minister of public security from 2006 to 2012, is currently facing drug charges in the United States after his December 2019 arrest. López Obrador responded to his detention by calling the administration of former President Felipe Calderón a “narco-government.”
The justice system under President López Obrador in Mexico, where the impunity rate is consistently one of the highest in Latin America, will now be put to the test to determine whether or not the highest echelons of the Mexican military will remain untouchable.
“I think Mexico will give the appearance that they’re looking into the matter, but the chances of Cienfuegos being prosecuted successfully are slim to none,” Vigil said.
Reprinted from InSight Crime. Parker Asmann is a writer with InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.
Residents meet in Tepalcatepec to plan deployment of self-defense force.
Residents of a municipality in Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente region armed themselves on Thursday after local communities came under attack by a cell of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
The cell attacked several communities in Tepalcatepec Thursday morning including Los Cuchis. According to a report by the newspaper El Universal, armed men began firing at the town at 8:30 a.m. from the nearby community of Voladeros, located in the neighboring municipality of Aguililla.
Los Cuchis residents fled their homes to seek safety in other towns. There were no reports of any casualties.
The CJNG, usually considered Mexico’s most dangerous and powerful criminal organization, is reportedly intent on taking control of Tepalcatepec and the neighboring municipality of Buenavista.
Residents of Tepalcatepec and Coalcóman, another neighboring municipality, recently dug trenches across highways in an attempt to prevent CJNG hitmen from entering their communities and attacking them.
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After Thursday’s attacks, residents gathered in the Tepalcatepec town square where they decided to take up arms and deploy as self-defense forces to the communities that were targeted. They also agreed to dig more highway trenches and to block off paths where criminals enter the municipality on foot.
Residents of Los Cuchis posted video messages to social media calling for help from state and federal authorities.
The CJNG is believed to operate in almost every state of Mexico, aggressively expanding its influence since forming in Jalisco about a decade ago.
Its leader, Nesmesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, is Mexico’s most wanted drug lord and is also sought in the United States, where a US $10-million reward is on offer for information that leads to his arrest.
According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the CJNG manufactures, distributes and smuggles into the U.S. large amounts of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. It is also involved in other criminal activities such as fuel theft and extortion.
Ebrard: the US has full confidence in the Mexican justice system.
The Mexican investigation into former defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos – who returned home on Wednesday after the United States dropped drug trafficking and money laundering charges against him – will live up to the country’s “prestige,” Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Thursday, asserting that it would be “almost suicide” to bring the ex-army chief to Mexico and then do nothing.
“There is confidence, both in the United States and in Mexico, that the investigation will meet the highest standards of effectiveness and honesty,” the foreign minister told President López Obrador’s morning news conference.
Ebrard said the United States has full confidence in and supports the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR), which is carrying out the investigation into Cienfuegos’ alleged wrongdoings, and the Mexican judicial system.
“We think that’s very significant coming from the judicial authorities of the United States,” he said.
Agreeing to the United States Department of Justice request for the charges against former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s defense minister to be dismissed, U.S. federal Judge Carol Amon said there was no evidence or suspicion that Mexico wouldn’t conduct an investigation.
Will Cienfuegos face trial? Many analysts doubt it.
However, there are doubts about whether evidence the United States has given Mexico – including thousands of intercepted cell phone messages that allegedly show that Cienfuegos colluded with the H-2 drug cartel – will be admissible in Mexican courts given that it was obtained by U.S. authorities here without the authorization of a Mexican judge.
But Ebrard said there will be justice “according to the provisions of Mexican law and the investigations that the FGR will carry out.”
He added that it would be “almost suicide” not to subject Cienfuegos to a thorough investigation. If that were the government’s intention it would have been better to leave him in the United States, Ebrard said.
López Obrador called on the public to have confidence in the investigation. The president added that Cienfuegos must be investigated in Mexico as a matter of sovereignty.
“We can’t allow foreign agencies to try Mexicans if there is no proof,” López Obrador said, apparently ignoring the United States’ assertion that it had a “strong” case against the former army chief.
“Besides there are cooperation agreements that have to be respected. How is is that there is a [bilateral] cooperation agreement in this area and we’re not informed that he is going to be arrested or that there is an investigation open … [against] General Cienfuegos? If that’s the case, what are cooperation agreements for?”
The president declared that the law is now applied with rectitude in Mexico as a result of his government coming to power.
“This idea that [criminals] are punished there [in the United States] and not here was created because the authorities in Mexico weren’t up to the task. Now it’s different, now there is a change,” he said.
The United States’ decision to allow Cienfuegos was highly unusual because it has previously shown little faith in Mexico’s justice system.
Several sources have said that the United States government agreed to Mexico’s request for the general to be returned because Mexico threatened to end or limit cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Announcing the decision to seek the dismissal of the charges faced by Cienfuegos, U.S. Attorney General William Barr and his Mexican counterpart Alejandro Gertz Manero said the two countries remain committed to “bilateral law enforcement cooperation.”
San Pedro de la Cueva closed its doors to outsiders when the pandemic began.
A good strategy for minimizing the risk of catching Covid-19 in Mexico might be moving to a small, rural community — if you can get in, that is.
According to the federal Ministry of Health, 193 small municipalities in six states have managed to remain completely free of Covid cases since the pandemic began. The state of Oaxaca heads the list with 172.
The other states with Covid-free municipalities, Chiapas, Puebla, Veracruz, Sonora and Tamaulipas, have far fewer that are virus-free but all display a similar pattern: relatively small populations, often indigenous, often with a percentage of the population scattered into even lower-density rural areas around the municipality.
In some communities, local and state officials also attribute the lack of cases to zero-tolerance policies preventing outsiders from entering.
In Puebla, only four of the state’s 217 municipalities do not have any Covid-19 cases: Axutla, Coyomeapan, Chigmecatitlán and San Juan Atzompa. All are small communities that are difficult to access, located in forested areas or mountainous zones.
Similarly in Veracruz, the five municipalities that have stayed free of the disease are all in remote locations in the northern and central sierras, with low-density populations dedicated to farming, whose residents only leave when absolutely necessary.
In Tamaulipas, health specialist Daniel Carmona said that the state’s two municipalities without cases, Palmillas and San Nicolás, “put the brakes” on Covid arriving thanks to their remoteness.
Some officials say their communities remain without cases because they closed access to outsiders early on.
Edna Rubal, mayor of San Pedro de la Cueva, Sonora, said her community made the decision to close the town right at the pandemic’s beginning, when the state was assessed at red, the highest risk level on the national coronavirus map. Hers is one of the three municipalities in the state that has remained virus-free, along with Átil and Bacadéhuachi.
Oaxaca Health Minister Donato Casas said that many of the state’s Covid-free municipalities have remained that way because of their rural locations but also because they exercised discipline with anti-Covid measures from the beginning of the pandemic. For example, the remote community of Santo Domingo Tlatayapam, whose population is 132, closed the town to strangers and even outside deliveries.
In Chiapas, seven communities have managed to stay free of the coronavirus. In three of them — San Juan Cancuc, Maravilla Tenejapa and San Andrés Larrainzar — strangers are not welcome for now.
Despite residents in those towns not being required to wear masks or use hand sanitizer in public places (although the local government does follow other risk-prevention protocols), Covid is not a problem.
Authorities are struggling with the colossal task of burying a humpback whale, estimated to weigh 35 tonnes, that washed up dead five days ago on a beach in La Paz, Baja California Sur.
Marine biologists with the federal environmental protection agency and coast guard officials arrived at El Mogote Beach Thursday to bury the dead animal but a front-end loader brought along to carry out the task was deemed insufficient for the job.
“They’re coming back … with two backhoes,” said a local fisherman who mentioned that local security officers also showed up at the scene and failed to make any progress.
Local residents and fishermen have been complaining about the odor the dead whale has been giving off since it washed up at low tide on Sunday, already in a state of decomposition. It has remained ever since at the water’s edge, and locals are demanding that authorities find a way to bury the 20-meter-long animal as soon as possible.
Francisco Gómez, director of the Museum of the Whale in La Paz, told Más Noticias BCS that the whale must be removed soon to avoid blood and body oils from the whale contaminating the shoreline.
The whale is believed to have lost its way and then died while still in the ocean, eventually being pulled onto the beach by tidal currents.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been left to mourn the deaths of loved ones.
Mexico on Thursday became the fourth country in the world to record 100,000 Covid-19 deaths, passing the tragic milestone eight months after the first fatality was officially registered in the country.
Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía reported that the death toll had risen to 100,104 with 576 additional fatalities registered on Thursday.
The only other countries that have passed 100,000 Covid-19 deaths are the United States, Brazil and India.
The milestone came five days after Mexico’s accumulated case tally passed 1 million. The Health Ministry registered 4,472 new cases on Thursday, increasing the tally to 1,019,543.
Both the death toll and case tally are widely believed to be much higher because Mexico’s testing rate is much lower than most other countries. The Health Ministry reported late last month that there were about 193,000 more deaths than usual in the first nine months of the year and that at least 139,000 of them were attributable to Covid-19.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Based on confirmed cases and deaths, Mexico’s Covid-19 fatality rate is 9.8 per 100 cases, the highest among the 20 countries currently most affected by the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University. The country ranks sixth for per capita deaths among the same group of countries with 79.3 fatalities per 100,000 residents.
Speaking at Thursday night’s coronavirus press conference, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, the government’s pandemic point man, described the 100,000+ death toll as “unheard of.”
“Today in Mexico we have 100,000 people who have lost their lives due to Covid-19. It’s an unheard of amount, there is no precedent in Mexican society of an acute, infectious disease … affecting the lives of so many people,” he said.
The death toll is now 66% higher than López-Gatell’s prediction of what could happen in a “catastrophic scenario.”
When Mexico’s death toll rose to 12,545 on June 4, the deputy minister said the government couldn’t rule out 30,000 to 35,000 Covid-19 fatalities. “In a catastrophic scenario, it could be 60,000,” López-Gatell said.
On Thursday, he was critical of the media for being “alarmist” by focusing on the death toll reaching 100,000.
López-Gatell: death toll ‘unheard of.’
“The epidemic is terrible in itself, you don’t have to add drama to it,” López-Gatell said, charging that some media outlets were focusing on the figure to sell newspapers or to trigger “political confrontation.”
When Mexico officially passed 1 million cases, the deputy minister also took aim at the media, saying, “in terms of news it appears attractive to report a round number whenever there is one.”
He personally described the passing of the 1 million case mark as “insignificant.”
What is not insignificant is the effect the pandemic has had, and continues to have, on people’s lives. Every state in the country has recorded at least 600 Covid-19 deaths and all but four – Baja California Sur, Colima, Campeche and Nayarit – have recorded more than 1,000.
Mexico City had recorded 16,677 Covid-19 fatalities as of Thursday, by far the highest total in the country, while neighboring México state, where 11,399 people have officially lost their lives to the disease, is the only other state with a five-figure death toll.
A nationwide death toll in excess of 100,000 people means that there are multiple members of more than 100,000 families who have grieved for loved ones who lost their lives to Covid-19 this year.
The pandemic has also had a significant effect on people’s everyday lives as coronavirus restrictions curtail the nation’s social and economic activities. More than a million formal sector jobs were lost due to the pandemic – although jobs recovery is now underway – and countless millions more were lost in the vast informal sector.
Unsurprisingly, the economy slumped as restrictions took effect, and although a recovery of sorts is now underway the recession this year is predicted to be the worst since the Great Depression.
The pandemic has also taken a toll on many people’s mental health.
“Mexico’s living are bearing the scars of the pandemic along with their lost friends and loved ones,” the Associated Press (AP) said in a report published after the death toll passed 100,000. “Many surviving coronavirus victims say the psychosis caused by the pandemic is one of the most lasting effects.”
AP spoke to Daniel Alfredo López González, a community leader in the sprawling, poverty-stricken eastern suburbs of greater Mexico City, who said that he was extremely afraid when he contracted the coronavirus himself.
“It is a tremendous psychosis. In the end, sometimes the disease itself may not be so serious, but it is for a person’s psyche,” he said. “That is, knowing that you have a disease like this can kill you as bad as the disease itself.”
His sister is a public health outreach worker and became paranoid that she had been exposed to the coronavirus while working.
Dulce María López González told AP that during one moment of panic she believed that she couldn’t breathe. But then she said to herself, “No, it is a psychological question.”
She said she had to force herself to calm down, telling the news agency: “If I get worked up thinking I have the disease, that I am going to die, then I am going to have a heart attack.”
Many people are also afraid of going to hospitals amid the pandemic, both for treatment for Covid-19 and other unrelated ailments, because they believe they won’t receive proper treatment and be left to die or because they think they will be infected with the virus.
Large numbers of people have only sought medical attention when they are gravely ill, causing many to die in emergency wards upon arrival or soon after they were admitted to hospital.
Mexico City Health Minister Oliva López Arellano said earlier this year that during an influx of coronavirus patients in May, almost half died within 12 hours of arriving at hospitals in the capital.
“After seeing videos of what happens to people inside hospitals, screw that,” José Eduardo Bailón, a Mexico City man who spent 60 days at home recovering from Covid-19, told The New York Times. “I’d rather stay home and die there.”
Feed the Hungry distributes food to a community in San Miguel de Allende. lauren sevrin
A San Miguel de Allende charity is taking transparency to the next level on Giving Tuesday December 1 by live-streaming its distribution of 500 care packages to needy rural communities.
Giving Tuesday is an annual event that encourages people to give to charities.
In San Miguel, the organization Feed the Hungry is inviting the public to a special “24 Hours of Gratitude” on its social media sites, encouraging supporters to post one thing they are grateful for.
The organization is also selling art donated by a San Miguel gallery and copies of a bilingual cookbook created for the charity. All the proceeds will go toward purchasing food for its beneficiary families.
“Every day, we are helping thousands of families put food on their table, and on December 1 we want to give [the public] an opportunity to join us virtually …” said Feed the Hungry president Al Kocourek.
An organization whose model before the coronavirus pandemic was to deliver weekly food staples to school kitchens in needy neighborhoods and rural communities, Feed the Hungry had to adapt its delivery model once schools across Mexico shut down and students began to learn at home.
Over the past eight months of the pandemic, the NGO has provided more than 60,000 food baskets directly to families.
