Tourists return to Guerrero destinations but numbers are small

July 6, 2020

An Acapulco beach with palms and palapas — The government will 'rehabilitate' beach access points in Acapulco, Sheinbaum's deputy tourism minister promised. (File photo)

Acapulco’s hotels, beaches, and restaurants opened again to tourists for the first time in three months on the weekend, but hotels are reporting a disappointing start with barely 13% occupancy.

It’s indicative of a greater trend in Guerrero, which officially was allowed to reopen 11 types of public activity to 30% capacity last Friday, after its Covid-19 risk rating under the federal government’s “stoplight” system moved from red to orange.

This also included tourism-dependent activities like sportsfishing and boat tours. However, the newspaper El Universal found that three major tourist destinations in the state — Acapulco, Taxco, and Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa — were reporting average occupancy of only 15% on Sunday.

The latter reported 21% and Taxco 11%.

Nor are vacation hotspots out of the woods medically, despite the state’s orange rating. Two weeks ago, the hospitality industry in Acapulco began pushing for the partial reopening of the city, saying the local tourism economy was in crisis. Governor Héctor Astudillo Flores was in agreement, and cited a video of a recent conversation with Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, in which the latter said the state was trending downward overall in coronavirus cases and had increased capacity at its hospitals.

Nevertheless, hospitals dedicated to Covid-19 patients in Acapulco are still 51.4% occupied, and the city reported 104 new cases on Sunday.

Reopening is also likely to move slowly, and many businesses may never recover, said Alejandro Martínez Sidney, president of the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, Service, and Tourism, who told El Universal that more than 480 businesses in Acapulco were not able to open this weekend because they couldn’t afford the cost of doing so.

Even large chain businesses on the busy Costera Miguel Alemán, such as Pizza Hut and Buffalo Xtreme, were not prepared to reopen, he said. The pandemic has pushed some business into bankruptcy.

At Calinda Beach Hotel, a popular luxury beach hotel in Acapulco’s Golden Zone that is currently taking bookings on its website, employees who showed up to work on the weekend reportedly were told they no longer had jobs.

Sources: El Universal (sp)

The human rights abuses of renewable energy companies in Mexico

Jack Gooderidge

July 6, 2020

windfarm — A wind farm in Oaxaca has faced multiple allegations of abuse.

It’s a good week in Latin America when not a single story emerges of a nefarious land grab from indigenous communities, the pillaging of a cultural site for industrial land, or the death of an activist trying to prevent either.

We are almost as used to the stories themselves as we are to the kinds of companies and industries typically involved. Agri-business, oil drillers, fracking companies — these are all enemies that, in an age of environmental progress, we find it somewhat easy to condemn. We recognize that these unsustainable and destructive practices are no longer the future, and the ever-growing rap sheet of human rights abuses only serve to further antagonize us against this common enemy.

But when the perpetrators involved represent a future we are striving for, the common will to condemn is placated. The abuse of vulnerable communities and protected land is not a phenomenon exclusive to non-renewable energy giants, in fact the list of offenses attributable to green-energy projects is documented and extensive. The urgency with which we are pursuing a clean-energy powered future, in Mexico especially, is beginning to undermine itself, with its narrow focus too often neglecting sustainable development, as well as the issues of inequality and poverty.

As of 2017, Mexico was among the top 10 countries in terms of investing in renewable energy solutions with US $6 billion spent that year, up 810% on the previous year. Mexico is leading Latin America full throttle into a future championed by clean energy, but the region itself is also the largest source of human rights abuses within that sector. Of the 197 allegations of such abuses reported by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) since 2010, 114 have originated in Latin America, making up 61% of allegations globally.

In Oaxaca, the Eólica del Sur wind farm has been facing multiple allegations of abuse since construction started in 2012. According to the BHRRC, protesters and dissenters found themselves facing threats and intimidations and some claim to have received credible death threats. The link between the project and local authorities has also become more muddied with time, municipal police using violence and force against those opposing the farm.

On one such occasion, the indigenous activist Rolando Crispin López was shot and killed when municipal authorities allegedly opened fire on a group of protesters.

Projects in the Yucatán have also been exposed as abusing the rights of indigenous communities by developing carelessly on sacred land. A solar farm in Valladolid was suspended after a judge decided that the company involved had repeatedly abused the rights of indigenous people and also failed to take into account the location of a protected cenote.

Further allegations expose an even more insidious category of abuses, ones that rely less on the hammer and nail approach and instead deny the tools for understanding the projects to those they affect. Numerous accounts from residents surrounding SunPower’s Ticul A and Ticul B solar farms suggest that the consultation process, designed to democratize the issues and open the discussion up to the community, was purposely deceptive regarding the planned land usage, that dissenting opinions were not adequately recorded or responded to, and that there was a complete absence of independent specialists.

The UN Special Rapporteur on indigenous rights stated that those first contracts “undermined the freedom of the consultation process and caused divisions and tension within the community.”

This is a constant pattern that has been repeating itself not just through Mexico, but through Latin America and beyond; communities are constantly denied access to adequate information, forcibly silenced through violence or the threat of it, and often just simply ignored. The tensions and rifts exacerbated by actions exerted from power are doing little to unite communities behind the pursuit of zero-carbon energy solutions, in fact achieving the opposite.

This is a worry well understood by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, which this week released a pioneering benchmark that begins to articulate a cultural framework for the respect of human rights in the renewable energy sector. Professor of climate justice Mary Robinson summarizes in the report that “a narrow focus on short term return on investments regardless of the harm to people and the environment has led fossil fuel companies to lose legitimacy and social licence to operate.”

With the benefit of hindsight and a comprehensive case study such as this one, the clean energy sector should be willing to grow sustainably in harmony with existing communities else, as Robinson claims, “it will only slow our expansion to a net-zero carbon future.”

The BHRRC offers guidance to energy companies on how to meaningfully protect and champion human rights throughout their projects, including codifying policies that secure human rights, regularly consulting with affected communities and individuals in operational areas, and exploring shared ownership models which extend the benefits of certain projects to the communities they incorporate.

But expecting energy companies to take these steps all by themselves may be unrealistic, and in a sector that still relies heavily on private investment, vested interests, and shareholder support, a willingness from investors to encourage human rights will be an equally essential tool. Investors should be holding energy giants to account by following up on abuses, encouraging a two-way dialogue between companies and communities, acting as a conduit between aggrieved workers and the companies at fault, and be wielding their influence to urge policy makers toward a transition to clean energy that doesn’t exploit those with the least power.

These are ideas expressed by the BHRRC that recognize the power structures already at play and use them to propel the green revolution.

This is the thrust of the BHRRC’s new benchmark; it understands that energy conglomerates and their beneficiaries exert power that often goes unchecked and that has destructive long-term consequences for indigenous communities, but suggests a way in which the industry can find a way once again to be accountable.

The climate crisis is looming and the instinct to lurch into harmful practices is tempting, but a truly sustainable future must go hand in hand with a just and equitable society, because a green revolution without ethics is not green at all.

Coherent environmentalism must be intersectional, recognizing and championing human rights, class, gender and race, while also understanding that the hands of eco-energy are far from clean.

Jack Gooderidge writes from Campeche.

There is a new era of respect for Mexico, says AMLO in justifying US visit

MND Staff

July 6, 2020

López Obrador and Trump: it's unclear what the former will gain with this week's meeting.

Two days before meeting with his United States counterpart in the White House, President López Obrador has brushed off criticism of his trip to Washington, declaring that U.S. President Donald Trump’s treatment of Mexico is not the same as it was before.

“If we have a good relationship with the United States government, we’ll avoid ill treatment, and little by little we’ve achieved this,” López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference on Monday morning.

“My critics, our adversaries, ask ‘how can I go [to the United States] if he [Trump] has offended Mexicans?’ I want to say to the people of my country that in the time we’ve been in government, there has been a relationship of respect, not just toward the government but especially toward the people of Mexico. It’s not the same treatment as before and this can be proven in statements, in messages … about Mexico from abroad. It’s a completely different situation,” he said.

López Obrador reiterated that the purpose of his visit to Washington is to celebrate the July 1 entry into force of the new North American free trade pact, the USMCA, and the beginning of a new commercial relationship with Mexico’s fellow signatories, the United States and Canada.

(The office of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that he won’t attend the White House celebration.)

“We believe that the treaty’s entry into force is … very important,” López Obrador said, declaring that the USMCA will allow North America to become a stronger economic region.

“This agreement is beneficial for the three nations” and their people, he said, adding that it ensures that workers in Mexico, the United States and Canada will receive fair pay and benefits.

“This wasn’t considered before,” the president said.

While the entry into force of the USMCA provides a legitimate reason for López Obrador to travel to the United States, his first trip outside Mexico since taking office in December 2018, people ranging from everyday Mexicans to former diplomats and political commentators have nevertheless criticized his decision to meet with Trump, who a year and a half before his 2016 election victory infamously labeled some Mexican immigrants to the U.S. as criminals, drug dealers and rapists.

Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said on Twitter in late June that meeting with Trump would be a “big blunder” writing that López Obrador “will only be used as an electoral prop” four months before U.S. voters go to the polls.

Denise Dresser, a Mexican political scientist and columnist, said the decision was “a very risky move.”

“Forever the Mexican president will be captured in a photograph standing next to someone who Mexicans view as xenophobic, as racist, as a leader who has humiliated Mexicans,” she said. “By standing next to him, López Obrador validates those positions.”

A Mexico City sidewalk taquero, or taco cook, was also critical of the president’s trip to Washington.

However, given that he has made up his mind to go, AMLO, as the president is popularly known, should “tell Trump to stop stepping all over us and to treat everyone as equals,” Cristian Corte told the United States’ National Public Radio (NPR) from his makeshift taco stand outside a subway station.

Others critical of López Obrador’s Washington trip say he is using it to distract from problems at home, especially the coronavirus crisis and associated economic downturn.

There is, however, strong public support for AMLO’s decision to meet with Trump. A poll conducted by the newspaper El Financiero at the end of June showed that even though 70% of respondents saw Trump in a negative light, 59% supported López Obrador’s plan to meet with the U.S. president. In contrast, 35% of respondents disagreed with it.

A Mexico City construction worker expressed support for the trip, telling NPR that López Obrador’s meeting with Trump could help Mexico’s ailing economy, which is predicted to suffer a deep recession in 2020.

“I hope they do something good and get investment to come here because jobs are hard to come by these days in Mexico,” Saúl Hernández said.

Carlos Bravo Regidor, a professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching, a Mexico City university, predicted that López Obrador won’t lose too much support as a result of meeting with Trump.

“For Mexican standards López Obrador is still quite a positive president, his base sticks with him. It’s chipping away but it is chipping away slowly,” he said.

Bravo personally opposes AMLO’s White House visit but acknowledged that he is in a difficult situation.

“It’s not like the president of Mexico can get in a fight with Trump. … One way or the other we have to reckon with the fact that we have such an anti-Mexican president in the White House and find a way to work with him.”

The meeting between López Obrador and Trump will be the two leaders’ first face-to-face encounter, although they have shared several telephone conversations.

The Mexican-American summit will go down as one of the odder meetings, said the news magazine The Economist, describing it as a “rare face-to-face meeting” amid the coronavirus pandemic between two presidents “who are notably reluctant to promote social distancing.” Neither is ever seen wearing a face mask.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said that everyone traveling in the Mexican delegation – Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and Economy Minister Graciela Márquez will be among the officials accompanying López Obrador – will be tested for Covid-19 before meeting Trump.

Their risk of exposure to the virus will be higher because the president and other government officials will fly commercial to Washington with a change of planes required to reach the U.S. capital from Mexico City.

While López Obrador and other government officials are at pains to justify the visit, The Economist said that “it is not clear what AMLO will gain from the summit except frequent-flyer miles.”

It said that the meeting will provide an opportunity for Trump to boast that he has got much of what he wanted from López Obrador.

The United States president initiated the renegotiation of a new North American trade pact, describing NAFTA as “perhaps the worst trade deal ever made,” and convinced Mexico effectively to become his long-promised border wall by threatening blanket tariffs on Mexican imports if López Obrador and his government didn’t do more to stem the flow of migrants to the U.S.

The Mexican government staved off the tariffs by deploying the National Guard to both block the entry of Central American migrants at the southern border and stymie their progress through Mexico toward the United States. It also agreed to accept the return of all migrants who had passed through Mexico to reach the U.S. as they await the outcome of their applications for asylum.

In addition, Mexico allowed factories that had been shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic to reopen after coming under significant pressure from the United States not to disrupt the North American supply chain.

The U.S. government, The Economist noted, helped to arrange the sale of 211 ventilators to Mexico but “otherwise there has been little reciprocity.”

The United States did agree to cut oil production on Mexico’s behalf in order to help secure a deal to reduce global output to stabilize crude prices amid the coronavirus pandemic but Trump stressed in April that Mexico would “reimburse us sometime at a later date when they’re prepared to do so.”

Trump could seek to have such a reimbursement designed in a way that will help his chances at the November 3 presidential election at which he will face off against Democratic Party presumptive nominee and former vice president Joe Biden.

López Obrador’s cultivation of a friendship with Trump via his Washington visit could jeopardize his relationship with Biden, who appears to be on track to become the next president of the United States.

The Economist said that “Democrats are thought to be dismayed by AMLO’s subservience to Mr. Trump,” noting that while Biden met with all of the presidential candidates for Mexico’s 2012 election, including López Obrador, during a trip to the country that year, the Mexican president has given no indication that he will return the favor.

It also said that some members of Biden’s team think AMLO is a willing accomplice in Trump’s pitch for reelection and predicted that Mexican-American relations could be strained if Barrack Obama’s VP ascends to the top job.

“If Mr. Biden wins, Mexico’s president may have some fence-mending to do,” The Economist said.

Source: Reforma (sp), NPR (en), The Economist (en)

Narco plane that crash-landed on highway was tracked from Venezuela

Michelle Aguilar

July 6, 2020

Plane believed to be carrying cocaine burns on a Quintana Roo highway.

A plane authorities say was carrying over 100 million pesos’ worth of cocaine made an abrupt forced landing Sunday morning on a state highway in Quintana Roo after being tracked by the Mexican air force.

The occupants of the plane escaped capture and are being sought by security forces.

Shortly after the plane landed, military special forces deployed in a helicopter to pursue the plane’s crew confiscated a pickup truck carrying 390 kilograms of cocaine with an estimated a value of 109 million pesos (US $4.87 million) near the town of José María Morelos. Authorities say it was the plane’s cargo.

By the time military personnel reached the plane, which had landed in the municipality of Chunhuhub, it had been set on fire and the crew had presumably escaped into the nearby forest, authorities said. Quintana Roo Security Minister Alberto Capella posted a tweet asking residents to vacate the area where the plane had been found. His post showed videos of the plane in flames.

It was not the first such forced landing in Quintana Roo of a drug-trafficking plane. In January, military personnel seized cocaine and guns from two different planes only a day apart from each other. One landed in an airfield in Mahahual and the other on a highway in Chetumal.

Air force officials told the newspaper Milenio Sunday that it began tracking the Hawker 700 aircraft’s route soon after it took off around 5:00 a.m. CT from an airstrip south of Maracaibo, Venezuela. The plane, authorities said, had no flight plan and was not using a transponder, fitting the profile of a “clandestine aircraft” used for smuggling.

Once the plane entered Mexican airspace via the Yucatán Peninsula, military forces dispatched a T-6C Texan aircraft to intercept the Hawker and ordered it via radio three times to follow them to a military airbase in Cozumel. The Hawker’s crew did not respond and eventually landed on the highway where a truck was waiting for them, authorities said.

The military dispatched special forces personnel by helicopter to intercept the landed plane, but by the time they arrived it was on fire and the crew had been spotted abandoning fleeing into the forest.

The air force frequently uses its aerial vigilance system, a network of radar and sophisticated aerial tracking software, to track suspicious flights in Mexican airspace even before they enter. It was built 15 years ago and has improved over time, partly with the help of the United States, although it has never fulfilled its original promise to be a nationwide aerial surveillance net for Mexico, according to Aviacionline, an aviation industry publication.

According to the publication, the network monitors 32% of Mexican airspace and can communicate with the aerial surveillance networks of other countries, including the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command.

Sources: Infobae (sp), Milenio (sp), Aviacionline (sp)

New one-day virus case record sends tally over 250,000; deaths surpass 30,000

MND Staff

July 6, 2020

Workers disinfect a walkway in Xochimilco, Mexico City.

Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll passed 30,000 on the weekend and a new-single day record for case numbers lifted the accumulated tally above 250,000.

The death toll now stands at 30,639 after the Health Ministry reported 523 additional fatalities on Saturday and 273 on Sunday.

Mexico has now recorded the fifth highest number of Covid-19 deaths in the world after the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Italy.

President López Obrador stressed in a video message on Sunday that the death rate per million people is much lower in Mexico than in European countries such as France and Spain, which have similar death tolls but significantly smaller populations.

As of Sunday, Mexico had recorded 237.6 confirmed Covid-19 fatalities per million people, according to the Oxford University website Our World in Data.

The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio

The United States has recorded 392.6 fatalities per million, while the other countries with higher official death tolls than Mexico – Brazil, the United Kingdom and Italy – have rates of 305.2, 651.4 and 576.6, respectively.

Mexico’s real death rate, however, could be much higher as a growing number of independent studies suggest that tens of thousands of fatalities have not been included in the official death toll.

Based on confirmed cases and deaths, Mexico’s fatality rate is currently 11.9 per 100 cases, well above the global rate of 4.7.

The real fatality rate is almost certainly considerably lower because the government is not testing widely for coronavirus, meaning that a high number of cases don’t show up in the official tally.

Mexico passed 250,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases on Saturday with a record 6,914 cases added.

The Health Ministry reported 4,683 new cases on Sunday, increasing the total to 256,848. Just over 10% of the confirmed cases – 26,295 – are considered active, meaning that number of people tested positive after developing coronavirus symptoms in the past 14 days.

There are also 71,305 suspected cases across the country while 641,142 people have been tested. Just under 5,000 people per million inhabitants have been tested in Mexico, a figure dwarfed by figures for many other countries.

The United States has completed more than 113,000 tests per million people, while Canada has performed almost 78,000 tests per million inhabitants, according to data published by the German statistics portal Statista. In Latin America, Brazil’s testing rate is more than three times higher than Mexico’s, while that of Chile is more than 12 times higher.

At Sunday night’s coronavirus press briefing, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell presented a graph that showed that Tabasco, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Mexico City and Coahuila have recorded the highest number of new cases in recent weeks.

However, the incidence of new cases in Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter, declined during three consecutive weeks to June 27, he said.

“There is a progressive and consistent decrease in the Covid-19 incidence in Mexico City,” López-Gatell said, adding that case numbers for the capital also declined last week.

However, that data is not yet considered useful for epidemiological purposes, he said.

The graph showed that the five states with the lowest incidence of new Covid-19 infections are currently Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Morelos, Querétaro and Chiapas.

López-Gatell also presented national data that showed that 44% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while 38% of those with ventilators are in use.

Tabasco has the highest occupancy rate for general care beds, with 77% currently in use, followed by Nayarit and Nuevo León, where 73% and 66% of beds, respectively, are occupied.

At 61%, Baja California has the highest occupancy rate for beds with ventilators, followed by Nuevo León and México state, which have rates of 57% and 53%, respectively.

López-Gatell said that the coronavirus mitigation restrictions put in place by the government have been successful in avoiding the saturation of Mexico’s health system.

“We haven’t had critical situations in which … hospital capacity has been overwhelmed,” he said.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp)

Ocher mine in Quintana Roo is at least 10,000 years old

MND Staff

July 4, 2020

A diver examines a rock pile believed to be a navigational marker in the ocher mine. CINDAQ.ORG

Divers have rediscovered an ocher mine in a submerged coastal cave system in Tulum, Quintana Roo, that is more than 10,000 years old.

Two cave divers from the Quintana Roo Aquifer System Research Center (CINDAQ), Sam Meacham and Fred Devos, located the mine in 2017 and showed it to Eduard Reinhardt, a geoarchaeologist at McMaster University in Canada, the following year.

The three men concluded that ocher – an earthy yellow, red or brown-colored substance used for a variety of purposes including rock art, body painting, the tanning of animal hides and possibly as a medicine – was mined in the now-submerged cave system thousands of years ago.

Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the earliest deposits of ocher were left there some 12,000 years ago while the most recent deposits originated about 10,000 years ago. Rising seas inundated the three-cave system approximately 7,000 years ago but by that time it is believed that the mine had already been abandoned for several millennia.

Dubbed La Mina (The Mine), the site is one of the oldest known ocher mines in the Western Hemisphere.

A research article published in the journal Science Advances on Friday details the rediscovery of the mine and the academic implications.

“The cave’s landscape has been noticeably altered, which leads us to believe that prehistoric humans extracted tonnes of ocher from it, maybe having to light fire pits to illuminate the space,” Devos said.

The divers found piles of coal on the floor of the caves and soot on the ceiling, indicating that fires were once lit there.

Brandi MacDonald, an archaeological researcher at the University of Missouri and lead author of the research article, said that there is evidence that ancient miners broke stalactites off the ceiling of the cave system and used them as tools to smash through limestone and extract high-quality ocher.

MacDonald said that there is no conclusive evidence that indicates how the ancient miners used the ocher, explaining that the hot and humid climate has corroded archaeological clues.

However, she said that the ocher’s unusually high arsenic content could have made it an effective insect repellant.

Diver Christophe Le Maillot examines evidence of mining activity. Sam Meacham, CINDAQ. A.C. SAS-INAH

MacDonald also suggested that it was used for decoration, a hypothesis shared by a University of Wyoming archaeologist who is excavating an ocher deposit in that state.

“The love of shiny red things is a pretty universal human trait. … It’s why we buy red sports cars,” Spencer Pelton told Science magazine.

Roberto Junco, head of the Underwater Archaeology Department (SAS) at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), said that La Mina is a continuation of the Hoyo Negro, or Black Hole underwater chamber, where the skeleton of a teenage female known as “Naia” was discovered in 2007.

Experts have concluded that early inhabitants of the Yucatán Peninsula entered cave systems to search for water and to take shelter from predators. The discovery of La Mina indicates that they had another reason to go inside.

“We can now imagine ‘Naia’ entering the caves in search of ocher, an element that to this day is the most widely used inorganic body paint amongst African communities to create a red pigment,” Junco said.

“This opens up the possibility that the mineral not only had an ornamental value, but also a significance in terms of identity, or that it was used to create artistic manifestations, amongst many other hypotheses.”

INAH said in a statement that experts from Mexico, the United States and Canada will continue to conduct laboratory research in coming months to learn more about the mine and the cave system in which it is located.

Dominique Rissolo, an archaeology researcher at the University of California in San Diego and one of the research article authors, said that a 3D model of the site was created from more than 20,000 photos that were taken during almost 100 dives.

The model allows archaeologists to continue exploring the site virtually without getting wet.

“The team of explorers and researchers assembled for this project is delivering outstanding results,” Junco said.

“The SAS acknowledges … the work of each and every one of them, especially the explorers from the CINDAQ, and their commitment towards the underwater cultural heritage of Mexico.”

Source: Science (en)

‘How much are they paid to attack me?’ AMLO asks of ‘corrupt media’

MND Staff

July 4, 2020

AMLO and García, who claimed journalists pay more taxes than the president has paid in his entire life.

President López Obrador said on Friday that attacking him in the media is a “lucrative business” and that dissenting columnists should hand over part of their earnings to a “good cause.”

Speaking at his regular news conference, López Obrador claimed that before he took office some columnists earned up to 1 million pesos (US $44,700 at today’s exchange rate) a month to write critical articles about him.

“Now they don’t earn that amount but they haven’t stopped receiving income. … Now I’m looking for a way to have them contribute because attacking me is a lucrative business. How much are they paid to attack me? They benefit from that so they should contribute something,” he said.

“If it’s 500,000 pesos, they should contribute 50,000 to a good cause and with that, they keep their permission, their license, to continue attacking me.”

The president accused media outlets that publish critical opinions about him and his government of being “sold or rented press,” insinuating that they are funded by his adversaries.

He attributed the attacks to his government’s fight against corruption as well as its dismantling of an “extremely costly bureaucratic apparatus” and termination of privileges and luxuries.

López Obrador said that Mexican Employers Federation chief Gustavo de Hoyos is one of the people behind the attacks on his government and asserted that large business owners are upset because they no longer receive preferential treatment from the government.

“They no longer benefit from the budget, we no longer allow the budget to be left with a minority, …it’s the people’s money and it’s returned to the people,” he said.

His suggestion that critical media commentators should share their wealth triggered a rebuke from Salvador García Soto, a columnist for the El Universal newspaper and a radio and television presenter.

“The president who is trying to intimidate the critical press with tax threats ignores that journalists pay more taxes than he has paid in his whole life,” he wrote on Twitter.

López Obrador has long been highly critical of media outlets that don’t cover him favorably, deriding them as prensa fifi, or elitist press.

Press freedom advocacy organization Article 19 has accused the president of increasing the risks for journalists in Mexico, saying last year that his “stigmatizing discourse” is reflected in the discourse of the rest of society and can even generate attacks against media workers.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, with more than 130 murdered since 2000, according to Article 19.

Source: Forbes México (sp), El Universal (sp)

Mexican teachers working to overcome challenges during the pandemic

Leigh Thelmadatter

July 4, 2020

The Tec de Monterrey's Bauer and an online teaching studio.

Covid-19 has shut 1.2 billion students in 186 countries out of their schools and into online environments, leaving teachers and students grappling with many questions and very few answers.

Mexico has had distance education, in particular telesecundarias, to serve rural populations. But nothing done before could prepare for a complete demobilization of the entire 36-million student population.

In March, the Ministry of Education (SEP) announced the Aprende en Casa (Learn at Home) program, using state-run television stations and online platforms to provide K-12 classes. Private schools and universities were on their own.

The first private university to close was the Tec de Monterrey on March 12. By March 20, all universities were closed. SEP’s official closure date was March 23.

Mexico’s educational system was caught off guard despite the school closures of 2009 due to the H1N1 pandemic. The main reason for this, according to Ken Bauer of Tec de Monterrey, was that schools were only closed for a week in 2009. This time around, what was originally announced by SEP as a month-long contingency for the coronavirus is now indefinite.

Mexico is grappling with the sudden shift like the rest of the world, but its situation is unique in some ways. Like most developing countries, the main issue is the “digital divide,” a lack of access to online resources. According to the national statistics institute Inegi, 39% of Mexican students have no access to the internet for educational purposes.

Basic connectivity is an issue, not only for internet by phone line, but also for cell phone and television signals in rural mountainous areas. Less than half of Mexico’s students needing Aprende en Casa have access to public television signals. The government has distributed traditional school materials for extremely rural areas, but not enough. Schools such as the Escuela de Modelo in Mineral de Pozos, Guanajuato, are completely shut down for lack of resources.

Even in areas with internet, bandwidth is a serious issue. Mexico overall has far less than developed countries, limiting the number of students per household that can work and making videoconferencing impossible in many places. The lack of online materials in Spanish, and their absence in indigenous languages is a major issue as well.

Major universities such as the National Autonomous University (UNAM) and Tec de Monterrey are the most prepared, with online classes and experience developing materials and courses, according to Tzinti Ramírez Reyes, a researcher and collaborator on a recently published paper on worldwide response to the Covid-19 pandemic in education.

Smaller and regional universities such as the Technological University of the Mixteca (Universidad Tecnológica de la Mixteca) in Oaxaca have had to work almost completely from scratch. It is worse at the K-12 level.

All schools suffer from a lack of teachers (and students) with experience in online education, unable to take advantage of the resources they do have. The traditional classroom has dominated, both because of the digital divide as well as the cultural value placed on face-to-face interaction. Past attempts to use digital resources in schools had problems with planning and even corruption.

Schools and teachers have been forced to try and make up for this in just a matter of weeks, even days. This has meant cutting back lessons to the bare bones, not only because teachers are stressed but students, too. Teachers also find themselves making changes midstream as they find what does and does not work.

Rafael Quintero, a science teacher at the American School in Durango, says he had to make his chemistry and physics classes more qualitative and less mathematical and still have students understand the basic concepts. Teachers have also ditched assigned educational platforms in favor of Facebook, WhatsApp and the like. Not only are they already familiar, but they are accessible by cell phone, often free to use in many data plans.

For K-12 teachers, a major concern is keeping students on task and knowing who needs help. Aprende en Casa and other programs assume parents will step in as substitute teachers. This can be very problematic. Parents may not have the technical ability to help access online resources. Even worse, they may still have to work, with grandparents and others pressed into emergency childcare.

Students and teachers in private institutions and higher education fare best, not surprisingly. In the best of cases, there is access to various platforms such as Moodle, Blackboard, Google Classroom and Zoom that have already been used in one way or another. Teachers in these situations were the most upbeat about their online experiences and more likely to consider using online instruction after the emergency is over.

Only the Tec de Monterrey’s Bauer indicated a willingness to teach completely online, but he had already been doing so. Others were willing to consider using more digital resources, but some have become hardened against online education. The main issue for them is the negative effect the lack of their physical presence has had on their students.

K-12 teacher José Rodrigo Guerrero Ruiz stated he feels like a “bad teacher” because of this, and others indicated that students did not find online learning satisfying. Conversely, about half the teachers interviewed for this column stated they had students who did better in the new environment.

None of the teachers interviewed believed that classes will return to normal in the fall. The most optimistic believe that there will be a mix of online and classroom instruction to keep schools at low occupancy. Less-optimistic teachers believe that completely online instruction will continue at least through the end of the calendar year.

Ramírez recommends that when schools reopen there are diagnostics to see what the effect of the emergency has been. She and Bauer agree that serious effort needs to be made to prepare for the next emergency school closure, such as plans to appropriate television and internet service to provide educational resources. More importantly, alternate educational plans need to exist and be proven to work.

Special thanks to Oscar Luis Silva Méndez of Languageland Puerto Escondido, Ana Azuela of the Escuela Modelo Mineral de Pozos, Guanajuato, Rafael Quintero of the American School of Durango, Melissa Ferrin of the Universidad Tecnológica de la Mixteca, and Freddy of Northridge School in Mexico City.

Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexico and her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears weekly on Mexico News Daily.

Mexico vastly underestimating virus death toll, studies show

Tony Richards

July 4, 2020

Mexico has been grossly underestimating its Covid-19 death toll, according to a growing number of independent studies suggesting there have been tens of thousands of deaths in excess of the official count, casting doubt on President López Obrador’s insistence that the pandemic has been tamed.

As of Friday, Mexico has officially reported 283,511 infections and 29,189 deaths among its 129 million population. But the true picture may be far worse.

One study by independent researchers Mario Romero and Laurianne Despeghel shows at least 3.5 times more deaths in Mexico City than the official data, an undercount of some 22,705 deaths in the capital alone.

In another, Raúl Rojas, a Mexican professor of artificial intelligence at Berlin University, calculated that Mexico could have as many as 6 million cases and nearly 78,000 deaths — almost three times the official count.

“I find it incredible that instead of giving numbers, they’re hiding them to conceal the seriousness of the situation,” he said.

More than half the world’s average daily deaths from the virus are now in Latin America, making it one of the global centers for Covid-19. Brazil has the world’s highest official number of daily deaths, but with an average of 4.7 new deaths per 1 million people in the last week, Mexico and Brazil are neck and neck in proportion to population.

Mexico is only counting cases and deaths that have been confirmed by a laboratory — and only 610,495 people have been tested. In part because of the low level of testing, some 67% of tests come back positive — an indication that many more cases are being missed.

Hugo López-Gatell, the deputy minister of health and coronavirus czar, said mass testing would be a waste of time and money, and the World Health Organization’s appeal to “test, test, test” had been understood in a “deformed, erroneous and distorted” way.

But without robust testing and tracking, experts fear Mexico will struggle to tame any new outbreaks as Latin America’s second-biggest economy reopens.

López-Gatell acknowledged in an interview with the Washington Post that total deaths in Mexico city from March to May were triple the usual level, according to an official but as yet unpublished study. The Financial Times’ requests for an interview have not been granted.

Until that study is published, or official mortality data is released next year, the closest estimates available come from Romero, a software developer and data analyst, and Despeghel, a consultant in economics.

raul rojas — Rojas: ‘I find it incredible that instead of giving numbers, they’re hiding them to conceal the seriousness of the situation.’

They tallied the number of death certificates issued in Mexico City since the start of the pandemic, regardless of the cause of death, and found a 126% increase in the past three months compared with the average for the same period from 2016-18. Official data on total deaths in 2019 is not yet available.

According to their latest count, published in the news magazine Nexos on July 3, there were 22,705 excess deaths in the capital by the end of June. Officially, Mexico City has confirmed 6,642 deaths from coronavirus.

“In the last week, we had 104% excess mortality — twice as many people than normal died in Mexico City,” said Despeghel. That compared with as much as 219% five weeks ago. “It’s coming down, but it’s still high.”

In Mexico City, excess deaths have risen more slowly than in some cities, such as New York, but “here it’s taking longer to taper,” said Romero.

Since countries’ methodologies for reporting Covid-19 fatalities differ widely. David Spiegelhalter, professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University in the U.K., describes tracking excess deaths as “the only unbiased comparison you can make between different countries.”

López Obrador, who initially minimized the risk from Covid-19 and refuses to wear a face mask, now insists Mexico is past the worst — even as the number of cases keeps rising.

Officials have denied hiding the figures, but data has been uploaded to civil registry websites slowly and in the state of México a site publishing similar data was taken down altogether, Despeghel and Romero said.

In his study, Rojas noticed that official national statistics in June attributed 40% more deaths to May than had been reported at the time. To correct for administrative delays, he calculated that Mexico’s death toll needed to be multiplied by 1.4.

Although in the capital there appear to be at least three times more deaths than usual, he used the conservative assumption that nationwide figures were under-reported by 50%.

Correcting both for delays in reporting and under-registration, that implied 77,753 deaths in the whole country, he said. Assuming a 2% mortality rate, that meant as many as 6 million infections.

Romero and Despeghel’s findings chime with a separate analysis of death certificates from May by Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), a think tank. It found nearly four times more deaths in the capital attributed to coronavirus than in official data.

Two other studies, tracking calls to emergency services, also challenge the official count. In Tijuana, UCLA and Mexican academics with the Red Cross found 195 excess out-of-hospital deaths between mid-April and mid-May, versus eight in the official tally.

In Mexico City, Quinto Elemento Lab, an investigative journalism non-profit body, found that 1,179 people had died at home or outside hospitals of coronavirus-linked conditions between March 23 and May 27, while just 329 were reported officially.

At a news conference on Thursday night, López-Gatell acknowledged the same situation with excess deaths “is happening all over the country … We’re not hiding anything.”

He has already said that official data showed that infections “hit a peak then unfortunately continued,” exceeding official predictions in several cities. He now says the pandemic could last until October.

Statue of Christ on pre-Hispanic pyramid meets with objections

Susy Buchanan

July 4, 2020

The statue in place on a pyramid in Tierra Blanca.

A political organization and a group of local residents placed a large religious statue on top of a pre-Hispanic pyramid in the state of Veracruz last month, despite the fact that the ancient structure is protected by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

The event occurred on June 18 in the archaeological zone of Lomas del Manantial in the municipality of Tierra Blanca, when local politician and former mayoral candidate Manuel Dimas Cristóbal and a group of neighbors delivered a large statue of Christ the Redeemer to the site.

With the help of a crane and a dozen workers, they installed the five-meter concrete statue on top of the archaeological ruins known locally as “El Cerrito,” the site of long-ago indigenous rituals.

Participants posted images on social media of the installation of the statue, claiming they were upholding “Mexican traditions.”

However, others were quick to denounce their actions and a complaint was lodged with INAH regarding the placement of the statue without authorization.

The concrete statue of Christ the Redeemer.

Some called it an aberration, others a recurrence of the Spanish Conquest as they decried defacing a pre-Hispanic pyramid with a Catholic statue.

The institute sent a letter to the mayor asking for the statue to be removed from the area, which is protected by the Federal Law on Monuments and Archaeological, Artistic and Historical Zones.

In addition, INAH clarified that residents do not have permission to modify the area in any way, and asked for a guarantee that nothing similar happens again.

Local authorities have not complied with this request and Jesus still stands.

Source: El Sol de Orizaba (sp), La Silla Rota (sp)

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