Though August set a record in remittances for the year's eighth month, the amount sent fell 12.5% in real terms from August 2022. (Gobierno de México)
Mexicans working abroad sent US $3.8 billion back home during the month of May, representing a rebound of some 18.10% in remittances over the month of April, the central bank reported on Wednesday. The total is also 2.9% higher than in May 2019.
May’s average remittance was $319, lower than April’s $329 average, but 10,590 more remittances were made, resulting in the higher total.
The increase in the number of remittances, one of Mexico’s most important sources of foreign income, may also be related to the Mother’s Day holiday. Banking officials say that over the last 20 years, May traditionally sees almost 14% higher totals than other months of the year, as some people only send money home on that day.
According to the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (CEMLA), there was also a slight improvement in the employment situation of Mexican workers in the United States in May after the suspension of economic activity in March and April due to the coronavirus pandemic and corresponding economic shutdown.
CEMLA estimates that 5.7 million Mexicans were employed in the United States in May, down from 7.36 million in May 2019.
In March, Mexicans working abroad sent a record-setting $4.02 billion back home, and although April 2020 numbers represented a decline of 28.5% over the previous month, the largest monthly decline since November 2008, total April remittances were roughly equal to those of the same month in 2019.
So far this year Mexicans working abroad — mostly in the U.S. — have sent home $15.53 billion which helps support the basic needs of an estimated 10 million people, 10.4% more than during the same time period last year.
Attorney General Gertz: 'Guanajuato has been a veritable hellhole of violence for five years and the attorney general has been there for 11.'
A security operation in Celaya, Guanajuato, that led to the arrest of the mother, sister and cousin of Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel leader José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez was a farce, says federal Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero.
During a radio interview on Tuesday, Gertz also said that Guanajuato Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa will be investigated for his role in the June 20 operation during which 26 people with alleged links to the Santa Rosa fuel theft, extortion and drug trafficking gang were taken into custody.
Gertz told journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga that Guanajuato police did not have a warrant to search the address where the suspects – all of whom have since been released – were supposedly arrested. Judges had only issued a warrant to conduct a search of a stolen vehicle, he said.
He also said that one of those arrested was detained on weapons charges but the person only had a gas gun, “not a firearm.”
He added that police had only found a small quantity of drugs in the possession of those detained.
The attorney general said that once Guanajuato authorities realized that they had carried out an operation that “had nothing to do with what their own judges had authorized,” they tried to have federal authorities take charge of the case.
“The day after they’d done all this, … they go to the federal Attorney General’s Office [FGR] … and say ‘you take over,’” Gertz said.
However, the FGR cannot assume responsibility for an operation which it didn’t carry out and with which “it doesn’t agree,” he said.
Gertz also said that the FGR couldn’t take charge of the case because the crimes of which those detained were accused – small scale drug dealing and possession of “a gun that isn’t a gun” – are not federal offenses.
He said that Guanajuato authorities made an application for a court ruling for federal authorities to take over the case but a judge rejected their request.
“The local judge told them exactly the same thing as our [Guanajuato] delegate told them. ‘No – you were given authorization to carry out a certain [operation] and you went and carried out a different one,’” Gertz said.
Guanajuato Attorney General Zamarripa is under investigation.
The anomalies in the operation made it “ridiculous to say the least,” Gertz said, describing it as a montaje – a stunt, setup or farce.
He also said that Guanajuato authorities’ claim that the FGR was responsible for the release of El Marro’s family members – the criminal leader’s father and wife, among other relatives have also been set free – was indicative of a “lack of respect” for federal officials.
Gertz said that Zamarripa, the Guanajuato attorney general, will be investigated in connection with the anomalies in the operation and the accusations leveled at federal authorities.
“Guanajuato has been a veritable hellhole of violence for five years and this attorney general has been there for 11 years. We’re going to initiate proceedings … to shed light on all his actions to see if there are any [grounds for] legal complaint,” he said.
Meanwhile, the newspaper Milenio reported that three police officers in Silao, Guanajuato, followed orders from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) – the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel’s arch-enemy – to set up a roadblock to stop a convoy of vehicles in which Yépez’s mother was believed to be traveling after her release from prison on Sunday.
However, El Marro said in a video posted to social media that his mother had changed cars and managed to pass freely through the police checkpoint.
Angry at their failure to locate Yépez’s mother, CJNG operatives pursued a vehicle in which the woman’s lawyers were traveling and shot and killed one of them.
In light of the events, Silao Mayor Antonio Trejo dismissed the local police chief while the municipal force is investigated for alleged links to the CJNG, one of Mexico’s most powerful and violent criminal organizations.
Mayors Rivera and Charrez have accused the governor of slander.
The mayors of Ixmiquilpan and Zimapán, Hidalgo, have asked state Governor Omar Fayad Meneses to clear their names after he linked them to organized crime, including drug trafficking and fuel theft, on June 18.
“This is slander. Politics is a very complicated environment and there must be a collaborator who does not like me, not everyone does, and someone may have passed a tip on to the governor,” said Pascual Charrez Pedraza, mayor of Ixmiquilpan, a municipality located 117 kilometers north of Mexico City.
Charrez said he asked the state government to carry out a thorough investigation into the charges so that the governor can retract his statement and issue an apology.
Fayad’s remarks were made during President López Obrador’s recent tour of Hidalgo, when Fayad presented the president with the names and photos of 17 men he said were members of the criminal organization Los Hades, a fuel theft ring. Charrez’s name and photo were among those shown to the press and the president.
Charrez does not deny that stolen fuel is sold in the municipality he governs, but that’s nor where the thefts occur. “There are no pipelines here. It is brought in from other places,” he said.
The town does have a bit of a reputation, Charrez admits. In 2017, residents prevented federal police from entering the town when they blockaded a highway in protest against high gasoline prices. A warehouse where stolen fuel was stored exploded in November 2018 and in January 2019, 11 members of a fuel and car theft gang were arrested.
In Zimapán, Mayor Erick Marte has also asked for a detailed investigation into Fayad’s allegations of his connection to fuel theft and providing protection to the Los Hades gang.
“If they want to check my bank account, my house or my business they will see what I do has nothing to do with what they are claiming. They’ve got the wrong person,” Marte said, adding that there are political motives behind the accusations.
“They mention me as a candidate, that I want to be governor and I’m not saying I don’t want to,” said the mayor.
“I don’t even have bodyguards; people know me, they know what I do, we are the only municipality with a peace program dedicated to fighting and preventing drugs.”
Governor Fayad has not publicly commented on the mayors’ request for a retraction and apology.
While Mexico City remains at high risk for the coronavirus, 27,000 businesses in the city’s historic center were permitted to reopen Tuesday, drawing large crowds of shoppers particularly concentrated in areas behind the National Palace and on Academia and Corregidora streets.
Social distancing measures were largely forgotten as the area swarmed with people shopping for clothing, shoes, jewelry and accessories after stores had been closed since April 7.
Masks were worn by some but not all as long lines formed in the streets to enter shops that for the most part followed guidelines to restrict shoppers to 50% of the stores’ capacity. Some offered antibacterial gel and took people’s temperatures before allowing them to enter.
Street peddlers lined the sidewalks offering items from baby clothes to face masks and plastic face shields, calling out to passersby as they hawked their wares. Many laid out their merchandise on plastic tarps spread out on the sidewalk.
Men with dollies, most of them without masks, were at the ready to help shoppers transport large purchases.
Mexico City reopened with gusto on Tuesday.
“If I had known it was going to get like this, I would not have come. A while ago I went through the Sonora market, La Merced, and people are walking normally, without face masks, without control. What scares me is a resurgence,” a man who was shopping for hardware items told the newspaper La Jornada.
Emma García, who walked at a brisk pace down 16 de Septiembre street clad in a mask, glasses and gloves, found the hordes of shoppers alarming.
“What they are doing to open is disastrous; we are all going to catch it because people don’t understand, but I also understand commerce …” she said in an interview with a radio station.
Officially, shops and businesses with an odd street number are permitted to open three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, whereas even-numbered shops can open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Additionally, business hours are restricted to 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
In order to prevent crowds from accumulating and promote social distancing, 31 streets were converted into pedestrian-only zones.
Juan Carlos López Villagrán, the owner of a dress shop on 20 de Noviembre street, said he’s happy to open his doors again, but concerned that shoppers won’t actually have the financial means to make purchases due to the economic crisis provoked by the pandemic.
He also said he has invested some 12,000 pesos (US $527) in purchasing masks, antibacterial gel, thermometers and other supplies to comply with government regulations.
Alejandro López, manager of a clothing store, tried to be hopeful.
“It was too many days of waiting to open again. We feel despair and anguish. Despair because the coronavirus does not stop for a single moment and anguish over the economic issue,” he said. “But at the end of the tunnel there will always be light and today is the day when we are going to start breathing again.”
In the country’s capital, the suspension of commercial activities caused an economic crisis that has led to the loss of 197,000 jobs, the city government reported on June 13.
Family members wait outside La Raza National Medical Center in Mexico City for news about relatives inside.
The coronavirus pandemic is at its peak, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday as more than 5,000 additional cases were added to Mexico’s tally.
“The number of cases presented daily continues to be very high, nobody should be confused by this. The epidemic is still active, in fact the epidemic is at its peak, let that be very clear,” López Obrador told reporters at the Health Ministry’s nightly coronavirus press briefing.
“There is still a large number of infections and hospitalizations that occur every day, and the number of deaths registered is approximately 600 per day. So the epidemic is still active, it hasn’t ended and it possibly won’t end before October,” he said.
Speaking at the president’s regular news conference earlier on Tuesday, López-Gatell offered a different assessment about how long the pandemic could last.
“How long in total will all this last? We can’t be sure but some scientific conjectures indicate that this could last several years, possibly two or three years,” he said.
Coronavirus deaths as reported on Tuesday. milenio
“Given that reality, what the new normal implies is to live in a situation in which we can’t eliminate the risk completely, we can’t eliminate [the coronavirus] from the planet but we can … live … in a way that allows us to reduce the risk. In the reduction of this risk, there are changes [to our] daily life practices that allow us to reduce the probability of being infected,” López-Gatell said.
He stressed that people need to continue to keep their distance from each other and maintain good hand hygiene to help slow the spread of the virus.
The number of new Covid-19 cases reported by the Health Ministry declined for four consecutive days between last Friday and Monday but the downward trend came to an end on Tuesday.
Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía reported 5,432 additional cases, increasing the cumulative case tally to 226,089.
Mexico currently has the 11th highest case tally in the world, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Alomía also reported 648 additional Covid-19 fatalities, lifting the official death toll to 27,769. Mexico currently has the seventh highest death toll in the world after the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Spain.
Accumulated coronavirus cases as of Tuesday evening. milenio
In addition to the confirmed Covid-19 deaths, 2,197 fatalities are suspected of having been caused by the disease.
Of the confirmed cases, 23,782, or 10.5% of the total, are considered active, an increase of 393 compared to Monday. There are also 72,041 suspected cases across the country, while 581,580 people have now been tested.
Mexico City is the only entity with more than 3,000 active cases, according to official data, while neighboring México state has just over 2,000.
Seven other states have more than 1,000 active cases. They are Puebla, Guanajuato, Nuevo León, Yucatán, Coahuila, Tabasco and Veracruz.
Mexico City has the highest death toll in the country, with 6,560 confirmed Covid-19 fatalities, while Colima and Baja California Sur share the lowest, with 71 people confirmed to have lost their lives to the disease in both states.
With Mexico and the rest of the world bracing for a long pandemic – and no certainty about when or even if a coronavirus vaccine will be available – hospitals will face increased demand for their services for the foreseeable future.
The number of active cases reported on Tuesday. milenio
In that context, Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) director Zoé Robledo told reporters Tuesday night that IMSS, one of the country’s largest health care providers, had increased its capacity to respond.
Robledo, who recently recovered from Covid-19 himself, said the number of designated Covid-19 hospitals has increased to 184 from 80.
IMSS hospitals have a total of 12,735 general care beds for coronavirus patients and 3,460 with ventilators, he said.
National data showed that 45% of all general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while 40% of those with ventilators are in use.
At 65%, Nayarit has the highest occupancy level in the country for general care beds, while Baja California has the highest occupancy level for beds with ventilators, with the same percentage currently in use.
President says he won't be intimidated by cartels.
Despite Friday’s armed attack on Mexico City Police Chief Omar García Harfuch, President Lopez Obrador promised there will be neither a war against organized crime nor an accord made with criminal organizations.
But analysts doubt the approach will be successful.
The president said on the weekend that his administration will continue with its non-confrontational security strategy, which aims to bring peace and tranquility to Mexico by addressing the root causes of violence, namely poverty and lack of opportunity.
On Friday morning, a highly armed group – allegedly contracted by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) – intercepted and opened fire on the armored vehicle in which García was traveling on Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s most iconic boulevard. The attack left the police chief with three gunshot wounds and killed two of his security detail and a bystander.
In a video message from the National Palace on Saturday, the president acknowledged that it had been a difficult week due to the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, last Tuesday’s earthquake in Oaxaca, and the attack on García. But “the will of the Mexican people to move forward is more powerful,” he said. “Let’s not lose faith. We will win.”
López Obrador conceded that “we’re afraid because we’re human beings” but stressed that he and the members of his government are not “cowards” and won’t be intimidated by violent cartels.
However, the government’s security strategy will not involve “declaring war” on criminal organizations or violating human rights, he said.
“We’re not going to make any agreements with organized crime like in the past. There’s a stopping point, a limit … On one side there’s the authorities and on the other, crime. Hopefully this is understood.”
López Obrador said that his administration is focused on addressing the causes of violence, on giving people – especially young people – better access to education and jobs so that they have options that will steer them away from antisocial behavior.
But two experts raised doubts about whether the government’s approach is enough to quell the violence that has remained stubbornly high in 2020, even as the country faced coronavirus lockdown measures.
The director of the National Citizens Observatory, a nationwide crime watch organization, told the newspaper El Universal that the role of the state is to guarantee citizens’ right to a lawful society, and if it’s not doing that, it’s not fulfilling its function.
Rivas: social programs are not crime prevention programs.
“If he [López Obrador] doesn’t want to declare a war, that’s fine and I applaud him, but it should be clear what they are going to do,” Francisco Rivas Rodríguez said.
“Social programs are not crime prevention programs … they have nothing to do with the crisis of violence that we are living,” Rivas added, a claim that puts him at odds with the president.
For his part, prominent security analyst Alejandro Hope said that nobody is asking the government to declare war on drug cartels – a strategy launched by former president Felipe Calderón and perpetuated by his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, that resulted in more than 200,000 deaths – but nor can it carry on as if the CJNG attack on García didn’t happen.
Hope said the government has an obligation to respond to such a “brutal” attack and charged that it should allocate “extraordinary resources” to “deal with the unprecedented security matter.”
“That doesn’t imply declaring war on anyone,” he said.
Hope, also a columnist for the El Universal newspaper, said the government needs to modify its security strategy in light of Friday’s attack in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood. Another similar attack could pose a risk to governability and national security, he said.
Hope added that now would be a good time for the government to review its security strategy to determine what has been achieved and what needs to be done.
“After what happened on Friday, I believe that you have to start with the assumption that this could be the first but not the last attack against high-ranking officials,” he said.
“The president might not take the decision to declare a war … but the criminal organization [the CJNG] did. He can continue providing scholarships if he likes but the Jalisco New Generation Cartel will continue firing bullets.”
In his video message on Saturday, López Obrador thanked Mexico’s National Intelligence Center (CNI) for providing a warning about the attack and announced that the agency had already detained several suspects. He also lamented the deaths of García Harfuch’s security guards and that of a woman driving through the area.
In addition, the president used his message to promote what he characterized as a new and better era for the federal intelligence agency, which he acknowledged was known in the past to spy on people without justification.
“CISEN [the CNI’s predecessor] was used to spy on opponents, to listen to telephone calls,” he said. “This has been stopped.”
Municipal authorities in La Paz, Baja California Sur, are discussing the possibility of closing the area’s beaches once again after soaring temperatures drove crowds of residents to the coast, despite social distancing protocols and reduced capacity.
The head of the municipality’s Federal Terrestrial Maritime Zone (Zofemat), Susana Rubio, noted that from June 22 to 26 just over 10,000 people visited the beaches of the city, which is the epicenter of the coronavirus in the state where new cases are being confirmed at a rate of 60 per day.
Beaches in Baja California Sur had been closed until June 15.
Rubio indicated that there are Zofemat personnel and police patrolling the most visited beaches, reminding bathers to obey health measures and keep crowds to a limit of 30% capacity.
However, in beaches with no access control, the measures are not being respected, she indicated, which could lead to closing down beaches once again.
Carlos Alfredo Godínez of the state Civil Protection agency, pointed out that the same thing was also happening in Los Cabos, where Playa Chileno was packed over the weekend with bathers who neglected to observe healthy distance measures. The same was true in the Los Cabos town of Pueblo La Playa, where towels and beach umbrellas obscured the sand on Sunday.
Garbage was another issue in La Paz last week: 14 tonnes were removed from the beaches.
“It is unfortunate that people are leaving trash and that they continue to leave our beaches dirty,” Rubio said. “So the invitation is that people be aware that the beaches belong to everyone, and you can go and enjoy it but take your trash with you. ”
Hoses transport fuel in a petroleum thieves' tunnel.
Amid an ongoing crackdown on fuel theft, Mexico’s petroleum plunderers are going underground – literally: they have built tunnels in at least three states to transport stolen fuel.
According to a report by the newspaper Milenio, huachicoleros, as fuel thieves are known colloquially, have had to rethink their modus operandi in order to sustain their illicit business while the army, navy and National Guard carry out air and land operations against them.
Federal security authorities in conjunction with the state oil company Pemex have uncovered fuel transportation tunnels in San Martín Texmelucan, Puebla – part of the so-called Red Triangle, a region notorious for the tapping of petroleum pipelines, Cadereyta, Nuevo León, and the Guanajuato municipalities of Apaseo el Grande and Apaseo el Alto.
Fuel thieves use hoses that run through the tunnels to transport petroleum extracted illegally from tapped pipelines.
The tunnels, located just under the ground’s surface, have exit points at locations away from the Pemex pipelines where thieves can more easily avoid the prying eyes of authorities and safely make off with their stolen fuel – at least until the tunnels are discovered.
Now that the authorities have become aware of the huachicoleros‘ subterranean strategy, the security forces tasked with combating the lucrative fuel theft racket have a new mission: ferret out more tunnels.
A Pemex security director told Milenio that finding the tunnels is not as hard as it might seem.
“The smell of fuel is very strong, very acute, and that’s one of the main signs that allows us to detect … an illegal extraction,” Netzahualcóyotl Albarrán Mendoza said. He said the tunnels that have already been found were located not long after they were built.
Fuel thieves have not only relied on their own purpose-built tunnels to move stolen petroleum in secret: they’ve also used infrastructure built for licit purposes.
Authorities told Milenio that fuel thieves have made use of a 3.7-kilometer section of an incomplete, non-operational natural gas pipeline built by TC Energy (formerly TransCanada Corporation) in Hidalgo.
National Guardsmen at a pipeline in Hidalgo.
Located just two kilometers from the state-owned refinery in Tula, the section of pipeline used by thieves to transport fuel runs parallel to a Pemex duct.
The army not only detected that huachicoleros were opportunistically using the TC Energy pipeline but is also in the process of recovering some 2 million liters of stolen fuel still in it. Once recovered, the fuel will be decontaminated and returned to Pemex storage facilities.
Col. Humberto Bautista said Monday that the recovery of the stolen fuel will be the largest since the federal government implemented a new strategy against fuel theft 18 months ago.
He said that air and land-based security operations have been successful in “considerably” reducing fuel theft, a crime that formerly cost Pemex 30 billion pesos (US $1.3 billion at today’s exchange rate) a year, according to former CEO Carlos Treviño.
President López Obrador and current Pemex CEO Octavio Romero have asserted that fuel theft has declined significantly on their watch, although it remains a problem for the heavily-indebted state oil company.
López Obrador said earlier this month that theft had been reduced from 80,000 barrels a day when he took office to just 3,000 barrels a day, a 96% decline.
He claimed that fuel theft will soon end because there is no longer collusion between Pemex and fuel thieves, who like their drug trafficking cousins have inspired a genre of outlaw music.
Considering the authorities’ recent discoveries, it might not be too long before a new huachicorrido – a ballad that tell the stories of fuel thieves – celebrating their tunnel digging prowess makes an appearance online.
Peña Nieto, left, and Lozoya: will the latter testify against his old friend?
The former head of Pemex, Mexico’s state oil company, has dropped his extradition fight and will be flown home from Spain to face charges in the biggest corruption prosecution yet under President López Obrador.
Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero said Emilio Lozoya had “offered his collaboration to establish and clarify the matters of which he has been accused.”
The former Pemex chief, who had been a key figure in the election campaign of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, was arrested at a luxury residential complex on the Costa del Sol in February, after an eight-month search.
Lozoya has denied receiving US $10 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which admitted paying billions of dollars in kickbacks across Latin America in exchange for political favours that have landed scores of former officials across the region in jail.
He faces charges of money laundering and corruption over Pemex’s purchase of a fertilizer factory.
Shortly after news of his imminent extradition was made public, Coello Trello y Asociados, the law firm that represents Lozoya, said it would no longer do so.
In a statement, it said it had taken the decision a month ago, in agreement with Lozoya, but gave no reason.
Mexico was conducting final paperwork before sending an aircraft to fly him home. Once back in Mexico, legal proceedings would begin “immediately,” the attorney general said.
“The relevance of this issue mandates an absolutely transparent investigation and fairness that is beyond doubt,” he said.
That scandal, as well as the unsolved killing of 43 students almost six years ago, has tainted Peña Nieto’s reputation. Some analysts believed that Lozoya could testify against his former boss.
“He surely didn’t act alone,” said Marco Fernández, anti-corruption investigator at México Evalúa, a think tank, and a professor at the Tec de Monterrey. No other former officials have yet been accused.
Former Ayotzinapa investigator Zerón is sought by Interpol.
“The big elephant in the room is the lack of results” in López Obrador’s anti-graft drive, he added.
Gertz Manero also said an Interpol red notice had been issued against Tomás Zerón, the fugitive former head of the Criminal Investigation Agency that was part of the attorney general’s office, seeking his extradition to face charges in connection with the investigation of the student killings.
Zerón had been a defender of what the previous government described as the “historic truth” — that the students had been kidnapped by corrupt police, handed to a local cartel, killed and burned.
Puerto Peñasco is easing coronavirus restrictions.
Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, also known as Rocky Point or “Arizona’s Beach” due to its proximity to the Grand Canyon State, has reopened for tourism and is welcoming visitors to its sunny shores.
With the safety of residents and tourists a priority, the resort destination, which has only seen a handful of coronavirus cases, has implemented a series of protocols corresponding to phase three of its reopening plan, Mayor Kiko Munro in a press release issued Monday.
“Now that we know our efforts to lock down and stay at home have limited the spread of coronavirus in Rocky Point, we have been happy to welcome tourists back in our town,” said Keith Allen of the Peñasco Business Coalition.
Healthy visitors are encouraged to return to Puerto Peñasco, but are required to wear a face mask in public areas and businesses.
Travelers will have their body temperature checked upon arrival at health checkpoints, and anyone registering a temperature higher than 37.5 C will be asked to leave their vehicle and take a second temperature test. If the reading is the same, the passenger will be offered a free, rapid coronavirus test.
A positive result means travelers will be asked to return to their point of origin. If the test is negative, visitors will be allowed to continue but advised to consult with a doctor.
Visitors will also be asked to show proof of a lodging reservation at an approved hotel, resort or rental property.
All residents and visitors are encouraged to maintain a healthy distance from others of approximately two meters.
Beaches remain closed, but some hotels may allow access to pools or the small beaches directly in front of their property, although swimming in the ocean is not permitted.
Sportsfishing has been reopened, as have other marine tourism businesses. The boardwalk area of the Malecón is open until 9 p.m. for those who would like to take a stroll along the sea, but they must do so with masks in place.
“We hope visitors understand that these precautions will keep everyone safe and healthy as we look to welcome people back to Rocky Point while still preventing the spread of Covid-19,” said Mayor Munro.
