The state Congress voted 31-5 in favor of the change.
After three hours of debate, Puebla’s state Congress voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to change the state civil code to recognize same-sex marriage, a highly anticipated move that comes years after Puebla’s ban against same-sex marriage was struck down by a court order.
The vote came three years after the Supreme Court (SCJN) upheld the legality of same-sex marriage in the state in 2017, when it struck down as unconstitutional the articles of Puebla’s civil code defining marriage and common-law marriage as between a man and a woman.
Yesterday’s vote, which passed 31-5, officially changed parts of the civil code to be in compliance with the court decision, changing gender-specific references in parts of the civil code that referred to marriage and to common-law relationships from “man and woman” to “persons.”
The part of the civil code relating to marriage will now state, “Marriage is a civil contract by which two persons who join together voluntarily in society in order to carry out a life together with respect, mutual aid, and an equality of rights and obligations.”
The vote was not without controversy. Some opposition lawmakers accused the governing Morena party, which holds the governorship and a majority in the state Congress, of bad faith and trying to curry favor with voters in next year’s elections.
They said similar legislation was proposed last year by a coalition of opposition parties but Morena members turned it down.
By contrast, the lawmakers said, Morena quickly passed the changes within eight days of the bill being proposed.
An August survey by pollster Massive Caller predicted that Morena would defeat its main opposition, the National Action Party, next June but by a narrow margin of only 2.2%.
Yesterday’s vote makes Puebla the 19th state to approve same-sex marriage.
Following a protest by workers who say they haven’t been paid since September, the budget airline Interjet made a commitment Tuesday to transfer one fortnightly salary payment to employees this week.
But its capacity to do so is in doubt – one of Interjet’s owners acknowledged that the airline doesn’t have any money.
The federal Interior Ministry said it organized a meeting Tuesday night between Interjet, its workers and representatives of their union where the airline agreed to pay one quincena, or fortnightly payment, to workers this week.
Interjet executive president Alejandro Del Valle, one of the company’s new owners, told workers before the meeting that the airline hoped to make one salary payment on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Speaking to workers protesting outside Interjet’s offices at the Mexico City airport, Del Valle said the airline actually hopes to pay three quincenas by the end of the week but he also acknowledged that it doesn’t have any funds.
He said the situation is complicated for the airline due to its lack of cash flow and unpaid tax commitments. Interjet canceled all its flights on both Sunday and Monday, apparently because it was unable to pay for fuel.
Despite its lack of cash and tax problems, Interjet is aiming to add 16 planes to its fleet and increase its capacity to attract more passengers, Del Valle said.
“A company with 5,000 employees can’t operate [profitably] with four planes,” he said.
“We ordered 16 planes; we can’t bring them [all] due to a lack of cash flow [but] there is a possibility that we’ll bring the first three,” Del Valle told the protesting workers.
The disgruntled employees blocked the Circuito Interior freeway outside Interjet’s airport offices for several hours on Tuesday to demand payment of salaries and benefits.
One maintenance worker told the newspaper El Financiero that employees haven’t received their last four salary payments.
“They haven’t paid us since September,” said the employee who asked to remain anonymous.
The worker said that some benefits, including uniform allowances, housing credits and health insurance payments, haven’t been paid since March.
Interjet has been plagued by problems this year as airlines around the world struggle to stay afloat amid the coronavirus pandemic and resulting decline in demand for air travel.
The federal tax agency SAT placed an embargo on property belonging to the father of Interjet president Miguel Alemán Magnani due to the airline’s unpaid tax bills, 25 of its leased aircraft were repossessed, the city of Chicago launched legal action against it for failing to pay taxes and fees owed to O’Hare International Airport, customers are preparing a class action suit against it over the constant cancellation of flights and its reimbursement practices and the Canadian Transportation Agency suspended its license to operate in Canada for failing to have liability insurance coverage.
And all that was before this week’s cancellations due to Interjet’s apparent inability to purchase fuel.
According to the airline, the cancellations on Sunday and Monday affected 2,690 passengers but the consumer protection agency Profeco disputed that number, saying that more than 3,000 people were left stranded.
Profeco issued a statement on Tuesday, warning people of the risks of buying flights with Interjet due to the airline’s repeated cancellations. It said that it has received 1,542 complaints from dissatisfied Interjet customers this year.
“Interjet doesn’t provide certainty, fairness or legal security to consumers,” Profeco said. “Profeco informs and alerts [potential customers] about the risk of establishing commercial relationships with Interjet.”
When a flight is canceled, airlines under Mexican law are required either to refund passengers the cost of their ticket or put them on another flight at no extra charge. In addition, they must pay 25% of the value of the ticket in compensation.
However, there is evidence that Interjet hasn’t been complying with the law.
According to Pablo Martínez Castro, the moderator of a Facebook group called Queja Colectiva a Interjet (Collective Complaint Against Interjet), one illegal practice is that when a flight is canceled, Interjet issues customers with vouchers for amounts less than what they paid for their tickets.
As a result they are forced to pay extra when rebooking a flight on the same route, he said.
There is also evidence that Interjet is not paying the 25% compensation within 10 days as required. One passenger affected by a flight cancellation this week said that she was also stranded by a cancellation in March.
However, Andrea Lozada said that eight months later she still hasn’t received any financial compensation.
The governor of Jalisco and many social media users have a very different perception about the success of coronavirus restrictions in the state capital.
Governor Enrique Alfaro posted photos to his Twitter and Facebook accounts on Monday that purportedly show an empty street in Guadalajara on Saturday and the city’s central square devoid of people on the same day.
The images were juxtaposed with photos of packed streets in Mexico City over the Halloween/Day of the Dead weekend.
“In the country’s two main cities, on a high-risk weekend when the virus is gaining momentum in all of Mexico, this is the difference between taking difficult decisions to do things well, even though there are political costs, and doing nothing,” Alfaro wrote above the contrasting images.
“… We’re continuing to set the national example. It’s worth doing the right thing in order to take care of ourselves, cut the chain of infections and save lives.”
One of Alfaro’s photos intended to demonstrate successful Covid measures.
Some social media users were quick to rebut the governor’s claim that the new rules were having the desired effect.
Twitter user @israelijacoboj tweeted a photo to Alfaro showing the crowded platform of a Guadalajara subway station.
“An hour ago, while your community manager was managing your social media, this was happening in central Guadalajara,” he wrote above the image.
On Facebook, where Alfaro’s post attracted more than 8,000 comments, one woman posted a picture of a crowded train with the message, “This is real life. Welcome!”
Crowded subway scenes were shown in many photos posted to both Facebook and Twitter, while a smaller number of images showing busy Guadalajara streets were also posted online in response to the governor’s posts.
Pithy remarks accompanied many of the photos sent to Alfaro. Among them: “The Jalisco you don’t know,” “You forgot to post this image,” “Don’t be a liar” and “Your strategy is a failure.”
Jalisco, Mexico’s fourth most populous state, currently ranks eighth among the 32 states for total coronavirus cases and fifth for Covid-19 deaths.
As of Monday, the state had recorded 34,797 confirmed cases and 4,096 Covid-related deaths, according to federal data.
Weyll says he has no knowledge of how the bribe money was to be used.
The former Mexico director of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht has rejected ex-Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya’s version of events about bribes he paid on behalf of his employer.
Lozoya, arrested on corruption charges in Spain in February and extradited to Mexico in July, told the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) that after he met with Odebrecht director Luis Alberto de Meneses Weyll in Mexico City in 2012, the firm gave US $4 million to the campaign of former president Enrique Peña Nieto and another $6 million to his government after he took office.
He said he met with the company director on the orders of Luis Videgaray, a Peña Nieto-era cabinet minister, who instructed him to negotiate resources to cover campaign costs.
The former state oil company chief, who worked on Peña Nieto’s 2012 campaign, alleged that Odebrecht paid the bribes in exchange for preferential treatment from the former federal government. He said that the $6 million was paid in exchange for a 3-billion-peso ($141.5 million at today’s exchange rate) contract for work on the Pemex refinery in Tula, Hidalgo.
Part of that money was used to bribe lawmakers to ensure support for the former government’s 2014 energy reform, he told the FGR.
Lozoya, who is cooperating with authorities in the hope that he will be acquitted or given a lighter sentence, also accused officials in the government of Peña Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderón, of taking bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for approving an ethane plant deal in Veracruz.
But through his lawyer, de Meneses Weyll (commonly known as Luis Weyll) rejected Lozoya’s claims.
Carlos Kauffmann told the investigative news website Quinto Elemento Lab that his client – who has admitted to paying bribes to Lozoya on Odebrecht’s behalf – didn’t specifically provide money for Peña Nieto’s campaign or to pay off lawmakers in exchange for approving the energy reform.
The lawyer also told the website that Weyll didn’t make payments to the Calderón government in exchange for ethane plant contracts and would have said so if he had.
Kauffmann asserted that his client had no knowledge of how the money he transferred to Lozoya would be used.
“What Emilio Lozoya did with the payments – that wasn’t up to Luis Weyll to decide or question. … The only person who knows what was done with the money is Lozoya himself,” he said.
“Luis Weyll assumed complete responsibility for all the payments he made and proved all the payments with documents but he won’t take responsibility for what he didn’t do.”
Weyll told Brazilian prosecutors in 2016 that the money he transferred to Lozoya was exclusively for his use. He said that he gave the money to the former Pemex CEO in exchange for helping Odebrecht win Pemex contracts at the Tula refinery and in the state of Veracruz.
In his submission to the FGR, Lozoya claimed that Peña Nieto and Videgaray had a close relationship with former Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht and Weyll and led the Odebrecht bribery scheme, depicting himself as a victim of their corruption.
Two meetings serve as evidence of the close relationship between the Odebrecht officials and the former government, Lozoya told the FGR.
He said that Peña Nieto met with Odebrecht and Weyll in Brazil in 2010 when he was governor of the state of México. After a meal together, the Odebrecht officials offered to support Peña Nieto financially in the event that he ran for president at the 2012 election, Lozoya said.
After winning the 2012 election but before taking office, Peña Nieto met with Odebrecht again, he said. At a meeting at Odebrecht’s Sao Paulo home, a “more direct relationship” between the Brazilian firm and the former Mexican government began to be forged, Lozoya said.
Kauffmann refuted Lozoya’s claim that his client met with Peña Nieto, asserting that Weyll never had contact with any Mexican government official apart from Lozoya.
“Luis Weyll only had direct contact with Emilio Lozoya. He never had contact with the president nor any other lawmakers,” he said before reiterating the his client did not know how the Odebrecht bribes would be used.
The lawyer rejected Lozoya’s claim that Odebrecht congratulated the government after Congress passed the energy reform that opened up the sector to foreign and private companies for the first time in more than 70 years.
“They were happy because with the reform they could obtain a greater volume of work,” the former Pemex boss told the FGR.
However, Kauffmann said that Odebrecht never had any interest in the energy reform and didn’t benefit from it in any way.
“If there was no interest … [the company] wouldn’t pay legislators” to approve the reform, he said.
Authorities in Mexico haven’t called on Weyll to provide a statement in relation to the Lozoya case but his lawyer said that his client is willing to cooperate.
However, the lawyer stressed that his client would only talk after Mexican authorities made a commitment not to pursue the former Odebrecht director.
“Luis Weyll is in Brazil. He can speak to Mexican authorities as long as they respect the commitment they entered into with Brazilian authorities,” Kauffman said.
Weyll previously struck a deal with those authorities to cooperate in exchange for a reduced sentence.
In light of the article published by Quinto Elemento Lab, President López Obrador said Tuesday morning that the FGR should investigate the veracity of Lozoya’s claims.
Lozoya is one of three high profile Peña Nieto-era officials who have been arrested since the new government took office.
Police summoned to an emergency call in Tapachula, Chiapas, on Sunday got a little more than they bargained for: a drunk driver, a crash and a theft, all in one package.
When authorities and emergency personnel arrived on the scene, they found an apparently inebriated man near a damaged car that witnesses told police had hit a tree so hard that the car’s engine was ejected.
Then, during the ensuing commotion, someone stole the engine from the street where it lay.
Officials said the driver was traveling at excessive speed on Central North boulevard in Tapachula when he lost control of the Chevrolet Aveo and hit the tree.
Yiordani Miner “N,” 36, was examined by paramedics at the scene and declined further medical attention, authorities told El Orbe newspaper. A native of the Dominican Republic, Miner was taken into custody by immigration authorities. Police had the car towed away.
A demonstration by the Catrinas CDMX 2020 march on Sunday in Mexico City.
In cities around the country, protesters took advantage of this year’s Day of the Dead holiday to highlight the problem of deadly violence toward women in Mexico, with traditional holiday altars calling attention to femicide, the gender-based murder of a woman or girl by a man, and violence toward women in general.
In Mexico City’s Rotunda of the Illustrious memorial in the borough of Xochomilco, a women’s group created traditional holiday altars, or ofrendas, with the classic orange marigolds, candles, and papel picado (decorative paper cutouts) — but also with pink memorial crosses and photos of women killed by men. At the Benito Juárez Hemicycle monument, about 100 women gathered to place an ofrenda to victims of femicide.
In México state, Lidia Florencio built an altar with a group of protesters in front of the Chimalhuacán District Attorney’s Office to commemorate her daughter Diana, who she said was a femicide victim.
Other altars in front of the Mexico state Attorney General’s Office and elsewhere bore signs with slogans including “Not even one more” and accused law enforcement authorities of not doing enough to protect women from gender-based violence.
Protester Carmen Sánchez, who survived having acid thrown on her, said she was also an example of “how dead the authorities are at finding justice” for victims of gender-based violence.
Las Catrinas march in the capital on Sunday.
“There’s no progress, no follow-up,” she said. “My own case investigation and those of the rest of the women here might as well be buried in the ground because they have been halted, left to die.”
Meanwhile, in the city of Querétaro, protesters created an ofrenda in the city’s iconic Aqueduct that displayed 489 gravestones bearing the names of femicide victims in Mexico between January and October. The number represents the number of femicides recorded so far in 2020.
“We have here represented not even 5% of the actual cases of femicide in Mexico, because in the official data they don’t even count women who were disappeared,” said one activist.
The altar also featured a sign with a macabre play on words:
“En México, todos los días son Día de Muertas,” which used the Spanish feminine form of the word muerto to say, “In Mexico, every day is a Day of Dead Women.”
According to the federal numbers, the highest numbers of femicides occur in the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, México state, Mexico City and Morelos.
489 ‘gravestones’ in Querétaro represented the official number of femicides so far this year.
In Sonora, at the steps of the state Attorney General’s Office in Hermosillo, activists set up photos of children, teenagers, and adults who were victims of femicide this year, illuminated by candles.
The various groups in the area who organized the event dubbed it a “Vigil for the Femicides.”
A member of the feminist group Marea Verde Sonora said that groups such as hers all over Mexico were organizing the vigils and altars this year in order to make visceral how much violence at the hands of men Mexican women face.
“We are very worried about the violence we see toward women and girls in our state increasing, and each time, we see forms of violence that are crueler and more intense,” she said. “But we also see more women organizing, such as the Madres Buscadoras. Clearly, the government’s efforts to protect us are not enough.”
Videgaray: accused of leading a bribery scheme connected to Odebrecht.
President López Obrador confirmed Tuesday that the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) sought an arrest warrant for former cabinet minister Luis Videgaray in connection with a bribery case but was blocked by a judge.
Videgaray served as finance minister in the first four years of the 2012-2018 government of former president Enrique Peña Nieto and foreign affairs minister in the final two.
Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya, currently awaiting trial on corruption charges, has accused Peña Nieto and Videgaray of leading a bribery scheme that collected multi-million-dollar payments from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
According to the news website Latinus, which first reported the rejected warrant request, the FGR wants to arrest Videgaray on five charges.
One charge is related to an electoral crime, two involve bribery, one is for criminal association and the fifth is for treason.
The FGR accuses Videgaray of committing an electoral crime by delivering more than US $1.6 million in bribes to Peña Nieto’s 2012 campaign.
One bribery charge is related to the former official allegedly helping Peña Nieto to secure more than US $5.8 million and 84 million pesos in bribes from Odebrecht and Braskem, a petrochemical company that is a subsidiary of the Brazilian conglomerate.
Videgaray and Peña Nieto allegedly used the money for “wrongful acts related to their roles.”
The second bribery charge is related to Videgaray allegedly handing over more than 120 million pesos to lawmakers in exchange for supporting the former government’s 2014 energy reform that opened up the sector to foreign and private companies.
The criminal association charge is related to his alleged dealings with Odebrecht and the lawmakers who are accused of taking bribes.
Accusations against the former minister were made by Emilio Lozoya, former CEO of Pemex.
The treason charge is also related to the bribes that were allegedly paid to the lawmakers. The FGR accuses Videgaray of subjugating “the integrity of the nation to foreign persons” by paying off lawmakers to support the energy reform.
If convicted on that charge, the former minister could be jailed for up to 40 years.
According to the FGR, Peña Nieto entered into an agreement with Videgaray to “implement an organized apparatus of power … to obtain benefits that affect the sovereignty of Mexico, subjugating it to national and foreign persons and groups.”
The federal government intends to hold a referendum next year at which citizens will be asked whether past presidents should face justice for crimes they allegedly committed while in office.
Latinus said it was informed by high-ranking judicial sources that the FGR’s request for an arrest warrant for Videgaray was rejected because it lacked the “necessary legal support.”
López Obrador said much the same at his morning news conference.
“I have been informed that a request of this nature was made to the judiciary, but the request was rejected,” he said. “My understanding is that the judge sent the request back to the Attorney General’s Office.”
Latinus said that the warrant application could be reformulated by the FGR but López Obrador said he was uncertain if a new warrant could be requested.
Videgaray is the highest ranking official that the FGR has sought to arrest in connection with the Odebrecht case.
“Lozoya’s accusations are invented lies to try to get out of the consequences of his own actions,” he wrote.
Videgaray hasn’t publicly commented on the revelation that the FGR sought a warrant for his arrest.
The former minister worked as an academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after serving in the former government but according to a columnist for the newspaper El Universal he left that job and traveled to Israel on October 10.
“It may or may not be the case that Videgaray will ever be found guilty by a judge of committing crimes himself. However, the breadth and depth of credible accusations against him raise serious doubts over his moral authority to lead research projects,” the letter said.
“… MIT should end Videgaray’s appointments.”
Despite the letter, MIT management said that they supported Videgaray’s ongoing tenure at the university.
If he were to be arrested he would be the third Peña Nieto-era minister to be taken into custody after former social development minister Rosario Robles and ex-defense minister Salvador Cienfuegos.
Authorities in Mexico City have set a new coronavirus testing record, applying tests to 42,360 people between October 24 and 31.
The number of people tested at health kiosks, hospitals and medical centers in the last week of October was 48% higher than the previous record set in the first week of September when 28,579 citizens were tested in the capital.
By comparison, the city of San Francisco, California, has been doing 5,000 tests a day and New York City nearly 50,000.
According to the Mexico City government, 40% of all coronavirus tests in Mexico between October 24 and 31 were performed in the capital. Authorities reported 8,811 new coronavirus cases in Mexico City in the same period.
The capital has been Mexico’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic, and has recorded far more confirmed cases and Covid-19 deaths than any other state. As of Monday, Mexico City’s accumulated case tally was 163,418 and the death toll was 15,231.
The federal Health Ministry estimates that there are currently 11,575 active cases in the capital, a figure that accounts for one in four active cases across the country.
The mayor’s consideration of returning the capital to red light “maximum” risk on the coronavirus stoplight system has reportedly placed her at loggerheads with Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, the federal government’s coronavirus point man, and President López Obrador.
The president is said to be opposed to implementing stricter restrictions in the capital due to the economic impact such a move would have. The Mexican economy has already taken a massive hit from the pandemic and associated restrictions, slumping almost 20% and 10% in the second and third quarters, respectively, compared to the same periods last year.
Sheinbaum, a close ally of López Obrador, has also had differences of opinion with the federal government over face masks.
The mayor has advocated much more forcefully for their use and began wearing one early in the pandemic whereas López Obrador and López-Gatell have been much more reluctant to promote – and wear – them.
Mayor Sheinbaum speaks at a presidential press conference. The mayor and the president are reported to have disagreed over declaring a red light risk level in Mexico City.
The president and deputy minister both said last week that there was no possibility that the federal government would enforce their use. The latter asserted that their effectiveness in stopping the spread of the coronavirus is “overstated” in the “public narrative.”
Although the federal government is apparently opposed to the implementation of red light restrictions in Mexico City, there are strong arguments for tighter rules.
Almost 3,000 coronavirus patients are currently receiving treatment in hospitals in the capital, about a quarter of whom are on ventilators.
In addition, there is widespread flouting of existing rules and restrictions in Mexico City: masks are supposedly mandatory but many people choose not to wear them with impunity, parties and other large gatherings are becoming increasingly common and keeping a “healthy distance” from others is evidently not a priority for some.
In a bustling, densely-populated metropolis such as Mexico City, social distancing is indeed impossible in many situations, especially among people using public transit or working in the busy historic center.
A shift to red on the stoplight system would not only force the closure of – or at least tighter restrictions on – some businesses but also send a clear message to Mexico City residents that the risk of coronavirus infection remains very real.
Some capitalinos and chilangos, as residents of the capital are known, appear to have little concern about the risk of contracting Covid-19 even though so many people have died in Mexico City.
“Saint Jude can handle everything, even the damn Covid,” said one follower amid a large crowd of non-socially distanced devotees, some of whom were not wearing face masks.
The event set off alarm bells among local authorities and federal officials including López-Gatell, who reiterated that large gatherings are risky.
The deputy minister warned that if large groups of people also gather on December 12 – the feast day of the widely venerated Virgin of Guadalupe – there will be an “extremely high risk” of coronavirus transmission.
López-Gatell also said that if large numbers of people from around the country descend on the Basilica of Guadalupe in northern Mexico City – millions of people normally flock to the church on the feast day – coronavirus case numbers could subsequently spike in states where the pandemic has recently waned.
Mexico has already recorded more than 900,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and over 90,000 Covid-19 deaths to rank 10th and 4th in the world, respectively, for infections and fatalities, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Cases and deaths in Mexico City account for about one-sixth (16%-17%) of the national totals despite only 7% of Mexicans (excluding those who live in México state municipalities in the greater metropolitan area) calling the capital home.
Lidia Florencio sits in front of the altar she put out for her daughter in her home. Molly Ferrill
“I still can’t bring myself to put her favorite things on the altar. It’s too painful to accept that she is gone. I can’t let myself believe it.”
Lidia Florencio stands in her home in Chimalhuacán just outside of Mexico City, tears filling her eyes as she looks at the altar she has prepared to honor her daughter, Diana Velázquez Florencio, in the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead.
Three years have passed since the day her daughter left the house to make a phone call and never came home. That evening, Lidia and her family realized almost immediately that something was wrong. Along witha specialized unit that helps search for missing people, they scoured the city for signs, but none were found.
Hours later, someone picked up Diana’s phone. They said they’d just bought it at the local market.
The grief experienced by family and friends processing the loss of “disappeared” or missing people is said by some psychologists to be one of the worst forms of emotional pain, even worse than the pain of losing of a loved one to suicide.
Lidia Florencio leads a protest in Mexico City in honor of her daughter during the Day of the Dead. Molly Ferrill
After Diana’s phone was identified, Lidia knew that something had happened to her daughter, but still had hope that she might be alive. She says that the idea that her daughter could be suffering somewhere haunted her constantly.
Lidia was not alone in this experience. As of July 2020, there were more than 73,000 disappearances registered by Mexico’s National Search Commission, and the numbers show an upward trend over recent years.
Human trafficking, gender-based violence, the activities of organized crime groups, and repression of activism are some of the many potential causes of forced disappearance in Mexico. With such a high number of unresolved cases, however, the data on this human rights crisis remains incomplete.
Five days after her daughter’s disappearance, Lidia received a call that her body had been found. “They didn’t just kill my daughter. They killed her, they raped her and they left her in the street, and they went to bed and went on with their lives. I can’t resign myself to it. That I couldn’t hug her again. That a bag arrived and they said she was inside it. It fills you with so much pain, so much anger and desperation. But I guess I have to accept that she’s gone.”
Many people with disappeared loved ones are never able to get closure. The question of where their family members or friends might be can loom for years — and there is good reason not to lose hope, since many missing people in Mexico have been rescued years after their disappearance. Some people describe the emotional effect of spending years searching for answers as a feeling of being suspended in time.
Diana Fidelia, an actor from Mexico City, has been searching for her brother Ricardo Flores Palacios for 15 years. When he went away for a soccer trip to Durango, her family never thought it would be the last time they would see him. During that trip, she received a phone call from him that surprised her, since he didn’t usually call. It was the last time she heard from him.
Diana Fidelia and her brother Ricardo used to play soccer together when they were young. His childhood soccer jerseys bring back those happy shared memories. Molly Ferrill
With the passing of the years, she has come to understand that call as a goodbye. When time passed after the phone call and she and her family didn’t hear from Ricardo, Diana says she began to enter into desperation. “I still had the number he’d called me from saved in the call log of my phone. I called him obsessively. I think I called more than 200 times every day.
There was also a time period when I was checking the newspaper of Durango every day, and checking the page of the morgue with the bodies of the people who have died, to see if he was there.”
Over the years, Diana has gone through a long process of healing, and she even created a theatrical performance about her brother’s disappearance. Now, 15 years later, she has accepted the uncertainty as a part of her life,although it is still painful. “It’s very difficult to have a brother whom you love, and not know what happened, where he is, or what they might have done to him.”
She and her family prefer not to give any significance to the Day of the Dead, since they still don’t know where her brother might be. Instead, Diana reflects on her memories and preserves her brother’s belongings and articles of clothing as a way of keeping his presence in her life despite his physical absence.
“It’s another kind of altar,” she says with a small smile. “It is important for me to keep him here in my memory, although we don’t know what happened. It’s important to talk about him, because if we are quiet, I think that silence is death. So it’s better to talk and to share. In the midst of all of this pain, we hope that wherever my brother is, he is all right.”
Dealing with the disappearance of a family member is a personal process, and no two stories or reactions will be the same. For Diana, her art is her way of processing and sharing this experience with the public. Lidia chooses to focus on political activism. She says that the capacity of law enforcement needs to be strengthened in order to locate disappeared people and bring criminals to justice.
Diana Fidelia holds her missing brother’s childhood shirt. Keeping his physical belongings helps with the feeling of not being able to have his physical presence with her. Molly Ferrill
Although Lidia’s daughter’s body has been found, she feels that justice has not been served. She also emphasizes that femicide, or the gender-based killing of a woman or girl by a man,as in her daughter’s case, is one frequent cause of disappearances that needs to be addressed in Mexico.
“Two men assaulted my daughter, but only one is in jail. I never stop thinking about how we can make sure that the authorities work against this kind of murder, because we never felt that they gave my daughter’s murder any importance.”
She feels that more work needs to be done so that disappearances don’t happen in the first place. “We are becoming conscious that there is a lot of violence taking place, and we need to take to the streets and speak out against it.”
Lidia’s youngest daughter Camila, 6, in front of an altar honoring her adoptive sister on Day of the Dead. Molly FerrillFor Lidia, activism is crucial in preventing disappearances like that of her daughter. Molly FerrillDiana Fidelia looks through old photos of her brother Ricardo. Molly FerrillLidia and her youngest daughter Camila walk home together in Chimalhuacán, where a rising number of disappearances have been recorded. Molly Ferrill
Tijuana councilor and actress Claudia Casas courted controversy on Halloween, posting images of herself and her family on Facebook dressed in mock-bloody clothing and brandishing machetes and high-caliber rifles.
Such weapons are highly associated with organized crime.
The post featured pictures of Casas and her husband and daughter wearing various Halloween masks and clothing made to look blood-spattered. All three took turns holding a machete and a butcher’s knife, both also dripping in red paint, as well as a high-caliber rifle.
The wall behind them had slogans in the same blood-red paint that said, “Make Mexico purge again” and “Purge 2020”
The slogans appear to be a reference to the popular American movie series The Purge, which depicts a speculative version of the United States in which, on a single day each year, all citizens can legally kill each other with impunity.
Casas has acted in narco-films produced by her husband, Óscar López.
Tijuana has the highest number of homicides in Baja California, and the state has the highest number of murders in Mexico, according to the latest federal statistics. As of September, 53.7 people have been killed for every 100,000 people in the state this year.
Tijuana accounted for more than half of that number, with 1,534 people killed between January and September.
