Senator Delgadillo says many employers don't consider the impact of menstruation on their female employees.
Women should have access to paid leave when they are menstruating, according to a Citizens Movement (MC) party senator.
Senator Verónica Delgadillo presented a bill that would give women and trans men the legal right to take time off when they have their period.
Presenting her proposal in the Senate on Wednesday, Delgadillo said that women menstruate for an average of 3,000 days over the course of their lives, during which they experience symptoms such as cramps, headaches, nausea and dizziness.
The senator for Jalisco also said that many employers don’t consider the impact of menstruation on their female employees.
“That’s why I come to this rostrum today to make a very simple proposal – that a new labor right be recognized for women,” Delgadillo said.
She said women should be able to go on “menstrual leave when their period doesn’t allow them to go to work,” without their salary and benefits being affected.
They should be able to take time off “with the peace of mind that their rights remain protected,” the MC lawmaker said.
Menstrual leave should not be considered a luxury or privilege, Delgadillo asserted before saying she had no doubt that some people would characterize it as such.
“I would like to see them with these levels of pain so that they can tell us whether it’s a privilege or not. Rest assured, it’s not a privilege. There are women who need that leave from work, and we’re in a position to give it to them,” she said.
Among the senators who expressed support for Delgadillo’s proposal were Olga Sánchez and Malú Mícher of the ruling Morena party.
Baby Luna Rangel Cabrera with her parents, Mariel Aragón Rangel and Miguel Pérez Cabrera.
A baby girl in Querétaro has become the first minor in that state to have two surnames derived from two maternal last names.
In Mexican convention, most people have two surnames: the first, from the person’s father and the second, from the mother. Each parent passes on surnames from their own fathers.
But baby Luna’s surnames are different. She bears her parents’ maternal (second) surnames, passed down from each of her grandmothers.
As of Wednesday, the legal name of the daughter of Mariel Aragón Rangel and Miguel Pérez Cabrera is Luna Rangel Cabrera. Traditionally her name would have been Luna Pérez Aragón.
Luna’s parents had to obtain a court order to be able to name their daughter as they wished because Querétaro is one of six states where there is a legal requirement for the surnames of children to be the paternal last names of their father and mother in that order.
Their initial attempt to obtain a birth certificate was rejected in November. They subsequently hired a lawyer who filed an application for an injunction, which was granted in January.
Aragón and Pérez told the newspaper Milenio that the law in Querétaro should be changed because as things stand it discriminates against women.
“We’re not talking about surnames that are … someone else’s; they’re our own surnames but those of our mothers,” Pérez said.
The Supreme Court ruled last December that it is unconstitutional to oblige babies to be registered with their father’s paternal surname first followed by that of their mother.
“Are fathers superior to mothers? Are men superior to women? They’re equal before the law; they are equal before their children. They deserve the same dignity,” Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar said in a video message at the time.
Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar and former first lady Margarita Zavala.
Former first lady Margarita Zavala has hit back at the chief justice of the Supreme Court (SCJN) after he accused the government of ex-president Felipe Calderón of improper conduct in relation to a fire at a daycare center in Sonora in 2009 that claimed the lives of 49 children.
Presenting his new book on Tuesday, Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar claimed there was “an operation by the state to protect the family of the president’s wife [and] to protect the high-ranking officials of that government” from being accused of wrongdoing in connection with the fire at the ABC Daycare Center in Hermosillo in June 2009.
He asserted that the 2006-12 Calderón administration pressured the SCJN to hand down rulings that were not unfavorable to the government.
Numerous officials with the Mexican Social Security Institute, Civil Protection and other government departments were eventually found criminally responsible for the deaths of the children and sentenced to lengthy jail terms.
Zaldívar, appointed to the SCJN by Calderón in 2009 but now considered an ally of President López Obrador, said he had a heated, hours-long discussion with former interior minister Fernando Gómez-Mont about the court’s consideration of the daycare center case.
A monument to the children who lost their lives in the ABC Daycare fire in Hermosillo. Gob. de México
He said he directed Calderón’s interior minister to “tell the president that he nominated a justice” and hadn’t appointed a “minister of the state.”
“I’m not his employee and I won’t carry the death of 49 children on my conscience,” Zaldívar recalled telling Gómez-Mont.
In addition, the chief justice claimed that the Calderón government didn’t allow children injured in the fire to be airlifted to a hospital that was waiting for them in Sacramento, United States, “because they didn’t want the scandal to become a big one.”
Zavala, currently a federal deputy for the National Action Party, accused Zaldívar of lying in a series of Twitter posts published Wednesday.
“He’s lying by saying there was an operation to protect my family,” she said in one post, adding that the federal government obtained a warrant for the arrest of one of her relatives.
“Zaldívar is lying because it was precisely the federal government that arranged for children to go to specialist hospitals in the United States,” Zavala wrote in another post.
She also said that she is still in contact with some of the mothers who lost their children in the 2009 tragedy.
“None of what he said yesterday appears in his book, … it just occurred to him at the time [he was presenting it]. Don’t come up with any more bright ideas @ArturoZaldivarL and concentrate on your work, which is justice in Mexico, and what little you’ve done for that in these years,” Zavala said.
In an interview Wednesday night, the chief justice responded that everything he said on Tuesday “is proven.”
Calderón hasn’t personally responded to Zaldívar’s claims but he has retweeted the opinions of several other people.
“Frankly, @ArturoZaldivarL has lost all credibility,” said one of the Twitter posts republished by the ex-president.
On Wednesday, President López Obrador criticized the Austrian response to his request to borrow Moctezuma's headdress.
Mexico will once again ask Austria to return the elaborate headdress that is believed to have belonged to the Aztec emperor at the time of the Spanish Conquest, President López Obrador said Wednesday.
Speaking at his regular news conference, the president acknowledged that efforts to have the penacho de Moctezuma (Moctezuma’s headdress) returned to Mexico have gotten nowhere, but asserted that his government is in the process of lobbying for the recovery of stolen art and cultural artifacts that belong to Mexico.
“We have to keep insisting that the penacho be returned to us and that everything that has been stolen that belongs to Mexicans is returned to us … [from] all countries,” López Obrador said.
The headdress – made of feathers from the quetzal and other birds – is on display at the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna.
Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, AMLO’s wife, met with the president of Austria in October 2020 and – armed with a letter from her husband – asked that the European nation lend the penacho to Mexico for exhibition during 2021, the bicentenary of independence from Spain.
A modern copy of the headdress is displayed in the National Museum of Anthropology and History, in Mexico City. Thomas Ledl / CC BY-SA 4.0
López Obrador recalled that Austria rejected the request, arguing that the headdress wouldn’t withstand the long journey to Mexico.
“This meeting that Beatriz had with the president [Alexander Van der Bellen] was very unpleasant, … she tells me that he didn’t have much knowledge [of the penacho]. He was surrounded by men and a woman who feel they are the owners of the penacho. … They’d barely started talking about the issue and they were already saying no,” he said.
“… Beatriz very kindly said goodbye … and we didn’t continue with the issue because there was this refusal. It’s a very arrogant, high-handed attitude and there is no justification,” López Obrador said.
“… We weren’t even suggesting … that they return it to us [for good], that it’s ours, no. It was to exhibit it,” he said.
The president said he hoped Austria would change its way of thinking and allow the penacho to come back to Mexico.
“There are things in the relationship with Austria that are exceptional,” he added. “During the government of president Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico was the first country that condemned the Nazi invasion of Austria; there’s recognition for that.”
Los Pochos dancers from carnival celebrations in Tenosique, Tabasco. The dance dates back to pre-Hispanic times. David Oliva
Mexico has one kind of carnival celebration, similar to what you’d see elsewhere in the world, but another kind is uniquely Mexican.
Are you looking for an experience similar to those in New Orleans or Rio de Janeiro? Head to Mexico’s coasts: notable celebrations from Veracruz to the Yucatán Peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico side and in Mazatlán and Baja California on the Pacific side will satisfy your need for glitz, large parades and a massive party atmosphere. But there are others too, Mexico’s more “authentic” carnivals, celebrations that often feature a rural, indigenous flavor.
Now, even Mexico’s biggest, glitziest celebrations are still way smaller than many carnival celebrations in the Old World and New. Why is that?
The conquistadors introduced the tradition along with all its other folk religious celebrations in the early colonial period. Most of these were adopted and shaped one way or another by rural and urban populations, but the popularity of carnival became something of a headache for the colonial masters.
Carnival is a time to set aside social conventions, including subservience to crown and church. Masks and costumes provided anonymity and allowed the disenfranchised to make fun of norms and the authorities themselves.
These sorts of glitzy carnival celebrations are more typical in Mexico’s coastal cities. Rubén Naíl
This would not do, so campaigns to stamp it out began in the 17th century. By the 18th, it was mostly eliminated in the cities, where enforcement was strongest, but not so much in isolated rural communities.
With the country’s independence in the 19th century, there were initially no efforts to bring it back. Many religious folk festivals were frowned upon by Mexico’s Liberal movements eager to banish the colonial past.
Yet, remnants of carnival, mostly as balls for the rich, survived. It eventually experienced a comeback in coastal cities, probably due to contact with other countries with more robust traditions.
Mazatlán was first to reestablish carnival in 1898, taking an annual mock battle between dock and warehouse workers and shifting the focus to colorful costumes to keep the violence down.
However, the idea of a simulated battle never really disappeared: throwing projectiles such as empty eggshells filled with confetti and spray foam are still an integral part of celebrations.
These modern coastal carnival celebrations have what you would expect: large parades, extravagant costumes, queens (and sometimes kings) and lots of partying, as well as the same problems — alcohol-fueled public disturbances and overt sexuality that has sometimes caused controversy.
A participant in Zacapoaxtla costume firing a mock rifle with real gunpowder in Huejotzingo, Puebla. Leigh Thelmadatter
To counter some of this, versions for children have been created.
Besides Mazatlán, the largest, most important coastal carnivals take place in Veracruz city (the second largest), Ensenada, La Paz. Mérida, Cozumel, and Campeche city. They continue to grow more popular on both coasts as more communities sponsor them, looking for a slice of the domestic tourism they generate.
But such carnivals have not taken off in the interior cities, not even Mexico City. Masks, costumes and social rule-bending abound in these other celebrations too, but that’s pretty much all they have in common with their coastal cousins.
These other celebrations can be found in about 225 central and southern Mexican communities, where Catholicism was introduced before the religious feast was purged. These events are very local, with traditions distinct to each town or small region. Local dances and musical styles (especially with wind instruments) dominate. They may involve bullfighting, charreada (rodeo), horse racing, story reenactments and even fishing tournaments.
Indigenous influence can be seen in many of these celebrations, especially in the dances. In the center of the country, they often include the huehues, literally “old men,” as well as adapted rituals meant to ensure good crops for the upcoming growing season. Costumes are influenced by local traditions, with bull-themed ones in Veracruz and monkey-themed ones in Chiapas.
The largest and best-known of these carnivals is that in Huejotzingo, Puebla, where just about the entire town participates. This celebration, which starts on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday, mostly revolves around a “reenactment” of the 1862 Battle of Puebla.
CARNAVAL DE HUEJOTZINGO 2020 | MARTES PARTE 2
Huejotzingo, Puebla’s carnival celebration in 2020 with parade costumes loosely evoking the Battle of Puebla.
The residents of the four oldest neighborhoods are given roles: two represent the invaders — the French (known as zuavos or zapadores) and the turcos (Turkish mercenaries) — and the other two the Mexican defenders, known as the zacapoaxtlas and the indios.
It is not historically accurate by any means but rather consists of a large number of mostly men (women were permitted to participate only somewhat recently) running around in garish costumes with fake rifles that explode real gunpowder. Alcohol figures in here as well, so accidents can and do happen. It all makes for a wildly chaotic scene with smoke and noise filling the air for three days and nights.
In Mexico City, carnival has and has not disappeared. Yes, there are small celebrations of the rural type to be found, but that is because until the 20th century, areas like Santa Martha Acatitla, Santa Cruz Meyehualco and San Lorenzo Tezonco were isolated rural areas. Now that these are urban areas, elements of modern carnival celebrations have crept in, especially in the costuming, the addition of carnival royalty and the musical choices.
Whichever your preference, attending a carnival celebration in Mexico is highly recommended; just keep your head and, as always, stay safe.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
Two trailers whose brakes failed caused two separate accidents in Morelos on Wednesday morning, leaving at least seven people injured, one seriously.
The accidents took place on the Mexico City-Acapulco highway around 10:45 a.m. just one kilometer away from each other, on the outskirts of Cuernavaca.
Both drivers fled after the crashes, the newspaper Milenio reported. The federal highways agency Capufe temporarily closed the highway in both directions.
More than 15 vehicles were affected in the accidents. The first completely destroyed various vehicles and damaged others. The second crash took place moments later.
Both accidents were on the Paso Exprés, a 14 kilometer section of the highway opened in 2017. In the last five years, more than 300 serious road accidents have been recorded on the stretch of highway, claiming more than 100 lives, the newspaper El Sol de Cuernavaca reported.
There were no fatalities in either of the accidents.
The average number of new coronavirus infections reported each day in Mexico has decreased by more than 20,000 over the last three weeks, according to the Reuters COVID-19 tracker.
The seven-day average for daily case numbers was 16,817 after 18,309 new infections were reported Tuesday. That’s a 12% decline compared to a week earlier, a 35% reduction compared to February 8 and a 54% drop compared to the start of February.
January was the worst month of the pandemic for new cases with over 960,000 recorded as the highly contagious omicron strain spread rapidly. Mexico’s accumulated case tally is currently 5.43 million, of which 62,404 infections are estimated to be active.
The seven-day average for COVID-19 fatalities is currently 403, an 8% drop compared to a week ago and a 10% reduction compared to the start of the month. The official death toll is 316,492, the fifth highest total in the world.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday that the intensity of the pandemic in Mexico had been on the wane for a month, asserting that there has been a “drastic reduction” in case numbers in all 32 states.
López-Gatell said that the national hospital occupancy rate in COVID wards didn’t exceed 50% during the entire fourth wave of the pandemic, a situation he attributed to the reconfiguration of hospitals to increase their capacity to treat COVID patients and the fact that the vast majority of the adult population is vaccinated.
The national vaccination rate among adults is over 90%, and no state has a rate below 70%, the deputy minister said. The coronavirus point man also said that 69% of adults aged 60 and over have had a booster shot.
Booster shots are currently being administered to younger adults, including those aged 18 to 29 who live in Mexico City.
A television host from Veracruz has become the sixth media worker to be murdered so far this year.
The body of Michell Pérez Tadeo, 29, better known as Michell Simón, was found on Monday by workers fighting a fire on the Picacho-Ajusco highway near Santo Tomás Ajusco, 30 kilometers south of Mexico City.
Pérez, the single mother to a four-year-old girl who called herself a “happy mom,” had been reported missing three days earlier.
The actress and model from Coatzacoalcos worked principally in sports coverage for the Veracruz channel Olmeca TV and moved to Mexico City in 2013. She was studying to be a sports presenter and worked on the program Hoy Fútbol (Football Today) on Aym Sports and on the radio channel Grupo Acir. She also collaborated with Fox Sports, TV Azteca and Televisa.
Pérez took strong positions on women’s rights issues: last year, she posted “Ni Una Más” on social media, meaning not one more, a popular phrase used to call for an end to femicides.
Jan Albert Hootsen of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said he doubts Pérez was killed for her work. “For now, we are not seeing the case as an attack on the press, since apparently the victim was not practicing journalism at the time. Rather, it has the characteristics of a femicide,” he said.
It is Mexico’s 13th most violent municipality in terms of homicides per capita, but there are signs that the security situation is improving in Cajeme, Sonora.
There were 30 homicides in the Yaqui Valley municipality in the first 22 days of February for an average of 1.36 murders per day.
Evidently, a lot still needs to be done to bring peace to the municipality, which includes Ciudad Obregón, but this month’s daily murder count is 22% lower than the average in January, when there were 54 homicides in total, and 47% lower than the average during October, the worst month for homicides in 2021 with 79.
The decline in murders comes after a new security strategy involving all three levels of government was announced earlier this month.
In an interview with the newspaper Milenio last Wednesday, Mayor Javier Lamarque boasted that there had been a streak of three days this month with no homicides.
However, the federal government’s daily homicide reports for the first 22 days of February indicate that while there have been seven days this month without a murder in Cajeme, the longest streak without homicides is only two days.
Before this month, according to Milenio, not even one day in more than two decades had passed without a murder. Mexico News Daily was unable to verify that seemingly remarkable claim.
Violence in Cajeme, and many other Sonora municipalities, is largely generated by a turf war between criminal groups affiliated with notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was released from prison in 2013, and other groups controlled by Los Chapitos – the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Lamarque said the new security strategy, which is reviewed and tweaked every morning, is starting to yield results.
“We’ve made significant progress this year. … On February 15, … there were zero homicides,” the mayor said.
“We’re starting to have a sustained decrease,” Lamarque said, adding that the murder data supports his belief that “we’re on the right path.”
There is “intense coordination between the federal government, the state and the municipality,” he said, explaining that they share intelligence and collaborate on security operations and law enforcement.
Lamarque said that dialogue and agreement between authorities is easier because the Morena party holds power in Cajeme, Sonora and nationally.
“We’re people working on a project [to transform Mexico] out of conviction. Of course the president .. is who leads at a national level, here in Sonora it’s the governor [former federal security minister Alfonso Durazo] and I’m part of the project,” he said.
“… We’re at the helm of our municipality to direct security, growth, development and wellbeing … within the framework of the political project that the president of the republic represents.”
Carmen Aristegui described the president's latest claims as 'madness.'
President López Obrador’s long-running battle with the media shows no sign of abating.
He renewed his attack on Carmen Aristegui on Tuesday, prompting the prominent journalist to accuse him of using “confrontational discourse” to divide and inflame the people of Mexico.
Speaking at his regular news conference, López Obrador reasserted that Aristegui is opposed to him and biased toward his political opponents, whom he refers to collectively as “the conservatives.”
“Without a doubt she is aligned to the conservative group and we’re against that conservative bloc, which we believe has been the cause of the misfortune of the Mexican people,” he said.
AMLO charged that because Aristegui opposes him she is also against “a movement of millions of Mexicans who want to carry out a transformation in the country.”
López Obrador and another of his favorite targets, Carlos Loret.
The president compared her to Carlos Loret de Mola, another well known journalist he frequently criticizes and with whom he is currently engaged in a war of words.
His latest attack on Aristegui came two weeks after he accused her of misleading people during her long media career. The journalist responded to that claim by saying it was regrettable that the president was seeking to use his “very powerful word” to destroy reputations.
On Tuesday, she reaffirmed that she is neither partial toward nor biased against López Obrador, and described the president’s claim that she is against millions of Mexicans as “madness.”
Aristegui also renewed her criticism of the president for using public resources to attack journalists and media organizations at his weekday press conferences.
“What the president of the republic is doing … with his strength, his power, his mandate, the resources of all of us … is engaging in confrontational discourse that seeks to, and manages to, divide and inflame,” she said during her radio program.
“This country doesn’t deserve to be poisoned; we already have a lot of historic poison, poison that of course is still here with the many grievances of all kinds that exist in this country,” Aristegui said. “Deliberately continuing to inflame the population … is frankly regrettable, to say it mildly.”
López Obrador has been widely criticized for his verbal attacks, and those of his government, on journalists, newspapers and other media outlets that are critical of his administration.
Press freedom advocacy group Article 19 said in 2019 that López Obrador’s “stigmatizing discourse” against the media “has a direct impact in terms of the … risk it can generate for the work of the press because [his remarks] permeate in the discourse of the rest of society and can even generate attacks.”
Six journalists have been murdered in Mexico so far this year, prompting an expression of concern from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
