López Obrador and Trump will meet next week, but Trudeau's attendance is in doubt.
President López Obrador will meet with his United States counterpart on July 8 and 9 in Washington, D.C., Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced on Wednesday.
The meeting with President Donald Trump will mark López Obrador’s first trip abroad since assuming the presidency in 2018.
“I can confirm that we have received an invitation from the U.S. government for an official work visit on July 8 and 9,” said Ebrard, who will accompany the president. Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., Martha Bárcena, the economy minister and the president’s chief of staff will also participate.
The president and his entourage will fly on a commercial airline to attend.
On July 8, discussion will be focused on bilateral Mexico-U.S. issues, whereas on the following day the agenda will be trilateral and related to the entry in force on Wednesday of the new trade treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada.
It is unknown if Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be in attendance. If he does travel to Washington, Trudeau would face a mandatory 14-day quarantine upon his return to Canada. López Obrador stated it would be “somewhat better” if Trudeau could join them for the meeting.
Ebrard stressed that the meeting is an attempt to fortify investments and trade between the three countries under the terms of the new treaty.
“A very important message for each of us is that today not only does a treaty enter into force, but we also started a very relevant climate in Mexico for investment, employment and economic growth,” he stated at a press conference on Wednesday.
López Obrador has been criticized for traveling to the U.S. in the midst of a presidential election campaign.
On Monday, he defended his decision to meet with Trump. “I don’t have a bad conscience to travel to the U.S.,” he said. “I am not a sellout. You can have a good relationship with the U.S., a neighboring country, maintaining decorum, our dignity, our independence and our sovereignty.”
While walking downtown with my mask and maintaining my distance from others, hand gel in pocket, I can’t help but feel exceptional (I was one of those kids, and kind of still am).
This isn’t so bad! It’s a little uncomfortable, but surely we can collectively rally for the good of the whole. I think we’re gonna make it.
Then I see a city bus pass by, packed with people, and my optimism sinks. Not all of them are wearing masks. Most of them are going to work, of course, because what else can they do?
There have been no stimulus checks, no pardons of rent, water bills, electricity bills, grocery bills. Charity is available but not widely advertised — nor could it stretch the necessary amount if everyone did know about it — and the assurance that “the worst is over” is cold comfort for those wondering what they’re going to feed their families tomorrow.
Hypothesis: capitalism and protection against the spreading of the coronavirus cannot co-exist, and the friction between these two facts is pushing us all over the edge.
The coronavirus couldn’t care less about capitalism and its weird way of running things in our lives. It doesn’t care that people will become destitute. It doesn’t care that anyone’s business will go under. And for those of us (which — let’s face it — is all of us) stuck within the parameters of capitalism, this is a problem.
I agree with José Antonio Ocampo, chairman of the international think tank ICRICT, that President López Obrador is simply not doing the right thing by insisting on austerity measures. This is the time literally to break the bank in order to keep people alive and safe.
As things stand, plenty of people are falling fast into that category of “the poorest and the neediest” because they’ve lost their jobs or their micro and small-businesses have gone under. And no, Mr. President, a single 25,000-peso loan is not going to fix things — especially when you add the stipulation that they not let anyone go despite sudden sub-zero earnings.
So what are we to do?
At this point, it’s hard to say how we could reverse course. Many businesses and livelihoods have long been lost already, making it more urgent, not less, for people to go out looking for other work. And what do all those people being out and about mean? Well, more than anything it means that this health crisis won’t be ending anytime soon.
If we want people to stay home, we literally need to pay them to stay home. Even then, this is not a country of people who love hanging around inside. The culture of “enjoy what you can when you can” goes directly against our contention efforts, especially in these times of stress. Life is hard and quite possibly short in the best of times, so (the idea goes) party when you’re able to party.
On top of this, our infrastructure is not made for keeping our distance. Physical closeness is built not only into the culture but into our very communities, with narrow passageways and close quarters being the norm. Who needs wide open spaces when you can just be together instead?
Additionally, this is not a country where people are accustomed to following the rules. Just look at the opening of the La Paz beaches where they were immediately packed, citizens and authorities ignoring regulations about social distancing and capacity. Rules are meaningless if no one has the authority or the will to enforce them.
But let’s talk about what we can achieve.
This, to me, is the most important: we can pay people to stay home rather than going out looking for work. It won’t keep everyone inside, but it will keep more people inside, and a smaller crowd is better than a bigger crowd. Let’s not throw our hands up in the air and walk away just because something gives a good-ish result instead of a perfect one.
Businesses can keep insisting on mask-wearing upon entry, temperature-taking, and essentially spraying people down in anti-bacterial gel. Only allowing one person in at a time, while annoying, does seem to be keeping the quantity of bodies in enclosed spaces down, so let’s keep doing that.
Test widely and make it free. If they can do it in Acapulco, they can do it in other places, too. This will help us get a handle on hot spots, get sick people off the streets and the care they need, and will limit the spread of contagion since more people will be aware they’re carriers.
Find ways to show people you care without touching them. As I tell my daughter, it’s terrible not to be able to play with our friends, but it won’t be forever.
If you must be around others (and the reason for the “must” could be for your own emotional and mental health — I’m no one to judge), do you best to lather yourself in antibacterial gel and keep a safe distance.
The ability to self-isolate is a privilege, and it’s mostly an economic one. Let’s make that privilege more accessible to everyone.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Coronavirus has put thousands of workers out of a job.
It’s no secret that Mexico has been hit hard by the coronavirus epidemic. With over 20,000 confirmed deaths and cases still on the rise, it appears to be not only one of the worst affected countries, but also to be experiencing one of the most sustained and unrelenting outbreaks globally.
A consensus as to where Mexico is in its Covid trajectory is elusive, but frustrations are boiling over and the ever-growing crowd of virtual protesters is pointing to entire industries at their tipping point — Mexico’s temper is wearing thin.
The powers-that-be have acknowledged this, and the hum of society’s engine is again audible. Factories in Mexico City are opening under strict sanitary guidelines, travel curbs have been lifted, and despite recent roll-backs of certain measures due to continual outbreaks in the capital, the general unanimity that the country is on a path to normality remains.
Half of all Mexican states have now reached infection levels deemed compatible with limited social reopening, albeit at a maximum of 50% capacity in restaurants and hotels.
Perhaps most significantly, the tourism industry, which has been suffocated by travel restrictions and the shutdown of the hospitality sector, is on track to be partially functional for a portion of the summer period. While we won’t be seeing images of holidaymakers lining every inch of the Cancún sand, there may be just enough business to tide the industry over until we completely cross the rubicon.
But is it too late to be saved? Most of the economy was wound down in the final week of March, and in the following month Mexico registered only 86,000 visitors, down from 2.8 million in the same period just a year before. Tourism is the bedrock of 11 million jobs, directly or indirectly, and with the blindside punch of lockdown, hundreds of thousands of hotel workers, flight attendants, waiters, and beach cleaners were simply told to go home and wait it out.
Tourism is often seen as too big to fail in Mexico, but the truth is it’s too big to fail its employees; the after-shocks of its collapse would be felt generations down the line.
The tourism minister has understood the desperation of the situation in suggesting that the tourism industry should be treated as an “essential activity” so that it could be one of the first to reopen alongside factories, construction, and the energy sector. But while the situation in many regards is urgent, the immediacy with which officials are seeking to ease the industry out of its slumber may be overly hasty.
One of the many ironies of the pandemic’s effect on the beaches of Cancún and other stretches of tourist paradise is that only now do they reflect the pristine and peaceful pictures from the brochures. The reminder that these areas have been exploited and overrun for decades is a welcome one, and the sudden quiet of once burgeoning and unstable resorts is deafening. While the extended absence of tourists from the beaches adds pressure on the industry as a whole, it serves as a timely prompt that its bloated size was getting to be inherently unstable.
Maybe this could be a turning point for tourism in Mexico. The pandemic has exposed some of the most fundamental inequalities in our society and as it tears through this once booming sector, it leaves us with no choice but to consider a future of tourism that recognizes the byproducts, environmental deterioration and cultural interference, and actively tries to re-balance these.
Through the shutdown we have not only seen how tourism affects wildlife and the environment, but we’ve observed the influence it has over the communities that support the industry through real estate and an ever-growing workforce. As we emerge from the coronavirus sludge, it will be important to re-evaluate the ways in which we have, over the last 50 years, reversed our initial model of society; essentially we have changed from building communities around industries, to building industries on top of communities.
This is perilous — not only does it leave a community on unstable foundations, it gives the illusion of strength and timelessness. Who could have imagined a million tourists disappearing from the beach, whipping the rug out from an entire city’s working population? For years the base of community and industry has been welded together so that with the demise of one comes the demise of the other. It’s an instability that is systemic, and that may only be observable in the wake of an economically and socially tragic event like this one.
Whether this idea will be considered in a meaningful sense is questionable; the eagerness to get the wheels turning again is overwhelming and the question of how we build societies will seem increasingly ethereal the longer workers in the industry go without money in their pocket.
But we should remember how the pandemic exposed the foundations of the tourism industry which, as sturdy as they seemed, snapped with devastating effects. Perhaps, fittingly, our reminder could be those images from the brochures of those pristine beaches, abandoned.
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. ”
