Green remains the predominant color on the new map.
Three states regressed to high risk orange on the updated coronavirus map presented by the federal Health Ministry on Friday night, while six advanced to low risk green.
Baja California Sur, Yucatán and Tabasco, which have all seen a recent increase in case numbers, switched to orange from medium risk yellow on the new map, which will take effect Monday and remain in force until June 20.
That brings to four the number of high risk states for the next two weeks as Quintana Roo is already orange and remained that color on the updated map.
The predominant color on the map is once again green, with a total of 19 states at the low risk level, an increase of three compared to the current map.
Mexico City, México state, Zacatecas, Nayarit, Michoacán and Puebla switched to green from yellow, joining Coahuila, Durango, San Luis Potosí, Jalisco, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Querétaro, Hidalgo, Morelos, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tlaxcala and Guerrero, which are already low risk states.
There are nine yellow light states on the new map, among which are five of Mexico’s six northern border states.
Veracruz, Sonora and Sinaloa regressed to yellow from green, joining Baja California, Chihuahua,Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Campeche and Colima, which are already medium risk states.
Each stoplight color, determined by the Health Ministry using 10 different indicators including case numbers and hospital occupancy levels, is accompanied by recommended restrictions to slow the spread of the virus but it is ultimately up to state governments to decide on their own restrictions.
Some states, such as Yucatán and Quintana Roo, have their own stoplight systems to guide the implementation and lifting of restrictions. Authorities in Yucatán announced before the federal government updated its map that the state would remain at the yellow light level even though case numbers have recently increased.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated case tally rose by 2,809 on Friday to just under 2.43 million, while the official Covid-19 death toll increased by 206 to 228,556, the fourth highest total in the world after those of the United States, Brazil and India.
The Health Ministry also reported Friday night that 23.7 million people, or 27% of the adult population, are either partially or fully vaccinated against Covid-19. A total of 33.78 million shots have been administered in Mexico since the vaccine rollout began last December.
El Manto is a crystal-clear, spring-fed river with a waterfall in Nayarit that has been gently adapted into a water park.
“There’s a river I remember in a remote corner of Nayarit,” said watercolorist Jorge Monroy one day while I sat in his studio, sipping wine and exchanging tales of western Mexico’s hidden beauty.
“You walk alongside a stream between wonderfully colored, high canyon walls and get soaked by waterfall after waterfall. The water, by the way, is neither hot nor cold, but just perfect for having fun for hours.”
This description was enticing indeed, and because neither Jorge nor his artist friend Ilse Taylor Hable had ever painted this river, it was easy to set up a visit to El Manto, located 115 kilometers west of Guadalajara and no longer so remote, thanks to recently paved roads leading all the way there.
Upon reaching the river, we found a very large parking area full of cars and a gateway where we had to pay an entrance fee. A well-made stairway — with what seemed like a million steps — took us down to a truly gorgeous little river winding its way between high canyon walls.
To me, the place looked beautiful, but Jorge had a different reaction:
Neither the water nor the rain is cold, so there’s never any need to stop the fun.
“It has been developed!” he cried in anguish.
Swimming pools and sidewalks had been built along the 300-meter stretch of the river, bridges now crossed it at various points and, of course, there were people — lots of people — enjoying this unusual and perhaps unique balneario (water park).
It was only when Jorge and Ilse set up their easels that I realized for the first time in my life that artists live in another dimension, a wonderful parallel universe closed to us ordinary people, especially us photographers.
Standing there on the sizzling-hot concrete platform, surrounded by noisy, splashing children, Jorge and Ilse calmly created on their canvases the magical, untouched El Manto of yesterday: the wildly colored canyon walls, the bubbling brook, the waterfalls as they once were.
And wonder of wonders, neither painting contained a single square centimeter of concrete!
Recently, I returned to El Manto with the plan of camping there. I found the swimming area along the river as enchanting as ever … and apparently, so have throngs of others who now flock to El Manto by the busload.
Filled with emotion, Don Salvador tells the tale of struggling to tame the wild river.
As for the camping facilities, you can pitch your tent anywhere you want in a huge, flat, grassy area the size of a football field. Here you will also find clean toilets, showers and big, roofed platforms with picnic tables … as well as a sign saying music must be turned off at 11:30 p.m.
Well, in true Mexican style, everyone at the campground soon got to know everyone else, and the chatting went on until well after midnight … sin música, I might add.
Early the next morning, I opened my eyes to the crowing of roosters and the lowing of cattle … and to a spectacular sunrise that lasted only a few moments.
Later that morning, I struck up a conversation with a distinguished-looking old gentleman who had wandered into the campground.
“Excuse me,” I said, “do you happen to know anything about the history of this place?”
Well, I had found the right man. He closed his eyes and stood there a moment as a big smile came over his face.
Children float leisurely at the side of the craggy canyon wall.
“It all started 50 years ago when I was just a boy,” he said. And I quickly discovered I was talking to Don Salvador Quintero Bernal, owner of El Manto and one of those people who, at the cost of years of hard work, had managed to turn his life’s dream into reality.
As a boy, Don Salvador had been just another kid from a poor family living in the nearby town of El Rosario. He managed to earn a few centavos doing odd jobs, he told me.
“But I dreamed about doing something worthwhile with my life, something no one else had done. Then, one day, I was sitting above the beautiful waterfall here on this river, and I said to myself, ‘El Manto! I’m going to turn El Manto into a place unlike any other, into something wonderful!’”
Young Salvador then walked the length of the river and in his mind’s eye saw what it could become. So he went to the landowner with his idea.
“It’ll never work,” the man said. “You can’t turn this place into a balneario because it floods all the time … But if you want to buy it, I’ll sell it to you for 300 pesos.”
“So,” said Don Salvador, “I raised the money and bought the land, and in 1971, I started building the stairway leading down to the riverside.
The view from the spacious campground.
“I never needed an architect because I had the whole plan in my head. Everything you see down there was built by the hands of people like me, hardworking folk from El Rosario.”
An important part of Quintero’s vision were strategic floodgates which could be opened quickly and easily to prevent water from rising in the narrow canyon.
As a result, “not one single death, not one serious accident, has ever occurred here at El Manto during all these years,” he said.
In the course of time, El Manto has become widely known and admired.
“All the profit we get, I turn right back into community projects here in El Rosario,” he says.
Apart from the swimming and camping areas, El Manto has two restaurants that, in theory at least, will even make you a stack of hotcakes as early as 8 a.m. You can also book a delightful villa (including a kitchen with a fridge) for four people, at a cost of 1,800 pesos, which includes access to the water park for two days.
At El Manto you can stay overnight in a modern villa equipped with a kitchen.
The “Villa Village” has, by the way, its own luxury swimming pool in case you’d rather not walk all the way down to the river.
Check out El Manto’s excellent website, and be sure to make reservations in advance if you want to stay in a villa. Note that during the rainy season (July through October), many of El Manto’s pools are kept empty. This greatly reduces the number of visitors during the rainy season, perhaps making it all the more attractive to foreigners, especially those who can afford to stay in one of the lovely villas.
Entrance cost to the water park is 80 pesos for adults and 60 for children. To get there, ask Google Maps to take you to El Manto, Amatlán de Cañas, Nayarit.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
Guests at El Manto swim in the rain.
Bridges and walkways were added to the scene by Don Salvador Quintero.
The sun rises over the campground.
The smallest of the three waterfalls at El Manto.
Painters Ilse Taylor Hable and Jorge Monroy capture El Manto on canvas.
Santa Catarina, Oaxaca, where no one will be voting on Sunday.
Tens of millions of citizens will vote in Mexico’s biggest ever elections on Sunday but residents of one community in Oaxaca and two municipalities in Chiapas won’t be among them.
In Santa Catarina Yetzelalag, located in Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte region, local authorities decided on Wednesday that they won’t allow polling stations to be set up in the small town.
In a statement directed to President López Obrador, Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat, political parties and the media, local authorities said the decision was made a town meeting because 11 years after more than 100 homes were damaged by Hurricane Karl, the promised aid has still not arrived.
Following the hurricane it was determined that the whole town needed to be relocated due to the risk of landslides. But Santa Catarina Yetzelalag remains where it was and families haven’t received any government support.
“On the eve of what some call the festival of democracy, the residents of Santa Catarina Yetzelalag don’t have anything to celebrate. We’re filled with deep sadness and legitimate and intense anger because we feel used and abandoned by the political parties,” the statement said.
“… The failures of the governments of the left and the right have been constant … at the state and federal level. Taking all these factors into account, the [town] assembly decided to show the same indifference toward the political parties that they have shown toward us,” it said.
The authorities argued that resources dedicated to holding the elections could have been used to relocate the town, where they say the lives of residents are still at risk.
“… We will not be accomplices of our executioners, no solution means no election. For the government, the life of each one of our residents is not worth 3,500 pesos [US $175] but it squanders millions on electoral advertising that will be trash on Monday,” the statement said.
Santa Catarina authorities agreed to block access to the community on Sunday and residents will not be allowed out unless they are attending to an emergency.
Meanwhile, the Chiapas Institute of Elections and Citizen Participation decided to suspend elections in Honduras de la Sierra and Venustiano Carranza due to security concerns.
Honduras de la Sierra became an independent municipality three years ago after separating from Siltepec, and some community landowners are demanding that it be reincorporated, generating concerns that local elections could be marred by violence.
Land disputes plague Venustiano Carranza and two groups of Tzotzil Mayan people were recently involved in a gunfight there. Murders in the municipality have also been linked to conflicts over land.
It will be up to the Chiapas Congress to determine when extraordinary elections can be held safely in the two municipalities.
Shopping centers will be allowed to operate at 50% capacity as of Monday.
For the first time since the coronavirus stoplight system was introduced more than a year ago, Mexico City and México state will both make the switch to low risk green, authorities announced Friday.
The capital and its neighbor, which between them have recorded more than 900,000 confirmed cases and over 70,000 Covid-19 fatalities, will move to green on Monday. Both are currently medium risk yellow on the stoplight map, which will be updated at the Health Ministry’s Friday night coronavirus press briefing.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced the risk reduction in a Twitter post.
“Thanks to the efforts of everyone, the city will move to the green light [risk level] next week. Let’s not drop our guard, let’s keep looking after ourselves,” she wrote.
Despite the downgrade in the risk level, the pandemic is far from over in the capital, which has been Mexico’s coronavirus epicenter since the virus was first detected here in February 2020.
More than 700 new cases and 28 Covid-19 deaths were reported Thursday and there are currently just under 5,000 active cases in Mexico City, according to Health Ministry estimates – far more than any other state in the country.
However, the occupancy rate for both general care and critical care hospital beds is below 20%, according to federal data, and authorities began the vaccination of people aged 40-49 this week after having offered at least one dose to residents aged 50 and over.
In México state, which includes many municipalities that are part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area, Governor Alfredo del Mazo Maza announced the switch to green in a video message.
“After several weeks with a downward trend in the number of infections and hospitalizations, México state will move to the green light [risk level] next week,” he said.
“… The green light means that we’re doing well, infections have gone down [but] we have to keep being responsible, … let’s not drop our guard, let’s keep following the preventative measures, let’s keep using face masks,” del Mazo said.
There are an estimated 1,112 estimated active cases in México state, while the hospital occupancy rate is 12% for general care beds and just 9% for those with ventilators.
Mexico City gets the green light for the first time.
Del Mazo highlighted that seniors in all 125 México state municipalities will be fully vaccinated by next Tuesday and people aged over 50 will have received at least one shot by the same day. The vaccination of residents aged 40-49 began in some municipalities this week.
The switch to green means that coronavirus restrictions will ease next week.
In the capital, shopping centers and department stores will be permitted to increase their maximum capacity to 50% of normal levels and restaurants will be able to remain open until 12:00 a.m., also at 50% capacity.
Hotels will be able to operate at 60% capacity and host events for up to 100 people. Nightclubs and bars will not yet be permitted to reopen although many of the latter reinvented themselves as “restaurants” and have been open for months.
A similar easing of restrictions will occur in México state. As is the case in other states, the switch to green also paves the way for schools to reopen. Del Mazo indicated that could occur as soon as June 14 in his state.
He highlighted that all public and private school teachers are already vaccinated and said that meetings will be held next week with a view to restarting classes the following Monday. Students will initially have the choice to continue studying virtually or to return to in-person classes, the governor said.
The risk downgrade in the capital and México state is further evidence of the vastly improved coronavirus situation in Mexico, which went through a devastating second wave that began late last year and extended into January.
No alcohol may be sold when the ley seca, or dry law, is in effect.
Many states will be alcohol-free on both Saturday and Sunday, a longstanding practice used to maintain order during elections.
With election day coming up on Sunday, here’s a rundown of where alcohol sales will be banned and when, according to various sources gathered by Mexico News Daily.
Campeche, Chiapas, Coahuila, Durango, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Morelos, Nuevo León, Mexico City, México state, Oaxaca, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Zacatecas: the sale of alcohol will be banned both Saturday and Sunday. (In Mexico City and México state, restaurants will still be permitted to serve alcohol as long as it is accompanied by food).
Aguascalientes: sales will be banned on Sunday.
Baja California: municipalities will decide whether to enact alcohol bans.
Baja California Sur: municipalities will decide whether to enact alcohol bans.
Chihuahua: no alcohol sales all day Sunday and up to 9 a.m. on Monday.
Colima: a ban will begin Friday at 12 a.m. and end Sunday at 12 p.m. in the municipalities of Colima and Villa de Álvarez.
Guanajuato: a state-imposed alcohol ban will begin at 10 p.m. Saturday and extend all day Sunday.
Jalisco: each municipality will decide whether alcohol sales will be permitted.
Michoacán: as of Friday afternoon three municipalities had confirmed bans on sales. They are Morelia, Zitácuaro and Maravatío.
Nayarit: state law mandates that no alcohol is sold the day before or the day of the elections.
Querétaro: the state has not enacted a ban but municipalities have the authority to do so.
Quintana Roo: state law decrees that alcohol sales will be banned the day of the election and 24 hours leading up to it, with an exception for tourist areas.
Sinaloa: the alcohol restrictions will start at 2 a.m. Sunday and continue until 9 a.m. Monday. Restaurants are exempt from the ban, and may serve alcohol with food.
Sonora: the sale of alcohol will be prohibited all day Sunday. Restaurants will be exempt, and may serve alcohol if it is accompanied by food.
Tabasco: the state has banned the sale of alcohol starting Friday and ending midnight Sunday.
Tlaxcala: alcohol sales will be prohibited between 9 a.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Monday.
Yucatán: state law mandates that no alcohol is sold the day before or the day of the elections.
The donated Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines will be used in northern states to accelerate the reopening of the border.
One million single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines donated to Mexico by the United States will be used to inoculate people aged 18 to 40 in northern border municipalities, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Friday.
President López Obrador said Thursday that Vice President Kamala Harris had informed him that the U.S. would send the doses to Mexico but didn’t say when they were expected to arrive.
Speaking at López Obrador’s news conference on Friday, Ebrard said that “on the instructions of the president” the Johnson & Johnson doses will be used to vaccinate those between 18 and 40 in Mexico’s border area with the United States.
“This area comprises 39 municipalities,” he added.
The foreign minister said the 1 million doses will be sufficient to inoculate one-third of the people in that age bracket, adding that the government will obtain additional doses in order to cover 100% of the cohort.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard appeared to rule out the use of the donated vaccines in tourist destinations like Canún and Los Cabos.
Ebrard said the aim of vaccinating that sector of the population is to “accelerate the reopening of activities at the border between Mexico and the United States.”
Goods and people have continued to flow across the border during the pandemic, but the United States has restricted nonessential cross-border travel since early last year as part of efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus, a policy that has caused economic damage to U.S. businesses that count large numbers of Mexican daytrippers among their customers.
Mexico did the same until April, when it began allowing nonessential travel into the country via border states that are low-risk green or medium-risk yellow on the federal government’s stoplight map.
Ebrard’s remarks on where the Johnson & Johnson vaccines will be deployed came after Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Thursday night that the donated doses could also be used in resort cities such as Cancún and Los Cabos.
Ebrard said Friday that universal vaccination in tourist destinations remained a priority but appeared to rule out the possibility of using the donated shots in such places.
He said López Obrador had instructed him to obtain vaccines to guarantee supply in tourist destinations but emphasized that they don’t have to be Johnson & Johnson shots.
“For key tourism areas of Mexico, essentially Quintana Roo, Baja California Sur, they can be other vaccines,” Ebrard said, adding that other popular destinations such as Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta is located, and the coast of Nayarit will also be considered for early vaccination of people aged 40 and under.
Quintana Roo, and especially Cancún, is currently facing a worsening coronavirus outbreak, which prompted the governor to tighten restrictions in the state this week, while other states that depend heavily on tourism revenue, such as Yucatán and Baja California Sur, have also seen recent spikes in case numbers.
The government to date has used the Pfizer, AstraZeneca, CanSino, Sputnik V and SinoVac vaccines to inoculate the population, meaning that the Johnson & Johnson shot will be the sixth to be used in Mexico.
As of Thursday night, Mexico had received 42.3 million doses of the first five vaccines and administered almost 32.9 million of them. Almost one in five people – 18% – have received at least one shot, data shows, although that doesn’t include Mexicans who have traveled to the United States to get vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated case tally stands at 2.42 million while the official Covid-19 death toll is 228,362, a figure considered a vast undercount, mainly due to a lack of testing.
María Amparo of Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity was happy to hear the US will continue international funding to fight corruption.
An anti-graft group that has been labeled a political adversary by President López Obrador has welcomed the United States’ announcement that it intends to increase support to international partners committed to the elimination of corruption.
The White House published a memorandum on Thursday that established the fight against corruption as a core national security interest of the United States.
“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to tackling corruption as an economic and national security priority and has pledged to lead international efforts to bring transparency to the global financial system and close loopholes that undermine democracy,” the White House said.
It said the U.S. government is “committed to taking new steps to hold accountable corrupt individuals, transnational criminal organizations, and other actors engaged in illicit activity.”
That commitment includes “increasing support to grow the capacity of civil society, the media, state and local bodies, international partners, and other oversight and accountability actors,” the White House said.
Amparo suggested that the president was happy to accept 1 million free Covid vaccine doses from the US but not so much about funding for groups that are ‘keeping an eye’ on where public money is spent.
The publication of the memorandum came almost a month after the Mexican government sent a diplomatic note to the United States to ask it to explain why it has provided funding to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), a civil society organization that has been critical of President López Obrador and exposed corruption in his government as well as that led by his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto.
López Obrador has characterized funding organizations such as MCCI and the press freedom group Article 19 as “interference and intervention” in internal affairs that are the exclusive domain of Mexicans. He has repeatedly asserted that the practice violates Mexico’s constitution and called on the United States to stop providing resources to what he says are political groups opposed to his administration.
Thursday’s memorandum didn’t mention Mexico, but MCCI president María Amparo Casar agreed in a radio interview that it could be considered “an indirect response” to the federal government.
She told W Radio that the memorandum gave her “a lot of hope” that the United States would continue funding the MCCI and other organizations committed to exposing corruption and promoting government transparency.
“I’m happy and I hope — and I have no reason to doubt it — that this translates into more support in the future,” Amparo said.
She added, perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek, that López Obrador should also be happy about the United States government’s announcement of its firm commitment to combatting corruption because he too — as he frequently reminds Mexicans — is fully committed to eradicating it.
“This announcement should come like a ring to the finger [fit like a glove] for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to use one of his expressions,” Amparo said.
The president should be “very grateful,” she said, to which journalist Carlos Loret de Mola responded, “I feel not,” prompting laughter from the MCCI chief.
“… He likes being given 1 million vaccines [from the U.S. government], as was announced [Thursday], but he doesn’t like [the United States] funding those of us who keep an eye on where public resources are going,” Amparo said.
She said she was proud that MCCI, which has received funding from the United States Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy, has been recognized by the U.S. as being among the civil society organizations committed to the fight against corruption in Mexico.
In addition to corruption, “the deteriorations that Mexico is suffering in matters of democracy” are a topic of public discussion in the United States, Amparo said a week after the newspaper The Economistasserted in an editorial that López Obrador is “a danger to Mexican democracy.”
‘… it’s not a memorandum about Mexico,’ Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said at the president’s news conference on Friday.
Asked at López Obrador’s Friday news conference about the U.S. statement, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard — who gave instructions for last month’s diplomatic note to be drawn up — responded, “First of all, it’s not a memorandum about Mexico, it’s a memorandum about their entire [anti-corruption] policy.”
“What Mexico is proposing is that the internal political environment [of a sovereign country] must be respected; that’s also in the laws of the United States. Mexico couldn’t pay organizations to politically influence [the affairs of another country].
“What is being proposed is that the same standard — that organizations can’t intervene in or influence the political process — [be applied in Mexico] … This case that we’ve presented about MCCI, which seeks to influence Mexican politics, is one issue, and that of the United States memorandum is different.”
Most attacks against politicians and candidates during the period leading up to this Sunday’s elections were not related to the electoral process, Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero said Thursday.
This electoral season, which officially began last September, has been the most violent on record with 782 acts of aggression against politicians and candidates, including 89 murders, according to the risk analysis firm Etellekt, which tracks election campaign violence.
But Sánchez claimed that few of the acts of aggression — among which were threats, homicides, attempted murders, assaults and kidnappings — were related to the June 6 municipal, state and federal elections.
“They’re reprehensible incidents, their perpetrators must be punished with all the rigor of the law, but as far as we know they don’t have an electoral motive,” she said during a virtual meeting with state election officials.
“The incidents that have occurred, affecting candidates of all parties, are not related to the electoral process in the vast majority of cases,” Sánchez clarified.
The interior minister said she was aware of three main motives for the attacks against political figures.
“… The ministry I’m in charge of can identify [three] clearly differentiated motives. Firstly, conflicts that are the product of old social demands, mainly in rural areas and indigenous communities, in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Nayarit and Michoacán, for example,” Sánchez said. She did not give examples of what she meant by social demands but was likely referring to localized demands for infrastructure and services or those related to land disputes.
“Secondly, there are union, farmer, popular and student organizations that use the electoral circumstances to exert pressure, sometimes violently, for the satisfaction of their demands; it has nothing to do with the elections,” she said.
“… And thirdly, criminal actions, which especially affect the municipal realm. That’s why I’ve said that the weak link in the chain of governability is in some municipalities,” she said.
Three-quarters of the candidates attacked during the electoral season were seeking municipal positions such as mayor or councilor, according to Etellekt. In addition, three-quarters of the total number of politicians or aspirants who were victims of aggression were opponents of the party in power in the state where the act of aggression against them occurred.
Sánchez asserted that citizens will be able to vote in peace at this Sunday’s elections, which will be the largest in Mexico’s history.
“The problems we face are … isolated. They affect very few municipalities and very few polling booths. In no case do these acts [of aggression] or incidents place the validity of a district or state election at risk,” she said.
“The cases in which a municipal election could be affected are limited. To count them, I believe that the fingers on one’s hands are more than enough. Of course, all aggression against candidates, no matter which party [they belong to], is a violation of democratic governability,” Sánchez said.
More than 22,000 elected positions will be up for grabs on Sunday, most of which are municipal and state positions. At the federal level, voters will elect 500 lower house deputies, while the governorships of 15 states, including Nuevo León, Baja California, Michoacán and Guerrero, will also be decided.
The president's Morena party is expected to cement its place as Mexico’s most popular political force.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s name will not be on the ballot when voters pick state governors, deputies to the lower house, mayors and thousands of other local positions on Sunday in what both he and his critics agree will be a watershed vote.
Even so, the populist president, elected in a landslide in 2018 on the back of widespread disgust at endemic corruption, still has plenty riding on the election, with it being widely seen as an unofficial referendum on his leadership.
For López Obrador, the midterms are a chance to prove “that things are changing, that there’s a transformation [under way],” as the 67-year-old nationalist said this week. For critics, the changes so far have not been for the better — and could become worse.
“This is not a routine election,” said Alfonso Zárate, a consultant and former presidential spin-doctor who recently published a book about López Obrador entitled The One Man Country. “We’re facing the possibility of hurtling toward disaster.”
Over the past three years, López Obrador has presided over murder rates that remain near record highs, no obvious reduction in corruption, one of the world’s biggest Covid-19 death tolls, and economic growth still well below pre-pandemic levels.
Even so, largely thanks to a fragmented opposition and high personal popularity ratings that stand at about 59%, polls indicate he will emerge, if not strengthened, then emboldened from the election — a rare feat in midterms, when incumbents usually suffer losses.
His Morena party is expected to cement its place as Mexico’s most popular political force. Alongside its allies, Morena is forecast to hold 322 seats in the 500-seat chamber of deputies, just shy of its current 334 seats, which it needs for a supermajority to pass constitutional changes.
The vote is for all 500 lower house deputies, 15 state governorships, almost 2,000 mayors and thousands of other local positions.
As for Mexico’s powerful state governorships, Morena currently has six and could win seven or more, pollsters say, potentially commanding almost half of Mexico’s 32 states. No seats in the Senate, where the ruling coalition lacks a constitutional majority, are in play.
For critics, the prospect of these results makes the poll a pivotal moment. López Obrador has always said he would use the first half of his six-year term to lay the foundations for a national transformation as epoch-making as independence from Spain, 19th-century reforms or the Mexican Revolution — and then get down to reforms in earnest in his last three years.
“Security is the worst we’ve seen, there’s the pandemic, economic decline and a rise in poverty … and yet we’re going to get the same vote totals as [the election] three years ago,” said Federico Estévez, a political science professor at Mexico’s ITAM university.
One concern among investors is that the president will meddle with the Bank of México.
One reason for what otherwise might seem a counter-intuitive result is Mexico’s Covid-19 vaccination drive, in which one in four adults have had at least one shot. As a result, the government is not expected to lose much electoral support, despite the high levels of insecurity that have led to the murder of 35 candidates during the campaign.
“It’s a bit like the Trump election,” said Joy Langston, a professor of political science at CIDE university. “No matter how bad the president is, you still have people who love him literally no matter what.”
Three scenarios worry investors if López Obrador and his party do as well as expected.
The first is if he meddles with Mexico’s respected central bank, which the president has said should be run by a “moral” economist. The second is changing the Supreme Court, where López Obrador has already backed a controversial two-year extension to its chief judge’s term — a move that critics warn could set a precedent for him to try to prolong his own presidential mandate.
And the third is if he finally kills off Mexico’s energy reform, passed by the previous government and which allowed private ownership in the sector, via a public consultation process. López Obrador has already scrapped Mexico City’s partially built airport after such a “people’s poll.”
Some of those fears may be overdone. Brokerage Grupo Bursátil Mexicano believes López Obrador had already rattled through almost three-quarters of the reforms he floated in his book-cum-manifesto The Way Out, published before the 2018 election.
“Most of the aggressive actions that were meant to go against the status quo and the market sentiment have already happened,” it wrote.
In fact, given the close governorship races in many states and the president’s constant attacks on his political opponents, for many the bigger immediate fear is that López Obrador challenges unfavourable results or even tries to scrap the electoral authority, INE, which he has said he does not trust.
That is why businessman Javier Olavarrieta hopes for just one thing at Sunday’s election: unequivocal results. “Let’s hope there’s a big difference between the winners and losers,” he said.
Flights to the Riviera Nayarit are picking up, with an average of 363 flights per week to Puerto Vallarta, thanks to the opening up of travel in Canada and an increase in flights from the United States. A total of 1,452 flights are projected for this month.
Starting June 5, WestJet will start flying again with a weekly route between Calgary and Puerto Vallarta. American Airlines will restart its flights from Charlotte and Chicago and double its flights from Dallas. Flights from Phoenix and Los Angeles will continue, making for a total of 28 flights a week.
Delta Airlines and Southwest will continue with 28 flights per week, while Alaska Airlines has 22, six fewer than last month. United Airlines continues to have the most connections to the Riviera Nayarit region, with 67 flights from Houston, Chicago, Newark, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Canadian airline Air Transat will reinitiate its Riviera Nayarit flights in mid-June.
Domestic airline TAR Aerolíneas will offer 25 flights to the region, seven more than were available in May, while Aeroméxico and Aerolitoral will offer 54 flights in total.
During the first four months of 2021, Mexico has seen the lowest the levels of tourism since the same period in 2008. Of those tourists, 75% were from the United States. The second largest group of tourists this year hailed from Colombia, making up 3% of the total.
