A requirement to show proof of vaccination in Mazatlán is facing resistance: 11 people have obtained injunctions that exempt them from the rule, which requires that people seeking to enter businesses and public places show proof of vaccination or be denied entry.
It went into effect on August 2.
José Guadalupe Morales, a member of Mazatlán Lawyers United, told the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlán that the rule is illegal as it violates the right to freedom of movement and the freedom to decide whether to get the vaccine. Morales said some people have medical reasons for not being vaccinated and the alternative offered by the government — showing a recent negative Covid test — is prohibitively expensive for many.
“They tell you that a negative certificate is enough, but you have to pay 900 pesos to get in and show the mayor that you’re virus-free. These are things they have not considered. We cannot permit an authority to walk all over our rights,” Morales said, adding that the mayor instituted the rule without legislative approval.
Citizens have 15 days, counting from August 2, to seek an injunction, Morales said.
In the face of the opposition, Mayor Luis Guillermo Benítez Torres stood his ground.
“I am asking for the vaccination certificate in order to enter a public place, and it’s for everyone’s health,” he said, adding that the rule was for both locals and the port city’s many tourists. Meanwhile, city officials have begun to fine businesses that do not comply with the requirement.
Proof of vaccination requirements have also been implemented in Quintana Roo as well as some areas of Sonora, and the state government of Hidalgo has announced that vaccination certificates will be required for entering tourism sites.
Coleman with his wife and two children, who were stabbed to death in Rosarito.
An American surfing school owner suspected of murdering his children in Baja California was arrested on Tuesday as he tried to re-enter the United States.
Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, the owner of a surf school in Santa Barbara, California, was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents as he was crossing from Tijuana to San Diego after the mother of the two children reported them missing.
Coleman traveled with his two children, a one-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy, to Rosarito on Sunday where he checked into the Hotel City Express. CCTV footage showed that he left the hotel with the children around 3 a.m. Monday. Around 6:30 a.m., he returned to the hotel alone.
An hour later, the children’s bodies were found in the undergrowth near El Descanso ranch, a little over 20 kilometers away from the hotel. The boy had been stabbed 17 times and the girl 12, Baja California Attorney General Hiram Sánchez Zamora told a press conference. The wounds were inflicted with a wooden stake and possibly a harpoon, Sánchez said.
Consulate authorities are processing the paperwork for the identification and return of the children’s bodies to the U.S. Coleman could be extradited and face murder charges in Mexico.
A kindergarten teacher in Oaxaca has been sentenced to 198 years for raping three girls and being in possession of child pornography involving five others, all between three and six years old.
José Emmanuel R.O. was caught red-handed and arrested in May 2016 after a victim’s grandmother couldn’t find her at the kindergarten in Santa María Tlalixtac in the La Cañada region of the state. She was informed by the girl’s classmates that their teacher had taken her to his house nearby.
She found the house locked but forced open the door and found her granddaughter naked while her teacher was taking photographs of her.
Police arrested the man, which may have saved his life: local residents were trying to break him free in order to lynch him.
Authorities later found photographs of naked children among his belongings as well as on his mobile phone and laptop.
According to a statement by the state Attorney General’s Office the crimes were committed starting in 2015.
The newspaper Diario Marca reported in 2016 that the convict received a hereditary position as a kindergarten teacher in 2013 “despite not having the corresponding qualifications.” It also alleged that he was protected by the local head of the CNTE teachers union, who ignored the complaints of parents.
The accused has also been ordered to pay a fine for more than 1 million pesos (about US $50,000).
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Ken Salazar, former secretary of the interior, to be the next ambassador to Mexico.
Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard took to Twitter to congratulate the new ambassador, calling the appointment “good news for the close relationship that exists between the administrations led by Presidents López Obrador and Biden.”
In Salazar’s confirmation hearing on July 28, topics discussed included immigration, drug trafficking and the North American trade agreement, as well as the violence that has plagued Mexico in recent decades.
Salazar, who is of Hispanic descent, promised to address the “root causes” of immigration and work on security issues, which he called a shared responsibility between the two countries.
Salazar, 66, also emphasized the importance of protecting U.S. investments in Mexico.
His nomination was welcomed by immigration advocacy groups like the Immigration Hub, which praised his “deep roots in the southwest, Mexican heritage and broad experience.”
Salazar was secretary of the interior under former president Barack Obama. Before that he served as a senator representing the state of Colorado and was the state’s attorney general.
One municipality in Puebla has lived through the Covid-19 pandemic completely unscathed. Chigmecatitlán is the only one in the state that hasn’t recorded a single case or death among any of its 1,200 inhabitants.
The community, 95 kilometers south of the state capital, was identified by the government in May last year as one of its “Municipalities of Hope” after it had recorded no cases. Fortunately for the residents, who live mainly on the production of handcrafts made from palm leaves and raffia, the absence of the virus has continued.
According to data published by the website Alcaldes de México in July, the only other states with municipalities that have avoided Covid-19 infections altogether are Chiapas, which has four, and Oaxaca, which has 74.
María Cleofas Flores Acevedo of the Chigmecatitlán municipal office said the community had remained cautious despite its success in avoiding contraction. “Thank God, so far nothing has been reported, and hopefully we can continue like this. We are trying to maintain hygiene measures and healthy distance even though activities have already been reopened,” she said.
Flores added that all types of mass gatherings were canceled when the pandemic arrived, including Easter, the local fair for the patron saint on December 8 and the nativity play on December 28.
The black sliver in the middle of the lower portion of the state is the only municipality in Puebla that is virus-free.
In her role she has been privy to all deaths in the community, and their causes. Flores confirmed that so far this year there had been 13 deaths and 28 in 2020, the vast majority of which were elderly people who died of natural causes.
She added that the community was still awaiting instructions from the Education Ministry (SEP) to reopen schools.
According to the latest data from national science agency Conacyt Puebla has recorded 94,890 cases of Covid-19, making it 27th among Mexico’s states in terms of infections per 100,000 inhabitants. There have been 12,620 deaths from the disease since the start of the pandemic, putting it in 14th place for deaths per 100,000 people.
Author Joseph Boyden's "Writer’s Toolbox" is one of four workshops the San Miguel Literary Sala is hosting this month over Zoom.
Basketball superstar athlete Michael Jordan once said, “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”
The San Miguel Literary Sala, based in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, is taking that advice to heart and focusing its online workshops this month on teaching the fundamentals of writing. These live, online classes over Zoom, some of which begin Monday, will go back to basics, teaching subjects such as crafting metaphor, using point of view and dialogue, pacing scenes and more.
The literary organization has been offering online events for writings and book lovers since 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic forced it to go virtual.
For those writing in specific genres, August will also feature workshops on writing about travel and food and on using humor.
And on Sunday, the Literary Sala will also host a discussion between two poets over Zoom: Michael Bazzett and David Dykes’ talk is entitled “Writing is a Suckas Game: Art vs. Craft.” Their discussion will take from 4 to 5 p.m. CDT.
Laura Juliet Wood’s Literary Sala workshop on August 16 and 18 will take poetic metaphor as its topic.
Bazzett, author of The Echo Chamber and five other collections of poems as well as a translator of The Popol Vuh, won the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry. Dykes is a poet, teacher and editor. Tickets to this talk are free, although voluntary donations are welcomed.
The Literary Sala’s August workshop schedule is as follows. All events are listed in Central Daylight Time.
August 16 and 18, 3–4:30 p.m. — Laura Juliet Wood: “Metaphor in Flight: the Leap of the Subconscious in Poetry.” Learn what the greats (Bly, Garcia Lorca, Dickinson, Bishop and others) have to say on the subject and try it yourself in several writing exercises. Tickets: US $80.
August 16 and 18, 5:30-7:30 p.m. — Joseph Boyden: “Writer’s Toolbox.” Boyden, author of Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce, will teach you how to open up the writer’s toolbox and examine its contents, including point of view, suspension of disbelief, scene, summary and dialogue. Tickets: US $80
August 17 and 19, 3-4:30 p.m.— Diana Spechler: “A Moveable Feast: Writing about Travel and Food.” Those interested in writing about the most expensive Paris restaurant or about the 75-year-old hamburger joint in their hometown will both find a home here. Spechler will discuss character development and how to describe food without resorting to cliches. The workshop is taught in two 90-minute sessions. Tickets: US $80.
August 17 and 19, 5:30-7 p.m. — Mark Saunders: “10 Ways to Punch up Your Writing with Humor.” Saunders, author of Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak, will teach you 10 methods of incorporating humor into your writing. The workshop will consist of quick exercises to help spark your sense of humor as well as examining humor writing techniques used by some of literature’s most accomplished humorists. Tickets: US $80.
For more information, including how to buy tickets or buy tickets to multiple upcoming Literary Sala events at a package price, visit their website.
Pueblos Unidos self-defense groups have implemented blockades, trying to stop the expansion of the CJNG.
Fighting in Aguililla, Michoacán, has spread to other municipalities in the notoriously violent Tierra Caliente region, strategically significant for drug trafficking and the production of methamphetamine due to its proximity to the port of Lázaro Cárdenas.
Self-defense groups pertaining to Pueblos Unidos and criminal cells of Los Viagras — part of Cárteles Unidos — are trying to prevent the spread of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and stop its alleged lieutenant, Miguel Ángel Gallegos Godoy, from taking control of the area. New blockades have caused fear and tension and disruption of trade and transport in the municipalities of La Huacana, Ario de Rosales, Nuevo Urecho, Salvador Escalante and Nueva Italia.
La Huacana, 162 kilometers east of Aguililla, has been under siege for weeks by Pueblos Unidos and Los Viagras, the newspaper El Universal reported on Wednesday. To the north of the city, the Pueblos Unidos has blocked the main point of entry, the La Huacana-Ario de Rosales highway, which is the route to the state capital Morelia. To the south, in the direction of Lázaro Cárdenas, on the border with Churumuco, there is a blockade by Los Viagras.
The borders at Ario de Rosales and Churumuco are points of high tension where Pueblos Unidos, Los Viagras, and the CJNG all have look-outs and conduct armed patrols.
The Pueblos Unidos completely closed the northern entrance to La Huacana after the June 6 election, which raised prices for basic products and transport costs, as providers had to take longer back roads. It is not clear if any traffic has been allowed to pass since that date.
Goods vendors have expressed their fear to travel to La Huacana by the back roads due to the risk of vehicles being hijacked and and set alight to form a road blockade.
Buses from Mexico City and Morelia have been suspended for weeks, leaving the small bus terminal empty.
A store owner in La Huacana, Graciela Teniza, said transit had come to a halt. “People do not come to town. To leave it, you have to think about it a lot, since it is very expensive, and there isn’t much income,” she said.
However, another resident said that the violence had remained peripheral to daily life. “We are in the midst of a dispute, about which everyone here in the village knows, but very little is said. We only see the trucks with armed people passing from one place to another, always keeping guard so that their opponents can’t enter.”
President López Obrador overruled his Health Ministry Tuesday by declaring Mexico City is not at maximum risk for Covid-19.
A difference of opinion surfaced last Saturday when Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum insisted that the capital would remain at the orange high risk level on the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight map. Federal health authorities announced Friday that the city would join five other states and regress from orange to red due to the growing number of cases.
At yesterday morning’s press conference, the president put an end to uncertainty by siding with the city and did so in front of the minister of health and his deputy, who is responsible for directing coronavirus strategy. But he stressed there was no “substantial difference” between the parties involved and that all had the public interest at heart.
“It has been decided,” he said, “because it’s the city’s responsibility, that the stoplight is orange and that is what’s happening.”
Since the stoplight system was introduced last year, allocating stoplight colors to the states has been the sole responsibility of federal health authorities, who have made their decisions based on data provided by the states.
The president played down the issue on Tuesday, saying that the important issue is that there aren’t many restrictions being placed on citizens “because the fact is that now is the time for us to look after ourselves.”
He then went off on a favorite tangent, attributing restrictions on people’s movement to “authoritarian zeal.”
The people are old enough to act on their own without being told what to do, López Obrador said.
The purpose of the stoplight system is to guide states in the implementation of restrictions based on nationwide standards. But many of the decisions have been questioned, particularly by state governors unhappy with the designations they have been given. There have also been questions about the degree of political involvement in the process.
On Saturday, Mayor Sheinbaum urged federal authorities to take into account the number of people who have been vaccinated against Covid in assigning stoplight risk levels.
More elaborate narco tombs feature many of the comforts of home: multiple rooms, air conditioning, full lighting and security alarm systems.
A couple of weeks ago, The Captured Woman (TCTW) and I were headed a few hours away to Costco in Culiacán to worship at the altar of perpetual consumption. On the way, we decided to take a side trip.
We have heard about it for years and felt it was finally time to visit the Jardines de Humaya, also known as “the narco cemetery.”
With 83% of the population Catholic, graveyards in Mexico are an important part of the culture. Mix in an ample dose of indigenous superstitions passed down through many generations and the legacy of dead family members takes on a life of its own.
Here in Mexico, the Day of the Dead is far more revered than Christmas — as more personal on many levels. From midnight of November 1 to midnight of November 2, many families will travel to where their loved one is interred or entombed, then break out the lawn chairs and have a picnic.
Sometimes they will even get a band to come in and make a great deal of noise at the party.
At times, the rows of mausoleums in Culiacan’s Jardines de Humaya cemetery can look more like a quiet upper-class suburban block.
With very few cremations happening among the pious population and a 500-year history of excessive bloodshed, cemeteries in Mexico are as numerous as Oxxo stores.
I have never turned down the opportunity to stroll through a cemetery and read the headstones or the bronzed plaques — the older the better. I have to admit that until now, my Mexican cemetery experience has been limited to villages and small towns.
The various ones I have visited have all had homemade mausoleums, mostly brick and mortar and all painted with bright colors. They look like tiny houses or churches for Lilliputians.
Culiacán is best known for being the home of the Sinaloa Cartel and, of course, the famed El Chapo. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Culiacán’s memorial park for the nefarious and seriously wealthy has taken this quaint custom of making personalized mausoleums at graveyards and aggrandized it significantly.
As TCTW and the friends with whom we undertook the trip followed along the path set out by Google Maps, we knew we were getting closer when we passed a taquería named El Cartel.
When we arrived at the cemetery, a security guard opened one of the two large ornamental iron gates to let us in. As we passed, he took a picture of our car and then our license plate. I was suddenly glad we have Sinaloa plates.
Sometimes, only the prominent religious displays betray these structures’ real purpose.
As we rolled down a slight incline, I found a place to park in the shade of a large huanacaxtle tree. The place had the appearance of a shady park surrounded by an upper-end Mexican neighborhood. Were we looking at mausoleums or mansions?
We started at the mid-level narco necropolis, where some of the graves were a simple concrete slab with a plaque. Others were enclosed two-story structures. Each plot was about 1 ¼ meters wide and about two meters long with a 30-centimeter space between each repository.
Many of these mausoleums occupied more than one plot.
As we moved further into this marbled home of the dead, the architecture became more elaborate and included full electricity, air conditioning, bathrooms, living rooms — or dead rooms in this case — and even a few satellite dishes. Many places had security bars across the doors and windows, and a few were without any form of security other than the family names: Guzmán, Beltrán, Fuentes, Leyva, and Félix were all represented in multiple locations.
Even the former leader of the Juárez Cartel chose to be buried in Sinaloa among many of his past compatriots. The three-story resting place of Amado Fuentes — known in his heyday as Lord of the Skies for his fleet of planes he used to transport drugs — has a chapel on the main floor that can hold 40 people. The purported price of this ostentatious pile of marble is over US $400,000.
Of course, ensconced in the most overwhelmingly extravagant tomb are the remains of Arturo Guzmán Loera (El Pollo), brother of the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo. Rumor has it that the cost of this final resting place was over US $1 million.
A few specialty builders construct these mausoleums with elaborate flourishes and architecture. Some are rumored to have cost US $1 million.
I have since learned that there are a couple of specialty builders in Culiacán who only do elaborate tombs. They are not cheap.
The single plots with only a simple structure often have a printed banner displaying a picture of the deceased and his favorite things. These are usually men in their middle 20s with new cars, four-wheelers and diamond-clad women surrounding their smiling visages.
These are young men who did not die of natural causes — unless acute and instantaneous lead poisoning could be considered natural.
Jardines de Humaya is the final resting place for many who have lived a short and violent life embroiled in one of the top three industries in México. Here, the term rest in peace takes on a meaning far more profound than your average Mexican marble orchard.
• For readers who would like to learn more about this dark side of Mexico, I recommend the book Narcoland by Anabel Hernández, along with Down by the River, by Charles Bowden.
The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half-wild dog. He can be reached at buscardero@yahoo.com.
The National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Mexico City, where a Covid victim found a bed after searching for three days.
The United States advised Mexico on Monday that it will send another 8.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine as the third wave of the virus continues to spread.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed the offer during Tuesday’s presidential press conference. It was made during a telephone conversation between President López Obrador and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
However, it remains unclear whether the vaccines — 3.5 million doses of Moderna and 5 million AstraZeneca — are a donation or if the U.S. expects payment.
In response to a reporter’s question, Ebrard said he understood they were a donation but was unsure. “… we shall have to see in the next few days what specific conditions there are.”
The U.S. has already given just over 4 million doses to Mexico. Should the new shipment prove to be donated, Mexico will become the top recipient of U.S.-donated vaccines.
The vaccination program itself continues. Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell told this morning’s press conference that nearly 73 million doses have been administered, leaving 57% of the adult population with at least one dose.
According to the New York Times‘ coronavirus vaccination tracker, 22% of the Mexican population is fully vaccinated.
As for case numbers, health authorities said Tuesday afternoon there was a slight increase in the number of estimated cases after declines had been registered for two days in a row following nine weeks of increases. Tuesday’s total was 129,468.
There were 19,555 new cases recorded Tuesday after the usual weekend lull: Saturday’s figure was 20,018 followed by 7,573 on Sunday and 6,513 on Monday. The total number of cases is now 2.99 million.
There were 786 deaths recorded on Tuesday, bringing the total to 245,476.
The occupancy of general care Covid hospital beds across the country was reported to be up 1% to 54% and for those with a respirator 45%.
Meanwhile, it’s becoming harder to find a Covid bed in Mexico City, according to the experience of a 38-year-old man who became infected three weeks after receiving his first dose.
Eder Guadalupe was able to find a bed at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER) after spending three days looking for one in various parts of the city. A family member said Guadalupe was showing serious symptoms and had only 50% oxygen saturation.
