Daily Covid infections far higher than official counts, says specialist

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August 6, 2021

The new stoplight risk map which takes effect Monday.

While health authorities are saying that Covid-19 is currently infecting some 20,000 people a day, the actual number is 25 or 30 times higher, according to an infectious disease specialist.

But Dr. Alejandro Macías of the University of Guanajuato offered the less than consoling observation that the pace of infection cannot keep up — because the disease would run out of recipients within two months.

However, he also told a Covid-19 discussion panel that he expects a sudden drop in new cases will occur by September after a peak in August.

“It’s a tough situation, there’s a lot of sickness. This is a steep incline that I hope will arrive at its peak in August so as to begin to decline at the end of the month or in September,” Macías told a virtual Covid discussion hosted by the Tec de Monterrey university.

He estimated that half a million Mexicans are being infected daily.

Dr. Alejandro Macías discounted concerns about the Cansino vaccine.

A fellow panelist said that despite the pronounced growth in case numbers, Mexico’s situation can be compared with what happened in India and the U.K., where there was an abrupt and rapid decline in new cases.

“If we behave ourselves during two or three weeks we can arrive at the point where there is a rapid descent,” said Dr. Francisco Moreno, head of the Covid department at the ABC Medical Center in Mexico City.

And that, Macías said, means slowing the spread of the virus by avoiding crowds and enclosed spaces and wearing face masks, considering the highly contagious delta variant that is at the forefront of the new infections.

“This could take a turn for the worse if we don’t understand right away that it’s not just about being vaccinated,” Moreno said. “It’s about looking after yourself with basic measures.”

Macías also spoke to the doubts that have been raised about the efficacy of some vaccines such as the Chinese Cansino, which he attributed to a lack of information having been provided about them.

“Millions of people have been vaccinated in Mexico with Cansino yet we are not seeing hospitals full of people who were injected with it. We are seeing more or less the same proportion [of hospitalizations of patients given other vaccines]. It isn’t any more risky to have been vaccinated with Cansino.”

Dr. Francisco Moreno said many youths hospitalized with Covid are seriously overweight.

The discussion also looked at the effect of the delta variant on youths, a highly mobile sector of the population that is hard to keep at home and likes going out to have fun. But the vulnerable among them are those who suffer from other issues. Moreno said that 80% of the youths intubated at the ABC Medical Center are obese or seriously overweight.

“This is an important health message that we need to spread after the pandemic.”

Panel moderator and Tec de Monterrey researcher Dr. Guillermo Torre described obesity and Covid as “one pandemic on top of another that is clearly aggravating the situation we have today.”

In other Covid news, the federal Ministry of Health reported 21,563 new cases on Friday, bringing the accumulated total to 2.94 million. It was the third day in a row that more than 20,000 new cases have been recorded.

Health officials reported another 568 deaths and estimated there are currently 144,176 active cases.

Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio

• Mexico City and five other states will go red on the coronavirus stoplight map effective Monday, the federal Health Ministry said. The other states are Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco, Nuevo León and Nayarit. They will join Sinaloa, the only state that has been red for the past two weeks.

Fifteen states are high risk orange: Baja California Sur, Sonora, Tlaxcala, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Durango, Michoacán, Querétaro, state of México, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Puebla, Oaxaca and Quintana Roo, and nine are medium risk yellow: Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Morelos, Yucatán, Campeche and Tabasco.

Chiapas is the only low risk, green state on the map, which is effective Monday through August 22.

• There will be no closures of beaches, hotels or bars in tourist destinations such as Acapulco and Zihuatanejo, although some new measures will be announced on Monday, the governor of Guerrero said today.

The state’s health minister said Friday afternoon that 38 Covid deaths had been recorded in the previous 24 hours, the highest number recorded in a 24-hour period since the pandemic began. There have been 169 deaths in the first six days of this month.

Chilpancingo, Acapulco, Zihuatanejo, Ometepec and Chilapa are the municipalities with the highest number of active coronavirus cases.

Mexico News Daily

Geologist’s delight: see 3 types of volcano in 1 day in Guadalajara

By

John Pint

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August 6, 2021

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peak of el Cerro del Cuatro, Guadalajara — The peak of el Cerro del Cuatro offers an excellent view of the city of Guadalajara.

One day a geologist casually mentioned to me that people living in Guadalajara are lucky because in one day they could easily visit three of the major types of volcanoes.

They could, for example, go to the top of Cerro del Cuatro, the tallest “hill” in Guadalajara (1,860 meters high) to have a look at a scoria volcano, also known as a cinder cone.

This is the most common type of volcano on our planet, conical in shape, with very steep slopes and composed of lightweight volcanic rock filled with holes, commonly called tezontle in Mexico.

The second type of volcano they could visit is a stratovolcano such as El Volcan de Tequila (Tequila Volcano), located only an hour’s drive from Guadalajara. Stratovolcanoes feature the classic Mount Fuji-type profile and are famous for their explosive eruptions.

This one is no longer active, however, and conveniently has a cobblestone road leading up to microwave towers at the top.

Río Caliente in Primavera Forest, Jalisco — Río Caliente, the hot river which runs through the Primavera Forest, is exceptionally rich in minerals.

The third major type of volcano is the caldera, which is a huge, bowl-shaped hole in the ground left after a volcanic explosion. Such an explosion occurred in western Mexico 95,000 years ago, ejecting 40 cubic kilometers of pumice and ash (locally known as jal) into the air, creating the Primavera Caldera — and, by the way, giving the name Jalisco to the area where the jal fell back down to Earth.

The idea of visiting three types of volcanoes in one day intrigued me. “I wonder if it would be possible for someone to do all three on foot?” I asked myself.

I had only to mention this crazy idea to Mexican ultrarunner Sergio Vidal, who specializes in runs of more than 100 kilometers.

“I’m going to do it,” he replied without hesitation. “Let’s start working on the route.”

The first thing we did was to substitute another scoria volcano for el Cerro del Cuatro. “I love running,” Vidal said, “but I prefer the great outdoors to city streets.”

Fortunately, there happened to be another scoria volcano just southwest of Guadalajara called El Cerro de Mazatepec.

Hiking inside the crater of Tequila Volcano.

Vidal and three other Mexican long-distance runners decided that they would run up and down El Cerro De Mazatepec, then cross the Primavera Caldera (now called the Primavera Forest) and finally run to the top of Tequila Volcano, not via the cobblestone road but straight up its steep and weedy south flank.

This they accomplished in December of 2016, completing the 120-kilometer run, which they called the “Trivolcano,” in 35 hours, without bothering to stop and sleep as they had originally planned.

If you are an ultrarunner, you might be interested in trying to break that record, but if you are an ordinary mortal, here are volcanic vistas near Guadalajara, all of which can be visited by car — or on foot, if you insist.

Cerro del Cuatro (scoria cone)

I have viewed Guadalajara from several lookout points outside its municipal boundaries and, in my opinion, none of them offer a view of the city as good as the one from the top of El Cerro del Cuatro, especially during a thunderstorm. So be patient as you negotiate the rather unsightly streets on the Cerro’s steep flanks.

Once you make it all the way to the top, a delightful little park awaits you, with rolling hills covered with green, where volunteers have been planting trees every year for a long, long time. You’ll have a hard time believing that you are still in the city!

Cerro del Cuatro, Jalisco — A bicycle trail atop Cerro del Cuatro reveals the red *tezontle* or scoria rock of a typical cinder-cone volcano.

A long arroyo (brook) cuts through all this, making it a favorite for downhill bicycle riders to prove their skills. Scratch around in the arroyo and you’ll come up with a handful of red tezontle or scoria rocks, proof that you are indeed standing on top of a cinder cone.

To reach the top of the hill and the antennas, from which you can enjoy that great view, ask Google Maps to take you to Estación Transmisora SPR, Jalisco.

The Primavera Caldera

This caldera was a big hole filled with water for 10,000 or 20,000 years, but then magma pushed the bottom up and the water out, giving us the pine- and oak-covered hills of Bosque la Primavera, a protected area and home to deer, foxes, ringtails, coatis and even a few pumas.

It also has fumaroles and a hot river (Río Caliente) to remind you that it’s a volcano and far from dead. The Primavera Forest is located immediately west of Guadalajara and nearly matches the city in size. To bathe in the hot river, ask Google Maps to take you to Pilitas Río Caliente, Jalisco.

While splashing in one of the hot pools, notice the pumice rocks all around you. These are light enough to float on water and came from that explosion here 95,000 years ago.

Planting trees in El Cerro del Cuatro, Jalisco — Volunteers plant trees in the city park atop El Cerro del Cuatro.

Tequila Volcano (stratovolcano)

El Volcán de Tequila, located near Tequila, Jalisco, erupted 200,000 years ago, spewing out great rivers of lava, many of which cooled into the numerous deposits of obsidian that the state is known for. A cobblestone road takes you from Tequila town, ever upward through ecosystem after ecosystem, to the antennas at the top.

From here, you can hike into the volcano’s absolutely gorgeous crater and perhaps even climb the great vertical plug that protrudes from it, peaking at 2,920 meters above sea level and offering an impressive view of blue-green seas of agaves in every direction. See this article for more info and directions.

The volcanic domes of Ahuisculco

The Selva Negra Nature Reserve, located 32 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara, is the site of extensive deposits of obsidian that did not come from Tequila Volcano but oozed out of domes and dikes like toothpaste squeezed from a tube.

This may be the biggest single source of obsidian in Mexico, but it was not born of a classic volcano. Because the obsidian is pure and of very high quality, the pre-Hispanic people loved it and established hundreds of mines and workshops here, meaning that everywhere you go you will come upon great heaps of broken or discarded knives, arrowheads and other artifacts.

This forest forms an animal corridor between two other protected areas of Jalisco and is under the management of a foundation created by the Guadalajara rock band Maná. If you have a high-clearance vehicle, you can get here by inputting H7JF+JV Ahuisculco, Jalisco, in Google Maps.

Take a break and enjoy a volcanic vista!

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.

Tequila Volcano, Jalisco — Tequila Volcano is a landmark in Jalisco and can easily be identified by the volcanic plug that rises from its crater.

Cerro del Cuatro in greater Guadalajara. — At 1860 meters above sea level, the heavily populated Cerro del Cuatro is the highest point in greater Guadalajara.

Guadalajara ultramarathon runner Sergio Vidal — The Guadalajara area has 3 volcanoes near enough to each other that ultrarunner Sergio Vidal ran the 120-kilometer Trivolcano challenge in 35 hours.

Manhole covers focus of thieves in Puebla’s historic center

By

Rose Egelhoff

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August 6, 2021

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Missing manhole covers a danger in Puebla.

Pedestrians beware: in Puebla’s historic center, a rash of manhole cover thefts has alarmed neighbors and frustrated authorities.

The covers are stolen for their scrap metal value, leaving holes that present a danger both to pedestrians and vehicles. In some cases, neighbors have taken it upon themselves to mark the holes with caution tape or objects, hoping to prevent accidents.

According to a source close to the state’s Public Security Ministry, the manhole covers are worth less than 1,000 pesos each to thieves. The areas of the city with the most robberies are the México-Puebla highway, Vía Atlixcáyotl and the historic center.

Though the covers can be difficult to replace, municipal police have managed to detain at least one alleged thief. Last Sunday, a man was arrested for making off with a cover after a neighbor witnessed the crime and called police.

Puebla is hardly the only area suffering from manhole cover thefts. The problem has also been reported in San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas and Guanajuato.

“When the rainy season arrives, the problem is accentuated … [citizens] complain but there isn’t much to be done because the authorities do not have sufficient resources to repair all the damage,” said Rubén Guajardo Barrera, a San Luis Potosí state legislator who called for greater enforcement to prevent and punish the thefts.

In July, Tamaulipas water authorities reported that the stolen drain covers were costing them more than 100,000 pesos a week. And in Salamanca, Guanajuato, authorities have started to replace some of the covers with concrete rather than iron, hoping to reduce thefts.

It is not a new problem. The Mexico City government said in late 2015 it had spent more than 17 million pesos to replace stolen manhole covers and drainage grates.

With reports from Periódico Central and El Universal

Oaxaca music students get their stolen instruments back

By

Rose Egelhoff

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August 6, 2021

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Another Oaxaca youth orchestra will benefit from a donation courtesy of Metallica.

After the theft of musical instruments from a youth philharmonic band, the halls of the community center in a Oaxaca community fell quiet. But now the instruments have been recovered and the students can get back to practicing their music.

The community of Santa María Tlahuitoltepec discovered the identity of the thief, a resident, through an internal investigation. After being outed, the thief returned the instruments at a community meeting and was sanctioned.

The instruments were taken on June 29 when the thief broke into the Santa Ana-Ne’äm community center, stealing a clarinet, two saxophones, four trumpets and three trombones. The community, located east of Oaxaca city in the Sierra Mixe, is home to the indigenous Mixe people.

The incident was not the first musical heist for a Oaxaca youth band. In December 2019, 26 instruments — worth half a million pesos — were stolen from the Philharmonic Band of San Pedro and San Pablo de Ayutla, another Mixe community. In that case, the instruments were replaced by funds raised through social media donations.

Now, that same band will benefit from another, high-profile source of funds: the proceeds from a Metallica song. The heavy metal band’s 30^th anniversary disk, The Black Album, includes covers by more than 50 artists. Every artist chose an organization that would benefit from the proceeds of their cover.

El Instituto Mexicano de Sonido, which covers the song Sad but True, chose the San Pedro and San Pablo de Ayutla philharmonic band as its beneficiary.

Other causes supported by the album include UN Women, Save the Children and the Nashville Rescue Mission.

With reports from Milenio and El Universal

Cougar attacks and kills 12-year-old boy in Oaxaca

By

Rose Egelhoff

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August 6, 2021

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The cougar is one of five wild cat species found in Oaxaca.

A young boy has died after a cougar attacked him in Guadalupe Siete Cerros, a community in San Francisco Chapulapa, located in the Cañada region of Oaxaca.

Local media outlets reported that Gabriel Trovamala, 12, went out into the fields to check the crops on August 1 when he was attacked. Trovamala, a member of the Mazateca indigenous community, died of internal bleeding.

Local residents said there have been attacks against livestock and one adult, who was unharmed. They attribute all the attacks to the same animal.

Though the director of the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (Conanp) asked that people not demonize the large cats, the Mazateca community has organized the placement of traps and plans to hunt the animal down, hoping to prevent another attack.

Oaxaca is home to five of Mexico’s six wild cat species: jaguars, cougars, ocelots, lynxes and jaguarundi all inhabit the mountainous state, according to Conanp.

With reports from El Universal and Televisa

Hidden camera captures customs agent demanding a bribe

By

Rose Egelhoff

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August 6, 2021

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A customs agent in Matamoros, Tamaulipas has been dismissed after a video caught him asking for a bribe of US $1,000 to let a merchant through without declaring his products.

“A person likes to go to the mall… he has a family,” explained the agent, Saúl Hernández, by way of justification in the video. “You have $10,000 in merchandise. If I asked for $9,000 … it would be robbery, it would be extortion. But 10%, that’s not bad. Legally you would have to pay 25%.”

Little did Hernández know, his target was secretly recording the conversation, which took place at a customs office on the International Free Trade Bridge that connects Matamoros to Los Indios, Texas.

The video was not the first indication of corruption on Hernández’s part. The Federation of Tamaulipas Chambers of Commerce and the vice president of the Confederation of National Chambers of Commerce (Concanaco) have accused the same agent of committing acts of corruption against both merchants and tourists.

Concanaco vice president Julio Almanza Armas said his reports to the General Customs Management Office received no response.

“We solicited an urgent audience with the customs director, Horacio Duarte, to give him our evidence of corruption in the Tamaulipas customs office, but we have received no response,” Almanza Armas told the newspaper Reforma.

But an official announcement came Friday. Customs chief Duarte announced Hernández’s “immediate departure” for loss of trust. “We have a zero-tolerance policy toward corruption.”

With reports from Reforma

Woman who was tortured by authorities freed after 11 years

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August 6, 2021

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An indigenous woman who was sentenced eight years ago for kidnapping was freed Thursday on the grounds that she had been tortured during the investigation.

María Isabel San Agustín, originally of Hidalgo, was arrested in the Mexico City borough of Milpa Alta in 2011 and sentenced two years later to 65 years in prison.

But her case was revisited by federal justice authorities in 2018 and she was ordered released under the Istanbul Protocol, an international set of guidelines on the documentation of torture. The National Human Rights Commission had found evidence of torture after her arrest.

Nonetheless, the 35-year-old had to wait another three years to walk free. Her liberation appears to have been hastened by President López Obrador’s announcement last week that thousands of inmates would be released from jail if they had been victims of torture or were over 75 years old and had not committed a serious crime.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced San Agustín’s release on Twitter.

“I was in communication with María Isabel San Agustín’s family to inform them of the liberation of her release in the next few hours, after suffering torture and spending 11 years imprisoned unjustly.” She added that other similar cases were currently being examined.

The Mexico City Human Rights Commission said Monday that at least 479 people in city prisons were victims of torture. In 49 of those cases it has been determined that torture could have interfered with the investigation of the crimes of which they were accused.

It was an emotional moment yesterday at 6:00 p.m. when San Agustín walked out of a Mexico City prison into the arms of waiting family members. “Justice was done,” she declared to reporters, but cautioned that justice remained to be done in the prison she had just left.

“… most of the population here is innocent.”

With reports from El Universal and Proceso

Pandemic pushes poverty figures up: the poor number 55.7 million

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August 6, 2021

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Percentage of people living in poverty by state. coneval

There are an additional 3.8 million Mexicans living in poverty, according to the latest figures compiled by Coneval, the federal agency that measures social development.

In its 2020 report, Coneval said the number of people it classified as poor rose to 55.7 million people, or 43.9% of the population, up from 41.9% in 2018. The coronavirus pandemic was mainly responsible, it said.

The highest growth in poverty levels was seen in states that rely on tourism. Quintana Roo saw the biggest increase in poverty, rising 17.3% to 47.5% of the population compared to 30.2% two years before. In absolute numbers, the poor totaled 893,000, up from 546,000.

The Caribbean coast state was followed by Baja California Sur: poverty was up from 18.6% to 27.6%, an increase of 9%.

They were followed by Tlaxcala, México state and Yucatán.

Poverty figures by state, in percentages and absolute terms, by thousands of persons. coneval

Mexico’s poorest state is Chiapas, where 75.5% live in poverty, a slight improvement over the 2018 figure of 78%. Guerrero, Puebla, Oaxaca and Tlaxcala followed with poverty levels of 66.4%, 62.4%, 61.7% and 59.3%, respectively. Two of those states saw an improvement but the situation worsened in Puebla, up from 58% in 2018, and Tlaxcala, where the figure soared from 51%.

At the other end of the scale were Baja California, with 22.5% of its citizens living in poverty; Nuevo León, 24.3%; Chihuahua, 25.3%; Coahuila, 25.6%; and Colima, 26.7%

The number of Mexicans living in extreme poverty — those with insufficient income to meet the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter — rose from 7% of the population to 8.5%, from 8.7 million people to 10.8 million.

Among social deficiencies, some of which were basically unchanged or improved, lack of access to health care saw a whopping increase from 16.2% of the population to 28.2%, meaning that an additional 15.6 million people fell outside the healthcare system. They were unaffiliated with any of the state healthcare services and unable to obtain healthcare from either public or private providers.

In an executive summary to its report, Coneval described as urgent the need for the healthcare system to transition fully to the Insabi health care service, introduced by the current federal government to replace Seguro Popular, and guarantee healthcare attention to the public.

One sector of the population where poverty levels fell in percentage terms was the elderly. People over 65 accounted for 43.2% of the population in 2018; in 2020 that figure had fallen to 37.9%, likely due to the increases in seniors’ pension introduced by the administration of President López Obrador. However, because of the increase in the seniors population the number living in poverty remained about the same in absolute terms at 4.5 million.

Coneval’s figures are based on a survey of households between August and November, but President López Obrador said on Friday that he did not accept the results.

“… I have for example my own method of measurement … I see the macroeconomic data,” he told his morning press conference. “I have other information and I believe the people are receiving more support and even with the pandemic people have enough for their basic needs and something very important, they have not lost faith and we’re moving ahead.”

With his customary ability to see the positive side of things, López Obrador said the economy is in recovery in most sectors.

“… aviation, tourism, trade, industry, there is an extraordinary recovery, exceptional, to a degree that growth forecasts for this year are more than 6%.”

Measuring poverty

According to Coneval, people are in a situation of poverty when they are lacking access to at least one of six social rights — food, health, education, social security, adequate housing and basic housing services — and their income is insufficient to purchase the canasta básica, or basic food basket. Its value is currently 1,745 pesos in urban areas and 1,256 in rural ones (US $87 and $63 respectively).

Extreme poverty is defined as lacking access to at least three of those social rights, not having sufficient income to purchase the canasta básica and lacking in the nutrition necessary for a healthy life.

Coneval measures poverty in Mexico every two years using data generated by the national statistics agency, Inegi.

Mexico News Daily

Extermination sites: the new depths of Mexico’s disappearance crisis

By

Victoria Dittmar

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August 5, 2021

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Searching for bodies at La Bartolina, Tamaulipas.

Families combing for clues about their vanished loved ones at recently discovered extermination sites in northern Mexico have turned to local cartel leaders for help — revealing their desperation to find any trace of the disappeared amid masses of incinerated bones.

At the end of July, families of those missing in Tamaulipas issued a letter to the Gulf Cartel faction operating in Matamoros, along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We are not looking for culprits; We are looking for our sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and relatives,” they insisted.

Earlier that month, the Mexican government recognized the existence of an extermination site in Matamoros, where more than half a ton of skeletal remains have been found. The location, known as La Bartolina, lies just 12 kilometers from the border at Brownsville, Texas.

In Tamaulipas alone, groups searching for the disappeared have identified 57 such extermination sites since the end of 2012, according to a report from news portal Elefante Blanco.

Just days before the letter from the families in Tamaulipas, the United Forces for Our Disappeared in Nuevo León (Fundenl) issued a press release urging authorities in the northern border state to speed up investigations into five such sites, where more than 600,000 skeletal remains have been recovered since 2010.

The graves classed as extermination sites all share certain macabre characteristics: multiple clandestine graves, containers to incinerate bodies, encampments, confinement areas and victims’ remains.

In an interview with Elefante Blanco, Mexico’s national search commissioner, Karla Quintana Osuna, stated that La Bartolina is the largest extermination site that federal authorities have identified.

“We have decided to designate them ‘extermination sites’ … because they are crematoriums where they have tried to disappear and pulverize at least hundreds of people,” Quintana said in an interview with Milenio.

Over the last 15 years, more than 80,000 people have disappeared in Mexico. According to a report by the federal government in April, Tamaulipas and Nuevo León are among the five states with the highest number of disappearances reported.

InSight Crime analysis

Recognizing the existence of extermination sites in Mexico is an important step toward understanding the magnitude of the country’s crisis of forced disappearances. However, there is still a long way to go to address the systematic human rights violations that have occurred in the country’s northeast, where criminal groups remain in power.

The areas where extermination centers have been detected once had a significant presence of the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. These drug groups were involved in several episodes of extreme violence that claimed the lives of thousands of victims.

For example, the Piedras Negras prison in Coahuila was used as an extermination center where the Zetas murdered more than 150 people between 2010 and 2012. Their bodies were then burned in diesel-filled barrels known as “ovens.” Police and prison personnel were aware that the prison was being used as a death camp.

Previously considered some of the most violent groups in Mexico, the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel no longer wield the same power after fracturing. Splinter groups, though, continue to terrorize locals. For example, in June, shootouts in Reynosa left 26 people dead, many of whom were said to be bystanders. A cell linked to the Gulf Cartel was blamed for the gunfire, as well as for the kidnapping of 119 people.

State actors also play an important role in the abuses. In January, for example, 19 people – including Guatemalan migrants – were massacred and burned in the Tamaulipas municipality of Camargo. At least 12 members of Tamaulipas’ special operations group (GOPES), which answers directly to the state governor, were held responsible. That same month, residents of Tamaulipas’ Ciudad Mier reported being forcibly displaced after the disappearance of two people at the hands of the GOPES.

Likewise, in 2019, the DEA accused elements of the unit of detaining and disappearing people, turning them over to the cartels.

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to allocate more resources to the search and identification of missing persons and has created search commissions in each state.

However, most of the burden continues to fall on family members, search groups and other non-governmental organizations, which face bureaucratic barriers, corruption and government negligence.

Activists searching for the disappeared are also constantly threatened for their work and the state rarely offers them protection. On July 16, a woman was murdered in Sonora state after spending months looking for her husband with a group called the Searching Mothers of Sonora.

According to the report by Elefante Blanco, members of the group that discovered La Bartolina in Matamoros have received threats since the government recognized it as an extermination center.

Forced disappearance cases in Mexico face high levels of impunity and investigations into the extermination sites and the clandestine graves have been halting and cumbersome. Authorities are often indifferent. Searchers say that much can be done to speed up identifications and prosecutions, including those of complicit state officials.

“People knew. The authorities knew. Something of this scale cannot happen without them knowing what is happening,” Quintana, the national search commissioner, told Milenio.

Reprinted from InSight Crime. Victoria Dittmar is a writer with InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.

Millennial workers came to the rescue in the pandemic: BBVA study

By

MND Staff

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August 5, 2021

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Millennials' average monthly earnings were 7,251 pesos.

Millennials played a key role in the reactivation of the Mexican economy in late 2020 as pandemic restrictions were relaxed, according to a study by BBVA Research.

The population segment counted for almost one third of the working population from August 21-November 28, the period in which infection rates had begun to drop.

The economy had been widely forecast to suffer a deep recession in the second half of 2020, which was largely avoided by the flow of remittance payments from the United States and workers returning to their duties, including about 20 million people in the millennial age category.

There is no absolute consensus on the dividing line between millennials and its preceding, older population group Generation X. For the purposes of the study, BBVA defined millennials as people 25-39 years old in 2020, having been born between 1981 and 1995, while Generation X covered people between 40 and 54 years, born between 1966 and 1980.

The personal income earned by millennials attested to their value to the workforce. On average, they earned 7,251 pesos (about US $364) per month, while Generation X workers averaged just 12.3% more.

The data showed that the labor market valued millennial workers with professional or postgraduate training, but barely distinguished those with bachelor’s degrees from their peers with only primary or secondary education.

The study also revealed the difference in salaries between millennial men and women. In Yucatán men earned 72.4% more than their female peers. In Durango, Baja California, Tamaulipas, Aguascalientes, Michoacán, Chihuahua and Nuevo León, the income gap was over 30%. The state of México, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Quintana Roo were those with the lowest differentials.

There were also marked differences in earnings depending on where millennials lived. For example, the average salary of a millennial employed in Nuevo León was 11,100 pesos a month (about $557), while in Chiapas it was 4,458 pesos (about $224).

The BBVA study was based on the Survey of National Household Income and Expenditure by federal statistics institute Inegi published on July 28. The data was collected from August 21-November 28, 2020.

Mexico News Daily

Cerro del Cuatro (scoria cone)

The Primavera Caldera

Tequila Volcano (stratovolcano)

The volcanic domes of Ahuisculco

Measuring poverty

InSight Crime analysis

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