The United States government suspects that pirate attacks on vessels and oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico are being underreported, according to the latest advisory from the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD).
“A significant underreporting of attacks in this area is suspected. These attacks have involved the discharge of firearms, crew injuries, the taking of hostages and robberies,” the report stated, urging vessels in the area to develop security protocols to prevent pirates from boarding.
MARAD says that a minimum of 20 fishing vessels and 35 oil platforms have been attacked since 2018 in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico with at least five attacks occurring in April.
An April 20 report from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) details the latest reported attacks.
At around 9 a.m. on April 4, Remas, an Italian pipe-laying vessel near Dos Bocas, Tabasco, was approached by eight armed men in a fast boat, prompting the captain to sound the alarm and lock down the vessel. The men opened fire on the ship but the captain was able to use his thrusters to prevent the pirates from coming alongside and boarding.
On April 8, around 9:30 a.m., seven armed men in two boats pulled up on another pipe-laying vessel near Dos Bocas and three of the pirates were able to board but later fled.
The following day at 10:30 p.m. eight armed pirates wearing masks managed to once again board the Remas near Dos Bocas, the third pirate attack in five months on that vessel, taking crew members hostage and using them as human shields. The armed men looted the ship, stealing the crew’s personal belongings and navigation equipment. Several shots were fired but no injuries were reported.
On April 12, pirates attacked the Maersk Transporter, a Denmark-flagged supply vessel located north of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, and took several crew members hostage as they looted the ship. The hostages were released when the pirates left.
And on April 14 six pirates armed with automatic weapons and pistols boarded the barge Telford located north of Ciudad del Carmen and opened fire. One crew member was injured.
After a fourfold increase of reported acts of piracy in the Gulf in 2019, the Mexican navy established four monitoring zones which will be patrolled through 2024.
Last year, Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, called Gulf of Mexico piracy “the wave of the future.”
One of two babies that survived Covid-19 in Tabasco.
Two infants have recovered from coronavirus this week in Tabasco.
After 35 days in the hospital suffering from coronavirus-associated respiratory symptoms and malnutrition, 4-month-old Isaac received a clean bill of health and has rejoined his family.
The infant spent more than a month at the Rodolfo Nieto Padrón children’s hospital in Villahermosa, the Ministry of Health reports.
After overcoming symptoms and testing negative for the coronavirus, baby Isaac was discharged Wednesday from the hospital to applause from medical staff.
The child’s mother thanked the hospital for caring for her baby over the last five weeks and rang the “Bell of Life,” a symbol of victory and hope, before taking him home.
A second baby in Tabasco, 9-day-old Lupita, was discharged from the same hospital with similar fanfare less than 24 hours later after she too recovered from the coronavirus.
The World Health Organization reports that worldwide “relatively few cases of infants confirmed to have Covid-19 have been reported; those who are infected have experienced mild illness.”
As of Friday, Tabasco had 2,930 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 371 deaths.
Nadine Gasman of the federal women's agency Inmujeres.
Coronavirus stay-at-home measures have generated a marked increase in attacks on women, says the head of a federal agency, who called it a “second pandemic.”
In a virtual meeting with federal lawmakers, Nadine Gasman Zylbermann, president of the National Institute of Women (Inmujeres) reported that 400,000 domestic violence calls were made to 911 during April.
Gasman also pointed out that 91% of victims of violence do not file complaints at all. Frustration with the system may be one reason behind their silence.
“When a woman is experiencing such violence, she has very little recourse,” World Justice Project lawyer and researcher Layda Negrete told the website Foreign Policy. “If she calls the police, they might not come, and even if they do, they have no training in how to respond to family violence. To pursue charges and protection from the violence they must go to the prosecutor’s office, who typically fail to do anything about the complaint.”
Numbers from the Spotlight Initiative, a partnership between the United Nations and the European Union working to eradicate violence against women and girls, show that Mexican women made more than 115,000 domestic violence-related calls to 911 in March a 22% increase compared to February.
The majority of calls came from the state of México, Mexico City and Chihuahua, with Chihuahua having the largest number of calls per capita in the country.
Sexual assault reports are also on the rise. In March 395 rape-related calls were made to 911, representing a 20.06% increase over February when 323 calls were received, and 15.83% more than in March 2019 which saw 341 complaints.
On May 15, President López Obrador rejected numbers from his own government showing that violence against women has increased during the coronavirus emergency.
“I’m going to give you a piece of information that doesn’t mean that violence against women doesn’t exist,” López Obrador said. “I don’t want you to misinterpret me because a lot of what I say is taken out of context: 90% of those calls … are false, it’s proven.”
Reports from activists claim that 209 women have been murdered since stay-at-home measures were implemented.
According to the non-profit women’s justice organization Equis, three factors have led to an increase in calls during the pandemic. First, self-isolation means women spend more time with their aggressors, thus increasing their risk of being attacked. The economic crisis also puts added stress on households, and finally, some support networks available to help women deal with violence, although considered an essential service by the government, are operating at limited capacity due to the coronavirus.
During the meeting, Gasman appealed to the the Gender Equality Commission of the lower house of Congress to use the opportunity to develop a “new normal” for women and families in the nation, calling on institutions, government and non-profits to work together to create a unified front in the prevention of domestic violence.
Interior Minister Olga Sánchez told the meeting that most public funds have been directed toward the Covid-19 crisis, putting budgetary pressures on other projects, including the protection of women who are victims of violence.
The federal Health Ministry will use the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat 20,000 Covid-19 outpatients despite doubts about its efficacy and the risk of it causing an irregular heartbeat and even death.
The director of the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition told the newspaper Milenio that the health regulatory agency Cofepris has authorized the administration of the drug to patients recovering from Covid-19 in their homes.
José Sifuentes acknowledged that clinical trials have shown that high doses of hydroxychloroquine for a prolonged period of time can cause a range of side effects in Covid-19 patients but emphasized that the drug has been shown to reduce generalized inflammation in people with the disease.
In that context, he stressed that outpatients will be given only low to medium doses for a maximum of seven days starting in the early phase of their illness.
Sifuentes said that all patients receiving treatment with the drug will be closely monitored, explaining that the “careful follow-up” will occur at people’s homes and via telephone and video calls.
He said that 130,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine donated by the Swiss healthcare company Novartis will be distributed to national health institutes, regional hospitals and specialty hospitals, among other facilities. The use of the drug among ambulatory Covid-19 patients will commence next week.
The announcement of the plan came just two days after the World Health Organization (WHO) reiterated that the drug should only be used in closely-monitored clinical trials due to the potential side effects.
Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said that hydroxychloroquine and the similar drug chloroquine have “yet to be found effective in the treatment of Covid-19” or to prevent the disease.
The medical journal The Lancet published a study on Friday that said that there were no benefits to treating Covid-19 with either drug and that their use actually increases the risk of dying for coronavirus patients.
In a study of 96,000 coronavirus patients, 18% treated with hydroxychloroquine and 16.4% of those treated with chloroquine died. For patients in a control group, the death rate was 9%.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus point man, is among a large number of medical professionals who have warned against taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against Covid-19.
But United States President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly promoted the drug as a Covid-19 treatment, was not dissuaded from using it to try to stave off Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
“A lot of good things have come out about the hydroxy, you’d be surprised about how many people are taking it … before you catch it. … I happen to be taking it …” he told reporters on Monday.
“Couple of weeks ago, I started taking it because I think it’s good, I’ve heard a lot of good stories. And if it’s not good I’m not going to get hurt by it. It’s been around for 40 years for malaria, for lupus, for other things. I take it, frontline workers take it, a lot of doctors take it …” Trump said.
Mexico recorded a new daily record for Covid-19 deaths for the second time in three days on Friday with 479 additional fatalities.
The official coronavirus death toll now stands at 6,989 just over two months after the first Covid-19 fatality was recorded in the country.
The death toll reported on Friday is 13% higher than the previous high of 424 on Wednesday. More than 1,300 new Covid-19 fatalities were reported in the past three days.
Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía told a press conference Friday night that an additional 814 fatalities are suspected to have been caused by Covid-19 but have not yet been confirmed.
He reported that the number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus in Mexico since the start of the pandemic had risen to 62,527, an increase of 2,960 compared to Thursday.
The daily tally of new coronavirus cases and deaths. milenio
The single-day increase in cases is the second highest since Covid-19 was first detected in Mexico at the end of February. The daily record was set a day earlier on Thursday with 2,973 new cases reported.
Alomía said that 13,347 of the confirmed cases are considered active, an increase of 442 compared to Thursday. He also said that there are 33,801 suspected cases across the country and that a total of 210,070 people have now been tested.
Alomía said that there are currently more than 413,000 testing kits available in Mexico after a shipment of 300,000 arrived from China last weekend.
Mexico City continues to lead the country for accumulated Covid-19 cases, active cases and deaths. The capital has recorded 17,690 cases since the start of the pandemic of which 3,495 – about one in five – are active.
México state has the second largest active coronavirus outbreak, with 1,437 cases. Tabasco, Veracruz and Baja California rank third, fourth and fifth, respectively, for the size of their active outbreaks. Each of the three states has more than 500 active cases.
Colima is the only state in the country with fewer than 50 active cases while three – Zacatecas, Durango and Baja California Sur – have between 50 and 100.
México state also has the second highest death toll after 187 additional fatalities were reported on Thursday. It has now recorded 809 Covid-19 fatalities, 161 more than Baja California, which has the third highest death toll in Mexico.
Based on confirmed cases and deaths, the coronavirus fatality rate is now 11.1, significantly higher than the global rate of 6.4.
Despite the rapidly rising case tally and death toll, Mexico’s national social distancing initiative – La Jornada Nacional de Sana Distancia – will officially conclude next Saturday just over two months after it commenced.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell stressed on Friday night that the conclusion of the initiative will not “in any way” mark a return to normality and a resumption of all economic and everyday activities.
After May 30, “the majority of large cities” will be allocated a red light on the government’s color-coded “stoplight” system, he said, meaning that “work and school restrictions will continue.”
López-Gatell said that plotting the return to the so-called “new normal” is very complex and that the government is endeavoring to find the right balance. He stressed that the authorities place a higher priority on health and life than on the economy but noted that a lot of Mexicans are currently experiencing severe economic hardship as a result of the coronavirus mitigation measures.
“We live in an extraordinarily unequal country; half of all people live day by day and they’re suffering. … They don’t have [money for their] daily sustenance, to feed themselves. That affects their health and can affect their lives.”
A gardener harvests greens at Vía Orgánica in San Miguel de Allende.
Urban gardening is nothing new in Mexico. Lack of space and a growing population led to the invention of chinampas, artificial islands in the lake waters of ancient Mexico City. Today, some of the islands still exist as productive farmland.
The modern concept of reclaiming urban space for agriculture has become popular in Mexico for many of the same reasons as other parts of the world – concerns about the environment, food quality and food availability. It started in the United States, with the victory gardens of World War II, but by the 1980s had spread worldwide.
Mexican urban agricultural organizations are also involved in issues related to genetically modified food, organic farming, food labeling and community building. More recently, Mexico has seen an upsurge of interest in gardening because of Covid-19.
But there are reasons why urban gardening is attractive specifically to Mexico. About 80% of Mexicans now live in urban areas, and much of this population consists of recent migrants from rural areas. In addition, urban sprawl has swallowed former farms and villages.
Poverty is an issue for former rural residents and former rural lands. According to Patricia Iglesias of Tierra Permanente, a Mexico City organization that promotes sustainable agriculture, even small fluctuations in the prices of staples can strain small household budgets. Gardening is one strategy to combat this.
Young gardeners at Vivero la Esperanza in San Juan Tecomatlán, Jalisco.
But the issues are not just economic. Mitigating the heat-island effect is particularly important in Mexico as most of the country is in a tropical or semi-tropical zone. Rural migrants and newly urbanized lands are often from highly traditional communities, mestizo and indigenous. These communities risk losing cultural values and the social cohesion that comes with it. This is particularly true for Mexico’s three largest cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey.
Many urban and community gardens are bottom-up initiatives, but unlike Europe, they tend to be controlled by an individual or well-defined group, with physical restrictions to outsiders. The group may be non-profit, but economic issues tend to dominate over ecological ones.
Mexico can and does grow a wide variety of produce in its urban gardens, which in many places can grow year-round with irrigation. Gardens grow fruit trees, medicinal plants and specialty produce, but the most popular crops are the staples of the Mexican diet: tomatoes, squash, chayote, chile peppers and various greens including lettuce. Iglesias says that even egg production is done in many gardens, something rare in more developed countries.
Urban agriculture is most developed in Mexico City, but gardens and organizations exist all over the country. It includes taking advantage of roofs, balconies, inner courtyards and windowsills along with the more traditional backyards and abandoned lots. From 2013 to 2017 over 63,000 people participated in urban gardening in Mexico City alone.
Although most projects supplement family food supplies, urban gardens exist for other reasons, mostly concerns related to commercial agriculture. These gardens tend to produce organically and work to increase awareness about problems with pesticides, the development of seeds (including GMO) and depletion of soils.
Some gardens exist to produce gourmet and specialty produce such as uncommon species of mushrooms and plants that were common in the pre-Hispanic diet. Some give the long-term unemployed a chance to contribute economically. There are even corporations that have installed gardens on their grounds, with the produce used in their own cafeterias.
Las Cañadas center for agroecology and permaculture in Veracruz.
Only 24% of Mexico’s urban residents have access to green spaces. Government agencies, especially at the local and state level, support urban gardening with resources such as space, compost, information and legal rights. In 2017, the city passed a law specifically stating that residents have the right to an urban garden, and all government agencies are required to have at least one in their installations. The capital was named one of five cities in Latin America doing the most to promote urban agriculture by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Just about all of Mexico’s major cities have urban gardening initiatives, almost all of which were started in the past 15 years. These include Huerto Tlatelolco, Huerto Roma Verde and the Cultiva Tu Espacio programs in Mexico City, along with the Colectivo Hurto Agroecológico Universitario and Huerto Comunitario Mejor Santa Tere in Guadalajara. The Huertos Familiares program in Monterrey provides fresh vegetables for 300 families in 39 neighborhoods. The first program in Mérida was established by the municipality in 2018.
Non-profit urban agriculture organizations accept volunteers, and many offer other kinds of services including cultural activities, cooking classes and workshops on a myriad of topics from composting to reclaiming wastewater and even non-gardening topics. Because of the Covid-19 situation, almost all are physically closed at present, but many are offering classes and other services online, although in Spanish. Many for-profit businesses also exist, catering to urban gardeners. Many of them are in Mexico City but can ship nationwide.
Those initiatives near areas where many expats live are likely to have workshops and services for non-Spanish speakers. Huerto Roma Verde has members who speak German, French and Japanese as well as English. Rancho Ecológico, just outside of San Miguel Allende, has one founder who is American. Vivero La Esperanza on Lake Chapala is run by Francisco Nava, who speaks English, and Chapala proper has the Lake Chapala Garden Club as well.
On Lake Pátzcuaro there is Tierramor, which was cofounded by Holger Hieronimi, originally from Germany. If you do speak Spanish and live in a rainforest area, Las Cañadas Centro de Agroecología y Permacultura in Veracruz offers 20-day intensive apprenticeships.
Another way to find urban and community gardeners is through businesses that share their worldview, especially health food restaurants and cafes. Several organizations were found for this report by contacting business such as Huerto Café in Chapala and The Green Place in Puerto Vallarta.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears weekly on Mexico News Daily.
A lone musician seeks customers on a deserted Acapulco beach.
Hospitals in Acapulco, Guerrero, are on the verge of collapse due to the large numbers of Covid-19 patients they are treating, the resort city’s mayor said on Thursday.
“I’m deeply concerned about the situation we’re going through in our municipality,” Adela Román Ocampo said in a video posted to social media.
“The coronavirus pandemic has spread out across all of Acapulco. The situation is very serious. … The virus exists, it’s not an invention and it’s causing the deaths of thousands of people across the whole country. In Acapulco 38 people have lost their lives and we have almost 520 infected people.”
Román said that Acapulco hospitals are approaching 80% of their capacity and that more people with coronavirus-like symptoms are arriving every day.
If the situation isn’t controlled within a short period of time, “Acapulco’s hospitals will collapse and they won’t be able to attend to more patients,” she said.
The mayor also said that one of the two crematoriums in Acapulco is on the brink of saturation.
Román implored residents of Acapulco to take the pandemic seriously, asserting that “the danger is very high” and pointing out that the pandemic is growing more quickly in Guerrero than in all but two other states of the country.
“Acapulco is the center of the pandemic in the state. That’s why it’s necessary for you to stay at home; don’t go out [where you can] catch or spread a virus that could cause your death or that of your family,” she said.
The Morena party mayor said that she was aware of the economic hardship people are going through due to the shutdown of the tourism sector and economy more generally.
In that context, Román announced a series of measures she said would help to reactivate the Acapulco economy amid the pandemic.
She said that fertilizer will be distributed to 10,000 farmers to allow them to sow new crops “during this very difficult stage of the pandemic,” that jobs will be offered in a local government program to repair potholes before the commencement of the rainy season and that financial support will be made available to 5,000 local fishermen and fishing cooperatives.
However, a true reactivation of the Acapulco economy will be heavily dependent on the resumption of activities in the tourism sector. While authorities in Quintana Roo are hoping to welcome tourists to the Caribbean coast resort city of Cancún as soon as June 8, it is unclear when visitors will be able to return to the port city sometimes referred to as “the Pearl of the Pacific.”
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Wednesday that “the critical time” of the pandemic in Acapulco “is still a long way off” and that its tourism industry won’t be able to open any time soon.
According to federal government statistics, 555 people have now tested positive for Covid-19 in the city while case numbers in Guerrero are just short of 1,000.
Experts suggest the creature may have been a feisty, nontoxic, Mexican bullsnake.
Ever since I came to Mexico, people have been telling me about caves in their area. Strange as it may seem, the descriptions are always remarkably similar, although the caves, if we find any at all, may be completely unalike.
“This cave starts at a little hole over there by a guamúchil tree and goes straight through the whole mountain … ¡Sí, Señor! It comes right out the other side. But no one has ever gone all the way because as soon as you get 100 meters inside, your light is mysteriously blown out, even if it’s a flashlight! That’s what has stopped us from reaching the treasure … and then there are the snakes … No, you’d better not go into that hole!”
The snakes. Everyone supposes that caves are crawling with them, so I always make it a point to tell people that in 53 years of underground exploring, I’ve seen just about the same number of snakes in caves as treasure chests. But one day something happened that made me change my tune …
Not far from where I live there’s a steep hillside with a big black hole that looks, from a distance, like a railway tunnel. When we walked into that dark opening, we discovered something really curious: on the roof, all along the tunnel’s length, were nicely rounded holes, spaced about 11 meters apart. We found 74 of these “skylights” and were unable to explain their presence until we took two archaeologists inside and discovered our cave was not a cave at all, but a man-made underground aqueduct, commonly known by its Arabic name: qanat.
Some years ago I was visited by two cavers from the U.S.A. After taking Ray and Cindy to Tequila, I thought I would stop on the way back to quickly show my friends our mysterious qanat with its curious string of skylights.
One of 74 ceiling holes noted by surveyors of the qanat.
After exploring the lower section of the qanat where, long ago, people used to come to collect water, we climbed up a steep hill of debris and down the other side.The long dirt slope brought us into the main part of the system, a narrow passage about 10 meters high. As we had not planned to do any caving that day, we had only one proper flashlight among us, plus Ray’s feeble throwaway, which was emitting a hazy brown glow.
“No problem,” I exclaimed confidently as we made our way down the dusty dirt pile, “there’s plenty of light in this section from all those holes in the ceiling.”
The four-meter-wide fissure we were in quickly narrowed to a maximum of 1.5 meters at shoulder level and a mere 30 cm on the floor. Right at a spot halfway between the shafts of light, a spot “as black as a cow’s inside” (as Mark Twain might have put it), my friend Ray, who was bringing up the rear, suddenly let out a nerve-wracking scream and began yelling bloody murder at the top of his voice.
“HOLY ☼#Δ■₰!!!!” was shouted with such force and genuine panic that Cindy and I literally leaped into the air and jumped forward while Ray jumped back.
Up until this moment, we had assumed there were only three of us in that cave but, from a point halfway between us, we could hear inhuman noises that made our hair stand on end.
“John, shine the flashlight over there, down on the ground!” And we had our first look at the creature with which Ray had been doing a tango in the dark.
The ancient spelunker, author John Pint.
There in that narrow slot, the bright beam of my light revealed the coils of a nearly two-meter-long snake, type unknown. It was obviously enraged, crazily striking left and right and putting on a terrifying show. As Ray so colorfully expressed it, “That sucker was hissin’ an’ spittin’ an’ jumpin’ all at the same time.” And with good reason. Apparently I had woken it up, Cindy had stepped right on it and unlucky Ray was left to make the apologies.
How do you get past an incensed serpent in a narrow crack? Even when we moved farther away, we could see it lunging at every shadow. It had a good 75 cm reach and there was no way we were going to slip by it in that narrow fissure. The possibilities of “chimneying” up and over it (a technique for climbing cracks) were not too bright, and a little experimenting showed us that one of the side walls was extremely slippery.
Cindy and I pondered our situation while stretched across the crack at a spot farther away and too high for the snake to reach. Meanwhile, Ray left the cave to hunt up a long stick. One thought kept coming back into our conversation: what if all three of us had got trapped on the wrong side of that furious ophidian?
Ray returned with a long pole and we discussed escape plans. Should he prod and push the critter further into the cave, beyond the high spot where Cindy and I were now perched? Or should he try to hold its head down while we made a flying leap over it? Both solutions might have resulted in the snake taking off after Ray. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a copy of the Guinness Book of Records to find out what this reptile’s top speed was, so we decided on option two, which might result in demobilizing the beast for a few moments.
Cautiously Roy reached out with the pole. “Keep the light on it, John! Keep the light on it! Ah! Got him!” There was a wild thrashing of rippling coils. Hoping Ray had the right end pinned down, Cindy scrambled over, feet on one wall, hands on the other. “EEEEK! I’m slipping!”
Ah, what a scene for an Indiana Jones movie! But she didn’t slip, and now it was my turn. I opted for a flying leap, which resulted in my going right over Ray’s head. Of course, as I flew over him, there was no more light on the snake. “Run for it, Ray!” I shouted and believe me we didn’t tiptoe out. Never have I seen anyone get up the steep dirt-hill entrance faster than the three of us.
[soliloquy id="111638"]
On our way home we acknowledged that our little problem might not have developed had we not broken one of the cardinal rules of caving: don’t go into a cave unless every member of the group has three sources of light.
One person trying to light the way for three reduced our chances of spotting danger to almost zero. In addition, we might have realized that a cave with 74 holes in the ceiling is 74 times more likely to contain extraneous objects than a normal cave. Breathing frequent sighs of relief, we celebrated our “self rescue” with frosty bottles of Negra Modelo. After all, having found that elusive snake-in-a-cave was a sure indication that on our next trip we were bound to run into a treasure chest.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 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.
A poor area of the borough of Iztapalapa, Mexico City.
The coronavirus-induced economic crisis could push more than 34 million additional people – about one in four Mexicans – into poverty in a worst case scenario, according to an analysis by the research division of the bank BBVA.
If the Mexican economy contracts by 12% this year – the low-end of the bank’s current forecast range – 16.4 million additional people would find themselves in situations of “income poverty” and 18 million more would be pushed into “extreme income poverty,” BBVA said.
The federal government’s social development agency, Coneval, sets the poverty line at income of 3,208 pesos (US $140) per month for people living in urban areas and 2,086 pesos (US $92) for those living in rural areas. The extreme poverty line is set at income of 1,632 pesos per month (US $72) in urban areas and 1,165 pesos (US $51) in rural areas.
If the economy shrinks by a more modest 7% this year – BBVA’s most optimistic forecast – 12 million additional people will be pushed into “income poverty” and 12.3 million people will find themselves in situations of “extreme income poverty.”
According to the bank’s 7% contraction analysis, the combined number of additional people who would be considered impoverished due to their income would be 24.3 million, 29% fewer than in the more dire scenario.
A recession just 0.5% less severe – a forecast in line with the 6.5% contraction predicted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean – would leave an additional 16.6 million people in situations of poverty and extreme poverty, BBVA said.
BBVA México chief economist Carlos Serrano told the newspaper La Jornada that Mexico will face a “new economic reality” as a result of the coronavirus crisis.
“We know that the country has enormous inequalities and the pandemic will exacerbate them,” he said, adding that the government will have to take additional measures to address the situation. Tax breaks, higher pensions and improvements to public education and health care could all help to reduce inequality, Serrano said.
Serrano said that more job losses can be expected in the short term even as the federal government takes steps to reopen the economy from June 1 despite the worsening coronavirus pandemic.
Mammoth bones are cleaned at the construction site.
Archaeologists have found the remains of more than 60 mammoths at the site of the new Mexico City airport, located about 40 kilometers northeast of the capital in México state.
Scientists with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered the bones during recent months but didn’t report the findings until Thursday.
They were found in the area where the control tower and runways of the new airport – currently under construction at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base site – will be located.
INAH experts will treat the bones to conserve them and they will eventually be put on display at a museum planned for the airport site, said chief archaeologist Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava.
The remains are of Columbian mammoths and correspond to adult males and females as well as their young. Columbian mammoths were abundant in the Pleistocene era, which concluded about 12,000 years ago.
Bones of at least 60 mammoths have been located.
Sánchez said the mammoths probably died naturally after getting stuck in the mud of an ancient lake that subsequently disappeared.
However, he said that it is possible that the giant herbivores were steered into the mud by hunters who might have killed them and stripped off their flesh after they became stuck. INAH archaeologists found two mammoth traps late last year in Tultepec, a México state municipality just 10 kilometers from the new airport site, demonstrating that hunters in the late Pleistocene era used more sophisticated hunting methods than previously thought.
Sánchez said that the recently-discovered bones will be subjected to tests to try to find out more about how the extinct mammals lived and died.
He said that it is possible that more mammoth remains will be found at the airport site as exploration continues. Some 30 archaeologists are working there as construction of the the Felipe Ángeles International Airport – scheduled to open in 2022 – takes place.
“We’re in the exploration stage but there are also curators and restorers who are helping us with the cleaning of the remains,” Sánchez said.
He stressed that the discovery of the mammoth bones and the ongoing exploration will not cause any delays to the construction of the new airport, one of the federal government’s signature infrastructure projects.
Archaeologists have also found remains of other Pleistocene era animals in the area, including those of now-extinct bison and camel species, as well as 15 burial pits where it is believed pre-Hispanic farmers were laid to rest.
The erstwhile agriculturalists were buried with ceramic pots and bowls as well as mud figurines. Sánchez said that the human remains probably dated from around 500 to 1,000 years ago, several millennia after the mammoths became extinct.
