Abolishing trusts will be historic blow to science and culture: critics

The Supreme Court voted 6-5 on the controversial proposal. — The court voted 6-5 on the controversial proposal.

President López Obrador has secured Supreme Court approval for a controversial referendum on whether five of his predecessors should face trial for corruption, prompting critics to slam the ruling as a dangerous erosion of constitutional checks and balances.

Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, government spokesman, called the 6-5 vote “a transcendental step towards the construction of a true democracy” and the fruit of “a decades-long fight” for the people to be heard.

Any referendum should by law happen in August but lawyers said López Obrador could now push for the question to be on the ballot in next June’s midterm vote.

The decision sparked a tide of concern that López Obrador had now co-opted one of Mexico’s last autonomous institutions. He is the country’s most powerful president in a generation and has been waging a bitter campaign against media critics that they say undermines freedom of speech.

Since taking office nearly two years ago, López Obrador has concentrated decision-making and acknowledged that he demands “blind loyalty to the project of transformation” that he considers his mission.

Diego Valadés, a constitutional expert, called the ruling “astonishing” and several Supreme Court justices said it trampled human rights including the presumption of innocence.

“Justice is not up for consultation,” said Justice Javier Laynez Potisek. Another, Norma Piña Hernández, said it was her duty “not to yield to more pressures” than those that came with being a constitutional judge.

But Arturo Zaldívar, court president, said it was not the institution’s job “to be a closed door but a bridge allowing people to intervene in major decisions.”

Jesús Silva Herzog, a prominent political commentator, said Zaldívar was proposing “the court’s suicide” and tweeted: “The president’s intimidation worked.”

Hours before the ruling, López Obrador said during his daily news conference that it would be “lamentable” if the court did not back his bid to allow the people to decide whether presidents from 1988 to 2018 should be tried for corruption, social inequality, violence “and many other calamities.”

He had earlier this week vowed to seek to change the constitution if the Supreme Court voted against him.

Images shared on social media showed a crowd of government supporters gathered near the court chanting: “We did it.”

José Miguel Vivanco, executive director for the Americas at advocacy group Human Rights Watch, called it a “constitutional delirium in Mexico.”

“If they have evidence against ex-presidents, they should be investigated. Otherwise, there’s nothing to investigate. They cannot turn the country into a Roman Circus,” he tweeted.

John Ackerman, a law professor at the National Autonomous University and prominent supporter of the president, who is also married to the minister in charge of eradicating corruption from Mexico’s public administration, said López Obrador’s “openness to citizen participation … is not ‘institutional erosion’ but precisely the contrary, it empowers democracy and … helps break with the old entrenched, corrupt practices.”

The poll proposal will go to Congress, where the president has a majority in both houses.

Mexico City airport upgrade to make it less commercial, more ‘humanist’

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October 1, 2020

The federal government intends to make the Mexico City airport less commercial and more comfortable for everyday passengers.

Prepared by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT), the 2020-2024 plan for the airport says the facility should no longer be thought of as a commercial center.

During the previous federal government, commercial activities at the airport were prioritized over making the facility comfortable and user-friendly for passengers and employees, the SCT said.

“Employees lack tools to do their jobs and poor signage causes more confusion than certainty,” the ministry said. “In order to counteract this situation, the experience of users will be improved.”

The Benito Juárez International Airport, which is operated by the government-owned corporation Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares, will be transformed to make it more functional, comfortable and sustainable, according to the 2020-2024 plan.

The airport will also be made more user-friendly for vulnerable groups of people such as the disabled, the SCT said.

Waiting rooms will be expanded, escalators, elevators and moving walkways will be replaced, baggage carousels and air conditioning systems will be upgraded and taxi and bus pick-up and drop-off zones will be made safer and more efficient in addition to a range of other projects.

To guide the airport’s transformation, management will consult with experts and take the views of airlines, taxi companies and security firms into account, the document said. The SCT said that airport management will not yield to interest groups, which it charged have dictated airport decisions for decades.

The ministry asserted that there are too many premium lounges in the airport’s two terminal buildings and not enough areas where equal conditions are guaranteed for all passengers.

The airport can be part of the so-called “fourth transformation” the government says it is carrying out by being a “humanist and social” facility, the SCT said. The economic inequality and exclusion established there in recent decades must come to an end, it added.

The document, which has been approved and submitted to the National Commission for Regulatory Improvement, said the airport’s funding and profits between 2013 and 2018 totaled more than 64.7 billion pesos (US $3 billion at today’s exchange rate).

The airport was allocated “extraordinary resources for the permanent modernization of infrastructure but abandonment prevailed,” it said.

“Essential resources were approved for the rehabilitation of aeronautical facilities while the terminal buildings and support areas were forgotten.”

The document charged that the quality of services offered at the airport to passengers was diminished during the previous government, which envisioned that the facility would close once the (now-canceled) new Mexico City airport was built.

The government is building a new airport at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base north of the capital but sees the existing airport, as well as that in Toluca, México state, as part of a three-prong plan to meet future demand for airline services to and from the greater Mexico City area.

Source: El Economista (sp)

New warning labels now required on packaged foods

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October 1, 2020

The label warns of high calories and sugar content on this drink. — The label warns of high calories and sugar content of this drink.

Mexico’s new food warning label law, which requires black informational octagons to be placed on packaged foods that are high in saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, sodium or calories, went into effect on Thursday.

Businesses have until December 1 to phase in the new warning labels to avoid fines.

In addition, the law states that products containing caffeine and sweeteners must bear warning labels indicating that they should not be consumed by children, and products with warning labels cannot include children’s characters, animations, cartoons, or images of celebrities, athletes or pets on their packaging.

The aim of the new requirements, similar to programs already in place in Chile, Peru and Uruguay, is to provide Mexicans with information about the food they eat in an effort to curb obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other ailments related to a poor diet.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) praises Mexico’s new labeling system as the best yet. “It has reached the highest level of excellence that we have today. Mexico has become an example for the world in this matter,” PAHO official Fabio da Silva Gomes said.

Simón Barquera of the Ministry of Health said that a study has shown that the resulting dietary changes would represent “a savings of US $1.8 billion in health care costs in five years if the effect is sustained, and prevent 1.3 million people from becoming obese.” The government says the new program will reduce daily consumption by 37 calories per person.

In Chile, the Ministry of Health reported significant achievements in 2019, three years after implementing its labeling program. Purchases of sugary drinks dropped 25%, packaged desserts 17% and breakfast cereals 14%. An average reduction of 25% in the consumption of sugar was also noted.

The new warnings will not replace the traditional nutrient breakdown per portion size usually placed on the back of packages, information which Barquera characterizes as misleading and useless.

“They are not understood and do not allow a quick decision to be made when comparing, in addition, they are based on arbitrary portions. It is one of the worst strategies clearly interfered with by industries with commercial interests,” Barquera says of the familiar labels.

Critics of the new system say the obesity problem is also due to unhealthy yet traditional Mexican street food, an idea health care officials reject, saying that ultra-processed foods, which account for 25% of Mexicans’ diets, are to blame.

PAHO reports the country is fourth in the world in annual sales of ultra-processed foods and beverages per capita, which the United Nations describes as “the engine of the obesity epidemic.”

“If we remove the ultra-processed ones, the traditional Mexican diet is perfect and balanced and complies with the World Health Organization’s recommendations,” PAHO advisor Silva Gomes said.

As for complaints that small businesses will suffer and thousands of jobs will be lost if Mexicans change their eating habits, Barquera said that won’t be the case. “In Chile, there were no economic problems. The reason is that the consumer continues to buy, only that a change is made to healthier products. Those are the big winners,” he says.

The Mexican Council on the Consumer Products Industry, ConMéxico, agrees that labeling in Chile did not have a major impact on businesses producing unhealthy food, although it questions the efficacy of the program.

“All the products affected at the beginning recovered because the effect was lost, there were so many stamps that the consumer began to ignore them, and they stopped being an element of nutritional information,” its director said.

Source: BBC (sp)

At US $3.57 billion, August remittances up 5.3% over last year

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October 1, 2020

Mexicans working abroad continue to send significant amounts of money home despite the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Remittances totaled US $3.57 billion in August, according to the Bank of México, a 5.3% increase compared to the same month last year and 1.2% more than July.

Between January and August, Mexicans working abroad, mainly in the United States, sent $26.39 billion home, the highest total on record for the first eight months of a year. The amount is 9.3% higher than the first eight months of 2019.

Remittances hit an all-time high in March at just over $4 billion and reached their second best level ever in June at $3.54 billion.

But the June level was exceeded by $30 million in August, meaning that month is now the second most significant in terms of money sent to Mexico from abroad.

According to the central bank, an average of $323 was sent in each remittance in August. The amount was the same as each average transfer in July.

Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs, said in September that the economic downturn and rise in unemployment in the United States due to the pandemic didn’t appear to have impacted the flow of money south of the border.

Generous income support programs in the United States, the exchange rate and a deep contraction of economic activity and employment in Mexico may have acted as both “push and pull drivers” of dollar remittances, he said.

GDP contracted almost 20% in the second quarter and millions of people lost their jobs, making remittances even more important to the Mexican economy and low-income families, many of which have family members working abroad.

President López Obrador has described Mexican migrants as “heroes” and praised them in his second annual report for increasing their transfer of remittances to family in Mexico during the difficult economic times.

Source: Milenio (sp) Reuters (sp)

On list of Covid deaths per capita, Mexico is No. 10 at 61.5 per 100,000

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October 1, 2020

Coronavirus deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. johns hopkins university/bbc

With more than 77,000 confirmed Covid-19 fatalities, Mexico has the fourth highest pandemic death toll in the world after the United States, Brazil and India.

But in mortality rate (deaths per capita) rankings, Mexico fares somewhat better: it is No. 10, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University or No. 12 if the micro-states of San Marino and Andorra are included on the list.

Data shows that San Marino and Andorra rank first and fifth for Covid-19 deaths per capita but the tiny European states have only recorded 42 and 53 fatalities, respectively.

Among larger countries, Peru has the highest mortality rate with 101.3 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Belgium and Bolivia follow with rates of 87.7 and 70.2 respectively.

Six other countries have higher mortality rates than Mexico. They are Brazil, Spain, Chile, Ecuador, the United Kingdom and the United States. Those countries have recorded between 63 and 69 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to official data.

Based on the official death toll of 77,646, Mexico’s rate is currently 61.5 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants.

With regard to case fatality rate, Mexico ranks third among 168 countries listed by Johns Hopkins University.

With 743,216 confirmed coronavirus cases and 77,646 Covid-19 deaths as of Wednesday, Mexico’s fatality rate is currently 10.4 per 100 cases.

Only Yemen, which has a fatality rate of 28.9, and Italy, with a rate of 11.4, have recorded more deaths among people confirmed to have Covid-19.

Mexican authorities have blamed the high fatality rate here on the prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity, but Mexico’s lower testing rates would also have an effect.

With regard to confirmed coronavirus cases, Mexico ranks ninth for sheer numbers behind the United States, India, Brazil, Russia, Colombia, Peru, Spain and Argentina.

Former health minister Chertorivski: government has not responded to suggestions for fighting the virus.

As for testing, Mexico has the 29th lowest rate among 31 counties included in a graph published by the German statistics portal Statista.

Only 15,102 people per 1 million inhabitants have been tested for Covid-19 in Mexico, the government having focused on testing people with serious coronavirus-like symptoms, meaning that many mild and asymptomatic cases have gone undetected.

Mexico’s Covid-19 death toll is also widely believed to be much higher than official statistics indicate, mainly due to the low testing rate.

Six former federal health ministers called on the government to ramp up testing in a document published last month that set out a new national strategy to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Salomón Chertorivski, one of the ex-ministers, said in an interview Wednesday that it was regrettable that the government hasn’t provided a formal response, although Hugo López-Gatell – who has described widespread testing as “useless, impracticable and very expensive” – publicly mocked and criticized it.

“We haven’t had a response from the government. … We fulfilled … our responsibility to continue contributing to the public debate. In any democracy, in the spirit of plurality, [the contribution] should be well-received but in effect we haven’t been heard,” Chertorivski said.

He said the document he and the other former health ministers penned is not of a political nature but rather contains a “serious analysis” of the situation Mexico faces and a strategy to control the pandemic.

“[It’s] a document that speaks of facts, of evidence, there are no adjectives. [It contains] a serious analysis and timely recommendations. Anyone who reads them will realize that the recommendations [widespread testing, mandatory use of face masks, localized lockdowns] are obvious,” Chertorivski said.

Countries that have had success in controlling their coronavirus outbreaks have implemented them and the World Health Organization promotes them but in Mexico “we’ve decided to ignore them,” he said.

Chertorivski, health minister in the final year of the 2006-12 government led by Felipe Calderón, noted that the government’s “catastrophic scenario” – 60,000 Covid-19 deaths – became a reality more than a month ago and asserted that the strategy to manage the pandemic must change.

“The catastrophic scenario came true long ago. … We’re approaching 80,000 official deaths, there could be more because we know about the excess death [reports]. Unfortunately, we could be talking about 240,000 direct and indirect deaths,” he said.

“This should make us move in a different way.”

Source: BBC Mundo (sp), Milenio (sp)

Mexico hopes US, Canadian visitors will reactivate tourism this winter

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October 1, 2020

Mexico hopes US and Canadian visitors, weary of lockdown, will look south. — Mexico hopes US and Canadian citizens, weary of lockdown, will look south.

Authorities are counting on tourists from the United States and Canada in the coming months to reactivate the sector, which has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

In a joint press conference Wednesday night with Deputy Health Minister and coronavirus point man Hugo López-Gatell, Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco noted that vacationers from the U.S. and Canada make up 66.4% of all visitors to Mexico, whose proximity makes the country a prime destination.

He said the coronavirus pandemic has changed the way people look at travel. Tourists are reevaluating travel plans and opting for destinations that can be reached by flights of no longer than 4 1/2 hours, which could make Mexico a prime vacation spot.

Mexico is potentially easily accessible from 22 Canadian cities, Torruco said, including Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, Winnipeg and Regina with destinations such as Cancún, Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta and San José del Cabo.

Visitors from the United States, which eased a travel advisory on Mexico in mid-September, have even more options with 37 such routes possible from cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco to destinations like Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, Querétaro, Mexico City, Huatulco and Oaxaca.

While tourism in 2020 is down by around 50%, that could change before the end of the year as travelers weary of lockdown and looking to escape the colder months turn their attention south.

“There could be a pretty interesting rally, especially as Canadians have their winter season from late October to mid-April,” Torruco said.

Should the country move to a yellow light on Mexico’s coronavirus stoplight system by the end of this year, hotel occupancy rates could reach 42.8%, which is slightly higher than the 40.7% predicted two months ago under the same scenario, Torruco said.

If the country remains at an orange level through December, the occupancy estimate drops to 32.9%.

Last year Mexico welcomed 19.6 million international tourists, and projections for 2020 see that number dropping to 6.8 million. Torruco reports that 86% of tourists visit six destinations — Cancún, Mexico City, Playa del Carmen, Los Cabos, Nuevo Vallarta and Puerto Vallarta in order of popularity.

Overnight tourism along the border area, which saw 21.2 million visitors making quick trips into the country in 2019, is expected to drop to 12.3 million this year.

On October 5, Torruco announced the Tourism Ministry will present a strategy to encourage domestic tourism as well by promoting Pueblos Mágicos, or Magical Towns, as attractive destinations for Mexicans to visit.

In 2019, 102.6 million domestic tourists traveled to different destinations within the country. This year Torruco says 59 million Mexicans will travel within the country.

Torruco also announced that the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association is working with Mexico on health protocols to restart the cruise ship industry in November and December.

In 2019 nine million tourists visited Mexico as part of a cruise, a number that is projected to drop to just over three million this year. And whether the cruise industry will start back up any time soon remains to be seen.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced yesterday that they have extended a ban on cruises originating from U.S. ports to at least October 31.

Source: Sipse (sp), Axios (en)

AMLO announces new airport for Tulum, Quintana Roo

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October 1, 2020

Tulum will get an airport, although no details have been offered.

As part of efforts to stimulate the economy in Mexico’s south and southeast an airport will be built in Tulum, Quintana Roo, President López Obrador said Thursday.

“A new airport will be built in Tulum, it will help [the economy] a lot,” he told reporters at his regular news conference.

López Obrador didn’t provide any details about when the project might start or where in Tulum it would be located.

His announcement comes 10 years after former president Felipe Calderón announced that a 3.2-billion-peso airport would be built in the popular beach destination.

But the project never got off the ground and as a result most people travel to Tulum from Cancún, located about 130 kilometers north.

Before López Obrador’s announcement, the Quintana Roo representative of Fonatur, the National Tourism Promotion Fund, said that federal authorities were considering the construction of two new international airports to complement the Maya Train project, which is expected to be completed in 2022.

Raúl Bermúdez said that one of the facilities would be located in Tulum and the other in Mérida, Yucatán.

However, López Obrador’s announcement this morning may have caught authorities in Quintana Roo by surprise: Tourism Minister Marisol Vanegas said Wednesday that she had no knowledge of an airport in Tulum.

In addition to having an air link, Tulum will be connected to the Gulf of Mexico coast via Palenque, Chiapas, the president said, explaining that the Maya Train will run between those two cities and then on to Escárcega, Campeche, from the latter.

López Obrador, who says the Maya Train will spur economic and social development in Mexico’s long-neglected southeast, predicted that Quintana Roo will be one of the first states to recover from the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

“Its tourism activity is a creator and distributor of wealth,” he said.

“A lot of tourists arrive and there is economic growth. [Tourism] provides a lot of work for transportation, hotel and restaurant workers. [Quintana Roo] is very prosperous … in normal circumstances.”

If the Tulum airport is built, it will be the Caribbean coast state’s fourth airport. The commercial airports currently operating in Quintana Roo are located in Cancún, Chetumal and Cozumel, an island off the coast of Playa del Carmen.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp), Mega News (sp)

Drunk driver plows into baby shower, expectant mother loses child

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October 1, 2020

The baby shower in Coatzacoalcos came to a sad and sudden end.

A joyous occasion turned to tragedy on Monday in Veracruz when a drunk driver plowed into a crowd of people at a baby shower, injuring eight and causing the expectant mother to lose her unborn daughter at 39 weeks of pregnancy.

On Monday afternoon, Esmeralda Muñoz and her husband invited friends and family to their home in Coatzacoalcos to celebrate the imminent birth of their second child, a girl the couple had decided to call Yazmin. They had already begun stockpiling diapers for the little girl and had even picked out the outfit she would wear home from the hospital.

Guests gathered on the cordoned-off street outside the home which had been decorated with pink and white balloons to mark the occasion. A gift table had been set up with Yazmin’s name spelled out in large pink letters. A clown was hired to entertain the children.

The peaceful gathering was shattered around 6 p.m. when a 54-year-old man driving a pickup truck drove head-on into the crowd at a high rate of speed, running over at least seven people and killing a dog before ramming into a parked car where the vehicle came to a stop.

Neighbors were able to detain the driver, who appeared to be drunk, until police arrived.

Six women and a child under the age of 8 were taken to the hospital by emergency workers who encountered a chaotic scene littered with the injured, an overturned stroller and broken chairs and tables the truck left in its wake.

“The person came, he let himself come at us at full speed and if it had not been for the white car he would have killed us, he would have taken out all of us,” the clown told a reporter.

Although Esmeralda Muñoz was not directly hurt in the incident, the shock of what happened to friends and loved ones took its toll.

The following morning she began to experience abdominal pains and was taken to the hospital where Yazmin was pronounced dead just days before she was due to be born.

Later that day, Yazmin’s body was turned over to her family and a wake was held at the home where 24 hours earlier they were celebrating her upcoming birth. A tiny white casket was placed on a table adorned with gladiolas while Muñoz remained hospitalized.

Her mother fears that the driver will soon be released from jail because direct injuries from the crash were relatively minor.

“They told us that the man was going to get out in 48 hours and was only going to pay for injuries that could be verified. I have my other 11-year-old daughter bedridden, she can’t even move,” she said.

The driver, also a neighbor of the Muñoz family, was scheduled to appear before a judge on Thursday.

Source: Infobae (sp), La Silla Rota (sp)

Police clash with teachers in efforts to clear rail blockades

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October 1, 2020