Health minister promises free medications, specialty healthcare as of December 1

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October 1, 2020

Opposition members greeted Health Minister Alcocer, center, with signs reading 'Stop corruption' and 'Too much ineptitude.'

Medications and medical care at all public healthcare facilities including specialty hospitals will be free effective December 1, Health Minister Jorge Alcocer said Wednesday.

Speaking in the Senate, Alcocer said the government was complying with its commitment to make specialty health care free as of that date.

“We’re working so that it happens on that date or before if possible,” he said.

The government launched a new universal healthcare scheme known as Insabi in January but to date it has only provided free services at primary and secondary health care facilities, not tertiary level ones such as national health institutes and other highly-specialized hospitals.

Patients who qualify for the Insabi scheme and their family members have complained that they have had to purchase medications when hospitals should have provided them free of charge. Alcocer ensured that will no longer be the case by December 1.

The health minister acknowledged that providing free medical services at all levels of care will be expensive but stressed that the government sees spending in the health sector as an investment rather than a burden.

He said the government’s central aim is to reduce healthcare inequality by ensuring that all people without health insurance such as that provided by the Mexican Social Security Institute and the State Workers Social Security Institute can access free of charge all the medical services and medications they require.

Earlier in his Senate appearance, Alcocer defended the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in the face of harsh criticism and difficult questions from opposition party senators.

“The government response … has focused on saving lives,” he said, highlighting the various measures that were implemented to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Alcocer said that the government’s pandemic response has avoided a “collapse” of the health system and has taken people’s rights and dignity into account. (Unlike many countries in the region, a hard lockdown was never enforced in Mexico.)

The health minister said the government inherited a health system with incomplete infrastructure and a shortage of more than 200,000 workers but nevertheless quickly prepared it to receive an influx of coronavirus patients. In a few short months, 969 public hospitals were equipped to treat Covid patients, Alcocer said.

Services provided by tertiary level facilities such as national health institutes and other highly-specialized hospitals will become free.

An analysis published by Amnesty International at the start of September said that more health workers have died in Mexico after contracting Covid-19 than in any other country but the health minister rejected that was the case.

Citing per capita figures rather than sheer numbers, Alcocer said that Mexico ranked 12th for Covid-19 deaths among health workers, not first.

He asserted that new coronavirus case numbers have been on the wane for nine weeks and highlighted that half of the country’s 32 states are close to green light status according to the federal government’s stoplight system to assess the risk of infection.

(Sixteen states are currently considered yellow light “medium risk,” 15 are orange light “high risk” and one – Campeche – is green light “low risk.”)

During Alcocer’s appearance in the upper house, National Action Party Senator Alejandra Reynosa said that the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis constituted a “crime” given that so many people have lost their lives.

She asserted that the death toll is undoubtedly much higher than the official number, which as of Wednesday was 77,646.

Sylvana Beltrones of the Institutional Revolutionary Party asked Alcocer what it would take for the government to reconsider its strategy and undertake a widespread Covid-19 testing campaign. Would a death of toll 80,000 convince the government that its strategy is not working, she probed.

Verónica Delgadillo of the Citizens Movement party asked Alcocer how many more people would have to die before he and Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus czar, would resign.

She asked him why he had permitted “the errors and negligence” of López-Gatell and inquired: “Aren’t you ashamed to know Mexico has the highest mortality rate in the world?”

Acocer responded correctly that according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Mexico in fact has the 12th highest mortality rate (deaths per capita) in the world, although if the micro-states of San Marino and Andorra are excluded it ranks 10th.

Source: El Universal (sp), La Jornada (sp)

Fake companies used to syphon millions of pesos from federal programs

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MND Staff

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September 30, 2020

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Homes on this street in Monterrey were listed as the addresses of some of the shell companies.

Shell companies with links to drug traffickers were used to syphon millions of pesos from federal programs during the government of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, according to a report by the newspaper Reforma.

The Software Industry Development Program (Prosoft), established during the 2000-2006 presidency of Vicente Fox, was one of those targeted by the illicit scheme.

A network of illegal companies in Nuevo León received 152.8 million pesos (US $6.9 million at today’s exchange rate) from the government via the program, Reforma said.

The illegal companies were created out of thin air, the newspaper said, adding that people who lived in poor neighborhoods in and around Monterrey were listed as directors or shareholders without their knowledge.

Some of the shell companies vanished after they received government funding. Others still appear on suspicious company lists prepared by the federal tax agency SAT.

Prosoft distributed 3.3 billion pesos (US $149.2 million) to companies and individuals during Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 term, meaning that there was plenty of scope for corrupt activity.

It is unclear how much of that amount went to fake companies but in Nuevo León, where just under 338 million pesos was distributed, almost half of the funds distributed by Prosoft went to such firms.

Reforma and Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), an independent anti-graft group, revealed in an article published Tuesday that SAT has launched a money laundering and tax fraud probe into a network of at least 45 shell companies that operated in the northern state.

The network of companies was used by leaders of the Zetas drug cartel, the Peña Nieto administration and several state governments, Reforma and MCCI said. Some of those companies illegally siphoned Prosoft funds.

The United States Department of Treasury also detected that companies within the illicit network were involved in suspicious operations.

The Peña Nieto government, which was plagued by corruption scandals, allegedly made extensive use of shell companies to divert public money.

Eleven federal agencies allegedly diverted billions of pesos through shell companies between 2013 and 2014. Former cabinet minister Rosario Robles was arrested in connection with the so-called “Master Fraud,” which syphoned money via contracts with public universities. She remains in prison awaiting trial.

The Ministry of Defense during the Peña Nieto government allegedly paid almost 2 billion pesos to 45 shell companies to which it awarded supply contracts related to construction work at the cancelled Mexico City airport project.

Chief Auditor David Colmenares said earlier this year that there were was a question mark over the use of 50.94 billion pesos (US $2.2 billion) during 2018, the final year of the previous government’s six-year term.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Residents fined for filling Oaxaca city potholes: they didn’t have a permit

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Susy Buchanan

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September 30, 2020

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A vehicle encounters a pothole on a flooded Oaxaca city street.

Repair a pothole on a Oaxaca city street and you’re likely to get fined for it: filling baches, as they’re called, requires a permit.

Citizens who took it upon themselves to fix gaping holes in city streets were fined earlier this month for not having obtained the proper permits. Now they are demanding that authorities get the job done.

“We are an example of everything that a city should not be. A group of citizens covered a pothole and the municipal authority fined them,” said Jorge González Ilescas, a citizens’ representative. “The mayor has not visited this area because he has no intention of participating in its recovery.”

The municipal government’s efforts at patching the potholes amount to little more than filling them with dirt and stones, which is not a viable or lasting fix, citizens argue.

“There is not a single street in the city of Oaxaca, the metropolitan area of Xoxocotlán and Santa Lucía del Camino or San Jacinto Amilpas that is free of damage,” said Rubén, a taxi driver.

“We are waiting for the government’s response because it is the same everywhere. If we go through Nuño del Mercado it is ugly … the lower part of the IV Centenario bridge is a swimming pool. Periférico, Miguel Cabrera, Avenida Central and Manuel Ruiz, they are impassable,” he says, arguing that the temporary repairs the city does last only a few days.

“The main reasons why our streets are destroyed is first due to heavy rains, secondly because of the terrible work of previous administrations and because [the state water utility] does not do their job well,” Mayor Oswaldo García Jarquín said.

However, Governor Alejandro Murat made it clear this week that the responsibility for repairing city streets lies with the municipal government. “The potholes in the cities are the responsibility of the municipalities,” he said.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Violence continues in Guanajuato despite cartel boss’s capture

By

MND Staff

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September 30, 2020

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El Marro was captured in August after a long manhunt.

Guanajuato remains Mexico’s most violent state almost two months after the capture of the leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel (CSRL), a fuel theft, drug trafficking and extortion gang engaged in a turf war in the state with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

José Antonio Yépez Ortiz, better known as as “El Marro,” was taken into custody on August 2 after a long manhunt. He is currently in prison awaiting trial on a range of charges including kidnapping, fuel theft and organized crime.

Homicides declined 12.7% in August to 351 compared to 402 in July but have increased again this month.

Presenting crime data for August earlier this month, federal Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said that homicides had declined in Guanajuato since Yépez’s arrest and asserted that while the government couldn’t yet “sing victory” the situation was looking more positive in the Bajío region state.

But even with the almost 13% decline in homicides last month, Guanajuato still led the country for the crime. In the first eight months of the year, a total of 3,032 people were murdered in the state, a 33% increase compared to the same period of 2019, Mexico’s most violent year on record.

Roughly one in eight homicides in Mexico between January and August occurred in Guanajuato.

In the first 29 days of September, there were 356 homicide victims in Guanajuato, according to daily statistics published by the federal Security Ministry. Murders have spiked over the past week with about 120 victims, including 31 people who were killed on Sunday.

The government’s daily count tends to miss some homicides, which are later included in the National Public Security System’s monthly crime reports.

As a result, “it is very probable” that homicide numbers for Guanajuato in September will be about the same as July, according to security analyst Alejandro Hope.

Writing in the newspaper El Universal, Hope noted that there were a few weeks of “relative peace” after the arrest of El Marro and that August was the least deadly month in Guanajuato since last December.

But the “good streak” ended in September, he wrote. The analyst said that he doesn’t have a complete answer as to why the reduction in violence has not been maintained but provided some hypotheses.

Frame from a Santa Rosa cartel video in August advising the Jalisco cartel it was still in charge in Guanajuato.

Hope speculated that, as has occurred with other criminal groups, the “beheading” of the CSLR might have caused a dispute among gang members over who would succeed Yépez.

He also hypothesized that El Marro’s arrest caused a loss of discipline within the organization and in-fighting over control of fuel theft, drug trafficking and extortion revenue.

“At the same time, the breaking up of this group might have opened up a space for other groups (the Jalisco New Generation Cartel or maybe other local groups) to try to take over some of the illegal activities that El Marro’s people ran,” Hope wrote.

He said that another hypothesis is that the arrest of Yépez “did very little” to the organization he headed, either because El Marro wasn’t an all-powerful leader or because the CSRL has a more decentralized structure than the authorities think.

“In that scenario, the capture of Yépez would have only caused the group’s gunmen to lower their profile for a few weeks,” Hope wrote.

As soon as state and federal authorities reduced the pressure on the CSRL, its members might have returned to their criminal activities as they were carrying them out before El Marro’s arrest, the analyst hypothesized.

Hope said that a third explanation as to why the reduction in violence in Guanajuato has not been maintained is that the turf war between the CSRL and the CJNG never was its “efficient cause.”

“Maybe it was the trigger but stopped being the dominant dynamic long ago,” he wrote.

“That’s what happened in Ciudad Juárez a decade ago: the issue might have started as a conflict between cartels but a lot of scattered violence mounted on top of that – between [criminal] groups or not, involving gangs or not, in the prisons, in the streets, in homes and on public highways with the direct participation of multiple government agencies in the battle.”

In such a situation, arresting a single criminal leader does little to change the equation, Hope said, “especially if it is not accompanied by efforts at institutional reconstruction and prevention of violence.”

Whatever the explanation for the ongoing violence in Guanajuato – a report by the news website Infobae said that it has spiked recently because the new CSRL leader, a man nicknamed “El Azul,” rejected the CJNG’s attempts to strike a peace deal – “it is clear that the downfall of El Marro didn’t turn out to be the silver bullet that federal and state authorities expected,” Hope wrote.

“The drama of Guanajuato still has many chapters ahead.”

Source: Infobae (sp), Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp)

Covid has shut down 90,000 restaurants and more may follow: Canirac

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MND Staff

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September 30, 2020

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Restaurants that remain open must operate with limited capacity.

Ninety thousand restaurants have closed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and about 30,000 more could follow, according to the vice president of the national restaurant association Canirac.

Germán Gonzélez said Tuesday that the pandemic and associated restrictions could force the closure of a total of 122,000 restaurants.

Speaking at a press conference to promote an upcoming food expo, Gonzélez said that about 17,000 restaurants in the greater Mexico City metropolitan area have not reopened after being forced to close in March.

He said that a census last year found that there were about 600,000 restaurants in the country, 96% of which are small businesses such as family-run fondas (informal diners) and taquerías (taco restaurants). That means that the coronavirus pandemic has shut down 15% of all eateries across Mexico.

Gonzélez said that restaurant industry revenue has fallen 100 billion pesos (US $4.5 billion) in 2020, explaining that restaurants that are currently open have seen their income drop by an average of 60% compared to last year.

Authorities began allowing restaurants to reopen to sit-down customers in June but their capacity has been limited to 30% to 50% of normal levels in most states.

With fewer diners and lower revenue as a result, many restaurant owners have had to dip into their savings in order to continue operating, Gonzélez said.

“That’s difficult to maintain for long periods,” he added.

While restaurant owners are reaching into their own pockets to keep their existing establishments open, they have little money to invest in new eateries, Gonzélez said.

“If a company has to put up money every day to stay open, creating new investment projects is difficult,” he said.

The coronavirus pandemic has also ravaged Mexico’s normally lucrative tourism sector. Average hotel occupancy across the country is currently below 25% whereas at the same time last year it was between 60% and 70%, according to Luis Barrios, CEO of the City Express hotel chain.

Tourism revenue remains well below 2019 levels although passenger numbers at the Mexico City airport are slowly recovering.

As a result of the sharp decline in tourism income, “investment in new hotels is minimal and projects that are half completed have been postponed,” Barrios said, explaining that the hotel industry is focused on keeping existing properties open and has “no resources left over.”

Source: Reforma (sp)

Rape and murder of 3-year-old reignites chemical castration discussion

By

Susy Buchanan

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September 30, 2020

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A memorial for rape and murder victim Michel Aylin. — A memorial for Michel Aylin.

The rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl in Tepic, Nayarit, has revived debate in the state government on the merits of punishing sex offenders with chemical castration.

Michel Aylin was sexually abused and suffocated to death on Sunday while in the care of her stepfather, who took the girl’s lifeless body to the hospital. She was pronounced dead upon arrival, but medical staff noticed clear signs of repeated physical and sexual abuse on her body.

Both the stepfather and the child’s grandfather, who has a history of sexual abuse of a minor dating back to 2014, have been arrested as authorities investigate her molestation and death.

Nayarit Governor Antonio Echevarría García condemned the toddler’s death.

“The loss of life hurts in any case, but it goes deep when it comes to girls or boys,” he wrote on social media. “As a citizen, I join the demand for clarification of the case, demanding that the Attorney General’s Office carry out the necessary investigations and that whoever is responsible for this brutal crime be punished with the full weight of the law.”

If Rodolfo Pedroza Ramírez has his way, in Nayarit that could soon include chemically castrating that person.

Since March 2019, the National Action Party (PAN) deputy has voiced his support for including chemical castration in the state penal code as a punishment for people who rape women and children. The measure had stalled out but is seeing new support as outrage grows over what happened to Michel.

The topic has bounced around the halls of justice in Mexico for years, but no state has yet approved the practice.

Earlier this month Deputy José Juan Espinosa of Puebla proposed chemical castration for sex offenders in his state. “Enough of being lukewarm on combating perverse behaviors that hurt the children of our state,” the legislator posted to his Twitter account. “I understand the issue of human rights of criminals, but I think that we also have to think about the victims and try to control this type of behavior,” he said.

The human rights advocacy organization Human Rights Watch considers chemical castration, which uses hormones to lower testosterone levels and reduce men’s sex drive, a cruel and degrading form of corporal punishment, which the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights both prohibit.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Kids and Covid: avoiding both contagion and isolation-induced health issues

By

Sarah DeVries

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September 30, 2020

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On Mother’s Day this year, my 6-year-old daughter had a bit of a breakdown.

She doesn’t usually cry now that she’s an older kid — my theory is that she used up 90% of her allotted lifetime supply of tears during her first two years of life — so when she does, I know it’s about something serious, like the heartbreak of getting your feelings hurt or very real fear.

So what was the breakdown about? Well, a lot of things. Her father and I had separated a few months before, and I’d moved us into a new house. Shortly after I had the house all set up and finally ready to receive guests, coronavirus came sweeping through and kept us isolated there and unable to have company, something we both love that makes us feel normal and at home.

She missed her dad living in the same place as us, even though she saw him frequently. She missed her friends. She missed her school. She didn’t like the new, unfamiliar house. She missed the younger dog that always picked fights with the older dog who now lived with her aunt instead of with us. She shouted through tears of rage and desperation, “I HATE coronavirus!”

Eventually, I cried with her, and sitting with her on those back steps sobbing together on our patio has become, for me, the kind of painfully tender memory that sticks with you forever.

If you have children, you understand. The most succinct expression of that feeling was expressed by the grandmother of the main character in one of my favorite books, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: “Every tear you drop squeezes a cup uh blood outa mah heart.”

So what do we do with our children? If you’re me, you learn to be a little flexible, balancing the risk of contagion against the risk of isolation-induced mental and emotional health problems in young, pliable, sensitive brains.

Technically, my daughter should have been only with me since lockdown began if we’d been following the strictest set of guidelines. But keeping her from seeing her father is not something I’ve ever been willing to do: he’s a great dad, and they love each other.

It’s not just that I’m a reasonable co-parent (though I am a reasonable co-parent). First, being stuck at home just with me is very boring. While she can be shy at first, the fact that she was actually an extrovert was immediately evident when we enrolled her in daycare at the age of 8 months. She went from constant crying at home — did she just hate being a baby? — to all smiles when surrounded by friendly peers in a matter of days. My working theory is that she wanted more adventure than her family’s arms could provide her.

Plus, I work at home. I love my daughter more than anything and I love being with her, but when she’s with me, very little of what I need to do gets done. And if I want to put food on the table, things need to get done. My normal pre-pandemic pattern of working while she was at school has now practically been reversed: not only do I need to be present for at least popping in and out of her classes to help, but she needs my computer in order to take her online classes.

So far, so good-ish. When two well-meaning parents calculate risk differently, however, things can get sticky.

My daughter sees and interacts with several members of her dad’s side of the family and another (extended) family close to him. According to him, they have formed a “pod” of what I think are about 10 people who (supposedly) only and exclusively spend time with one another. I simply don’t believe that they can be 100% confident that no one in their circle has had any contact without “outsiders,” but honestly, I don’t begrudge them needing the contact and have not tried to insist on him keeping my daughter completely isolated.

I try to base my precautions and worries on statistics more than on fear. This means researching statistics on causes of death by age group, a macabre and terrifying real-life thought experiment if there ever was one. I don’t always succeed at staying calm, but science is certainly a better benchmark than my anxieties.

For my daughter’s age group the risk of death is higher for the flu and pneumonia than Covid, which most people, I think, know (once you get to the age of 15, the risk of dying from Covid becomes the higher one). One of the few mercies of this disease is that it seems mostly to spare children, if not from infection, at least from serious complications and death as a result.

Throw in the fact that the chances of dying in a car accident are much higher even than both of those combined, and you can guess why I’ve been known to chase after the car to make sure she has her seatbelt on with the kind of urgency that many think I should be feeling about her tiny face mask and antibacterial gel (to be clear, those are also required).

It’s not only about the children’s health, of course: children interact with older, more vulnerable adults, and much of the control of their movement and activity is just as much about protecting their elders.

But like putting a child in a car, it’s a risk people take because the benefit of important needs met is determined to be worth it. Face masks and gel are the seatbelts, but we all know that there are no guarantees for any of it.

When she’s with me, things are a bit more boring, because our own “pod” is much smaller: we have one little friend who lives close by that we go to play with sometimes. We go on walks. We’ve visited with one other family that’s stayed isolated, and we don’t hug, kiss, or shake hands with others. Mostly, though, we just hang out at home.

But my daughter is happy.

Are we taking the absolute strictest precautions? No, we are not. But we’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, either: pretty good is better than giving up because perfection can’t be achieved. And in the end, our daughter’s happiness and emotional health is just as important as her physical health. Like everyone, we’re just trying to make it through.

Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.

Group of young men who serve Catholic Church has origins in Franciscan friars

By

Joseph Sorrentino

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September 30, 2020

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Los Varones prepare to go to work cleaning the churchyard.

Los Varones is a group of 14 young men in San Gregorio Atlapulco, Mexico City, who dedicate a year or more to serving the Catholic Church, a group that is the only one of its kind in Mexico, and perhaps the world.

The young men spend months in rigorous physical and spiritual training and, during Holy Week, endure periods of fasting and silence. “It is not easy,” admitted Ricardo Castro, a member for two years, “but one does it with faith.”

There’s very little written about their history, but there are snippets and some oral history that allow them to be better understood.

When Franciscan friars arrived in San Gregorio in 1555, the land had already been occupied for thousands of years. There’s a Neolithic site in an ejido known as El Japón that’s 4,000 years old (they were hunter-gatherers) and ruins in the hills that are at least 2,000 years old.

The hills were occupied by two groups of Mexicas and the lowland areas known as the chinampas were occupied by two groups of Alcohuas. They were Nahua, and had a warrior culture.

Members of Los Varones in a Good Friday procession.

Los Varones got their name from those Franciscan friars, an order that was founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. He was known as El Santo Varón, and the order is often referred to as Los Santos Varones.

Los Varones may be translated as “The Young Men” but in this case it has a deeper connotation of someone who is chaste and serious.

“Franciscans arrived in [San Gregorio in] the 16th century and they were really the first Varones,” said Arturo Galicia Carrasco who was a member of the group several years ago. “Probably in the early 17th century, they started using young men from the pueblo.”

Although firmly rooted in the Catholic religion, the group contains elements that can also be traced to indigenous groups that occupied the region in pr-Hispanic times (this mixing of Catholic and indigenous beliefs is referred to as Popular Religion).

The training Los Varones undergo today is in some ways similar to the military training undertaken by Mexica warriors in a school for children of the nobility. Los Varones need the training because during Holy Week they carry large statues through the pueblo for hours.

“We prepare for that by carrying a heavy table,” said Octavio Flores, a 15-year-old who has been in Los Varones for two years. “We run, do push-ups and pull-ups, we walk without shoes. Sometimes we put another person on our back and climb stairs.”

Los Varones are busy during Easter Week. Here they are in a procession on Holy Thursday.

Los Varones have a number of responsibilities to perform during the year. They maintain the gardens in front of the church, clean various statues and also clean some of the pueblo’s chapels. It’s a sizable time commitment.

“We are together Saturdays and Sundays for the whole year,” said Alberto Casas Garcia, the group’s president. “It is like we are family.” Members also spend more time in prayer and, especially during the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday — the cuaresma — attend more masses.

All members must be single. “If I want to marry,” said Castro, “I must leave the group.”

New members, called aspirantes, may ask to join Los Varones or, if someone is noticed to be especially pious, may be approached by someone in the group. At times during their training or while doing work with Los Varones, aspirantes must walk barefoot.

“That can be difficult,” admitted Eduardo Huerta Galicia, “But it prepares us … it is to purify oneself.” Going barefoot may harken back to the training of Mexica warriors and also to Franciscan friars, who often went barefoot to show their humility.

Given the commitment and the rigors of the training it’s a little surprising, especially these days, that there are still young men who want to be members of Los Varones. And even after serving for a year they want to continue.

Castro has been a member for two years now and doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. “They are my brothers,” he said. “It is not only for Easter Week, we are together all year … The group is now part of me. I know one day I will leave but I do not want to. The most important reason we do this is to be close to God. That is the most beautiful thing.”

Joseph Sorrentino is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily. He writes from his home in San Gregorio.

Blocking access to beaches could net fine of over 1 million pesos

By

MND Staff

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September 30, 2020

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Property owners who block access to beaches could soon incur fines of more than 1 million pesos.

The Senate unanimously approved a reform to the General Law on National Assets on Monday that sets fines ranging from 260,640 pesos to 1.04 million pesos (US $11,800 to $47,200) for owners of coastal properties who prevent, restrict, obstruct or place conditions on access to beaches. By law all beaches in Mexico are public.

Fines can be issued if fences, barriers or buildings prevent entry to a beach or if property owners, hotel security staff or other hotel personnel block access when there is not an alternative public path to the coastline.

Repeat offenders could be stripped of permits that allow them to access the beach from their properties.

“The restriction of access to beaches … by owners of properties adjacent to the federal maritime land zone represents an act of discrimination against citizens,” said Mónica Fernández, a senator with the ruling Morena party.

She said that some owners of coastal properties treat the beach as their own private land when in fact it belongs to the nation.

Antonio García, a senator with the Democratic Revolution Party and president of the upper house’s tourism committee, said the reform will help to put an end to the discriminatory practices of some property owners.

He also said that it will strengthen the tourism industry, which has been decimated this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re guaranteeing the right to recreation and also strengthening the tourism industry. … The tourism industry is the sector that has been hit the hardest by the pandemic; more than 10,000 small businesses have closed … due to a lack of economic activity,” García said.

After approval by the Senate, the reform was sent to President López Obrador for his endorsement prior to publication in the government’s official gazette.

Hotel owners have previously been warned by the government that their properties could be closed and demolished if they don’t comply with orders to grant access to public beaches.

The director of the federal office of maritime law zones said last December that one hotel project in Cancún, Quintana Roo, was demolished because it would have blocked public access to the beach.

In February this year more than 1,000 people gathered outside a beach club in Playa del Carmen to protest the infringement of citizens’ access to the country’s beaches.

The protest followed the arrest of a couple who had refused to buy food and drinks from Mamita’s Beach Club while they were enjoying the white sand and turquoise water of the Caribbean coast.

Source: El Universal (sp), Sin Embargo (sp)

All-women police division: ‘Abortion Day marchers attacked us without reason’

By

Susy Buchanan

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September 30, 2020

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Guadalupe Hernández of the Ateneas squad says she was struck by a hammer.

Mexico City policewomen responding to Monday’s International Safe Abortion Day protest say they were attacked with Molotov cocktails and hammers without reason in an hours-long skirmish with abortion-rights activists.

“It was the demonstration with the most direct attacks on us. They did not care that we were women and attacked us like that when they claimed to be our defenders. They directly threw Molotov cocktails at us and hit me with a hammer, they didn’t mind hitting you in the head,” said Guadalupe Hernández, deputy director of the Environmental Police, a detachment that is part of the all-women Ateneas squad that was in charge of policing the march.

An estimated 1,000 women participated in the demonstration, which they hoped would end in the zócalo, or city square, where another group of protesters demanding President López Obrador’s resignation has been camped out since last week.

Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said police asked that marchers hand over objects that could be used as weapons before entering the square, but they refused to do so and their access was blocked.

A small contingent of irate protesters then attacked shield-bearing police with metal pipes, paint, sticks, rocks, hammers, and Molotov cocktails, authorities say.

Sheinbaum said 44 police officers were injured in the clash.

Hernández said the tendons in her hand were injured during the demonstration. “We only asked that they march in peace and out of respect They hurt us and attacked us without reason. The only thing left for us was to protect ourselves, but we did not deserve the attack,” she said.

Ateneas’ deputy director Gabriela Torres Sánchez said the attacks began with protesters hurling a Molotov cocktail at police, setting 10 officers on fire. Ateneas officers do not carry any kind of weapon, she said, and although police have been accused of using tear gas on marchers, authorities insist the chemical cloud that was seen came from fire extinguishers as police sought to defend themselves.

“The only thing they did was attack, break glass and hit colleagues who are also women, mothers,” she said.

Yesterday, President López Obrador praised Sheinbaum’s handling of the demonstration, saying her administration acted with “great responsibility, with great prudence.”

He also appealed to activists to keep their protests peaceful. “You cannot solve anything with the use of violence, that is not advisable. You cannot confront violence with violence, you cannot put out a fire with fire,” he said. “You have to fight peacefully and that is the only thing that we recommend.”

Source: El Universal (sp)