A mob went on the ramapage Wednesday night in Venustiano Carrranza, burning houses and vehicles.
Hundreds of people took to the streets in Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, Wednesday night after rumors spread on social media that the government was trying to kill them.
Around midnight Wednesday and into the early hours of today, residents went on a rampage provoked by false reports that the municipal government was using drones to spray a deadly chemical at residents who do not believe that the coronavirus exists.
Angry mobs of citizens armed with sticks and stones looted an Elektra department store and burned down the home of Mayor Amando Trujillo Ancheyta, that of his in-laws, as well as the residence of Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandón’s elderly mother, who escaped the blaze unharmed.
Streets were blocked off and vehicles belonging to medical personnel were looted and burned.
Residents were enraged by social-distancing measures and the municipal government’s crackdown on those who refused to follow sanitary guidelines as confirmed cases of the coronavirus mounted.
The message disseminated on WhatsApp and Facebook said that a community member had shot down a drone and discovered it was carrying a box of white powder, said to be Paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide.
Some residents said that the mayor was using the herbicide to kill them, decried the existence of the coronavirus and believe that a local saint, “El Señor del Pozo,” would protect them from sickness, just as he is believed to have cured a woman of leprosy in the 1690s.
Cancún hopes to assure travelers that it's a safe destination.
As Cancún and the Mexican Caribbean prepare to reopen for tourists after suffering an estimated US $1 billion in lost revenue, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has given the destination its safety stamp of approval.
The WTTC has announced that the Mexican Caribbean will be the first destination in the Americas to receive a newly created “Safe Travels” global safety and hygiene certification, backed by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and more than 200 CEOs in the tourism sector.
The region joins cities in Saudi Arabia, Portugal and Spain that have adopted globally standardized protocols recognized by the WTTC, with the hope that the certification will increase travelers’ confidence in the approved destinations.
The stamp will be offered to hotels, restaurants, airlines, cruise lines, tour operators, restaurants, shops, transportation services and airports that adopt the WTTC’s guidelines.
“We have learned from past crises that global standard protocols and consistency provide confidence for the traveler. Our new global safety stamp is designed to help rebuild consumer confidence worldwide,” the WTTC said in a press release.
“We appreciate being one of the first destinations to receive this certification from [the WTTC],” Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín González said. “The state authorities and tourism companies have worked as a team to guarantee the trust and safety of tourists.”
Major tourism operators are hopeful that the industry can rebound. “We see the early signs of our industry’s resiliency, but we also believe that restoring consumer confidence is the greatest accelerant to increasing traveler demand,” says TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer, who applauded the WTTC’s initiative. “Safety has always been top a priority for travelers, and the need to feel safe will only become more important in the months and years ahead.”
The WTTC safe travel protocols were developed in collaboration with the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the International Air Transport Association, the Airport Council International and the Cruise Lines International Association.
Covid-19 death projections by MIT for Mexico, the US and Canada. The figures have gone up since the chart was created earlier Thursday.
Mexico’s coronavirus death toll will soar well above 100,000 by September 1, according to a model developed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) data scientist that predicts fatalities will peak in August.
Developed by Youyang Gu using machine learning techniques in combination with the SEIR epidemiological model, the model is predicting as of Thursday morning that 136,769 people in Mexico will have lost their lives to Covid-19 by September 1.
The figure is more than 15 times the current official death toll.
In a worst case scenario, coronavirus fatalities in Mexico would total 215,212 by September 1, according to the MIT model, while in a best case scenario the death toll would reach 39,775 by that date.
The model predicts that Covid-19 deaths will peak on August 9 and 10 with 2,064 fatalities on both dates.
It also predicts that 19.44 million people – about one in six Mexicans – will have contracted the new coronavirus by September 1. In a worst case scenario, 30.3 million people will have been infected by that date.
The model estimates that 2.16 million people in Mexico have already been infected, a figure more than 27 times higher than the current official tally.
It predicts that new infections will peak between July 18 and 25 with more than 250,000 people projected to contract the coronavirus each day in the weeklong period.
The predictions make for sober reading as Mexico enters the fourth month of its Covid-19 pandemic with more than 8,000 people already having lost their lives to the disease.
The federal Health Ministry reported an additional 463 coronavirus-related fatalities on Wednesday, lifting the death toll to 8,597. The number of deaths reported was the third highest on a single day after 501 on Tuesday and 479 on Friday last week.
However, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell explained that not all the deaths reported at the nightly coronavirus press briefings occurred in the previous 24 hours. He said that the fatalities reported each night are indicative of the number of deaths that were confirmed in the previous 24 hours and consequently reported to the federal Health Ministry by state authorities.
The daily tally of Covid-19 cases and deaths. The latter is not necessarily the number of deaths that occurred each day, but the number confirmed. milenio
Given that test results may not be known until days after a suspected Covid-19 patient dies, a fatality confirmed to have been caused by the disease might not be reported by the federal Health Ministry until well after it occurred.
López-Gatell said that while the highest number of Covid-19 deaths was reported on Tuesday this week, the highest number of fatalities actually occurred on May 15. He said that 261 coronavirus patients died on that date but only 48 of the fatalities were confirmed the same day and consequently reported by the Health Ministry on May 16.
The other 213 deaths were reported on subsequent days, he said. López-Gatell said that the second and third highest number of Covid-19 deaths occurred on May 14 and 18, with 258 and 252 patients, respectively, succumbing to the disease on those dates.
Of the 463 Covid-19 fatalities reported by the Health Ministry on Wednesday night, only 62 occurred in the previous 24 hours, he said.
Given that the Health Ministry has reported more than 261 deaths – the May 15 peak – on 10 separate days, including five on which more than 400 were reported, the number of deaths reported on several other days must have been much lower than the actual number of fatalities that occurred in the previous 24 hours.
During the past two weeks, the number of Covid-19 deaths reported by the Health Ministry on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays has been significantly lower than in preceding days, seemingly indicating that there is a delay in confirming and/or reporting deaths over the weekend.
In any case, Mexico’s official death toll has risen rapidly over the past month, increasing from 1,434 on April 27 to 8,597 yesterday, a 500% increase.
More than a quarter of the total deaths – 2,313 – occurred in Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter, but several media reports based on a range of evidence including death certificates issued in the capital claim that fatalities are being drastically underreported by authorities.
López-Gatell has acknowledged that Covid-19 has killed more people than official statistics show but rejects any suggestion that the government is deliberately underreporting deaths.
In addition to the more than 8,500 people confirmed to have lost their lives to Covid-19, 727 fatalities are suspected to have been caused by the disease but have not yet been confirmed, Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía told reporters on Wednesday night.
He also reported 3,463 additional confirmed coronavirus cases, the highest single-day increase to Mexico’s case tally since the virus was first detected in Mexico at the end of February. The figure is indicative of the positive test results reported in the preceding 24 hours, Alomía said.
A total of 78,023 people have now tested positive since the beginning of the pandemic. Alomía said that 15,592 cases – one in five of the total – are considered active, an increase of 874 compared to Tuesday.
He also said that there are 33,566 suspected cases of Covid-19 across the country.
Almost 245,000 people have now been tested for coronavirus in Mexico, a figure that equates to about 1,900 tests per one million inhabitants.
Mexico’s testing rate is about 40 times lower than Spain’s, 25 times lower than that of the United States and more than two times lower than the rate in Brazil, according to data published by the German statistics portal Statista.
Technicians conduct Covid tests at a laboratory in Hermosillo.
Panicked citizens in Sonora have responded to reports of increased cases of Covid-19 by flocking to certified private laboratories to be tested.
Laboratories in Hermosillo and other cities in the state reported that the crowds have exhausted their daily testing capacities in recent days.
Worried residents begin to line up in their cars around 7:00 a.m. and wait for laboratory staff to come to their windows and take the necessary samples.
Costs of coronavirus tests at private labs in the state currently range from 3,000 to 8,000 pesos (US $135-$360).
The laboratory overload is a response to recent reports from the federal and state Health Ministries that rates of both confirmed cases and deaths from the disease are on the rise.
The most recent data released by the Sonora Health Ministry reveal that there are 1,809 confirmed cases and 139 people have died from Covid-19 in the state.
Federal Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell announced that the transmission curve in Hermosillo is expected to peak on June 4, meaning the city will see elevated rates of cases and deaths for months afterward.
“My message is this: if we don’t reduce mobility, we’re not going to have a reduction in infections. The technical report the mathematicians shared with us shows that in the case of Hermosillo, the acme of the epidemic curve will occur on June 4 and the epidemic there will propagate until the first week of August,” said López-Gatell.
More than half a million Mexicans are without power after the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) cut their service for not paying their bills.
Across the country, 543,128 customers didn’t pay their electric bills that were due May 12.
Most of those cut off were customers in México state, Mexico City, Jalisco, Michoacán, Puebla and Guerrero.
CFE director Manuel Bartlett had warned that there would be no deferrals or forgiveness of electricity debt incurred during the coronavirus pandemic, pointing out that the CFE still had to meet a payroll for some 90,000 workers as well as other expenses to keep the federal utility up and running.
Power consumers have noted a considerable uptick in their bimonthly bills due to stay-at-home measures enacted late last March, as people remaining in their homes tend to use electrical appliances more.
One CFE customer reported his regular 400-peso (US $18) electric bill jumped to 1,500 pesos (US $67) due to self-isolation measures.
This has caused protests in various parts of the country, where citizens are asking the federal government to suspend power cuts due to non-payment during the health and economic crisis.
In Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, residents first petitioned the CFE to defer payments in early May and received no response, so they protested outside the electric utility’s office on Wednesday, as citizens did in 10 communities across the state
“At no time have we said that we do not want to pay,” said local activist Moisés Hernández Lozano. “We want them not to cut it off and in some way charge us later or find an alternative but not cut it.”
In Morelia, Michoacán, politicians are lobbying the CFE to allow households and agricultural businesses to defer payments for 12 months, free of interest and surcharges.
“There are sick people, there are people who do not have money to pay, and we are not asking that it not be paid, what we are asking is that the payment be deferred, that there be no reconnection costs or fines and that cuts be avoided,” said federal Deputy Armando Tejeda Cid.
The CFE’s policy is in line with that of the federal government with regard to the payment of taxes. President López Obrador has repeatedly insisted that there would be no deferrals or tax breaks during the coronavirus emergency.
Parents protest outside the Ministry of Health in Mexico City.
Nine parents of children with cancer began a hunger strike outside the offices of the federal Health Ministry in Mexico City on Wednesday to protest the shortages of cancer medications that have threatened their children’s chances for survival for at least two years.
Reports of understaffed and understocked hospitals began to pop up last spring when the effects of federal budget cuts began to set in. Despite several promises from the federal government to solve the problem, parents are still having trouble getting the life-saving cancer drugs their children need.
The parents said they will continue their strike until Health Minister Jorge Alcocer Varela speaks with them and offers a solution to a problem they say goes back two years.
“We still lack the same medications — cyclophosphamide, vincristine, daunorubicin — and in the face of the indolence of the federal government … nine of us parents decided to begin an indefinite hunger strike outside the ministry offices as an act of nonviolent civil disobedience to put pressure on the [government],” said Luis Olvera, a father participating in the protest.
He and other parents said they will hold the federal government responsible for any physical damages they may incur during their hunger strike.
“We don’t want to come out here. We know that we’re putting ourselves at risk, but we have to do it because they’re always shrugging us off. They promise us that there won’t be a shortage, and the situation in the hospitals doesn’t change. [They] don’t even answer our calls,” said Olvera.
The Health Ministry announced on Monday that a plane carrying cancer medications arrived from Argentina, but the protesting parents said that they have yet to be distributed. The medicines must first be inspected by the federal health regulatory agency before that can happen.
A group of seamstresses in Tabasco has warned President López Obrador that “blood will flow” if the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) cuts their power again for failing to pay their bill.
In a video posted to social media, the head of the Exótica Textiles cooperative in Macuspana – the municipality where López Obrador was born and raised – said that CFE personnel most recently cut the power in their factory while they were rushing to complete an order of face masks to help stop the spread of Covid-19.
Alicia Jiménez said the seamstresses held the president personally responsible for the power cut.
She said that the cooperative is part of the “civil resistance” movement against the state-owned electricity company, which was initiated by López Obrador after his defeat in the 1994 election for governor of Tabasco, allegedly due to electoral fraud.
Jiménez said the president had promised to meet with them to discuss the issue of electricity rates but asked them to be patient. A year and a half after he took office, López Obrador has failed to keep his word, she said.
Advierten a AMLO: si nos cortan la luz habrá sangre
A spokeswoman for the seamstresses gave a fiery speech before the camera in video for President López Obrador.
“He doesn’t want to help us,” Jiménez said.
She also said that the seamstresses haven’t received any support from state or federal authorities to help them through the coronavirus-induced economic slump.
“We do what we can to get by; we have a contract to make face masks but … the [electricity] commission says, ‘go and cut off their power.’ It’s not fair, if we don’t have anything to eat, why do they take away the little we have,” Jiménez said.
“Don’t forget this message [López Obrador], you’re responsible for what happens. … Maybe a lot of people want to see this factory destroyed but … we’re not going to allow it. … If these people come back to disconnect the electricity, a tragedy could happen, we don’t know. … We’re not going to allow them to cut the power.”
At the conclusion of the video, one of the other seamstresses said that the cooperative is the “sustenance of our families” and they won’t allow it to be destroyed by the authorities.
The remains of a cannon found by divers off the coast of Quintana Roo. Laura Carrillo Márquez
Underwater archaeologists have rediscovered the remains of a sailing ship that is believed to have been wrecked off the coast of Quintana Roo in the late 18th or early 19th century.
Archaeologists with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) found the anchor and 2.5-meter-long cannon of what is believed to have been an English sailing ship at the southeastern corner of Banco Chinchorro, an atoll reef lying off the coast of the southern Quintana Roo municipality of Othón P. Blanco.
They also discovered pig iron ingots that are believed to have been used as ballast in the ship.
The wreck was first spotted by local fisherman Manuel Polanco, who took engineer and underwater archaeology enthusiast Peter Tattersfield to the site in the 1990s.
Tattersfield recently approached the underwater archaeology department of INAH and a team was put together to explore the more than 200-year-old shipwreck that has been named after Polanco, an octogenarian who is now retired.
Ship’s anchor has become embedded in the coral. Laura Carrillo Márquez
The erstwhile fisherman and discoverer of several other shipwrecks is no longer able to go to sea because of his advanced age but his son, Benito Polanco, guided the INAH team to the site.
The archaeologists believe that the crew members made a last-ditch effort to save the ship by throwing the anchor overboard in an attempt to tether it to the atoll reef, INAH said in a statement on Tuesday.
They reached that conclusion because the anchor was completely integrated in the coral system of Banco Chinchorro, which has long been colloquially known as the quitasueños – nightmare or sleep-robbing – reef because of its treacherousness.
The “Manuel Polanco,” as the wreck is now known, is the 70th shipwreck to be documented by INAH archaeologists in the Banco Chinchorro natural reserve.
Laura Carrillo Márquez, an INAH archaeologist and head of the team that explored the wreck, said that a lot of details about the ship, such as its size and exact age, have not yet been determined because the site is in a “complex” location where there are strong currents.
However, further exploration is planned after the coronavirus restrictions are eased, she said.
Carrillo said the scientists haven’t found any of the wooden hull of the wrecked ship because it would have disintegrated over the hundreds of years it was left in the Caribbean sea water.
She said that the anchor and cannon were consistent with English designs from the 18th century but stressed that the hypothesis that the ship was British has not yet been confirmed.
My dad is a political scientist and a passionate political activist. As children, my sister and I heard countless speeches about what the powers-that-be were actively trying to do, and what they were actively trying to prevent.
They didn’t like poor people or black people (Oh Dad, please!), and worked hard to make sure their kids didn’t have to go to school with them. Speaking of school, he always believed there was a concerted effort to make history classes both boring and incomplete, never getting past World War II in subject matter — basically, the last time that the U.S. could really be widely considered heroes.
He explained why a “flat tax” was not actually the fair idea that it sounded like: 20% of a poor person’s income accounts for a lot more of their essential income than 20% of a rich person’s income. Credit cards were evil and designed to put people into permanent debt so that others could make money off them indefinitely.
And when it came to energy, he assured us that oil companies gave (and I quote) “beau coops” of money to make sure that energy policy favored the use of fossil fuels and gave priority to their continued use even though it was not in the best interest of the environment. Why else would we have so many cars and so few options for public transport?
We always thought he was being hyperbolic. Now we know that his “radical” ideas and resistance in “going with the flow” were pretty much right on the money.
So, here we are.
I am interrupting my regularly-scheduled coronavirus-related hand-wringing to gasp and puzzle over something else: why on earth Mexico is not running with open arms toward becoming the leader in clean energy production that it was poised to become a very short time ago.
We’ve got everything we need to get the ball rolling. A variety of clean energy companies at the ready, many with experience in selling energy to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) already at a greatly-reduced price, and with a multitude of investors ready to make sure it happens.
The country, and the world, are ready. While environmental degradation is literally carrying us all into a free fall at an accelerated pace, our actual environmental policy seems to be saying, “What’s the problem? Look, we’re still in the air, relax!”
I’d like us to focus on the first question there: what’s the problem?
If you’re to believe CFE chief Manuel Bartlett, the problem is that private renewable energy companies are corrupt and literally cheating and robbing the poor, defenseless CFE. (I mean seriously, what is it with powerful men here — and everywhere, I suppose — that they’re so good at simultaneously holding on to inordinate amounts of power while throwing themselves dramatically on the ground in a show of unparalleled victimhood? Did they all learn it from watching professional soccer matches?)
Then there’s AMLO (sigh). He’s said that private energy companies “contribute nothing,” and I think it’s worth examining why he’d say something like this when it’s clearly not true. He must, of course, know that it’s not true, so what’s the deal?
From the same article: “Private energy companies generate 46% of the nation’s electricity, according to the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), and they do so at a cost up to 85% less than the CFE.”
My suspicion is that he’s made a deal with the CFE to ensure they stay in business and don’t lose money. Perhaps that seemed like a logical extension of his animosity toward and suspicion of private industry in general, a way for him to stay faithfully “on message” before his supporters.
To some extent, I get it: I am also generally suspicious of for-profit services. But my goodness, his penchant for putting his foot down on some large organizations that cheat and turning a blind eye to others is disingenuous, to say the least.
And besides, whatever happened to his promise of “letting the people decide,” of putting everything to a vote? It seems that’s only a route to take when it’s convenient. Other times, it’s a condescending “no, no, no, people just aren’t smart enough to get this complex issue.”
Maybe they aren’t, but my goodness, stop saying then that it’s the only way to do things. Why not surround yourself with qualified, forward-thinking people who are smart enough to understand it and not only to make a good decision, but explain their conclusions in layman’s terms?
I hope he sees that he would be even more “on message” by giving the green light to create jobs for thousands of Mexicans who, especially now, desperately need them. Even if this does eventually get fixed, what kind of confidence will future investors have here next time we need it?
The investment, in this case, is not simply a cheap labor-motivated “race to the bottom.” This investment is revolutionary, and has the potential to put Mexico on the map as a world leader in renewable energy. AMLO, please don’t hold us back here! Those who are fighting for renewable energy’s place in our policy, please keep fighting (thanks governors and Mario Molina for speaking up)! This is not over.
I see a future in which Mexico is a leader in the Americas for clean energy. The hardest part of this whole thing seems to be getting some very large egos out of the way.
Try some humility, people. It’s good for us all.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Farmworkers on the road, heading north to find work.
Day laborers from the mountains of Guerrero are migrating by the thousands to the fields of Baja California, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Zacatecas despite stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic and high levels of infection in some of those areas.
Some farmworkers are even traveling to the United States to look for work. In San Pedro de la Laguna, 250 of the town’s 1,000 inhabitants are working on the other side of the border.
Residents of the poverty-stricken region have no choice but to leave if they and their families are to eat. Around 8,000 men, women and children in Guerrero are predicted to migrate north to find work this season, where they will toil in the fields for between 120 and 250 pesos a day (US $5.40 to $11.18).
“Migration does not stop despite the pandemic. There is an increase in the number of migrants because there is an economic situation of extreme poverty in the mountain communities, which have poverty levels similar to those of sub-Saharan Africa, which is now worsened by the increase in food prices due to Covid-19,” says Paulino Rodríguez Reyes of the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center.
He said buses leave every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, carrying as many as 150 workers each.
Workers wait to board northbound buses in Guerrero.
Around 2,000 people have already left the state this month.
Each year around 30,000 mainly indigenous day laborers from the Guerrero mountains earn their living this way, and this year they are traveling without masks or hand sanitizer and in crowded conditions.
Sometimes large agricultural export companies will recruit them and send buses, but this year many are making the journey on their own dime.
The first season lasts from September to January, with a second season beginning in May.
Doctor Alejandro Morales Ibarra, who helps care for rural workers, says this year has been atypical, with a 50% increase in migration, especially among students aged 14 to 20 who have taken the opportunity generated by the suspension of classes to earn money.
Activist Abel Barrera Hernández proposes that the Ministry of Labor help protect day laborers who travel to other states and those who return to their towns against the coronavirus, as well as compel employers to do the same.
A coalition of day laborer organizations, experts and activists released a report earlier this month detailing a number of steps governments and employers can take to help keep those who travel to the fields safe, including enforcing hygiene measures and offering workers access to health care.
In the poorest areas of Guerrero, others hope the federal government will step in with scholarships, subsidies and food, as raising corn in the region is no longer a viable solution to staving off hunger.
According to the National Network of Day Laborers, there are almost 3 million migrant day laborers in Mexico, of which 2.5 million are indigenous.
