Women remain still as a black bear checks them out in Chipinque Park. (El Universal Estados/X)
A trio of young women walking the paths of the Chipinque Ecological Park in Nuevo León got some unwanted attention when a highly curious black bear got too close for comfort and gave the visitors a thorough examination.
The medium-sized bear, captured on a 59-second video, can be seen sniffing the women’s legs and torsos and in one case, getting up on its hind legs twice, at times placing its front paws on a woman’s shoulders as it sniffs her.
Voices can be heard in the background as companions of the women attempted to drive the bear away and advised the three not to move.
The women took the advice and remained completely still as the bear interacted with them and not until it began to walk away did they leave the scene of the encounter. The video was posted on Twitter, where it has had over 4,000 views.
Chipinque Park is part of the larger Cumbres de Monterrey National Park in the eastern Sierra Madre mountains.
#NuevoLeón El incidente ocurrió en uno de los caminos de terracería del parque Ecológico Chipinque en el municipio de San Pedro Garza García pic.twitter.com/mMScNkbjlT
— El Universal Estados (@Univ_Estados) July 18, 2020
According to experts, this type of sighting is not unusual in the park during certain times of the year, when bears come down from the mountains in search of food and water. The bears even appear in residential areas. Black bears are considered to be an endangered species in Mexico, due to the destruction of their habitat and illegal hunting. However, its only protected population is in Sierra del Burro, part of the eastern Sierra Madre mountain range which lies in the state of Coahuila.
The women followed expert recommendations to the letter, according to Nuevo León Civil Protection authorities, who reminded residents on that they are in “bear country” and that they have to learn to coexist with the animals.
They advise people who encounter a bear to “remain calm, never put yourself between a mother and her cub.”
However, other videos of the same incident posted on social media show that companions of the three women were not so cautious. One showed a member of the group trying to take a photograph of herself with the bear, going against official advice to avoid taking photographs or selfies.
Two visitors to the city of San Miguel de Allende have been arrested and fined by authorities after refusing requests to wear a protective mask in public.
The man and woman — only identified by authorities as “Victor G.” and “Paulina H.” — were visiting from the neighboring state of Querétaro when they were arrested Saturday evening while walking with a third person, also visiting from Querétaro.
According to authorities, a police officer approached the trio as they were walking in the downtown historic area and reminded them that they were legally required to wear masks. The third person in the group at that point donned a mask, authorities said, but the two arrestees refused, authorities said.
They were taken into custody and later ordered by municipal authorities to pay a 500-peso fine and spend 12 hours in police custody, according to a press release from Mayor Luis Alberto Villarreal’s office.
According to Guanajuato’s Secretary of Public Health, San Miguel de Allende has recorded a total of 169 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and nine deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. Of those cases, 165 have occurred through community transmission. Guanajuato state currently has a red rating on the federal government’s virus risk stoplight system.
In the press release, Villarreal said that people who refuse to comply with the city’s public health regulations are endangering public health and could face up to 36 hours in custody. Villarreal told the newspaper Milenio recently that “a wrong step could return us to closing our tourism destination again.”
In March, the city closed access to non-residents who could not produce evidence of a compelling need to enter the city.
Although it recently reopened to tourism, the city has been taking its Covid-19 preventative measures increasingly seriously. Since May 1, it has been urging people to wear masks in all public spaces, including while walking outside, on public transportation, and inside businesses — a requirement that gained teeth July 10 when the Guanajuato state government certified it as an official ordinance.
Beginning May 29, the city installed health checkpoints at entry roads from the neighboring cities of Querétaro and Celaya. Officials have been asking those entering the city limits the purpose of their visit, taking car occupants’ body temperature, reminding people of the legal obligation to wear masks in the city, and offering a free mask to those who say they don’t have one. Transit authorities have been monitoring municipal bus routes to ensure that drivers are wearing the required masks throughout their routes.
The municipality also began bolstering the entry checkpoints with dogs trained to sniff out drugs and explosives after an incident at a checkpoint where a dog detected a bag of marijuana under a seat.
Governor Mendoza and López-Gatell at a meeting in May. The former has rejected the latest coronavirus risk map.
The governors of several states have indicated that they won’t impose stricter coronavirus restrictions this week despite being allocated a “red light” on the federal government’s latest “stoplight” map, used to indicate the risk of infection.
The governors of Baja California Sur (BCS), Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Querétaro all said they will maintain the less severe “orange light” restrictions that have been in place in their states in recent weeks.
BCS Governor Carlos Mendoza Davis said the state’s health safety committee had voted in favor of maintaining the risk level at orange. He asserted that the committee is a responsible decision-making body with the best interests of BCS residents at heart.
Mendoza acknowledged that coronavirus case numbers have recently risen but attributed the spike to an increase in testing. He said that a declining Covid-19 fatality rate in BCS and the availability of hospital beds were among the factors considered by the health committee before deciding to maintain the “orange light” risk level.
BCS has recorded 3,107 confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic – the fifth lowest total among Mexico’s 32 states – of which 895 cases are currently estimated to be active. The state has the lowest Covid-19 death toll in the country, with 117 fatalities, according to federal data.
Data presented at the federal Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing on Sunday night showed that 27% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients in BCS are currently occupied while 34% of those with ventilators are in use.
In Yucatán, where there are an estimated 1,413 active coronavirus cases, the state Health Ministry decided that it too would maintain the risk level at orange this week.
Before the state was allocated a “red light,” Governor Mauricio Vila announced the reimplementation of a ley seca, or dry law, prohibiting the purchase of alcohol all week. He also said that residents were banned from using their cars at night, with the driving restriction beginning at 9:00 p.m. in coastal communities and at 10:30 p.m. elsewhere, and concluding at 5:00 a.m.
Yucatán has recorded 7,226 confirmed coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic and 699 deaths.
Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín reiterated Saturday that his government has its own “stoplight” system and therefore won’t respect that of federal authorities.
Quintana Roo Governor Joaquín: state has its own stoplight system.
“Orange light” restrictions will remain in place this week in the northern half of the state, which includes the popular tourism destinations of Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, but “red light” rules will persist in the southern half, Joaquín said.
The Caribbean coast state has recorded 6,161 confirmed cases, of which 1,273 are estimated to be active, and 792 Covid-19 deaths.
Querétaro Governor Francisco Domínguez Servién said that his government won’t shut down any economic activity that has already been permitted to restart.
“We will continue with the economic activities that have already been reactivated but with greater vigilance of compliance with health measures,” he said.
Querétaro has recorded 2,896 confirmed cases – the fourth lowest total in the country – of which 399 are estimated to be active. The Bajío region state has also recorded 403 Covid-19 deaths.
Although stricter restrictions won’t be imposed in Querétaro this week, Domínguez said he was prepared to place further limits on activities if the coronavirus situation worsens.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro preceded his counterparts in BCS, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Querétaro in speaking out against the federal government’s updated “stoplight” map, asserting on Friday that Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell had allocated a “red light” to his state because “he felt like it.”
For his part, Tabasco Governor Adán Augusto López claimed Friday that the deputy minister has presented incorrect coronavirus data for the Gulf coast state.
“I can’t [put up] with Gatell. I don’t know where he gets some of his numbers from,” he said during a hospital visit.
Despite the governors’ airing of their public grievances with the federal government, López-Gatell said Sunday that there is no dispute with nor animosity toward the state leaders.
He said the federal government respects and supports the decisions that states take with regard to the tightening or easing of coronavirus restrictions.
“We’re not going to oppose them,” López-Gatell said.
However, the federal government will not cease to provide recommendations to help the state’s combat their local coronavirus epidemics, he added.
The deputy minister emphasized that the development of the “stoplight” map is not only his responsibility but rather that of all federal health officials.
“It’s not López-Gatell’s stoplight, it’s the institutional stoplight of federal health authorities,” he said.
The official brushed aside the remarks of the Tabasco governor, saying that they were motivated by a “slight lag” in the reporting of data that has now been explained to him.
The coronavirus pandemic has become a highly politicized issue in Mexico with many government critics accusing President López Obrador and his government of first downplaying then mismanaging the health crisis, and not doing enough to support the economy amid the coronavirus-induced downturn.
Some governors, especially those who represent the conservative National Action Party, have added their voices to the criticism.
Mexico’s pick to run the World Trade Organization says he can fix its broken dispute resolution mechanism within 100 days, use it to ease U.S.-China trade tensions and keep Washington from quitting the global trade body.
Jesús Seade, a veteran of three decades of negotiating trade agreements — most recently getting the USMCA trade pact between the U.S., Mexico and Canada across the line — is one of eight candidates to succeed Brazil’s Roberto Azevêdo as director-general after he steps down in September.
The field is led by two female African former ministers — Kenya’s Amina Mohamed, a former trade minister who has chaired the WTO’s general council, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance minister and senior World Bank official. Seade insists he is not disadvantaged by a widespread desire to make the multilateral body’s leadership more diverse.
“Maybe there’s a fascination for someone who comes from a certain continent or is of a certain gender,” Seade told the Financial Times in an interview from Geneva, where the candidates last week pitched their programs to the WTO’s general council, kicking off what is meant to be a consensus-based selection process.
Seade thinks his resume gives him the edge: stints as the WTO’s deputy director-general and senior posts at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank working on “dozens and dozens of countries” worldwide. He also notes that he has lived in China and gone head to head with tough U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer over USMCA.
“Some candidates have terrific experience but my experience has been much more specific on trade negotiations,” he said.
While he said it was too early to speak of firm support for any candidate, Mexico is relinquishing leadership of the OECD in a move seen as designed to bolster Seade’s chances.
Whoever steps into Azevêdo’s shoes will first have to fix the appellate body — the WTO’s dispute resolution mechanism — that has been at a standstill since last December. The U.S. has exercised a veto and blocked the appointment of new judges to the body, which adjudicates on contested rulings over disputes between members.
Seade locked horns with Lighthizer several times during the USMCA negotiations, including over Washington’s desire for steel and aluminium quotas and labour inspections. But they hammered out compromises after setting out what both sides could accept.
“You need to respond to what is said to you, to engage. If there’s a suggestion you need to say exactly what you buy and don’t buy … begin to find a way to converge,” he said of his negotiating style. “I prefer a negotiator that takes risks.”
He would apply the same tactic to the appellate body amid “profoundly different philosophies” in Europe and the U.S. about how it should work.
Seade says fixing the dispute resolution mechanism would help settle US-China relations.
“I think [the problem] is extremely grave, super serious but quite specific,” he said of the U.S. objections, but this could be addressed “with good robust engaged discussion, negotiation … I would hope it can be resolved within my first 100 days.”
Fixing the dispute resolution mechanism could in turn help settle U.S.-China trade tensions.
“A lot of the trade war is bilateral but … a lot of discrepancies should belong in the WTO … Let’s put in place together the dispute settlement system and use it in relations including with China,” he said.
He would like other problems arising from U.S.-China discussions to be tackled in Geneva. “We certainly hope to be a helpful partner — sticking my neck out as I have done many times to get results to help them find solutions that are acceptable to both.”
China’s reluctance to relinquish “special and differential treatment” status — being considered a developing nation within the WTO despite also being a global superpower — was a “challenge,” he added. But nations had to advance in negotiations on fisheries, electronic trade and regulation “to create confidence” before tackling tough issues of industrial subsidies, he said.
“It is for [other nations] and China to figure out what can be done … What I can offer is [to be] a forceful and powerful and reliable, honest intermediator that will bring them to the table, that will work with them to find the way forward,” he said.
A multilingual Mexican and Lebanese national, Seade, 73, said the “bread and butter” of his career had been working with developing nations, including helping Argentina and Colombia exit financial crises, negotiating debt forgiveness for 15 African nations at the IMF and helping devise Morocco’s sales tax.
He has lived in North and South America — amassing, he said, an enviable collection of Brazilian music — as well as in Europe. He spent more than a decade as a professor in Hong Kong and China, where he picked up enough Mandarin to deliver a speech competently.
He dismissed suggestions the U.S. could pull out of the WTO altogether but stressed that “they have a grudge with the WTO — we have to understand that grudge, and that grudge is not Republican … it will be there whoever wins the next elections.”
“We must not have illusions that if [President Trump’s Democrat challenger] Mr. [Joe] Biden wins, then it’s all dandy for the WTO. Not at all, we must engage with the U.S. … We need to work with them and we need to fix it,” he said.
Then he repeated a joke shared among Mexican trade negotiators when he threw his hat into the ring: “Only Jesus can save the WTO.”
Why do we drink it, asks the deputy health minister.
Covid-19 has had a huge impact on Mexico due to the high prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Saturday.
Speaking at an event in Berriozábal, Chiapas, López-Gatell said that if people had diets free of junk food and sugary drinks – which he described as “bottled poison” – the impact of any virus on the population of Mexico would be less.
He has said repeatedly that the high prevalence of diabetes, hypertension and obesity is a major factor in the high number of Covid-19 deaths in Mexico.
López-Gatell, the government’s coronavirus point man, said Saturday that diet-related health problems date back 40 years in Mexico and lamented that many people have abandoned healthier, more natural foods for highly-processed ones.
“What are we eating? How much salt are we putting on our food? Enough salt already! [Packaged] food already has salt,” he said.
“How much sugar are we putting into drinks? Fruit already has sugar. And, of course, why do we need bottled poison?” López-Gatell asked, referring to sugary soda and juice. “Why do we need to eat donuts, cakes and chips?”
The deputy minister told his audience that if there are overweight and obese people within their communities, it is because they are consuming too much of the wrong foods and drinks.
“There is no reason for you to have overweight people [in your communities]. If you have them, it’s because they’re eating too much [junk food], … it’s because they’re drinking soda or juice. … Those that are bottled are not juice, it’s paint with sugar,” López-Gatell said.
“Health in Mexico would be very different if we hadn’t allowed ourselves to be fooled by the lifestyles that are shown on television, heard on the radio and which we see in advertisements,” he said.
The health official’s remarks came a month after President López Obrador delivered a sermon-like video address in which he urged people to follow a healthy diet full of fresh and nutritional food.
Corn, beans, seasonal fruit, fish and hormone-free meat should be on Mexicans’ dining tables, he said, adding that drinking a lot of water and exercise are also crucial for good health.
Coahuila Governor Riquelme, wearing hat, hosted a birthday party on Saturday.
Coahuila Governor Miguel Riquelme hosted a big birthday party for one of his employees Saturday in spite of a prohibition against such festivities, according to a report by the newspaper Reforma.
The event took place in the city of San Juan de Sabinas and was attended by Mayor Julio Long, Saltillo Mayor Manolo Jiménez, and various other mayors and political dignitaries from around the state.
The party was in direct violation of state and municipal decrees. On Friday, a committee headed by Jiménez asked citizens to report large social events and parties that put public health at risk.
Saturday’s birthday party, held for Riquelme’s chief of staff, Lauro Villarreal Navarro, was revealed when Mayor Jiménez posted images of the festivities — which he later deleted — on WhatsApp. In the photos, guests are neither wearing masks nor maintaining a safe distance.
In one photo, Riquelme can be seen with Jiménez, businessman Urbano Santos, and Monclova Mayor Alfredo Paredes, whose city was in the news in April for having the largest outbreak of Covid-19 in Mexico at the time.
According to the federal health ministry, the state has had 8,995 confirmed Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, and 1,339 are currently active. According to the state, 80% those active cases are concentrated in six municipalities, including Saltillo, Torreon, and Monclova.
Health workers are attempting to convince more people to heed coronavirus warnings.
The streets of the market in the Mexico City pueblo of San Gregorio Atlapulco, normally filled with street vendors and people selling produce from wheelbarrows and small stands, are now empty after the Xochimilco government shut them down until at least August 2.
The small fruit and vegetable stores remain open but no baskets filled with produce sit in the streets like they usually do; everything has been pulled inside. The market itself, usually bustling, is eerily empty. The building’s walls are now plastered with posters, some warning about the dangers of the coronavirus, others encouraging people to wear masks and keep a safe distance.
Last week, Xochimilco healthcare workers arrived. They’ve been walking through the market wearing white protective suits and armed with antibacterial gel to spray on people’s hands and others were spraying disinfectant on sidewalks and buildings. They’ve set up a tent behind the church to test people for the virus.
The federal government uses a stoplight system to indicate areas with high numbers of infections with red being the worst. If there were another color to indicate an even worse situation, San Gregorio might warrant it. That’s because the pueblo, with a population of about 30,000, has the highest number of infections out of 1,812 colonias, pueblos and barrios in Mexico City.
“We are handing out information,” said medical services assistant director Marisol Olivares. “We want to tell people what is happening.”
A healthcare worker dispenses gel in San Gregorio Atlapulco.
It’s good to finally get attention — and some action — from the municipal government. But sadly it has the feeling of too little, too late.
Back in March, when the pandemic was just getting underway, thousands of people crammed into the pueblo for the Fiesta de San Gregorio, a 10-day event marking the death of the pueblo’s patron saint. Streets in the center were lined with vendors, there were concerts every night and a huge fireworks display on the last night. Everything was well attended.
I photographed the the first day of the event — from a safe distance — and over the course of several days interviewed people about the pandemic. What I was almost always told was, “No pasa nada.” Nothing will happen.
Some people claimed it was because Chicuarotes (which is what people living here call themselves; it’s a local chile) are stronger than other people. Others said — only half jokingly — it was because Mexicans drink a lot of tequila.
No one wore a mask at the festival; no one practiced safe distancing. That attitude continued for months and we’re now paying the price.
One of the people I interviewed in March was Ábel Cortina, who owns a small store near the center of the pueblo. He was one of those who believed nothing would happen, that the pandemic was simply a rumor. He’s changed his opinion.
The market has gone quiet since officials banned street vendors.
“I was wrong back in March,” he said. “We did not see the danger. We had our fiestas, we did not keep distance, we carried our saints in processions. We were wrong.” He now wears a mask and keeps a bottle of antibacterial gel on the store’s front counter.
At one of the last Catholic Masses in late March, before all church activity was suspended and the church locked up, Padre Arturo, the parish priest, told his parishioners that they would be protected by the pueblo’s patron saint. Legend has it that in 590, San Gregorio stopped another plague by organizing prayer vigils and processions.
“[Padre Arturo] said we must entrust ourselves to San Gregorio,” Octavio Flores said in early April when I spoke to him, “In the same way that he saved his people from the plague he will save us from the coronavirus.”
The 15-year-old Flores is a member of “Los Varones,” an organization of 14 young men who dedicate a year or more to serving the church. “I believe San Gregorio will protect us, certainly,” he said at that time. “I do not use a mask or gloves because my faith will protect me.”
It’s anyone’s guess how many people fell ill because of their faith in the saint but Flores is healthy and now wears a mask when he goes out. “The hope that San Gregorio would protect us from the pandemic has failed.” He said his faith is still strong but “Now we have to protect ourselves.”
Unfortunately, not everyone has caught onto that.
Bustling crowds during the town’s fiesta in March. No pasa nada, they said.
Until the municipal government banned street vendors, Nazario Fernández Landero sold pots and pans on Calle Insurgentes. The day I met him, he wasn’t wearing a mask. “I was in a rush this morning,” he said, “and forgot it.” When asked if he was afraid to be without a mask, he pointed one finger to the sky. “I am not afraid,” he said. “If God says he will take me, he will take me.”
He’s not the only one who believes this and, for whatever reason, there are still people congregating without masks.
Mexico City’s Central de Abasto is the world’s largest market and it’s estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 people pass through there in a single day. So it’s no surprise that it’s a major center for the viral outbreak. Many Chicuarotes sell their produce in the market or work there and it’s believed that they were among those who brought the virus to the pueblo. In fact, many people who work there have become sick and some have died.
Juan Serralde grows vegetables in the agricultural area known as the chinampería and every Sunday delivers his produce to the Central de Abasto. “I do not sell there, only deliver five or six boxes,” he said. He takes many precautions, including wearing a mask, gloves and spraying himself with disinfectant. He’s still afraid but feels he has no choice. “I go to the city for necessity, to provide for my family. We have to keep working because there is nothing else.”
The Clinica Médica Isabel is a tiny clinic in the pueblo that can’t treat people with Covid-19 symptoms. When someone arrives with symptoms, they’re sent to a hospital but some refuse to go. “People are afraid to go to the hospital,” said Domingo García Flores, the clinic’s administrator. “In fact, they believe that doctors want to kill them.” So they quarantine at home, putting others at risk.
There’s no doubt that, in some ways, things have improved. The majority of people are wearing masks, fist bumps and elbow taps have replaced handshakes and hugs, most stores have antibacterial gel available. But there are those who are out and about without masks and social distancing in the market, despite there being fewer people, is still not practiced.
Olivares, the assistant director of medical services, said healthcare workers will be coming to the pueblo daily for at least another two weeks. “We are bringing doctors and nurses. We are trying to educate people,” she said.
But, she added, “People still do not listen.”
Joseph Sorrentino lives in San Gregorio Atlapulco and is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Mexico City has ramped up Covid testing but the number of people being tested is still low.
Mexico needs to spend at least 6.4 billion pesos (US $283.4 million) on Covid-19 testing kits in order to have the capacity to reach the average testing rate of the 37 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to a Mexico City think tank.
The Center of Economic and Budget Research (CIEP) said in a report that level of investment is needed just to buy the testing kits. Additional money would be required to perform the tests and process them in laboratories.
The CIEP noted that Mexico has the lowest testing rate among OECD nations.
The per capita testing rate in the United Kingdom is more than 30 times higher than Mexico’s rate while that of the United States is about 23 times higher. The testing rates in Spain, Italy and Germany are 20, 16 and 13 times higher.
Active coronavirus cases as of Sunday. milenio
Testing rates in the two other Latin American OECD countries, Chile and Colombia, are 11 and four times higher, respectively, than that of Mexico.
The CIEP report said the federal government’s “immediate policy response” to the coronavirus crisis should focus on ensuring that there are enough kits to test widely.
But Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus czar, has said that the government is not interested in testing Mexicans en masse because doing so would be “useless, impracticable and very expensive.”
Despite its low testing rate, Mexico has recorded more confirmed Covid-19 cases than all but six other countries in the world.
The federal Health Ministry reported on Sunday that Mexico’s accumulated case tally had increased to 344,224 with 5,311 new cases registered.
Only the United States, Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and Peru have recorded more confirmed cases, according to data complied by Johns Hopkins University.
Covid-19 deaths reported as of Sunday. milenio
Sunday’s spike in case numbers came a day after the Health Ministry reported that it had registered 7,615 new coronavirus cases, the highest single-day total reported since the beginning of the pandemic.
Just under 9% of the more than 344,000 confirmed cases – 30,478 – are considered active.
Data presented at Sunday night’s coronavirus press briefing showed that 821,922 Covid-19 tests have been performed in Mexico, of which 394,156 came back negative. The results of 83,542 tests are not yet known and are thus considered suspected cases.
Based on known results, the positivity rate in Mexico is 47%, meaning that almost one in every two people tested has been confirmed to have Covid-19. The positivity rate is much higher than most other countries because Mexico is focusing its testing efforts on people who have coronavirus-like symptoms.
The Health Ministry also reported on Sunday that it had registered 296 additional Covid-19 deaths, lifting Mexico’s death toll to 29,184.
Mexico ranks fourth in the world for Covid-19 deaths behind the United States, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Based on confirmed cases and deaths, Mexico’s fatality rate is 11.4 per 100 cases, much higher than the global rate of 4.2.
Mauri and Kenneth Karger: their relationship with Mexico is over.
I am ending a 20-year relationship with Mexico and that is very sad for me. It’s kind of like the end of a marriage. At some point, the relationship turns so sour that one of the parties has to leave. In this case, it is me.
What makes this even more sad is the fact that I love Mexico. I love its natural beauty, from the desert, to the mountains to the pristine beaches. My family has loved it all. But most importantly, we have loved the Mexican people. Our relationships are more like family than even friends. I have personally invested millions of dollars in your country. But I give up. Your government clearly does not want me any longer.
I want to make it clear that I am not here to lecture Mexico. I am not here to tell it what to do or how to do it. It is simply not my place to do so. I am only letting Mexico know why our relationship failed and maybe, if it so desires, not to have so many future failures. Let me share with you my story.
Two decades ago, my brother and his wife bought a beautiful property in San Miguel de Allende and established roots. Deep roots. He built a beautiful home, two casitas, hired full-time staff whom he considers family, and started giving back to his community. He, and particularly his wife Kelly, started a dog rescue program for all the starving street dogs around town. They have rescued hundreds of animals from starvation and abuse and set up a spay neuter program second to none. Why? It’s part of what our mother taught us: give back to your community. This is part of our DNA.
While all of this was happening in San Miguel, I went to work in Quintana Roo. I bought a derelict house on the ocean in Puerto Aventuras and put 10 million pesos into it to restore it to glory. I also bought beach property around Mahahual, 20 hectares on Lake Bacalar and a 2,000-hectare ranch that had been abandoned near Chetumal. We then went to work.
Thugs at the gates.
We hired seven full-time employees to work the ranch, protect the property from poachers (we have deer, tapirs, jaguar and puma just to name a few of the animals we protect). There is a 500-hectare lake on the ranch as well and poachers were gillnetting with 100-meter nets and destroying the fishery for generations to come. We stopped that from happening. Birds have returned and fish now abound. We gave back to nature and the community.
Our workers who come and go each day are well paid and fed breakfast and lunch. Our foreman lives full-time in a house we built for him and his lovely family. They all get health insurance, he gets a truck to drive, free gas, free food, free cell phone, and internet. Basically everything is paid for and he gets to use his salary as discretionary income. It’s a great deal for him but it also works great for us. It is a true win-win for all of us.
And how have I been treated? Not well. My ranch has been invaded twice. Once with 10 men and guns threatening to kill all the workers if they did not leave immediately. We called the police. What did they do? Nothing. Nothing at all. It took one year and over 2 million pesos to correct the wrong and get my ranch back from the thugs. Why would your system treat honest people like this? It is truly beyond me.
I have another property that I am fighting an invasion on and have been doing so for over three years. Sure I have won the battles in court so far but they are still on my property and I have spent over 200,000 pesos on lawyers. Will I win? Yes but I have no desire to keep fighting this battle. Mexico requires me to keep spending money simply to hold on to those things that I have already bought and legally paid for. Does this seem insane only to me?
My brother in San Miguel was attempting to return home from a drive to Puerto Vallarta where he has a beachfront lot. On his way home, he was stopped at a cartel roadblock and robbed. When they attempted to steal his vehicle also, he did a high speed escape past a burning bus back to Puerto. He and his wife then had to fly home and have a driver get his vehicle back home for him. In what universe does this make sense? An honest citizen or visitor cannot travel down a major highway safely?
It gets far worse in my opinion. My neighbor who owns a nearby ranch was in Tamaulipas two years ago buying some cattle from local ranchers who were fleeing from the cartel. These poor ranchers had lost everything and were simply trying to sell what they could and escape, leaving their homes, ranches and other possessions behind. While my friend Jacob was there, word came that another cattle buyer on the adjoining ranch had been kidnapped and they were possibly coming for Jacob. He immediately left the ranch and went back to Quintana Roo.
A cartel convoy on a Mexican highway in 2018.
Mexico has turned over entire states to the cartel. If I told someone that I could not drive from Texas to Mississippi because Louisiana had been taken over by criminals, they would look at me as if I had two heads. Never would the U.S. allow criminals to take over a highway much less an entire state. If a cartel attempted to set up a roadblock on a highway in the U.S., a SWAT team of snipers would kill them all within an hour.
Jacob’s sister and her son were killed along with many more recently in northern Mexico by the cartel. Murdered — no, not murdered, more like slaughtered — without cause and so far Mexico has done very little to right this horrible wrong. I guess President López Obrador’s philosophy of hugs not guns seems to be prevailing. You have to understand how strange this all sounds to Americans. We are to hug murdering thugs instead of shooting them? Sorry, but I had rather send them to hell that very day.
I think the final straw that broke the camel’s back came last year when Monex stole over 20 million pesos from our accounts. We had money in the account one month and the next month, bank employees had stolen every peso. Many newspapers and TV networks reported that 158 accounts and nearly 800 million pesos had been robbed from the accounts of Americans and other foreigners. For many of these people, it was their life savings.
Did bank officials from Monex get arrested and prosecuted? No, they did not. Has Monex replaced the stolen money in full to those depositors? No, for the most part they have not. In fact, my brother and I have yet to receive one peso of the money stolen from us by the bank. Sure we have filed criminal charges and civil actions but it might be many years before the Mexican government forces this criminal bank, Monex, to reimburse our funds.
We even hand delivered a letter to López Obrador himself begging for help. Nothing happened. A low level bureaucrat called us and explained he had been handed the complaint from a superior but it really wasn’t in his jurisdiction and he had no idea why it was handed down to him. He promptly did nothing.
This is why I fear López Obrador is worse than corrupt; he is incompetent. Maybe he can just give Monex a hug and then they will give us back the money they stole. If you want to see further details on this massive crime and cover up, check out bancomonexfraud.com.
No more high hopes for López Obrador.
I have another friend who is a pilot of private jets in Mexico. He and his family were on vacation in San Antonio, Texas, when his 12-year-old daughter opened the door on their rental car and accidentally scratched the adjoining car. The owner of that car jumped out and started verbally abusing my friend, Esteban, and his daughter. Esteban assured him that he had insurance and would pay for any damages. This did not appease the guy.
He threatened physical violence against Esteban’s daughter. Esteban called 911 and was shocked when the police showed up in less than three minutes, listened to what Esteban had to say and then handcuffed the man and took him off to jail for making threats. Esteban told me this would never happen in Mexico. But it should. Mexico deserves better than it is getting.
I had great hopes for López Obrador after Peña Nieto proved to be pretty much a failure. As I expressed those hopes to my Mexican friends about AMLO taking office, they almost all universally would shrug their shoulders and say, “We shall see. We have been promised all of this before.” Their attitude reminded me of a Robert Earl Keene song that goes like this: “The road goes on forever and the party never ends.” Except here we have to change the lyrics to “The road goes on forever and the corruption never ends.” As I wrote earlier, I really don’t believe López Obrador is corrupt. I think his office is worse: incompetent.
My brother is a lawyer by trade. He talks about the difference between a first world country versus a third world country. He always says it is mis-defined. People think that a country is third world if it is poor. This is not true. It is third world if rule of law and more specifically, honoring contracts and enforcing them is the true measure of a country’s status. Does Mexico honor contracts? Not in the least.
Property rights are destroyed by invasions that take years to resolve and the sanctity of bank accounts and the security of those deposits mean nothing in Mexico. Even notaries and public registries falsify property sales and say no leans exist when in fact they do. You only find out after the purchase. These are not isolated incidents in Mexico.
The municipality of Tulum, by rule of guns not law, seized boutique hotels and beach properties and threw their true owners out on the whim of a corrupt politician for personal gain. Property rights meant nothing and in the three or so years after these Tulum thefts, properties have still not been returned to the rightful owners. What a travesty of justice. Even when these sorts of travesties are recognized, the Mexican legal system does nothing to correct the errors.
Unprecedented levels of violence.
We really believed Mexico was changing 20 years ago. New auto plants, more hotels, more jobs and a true middle class starting to arise. We had hope and I think the Mexican people had hope too. But in the last five years we have witnessed the rise of the cartels stealing oil, cattle, avocados and anything else available, the rise of violence in unprecedented levels and the failure of the Mexican government to actually change anything. The only thing that changed was the slogan: hugs not guns. This is true insanity on a national level.
I wish I could say that I left Mexico in better shape than I found it. For my properties, this is true. But for Mexico in general it is not. I wish I could effect change but I can’t. I don’t get to vote, I don’t get to express an opinion to politicians or government workers and no one really cares what I have to say. The only protest afforded me is with my feet and I choose to leave.
I hope and pray that Mexico finds its way out of the pit it has dug. The Mexican people deserve better than what they are getting. They deserve hope, justice, fairness, and honesty. Right now, they are getting none of these.
The writer is a retired dentist from Fort Worth, Texas.
Damage to a pre-Hispanic aqueduct at an archaeological site in Texcoco, México state, is irreparable, says a director at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
According to media reports, farmers from the town of Santa Catarina del Monte damaged part of the Caño Quebrado aqueduct at the site commonly known as Los Baños de Nezahualcóyotl (The Baths of Nezahualcóyotl) while building a new road between their town and agricultural land.
After inspecting the damage caused by heavy equipment, México state INAH chief Luis Antonio Huitrón told the newspaper Reforma that it appears to be “irreversible.”
He explained that parts of the aqueduct have been removed or displaced and said that it was lucky that only one section – 143 square meters in total – was damaged.
Although reports have blamed Santa Catarina farmers, Huitrón said that the perpetrators have not yet been identified and it is unclear why heavy machinery had been used at the site, formally known as Tetzcotzinco.
“At this time, we don’t know the intention of this action. However, it seems to be related to an activity that has been increasing in the entire … Tetzcotzinco area, … which is the irregular construction of homes,” he said.
Huitrón added that INAH is working with Texcoco authorities to increase legal protections to ensure that all construction in and around the archaeological site is prohibited.
The damage to the ancient aqueduct, built while Nezahualcóyotl – known as the poet king – was the ruler of the city-state of Texcoco in the 15th century, triggered an outpouring of anger on social media.
The damaged aqueduct is the “most important” pre-Hispanic hydraulic engineering infrastructure in Mexico, Enrique Ortiz García, a Mexican history enthusiast, said on Twitter.
Nezahualcóyotl, who ruled Texcoco from 1429 to 1472, used the Baños de Nezahualcóyotl site as a retreat and meditation place as well as a center for astronomical observation, according to INAH.
It includes several stone structures and baths, and is considered one of the most important archaeological zones in México state.
