Mexico has fallen three places on an index that measured the rule of law in 128 countries based on the experiences and perceptions of the general public.
Mexico’s score on the World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index 2020 declined 0.01 points to 0.44 and its ranking fell to 104th. The index uses a scale from 0 to 1, with 1 indicating the strongest adherence to the rule of law.
In Latin America, Mexico ranked 26th out of 30 countries, ahead of only Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela.
The WJP, an international civil society organization dedicated to advancing the rule of law around the world, found that Mexico rated most poorly among the 128 countries in absence of corruption and order and security.
With scores of 0.27 and 0.53, respectively, Mexico ranked 121st in both areas, a blow to the government of President López Obrador, who has vowed to stamp out corruption and reduce insecurity.
The country also ranked among the worst countries in the areas of criminal justice and civil justice, placing 119th and 116th, respectively. In regulatory enforcement, constraints on government powers, fundamental rights and open government, Mexico ranked 91st, 89th, 78th and 36th, respectively.
The third worst score for Mexico was 0.39 for civil justice. As its ranking also indicates, Mexico fared best in the area of open government, with a score of 0.60.
Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands were, in that order, the best assessed countries in terms of rule of law, while Venezuela, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt and Cameroon were the worst.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the top three countries were Uruguay, Costa Rica and Chile, which ranked 22nd, 25th and 26th, respectively, out of the 128 countries evaluated. Mexico’s North American trade partners, the United States and Canada, ranked 21st and 9th, respectively.
The scores and rankings in the WJP Rule of Law Index 2020 are derived from more than 130,000 household surveys and 4,000 legal practitioner and expert surveys worldwide.
According to the WJP, the index is the world’s most comprehensive dataset of its kind and the only to rely principally on primary data.
The area covered by monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico declined by 53% this season, the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp) announced on Friday.
The commission said that the monarchs, which travel more than 4,000 kilometers from the United States and Canada to spend the winter in pine and fir tree forests in Michoacán and México state, covered an area of 2.83 hectares in the winter of 2019-20 compared to 6.05 hectares a year ago.
Conanp chief Roberto Aviña said that there were 11 different colonies of butterflies this winter, three in Michoacán and eight in México state, including a new one on community land in the municipality of Amanalco.
Despite the 53% decline in the area covered, Conanp said that monarch numbers were “stable.”
Experts said that the butterflies gathered in denser clusters this winter than they did in 2018-19, meaning that the 53% decline in area covered doesn’t equate to a decline of the same percentage in total numbers.
Rickards: numbers are stable.
The head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Mexico, Jorge Rickards, said that the reduction “is not alarming,” adding that the large numbers last year were “atypical.”
“The norm has been for the butterflies to cover an average of about three hectares,” he said.
“The last season, 2018-19, was very good, with 6.05 hectares of forest cover, but it was certainly atypical, thanks to the fact that the first generation of butterflies in the spring of 2018 encountered favorable weather conditions to reproduce.”
In the spring of 2019, butterflies encountered colder weather in Texas on their return from Mexico than they did the previous year and reproduced less as a result.
Rickards also said that there was a greater presence of ants, which eat butterfly eggs, in breeding areas last year.
While the WWF and Conanp were not concerned by the decline in this season’s butterfly migration, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity in the United States said that the decrease was “heartbreaking.”
Curry: decrease is heartbreaking.
“Scientists were expecting the count to be down slightly, but this level of decrease is heartbreaking,” Tierra Curry said. “More protections are clearly needed for this migratory wonder and its habitat.”
The center said in a statement that scientists estimate that the 6-hectare coverage seen in Mexico last year “is the extinction threshold for the migratory butterflies’ survival in North America.”
Víctor Sánchez-Cordero, a researcher at the National Autonomous University’s Institute of Biology and Mexico’s lead representative on a tri-national scientific committee that studies the monarch, said in February that Mexico, the United States and Canada all must do more to ensure the long-term survival of the migrating butterfly population.
Expressing a view similar to that of Curry, environmentalist and author Homero Aridjis said that “the decline of over 53% of populations in the butterfly reserve is worrisome, above all because of the effects of climate change on the migration route and on the wintering grounds in Mexico.”
He also said that deforestation in Mexico and crime against environmentalists are reason for concern: butterfly conservationist Homero Gómez González, head administrator of the El Rosario monarch butterfly sanctuary in Angangueo, Michoacán, was murdered earlier this year.
The use of pesticides and climate change also pose a risk to the ongoing survival of the monarch butterfly.
In addition, a sooner than expected departure of butterflies from Mexico this year could pose a risk to the next generation of black and gold-winged insects, according to regional Conanp director Gloria Tavera Alonso.
She said that most monarchs left Mexico earlier than usual, and that there is not yet enough milkweed in Texas to support the next reproduction cycle. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the plant and the caterpillars eat its leaves.
The lack of milkweed in Texas is “very worrying,” Tavera said.
Former health minister José Narro has slammed the federal government for its response to the coronavirus pandemic, charging that it is acting too slowly and “as if we had no problems.”
Narro, health minister in the second half of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term between 2012 and 2018, said in a radio interview that authorities should have already taken measures to slow down the spread of Covid-19, such as canceling classes at the nation’s educational institutes and suspending large events.
“We mustn’t wait 10 days for the cases of Covid-19 to increase in order to take action … [The government] is acting in the wrong way,” he said.
Narro, also a former rector of the National Autonomous University and head of its Faculty of Medicine, said that Mexico should look to countries such as Italy, which is under a national quarantine, and the United States, which this week banned the entry of travelers from continental Europe for 30 days, for ideas about how to respond to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, late last year.
“We see the decisions that Italy, Spain, the United States, Central and South American countries have taken and we want to continue combatting coronavirus as if it were an invention of the conservatives but it’s a public health issue,” the former minister said in a swipe at President López Obrador, who dubs all critics of his government “conservatives.”
Córdova: measures are appropriate.
Narro also said that there are contradictions in the messages sent by federal officials about Covid-19 and how best to avoid being infected.
“The president says ‘hug each other,’ the deputy [health] minister says there is no need to worry, the public education minister of the same government says don’t shake hands, don’t hug; this is completely contradictory,” he said.
“This is a national problem, a worldwide problem, there has to be a general public policy. The National Health Council is there to dictate the measures.”
Echoing calls from health professionals, Narro said that Mexico should be carrying out greater numbers of coronavirus tests, especially among people who are known to have come into contact with people already confirmed to have Covid-19. (There were 26 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Mexico as of Friday.)
However, he questioned the public health system’s capacity to carry out a large number of tests and to treat those who become seriously ill from the disease that had killed almost 5,000 people around the world as of Friday.
“Where are the spaces [to treat people]? Where are they going to do the tests?” Narro said.
He also questioned why Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, rather than Health Minister Jorge Alcocer, is leading the government’s coronavirus response.
“The way in which the deputy minister is working is completely reprehensible … What I wonder is, where’s the health minister?”
In contrast, another former health minister defended the actions of health officials. José Ángel Córdova Villalobos said the actions being taken by the government over the coronavirus are those that should be taken.
When there is community transmission, he said, it will time to implement other actions, such as “social distancing,” or minimizing contact with others.
Córdova, who was health minister in the Felipe Calderón government at the time of the A/H1N1 flu virus outbreak, said the current administration is taking appropriate measures.
A nongovernmental organization in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, has big plans to celebrate World Water Day on March 22, extending the festivities through the following week.
Dedicated to supporting communities without access to safe potable water and developing sustainable solutions to the problem, Caminos de Agua (Paths of Water) has scheduled a week’s worth of events, discussions and activities to entertain and inform.
Executive director Dylan Terrell said that the organization has several important goals for the week.
“We believe that it’s fundamental to inform the public about the growing scarcity of our water supplies, as well as the increasing pollution of the potable water left to us,” he said.
“We want to use World Water Week as an opportunity to educate the people of our region about the causes of these problems, what are the risks to health, what can they do about it personally and as part of their communities, and what actions they can begin to take right now,” he said.
The San Miguel de Allende municipal government and the Life Water Coalition, a group of 15 local nongovernmental organizations concerned about water problems in the region, are also pitching in to organize and administer the events.
The week will kick off with the Municipal Water Fair on March 22 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. With lots of family-oriented events, as well as music, entertainment, food and educational activities, there will be something for all ages. Admission is free.
The special guest speaker for the week will be Joaquín Murrieta, an ecologist with the Tucson, Arizona-based Watershed Management Group (WMG). He will give talks in both English and Spanish and conduct practical workshops on topics such as constructing microwatersheds, rain gardens and other rain collection techniques.
“We need to begin to construct homes that have their own incorporated systems of rainwater harvesting, and this is a change that can be done without depending on the government or others, but on systems that I and everyone else are capable of building,” Murrieta said.
There will also be a benefit dinner and other educational and bilingual activities throughout the week. Check the Caminos de Agua website for a full listing of events.
Schroder, left, and Scherer excavate in the ballcourt which they enclosed with a fence to keep away nosy cows. Charles Golden
What do carnitas – pork simmered for hours in its own lard – and an ancient Mayan stone tablet have in common? Apart from their shared mexicanidad, or Mexican-ness, not much, one might think.
But the two are inextricably linked in the discovery of the long-lost capital of an ancient Mayan kingdom in the southern state of Chiapas.
In June 2014, Whittaker Schroder, then a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania was touring archaeological sites in Chiapas looking for inspiration for a dissertation topic when he saw a carnitas vendor waving at him on the side of a highway in Ocosingo near the border with Guatemala.
Believing that the vendor was encouraging him to buy some tacos, and being a vegetarian, Schroder continued on his way. However, the day before he was leaving Chiapas, the student saw the same man in the same place waving at him again.
This time, Schroder, who had been visiting the same area for years, pulled over.
At left, drawing of a tablet found at the site. Right, a digital 3-D model. Stephen Houston (Brown University)/Charles Golden (Brandeis)
The carnitas vendor, it turned out, wasn’t interested in selling any of his succulent pork but instead wanted to alert the student – who he knew was interested in Mayan history – to a discovery made by his friend: an ancient stone inscribed with stories of rituals, battles, a mythical water serpent and the dance of a rain god.
The following day, Schroder and another grad student, Jeffrey Dobereiner of Harvard, met the vendor’s friend, a cattle rancher, convenience store owner and carpenter, who showed them the Mayan stone.
Schroder would later tell Charles Golden, an associate professor of archaeology at Brandeis University, and Andrew Scherer, a bioarchaeologist at Brown University, about what he saw, prompting them to hatch a plan to excavate the site where the stone was found.
It took them years to get permission but along with a team of researchers from Mexico, the United States (including Schroder) and Canada, they began excavating the site – the backyard of the cattle rancher – in June 2018.
What they discovered amazed them – the ancient capital of the Sak Tz’i’ Mayan kingdom. According to a report published by science and technology news website Phys.Org, academics have been looking for evidence of Sak Tz’i’ since 1994.
Named Lacanja Tzeltal after the nearby community, the site discovered by Golden and Scherer was likely settled by 750 B.C. and then occupied for more than 1,000 years.
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As a result of excavations, the archaeological team has found remnants of pyramids, a royal palace and a ball court as well as a treasure trove of Mayan monuments. The team has also found remnants of fortifications believed to have been built to keep out invaders.
Sak Tz’i’ – which means white dog, although for what reason is unknown — was far from the most powerful Mayan kingdom, and the structures that once stood in its capital are very modest when compared with the pyramids of such sites as Palenque and Chichén Itzá.
But Golden says that the discovery still contributes a lot toward a greater understanding of ancient Mayan culture and politics. It’s a “big … piece of the puzzle,” he said.
He and his collaborators published the results of their research in the December edition of the Journal of Field Archaeology.
Pending permission from the Mexican government and the local community, the archaeological team plans to return to the Sak Tz’i’ capital in June to continue mapping the ancient city using the laser surveying method known as lidar (light detection and ranging).
They also intend to stabilize ancient structures that are in danger of collapsing, carry out further studies of sculptures and other monuments found at the site and explore an area believed to have been a marketplace.
Golden said that the team will seek to continue working closely with members of the local community, many of whom are the descendants of the builders of pre-Hispanic Mayan cities.
“To be truly successful, the research will need to reveal new understandings of the ancient Maya and represent a locally meaningful collaboration with their modern descendants,” he said.
Madrid: Mexico's tourism industry will suffer economic damage.
The global outbreak of the new coronavirus Covid-19 poses the biggest challenge to tourism since World War II, according to experts at Mexico City’s Anáhuac University.
In a report published Friday, academics with the university’s Center of Research and Tourism Competitiveness (Cicotur) said that the global tourism industry could take its biggest financial hit since the 1939-45 war as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Mexican tourism industry will not be immune from the situation, the academics said, predicting that the initial financial cost of a downturn in visitor numbers will be 1-5% of tourism GDP. The tourism industry in Mexico, the seventh most visited country in the world in 2018, contributes 8.7% of total GDP, Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco said in January.
Francisco Madrid, Cicotur director and a former deputy tourism minister, said that the current “emergency” the world is going through due to the global outbreak of Covid-19 is of “enormous proportions.”
In light of the situation, Cicotur urged the government to develop a plan that supports the tourism industry now and into the future. All of Mexico’s tourism companies “will suffer [economic] damage to a greater or lesser extent due to the pandemic,” the report said.
“But without a doubt, airlines will face greater challenges. Therefore … they will require extraordinary support.”
A significant percentage of the revenue generated by the DNR tourist tax that foreigners pay when entering Mexico by air should be used for tourism marketing in the months after the Covid-19 health crisis subsides, the research center academics said.
They also said that Mexico’s tourism destinations need to improve their capacity to provide timely and accurate online information to potential tourists about the local Covid-19 situation.
In the face of an inevitable downturn in visitor numbers in the coming weeks and months, tourism-oriented companies must do all they can to preserve the jobs of their employees, the academics added.
The head of the World Travel and Tourism Council said this week that the coronavirus could cost up to 50 million jobs worldwide. Gloria Guevara, a former Mexican tourism minister, said the outbreak “presents a significant threat” to the industry. Council figures suggest the travel sector could shrink up to 25% this year.
The publication of the Cicotur report comes as Mexico braces for a likely widespread outbreak of Covid-19, which had sickened almost 133,000 people around the world as of Friday and killed close to 5,000.
There were 26 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Mexico as of Friday, a 117% increase compared to Wednesday, when there were 12 cases.
The Museo Nacional de las Culturas Populares in Coyoacán will invite artisans to set up tables and sell products directly to the public.
March 19 marks the “Day of the Artisan” (Día de Artesano) in Mexico — a date chosen because it is the feast day of Saint Joseph, the human father of Jesus and a carpenter by trade.
Handicrafts were not always valued in Mexico. Before the Mexican Revolution they were considered a sign of a backward society, unable to join the modern, industrialized world. The post-Revolution government, seeking to establish its legitimacy and a new sense of what it meant to be “Mexican,” began to take imagery from Mexico’s rural and indigenous populations, and this included handicrafts.
Modern documentation of Mexican handicrafts began in the 1920s and was led by Mexico’s avant-garde artists, most notably Dr. Atl. The tourism industry provided the next boost: it began slowly around the same time period, but took off in the 1950s with the advent of affordable recreational travel. Handicrafts soon became a way to take a piece of “authentic Mexico” home, leading to new generations of collectors, especially in the United States. Today, the vast majority of handicrafts are made for the tourist and collectors markets.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), there are at least 12 million craftspeople in the country, meaning that 10% of the population make something with their hands, full or part time. Their direct economic contribution is estimated at 91 billion pesos (US $4.15 billion), along with an indirect contribution of 62 billion related to the tourism industry.
For many families, especially in rural areas, this work is the main or only form of economic support. But it is not easy; most live and work in poverty. One reason is that the local and Mexican markets for their products are limited, and many Mexican buyers negotiate prices down, not only because it is the culture with informal vendors but because most associate handicrafts with “cheap.”
Andares, in Oaxaca city, will celebrate the Day of the Artisan from March 19-21.
Few artisans have managed to gain significant direct access to foreign buyers because of distance from tourist areas, an inability to take advantage of online resources and/or hurdles associated with export.
Most cultural institutions connected to handicrafts have something in the works for the Day of the Artisan, often extending into the nearest weekend and sometimes for the entire month of March. The most common of these events are sales by the artisans themselves at the institutions, rather than by resellers.
(Because of current coronavirus concerns, it’s a good idea to check with local museums and casas de cultura to make sure there have not been any cancellations.)
Some highlights:
The Museo Nacional de las Culturas Populares in Coyoacán, Mexico City, each year invites artisans to set up tables and sell products directly to the public. It also includes items that might not usually be termed “handicrafts,” such as hygiene and prepared food products (like chocolate).
Andares, located in the historic center of Oaxaca city, is holding an event from March 19-21 with sales by artisans, workshops related to different crafts and, of course, local food.
For the whole month of March, the municipality of Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, has an exhibition of textiles at the Centro Integral de Atención al Turista in the city center.
The federal School of Handcrafts (Escuela de Artesanías), in Mexico City, focuses this year on papier-maché crafts (cartonería), with an exhibition and three-day conference based on the recently published bilingual book: Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer).
The Centro Cultural Ciudadela Del Arte in the city of Zacatecas will have mask-making workshops for those 15 and older from March 17-20.
Inside La Casa de Piedra shelter cave at Big Nose Mountain.
I was in the little town of El Limón, Jalisco, located 110 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara, with my friend Jorge Monroy, the muralist, gazing up at a steep hill looming high above us.
“This small mountain,” said Jorge, “is called El Narigón, the Big Nose, because it’s shaped like a long nose with a high, narrow bridge. It’s an important local landmark for all the towns around here. Because of El Narigón, people have to walk or drive a long way to get, for example, from here to Ejutla, which lies just 9 kilometers north of us.”
“See that rock up at the very peak?” chimed in Marcela Michel, who teaches yoga in El Limón. “We call that La Casa de Piedra, The Rock House, because there’s a huge shelter cave up there and that’s where we’ll be eating today.”
To me, the Rock House looked awfully high and awfully far away. “We’re going to hike way up there?” I asked, a bit surprised because Jorge had asked them to take us on “una caminata fácil,” an easy hike.
“Yes, we’re going to follow a circular route. We’ll go up ‘El Camino Feo’ (the ugly way) and come down via El Sendero de las Mil Piedras (The Path of a Thousand Rocks), finally arriving at El Tepame, The Acacia Grove.”
Spanish moss and a stranded rock.
True to its name, the trail first took us through thorny scrub which, however, became less and less feo the higher we climbed, but also grew steeper and steeper. Fortunately, I had brought along two bottles of Electrolit, my favorite hydration choice by far, invented and made in Guadalajara.
After hours of climbing, panting and sweating, we began to catch glimpses of gorgeous landscape stretching off into the distance, and at the same time, the scrub gave way to oak, copal and papelillos, often called “tourist trees” because of their peeling red bark.
The Rock House turned out to be 928 meters above the spot where we started hiking. The “house” had been formed when one impossibly large rock fell over and leaned against another impossibly large rock, producing a convenient shelter which has served the local mountain climbers since time immemorial.
The last few hours of the climb I had been moving at a snail’s pace but, fortunately, most of the younger members of our group had sprinted on ahead to start cooking lunch, so when Jorge and I finally staggered into La Casa de Piedra, delicious smells told us that we had arrived just in time for a great meal of tacos and pico de gallo (rooster’s beak), a non-liquid, chopped salsa, which in this case included bits of mango.
Somehow those hardy chicos and chicas from El Limón had also managed to carry a two-gallon container of orange juice up there, to which they had added a bit of baking soda: the local version of Electrolit, and a lifesaver for Jorge and me, as we had nothing left to drink.
After eating and snoozing, Marcela led us to El Gran Mirador, the Great Lookout Point, which lies 200 meters south of the Rock House, insisting that we could not possibly start our descent until we had seen it.
El Tepame Meadow, a favorite picnic spot.
Well, I’ve been to a lot of miradores in Mexico, and I must say this one ranks among the most dramatic, because you don’t realize you’ve come to it, as you emerge from a tunnel-like trail, until suddenly the horizon expands a thousand-fold and you find yourself teetering on the edge of a great rocky cliff overlooking a vast panorama. I could imagine Also Sprach Zarathustra playing in the background as the glorious view unveiled itself.
We now made our way west along a high, narrow ridge where the vegetation was quite curious. On the one hand, there were rocks covered with lichen, and oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, but at the same time there were plenty of acacias and cacti, which I would expect at lower altitudes.
During this part of our hike we came upon three or four more lookout points giving us great views both to the north and to the south. Then our path began to wind through a literal forest of huge white rocks. We were now on the Sendero de las Mil Piedras.
This scene was mind-boggling. In Jalisco, people go to the town of Tapalpa to gaze upon the local Piedrotas, Great Rocks … but there aren’t more than a handful of them to be seen.I turned to my compañeros: “Your piedras make Tapalpa’s Great Rocks look like marbles. Wait till the rest of the world discovers this incredible sendero.”
We continued threading our way through countless magnificent monoliths until at last we came to El Tepame, a gorgeous flat meadow surrounded of course by still more giant rocks: a favorite place for local people to come for a picnic.
So long did we linger at El Tepame, sharing all the snacks we had left, that darkness overtook us on this last leg of our trek and we were soon making our way down the steep trail by the light of headlamps and flashlights.
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By this time my legs felt like rubber. “How much farther?” I would ask Marcela over and over, as we descended.
“Falta menos!” she would reply again and again. “There’s less to go than there was before,” scant comfort for my aching body which now wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed.
At last we reached El Limón, 12 hours after we had started, having covered 15 kilometers and having ascended and descended a vertical distance of over 1,000 meters.
The next day some of the local people were already talking about building a road up to El Tepame, from which visitors could then hike as far as they want along the Sendero de las Mil Piedras which, I think, surely deserves a place among the most beautiful trails in the world.
Check this hike out on Wikiloc under “Casa de Piedra.” And don’t forget your Electrolit: you may need several bottles if you’re over the hill!
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
Taking the census is proving to be dangerous work.
Conducting the 2020 national census is proving to be a dangerous business: census takers have been mugged in at least two states and Mexico City and one interviewer was shot.
At least seven census takers employed by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) to carry out the 2020 Population and Housing Census were held up in Juchitán, Oaxaca, on Thursday.
According to a report filed by a local Inegi coordinator, the census takers were working in the 11 de Septiembre neighborhood when they were intercepted by two men on a motorcycle.
The assailants stole five mobile telephones, 1,000 pesos in cash and a motorcycle from the census takers, according to a report by the newspaper El Universal. The victims said that nobody was injured during the robbery and explained that the police carried out an operation to search for the criminals but no arrests were made.
Other census takers in Juchitán, a municipality in the Isthmus of Tehuantepc region almost 300 kilometers south of Oaxaca city, suspended work on Thursday afternoon after hearing about the robbery.
The muggings followed a gun attack on a census taker in the same city on Monday. A 37-year-old male Inegi employee was shot in the abdomen, chest and forearm while working in the Juchitán neighborhood of Magisterio Democrático. He sustained serious injuries but is now in stable condition. The perpetrators of the attack fled on a motorcycle, Inegi said.
Since that attack, police have accompanied some census takers as they carry out their work in Juchitán but a lack of officers means that all Inegi interviewers cannot be protected all of the time.
“We can’t go out to to work under these conditions of insecurity,” one Juchitán census taker told El Universal.
Census takers have also been targeted by criminals in Puebla, where six muggings have been reported. Most recently, two Inegi employees had their mobile telephones and electronic census equipment stolen while working in the municipality of San Martín Texmelucan on Thursday afternoon. The census takers were reportedly threatened by two men who approached them on a motorcycle.
Other incidents have occurred in the municipalities of San Felipe Teotlalcingo and San Salvador el Verde, the Puebla-based newspaper Puntual reported.
In Mexico City, three census takers were subjected to violence between March 2 and 6, the first week that the 2020 census was conducted.
On March 3, a 39-year-old female Inegi employee was held up at gunpoint in the northern borough of Gustavo A. Madero by a man who stole her mobile phone. Later the same day in the same borough, a 32-year-old woman was threatened with a firearm after knocking on a door in the 2 de Octubre neighborhood.
The man demanded that she hand over the electronic device she was using to record census data but she refused and fled, ABC Noticias reported.
Two days later, on March 5, a man was arrested in the sprawling eastern borough of Iztapalapa after stealing the mobile phone and census device of a male Inegi employee.
More than 150,000 census takers plan to visit some 45 million homes by March 27 to collect information such as the age, ethnicity, religion, marital status, education and employment status of more than 125 million Mexicans. Inegi last conducted a national census in 2010.
Welcome to Jalisco, where better highways have been promised.
The Jalisco government announced that it will invest over 2.5 billion pesos (US $114 million) this year to renovate the state highway system.
Along with the funds bankrolled for the project in 2019, the investment will amount to over 8.76 billion pesos (US $399 million) for the two-year period.
Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez said that with the investment in the state’s federal highways made by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation, Jalisco’s roads will have received a makeover worth over 11.4 billion pesos.
“Within nine months, we will have reached our goal of having 70% of the state highway system in good condition in just two years of our administration. We’ll go from 80% in bad condition to 70% in good condition,” said Alfaro.
He said that of the 6,617 kilometers of public highway in the state, 4,421 are in the state system and 2,196 are federal. With most of those roads in sub-standard shape when he began his administration, Alfaro said, they were leaving a bad impression on the 62 million people who drive them annually.
Thus far 40% of the funds have been spent, he said, and the remaining 60% will be spent by July.
“The goal for July of this year is to get to where half of our highways are in acceptable operating condition,” he said, adding that they will also build six new highways to strengthen regional connectivity.
The new highways will be Colotlán-El Carrizal-Aguascalientes, Autlán-Villa Purificación-Chamela, Talpa de Allende-Llano Grande-Tomatlán, Chiquilistlán-Tapalpa, Huejuquilla-Bolaños and Teocuitatlán-Concepción de Buenos Aires.
