Mexico recorded its biggest single-day increase to its coronavirus case tally on Wednesday, adding 1,609 new cases, while 197 additional fatalities pushed the death toll beyond 2,700.
Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía reported that 27,634 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in Mexico since late February and that 2,704 people have lost their lives to the infectious disease.
An additional 234 deaths are suspected to have been caused by Covid-19 but have not yet been confirmed, he said.
Of the more than 27,000 accumulated confirmed cases, 7,149 are considered to be active. There are also 17,553 suspected coronavirus cases, while almost 111,000 people have now been tested.
More than half of those confirmed to have Covid-19 – almost 15,000 people – have now recovered, according to Health Ministry data.
The coronavirus death tally as of Wednesday. milenio
Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Mexico City have now passed 7,000, increasing to 7,521 from 6,999 on Tuesday. The capital also has the highest number of active cases, with 1,875.
México state ranks second for confirmed accumulated cases with 4,661. Many of those cases were detected in municipalities that are part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area such as Nezahualcóyotl, Ecatepec, Tlalnepantla and Naucalpan.
México state also ranks second for active cases, with 1,046. Just over four in every 10 active cases across the country are in Mexico City and México state.
Baja California ranks third for accumulated confirmed cases, with just over 2,000, while Tabasco and Sinaloa rank fourth and fifth, respectively, with more than 1,200 cases each.
Baja California has the third largest active outbreak of the disease followed by Yucatán, Veracruz, Morelos, Tabasco and Sinaloa and Puebla. All those states have between 250 and 300 active Covid-19 cases, according to Health Ministry data.
Five states have less than 50 active cases: Colima (6); Durango (34); Baja California Sur (43); Querétaro (48); and Zacatecas (48).
At the municipal level, Iztapalapa and Gustavo A. Madero in Mexico City have the largest active outbreaks followed by Centro (Villahermosa), Tabasco; Mérida, Yucatán; and Nezahualcóyotl, México state.
The total number of active cases equates to a nationwide infection rate of 5.59 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, the rate is much higher in Mexico City, where more than 20 people per 100,000 residents are currently sick with Covid-19.
Almost one-third of all coronavirus-related deaths reported on Wednesday occurred in the capital, where the death toll increased to 604 from 543 a day earlier.
Seven of Mexico’s 31 states have now recorded more than 100 deaths: Baja California (326); México state (244); Sinaloa (180); Tabasco (179); Quintana Roo (158); Chihuahua (117); and Puebla (116).
At the other end of the scale, there are three states with single-figure coronavirus death tolls: Colima, with six fatalities; Durango, with eight; and San Luis Potosí, with nine.
Based on confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths, Mexico’s fatality rate is now 9.8 per 1,000 cases, 40% higher than the global rate of about 7. Most of those who have died in Mexico had underlying health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity.
Peacefulness in Mexico deteriorated 4.3% in 2019, largely due to a 24.3% increase in the rate of organized crime, according to a global think tank.
The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) said in its report Mexico Peace Index 2020 that peacefulness has declined 27.2% over the past five years. Published on Tuesday, the report highlighted that the homicide rate in Mexico last year was 28 per 100,000 residents, seven times higher than the global average.
The IEP noted that the rate increase of 1.4% in 2019 represented “a much slower rise than the previous year’s increase of 15.7%” but highlighted that the national violent crime rate increased by 4.7%. The latter increase was mainly driven by an 18.7% rise in the sexual assault rate, the think tank said.
It said that Baja California was the least peaceful state in Mexico last year for a second consecutive year followed by Colima, Quintana Roo, Chihuahua and Guanajuato. Yucatán remains the most peaceful state, followed by Tlaxcala, Chiapas, Campeche and Nayarit.
The IEP said that only seven states have recorded improvements in homicide rates since 2015. “Baja California Sur has achieved the largest improvement, reducing its homicide rate by more than half to stand at 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people,” the report said.
The think tank said that statistical analysis shows that there are four distinct types of violence in Mexico: political, opportunistic, interpersonal and cartel conflict.
The overall economic impact of violence in Mexico last year – the first full year of the new federal government – was 4.57 trillion pesos (US $238) billion, the IEP said, noting that the figure is equivalent to 21.3% of national GDP. Homicides caused just under half of the economic damage.
“The economic impact of violence was nearly eight times higher than public investments made in health care and more than six times higher than those made in education in 2019,” the report said.
“The economic impact of violence was 36,129 pesos per person, approximately five times the average monthly salary of a Mexican worker. The per capita economic impact varies significantly from state to state, ranging from 11,714 pesos in Yucatán to 83,926 pesos in Colima.”
Despite the high cost of rampant violence, the federal government spent just 0.7% of GDP on domestic security and the justice system last year, the IEP said, highlighting that the percentage was the lowest among the 37 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Since then, the governments of the first four entities have started reporting municipal coronavirus numbers online but authorities in Tlaxcala continue to keep figures for that state’s 60 municipalities under wraps.
To access that information in the small, central Mexico state, residents have to consult federal government figures whereas people in other states and Mexico City can go to state-run websites.
Defending the state government’s decision not to publish the data, Tlaxcala Health Minister René Lima Morales said that such information has to be managed with “a lot of caution” because municipalities with higher numbers of cases could be stigmatized.
Tlaxcala has only reported 261 confirmed Covid-19 cases since the disease was first detected in Mexico at the end of February. But with 30 deaths, its fatality rate of 11.5 per 100 cases is higher than the national rate of 9.6.
The first meeting between Moctezuma and Cortés is recreated in vivid detail by author Camilla Townsend.
Five hundred years after the Aztec empire made its first fateful contact with the Spanish conquistadors, a new book examines the Aztecs through their own lens instead of that of the Spaniards.
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend draws upon the expertise of its author, a Rutgers University professor long interested in the Aztec language Náhuatl.
“I really, really wanted Nahua sources,” Townsend said in a phone interview. “I just wanted to try to tell the story, really, the way the Nahuas did.”
According to the book, it is the first history of the Aztecs based exclusively upon histories they wrote following the Spanish conquest. Known as the annals, they were written using the Roman alphabet, with the 17th-century chronicler Don Domingo Chimalpahin compiling the most. Unlike the well-known Florentine Codex, the Spaniards were unaware of the Aztec annals, which Townsend calls “written-down history by Nahua for Nahua children.”
Townsend uses the annals to convey a narrative of the Aztecs that differs from conventional perceptions. She holds that they were not uniformly bloodthirsty in warfare or religion, and that they did not lose their empire out of a view that the Spaniards were gods, or because emperor Moctezuma II lost his nerve against conquistador Hernán Cortés. And she holds that the Aztec story did not end with the conquest.
Fifth Sun, a history of the Aztecs in their own words.
“I really wanted to create a sense that life continued,” she said. “I don’t mean that it was unchanged.” However, she added, “They did survive. They may have felt it was the end of all things. But they managed. They held themselves together.”
One way the Aztecs survived after the conquest was by compiling annals of their history in their native language. And, Townsend said, “there are patterns … They’re not all so different.”
Townsend’s interest in Náhuatl began in 1998. A professor at Colgate University at the time, she decided to enroll in a summer course in the ancient language at Yale. “I thought because it was an indigenous language, it would be much harder,” she said. Instead, she realized, “language is language. All have a subject, predicate, verbal declension.”
She had not realized “how many sources there are in Náhuatl,” she reflected. “I said, ‘My God, I must do this.’ The last 20, 22 years, it’s what I have been doing.”
Townsend has used her expertise to write multiple books about Aztec history, such as the 2006 Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico. She continues to explore the role of Malintzin, commonly known as La Malinche, an indigenous woman who played a key role as Cortes’ translator during the Aztec conquest. Townsend also wrote the acclaimed 2016 work The Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive.
For Fifth Sun, Townsend said, “the last few years, when I ended up writing the book, I needed to be familiar with a lot of annals.” She contrasted her comprehensive approach with that of academia in general, which she characterizes as an atmosphere of specialization. “There’s no sense how much of the histories really have in common with each other,” she said.
Author Townsend, a student of the Náhuatl language and Aztec history.
As she was focusing on the annals, she questioned long-cited Spanish sources from the centuries of conquest, including friars Bernardino de Sahagún and Diego Durán. She also said she gave little attention to previous “famous scholars” of the Aztecs.
Townsend described the book as approaching the project in her own way. “It’s not a lack of respect,” she said. “I just wanted to try telling the story, really, the way the Nahua did.”
According to Townsend, the annals collectively provide an overview of Aztec life as early as 50 to 60 years before the conquest. “Beyond that, it’s fuzzy,” she said.
She investigates the rise of the empire of the Mexica, centered at Tenochtitlán, amid numerous neighboring altepetls, or city-states. These altepetls were governed by polygamous chieftains or tlatoanis, some of whom were related by marriage. One arguably less familiar figure mentioned in the book is Nezahualcóyotl, the 15th-century tlatoani of Texcoco, father of an estimated 117 children.
The Mexica worshiped a pantheon of gods — including the rain deity Tlaloc, whose influence Townsend sees as lingering decades beyond the conquest. Their priests took captives in battle. Yet even in the early history of the Mexica, Townsend disputes established accounts of brutality.
To her, their Flower Wars are more of an Olympic-style ceremony than bloody combat, and as for their reputedly extensive practice of human sacrifice, “I don’t think they were sacrificing thousands of people a day,” she said. However, she added, “Don’t get me wrong. It may seem they got a little out of control in the end.”
When Cortés and the Spaniards landed on the Mexican coast in 1519, Moctezuma II had been emperor for 17 years. Townsend likened the emperor’s situation to that of Western leaders today in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. She sensed resolve in Moctezuma. “I had no sense he just fell apart, nor does the evidence seem to indicate it,” she said.
However, she notes, there were “thousands more Spaniards, hundreds more ships.” And Cortés had encountered an indigenous woman named Malintzin whose knowledge of language proved invaluable.
“She was not an Aztec,” Townsend explained. “Her people were attacked by the Aztecs. She was sold into slavery because of her coastal area fighting with the Aztecs. It would have made no sense for her to side with the Aztecs.” As Townsend noted, “she was a prisoner of the Spaniards. She had to figure out how to stay alive, how to keep a lot of other people alive.”
With Malintzin translating, Moctezuma and Cortés met for the first time on the causeway between Iztapalapan and Tenochtitlán on November 8, 1519. This scene is recreated in vivid detail by Townsend, as well as the tumultuous events of the next two years — the imprisonment and death of Moctezuma; the initial expulsion of the Spaniards from Tenochtitlán; their subsequent return and victory amid an outbreak of disease that decimated the Aztecs, with their last emperor, Cuauhtemoc, captured and eventually executed by Cortés.
The conquering Spaniards attempted to erase Aztec culture through baptism, Christianity and educating indigenous boys in the Spanish language. Malintzin, as well as Isabel-Tecuichpotzin, Moctezuma’s daughter and Cuahtemoc’s widow, both “married Spaniards and their children became Spanish grandees,” Townsend said.
Both women also had children with Cortés. Townsend chronicles the post-conquest life of Martín Cortés, the son of Hernán Cortés and Malintzin, who became a Spanish nobleman, but was accused of treason. In 1568, in the wake of unrest between the Spaniards and Aztecs, he was tortured to death.
In a wider story of death over the decades, epidemics continued to ravage the indigenous population. These outbreaks continued “roughly every 20 years,” Townsend said, beginning with a “horrific disease” in 1520-21 and continuing into the early 1600s.
In a footnote she writes that the diseases diminished the population “by almost two-thirds” over time. “Each generation was smaller,” she said. “Women had fewer babies.”
“There were new waves, new diseases,” Townsend said. “It was a very similar crisis to the one today, Covid-19.”
And yet, even in their darkest moments, the Aztecs did not forget their old ways, she said, citing the example of the chronicler Chimalpahin. Educated by the Spaniards and working in a church, Chimalpahin nevertheless found inspiration from his ancestral religion when disease struck again. Townsend said that the iterations he used when writing about “all the people bowed with illness” are reminiscent of “the old prayer to Tlaloc.”
“His way of prayer was probably influenced by the way his parents and grandparents prayed,” Townsend said. “In a cultural sense, there was less of a conquest than first thought.”
President López Obrador has expressed confidence that violence will be brought under control because there is no longer any collusion between authorities and organized crime.
“We have a lot of confidence that we’re going to control violence. Do you know why? Because there is no longer complicity; the … dividing line between crime and the government is now well defined,” he told reporters at his morning news conference on Wednesday.
The president asserted that his administration is making progress towards pacifying Mexico despite a dire security situation it inherited from previous governments. López Obrador said his government works every day to eradicate violence and that has not changed as a result of the coronavirus crisis.
“The special operation we’ve had since the start of this government is to work every day from six in the morning,” he said.
However, he acknowledged that violence levels remain stubbornly high in Guanajuato. One-fifth of the 76 homicides recorded across the country on Tuesday occurred in that state.
López Obrador conceded that Guanajuato is problematic but stressed that security officials are not responding to the situation with their “arms crossed.”
“We have thousands of [National Guard] elements in Guanajuato but the problem is deeply rooted; they [past federal governments] allowed it to grow,” he said.
The state was the most violent in the country last year, with more than 3,500 homicide victims. A bloody turf war between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel over control of fuel theft, extortion and kidnapping is considered the main driver of violence in the state.
While López Obrador says that his administration is already responding to the situation, the head of a citizens’ group believes that the federal government needs to do more.
Municipal and state governments can’t combat the high levels of violence on their own, said José Antonio Ortega Sánchez, president of the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice.
“They need the help of the federal government to break up all the gangs that cause the violence in Guanajuato,” he said.
Security operations in the state should not just focus on arresting José Antonio “El Marro” Yépez Ortiz, leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, but also “all his operational chiefs,” Ortega said.
“Obviously, impunity needs to be eliminated; if crimes of murder and malicious injury are not punished … violence will not go down. We have to punish [criminals], apply the law in order to be able to really overcome [the violence crisis],” he said.
Ortega also said that the government’s social programs have failed to stem the violence that plagues not just Guanajuato but many other parts of the country.
The López Obrador administration has spent three times more on crime prevention and welfare programs – part of the president’s so-called hugs not bullets strategy – than the governments of Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto yet violence persists, he said.
There are more becarios, or scholarship holders, now but there are still many sicarios, or hired killers, Ortega said.
The public security activist also charged that the National Guard, a new federal security force formally inaugurated last June, lacks a clear strategy to combat the high levels of violence.
“A clear strategy is needed; it should coordinate with state and municipal forces and be a support for the [states],” Ortega said.
López: 'How can we say the curve has flattened if we haven't yet reached the peak?'
A National Autonomous University (UNAM) epidemiologist has raised doubts about Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell’s assertion that Mexico’s coronavirus curve is flattening.
Malaquías López Cervantes, spokesman for the UNAM Covid-19 Commission, said that without all the information from the government’s sentinel surveillance system – in which data about confirmed and possible coronavirus cases is being collected at 375 different health care facilities and extrapolated to estimate the total number of cases in Mexico – there is no certainty that the curve has flattened.
The Health Ministry last month presented estimates based on the sentinel system that indicated that there were about eight undetected Covid-19 cases for each confirmed one. However, it has not presented a new sentinel system estimate for almost three weeks.
López also said that it doesn’t make sense to say that the number of Covid-19 infections reported daily is remaining stable or going down when the peak transmission period has not yet occurred, according to Health Ministry predictions.
“They said that we would reach the peak on May 6 [now updated to May 8]; supposing that is true, how can we say that the curve has already flattened … if we haven’t yet reached the peak?” he said.
The UNAM epidemiologist charged that health authorities have concluded “hastily” that the measures put in place to limit the spread of coronavirus have been successful. However, López said that the number of cases still being detected despite low testing rates – 1,120 on Tuesday – suggest that the measures have not been as successful as they think.
He also said that health officials should be basing their commentary on the curve and predictions about the pandemic on sentinel system case numbers rather than those for confirmed cases.
Based on the government’s previous sentinel system estimates, the real number of Covid-19 cases in Mexico since the beginning of the pandemic would now be more than 230,000, a figure much higher than the 26,025 reported on Tuesday.
López said that it is regrettable that the Health Ministry has only offered sentinel system numbers on a few occasions, claiming that it is also withholding other information about the pandemic in Mexico.
The UNAM academic also took aim at the government for not purchasing ventilators well before the peak of the pandemic. (One shipment arrived from the United States on Tuesday and more are due to arrive later this month.)
“I think it’s wrong to wait until people are getting sick to start the purchasing processes. I believe that they could have started all the purchasing processes in advance,” López said.
The federal government’s coronavirus predictions are “completely invalid,” according to one former health minister, while another described its Covid-19 statistics as “almost irrelevant.”
José Narro Robles, health minister during the second half of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s term, claimed that it is the second time that Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell has made mistakes in calculating the prevalence of an infectious disease. The deputy minister was also a federal health official during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
“Dr. López-Gatell’s statistics are wrong once again. They were wrong in 2009 and they’re wrong in 2020,” Narro said.
The former health minister said the government has failed to perform sufficient tests to have an idea of the “reality of the course of the epidemic.”
By not testing widely, the government has failed to detect many people who are infected and thus missed an opportunity to avoid the transmission of the coronavirus, Narro said.
Without reliable case numbers, it is not possible to measure accurately the effectiveness of the steps put in place to contain the virus or to estimate what is going to happen, he said.
But according to Narro, the estimates offered by health authorities are “completely invalid.”
He charged that in not testing widely for Covid-19, the government has made the same mistake as that made by the administration led by former president Felipe Calderón during the swine flu pandemic.
For his part, Calderón’s health minister between 2006 and 2011 predicted that without wider coronavirus testing, there will be an even worse Covid-19 outbreak when restrictions – currently scheduled to expire at the end of May – are lifted.
“We want to go back to work,” said José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, but before that happens widespread testing needs to occur to ensure that people infected with Covid-19 but who have no symptoms don’t spread the disease.
“Tests are essential, … [if] we start doing normal activities the risk of a new outbreak – and the World Health Organization said this – could be very high,” he said. “We’ll lose … a lot of what we’ve gained.”
Córdova said that the coronavirus predictions and cases numbers presented by the Health Ministry “give the impression” that the authorities are only interested in acknowledging “controllable figures” rather than “accepting that there might be many more cases.”
It appears that there is scant interest on the part of the government to know the real number of Covid-19 cases, Córdova charged, adding that having so many suspected cases of Covid-19 – there were more than 16,000 as of Tuesday – is “very questionable.”
“If I have a suspected case, it’s because [the person] has symptoms: if he has symptoms, I do the test and if I do the test there are no doubts anymore. [The case] is not suspected, it’s confirmed or dismissed,” Córdova said.
“All these inconsistencies make one begin to doubt the validity of the figures. … Up to this time, I believe that they are almost irrelevant, … we can no longer believe that they are true. The only real figures will be those of hospitalized patients … and the number of deaths,” he said before adding:
“But they’re also leaving some [deaths] out, I don’t mean intentionally, but cases labeled as atypical pneumonias, … many of them were most probably due to coronavirus.”
The Health Ministry last month presented estimates of case numbers based on the sentinel epidemiological surveillance system. They indicated that there were about eight undetected Covid-19 cases for each confirmed one.
However, López-Gatell said this week that the system is no longer the principal means of measuring the pandemic because it was no longer practical, given the higher rapidity with which new cases are occurring.
Los Pinos is now providing accommodation to frontline medical personnel.
The former presidential mansion and 196 hotels are now providing housing for medical staff on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic in Mexico City.
City Express, Holiday Inn Express and Fiesta Inn are among the hotel chains that have committed to supporting healthcare workers, and many have been doing so since mid-April. More than 2,560 hotel rooms have been made available thus far.
Medical workers must show hotel personnel identification as well as a signed letter from their hospital’s director.
The hotels’ participation comes in addition to the federal government’s decision to turn Los Pinos, occupied by Mexico’s presidents until Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office, into a temporary shelter for doctors and nurses.
“In the case of Los Pinos and all these hotel efforts, which there are many, it is specifically for workers who are in contact with Covid patients,” explained Zoé Robledo, director of the Social Security Institute (IMSS). “They are the ones who carry the greatest burden, the greatest stress, and of course we are taking care of them.”
The Los Pinos Cultural Complex will be able to offer 58 doctors and nurses from three different hospitals a safe and clean space to rest, eat, do laundry, exercise and use the internet, the IMSS director said.
An internal survey of medical staff showed that 86% were in favor of the shelters, many citing long commutes between work and home using public transportation, as well as a desire to protect loved ones from infection.
As of May 5, 6,999 confirmed cases of the coronavirus have been reported in Mexico City, and 543 deaths. Oliva López Arellano of Mexico City’s Ministry of Health said 97 health workers have been infected and 13 have died.
A National Guardsmen at the home of a man from whom he demanded money.
In another scandal at the national security force, at least two National Guard officers assigned to Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, are under investigation for extortion after a video surveillance camera caught them repeatedly trying to break into a private home and demanding an 11,000-peso (US $452) bribe.
The footage, apparently filmed on April 30, May 1 and May 3, is filled with expletives and threatening language.
“I already have the grenades here, do not make me use one of those grenades because you are going to pay me,” the armed, uniformed officer can be heard shouting during one of the videos.
In another, an officer breaks a porch light with a wooden board. “Give us the money, dude, and we will stop bothering you.”
The subject never opens the door.
After the videos were released, the National Guard stated that the alleged perpetrators will be investigated and the full weight of the law will be applied. “Neither in this nor in any other case will impunity be allowed,” said the institution.
“With absolute outrage today we watched a video circulating on social networks in which elements of this institution in #Sonora can be seen carrying out behavior totally removed from the laws, principles and values of the National Guard,” the force posted to its official Twitter account. “We will not rest until we eradicate this type of behavior, which does a lot of damage to our nascent institution.”
The incident comes a little more than a week after photos surfaced on social media of National Guard officers sharing a meal with a family of politicians linked to criminal activity in Venustiano Carranza, Puebla.
A senior official in the Guard’s internal affairs division was relieved of his duties last week while under investigation, the force announced on social media. He was one of seven guardsmen in the photos.
On April 29, a video surfaced of uniformed National Guard members who were stripped of their weapons by local police in Los Reyes, Michoacán, because they appeared drunk and were acting aggressively.
And on May 4, the news website La Silla Rota posted a series of photos purporting to show National Guard officers in Irapuato, Guanajuato, throwing a party attended by sex workers.
President López Obrador formed the National Guard in 2019 in a new effort to bring organized crime under control.
The Puebla animal control agency has rescued 188 abandoned dogs from the streets in the city during the coronavirus quarantine.
Animal control agents, who found the dogs in various states and ages, believe that many were abandoned due to fears of the coronavirus.
“There’s no evidence that pets have transmitted the disease, therefore there exists no justification at all to take extreme measures with pets that can affect their wellbeing,” said a member of one of the city’s animal control brigades.
After capture the animals are taken to a refuge in the south of the city where they are given medical care, food, shelter and rehabilitation until they are ready to be put up for adoption.
“People send us reports that they see [dogs] in the street, sometimes they’re the same people feeding them until we arrive,” said the animal control agent.
Puebla’s animal control department made a call to citizens to avoid walking their dogs in public during the quarantine period. It also advised pet owners to make sure they have all the proper vaccine and ownership documentation in case of emergency.
