With beer production having been deemed a nonessential activity during the coronavirus pandemic, breweries have been shut down since early April. Now Mexico is running out of beer.
The short supply has driven prices through the roof on the black market, where a six-pack of cold ones can cost up to 300% more than pre-coronavirus prices.
Smugglers on the northern border are bringing in clandestine shipments of beer from the U.S., where production continues.
In southern Mexico, illegal beer runners in Tabasco, where alcohol sales have been prohibited for the past month, recently saw 85 cases of beer meant for resale seized by authorities. The shipment was destroyed by a bulldozer.
Last weekend at least 25 states across Mexico reported beer shortages both in large supermarket chains and corner stores.
Some areas of the country are under government-mandated dry laws either banning outright the sale of alcohol or limiting the hours during which it can be purchased, but the shortage has imposed de facto dry laws on other regions simply because supplies do not exist.
And in areas where beer is still in supply, prices are soaring. In Tamaulipas, the price of a six-pack has doubled and a case of beer that used to sell for 280 pesos is now going for up to 600 pesos. In Coahuila, prices are up by 40%. In Chihuahua, panic buying and hoarding have exhausted shelves.
In Monterrey and Tijuana, stores are posting signs saying they have no beer.
Beer runners are taking to social media to sell their clandestine wares, which are being trafficked similarly to cocaine and marijuana. Sellers will bring beer to a customer’s door to lower the risk of being caught by police, but purchasers will often pay a 300% premium for the service.
Not only do regular beer drinkers miss out, so too do the government’s coffers as they are no longer collecting beer tax money. In 2019 those revenues amounted to around 1 billion pesos, almost US $41 million.
According to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography, there were about 65 million regular beer drinkers in 2018, about half the population.
One of the warning signs in 89 areas of Mexico City that are considered high risk.
The number of coronavirus patients in intensive care beds in Mexico City hospitals will peak next week, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said on Sunday.
Speaking at the Health Ministry’s nightly coronavirus press briefing, López-Gatell said that about 1,800 Covid-19 patients are expected to be in the capital’s intensive care wards between May 11 and 15. The prediction is based on the estimate that the transmission of the virus will reach its peak in Mexico City between Wednesday and Friday of this week, he said.
With that scenario looming, the Mexico City government has put up signs in 89 different locations warning residents that they are areas of high risk of infection because large numbers of people pass through them.
Placed in 51 metro stations, 31 transit hubs (mainly bus stations outside subway stations) and seven public markets including the Central de Abasto wholesale market and the sprawling Mercado de la Merced on the fringe of the capital’s historic center, the yellow and black signs bear messages such as “Careful! High contagion area” and “Keep your distance and don’t touch anything.”
Mexico City is the worst affected entity in the country in terms of both Covid-19 cases and deaths from the infectious disease.
Confirmed Covid-19 cases as of Sunday evening. milenio
López-Gatell said on Sunday night that the number of confirmed cases across the country had increased by 1,383 to 23,471 and that the death toll had risen by 93 to 2,154. He also said that there are 191 suspected coronavirus fatalities that have not yet been confirmed.
More than a quarter of the confirmed cases since Covid-19 was first detected in Mexico at the end of February – 6,417 – were reported in Mexico City while almost 4,000 more were identified in neighboring México state. The capital has reported 472 coronavirus-related deaths, almost double the 238 fatalities in Baja California, which has the second-highest death toll in the country.
México state has the third highest death toll with 199 fatalities followed by Sinaloa, Tabasco, Quintana Roo and Puebla, where 170, 145, 118 and 102 people, respectively, have lost their lives to Covid-19.
Of the more that 23,000 confirmed cases, 6,933 are currently considered active, López-Gatell said, adding that there are 12,664 suspected cases of the disease and that almost 96,000 people have now been tested.
Mexico City also has the highest number of active cases, with 1,894, followed by México state, with 1,076. Tabasco has 344 active cases, Sinaloa has 287, Veracruz has 273, Yucatán has 261, Puebla has 241, Quintana Roo has 222 and Morelos has 216. No other state currently has more than 200 active cases, according to Health Ministry data.
While admissions of Covid-19 patients to intensive care wards in Mexico is predicted to spike next week, hospitals in the capital are already under more pressure than those in the rest of the country.
Mexico City leads with the highest number of Covid-19 deaths, at 472, according to the statistics released Sunday. milenio
Two-thirds of hospital beds for patients requiring general care are already occupied in the capital while 59% of those with ventilators are currently is use, López-Gatell said.
Baja California has the second highest occupancy rate of regular hospital beds, at 53%, while Sinaloa ranks second for occupancy of beds with ventilators, with 55% currently in use.
At a national level, occupancy of regular hospital beds is 29% while 24% of beds with ventilators are in use.
The drug lord's mansion in the Jardines de Pedregal neighborhood of Mexico City.
The former home of famed Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes has a new owner. On Sunday, the once luxurious property in Mexico City’s posh Jardines de Pedregal neighborhood was sold at auction for 49.71 million pesos, a little over US $2 million.
The home was one of hundreds of offerings put on the auction block by Indep, a branch of government formed to claim the proceeds of assets seized during the committing of crimes. The money raised in this auction will be used to help fight the coronavirus, officials said.
The boxy, cement home would have been state-of-the art when it was built. The 3,500-square-meter mansion includes an indoor swimming pool and spa, an elaborate children’s playhouse, large gardens, a bar and a wine cellar.
There was only one bidder for the house.
The auction, held at the Los Pinos cultural complex, also offered 77 cars, five airplanes, five homes and 107 lots of jewelry, among other seized goods. In total, more than 130 million pesos, around US $5.3 million, was collected.
The home, whose style and fixtures appear dated, belonged to Carrillo, known as “The Lord of the Skies,” until his death in 1997 from a botched series of plastic surgery procedures.
Carrillo became involved in the drug trade while still a teenager, working in poppy and marijuana cultivation in the mountains of Chihuahua before rising through the ranks to become head of the Juárez Cartel.
He is estimated to have amassed a fortune of around US $25 billion by transporting drugs, mostly cocaine, from Colombia and Mexico to the United States, often using his fleet of jets, which is how he earned his nickname.
After his death, Mexican police seized dozens of Carrillo’s properties across the country. The government also seized an Arabian-style home called “The House of 1,001 Nights” from Carrillo in 1993. The over-the-top mansion still stands, abandoned and covered in graffiti, in Hermosillo, Sonora.
National Guard patrols outside hospital stormed by angry family members on Friday.
The family members of coronavirus patients at a México state hospital will now be able to stay in contact with their loved ones using tablet computers after an angry mob stormed the facility on Friday night seeking information about a patient.
The México state Health Ministry has distributed mobile phones to medical personnel at the Las Americas General Hospital in Ecatepec and tablets to family members of patients. If Covid-19 patients are well enough, they will be able to speak with their relatives via video calls. Family members are prohibited from visiting the patients due to the risk of infection.
Authorities will also erect tents outside the Ecatepec hospital where information about patients’ conditions will be provided to family members. More than 30 additional health workers, including doctors, nurses and nurses’ aides, will be allocated to the facility to treat the growing number of Covid-19 patients.
Almost 500 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in Ecatepec, a sprawling, densely-populated municipality that borders Mexico City.
The announcement of the new measures comes after a group of some 15 people breached security at the hospital after they found out that two coronavirus patients had died but were given no specific information about the fatalities.
Led by the parents of a young man who had been hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms, the mob burst into the hospital to locate him and other patients. The group found several bagged bodies in a hospital corridor including one containing the young man.
The discovery triggered even greater anger among some of the group’s members, who demanded answers from doctors and nurses about the treatment and medications he had received. An emergency doctor and three security guards were physically attacked during the altercation, the newspaper El Universal reported.
Members of the National Guard and state police arrived at the hospital almost an hour later to quell the protest but disgruntled family members demanding better care for their loved ones maintained a blockade outside the facility until Saturday morning.
The state government said that due to to lack of space the bodies of eight deceased Covid-19 patients had been temporarily stored in a hospital corridor as they awaited collection by busy funeral homes. The government said that family members of the victims had been notified even as relatives claimed they had been kept in the dark.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell later admonished those who stormed the Ecatepec hospital and rummaged through the body bags, which he described as a source of infection.
There is evidence that staff at other health care facilities are also failing to notify family members of Covid-19 patients about their condition in a timely manner as they face increasing demand for their services due to the worsening coronavirus outbreak.
Miriam Cruz, the daughter of a 58-year-old man admitted to a Mexico City hospital with coronavirus-like symptoms last week, didn’t find out that her father had died until two days after his passing.
According to a report by the newspaper Milenio, Rosendo Cruz was admitted to the ISSSTE Ignacio Zaragoza Hospital in Iztapalapa on Wednesday but his daughter didn’t find out about his death the next day until Saturday when her mother-in-law received a call from the facility.
Miriam, who waited day and night outside the hospital with other family members, described not knowing anything about his condition for several days as “horrible.”
She said the hospital said its staff is overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients.
Iztapalapa, the most populated and poorest of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs, has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, recording more confirmed cases than any other municipality in the country.
The president is looking up but his popularity is not.
President López Obrador’s approval rating reached its lowest point ever in April, according to a survey by Consulta Mitofsky and commissioned by the newspaper El Economista.
Last month saw his approval rating drop 4% from March to 48.8%, with disapproval rising to 52%.
López Obrador’s popularity according to previous Mitofsky polls peaked in February 2019 at 67.1%, three months after he took office.
The current survey showed his highest approval rating was among teachers (63.8%), the informal sector (60.1%), self-employed workers (55.2%) and public servants.
López Obrador’s highest disapproval rating came from the unemployed (65.3%), business owners (61.2%), students (58.4%), professionals (57.7%) and retirees (54.5%).
By age, 50.8% of 30 to 49-year-olds approved of the president’s performance compared to only 43.9% of those over 50.
By state, more than 64% of residents in Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Campeche and Oaxaca rated the president as “outstanding.” The lowest approval rates, below 40%, were found in Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, Jalisco, Querétaro, Yucatán and Zacatecas.
When asked if López Obrador has managed to unite the country, 72.4% answered no, eight percentage points higher than in March.
Finally, 60.8% of those surveyed felt the president does not have a good relationship with the business community, the lowest number since April 2019.
Factors affecting the president’s approval rating last month included complaints from state governors about the lack of quality medical supplies to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and the drastic drop in oil prices. Also mentioned were the country’s homicide rate and the president’s announcement that, despite the pandemic crisis, the Dos Bocas oil refinery, which is expected to cost upwards of US $8 billion, the US $8-billion Maya Train and the US $3.8-billion Santa Lucia airport projects would continue to go forward.
The survey was conducted among 45,605 Mexicans over the age of 18, using smartphones with internet access.
Shepherd's tacos, commonly known as tacos al pastor. XXMaxusXx / CC BY-SA
Mexico’s most popular taco originated in the Middle East but why they should be called “shepherd’s tacos” is anybody’s guess.
In the United States, classic dishes with immigrant roots are almost a given – hot dogs and hamburgers (Germany), pizza (Italy), fortune cookies (China), and so on.
However, the same cannot be said for Mexican cuisine. There is this idea that Mexico is a timeless land, whose identity was forged in the colonial period and has been preserved ever since.
Although smaller in numbers, Mexico does have a history of immigration that continues to affect the country’s cultural development.
One of the more unusual immigration stories concerns people from the Middle East, now often referred to as Lebanese. This migration started as early as the 19th century from an area then known as “Greater Syria.” Here, non-Muslim families often sent children abroad to avoid conscription in the Ottoman Empire, and some made their way to Mexico.
A dish of tacos al pastor.William Neuheisel / CC
Such immigration increased in the first decades of the 20th century as the empire became unstable and fell. In 1943, much of the region became the country of Lebanon.
Most were Arabic-speaking Christians, and they brought with them the technique of roasting sliced meat on a vertical spit. This is common in the Mediterranean Middle East and known by various names such as gyro, döner and shawarma. The original dish is lamb, pita bread, vinegar and various spices.
After this, the story gets murky. The immigrants settled in various parts of Mexico, with the majority in Puebla and Mexico City. In Puebla, they began selling the spit-roasted meat, with some places such as Taquería Bagdad becoming institutions by the 1930s. Family stories taking credit for the creation of tacos árabes abound. These tacos are still popular in Puebla, where the spicing remains Middle Eastern, but the meat is now often pork.
The dish was served in Mexico City as well, especially in the La Merced area where many of the Lebanese lived. The evolution of taco árabe to taco al pastor most likely occurred in Mexico City. Non-Lebanese taco places began to adopt the use of the vertical spit but modified the dish.
In addition to pork, other substitutions included achiote and chile pepper for the original spices, corn tortillas for the pita. Additions include onion, cilantro, pineapple and salsa. It is unknown why pineapple came to be included although some swear that it is important for proper digestion.
Another unknown is why it is called “al pastor” (shepherd’s) as pigs are not herded like sheep.
Tacos al pastor as we know them took form by the 1960s, with various families and businesses in Mexico City taking credit for their invention. Al pastor is an anchor of Mexico City cuisine, but árabe is not so easy to come by. In Puebla, al pastor competes with árabe.
Recipes for al pastor vary. Many places jealously guard their version, especially the marinade used for the meat. The pork is cut into thin sheets along the grain, much like the cut for milanesa (thin cutlets). The sheets and onion slivers are marinated, then stacked over the spit. Then a peeled pineapple is skewered on top, in part to keep the meat pressed. The spit is placed and rotated exactly the way those for gyros and döners are, with cooked bits cut off and served on tiny corn tortillas, usually in orders of five.
While tacos rule, al pastor can also be used to make tortas (Mexican subs), alambres (meat with vegetables) and gringas (meat and cheese layered on flour tortillas).
The popularity of al pastor can be attributed to its mild taste — before salsa is added, of course. But it is also a kind of show. Spits are almost always found in prominent places where perspective diners can see and smell the meat being cooked as well as the artistry of the taquero at work. An important talent for these cooks is to be able to cut a small piece of pineapple from the top of the spit and have it land perfectly onto the taco below.
Since becoming popular, it has spread to the rest of the country, where it may be called tacos del trompo (top, as in the toy) or tacos de adobada (marinated). It has become the most popular taco variety in the country by far. Its reach continues to grow, crossing the border into Mexican restaurants in the United States, and there is even one restaurant serving it in Beijing.
The Lebanese have not only contributed Mexico’s favorite taco to the country. Today, there are over 400,000 Mexicans of Lebanese heritage, with a reputation for business acumen. Latin America’s richest man (and fifth richest in the world) is Carlos Slim Helú, a first-generation Mexican, whose parents were Lebanese immigrants.
Leigh Thelmadatter’s culture blog appears weekly on Mexico News Daily.
The survivor of a 17-day struggle against coronavirus.
An 84-year-old woman with several underlying medical conditions was discharged from a hospital in Nuevo León on Thursday after she was successfully treated for Covid-19.
The woman, whose identity was not released, was admitted to a Social Security Institute hospital in the municipality of Guadalupe on April 13. She was suffering from atypical pneumonia, body pains, fever and an oxygen capacity below 80%.
She was considered an extremely high-risk patient upon being diagnosed with Covid-19 due to her advanced age, elevated weight, status as a heart attack survivor and the presence of other underlying conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension.
But she beat the odds.
“I’m very grateful for all the doctors and nurses. They all took good care of me and I’m alive thanks to them. They’re all wonderful. I have no way to repay them,” said the patient upon her release.
Totally conscious during her entire 17-day struggle against the virus, the woman was given intravenous liquids, as well as antiretroviral, antimalarial and anticoagulant medications.
Hospital deputy director María Elvia Lugo praised the team of doctors and nurses who kept the woman alive, saying that they followed all established protocols for dealing with the virus with dedication and professionalism.
The skulls of the men buried in Mexico City whose bodies were found in the 1990s.
DNA testing has allowed a Mexican graduate student and his German adviser to obtain a fascinating insight into the lives of three African men believed to be slaves who were buried in colonial Mexico City almost 500 years ago.
Rodrigo Barquera, an archaeogenetics student at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and his adviser Johannes Krause extracted DNA from the teeth of three male skeletons found in the early 1990s when workers were excavating for a new subway line.
They came across a long-lost burial ground that had been connected to a hospital for indigenous patients that was built shortly after the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the early 16th century.
The San José de los Naturales Royal Hospital and its cemetery were located in the center of the fledgling colonial city near where the Line 8 Metro station San Juan de Letrán now stands.
Three skeletons excavated at the colonial-era cemetery stood out because their teeth were filed decoratively, alerting archaeologists that they weren’t local indigenous people. It was concluded that the remains most likely belonged to slaves from West Africa but without more evidence they couldn’t be sure.
Remains of the three men show signs of physical abuse, such as the green stains produced by a gunshot wound.
Now, however, Barquera and Krause have concluded that the individuals were among the first generation of African slaves to arrive in the Americas. Via a DNA analysis of their teeth, the researchers were able to conclude that all three men had ancestry from West Africa, although they couldn’t pinpoint which country or tribal group they came from.
According to an article by the researchers published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology, chemicals in their teeth – which retain a signature of the food and water they consumed in their childhood – were consistent with West African ecosystems.
Barquera and Krause also studied the whole skeletons of the probable African slaves, all of which are held at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) in Mexico City. ENAH researchers assisted Barquera and Krause in their analysis.
“We studied their whole skeletons, and we wanted to know what they were suffering from, not only the diseases but the physical abuse too so we could tell their stories,” Barquera said. “It has implications in the whole story of the colonial period of Mexico.”
The researchers concluded that the three men were in in their late 20s or early 30s when they died. Two of them may have suffered from malnutrition and anemia as the bones in their skulls had thinned, a phenomenon consistent with those conditions. The skeleton of one of the malnourished men indicated that he had survived several gunshot wounds.
“You could see that the bone was stained with a copper greenish pigment because the bullets stayed in the body of this individual until he was dead,” Barquera said.
The skeleton of the third man showed signs of severe stress, most likely from arduous physical labor. Signs of abuse, including a poorly-healed broken leg, made it more likely that the men were enslaved rather than free, Krause said.
Through a genetic analysis of the microbes in their teeth, the researchers found that the two men with malnutrition carried pathogens linked to chronic diseases. One carried the hepatitis B virus and the teeth of the other man had traces of the bacteria that causes yaws, a tropical disease related to syphilis.
The microbes carried by the men most closely resembled African strains. One hypothesis is that the slaves were infected at home before their voyage to the Americas. Another, put forward by Ayana Omilade Flewellen, a University of California archaeologist not involved with the study, is that they picked up the microbes on a crammed slave ship as they made their way to the new world.
Krause said that the discovery of the diseases carried by the men is direct evidence that African slaves introduced new pathogens to the Americas in the same way European colonizers did.
“We are always so focused on the introduction of diseases from the Europeans and the Spaniards that I think we underestimated how much the slave trade and the forceful migration from Africa to the Americas contributed also to the spread of infectious diseases to the new world,” Krause said.
Although they were able to determine that the slaves suffered from a range of ailments, the researchers could not definitely conclude what killed them.
Although the skeletons didn’t detect DNA that showed that the men had been infected with smallpox or measles, it is possible that they died of those diseases during epidemics that afflicted the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
With Cancún, Quintana Roo, seeing a drop in confirmed coronavirus cases, the tourist destination announced an aggressive new campaign to bring visitors back to the region.
The Hotel Association of Cancún, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres (AHCP), in anticipation of a reopening of tourism on June 1, announced the “Come 2 Cancún” campaign to attract visitors with two-for-one hotel stays.
Other destinations in the state could soon follow, pending approval by the Quintana Roo Tourism Promotion Council (CPTQ).
More than 150 hoteliers, including representatives from Acotur, Sunset Group, Ritz Carlton hotels, Fiesta Americana Coral Beach, AM Resorts, Hilton, Quinta Real, back the digital campaign, which will also include contests on social media where winners will receive free trips to the area.
It is unclear if the campaign, slated to be ready by May 15, will apply to those who have existing reservations at area hotels.
As part of the marketing plan, hotels are undergoing hygiene training and will seek some sort of health certification before reopening.
“We think that a ‘Covid-free’ certificate should be created so that the entire state, the entire tourism industry of the state, restaurants, ecotourism parks, discos, marinas, casinos can be launched on June 1 as a ‘Covid-Free destination,”Roberto Cintrón Gómez of the AHCP said.
As of May 1, the Benito Juarez municipality where Cancún is located had 619 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and had recorded 82 deaths.
But Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell expressed optimism Friday that Cancún was about to see a decline in the number of new cases. Statistics have indicated that the city hit a peak on Thursday, he said, but reminded citizens that isolation measures must continue.
Health workers check the occupants of a vehicle heading out of Guadalajara on Friday.
Hundreds of Jalisco residents clogged up the highways leading out of Guadalajara on Friday, ignoring the government’s pleas for people to remain in their homes during the most intense phase of the Covid-19 outbreak in the country.
Aboard cars and trucks loaded with beach accessories, coolers and even bicycles, residents formed lines stretching over two kilometers at the toll booths accessing the highways to Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, Colima, in hopes of taking advantage of the long Labor Day weekend.
Initial reports said that health workers stationed at the two highway checkpoints screened as many as 446 cars as of Friday afternoon, carrying out exhaustive examinations of the passengers and cargo. Similar numbers were estimated to have been screened at checkpoints on two other highways leading north out of the city as well.
Health workers and police took people’s temperatures and urged them to return to their homes. Despite the large numbers of vacationers attempting to leave the city, no potential or confirmed case of Covid-19 was detected during the screenings.
Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez acknowledged his constituents’ restlessness, but reminded them that it was no time to take vacations, as the country is currently in phase three of the coronavirus pandemic, when the rate of transmission is the highest.
“For those who think that it’s not a problem, remember that — as we saw during Easter — in 15 days there will be grave consequences and among them deaths. It’s not a joke. For a few, we all lose,” he said.
Friday saw the biggest single-day jump in new cases of Covid-19 across the country, as 1,515 people were confirmed to have the virus.
“We’re now fully in the most critical phase [of the outbreak] and we have to take it seriously. It’s not a holiday weekend. Those who leave could take the virus to other places or return home sick and infect more people,” said Alfaro.
Health workers have documented that these and other incidents of people not staying at home have resulted in infections that could have been preventable in the state.
