Waters off Veracruz turn turquoise blue due to lack of human activity.
The beaches in the city of Veracruz have turned a turquoise blue normally seen on Mexico’s Caribbean coast in the absence of human activity due to the government’s efforts to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.
Photos of the sparkling waters and glittering beaches — normally murky and litter-strewn — went viral on social media this week. The Veracruz municipal government even boasted of the phenomenon on its Twitter account.
“This is how the beaches of Veracruz look thanks to the low number or total lack of people due to the crisis. What do you think?” it tweeted on Tuesday.
Well aware of the popularity of the city’s beaches during holidays, the municipal government blocked access and deployed officials to patrol the beaches to prevent people from gathering during the Easter Week vacation.
The city’s Villa del Mar and Martí beaches normally fill up with vacationers in April, but the photos of crystalline waters posted online show them all but empty.
The neighboring municipality of Boca del Río has also implemented measures to keep people off the beaches, sending navy and National Guard troops to break up any gatherings and persuade people to return to their homes.
Coastal communities across Mexico have seen impressive natural phenomena during the pandemic, as wildlife reclaims spaces previously left alone due to human activity.
Across the globe, many have taken to song during the coronavirus pandemic, whether it be quarantine balcony performances in Paris, Andrea Bocelli’s lonely concert in Milan, Italy, or Mister Cumbia’s surprisingly popular La Cumbia del Coronavirus.
On Wednesday evening, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mayor Célida López Cárdenas decided it was time to add her voice to the chorus.
A self-taught and newly-minted musician, López posted a minute-long video with a coronavirus stay-at-home message to her Twitter account, showing her playing guitar and singing in her kitchen. As of Friday morning it had garnered 38,000 views.
The lyrics of the song she composed plead with citizens to stay at home and warn of arrests and fines if they do not comply.
“Stay at home, listen to us and help us now! Stay at home or I will fine you! Stay at home please, whoever does not stay at home will be arrested! If you don’t stay home then don’t complain if there aren’t enough hospitals for everyone!” she sings while strumming a one-chord melody on an acoustic guitar, finishing off with “Hooray for your mayor’s talent!”
Por ustedes por su vida no hay nada que esté a mi alcance que no vaya hacer. Les canto esta canción con mucho cariño ya no sé cómo pedirles se queden en casa. Aaaa y por favor no sean gach@s no me insulten ya se que canto feo !!! pic.twitter.com/qZrSRaL1GT
On April 14, the Hermosillo municipal council announced strict stay-at-home measures, with fines of up to 8,800 pesos, around US $356, for anyone who leaves their home for nonessential reasons or travels with a passenger in their vehicle.
Police report that during the first two days of the edict around 130 people were fined and that number has since soared to more than 1,000.
As of Friday morning, Hermosillo, which has a population of 946,000, had reported 215 positive cases of the coronavirus and 20 deaths.
Reactions to the mayor’s musical effort were mixed. Some Twitter commenters thanked her for the laugh, others said they were ashamed to call her mayor and several suggested she should work on writing a song called “I will pave the streets.”
Pemex posted a gargantuan loss in the first quarter of the year as the coronavirus crisis, low oil prices and a tumbling peso took a heavy toll on the beleaguered state oil company.
It reported a loss of 562.25 billion pesos (US $22.8 billion) on Thursday, a result 16 times worse than the 35.7 billion-peso loss it posted in the first three months of 2019.
The coronavirus pandemic was the main cause of the company’s dismal first-quarter showing: global demand for oil plummeted, causing prices to follow suit, and the peso depreciated sharply against the United States dollar as investors abandoned it in favor of safe-haven currencies, especially the greenback.
Pemex’s revenue slumped 20.3% in the first quarter compared to the same period of 2019, falling to 284.1 billion pesos from 356.3 billion pesos a year earlier. Exports fell 19.4% as demand for crude collapsed.
“The most significant variables that explain this situation are the decline in the price of the Mexican export [oil] mix … and the reduction in national and export sales volumes caused by the lockdown measures to reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the state company said in a report sent to the Mexican Stock Exchange.
Pemex also noted that the peso lost 24.7% of its value against the U.S. dollar in the first three months of the year. The depreciation of the currency inflicted a 469.2 billion-peso foreign exchange loss on the oil company, which has debt in excess of US $100 billion.
However, the exchange loss doesn’t threaten the economic viability of the company, Pemex chief financial officer Alberto Velázquez said in a call with analysts. The first-quarter loss was about average for international oil firms, he said.
Velázquez said that the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Pemex was “serious but temporary,” adding that the company will continue with the operational and financial plans implemented since the beginning of the six-year term of the current federal government. Pemex will continue aiming to boost crude production despite the downturn in demand, he said.
President López Obrador has pledged to reduce Mexico’s reliance on imported fuel and to that end is moving to increase the country’s refining capacity even though that activity is not profitable for Pemex.
No beer, and it could be a while before there is any.
As the country faces another month of quarantine, a new crisis looms on the horizon: Mexico is running out of beer.
Hoping their stocks would last through to the end of the quarantine, beer companies began halting production in early April in response to the government’s classification of alcohol as a nonessential agro-industrial product.
But now that the emergency period has been extended to the end of May, small business owners who depend on beer sales for as much as 40% of their revenue are starting to feel the economic pinch.
“We’re now seeing what was more or less obvious. The inventories in the warehouses are running out and there’s no new production,” said Cuauhtémoc Rivera, president of the National Alliance of Small Business Owners (Anpec).
The alliance urged the federal government to classify beer as an essential product in early April to avoid the very situation small shop and convenience store owners now face.
“There’s no beer because there’s no production. They closed the plants because of the disease,” said Emilio, a Mexico City shop owner with a few lonely cans of less popular brands of beer left in his refrigerators.
A couple of blocks away, Alejandro runs a beer distributor that normally stocks 150 businesses in the neighborhood. He has gone from selling 1,000 cases a week to zero and now a sign hangs over the door reading, “No beer.”
“It’s hitting us real hard because beer is what we sell most. Now that we don’t have any, it obviously hurts us. My business supports eight families,” he said among mountains of empty bottles.
Even larger grocery stores are starting to see stocks run low, and the scarcity is being felt at the cash register, as beer prices have risen around 30%.
“Before, I got a case for 380 pesos (US $15.40). Now I get one for 600 pesos (US $24.32),” said Omar, who runs a michelada street stand in Mexico City.
Data published by the federal statistics institute Inegi reveal that around 65 million Mexicans drink beer, and that each of those consumes an average of 68 liters of the brew annually. But Mexicans’ intimate relationship with beer has had a rocky month, as news of halted production and dry laws triggered panic buying at the beginning of the emergency period.
“The beer supply is a problem,” said Juan Fonseca of Femsa, owner of the Oxxo convenience store chain. “Currently we have stock from [Heineken and Grupo Modelo], … but they’re not currently producing.”
He said on Thursday that Mexico’s 19,344 Oxxo stores have enough beer to last them the next 10 days, but many small businesses and distributors like Alejandro’s in Mexico City are already out of stock.
A possible consequence of such a prohibition is a black market for beer, which the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) fears will grow as the pandemic stretches into May.
“There’s a lot of beer arriving [on the market],” said Concamin vice president Alejandro Malagón. “Our greatest worry is that there is a market for imported beers that is taking a space, but we don’t know if they are temporary imports or contraband.”
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Mexico surged by 1,425 on Thursday, taking the total to 19,224, while 127 new fatalities lifted the death toll to 1,859.
The increase in cases was the biggest single-day jump since Covid-19 was first detected in Mexico at the end of February. The daily death toll was the fifth highest since the first coronavirus-related death was reported on March 18.
In the 10 days since the government declared the commencement of phase three of the coronavirus pandemic, a total of 10,452 new Covid-19 cases, an average of 1,045 per day, and 1,147 deaths, an average of almost 115 per day, were added to Mexico’s tally, according to federal Health Ministry data.
If those rates continue, Mexico will record its 20,000th confirmed Covid-19 case today and its 2,000th coronavirus-related death tomorrow.
On a brighter note, about half of all the people in Mexico confirmed to have the coronavirus have now fully recovered, and a decline in new cases might be seen next week.
Covid-19 cases by state as of Thursday evening.milenio
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell told the president’s press conference Friday morning that the pandemic should reach the peak number of cases May 6, provided citizens continue to isolate themselves.
“There is one week left before we get to the peak, after which [the numbers] will begin to decline but only if we stay in our homes, otherwise this prediction will not come true.”
According to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, Mexico had the 23rd highest number of accumulated cases in the world and the 15th highest death toll as of Friday morning. It ranks fourth for cases among Latin American countries behind Brazil, Peru and Ecuador and second for deaths behind Brazil.
More than a quarter of the confirmed cases are in Mexico City, where 5,209 people have now tested positive for Covid-19. The capital also has the highest number of active cases with 1,660.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and her counterparts in the capital’s 16 boroughs appeared in a video posted to social media on Thursday in which they renewed the call for residents to stay in their homes to limit the spread of Covid-19.
“Governments have a great responsibility but citizens do as well. We all have to be responsible; stay at home, together we will overcome this,” Sheinbaum said.
Covid-19 deaths by state. milenio
She warned that if large numbers of residents don’t follow social distancing recommendations, hospitals will likely face a significant influx of patients requiring respiratory support.
“Today we have 809 people intubated and we’re preparing to have 2,000 people in intensive care,” Sheinbaum said.
México state has the second highest number of confirmed cases with 3,130, many of which were detected in municipalities that are part of the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City.
Baja California is the third most affected state with 1,557 accumulated cases followed by Tabasco, Sinaloa and Quintana Roo, where 984, 856 and 788 people, respectively, have tested positive for Covid-19.
México state also has the second largest active coronavirus outbreak with 956 cases. The Gulf coast state of Tabasco has 317 active cases, its neighbor Veracruz has 241, Baja California has 234 and Quintana Roo has 209. No other state has more than 200 active cases, of which there are 5,912 across the country.
At the municipal level, Mexico City’s most populated borough, Iztapalapa, has the highest number of active cases followed by the northern borough of Gustavo A. Madero; Centro (Villahermosa), Tabasco; Nezahualcóyotl, México state; and Benito Juárez (Cancún), Quintana Roo.
Mexico City also leads the country for coronavirus-related deaths with 409 as of Thursday. Baja California is second with 222 fatalities followed by México state, Sinaloa, Tabasco and Quintana Roo, all of which have recorded more than 100 deaths.
Tijuana, with 158 coronavirus-related fatalities, and Culiacán, with 101, are the only municipalities with triple-figure death tolls.
Among the 1,859 people who have lost their lives to Covid-19, 186 died in their homes, according to Health Ministry data.
The fatality rate for the disease in Mexico has crept up this week from 9.2 per 100 cases on Monday to 9.7 on Thursday. The global rate is about 7.
However, as many Covid-19 cases both here and around the world go undetected, the real fatality rate is certain to be much lower.
Tingambato, Michoacán, site of three ancient settlements.
The use of drones and lasers has allowed archaeologists to confirm the existence of two pre-Hispanic settlements buried beneath a third ancient city in the state of Michoacán.
José Luis Punzo, an archaeologist with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), told the newspaper El Universal that Mexican and foreign archaeologists used drones and the laser surveying method known as lidar (light detection and ranging) to explore the site of the ancient city of Tingambato because much of it is covered with thick vegetation including avocado groves.
Located between the cities of Pátzcuaro and Uruapan, the Tingambato site was inhabited between the years 1 and 900, Punzo said.
“In the year zero [1 AD], there was a first village that was destroyed and another great platform was built on top of it. That remained until the year 500 AD,” he said. “It was also covered and another great city was built on top of it. That’s the one you can visit today.”
Punzo said that it is not known why the first two cities – now some four meters below ground – were destroyed.
The Tingambato archaeological site is located between Uruapan and Pátzcuaro.
The third city – abandoned in the latter half of the ninth century possibly because of a large fire or volcano eruption – shares some architectural features with the ancient city of Teotihuacán, located in modern day México state, suggesting that people from that settlement contributed to its construction.
It is also known as Tinganio, which in the Purépecha language means “place where the fire ends.”
Punzo said that using drones and lidar technology to explore the site was expensive but without them the work would have taken much longer.
“If we compared the results we obtained with them with the time … [the exploration] would have taken if we didn’t use them, we would realize that they are not so expensive,” he said.
Drones were used to take aerial photographs of the above-ground structures, the INAH archaeologists said, explaining that the images were used to develop 3D models of them. Punzo also said that drones helped to identify where excavations should take place to look for remnants of the buried cities.
Terrestrial and airborne lidar technology was used to map the site, he said.
“Terrestrial lidar … gives us extremely precise [information] about the buildings, the architectural relationships … at the site,” Punzo said. Aerial lidar, he added, enabled archaeologists to detect structures below vegetation.
“Then … the layer of vegetation is removed. In other words, cities are discovered with this [airborne lidar technology], Punzo said.”
In addition to the INAH team, archaeologists from the National Autonomous University, the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the University of Strasbourg in France worked on the exploration project.
As part of their studies, the archaeologists were able to determine that the remains found in a grave at the site in 2012 were those of a young woman aged between 15 and 19. The woman was buried in pre-Hispanic times along with some 19,000 precious stones, sea shells and human bones.
“We’re working with Harvard University to carry out DNA studies. We’ve discovered that she had a deformed skull and her teeth were modified; in other words, she was a high-ranking person,” Punzo said.
The archaeologist also said that INAH is planning another study using drones and lidar technology at the Tzintzuntzan pre-Hispanic site, also located in Michoacán.
“It’s a lidar research project in conjunction with the National Council of Science and Technology but everything is on hold because of the Covid-19 health crisis.”
Papier-mache figures in an image from Thelmadatter's book.
The history, craft and cultural importance of the traditional folk art cartonería, or Mexican papier-mache, is the subject of a bilingual book that aims to present the art form to speakers of both English and Spanish beyond Mexico’s borders.
Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta is the product of years of research and networking with artisans carried out by author and Mexico News Daily writer Leigh Ann Thelmadatter, who has lived and worked in Mexico for over 15 years.
“My purpose was to introduce cartonería to a foreign audience, since … there wasn’t anything in English and very little in Spanish,” said Thelmadatter in an interview.
The author was invited to the second annual Cartonería Conference in Cuernavaca in 2016, where she met the majority of the over 50 artists, museum directors and other experts she interviewed for the book.
She said that previous books on the subject have focused on Pedro Linares, the creator of the figurines of fantastical creatures called alebrijes. Although Oaxaca is now famous for its wooden alebrijes, the figurines originated in Mexico City in the mid-20th century when Linares used papier-mache to form the beasts from dreams he experienced while ill with a fever.
Mexican Cartonería, the book by Mexico City writer Leigh Thelmadatter.
“Much of the documentation also had to do with this family. However, thanks to the cartonería conference, I realized that [the art form] had grown a lot and that it involved people from very different backgrounds,” said Thelmadatter.
The book covers the full history of the folk art, from the origins of its popularity in the fever dreams of Pedro Linares to the artists in whose hands it continues to evolve to this day, and this growth is what the author considers to be the most important part of the work.
The full-color, hardcover book can be purchased online directly from the publisher, and is also available on Amazon.
A 69-year-old man this week became the first doctor in Sonora to die after contracting Covid-19, passing away seven days after his wife succumbed to the same disease.
Salvador Ramos Olmos, a doctor in the city of Caborca, died in the IMSS 14 General Hospital in the state capital Hermosillo early on Tuesday morning. His wife, 68-year-old Liliana Magdalena Soto, died in the same hospital on April 21.
The couple’s daughter, a pediatrician who also tested positive for the coronavirus but didn’t develop serious symptoms, told the newspaper El Sol de Hermosillo that her father is believed to have been infected with Covid-19 during a consultation with a patient from the small border town of Sásabe.
Suzel Ramos Soto said her father had continued to attend to his patients despite the risk of being infected and his age because he was dedicated to his job. Ramos will be remembered as a devoted doctor who served the community of Caborca for more than 40 years.
After developing coronavirus symptoms, the doctor was admitted to the private hospital where he worked on April 8 but transferred to Hermosillo the next day after his Covid-19 diagnosis was confirmed by test results.
Before he was hospitalized in Caborca, Ramos is believed to have transmitted Covid-19 to his wife. She first developed symptoms on April 11, tested positive for the disease on April 13 and was transferred to the IMSS hospital in Hermosillo on the 15th.
Ramos’ family didn’t tell him that his wife was also sick but after she arrived in the same ward in Hermosillo he quickly became aware of her illness.
“When they admitted my mom to hospital my dad heard her,” said Suzel Ramos, adding that her father’s condition deteriorated after he found out that his wife was also sick.
However, it was Soto who succumbed first to Covid-19, dying six days after she was hospitalized. She suffered from Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that made her more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
Ramos, who was asthmatic, died a week later. Both he and his wife had been placed on ventilators before their deaths, their critical conditions making it impossible for them to say goodbye to each despite their close physical proximity.
“If anything is true, it’s that coronavirus patients die alone,” said the couple’s daughter.
Federal health authorities said this week that the possibility of surviving Covid-19 after being placed on a ventilator is relatively low, with 60% to 80% of intubated patients having died in Mexico.
Suzel Ramos and her two brothers, Edgar and Carlos, all said that their parents received excellent care in the IMSS hospital in Hermosillo.
Twenty people have now died in Sonora after testing positive to Covid-19. There were 202 confirmed coronavirus cases in the northern border state as of Wednesday, 53 of which were considered active.
The dry law doesn't necessarily mean a complete ban on sales. In this case, they are prohibited daily from midnight to 7:00 a.m.
The Yucatán state government has extended its prohibition on alcohol sales until May 15 as part of its efforts to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.
State authorities explained that the decision to extend the dry law was made “with the purpose of continuing to take care of the people’s wellbeing,” especially now that the country has entered phase 3 of the pandemic.
They also cited a significant decrease in calls to 911 related to domestic violence since instating the dry law earlier this month as another reason for extending the prohibition.
Anyone found selling alcohol illegally could face up to six years in prison and/or a fine of up to 24,644 pesos (US $1,025).
Authorities in Baja California Sur, Sonora, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Sinaloa and Nuevo León have also enacted dry laws during the pandemic.
The role of beer in society has been a contentious issue between the public and private sectors during the pandemic. Production was halted after the federal government initially deemed beer nonessential, but manufacturers, vendors and drinkers were given a bit of hope when the federal Agricultural Ministry gave the industry the go-ahead to resume production on April 6.
The joy was short-lived, however, as deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell quickly put the kibosh on the decision, announcing just days later that beer was still considered a nonessential product.
Yesterday was the last time Rubén Rodríguez, state coordinator of Red Cross Relief in Mexico City, will spend at home for the foreseeable future.
In an interview with the newspaper El Universal, the paramedic says he will be staying in a hotel room outside of working hours in order to keep his family safe. Rodríguez comes into contact with coronavirus patients on a daily basis, and the possibility of infecting those he loves is not worth the risk.
It’s a fear that surpasses what he experienced as a first responder during the aftermath of Mexico’s September 19, 2017 earthquake, which left 370 dead and 6,011 injured.
“Not even in the earthquake did I see so much fear,” he told the newspaper. Then, if a structure collapsed while he was trying to rescue people, he might be killed, but he knew his family would be safe. “The issue with this is the risk of being infected with a disease that you do not know you are carrying until 14 days later and can pass it on to the people you love.”
Rodríguez works with a team of six specialized Red Cross ambulances that have been adapted to transport people with the coronavirus.
The units are equipped with a plastic capsule to isolate the patient, a ventilator, a vital signs monitor and other limited medical equipment. Rodríguez says they try to keep the interiors stocked with only the most essential items, making them easier to disinfect between patients.
Ambulance rides are carefully triaged. Someone who is experiencing coronavirus symptoms must first call 911, and if they are showing respiratory distress they are referred to a doctor for screening to determine the severity of their symptoms.
If the Red Cross questions the need for transportation, it will send a staff member to the patient’s home on a motorcycle to make an in-person assessment. Only those with complications are taken to hospitals.
Currently, 30% of Mexico City’s 186 Red Cross employees are symptomatic and on medical leave.
The agency has so far carried out 140 transfers of suspected coronavirus patients and 64 with confirmed cases.
Rodríguez reports that since the beginning of the pandemic and as far back as January the Red Cross has provided personnel with supplies including N95 masks, and training to help keep staff and volunteers safe from the virus.
Between transports, Red Cross paramedics seek out other ambulance companies and help train them in proper protocol and use of protective equipment. It helps quell their fear of infection, Rodríguez says.
And that fear is a constant in the lives of those on the frontlines of the pandemic. The risk of infection coupled with fatigue, stress and the psychological effects of treating coronavirus patients is taking its toll, and, in at least Rodríguez’s case, separating families.
The biggest challenge, he says, is that “we are all afraid of the unknown.”
