The wreckage of tractor-trailers after Friday's tornado.
Howling winds, furiously whirling dark clouds and scraps of sheet metal careening through the skies like confetti were what residents of Apodaca, Nuevo León, faced on Friday afternoon when a tornado touched down, causing extensive damage that was documented in videos shared to social media.
Two people lost their lives and at least five were injured.
The tornado was formed as Cold Front No. 60 advanced on the state, causing a drastic change in temperature that quickly dropped from 37 to 21 C, Miguel Ángel Gallegos of the National Meteorological Service explained.
The storm began around 5 p.m., moving across the state and dumping up to 60 millimeters of rain. As conditions worsened, the Monterrey-Saltillo highway was shut down in both directions due to a landslide.
By 7 p.m. Civil Protection had received 205 calls for help or reports of damage, which included fallen trees and lamp posts and downed power lines.
— ¿Por qué es Tendencia? (@porkestendencia) May 8, 2020
The agency confirmed that the tornado was classified as EF-2, with winds between 180 and 220 kilometers per hour, which caused damage in at least four municipalities, including Monterrey.
Twelve tractor-trailers were overturned and more than 100 cars were damaged by marble-sized hail. The storm also brought heavy rain forcing some roads to be closed due to flooding.
Rocío Dovanet Morales, a 32-year-old security guard, was working at the Whirlpool warehouse inside Apodaca’s Prologis Industrial Park when the tornado lifted her into the air and slammed her against a billboard, killing her when she fell back to the ground.
A 40-year-old man whose name has not been released lost his life when a tree fell on him in Atongo de Abajo, a small town located 60 kilometers southeast of Monterrey.
Covid-19 cases as of Friday evening: accumulated cases now total over 31,000. milenio
Mexico has now recorded more than 30,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 3,000 deaths as the coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of abating.
The federal Health Ministry reported 1,906 new confirmed cases on Friday, taking the total number of accumulated cases to 31,522. It also reported 199 additional fatalities, lifting the death toll to 3,160.
One in six of the total number of confirmed cases were reported in the past three days and one in five coronavirus-related deaths occurred in the same period.
Mexico City continues to bear the brunt of the pandemic, with approximately one-quarter of total cases and deaths reported in the capital. Many México state municipalities that are part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area have also reported high numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday night that there were 3,372 people in hospitals in the greater metropolitan area who were receiving general care for Covid-19 or coronavirus-like symptoms and that an additional 1,034 patients were in intensive care on ventilators.
More than 2,200 people hospitalized for Covid-19 in the Valley of México have recovered and been discharged, she told the federal Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing.
Just under half that number of people – 1,029 – have died in Mexico City and neighboring México state after testing positive for Covid-19.
Sheinbaum presented one graph based on an epidemiological model that showed that hospitalizations are expected to continue to rise in the Valley of México in coming weeks and another that showed that the number of new patients requiring intubation had only increased slightly over the past four days.
“In recent days we’ve had lower growth [in intubations] than what we had in recent weeks [but] we cannot yet say conclusively that this means that we’re flattening the curve [in the Valley of México],” she said.
President López Obrador said earlier on Friday that the peak of the pandemic in Mexico City had begun and was expected to continue until May 20.
“In … Mexico City, we’re in the phase of greatest infection, we’re at the peak. We’ve been informed that it could last until May 20, from now until the 20th, and the projection is that from then the number of infections will start to go down,” he said.
Covid-19 deaths recorded as of Friday evening. milenio
However, an epidemiological model developed by academics at the Center for Research in Teaching and Economics (CIDE), a Mexico City university, and Stanford University, is currently predicting that the pandemic won’t peak in the capital until June 21.
“If nothing changes, we’ll have the peak of infections in the third week of June,” said Fernando Alarid Escudero, a health researcher at CIDE.
Beyond the metropolitan area of Mexico City, Baja California – especially the border city of Tijuana – has been the worst affected part of the country, with almost 2,300 confirmed cases and 365 deaths. Tabasco has the fourth highest number of confirmed accumulated cases followed by Sinaloa, Veracruz and Quintana Roo.
Of the more than 30,000 Covid-19 cases that have been confirmed since the start of the pandemic, 8,048 are currently considered active, Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said Friday night.
Mexico City has the largest active outbreak at present, with more than 2,000 active cases, followed by México state, Tabasco, Veracruz and Baja California.
In addition to the confirmed active cases, there are 20,571 suspected cases across the country, Alomía said, adding that 123,446 people have now been tested for Covid-19.
In addition to the 3,160 coronavirus deaths, the health official said that there are 254 fatalities that are suspected to have been caused by Covid-19 but have not yet been confirmed.
Mexico’s fatality rate based on confirmed Covid-19 deaths remains at 10 per 1,000 confirmed cases.
Despite the growing pandemic, availability of hospital beds remains high, according to Health Ministry data. Only 34% of general care beds set aside for Covid-19 patients across the country are currently occupied while 25% of those with ventilators are in use.
However, hospitals in Mexico City are under much greater pressure, with 74% of general care beds and 62% of those with ventilators currently occupied.
Although some media reports suggest otherwise, López Obrador said Friday that no person with serious coronavirus symptoms has been unable to access the hospital care they require.
“In no case have we lacked beds, ventilators or specialists,” he said. “[The health systems in] Quintana Roo and Baja California were reinforced yesterday, equipment was taken there, and other states are being reinforced [as well].”
CCE chief Salazar: private sector needs help to reactivate the economy.
President López Obrador has rejected a new call from an influential business group to offer greater support to the private sector amid the coronavirus-induced economic crisis.
The Business Coordinating Council (CCE) called on the government to increase public debt to support business as it confronts the sharp economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the measures put in place to contain the virus.
“The country must take on greater public debt to reactivate the economy. … We all believe that we should take on debt in a responsible way,” said CCE president Carlos Salazar Lomelín.
According to López Obrador, the business group wants the federal government to commit to bailing out large companies that might collapse due to the coronavirus crisis, something that he has pledged his administration will not do.
Until recently there was frequent dialogue between the president and Salazar. Today there is none.
“We’re not going to continue with more of the same. If a company goes bankrupt, the owner should assume responsibility, or the partners or shareholders, because the state has to protect everyone; it would be immoral to use the state to bail out companies or financial institutions that are bankrupt,” he said at his regular news conference on Thursday.
He also ruled out any possibility of allowing big businesses to delay their tax obligations because such a move would reduce the government’s capacity to support Mexico’s lower classes.
López Obrador, who has pledged to provide greater economic support for the nation’s poor during the pandemic by increasing welfare spending, stressed that there will be no privileges for big business.
The CCE, which published a list of 68 proposals to respond to both the health and economic crisis, has the right to voice its opinion, the president said. However, if the business organization thinks that things will return to how they were in the past when companies were bailed out and bank debt was converted into public debt, they’re dreaming, he said.
López Obrador also said he had no plans to meet with the CCE leadership, suggesting that they should conduct their dialogue with the government through the Economy Ministry. The differences between the government and the business group cannot be resolved “in private” or “in the dark,” he said.
With regard to the reopening of the economy, the president said that the government will present a timetable on Monday. Normal economic and educational activities should be able to recommence on May 17 in areas of the country where there are no reported cases of Covid-19, López Obrador said.
“The pandemic has grown but there are entire regions where there are no cases. There, with a lot of care, … we could [re]start activities, it will depend on … [what happens] in the coming days,” he said.
However, as López Obrador pointed out, the pandemic is not affecting the country uniformly. More than half of the almost 30,000 confirmed cases were detected in just three entities – Mexico City, México state and Baja California – and the same entities have recorded 44% of the almost 3,000 Covid-19 deaths.
Ten states have reported fewer than 300 coronavirus cases among which two – Colima and Durango – had fewer than 100 as of Thursday.
Mexico is grinding to a halt. As lockdown restrictions sweep the nation, schools, offices and sports games are choosing to either close, restrict or postpone; the emergency brake has been pulled and the wheels of the economy are finally beginning to slow.
Despite a near universal acceptance of this, certain projects are proving too valuable to be shelved, and as if using the peace and quiet to get themselves a head start, seeming more proactive than ever, the Maya Train is going full steam ahead.
While it was never likely that this flagship project would be postponed in the same way as other arguably less important initiatives to the administration, it had always seemed that, with the slowing infrastructural powerhouse across the country, the masterminds of the train’s construction would resist the temptation to plough on through.
As it happens, the pressures of national lockdown seem only to have exacerbated a restlessness to complete the train as quickly as possible, with two contracts having been awarded to begin construction. Far and away from coronavirus raising the difficult questions of deadline shifts, economic impacts, and lack of manpower, it actually appears to be accelerating the decision making process.
Two weeks ago, a consortium led by Mota-Engil of Portugal was offered a contract worth 15.5 billion pesos to begin work on the initial portion of the train. A week later, another consortium of companies, owned and managed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, was offered the contract for the second phase of the project.
Dissenters claim project is not a priority.
The awarding of these contracts is not surprising in and of itself, but plans to begin work on construction are still set for May, despite the pandemic. Fonatur also announced this week that provided the project receives the green light from the Ministry of Health, the first ground could be broken as early as May 12.
This unprecedented determination to continue looks likely to rattle a few political feathers, the contracts having been awarded just days after a recommendation from five state governors and 2,000 business people that development of the Maya Train and the Dos Bocas refinery be scrapped. Their statement suggests that the funds for the project would be better spent on a combination of economic stimulation initiatives, financial relief for businesses, and funding for healthcare in areas of severe crisis.
This school of thought is popular with groups already opposed to the construction of the Maya Train, but increasingly so with the rest of the population who both recognize the potential fallout of the virus, and who also struggle to understand the benefit of unifying a decomposing tourist industry.
The governor of Nuevo León spoke to this issue, claiming that “thousands of jobs will be lost that will not be recovered with the construction of the Maya Train, thousands of companies and businesses are at risk.” It’s a worry now felt across the country. The Maya Train is facing an existential threat, not primarily from lack of resources or political will, but from the growing criticism that its fundamental concept no longer makes sense.
If there was one message from the governors and business people it was one that attempted to orientate priorities — where could this money be better spent? Those that are asking this question are emboldening the movement made up of environmental and indigenous land rights activists that already stand firmly against the project and have had their issues left unresolved. It seems possible that before long the opposition will summon the kind of cross-cultural, bipartisan support capable of toppling the Maya Train project.
No wonder then, that the government is keen to get work going; the longer it hesitates, the louder these voices become. This pressure could arguably be part of the reason why certain groups protesting the Maya Train have been denied access to submit appeals over the course of the last month. Reports this week show how district courts of the federal judicial branch based in Campeche and Yucatán, respectively, have impeded those set to be affected by construction from accessing justice.
Specifically, the Tres Colonias de Campeche Collective, made up of residents of the Camino Real, La Ermita and Santa Lucía neighborhoods in Campeche, were turned away in their attempt to present the court with an injunction. The injunction in question would delay the date at which their eviction from houses on development land would be enforced; on this occasion, they were reportedly told that it was not an “urgent matter.”
On another, members of the Maya Assembly Muuch Ximbal attempted to file an injunction against the project claiming that construction work during quarantine risked contamination and public health. This was, after much insistence, accepted by the district court but not considered a priority with the processing postponed until “after the public health emergency had passed;” the irony that it was precisely the health emergency that had prompted the injunction was apparently lost on the officials.
There seems to be more protest against the Maya Train project now than ever but equally, political determination to keep the wheels in motion is reaching all-time highs. If ground can be broken on the tourist train, there is some reason to believe that the project could be seen through to completion, but as long as dissenting voices are muted, it becomes all the more likely that they will find alternative ways to be heard.
Those who have been most hard done by in this saga so far have demonstrably made it their mission to be the thorn in the government’s side. In the meantime, and regardless of the efficacy of protest, as the pandemic continues to disrupt Mexican society protagonists of the project will need to ask themselves one simple question. For a region in flux, does the Maya Train still make sense?
Memorial candles burn outside the Torreón home where three sisters were murdered early Friday.
The Coahuila Ministry of Public Security reports that three sisters who worked for the Social Security Institute (IMSS) were found strangled to death in Torreón on Friday.
According to the authorities, the victims were nurses Cecilia Pérez, 48, and Dora Pérez, 56, and 59-year-old Araceli Pérez who worked as a secretary.
Their decomposing bodies were discovered in the early hours of this morning in a house in the Compresora neighborhood in the western part of the city. The sisters appeared to have been tortured.
The women had their hands and feet in restraints; two were discovered on the first floor of the house, while the third was found in an upstairs bedroom. Their bodies were found by a family member who then called 911.
Autopsy reports are pending and the state Attorney General’s Office is investigating.
IMSS director Zoé Robledo Aburto reached out to offer support to the state’s governor and issued a statement today strongly condemning the murders.
“I condemn the murder of our collaborators, Cecilia, Araceli and Dora in Torreón. I send my sincere condolences to your relatives. We sympathize with the pain that overwhelms them, which we also share,” he wrote on Twitter.
His sentiments were echoed in a formal statement from the health agency: “The IMSS family condemns all kinds of violence against women and any of its members, who during this health emergency give their all to serve and save the lives of Covid-19 patients.”
The International Red Cross (ICRC) and the Mexican Red Cross today expressed their “great concern at the increase in attacks against health personnel and health infrastructure in Mexico. In times of crisis unleashed by the coronavirus, solidarity, humanity and the generosity of all are more necessary than ever,” said a statement from the ICRC, calling for respect and gratitude toward Mexican medical workers.
Across the country nurses, doctors and medical workers have reported dozens of violent attacks, insults and cases of discrimination on the part of the public for the work they are doing to help care for and save the lives of coronavirus patients.
It is claimed the monoliths of Las Águilas were once used as an astronomical observatory.
An army of tall monoliths stands guard over the small town of Cuautla, Jalisco, located 115 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara. The word Cuautla means “the place where the eagles land,” and the overlooking mountain is called Las Águilas.
Many years ago, a determined citizen of Cuautla, Señor Miguel Mora, was captivated by those curious standing rocks and succeeded in drawing the attention of the Mexican press and the scientific community. I don’t know whether the monoliths are the remnants of a new-world Stonehenge (as one magazine has suggested) or just another awe inspiring work of nature, but it will always have a high place on my list of great places for hiking.
I was told that Las Águilas had once been an ancient center for astrology and magic, and that on certain days of the year, the rays of the rising sun pass through two monoliths, lighting up a curiously shaped “marker stone.” I also heard that Carlos Castaneda referred to this place as “a power center.”
An astronomer in Guadalajara told me that May 21 or 22, when the sun reaches its zenith over Las Águilas, would be a good time to check the place out for anything unusual at sunrise. So I proposed to my wife that we should camp out at Las Águilas, get up early, and see what we could discover.
The rock-covered hill is visible from a long distance, but when you get within a kilometer of it, you must park and continue on foot. Since this parking spot is flat and grassy, here is where we pitched our tent.
Rumors abound about the true purpose of “Mexico’s Stonehenge.”
So inspired were we by the beautiful view of the hills covered with strangely shaped rocks, that we took little notice of the cows and bulls grazing all around us. But that night we discovered that these creatures apparently never sleep. Ominous footsteps outside our tent and heavy breathing only inches from our heads woke us at midnight.
Shining our flashlights in their eyes did not scare them away at all, but actually seemed to attract even more visitors! Shouting “¡Vayanse!” (Scram!) turned out to be equally ineffective. Ignoring them and trying to sleep proved impossible. We considered them friendly, not aggressive, but in our imaginations we could see the results of “one small step” in the wrong direction by “one big hoof,” and that thought was unnerving.
Finally we had no choice but to abandon ship and seek refuge in our truck which, for the duration of the night, was shaken by the bulls’ cornazos (“horny collisions”) as they relentlessly attempted to get at the garbage we had unwisely stowed beneath our vehicle.
Bleary-eyed, we rose at 5:00 p.m., trudged half an hour up the trail and positioned our tripod to catch the first rays of light. What we witnessed was indeed spectacular. The red disk of the sun rose straight up from the bottom of a gigantic V formed by the slanted tops of two of the monoliths, leaving the marker rock (shaped like a snowball stuck on a pyramid) standing alone in the center of the long, V-shaped shadow.
Not having really expected to see anything, we were very impressed. It seemed unlikely that such a grandiose illumination of the marker rock on that particular day of the year could be just a coincidence.
We returned to Las Águilas a few years later. Under the guidance of a local boy named Manuel Rangel — nicknamed Maico because he was crazy about Michael Jackson — we visited several nearby hilltops. As we walked along, we chatted in English, which Maico had learned from an American teacher in Cuautla. “I want to master two languages,” he told me: “English and Arabic.”
A balanced rock.
I told him he was definitely not a typical small-town boy and that, if he wanted, I could teach him a few words of Arabic, having spent 13 years of my life in Saudi Arabia. His eyes lit up: “How do you say, ‘hello,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘he?’ … well there was no end to what Maico wanted to learn and by the time we finished our visit, he had nicely memorized a long list of expressions and numbers.
Maico took us first to a site supposedly dedicated to magic, a hilltop we had not visited before. It was virtually covered with a thick forest of rocks: rocks shaped like bathtubs or sphinxes, balanced rocks, rocks as tall as pinnacles. It was a place where you could truly unlimber the imagination!
Hidden among all those rocks was a shelter cave, the subject of the usual stories about fabulous treasure hidden within. Though it was getting late, we still had time to take a look at one more hill which, Maico claimed, had been dedicated to religious ceremonies. Here we found a long, oval-shaped mound which looked like it ought to be archaeologically important. This is the highest spot in the area (altitude 1,870 meters), with a truly magnificent lookout point. It’s also the only place we saw petroglyphs, but these engravings were so old and faint that we could hardly make them out.
Time passed and one day I asked myself: Whatever happened to Las Águilas?
A few months ago, Guadalajara muralist Jorge Monroy and I decided it was time to go have a look.
Since Las Águilas had been reported on in numerous magazines and newspapers, we expected to find a neon sign advertising it somewhere along the highway near Cuautla, but we saw nothing. “I guess we’ll have to follow the track I recorded 13 years ago,” I told Jorge, pulling out my GPS.
[soliloquy id="110247"]
The old track took us along dirt roads for half a kilómeter and brought us to the grassy parking spot where my wife and I had lost our battle with horned giants many years ago.
We parked and began hiking along a narrow trail skirting a picturesque little lake.
Just beyond the lake, the trail led us straight to a big, beautiful and utterly abandoned “Las Águilas Visitors’ Center.” This was a surprise and so was the wide, well-made cobblestone andador (sidewalk) which took us on a one-kilometer walk up to the fabled Mexican Stonehenge. Along the way we found streetlamps as well as benches where you could take a breather as you climb 75 meters in altitude.
At the top of the hill, the monoliths still looked the same, not commercialized in any manner, still hiding their ancient secrets. At the cliff edge a roofed belvedere had been built, offering an excellent view of the surrounding countryside.
Later that day we were able to meet with Miguel Mora’s nephew Jorge, who is now director of tourism in Cuautla. We congratulated him on getting the walkway built. “But,” we asked him, “why is there no road leading from the highway to the visitors’ center?”
“We had plans and funds to build it,” he replied, “but once tourists started showing up at the monoliths, the local landowners decided they didn’t like visitors after all. So Phase II of the development plan was never carried out and only occasional hiker types like you two ever go up there.”
What the local ejido (country cooperative) knew jived with my own discovery years ago. In Mexico, if you want to keep visitors down to a mere handful, just locate your parking space more than half a kilometer from the attraction. So, whatever secrets Las Águilas harbors are still as safe as ever, but if you like to walk, the Mexican Stonehenge still welcomes you.
To visit Las Águilas, either consult my map on Wikiloc or go to the plaza at Cuautla and shout “Maico!”
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.
The Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece) has warned that electricity rates could go up as a result of measures that will delay the commencement of new renewable energy projects and ramp up production at old state-run power plants.
The National Energy Control Center (Cenace) published an agreement last week that suspended trials that allowed wind farms and solar parks to provide electricity for the national grid. The decision will cause delays to 28 new wind and solar projects because they can’t begin selling electricity to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) until they have completed the trials.
Cenace also said that fuel oil produced by Pemex as part of the oil refining process will be used to ramp up power generation at old CFE plants in order to “to improve the reliability of the electricity system” during the coronavirus pandemic.
The competition commission said in a statement that it had advised the federal Energy Ministry, the Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Energy Control Center that the Cenace agreement could lead to higher power prices and force the federal government to increase electricity subsidies.
Private energy companies including those that operate renewable projects sell electricity to the CFE at prices that are much lower than it costs the state-run commission to generate it itself. Therefore, the greater the quantity of power the CFE supplies to the national grid itself, the higher electricity rates will be.
Cofece also said that the Cenace decision that delays the entry into operation of new renewable energy projects could be in violation of competition rules and generates investment uncertainty.
The commission criticized the Cenace agreement for not stipulating the length of the suspension of the renewable energy trials and not establishing “clear and measurable criteria” under which the trials can be resumed, “thus worsening the uncertainty for planned and future investments in wind and solar generation projects.”
It also said that the Cenace measures create uncertainty for wind and solar power plants that already operate in the market and which “usually have lower production costs than conventional plants.”
“For wind and solar generators this could imply, although it is not totally clear, that their dispatch is limited in favor of conventional power plants that currently have idle available capacity, as could be the case of those of the Federal Electricity Commission.”
Cofece recommended a review of the Cenace agreement, stating that the measures that concern wind and solar projects should be based on “strict technical criteria directly linked to aspects of reliability, continuity and stability” of the national electricity system. The criteria should be made available to the public, Cofece added.
“During the health emergency, competitive electricity prices are of the utmost relevance. Cofece’s recommendations seek to avoid a permanent increase in electricity rates or an increase of subsidies by the federal government in a context of budgetary constraints.”
Coronavirus restrictions have hit Mexico’s restaurant industry extremely hard, reports Francisco Fernández, president of the restaurant association Canirac. An estimated 30,000 restaurants will be permanently closed once restrictions are lifted, he says.
Only 20% of the nation’s 635,788 dining establishments remain open for take-out and delivery, and sales have dropped more than 85%, Fernández said at a virtual Confederation of Industrial Chambers meeting on Thursday.
Canirac estimates that more than 80% of restaurateurs do not have sufficient liquidity to cover payroll, fixed expenses and taxes, and most of them have been closed with zero revenue since March 23.
It’s an economic blow from which many will not be able to recover, and one that Fernández describes as “brutal.”
Canirac estimates that 98% of restaurants are small or medium-sized, and 48% are family owned and operated.
The closure of such a significant number of establishments translates to a loss of jobs that would affect more than 300,000 families. A 2018 study found that 2.14 million Mexicans work in the restaurant industry.
To mitigate the impact on the sector, responsible for 15.5% of tourism’s gross domestic product, Fernandez proposed marketing campaigns to include official coronavirus-free certification, financial assistance in the form of soft loans and grace periods, subsidized utility rates and tax deductions.
Fernández, who calculates restaurants will have been shuttered for 75 days by the time the coronavirus stay-at-home restrictions are lifted, knows his industry is facing a long battle when it comes to economic recovery to pre-coronavirus levels. He reminded those in the meeting that it took restaurants in Mexico 10 years to fully rebound from the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.
Members of the search collective, dressed for protection against the coronavirus.
Searching for missing loved ones is an essential activity, according to a group of women in Sinaloa who have not let the coronavirus crisis put a halt to their efforts to locate their children.
The Culiacán-based collective Sabuesos Guerreras (Warrior Sleuths) continues to carry out searches for their missing children despite authorities urging Mexicans to stay at home to slow the spread of Covid-19.
One of the collective’s members is María Isabel Cruz Bernal, whose son, a former municipal police officer, disappeared without a trace more than three years ago.
Once a week, Cruz dons gloves, a face mask and a protective suit before leaving her Culiacán home to go out in search of her son, Yosimar García Cruz. Other members of the 370-strong Sabuesos Guerreras, all desperate to find their missing children, do the same.
“We used to go out three times a week, now just once,” Cruz told the newspaper El Universal.
“Fifteen or 20 of us used to go out, now just half. We understand what the authorities are asking but the search mustn’t stop because if we don’t do it, no one will,” she said.
Cruz said that the members of the collective feel a strong need to search for their missing children, explaining that it helps to calm “the void” in their stomachs.
“Even though we go out protected, sometimes we forget that the coronavirus exists; we are already like the living dead – what can the virus do to us if the worst plague already inflicted the worst pain on us: the disappearance of our children,” she said.
Cruz said the “warrior sleuths” are currently not receiving any help from state authorities in their quest to find their loved ones, explaining that they were told that personnel at the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office (FGE) are currently too busy to offer assistance due to the coronavirus.
When the collective’s members found human bone remains in a Culiacán community last month, FGE experts told them to store them in a bag and hand them in later for analysis, she said.
Although the women are breaking quarantine to look for their children, the authorities haven’t told them to put a temporary halt to their search efforts, Cruz said.
“If at some time they’re going to restrict our right to go out, they should explain to us what the dynamic will be so that they look for our family members,” she said.
“Hopefully they’ll let us keep looking because if we don’t, who will? Who is going to look for them if the authorities are very busy with other matters? That’s why we tell [the authorities] that if you’re not going to help us, don’t get in our way.”
Heroes Also Cry, one of 12 murals painted in Acapulco.
A series of murals commissioned by the municipal government pays homage to the frontline healthcare workers caring for coronavirus patients in Acapulco, Guerrero.
One of the 12 pieces, entitled Heroes Also Cry, was created by muralist David de León and his wife Abigail Medina, who collaborated with six other painters to complete the mural in five nights.
They worked from 9:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. each night to avoid traffic and mitigate the possibility of catching the virus, but the painters said the all-nighters were nothing compared to the 14 to 16-hour shifts that health workers are putting in daily.
The mural is 33 meters long and four meters tall and is divided into two sections, the first of which features two medical workers embracing each other while crying.
“I tried to capture them in a very human attitude, because all this protective equipment dehumanizes them. They just turn into a doctor or nurse and have no name. They are Juan, María or Camila,” said de León.
The second section of the mural shows four health workers moving a patient in serious condition. Two carry the patient, one carries the IV and the other pulls the oxygen equipment.
“I decided not to have them using a stretcher in order to dramatize the scene even more due to the extra effort they’re putting into it,” said the muralist, who added that it is also meant to call attention to the lack of medical supplies many hospital staff are facing.
Shortages of medical supplies and personal protective equipment have plagued several hospitals in the country since the virus arrived in Mexico.
De León had already painted two other murals commissioned by the municipal government. One titled Heroes Without Capes is a comic book-style piece featuring essential public employees, such as street sweepers, workers the artist described as those “we don’t notice much, but who risk their lives in order to keep working.”
De León was given full artistic license for the latest mural, and decided on medical workers thanks to a suggestion by his wife, who said that “they receive insults and are branded as murderers for the sacrifice and labor that an ordinary person would not do.”
The inspiration for the mural came from the artists’ relationship with healthcare workers. One family member has spent over a month separated from his wife and daughters in order to keep them safe, keeping in touch with video calls.
In order to avoid harassment, he makes sure not to wear his scrubs or other identifying items in public, and has not told the neighbors at the apartment he is renting that he works at a hospital.
Stories of 14-hour shifts without a bite to eat and even of doctors and nurses wearing diapers in order to not have to take bathroom breaks also influenced the artists’ decision to feature them in the murals.
For de León and Medina, painting is their way of combating the coronavirus pandemic.
“Everyone has to do their part for the cause with the skills and resources they have,” de León said.
