Good Friday is a major holiday in Mexico, a majority Catholic country, and a day when fish, not red meat, is on the menu for people of faith.
It’s a tradition that drew dense crowds of thousands to the San Luis Mextepec seafood market near Toluca yesterday, where customers disregarded coronavirus recommendations by cramming into vendors’ stalls to purchase fresh fish, octopus and shrimp for the Lent holiday.
Entire families, including babies, senior citizens and in one case even the family dog, showed up en masse to make their purchases, spilling off the sidewalks and into the streets.
Police, the National Guard and market security guards were on hand to enforce social distancing measures, but market-goers refused to comply, and some even got into heated discussions with authorities who tried to prevent entire families from visiting vendors’ stalls together.
The Easter season represents the high season for the more than 50 tenants of this market, who say sales have been down 30 to 80% due to the coronavirus.
Similar situations occurred in other markets around Mexico, such as in Jalisco’s Zapopan Seafood Market where vendors were given verbal warnings and threatened with fines if they refused to comply with sanitary measures.
Access was limited to 50 market-goers at a time, more than 900 sanitary masks were distributed, and shoppers and vendors were given clear instructions on how to prevent the spread of the virus.
Even the governor of Jalisco weighed in on the situation, tweeting on Thursday, “if you have to go out and buy food or the essentials, don’t take company with you. We can’t continue like this. Without solidarity, we are going to lose innocent lives because of a few irresponsible people.”
How essential is beer in Mexico? That’s a topic of debate on which the government has appeared to waiver during the coronavirus crisis, with one branch of government directly contradicting the other.
Earlier this month, when beer production failed to make the government’s list of essential services, major breweries announced they would be halting production.
“Spending all day together for over a month will have consequences and in this environment, the consumption of beer at home works like a relaxant, a drink for use in moderation that contributes to enduring the strictest terms of this difficult test,” Anpec argued in a statement, claiming that beer production and sales generate some 500,000 jobs.
Beer production was initially halted, but breweries such as Grupo Modelo resumed production after receiving a letter from the Ministry of Agriculture (Sader) on April 6 which appeared to allow production to begin anew.
“For the moment, we are inviting you to continue with daily operations and production and distribution activities, taking into consideration all the measures issued by the health authorities,” states the letter signed by Sader official Santiago José Argüello Campos.
The statement from Sader, however, was in direct contrast to directives from the Ministry of Health, which was quick to respond by ordering that production once again be halted.
“It is a mistake and it is going to be corrected. A general provision the Health Ministry has established, with precision, is that all activities, except essential ones, are suspended. And that does not include the manufacturing or marketing of beer. It is going to be amended, the Secretary of Agriculture has already taken action on the matter and it is going to be amended shortly. The beer industry does not have the authorization to re-establish operations,” the Ministry’s Hugo López-Gatell said at a press conference on Friday.
Sader appeared to backtrack on its previous statement, clarifying that the April 6 letter was “exclusively limited to facilitating the relationship between barley producers and industry representatives. It is important to make clear that this is not an authorization for the brewing industry to maintain or resume production.”
Mexico recorded its biggest single-day increase Friday in both coronavirus-related deaths and confirmed cases of the contagious disease, Health Ministry data shows.
The death toll increased by 39 to 233 while the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases rose by 403 to 3,844. Health Ministry Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía also reported that there are 10,300 suspected coronavirus cases and that 19,749 people have tested negative.
A total of 33,893 people have now been tested in Mexico for the novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, late last year and which has now infected more than 1.7 million people around the world and killed more than 100,000, according to data compiled by the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
Alomía said that the number of Covid-19 cases being reported globally is on the wane but figures for the Americas are on the rise.
The number of confirmed cases in Mexico more than doubled between Friday of last week, when 1,688 cases were reported, and yesterday. Deaths almost quadrupled in the same period from 60 to 233.
Alomía said that 68.2% of people confirmed to have Covid-19 did not require hospitalization while the remainder did. Of those currently hospitalized, 675 are in serious condition and 147 others are in critical condition on ventilators, he said.
The epidemiologist said that 42% of people confirmed to have Covid-19 in Mexico – more than 1,600 – have now recovered from the disease.
Mexico City has now reported 1,040 Covid-19 cases, more than double the number in México state, which ranks second with 470 confirmed cases. Baja California, Puebla and Sinaloa follow, with 258, 214 and 171 cases, respectively.
With regard to coronavirus-related fatalities, Alomía said that 134 people aged 25-59 have died and that the other 99 deaths were of people aged 60 or older. The fatality rate among the former cohort is 4.8 per 100 confirmed cases while among the latter it is 13.3. Mexico’s overall coronavirus fatality rate is 6.1.
Hypertension, diabetes and obesity are the most common existing health conditions among those who have died.
Mexico City has recorded 46 deaths – one-fifth of the total – while 17 patients with Covid-19 have died in Baja California, 16 in México state, 15 in Puebla and 13 in Quintana Roo.
Only two of Mexico’s 32 federal entities had not recorded a single coronavirus-related death as of Friday: Aguascalientes, where there are 53 confirmed cases, and Colima, which has just seven.
Tomatoes are the main product at Invernaderos Potosinos.
A San Luis Potosí greenhouse grower will donate between five and six tonnes of fresh produce per week to families struggling to make ends meet due to the restrictions put in place to limit the spread of Covid-19.
The company Invernaderos Potosinos will deliver the produce – mainly tomatoes – over the next 1 1/2 months to the state capital’s DIF family services agency, which will then distribute it to needy families.
After touring the company’s greenhouses with San Luis Potosí Mayor Xavier Nava Palacios, his wife and local DIF president Nancy Puente Orozco and municipal social development director Óscar Valle Portilla, CEO Juan Ariel Reyes Rábago said that Invernaderos Potosinos wanted to support the local government’s programs that seek to limit the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis.
“We decided to cooperate with the municipal government because we know that … good use will be made of these donations … that they will reach their final destination, … families that really need them,” he said.
Both Nava and Puente thanked the company for its support, the latter highlighting that authorities in the state capital are not only doing all they can to stop the spread of Covid-19 but also looking out for families in a precarious situation due to the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.
There were 47 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the state of San Luis Potosí as of Thursday and four coronavirus-related deaths.
The greenhouse growers’ initiative will no doubt be welcomed by those who have lost their incomes or seen them drastically reduced as a result of the government’s suspension of nonessential activities.
Founded in 2007, Invernaderos Potosinos offices are in San Luis Potosí but its greenhouses are located in the neighboring state of Guanajuato.
The company harvests between 140 and 150 tonnes of produce per week, shipping 60% to the United States and the other 40% to Canada. It employs 260 people on a permanent basis and 100 more during busy periods.
Bonilla, left, announces the closure of manufacturer Smiths Medical.
The Baja California government has temporarily closed a medical device company in Tijuana after it refused to sell ventilators to the state to treat Covid-19 patients.
Governor Jaime Bonilla Valdez announced the closure of the Tijuana facilities of the United States company Smiths Medical on Thursday during a live video address posted to social media.
“I established contact with Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard to reach an agreement with said company because it’s not just Baja California that needs ventilators but the whole country. The corporation’s response was that they set up [in Tijuana] to create jobs and that the ventilators assembled there are committed to other countries,” he said.
“The decision was taken that if … companies don’t support or contribute to the state … [during] the health emergency, they are considered [to be undertaking] nonessential activities,” Bonilla said.
While Bonilla railed against Smiths’ refusal to sell ventilators to Baja California, the president of a Tijuana-based business group said the company’s stance was justified.
Carlos Higuera of the industry group Deitac said that it would be illegal for Smiths to sell products to the state government because it is part of the government’s manufacturing and export services program known as Immex. Companies with Immex permits that allow them to operate in Mexico must export 100% of the products they manufacture, he said.
“Immex manufacturing companies by … law cannot sell products in national territory. … Their legal status obliges them to sell all that they produce abroad,” Higuera said.
“The state government is asking for something that goes against the law,” he said, adding that if it wants to buy ventilators from Smiths it should do so in the United States.
Higuera said that Smiths and any other companies that have been forced to close even though their business activities are considered essential according to the government’s definition have the legal right to seek compensation.
Smiths could be deserving of significant government compensation because it will be unable to manufacture for a certain period of time and as a result will be unable to meet its contractual obligations with customers, he said.
The Deitac chief charged that the decision to temporarily shut down the company’s Tijuana factory, and the federal government’s cancelation of Constellation Brands’ brewery project in Mexicali after a public consultation in March, will make it more difficult to attract investment to Baja California.
Whether at poolside or on the beach, e-readers work well in bright sunlight.
If you live in Mexico, finding good books in English is difficult in the best of times and a major headache when a pandemic has you under siege.
On March 20, my favorite bookshop in Guadalajara, La Perla Records and Books, closed its doors in solidarity with the stay at home coronavirus measure.
I would like to suggest e-books as an alternative, but if you are as old as I am, you probably have a firm prejudice against them. Still and all, I beg you to let me state my case in their favor. Bear with me!
The most common reaction to e-books (on the part of pre-millennials) is “I’m a romantic. I love the heft of a real book, the crinkle of real paper, the musty smell of a classic, riddled with wormholes … and besides, I can’t stand reading anything on a computer screen.”
I, too, had those feelings once upon a time, but curiosity got the better of me and I bought a flat little reader called a Kobo, into which I could download almost any book I wanted, often for free.
Install calibre in that old laptop and turn it into an e-reader!
I hate to say this, but I missed the crinkle and smell of paper for all of 15 minutes. As for the “heft of a real book,” only five minutes of reading in bed convinced me that most printed books are cumbersome and too heavy.Sorry, an e-reader weighs slightly less than a typical paperback, and turning its pages is far easier (just a tap on the screen will do the trick), but guess what? The screen of an e-book reader is not at all like a computer’s.
An electronic paper surface (such as E ink), for example, is non-glare, non-radiating and not lit from behind. I found it was as readable as paper and totally usable in the brightest sunshine. But the greatest argument for e-readers is, in my opinion, the ease with which you can instantly change the size of the letters to suit the needs of your own eyes.
The one disadvantage I’ve found: if you fall asleep while reading, your Kindle may slide off you, hit the floor and never work again. Solution: make your own loop strap by attaching a long piece of elastic to the back of your device with a trusty, indestructible product like Shoe Goo.
If you opt for a Kindle, that bestseller you heard about will download into it (with no work on your part) a half-second after you pay for it on Amazon. Now, if you’re upset that e-books cost about the same as paper books, note that Amazon regularly drops the prices of certain e-books literally to nothing or almost nothing on certain days.
To find websites that announce these short-lasting bargains, go to Free Kindle Books & Tips, Kindle Nation Daily or Kindle Buffet. Each of these sources lists different bargain books.
Want to read the classics? You’ll find over 60,000 of them at Project Gutenberg, said to be the oldest digital library in the world and containing mostly older literary works published before 1924.
Attach a loop to your e-reader and there’ll be no problem if you fall asleep.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Project Gutenberg is a nonprofit organization that got its start on the 4th of July, 1971, when a student at the University of Illinois, Michael Hart, decided to type the U.S. Declaration of Independence into the school’s computer system for distribution free of charge. Hart then went on to type in the works of William Shakespeare and the Bible.
It’s hard to believe, but it seems Hart transcribed around 100 books over the following 20 years and in time the project grew to include thousands of volunteers around the world. In the 1990s, scanning (with Optical Character Recognition) began to replace transcribing and the number of public works in the library grew to a thousand in 1997.
Optical Character Readers, of course, make mistakes and through an organization called Distributed Proofreaders, an army of volunteers work to correct them. Thanks to their efforts, nearly 40,000 properly scanned books have been added to Project Gutenberg which, by the way, now has works in 50 different languages.
As for me, the first book I downloaded from Project Gutenberg was The Gentle Grafter, a collection of great short stories with surprise endings by O. Henry. I enjoyed this book when I came upon it in the library of my high school all those many years ago. Today the slang is just a wee bit out of date, but many of the stories are as funny and entertaining now as they were then.
All the above sources are legal, but if you agree with Ben Franklin, who gave us the free public library, that good books ought to be shared, you might also visit Z-Library, a website “registered in Switzerland” (but who knows where it really is) with over 5,029,804 popular and scientific books and 77,498,431 articles. By the way, Google Safe Browsing Site Status Checker says this website is safe!
Speaking of Ben Franklin, lots of public libraries in the U.S.A. and Canada will be happy to lend you e-books on a regular basis — just check!
Reading an e-book on a mobile: just the thing when you’re standing in line.
The best way for you to download the e-books mentioned above is with the help of a free program called calibre (yes, with a small c) and once you’ve got your new books, calibre makes it dead easy to download them straight into your Nook, Kindle, Kobo or whatever, converting each title into the proper format you need, no matter which brand of device you’re using.
But calibre does much more than that. It’s also your personal library catalog, listing all the books you have, authors’ names, descriptions and images of the covers. And if any of the data about a book are incorrect, you can click on the edit button and fix the mistake, or you can download correct info about your book from the internet, and maybe change the look of the cover to something you like better.
In addition to all that, calibre has its own built-in e-reader which, once again, is extremely easy to use.
This excellent program was developed by Kovid Goyal, a CalTech graduate with a doctorate in quantum computing who lives in Mumbai, India. Goyal works on calibre for about 80 hours a week and answers some 50 messages from users per day. Every time somebody suggests a well-thought-out improvement, Goyal updates calibre.
The result is is a truly intuitive program that everyone from small kids to grandmas find easy to to use. So it’s no surprise that calibre has been installed more than 18 million times since Goyal began working on it in 2009.
At this point you may be saying, “OK, I’m convinced it’s easy to read an e-book using calibre, but how much fun is it to read a novel while you’re sitting down in front of a computer? How about if I want to read The Gentle Grafter while I’m lying in bed?”
Calibre downloading an ebook into a Kindle.
Well, you could just buy yourself a Kindle. But if that’s not in your immediate plans, your smartphone will do almost as well.OK, the smartphone screen is pretty small, but you can instantly enlarge the text to the size you want and flicking to the next page is really easy.
All you have to do is download an app for reading e-books — Media365, for example, which is free. Through this app you can search the internet for great books and, with just a tap, download them from sites like Gutenberg or Amazon. Then, at last you can stretch out on your bed or sofa and begin reading The Gentle Grafter. But, of course, should you fall asleep, that could be the end of your mobile — but not mine because, as you may have guessed by now, I have a homemade strap attached to that, too.
Happy reading!
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.
A healthcare worker in Toluca, México state, suits up with protective gear.
Mexico’s national health workers union has issued a plea for the immediate provision of additional personal protective equipment (PPE) to medical personnel as the number of those infected with Covid-19 continues to climb.
Union leader Arturo Olivares Cerda said that was essential that supplies purchased from China reach health workers “as fast as possible.”
He said it was regrettable that medical personnel have been infected with Covid-19 due to a lack of PPE such as face masks, gloves and gowns.
“There will always be a risk [of infection] but if we have all the [necessary] instruments to confront coronavirus, the risks decrease considerably,” Olivares said.
His appeal to health authorities comes after more than two months of silence from the union on the issue of PPE even as medical personnel across the country protested to demand adequate protection to treat Covid-19 patients.
Meanwhile, the number of medical personnel confirmed to have Covid-19 is increasing steadily as the number of coronavirus cases in Mexico also continues to rise.
The IMSS General Hospital in Monclova, Coahuila, has reported 32 cases among staff and three deaths while 19 resident doctors and seven interns from an IMSS facility in Tlalnepantla, México state, have tested positive. Medical personnel in Morelos, Guerrero, Querétaro, México state, Quintana Roo and Aguascalientes have also tested positive as have four public health officials in Baja California Sur.
The latest coronavirus fatality among health workers was that of a 59-year-old doctor and director of the emergency department at the La Perla hospital in Nezahualcóyotl, México state, who died on Thursday.
State authorities said that he caught Covid-19 during a recent working trip to Cuba but his colleagues – among whom there are at least 13 people confirmed to have Covid-19 – claim that he was infected at work.
They say that the infections are the result of a lack of protocols to manage possible coronavirus cases as well as a shortage of PPE.
Similarly, the doctors and interns at the Regional General Hospital in Tlalnepantla say that they were infected at work, contrary to the claims of IMSS General Director Zóe Robledo, who said that the outbreak did not originate in the facility.
The workers demanded an apology from Robledo in a letter directed to Health Minister Jorge Alcocer and Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell.
“Denying the presence of outbreaks in hospitals does not lead to them being managed,” they said, adding that more supplies are needed at the Tlalnepantla facility to treat both Covid-19 patients and people with other health problems.
The hospital has lacked general supplies for years, a situation “that is more evident now than ever,” the letter said.
The doctors and interns said they have to buy their own PPE as well as soap, anti-bacterial gel and wet wipes because there are not sufficient supplies in the hospital.
“The authorities told us that it was part of our commitment as doctors to obtain the resources [to buy supplies] by our own means,” they said, adding that authorities need to “learn quickly” from their mistakes to avoid more health workers becoming sick after being exposed to risks while at work.
“We want to work, we want to serve and we want to live to teach the next generations,” the letter concluded.
Tunnels are a waste of money, says deputy minister.
Whereas some governments are heeding the advice of Mexico’s Ministry of Health and removing disinfection tunnels thought to help control the spread of coronavirus, others are moving ahead with their installation.
The automated tunnels, which spray people with ozone, are being removed across Mexico City at the behest of that city’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum. The decision comes on the heels of an April 8 warning that the tunnels are not only ineffective in preventing the spread of the virus, but may also aid in its transmission.
On April 8, the Health Ministry warned that “inhaling disinfectants can cause, among other things, damage to the airways, coughing, sneezing and irritation of the bronchi, triggering asthma attacks, producing chemical pneumonitis and irritation of the skin, eyes and mucosa,” the ministry stated.
A simple sneeze, according to the Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, can propel the virus for a distance of up to 10 meters. “There are drops that are too heavy and fall two meters, there are drops that are light and fall six meters and there are drops that are lighter that fall 10 meters away, which can happen if I sneeze.”
“Those virus particles are going to be mobilized and if the sanitization time is not technically monitored, and that depends on the size of the person, the area to be covered and the intensity, … it will not be enough to inactivate the virus and would have the opposite effect,” López-Gatell cautioned.
But in Aguascalientes, the installation of 12 sanitization tunnels in markets, stores and public spaces is going forward, despite the federal warning. Octavio Jiménez Macías of that state’s Health Ministry assured that the installation of sanitation tunnels is common in cities across Mexico and the world, and is useful in flattening the coronavirus curve.
The product used as a component of the spray, he argued, is endorsed by the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER), a hospital for the treatment and research of respiratory diseases which is also run by the Mexican government.
For his part, López-Gatell stands by the Health Ministry’s statement on the potential dangers tunnels pose. “If they didn’t represent a risk we wouldn’t have said anything,” he said, calling the tunnels “a waste of money.”
The federal government has invited the beer industry to resume production and distribution under the measures issued to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.
The federal Agricultural Ministry (Sader) advised the industry group Cerveceros de México that beer production is now considered an essential activity.
Signed April 6 by Sader publicity director Santiago José Arguello Campos, the letter invites the industry to continue with production and distribution, taking into account the safety measures issued by health authorities.
Beer makers didn’t have to be told twice. Grupo Modelo, which halted production on Sunday, has already begun to restock empty refrigerators in Oxxo and other convenience stores.
Heineken, which brews the popular brands Tecate, Indio, XX, Coors Light and Miller Lite among others, said it is preparing to go back to work.
The federal government’s coronavirus emergency declaration did not include beer production among so-called essential activities, forcing its stoppage across the country.
Beer making now joins food production, fishing, livestock farming, agro-industrial activities and the petroleum, chemical and transportation industries as essential.
However, its availability for sale is still not guaranteed in those states and municipalities that have implemented restrictions on alcohol sales. Nuevo León was one of the first to do so on the grounds that citizens cooped up in quarantine might get violent should they be allowed to imbibe.
However, a researcher in Yucatán claimed this week that the enforced abstinence from alcohol could well fuel physical violence.
Trump and López Obrador spoke by phone on Thursday and resolved the oil production impasse.
The United States has agreed to cut oil production on Mexico’s behalf, President López Obrador said on Friday, a move that apparently ends an impasse on a deal to reduce global output to stabilize crude prices amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Mexico on Thursday refused to lower its daily output by the amount requested by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
But López Obrador said that he spoke to United States President Donald Trump on Thursday night and that they agreed that Mexico would cut its production by 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) and that the U.S. would reduce its output by an additional 250,000 bpd.
He said that OPEC+, a group consisting of the organization’s 13 core member nations as well as 10 additional oil-producing nations, initially asked Mexico to cut its production by 400,000 bpd as part of a plan to reduce global output and stabilize crude prices that have fallen sharply as demand plummets due to coronavirus.
However, after Mexico refused, OPEC subsequently lowered its request to 350,000 bpd, López Obrador said. That reduction will be shared by Mexico and the United States.
Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de facto leader, made the entire oil reduction deal dependent on Mexico’s agreement to cut its production by that amount. The kingdom’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, was adamant that the burden of the cuts – which will together reduce global oil production by more than 10% – must be shared as widely as possible among the OPEC+ nations.
However, López Obrador said that the cut Mexico was asked to make was unfair considering that its production is much lower than some other OPEC+ countries and that it is only just starting to recover from a prolonged decline in crude output.
“Producing 12 million barrels a day is not the same as the 1.786 million [barrels that Mexico is producing] and besides [we’re] coming out of a crisis … a production decline during 14 consecutive years. That’s why we couldn’t accept what was originally proposed and we resisted,” he said.
AMLO, as the president is widely known, said that Trump questioned Mexico’s refusal to cut its production when all other OPEC+ nations agreed.
“President Trump started to read out the names of all the countries that had accepted and he says, ‘only Mexico didn’t accept’ and I explained to him why and I made a proposal to him that he fortunately accepted,” he said.
López Obrador said that after he told Trump that Mexico could not cut its oil production by more than 100,000 bpd, “he very generously told me that they were going to help us with the 250,000 additional barrels.”
“For that, I thank him,” he added. López Obrador said that the cut to which Mexico has now committed represents 5.5% of daily production.
“From 1.786 million bpd on average in March, we’ll go down to 1.686 million barrels; this will apply from May onwards,” he said.
“With this we hope that the price of crude oil will go up … but we especially hope that it will help to stabilize the economy,” López Obrador said, adding that OPEC was notified of the deal struck between Mexico and the United States.
However, OPEC delegates said that they were unaware of the terms of the agreement to which he was referring.
The news agency Bloomberg reported that if the standoff between OPEC+ and Mexico has been resolved, as AMLO claims, “it opens the way for a historic effort to revive the oil market from a debilitating coronavirus-induced slump.”
It noted that the agreement to cut production is much larger than previous interventions and that it would put an end to the price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that contributed to the slump in global oil prices.
In a series of Twitter posts on Friday morning before AMLO announced the agreement with Trump, the director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center was critical of the government’s decision not to agree to OPEC’s request.
“We all know by now that the government is blindly committed to increasing production – nothing (not Covid-19, nor Pemex downgrades, nor endless expert advice) will change that,” Duncan Wood wrote.
“The failure to grasp an opportunity to stabilize oil prices at a time when it is costing much more to pump Mexican oil than the market price, is mind-boggling. At a time of such low oil prices it actually makes economic sense to import crude for domestic refining rather than increase production; why pump oil at a loss?”
After López Obrador’s announcement of the pact with Trump, Wood said that it was unclear how the burden-sharing arrangement will work.
“AMLO has just said that U.S. will be responsible for 250k barrels of Mexico’s cut? I am intrigued to see how that would actually happen!”
