The fossil found near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Kleyton Magno
The National Autonomous University (UNAM) has announced the discovery in Chiapas of a fossil of a previously unknown fish species that lived at a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Paleontologists from the university’s Institute of Geology discovered the approximately 95-million-year-old fossil in 2018 in a quarry in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, located about 30 kilometers from the state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
UNAM’s social communication department said the main characteristic of the fish is its “numerous spines on its dorsal and anal fins.”
UNAM paleontologist Kleyton Magno Cantalice Severiano published a description of the previously unknown fish in the British journal Papers in Palaeontology.
He and other experts named it Choichix alvaradoi, which is derived from two Tzotzil Mayan words and the name of a widely-respected Institute of Geology academic.
Choichix is a portmanteau of the words choy, meaning fish, and ch´ix, meaning spines. Tzotzil Mayan is spoken in the area where the fossil was found.
Alvaradoi refers to Jesús Alvarado Ortega, a fish fossil expert who has helped train many other paleontologists.
Cantalice said the Choichix alvaradoi belongs to a large group of spiny-finned fish known as the Acanthopterygii superorder, which includes species commonly eaten today such as bream, bass and snapper.
“… Ours is one of the oldest [of that group]. We discovered that it’s from a new [sub]group of fish because of the number of spines on its dorsal fin – 13,” he said.
Unlike modern-day spiny-finned fishes, the Choichix alvaradoi didn’t have ventral, or pelvic, fins. That’s because it was a primitive fish, Cantalice said, noting that that particular evolutionary trait emerged later.
The paleontologist said that other fossils of ancient fish as well as others of plants, mollusks and crustaceans from the Cretaceous period have been found in the same area.
“We could say that this [fish] species lived alongside dinosaurs, although that doesn’t mean there are … [dinosaur] fossils in the quarry, but the age in which they lived is the same. It’s a quarry where there are regular collections [of fossils], the specimens are very well preserved and what has been collected the most there are fish fossils,” he said.
Cantalice said similar fossils have been found in other countries, citing Lebanon as one example. However, none match that of the Choichix alvaradoi found in Chiapas, which is now part of UNAM’s national collection of fish fossils.
The species is believed to be the most primitive of the the spiny-finned fishes, he said, which would mean that the Acanthopterygii superorder might have originated in the land now known as Mexico.
It has previously been thought such fish originated in the Tethys Ocean, which existed during much of the Mesozoic Era, a period lasting from about 252 million to 66 million years ago that is also known as the Age of Reptiles.
“It was previously believed that the fish originated there and migrated to this part of America. However, we now see that the oldest, most primitive fish were in this region and subsequently diversified toward the Tethys Sea,” Cantalice said.
Trucks burn on the Uruapan-Cuatro Caminos highway.
A long-running battle between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cárteles Unidos in Aguililla, Michoacán, spilled into other Tierra Caliente municipalities this week.
Residents have reported narco-blockades and/or confrontations in the municipalities of Aguililla, Tepalcatepec, Buenavista and Apatzingán, located in western Michoacán on or near the border with Jalisco.
Photographs and videos posted online show heavily-armed men from both the CJNG and Cárteles Unidos traveling in armored vehicles in the municipalities, where they have clashed in both built-up areas and on lime farms. The latter group is mainly led by members of the Viagras crime gang, the newspaper Reforma reported, and also has links to self-defense groups.
The Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán is coveted by criminal groups due to its proximity to Pacific coast ports, through which illegal drugs are smuggled into the country, as well as its iron mines and forests. CJNG leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes hails from a small town in Aguililla and in late 2019 was reportedly planning to move back there and make the region his “bunker.”
Lengthy clashes between the CJNG and the Cárteles Unidos left two people dead in Buenavista on Monday, according to residents, and there have also been gun battles in Tepalcatepec, where the number of victims is unclear. Authorities haven’t announced official death counts for any of the recent clashes.
An armed vehicle believed to belong to the CJNG patrols in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán.
José Segura, a Catholic priest in Apatzingán, said Tuesday the National Guard failed to intervene in the confrontation between the CJNG and the Cárteles Unidos in Buenavista, which is now in its fourth day.
“The criminal groups are in the center of Buenavista. What these groups do is look for people who they believe are from the opposing side; they threaten them, burn their houses, take them out and they can even murder them. So the downtown area of Buenavista is one of terror,” he said in a video message.
“Sadly, the National Guard is on the outskirts of the town, at the entrance points, making sure that nobody disrupts the witch hunt of the Cárteles Unidos. Instead of helping the population, they’re looking after those who are now tormenting the people. Nobody goes to help them, that’s the way thing are, how they’ve been and how they will [always] be. There’s no human power that can contain these monsters,” Segura said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT) reported three highway blockades in Michoacán on Tuesday.
Two were established by a criminal group on the highway between Apatzingán and Tepalcatepec and a third was set up between Uruapan and Nueva Italia by a group known as Pueblos Unidos, which is made up of avocado farmers who decided to take up arms against organized crime. The SCT warned against travel on the affected roads.
Blockades were also reported on Monday and have been frequently set up on the Aguililla-Apatzingán highway by both the CJNG and the Cárteles Unidos, leaving residents of the former city unable to access essential goods for extended periods of time.
Possibly sparking the latest outbreak of violence was the kidnaping of a self-defense group founder on Sunday in Buenavista by presumed CJNG members or people affiliated with them. However, Ángel Gutiérrez Aguilar, known as “El Kiro,” was rescued on Tuesday morning, according to Tepalcatepec self-defense groups.
One self-defense group member said in an interview that Gutiérrez was located after a boy heard him shouting from an abandoned house where he was being held captive. Self-defense force members subsequently rescued him, he said, explaining that “El Kiro” had injuries inflicted by his abductors.
The doctor treating Gutiérrez described his condition as delicate but stable, explaining that he already had high blood pressure and previously underwent heart surgery.
“I have him slightly sedated because he arrived shocked by everything that happened; he didn’t eat or drink water for two days, he’s dehydrated,” he said.
Gutiérrez was a leader of a self-defense group that formed in Michoacán in 2013 to take up the fight to the Caballeros Templarios, or Knights Templar cartel. There is some hope that his rescue will help calm the situation in Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente, a region notorious for violent crime.
Thousands of tonnes of dead sardines as well as other fish and marine life washed up on the northern Pacific coast of Baja California Sur over the weekend in an event described by local environmentalists as the state’s worst ever marine ecological tragedy.
Massive quantities of sardines as well as smaller amounts of other fish such as combers and anchovies along with sea cucumbers and lobsters, some of which were still alive, washed up on beaches on Sebastián Vizcaíno Bay, located off the northwest coast of the municipality of Mulegé.
According to local media reports, about 15 kilometers of coastline were covered with dead sardines that attracted hungry seagulls and even coyotes. Locals told the newspaper El Sudcaliforniano that the event was unprecedented in terms of its magnitude.
Fernando García Romero, an official with the Baja California Sur Ministry of Fisheries, said the die-off was caused by high ocean temperatures. The hotter than usual temperature of the water caused hypoxia – inadequate oxygen supply – in the deceased fish and marine life, he said.
Locals who returned lobsters to the sea noted that the water was much hotter than normal and a cloudy brown color, indicating a lack of oxygen. Local fishing union leader Benito Emeterio López attributed the die-off to climate change and a current of hot water that originated in Japan.
The temperature of the water off the Baja California coast is normally 18-22 C but reached 30 C in the area where the dead sardines washed ashore, according to local fishing cooperatives. The temperature has since returned to normal.
The newspaper Milenio reported that the discovery of the thousands of tonnes of dead fish “was described by several local environmentalists as the biggest ecological tragedy recorded on the coast of Baja California Sur.”
Local fishermen said that there was a possibility that large quantities of other marine species, such as clams, mussels and sea snails, were also killed, even though they didn’t wash up on beaches. There is also concern that abalone stocks – upon which the livelihoods of hundreds of families depend – may have been adversely affected by the high water temperature.
Jesús Camacho, former president of the Mexican Confederation of Fishing Cooperatives, said that a similar hot water phenomenon occurred on the Pacific coast in 1992, causing the deaths of marine creatures – including abalone – and “enormous economic losses.”
Fishermen and environmentalists said that high levels of contamination in the water may have also been a factor in the recent incident.
Aníbal Lucero, leader of a fishing cooperative, said there was concern among fishermen that a similar event could happen on other stretches of the Pacific coast. When a hot water current arrives, history shows that it kills most of the marine creatures in its path, she said.
An armed commando dressed in military uniforms freed a gang leader Tuesday in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, just 24 hours after police arrested him and three other cartel suspects.
José Alfredo Hernández Campos, also known as “Metro 27,” is alleged to be one of the leaders of the Gulf Cartel based in nearby Matamoros. The man thought to be his boss, known as “El Primito,” had offered 1 million pesos (about US $50,000) for anyone able to break him out, according to reports.
Around 30 armed men in six vehicles awaited the arrival of ministerial police yesterday evening and, while firing their weapons into the air, ordered officers to hand over the suspect, who had been detained on Monday. Reports indicate that the convoy of cartel sicarios dropped traffic spikes on the road to prevent security forces from pursuing them.
After Hernández was set free, National Guard and state police officers and soldiers began an operation to rearrest the suspect. He is still thought to be in Reynosa, and security officials have conducted helicopter and road patrols along highways to Monterrey to prevent him traveling.
The state Attorney General’s Office reported that officers were later involved in a confrontation with members of the commando. One was killed and three others were arrested, one of whom was carrying identification from the Ministry of National Defense.
The botched arrest comes shortly after at least 15 innocent civilians were killed in the border city on June 19, when gunmen arrived in vehicles and indiscriminately opened fire.
In an interview with the Mexico Violence Resource Project published in the aftermath, Carlos Manuel Juárez, the co-founder of Elefante Blanco, a new independent media project in Tamaulipas, said the current violence in the state is the product of intense fragmentation of cartels, including a “ferocious schism” between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, which was originally the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel.
Tamaulipas has been one of Mexico’s most violent states for years, and is one of six on the U.S. Department of State’s “do not travel” list.
Think twice before heading to Mexico, travelers warned.
The United States Centers for Disease Control issued a Level 3 travel advisory for Mexico on Monday, warning citizens of high rates of Covid-19 infections and advising that they reconsider travel to Mexico.
Coronavirus cases have spiked in Mexico, with more than 11,000 new cases recorded on Tuesday as the third wave of the pandemic continues to grow. The federal Health Ministry reported 11,137 new infections – the highest single-day tally since early February, although hospitalizations and deaths are down 75% due to vaccination.
The U.S. Department of State’s advisory stated that dangers associated with Covid-19 could be lower for vaccinated travelers. “Your risk of contracting Covid-19 and developing severe symptoms may be lower if you are fully vaccinated with an FDA authorized vaccine,” it read.
Aside from Covid-19, the Department of State also cautions against traveling to some states due to crime. U.S. citizens are instructed not to travel to Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas due to crime and kidnapping.
Authorities also urge people to reconsider visiting a further 11 states and advocate the exercise of increased caution for another 14. Only taking normal precautions is advised for just two states: Yucatán and Campeche.
In April, Mexico was one of about 80% of the world’s countries which was placed on the Department of State’s “Level 4: Do not travel” list. But the status was eased to “Level 3: Reconsider Travel” early last month.
People who do decide to travel to Mexico should keep traveling companions and family back home informed of their travel plans, use toll roads when possible and avoid driving alone or at night, according to the Department of State. It also advises U.S. citizens to exercise increased caution when visiting local bars, nightclubs and casinos and not display signs of wealth such as expensive watches or jewelry. Also, be extra vigilant when visiting banks or ATMs, the advisory says.
Four of 10 adults have now received at least one dose of Covid vaccine.
Mexico recorded more than 11,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday as the third wave of the pandemic continues to gather strength.
The federal Health Ministry reported 11,137 new infections – the highest single-day tally since early February – increasing the accumulated case total to 2.6 million.
There are currently 63,093 active cases across the country, according to Health Ministry estimates, an increase of 23% compared to a week earlier. Just over a third of the estimated active cases – 21,743 – are in Mexico City.
México state ranks second with more than 5,000 followed by Sinaloa, Veracruz, Quintana Roo, Baja California Sur, Nuevo León, Tabasco, Jalisco and Yucatán, all of which have more than 2,000.
An additional 219 Covid-19 fatalities were also reported Tuesday, lifting the official death toll to 235,277, a figure considered a vast undercount. About one in five deaths occurred in Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
He said case numbers in this wave are similar to those in the first and second waves but hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients and deaths are down 75% due to vaccination. Just over a quarter of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while 21% of those with ventilators are in use.
Four in 10 Mexican adults have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the latest Health Ministry data, and hundreds of thousands of additional shots are being administered every day. More than half a million were given Monday.
Baja California, where the campaign to vaccinate adults concluded in late June, has the nation’s highest vaccination rate among adults – 79% – followed by Mexico City (63%), Baja California Sur (54%) and Yucatán (52%), the Health Ministry said.
Chiapas, where just 19% of adults are vaccinated, has the lowest rate followed by Puebla and Guerrero, both of which have rates of 29%.
López-Gatell said a campaign is underway to boost the rate in Chiapas, explaining that 41 mass vaccination centers have been set up and health workers are traveling to communities across the state to administer shots. The aim is to reach a 40% vaccination rate by the end of this month.
In northern border municipalities, the government is aiming to vaccinate adults of all ages as quickly as possible to expedite the reopening of the border with the United States to nonessential travel. A mass vaccination campaign is currently underway in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and López-Gatell urged all unvaccinated residents to go and get a shot.
Mexico received more than 6.4 million additional vaccine doses last week and is expected to receive almost 3.8 million this week.
Health Minister Jorge Alcocer said Tuesday that vaccination against Covid-19 can reduce the risk of severe disease and death by up to 96%. Mexico has used six different vaccines – Pfizer, AstraZeneca, CanSino, Sputnik V, SinoVac and Johnson & Johnson – all of which have different efficacy rates.
UPDATE:
The Health Ministry on Wednesday reported 12,116 new confirmed cases of Covid and 230 more fatalities, bringing its total figures to 2.61 million infections and 235,507 deaths.
After it published statistics on the murders of journalists since he took office, President López Obrador called the newspaper Reforma a 'bulletin of conservatism.'
President López Obrador on Monday accused the newspaper Reforma of publishing propaganda after it reported that 56 activists had been killed in Mexico since the current federal government took office.
But the government’s own Interior Ministry (Segob) subsequently acknowledged that the real figure is in fact 68.
In a report published Monday, Reforma cited data from the human rights organization Front Line Defenders that showed that 24 activists were killed in 2019 and 20 were murdered last year. It added 12 murders of activists counted by the National Human Rights Commission in 2021 to arrive at the figure of 56, although the newspaper acknowledged that the number could in fact be higher.
Speaking at his regular news conference on Monday, López Obrador claimed that the figure of 56 murders of human rights and environmental activists was “propaganda of our adversaries disseminated by Reforma.”
He described the Mexico City-based newspaper, of which he is frequently critical, as a “bulletin of conservatism.”
The president asserted that a government program to protect human rights defenders and journalists that has been deemed at risk has not failed and is functioning as it should. The federal Ministry of the Interior, however, said in a statement issued later on Monday that seven journalists and two rights activists who were beneficiaries of the so-called “protection mechanism” have been killed since December 2018.
The ministry said a total of 43 journalists and 68 human rights defenders have been killed since December 1, 2018, the day on which López Obrador was sworn in as president.
Among those who have been murdered in the last 2 1/2 years are Baja California water rights activist Óscar Eyraud Adams, Chihuahua women’s rights activist Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre and Chiapas environmental activist José Luis Álvarez Flores, who worked to preserve the habitat of howler monkeys.
Turbulent waves and strong currents on the Pacific coast can be dangerous to swimmers: so far this year at least eight people have died in Oaxaca alone.
According to state authorities, the majority of accidents occurred after the victims ignored red flags on the beaches, which indicate that it is unsafe to swim.
Esteban Vázquez, Civil Protection officer on the Oaxaca coast, detailed the fatalities.“We believe eight people have died so far in 2021, two in the Huatulco area, two in the Zipolite area, two more recently in the San Agustinillo area recently and finally two more in the Puerto Escondido area … [at least half] these drownings have been due to recklessness,” he said.
Puerto Escondido resident Teresa Rivera said she was aware of the danger. “At Puerto Escondido … the swell is very strong. It is not suitable right now for the little ones, in fact, I’ve brought a 5-year-old along and we are just going to walk on the shore,” she said.
Lifeguard operations have been stepped up to prevent further fatalities, but Godofredo Vázquez, head of Puerto Escondido’s lifeguards, advised swimmers against entering the sea unattended. “Where there are no lifeguard booths, it is a little risky to be entering the sea,” he said.
At least 10 more people have been rescued this year on Oaxaca’s coast. Meanwhile, in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, three people, two of them minors, were rescued from the sea at about 3:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Mauricio, 20, Alma, 15, and Diego, 13, all from Durango, were aided by lifeguards at Playa Cerritos beach after they had tired when trying to return to shore.
Later on Sunday, Xóchitl, 16, was assisted by lifeguards after injuring herself by falling from a banana boat and was transferred to hospital.
Microdosing is the practice of consuming very small amounts of certain recreational drugs like LSD or psilocybin as a therapeutic. Microgen/Shutterstock
Microdosing, using micro amounts of recreational drugs, often LSD or psilocybin, has reached Mexico, and one of its epicenters is San Miguel de Allende, a popular destination for American and Canadian expats living abroad.
“We had a client that had been on antidepressants for 30 years. When Covid started, she was super anxious, and then she started with the protocol,” says a psilocybin provider in San Miguel de Allende who asked that his name not be used because the drug is illegal in Mexico. “After one month, she picked up a paintbrush — she was a painter and hadn’t held a brush in her hands in five years. In a few months, she had 10 finished pieces. And there are so many stories like that.”
When asked why most people seek him out, he said older people are microdosing to prevent degenerative mental disease. “Some people just want to experiment with psilocybin in microdosing, and some people want to use it to deal with depression and moderate anxiety,” he says.
According to this provider, around two years ago there were murmurings of microdosing (using a tenth or twentieth of a typical recreational dose on a regular basis) in Mexico City. San Miguel clients began asking about acquiring the drugs locally.
San Miguel de Allende has become an epicenter for microdosing in Mexico. Depositphotos.com
He and his partner, after some extensive research, developed what they believe to be a balanced regime (called a protocol) that includes other legal fungi and some vitamins for maximum benefit. The results, he says, have been unbelievable.
Another client, with Lyme disease, says her brain fog has lifted, her depression is gone and even her tremors were reduced in just a few months.
Hard science behind psychedelics is historically patchy. There was excitement in the 1950s and 60s that these drugs might mean solutions to PTSD, depression and a whole range of mental illnesses.
While research sprung up all over the world, it was hindered by very public incidents like Timothy Leary’s Harvard study and reports that started to filter out to the general public about users’ bad trips, suicide attempts and psychotic episodes (even though, as Michael Pollan notes in his book How to Change Your Mind, “It is virtually impossible to die from an overdose of LSD or psilocybin, … and neither drug is addictive”).
By 1970, the U.S. government had categorized both LSD and psilocybin as Category 1 drugs. Scientific research on them became impossibly bogged down in bureaucracy and restrictions.
But studies and experiments with psychedelics never really went away, mind you. There were dozens of them (both academic and not) around the world that continued into the 1970s and 1980s, some even government supported and funded by grants — until money ran out and restrictions kicked in.
María Sabina, the Oaxaca healer whose appearance in Life magazine sparked a 1950s interest in psychedelics that bloomed in the 1960s.
During that time, advocates and scientists explored psychedelics on the sidelines in a world that wasn’t quite ready to embrace them … yet.
In 2000, a Johns Hopkins University psychedelic research group was the first to get regulatory approval again in the U.S. to research them on healthy patients who had never used them before. Their 2006 psilocybin study got the world excited about researching these drugs again.
Author and longtime psychedelics advocate James Fadiman added the term microdosing into our daily lexicon. His 2011 book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, offers first-person reports of microdosing from a range of users.
Instead of an ego-disintegrating trip, microdoses are said to provide daily benefits — clarity, creativity, an open mind, and open heart — without impairing your ability to function normally. This more mellow version of psychedelic use has been promoted in the past five years by Silicon Valley types looking to enhance their creativity and focus in the workplace.
Mexico has a long history with hallucinogens used by pre-colonial indigenous cultures. In fact, the spark that ignited the psychedelic craze in U.S. and other nations in the 50s was lit in Huautla de Jiménez, a small town in Oaxaca
Writer Robert Gordon Wasson convinced a local curandera to let him participate in a traditional hallucinogenic mushroom ceremony. His 1957 Life magazine article introduced “magic mushrooms” to a larger audience.
Apple founder Steve Jobs’ comments that taking LSD helped inspire his company’s design ethos, likely sparked the microdosing trend in Silicon Valley. Wikimedia Commons
But many I spoke to seem most interested in microdosing’s purported benefits for anxiety, depression and hopelessness — especially coming off a year and a half of isolation and pandemic chaos.
“I spent some years in the past on antidepressants,” says Ron Alexander, a retired writer now living in San Miguel. “I did Prozac and … I was really taken with it, but it kind of stopped working. A couple of years later … my doctor prescribed something else, and I did that for several years, and [then] it sort of stopped working … The depression didn’t really emerge again for me in a crippling way until Covid. ”
Alexander had researched how antidepressants diminish your frontal cortex and when a friend told him about microdosing, he believed psilocybin might be a more natural remedy.
“For me, the depression is putting a negative twist on too many things, catastrophizing things …” he says. “When I started microdosing, almost within days, all that lifted and I was happier. It had a bold impact.”
Other users are more interested in the possibility of opening and expanding consciousness and imbuing internal balance, as well as cultivating compassion.
Erika Haag, who has a regular yoga and meditation practice, was interested in what microdosing could do for her long-term emotional stability.
Many microdosers claim that in very small doses, psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” can help with symptoms of mental illness. Daniel Patrick Martin/Shutterstock
She and her husband had taken medicinal plants in larger doses and benefited a lot from the experience. “Once it helped us get through a really intense relationship crisis, and it’s allowed us to grow so much on so many different levels,” she says.
While Alexander’s approach to microdosing is more casual, Erika and her husband have followed stricter protocols.
Each protocol is a little different, with other substances to balance the psychedelic’s effects on the body. Haag says she enjoyed the experience but decided that microdosing was increasing her sensitivity too much and discontinued it after eight months.
“In theory, you are supposed to do it for one year, but right now I am trying to work without living by dogmas and instead listen to my body and what I need,” she says. “I felt really good stopping for now.”
For the hesitant microdoser, there is plenty of information online these days, including an entire Reddit subgroup. Both Fadiman’s and Pollan’s books have also spiked interest in this new form of self-medication. And as attitudes change about psychedelics, work to decriminalize psilocybin in both Mexico and the United States continues, with the hope that new research will find ways to use these drugs to benefit a larger population.
Like so many other ancient traditions, psychedelics may be a key to navigating life that the modern world is just starting to understand.
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
A business that closed in El Paso, Texas, due to a decline in business from Mexicans in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. al día dallas
The closure of the Mexico-United States border to nonessential traffic since early last year due to the coronavirus pandemic has caused big economic losses in U.S. border cities but some gains in their Mexican counterparts.
The economies of U.S. border communities have suffered losses of US $10 billion since March 2020 due to the inability of many Mexicans to cross the border to go shopping, eat in restaurants and fill up their cars, according to a study by José Iván Rodríguez Sanchez of the Baker Institute Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University in Texas.
Meanwhile, Mexicans who would normally shop in the United States have spent an additional 45 billion pesos (US $2.24 billion) in Mexican border cities since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco).
In shopping districts located near border crossing points in towns and cities in Texas, the lack of Mexican visitors has forced many stores to close, reported the news website Al Día Dallas. A large number of the shuttered businesses – many of which sell items such as clothes, shoes, perfume, wedding dresses and 15th birthday dresses – had depended on Mexican customers for years, if not decades.
“To walk around and see businesses closed is very sad,” said Teclo García, director of economic development for the city of Laredo, Texas, located across the border from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.
“That’s the most painful thing, we don’t know whether they will open again or not.”
The estimated US $10 billion in losses is set to rise as the border between remains closed to nonessential traffic, although there is an expectation that it will open relatively soon as the priority vaccination of young people in Mexican border communities continues.
“Border businesses are facing an unprecedented crisis because thousands of people are no longer crossing to consume and that deals a direct blow to the heart of these border communities,” Rodríguez told Al Día Dallas.
“And the Mexicans are also losing because they used to cross [the border] to buy goods they got more cheaply in the United States and now they have to buy them in Mexico at a higher price,” he said.
His remarks are backed up by United States Department of Transportation data that shows that vehicular traffic from Mexico to the U.S. declined 50% annually to March 2021, while cross-border foot traffic was down almost 61%.
The silver lining for Mexico is that the inability of many Mexicans to cross into the United States has benefited businesses in Mexican border cities from Tijuana in the west to Matamoros in the east, according to Julio Almanza, a Concanaco vice president in the northern border region.
He said the economies of Mexican border cities have also benefited from visiting U.S. citizens, who have routinely been let into Mexico despite the border ostensibly being closed to nonessential travel for most of the pandemic before restrictions on southbound travel were recently eased.
Many Americans first came to Mexico to look for essential items they couldn’t find at home, such as toilet paper, and they have continued to come, Almanza said.
Sales in Mexican border city businesses “have increased 40% permanently,” he said, adding that the flow of U.S. visitors increased further as vaccines were rolled out rapidly north of the border.
