Dance of the Knives is performed in a community near Toluca de Guadalupe.
The people of Toluca de Guadalupe, Tlaxcala, ended their long wait and took to the hills this week to take the traditional Dance of the Knives to rural communities.
The dance, normally performed in the spring as part of Carnival, had to be postponed this year due to the coronavirus, but those who perform it wanted to keep the tradition alive even after eight months of confinement.
The dance, which has been performed since 1930, represents the start of a new agricultural cycle and also commemorates a peasant uprising that occurred against abusive landowners at the turn of the last century.
As the story goes, indigenous people were able to organize against their European repressors by adopting a practice of talking backward when discussing their plot, that is, saying precisely the opposite of what they actually meant in order to avert suspicion.
The celebration of the reenactment of those events is portrayed by dancers clad in brightly colored shirts, skirts, elaborate hats, shawls and masks representing different characters such as a doctor, a widow and a priest. They perform complicated dance steps with knives strapped to their ankles to demonstrate their agility and ability not to injure themselves. At the end, the dancers simulate a riot against a Spanish landowner which ends in his hanging.
But the dance also represents the changing seasons and respect for nature. Hats the dancers wear are festooned with rainbow-colored streamers. They carry whips to represent the sound of thunder and bells to symbolize rain, dancing in a circle to the sounds of a violin and guitar.
The dance is a celebration steeped in identity and pride, and one that dancers felt important to take to the ranches and farms outside the city, albeit eight months later than usual.
Parents of children with cancer don't believe the government.
Pharmaceutical companies are attempting to prevent the federal government from buying cancer medications, President López Obrador claimed Tuesday.
“There are signs that they’re blocking us [from making purchases], not just in Mexico but also abroad. The companies here make agreements with foreign companies … so that they don’t comply with our contracts,” he told reporters at his regular news conference.
“We had a hard time obtaining these medications; we brought them [to Mexico] from Argentina; it’s very strange that these medications were stolen from a warehouse,” López Obrador said.
He said Monday and Tuesday that the government will fulfill its commitment to supply medications to children with cancer despite the robbery, which occurred last Wednesday at the Mexico City facilities of pharmaceutical company Novag Infancia.
The stolen medications, which included a range of chemotherapy drugs, were to be distributed to public health facilities by Novag.
López Obrador said Tuesday that he was unsure about how the government would go about obtaining cancer drugs given the pharmaceutical company “conspiracy” but asserted Monday that “we’re permanently trying to supply these medications to all hospitals.”
“We’re not inhumane, we have feelings and we know what children [with cancer] and any [sick] person suffer if they don’t have medications,” he said.
Although López Obrador claimed that he didn’t know how the government would obtain future consignments, his administration signed an agreement with the United Nations Office for Project Services in July to collaborate on the international purchase of medicines, medical supplies and vaccines.
Meanwhile, a group of parents of children with cancer believe there was no robbery.
‘Theft is very strange:’ AMLO.
“We don’t know much about this implausible robbery, our position is that we don’t believe it,” said Israel Rivas, spokesman for a national group of parents of child cancer patients.
He said in an interview that the warehouse from which the medications were apparently stolen is not a run-of-the-mill facility but rather “an enormous refrigerated room with a lot of security measures.”
An “alphanumeric passcode” is required to enter the facility, he said.
At a press conference in Mexico City on Wednesday during a protest against the shortage of cancer medications, Rivas said that parents don’t believe the government’s story that a robbery occurred because it has “systematically lied to us.”
“First it said that the shortage of medications was caused by a monopoly, then because … [of] corruption, then because there was an international shortage and now they come out with … [the story] that the medications were stolen. Would you journalists believe this tale?”
“Forty thousand doses [were supposedly stolen]! It’s unbelievable what happened, incredible, not to be believed. The truth is I’m astonished. We don’t believe the version the government is giving us …” Rivas said.
The spokesman, whose daughter has cancer, said that almost 1,700 children have died due to cancer medication shortages and warned that the situation will worsen due to the purported theft.
Andrea Rocha, a lawyer for the parents, said that a complaint in relation to the supposed robbery would be filed with the federal Attorney General’s Office today against López Obrador, health sector regulator Cofepris – which announced the theft in a health alert – and Novag Infancia.
She said that “there is not a single piece of real evidence” that the theft actually occurred and no proof that a criminal complaint has been filed in connection with the alleged crime. Rocha questioned why the Argentine-made medications were in Novag’s possession when López Obrador has said that the government itself will manage the distribution of medications to public health facilities.
At the same press conference, parents of children with cancer announced that they were aiming to collect 1.2 million signatures of support for a petition calling for a reform to the constitution in order to ensure that adequate medical treatment for cancer patients is guaranteed.
Rivas said the aim is to “comprehensively protect” all children who currently have cancer as well as future patients. He said the reform would also protect families “from an economic point of view.”
In a subsequent media interview, Rivas said that parents of children with cancer are unconcerned about where the government sources medications as long as they are of high quality.
“Hopefully there will be no [further] shortages. … We’re not interested in where they get [the medications], whether it’s India, Argentina, Mars or another planet. As long as they’re [high] quality, bring them from wherever.”
Motul, Yucatán, has become the second city in the state to replace horse-drawn carriages with motorized ones following pressure by animal rights activists to abandon the practice, citing animal cruelty.
Mérida was the first city in the state to begin using gas-powered buggies, which it did in November 2019.
Horse-drawn carriages have been banned in Cozumel, Quintana Roo, since May as the practice violates the state’s animal welfare laws.
They were also banned in Acapulco, Guerrero, this spring after the state decided to begin enforcing animal welfare laws on the books since 2014.
In that city, buggy drivers have taken to pulling the carriages with ATVs provided by the state government. Carriage drivers also received 10,000 pesos (US$ 469) from the government and a year’s worth of free maintenance on the four-wheelers. They were instructed to find a dignified retirement home for the now prohibited horses.
One such sanctuary is Cuacolandia in Puebla, where owner Elena Larrea cares for more than 100 abandoned or abused horses, including 42 former carriage horses from Acapulco that arrived after the ban was put into place, many with open sores and suffering severe malnutrition.
In Guadalajara, horse-drawn carriages were banned in 2017 and replaced with electric buggies equipped with a 10-horsepower motor that can drive the carriage at speeds of up to 25 kilometers per hour.
“We cannot continue to mistake the idea of tradition with animal abuse. That no longer has a place in Guadalajara; we’ve put a stop to it today,” then-mayor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez said at the time.
A video of a girl walking a tiger cub on the streets of Guasava, Sinaloa, has drawn some attention on social media.
The footage filmed from inside a pickup truck shows a girl clad in shorts and a t-shirt walking the tiger on a rope leash. “Look, crazy Guasave. People go out for a walk with a tiger,” the man is heard saying as he approaches in his vehicle.
He asks after her father as he films, and in their brief conversation she indicates that she has another tiger at home.
Last month a woman was photographed walking her pet tiger in Mexico City’s wealthy Polanco district, causing a buzz on Twitter.
The owner fired back on social media, pointing out that the animal is not a Bengal tiger and that owning an exotic species is legal in Mexico if the owner meets with requirements set by environmental officials.
Exotic animal owners must obtain approval from the Ministry of the Environment (Semarnat), must prove the animal was born in captivity and that the animal will be confined under conditions that guarantee the safety of the public. The owner must also show respect to the animal.
Not everyone is up to the task of taking care of an exotic animal like a tiger. Guillermo Herrera, a parks and wildlife official in Nuevo León, says that people who own exotic pets must be able to provide the animals “with correct facilities and adequate knowledge of their diet and its maintenance. Unfortunately, the [exotic animal dealers] do not pay attention to this and sell to anyone without knowing if they meet these requirements.”
Although Mexican law does not prohibit the purchase of exotic animals, it does prohibit someone from taking their tiger out for a stroll around the neighborhood. “Animals cannot be exhibited on the street, they have to be in a confined site because they are exotic and dangerous. The law says that they have to be totally confined with no possibility of escape to guarantee the safety of civil society,” said Herrera. “The more contact it has with humans, the more dangerous that animal will be.”
In October 2018, authorities seized three Bengal tigers, a lion, 23 turtles, a lemur and a crocodile from a home in Hermosillo, Sonora, after a 7-year-old girl was attacked by one of the tigers. The owner said he was planning on establishing a private zoo.
The Economy Ministry (SE) has placed an immediate ban on the sale of 19 brands of cheese and two brands of yogurt because they don’t meet official standards.
The ministry, in conjunction with the consumer protection agency Profeco, said Tuesday that various products called “cheese” and “natural yogurt” don’t comply with official Mexican standards and their sale has been carried out “to the detriment of consumers and with information that could cause them to be deceived.”
The ministry said the main breaches of the 19 cheese brands were that they claimed to be made with 100% milk when they were not; that vegetable oils were added in lieu of milk in their production; that they weighed less than the amount stated on their packaging; and that the main side of their labeling didn’t list the percentage of caseinates (milk proteins) used in their production.
The cheese brands whose sale has been banned are Fud, Nochebuena, Premier Plus Cuadritos, Zwan, Caperucita, Burr, Precissimo, Frankli, Selecto Brand, Galbani, Lala, El Parral, Portales, Walter, Sargento, Cremeria Covadonga, Aurrera and Philadelphia (original and light).
With regard to “natural yogurt,” the breaches were the addition of sugar and non-compliance with the minimum required quantity of milk. The banned brands are Danone Bene Gastro and Danone Natural.
The manufacturer of Philadelphia cream cheese has rejected the test results.
The SE said the companies that make the banned cheeses and yogurts will be fined in addition to having the sale of their products banned.
Profeco chief Ricardo Sheffield told the newspaper Milenio that the agency he heads has initiated legal proceedings against Danone for deceitful advertising of its Bene Gastro yogurt. He said the name of the product implies that it is good for the gastrointestinal system whereas due to its significant corn syrup content it is in fact not good.
“It could even be damaging to health,” he said, adding that the legal battle against Danone will likely end up in court.
More legal battles could be looming as two manufacturers have challenged the results of the lab tests.
The manufacturer of Philadelphia cream cheese asserted that the decision to ban its products is “unfounded.”
Mondelēz México said in a statement that it has evidence that quality studies carried out by Profeco’s national laboratory in September found that Philadelphia cheese met all required standards.
The company said the Economy Ministry’s order to the National Association of Supermarkets and Department Stores to withdraw its cream cheese products caused it “surprise” and “bewilderment” because it is “totally unfounded and harms the reputation of our brand.”
Grupo Lala, meanwhile, rejected the findings with respect to its sliced, lactose-free Manchego cheese, insisting that the product is made with 100% milk.
Police prevent access to a Columbus statue in Buenavista, Mexico City.
On the 528th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, protesters took to the streets this week in several Mexican states to denounce the “genocidal” explorer.
A statue of Columbus on Mexico City’s Reforma Avenue was removed on the weekend, ostensibly for restoration, but it came after threats to topple it. Nevertheless, protesters arrived at the statue’s base Monday and graffitied the fence that has been installed around it.
Among the messages: “Nothing to celebrate, nothing to forgive, everything to tear down,” “528 years of struggle, organization and resistance – the fight continues,” “Down with the symbols of colonialism” and “Good riddance, genocida [a person guilty of genocide].”
Another group of protesters made their way to a statue of Columbus in the Buenavista neighborhood, where they encountered a cordoned-off statue and a contingent of police who stymied their goal of defacing or bringing down the explorer’s likeness.
In Chilpancingo, Guerrero, protesters including members of the CNTE teachers union blocked traffic on the Mexico City-Acapulco highway for an hour to mark the anniversary of Columbus’s arrival.
Foiled in their attempts to take down a Columbus statue in Mexico City, protesters tear down street signs instead.
In Morelos, indigenous protesters expressed their support for President López Obrador’s request to Pope Francis for a public apology from the Catholic Church for the abuses committed during the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. In Oaxaca, there were protests to demand respect for indigenous peoples and to denounce large-scale energy projects, the newspaper El Financiero said.
Groups with links to the Zapatistas protested in the Chiapas cities of Tuxtla Gutiérrez and San Cristóbal de las Casas, where they condemned the negative impact of the Conquest and subsequent colonization.
The condemnations of the Genoan explorer are not new.
César Morado, a historian at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, told the newspaper El Norte that condemning Columbus – whose expeditions were sponsored by Spain – and debate about his legacy go back centuries.
“It’s an old conflict we’ve had since the 19th century,” he said, adding that there has long been a debate between the aztequistas, those who hold up indigenous customs and traditions as superior, and the hispanistas, those who favor the Spanish.
“This debate is highlighted now due to the fact that society is more interconnected by social media but the bottom line is the same: it’s a matter of how we interpret history,” Morado said.
There is Columbus the explorer and conquistador and Columbus the perpetrator of atrocities against indigenous peoples, he said.
However, Morado noted that the history written by the winners, the conquistadores, became the dominant one. But opposing narratives are now becoming more prominent, the historian said.
According to another historian, the marginalization faced by indigenous people in Mexico today cannot be attributed to Europeans’ “discovery” of the Americas in the 15th century and the subsequent Spanish Conquest.
Luis Alberto García told El Norte that he believed that an apology for the Conquest, which López Obrador has also sought from the King of Spain, is unnecessary.
An apology, he said, “won’t change the current situation at all nor establish a plan to do so.”
The boats are off in the shotgun start of the Bisbee's Black & Blue. Clicerio Mercado
Clicerio Mercado sits at a restaurant at the Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, marina on a late-summer morning, sipping a smoothie and greeting locals who stroll by his table with his typical good cheer.
Everyone is happy to see him, not just because he’s overcome a nasty, six-week bout with the coronavirus, but because he helps run the legendary Bisbee’s fishing tournaments, which bring an estimated US $12-million injection into the Cabo San Lucas economy, a boost sorely needed in 2020.
For 30 years Mercado, now 73, grandfather to seven and great-grandfather to six, has organized the Bisbee’s in Los Cabos, a series of three tournaments culminating in the Bisbee’s Black & Blue, named for the two species of marlin it centers around, which draws anglers from all over the world to compete for millions in prize money.
In 2006, anglers aboard Bad Company took home a record US $3,902,997.50. In the tournament’s 40-year history, 16 teams have received checks of upwards of US $1 million.
And while other tournaments in Costa Rica, Florida and the Bahamas have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, Bisbee’s soldiers on by adopting a new set of protocols.
Clicerio Mercado celebrates his 30th year with the Bisbee’s tournaments. Gary Graham
It’s just another example of how Mercado has learned to roll with the punches and his determination to continue with a tournament that he, those who fish it, and residents of Los Cabos dearly love. Fishing is, after all, what brought the first tourists to Los Cabos, and the October tournaments mark the beginning of high season for the resort destination.
Mercado is confident that the Los Cabos Offshore — October 15 through 18 — and the “Superbowl of fishing tournaments” as Sports Illustrated has called the Black & Blue — October 20 through 24 — will go off without a hitch.
The tournament was founded in 1981 when a group of six teams of fishing buddies decided to create a competition for a US $10,000 purse in what was then a relatively remote location with a reputation for excellent fishing.
As Los Cabos grew exponentially, so did the Bisbee’s.
Mercado was the food and beverage manager at a marina hotel when tournament founder Bob Bisbee, who died in 2018, first hired him to help with logistics in 1990.
“Throughout the tournament, we always needed help on things from our host facility and were unable to get the help needed by the different people there. So we found ourselves going to Clicerio for things that the general manager should have been doing. Also, for things that the maintenance department should have been doing,” said Bob’s son Wayne Bisbee, who is now tournament president.
Tricia and Wayne Bisbee and Mercado. Gary Graham
“Basically, Clicerio became our primary go-to guy for getting things done even if they weren’t in his department, and that was great for us.”
Mercado says he found that the skills he had learned in a 20-year career in the hospitality industry, where he began as a dishwasher, transferred well.
For him, coordinating a tournament means not only establishing a system and sticking to it, it’s also about diplomacy, cultivating friendships and making sure to know the right people in the right places to help pull off the event without a hitch.
“A main strength that Clicerio has which I don’t is that he likes meetings. I hate meetings unless they’re taking place on a boat while fishing or in a bar, so he is great for seeing that the needed meetings for organizational things are happening,” Bisbee said.
“He is much more organized than me and always has a checklist of what needs to be done versus trying to keep it all in his mind which I try to do. He also has a great capability of working with all the different organizations as needed in a very friendly manner.”
By 1993 Mercado began working for the Bisbee’s full-time, and since then he has become the Mexican face of the tournaments that he, Wayne Bisbee and his sister Tricia Bisbee run like clockwork, handling the logistics of holding such major events in Mexico with characteristic aplomb.
Last year’s winners of the Black & Blue. Gary Graham
In recent years more than 150 teams from around the globe have participated in what has become the world’s richest fishing tournament. As of October 13, 69 teams have registered for the Black & Blue, with entry fees starting at US $5,000 per team, or US $71,500 for across-the-board entry into daily jackpots. Seventy-six teams have registered for the Los Cabos Offshore.
More teams are expected to sign up for both tournaments in the coming days.
“Our expectation is to have over 100 teams per tournament, and that will be phenomenal for this very weird 2020,” Mercado says.
For an experienced coordinator like Mercado, putting on fishing tournaments in a pandemic is just a matter of changing up the rules a little for safety reasons. After all, the fish are still biting.
“We are holding normal Bisbee’s tournaments, and the restrictions do not have to scare people away. We have very good circumstances for the tournaments.” Mercado says.
Working with state and local governments, Mercado and the Bisbees developed a blueprint for how a fishing tournament could be safely held during the pandemic and put it to the test earlier this year in their annual August East Cape Offshore tournament.
Mercado, far right, at his first Bisbee’s tournament, in 1990.
The event was a rousing success, breaking records as 72 teams competed in the three-day event on the Sea of Cortés with a jackpot of over US $1,100,000, marking the first year that prize money had topped US $1 million. Local fishermen also landed a massive 704-pound blue marlin, the largest in that tournament’s history.
But the circumstances were a bit different, as they will be in the upcoming two tournaments.
This year the normal in-person captains’ meeting to go over rules will be held virtually, with every captain, angler and crew member receiving a link to feeds in both English and Spanish. Face masks are mandatory at all times and only the angler who caught the fish will be allowed to approach the weigh station, which has been moved from in front of the Puerto Paraíso mall to the cruise ship pier to prevent massive crowds from gathering, as they have in years past.
The annual fundraiser for the Bisbee’s Fish & Wildlife Conservation Fund, which provides scholarships for local college students, supports a billfish tag and release program and funds anti-poaching efforts in South Africa, will be held virtually as a silent auction.
But the main difference most anglers will note is the absence of the tournament’s epic parties.
“Due to Covid-19, we’re not allowed to bring people together in any way which I am personally very sad about,” Wayne Bisbee says. “A huge part of our tournaments is the camaraderie of all the teams from literally around the world.”
Gary Graham, a photojournalist, writer and fishing guru who first visited Baja in 1973, predicts that anglers weary of lockdown will still come out despite these uncertain times.
Graham covered the August Bisbee’s tournament whose success he describes as remarkable. “When that tournament took place, two weeks out there was no guarantee that it was going to happen, what the protocols would be, how it would be managed,” he said. The turnout showed that “teams that were interested in fishing tournaments, come hell or high water, would be there. That’s what I’m expecting in Los Cabos.”
For Mercado, the event’s success is a given. He’s got coordinating fishing tournaments down to a science that not even the coronavirus can derail.
The energy regulator is implementing a ban on new permits, which includes everything from renewables generation to gas stations.
Mexican regulators are clamping down on private investment in the energy sector in the latest attempt by the nationalist government to protect state oil and utilities companies, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.
The move escalates months of government efforts to abruptly change the rules in the sector that have soured investor sentiment, sparked a flood of injunctions and raised the prospect of litigation under international trade treaties, including the new North American trade pact, USMCA.
According to the documents, the energy regulator CRE is implementing an appeal issued by President López Obrador to regulators last month to ban new energy permits — a move that covers everything from renewables generation to gas stations.
Analysts and former officials say the policies are a backdoor attempt to discriminate in favour of Mexico’s struggling state oil company, Pemex, and state utility, CFE, without changing the law.
López Obrador, a fervent energy nationalist, sees the former monopolies as national champions and says past policies allowed for the foreign “conquest” of the country’s energy sector.
The government has displayed “a spectacular degree of stubbornness” in continuing to seek new ways to curb private sector involvement, said the chief executive of one renewable energy company.
The documents instructed officials to “abstain from implementing processes” laid out in three regulations from 2017 and 2018.
Those related to updating and authorizing permits, greenlighting generation activity, imports and exports. The move ensured that such decisions now had to go through the CRE board, a former energy official said.
López Obrador has appointed political loyalists to the CRE board, including a 91-year-old refinery expert, José Antonio Celestinos, who last week approved new curbs on some private generators saying: “[I vote] in favour, in accordance with the president’s instructions.”
A CRE spokeswoman said they were internal documents which “modified internal processes in support of the fight against corruption and transparency” and should “not be misinterpreted.”
López Obrador is a fierce critic of the landmark 2013 energy reform, which included allowing private investment in Mexico’s long-closed oil and gas sector. But he says he will only seek to change the law if his attempts to “rescue” Pemex and CFE founder.
The renewables CEO called the permit ban “a new chapter” in Mexico’s clashes with the private sector” and “absolutely extreme and absurd.”
He added: “They’ve halted private sector investment in energy completely.”
One former senior government official said companies were “preparing for the legal battle that will come . . . The idea of injecting more money into the country as of now is a no-go. They’re trying to protect the investments they’ve already made.”
That could include triggering investor protection mechanisms under USMCA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty and pacts with EU countries.
“We are very concerned with actions by the Mexican government to deny U.S. energy companies fair market access,” said Geoff Moody, vice president of government relations at the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.
International oil majors and power companies have invested billions of dollars in Mexico. “We’ve put new investments on hold,” said one executive at a European power company, adding that international arbitration “is being considered very seriously”.
One source close to Onexpo, Mexico’s national association of petrol station owners, said 154 permit applications had been “frozen” by the CRE — the very authority supposed to ensure that the law is applied.
“They’re achieving very little but the destruction in terms of investor and regulatory certainty is very big,” said the former energy official.
The headdress is on display at a museum in Vienna.
President López Obrador revealed Monday that he had instructed his wife to ask Austrian authorities to lend Mexico an elaborate headdress that is believed to have belonged to the Aztec emperor at the time of the Spanish Conquest.
Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller met Monday with the president of Austria, where the penacho de Moctezuma (Moctezuma’s headdress) – made of feathers from the quetzal and other birds – is on display at the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna.
“With the intention of obtaining Mexican historical and archaeological pieces to be exhibited in our country during the bicentenary of independence [in 2021], Beatriz visited the president of Austria, Alexander Van der Bellen,” López Obrador wrote in a Twitter post above a picture of his wife and the head of state.
“I recommended that she insist on the penacho de Moctezuma, although it’s an almost impossible mission given that they’ve appropriated it completely to the extent that they didn’t even lend it to [Emperor] Maximilian … when they invaded us and imposed the so-called Second Mexican Empire,” he said in a second post.
Austria’s possession of the headdress, whose provenance has been disputed, has long been a source of tension with Mexico. The penacho is among a range of Mexican artifacts held by the European nation.
Müller, left, with Brigitte Macron in Paris.
In an Instagram post on Monday, Gutiérrez wrote that the Austrian National Library is in possession of a “great collection” of Mexican artifacts including the Venice Codex, a pictorial document dating back to the 14th century.
She also said the governments of Mexico and Austria had signed an agreement to allow digital access to the latter’s collection.
“This agreement will allow all Mexicans to see the digitalized collection of this historic and extremely important European library. Humanity’s cultural heritage is shared, … it belongs to everyone, not to a private individual,” Gutiérrez wrote.
Earlier in her European trip, Gutiérrez met in Paris with Brigitte Macron, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, where she also attended the opening of an exhibition focused on the culture of Mexico’s Olmec civilization.
The president’s wife, who has broken with tradition and not adopted the title of first lady, also met with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Rome and Pope Francis in Vatican City.
She delivered a letter from López Obrador to Mattarella in which he asked Italy to lend Mexico the Florentine and Cospi codices for exhibitions in 2021, which will also mark the 500th anniversary of the Conquest of Mexico led by Hernán Cortés and the 700th anniversary of the founding of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec or Mexica capital that stood on the land where modern day Mexico City is located.
The president also wrote to Pope Francis to ask for the Catholic Church to offer a public apology to Mexico’s indigenous people for the “atrocities” committed during the Conquest.
Meanwhile, the president of the Mexican Employers Federation (Coparmex) criticized López Obrador and Gutiérrez for bringing up “painful” events from the past while the latter is in Europe.
“In the 21st century reliving episodes that were painful, that were part of a historical context, seems like a bit of a pointless adventure. We have to build pride in our history,” Gustavo de Hoyos told a virtual press conference.
The Coparmex chief also criticized López Obrador for not traveling more to meet with world leaders and promote Mexico’s interests abroad.
It’s all well and good for government ministers or the president’s wife to travel overseas but international relations must also be conducted by the president because there are certain things that only he can do, de Hoyos said.
He said that López Obrador’s meeting with United States President Donald Trump in Washington – during the Mexican leader’s only foreign trip since he took office in late 2018 – was a clear example that “these kind of actions” can yield good results.
Joel Luis and a bottle of sauce made by El Típico in Ixtepec.
The Covid-19 pandemic has dealt a death blow to thousands of restaurants across Mexico, but a family operation in Oaxaca has found an innovative way to adapt — and deliver its products to Oaxacans nationwide who are nostalgic for a taste of home.
El Típico, a modest restaurant specializing in traditional cuisine in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec city of Ixtepec, was facing the same devastating economic losses as many in Mexico’s restaurant industry.
It had to close for several months, and the family faced the unenviable prospect of laying off its eight employees — that is until one young, tech-savvy member of the family, twentysomething son Joel Luis, found a way to keep his family’s business alive by bottling and delivering 20 of the menu’s sauces to anywhere in Mexico, allowing clients to recreate the restaurant’s meals at home.
The family also now sells the sauces in stores locally, in the city of Oaxaca, and even as far away as Veracruz, a Oaxacan enclave.
But the mail-order strategy has allowed El Típico to flourish, finding a niche market in out-of-state Oaxacans who were stuck at home across the country and homesick for the state’s traditional cuisine.
Sauces made and sold by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec restaurant.
Its success is likely helped by the fact that Joel Luis took advantage of the restaurant’s closure period to post video tutorials to El Típico’s Facebook page — complete with traditional music playing in the background — on how to cook the restaurant’s dishes using the sauces.
The customer supplies everything but the sauce, and the restaurant’s staff provide the step-by-step explanations for recreating the restaurant’s recipe within 10 minutes.
“For 40 pesos, the client can bring traditional flavors to their dish,” Joel Luis explains. “Without being experts, they can prepare a tasty broth using Oaxacan spices or a plate of shrimp with traditional sauce. They don’t have to do more than open a bottle and add it to the meat or the shrimp.”
The innovative strategy has paid dividends for both the restaurant and the young entrepreneur. Not only did the restaurant manage to keep its employees by refocusing them on producing items for the mail-order business during its closure, Joel Luis has recently brought on board seven new apprentices he is training to cook items for mail order.
“The truth is, the crisis has brought us to this point,” leading us to come up with an alternative.
