A confrontation between security forces and armed civilians in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, on Friday left nine people dead, including two police officers.
The confrontation occurred as officers from the state Attorney General’s Office carried out an operation related to stolen vehicles. Officers Jorge Omar Valdez Hermosillo and Miguel Medrano were among those who lost their lives in the gunfight.
Police discovered that the house where the fighting occurred was used to hold kidnapping victims, several of whom were on the property at the time. Six people were found dead after the fighting.
Another woman who was in the neighborhood to visit her daughter died in the crossfire.
Four civilians, presumably kidnapping victims, and a police officer were reported wounded.
Municipal police officers secured a broad perimeter around the house where the events occurred.
Teachers at a nearby daycare said that they told the children to get on the floor when they heard the gunshots. They helped maintain calm by telling the children that the noises were just fireworks for a religious ceremony.
A group of young people in Morelos have found a market in China for the decorated face masks they invented to help mothers and children in their hometown stay healthy.
The demand for face masks has skyrocketed in China as the country attempts to contain the spread of the coronavirus known as Covid-19.
The four entrepreneurs behind Changuitos (Little Monkeys) were contacted by the company E-FX to make a big order of their fun face masks, which they decorate with smiley faces, cartoon characters, pig noses and other designs.
They said that although it may appear they are being opportunistic, they have been making the masks since before the spread of the coronavirus made the masks a hot commodity.
“They called us opportunists, said that we were taking advantage of the scarcity of face masks … to make and sell these designs, but what they don’t know is that we created these face masks so that children would leave them on when they are sick,” Changuitos’ Eduardo Salas told the newspaper El Financiero.
Children like the masks for their unique designs.
They saw that mothers in their town had trouble getting their children to leave the face masks on when they were sick, so they founded Changuitos in a little workshop located at the city limits between Cuernavaca and Tepoztlán.
“The moment we put smiley faces on the face masks, they became more striking and the kids even wanted to show them off, because now they were part of their personalities,” said cofounder Susana Itzel.
But it’s not just human health that the company is worried about. The Changuitos founders are looking out for the environment as well. Made of cloth and cotton, the face masks can be washed and reused to avoid generating waste.
A mother herself, cofounder Diana Karen said that the increased demand has led them to open other Changuitos branches in Juitepec, Temixco, Cuernavaca and elsewhere in the state.
The company also personalizes mugs, pens, T-shirts, hats, aprons and coffee thermoses, and their work can be seen in a number of local restaurants, hotels, cafés and other businesses.
Female police are also targets of sexual harassment.
The response to the recently created Mexico City police Gender Unit has revealed that sexual harassment and assault are problems even among those meant to protect the public from such crimes.
The office already has 205 open cases looking into internal reports of assault or machista violence. There were 130 such reports in 2019.
Gender Unit director Sahara Sánchez Nieto told the news website Animal Político that the force has always investigated internal reports of gender violence, but having a specific office for such complaints has encouraged more victims to speak out.
“Now with this unit that was created, women feel safer when filing reports,” she said.
Government watchdog group Causa en Común, or Common Cause, reported on Tuesday that 68% of female police officers have been the victims of lascivious comments or worse forms of sexual harassment or assault.
Its data also revealed that 21% said that they had not reported the incidents because they either didn’t know they could or where to do so.
The Gender Unit was created to address the problem in November of last year in honor of that month’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office reported that month that it had received 117 complaints of sexual aggression by police.
The new unit is specially designed to deal with reports of gender violence, both from civilian women who are assaulted by police and female police officers who have been victimized by their peers or ranking officers, both on and off duty.
In the first months of 2020, 13 such cases have been sent to the city’s Council of Honor and Justice, which analyzes the evidence and determines sanctions, and disciplinary actions have been taken against several officers.
Sánchez said that the strength of the sanctions has not changed since the creation of the unit. They can be anything from a written reprimand to 24-36 hours in jail to a department transfer, and serious cases can lead to dismissal.
“It depends on the gravity of the conduct. For example, for rape, it’s dismissal. Sexual assault, the same, dismissal when there are ways to prove it. That’s why we work with the Attorney General’s sexual crimes unit,” she said.
She said that her office aims not only to remove guilty officers from their posts, but also to bring criminal charges against those whose crimes call for it.
The Gender Unit has the ability to open investigations even when there is no report of a crime.
“There are several ways that complaints come to us,” said agent Judith Escobar. “They come to us directly or we go out for them, we go to different sectors, we do field work.”
She and her colleagues perform random interviews and review the city’s security cameras to detect any irregular behavior.
Aside from officers specifically trained to deal with gender violence, the unit also has two lawyers, three psychologists, two human rights specialists and two gender violence educators.
The office is also conducting a public relations campaign to show women that they shouldn’t be afraid to file reports against their aggressors.
María Tzeltzal by Myriam de la Riva. Alejandro Linares Garcia
Indigenous Mexican women are the focus of a new exhibition at the Salon of Mexican Fine Art (Salón de la Plástica Mexicana) in Mexico City, this year’s edition of an annual program in honor of International Women’s Day, celebrated next Sunday.
An exhibition honoring women — Mexican women in particular — has been held at the institution each year since 2005. According to board member Helen Bickham, “… even though it is much, much better, this society is still not entirely favorable to women or to their achievements. So, we are trying again to break the barriers that still exist to what women do.”
The focus of the show varies slightly from year to year. This time, it is on women in rural and traditional communities, mostly of indigenous origin, but not necessarily limited to them.
“Mujeres de los pueblos originarios” (Women of Indigenous/Traditional Communities) comprises 36 pieces, including drawings, graphic works, sculpture, painting and photography.
Dating from the mid-20th century to the present, the works correspond to dominant art styles in Mexico over the past 70 years.
Niña Jarocha by Antonio Díaz Cortes. Alejandro Linares Garcia
There are rarely seen preliminary mural sketches as well as photographs of artists working with women. Both male and female artists are represented but the focus is on the reality of traditional life, both good and bad.
Featured works include Mujer con tocado (Woman with headdress) by Raúl Anguiano, Mujer con rebozo negro (Woman in black shawl) by Concepción Báez, Tres generaciones (Three generations) by Federico Cantú and Bronce (Bronze) by Francisco Zúñiga.
The collection represents women from Chiapas, Hidalgo, Veracruz and other states, embracing such ethnicities as the Tzetzals, Tehuanas and Jarochas (Veracruz mestizo).
Women are depicted as mothers, protectors, workers, fighters and sufferers, with elements from traditional societies, particularly dress.
The show “… is a tribute to our identity through the features that define the women of the different regions of our country,” stated gallery director Cecilia Santacruz at the inauguration.
This year’s exhibit is part of the Equitativa program, dedicated to promoting gender equality and denouncing gender-specific violence and sponsored by the federal Secretariat of Culture. Launched in November 2019, it is the brainchild of artist and cultural activist Lorena Wolffer.
Bronce by Francisco Zúñiga. Alejandro Linares Garcia
The Salon took the opportunity of International Women’s Day to reopen another exhibition that was interrupted three years ago by the Puebla earthquake. Umbral, by photojournalist and Salon member Blanca Charolet, features a series of 15 black-and-white photographs that explore the “… space between the need to make a decision and the making of it.”
Charolet was the first woman photojournalist to work for a Mexican daily newspaper as well as the official photographer for the office of the president from 1977 to 1982.
One of the two ads that was the target of criticism.
The department store chain Sears has withdrawn two photographs from an advertising campaign amid a barrage of online complaints that they are racist.
Sears México, owned by billionaire businessman Carlos Slim, used two images featuring indigenous women to promote its “Vacations 2020” clothing collection.
One of the photographs shows an indigenous woman in traditional dress standing next to a much taller fair-skinned woman dressed in clothes available for sale at Sears. The other image shows an indigenous woman holding bags and textiles beside a man dressed in a Sears outfit who looks down at her while smiling.
Social media users accused Sears of objectifying the indigenous women who appear in the photos, and the hashtag #SearsNoEntiende (Sears doesn’t understand) – an adaptation of the chain’s slogan “Sears Me Entiende” (Sears Understands Me) – trended on Twitter.
Twitter user @Santiralph speculated satirically about how the images might have come about.
The ads were described as ‘classist and discriminatory’
“Marketing creative: Imagine a tall white man looking at an indigenous woman beneath his shoulder and a blonde woman showing disinterest towards another indigenous woman. SEARS: You’re a genius, advertising approved. #SearsNoEntiende.”
Above images of the offending advertisements, Twitter user @Magdalenachulis wrote: “Come and see the stigmatization, objectification and racism that this store promotes. Can someone explain it to me?”
Another Twitter user appealed to the National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred) for advice about how to have the advertisements removed from the streets of Polanco, an affluent Mexico City neighborhood where Sears has a store.
“Hey @CONAPRED how can we remove these @searsmexico billboards that I think are classist and discriminatory. What procedure should be followed?” wrote @mara_glz.
Conapred responded with a graphic that outlines the various ways in which a complaint can be filed – in person, in a letter, by e-mail and phone or on the council’s website.
As the criticism continued, Sears México announced on Twitter late Thursday that it would withdraw the two images from its advertising campaign.
“At Sears we value your opinion about our new campaign that seeks to highlight the cultural richness of Mexico. We understand that for some people the message was inappropriate so we offer a sincere apology and … we’re withdrawing both photos from the campaign,” the company said.
Sears México also felt the wrath of social media users recently after it advertised domestic appliances such as washing machines and blenders beneath a banner that wished women a happy International Women’s Day for March 8.
“Celebrating [International] Women’s Day promoting washing machine and domestic appliances is extremely sexist,” said Twitter user @BBBLGUMDJ.
Sánchez’s body was taken to the state Attorney General’s Office for an autopsy. The victim’s family will decide whether or not to sue the hospital once they see the results.
His wife Elodia Hernández Félix said that he had told hospital staff that the medicine was a strange yellow color and that he had seen them take it out of dusty, old boxes.
“He, with his own money, bought the heparin, but they didn’t use it here. They gave him something else, and he himself told the nurse that they were going to kill him. He began to feel bad that very same day [February 27],” she said.
Hernández called for justice and demanded that President López Obrador intervene to see that other dialysis patients don’t die in the same way.
Several patients at the hospital’s dialysis clinic have complained about the quality of the medicine they receive.
Gutemberg López Hidalgo said that he hadn’t been administered the correct medication in weeks and that he was forced to buy it out of pocket, despite not being able to work.
María Araceli García, whose husband is in intensive therapy, complained that the dialysis department is always closed and that it lacks basic medications and supplies.
Others said that although the state oil company had reported it would move six critical patients to Mexico City for specialized care, none has left Tabasco and they are still being treated at the hospital in Villahermosa.
The entrance to the Palacio de las Vacas in the historic district of Guadalajara.
The city of Guadalajara was founded 478 years ago and many of its dusty old buildings have extraordinary tales to tell. One of these is El Palacio de las Vacas, an urban legend that few local people have heard of and even fewer have visited. This venerable old mansion was closed to the public for some time but visits are now permitted — only on Sunday nights.
The entrance, at Calle San Felipe 630, immediately grabbed my attention. The windows and doors have a Moroccan design that cried out, “Within these walls something exotic awaits you.”
At 7:00 p.m., Raul Nava, the custodian of the place, opened the doors and led us into a huge, elaborately decorated room with a ceiling three stories high. Here we enjoyed a glass of wine and snacks as Señor Nava recounted the history of the place.
“This mansion was built by President Porfirio Díaz for his cousin Segundo Díaz, because Porfirio wanted Segundo to marry a tapatía, a woman from Guadalajara who was famed for her beauty. Construction was begun in 1850 and completed in 1910. Sixty years it took to build the place, which is not surprising if you consider that this house has 24 rooms, 10 baths, two dining halls, four patios and a chapel.
“Well, Segundo never married that woman, but he did live in the house for a short while, after which he passed the place on to his brother Miguel. Miguel then moved in, but he didn’t like it much and soon moved back out … and it was Miguel who came up with the idea of keeping his cows here overnight, as if the house were a big barn.
A visitor enjoys a quiet moment in the library, which is filled with books on art.
“Yes, he actually turned the place into a dairy farm! Well, everybody in Guadalajara was soon talking about Miguel Díaz’s cows ruminating among exquisite murals and from then on it has always been known as the Palace of the Cows.”
The murals Señor Nava referred to have a history all their own. They were painted — over a period of 11 years — by Xavier Guerrero who, together with Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, founded Mexico’s great muralist tradition.
Guerrero, who had been born in Coahuila, was only 16 years old when he came to Guadalajara and — who knows how — got himself the gig of all gigs: a chance to paint whatever he wanted on 400 meters of walls and ceilings and get paid for it. The youthful artist painted 80 murals in that mansion: pastoral scenes here and biblical scenes there, spiced up a bit with an occasional erotic image. He also added a curious frieze displaying stylized foliage interspersed with nude women whose bodies ended in fish tails, “an anomaly which greatly surprised the owner.”
Over the years, El Palacio de Las Vacas was used for just about every purpose under the sun. “It was a dairy, a grade school, a secondary school, a school of homeopathic medicine, a tapestry workshop, a carpentry workshop and even a brothel. Maybe even a hospital and a kindergarten,” says Julia Escher in a University of Guadalajara publication.
Some say the palace also housed Guadalajara’s first college for women, but historians have found it very difficult to document this or much else of the building’s history.
It is said that one of the building’s owners, a Mexican woman,wanted to tear the palace down and replace it with a parking lot. The city fathers told her she couldn’t do that … which prompted the woman to plug all the downspouts with cement, hoping that the weight of all the water on the flat roof would cause the building to collapse. This did not occur, but the nefarious plan resulted in great damage to many of Xavier Guerrero’s murals.
It is said that Porfirio Díaz slept here when visiting Guadalajara.
According to Julia Escher, in 1998 an American named John A. Davis, a retired jeweler from Atlanta, Georgia, bought the place from Alexandra Muir, a member of the famous Muir family of California.
“Davis had fallen in love with El Palacio three years before,” she says, “and he sold everything he had to buy it.”
Davis then moved right into the old house “even though it was falling to pieces and filled with lice and fleas.”
“When I bought the house there was no furniture, no bathrooms, no electricity, no water, no plants,” he told the Guadalajara Reporter, and he spent the next 20 years filling it with antiques and trying to restore it.
However, he was assaulted by armed robbers “on more than one occasion,” and in the end was left penniless. “I worked 40 years to buy this house. It was my life’s work and now I’ve lost everything,” he reportedly lamented.
Davis never stopped trying to find support for the restoration of El Palacio de las Vacas, but in time he fell ill and passed away. Today the place has a new owner who prefers to remain anonymous … or so goes the rumor.
[soliloquy id="103353"]
In fact, while this palace once housed cows, today it seems to house rumors: “Porfirio Díaz once lived here; so did Diego and Frida; the paintings hanging on the walls were done by the most famous artists you can imagine; the house makes strange noises at night and is full of ghosts; President López Obrador’s wife says she is going to restore the old place.”
Not a rumor is the fact that it is now possible to visit the Palace of the Cows on Sunday nights at 7:00 p.m. Better take advantage before the situation changes! For more information check out their Facebook page or call 331 129 5389.
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.
Mexico’s exports could decline by US $1.37 billion due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
The intergovernmental body said in a report that the slowdown of manufacturing in China due to the outbreak of Covid-19 is disrupting world trade and could result in a $50-billion decrease in exports across global value chains.
“Because China has become the central manufacturing hub of many global business operations, a slowdown in Chinese production has repercussions for any given country depending on how reliant its industries are on Chinese suppliers,” UNCTAD said.
According to UNCTAD estimates, Mexico will be the eighth most affected economy after the European Union, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
“In addition to grave threats to human life, the coronavirus outbreak carries serious risks for the global economy,” said UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi.
“Any slowdown in manufacturing in one part of the world will have a ripple effect in economic activity across the globe because of regional and global value chains.”
UNCTAD said its estimates showed that the most affected sectors would include precision instruments, machinery, automotive and communications equipment.
In Mexico’s case, UNCTAD is predicting that the automotive sector will take the biggest hit, with exports forecast to fall by $493 million.
The next most affected sectors are predicted to be electrical machinery, with a forecast export decline of $341 million; “various” machinery, $228 million; communications equipment, $71 million; office machinery, $58 million; precision instruments, $57 million; wood products and furniture, $52 million; rubber and plastics, $26 million; and metals and metal products, $23 million.
UNCTAD noted that the estimated effects of Covid-19 are subject to change depending on the containment of the virus and/or changes in sources of supply. As of Friday morning, there were five confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Mexico and 35 possible cases.
Rail blockades in Puebla and Michoacán are costing the private sector millions of pesos.
Members of the SNTE teachers union have blocked tracks in the Puebla municipality of Rafael Lara Grajales for the past nine days to demand the intervention of the federal government to ensure that new labor laws guaranteeing them the right to elect their union leaders in free and secret ballots are adhered to.
Their blockade has forced the rail firm Ferrosur to suspend service between Veracruz and the Valley of México. As a result, the company was unable to transport 440,000 tonnes of steel, foodstuffs (including perishables such as fruit), chemicals and auto parts on Thursday, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Ferrosur estimates that it has lost 12.5 million pesos (US $620,000) per day due to the blockade in Puebla.
“In nine days, we haven’t been able to move 144 trains and we haven’t been receiving goods from our customers for four days,” Lourdes Aranda, a spokesperson for Ferrosur’s parent company Grupo México, told Reforma.
“The warehouses of our clients in the port of Veracruz are saturated: there are more than 73,000 tonnes of goods stored there. The same thing is happening at Tierra Blanca and Coatzacoalcos, where we have 120,000 tonnes in both ports. There are also ships that haven’t been able to unload,” she said.
In light of the circumstances, Ferrosur has called on Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa to intervene and immediately order the clearing of the tracks.
Meanwhile in Michoacán, teacher training college studentsblocked tracks at two different points on the Lázaro Cárdenas-Morelia line during the past two days. The normalistas, as the students are known, say that they are protesting to demand the payment of scholarships they are owed and to pressure authorities to make more teaching positions available for graduates.
The Michoacán Industry Association said that 17 trains were stranded due to the students’ blockades on Wednesday and Thursday and estimated economic losses of 100 million pesos (US $5 million). The steel, automotive, agro-industrial and petroleum industries are among the worst affected.
The industry association urged authorities to immediately clear the tracks but the students continued their blockade on Friday morning before voluntarily withdrawing, according to a report by the news outlet Imagen Noticias.
Restoration work underway at Izapa. Alejandro Uriarte Torres/INAH
Archaeologists with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) are carrying out a project to study and restore Izapa, a pre-Hispanic city in Chiapas built with clay.
Located on the Izapa River near Tapachula and the Tacaná Volcano, which straddles the Mexico-Guatemala border, the Mayan city features more than 30 stone monuments engraved with mythical scenes associated with the exercise of power by ancient rulers. The carvings haven’t been studied for more than 50 years.
Led by the archaeologist Alejandro Uriarte Torres, the Izapa Research and Conservation Project (PICI) is restoring the splendor of the monuments and the site in general, INAH said in a statement.
Uriarte said that the work is being carried out to repair damage to the site’s structures caused by their proximity to Tacaná, an active volcano that last erupted in 1986.
He explained that when the PICI team first examined Izapa in 2015, they found that parts of the clay structures were displaced, crumbling or cracked due to seismic activity linked to rumblings and eruptions at the volcano.
A ballcourt at the Izapa site. Alejandro Uriarte Torres/INAH
While carrying out the restoration work, archaeologists were able to identify the construction systems and materials used at Izapa, Uriarte said, adding that a study will be carried out to determine where the materials came from.
All of the structures are made out of clay, the archaeologist said, explaining that after they were built, their exterior walls were covered with river stones measuring 50-60 centimeters in diameter. All of the restoration work has been carried out with respect for the original construction techniques, Uriarte said.
“We learned to value the earthen architecture in Mesoamerica, which is much more common that we think. … There are a great quantity of sites like Izapa, where only the walls are made with stone … The whole interior is clay,” he said.
“This is something that we have to study more deeply because we generally have the idea that all the Mesoamerican buildings are stone.”
The archaeologist explained that the stone monuments, or steles, are being cleaned of lichen and other types of fungi that thrive in the year-round humid climate at Izapa, one of the most important archaeological sites in the Soconusco region of Chiapas.
After cleaning, archaeologists are photographing the monuments with the aim of establishing a visual registry of their iconography before further deterioration occurs.
Some steles were removed from the site before the current project began and are on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and the Soconusco Museum in Tapachula.
INAH said that the microorganisms growing on the steles are also being studied to determine how they can be removed in the future without harming them. Alejandro Medina, an INAH biologist, is leading the work.
Izapa reached its peak between 850 B.C. and 100 B.C. but was abandoned completely sometime around 1200, a year which corresponds to the early post-classic period of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.
