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Homemade seasonings spice up holiday gift giving

By
Janet Blaser
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Homemade seasonings, like this pumpkin pie mix, trump store-bought.
Homemade seasonings, like this pumpkin pie mix, trump store-bought.

While I can’t be near most of my friends and family this holiday season, I’m finding that making gifts in the kitchen helps me feel connected even though we’re far away from each other.

Cookies are the classic homemade gift (more about those next week!), but these spice blends will be just as appreciated and are easier to give to folks who may have dietary restrictions that you’re unaware of. While putting together spice and seasoning blends may sound simple, there are some tips that will make your finished products really shine.

First and foremost, start with the freshest spices you can find. That means don’t go to any sort of discount outlet to get them. Go to a busy mercado (properly masked and socially distanced, of course) where spices can be found in bulk or freshly ground while you wait. You can also go to a bigger store that has sealed, packaged and dated jars of the spices you need. This is a good excuse to buy a box of kosher salt too.

As much as possible, you also want to grind, grate or crush the spices yourself. Fresh-grated nutmeg, for instance, imparts a brilliant burst of flavor unlike what you get in a jar. A mortar and pestle or molcajete can be used to prepare ground oregano or thyme or to crush the coriander, mustard or cumin seeds. And always grind black, red or other peppercorns yourself for the brightest flavor.

What you can find at places like Waldo’s are small decorative jars in which to put your spice blends. These can also be found at kitchen supply shops, where I always find fascinating things I didn’t know I needed. Tie some red or green ribbon around the tops of the jars and they’re good to go. Feliz Navidad, my friends!

This taco seasoning can also be used in red enchilada sauce.
This taco seasoning can also be used in red enchilada sauce.

 Jenn’s Taco Seasoning

I tend not to make tacos at home as they seem so much better at my favorite stands, but Jenn swears by this spice mix.

  • ¼ cup ancho chili powder
  • 3 Tbsp. ground cumin
  • 1 Tbsp. paprika
  • 1 Tbsp. salt
  • 1 Tbsp. onion powder
  • 2 tsp. garlic powder
  • 2 tsp. dried oregano
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 Tbsp. cornstarch or 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

Mix everything well and store in an airtight container. Two tablespoons of this is equivalent to one store-bought packet.

To make tacos, use 2 Tbsp. per pound of ground beef. Add ¼ cup of water along with taco seasoning. Makes ¾ cup, enough to season six pounds of ground beef.

For Red Enchilada Sauce: Add 1 Tbsp. taco seasoning mix per 1 cup of tomato puree, plus a bit of vinegar to taste.

Pumpkin Pie Spice

Add to cupcakes, quick bread or make your own Pumpkin Spice Latte!

  • 4 tsp. ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp. ground ginger
  • 1 tsp. ground cloves
  • ½ tsp. ground nutmeg

Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place up to six months.

Salt-Free Herb Blend

A sprinkle of this perks up chicken, fish, shrimp and vegetable dishes.

  • 4 tsp. sesame seeds
  • 2 tsp. EACH celery seed, dried marjoram, poppy seeds and ground black pepper
  • 1½ tsp. dried parsley flakes
  • 1 tsp. each onion powder and dried thyme
  • ½ tsp. each garlic powder and paprika

Store in an airtight container up to 6 months. Yield: 1/3 cup

Flavorful spice mixes are a great way to reduce your salt intake
Flavorful spice mixes are a great way to reduce your salt intake

BC’s Italian Dressing Mix

 Also great as a rub for chicken or in soup or tuna salad.

  • 1 Tbsp. dried garlic flakes or powder
  • 1 Tbsp. dried onion flakes or powder
  • 2 Tbsp. dried oregano
  • ! Tbsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • ¼ tsp. dried thyme
  • 1 tsp. dried basil
  • 1 Tbsp. dried parsley
  • ¼ tsp. celery seed
  • At least 1 Tbsp. salt, or to taste

Mix all spices together. Store in an airtight jar.

 To make dressing: In a shaker jar, add 2 Tbsp. of spice mix to ¼ cup vinegar (any kind), 2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, 2 Tbsp. water. Add a squeeze of fresh lime juice or a minced fresh garlic clove, if you like. Shake well.

Seasoned Salt

 Delicious on everything!

  • 1/3 cup salt
  • 1½ tsp. garlic powder
  • 1½ tsp. celery seed
  • 1½ tsp. paprika
  • ½ tsp. onion powder
  • ½ tsp. ground mustard

Store in an airtight container for up to 1 year. Makes about ½ cup.

BC’s Poultry Seasoning

  • 2 tsp. ground sage
  • 1½ tsp. ground thyme
  • 1 tsp. ground marjoram
  • ¾ tsp. ground rosemary
  • ½ tsp. ground nutmeg
  • ½ tsp. fine ground black pepper

“Everything Bagel” Popcorn Seasoning

  • 2 Tbsp. EACH white and black sesame seeds,
  • 1 Tbsp. EACH caraway seeds, granulated onion and granulated garlic
  • 1½ tsp. salt

Toss seasonings with 6 Tbsp. melted butter and 12 cups freshly made popcorn.

Discount stores are an economical place to find attractive spice jars.
Discount stores are an economical place to find attractive spice jars.

Garam Masala

 This classic mixture of spices makes the magic in Indian foods. 

  • 4 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1½ tsp. EACH ground coriander, cardamom and black pepper
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • ½ tsp. ground cloves
  • ¼ tsp. EACH ground nutmeg and dried chili flakes

Store in an airtight container.

Ranch Seasoning Blend

Sprinkle on top of baked or scalloped potatoes, on garlic bread, popcorn or even fish tacos.

  • 2 ½ Tbsp. dried parsley
  • 2 tsp. EACH dried dill and dried minced onion
  • 2½ tsp. EACH garlic powder and onion powder
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1½ tsp. salt

Add 1 Tbsp. of seasoning and 1 Tbsp. fresh lime juice to 1/3 cup mayonnaise.

Chinese Five Spice Blend

 Add sweetness and warmth to Asian-inspired dishes.

  • 2 Tbsp. anise seed
  • 2 Tbsp. fennel seed
  • 2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
  • 2 Tbsp. whole cloves
  • 2 Tbsp. whole peppercorns

Grind with a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle until mixture becomes a fine powder. Store in an airtight container. Makes about ½ cup.

Janet Blaser has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life and feels fortunate to be able to write about great food, amazing places, fascinating people and unique events. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.

Pemex rescinds contracts awarded to president’s cousin

By
MND Staff
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López Obrador's cousin was not named on three of the contracts.
López Obrador's cousin was not named on three of the contracts.

The state oil company Pemex has rescinded four contracts awarded to a company owned by President López Obrador’s first cousin.

Litoral Laboratorios Industriales (LLI), a company owned by Felipa Guadalupe Obrador Olán that provides chemical and microbiological testing of oil products, won four Pemex contracts last year. Three of them were awarded after Pemex became aware of Obrador Olán’s relationship to the president and ordered her to abstain from participating in its tendering processes.

The state oil company said Sunday that in addition to canceling the contracts it would carry out an exhaustive investigation into the tendering processes in which LLI participated.

The aim will be to determine who was responsible for awarding the contracts and decide the consequences for not following the company’s regulatory processes and López Obrador’s instructions not to do business with any of his relatives.

Journalist Carlos Loret de Mola revealed last Thursday that Obrador Olán’s company had been awarded government contracts worth 365 million pesos (US $18.3 million) over the past two years.

The president, who has made combatting corruption the central aim of his administration, said Friday that he wasn’t aware of the arrangements.

However, he said Monday that his cousin, whose company has been awarded government contracts as far back as 2013, had entered a consortium with other firms and was not listed as a legal representative on bids submitted to Pemex.

“In Pemex they did not realize or there was omission and they delivered the contract,” López Obrador said, adding that he told Pemex CEO Octavio Romero to act in accordance with the law. “Even when it comes to family, there will be no corruption,” he said.

According to a Pemex statement, LLI participated in one tendering process in October 2019 with a company called Services Inter Lab de México.

A public servant responsible for reviewing the bids noticed that Obrador Olán was listed as one of the interested parties, the state-owned company said.

“The above was reported to the president by the general director of Pemex; the response was categorical in the sense that under no circumstances was the awarding of contracts to any relatives allowed,” Pemex said.

pemex

“In response to the presidential instruction, Felipe Guadalupe Obrador Olán was verbally advised that she wouldn’t be awarded the contract and she was ordered not to continue getting involved in Pemex tendering processes.”

Obrador Olán didn’t receive that contract but her company, as part of a consortium with two other firms, was awarded one earlier in October 2019, the newspaper El Universal reported.

Another consortium LLI was part of with six other companies won three additional contracts with Pemex in November 2019. The state oil company said that when she was ordered not to participate in Pemex tendering processes, Obrador Olán didn’t reveal that LLI had already submitted bids as part of another consortium.

It’s not the first time that López Obrador has been placed in a difficult position by members of his family. Two videos showing the president’s brother receiving large amounts of cash in 2015 from a man who became Civil Protection chief in the current government surfaced in August.

López Obrador denied that the payments his brother received were corrupt, saying that the money was “contributions to strengthen the [Morena] movement” and came from ordinary people who supported the party, which he founded in 2014.

However, he said the Attorney General’s Office should investigate.

Pío López Obrador filed a complaint in October against the journalist who brought the videos to light – Carlos Loret de Mola, an outspoken critic of the federal government who has also sought to expose corruption linked to Federal Electricity Commission director Manuel Bartlett and Public Administration Minister Irma Sandoval.

Source: El Universal (sp), Bloomberg (en) 

Faith trumps Covid: fear of coronavirus doesn’t stop pilgrims to Guadalupe

By
Michelle Aguilar
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Luis and his family at the basilica in Mexico City.
Luis and his family at the basilica in Mexico City.

For 20 years, Luis, a devout Catholic, has organized a pilgrimage to Mexico City’s Basilica of Guadalupe in December with his extended family to give thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe for yet another year of life.

It’s a tradition that not even the coronavirus can stop.

“Faith matters more than fear of the virus,” he said as he and his wife, their young children and his mother left the basilica together, where the family had two images of the Virgin blessed.

Normally, the family would visit closer to the Virgin of Guadalupe feast day on December 12, making a pilgrimage to the church on foot. But the Covid-19 pandemic has forced changes upon them this year: to avoid crowds, they came by public transit and they came earlier than usual.

But they never once considered not coming at all, despite the cancellation of all religious activities at the basilica this year on December 11 and 12 to discourage crowds. Church officials have urged the faithful to stay home.

Pilgrims practice social distancing at the Basilica of Guadalupe.
Pilgrims practice social distancing at the Basilica of Guadalupe.

“This isn’t the usual way, but it was never an option not to come,” Luis said. “It’s a tradition. The pandemic doesn’t matter. We had to come celebrate [the virgin].”

The celebrations at the basilica are Mexico’s most popular religious celebration of the year, annually attracting between 8 and 10 million people to the basilica in the days leading up to December 12. About 20 million people in total visit throughout the year.

This year, church officials have encouraged the faithful to visit in November or January instead to avoid overcrowding. People are not allowed to linger once they have had their moment before the holy relic, a cloak said to have been divinely imprinted with the virgin’s image in 1531.

But Luis’s family, which carries on a tradition started by his grandmother, is an example of the difficult road devout Catholics in Mexico are navigating this year as they debate between avoiding Covid-19 and maintaining traditions that demonstrate faith at a time when they say they need divine intervention more than ever.

“There is no December without a celebration for the virgin,” says Luis’s mother Patricia. “I always get excited to see her and to ask her to protect us, now even more with all that is happening,”

Celebrating the virgin’s holy day is also an act of family togetherness. According to Luis’s wife Viridiana, the family begins its festivities at 12:01 a.m. on December 12, singing the Mañanitas (typically sung to religious figures on their feast day and at birthday parties) to the virgin at an altar they have decorated with flowers.

“We stay awake until midnight. We all sing together … and light the candles for the favors received during the year,” she said. “In the afternoon, we make a meal and spend time together.”

The family said they understand the risk in coming this year and emphasized that they obeyed all the safety rules enforced by the cadre of health officials stationed around the basilica’s perimeter.

“Of course we are afraid,” said Luis. “But it is exactly for that reason that we are here asking the virgencita to help us, to be with us.”

Source: El Universal (sp), Infobae (sp)

As hospitals fill, people with Covid symptoms urged to call ahead to see if there’s a bed

By
MND Staff
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80 hospitals around the country are currently full.
80 hospitals around the country are currently full.

The federal Health Ministry has advised people with Covid-19 symptoms to call 911 to confirm the availability of hospital beds before seeking treatment to avoid facilities that are already full.

As the health systems of some states come under increased pressure due to a recent increase in hospitalizations of coronavirus patients, the Health Ministry issued two statements urging people with Covid-19 symptoms to seek medical care promptly but to check with hospitals first.

In a statement released last Wednesday, the ministry said that the 911 emergency number has a service that allows people to find out which hospitals in the area where they live have beds available for coronavirus patients.

“The person who calls, regardless of the place he or she is, will receive guidance about available hospitals in their location. That will avoid the loss of valuable time in order to ensure prompt medical care,” the ministry said.

It also said that people can access information about “self-care measures” and coronavirus symptoms as well as a list of healthcare facilities and the services they offer on the mobile app COVD-19MX, which is available in both Spanish and English.

The Health Ministry said that a diagnosis in the first 48 hours after the onset of coronavirus-like symptoms such as fever, a cough, a headache or lack of oxygen is essential to avoid complications and the risk of death.

The ministry issued a similar statement on Sunday directed at people with existing health problems that make them particularly vulnerable to a serious Covid-19 illness.

People with Covid-19 symptoms who smoke, have high blood pressure, HIV, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease or any other illness that suppresses the immune system should call 911 to find out which hospitals have availability in order to avoid losing time, the statement said.

The ministry said that seeking medical care in the first 48 hours after the onset of symptoms is crucial to reduce the risk of Covid-19 complications and deaths among people aged over 60 and those with chronic diseases.

A person who seeks care five days after the onset of symptoms has double the risk of dying from Covid-19 compared to those who seek care in a more timely manner, it said.

“In some cases, the SARS-CoV-2 virus can make [a person’s] health status worse in a matter of hours,” the ministry said.

According to data presented at Sunday night’s coronavirus press conference, only 39% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while 33% of those with ventilators are in use.

But federal data publicly available online shows that 80 hospitals are currently at 100% capacity. The completely full facilities are located in numerous states including Michoacán, México state, Guanajuato, Veracruz, Mexico City, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Aguascalientes, Nayarit, Durango, Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Baja California, Jalisco, San Luis Potosí, Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Guerrero, Sonora, Sinaloa and Colima.

Seventeen other hospitals currently have an occupancy level above 90%.

Ten of the hospitals with 100% occupancy are in Mexico City, where 600 additional hospital beds for coronavirus patients are to be installed this week.

Authorities in the capital also announced that rapid Covid-19 testing will be available at 29 city-run public hospitals as of this week. The Mexico City government is aiming to carry out 20,000 tests per day — double the current number — to identify and isolate a greater number of positive cases and thus limit the spread of the coronavirus. People found to have the virus will receive financial and food support to ensure that they can isolate at home if their symptoms don’t warrant hospitalization.

There are now more than 200 places to get tested in the capital including medical centers, hospitals and health kiosks that have been set up in hotspot neighborhoods and in busy public places, such as Metro stations. Close to 100,000 rapid tests had been performed at the health kiosks as of Sunday and just under 21% of tests came back positive.

A map of the medical centers and health kiosks performing Covid-19 tests free of charge is available here.

The 29 hospitals where free rapid tests are available are located across 15 of the capital’s 16 boroughs. The full list of participating hospitals is available here.

Mexico City has been the country’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic with more than 232,000 confirmed cases and 18,171 Covid-19 deaths.

The former figure accounts for about one in five of all cases detected in Mexico. Many of the more than 117,000 confirmed cases in neighboring México state correspond to municipalities that are part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area.

The capital’s death toll represents 16.5% of all fatalities officially attributed to Covid-19 in Mexico.

The nationwide accumulated case tally increased to 1,175,850 on Sunday with 7,455 new cases reported while an additional 261 fatalities pushed the death toll to 109,717.

The coronavirus risk in two of Mexico’s 32 states, Baja California and Zacatecas, is currently red light “maximum” on the federal government’s stoplight system. The risk in 24 states including Mexico City is orange light “high,” three states are at the yellow light “medium” risk level while three others – Campeche, Chiapas and Veracruz – are painted “low” risk green.

Source: Animal Político (sp), Milenio (sp), El Sol de México (sp) 

Yucatán cenote cleanup yields a mysterious find: 112 electric meters

By
Michelle Aguilar
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A diver with one of the meters found in a Yucatán cenote.
A diver with one of the meters found in a Yucatán cenote.

A routine environmental cleanup of a Yucatán cenote yielded an unusual surprise embedded in the underwater cave’s debris: 112 discarded and corroded electricity meters.

Archaeologist Sergio Grosjean Abimerhi, an expert on Yucatán cenotes who was working on cleaning up the Chen há cenote in Kopomá, said that crews found the meters — some with marine animals’ jaws attached to them — mixed in with 700 kilos of sediment.

He said the meters contain “highly contaminating components” such as copper, lead and magnets which represent a risk not only to animals using the cenote as habitat but also to local residents who extract its water for human and animal consumption and irrigation. Even bleaching, a common practice to make the water safe for human consumption, does not eliminate the heavy metals, Grosjean said.

Metal detectors were used to detect the meters, which were buried deep due to their weight and due to the fact that Chen há, an open cenote, is subject to frequent precipitation with organic matter. The divers also found well-preserved dead fish at the cenote’s bottom depths and three crocodile skulls.

“The question we want to solve is whether these heavy metals caused the death of the fish,” Grosjean said.

Some of the meters that were buried in sediment in a cenote.
Some of the meters that were buried in sediment in a cenote.

In recent years, scientific studies have determined that Yucatán’s waters are contaminated with carcinogenic particulates. The dumping of items such as the meters is likely contributing to the problem, Grosjean said.

“We are calling upon authorities at the local, state, and federal level to take note of this matter since the person dumping these electricity meters and their reason for doing so is unknown,” he said. “[And] we call on the public to take responsibility for the cenotes in the Yucatán Peninsula, since the water that they contain in one form or another arrives at our homes.”

Source: Diario de Yucatán (sp)

Soaring peso inconvenient to some but a quadruple whammy for economy

By
Carlisle Johnson
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dollars and pesos

Mike might be saying to his San Diego pals on their annual fishing trip to Ensenada, “Geez guys, the Corona’s gotten a lot more expensive this year.”

Sally might be saying to Harry in their Ajijic pied a terre, “Jeez, our pensions don’t seem to go as far now as they used to.”

Mike and Sally are both correct.

On or about April 1, 2020, generally reckoned as the start date for the pandemic, the interbank dollar exchange rate stood at just under 24:1, having flirted with the round number of 25:1 only a few weeks earlier. As this is written the rate has dropped to less than 20.

It may be the invisible hand of Adam Smith in the free market. It may be, as currency traders say, a dirty float, with a policy finger on the scale from Mexico’s central bank. It may be a Faustian bargain with the U.S. to reduce emigration from zero population growth Mexico. It may be a nutrition police op to reduce Mexico’s waistline.

Or it may be all of the above.

Mike, Sally and Harry are annoyed, even inconvenienced by the 20% erosion in the value of their dollars. But the recipients of remittances from sacrificing Mexicans working in the U.S., Canada and Europe may be devastated by the roughly four-peso-per-dollar plunge in the purchasing power of the money sent back home.

It’s a triple or even quadruple whammy to an economy already struggling with loss of employment, a disappeared tourism sector, and low oil prices.

To reduce the situation to Exchange Rates for Dummies: a higher value for a country’s currency stimulates imports, penalizes exporters, hastens capital outflows, and with an expected $36 billion a year in remittances, a four-peso difference puts billions of kilos’ worth of fewer tortillas on the tables of Mexico’s hungriest.

Where are exchange rates headed? Even Don Quixote wouldn’t tilt at that windmill. But he would certainly pay attention to wind speeds.

The author, a former bank CEO, has an MBA from Harvard and has worked in Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, Venezuela, Argentina and Mexico.

Election in the air: Morena party chief lashes out at ‘perverse alliance’ of opposition

By
MND Staff
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From left: Delgado, Cortés, Moreno and PRD leader Jesús Zambrano.

The 2021 elections are still six months away but a war of words has already broken out between the ruling Morena party and a new three-party alliance determined to seize control of the lower house of Congress and win state gubernatorial races.

Morena national president Mario Delgado on Sunday described the coalition of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the  National Action Party (PAN) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) as a “perverse electoral alliance” and a “cancer,” triggering strong rebukes from the opposition parties themselves.

“The people of Mexico will not allow the return of a cancer that has done so much damage to the country. In 2021 we’re going to eradicate the perverse electoral alliance of the #TUMOR, made up of the PRI, the PAN and the PRD,” he wrote on Twitter.

Speaking on Sunday, Delgado said the sole objective of the coalition is to defend its own interests rather than attend to the needs of ordinary Mexicans.

The PRI, the PAN and the PRD have demonstrated over the years that they are “machines of bad government,” corruption and “immoral practices such as the squandering of public funds,” he said.

'A malignant tumor called PRIAN,' reads a frame from the Morena video that shows former National Action Party chief Ricardo Anaya, left, and Peña Nieto.
‘A malignant tumor called PRIAN,’ reads a frame from the Morena video that shows former National Action Party chief Ricardo Anaya, left, and Peña Nieto.

“They’re not worthy of the trust of the Mexican people,” Delgado said, adding that the coalition they have formed proves what President López Obrador has long been saying: “They’re all the same, conservatives that represent rancid neoliberalism, guilty of inequality and injustice in Mexico. They’re the mafia of power.”

Delgado, who left the lower house of Congress last month to assume the national leadership of Morena, expressed confidence that the ruling party will be well supported at the June 6 election at which the entire 500-seat Chamber of Deputies will be renewed.

“It will be very easy for the people to decide if they want to return to the politics of old, … which represents corruption and the privileges of the past, or if they want to keep trusting Morena so that the regeneration of the country’s public life continues,” he said.

Delgado also posted a 30-second video to Twitter featuring images of past PRI and PAN politicians including former presidents Carlos Salinas, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto.

“For decades Mexico suffered a serious disease, a malignant tumor called PRIAN that looted the country, took turns in power and pretended to compete with each other,” the narrator says.

“Today the mask is finally removed and they unite in a perverse electoral alliance. They are united by corruption, ambition and the fear of continuing to lose power. Don’t let them get away with what’s yours. Let’s eradicate the tumor of Mexico.”

The national leaders of the PRI and the PAN responded promptly to the video and Delgado’s remarks.

The PRI’s Alejandro Moreno, a former governor of Campeche, said on Twitter that if Morena is so interested in getting rid of a “tumor” it should instead focus its efforts on supplying medications to the “thousands of families that are watching their children die due to the incompetence of this government.”

Parents of children with cancer have held numerous protests since the current federal government took office to denounce ongoing shortages of drugs used to treat young cancer patients.

Moreno also took aim at Morena for cutting direct funding to daycare centers and abolishing 109 public trusts.

“The hypocrisy of Morena is so great that [its officials] are seeking to ignore their total responsibility for the closure of daycare centers, the theft of [public] trusts and the false austerity they proclaim. The reality is clear: Morena is the disgrace of Mexico, in 2021 they go! ”

PAN national president Marko Cortés said it was “pure shamelessness” for Delgado to criticize the new three-party alliance given that he was formerly a member of both the PRI and the PRD.

“Today the worst of the PRI and all parties take refuge in Morena,” he wrote on Twitter, citing López Obrador, Federal Electricity Commission director Manuel Bartlett (a former federal interior minister and governor of Puebla), current Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa and Senator Napoleón Gómez Urrutia as examples.

“We’re going to take its majority [in the lower house of Congress] in 2021!”

On its official Twitter account, the PRD wrote: “The mafia of power – full of corruption – is who is running the country today: they’re the poorly named 4T. That’s why we’re building a great opposition coalition from the PRD that will get results and [be a] counterweight [to the government]. … We will be the majority in 2021. 4T, you lie, steal and betray the country.”

The 4T or Fourth Transformation is the nickname the government has given itself because it claims to be bringing a radical change to Mexico that is comparable to those brought about by independence from Spain, the Mexican revolution and 19th-century liberal reform.

López Obrador, the embodiment of the 4T, also fired a salvo in the war of words on Monday even though the National Electoral Institute (INE) has warned him to abstain from making comments about the upcoming electoral process because doing so could violate the constitution.

Speaking at his regular news conference, the president accused the PRI, the PAN and the PRD, the last of which he represented in the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections, of being one and the same.

“It has already been discovered that they’re the same. They defend the same anti-popular, sellout politics. They’ve united to impose the neoliberal model, to loot, to impose a corrupt, anti-democratic model,” he said.

“Now that a transformation is being carried out, they can’t stand it, anxiety got the better of them and they decided to remove their masks and join forces. It’s a fact, the truth – it’s historic because the PRI and the PAN are officially uniting. Before there was a de-facto alliance … but now it’s legal, formal.”

Questioned about the INE’s warning, López Obrador said that he had the right to express himself.

“Even more so when [remarks are made] … against the project I represent, even against me. I’m not making anything up, they [government critics] say themselves that they are against me and it’s clear that’s why they’re joining forces. So I believe I have the freedom [to express myself] and I must exercise it to clarify, argue and reply,” he said.

The INE issued its warning after a group of 12 federal lawmakers as well as the PAN and the PRD filed complaints against the president for improperly using his position to intervene in the electoral process, criticize the three-party alliance and urge citizens to support Morena in the upcoming federal and state elections.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp), Animal Político (sp) 

Police find abandoned trailer loaded with US $63 million worth of drugs

By
Michelle Aguilar
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The trailer was carrying a load of plaster and drugs.
The trailer was carrying a load of plaster and drugs.

Authorities in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, say they confiscated an abandoned flatbed trailer loaded with US $63 million worth of illegal drugs hidden among sacks of plaster.

Local authorities, working with the military and the federal Attorney General’s Office, confiscated 2,894 pounds of marijuana, nine pounds of fentanyl, 144 pounds of crystal methamphetamine and 13 pounds of white heroin after receiving a 911 call reporting the abandoned truck in the city’s Tierra y Libertad neighborhood.

No arrests were made.

“Upon doing a preventative inspection in accordance with police protocols, drug-sniffing dogs detected the presence of various types of drugs in the trailer’s platform that was transporting hundreds of bags of plaster,” authorities said in a press release.

The tractor-trailer was towed to a city police station where officers discovered the drug haul.

Authorities said the fentanyl was enough to make 4 million pills worth 1.2 billion pesos (US $60.5 million). The marijuana, wrapped in 437,900 individual packages, was worth 21.8 million pesos and the crystal methamphetamine was enough to make 328,000 doses, with a value of 26.2 million pesos. The heroin seized was enough to make 60,000 doses worth 3.6 million pesos.

Synthetic drugs have been omnipresent in recent years at the U.S.–Mexico border, with nearly every major drug cartel manufacturing or trafficking in methamphetamine and fentanyl.

Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protections officers at the Arizona-Mexico border seized 254 pounds of fentanyl, valued at US $3.5 million, hidden under the floor of a tractor-trailer carrying produce from Mexico. At the time, it was the largest-ever fentanyl seizure on record.

In October, authorities confiscated 56 pounds of fentanyl and fentanyl powder at the Otay Mesa, California, cargo inspection facility, along with 3,014 pounds of methamphetamine and 64 pounds of heroin. The total value of the seizure was $7.2 million, authorities said.

Sources: Reforma (sp), KTSM-9 News (en)

Mexicans have fond and vivid memories of Diego Maradona

By
Shannon Collins
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Maradona in Mexico City in 1986.
Maradona in Mexico City in 1986.

In among the widespread international responses to the death of former soccer star Diego Maradona, from sporting icons to global politicians to celebrities, it perhaps escaped popular notice to what extent — especially with the pre-eminent focus being on Argentina and Naples — the reaction in Mexico was markedly different from elsewhere.

Globally, what is most remembered is a sporting icon seen on television sets and heard magically reported on radio, whereas in Mexico, a generation and a half ago, 100,000 people remember watching Maradona lift the World Cup, live, in the Azteca Stadium, with another few hundred thousand people able to witness him live across the other matches of the ‘86 World Cup.

Although international travel was possible in the 80s, it was nowhere near as affordable and prevalent as it is today (pre-pandemic, of course), so stadium audiences of the time tended to be composed much more of locals than is the case today. Thus, the popular memory of the live witnessing of that World Cup, in which one man — rather than a country — took the trophy home is directly remembered more by Mexicans and Mexico than by any other country in the world.

Initially slated to be held in Colombia, the original hosts of the 1986 tournament bowed out in 1982 due to a local financial crisis and spiralling endemic violence blighting the country’s political and economic system. It was deemed to be too big a risk to host such a major sporting event there.

As a result, and in what many suspected to be the result of underhanded dealings between FIFA’s Joao Havelange and the president of Mexican broadcaster Televisa, the Mexican football federation swooped in to fill the Colombian boots. The decision strained relations between the new hosts and Mexico’s U.S. neighbor, whose bid was never discussed, and who thought that Mexico’s heat, altitude, and unemployment difficulties made it an odd choice to host the most prestigious football competition in the world. Overt contempt was displayed from the northern neighbor to its southern partner — how little the world changes.

The tournament was jeopardized a second time just eight months before the tournament when a catastrophic earthquake hit Mexico City, killing an estimated 20,000 people and displacing a further 150,000. A United Nations report at the time estimated that the quake caused US $4 billion worth of damage in just three minutes, but despite the collapse of 412 buildings in Mexico City, none of the football stadiums was damaged.

And so the tournament kicked off on Sunday, June 1 with a 1-0 Brazilian victory over Spain and soon moved the fervor into the fervent following for the Mexican national side which, while winning their group and dispatching Bulgaria into the round of 16, could never quite shake the feeling that they weren’t the main draw in town.

That draw, of course, was Maradona.

“I remember it so vividly,” says Enrique Gutiérrez. “Maybe because I was young, and there was so much hardship around, and we had just lived through the earthquake, who knows? Our neighborhood was a mess, every third or fourth house had collapsed, but that summer I remember as though it was yesterday. I see it in technicolor. I proposed to my sweetheart that summer. That summer it felt like we were really living, whatever else was happening. And Maradona was the man at the heart of making the impossible seem attainable.”

Francisco Rodríguez, for his part, recounts how he would take his shoe cleaning stool to the Metro station outside the Azteca, and how much demand there was for his work: “It seemed as though every man would not go in without shiny shoes. Everyone knew even then that it was an event they were attending. When I think of The Hand of God, I don’t think of the goal against England, I consider it that God was on Maradona’s side throughout the tournament. It all felt pre-ordained.”

Tributes came from all corners, even President López Obrador: “In Mexico, Maradona lived his star moment as a footballer. It was through him that I discovered grace in the sport of football. But my greatest admiration for him was in his coherence. He never renounced his ideals, even when he paid the price for being regarded as ‘politically incorrect.’”

And there lies the nub, in the life and death of El Pibe de Oro, because just as he generated magic on the field of play, leaving generational memories for those who witnessed him, the man was always palpably, demonstrably one of them. He was always the boy from the barrio, the young man punching up, the idealist fighting injustice.

We all knew who he was, always. Out there on the pitch, the paths he lit were more than the work of a superhuman, they represented the paths to glory we might all have taken, once, if only we had not chosen different paths.

Maradona dreamed our dreams for us, and made them real.

Shannon Collins writes from Campeche.

Release of ex-defense minister a sign that AMLO wishes to coddle the army

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Milena Ang
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cienfuegos and amlo
Cienfuegos, left, gets protection from López Obrador.

Last month, the U.S. government dropped drug-related charges against Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s former defence minister and a retired four-star general. The decision was surprising given the U.S. record of prosecuting top Mexican politicians for their links with organized crime.

Late last year, for example, the U.S. arrested Genaro García Luna, the minister of public security under former president Felipe Calderón, and charged him with taking bribes from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the notorious drug lord now serving a life sentence in the U.S.

In that instance, President López Obrador, widely known as AMLO, claimed the charges demonstrated Mexico’s status as a “narco-state.” Now, by contrast, he has gone to considerable lengths to secure Mr. Cienfuegos’ release, successfully threatening a range of countermeasures, including the previously unthinkable expulsion of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration if the charges were not dropped. What, then, is different about Mr. Cienfuegos? And why did the Mexican government make such efforts to secure his freedom?

The decision seemingly reveals Mr. López Obrador’s continuing desire to coddle the army, an institution that has been gaining political power and funding for over a decade. In 2009, then-president Mr. Calderón announced the deployment of 2,500 soldiers to his home state of Michoacán to stop rising violence. From there, his administration deployed the military to “new hotspots” of violence with increasing frequency. The subsequent administration of Enrique Peña Nieto continued the trend. By 2018, the last year of that administration, 54,000 soldiers were deployed throughout Mexico.

During his 2018 presidential campaign, Mr. López Obrador pledged to reverse this escalation, and to “return the army to the barracks.” Yet, over the following two years, his administration instead expanded its reach, placing the military at the forefront of public security.

In the first months of his mandate, he created a National Guard, largely dependent on the army, tasked with “crime prevention, preserving public safety, and combating crime.” This militarization has since expanded far beyond security: the army is now in charge of customs programs and is even helping build one of the president’s pet projects: the Maya Train, a US $7.4-billion railway.

The growing militarization of civilian affairs was already troubling; the defence ministry is subject to more complaints filed over human rights violations (such as forced disappearance, torture and extrajudicial executions) than any other institution in Mexico. The release of the 72-year-old Mr. Cienfuegos suggests that the situation is only likely to get worse.

As defence secretary, he headed the military during its involvement in a number of well-documented scandals, most notoriously the disappearance — and suspected torture and murder — of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, plus the Tlatlaya massacre where 22 civilians were executed by soldiers after rendition. In both instances, lengthy and convoluted judicial processes clouded any chance of holding members of the military accountable. It is in this context of widespread human rights abuses and impunity that the López Obrador government has gone to unprecedented lengths to appease the military by protecting its top brass.

On the evening of November 17, Mr. Cienfuegos flew back to Mexico after the U.S. charges had been dropped. Upon his arrival, he was formally notified that an investigation had been opened against him. He then headed home.

All there is to do now is wait for Mr. Cienfuegos to be “investigated and, if appropriate, charged under Mexican laws,” as the U.S. and Mexican governments jointly put it. I’m not holding my breath.

The writer is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

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