The remains of a home gutted by fire Thursday in Tijuana.
Four Baja California border communities were hit by fires Wednesday night and Thursday morning that burned 56 homes to the ground and left one person dead.
Seventy-five separate blazes, driven by Santa Ana winds that reached 100 kilometers per hour in some higher elevations, either destroyed or did serious damage to homes in Tijuana, Playas de Rosarito, Ensenada and Tecate, forcing residents to flee.
Many were left with little more than the possessions that they could grab while fleeing, such as one couple observed by an El Universal newspaper reporter as they walked to a shelter in Tijuana with nothing more than a teacup, some porcelain items, and a couple of blankets.
Tijuana resident Dalila Gallegos described the fires as “an inferno.”
“That’s the only way I can describe it; it was an inferno,” she said while organizing a collection center created spontaneously by neighbors Thursday to provide fire victims with supplies. “When I got there, the scene was like a movie: people running, in tears, shouting, ‘Have you seen my father?’ ‘Have you seen my brother?’”
A friend of hers lost her mother, she said, after their home suddenly caught fire and they had to evacuate. After making sure that the children were safely outside, the woman decided to go back into the house and died when the building exploded in flames.
Gallegos said she saw the woman’s family walking around the area afterward, asking everyone they could if they had seen their mother. Later the woman’s daughters searched for her among the ashes.
“They found their mother’s body under some burnt wood,” she said.
Tijuana’s municipal government set up three temporary shelters and was planning on distributing 8 million pesos to help victims. State Civil Protection officials reported that the Santa Ana winds are expected to continue until sometime this weekend.
Mayor Arturo González Cruz cited the Santa Ana winds — which at times sounded like the roar of jet engines, witnesses said — as well as a lack of water in some areas as reasons why the blazes ended up intensifying and impeding emergency officials’ ability to respond quickly.
The winds, which surge from the east and south, bring hot and dry weather creating a fire-friendly environment for wildfires in both Mexico and the U.S. from around October through as late as March.
A long line of customers at a Best Buy store on Thursday.
The launch of a liquidation sale by electronics retailer Best Buy on Thursday morning generated such fervor that the store’s website crashed and the company had to close all of its 41 stores early after lines of customers waiting outside prompted concerns about overcrowding.
“For Best Buy México, the most important thing is your security and health and for this reason, due to the high numbers of customers at stores today, we have decided to close our physical stores before normal closing times,” the company announced by mid-afternoon on social media.
The retailer announced November 24 that it would begin closing its stores in Mexico at the end of the year. The liquidation sale, both online and at brick-and-mortar stores, was offering discounts of up to 60%, which caused customers to storm its website last night. Many popular items were sold out by morning.
At one point the online store went down, which caused more problems at some physical stores when even more customers showed up looking for deals. As a result, by Thursday morning people were lining up outside stores in cities all over Mexico on a level seen only at Black Friday sales in the U.S.
In Mexico City’s Cuauhtémoc neighborhood and in the city of Querétaro hundreds of customers were waiting at the doors before the stores even opened. By later in the day, lines were winding all the way through the malls where the stores are located.
“All the stores must be full to the brim; there’s an enormous line,” remarked Emmanuel Parra, a customer waiting in line outside a Best Buy at the Forum Buenavista mall in Mexico City around 1 p.m. “Who knows when we’re going to leave here and if we’ll even manage to buy anything.”
Aminadat Maciel, waiting in the same line as Parra, was one of many customers hoping to get the Nintendo Switch at a deep discount.
“[It] costs approximately 10,000 pesos, [and] is on sale for 3,500 pesos, including a game,” she explained. “You can also get games, which are normally 1,800, for 500 pesos. Everything is at a super discount.”
In Querétaro’s Paseo Querétaro mall, health officials also showed up after hundreds of customers formed lines that eventually wound back all the way to the shopping center’s entrance.
The company said on social media Friday morning that to avoid large crowds forming it would adopt a more orderly approach and announce discounts by product category.
Public health facilities began inoculating people against the flu in early October.
The start of winter is less than three weeks away but many doctors in the private health sector are unable to get their hands on influenza vaccine, a situation that increases the risk that the flu will spread widely in the coming months while the coronavirus continues to run rampant across much of the country.
The quadrivalent vaccine, which is designed to protect against four different flu viruses including two influenza A and two influenza B, is not yet available in most private hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices, according to a report by the newspaper Milenio.
The public health sector began inoculating people against influenza in early October and will end its vaccination campaign on December 31.
But concern is growing in the private sector because vaccines have still not been distributed whereas at this time in the past they had.
Vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur México manufactured in Mexico 35 million doses of a trivalent influenza vaccine, which protects against two influenza A viruses and one influenza B virus, but only imported 300,000 quadrivalent vaccines from the United States – the number it usually imports – despite higher demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The former, distributed by the state-owned company Birmex, are used in the public health sector while the latter are used in the private sector. The application of vaccines manufactured for the public sector is prohibited in the private sector.
Sanofi Pasteur medical director Alejandrina Malacara told Milenio that distribution of the quadrivalent vaccine began on November 15, two weeks later than normal. But almost three weeks later many private sector doctors who normally administer the vaccine still have not received it.
One company that distributes the vaccine to the private sector after buying it from Sanofi Pasteur – Bio Tec Vacunas – said on November 18 that it won’t have availability until January.
A private practice doctor told Milenio that he didn’t expect to have access to the quadrivalent vaccine until the end of this month at the earliest.
“They tell us that there are vaccines but they’re importing them in small batches and that by government order they have to be distributed to private hospitals and clinics in the first instance. … According to the importation and distribution program, they’ll be supplying private doctors’ offices at the end of December and start of January,” he said.
The doctor said he had been offered vaccines of doubtful origin but rejected them, explaining that he would never place his patients at risk or violate his own ethical values.
He advised people to go to a public hospital to get a flu shot, “even if it’s the trivalent,” in order to be at least partially protected against the influenza threat.
A private sector geriatrician told Milenio that he has been unable to get vaccines from private sector distributors.
He said that by this time of the year he normally would have vaccinated patients against influenza but Sanofi Pasteur distribution companies, “which usually have the best price,” have not yet received their allotments.
“We haven’t been able to find it. They don’t even answer [my calls] anymore because they got sick of me looking for them,” he said. “In my practice I administer [the vaccine] to the elderly in their homes … but that’s been impossible this year.”
Two mothers who spoke to Milenio said that they were unable to get the influenza vaccine for themselves and their young children at the private clinics they attend.
Another doctor blamed the federal government for the lack of influenza vaccines in the private sector.
“The [lack of] the influenza vaccine is another link in the chain of inefficiency in health matters of the so-called fourth transformation,” said Rafael Pérez Huacuja, referring to the government by its self-anointed nickname.
He claimed that the government’s “lack of awareness, inefficient administration and lack of planning” caused the vaccine shortage problem.
“The threat that diseases that were controlled will reappear [to cause] great harm to the population is regrettably real,” Pérez said.
He noted that the government has also struggled to ensure access to cancer medications for children and “other basic supplies for the operation of the health system.”
“… The fact is that obtaining an influenza vaccine is currently a very difficult challenge when until two years ago [when the federal government took office] it was accessible for the majority of the population,” Pérez said.
“It was promised that that the quadrivalent vaccine would arrive for private practices in the middle of October but only 200,000 doses were given exclusively to shifty distributors who sold all [their vaccines] before they had them in their hands. … With the Covid-19 pandemic … it’s possible that this winter we’ll face two devastating diseases that we won’t be protected against.”
But Malacara, the Sanofi Pasteur director, said that January – when the quadrivalent vaccine is expected to be more widely available in the private sector – will not be too late to get immunized against the flu.
“Reviewing the epidemiological distribution of influenza through the different seasons … we see that more than 70% of cases occur in the first quarter of the year – January, February and March – so we still have time and that’s good [news] for the Mexican public.”
Alfonso Romo will continue to be his chief link with the private sector, said President López Obrador.
President López Obrador announced Wednesday that his chief of staff was stepping down but would continue to be his “main link” to the private sector.
López Obrador said on Twitter that Alfonso Romo, a business tycoon with interests in several sectors and a former olympic equestrian, agreed to serve two years in his government and that period has now concluded.
“He has helped me and will continue helping. He’s an independent and honest man, committed to just causes. In addition, he’s my friend,” he wrote.
“I will never forget that he was the first businessman to support the transformation movement,“ López Obrador said, referring to his government.
In addition to serving as the president’s chief of staff, Romo has headed up the National Council for the Promotion of Investment, Employment and Economic Growth.
He has pushed strongly for Mexico to take advantage of the trade war between the United States and China in order to attract greater investment. Romo has also said that Mexico has a signifiant opportunity to benefit from an increased regionalization of supply chains due to the coronavirus pandemic and the entry into force of the new North American free trade agreement, the USMCA.
The government has nevertheless implemented some policies, most notably in the energy sector, that are not seen as being particularly friendly to private investment.
It remains to be seen what impact, if any, Romo’s departure has on future policy decisions.
After López Obrador’s announcement, several business groups acknowledged the role the outgoing chief of staff has played in linking the business sector to the government.
“In complex circumstances, he acted as a translator [and] interlocutor” between the two parties, said Gustavo Hoyos, president of Coparmex, the Mexican Employers Federation.
“He was the brake on many [government] ideas,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that he had kept the “radicals” in check.
The Business Coordinating Council, an umbrella organization of 12 business groups, described Romo as a valuable member of the government and an “open-minded interlocutor” with whom “sincere dialogue” was always possible.
“He will certainly continue working for the good of Mexico in his upcoming duties. We will miss him.”
National Search Commissioner Karla Quintana: her task is to find 79,000 missing people.
Karla Quintana has a gargantuan and unenviable task: leading the search for more than 79,000 missing people, most of whom have disappeared since former president Felipe Calderón launched the so-called war on drugs in late 2006.
But despite the myriad challenges she faces, the National Search Commission (CNB) chief is determined to make progress and help bring justice to the countless family members tirelessly looking for their missing loved ones – even if it takes 10 or 20 years.
A report published Thursday by The Washington Post delves into the challenges Quintana is confronted with, looks at the context of Mexico’s missing persons crisis and paints a portrait of a woman intent on doing all she can to help lessen the pain of the many people who have never found out what happened to their disappeared sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.
A 41-year-old lawyer with a degree from Harvard, Quintana was appointed to the search commissioner role in February 2019, two months after President López Obrador came to power. The CNB was created at the tail end of the previous government’s 2012-2018 term and when Quintana took the reins it was severely underfunded.
One human rights activist said that she had taken on “the most impossible job in the country.”
Quintana was given a US $22-million budget to work with in her first year in the position, which the Post described as “significant but hardly enough,” explaining that in order to exhume and identify bodies buried in hidden graves – which are all too common in Mexico – she would have to rely on a corrupt and underfunded justice system.
However, Quintana “saw reasons for hope,” the Post said. Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas, a close ally of López Obrador, was her boss, and the president had promised to get to the bottom of Mexico’s most infamous recent missing persons case – that of the 43 students who were abducted and presumably murdered in Guerrero in 2014.
“Many people think human rights defenders should always be in opposition to the government,” she said. “I’d say there are moments in which it’s necessary — there is no other option – but to be in the government.”
Quintana knew that funding for the commission would not be boundless even though López Obrador had said “there is no budget limit, no financial ceiling” but she was nevertheless cautiously optimistic, stating: “For the first time, maybe in a limited manner, the state, as a state, is trying to give a response.”
Quintana’s appointment to head up the CNB, however, was not met with great enthusiasm by family members of missing persons – mainly mothers – who have been searching for their loved ones for months, years or decades with scant support from the authorities.
Silvia Ortiz, the leader of a group dedicated to searching for missing persons near the northern city of Torreón, Coahuila, is one such person.
A search brigade at work.
“What if she’s the kind of woman who just sits behind a desk?” was her initial thought when she heard about Quintana’s appointment.
But the search commissioner dispelled that notion by joining Ortiz and others as they searched through graves uncovered in the desert outside Torreón, where a decade ago members of the Zetas cartel discarded their victims’ remains after dismembering and burning them.
While proving that she wasn’t averse to getting down to the nitty gritty of searching for missing persons, Quintana, the Post noted, fired questions at Ortiz and a state forensic expert.
How long had they been digging? Four years. How much help had they received from the government? Not much. How many bodies were in each grave? Up to 10 pounds of pebbles — around three humans.
Quintana has also accompanied on-the-ground search efforts in other locations including Guanajuato, currently Mexico’s most violent state.
Back at CNB headquarters, Quintana found there were 40,000 names of missing persons in what the Post called “a crazy quilt of Excel documents and Word files, replete with duplications and typos.”
Quintana hired a team of people to create a consolidated and updated database of the disappeared and they started contacting state Attorney General’s Offices for their latest figures. But many declined to send their data and the records of some were a complete mess.
The CNB nevertheless put together a more accurate albeit incomplete database with more than 60,000 names. The figure has now risen to more than 79,000.
A year after she was appointed search commissioner, Quintana had a workforce of 89 employees – a huge increase compared to when she started – and had helped established government search commissions in every state in the country. In August, Mexico finally recognized the authority of the United Nations to conduct missing persons investigations – recognition that the armed forces had long opposed.
But Quintana also ran into obstacles: a CNB proposal that it be given access to information from all government departments including the federal Attorney General’s Office was blocked by justice officials who said that investigations could be compromised.
Family members of missing persons noted that López Obrador’s promise to involve “all the institutions” in the search for the disappeared had not been fulfilled.
Although Quintana doesn’t have a mandate to investigate crimes to establish who is responsible for the abductions and presumed murders of thousands of Mexicans, she is planning to undertake an endeavor that would aid the investigative process, at least in a small way.
Searchers dig up a clandestine grave in Sonora.
The Post said that “she was trying to set up a unit within her commission to write the histories of the disappeared” in order to “identify the patterns, the perpetrators in different regions.” The newspaper noted the justice system’s “abysmal” record of just 39 convictions from more than 11,7000 forced disappearance investigations between 2006 and 2019.
Quintana said she hoped that the histories could one day be presented as evidence for a judicial process or truth commission.
During the war on drugs years, which endured through the 2012-2018 presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, security forces including the military were linked to forced disappearances but drug cartels also carried out abductions and continue to do so.
The Post said that by the time Quintana took on the commissioner role it was “obvious that they [drug traffickers] often worked closely with corrupt officials.”
The newspaper said it is easy to blame the criminal groups but asserted that “the truth is more complicated.”
It said that after the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s 70-year-long authoritarian, one-party rule ended in 2000 Mexico as a fledgling democracy “failed to build a professional justice system, with well-trained and well-equipped police and prosecutors.”
As a result, impunity today is rampant, giving criminals confidence that they won’t be held accountable for their wrongdoings.
“The use of violence is less regulated than it was before,” said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, the co-founder of Noria Research, a collective of researchers and analysts that studies international affairs and conflict. “Many more people are using violence.”
Indeed, 2020 is on track to be the most violent year in recent history. Reported disappearances, at just over 6,000 to date this year, are lower than in each of 2019, 2018 and 2017 but are still no doubt very high.
Mexico may have a competent and committed search commissioner but given the enormity of her task that is likely cold comfort for the countless citizens who have had no closure to their living nightmares and courageously carry on searching for their missed loved ones, day in, day out.
Responding to an anonymous tip, local, state, and federal authorities broke up a massive quinceañera block party Wednesday that had closed down an entire street in an Acapulco neighborhood, according to municipal government sources.
The illegal party in Puerto Marqués had attracted 500 guests and featured live music and guests without face masks, said officials, who arrived at around midnight to break up the party. In a video, guests could be seen beginning to leave as soon they saw the authorities — which included members of Civil Protection, state police, the National Guard, and the army.
“We urge the populace to be responsible and not relax the preventative measures of the Ministry of Health,” said municipal authorities in a press release.
Quinceañeras are a traditional way of celebrating a 15-year-old girl’s birthday, not unlike a sweet-16 party. They are often lavish events featuring live music, dancing, and spectacles put on for guests. The guest count is often large, and the event is not unlike a wedding.
Highway construction projects are among those in the plan.
The public-private plan to build 68 infrastructure projects with an investment of almost 526 billion pesos (US $26.4 billion) will have a limited impact on the Mexican economy, according to analysts who spoke to the newspaper Reforma.
The infrastructure plan includes highway, energy and public transit projects.
Alejandro Saldaña, chief economist at the financial company Ve por Más, noted that the investment associated with the projects is only equivalent to 2.3% of GDP and therefore will not have a large impact.
“We need to remember that the investment in these projects is spread out over the course of their development, which will take years,” he added.
Saldaña said that there will be some economic benefits from the investment but they will be seen in the medium rather than short term.
“We see this [plan] as insufficient for investment to return to the levels there were before [2018] – more than 20% of GDP,” he said.
Saldaña also said that the resources the private sector will invest are not yet set in stone and that it is not certain that the government has the funds needed for the projects in which it will have majority participation.
Roberto Ballinez, senior infrastructure director at HR Ratings, said that public resources earmarked for the projects could be reallocated if the coronavirus pandemic worsens.
“The issue of the health emergency and the purchase of vaccines is extremely important,” he said. “… If there is a significant increase in infections, … it could have indirect effects for these projects.”
Ballinez said it was positive that the government and private sector are working together but noted that the number of projects announced is well short of the 1,600 potential projects identified by members of the latter last year.
In a best case scenario the economic benefits of the projects won’t be seen until the second half of 2021, he said.
Saldaña said the government should be trying to attract more investment to sectors such as renewable energy and oil, which in fact have been made more difficult to enter due to policy decisions taken by an administration led by a staunch nationalist president and fierce critic of the 2014 reform that ended the state energy monopoly.
“Economically speaking, we believe that there are not many arguments not to be more aggressive and take advantage of the potential the country has to attract investment in these sectors. This would also help to generate more confidence in the economic policy,” he said.
Ricardo Trejo, director general of business information company Forecastim, predicted that private investment in the energy sector will be minimal because the government is seeking a more dominant role for state-owned companies such as Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission.
“There are no signs at the moment that it will allow more private sector investment to arrive in this area. The production and exploration of hydrocarbons will continue to be Pemex or government [activities] and there will only be opportunity for investment in liquefaction or logistics.”
The Programa Paisano launch in Tijuana on Wednesday.
Despite a Covid-19 travel ban across the Mexico-United States land border, Mexico’s Programa Paisano got up and running yesterday for the winter season, preparing to welcome home an expected 500,000 Mexican nationals for holiday visits.
The year-round program’s mission is to facilitate the transit of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. and Canada while they visit their home country. The program has special campaigns during the summer and winter, the busiest times of the year for Mexicans living abroad to come back to visit. In 2019, it served 4 million people. This year, it has so far served 600,000, a decrease which officials attribute to the pandemic.
Many of those visitors, living permanently in the United States and Canada, are expected to cross the land border into Mexico which, by agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, is supposed to be closed in both directions to all but essential travel until at least December 21 in order to slow the spread of Covid-19.
But officials with the National Immigration Institute (INM) say it would be impossible to stop Mexicans coming home to see family during the holidays.
“You can’t prohibit a Mexican from exercising his right to return to his home country,” said commissioner Francisco Garduño, adding that the institute will be taking all necessary health safety measures at the border.
Last month, Mexico surpassed 1 million Covid-19 cases. Virtually every state in the country is at least at yellow status on the national coronavirus stoplight map.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently called for “prudence” and encouraged Mexicans to avoid border crossings between Mexico and the U.S. for reasons of recreation, tourism, or “the celebrations that traditionally take place in these months,” but the tone seemed far from authoritative.
“We know that despite the recommendation, they are going to cross the border, so we have to be ready to attend to the needs of migrants who may come to visit their families,” said Luis Gutiérrez, head of the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, a federal agency.
While crossing into the U.S. is generally agreed to be vigilantly monitored to make sure travelers have a valid reason to enter, many report that the situation is not the same going in the opposite direction. In recent months, citizens and lawmakers alike in border states have called upon Mexico to enforce the travel ban supposedly in place. That the Programa Paisano will carry on more or less as usual seems indicative that the situation is not likely to change.
Certainly, at INM’s official launch of the program’s winter campaign this week in Tijuana, attitudes seemed welcoming and even encouraging of Mexicans coming home for the holidays: officials played an upbeat video featuring President López Obrador, who highlighted the contributions of Mexican migrants during times of uncertainty, implicitly referring to billions of dollars in remittances that Mexicans send home each year.
“We are going to protect you and care for you because you are Mexicans, because you are coming to your country, because you help us; and in these times, more than ever, you are supporting us. You deserve the best of treatment, to be received like heroes — our migrant countrymen,” said López Obrador in the video.
The ethane plant that has been effectively shut down by the government.
The federal government has cut off the supply of natural gas to an ethylene plant in Veracruz that is majority-owned by a subsidiary of Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht, intensifying a dispute between the two parties.
President López Obrador told reporters at his news conference on Wednesday that the supply contract with Braskem, a Brazilian petrochemical firm that has a 70% stake in the Etileno XXI plant, has ended.
“There’s no more natural gas for the company because the contract has ended,” he said.
López Obrador said there was no possibility of renewing the contract because it allowed the sale of ethane gas to Braskem at below-market prices to the detriment of public coffers and the state oil company Pemex, the supplier.
The National Gas Control Center (Cenagas), the government’s gas pipeline administrator, informed Braskem-Idesa on Monday that the contract for the supply of natural gas to the plant in Nachital, Veracruz, would not be renewed.
Grupo Idesa, a Mexican petrochemical company, has a 30% stake in the plant.
“It’s a contract with Odebrecht, a company that is famous for extortion and corruption,” López Obrador said. “… [The contract] wasn’t terminated, it reached its end date and it won’t be renewed.”
Odebrecht has been embroiled in corruption scandals in several Latin American countries including Mexico, where it admitted to paying bribes to the previous federal government in exchange for lucrative contracts.
The decision to cut off the supply of natural gas to its subsidiary effectively puts the Veracruz plant out of business.
“Cenagas’s actions have caused the total suspension of the plant’s processes,” Braskem-Idesa said in a statement without saying when operations might resume.
The consortium accused the government of placing the safety of the plant and its employees at risk by cutting the gas supply abruptly instead of providing 48 hours of reduced supply that would have allowed operations to be shut down safely. It also said that the decision would have an impact on the national petrochemical industry and the economy as a whole.
Braskem-Idesa claimed that its “rights, including multiple current legal provisions” have been violated and pledged to take action to defend them.
The consortium also said it has “repeatedly expressed our willingness to discuss with the authorities the issues that are raised … in relation to the operation of Braskem-Idesa and its contracts with Mexican state companies, bringing proposals for solutions.”
“We ask for respect for the rule of law,” it added before calling on the government to “rectify” the decision taken by Cenagas.
Relations between the federal government and Braskem-Idesa were already strained before the supply of natural gas was cut because the former has been seeking to renegotiate a separate contract for the supply of ethane for the manufacture of ethylene and in turn polyethylene, the most common plastic in the world today.
Signed in 2010 by the government led by former president Felipe Calderón, the contract obliges Pemex to supply ethane to Braskem-Idesa at US $0.16 per gallon until 2034. At the time, the two parties entered into the agreement, ethane had a market price of 50 cents per gallon.
López Obrador has also branded the deal as unfair, asserting that it has cost the government millions of dollars.
A senior official in the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office was found dead Wednesday in Culiacán in his car, which was riddled with over 100 bullet holes.
Ramón Muñiz, commander and coordinator of the Special Unit for Apprehensions, had just left his house and was on his way to work when, according to security cameras in the area, he was attacked in his Nissan Sentra in the Balcones de Valle neighborhood by at least two men with automatic weapons. Authorities found Muñiz’s car on the sidewalk.
The National Guard arrested a male suspect outside Mazatlán later in the day.
Muñiz, who in his 24-year career with the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office served on units related to everything from cattle theft to narco-crime reduction, is the eighth security officer in 2020 to be killed in the state.
The most recent case was in October, when a security officer identified as Salvador “N” was found shot to death by a river in Culiacán, near his burned-out car.
