San Miguel to go after meetings, wedding tourism with new center

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September 4, 2020

Shacman expects to build 5,000 trucks for the domestic market in the next five years.

Chinese truck manufacturer Shacman is setting up shop in Mexico and expects its new assembly plant in Ciudad Sahagún, Hidalgo, to begin operations in November.

The company, which markets a wide variety of products, including military vehicles, heavy-duty trucks and buses to more than 90 countries, chose Mexico as the location of the new plant in order to expand into the Americas, including the United States, Mexico general manager Carlos Pardo told Reuters.

Shacman is a subsidiary of the Shaanxi Automobile Holding Group. It was founded in 1968 and employs over 32,000 people worldwide.

During the first five years, the company expects to manufacture some 5,000 trucks destined for the domestic market in Mexico, but in the medium term the goal is to export to Latin American countries where it already has a commercial presence, such as Argentina, the Caribbean, Colombia and Venezuela and, later, to North America.

“We believe that we can be more efficient if we can supply units from here to the region. Our great challenge is to conquer the American market, the United States and Canada,” Pardo said.

Mexico’s free trade agreements with several nations, many of them on the American continent, make it a strategic location for the manufacturing plant as companies look to avoid disruptions to the supply chain that occurred during the coronavirus pandemic.

“… Mexico continues to be the great option to supply North America. The most important thing is that [the country] has a first-world logistics hub,” Pardo commented.

Pardo hopes that 2,000 units of its L3000 and X3000 models, which feature natural gas and diesel engines, will have been produced in Mexico by the end of 2021. The company says the trucks are 40% more fuel-efficient than gas-powered vehicles and will be priced around US $120,000. The plant is starting out with 30 employees but hopes to increase that number to 100 in the next year.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Mexico City economic reactivation plan’s goal is 300,000 jobs

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September 3, 2020

Mayor Sheinbaum: coronavirus has cost the city 220,000 jobs.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum presented an economic reactivation plan for the capital Wednesday that aims to create 300,000 jobs by the end of 2021.

The plan includes an investment of 40 billion pesos (US $1.8 billion) by the Mexico City and federal governments to provide loans and other financial support to citizens and businesses, and spending 27 billion pesos on educational, health, transportation and other urban infrastructure projects.

Sheinbaum told a virtual press conference that the government expects that private investment in the capital will total 75 billion pesos (US $3.5 billion) during the final months of 2020 and the first months of 2021.

Two projects to be built with private sector resources are a new elevated road that will connect with the Mexico City-Puebla highway and another elevated road that will link the capital to the Santa Lucía airport, which is currently under construction at an air force base in México state.

The Fería de Chapultepec amusement park will also be renovated with private money.

Finance Minister Luz Elena González explained that the reactivation plan consists of 10 different parts.

One is the creation of a temporary employment program that will seek to provide jobs to more than 15,000 people between September 15 and the end of the year.

People employed by the “Improving our city, our home” scheme will remove graffiti and clean up parks and public squares among other duties. They will receive a salary of between 3,500 and 15,000 pesos (US $160-690) per month.

Other aspects of the economic plan include revitalization projects in Mexico City’s historic center, investment in the Vallejo-i industrial zone, the establishment of plants to recycle urban and construction waste and the promotion of “safe tourism.”

Sheinbaum said the goal of the plan is to create 300,000 direct formal sector jobs by the end of next year. She said that 220,000 jobs were lost in the capital due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic restrictions.

Mexico City is one of 21 states where the risk of coronavirus infection is orange light “high,” according to the federal government’s stoplight system. The capital has remained at the orange light level for 10 weeks but authorities have gradually eased restrictions during the period and most businesses have now reopened albeit at a reduced capacity.

Mexico City’s confirmed case tally passed 100,000 on Wednesday while its official Covid-19 death toll stands at 10,671.

Source: El Universal (sp), El Financiero (sp), Milenio (sp)

Tourism promotion prize is 5 nights’ vacation a year for 20 years

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September 3, 2020

Participants enter by submitting photos or videos to Instagram or TikTok.

In an attempt to accelerate the recovery of the tourism industry in Quintana Roo, hoteliers and service providers are holding a contest whose prize is an all-inclusive, five-day vacation every year for the next 20 years.

The contest and associated website, come2mexicancaribbean.com, are part of a private initiative to reboot tourism in the region which is down 57% so far this year compared to 2019 numbers.

“The 20-year vacation to the Mexican Caribbean contest is designed to motivate travelers from all over the world who are eager to discover or rediscover destinations, specifically those of the Mexican Caribbean,” said Roberto Cintrón, president of the Hotel Association of Cancún, Puerto Morelos and Isla Mujeres.

The winners — two will be chosen — will enjoy accommodations in four and five-star hotels in different destinations in the Mexican Caribbean for two people for five nights and six days.

Those who wish to enter the contest may do so through Instagram or TikTok by uploading a photo or video inspired by the Mexican Caribbean including #Come2MexicanCaribbean in the text and tagging the @Come2MexicanCaribbean account.

Organizers suggest entrants focus on “the best of the Mexican Caribbean, our beaches, the color of the sea, food, astounding sunsets, how people enjoy their vacation.”

The two posts with the most likes, shares or comments by the contest’s closing date of November 9 will be the winners, and will be announced on November 27.

News of the contest comes as Quintana Roo prepares to reopen its 13 archaeological sites, including Tulum and Cobá, which have been closed for more than five months. The National Institute of Anthropology and History will announce an opening date on Friday.

Since coronavirus restrictions were eased, 155 hotels have reopened in the region, offering 38,434 rooms.

Currently, hotel occupancy in Cancun is at 26.9%, in Puerto Morelos it’s 21.8% and Isla Mujeres 27.5%.

Quintana Roo’s Tourism Ministry says that 22.8 million tourists and 7.2 million cruise ship passengers visited the state in 2019, generating US $15 billion. The average hotel occupancy rate in 2019 was 81%.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Poll suggests corruption is getting worse and many expect it will worsen

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September 3, 2020

43% believe President López Obrador is doing a good job combatting corruption. — 43% believe President López Obrador is doing a good job combatting corruption, a decline of 27 points.

Despite President López Obrador’s crusade against it, corruption has increased over the past year, according to the majority of respondents to a recent poll.

Conducted by the Reforma media group and the organization Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), the poll found that 53% of respondents believe that corruption has worsened. Only 22% of those polled said that corruption has decreased.

Published in a new report about corruption and impunity by MCCI, the poll found that 38% of respondents believe that the president is corrupt himself, an increase of 16 points compared to 2019.

Lorena Becerra, a deputy director of data at Reforma, noted that people’s perception of López Obrador as an honest politician has deteriorated even though he takes great pains to portray himself as austere and someone who is concerned about the wellbeing of the people.

“This is not good news for him,” she said.

The Reforma/MCCI poll also found that only 43% of respondents believe that López Obrador is doing a good job combating corruption, a decline of 27 points compared to last year’s survey. The same percentage said that they believe corruption will worsen in 2021.

“The outlook is not very encouraging for the president,” Becerra said.

Presenting the MCCI report on Wednesday, the organization’s president said that many people continue to suffer from corruption in their day to day lives.

“Our poll confirms it and so do those that other media outlets have released,” María Amparo Casar said.

While López Obrador has a strong – albeit declining – approval rating, the president’s public policies, including those aimed at eliminating corruption, don’t have the same level of support, Amparo said.

Sofía Ramírez, an MCCI researcher and coordinator of the new report, said that women have become increasingly disenchanted with López Obrador and his anti-corruption drive.

“In 2019, women were a lot more optimistic than men with respect to the evaluation of the combating of corruption by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador,” she said. “In contrast, in 2020 we see that women assess the government’s anti-corruption actions worse than men.”

Ramírez said that the percentage of women who believe that López Obrador is doing a good job combating corruption declined 30 points in this year’s poll compared to that of 2019.

“We’re starting to see an awakening of that half of the population,” she said.

In his second annual report to the nation on Tuesday, López Obrador declared that his government won’t be remembered for being corrupt but rather its “main legacy will be the purification of public life in Mexico.”

But in addition to the the Reforma/MCCI poll, an index developed by the the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and the global risk and strategic consulting firm Control Risks that was updated in June determined that corruption had slightly worsened over the previous 12 months.

Three corruption analysts who recently spoke with the newspaper El Economista spoke out against the federal government’s approach to combating corruption, charging that it should broaden its focus beyond high-profile former officials and make greater use of the National Anti-Corruption System (SNA).

Federal authorities have initiated proceedings against former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya and former cabinet minister Rosario Robles but they should also be investigating acts of corruption committed by current government officials and members of the ruling Morena party, said Maureen Meyer, vice president for programs and director for Mexico at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Attack on wake leaves 9 dead, 14 injured in Morelos

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September 3, 2020

Investigators at the crime scene in Cuernavaca.

Nine people lost their lives and at least 14 were injured when gunmen opened fire at a wake in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Tuesday night, authorities said.

At 10:40 p.m. a call was made to 911 reporting shots fired in the crime-riddled Antonio Barona neighborhood northeast of the city center. The state prosecutor’s office said the unknown assailants descended upon funeral services being held for a 16-year-old boy who died the previous day in a motorcycle accident.

The shooters arrived in a number of vehicles and were carrying assault rifles reserved for military use. More than 60 rounds were fired. The weapons they used are suspected of having been employed in other recent attacks, police say.

Four people died at the scene, and the remaining five died soon after.

Among the dead are a woman and two boys aged 15 and 16. The 15-year-old has been identified as aspiring soccer player Diego Miranda Bautista who had been invited to join Cruz Azul, a professional soccer team in Mexico City.

“Mayor Antonio Villalobos Adán strongly condemns and deeply regrets these events and shares the indignation and grief of the families of those who lost their lives,” the municipality said in a statement.

Restaurants and other businesses in the neighborhood affixed black bows of mourning to their storefronts as a sign of sorrow and outrage over the killings.

Cuernavaca communications director Carlos Félix Gaxiola said Thursday that the mayor has asked the federal government for a “substantia” increase in the presence of the National Guard in the region in response to Tuesday night’s events, and is reviewing how the city addresses crime.

“Cuernavaca demands an exhaustive, real and self-critical review of the crime prevention strategy and authentic coordination at the highest level,” Félix said.

Last month six young men were gunned down in the street in a similar attack after being ambushed by armed assailants who arrived in two vehicles in the Flores Magón neighborhood. At least one of the victims had a criminal record, and it is believed that the attack was linked to organized crime.

In February, Ramón Castro Castro, bishop of the Diocese of Cuernavaca, pleaded with Morelos Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco to rethink his security strategy and said organized crime had overtaken the state. “It is time to ask them, plead with them, encourage them to be more effective … I think that if they organize themselves better they can get better results,” he said.

Yesterday, the president of the Morelos Bar Association and former state Attorney General José Luis Urióstegui Salgado called for the removal of the governor and the state security commissioner from office, citing Tuesday night’s shooting as a further example that organized crime acts with impunity in Cuernavaca, a situation he says the current administration is incapable of, and disinterested in, resolving.

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

Environment minister’s resignation for health reasons: AMLO

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September 3, 2020

From left are Albores, who will head the Ministry of Environment, May who is to lead the Welfare Ministry, Toledo and López Obrador.

The minister of environment and natural resources has resigned for health reasons, President López Obrador confirmed Wednesday.

“He is an honest person, a first-rate professional, but he is in poor health; moreover, public activity and public service produce stress,” said the president of Víctor Manuel Toledo.

“Before I thought that stress was a delicacy of the petty bourgeoisie, but no, it does exist, and not all of us are made to withstand pressure,” López Obrador said, praising Toledo as a person “of the first order, I would say the most cultured ecologist-environmentalists in the country.”

The president said that health concerns had long weighed on Toledo who had presented his resignation before a recording surfaced last month in which he criticized the López Obrador administration.

Welfare Minister María Luisa Albores will serve in Toledo’s stead, and Deputy Welfare Minister Javier May will assume her role, the president said.

Toledo, who is 74, had suffered two heart attacks before he was named minister of the environment in May 2019.

In his final act as minister, Toledo announced yesterday that López Obrador will publish a decree to establish the gradual prohibition of glyphosate and 80 other chemical agents as well as the banning of genetically modified corn.

“I believe this will mark a watershed in the environmental history of the country,” Toledo said.

The glyphosate ban has been a hard-fought victory for Toledo and put him at odds with the Ministry of Agriculture. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the Monsanto product Roundup and studies have showm it to be a carcinogen which is also harmful to pollinators.

Rumors of Toledo’s imminent departure were rampant in recent weeks, and sources close to the president said his resignation was linked to a recording dating back to March in which Toledo said the government was full of “brutal contradictions,” lacked clear objectives, and that the environmental views of some cabinet ministers and the president were inconsistent with those of the ministry he headed.

Toledo had also criticized the environmental impact of the Mayan Train, one of López Obrador’s legacy projects.

Toledo said he would return to academia and his role as a researcher in the field of political ecology at the National Autonomous University (UNAM). López Obrador said he will continue to consult Toledo on environmental matters.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Mexico leads the world for Covid-19 deaths among health workers

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September 3, 2020

A health worker's job is high risk in Mexico.

More health workers have died in Mexico after contracting Covid-19 than in any other country, according to an analysis by Amnesty International.

At least 1,320 workers in the sector are confirmed to have died, a figure that is more than 20% higher than the health worker death toll in the United States, which ranks second for fatalities with 1,077 and has the largest known coronavirus outbreak in the world.

The United Kingdom, Brazil and Russia rank third to fifth for Covid-19 deaths among health workers, according to the Amnesty International analysis, with 649,634 and 631 respectively.

The human rights organization highlighted that the Mexican government has been keeping a detailed registry of such deaths, with disaggregated data on age, gender and profession.

“Such transparency is essential and all countries should be making this kind of detail available; it may also go some way to explaining the disturbing figures from Mexico relative to other countries,” it said.

Around the world, at least 7,000 health workers have died after contracting Covid-19, Amnesty International said.

“For over 7,000 people to die while trying to save others is a crisis on a staggering scale,” said Steve Cockburn, the organization’s head of economic and social justice.

“Every health worker has the right to be safe at work, and it is a scandal that so many are paying the ultimate price. Many months into the pandemic, health workers are still dying at horrific rates in countries such as Mexico, Brazil and the U.S.A., while the rapid spread of infections in South Africa and India show the need for all states to take action,” he said.

“There must be global cooperation to ensure all health workers are provided with adequate protective equipment, so they can continue their vital work without risking their own lives.”

In Mexico, where more than 97,000 health workers have tested positive for Covid-19 according to Health Ministry data published last week, doctors, nurses and other medical personnel have protested scores of times to demand access to the high quality personal protective equipment (PPE) they need to be able to treat coronavirus patients safely.

The government has said since late March that health workers have all the PPE they require, and brought millions of dollars worth of medical supplies into the country from China, but while the frequency of the protests has decreased they have not disappeared completely.

Of 97,632 health workers who have tested positive for coronavirus in Mexico, 42% were nurses, 27% were doctors and the remaining 31% were other medical personnel and hospital cleaning staff, according to government data.

Amnesty International noted that there have been reports that hospital cleaners in Mexico are especially vulnerable to infection.

“Many cleaners in health settings in Mexico are outsourced, which means they have less protection,” the organization said.

In a separate report, Amnesty International cited the case of a 70-year-old man identified only as Don Alejandro, who works as a cleaner at ISSSTE hospitals in Mexico City.

It said that he requested to be re-assigned away from hospital areas to clean only administrative areas due to his vulnerability to Covid-19 as an older person. His request was granted by the private company for which he works but his already meager salary was cut by 16%, Amnesty International said.

The human rights group also said that it has received information from various sources that indicates that cleaning staff contracted by a private company for which Don Alejandro works are not provided with medical face masks or adequate PPE even when they are exposed to hospital areas in close proximity to patients who have tested positive for Covid-19.

Echoing Amnesty International’s plea, Pan American Health Organization director Carissa Etienne said Wednesday that all countries need to ensure that health workers can do their jobs safely by providing with them with sufficient PPE as well as infection control training.

She noted that about one in seven coronavirus infections in Mexico and the United States were detected among health workers.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s confirmed coronavirus case tally increased to 610,957 on Wednesday with 4,921 new cases registered by health authorities. The federal Health Ministry estimates that there are 40,599 active cases across the country while the results of 81,775 Covid-19 tests are not yet known.

The Covid-19 death toll rose to 65,816 on Wednesday with 575 additional fatalities reported.

Mexico has the eighth highest number of confirmed cases in the world, according to data collated by Johns Hopkins University, and ranks fourth for Covid-19 deaths behind the United States, Brazil and India.

Source: El Universal (sp)

NGOs reject AMLO’s claim that security has improved since he took office

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September 2, 2020

Nine members of the LeBaron family were victims of a massacre last fall in Sonora. Adrian LeBaron says the president appears to have forgotten it.

Two non-governmental organizations have rejected President López Obrador’s claim that the security situation in Mexico has broadly improved since he took office.

During his second annual report to the nation on Tuesday, López Obrador asserted that the incidence of many crimes, including kidnappings, femicides, robberies and vehicle theft, have declined since he was sworn in as president in December 2018.

He acknowledged that homicides and extortion have increased but declared that there are no longer cases of torture, disappearances or massacres.

In response to the claims, government watchdog Causa en Común, or Common Cause, said in a statement that the crime rate in the first 20 months of the current government – December 2018 to July 2020 – was 16% higher than in the same period of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 administration.

Compared to ex-president Felipe Calderón’s first 20 months in office – December 2006 to July 2008 – the crime rate under López Obrador’s rule is 23% higher, the NGO said.

Causa en Común also said that official statistics show that femicides – the killing of women and girls on account of their gender – increased 5% in the first seven months of 2020 to 566 compared to the same period last year.

The number of femicides so far this year is the highest since federal authorities first recorded national data for the crime in 2015, it said.

“Another crime, whose increase the president didn’t mention, is domestic violence,” Causa en Común said, adding that its incidence is also at a five-year high.

The NGO acknowledged that López Obrador made mention of the rising homicide rate but said that it should be emphasized just how unacceptably high it is – “an average of 99 murders per day.”

It said that the reduction this year in crimes cited by López Obrador, including kidnappings, muggings and burglaries, had more to do with the coronavirus pandemic than anything the government has done.

Both Causa en Común and Amnesty International rejected the president’s claim about torture, disappearances and massacres.

“From January to July 2020, Causa en Común has registered 429 massacres and 404 cases of torture …” the former said.

Amnesty International said there have been 11,653 abductions since López Obrador took office and also noted that femicides have increased.

The president’s claim also drew a sharp response from Adrian LeBaron, who wondered if the massacre of nine members of his family didn’t count. “Has [the president] forgotten that of my daughter and grandchildren …?” he asked on Twitter.

The three women and six children were murdered in an ambush last November near the Sonora-Chihuahua border. López Obrador claimed last week that the case was close to being solved, a claim that LeBaron’s brother Adrian rejected.

López Obrador also claimed in his report that his administration has improved the justice system but Causa en Común said that the government has in fact “abandoned” the nation’s police, prosecutor’s offices and prison system.

“In none of these areas, which are essential for any security policy, is there a plan for reform or the public investment that could support it,” the NGO said.

The veracity of some parts of the president’s address, including his claims about the reduction in crime, was also questioned by some political analysts.

Víctor Manuel Alarcón, a political scientist at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City, said that López Obrador’s claim that most crimes have declined by about 30% since he took office “isn’t supported or is of very dubious veracity at least.”

Source: Reforma (sp)

Dollar remittances continue growing; July total up 7.2%

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September 2, 2020