More than 10,000 students are expected to apply for a free tablet.
In a single day, more than 5,000 students from low-income families in Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua, applied to receive free tablets provided by the municipal government in order to facilitate federally mandated distance learning due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The school year, which started on August 24, has been relegated to online or televised lessons, which makes getting an education complicated for thousands of students across Mexico who can’t afford the necessary equipment to keep up with their studies.
Many rural areas across the country don’t even have access to electricity, let alone an internet connection. Approximately 30% of Parral residents, some 35,000 people, live in extreme poverty, according to the Ministry of Social Development.
“We will not rest until our daughters and sons, who are our pride, have everything they need so that their education is guaranteed,” Mayor Alfredo Lozoya said. “We must make a great effort so that our children do not fall behind in their education. We parralenses will not fight at a disadvantage.”
The day after the municipal government opened the registration process on August 20, 5,483 students had applied, the mayor announced. The application process will close on September 4.
“These are very good quality electronic tablets with a powerful processor so that they can do their homework and follow their classes remotely,” Lozoya said.
The mayor hopes the program will help keep kids in school and has promised to deliver the tablets within 10 days. He also hopes to increase internet capacity in the area as bandwidth is likely to become saturated due to the surge in students accessing course material online.
According to projections, more than 10,000 students are expected to apply for the equipment in the coming days.
Applicants must fill out a registration form via WhatsApp or in person and are evaluated based on economic need.
Ex-presidents Salinas, Zedillo, Fox, Calderón and Peña Nieto should face justice, say poll respondents.
An overwhelming majority of Mexicans believe that former presidents and other ex-officials who committed crimes while in office should face justice, according to a new opinion poll.
A telephone survey conducted by the newspaper El Universal this month found that 95.6% of respondents would like to see former presidents and officials brought to justice for crimes they allegedly committed.
Almost nine in 10 respondents – 89.4% – said that Enrique Peña Nieto, whose 2012-18 administration was plagued by corruption scandals, should face trial for alleged wrongdoings.
Former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya, currently awaiting trial on corruption charges, has told federal authorities that Peña Nieto and his finance minister, Luis Videgaray, led a bribery scheme that paid off opposition party lawmakers in exchange for support of the previous government’s structural reforms.
Lozoya has also accused former presidents Felipe Calderón and Carlos Salinas of involvement in corruption related to the payment of bribes by the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.
The El Universal poll found that 88.5% of respondents think that Salinas, widely considered one of Mexico’s most corrupt presidents, should face trial while 82.1% said the same about Calderón.
President López Obrador claimed earlier this month that Mexico was a narco-state during Calderón’s 2006-12 administration given evidence that has emerged against his security minister Genaro García Luna, who is awaiting trial in the United States on charges he colluded with organized crime.
The poll also found that more than 70% of respondents believe that former presidents Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo should face justice for alleged crimes.
Despite the strong support for the ex-presidents accused by Lozoya to be brought to justice, 53.9% of respondents said that the ex-Pemex chief is not telling the truth.
Almost 87% of those polled believe that he should serve prison time for the crimes he is accused of committing – accepting bribes from Odebrecht and benefiting from the state oil company’s 2015 purchase of a run-down fertilizer plan at an inflated price.
Only 7% of respondents said that he should be spared a prison sentence as a result of his agreement to cooperate with authorities.
The president has been accused of using the consultation proposal to win votes in the midterm elections.
Three-quarters of respondents said that the ruling Morena party, founded by Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2014, should be sanctioned if it is proven that the payments constituted illegal funding of the party.
The president said last week he didn’t know whether the money, apparently used for Morena’s campaign at 2015 elections in Chiapas, was registered with authorities.
Speaking at a press conference in Torreón, Coahuila, on Wednesday, López Obrador reiterated his intention to hold a public consultation to decide whether former presidents should be put on trial for alleged corruption and other wrongdoings.
The president said that it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether such a consultation is permitted by the Mexican Constitution. But he claimed that it is.
“A consultation is provided for in the Constitution, it’s part of participatory democracy,” López Obrador said, adding that real democracy is not just about voting and then leaving everything up to politicians for the next three or six years.
“Fortunately, progress is being made in participatory democracy so that we can rule by obeying the people; it should always be the people who decide. … So in important matters, such as prosecuting an ex-president or not, all of us should participate,” he said.
The president said that if the Supreme Court rules that holding a consultation on the issue is constitutional, the National Electoral Institute will be in charge of arranging it.
López Obrador said that he would personally vote against prosecuting his predecessors because he favors looking to the future rather than the past.
“I don’t want people to think that I’m an executioner, revenge is not my strong point,” he explained.
Some lawmakers spoke out against the planned consultation, charging that one is not needed in order to prosecute past presidents. Indeed, the federal Attorney General’s Office has the power to investigate and prosecute past presidents if they receive complaints against them that they are able to substantiate.
Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, leader of the National Action Party in the lower house of Congress, said the purpose of the law is to be “applied,” not subjected to consultation. He described the president’s promotion of a public vote as a “smokescreen” to divert attention from his poor management of the coronavirus pandemic.
Manuel Añorve, a senator with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, agreed that the prosecution of former presidents does not require validation from a consultation.
Ex-presidents can be brought to justice using existing laws, he said, adding that it’s “obvious” that López Obrador’s consultation plan is an electoral strategy designed to win votes at the 2021 midterm elections.
Citizens Movement party Senator Juan Zepeda said much the same. “The president wants to have an issue that will pay off politically at the 2021 election in order to retain his majority in Congress,” he said.
According to the Constitution, consultations of national or regional importance can only be held on the first Sunday of August, meaning that a referendum asking citizens whether past presidents should be prosecuted could be held just two months after the midterm elections in early June 2021.
Criminal lawyer Juan Luis Gómez Jardón agreed with the lawmakers that a consultation is not necessary. Former presidents are regular citizens who can be prosecuted for crimes they committed just like any other person, he said.
“They don’t have immunity anymore. … There is no need to consult the people in order to comply with the law,” Gómez said.
“I don’t know what they intend to accuse the most recent ex-presidents of. Above all, who will file the complaint [if a consultation finds majority support to prosecute them]? The auditor’s office? [The tax agency] SAT?”
The president insinuated that Díaz, right, approved loan to Pemex.
The governor of the central bank has rejected an insinuation by President López Obrador that he approved a suspicious, potentially corrupt loan while head of the state-owned development bank Bancomext.
López Obrador on Wednesday called for an investigation into loans that Bancomext and the development bank Nacional Financiera provided to Pemex during the previous government.
The president said the loans partly financed the state oil company’s US $635-million purchase in 2015 of a fertilizer plant in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán. The Federal Auditor’s Office concluded last year that the price Pemex paid to the plant’s owner, Grupo Fertinal, was excessive.
López Obrador said the purchase was made when Bank of México (Banxico) Governor Alejandro Díaz de León was the director of Bancomext.
But Díaz said at a press conference on Wednesday that he wasn’t director of the development bank when the loan was approved in October 2015, pointing out that he joined Bancomext a month later.
“Those are things that were approved by the Bancomext governing body prior to my arrival at that institution,” he said while presenting the central bank’s latest quarterly report.
Díaz told a Bloomberg reporter that he appreciated the question about López Obrador’s remarks “because it allows me to clarify this.”
Several leading financial figures also defended the Banxico chief, including Gerardo Esquivel, a member of the central bank board, who described Díaz’s explanation as a “very important clarification.”
Gerardo Rodríguez, a BlackRock portfolio manager and former deputy finance minister, wrote on Twitter, “In all of Mexico, you won’t find a more honorable official than the current governor of Banxico.”
Díaz’s predecessor at Bancomext was Enrique de la Madrid, who left the bank in August 2015 to take up the role of federal tourism minister.
López Obrador also mentioned his name when calling for an investigation into the Bancomext and Nacional Financiera loans.
The president rebuked former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya, currently awaiting trial on corruption charges, for not providing information about the purchase of the Fertinal plant in a document he submitted to the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) earlier this month.
Lozoya, extradited from Spain last month, has agreed to cooperate with authorities and has been afforded protected witness status.
In an August 11 submission to the FGR, he accused three ex-presidents as well as former government ministers and federal lawmakers of corruption, much of which was allegedly linked to the payment of bribes by Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.
López Obrador said Wednesday that it was “inexplicable” that Lozoya remained silent on the Fertinal plant purchase given the excessive price that was paid.
“They [Pemex] paid about 9 billion pesos. … Do you know who gave them the loans? The Nacional Financiera and the Exterior Commerce Bank [Bancomext],” he said.
López Obrador charged that the purchase of the fertilizer plant is a worse example of corruption than Pemex’s acquisition of another fertilizer plant in Veracruz, for which it also allegedly paid an inflated price.
The FGR needs to get to the bottom of the matter, he said.
Acapulco’s wastewater system appears to have failed again, causing a discharge of sewage in Santa Lucía Bay, the second major occurrence in the past two months.
Photos uploaded to social media show a massive black stain of water flowing into the sea next to the Krystal Beach Hotel.
Recent heavy rains appear to have overloaded the city’s sewer system, water and sewer official José Ramón Aysa Neme said.
Aysa was put in charge of the city’s water utility, Capama, last month when Mayor Adela Román Ocampo demanded the resignation of five of its directors and the city’s head of ecology in the aftermath of a highly publicized, previous sewage leak at Icacos beach in June.
Footage of that leak showed a plume of black water emptying into the sea over the course of 25 minutes. “It was very stinky and made me nauseous,” a witness told Reuters. The leak was blamed on a broken pipe after heavy rains soaked the resort city.
That discharge also provoked a criminal complaint against Capama from the National Water Commission (Conagua), alleging environmental damage. It also resulted in the beach losing its prestigious Blue Flag distinction for cleanliness.
Since Aysa was appointed to his post, he says, investigators have uncovered 22 different sewage leaks due to failing infrastructure. The leaks have been fixed and are being monitored, he said.
Locals have complained about leaky sewer pipes that spew untreated water into the bay for years, a situation that has repelled some tourists in the past.
Last year Capama workers repaired the sewage pipes of three restaurants in Papagayo Park that were emptying into the bay.
On August 20 Mayor Román reported that since October last year 15 sanctions have been levied for illegal sewage discharges.
Román has also pledged to clean clogged storm drains and rebuild aging pipes that have collapsed over time.
Mexican authorities have discovered a tunnel under the Rio Grande connecting the cities of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reports.
Mexico’s National Defense Ministry (Sedena) has taken charge of the investigation into the tunnel, discovered during a patrol near the bank of the river by the army.
Located about 50 meters from the river, the tunnel was equipped with a generator, water pump and hoses. The subterranean passage measure 1.5 meters high and 80 centimeters wide, but had partially collapsed due to rains in the area, which could explain the related equipment which may have been used in the tunnel’s repair. Three clips of ammunition of different calibers were also found nearby.
The length of the tunnel has not been reported, nor its terminus on the U.S. side, although social media reports indicated it led to the Brownsville neighborhood of Southmost.
Matamoros is under the control of the Gulf Cartel and it is likely that the tunnel was dug to run drugs, weapons or people from one country to the other.
Tamaulipas public security spokesman Luis Alberto Rodríguez said that investigations into the tunnel are being coordinated with seven federal agencies of the United States in order to strengthen cross-border collaboration, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Texas Department of Public Safety. A working meeting on the topic was held Wednesday.
“Priority criminal targets that operate on the border were reviewed, as well as effective communication mechanisms to strengthen bilateral cooperation,” Rodríguez said, as both countries work together toward capturing criminals in the border region.
The National Guard and state police have taken control of public safety in the municipality of Altotonga, Veracruz, relieving the 43-member local police force of duty.
Members of the municipal police squad were ordered to undergo training and competency testing in the state capital of Xalapa after a family was gunned down over the weekend.
The change took place on Wednesday morning when national and state authorities also examined the municipal force’s weapons and disarmed them, the state’s Ministry of Public Security reported.
The measure, ordered by Governor Cuitláhuac García Jiménez, was enacted after a couple and their 8-year-old daughter were gunned down on Sunday morning.
The family, who sold chickens for a living, were seated in their delivery truck around 7 a.m. when gunmen on a motorcycle fired at least 15 bullets into the cab of the vehicle, prompting neighbors to appeal to the governor via social media for help in maintaining order in the town where residents say crime has run rampant in recent months.
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Sources say the family had recently been victims of an extortion attempt and were targets of loan sharks belonging to a criminal oragnization.
Gangs will typically offer high-interest loans, and when a party can’t pay, threats and violence often follow.
The move by the governor took place a day after García held a public safety meeting in Altotonga in which he pledged to reinforce security in the area from Altotonga to Tlapacoyan, notably in Jalacingo, Atzalan, Martínez de la Torre and Misantla. After taking office, García vowed in July 2018 that his administration would abolish crime in Veracruz within two years. Thus far in 2020, at least five families in the state have been murdered.
“We will not allow criminal gangs or groups to return to Veracruz,” García said Monday. “Unlike other administrations, we are not going to allow impunity.”
Central bank Governor Díaz: three forecasts developed due to coronavirus uncertainty.
The economy could contract by 12.8% in 2020 in a worse-case scenario, the central bank said on Wednesday after the publication of revised data confirming that GDP declined almost 20% in the second quarter as Mexico hunkered down amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Presenting the bank’s quarterly report for the April-June period, Bank of México Governor Alejandro Díaz de León said that three different forecasts have been developed due to the uncertainty about how the pandemic will evolve in coming months.
In the best-case scenario, the economy recovers quickly from the second-quarter slump and damage is limited to an 8.8% decline in GDP this year.
GDP falls 11.3% in 2020 in an intermediate scenario while in the worst case the economy suffers a deep U-shaped recession entailing the 12.8% slump.
The bank’s most pessimistic outlook for 2020 is 4% worse than its previous worst-case scenario forecast of an 8.8% contraction in 2020.
In all three updated scenarios, the Mexican economy contracts this year by its largest amount since 1932 when GDP plummeted more than 14% amid the Great Depression.
In an interview with the newspaper El Financiero after the national statistics agency Inegi published revised data showing an 18.7% contraction in the second quarter compared to the same period last year – 0.2% better than the preliminary data result, Díaz noted that the economy began to show signs of recovery in June, the month in which nationwide coronavirus restrictions were replaced by state-by-state rules.
Economic activity increased 8.9% that month compared to May but was still 13.2% lower than in June 2019.
Díaz said that if the economy continues to grow in a similar vein throughout the second half of 2020, “a more vigorous recovery” can be expected in 2021.
However, the central bank governor said that “it is clear that the economic recovery next year won’t be enough to return to the levels [of economic activity] we had at the end of 2019.”
The economy will grow by 5.6% in 2021 in the best-case scenario, the Bank of México said in its report, while in the worst-case scenario GDP will only rebound 1.3%.
Díaz said it is unclear how long it will take for the economy to get back to pre-pandemic levels but many analysts predict that it will take several years.
Alonso Cervera, chief Latin America economist for Credit Suisse, and Ernesto O’Farrill, president of the brokerage firm Bursamétrica, both predicted that it will be 2025 before economic activity returns to pre-pandemic levels.
Joel Virgin, chief Mexico economist for French bank BNP Paribas, was slightly more optimistic, forecasting that GDP will recover to pre-coronavirus levels by 2024.
The Bank of México also provided updated forecasts on Wednesday for employment, inflation and the nation’s current account.
It predicted that a total of between 1.1 million and 1.75 million jobs will be lost this year, an improvement compared to its previous forecast in which it anticipated the loss of 1.4 million to 1.8 million positions. The central bank predicted that 100,000 to 450,000 new jobs will be created in 2021.
The bank increased its end-of-year inflation forecast to 3.7% from 3.5% and predicted a current account deficit in 2020 of US $5 billion to $6 billion. It previously forecast a current account deficit of between $3.1 billion and $15.1 billion.
Asked about private sector surveys that found that Mexico is likely to lose its investment grade sovereign credit rating in the next one to three years, the Bank of México chief told El Financiero:
“I believe that it continues to be a possibility: it’s not a certain scenario and it should be avoided to the extent that is possible through the adoption of policies that can provide greater stability, certainty and solidity to the macroeconomic framework and in particular public finances.”
VisitMéxico.com, back on line and with mistranslations corrected.
After two embarrassing problems in recent weeks, the Visit México tourism website was officially relaunched on Tuesday by Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco.
However, the new beginning didn’t go as smoothly as he and other officials might have hoped: at the time the new site was being presented, it had not yet gone live.
But by Wednesday afternoon the Visit México portal was live, accessible and — apparently — error-free.
Torruco told a virtual press conference that the new website will feature the latest and best technology and that companies such as Google, Discovery Channel, Mastercard, Ford and Aeroméxico as well as the New York Yankees will partner with it via sponsorship deals.
The government won’t pay anything for its operation and upkeep, he said.
In its current incarnation, Visit México includes information about a range of tourism routes and has sections promoting each of Mexico’s 32 states, the country’s best beaches, archaeological sites, adventure and ecotourism and magical towns.
Torruco said that the site won’t function as an online travel agency where reservations can be made but rather as a “nerve center” that connects potential visitors to tourism operators and travel agencies in Mexico.
Among the businesses and people that will benefit from the new site, the tourism minister said, are restaurants, hotels, tour guides and travel agencies.
Torruco asserted that the new portal will allow tourism promotion to reach new audiences and open new markets.
“We want the new era of tourism to be for everyone,” he said, adding that the large number of small tourism-oriented businesses that don’t have currently have a digital presence will be provided with assistance to move online, and onto the Visit México site.
“We’re digitalizing the sector and democratizing tourism. … This new platform … is for everyone that wants to join the transformation of our thriving industry,” Torruco said, apparently referring to pre-pandemic times.
Tourism Minister Torruco speaks at Tuesday’s relaunching.
“We’re taking a firm step in our digital strategy, doing more with less but with a global vision.”
Visit México president Marcos Achar said that 70 million pesos (US $3.2 million) has been invested in the site to date and that great efforts have been made to create the world-class tourism platform the country deserves.
Carlos González, the site’s general director, said that Visit México is protected by cutting-edge technology that will guarantee that it isn’t taken down or tampered with by hackers. The site is “capable of repelling all attacks,” he said.
However, the company that has been in charge of managing the site’s content since 2019, Braintivity, claimed the page had been hacked.
The website was back online by early August but its English language content contained several errors that appeared to have been machine translated or intentionally changed. As a result, the names of numerous destinations were rendered as literal (and in some cases, inexplicable) translations.
Guerrero became Warrior, Hidalgo was translated as Noble and Tulum, the Caribbean coast beach town, was suddenly called Jumpsuit. The site was shut down after several media reports lambasted the government and site operator for the mistranslations.
Torruco said August 10 that a criminal complaint had been lodged against whoever was responsible for the suspension of the site and subsequent changes to the English-language translations of some destinations.
But just a day after Visit México’s second relaunch in as many years, it remains to be seen whether those epithets will be applied to the website in years to come.
Larrea and one of more than 100 horses at her sanctuary in Puebla.
Elena Larrea is literally saving lives. The young woman from Puebla runs Cuacolandia, a sanctuary for abused and mistreated horses that is one of just a handful of similar organizations in Mexico.
The photos she posts to Facebook of the horses that find their way to her are dramatic, a testament to her love for the animals and determination to allow them to live what remains of their lives with health and dignity.
Larrea considers herself an activist in defense of animal rights of all species, but horses have a special place in her heart.
“There is nothing deeper than the gaze of a horse,” she told the newspaper Milenio in an interview. “Horses are the windows to your own soul. That nobility they have is not possessed by any other animal.”
Cuacolandia is located in the Haras Ciudad Ecológica area of Puebla’s capital and is home to more than 100 rescued horses from all over the country.
“We have cart horses from the state of Mexico and the carriages of Acapulco, we have retired mounted police horses, we have horses who were abandoned in the streets,” she says.
This spring Larrea received 42 former carriage horses from Acapulco after the city began enforcing Guerrero’s animal welfare act of 2014, which prohibits their use.
One of them was Unicorn, so-named because his former owners used to slap a fake horn on his forehead when he pulled tourists through the city’s streets. Unicorn arrived at Cuacolandia not much more than skin and bones, yet after just six months he’s returned to a healthy weight.
Another new arrival is Willy, a brown horse with a ghastly open wound the circumference of a melon at the base of his neck, the result of pulling a garbage cart in Reyes La Paz, Mexico state.
Larrea is treating his injury with medication, has removed his horseshoes and is showering him with “love and carrots” as he heals.
According to Larrea, most of the horses are over 18 years old, The oldest is El Abuelo, at 29, and the youngest is El Covid, who at two months old is the first foal born at the sanctuary.
‘We need to start treating horses as sentient beings,’ Larrea says.
Unfortunately, most horses arrive at the ranch in similar states to Unicorn and Willy. Often they are abused, malnourished, or simply abandoned by their owners after they have served their purpose.
Larrea even takes in former racehorses who have been injected with cocaine or other performance-enhancing drugs until they are no longer useful.
Around 30% of the animals that arrive at Cuacolandia suffer from obvious injuries and malnutrition, and another 10% come to her in a state Larrea describes as alarming.
She hopes her labor of love will remind people that horses have been humanity’s constant companion throughout history, and should be treated with respect and kindness.
“We need to start treating them as sentient beings, which is what they are. Beings who feel pleasure, who feel pain, who dream. We must stop seeing them as an object and if you are going to have them as an object, at least have respect for them and give them a good life, and if you are going to exploit them, at least feed them,” she says.
Maintaining so many animals and the space they need is no small feat. Food is Larrea’s top expense, and Cuacolandia tries to produce its own forage to offset costs. Donations of any kind are always welcome.
But no matter the expense, no horse will be sold or adopted out, and Larrea says that the property could support up to 300 horses if need be.
“We don’t use them for anything, they just come to a place to have a decent life after having served the human under deplorable conditions all their lives,” Larrea says. The goal is to give the animals a break and a moment of peace.
“It costs nothing to be kind to a being lower than you,” Larrea says. “They are here with us, not for us.”
Consumers in Chiapas don't drink as much soda as study found, industry says.
The Mexican soft drink industry has rejected a study that found that residents of Chiapas drink an average of 821.25 liters of soda per person per year.
In a letter to Mexico News Daily, the general director of ANPRAC, the national soft drink makers association, said that data from the Mexican beverage industry and the national statistics agency Inegi shows that per-capita soda consumption in Chiapas was 133 liters last year, less than one-sixth the amount cited in a 2019 study by the Chiapas and Southern Border Multidisciplinary Research Center (Cimsur).
Jorge Terrazas’ dismissal of the study comes after Mexico News Dailypublished a story last week based on Cimsur’s findings.
The ANPRAC chief said the study cites local statistics for per-capita soft drink consumption in Chiapas that are incorrect.
Terrazas also challenged the claim that soft drink consumption in the southern state is more than five times higher than the national rate. According to data from Inegi and the National Population Center, consumption in Mexico in 2019 was 157 liters, he wrote.
Based on the statistics cited by Terrazas, soda consumption in Chiapas was in fact 24 liters — or 15% — lower than the national average in 2019.
The statistics cited in the Cimsur study are “inconsistent with reality,” the ANPRAC chief wrote, adding that it generally “lacks scientific rigor.”
Terrazas also rejected a claim in a National Institute of Public Health study that concluded that more than 40,000 deaths per year – 7% of the annual total – are linked to the consumption of sugary drinks.
He said that attacks on the soft drink industry and attempts to stigmatize it have “regrettably” intensified in recent months and attributed the attacks to “certain groups” that are “seeking to establish a narrative of direct correlation between the consumption of bottled beverages and all the serious multifactorial health problems we face as a society.”
“It’s very important to mention that until now, there is no scientific evidence that establishes a relation between between heart diseases, obesity and excess weight and the consumption of flavored drinks,” Terrazas wrote.
He added that the Mexican beverage industry is aware of the obesity problem in the country and committed to working with society and government to promote the benefits of a balanced diet and physical activity.
“This important industry believes that there are no ‘good or bad’ products but rather the key to a healthy life is energy balance,” Terrazas wrote.
He also said that it was “simplistic” to claim that a single product or an industry was an aggravating factor in the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell called sugary drinks “bottled poison” last month when asserting that Covid-19 has had a huge impact on Mexico due to the high prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases.
