The president gets a soccer red card from this protester in Querétaro.
For the fifth time, National Front Against AMLO protesters across the country took to their cars, motorcycles and bicycles and rode in long, noisy processions along major roadways in at least 13 cities on the weekend, calling upon President López Obrador to resign.
Protesters’ cars all bore large Mexican flags visible from a distance as they slowly drove in long lines on streets and highways all over Mexico, carrying signs accusing the president of many sins, including poor management of the nation’s Covid-19 response, turning Mexico into a “communist” nation, and corruption.
Protests orchestrated by FRENA — as the National Front Against AMLO calls itself — occurred in cities in Baja California, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, Quintana Roo, Sonora, and Yucatan.
In Mexico City, FRENA protesters rolled down city streets, honking their horns, converging at the Angel of Independence monument on Paseo de la Reforma where they got out of their cars to wave flags at passing cars and sing the national anthem.
In the city of Oaxaca, where López Obrador was in the state to meet with Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa and tour infrastructure projects, his tour was marked by demonstrations by FRENA and by local organizations.
In Querétaro, hundreds of cars moved in a slow procession Sunday morning along the Fray Junípero Serra state highway, honking their horns in fast succession. Similarly, their cars also bore Mexican flags and handmade signs with slogans such as “AMLO out” and “Send AMLO to prison.”
Upon reaching a pedestrian bridge, protesters sang the national anthem and then proceeded to the city’s Centro Sur before returning to their point of departure.
Coronavirus case numbers will soon spike in three tourism-oriented states, predicts an analyst with a consultancy firm that specializes in data analysis.
José Carlos Rodríguez of Pondera Lab believes that Quintana Roo, Baja California Sur and Guerrero will see significant new outbreaks.
He told the newspaper El Universal that crowds of people are gathering in popular tourism destinations without observing social distancing recommendations and other measures to stop the spread of the virus.
“People are dropping their guard because of the [summer] vacations,” Rodríguez said.
The analyst said his calculations show that Guerrero hasn’t yet reached the peak of its coronavirus epidemic, an assertion supported by federal Health Ministry data that showed case numbers began to spike in the southern state in recent weeks.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
Rodríguez added that Acapulco, the state’s largest city and most important tourist destination, was hit hard during the 2009 Swine flu pandemic due to its high population density, low levels of social security coverage among residents and high prevalence of existing health problems.
The Pacific coast resort city has also borne the brunt of Guerrero’s coronavirus epidemic, with more than half of the state’s almost 10,000 confirmed cases detected there.
Quintana Roo’s premier tourist destination, Cancún, has seen the highest number of confirmed cases in that state, while La Paz and Los Cabos have seen the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in Baja California Sur, where case numbers began to rise after restrictions were eased in June.
Guerrero is currently an “orange light” high risk state, according to the federal government’s infection risk “stoplight“ map, whereas Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur are “red light” states.
However, after federal authorities changed Quintana Roo’s risk level from orange to red on July 17, Governor Carlos Joaquín reiterated that his state has its own “stoplight” system and therefore wouldn’t respect that of federal authorities.
Rodríguez warned that hospital admissions of coronavirus patients will rise sharply in August and September if economic activities such as tourism are allowed to resume without the continuation of strict health rules.
National data presented Sunday night at the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing showed that there is still plenty of space in Mexico’s hospitals even as case numbers continue to show steady growth.
The data showed that 47% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while 39% of those with ventilators are in use.
Nuevo León, Tabasco and Nayarit have the highest occupancy levels for general care beds, at 77%, 73% and 72%, respectively.
Nuevo Léon also has the highest occupancy rate for beds with ventilators, at 68%, followed by Tabasco and Puebla, where 66% and 55% of such beds, respectively, are in use.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell also reported that Mexico’s accumulated coronavirus case tally had increased to 390,516 with 5,480 new cases registered.
Mexico now has the sixth highest case tally in the world, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, having passed Peru’s total over the weekend.
Mexico’s official death toll rose to 43,680 on Sunday – the fourth highest in the world – with 306 additional fatalities reported.
Of the confirmed cases, 31,812 are considered active, while there are 89,397 suspected cases across the country.
López-Gatell said that cases numbers declined for a second consecutive week in epidemiological week 29, which ran from July 12 to 18. He said it was the first time that case numbers had fallen in two consecutive weeks but stressed that there is no guarantee that the trend will continue.
Mexico City remains the country’s coronavirus epicenter, with almost 7,000 active cases, according to Health Ministry estimates.
México state has the second highest number of estimated active cases, with 4,660, followed by Nuevo León, with 3,972.
Mexico City also leads the country for confirmed accumulated cases and Covid-19 deaths with 68,903 of the former and 8,693 of the latter.
Authorities in the capital announced Sunday that 11 additional neighborhoods had been identified as coronavirus hotspots and will be given special attention aimed at reducing infections.
The hotspot neighborhoods are La Martinica in the borough of Álvaro Obregón; Portales Norte and San José Ticumac in Benito Juárez; Navidad and Ébano in Cuajimalpa; Año de Juárez and Barrio de Guadalupe in Iztapalapa; Pensiles in Miguel Hidalgo; El Arenal in Venustiano Carranza; and Selene and Apliación Selene in Tláhuac.
The Mexico City government previously identified 34 “red light” areas where health kiosks were set up to provide medical advice, carry out health checks and perform Covid-19 tests.
Six of those neighborhoods – Olivar del Conde segunda sección, Aldana, Guerrero, Lomas de San Lorenzo, Tlaxpana and San José Zacatepec – will be removed from the hotspot list due to a decline in case numbers.
Health workers performed 9,821 Covid-19 tests between July 15 and 25 in“red light” neighborhood health kiosks and provided medical advice to more than 80,000 people.
Federal and state authorities in Nuevo León and Tamaulipas are reporting a total of four people missing in the wake of heavy rains and flooding caused by former Hurricane Hanna, now a remnant tropical depression lingering over northeastern Mexico and southern Texas, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Both states experienced intense rains, swollen rivers and flooding over the weekend, forcing some evacuations and causing road closures and power outages due to high waters and downed trees and power lines.
Three people are missing in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and one in Nuevo León, where 709 storm victims were evacuated, according to Governor Jaime Rodríguez Calderón.
The governor declared a state of emergency, suspending all activities and shut down public transportation. Businesses recently opened again after lengthy Covid-19 closures have been ordered to close again. Rodríguez also asked the public not to leave their homes.
“The conditions are not favorable or safe for movement [right now],” Rodríguez said on Monday via Twitter. “The risk is high. I believe this is the most prudent thing to do to avoid putting the population at risk.”
In anticipation of flooding causing evacuations, neighboring Tamaulipas had shelters sanitized and ready to receive people Saturday.
In Reynosa, 21 neighborhoods saw flooding, according to state officials, and some areas had no drinking water. The floods caused major power outages, and emergency officials at times were using rowboats to travel inundated city streets. Staff at a maternity hospital waded in ankle-deep water overnight Sunday after rains flooded sections of the hospital.
The Federal Electricity Commission announced Monday that it had deployed nearly 300 workers in response to the crisis and had restored power to 53.5% of customers affected in both states.
While the world focuses on the Covid-19 pandemic, in politics it is business as usual. Deals are signed and laws are proposed amid the chaos, some, perhaps, in the hopes that a distracted public won’t put up much of a fight to their passage.
But in June, the Sin Maíz No Hay País (No Corn, No Country) campaign’s network of activists let Mexican politicians know that they were paying attention and that they planned to protect the rights of farmers.
Back in March at the beginning of the pandemic, a handful of proposed changes to Mexico’s intellectual property laws were presented by lawmakers in anticipation of the signing of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that went into effect July 1. One law to be included in the docket changed the Ley Federal de Variedades de Vegetales (The Federal Law of Vegetable Varieties).
Presented by Morena party Deputy Eraclio Rodríguez Gómez, the changes would criminalize the saving or the exchange of seeds with a penalty of up to six years of jail time, as well as allow companies to claim the harvest of farmers they suspect of using their seeds without permission.
Despite a political push to push the changes quickly through Congress, a campaign by Sin Maíz No Hay País was successful in getting the proposed changes taken off of the congressional agenda and their discussion postponed for a future date. A new proposal for the law is expected when the Congress reconvenes in September.
Corn cultivated by the Mazahua indigenous people in México state.
The impetus for the changes comes with entrance into force of the USMCA, the updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trade deals like the USMCA oblige countries like Mexico and Brazil to adopt the latest version of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) Convention, or UPOV-91.
An intergovernmental, international body that now includes over 70 member countries, UPOV has been working since 1961 to privatize seeds around the world through intellectual property rights. Several versions of the UPOV convention have been written, each strengthening the rights of corporate plant breeders and seed manufacturers and restricting the freedom of small farmers to save, exchange and sell seeds. The UPOV convention essentially sets up a system for registering plant varieties in each country. It gives rights to a single breeder for that variety’s sole use and sale. Once adopted, the convention’s protections must be written into each country’s national laws.
Mexico ratified an earlier version, UPOV-78, within whose parameters activists are hoping they can remain, despite international pressure.
There are four major differences between the 1978 version of UPOV and UPOV-91. The first is that according to the 1991 version farmers cannot freely save seeds of protected varieties to use in further planting. This means that any seed farmers might purchase that is registered and protected cannot be used for the next year’s harvest, essentially obliging farmers to purchase new seed or pay royalties to use saved seed.
Secondly, plant varieties and seeds can now be patented. This means that any unprotected or unregistered seeds currently used by farmers that is “discovered” by a company is free game to be patented by that company. This portion of the convention sets the stage for the entrance of genetically modified seeds as it allows for the patenting of genes.
Thirdly, any breeder with rights to a certain seed that they believe has been used without proper payment now has rights to the farmer’s harvest that the seed was used for (before they only had rights to the seeds themselves). So a company that believes its seed to have been used improperly can take everything produced from that seed on a farmer’s land.
The final change is a prohibition against further breeding. This means that if a farmer uses a protected seed and cultivates it in such a way that further breeding produces a different plant, that new plant is considered a variety of the first plant and is also owned by the breeder with rights to the original seed.
The violation of “breeders rights”by farmers is punishable by fines, confiscation of product, and jail time in some countries.
Those opposed to the convention say that hundreds of generations of farmers in Mexico — exchanging, cross-breeding and selecting their seeds for particular environments — are what has given the country its current megadiversity. Fifteen percent of all plants in the global food system are native to Mexico, and there is concern that without exchange and natural selection, biodiversity in Mexico, especially of its 64 native species of corn, will diminish.
Activists and academics point out that the country’s poorest farmers depend on saving seeds from their land each year in order to feed their families. For some, this is their main source of food.
Supporters of UPOV point out that anyone can apply to have protected rights as a plant breeder, but 94% of hybrid and “improved” seeds are in the hands of private corporations, not small and medium-sized farmers. Additionally, in the process of applying for breeders rights, priority is given to companies that have previously applied for the rights in other member countries, so Monsanto, for instance, which has already been awarded rights to specific seeds in the United States, would get priority approval for breeders’ rights in Mexico.
Ratification of UPOV-91 does not override national laws already on the books, which is why striking down the changes to the vegetable varieties law was vital to opposing the convention. Mexico has four years to approve UPOV-91 and within that time the Sin Maíz no Hay País campaign plans to lobby lawmakers to pass further laws that will protect farmers’ rights to seeds.
They also plan to undertake an information campaign aimed at rural farmers, many of whom are unaware of the proposed laws and their ramifications.
The eight people believed to be part of a kidnapping gang.
A joint operation by Mexico City and México state authorities resulted in the arrest of eight people involved in a crime gang allegedly responsible for several kidnappings, all led by a man behind bars in Mexico City.
One of the group’s latest victims, according to authorities, an unidentified woman kidnapped from Valle de Chalco, in México state, was found dead May 24 in the same municipality despite the fact that her family had paid over 1 million pesos (US $45,000) in ransom.
Officials say the gang’s ringleader is Polo “El Hardy” Páez Medina, 27, currently serving a prison term in a prison in Iztapalapa. Authorities arrested him after discovering a cell phone in his possession they say he used to coordinate the kidnappings with those outside the prison.
The other seven members allegedly took orders from Páez and were involved in contacting victims, carrying out the kidnappings, sending videos to the victims’ families, and collecting ransoms in multiple payments in various bank accounts.
Members of the gang, which called itself Los Corazones (The Hearts), were arrested in various locations in Mexico City and the state of México, including two locations that authorities say were highly secure buildings where victims were kept by the group while they sought ransom payments.
The group of men who traveled via all-terrain vehicles from Guanajuato to Puerto Vallarta.
As many as 20 men were kidnapped in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, earlier this month after arriving in the resort city on a trip from Guanajuato, according to media reports.
The newspaper Reforma reported that about 20 young men were abducted on July 18 after traveling to the resort destination in all-terrain vehicles via Jalisco’s Sierra Occidental region.
Jalisco Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solís Gómez said Saturday that about 13 or 14 men traveling in eight vehicles came under an armed attack in the Fluvial Vallarta residential area and that one of them was wounded and later died in the hospital.
“There was a series of shots. One person was left wounded at the scene, others managed to flee — some on foot, others in vehicles,” he said.
The deceased man has been identified as Joaquín Alba, a businessman from Guanajuato who supplied materials to the construction sector. At least 10 of the abducted men were also businessmen, according to Reforma.
Solís said that authorities in Jalisco are investigating the murder but asserted that they haven’t received any reports of missing people. He said that he had spoken with his counterpart in Guanajuato and that no missing person reports had been filed in that state either.
Following the attack, municipal authorities located three vehicles that apparently belonged to the men who were abducted.
An unnamed source quoted by Reforma said the assailants called family members of their kidnapping victims to seek ransom money.
However, Solís said that Jalisco authorities had no knowledge of any ransom requests.
The attorney general said that a “highly dangerous criminal cell” was believed to be responsible for the attack. One line of investigation is that the attack and abduction is related to a dispute between criminal organizations that operate in Jalisco and Guanajuato, he said.
Sources told Reforma that criminals, allegedly members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), were aware that the Guanajuato men were traveling through Jalisco and were waiting for them in Puerto Vallarta.
Murder victim Joaquín Alba.
According to the newspaper La Jornada, one “rumor” is that alleged CJNG members identified the men as members of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, a Guanajuato-based gang engaged in a vicious turf war with the Jalisco cartel.
Puerto Vallarta is known as a “red zone” for kidnappings, with at least 11 abductions reported there in the first five months of the year.
Writing in thenewspaper El Universal, security analyst Alejandro Hope said that a mass kidnapping such as that which apparently occurred in Puerto Vallarta can only happen if there is complicity between criminal groups and and government security forces.
Abducting 14 to 20 people “in the heart of one of the country’s main tourism centers” after firing shots “is no small feat,” he wrote. “That doesn’t happen if there isn’t someone protecting the criminals.”
Hope said that it was “probable” that the victims were located by their kidnappers well before they arrived in Puerto Vallarta and that they may have even been tracked since they left Guanajuato.
“That points to an increasingly marked phenomenon: criminal networks of the country’s central west cross state borders. What happens in Jalisco has an impact on Guanajuato and vice versa,” Hope wrote.
As the attack and kidnapping occurred in Puerto Vallarta, “the incident is international news,” the analyst said.
“It could become the final blow for the tourism industry which has already taken an enormous hit due to the pandemic. In that sense, the authorities of the three levels of government would do well to design and put into operation a specific security strategy for locations with a high influx of tourists,” Hope wrote.
“The incidents in Puerto Vallarta are no small matter. They are proof of the deterioration of the security conditions in the country’s central west and a sign of the freedom several criminal groups have to operate. Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for the authorities. If a mass kidnapping is allowed to happen without a greater response, the situation could get a lot worse in a very short time.”
Mexico’s flagship tourism website has been down since Friday, allegedly suspended for lack of payment, although the company that has been in charge of managing the website’s content since 2019 claims the page has been hacked.
Beginning Friday, Visit Mexico showed only a traffic cone and the message, “Suspended for non-payment. Excuse us, we are working on it right now. Come back soon.”
By Saturday afternoon the message had been amended to read that the suspension was not a hack.
Until August 2019, the site was administered by the Ministry of Tourism. However, due to the federal government’s austerity policy, which led to the disappearance of the Tourism Promotion Council (CPTM), the firm Braintivity assumed responsibility for managing the site, which is now funded by private business.
In 2019, Visit Mexico president Marcos Achar said the platform would be completely renewed to become a vehicle for the marketing of Mexican destinations. A goal for the site was to attract 55.3 million visitors to Mexico by 2024, which would generate revenues of some US $31.6 billion.
Achar and Carlos González, the site’s general director, posted a statement to Twitter Saturday morning announcing that Visit Mexico had been hacked and they were working on resolving the situation. An investigation is underway and security measures are being taken to protect the site, they said.
Earlier this month, Tourism Minister Miguel Torrucolikened the importance of the website and associated tourism campaign to the Pueblos Mágicos, or Magical Towns, program introduced by the government of former president Vicente Fox in 2001 and the Angeles Verdes, or Green Angels, roadside assistance program launched by the Tourism Ministry in 1960.
The website was meant to be a legacy project of the current administration and was set to make its formal debut in August with new promotional campaigns after it was redesigned and relaunched last year.
Tourism is a vital sector of Mexico’s economy that is struggling to rebound from the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In past years, the industry has generated about 8.7% of the country’s gross domestic product, bringing in around US $14.7 billion and providing 4.1 million jobs.
On its website, the Ministry of Tourism announced last night that it “has requested Braintivity to explain the causes of this interruption, which will be announced in due course.”
Plates by artisan Jorge Wilmot, who had a lasting influence on ceramics in Jalisco.
Eight years after his death, the legacy of ceramics artisan Jorge Wilmot lives on in the establishment of the Guadalajara metro area as a source for world-class ceramics. His fusion of art, technology and design elements from the past reinvented the working of clay.
Wilmot was born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, in 1928. He studied fine art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City for only a few months in 1948, returning to work in Monterrey, where one job was in a factory making dishes.
In the 1950s, he made the important decision to go to Europe to study ceramics in France, Sweden, and Switzerland. Here he discovered Asian techniques, in particular crackled glaze, that would appear in much of his later work.
Upon returning to Mexico, he had an exhibition in Monterrey in 1958. This led to contacts with cultural authorities in Mexico City, where he discovered the traditional burnished pottery of Tonalá, Jalisco.
What is now a suburb of Guadalajara has had a very long history of fine ceramic and pottery work since before the arrival of the Spanish. Its large clay deposits are among the highest quality in Mexico.
Traditional design had a strong influence on this piece by Wilmot.
By 1960, Wilmot was setting up shop in Tonalá. His goal was to create a new kind of ceramic, based on the traditional wares, but integrating Asian and modern elements in both technique and design. One of his first steps was to work with the local craftsmen to both learn from them and to work toward conserving centuries-old traditions.
After mastering that, he set about using his international training and experience. One main change he made was to use gas-fired kilns on a large scale.
In 1960, Wilmot met American ceramicist Ken Edwards who had also come to Tonalá to develop new pottery. However, Edwards was interested in doing his own thing, a very heavily Oriental-influenced work, rather than reinvent local traditions.
After much trial and error, Wilmot’s workshop developed a distinct inventory. His work had Mexican motifs as a base, but with Asian elements in both technique and design, especially glazes.
It is rather austere compared to native Tonalá pottery, which often attempts to fill in all available space with tiny decorative elements because of its Baroque heritage.
The new work gained acceptance at fine galleries in various cities in Mexico and abroad, especially in Europe, Japan, and the United States. It caught the attention of the head of the minister of culture at the time, Fernando Gamboa, and the business expanded exponentially.
In 1960, Wilmot set up shop in Tonalá where his goal was to create a new kind of ceramic.
From then until his death in 2012 he would receive various accolades and have exhibitions of his work in some of the world’s most important venues.
Despite his work in reinventing Tonalá ceramics, he continued to be dedicated to preserving the old traditions. In 1986, he established the National Ceramics Museum (Museo Nacional de la Cerámica) in his former house and donated it to the municipality of Tonalá.
The museum still exists with an important collection of work from the pre-Hispanic period to the present.
Perhaps more importantly he established a school that trained generations of ceramicists in the new techniques and designs he introduced, most notably stoneware and other high-fire work. So many craftspeople benefitted from this that almost all of the ceramic that is not strictly traditional shows influence from him. It is one of the main reasons why Jalisco has some of the best artistic production in Mexico.
Workshops that are Wilmot’s “heirs” include Cerámica Netzi in Tonalá and Cerámica (Noé) Suro in Guadalajara. But his influence goes even further. The metro area now has a reputation for fine ceramic in general, attracting designers and master craftsmen to open workshops and design new products. One example of this is the Japanese-inspired work of The Norm in Tlaquepaque.
While Mexican ceramics have a reputation for timelessness, in reality the 20th century was a time of great innovation. Wilmot’s contribution is extremely important because he was able to innovate while maintaining respect for the past.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears weekly on Mexico News Daily.
López-Gatell has no intention of quitting his job.
Coronavirus czar Hugo López-Gatell said Friday he won’t resign as deputy health minister after opposition politicians called for his dismissal.
“I am committed to Mexico. I will not resign,” López-Gatell, who has a doctorate in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University, told reporters at the Tabasco airport yesterday, just before his evening coronavirus press conference. “This is not about playing politics, it is about saving lives and protecting people,” he said.
His statements come after politicians from three parties demanded that he be ousted from his position as head of prevention and health promotion and chief strategist for the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We come to do technical work. We are technical officials dedicated to public health, and we come to do that work. The government of Mexico and President López Obrador have made it very clear since this pandemic began that in Mexico health decisions are made with technical and scientific criteria, and that’s our commitment,” he told journalists.
Leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) the Citizens’ Movement (MC) and the National Action Party (PAN) have all asked for his resignation claiming that he has failed at managing the pandemic.
As of Friday, Mexico had registered 378,285 cases of the coronavirus, 7,573 more than on Thursday, according to the Ministry of Health.
In addition, 737 people died during that 24-hour period, bringing the death toll to 42,645.
National Action Party politicians Cordero, Anaya and Cabeza de Vaca deny receiving bribes from the Peña Nieto government.
Politicians with the National Action Party (PAN) have denied claims by former Pemex boss Emilio Lozoya that they received bribes in exchange for legislative support.
Lozoya, who is in federal custody after being arrested in Spain in February and extradited to Mexico earlier this month, is accused of money laundering, criminal association and involvement in bribery.
The newspaper Reforma reported on Friday that he told authorities that he paid a total of 52.38 million pesos to PAN legislators during the administration of former president Enrique Peña Nieto in order to garner their support for the Pact for Mexico, which introduced sweeping reforms in sectors ranging from energy to education.
A payment of 6.8 million pesos was allegedly made to former PAN presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya, who rejected the accusation in a message yesterday to Reforma.
“The information contained is absolutely false. I have never committed an improper act. In addition to being false, the information is absurd,” he said. “I supported the reform with enormous conviction.”
Loyoza says bribes were also paid to former PAN senators Ernesto Cordero and Salvador Vega as well as Francisco Dominguez Servién and Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, current governors of Querétaro and Tamaulipas, respectively.
All four have denied the accusations.
The National Action Party said in a statement that Lozoya’s allegations are those of “a suspected criminal” who is accusing political enemies in order to save himself.
The party said the issue was a “smokescreen” intended to distract attention from “the failure of the López Obrador government in terms of the economy, … the appalling management of the coronavirus and the deaths that could have been avoided.”
