National Action Party blue is no longer in style in Baja California.
The blue aqueduct that carries water from the Colorado River to Tijuana, Baja California, is being repainted brown, fulfilling a request made by President López Obrador in April.
The aqueduct, which climbs more than a thousand meters through the La Rumorosa mountains pumping water 104 kilometers from Mexicali through Tecate to Tijuana’s El Carrizo reservoir, had been bright blue for decades but will now be brown, according to a government statement.
On April 22, President López Obrador criticized the aesthetics of painting government infrastructure in unnatural colors that clash with the landscape, especially when those colors are representative of political parties.
Blue is the color used by Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN) which governed Baja California for 30 years before being toppled by the current governor, Jaime Bonilla Valdez. Like the president, he is a member of the Morena party.
“I suggested to the governor of Baja California, ‘paint the aqueduct the color of the stones,’ maybe it will not cost you much and will help to maintain it,” the president said, decrying the political tradition of painting government buildings, schools and infrastructure in the colors of the ruling party.
On Tuesday, Water Management Minister Salomón Faz Apodaca stressed that the paint being applied to the Río Colorado-Tijuana aqueduct is part of regular maintenance.
“With an environmentally friendly, polyurethane-based color, which is resistant to weather, rust and chemicals, we hope to reduce visual contamination in the desert area of Baja California,” he said in a statement.
Painting the aqueduct is part of a number of measures, including electrical and mechanical maintenance, being undertaken to improve the state’s hydraulic infrastructure. The municipalities of Tecate, Tijuana, Playas de Rosarito and Ensenada receive 98% of their water from the aqueduct.
A marine conducts vessel inspections. The navy has stepped up measures to combat piracy.
The Mexican navy reports that it has reduced pirate attacks on vessels in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico to zero after a new operation was put in place on May 15.
In recent years the waters off the coasts of Campeche, Tabasco and Veracruz have been plagued by armed bandits who attack oil platforms, and commercial and supply vessels.
The pirates often approach vessels in fast boats, board them and take anything of value, including crew members’ possessions and navigational equipment which they sell on the black market. Some even steal fuel directly from the Gulf’s more than 100 platforms operated by Mexico’s oil company, Pemex.
In May, the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) reported that at least five pirate attacks occurred in a span of just 10 days in April, and the U.S. government has issued maritime travel safety alerts for Gulf of Mexico waters, with the latest one coming just last week.
Although pirates have hunted the waters of the Bay of Campeche for centuries, the modern-day version of thievery at sea began to increase dramatically in 2017 when 19 assaults or attempted assaults on vessels or platforms were reported, up from four in 2016 and one in 2015. In 2018 there were 16 reported attacks, 20 occurred in 2019 and so far this year 19 ships or platforms have been attacked by pirates.
However, the navy’s recent response appears to have been effective.
It has dispatched some 42 vessels of varying sizes, one airplane, four helicopters and more than 500 sailors to the area to conduct thousands of inspections, both onshore and at sea.
To date, the navy reports that 515 boats, 68 ships, 651 vehicles and 2,734 people have been inspected and interviewed by the military. The area has remained free of incidents since the operation began, although a number of minor citations have been issued.
One of hundreds of buildings that sustained damage in Oaxaca.
A 7.5-magnitude earthquake that shook southern and central Mexico on Tuesday morning damaged more than 500 homes in Oaxaca and left six people dead, authorities said.
The Oaxaca government said in a statement that most of the affected homes only sustained minor damage, while Governor Alejandro Murat confirmed the deaths of five men and one woman as a result of the quake, whose epicenter was located 23 kilometers south of La Crucecita, a town in the tourist destination of Huatulco.
More than 30 people were injured during the earthquake, Mexico’s 16th most powerful on record.
Homes and other buildings were damaged in at least 30 municipalities in Oaxaca, the newspaper Reforma reported, including 13 in the Central Valleys region, eight in the Sierra Sur, five on the state’s Pacific coast, three in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and one in the Mixtec region.
At least 15 hospitals and health care clinics in Oaxaca were damaged as were four schools. Three federal highways, five state highways and a bridge also sustained damage or were affected by landslides.
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A landslide on a highway in the municipality of San Juan Ozolotepec trapped two workers who were subsequently freed and taken to hospital, Murat said.
The governor said Wednesday morning that all of the affected roads are now open to traffic.
Some 50 historical monuments also sustained damage as a result of the earthquake as did structures at the archaeological sites of Mitla, Dainzú, Lambityeco and Yagul.
In Huatulco, the fire hall sustained severe damage but firefighters continued to provide services to the local community on Tuesday.
A fire broke out at the Pemex refinery in the coastal city of Salina Cruz shortly after the quake but was quickly put out. Early reports said that a refinery worker died from burns after the earthquake triggered an explosion but the federal government said later that his death was the result of a fall from a five-meter-high structure.
The Oaxaca government said that 2,300 members of the military were deployed to respond to the earthquake, explaining that they assessed damage and removed rubble, among other tasks.
Earthquake rubble on a street in Oaxaca.
The earthquake hit Oaxaca the hardest but was felt in 11 other states: Mexico City, México state, Guerrero, Chiapas, Michoacán, Jalisco, Querétaro, Morelos, Tabasco, Veracruz and Puebla.
Hundreds of aftershocks have been reported since the quake struck at 10:29 a.m. Tuesday including one with a magnitude of 5.5.
The Federal Electricity Commission reported that the earthquake affected the supply of power to more than 2.6 million customers in several states.
While Oaxaca bore the brunt of the quake, damage was also reported in other parts of the country.
In México state, both the General Hospital in Chalco and an IMSS health care facility in Ecatepec sustained minor damage, while water supply to the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl was interrupted.
In Veracruz, the earthquake caused a phosphoric acid spill at an industrial plant in the port city of Coatzacoalcos, the newspaper Milenio reported.
In Mexico City, where the sounding of the seismic alarm sent residents rushing to the street to seek safety in the open air, two people were reportedly injured and 36 buildings sustained minor damage.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said that four Mexico City government buildings were damaged. The worst damage occurred at offices of the water department, where a staircase became detached as a result of the powerful seismic waves that reached the capital from the quake epicenter about 700 kilometers away.
In the northern borough of Gustavo A. Madero, a five-story residential building sustained structural damage, forcing the residents of all 40 apartments to evacuate.
Yesterday’s temblor came almost three years after two powerful earthquakes devastated southern and central Mexico in September 2017.
Mexico is located within two active earthquake zones, making tremors a common occurrence and occasional temblors an unavoidable fact of life.
20% of Mexicans who tested positive for coronavirus are healthcare workers
A new single-day record for Covid-19 cases was set on Tuesday but Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell asserted that the coronavirus pandemic has been stabilizing for more than two weeks.
The federal Health Ministry reported 6,288 additional cases at Tuesday night’s coronavirus press briefing, increasing the total number of accumulated cases to 191,410.
Just over 20% of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 are health workers.
The Health Ministry also reported 793 additional Covid-19 fatalities, lifting Mexico’s official death toll to 23,377.
Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said that 24,387 cases are considered active – an increase of 1,232 compared to Monday – and that there are 59,106 suspected cases across the country.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
Mexico passed a Covid-19 testing milestone on Tuesday, with more than half a million tests now completed.
However, Mexico’s testing rate – about 3,900 people have been tested per 1 million inhabitants – is still very low compared to most countries in the region and beyond.
Health Ministry data shows that just over 60,000 coronavirus patients have been hospitalized since the start of the pandemic, a figure that accounts for almost one in every three people who have tested positive.
Of that number, 5,402 patients – about one in 12 – were placed on ventilators. Almost 70% of patients who were intubated ended up dying.
More than 130,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 were not hospitalized, of whom 2,471 died in their homes.
Mexico City leads the country for Covid-19 deaths, with 5,656 fatalities as of Tuesday, according to official data. México state has the second highest death toll, with 3,515 fatalities, followed by Baja California, Veracruz and Sinaloa.
Active coronavirus cases as of Tuesday. milenio
In addition to the 23,377 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, 1,848 fatalities are suspected of having been caused by the disease.
Mexico City also leads the country for accumulated and active coronavirus cases, with 43,596 of the former and 3,906 of the latter. Neighboring México state ranks second in both categories, having recorded a total of 30,011 cases of which 2,343 are considered active.
Six other states have more than 1,000 active cases: Puebla, Guanajuato, Tabasco, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Jalisco.
At the municipal level, Puebla city has the most active cases followed by León, Guanajuato, and Iztapalapa, Mexico City.
In the first 23 days of June, the Health Ministry reported a total of 100,746 additional Covid-19 cases, a figure that equates to 53% of the total number of cases detected in Mexico throughout the pandemic. Health officials reported 13,447 deaths, 58% of the total, in the same period.
An average of 4,380 new cases and 585 deaths were reported every day between June 1 and June 23, a period which coincides with the first three weeks of the so-called new normal during which some coronavirus restrictions have been eased.
Covid-19 deaths recorded as of Tuesday. milenio
But while the statistics are alarming, Deputy Health Minister López-Gatell highlighted that the rate of growth in case numbers has slowed in percentage terms this month.
Speaking at the presidential press conference on Tuesday, the government’s coronavirus point man said that starting “about 16 days ago, we’ve had increases [in case numbers] in percentage terms that are smaller” than those recorded perviously.
López-Gatell acknowledged that the percentage increases are in comparison with an increasingly higher number of total cases and that about 5,000 cases per day were reported in the period but stressed that “the day to day change in terms of percentage increases is decreasing in speed.”
That is “positive news,” he said before adding: “Of course, it’s still not satisfactory while this number of deaths are occurring every day.”
Dr. González: risk of infection was always troubling.
Emotions run high among medical staff who treat coronavirus patients, and their devotion to their profession often means being ostracized by society and isolation from family members in addition to the long hours spent on the front lines of the pandemic.
For Dr. Omar William González Hernández the worst part of the disease was the solitude and not being able to hug his children.
An internist who specializes in geriatrics, González works during the week at one government hospital and spends his weekends working at another.
Conditions at the hospitals are less than ideal, he reports, and the risk of infection was always troubling.
“The lack of personnel training, the lack of adequate equipment and the delay in implementing security protocols, as well as the greater number of infected colleagues and the greater number of patients treated, make it more feasible for me to have been infected there,” says González.
And his fears were realized. When he began to experience coronavirus symptoms, he had to take precautions to protect his family, such as not sleeping in the same room with his wife and sending his young children to stay with their grandparents.
After suffering from a fever and breathing problems, the doctor was diagnosed with the coronavirus and hospitalized at the same hospital where he works, which is likely where he was infected too.
“The moment they told me that I was going to be hospitalized I began to assimilate all those fears that my family shared with me, that it really could become something serious or that it could even cost me my life,” he says.
The most difficult thing for him during the six days of hospitalization and the three weeks of recovery was the isolation and loneliness that the disease imposes on patients who cannot have contact with their relatives.
However, González says his main goal was to get better and return to work and rejoin his family.
“Once the disease is over, one of the most emotional parts, I think, is when you regain your freedom to leave home, to go to work again,” González says. “But I think the most emotional part is being able to see my children.”
Despite becoming infected due to the lack of protective equipment in his workplace, González returned to the hospitals to continue to help the sick. “We have a duty and commitment to our profession, in addition to the need for staff because, due to fear, many do not want to participate.”
The National Electoral Institute: is it under threat?
The National Electoral Institute (INE) has dismissed President López Obrador’s pledge to be a “guardian” of the 2021 midterm elections.
“Mexico already has an elections guardian, an autonomous constitutional body that is the guarantor of our democracy,” INE president Lorenzo Córdova said on Monday.
INE councilor Ciro Murayama highlighted that the electoral institute is the sole body responsible for organizing and overseeing elections.
“The INE is not part of the opposition nor does it align itself with the government: it’s independent and autonomous, that’s the way it will be in 2021,” he said.
The officials’ defense of the electoral institute came after López Obrador claimed that the INE is the most expensive electoral body in the world and has “never guaranteed clean and free elections.”
The president, who claimed fraud was the reason for his losses at the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections, said that he will personally ensure that the will of the people is respected at next year’s midterms.
“So that there is no electoral fraud, I’ll become a guardian so that the freedom of citizens to freely elect their authorities is respected. I know that the INE already exists, I’m not going to get involved in that; I’m just obliged to report if there are any fraud attempts,” López Obrador said.
The president’s remarks were interpreted by some as a sign that the autonomy of the INE is under threat.
Former electoral tribunal judge María del Carmen Alanis said that López Obrador’s comments are cause for concern and charged that it is “a fallacy” to say that the INE has allowed fraud to occur.
Speaking at a political forum, she said there are “ominous signs” that efforts are being made to return to a time when the power of the Mexican state was concentrated in one sole individual, namely the president.
National Action Party Senator Gustavo Madero also said that there are signs that the government is attempting to return Mexico to how things were in the past. (The Institutional Revolutionary Party dominated Mexican politics for most of the 20th century and used a range of questionable and/or illegal practices to ensure that its power was perpetuated).
Madero said that he was concerned about what might happen to the INE, “but beyond that I’m worried about the threat to our democracy.”
Benit Nacif, a former INE councilor, said that it would be “an enormous backward step to return to what we fortunately left behind” and asserted that the autonomy of the electoral institute must be protected.
Experts who spoke with the newspaper El Universal said that López Obrador doesn’t have the legal authority to become an elections guardian,” pointing out that in addition to the INE, the federal electoral tribunal and the electoral prosecutor’s office have a role to play in ensuring that elections are free and fair.
María Eugenia Valdés Vega, a researcher at Mexico City’s Metropolitan Autonomous University who specializes in electoral processes, said that the INE has “evolved very favorably” in its organization and supervision of elections and “in this there cannot be a backward step.”
Ivonne Acuña Murillo, a politics professor at the Iberoamericana University, claimed that López Obrador had directed his electoral guardian message to the INE as well as opposition parties and state governors as a warning that he will not be afraid to call out what he sees as fraudulent electoral conduct.
While the president can’t do anything from a legal standpoint to oversee elections and prosecute fraud, he can “in terms of communication” and from a political perspective, she said.
Jessica Rojas Alegria, a specialist in electoral law at the National Autonomous University, said that while everyone has the right to free speech the president’s claim that he will oversee the elections is “dangerous” and “out of place.”
Ramírez: The party is plagued by internal chaos, a lack of ideological rigor and political incapacity.
Mexico’s ruling party is in crisis and at risk of losing its congressional majority at the 2021 midterm elections, says a political scientist.
Gibrán Ramírez Reyes, a supporter of the Morena party, also believes that President López Obrador could face difficulties completing his term at his planned “revocation of mandate” vote in 2022 if the party he founded doesn’t address its problems and plot a clear – and improved – course toward the elections.
In an interview with the newspaper Milenio, Ramírez charged that opposition parties have a well-planned road map for the upcoming elections whereas Morena is in disarray.
He claimed that interim national president Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar’s leadership of Morena is “adrift” and that the party is plagued by internal chaos, a lack of ideological rigor and political incapacity, among other problems.
Ramírez, a proponent of the political philosophy or movement known as lopezobradorismo, said the problems within Morena are more significant than the president himself thinks, adding that López Obrador has “preferred not to get involved” in the process to fix them.
However, without his involvement, “the political process won’t advance in the way the president wants,” he charged.
Given that there is a very real possibility that Morena will lose its majority in the lower house of Congress at next year’s midterms – only 33% of respondents to a recent poll indicated that they would vote for the ruling party – Milenio asked Ramírez if López Obrador can govern without a party.
The political scientist responded that “the president has shown that he can” but conceded that there would be complications.
Ramírez said it would be especially difficult for López Obrador to carry out the transformation he envisions for Mexico without the support of friendly state governors. (Fifteen gubernatorial elections will also be held next year).
If the party doesn’t resolve its problems, the president’s so-called fourth transformation, or 4T, will be left weakened in many parts of the country, he predicted.
Asked whether some governors and mayors already elected under the banner of the Morena party have governed poorly and thus run the risk of eroding the president’s political capital, Ramírez responded emphatically:
“Without a doubt. Of course they will cost Morena,” he said.
Ramírez added, however, that the party’s lack of organization will inflict a greater electoral cost on López Obrador. While the opposition parties are preparing themselves for the upcoming elections, Morena is not, he said.
“I think that’s more serious, the [Morena] governors’ management [of their states] won’t just cost the president [at the ballot box] but also the management of his own party. While Morena continues in limbo, we can’t have expectations of having a reliable apparatus to face up to the challenges of an organized opposition,” Ramírez said.
He said that no “substantial” discussions have yet occurred within Morena about the party’s candidates for the 2021 elections at which mayor and councilor positions will also be up for grabs in some municipalities.
“The apparatus of the 4T [Morena] is in crisis and if it’s not resolved between now and September, … Morena will go to the midterm elections in a very weakened [position],” Ramírez said.
“I believe that if [the problems] are not fixed now, those of us in favor of President López Obrador will be left in political orphanhood.”
Ramírez claimed that Morena never “institutionalized” itself as a party and as a result is now a “collection of empty bureaucracies that were left over as a product of López Obrador’s [2018] campaign committee.”
“There are no clear rules and no pragmatic and ideological discussions,” he said.
Ramírez also warned that if poor gubernatorial candidates are chosen by Morena, the party could suffer negative consequences at the federal level as well. (All 500 lower house seats will be renewed in 2021 but the terms of the 128 senators don’t expire until 2021).
Asked whether an electoral disaster is on the horizon for Morena if it doesn’t get its house in order, Ramírez replied:
“I don’t know if there will be a disaster but there will be complications, turbulence and of course we’ll lose the majority [in the lower house of Congress].”
In a rare case, newborn triplets tested positive for the coronavirus just hours after birth in a hospital in the central state of San Luis Potosí, health authorities announced on Monday.
The babies, two boys and a girl, were born to a mother who tested positive for the coronavirus while pregnant but showed no symptoms, officials at the Dr. Ignacio Morones Prieto Central Hospital stated. The father also tested positive and was also asymptomatic.
The triplets were tested shortly after being born on June 17 and before they had nursed, ruling out the possibility of transmission via breast milk.
Although all three are positive, one of the boys was born with pneumonia and paralytic ileus, a condition that causes obstruction of the intestine, and is receiving medical care. The babies are being kept in incubators due to their low birth weights, and in isolation from other newborns.
“This unprecedented situation, from a scientific point of view, occurred where triplets were identified and their tests for Polymerase Chain Reaction were confirmed on Saturday,” said Miguel Ángel Lutzow Steiner, a spokesman for the state’s Ministry of Health.
The hospital’s medical staff suspect the babies were infected in the womb, with the virus traveling through the placenta. A post-birth infection, they say, would need at least a two to seven-day incubation period before becoming detectable.
Health Minister Mónica Liliana Rangel Martínez also ruled out that the possibility that the babies could have been infected in the hospital.
“What strikes us, in this case, is that on the day they were born all three babies tested positive for coronavirus, which rules out any possibility that they have contracted it through a hospital infection,” she said in an interview with the newspaper Excélsior.
Another newborn in San Luis Potosí has tested positive for the coronavirus, but in that case testing was conducted two days after birth.
Mexican health authorities say that this is the first time in the world that vertical transmission of the coronavirus is suspected in a case of multiple births.
Criminal complaints against 43 invoicing companies allegedly involved in tax fraud are being prepared, the head of the federal tax agency SAT said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the presidential press conference, Raquel Buenrostro said that 8,212 companies and individuals evaded the payment of their taxes by participating in fraudulent schemes set up by the 43 companies.
Invoicing companies provide payroll and tax services to companies and individuals but in some cases allegedly failed to forward income tax and sales tax payments to the SAT. President López Obrador said Monday that the majority of companies and individuals got involved in the fraudulent schemes “innocently.”
Buenrostro, nicknamed the “Iron Lady” for her hardline approach to recovering unpaid taxes, said that the 43 invoicing companies failed to pay 55.1 billion pesos (US $2.5 billion at today’s exchange rate) in taxes owed to the SAT.
She said it would be difficult for the SAT to recover the full amount but added that it will seek to recoup at least 19 billion pesos.
Buenrostro said fraudulent invoicing companies began to proliferate in 2010 and that the 43 companies against which charges will be brought have links to each other. She said that some of them have the same owners, legal representatives and clients.
The SAT chief said that the companies and individual taxpayers caught up in the fraud will have the opportunity to settle their tax debts with the SAT, explaining that many of them were deceived by the invoicing firms and may have unwittingly paid for invoices related to organized crime.
If they fail to settle their debts, their cases will be referred to tax prosecutors, Buenrostro said.
The tourism industry in Mazatlán is hoping for an early return to this.
Although Mazatlán has yet to announce an opening date for the more than 200 hotels in the city, preparations are underway for it to happen on July 1, should coronavirus conditions allow.
Seventy percent of hotels are already working toward their health certifications in order to resume activities when authorities give the green light, and an announcement on a firm date is expected later this week.
Mazatlán’s Minister of Economic Development, Tourism and Fisheries, David González Torrentera, pledged that once the infection rate decreases enough to move the city’s coronavirus rate from maximum to low risk, “tourism activity will be the first to reactivate.”
González said that in virtual national meetings, municipalities and tourist destinations have asked that the federal government consider classifying tourism as an essential activity, although that hasn’t happened yet.
He projects that domestic tourism, particularly from those within driving distance of the beach destination, could resume quickly once hotels are allowed to open, with hotel occupancy rebounding quickly.
Several resorts have already announced the July 1 reopening date, including Las Flores Beach Resort, El Cid Resort, RIU Emerald Bay Mazatlán, and Pueblo Bonito Emerald Bay.
With projects like the new aquarium and the professional soccer team, the city’s economy remains dynamic, and a big draw for national tourism. González says that in the past 18 months private companies have invested some 24 billion pesos, just over US $1 billion, in Mazatlán, with more commercial and residential projects planned to start later this year.
Beaches, hotels and restaurants have been closed since April 2 in the port city known as the Pearl of the Pacific.
