Virus restrictions will be eased Monday in the Jalisco beach destination.
Hotels and beaches in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, are set to open Monday, Governor Enrique Alfaro announced, as coronavirus restrictions are eased in Jalisco and 15 other states.
Hotel occupancy levels will be restricted to 25%-30% in the popular Jalisco destination as well as in neighboring Bahías de Banderas, Nayarit.
Jalisco is one of 16 states where the coronavirus risk level has been moved down a notch from red to orange, allowing a resumption of nonessential activities.
Health authorities will make inspections to ensure coronavirus protocols are being met, with an eye to opening golf courses, public spaces and shopping centers in the near future.
Employers will be responsible for monitoring the health of their workers, and municipal governments will oversee health protocols at beaches.
“We have taken decisions that have allowed us to adjust the definitions of what can be done in these two municipalities so that hotel and tourist activity can begin their recovery process,” said Alfaro.
“We have to learn to live with fear because we cannot stop the economy any longer, because instead of dying of the virus, people are going to starve,” Alfaro added, imploring residents to continue to be mindful of social distancing and other coronavirus guidelines.
The reopening comes as Puerto Vallarta prepares a multimillion dollar marketing campaign aimed at enticing tourists from the United States, Canada, and large cities in Mexico to the beach destination with a goal of reaching pre-pandemic levels of visitors by the end of the year.
As of Friday, Jalisco had 3,704 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and had seen 319 deaths.
Next week's stoplight risk map shows half the country has a reduced coronavirus risk level. Colored indicators show hospitalization trends, red meaning they are on the increase, orange stable and yellow declining. milenio
Health authorities presented a new coronavirus “stoplight” map yesterday that will allow half of the country to begin to ease coronavirus restrictions as of Monday.
The previous map showed the entire country painted red, meaning that all 32 states were at “maximum risk” for contagion. The new map has 16 states at the orange level, meaning there is a “high level” of risk for transmission of the virus. One of the reasons for the change is that federal health officials have reevaluated their criteria.
The stoplight map assesses states based on four factors: case number trends (whether new infections are increasing, decreasing or stable), hospital admission trends for coronavirus patients, hospital occupancy levels and positivity rates (the percentage of people tested who are confirmed to have Covid-19).
Previously, if a state was deemed to be at maximum risk in any one of the four indicators, the state earned a blanket red designation.
This didn’t sit well with governors of several states. Jalisco’s Enrique Alfaro questioned the federal government’s criteria, methodology and intentions after his state was painted red at the end of May.
Virus cases and deaths since May 26. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
He declared that it was “absurd” that his state should be given a red designation when only one of the four indicators was red.
Mexico’s coronavirus point man, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, said Friday that after discussions with state governors the federal government is assessing the classification differently.
Hospital occupancy now carries a weight of 50%, case numbers and hospital admission trends 20% each and the number of new cases 10%.
The 16 states rated at the orange alert level are Aguascalientes, Baja California Sur, Campeche, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nuevo León, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosí, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Yucatán and Zacatecas.
Despite the federal government’s classification of Mexico City as red and at maximum risk, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced plans to transition to orange on Monday.
Federal health authorities reiterated that state and local governments will ultimately define what activities can resume, but under the federal definition nonessential activities can begin again and public spaces such as parks and beaches can be reopened but at limited capacity.
The news comes as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise. As of Friday, Mexico had 139,196 confirmed cases, an increase of 5,222 over the previous day, and 16,448 people had died. An additional 504 fatalities were recorded yesterday.
Health officials report that 46% of the country’s hospital beds are occupied and 38% of its beds with ventilators are in use.
Parks, plazas and other outdoor public spaces in Querétaro will be permitted to reopen at 50% capacity.
Some nonessential businesses will be allowed to reopen in Querétaro next week, Governor Francisco Domínguez Servién said Thursday.
“We took the decision to seek economic stability and reactivate certain nonessential activities starting next Wednesday, June 17,” he said.
Domínguez said that the coronavirus risk level will change from red to orange next Wednesday, allowing some shuttered businesses to reopen at reduced capacity and with strict health measures in place.
Hotels will be allowed to reopen at 30% capacity, restaurants and cafes will be able to resume table service at 50% capacity and hair salons and barbers will be permitted to offer their services by appointment only and at 50% of their normal capacity.
Gyms, swimming pools, spas and massage parlors will also be allowed to reopen at 30% capacity, while shopping centers will be able to operate at 25%.
Mayor Sheinbaum announced a gradual reopening would begin Monday in Mexico City.
Churches and other places of worship will also be allowed to reopen their doors but mustn’t exceed 25% capacity and religious services remain suspended. Parks, plazas and other outdoor public spaces will be permitted to reopen at 50% capacity.
The change from “red light” maximum risk level to “orange light” high risk will not, however, allow the reopening of bars, nightclubs, amusement parks, cinemas, theaters and museums. Events at which large numbers of people gather also remain suspended.
Querétaro has recorded 1,346 Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, of which 293 are currently active. The state has also recorded 174 coronavirus-related deaths.
The governor warned that new cases and more deaths will occur in Querétaro, and stressed the importance of continuing to take precautions to limit the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday that the risk level in the capital will remain at red next week but a transition toward the “orange light” phase will nevertheless commence on Monday.
She said that the hoy no circula, or no-drive day, restrictions currently in place for all residents regardless of the age of their vehicle will be lifted on Monday and that some of the subway and bus stations that were closed will reopen.
Sheinbaum also said that the manufacturing sector will be permitted to operate between Monday and Thursday starting next Tuesday and that small neighborhood businesses will be allowed to reopen on June 18.
The mayor said the hospital occupancy level in Mexico is 68% but trending downward. She has said previously that the capital will switch to the “orange light” stage once the occupancy level is below 65%.
Mexico City is the country’s coronavirus epicenter, having recorded more than 34,000 confirmed cases and 4,266 deaths.
Just over 4,000 of the cases are currently active, according to official data.
A translucent obsidian spangle. Note size of hole. Rodrigo Esparza
I first saw them in the delightful little museum of Ameca, Jalisco, located 60 kilometers west of Guadalajara. There were more than a hundred of them: thin disks of obsidian no more than an inch in diameter, each one with a tiny hole right in the center.
Some museologist had strung them all together (unfortunately using an ugly green plastic cord) to form a shimmering pectoral which was impressive indeed.
I admired the pectoral, but what I couldn’t get out of my mind was the fragility of those disks, some of them as thin as a dime. How had they been made and — all the more intriguing — how could anyone possibly have put a neat little hole through every one of them without shattering the glass? My surprise at the thinness of those disks was based on my own experience trying to help out that druid …
Oops, let me back up a bit.
Obsidian is natural glass that comes from a volcano. Mexico’s state of Jalisco has more sources of obsidian than any other region in Mesoamerica and the fourth largest deposits of the natural glass anywhere in the world.
Anthropomorphic obsidian “charms” may have been sewn on clothing as spangles.
That’s why “the druid” contacted me. Well, to be more precise, he was an Englishman who desperately needed a disk of green obsidian for what he described as a druidic ceremony.
Now I just happened to know of an excellent source of green obsidian, but my modern-day druid insisted he wanted it in the form of a thin disk one inch in diameter, with a biggish hole in the center, and — via email — he asked me to find a Mexican artisan who could make such a disk.
So, off I went to my favorite obsidian craftsman, Don Eleno, who said, “Claro qué sí, I can make the disk and the hole, but the thinnest I could possibly get it is a quarter of an inch (6.4 mm).”
So, standing there in the Ameca museum in full vision of all those ancient disks, maybe 2 mm thick, I wondered just how those pre-Hispanic artisans had done it.
Soon I learned that many such disks had been found in the vicinity of Tequila Volcano and the first persons to write about them were archaeologists John Clark and Phil Weigand. They declared that the little jewelry disks had not been produced through grinding and polishing (Don Eleno’s technique).
“Percussion was used,” they said, following the obsidian blade-making procedure succinctly described by the 16th-century Spaniard Toribio of Benavente, a Franciscan missionary known as one of the “12 apostles of Mexico.”
Flat obsidian core is “as thick as the calf of the leg.” Chris Lloyd
“It is in this manner: first they get out a knife stone (obsidian core) which is black like jet and 20 cm or slightly less in length, and they make it cylindrical and as thick as the calf of the leg, and they place the stone between the feet, and with a stick apply force to the edges of the stone, and at every push they give, a little knife springs off, with its edges like those of a razor.”
But what about the hole? How do you pierce a glass disk no thicker than a coin, without breaking it?
Along came another archaeologist, Rodrigo Esparza, who put a couple of these disks under the microscope to find out.
The holes, Esparza told me, are sometimes in the center, but more often near the edge in the pieces found in western Mexico and in a few cases there are two holes, one at each extreme.
“If making a flake is complicated,” commented Esparza, “putting a hole through a sheet of obsidian only two millimeters thick is even more complicated. We decided to analyze the orifice with a stereoscopic microscope and a scanning electron microscope. The results revealed a very sophisticated technology for drilling a hole.
“With the stereoscopic microscope we could see that the surface had been rubbed with sand to facilitate drilling. To start to make the orifice, a very fine auger, perhaps of bone or horn, was used, plus the dust of ground quartz or flint as an abrasive. With different magnifications, we could see that the friction tracks inside the hole were circular and uniform. This suggests that a string-powered drill was used to produce smooth, balanced movement.”
Necklace with round and anthropomorphic spangles. Rick Echevería
This drilling technique, by the way, contrasts with the system used to perforate similar obsidian disks found near Teotihuacán. Archaeologist Alejandro Pastrana told me that only percussion had been used and when he and his teammates tried to replicate the procedure, “it took more than a thousand tries, over a period of two years, before we succeeded.”
Apart from shiny disks, collectors in western Mexico had also acquired thin obsidian “charms” shaped like animals, humans and even plants. All of these were pierced, suggesting they were designed to be strung on a necklace.
One little problem with all of this — from the point of view of an archaeologist — was that none of the items they were examining were in situ. Without some sort of context, there was no way of determining their age.
Then, in 2002 and 2003, archaeologists discovered several undisturbed tombs in Circle Six of the Guachimontones, the “circular pyramids” located 40 kilometers west of Guadalajara.
“Erick Cach was digging there,”says Rodrigo Esparza, “and out came four little round disks in one of the burials. Well, radiocarbon dating proved that that burial was from 180 to 100 BC.”
Esparza calculated that by the year 100 AD the shiny pierced disks had gone out of style.
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“Who knows why,” says the archaeologist. “Maybe a political change took place, maybe an elite family lost power or maybe this type of jewelry simply went out of fashion.”
Speaking of fashion, just how were these disks used? Stringing them like beads to form a necklace would have been highly impractical. The tiny holes (sometimes only half a millimeter wide) would only admit a slender string which the hole’s sharp edges would soon cut.
Far more logical would have been to sew the discs onto clothing, as spangles and sequins are used today. This would have shown the shiny, mirror-like surfaces to advantage and would have made the wearer sparkle like Elvis.
It’s easy to imagine this truly dazzling figure standing atop one of the Guachimontones, which surely must have functioned as excellent stages, because anyone on top would have been visible to every last one of hundreds of people filling the circle around the mound.
Was the elite, glittering VIP covered with flashing spangles a singer, a dancer, a preacher or a politician? Whatever the case, he or she would certainly get the crowd’s attention.
And there you are. That, I think, is why spangles were all the rage at the Guachimontones in the year 100 BC … and that’s what I call entertainment!
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
A convicted drug lord provided information to United States authorities between 2008 and 2010 that linked former president Felipe Calderón and members of his government to Mexican drug cartels.
Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a United States citizen nicknamed La Barbie because of his fair skin, collaborated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) while he was working as a drug trafficker with the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel.
That information has only recently come to light because court documents from Valdez’s 2018 sentence hearing in Atlanta, Georgia – at which he was sentenced to almost 50 years in jail – have been declassified.
Valdez told U.S. authorities that corrupt officials in the Calderón government revealed the identity of DEA agents in Mexico to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. The corrupt officials also supplied the cartels with photographs of the agents and told them where they were located, Valdez told authorities.
One DEA agent was murdered in the period in which the officials were supplying the confidential information to the cartels.
Calderón, right, and his security minister, Genaro García.
In a report published Thursday on the news website Aristegui Noticias, Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández noted that a lawyer for Valdez gave her a letter in 2012 in which the trafficker-cum-informant claimed that he had given multimillion-dollar bribes to Genaro García Luna, Calderón’s security minister who was arrested in the United States last December.
In the letter, published in November 2012 by the newspaper Reforma, Valdez also claimed that Calderón, the president who launched the so-called war on drugs shortly after he took office in late 2006, had personally met with drug traffickers.
Hernández wrote that Valdez most probably shared that information with the DEA and FBI between 2008 and 2010.
A lawyer for Valdez said in 2018 that Calderón’s crackdown on cartels was not in fact a war against drugs but a “war for drugs.”
In the letter given to Hernández, Valdez said that his arrest in Mexico in 2010 came about because he refused to cooperate with Calderón.
“My arrest was the result of political persecution by Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, who initiated harassment against me because I refused to be part of the agreement that Mr. Calderón Hinojosa wanted to have with all the organized crime groups,” he wrote.
Calderón has steadfastly denied any involvement with criminal groups and has also said that he had no knowledge of García Luna’s alleged collusion with cartels.
A federal judge has issued a suspension order against a new energy policy that seeks to consolidate control of the electricity market in the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission and limit the participation of renewable energy companies.
But just hours after the ruling was handed down on Thursday, the federal Energy Ministry (Sener) said it would challenge it.
That declaration came after Judge Rodrigo de la Peza granted a definitive suspension against the policy published May 15 to Defensa Colectiva, an independent advocacy group.
The policy imposes restrictive measures on the renewable energy sector such as limiting the number of permits that can be issued for new wind and solar projects and prohibiting their construction in parts of the country where there are already a large number of renewable plants.
In his ruling, De la Peza said that “by establishing entry barriers to the wholesale electricity market,” the policy posed a threat to free economic competition.
While the policy hinders the entry of new renewable projects to the electricity market, it allows for an “anti-competitive strengthening” of plants that generate power using fossil fuels, the judge said.
In contrast to wind and solar projects, fossil fuel-powered plants “will be able to enter into operation and remain in the market, … at least with greater ease,” de la Peza said.
His suspension order is the second issued against the Sener policy. Greenpeace was granted a provisional suspension order and is awaiting a decision on its request for a definitive one.
After the suspension order was issued on Thursday, Sener announced that it would fight the ruling, asserting in a statement that economic rights would not be allowed to take precedence over the interests of the country.
“No economic right will prevail over the general interest and that of the nation when it affects the reliable supply of electricity,” Sener said.
Electricity is a “necessary” and “strategic” service with national security implications “that the state must guarantee for all Mexicans,” it said.
The ministry also said that the state has an exclusive constitutional right to make plans for and control the national electricity system. The new policy establishes technical criteria that allow all energy generation methods to be incorporated into the national grid, including renewable ones, Sener said.
The new policy will provide certainty to projects that comply with the criteria it establishes, it said.
Prior to the publication of the new policy, the National Energy Control Center (Cenace) suspended national grid trials for renewable energy projects under the pretext that the reliability of supply had to be guaranteed during the coronavirus crisis.
Suspension orders have also been issued against that decision but Cenace has indicated that it will launch legal challenges against them.
A drink made from fresh milk, chocolate, sugar and cane alcohol is coming to be known as the “drink of death” in Jalisco, where 25 people have died and 20 more have been sickened after drinking the concoction, known as pajarete.
Health Minister Fernando Petersen Aranguren is asking residents not to consume artisanal drinks because the quality, purity and safety of cane alcohol used in their production cannot be guaranteed.
Family members of Gustavo Chávez Anaya, who died on April 29 at age 61, say he only had one serving of the popular regional beverage before falling ill.
“He felt his hands grow numb, his body heavy, and he could not see well after drinking it,” said his niece, Carolina Chávez.
His symptoms were typical of what occurs after drinking alcohol tainted with excessive levels of methanol.
Typically used in solvents and antifreeze, methanol can metabolize to formaldehyde and formic acid in the liver and become toxic within a few hours of being ingested.
Symptoms included dizziness, blurred vision or blindness, difficulty breathing, seizures and severe abdominal pain.
The pajarete tradition is popular on ranches in Jalisco, Michoacán and Guanajuato, where many drink it in the morning for energy.
Many cattle ranchers also produce it for profit, as the market for fresh milk is oversaturated and a liter of pajarete, which uses milk as an ingredient, fetches a higher price.
The president of Jalisco’s Regional Livestock Union, Adalberto Velazco, estimates that hundreds of ranchers across 45 municipalities are dedicated to producing pajarete, but as deaths mount their industry may be shut down by authorities.
Adulterated liquor, like the cane alcohol used in pajaretes, has been responsible for at least 189 deaths in Mexico since May 1.
Fishermen from Cozumel, Quintana Roo, encountered a rare, six-meter-long oarfish this week.
In a video posted to Facebook, the fishermen filmed the bizarre-looking fish they found swimming close to the surface before they gaffed it and brought it on board. It appeared to have suffered a bite wound, the fishermen said, suggesting that was the reason it had left deep water.
According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, the oarfish, whose scientific name is Regalecus glesne, can grow to 10 meters long, and weigh up to 270 kilos. It is the longest bony fish in the world.
Because of its bizarre, elongated appearance, it has been associated with sea serpents in some cultures. Japanese legend has it that their appearance is a harbinger of earthquakes and tsunamis, postulating that the oarfish is a messenger sent from the palace of the sea god regarding impending disaster.
The oarfish typically lives at depths of 200 to 1,000 meters and scientists think that it is actually storms or strong currents, rather than an impending seismic disaster, that can push injured fish into shallow waters where they often die.
The Cozumel oarfish gaffed by a fisherman this week.
Otherwise, the reclusive fish has rarely been seen in its normal habitat, although scientists do know that it is one of the few animal species that can self-amputate; when encountering a predator the oarfish is able to drop up to 75% of its body length and swim away if it feels threatened.
The oarfish, which feeds on plankton, squid and crustaceans, is found worldwide in tropical and temperate waters.
Although sightings in Mexico are rare, two young men from Texas found a juvenile oarfish washed up on the beach of Baja California Sur’s East Cape region in July 2019. They helped oxygenate its gills then guided the fish into deeper waters where it swam off, apparently healthy.
The three suspects arrested in the death of Giovanni López.
The Jalisco Human Rights Commission (CEDHJ) has concluded that the death of Giovanni López, a 30-year-old man apparently arrested for not wearing a face mask, was an extrajudicial killing at the hands of municipal police.
The commission said in a report that López’s death was caused by a beating to which he was subjected after he was arrested by police in Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos, a municipality south of Guadalajara, on May 4.
“His death occurred when he was in the custody of police officers in municipal government facilities,” the CEDHJ said.
“Giovanni was beaten excessively by municipal police officers. … Everything indicates that his death was the result of the injuries he suffered.”
The rights commission said police intended to cause López to suffer and intimidate him.
The officers acted in a “conscious” manner and used “disproportionate” violence, the CEDHJ said.
“By beating the victim on repeated occasions, the police officers committed acts of torture, violating his right to personal safety,” it said.
According to police records, López was placed in municipal cells at 10:17 p.m. on May 4. The warden on duty said that he was already in poor health when he was locked up.
There is no video footage of López while he was being held at police facilities because the closed circuit camera system was not operating as it should have been.
The morning after he was placed in a cell, López was taken to a private hospital in Chapala for a CT brain scan. He arrived at the facility with two police officers, two paramedics and a man who appeared to be a specialist doctor.
While he was waiting for the scan, López was agitated and attempted to get off the gurney on which he had been placed. Just when he was about to be taken in for the scan, the specialist doctor said it wouldn’t be necessary and López was removed from the hospital.
He was subsequently transferred to municipal medical facilities in Ixtlahuacán where he was pronounced dead at about 12:00 p.m. on May 5. The cause of his death was determined to be a traumatic brain injury. He had also been shot in the foot.
Ixtlahuacán’s municipal police force was disarmed last Friday and a police commissioner, a middle-ranking commander and a police officer were arrested in connection with the case.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro and Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solís have denied that López was arrested for not wearing a face mask as his family claims. The latter said that he was arrested for “aggressive behavior.”
No face mask means jail time in Santiago Cacaloxtepec, Oaxaca.
The mayor of this mostly indigenous municipality in the state’s Mixtec region is imposing some of the strictest coronavirus restrictions in the country, including fines and 24 hours in jail for not wearing face masks in public.
Until a few days ago, Cacaloxtepec was included on the federal government’s “Municipalities of Hope” list, meaning that authorities considered the risk of coronavirus contagion to be minimal enough for restrictions to be lifted.
But the municipality confirmed its first case on May 19 and the mayor decided to crack down, developing a community health emergency plan that goes above and beyond measures taken by other areas.
In addition to a 200-peso fine and a day in jail for not wearing a face mask, the same punishment can be imposed for those who do not comply with social distancing or neglect to use antibacterial gel.
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The local council also agreed on a curfew, closing the town to visitors from 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m., and not allowing anyone outside their homes after 10:00 p.m.
As well, all schools will remain closed for an indefinite period as Mayor Teresita del Carmen Martínez Flores applies a “red light” designation for maximum risk of coronavirus transmission.
Health checkpoints have been established at the entrances to the town, where the names of all those who enter will be recorded. People who enter the town from elsewhere and intend to stay will have to quarantine for 14 days, and public transit vehicles can only carry three passengers at a time.
Religious services, including funerals, have been canceled.
Martínez says her government will work with neighboring municipalities to coordinate efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, and the emergency plan will be regularly evaluated beginning June 15 when authorities will determine whether restrictions should be eased or tightened.
