‘We open or we die:’ restaurants send a desperate message

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January 7, 2021

Valley of México restaurants can only serve customers for take-out or delivery.

Restaurant owners in Mexico City and México state have made a desperate plea to their political leaders to allow them to reopen to in-house dining, saying that their businesses will “die” if they are not allowed to do so.

Restaurants in the capital and neighboring México state were forced to close their doors to customers dining on the premises on December 19 after authorities reimposed red light coronavirus restrictions. As hospitals in the two entities remain under intense pressure from a recent influx of Covid patients, it appears unlikely that the suspension of nonessential economic activities will be lifted on January 11 as planned.

Consequently, restaurants look set to be restricted to takeout and delivery service for the foreseeable future.

In an open letter to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and México State Governor Alfredo del Mazo published Thursday, restaurant owners issued a “call for help,” declaring that they can’t go on as the situation currently stands.

“Restaurants are in danger of disappearing. Since the beginning of the pandemic 13,500 establishments in the Valley of México metropolitan area have closed,” they said.

The letter said that at least 50,000 restaurant sector jobs have been lost during the pandemic and that restaurants no longer have savings to help them survive the economic shutdown.

“In addition, grace periods with our creditors have ended. We are in water up to our necks because we have to continue paying taxes, licenses, services, etc., and with our doors closed it’s impossible not just to pay debts but to survive,” it said.

The document emphasized that restaurants have invested in the implementation of health measures to ensure the safety of employees and customers, and said that international studies have shown that eateries are not sources of coronavirus infection.

“Parties and private events and even informal commerce have caused the pandemic we are living through today,” it said.

The restaurant owners pointed out that other industries are adversely affected by the closure of their businesses and denounced the fact that they have received no financial support from the authorities.

“While in the entire world extensions for the payment of taxes and services, support to negotiate with suppliers and even unemployment subsidies have been given, here there is nothing,” they said.

“In the case of Mexico City, support of 2,200 pesos [US $110] is being granted to some workers in the sector [but] while we applaud this measure the best way to help them would to … [keep] restaurants open.”

In closing, the letter asserted that the end of the pandemic and a “return to normality” is still a long way off despite the commencement of a vaccination campaign. For that reason, finding a way to allow restaurants to welcome in-house diners while red-light restrictions remain in place is urgent, they said.

“It’s about protecting the economy and health in a balanced way. We’re in a crucial moment for survival, and we will continue fighting to preserve this industry that has done nothing but generate benefits for the country. … We ask that the restaurant industry be considered an essential activity and that we be allowed to return to work. If anything is clear, it’s that we [either] open or we die.”

Mexico News Daily

AMLO’s railway dreams: a shrewd calculation or another train wreck?

By

Carlisle Johnson

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January 7, 2021

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Pancho Villa and friends ride the cowcatcher.

Like millions all over the globe, Mexicans have a love affair with trains. Mexican President López Obrador, or AMLO, is no exception, with his at least temporarily stymied-by-environmental-concerns tourist train and a plan to unite northern Mexico with at least the center of the country via new rail routes.

The love affair runs deep through Mexican culture from the romantic ballad El Tren de la Ausencia (The Train of Absence), whose lyrics include the heartstrings-tugging lines, “I’m leaving on the train of absence, I have no return ticket.”

Of course there are heroics, too, as in Engine 501, the tragic ballad of brave brakeman Jesús García who left his mother on a Sunday only to perish trying to extinguish a fire on an explosives train.

The pre-Revolution brings us a now-iconic photo of Pancho Villa riding on the cowcatcher of a locomotive with some mustachioed, bandoliered “revolutionaries;” and the camera in 1917 captures the same Villa dynamiting a train.
The romance continues to the modern day, with the about-to-be-recalled-for-errors 100-peso bill featuring a powerful locomotive.

There is no passenger service in 2021, except for a fully priced tourist train through the Copper Canyon and an informal “Beast” informally carrying would-be immigrants to drop-off points near the U.S. border.

Historically, however, the love has not always been requited. The first concession in the 1830s for a line from the capital to Veracruz never produced a single chug, and repeated storm damage washouts in the late 20th century caused a U.S. concessionaire to abandon its right of way in the far southern area on the border with Guatemala.

The biggest train wreck of all occurred in 1935 when Mexico nationalized the largely U.S.-owned entire rail system, an event from which at least passenger service arguably never recovered. The days have passed on since I could take a passenger train from Mexicali to DF (and return) or an overnighter from DF to Oaxaca.

Enter AMLO. Whether from a disappointed childhood (“I wished for a train set at Christmas”) or a shrewd calculation that inexpensive labor-abundant Mexico could competitively build a new track system to relieve the pressure on the crumbling road infrastructure, AMLO has vowed to reverse the decline.

Only time will tell if his departure ticket is accompanied by a return coupon.

Carlisle Johnson writes from his home in Guatemala.

President heaps praise on coronavirus point man López-Gatell

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MND Staff

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January 7, 2021

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The president shows his support for the deputy minister at Wednesday's press conference.

As Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell continued to face criticism for taking a beach vacation amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic, President López Obrador on Wednesday lavished praise on his coronavirus point man, calling him an “extraordinary” public servant.

Although Mexico’s Covid-19 death toll is just shy of 130,000 – the fourth highest total in the world – the president said that López-Gatell’s work in combatting the pandemic and informing the public about the coronavirus mitigation measures has been “exemplary.”

He denied any suggestion that the coronavirus czar is thinking about stepping down.

“The participation of Dr. Hugo López-Gatell has been a lot of help for us, exemplary,” López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference before contending that there is no other public official in the world with such impressive credentials.

“He’s first-rate, … prepared and a great professional,” the president said prior to calling for the deputy minister’s CV to be put on display.

“Compare this CV with those who were health ministers before. [López-Gatell] is a specialist in pandemics, he’s prepared, with general culture [and has] a capacity for explanation. … It’s very important to know how to convey to people what they must do [during the pandemic]. He has a lot of capacity for that. Furthermore, he’s honest and honorable,” López Obrador said.

Behind the president, a slide showing an image of the smiling deputy minister and detailing his academic background was projected onto a large screen.

Under the heading “expert in epidemiology,” the slide said that López-Gatell is a member of the National System of Researchers, has doctorate and postdoctorate qualifications in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University and is a specialist in internal medicine.

“A doctorate and a post doctorate from this prestigious university in the United States, one of the most prestigious!” López Obrador remarked. “How could we get rid of Dr. Hugo López-Gatell?”

The president charged that the pandemic honcho has been the victim of a “smear campaign,” although it is clear that he ignored his own stay-at-home advice in choosing to travel to the coast of Oaxaca for an end-of-year vacation while the pandemic continued to rage.

“I think it’s very unfair because he’s been applied [to his job] full time. Imagine the pressure, what it means to be managing the actions against the pandemic, with all the pain, all the sadness,” López Obrador said.

“He’s a sensitive man, a human,” the president said before noting that he has been subjected to “blows and blows and blows” – relentless criticism for his management of the pandemic.

“Let it be heard well and far. We consider him to be an extraordinary public servant.”

For his part, López-Gatell on Monday defended his decision to travel to Oaxaca, saying that he had “nothing to hide” and followed health recommendations while visiting “very close relatives” and “very good friends” in the southern state.

Source: Reforma (sp)

2 Mexican cities voted among world’s most friendly

By

Michelle Aguilar

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January 7, 2021

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Two Mexican cities ended up ranking high on Condé Nast Traveler‘s 2020 list of “The Friendliest Cities in the World:” Mérida, Yucatán, which ranked No. 3, and San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, which ranked No. 4.

The rankings were based on reader input to the publication’s annual Reader’s Choice Awards survey, which the magazine said received “an impressive” number of responses, despite 2020 being an unusual year for travel.

Readers gave subjective assessments of a city’s friendliness, focusing on where they felt welcomed as they traveled.

“Did an outgoing local go out of their way to give you directions? Was the city easy to navigate? Did you simply get good vibes from the people around you?” were questions the magazine used to obtain the rankings.

Condé Nast cited Mérida’s Mayan heritage and colonial past as part of its charm and said the inland city draws tourists seeking “a bit of a slower-paced vacation than what you’d find at the bustling all-inclusive beach resorts of Cancún and the Riviera Maya.”

“In Mérida,” it added, “travelers delight in culinary, cultural, and creative experiences — and chatting it up with the friendly locals, who have earned their city the third spot on our list.”

San Miguel de Allende, the magazine noted, had also been voted the best small city in the world in 2020 by Condé Nast‘s readers. It called the locale a “hub for expat artists.”

Citing the city’s more than 350 restaurants — ranging from five-star quality to mom-and-pop style — the publication praised the Bajío-region municipality with having “a diverse and gregarious class of locals,” yet also called it “authentically Mexican.”

Notably, Mérida and San Miguel de Allende were the only two cities in the Americas to make it in the top 10. All the others were located in Southeast Asia, Europe or Australia, as well as New Zealand, which had two cities on the list.

The top 10 cities were:

Chiang Mai, Thailand
Luang Prabang, Laos
Mérida, Yucatán
San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato
Queenstown, New Zealand
Auckland, New Zealand
Galway, Ireland
Dublin, Ireland
Hoi An, Vietnam
Melbourne, Australia

Source: CNN Traveler (en)

Tortilla makers save money and turn to solar power in Querétaro

By

Michelle Aguilar

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January 7, 2021

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Tortilla makers are going off the grid in Querétaro.

Mexico’s history of making tortillas goes back centuries but in the state of Querétaro today’s tortilla makers are producing the staple food in a thoroughly modern way — using solar power.

According to the Federation of Producers of Corn Flour and Tortillas, a trade association for tortilla shop owners and other related producers in the state, 40% of its 389 tortillerías are currently powered with solar panels, which are not only more environmentally friendly than conventional electricity but ultimately cheaper for the proprietors as well, says association president Arturo Campos Novoa.

The eventual goal, says Campos, is to get 100% of shop owners off the grid.

The initiative, which is financed in part by the organization and in part by the state government, allows tortilla shop owners to take out 40,000-peso, low-interest, no-collateral three-year loans to purchase and install the photovoltaic equipment.

As soon as a participating business gets the panels, it stops paying for conventional electricity. Meanwhile, the loan’s monthly payments end up costing about the same or less than owners are used to shelling out for monthly electric bills.

“Over three years, they have to pay [monthly] for the [solar panels], but after that, it will be a benefit to the business,” said Campos, explaining that after the loan term, the owners make more profit since they have fewer overhead costs.

He estimates that altogether, participants in the program are already saving 20,000 pesos bimonthly against projected electricity costs.

And what’s good for tortillerías is also good for Querétaro citizens, he added, since more profitability means that tortillerías can afford to keep their prices down, even when the cost of ingredients goes up.

The state’s price ceiling on tortillas, an amount regulated by the government, has stayed the same in Querétaro since 2018 at 18 pesos per kilo, and Campos predicts that it will remain the same into next year thanks in part to the program.

Sources: El Universal (sp), Diario de Querétaro (sp)

AMLO moves to disband transparency watchdog, other autonomous bodies

By

MND Staff

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January 7, 2021

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inai — The transparency watchdog Inai is among the agencies to disappear.

President López Obrador said Thursday that his government intends to incorporate autonomous organizations such as the national transparency watchdog and the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) into federal ministries and departments.

The president told reporters at his morning press conference that he would meet with his cabinet next Monday to present his plan to disband a range of autonomous bodies in their current form.

He said legal reforms for their incorporation into government ministries and departments – over which he has ultimate control – would subsequently be presented to Congress. The initiative could save the government up to 20 billion pesos (US $1 billion) and that money could be used to purchase Covid-19 vaccines, López Obrador said.

“We’re going to carry out this administrative reform and we’re going to adjust the government to the new reality [and] no longer continue creating these [autonomous] institutions, these bureaucratic apparatuses,” he said.

“Just as they created these [public] trusts and funds willy-nilly” – 109 of which the government abolished late last year – “… autonomous organizations were also created … by executive agreements,” López Obrador said.

“So we have to review all these bodies so that there is no duplication [of responsibilities] because we have to save, be efficient, not have so many apparatuses that eat up the budget.”

The president said that the IFT could be incorporated into the Communications and Transportation Ministry, that the National System for Protection of Children and Adolescents could become part of the DIF family services agency and that the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information could be absorbed into the Ministry of Public Administration, the Federal Auditor’s Office or the office of the anti-corruption prosecutor.

He said the aim of his proposal was not to dismiss employees of autonomous bodies, saying that they could be reassigned to other roles.

Government critics have long accused the president of attempting to concentrate power in the federal executive and his latest proposal gives them another reason to assert that is the case.

“Institutional destruction and the concentration of power continues!” Claudio X. González, a lawyer, activist and outspoken government critic, tweeted Thursday morning.

“We have to stop this before they kill off the whole institutional framework and the autonomous bodies! Vote to throw them out!”

Source: El Universal (sp)

AMLO criticizes social media for blocking Trump’s accounts: ‘I don’t accept that’

By

MND Staff

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January 7, 2021

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lopez obrador — López Obrador: 'If there's censorship on social media, what's left?'

President López Obrador on Thursday criticized social media platforms for blocking the accounts of United States President Donald Trump after a violent mob of his supporters broke into the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

Speaking at his regular news conference, López Obrador said he doesn’t like censorship and that nobody should be deprived of their right to convey a message on Twitter or Facebook.

“I don’t accept that. We all have to show self constraint and guarantee freedom. … How can they censor someone? Let’s see, I punish you because I as a judge, as the holy inquisition, deem that what you’re saying is harmful,” he said.

“… Imagine that Twitter, as a company, decides ‘you no, because what you’re saying is damaging or harmful’ – it goes against good manners. … If there’s censorship on social media, what’s left?”

Twitter and Facebook blocked Trump’s access to his accounts on Wednesday after he used the platforms to publish what The New York Times described as “a string of inaccurate and inflammatory messages” as a violent mob overtook the United States Capitol.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday morning that a block on Trump’s accounts on that platform and Instagram, which it owns, would be extended at least until the end of the U.S. president’s term.

“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete,” Zuckerberg wrote on his own Facebook account.

The Twitter suspension was due to expire this morning but Trump remained silent on Thursday.

López Obrador, who has maintained an unlikely friendship with the U.S. president since assuming Mexico’s top job in late 2018, told reporters that he too has suffered censorship but didn’t elaborate.

AMLO, as the president is best known, is an avid user of social media, and has more than 15 million fans, followers and subscribers across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

As for the turmoil the United States faced on Wednesday, López Obrador said that Mexico wouldn’t intervene in issues that U.S. authorities have to resolve because the Mexican constitution enshrines the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of foreign countries.

However, he expressed regret about the events that took place in Washington and the loss of human life. (A female Trump supporter was shot dead by Capitol police.)

His failure to condemn the events in Washington was criticized by some.

“Mexico’s president, who has described himself as a humanist/pacifist, declines to comment on the violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters, saying he doesn’t opine on other countries’ affairs. Yet just on Monday, AMLO said he favors the U.S. pardoning Julian Assange,” said Eric Martin, a Bloomberg business reporter and former Mexico correspondent, on Twitter.

“AMLO yesterday: proposes giving political asylum in Mexico to [Wikileaks founder] Julian Assange. AMLO today: prefers not to give his opinion about what happened in the Capitol in order to not interfere in the affairs of other countries,” tweeted Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst.

Source: El Universal (sp)

5-year-old among this year’s victims of stray New Year’s bullets

By

Michelle Aguilar

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January 7, 2021

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Juan Carlos was looking forward to Kings' Day when he was killed.

A 5-year-old boy’s death from a stray bullet in the first minutes of the New Year has left a Michoacán community in shock and mourning, and many say that the practice that led to his death — residents greeting the New Year with a hail of gunfire into the air — was inexcusable and criminal.

Juan Carlos Aburto died when a stray bullet passed through the roof of his home in Apatzingán and entered his thorax while he slept. He never even managed to open his eyes, his mother said.

“He tried to breathe, but already he couldn’t,” she said. “That was his last gasp of air, and then my son was gone.”

The Catholic Church declared three days of mourning for the boy. The bishop called the boy’s death a crime and said that in the six years that he has been assigned to the diocese, at least three people have died from related incidents during celebrations.

Authorities publicly condemned the tragedy, which they said happened despite preventive measures this year to avoid the New Year’s tradition. However, no one has been arrested. Apatzingán Mayor José Luis Lucatero said celebratory gunfire had been reduced this year.

Known to family and friends as “El Güerito,” or “the light-skinned one,” Juan Carlos was laid to rest in a tiny white coffin on New Year’s Day, just five days before the Kings’ Day holiday, when he was hoping to receive a ball as a gift from the Three Wise Men.

Instead, his family held a wake and mourned with friends and neighbors for the boy who all described as friendly, interested in learning, a lover of arcade games and prone to singing and dancing. He was known to share with his two siblings, aged 2 and 7, the abandoned toys he collected from the street while selling bread to help his family’s finances.

According to his mother, the bullet that killed her son entered the house through the thin sheet of roofing covering the family’s house and struck Juan Carlos as he clung to a stuffed animal in his sleep.

The boy was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was confirmed dead.

His funeral brought out several members of the community, including a group of taxi drivers who presented the boy’s father with money they had collected on the family’s behalf. Others expressed indignation on social media at Juan Carlos’s death, repeating the slogan, “Not one bullet more.”

The New Year’s practice is not unique to Apatzingán. Federal, state and municipal authorities all over Mexico have called for it to stop. In various locales in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa, people reported injuries from similar celebrations.

In Sonora, a 23-year-old Nogales man got a bullet lodged in his back after it entered his home through the roof. In Hermosillo, a woman standing outside her home was grazed in the hand and a 28-year-old man was wounded in the forearm.

In Culiacán, Sinaloa, municipal and state officials had also made appeals that fell upon deaf ears. Four people sustained minor injuries from stray bullets this year after a hail of gunfire at the stroke of midnight New Year’s Day.

Sources: El Universal (sp), Excélsior (sp) Zócalo (sp), El Sol de Sinaloa (sp)

Discouraged doctors: minister’s beach vacation triggers resignations

By

MND Staff

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January 7, 2021

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The deputy minister in Zipolite, Oaxaca, last week.

Four doctors in Cuernavaca, Morelos, have quit in light of Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell’s end-of-year vacation on the coast of Oaxaca.

The coronavirus point man’s trip to the beach was the final straw that precipitated the doctors’ decision to resign, according to a colleague at the Carlos Calero Elorduy ISSSTE hospital in the Morelos capital.

The doctors were already discouraged by the federal government’s pandemic strategy, the lack of medical personnel, supplies and equipment to adequately treat Covid-19 patients and the irresponsibility of some citizens in the face of the virus threat.

“Four of our colleagues – we’re 23 doctors in the Covid area – resigned because, they said: ‘It’s not possible that we’ve been working our butts off for eight months … and the guy [López-Gatell] does this,'” said a doctor who spoke to the newspaper El Universal on the condition of anonymity.

The deputy minister’s decision to leave the nation’s coronavirus epicenter, Mexico City, to travel to Oaxaca was in clear defiance of the stay-at-home advice he has repeatedly asked citizens to follow.

The anonymous doctor told El Universal that the government’s strategy to combat the pandemic, which López-Gatell leads, has failed, noting that it hasn’t been a forceful advocate for face masks, especially early in the pandemic.

Asked what message he would like to convey to the public, the doctor responded that he would use colorful and forceful language to chide them for not following health recommendations.

“The majority don’t understand; we’ve been without medications for months, literally all the [coronavirus] patients who enter intensive care die, we don’t have enough doctors for the number of patients we have,” he said.

“Now we have an approximate fatality rate of between 60% and 65%, in other words out of 100 patients that come in [to hospital] 60 or 65 die. We’ve saved people who’ve come in not such a serious condition … but the reality is … if you go into intensive care, you die.”

Source: El Universal (sp)

Wednesday’s coronavirus case numbers and deaths set new record

By

MND Staff

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January 7, 2021

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Another suspected victim of Covid-19 is wheeled into a hospital in Mexico.

Wednesday was the worst day of the entire coronavirus pandemic in Mexico in terms of both new cases and deaths reported by federal health authorities.

The Health Ministry reported a single-day record of 13,345 new cases, pushing the accumulated tally to just under 1.48 million. Covid-19 fatalities also hit a new daily high of 1,165, lifting the official death toll to 129,987.

It was the third time in the space of eight days that the Health Ministry registered more than 1,000 additional fatalities on a single day.

There are currently 76,101 active cases across the country, according to Health Ministry estimates.

Data shows that 55% of general care beds across Mexico are occupied by coronavirus patients, while six states have an occupancy rate above 70%. They are Mexico City, 88%; México state, 83%; Guanajuato, 80%; Nuevo León, 79%; Hidalgo, 77%; and Baja California, 74%.

Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio

Nationwide occupancy of beds with ventilators is 46%. In Mexico City, 83% of such beds are taken, while México state has the second highest occupancy rate at 79%.

Of 952 healthcare facilities treating coronavirus patients across Mexico, about 200 are completely full in at least one of three areas: general care beds, beds with ventilators or intensive care beds.

In Mexico City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, 30 hospitals are at 100% capacity for general care beds, 20 have reached a 100% rate for beds with ventilators and 19 are at that level in their intensive care units.

Of the 200 hospitals that have reached maximum capacity in at least one of the categories, 111 are located in just four states, the newspaper Milenio reported. They are Mexico City, México state, Hidalgo and Guanajuato.

Meanwhile, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has called on Mexico to increase spending on healthcare, contending that a budget equivalent to less than 3% of GDP will be insufficient to respond to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 even as Covid-19 vaccines are rolled out.

PAHO representative Cristian Morales Fuhrimann acknowledged that the Mexican government is making efforts to increase the efficiency of the health system and stamp out corruption but urged that more money also needs to be injected into public health.

Healthcare expenditure of less than 3% of GDP – the government’s 2020 outlay was equivalent to 2.5% – won’t be enough to respond to the challenges the country faces, he told a press conference.

Those challenges, Morales said, include the coronavirus pandemic, progressing toward universal health care and establishing a more resilient health system capable of responding to future pandemics and health problems people face every day such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, dengue and HIV.

Mexico has historically spent about 3% of GDP on healthcare, putting it near the bottom of the list in Latin America, where Cuba led with 11.7% followed by Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina with 9% each, according to 2017 data.

President López Obrador vowed a year ago that by 2021 Mexico’s healthcare system will be comparable to those of Canada, Denmark and the United Kingdom.

All three countries spent 10% in 2018.

Source: Milenio (sp)

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