Children in six states didn't their vaccines between January and October.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell has rejected a study that found that more than 1.6 million children were unable to access essential vaccines between January and October.
A study by the Mexican Vaccination Observatory found that just under 1.66 million children in six states – Durango, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Hidalgo and Campeche – didn’t get the vaccines they required for a range of diseases including measles, hepatitis, diphtheria, polio and tuberculosis.
Of that number, 87% weren’t inoculated because the hospital or health clinic to which they went didn’t have the vaccines.
Asked about the study at a press conference on Sunday, López-Gatell claimed that the data was out of date.
However, he acknowledged that there have been problems with the national vaccination program, asserting that the government is today “trying to rebuild on the damage done, particularly between 2015 and 2018.”
The deputy minister said the government “inherited great vices” from its predecessor, asserting that it purchased vaccines from bogus companies set up for corrupt purposes.
“Some of these companies were barred [from selling vaccines] due to multiple irregularities. By being barred they left a void,” López-Gatell said.
“… The vaccines against tuberculosis and DPT [diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus] were the most affected. Also the vaccines against measles at one point,” he said.
López-Gatell said the government is currently purchasing the three vaccines from different producers around the world.
He said the Mexican government has been buying vaccines from the Serum Institute of India for 30 years without problem except for the 2015-18 period when fraudulent intermediaries got involved in the process.
In addition to the apparent shortage, many babies and children have missed out on essential vaccines this year because their parents didn’t take them to healthcare facilities out of fear of contracting the coronavirus, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Rafael Lozano, director of health systems at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington said that problems with Mexico’s network of infrastructure to keep vaccines cold have also caused people to miss out on getting essential shots.
López-Gatell said last week that Mexico wouldn’t purchase the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine – which the company announced is more than 90% effective – because it doesn’t have sufficient infrastructure to keep millions of doses frozen as required.
Two shoppers in Guadalajara got a good deal on a large purchase of whisky thanks to an error by a supermarket and intervention by Profeco, the federal consumer protection agency.
Profeco stepped in after a Soriana supermarket in the Jalisco capital refused to sell the couple 2,340 bottles of whisky at three for the price of two. The shoppers were taking advantage of a Buen Fin promotion that didn’t stipulate a limit per customer. When the store refused to sell them the liquor, they called Profeco.
Buen Fin, or Good Weekend, is similar to the United States’ Black Friday event. It began November 9 and wraps up Friday.
Profeco said it ruled in the shoppers’ favor because the promotional materials for the offer did not state anywhere that the promotion had a limit on the number of bottles that could be purchased.
The agency itself posted a video on its Twitter account showing the two in Soriana with a Profeco official in front of a large pallet containing their whisky. The agency warned business owners to be mindful of labeling restrictions during the Buen Fin sale, saying that the agency would rule in favor of consumers in the event of such errors.
Stories of retailers failing to indicate prices or restrictions adequately or correctly during Buen Fin — and the drastic monetary consequences to the retailer — have become the stuff of legend in recent years. Errors have resulted in consumers getting highly discounted prices on products.
Profeco tends to rule in favor of consumers. Last year, when Walmart in Durango and Mexico City mislabeled prices of electronics during Buen Fin, customers got unheard-of discounts: in Mexico City, customers got a 24,000-peso Samsung HD smart TV for 2,400 pesos.
In Durango, a mistake in which a comma was used instead of a decimal point on labeling, customers were allowed to buy a 32-inch Pioneer brand smart TV — intended to be sold for 3,788 pesos — for just 3.78 pesos.
Federal authorities chose to flood poor areas of Tabasco in order to prevent water from inundating the state capital Villahermosa, President López Obrador said Sunday.
The president made the remark while inspecting flood damage during a flyover of the Gulf coast state.
“This river is Carrizal, it’s the river that passes through Villahermosa,” López Obrador said while pointing out the window of a military aircraft.
“That sluice was closed and all the water from the [Peñitas] dam continued via the Samaria [River] to the low areas, [to the municipalities of] Jalpa, Nacajuca, Centla. That’s where we have the problem,” he said.
“We had to chose between problems; not to flood Villahermosa and [let] the water go out via the Samaria [instead], via the low areas. Of course the people of Nacajuca, the [Maya] Chontal areas, the poorest areas, were damaged but we had to take a decision. … A major flood was avoided where the majority of the people of Tabasco live.”
Parts of Villahermosa did flood after the Grijalva River burst its banks but authorities managed to stop floodwaters entering the city’s center. López Obrador said that even though it rained more than in 2007 – when 80% of Tabasco’s territory was flooded – Villahermosa didn’t face severe flooding.
The president also said the situation in Tabasco has improved since last week when some parts of the state saw their worst floods in 50 years. However, many roads and a lot of farmland remain under water.
Governor Adán Augusto López Hernández has blamed much of the flooding on the excessive release of water from the Peñitas dam, which was inundated with rain brought by two cold fronts and Tropical Storm Eta.
More than 300,000 people in Tabasco have been affected by flooding, National Civil Protection chief Laura Velázquez Alzúa said on Saturday. A total of 899 communities across the state were flooded, she said.
Almost 55,000 people in Chiapas and just under 11,000 in Veracruz were also affected by flooding, Velázquez said.
At least eight people drowned in Tabasco and more than 20 people lost their lives in Chiapas, including several people who died in landslides.
An army soup kitchen feeds flood victims in Tabasco.
Velázquez said that rivers that run through Tabasco have subsided with the exception of the Usumacinta. Some communities in the municipality of Jonuta remained at risk of being flooded on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, the director of the National Water Commission said that there was no guarantee that the Grijalva River won’t overflow again.
“I cannot say that it won’t overflow nor am I going to say that [Tabasco] won’t flood again. Due to the conditions in which you [Tabasco residents] live, it’s better to be prepared. … You have to learn to live with what’s [around you] and be very aware of the situation,” Blanca Jiménez said.
Recent federal governments have spent billions of pesos on flood prevention projects in Tabaso but none has succeeded in preventing inundations of the state’s cities and towns. However, not all of the money pledged for flood prevention has been invested.
The newspaper Milenioreported last week that just 2.8 billion pesos of almost 20 billion pledged by former president Enrique Peña Nieto was spent on projects in Tabasco.
López Obrador announced last week that his government would implement a new plan to stop recurrent flooding in Tabasco and Chiapas, which could soon receive more heavy rain as Hurricante Iota – expected to make landfall near the Nicaragua-Honduras border on Monday night – approaches.
The hapless dog before its rescue Saturday in Villahermosa.
A Mexican navy video documenting the rescue Saturday of a stranded golden Labrador retriever has captured worldwide attention.
The navy has since announced that it has adopted the dog that was launched to fame on the weekend after the video, posted on Twitter, showed a marine on flooded streets in Villahermosa, Tabasco, encountering the beleaguered dog outside a house on a flooded street.
The 30-second video shows an unhappy-looking dog standing on its hind legs in water outside the window of the house. The marine approached in a rowboat, gave the animal an encouraging pet and helped it aboard.
No one has come forward to claim the dog, navy officials said.
The video has gone viral, gaining over 5 million views, and has been featured in news stories around the world.
#PorSiTeLoPerdiste Personal Naval rescató a un perrito atrapado en medio de las inundaciones en Tabasco, el cual, gracias a los cuidados recibidos, se encuentra a salvo en compañía de sus rescatistas.
The southern region of Mexico, including the states of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Veracruz, were slammed earlier by heavy rains due to the combined effects of two cold fronts and Hurricane Eta. The flooding has been the worst seen in Tabasco for 50 years, affecting more than 300,000 people.
The navy’s new dog has not been named but has been made an official member of the force.
The ruling party's majority in Congress means the bill is likely to become law.
Lawmakers are expected to legalize the recreational use of marijuana by the middle of December but the government institute that will regulate the use and sale of the plant won’t be up and running until 2022.
Miguel Ángel Navarro, a ruling party senator and president of the upper house’s health committee, said the Mexican Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis (Imerecca) will begin operations in January 2022.
Until then, an inter-institutional committee will regulate its use and sale, he said.
His remarks came after the Senate’s justice, health and legislative studies committees approved a bill Friday to legalize the sale and recreational use of marijuana.
The bill will now be considered and voted on by all senators, perhaps as soon as Wednesday. If approved, it will be sent to the Chamber of Deputies for its consideration.
The Supreme Court, which ruled last year that laws forbidding the use of marijuana were unconstitutional, has given lawmakers until December 15 to approve legalization legislation.
The bill approved by the Senate committees replaces a draft proposal they passed in March.
It stipulates that people will no longer require a permit to possess up to 28 grams of marijuana for their own personal use and sets out a range of other rules to govern the possession and use of recreational marijuana.
Among them: people will be allowed to grow up to four marijuana plants at their home for personal use; fines can be imposed on people in possession of more than 28 grams but fewer than 200 grams of cannabis (more serious charges will apply for possession above 200 grams); people will only be allowed to smoke in their own homes or in the premises of marijuana “associations;” and smoking will be prohibited in front of children, adolescents and adults who have not consented to the use of marijuana in their presence.
The bill also prohibits the participation of children and adolescents in activities related to the planting, growing and harvesting of marijuana plants and bans them from selling and using the plant. Anyone caught involving minors in their cannabis-related activities will face hefty fines.
In addition, the bill – which if passed will be called the Federal Law for the Regulation of Cannabis – stipulates that the Health Ministry will oversee Imerecca rather than the Interior Ministry as previously proposed.
The proposed law does not set out rules for the medicinal use of marijuana or the industrial use of hemp.
Navarro said that more work needs to be done with regard to planning the structure of Imerecca and determining how it will be funded.
Ricardo Monreal, leader of the ruling Morena party in the Senate, said last month that he expected a law approving the recreational use of marijuana to be approved before the end of November. He said Morena, which leads a coalition with a majority in both houses of Congress, was unlikely to have problems passing the law.
The conservative National Action Party (PAN) is leading the opposition to legalization although Morena Senator Lucy Meza also expressed reservations last week. PAN Senator Damián Zepeda accused the government of succumbing to “political fashion” and urged that the issue be put to a referendum.
Senator Miguel Ángel Mancera, a former Mexico City mayor who is now the leader of the Democratic Revolution Party in the upper house, is one opposition party lawmaker who does support legalization.
He said it will help remove the taboo associated with marijuana use, and asserted that the public needs to understand that the cannabis plant is not representative of drug trafficking and associated problems.
“We have to remove this stigma from the plant,” Mancera said.
Senator Jesusa Rodríguez of Morena said that “stigmatizing the plant has done brutal damage.”
“The idea that [marijuana] is an evil plant remains fixed in the collective unconsciousness. … Leaving marijuana in the hands of the cartels just [allows] it to reach children,” she said.
Investigators outside the home where the murders occurred.
A Mexico City teenager has been arrested for killing his 7- and 14-year-old cousins with a knife Sunday during a family party.
Shouting “I’m fed up with trying to be perfect for my mother!” the youth also wounded another 7-year-old cousin and an adult relative at the family gathering in the borough of Venustiano Carranza.
The assailant, identified as Mario, stabbed his 14-year-old cousin 10 times, police said. The cousin was dead when emergency personnel arrived. The 7-year-old, who sustained serious wounds to his abdomen, was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where he later died.
The youth also attacked a 10-year-old female cousin after she shouted to the rest of the family for help. The girl’s 27-year-old mother was stabbed several times when she tried to disarm the youth and was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, authorities said.
The youth was finally disarmed by an uncle who persuaded him to give up the knife. The uncle then called emergency personnel.
Authorities told the newspaper El Universal that the 27-year-old female victim said the boy, who lives with his mother, suffered from neglect.
Mexico City Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Ulises Lara López said the youth was in custody and undergoing psychiatric and toxicological evaluation. In addition, he said, the city’s DIF family services agency had been notified and was working in conjunction with authorities on behalf of the minors involved, to investigate the home where the attack occurred.
The Mexico City government will establish 26 new Covid-19 testing points this week, including five outside Metro stations and one at a busy intercity bus terminal.
As of Wednesday, so-called “macro-kiosks” where members of the public will be able to get tested free of charge will be located outside the Mixocac, Etiopía, Pino Suárez, Tacuba and Tacubaya stations.
There will also be testing stations at the San Lázaro bus terminal, outside the Estadio Azteca sports stadium and at the Juana de Asbaje park among other locations with high levels of foot traffic.
In addition, authorities will set up macro-kiosks on the concourse of the municipal offices in 14 of the capital’s 16 boroughs.
The only boroughs where free testing won’t be available outside the municipal headquarters are Coyoacán and Tlalpan. However, residents of those boroughs will be able to access free testing at the stadium and park mentioned above.
After bars shut down Friday night in Mexico City due to new Covid measures, patrons moved into the street to dance.
The Mexico City government said the objective of setting up the new testing points is to identify coronavirus cases more quickly and isolate those who test positive.
The macro-kiosks will complement smaller mobile kiosks where authorities have been performing tests in hotspot neighborhoods in recent months. Authorities will have the capacity to conduct 10,000 tests per day at the testing points, double the current level.
Mexico City will remain at the orange light “high” risk level on the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight system this week but Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said last Thursday that the capital is close to regressing to “maximum” risk red due to a recent rise in hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients.
Even though the risk level will officially remain at high this week, Sheinbaum announced on Friday stricter coronavirus restrictions that require bars and cantinas to close for the next two weeks and limit the opening hours of a range of other businesses.
As of Sunday, Mexico City had recorded just under 180,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 16,383 Covid-19 deaths.
Meanwhile, the national tally of confirmed cases passed 1 million on Saturday and rose to 1,006, 522 on Sunday with 3,269 new cases reported by the federal Health Ministry. The official Covid-19 death toll increased by 283 on Sunday to 98,542.
After media reports focused on Mexico passing the million-case mark, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell called the figure ‘insignificant.’
Speaking at the coronavirus press briefing on Sunday, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said that it was “insignificant” that Mexico had passed the 1 million confirmed cases mark.
“Yesterday the media continued to highlight the issue of accumulated cases and they talked about reaching 1 million inhabitants who have suffered Covid-19. It’s true but it’s a limited version of the information; in reality, if we look at the estimated cases we [already] have more than a million. … Therefore it’s a little bit insignificant [to pass 1 million confirmed cases] but in terms of news it appears attractive to report a round number whenever there is one,” he said.
“What’s important is to be aware of what this means; what it means is that the epidemic remains active,” López-Gatell said, noting that new case numbers are rising after beginning to decline at the end of July.
“Now [cases] are increasing concurrently with the flu season just as we’ve been predicting since March,” he said.
The Health Ministry estimates that there are currently 47,099 active cases across the country. Mexico City leads the country for estimated active cases with 13,258 followed by Nuevo León with 4,153.
In per capita terms, Durango has the highest number of active cases with 78.6 per 100,000 inhabitants. Querétaro is just behind with 78.3.
The Reurbano architectural firm's ethos is "urban recycling," which preserves historic buildings in old neighborhoods while updating them for modern use.
It’s an interesting juxtaposition: new construction in an old, established neighborhood, keeping at least the old facade as — well — a facade.
It provokes mixed feelings. What is kept makes me wonder how much was lost.
This kind of development is done by various companies, and Reurbano specializes in it. One thing that distinguishes the firm, however, is that Reurbano conserves as much of the old building’s interior as possible. Company spokesman Andrés Sañudo says this ethos is almost “dogma” in the firm.
Reurbano’s partners are not conservationists in the classic sense of the word but rather dedicated to reciclaje urbano (urban recycling), applying the concept of recycling to old, neglected buildings. The result is new spaces which combine old and new.
“We work with respect for the blueprint of heritage to preserve and improve the historical character of the buildings,” Reurbano says on its website.
Reurbano seeks out historic but derelict buildings with unique character, like this once-abandoned building in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood.
The firm began in 2010, when founders Rodrigo Rivero Borrelli and Alberto Kritzler began working together on two renovation projects just west of the capital’s historic center. Since then, the partnership has grown organically, adapting itself to the needs of the projects it takes on.
Its work is like that done in major cities all over the world, such as the conversion of old warehouses and other spaces into residences. However, Sañudo stresses that the sociodemographics of Mexico City present unique challenges and opportunities.
Most of Reurbano’s work is done in the neighborhoods that straddle Reforma and Insurgentes avenues, just west of the historic center proper. Neighborhoods such as Condesa, Juárez and Roma were built in the 19th and early 20th centuries for the wealthy. They had been experiencing decline as residents fled to new, car-friendly developments to the west, but severe damage from the 1985 earthquake hastened the process tremendously. Real estate prices plummeted, and structures became abandoned.
These neighborhoods have since experienced a comeback, primarily because they are so close to Mexico City’s financial center and other major employers. However, many abandoned and derelict structures remain in sections of these neighborhoods that haven’t bounced back so well.
Such buildings are attractive to certain niche markets because they’re located in neighborhoods with established personalities. These structures cannot be duplicated, and “they have a premium,” says Sañudo.
But the difficulties working with such properties are formidable. First, there are problems with crime and blight. Making the properties sellable or rentable means making the areas they are in more attractive. This can be as simple as planting trees and adding benches for passersby to increase foot traffic. Often it means working with local neighborhood associations to convince them that Reurbano’s interventions are for the common good.
Before and after: Reurbano renovated this abandoned structure in Mexico City’s historic Juárez neighborhood (left), keeping as much of the original as possible.
One important long-term strategy Reurbano uses is to “cluster” projects on the same street or block so that the effect is cumulative, changing the face of that section of the neighborhood. Three of Reurbano’s early projects did just this, all located on Calle Havre, a small side street in Colonia Juárez.
When the street was all but a ghost town, the firm bought and reworked three old mansions there and even moved their offices to one of them. Since then, other developers have redeveloped five other structures on the same street.
The other strategy is to convert the buildings to mixed use. Upper floors have offices or residences, but the ground floor facing the street almost always has retail space. Reurbano does this to have the building “interact” with the neighborhood — to become part of it.
Redeveloping such buildings is complicated, time-consuming and expensive. There are more factors in the initial analysis, and there is always bureaucracy with heritage authorities. In addition, properties are on small lots, and most do not have garages or the ability to create one.
This means that Reurbano must market to a very different demographic than those who build suburban housing. Residences are targeted to professionals tired of long commutes and willing to shift their transport needs to public services, walking and biking. Such buyers are also attracted by the fact that many of these neighborhoods have small stores, restaurants and cultural centers close by.
Reurbano also has one other arrow in its quiver: often gentrification is preceded by the appearance of artists and other cultural entities who need cheap space — think SoHo, New York in the 1970s. To get this process going as soon as possible, Reurbano leases or rents spaces in its acquired buildings before renovations, sometimes free. The arrangement, Sañudo says, is win-win: the artists and cultural organizations get cheap space, and the area’s face begins to change long before any construction starts.
The firm has dipped its toes into a couple of areas outside its core zone — as far as Tacubaya in the west and Doctores and the historic center in the east. These areas are even more challenging as they are farther from employers and have stronger reputations for blight and crime. However, neither lacks for the “interesting spaces” that Reurbano seeks in potential projects.
The firm’s redevelopment process has been worked out over 10 years, with some problems along the way. Reurbano and other companies have been accused of gentrification practices that work against poor populations in the target neighborhoods. It received bad press a few years ago because of a building it acquired which had preexisting tenants. Mexican law and politics tend to favor occupants over owners. For this reason, they now stick only with truly abandoned buildings.
To date, Reurbano has 11 completed projects, three in progress and four others in planning. The firm has 35 employees, but it also outsources much of the work, meaning that a single project can employ up to 200 construction workers, architects, lawyers and others. Some of its projects have received recognition from architectural competitions and entities in Mexico and abroad.
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.
Sandoval has already been accused by the US of links to drug cartels.
The man who governed Nayarit between 2011 and 2017, already accused by the U.S. government of corruption and taking bribes from a drug cartel, is now being sought by Mexican authorities.
A judge issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of Roberto Sandoval on charges of embezzlement and wrongful performance of duty. According to state authorities, Sandoval is not currently in Nayarit but is believed to have traveled recently to Jalisco and Nuevo León.
A request has been made to Interpol to put Sandoval on the international police organization’s red list.
Justice officials said the former governor could face up to 20 years in prison and would be required to reimburse the state with about 20 million pesos (US $980,000).
He accused Sandoval of misappropriating state assets and receiving bribes from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The former Institutional Revolutionary Party politician has denied all the accusations against him.
Sandoval’s attorney general was sentenced last year to 20 years in a U.S. jail for drug trafficking. Édgar Veytia had pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from cartels to enable them to smuggle drugs into the U.S. from 2013 until his arrest in San Diego, California, in March 2017.
The president urged the ex-governor Saturday to answer to the charges. Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he should confront the accusations and trust in the rule of law.
“… there exists an authentic rule of law, [and] there is no longer a crooked state as before.”
López Obrador urged reporters to investigate book fair chief Padilla, right.
President López Obrador identified a new adversary on Friday — the Guadalajara International Book Fair, which he claimed was dedicated to opposing his government.
The president aimed his criticism at book fair founder and president Raúl Padilla for inviting writers and intellectuals who were opponents of his administration to give presentations at the annual fair, Latin America’s largest.
Questioned by a reporter about a claim by Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro that the federal government was paying for a social media campaign knocking the state government, the president denied the claim and introduced Padilla into the discussion.
Observing that the two had their differences, he said Alfaro “belongs to this group of conservatives; he gets along well with the head of the University of Guadalajara, a historical leader, Padilla.
“Look, the Guadalajara Book Fair, the recent ones, [have been] dedicated against us, but not only that, they bring [Mario] Vargas Llosa, [Héctor] Aguilar Camín and all of those, [Enrique] Krauze,” the president said, referring to writers who have been critical of his government.
López Obrador appeared to be especially irked by Padilla’s remarks about populism when he accepted the Princess of Asturias award for communication and humanities on behalf of the fair last month.
“Books – and the printed word in general – feed on freedom, while at the same time expanding it,” Padilla said. “Political modernity appeared with freedom of the press, with the right to write and publish without restrictions.
“Let us defend this fundamental value, all the more so against the populist governments that today threaten our liberal governance and place democracy at risk.”
For the president, it was the last sentence “that really caught my attention.” He said it reflected “decadence” on the part of universities, intellectuals and “those who hand out these prizes.”
He invited reporters to investigate Padilla. “I’ll leave you with some homework to conduct an investigation to determine since when this man has been in charge of the university.
“And when you have done the research you can help us here so as to inform.”
According to the university, Padilla, 66, was rector from 1989 until 1995. He founded the book fair in 1987.
The book fair responded to the president with a statement saying the event was an initiative designed to promote the flow of ideas and reasoned dialogue. “Over the course of more than three decades it has given space to authors, thinkers and public figures from all countries, all ideological currents and all political affiliations.”
