The robbery of transport trucks has increased 25% during the coronavirus quarantine period and car theft is up 10%, according to a company that specializes in the recovery of stolen vehicles.
The director of LoJack México told the newspaper El Universal that the company had started to see a decline in vehicle theft but numbers shot up again with the commencement of the Covid-19 containment measures.
“About three months ago we started to see very encouraging figures, especially in the central part of the country. … But since the lockdown we’ve had a very marked increase in [the robbery of] heavy vehicles,” David Román said.
He said that thieves are primarily targeting trucks carrying basic goods such as food and other essentials.
“Unfortunately [truck theft] has gone up in virtually the whole country,” Román said, adding that some parts of Mexico have seen sharper increases than others.
“Strangely enough, two municipalities that weren’t reporting such high levels, Zapopan and Guadalajara [both in Jalisco], are starting to have very serious problems. [And] the Mexico City-Puebla corridor continues to be a very significant focal point for these gangs,” he said.
Román said that the highest number of car thefts continue to be in the México state municipalities of Ecatepec and Nezahualcóyotl, both part of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area.
The LoJack chief said that crises always lead to an increase in criminal activity, adding that the National Guard and the army are currently more focused on the response to Covid-19 than public security tasks.
“It reduces the support they provide to other sectors,” he said.
Román warned people to take extra care of their vehicles given that they are more susceptible to theft now than during rosier economic times. He added that LoJack México has an 85% recovery rate of stolen vehicles fitted with the company’s radio transceivers.
Users of internet service provided by Telmex and Telcel experienced network failures in many locations across the country on Tuesday, but the former assured customers that the problem has been fixed.
The firm owned by businessman Carlos Slim said in a press release that the problem was due to a software failure, causing some customers in the cities of Puebla, Veracruz, Villahermosa, Coatzacoalcos, Poza Rica, Irapuato, Aguascalientes and Mexico City to experience service interruptions, although the effects were reported in several other locations.
Telmex added that it “detected the failure thanks to its network management systems, … which allowed it to locate the point of origin and immediately initiate the process to solve it, allowing clients to continue navigating normally.”
For some customers in Oaxaca, service was far from normal for much of the afternoon for both customers of Telmex and the Telcel mobile network.
The internet service troubleshooting website Downdetector reported that the network failures occurred between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.
The problems caused many users to complain on social media about how the failures were affecting their lives. One of the primary complaints came from students trying to study online.
“I have to do homework on the university platform … [but can’t because of] Telmex with its lousy crap,” said one fed-up student on Twitter.
Telmex asked customers experiencing service interruptions to provide their full names, 10-digit phone number associated with their internet account, a cell phone number and email in order to solve any continuing problems with their service.
Despite the company’s statement that service had been returned to normal, users continued to complain of internet failures and the inability to speak with customer service on Wednesday.
Water gushes from a leak in the Cutzamala water system.
A breakdown in the Cutzamala water system left 2.5 million people in the Valley of México without water service, the National Water Commission (Conagua) reported yesterday.
Although it was first estimated repairs would take 20 hours, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced it took only 12 hours to restore service to 12 municipalities in the valley’s metropolitan area.
Affected communities included Acolman, Atizapán de Zaragoza, Coacalco, Cuautitlán Izcalli, Ecatepec, Huixquilucan, Naucalpan, Nezahualcóyotl, Nicolás Romero, Tecámac, Tlalnepantla and Tultitlán.
Yesterday, Sheinbaum indicated via her Twitter account that the government would provide the necessary support to restore service to 100% as soon as possible. Wednesday morning Sheinbaum tweeted that crews worked through the night to fix the mechanical issue, and had finished repairs at around 3 a.m. Once the line filled up again, which takes six to seven hours, water was to be restored.
A broken valve sent a geyser of water gushing from the ruptured line, causing flooding and damaging eight nearby homes.
The Cutzmala water line is one of the largest drinking water systems in the world and consists of a 127-kilometer-long pipeline, seven reservoirs and six pumping stations.
Employees of Electrocomponentes protest April 20 against a lack of health protection measures.
While many manufacturers have been calling on the federal government to allow the reopening of factories that were closed due to the coronavirus, some in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, never closed.
At least 28 factories classified by the government as nonessential are still operating in the northern border city, according to local media reports, including ones owned by United States aerospace company Honeywell, Mexican electronics firm Electrocomponentes and Swedish home appliance manufacturer Electrolux.
The factories have stayed open despite Juárez being the focal point of the coronavirus outbreak in Chihuahua, with 204 of the state’s 314 confirmed cases and 58 of the 67 deaths. The figures equate to an alarming fatality rate of 28 per 100 cases in Juárez – triple the national rate.
Workers and activists claim that the high number of cases in the border city compared to the rest of the state is due to factories and other nonessential businesses remaining open when they should be shut. Some workers say that have been forced to keep working if they want to keep their jobs.
Honeywell workers protest two weeks ago against the company’s decision to continue operating.
However, the company’s employees were still at work on Tuesday, according to the newspaper Milenio, which filmed workers leaving the factory at the end of their shift. Wearing face masks, the employees left the plant to board buses, Milenio said, noting that some failed to comply with the recommendations to maintain 1.5 meters of distance from each other and not to touch their faces.
At least 500 workers at Electrocomponentes have also protested against their employer’s order that they continue to work during the emergency period. They also condemned the company for not granting leave to a female employee who is seven months pregnant.
Many of the factories that haven’t closed in Juárez are owned by United States companies, Milenio said, noting that they likely took the decision to remain open because they have an ongoing obligation to provide products to manufacturers in the U.S.
Many United States factories were classified as essential and have continued to operate even as the number of Covid-19 cases in that country soared.
The factories in Juárez that have refused to close have also violated an order issued by a Chihuahua court.
In response to an injunction request, Judge Madhay Soto Morales ordered the Chihuahua government on April 9 to close all nonessential factories. She also instructed the state Labor Ministry to carry out checks to verify that they had suspended operations.
Lawyer Carlos Joel Vargas argued that state authorities had failed in their responsibility to ensure that factories closed after the federal government ordered the suspension of all nonessential activities in late March.
In failing to uphold their responsibility, authorities have exposed factory workers and the general public to greater risk of being infected with Covid-19, he said.
Some factories in the Baja California cities of Tijuana and Mexicali, both of which have also recorded large Covid-19 outbreaks, have also defied the federal government order to close.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said on April 15 that 15% of businesses in Mexico had not complied with the order and would be shut down. However, it is unclear how many businesses have since been forcibly closed and sanctioned.
Many factories that were forced to close are likely to be able to reopen soon after President López Obrador said last Thursday that he expected an agreement “in due course” that will allow manufacturers that contribute to the North American supply chain to begin operating normally again.
The announcement came after manufacturers in both Mexico and the United States, and U.S. government officials, called on the government to allow certain factories to reopen to maintain regional supply chains.
The health emergency stipulating the suspension of nonessential activities is scheduled to run though May 30.
However, the emergency declaration must be updated before April 30, providing the government with the opportunity to make modifications to the activities it considers essential. Automotive and aerospace are among the sectors that are expected to be given the green light to recommence activities as soon as May 1.
It’s been over a month now, and everyone seems to be getting antsy. I am definitely getting antsy. People who had previously sworn to stay inside until the end have begun venturing out. How do we know that? Because Google knows that. Google knows everything.
I’m finding it hard to judge anyone for going out at this point, even for visiting others. Many of those who live in my colonia are behaving as if it were summer vacation, with cook-outs, kids playing with their neighbors, and teenagers hanging out and making out on the sidewalks.
At this point, I just give a shrug and a chuckle as I pass by, trying to put a reasonable amount of space between us.
Humans were never meant to live alone: we need each other; we’re communal animals. For myself personally, I don’t feel especially scared. I’m healthy with no pre-existing conditions, young-ish, and have been pretty good at staying away from people, and certainly away from crowds, during all of this.
Add to that the fact that Mexican culture and the Mexican way of life are particularly ill-suited for social distancing. We touch each other all the time, we crowd into places, we kiss, we stand, we sit, and we walk close to each other. The lack of concern for “personal space” is reflected in the very architecture of our communities. Why create larger, more open spaces? Just squeeze in there, it’s cozier that way.
Even those who are at greater risk because of age or health conditions seem to be weighing and considering the distress of isolation against the risk of illness and death, with plenty deciding that being with others is what makes life meaningful, virus or no virus.
All that said, if you’re mentally and emotionally able to keep making as good an effort as you can (I’ve never been a purist as a matter of philosophy — something is always better than nothing), give the following strategies for keeping it together a try.
Video chat with friends and family. Especially for those of us who are foreigners and might not have much family here (in a place where they’re so into family that they will literally ditch you to hang out with them), connecting with those who have known and loved us for a long time can be an important lifeline. Having your beverage or herb of choice in hand helps too! And even if you don’t have much news to give, a quick internet search for “games to play on video chats” will give you some good ideas.
Get your headphones on with your favorite playlist or podcast, and take a walk. As therapists constantly remind us, exercise is one of the most under-utilized methods of treating depression. Go around your neighborhood, walk down the street … it doesn’t really matter where, as long as you avoid getting in other people’s personal space.
Do the home improvement stuff you’ve been putting off (that you’ll be able to do on your own, of course)! No time like the present — chop chop! On my docket this week is starting a couple of murals in the back, painting some picture frames, and anchoring my daughter’s toy shelves to the wall in the likely event that she or another child will try to scale them at some point.
Try creating, executing, and sharing some fun assignments that will get you out of your head and out of monotony for a bit. My sister and I recently created a Facebook group modeled after artist Miranda July’s conceptual crowdsourced art project called Learning to Love You More. Each day an assignment is posted, usually something a little weird like “write a haiku poem” or “record yourself singing a lullaby that you liked when you were little.” So you get to have fun doing the assignment, and then you get to have fun seeing what everyone else did! It’s community without physical community, which is the best we can do right now.
Do not worry about your kids’ schooling. Just do not. If you feel like doing the assignments, or think something looks like fun, go for it, but don’t feel guilty about not completing the rest of the school year’s curriculum with them. They’ll be OK, they’re smart, they’ll catch up. I don’t know how many parents (especially mothers) I’ve talked to that are so worried about having to work from home, monitor their children’s online classes, make sure they do their homework — it’s just too much. You know what my kid has done? Mostly watched the 1997 Disney movie Hercules 50+ times. I also got her some roller skates, and we go out every day to practice. Sometimes she also helps with cooking and cleaning, but that’s about it.
These are strange, interesting times we’re living in, folks. Let’s just take care of ourselves and each other as best we can right now.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Lawmakers with Mexico’s ruling party and opposition parties have spoken out against a presidential proposal that would allow the executive to make unilateral adjustments to the federal budget in situations of economic emergency.
President López Obrador is seeking to reform the Federal Budget and Fiscal Responsibility Law so that budget changes do not have to be approved by the lower house of Congress in economic emergency situations such as that brought about by the coronavirus crisis.
Even lawmakers with Morena, which López Obrador led to a comprehensive victory in the 2018 election, have described the president’s proposal as invasive and unconstitutional, the newspaper Reforma reported
The party’s interim national president also expressed reservations about the proposal, which was sent to the lower house of Congress last week.
“We must specify what an economic emergency is, … the Chamber [of Deputies] and the executive should do it. As the constitution states who [has the power] to declare a health emergency or a national emergency, let it be clear who will declare an economic emergency,” Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar said.
“In that way, the constitutional mandate that the Chamber of Deputies is the only power authorized to approve and revise the budget can be saved,” he said.
Deputies with the Institutional Revolutionary Party roundly rejected the presidential proposal.
They said in a statement that it would destroy counterweights in the political system, diminish the separation of powers and violate the constitution.
“The next step would be a dictatorship. No extraordinary situation nor the pretext of an economic crisis justifies the proposal,” the statement said.
Deputies with the Democratic Revolution Party charged that the proposal is of an “autocratic nature,” adding that its approval would represent a backward step after “many years of democratic progress” in Mexico.
The leader of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in the lower house of Congress described the proposal as “perverse,” asserting that the president could seek to use authority over the budget “to rectify the results of his own irresponsibility in the taking of government decisions.”
Juan Carlos Romero Hicks also criticized the proposal for not establishing who would declare an economic emergency and not specifying the exact controls the president would have over the budget.
PAN president Marko Cortés said the proposal seeks to weaken Mexico’s legislative power, asserting that it would place greater power in the hands of the president.
López Obrador wants to spend public money without any oversight, Cortés charged. “He wants to do it by overriding the Chamber of Deputies, which has the sole authority to approve and modify the federal budget.”
Morena Deputy Lorena Villavicencio said that lawmakers with the ruling party are open to making changes to the presidential proposal but conceded that there is not yet any consensus about what modifications are necessary.
López Obrador claimed on Wednesday morning that the opposition to his proposal is politically motivated.
“The [2021 mid-term] elections are drawing near and they want to turn everything into politics, everything is electoral now. … The deputies will decide [whether to approve the proposal or not], those who represent conservatism not only oppose it but spread propaganda about it,” he said.
There was plenty of support for a young boy in Tijuana who decided to trade his toys for food, but a thief prevented the story from having a happy ending.
“As my mom isn’t working anymore, I was worried, and I have two grandparents. My grandfather is elderly and can’t see and they were going to operate on his eyes, but they cancelled it because of the coronavirus,” said Alexis.
Although many of Ortiz’s neighbors took the opportunity to help out a family in need, one man decided to take advantage of the situation.
Claiming to be an engineer, the man asked to use Ortiz’s cell phone to send the location to a friend who could bring food to trade for the toys. But once he had the phone in hand, he took off running.
On the other hand, the story brought Alexis’ family so much help they decided to share what they were given with others in a similar situation.
Alexis isn’t the only one to resort to bartering in order to get by in the extenuating economic circumstances resulting from the crisis. Street vendors in Baja California Sur have also turned to trading directly for food without tourists to keep their sales going.
Some of the poisoning victims had to be airlifted for medical treatment.
Some 32 people in the state of Jalisco have been poisoned after drinking a particular brand of cane alcohol and half of those have died, the state’s Ministry of Health reported.
The culprit, authorities suspect, is a 96-proof brand called El Chorrito which may have become tainted with high levels of methanol during the distillation process. Methanol, typically used in solvents and antifreeze, can metabolize to formaldehyde and formic acid in the liver and become toxic within a few short hours of being ingested.
The first reports of victims began Saturday in Mazamitla and Tamazula. Symptoms reported included dizziness, blurred vision or blindness, difficulty breathing, seizures and severe abdominal pain.
Of the deceased, 15 were men between the ages of 28 and 83. One 66-year-old woman has also died. Some of the victims had to be air-lifted to local hospitals.
The patients who have required hospitalization are 15 men between 22 and 67 years of age and a 29-year-old woman. As of Tuesday, two of those hospitalized had been discharged.
The state prosecutor’s office announced an investigation into the poisonings, which will include a look at El Chorrito’s parent company, Grupo Sáenz, and whether it was authorized to sell the product at a retail level or limited to bulk sales to the industrial and pharmaceutical sectors.
Last year in Costa Rica at least 19 people died from drinking alcohol tainted with methanol.
A truck blocks the tracks in Michoacán during a protest by teacher training students on Tuesday.
At least two students from the Tiripetío Rural Normal School in Michoacán were wounded yesterday after police opened fire on a bus they had commandeered.
In a video purported to show the incident, someone can be heard urging the bus driver to go faster before the sound of gunshots begins. “They are shooting at us!” the person says.
The bus was one of several stolen since Monday by students from at least eight different normal schools, or teacher training colleges, to attend a protest against enrollment limits.
Michoacán’s Public Safety Ministry said one bus blasted through a police checkpoint as it neared the city of Uruapan on Tuesday, prompting authorities to give chase.
On its social networks, the Escuela Normal de Tiripetío posted bloody photos of the injured students, decried the excessive use of force and blamed the attacks on the state and federal governments.
Some reports say that in addition to refusing to stop at the checkpoint, the speeding bus also tried to ram other vehicles and police officers.
Authorities placed blame on the students for their actions, saying they acted in the interest of public safety. They announced a full investigation into the incident.
Normal schools are intended to offer teacher training to poor and indigenous students to help strengthen rural communities. They are also fertile ground for political activism among students, and stealing buses and blocking trains are popular means of protest.
Prior to yesterday’s incident, students allegedly stole a delivery truck and used it block the railway tracks near Tiripetío and stole more vehicles to block the Siglo XXI highway between the state capital, Morelia, and the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas.
In 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa normal school were kidnapped in Iguala, Guerrero, and are presumed dead.
One of many checkpoints controlling access to communities across Mexico. The firearms would indicate they're serious.
Authorities and citizens who have restricted access to 340 municipalities in 15 states across the country are in violation of the constitutional right to free movement, according to the federal Interior Ministry (Segob).
The study released by the ministry’s human rights office reveals that the situation is most severe in Campeche, where all of the state’s 11 municipalities have either prohibited or restricted access.
As many as 80% of municipalities in Guerrero are controlling access, while that rate is 36% in Veracruz and 25% in Oaxaca. State and local authorities have restricted entry in Colima, México state, Baja California Sur, Chiapas and Chihuahua as well.
Segob also called out authorities who have initiated curfews in 31 municipalities in Guerrero, Michoacán, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Jalisco, Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Morelos, Coahuila and Nuevo León.
“The patrols, closures of state or municipal borders, are severe restrictions to free transit. The states and municipalities do not have the authority to order them, unless they have express authorization from the General Health Council to set up screening checkpoints,” said Segob human rights Deputy Minister Alejandro Encinas.
“It’s important to emphasize that access points controlled by indigenous citizens or authorities tend not to have adequate health measures or satisfactory practices for dealing with Covid-19. That’s why their presence doesn’t guarantee that the risk will be minimized. On the contrary, it puts those who participate in them at risk,” he added.
