López-Gatell warned Friday that many businesses continue to defy the order to close.
Under pressure from the United States and manufacturers on both sides of the border, the Mexican government announced on Friday that it would reopen automotive factories which it had previously deemed unessential businesses.
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry assured that the reopening would come with strict safeguards to protect the health of workers. “The Mexican government will be emphatic about health protection and will ensure that the reopening will be orderly, gradual and cautious,” it said in a statement.
The automotive industry accounts for 17.6% of the country’s manufacturing sector and, as of July 2019, employed some 977,000 people.
The move comes after the United States ambassador to Mexico posted a message on Twitter on Tuesday to persuade the government to get automakers back to work out of concern for the North American free trade zone’s supply chain.
“There are risks everywhere, but we don’t all stay at home for fear we are going to get in a car accident,” Ambassador Christopher Landau tweeted. “The destruction of the economy is also a health threat.”
Landau’s remarks echoed the concern of U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord, “we are seeing impacts on the industrial base by several pockets of closure internationally. Particularly of note is Mexico, where we have a group of companies that are impacting many of our major primes,” she said.
Economic pressure could mean that Mexico’s maquiladora sector, which also makes electronics and aerospace goods, could also reopen on a staggered schedule and with somewhat limited capacity.
However, dozens of maquiladoras deemed non-essential continue to operate in violation of the government’s order anyway. Lear, an automotive seat plant in Ciudad Juárez, finally closed down operations on April 1 after 16 of its workers died from the coronavirus.
Mexico’s Deputy Minister of Health underscored the need for most businesses, big and small, to obey quarantine regulations and remain shuttered, arguing that business owners, managers and shareholders need to abide by measures “that have a constitutional basis to protect one of the most important assets, people’s lives.”
Hugo López Gatell said Friday evening that businesses continue to defy the order to cease operations, warning that they are impeding the process of slowing the spread of the virus.
The reopening of factories would come at a time when Mexico has yet to see peak pandemic numbers. Currently, the country has 12,872 confirmed cases and has seen 1,221 deaths, although the Health Ministry estimates the actual rate of infection may be eight times that due to insufficient testing.
Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) is warning that unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic may lead to an uptick in recruitment by organized crime.
The UIF, a government agency designed to track and prevent financial fraud such as money laundering and the financing of terrorism, came to the conclusion in part after noticing a surge in internet fraud.
The UIF also pointed out other opportunities for the propagation of illegal activity during the pandemic it continues to monitor.
In a recent virtual meeting with government officials, UIF chief Santiago Nieto highlighted the need to make sure that supplies of fentanyl, a medicine used in the treatment of the coronavirus, go to pharmacies and hospitals instead of ending up in the hands of organized crime and drug addicts.
Nieto also advocated for government assistance to those who have lost their jobs, cautioning that without federal aid, many people are turning to pawnshops and predatory money lenders.
He said his agency is monitoring the situation closely, especially in the case of online crime via social media platforms, the use of money transfer services and suspicious bank deposits to launder money, and cases of price gouging.
Non-profit organizations soliciting donations to help fight the coronavirus can also be used as fronts to launder money, he said.
Governmental corruption during the pandemic is also a possibility Nieto raised, noting that his office is investigating the theft of supplies from a Mexican Social Security Institute warehouse. The UIF is currently investigating Health Ministry officials during the presidency of Peña Nieto for tax fraud.
As more cash begins to circulate outside the formal economy, Nieto cautioned, the probability of “issues related to possible cases of corruption and issues related to organized crime,” will be on the rise.
Trade negotiators signed the new deal in Mexico City in December before President López Obrador and other officials.
The new North American free trade agreement will take effect on July 1, replacing the 26-year-old NAFTA.
The United States notified Mexico and Canada on Friday that it had completed the domestic procedures required to implement the new pact, the final step needed for the USMCA to enter into force.
Mexico advised its trade partners on April 3 that it had completed its own domestic requirements to implement the agreement while Canada did the same a day earlier on April 2.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) said in a statement that the entry into force of the USMCA will mark “the beginning of a historic new chapter for North American trade by supporting more balanced, reciprocal trade, leading to freer markets, fairer trade and robust economic growth” across the region.
The agreement, the result of a lengthy and at times heated negotiation process that started during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, contains “significant improvements and modernized approaches to rules of origin, agricultural market access, intellectual property, digital trade, financial services, labor, and numerous other sectors,” the USTR said.
“These enhancements will deliver more jobs, provide stronger labor protections, and expand market access, creating new opportunities for American workers, farmers, and ranchers.”
Jesús Seade, deputy foreign affairs minister for North America and the government’s chief USMCA negotiator, expressed his satisfaction with the U.S. notification on Twitter.
“We are delighted with this fundamental step for the North American region! The USMCA is crucial for the three countries,” he wrote.
“We could discuss a thousand things about the entry into force of the USMCA … but let’s not complicate things: the USMCA is a great instrument for the medium and long term, and a vital base for the … relaunch of the economy after the Covid-19 crisis.”
United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that “the crisis and recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates that now, more than ever, the United States should strive to increase manufacturing capacity and investment in North America.”
The entry into force of the USMCA, he added, “is a landmark achievement in that effort.”
Heriberto Aguirre during his quest to find a hospital bed.
An 83-year-old man displaying coronavirus symptoms including difficulty breathing spent a horrific 10 hours searching for a hospital in Mexico City that would admit him, the newspaper Milenio reported.
After Heriberto Aguirre was feeling sick for four days and had paid two visits to a private doctor that did nothing to ease his discomfort, his family decided he needed urgent medical attention, his daughter said.
They set out from his home in Xochimilco via ambulance on Thursday morning around 9 a.m. It wasn’t until 8 p.m. that they finally found a hospital that would admit him.
Their first attempt was at the Manuel Gea González General Hospital in Tlalpan, but that facility was already at capacity, and they were turned away, as he was at the two hospitals they subsequently tried in Tláhuac.
That afternoon, Aguirre was also turned away from the Hospital Español because it had run out of beds. He then traveled to the Ministry of Defense’s Central Military Hospital, but did not have the proper credentials to receive treatment.
Aguirre’s breathing became more labored, and his family’s desperation mounted as paramedics patiently tried to get him the medical help he needed.
As what they thought was a last resort, the family took him to a private clinic in Francisco del Paso y Troncoso where they agreed to pay nearly US $1,000 to have him admitted, and then another US $1,000 for each day of treatment. A stay of five to 10 days is not uncommon for hospitalized coronavirus patients and can be substantially longer.
Fortunately, his persistent relatives went back to the Manuel Gea González General Hospital which had originally declined to admit Aguirre that morning and were able to convince medical staff to give him a bed.
One option that could have saved the patient and his family legwork and stress is if they had made use of an app available on the Mexico City government’s website, which uses GPS coordinates and real-time data to help show which are the closest hospitals receiving patients. The government is also urging those who are critically ill to call 911 for assistance in locating care.
Covid-19 cases have soared in central Mexico and the country’s southeast since the government declared the start of phase three of the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, fueling a nationwide increase in case numbers of almost 50%.
The federal Health Ministry reported on Monday that there were 8,772 confirmed cases of Covid-19. On Friday, four days into the most critical phase of the outbreak, that number had grown to 12,872, an increase of 46.7%.
Case numbers in central Mexico and the southeast increased by an even higher 50% in the same period while those in western Mexico grew by a more modest 42%. Infections in the north increased by 38.4% in the four-day period.
There are now 6,687 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in central Mexico, a region defined by the Health Ministry as Mexico City, México state, Puebla, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Morelos, Tlaxcala and Querétaro. The figure accounts for 52% of the total number of confirmed cases across the country.
Among the central states, México state recorded the largest increase in case numbers between Tuesday and Friday – an alarming 121% spike. There were 901 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the state on Monday but that figure had grown to 1,992 by Friday.
Confirmed cases as of Friday. An interactive version of this map can be seen here.
Morelos recorded the second highest increase in case numbers in percentage terms with the number of people infected rising to 146 from 85 on Monday, a 71.8% jump. Case numbers in Hidalgo increased 68.5% to 155 while those in Mexico City rose 30.3% in the four-day period to 3,532. There are more confirmed cases in the capital than in any of the country’s 31 states.
In Mexico’s southeast – defined as Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Veracruz, Yucatán, Guerrero, Chiapas, Oaxaca and Campeche – there are now 2,128 confirmed Covid-19 cases.
The Gulf coast state of Veracruz recorded an 84.6% increase in cases in the four days since the phase three declaration, Tabasco saw a 63.5% spike and infections in Chiapas grew by 52.9%.
With a total of 649 confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the disease was first detected in Mexico at the end of February, Tabasco ranks fifth for case numbers behind only Mexico City, México state, Baja California and Sinaloa.
In western Mexico, Baja California recorded the biggest percentage increase in numbers over the past four days with the number of confirmed cases now at 1,156, a 56% jump compared to Monday. Officials said this week that the health system in Tijuana, the state’s largest city, is struggling to cope with the high number of coronavirus patients.
In the northern region, Aguascalientes recorded the highest increase in cases this week with numbers spiking 82.5% to 146. Among the eight states in the region, Coahuila has the highest number of cases with 317.
At the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing on Friday night, Director of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía reported 1,239 new Covid-19 cases, the highest single-day increase yet. Friday was the third consecutive day that more than 1,000 new cases have been reported after 1,043 on Wednesday and 1,089 on Thursday.
Among those who have tested positive are 1,934 health workers, Alomía said, a figure that accounts for 15% of all confirmed cases.
He reported that 4,502 of the confirmed cases are considered active and that more than 60,000 people have now been tested for the disease. In addition to the confirmed cases, there are 7,889 suspected Covid-19 cases, Alomía said.
Mexico’s coronavirus death toll also recorded its biggest single-day increase on Friday with 152 new fatalities. The total number of deaths from the disease now stands at 1,221. An additional 77 deaths are suspected to have been caused by Covid-19, according to Health Ministry data.
Mexico City has recorded the highest number of confirmed deaths with 297 followed by Baja California and México state, where 146 and 104 people, respectively, have lost their lives to Covid-19.
Francisco Gurría prepares breakfast for healthcare workers.
A group of friends in Mexico City has banded together to prepare breakfasts for busy health workers treating coronavirus patients in the capital’s south.
Over the past two weeks, Francisco Gurría and several of his friends have prepared more than 1,200 breakfasts – egg sandwiches, juice and fruit – for medical personnel at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER), the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition and the Manuel Gea González General Hospital.
They distribute the meals to the health workers on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays while they dedicate themselves on the other days of the week to sourcing the products they require to keep their charitable initiative going.
The friends have been accepting donations of products such as eggs, bread, fruit and vegetables from people who have contacted them via their Instagram account Gracias Personal Médico (Thanks Medical Personnel).
“We want to contribute a little bit to the medical personnel because they’re doing a great job for everyone; they treat everyone even though their salaries may be low or people might attack them when they see them,” said Gurría, a veterinarian who has seen a drop-off in clients since the beginning of the national social distancing initiative in late March.
One of Gurría’s friends prepares breakfasts for delivery.
Martha Medina, another member of the team of friends who get together to prepare the breakfasts, told the newspaper El Universal that she was motivated to do something to help health workers after hearing about the attacks to which some doctors and nurses have been subjected.
“It’s extremely sad that there are people who want to harm them … when they are the ones who are exposing themselves [to the risk of infection] in this … outbreak,” she said.
“A day has many hours and we’re going to make use of our time showing solidarity with those who are risking their lives for us,” Medina added.
She called on the public to keep sending food donations so that they can continue to support health workers on the frontline of the coronavirus battle.
The friends don’t yet know how long they will continue to prepare the meals – they won’t have as much free time after the end of the emergency period – but stress that they will continue to make as many as they can for the time being.
Their work and goodwill is certainly appreciated by the health workers at the three hospitals in the southern borough of Tlalpan.
“We’re working a lot here. It’s been very hard every day since the epidemic started in the country. These kinds of deeds make us feel like we’re supported,” said a doctor at INER.
“Doctors are very obsessive with our work, we don’t leave [the hospital] … because the care of these [Covid-19] patients is very demanding. Whenever there is a measure of this kind, we feel good.”
Mexico’s customs chief has quit his post less than a year after President López Obrador gave him the responsibility of cleaning up corruption in the department.
López Obrador confirmed on Friday morning that Ricardo Ahued had tendered his resignation and would be returning to the upper house of Congress as a senator for Veracruz with the ruling Morena party.
“He told me he wants to be in the Senate,” the president said. “Ricardo Ahued is a man of integrity, a good person, an honest man,” he said.
Despite his kind words for the outgoing administrator, López Obrador conceded that he hadn’t been successful in stamping out corruption in customs, a department that has been plagued with problems of that nature.
Ahued became customs chief last June and two months later met with the president in the National Palace, where he was explicitly instructed to eliminate corruption at the nation’s airports, ports and border crossings.
López Obrador admitted today, however, that the job is still “outstanding.”
“Is the problem very big?” a reporter asked.
“Yes, it’s like the homicide problem [but] … we’re going to keep moving forward, providing an example that there is no corruption, impunity, conspiracy between crime and authorities,” López Obrador said.
“In the case of customs, a [new] cleansing is coming, … attempts have been made [to eliminate corruption] but it’s a monster, … a 100-headed one.”
For his part, Ahued said that his decision to vacate his customs role at the end of the month was a personal one.
He said that he was leaving the position with his head held high and that he was determined to fulfill his responsibility of representing the people of Veracruz in the Senate.
Under his leadership, customs authorities identified three cargo airlines last August that were believed to be bringing pirated goods into the country via the Mexico City International Airport. The newspaper El Universal reported the same month that complicity between several criminal groups and corrupt customs employees at the airport had facilitated the illegal import of weapons, drugs and counterfeit goods.
According to the Defense Ministry, “the corruption problem at customs offices fosters organized crime activities such as the smuggling of arms, drugs, chemical precursors, cash and goods in general.”
Typical Day of the Dead altar featuring favorite food and drink of the deceased.
The human race has become complacent. Once upon a time pestilence was something to worry about, but a few decades of relatively mild epidemics — and the discovery of medical fixes to keep them at bay — led most of us citizens of the 21st century to believe that pestilence and plague were things of the past.
This new virus, however, has shaken us. It is suggesting that maybe we were taking too much for granted, that we didn’t know how good we had it. It even dares criticize us for dedicating our few precious years of life to fun, football and Facebook.
Pestilence has visited Mexico before and those few epidemics that were recorded were far worse than this coronavirus.
The native people’s word for plague was cocoliztli and they used it to describe epidemics that swept through Mexico in 1520, 1545 and 1576.
The first of these was caused by smallpox, brought here by the Spaniards. It devastated the native population but hardly bothered the Spaniards.
Central Mexican victims of 1520 smallpox epidemic. Florentine Codex
In the Florentine Codex, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún says that the disease “brought great desolation: a great many died of it. They could no longer walk about, but lay in their dwellings and sleeping places, no longer able to move or stir. They were unable to change position, to stretch out on their sides or face down, or raise their heads.
“And when they made a motion, they called out loudly. The pustules that covered people caused great desolation; very many people died of them, and many just starved to death; starvation reigned, and no one took care of others any longer.”
The second epidemic hit Mexico only 25 years later. This one was far worse than the previous. The Spaniards had no idea what it was, so they gave it the name that the local people were using: cocoliztli. Spaniards who described it said the disease began with a high fever and headaches followed by bleeding from the eyes, mouth and nose, in fact from every bodily orifice. The victims’ tongues were dry and black and they experienced enormous thirst as well as delirium, dysentery, seizures and vomiting.
Whoever caught cocoliztli died within three or four days. It has been described as “a combination of hemorrhagic flu, yellow fever, jaundice, viral infection, malaria, typhus and typhoid.” Such a description, perhaps, is just a way of saying it was terrible but no one knew what it was — up until 2018, that is, when a team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany analyzed DNA extracted from the teeth of 29 skeletons buried in a cocoliztli cemetery.
What they found were traces of Salmonella enterica. Apparently salmonellosis, when unleashed upon those who have no resistance to it, is more devastating than we could ever imagine.
As you can see in the graph, smallpox struck in 1520 and killed an estimated 5-8 million people. Then, a few years later, two outbreaks of cocoliztli exterminated half of the remaining population.
Estimated population collapse in the 1500s.
This graph, taken from an article by Acuna-Soto et al in Emerging Infectious Diseases, says a lot, but it doesn’t say everything. Living in 2020 we know what has hit us and how it is transmitted. We have strategies for combating it and we can see ourselves defeating it in the near future.
The indigenous people of 16th-century Mexico could see none of this. How did they cope?
It’s no surprise that death inspired all sorts of rituals, customs and even philosophies here in Mexico.
We joke that nothing in life is sure except death and taxes, but even taxes are forgotten when overtaken by death. Says Fray Bernardino, “The worst attack of cocoliztli took place between 1567 and 1578 when it spread throughout the country, leaving more than 2 million dead. They say the towns were desolate and fields, mines and industries were abandoned. The viceroy was obliged to cancel and write off taxes and duties which were impossible to collect with things in such a state.”
Over many many centuries of cocoliztlis, people in what we now call Mexico developed a perspective based on the inescapable reality that death stalks every one of us and it’s impossible to know when it will finally do us in. The most obvious manifestations of this perspective are the traditions associated with El Día de los Muertos which are so unique that UNESCO considers them part of Mexico’s contribution to the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
A less flamboyant reaction to the reality that death is always around the corner is a code of behavior — supposedly developed by the Toltecs — called el sendero del guerrero or the warrior’s path, which urges us to carry out everything we do with impeccability, as if thumbing our nose at death.
Population changes for Spaniards and natives between 1570 and 1580.
Our present-day cocoliztli is forcing us to look at age-old questions: what will we take away with us when we go?
Life, said my teacher Caleb Gattegno, “is turning time into experience.” We can dedicate the limited amount of time given to us to fun, football and Facebook but, if Gattegno was right, the only thing we will be able to take with us when we die is awareness.
What awarenesses is our cocoliztli of 2020 bringing us?
COVID-19 is turning many of us into hermits. So why not do what hermits do and take a little time out for meditation?
Has COVID-19 made you aware of something you were not previously conscious of? Has your outlook changed? Have you changed?
If so, I hope you’ll share your thoughts and leave a comment below.
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.
The face of marijuana cultivation in Mexico is changing as more and more independent, boutique cannabis growers are popping up, providing high-quality “ethical” strains of weed free of cartel violence and influence, according to a report by Vice Media.
There are a number of factors at play in this new dynamic, including the availability of specialized seeds from the United States and Europe, the possibility of legalization within the country by the end of the year and a decline in demand for mass-produced weed due to legalization in the U.S.
But there is also a growing social consciousness among consumers that these small independent growers are banking on, marketing potent strains such as Chronic, Purple and Blue Dreams as “blood-free” weed, write Deborah Bonello and Miguel Angel Vega.
There is no cartel middleman in this emerging ethical cannabis market, with growers selling directly to dealers.
Farmers in states such as Sinaloa have switched from large, outdoor crops to carefully tended indoor operations, using lights, fertilizers and fans to allow the plants to mature under optimal circumstances. They are also dabbling in producing oils, edibles and other companion products as customers look for innovation in forms of THC delivery.
Although this kind of production incurs significantly higher costs, there’s no profit-sharing with cartel enforcers and profit margins are significantly higher. Whereas weed growers used to get around US $25 per kilo, dealers are now buying top-level cannabis at a price that varies from US $1,278 to $1,700 per half kilo.
However, by eschewing cartels pot growers face a number of challenges. Creating their own infrastructure for transporting their crops to dealers is one problem; operating under the radar of violent cartels is quite another.
“You’re not benefiting from any cartel protection structures or mechanism,” Jaime López, a security analyst, told Vice. “As long as you stay small and not too flashy you might avoid the vultures. But that’s a big if.”
And with a vote looming in the Senate (postponed until May 30 due to the coronavirus lockdown) on the legalization of marijuana, whether small, ethical marijuana cultivators will be able to hold their own in a larger, commercial market remains to be seen.
For now, however, blood-free weed seems to have found its niche market.
Factories in the north are planning to reopen soon.
Factories in five of Mexico’s six northern border states are planning to reopen in May even though it is not yet known whether the federal government will have lifted the restrictions that forced them to close due to the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 3,700 manufacturing companies have factories in northern border states, employing around 1.8 million people, according to data from the national statistics institute Inegi.
Those in Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas plan to resume operations in the coming weeks.
Gerardo Vázquez Falcón, president of the National Council of the Maquiladora Industry in Sonora, told the newspaper Milenio that the plan is to have all factories in the state operating by June 1.
He said that some factories will reopen as soon as next Monday, explaining that those in the automotive sector will resume operations first followed by those in the aerospace and electronics sectors.
About 85% of manufacturers in Sonora export their products to the United States, where productive sectors have not halted due to the coronavirus pandemic. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in that country wrote to President López Obrador this week, urging him to reconsider which businesses are considered essential.
Allowing factories to reopen in Mexico will help ensure that disruptions to the North American supply chain are minimized, the NAM said.
López Obrador said Thursday that he expected there would be an agreement “in due course” allowing factories to reopen but he didn’t offer a specific timeframe.
Nevertheless, Salvador Díaz González, president of the Otay de Mesa Industry Association in Tijuana, said that factories there were planning to reopen on May 4.
On the other side of the country in Tamaulipas, Julio Almanza Armas, an import/export business owner in the border city of Matamoros, said that factories are looking at reopening on May 18. Activity at the state’s ports has declined by 60% due to the closure of factories, he said.
The coronavirus crisis is predicted to take a heavy toll on the Mexican economy, with several financial institutions and international organizations forecasting economic contraction in the range of 5% to 10%.
