An eruption at El Popo sends ash and steam skyward.
Mountain climbers who scaled the Popocatépetl volcano have been called “imprudent” by the chief of the national Civil Protection agency.
A video circulating on social media shows a group of at least five climbers ascending the side of the volcano’s crater, wearing face masks, goggles and helmets, as the volcano emits plumes of smoke.
Civil Protection director David León Romero criticized the climbers, who numbered as many as a dozen, warning that they not only risked their own lives but those of emergency workers.
“Climbing an active volcano shouldn’t be seen as an athletic achievement for mountain climbers, but as an imprudent action,” he said. “The people who do it are not only risking their lives, but also the lives of rescue workers who would need to go help them, and the human and material resources of the Mexican state.”
Climbers are not allowed inside a 12-kilometer restricted zone around the crater.
#Video Captan a alpinistas en el cráter del Popocatépetl
Located in central Mexico and straddling the borders of the states of México, Puebla and Morelos, Popocatépetl has been active since 1994, and large fragments of molten rock are often ejected several kilometers from the crater.
The video of the climbers was uploaded to Twitter by the volunteer urban search and rescue organization, GORDAS-USAR.
A lawyer for the group defended the climbers and said they had good reason for approaching the crater.
“The people who went to the crater did it to take scientific measurements of altitude, temperature, the velocity of the volcano and other things,” Honorio Hernández said. “Another reason was to accompany members of the community of Santiago Xaliztintla, Puebla, who leave an offering to the volcano every year.”
There have been three other reports of climbers on the summit of the volcano while it was active. Experts said youths who climbed to the top in March were lucky to have survived.
Route of the migrants seeking asylum from Ciudad Juárez.
About 6,000 migrants are stranded in the border city of Ciudad Juárez while waiting to apply for political asylum in the United States.
Chihuahua’s State Population Council (Coespo), which heads the coordination of migrant services in the city, stated that the current wait time to apply for asylum is about 90 days.
The migrant population in Juárez
includes people from Cuba, Central America, Mexico, and even Africa.
As of August 13, 5,981 people were on the waiting list administered by Coespo. From this list, migrants are called by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to cross into El Paso, Texas, and apply for asylum with an officer.
Once they have applied, migrants are held for a short time in El Paso before being returned to Ciudad Juárez, where they must wait for their cases to be heard. Wait times can be as long as a year in some cases.
Dirvin García, head of Mexico’s Center for Comprehensive Migrant Services (CAIM), stated that there are already cases with wait times that extend well into 2020.
Since October 27, 2018, 18,166 people have been put on the list to apply for asylum, of which 12,185 have been allowed to cross into the U.S. to make the application.
Of the 67 people who arrived at the CAIM facilities on August 10, one was from Cuba.
“It’s a long time to wait,” he said, “and we’re running out of money.”
He said he had relatives in the United States that were helping him financially, but the wait still wasn’t easy.
“Hopefully they can speed up
the process so we can cross,” he added.
Instead of waiting, many migrants opt for crossing the Rio Grande to speed up the process. Once in the United States, they are arrested by the Border Patrol. At that point they can apply for asylum.
On Monday, the Border Patrol began holding interviews with migrants after a 10-day moratorium during which no one on CAIM’s list was called to cross into El Paso.
A similar situation occurred at the end of July, when interviews were suspended for 11 days due to overcrowding at CBP facilities.
Opponents and supporters of the bill in the gallery of the state Congress yesterday.
The state of Zacatecas voted not to legalize same-sex marriage on Wednesday, when 13 of the 26 deputies voted no, 11 voted in favor and two abstained.
The Morena party, which has a small plurality in the Congress, supported the bill with the exception of Deputy Armando Perales Gándara. The two-deputy blocks of the Labor Party (PT) and the Social Encounter Party (PES) also split, with one voting for and one against the bill in each party.
Morena Deputy Mónica Borrego Estrada expressed her disappointment after the vote, blaming the outcome on party-line votes by deputies allied with Governor Alejandro Tello, a block made up of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the National Action Party (PAN), the New Alliance Party (PANAL) and the Green Party (PVEM).
“I’m convinced that the truth won today, but lost to party-line votes, shameful votes by legislators from parties that are allied with Governor Alejandro Tello . . .” she said.
Borrego added that failing to legalize gay marriage puts
Zacatecas behind the rest of the country and the world.
“International agreements approved by the General Assembly
of the United Nations support the recognition of marriage equality as a
mechanism to fight discrimination and intolerance on the planet,” she said.
The outcome of the vote sparked protest from members of the LGBT community who were gathered in the chamber, and applause from the National Family Front, a Catholic Church group that opposes same-sex marriage.
Such marriages were legalized by a 2015 Supreme Court decision. However, in Zacatecas and the 11 other states that have laws defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, same-sex couples must obtain an injunction from a federal court in order to be able to legally marry.
In the state’s municipalities of Zacatecas, Cuauhtémoc and Villanueva same-sex couples may get married without obtaining an injunction.
Zacatecas joins Yucatán and Sinaloa as states that have voted down proposals to legalize the practice this year.
A frame from the video supposedly made by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has accused Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro of links to organized crime in a video posted to social media.
Surrounded by more than 20 heavily armed and masked men dressed in military attire, a man who identifies himself as CJNG leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes accused Alfaro of breaking a pact that gave the Jalisco cartel criminal control of the state.
He charged that the governor instead plans to give the “plaza” to Martín Coronel, a man known as “El Águila” (The Eagle), and Esteban “El Güerito” Rodríguez Olivera.
Coronel, nephew of a former close associate of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is believed to be the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in Jalisco.
“Alfaro made arrangements to remove us from Jalisco, thinking that he could do it overnight . . . Governor Alfaro was a very good friend of [Ignacio] Nacho Coronel and that’s why he has this relationship with his nephew ‘El Águila’ and ‘El Güerito,’ a close friend of ‘El Águila’ Coronel,” the presumed CJNG leader said.
“The governor did a deal with me, Mencho Oseguera, with which he didn’t comply at all. All of you know that before the new government led by Enrique Alfaro came in everything here in Jalisco was very calm and now with his rule, violence started in the whole state.”
The masked man who claimed to be “El Mencho” denied that the CJNG has anything to do with safe houses where dead bodies and bound captives have been found.
“Governor Enrique Alfaro is the only person who can tell you who owns those safe houses and [who is responsible] for those dead people since, in reality, they’re houses that are property of Martín Coronel . . . and Esteban Rodriguez Olivera . . . both [of whom are] directly protected by the governor,” the speaker said.
“El Mencho” – who according to a DEA agent is hiding out in the mountains of western Mexico – also denied that the CJNG is responsible for crimes committed in Puebla, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Chiapas, México state, Cuernavaca and Chihuahua.
“. . . We don’t kidnap, we don’t rob people, we don’t charge extortion,” he said.
Jalisco Governor Alfaro.
The suspected CJNG leader called on President López Obrador to launch an investigation into bank accounts that Alfaro allegedly holds in the names of prestanombres, or front men, in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
The governor uses the accounts to “move the money he receives from Martín Coronel and Esteban Rodríguez in exchange for agreements with them,” he claimed.
The masked man, who remains seated throughout the almost six-minute video, also claimed that Alfaro has a personal grudge against the CJNG because his “current woman” had a relationship with a high-ranking cartel member.
“. . . The hate and the personal problems that the governor has against our company are personal and because of that he preferred to give his support” to Coronel and Rodríguez, the man said.
The Jalisco government declared that all the accusations made in the video were false.
“For the state government, the fight against violence is a matter of utmost seriousness. That’s why since the beginning of this administration we’ve made it clear that this government doesn’t speak to, nor will it speak to, criminals,” the government said.
“The stunt, put together in a video with false assertions, contains lies that have the sole and clear intention to defame, intimidate, misinform and generate fear among citizens. For these reasons, it doesn’t deserve more than a single response: the government of Jalisco will continue doing its work and will file the corresponding [criminal] complaint with the federal Attorney General’s Office.”
In February, thousands of women marched in Mexico City to demand that President López Obrador do more to keep women safe. The protest sign featured here reads, ‘Don’t be indifferent.’ Reuters/Edgard Garrido
After the leftist firebrand Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the Mexican presidency in a landslide last year, he vowed to “govern for all, starting with the poor.”
In Mexico, “the poor” includes many women, who earn 34% less than men for doing the same job. Women in Mexico also face incessant catcalling and extremely high rates of violence. With 1,199 women murdered in Mexico between January and April this year – about 10 a day – Mexico is Latin America’s second-most dangerous country for women, after Brazil, according to the United Nations.
As a presidential candidate, López Obrador spoke about the challenges facing women in Mexico. His campaign even acknowledged that domestic abuse and poverty are particularly prevalent among indigenous women, and pledged to help them, too.
López Obrador’s administration has not, however, made women’s rights a priority. Instead, it has been rolling back some of the few federal policies designed to protect and empower Mexican women.
Under austerity measures meant to curb public spending, López Obrador in February ended an internationally lauded daycare program that allowed low-income families to sign up for government-subsidized childcare close to their workplace or home.
Rather than pay subsidies to this network of private daycare facilities, the Mexican government will now give vouchers worth about US $80 every two months directly to families.
The new policy will give parents more choice in their childcare, the Mexican government says. Each family may now decide whether to send their children to daycare or pay “a sister, an aunt or a grandma,” López Obrador said in a February 7 press conference.
López Obrador, who remains popular six months into his six-year term, additionally explained his decision to end government-subsidized daycare by saying the program was corrupt.
Several private daycare centers that benefit from government subsidies have been involved in high-profile child abuse scandals or shown to have unsafe facilities. In 2009 ABC Daycare in Hermosillo, Sonora, caught fire, killing 49 children.
Lopez Obrador blamed these problems on corruption among government and private-sector middlemen, who pocketed cash meant to serve children. He says that by removing the intermediaries to give money directly to families, the opportunity for corruption is eliminated.
As a group, indigenous women are the poorest people in Mexico. They are also the most likely to receive inadequate medical care and to die in childbirth. Reuters/Jacob Garcia
Public corruption is rampant in Mexico. But there’s no evidence that the childcare program suffered particularly from abuse of public funds.
In fact, Mexico’s subsidized childcare network, which has served two million children since it was established in 2007, has been quite successful in enabling more women to work outside the home.
According to a 2017 government evaluation, the daycare network had relieved 1,825,394 parents of childcare duties for 34 hours a week over the past decade. A significant percentage of the communities served by the daycare network were either very poor or home to a predominately indigenous population, according to the U.N., and women were the primary beneficiaries.
Women’s groups and human rights organizations in Mexico responded to the termination of the daycare program – and to the president’s suggestion that female relatives could care for Mexico’s children – with outrage.
In a joint statement released February 11, 17 civil society organizations said the new policy would “strengthen gender stereotypes” and “promote discrimination and gender inequality.” The groups reminded the president that women do 70% of all domestic work in Mexico and that grandmothers already care for 50% of all young children not in their parents’ care.
Mothers who used government subsidized daycare were 18% more likely to have gotten a job between 2007 and 2017 compared to those who did not receive government-subsidized childcare, according to a government program evaluation.
Even so, Mexico still has the second-lowest female participation in the workforce among developed countries, behind Turkey. Only four out of 10 women are employed outside the home.
The López Obrador administration has responded to this criticism with indignation.
After Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission ruled that ending the daycare program violated the constitutional rights of Mexican women and children, a government official sought to discredit the independent government agency as a partisan entity.
Undersecretary of Human Development Ariadna Montiel Reyes called the organization’s position an “unacceptable aberration” orchestrated by López Obrador’s political opponents and accused the commission of complicity with “atrocities” committed by previous administrations.
This is the first time the federal government has challenged the legitimacy of the commission since its creation as a government watchdog in 1992.
The elimination of public daycare was infuriating to López Obrador supporters who expected the president to promote a more progressive gender agenda.
So when the president announced in March that his administration would additionally slash funding for women’s shelters and instead give the money directly to victims of domestic violence, the backlash was immediate and fierce.
President López Obrador remains popular. On July 1, 2019, he celebrated the one-year anniversary of his landslide win with a rally in Mexico City attended by several thousand people. AP Photo/Fernando Llano
Worldwide, women are most likely to be murdered by a male partner and may be unsafe in their own homes, making shelters a vital sanctuary.
The number of Mexican women stabbed or strangled at home rose 54% between 2012 and 2016. In March 2019, the same month the cuts were announced, Mexican police received 56,590 reports of domestic violence – a 16% increase over February 2019.
Advocates for victims of domestic violence warned that cutting funding to domestic violence shelters would expose women and children to even more danger.
Public uproar forced the Mexican government to retreat on its plan to stop funding women’s shelters and give cash payments to women instead.
But a few months later, in May, news reports revealed that women’s shelters would see substantial budget cuts under the government’s austerity measures. Twenty-nine percent of Mexico’s 81 publicly funded domestic violence shelters have received no federal funding for the second half of the year.
To quell criticism that it doesn’t care about women, the Mexican government in late May announced the launch of a European Union and United Nations program in Mexico to eliminate violence against women.
The US $7.7 million investment, called Spotlight Initiative, will target three Mexican states with high rates of violence against women: México state, Chihuahua and Guerrero.
Its goals, according to the EU, are to design public spaces that are safer for women, facilitate women’s access to justice and protection services and to “fundamentally change the perception of women within their families and in society.”
López Obrador wasn’t always sure that Mexico needed the help.
A spokesperson for the European Union told the Spanish newspaper El País that López Obrador initially rejected this initiative because, for his government, gender “was not a priority.”
A lake has run dry in the Lacandon Jungle in Chiapas but the
cause of the phenomenon is unknown.
The now-empty lakebed is located in the eastern municipality of Ocosingo and part of the UNESCO-protected Metzabok lagoon system, which is considered sacred by the local Mayan people.
Local resident Armando Valenzuela said the lake dried up completely on Saturday night but water levels had been dropping during the previous two weeks.
“. . . The community was monitoring it to take care of the [wildlife] species,” he said.
Around 150 residents helped to transfer fish to other lakes
in the area, the newspaper Reforma reported,
although some ended up on dinner tables.
“There’s nothing left in what was a great expanse of water and a tourist site,” said one local in a video posted to social media.
Valenzuela said there are 10 smaller lakes in the area that dry up every year but it is the first time that a larger one has lost all its water.
Staff at the Natural Protected Areas Commission told Reforma that an investigation is underway to determine the cause.
Lower than usual rainfall appears to be the most likely culprit.
The National Meteorological Service said in May that land in the catchment area of the Usumacinta river, one of several waterways that feed the Metzabok lagoon system, was in a state of extreme drought.
Government urged to raise taxes on alcohol and other products.
Taxes on sugary drinks, junk food, alcohol and cigarettes should be increased to reduce pressure on the government’s healthcare budget, according to a consumer rights group and a health advocacy coalition.
Alejandro Calvillo, president of El Poder del Consumidor (The Power of the Consumer), told a press conference that an additional 50 billion pesos (US $2.5 billion) in revenue could be generated by raising taxes on the first three products.
The funds would enable the government to increase this year’s healthcare budget of 124 billion pesos by 40%, he said.
Calvillo proposed lifting the IEPS excise tax on sugary drinks from 1 peso per liter to 2, explaining that an additional 13.4 billion pesos could be collected annually.
Junk food taxes should increase from 8% to 12%, he said, while those on beer should go up to 35% from 26%.
Calvillo proposed increasing taxes on other alcoholic beverages to between 45% and 60% from the current range of 30% to 53%.
Erick Ochoa of México SaludHable said that taxes on cigarettes need to be adjusted for inflation.
“Currently a tax of 0.35 centavos per cigarette is charged. So, for each packet of 20 cigarettes, tax of 7 pesos is paid. With an adjustment for inflation this would increase to around 0.48 centavos per cigarette, which would be [tax of] almost 10 pesos per packet,” he said.
That hike would increase government revenue by 53.3 billion pesos compared to the amount collected in 2017.
Coupled with the additional revenue that would be generated by higher taxes on the other products, an extra 103.3 billion pesos (US $5.2 billion) could be injected into the federal health budget.
Calvillo said the proposal by the organization he heads has already been presented to a budget committee of the lower house of Congress, where it was well received.
However, he predicted that gaining support in the upper house will be more difficult because senators are more susceptible to influence from private sector lobbyists.
Even if it were passed, Mexico would still not reach the World Health Organization’s recommended level of taxation on products that are harmful to human health, Calvillo said.
He warned that if the government doesn’t increase taxes on the proposed products, the nation’s public finances will come under significant pressure and people’s health will suffer.
“They’re products that are addictive . . . They’re associated with problems of self-control and compulsive consumption . . . When we talk about the taxes on these products, it’s not just a discussion about revenue raising but rather a strategy to reduce consumption that causes harm to public finances, health and families’ finances.”
The ex-governor of Campeche has been declared the winner of the election to lead the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Alejandro Moreno and is running mate, Carolina Viggiano, won Sunday’s election with over 1.6 million ballots in their favor, or 85% of the vote.
The election of Moreno to the party’s presidency could be a watershed moment for the PRI, a party which political analysts say is already seeing the toughest times of its 90-year history.
“The PRI is going through the worst moment in its history . . .” said political analyst José Fernández Santillán. “It was the official party from 1929 to 2000, in power for 71 years, then from 2000 to 2012, it was the opposition party, and it had its second chance until 2018. But the upcoming elections in 2021 could lead it into a third stage it has never before experienced: that of an outlying satellite party.”
Moreno could be the catalyst that brings the PRI’s downfall to that third stage.
“If Alejandro Moreno is elected head of the PRI, the most probable outcome is that the party will become subordinate to the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They call Moreno ‘Alito,’ but his politics are so similar to the president’s that many call him ‘Amlito,’” Fernández said before Sunday’s vote.
The PRI lost the presidency in 2018 with López Obrador’s election, when it was reduced to the No. 3 party in Mexico, with only 47 of the 500 deputies and 14 of 128 senators. It governs only 11 of the country’s 32 states.
Allegations of corruption against former president Peña Enrique Nieto, as well as several former PRI governors, have led to the party’s decline.
Moreno’s rise to the party’s leadership could be the final nail in the coffin.
“The only thing that victory for Alejandro Moreno will do,” said Enrique Toussaint, political analyst at the University of Guadalajara, “is deepen the PRI’s tendency to destroy itself.”
The former mayor of Iguala, Guerrero, and his wife have now spent almost five years in jail awaiting trial in the case of the 43 students who disappeared in September 2014.
José Luis Abarca Velázquez and María de los Angeles Pineda, a former regional president of the DIF family services agency, are accused of masterminding the attacks in Iguala against students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college.
Six people were killed on the night of September 26, 2014, and 43 students were allegedly handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang by municipal police before they were killed.
Abarca and Pineda, who were allegedly complicit with the Guerrero Unidos’ criminal activities, evaded capture for more than a month but were arrested in Mexico City on November 4, 2014.
Yesterday, less than three months before the fifth anniversary of their detention, the couple’s daughter took to social media to denounce what she says has been a failure to respect her parents’ right to the presumption of innocence.
The ex-mayor and his wife a year after their arrest.
“. . . In the previous six-year term [of the federal government], they didn’t care that my parents were innocent of what they were accused of, they concealed evidence, altered files and altered the dates of hearings so that they didn’t occur,” Yazareth Abarca Pineda wrote on Facebook.
“They’ve been prisoners in maximum security jails for almost five years without guarantees, without medical care, without their children,” she added.
“. . . Let justice be served, for once in the history of this country, let’s allow one single thing to be done well and with honesty.”
In hashtags added to her post, Abarca Pineda claimed that her parents are political prisoners.
In addition to defending the innocence of the so-called “Imperial Couple” of Iguala, Abarca Pineda has also initiated legal action in a Mexico City court aimed at recovering assets seized from her parents.
Just two days after he took office, President López Obrador signed a decree to create a super commission to conduct a new investigation into the case of the 43 missing students.
Human rights undersecretary Alejandro Encinas said last week that the commission had analyzed more than 84 million phone calls made in the first six days after the students disappeared, and that it has information to disprove the previous government’s “historical truth.”
The Enrique Peña Nieto-led administration said that after the students were killed their bodies were burned in a municipal garbage dump and their ashes disposed of in a nearby river.
But that version of events has been widely rejected by independent forensics experts, human rights groups, journalists, family members and others who suspect that the army may have played a role in the students’ disappearance and deaths.
Fue el estado – it was the state – is the opinion of many Mexicans as regards to who is responsible for the students’ disappearance and presumed death.
The three words also make up a common slogan that has been chanted at countless Ayotzinapa protests and graffitied on innumerable buildings and monuments.
Micheladas Lupillo is one of the many hot-spots at Tianguis el Tepito.
The name Tepito, the “barrio bravo,” strikes fear in nearly every Mexico City resident’s heart. But it’s home to one of the city’s most visited and bargain-filled street markets.
El Tianguis de Tepito is a trip. It’s a strange market “netherverse” that will keep your hands in your pockets and your feet on your toes. Don’t be surprised to find yourself perusing the merchandise amid a hail of narcotics marketing.
Although apparently safer on its daytime streets in recent years, in 2019’s Tepito, crime is still quite high. Depending on how the statistics are broken down, it appears that the neighborhood is one of the most dangerous, or just mildly more dangerous than much of the rest of the city.
At one of the many entrances into the market — where Matamoros crosses Jesús Carranza — the blaring CDs, DVDs, video games and loaded USB sticks vie for attention. They decibel-wrestle for supremacy to determine which will bring the most customers to their vendor masters.
Some vendors have interior shops, like spacious garage units, but most sell on the streets. So much of the neighborhood is closed to car traffic every day but Tuesday, the tianguista’s day of rest.
“What do you want? Weed? Meth? Coke?”
“Weeeeed . . . Coooooke . . . Meeeeeeth . . .”
“Weed/Coke! Weed/Coke! Weed/Coke!”
Drug dealing is pervasive and blatant, despite the strong showing of police throughout the market. Lookouts intermingle with the crowds, I’m told, motioning to dealers should a cop come too near.
There’s a sticky party happening in the tent at Micheladas Destrucción. Paper cups filled with a liter of beer and enhanced with mixtures of syrups, powders and gummies, depending on the drinker’s persuasion — salty, spicy, sour, sweet, the Mexican taste rainbow.
Two kids erupt onto Matamoros on a motor scooter going far too fast. They whip around a sunglass stand in the middle of the street, regain balance and very nearly lay a lady flat.
The ladies’ wear at Tianguis el Tepito.
She was simply enjoying an ice cream. Damn kids made her look like an idiot.
Across Tenochtitlán begins the forest of footwear — Nike, Adidas, Vans, Puma, Crocs, Timberland including dress shoes, work boots, heels, slippers, snow boots. Snow boots? They certainly look legitimate.
I handle a few pairs, wondering if it’s possible to tell which are the poorly-made knockoffs and which are bootlegged from actual factories of the real-deal brands. But it’s difficult to concentrate with all the marijuana and cocaine sellers. There are dozens of them. They’re around every turn.
“Marijuanaaaaaa! Cocaaaaaaine!”
A couple on a scooter with a full load of purchases weaves through the crowd, speeding straight ahead — just a few meters at a time — then skids quickly to a stop, nipping at the heels of the crowd.
Aside from the drug dealers, there are a handful of glue sniffers looking dazed-out and barely conscious but sufficiently high so as not to appear to be a threat. Paranoia strikes every now and again as I feel I’m being followed too closely. Yet, I witness only fair transactions — money for goods. Not a robbery in sight.
The clientele are principally families wandering with kids begging for logos, toys and candy. Old ladies sit on curbs chatting. Couples suggest new outfits for each other or themselves — maybe it’s time to try something new. Hands wave in practiced pageantry to entice us to the rug-laid wares of coin collectors or porn merchants.
A leathered and long-haired shadowy man on a Harley makes a ridiculously tedious eight-point turn in the narrow aisle.
”Why would you ride a Harley into a tight-laned tarp market?” I wonder. Well, probably because it’s much safer in here than it would be out on the open street. And if this dude could get away with riding his Harley through Sears, I’m certain he would.
The clothing prices at Tepito are often not much different than what you’d pay at any other market, but the selection is insane — obscure jerseys, hard-to-come-by counterfeit high-fashion labels, collectible streetwear. If not the prices, then it may just be the coordinated lawlessness of Tepito that maintains its popularity.
As I pay for football jersey gifts for my nephews, the vendor asks if I want Nike and Adidas price tags attached. The tags look authentic, with the recommended price printed on them in U.S. dollars. I don’t want the kids to think I spent $120 on a couple of simple jerseys. But, then, they would probably cost only a little less from some guy elsewhere who doesn’t print his own labels, so I go for Tepito “authenticity.”
A train of three scooters zips past in quick succession, like knights into battle. If the first shall fall, two shall remain to fight on.
Tepito’s surrounding streets can look a bit bombed out.
“Coke. Coke. Coke.” This dealer is tapping people on the shoulders as they pass, speaking directly in their ears from a finger’s length and patting their backs — as if he thinks they may not have noticed the general availability of cocaine on the streets of Tepito.
He tugs a man’s sweater as he passes, holding on, following him into the aisle. A handcart making haste through the crowd runs over the dealer’s toes.
Surrounding dealers look over to see what he might do. Their questioning glances ask: “Have you been disrespected?” “Is retribution in order?” But the dealer just laughs it off and the cart disappears into the throng.
Passing through the crowd, people occasionally project bad vibes, but nothing is outwardly threatening. I take photos surreptitiously and a cop mumble-growls under his breath as I pass, “Not here, güero [whitey].”
There are sniffs of weirdness and mistrust everywhere.
I ask a man with stacks of Chinese cigarette cartons if I can take a photo. It’s like a smokers’- pride float. They’re beautifully stacked, alternated side-to-side, at least three meters high and look like a well-crafted sculpture.
He doesn’t just laugh and say “no,” like “Ha-ha, of course not.” He says, “No,” firmly and brutally.
At one of the wrist-watch stands I ask the attendants if there are a lot of scooter accidents within the market confines.
“Sí, sí, sí!” they respond in concert, with concerned looks.
“Do they run into people or tables or other scooters?” I ask.
“Everything,” one of the ladies tells me. “They crash a lot. They don’t know how to drive, and they just jump right on. Be careful out there!”
Still more scooters fly by in suicidal joy.
The sound of rain begins to hit the tarps like the fidgety drum of fingers on a table. It’s a pleasant feeling under the tarps — kept dry in the middle of a downpour.
You can stay dry under the many tarps of Tepito. But the sound of pattering rain is intermingled with calls of “COKE! WEED! COKE! WEED!” As you leave, new possessions in hand, the drug drumbeat grows ever fainter behind you.
• Tianguis de Tepito runs along Rivero (and surrounding streets) from Peralvillo to Eje 2 in Morelos, Mexico City, from 8:00am to 5:00pm daily, but closed on Tuesdays.
This is the 20th in a series on the bazaars, flea markets and markets of Mexico City:
