Paramedics may soon be weaving through Mexico City’s notorious stand-still traffic aboard motorcycles, delivering emergency care in as little as 10 minutes.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum told a press conference that the city will invest 20 million pesos (US $1 million) in 73 motorcycle units and 50 traditional ambulances by 2020. Yesterday, she gave the green light for 40 moto-ambulances — 30 for the medical emergencies and rescue team and 10 for the Red Cross — to be assigned to posts in the capital’s 16 boroughs.
The mayor said the city government hired and certified 97 emergency medical technicians trained in essential life support to pilot the motorcycles with the goal of having 35 motorcycle units and 27 regular ambulances available for every emergency shift.
Additionally, the motorcycles will be equipped with a defibrillator, oxygen tanks and other emergency life support tools to stabilize a patient’s condition or give vital pre-hospital care while waiting for a regular ambulance to arrive. According to authorities, moving a patient is not actually necessary in 60% of 911 calls in Mexico City.
The director of the C5 emergency system said that 911 dispatchers will communicate to emergency medical crews whether each emergency warrants a motorcycle technician or a traditional ambulance. Juan Manuel García said the motorcycle crews will reduce saturation in hospitals and deliver life-saving care in a much shorter time.
“If we have enough ambulances and emergency services, much of the time we can treat a patient on site if it is not too serious, and in that way avoid saturating emergency care units in hospitals. The second advantage is that it decreases the emergency response time and saves live. When I got here, the average response time was 45 minutes, but now, thanks to strengthening the dispatchers’ ranks with doctors and regionalization [of emergency responders], we have brought the average response time down to 35 minutes.”
Sheinbaum added that with the new motorcycle units and new hires of additional paramedics and volunteers, she hopes to bring the average emergency response time down to 10 minutes by 2020.
Despite their differences, the former finance secretary described AMLO as the best politician in Mexico today.
Former finance secretary Carlos Urzúa said in an interview he disagreed with the government’s decisions to cancel the new Mexico City airport and to build an oil refinery on the Tabasco coast.
Urzúa also told the news magazine Proceso that he was opposed to the move by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to seek to amend pipeline contracts and confirmed that he was referring to the president’s chief of staff when in his resignation letter he charged that there are “influential people” in the government “with a clear conflict of interest.”
The former secretary said he was in favor of continuing to build the airport at Texcoco, México state, because “the project was very advanced” and cancelling it would cause the loss of significant amounts of money.
Urzúa said that while it was true that a lot of the land around the airport “was controlled by people linked to the previous administration” – President López Obrador has consistently argued that the project was corrupt – “a strong government” could have expropriated it.
The ex-secretary also told Proceso that the plan to build a US $8-billion refinery at Dos Bocas “is not optimal in current conditions.”
He said the government needs to listen to petroleum sector experts, most of whom say the project can’t be completed within a three-year timeframe or for less than $15 billion.
“You can’t persist with an idea when there are companies that know more than you and they say the opposite. The problem of this government is its headstrong nature . . . Another of my differences [with the government] has to do with the Pemex business plan,” Urzúa said.
“I believe that the plan could be very good and could clean up the situation at the company in three years [but] it will only be possible if we avoid projects like the refinery and apply ourselves intensively to the exploration and production of crude.”
Urzúa, described by one analyst as the “adult in the room” in the López Obrador administration, said the decision by CFE chief Manuel Bartlett to seek arbitration to annul clauses in the contract for the Texas-Tuxpan gas pipeline was the final straw that led him to resign.
He said the problem with not respecting the contract is that TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) will sue the CFE and while the legal battle is ongoing the pipeline won’t be put into operation and ratification of the new North American free trade agreement could be threatened.
While the pipeline is out of action, the state-owned utility won’t be able to satisfy one-third of natural gas demand, he added, describing the scenario as “playing with fire and the well-being of millions of Mexicans who live on the Yucatán peninsula.”
Alfonso Romo, right, has a conflict of interest, Urzúa charged.
Mérida and Cancún have both suffered blackouts this year due to a lack of natural gas to generate energy.
“A senior official and I went to tell the president a few days ago that what the CFE is doing is not for the benefit of Mexico,” Urzúa said. “We signed a contract and we must comply with it.”
The 64-year-old economist described presidential chief of staff Alfonso Romo, a wealthy business tycoon, as “the main conflict of interest” in the government.
Given that the president’s office manages confidential economic information on a daily basis, Romo and his immediate family members shouldn’t maintain any shares traded on the Mexican Stock Exchange, Urzúa charged.
He also said the chief of staff’s ideological and social beliefs are incongruent with those of the president.
“Ideologically, Romo is a man of the extreme right and in social terms he ranges between Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ. How did a man like that, who came to admire [former Chilean president] Augusto Pinochet and [Legion of Christ founder] Marcial Maciel, end up not just being a friend of López Obrador but the head of the president’s office?” Urzúa wondered.
He said Romo was responsible for appointing the heads of the Federal Tax administration and Mexico’s state-owned development bank, Bancomext.
Urzúa was critical of the government’s decision to allocate large amounts of funding to projects such as the Santa Lucía airport, the Maya Train and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor before they have even started.
He also said that budget cuts, especially those made since March, have been too excessive and could cause problems in various government departments.
Despite his differences with the government’s agenda, Urzúa said he always got on well with the president.
“. . . I’m convinced that he is by far the best living politician . . . in Mexico today. Seeing him [in action] is very impressive, he has extraordinary social intelligence,” he said.
Urzúa said he believed that López Obrador shared his vision of developing Mexico along the lines of a Scandinavian social democracy but questioned how deep the president’s leftist credentials ran.
“I’ve never been a leftist from head to toe and deep down I don’t think he [López Obrador] is either. I don’t think that he takes Marxism seriously,” he said.
“The fact that he was fiscally conservative and at the same time placed great emphasis on social programs concerned me. The balance concerns me. It’s not easy to have budgetary balance and a lot of social programs at the same time,” Urzúa added.
“The big important difference between us [is that] the president doesn’t want to implement a fiscal reform. I do because I believe it’s the only way to reduce inequality. I don’t know why he doesn’t want to do it, maybe so as not to confront some business people, maybe because of the electoral cost . . .”
Seguro Popular's replacement will work with schools to train more doctors.
President López Obrador says Mexico needs 123,000 more doctors to cover the country’s needs.
“There are 270,600 general practitioners in the country, and according to international norms, we should have 393,600 doctors,” he said during a visit to a rural hospital in Michoacán on Saturday. “That means we’re 123,000 doctors short.”
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a country should have one doctor for every 333 residents. Based on a 2017 World Bank estimate, Mexico has only one doctor for every 477 people.
The president added that the shortage of doctors is related to low admission rates at universities for medicine programs.
“That’s why there’s a shortage,” he said. “We need more general practitioners, we need more specialists.”
He said 13,000 people applied for admission to the faculty of medicine at the National Autonomous University, but only 216 were accepted. The most popular career choice among prospective students is that of a surgeon. In February, López Obrador said, there were 11,198 applicants for 140 places.
He said the new National Institute of Health for Well-Being will work with universities to train more doctors.
The institute, which has not yet been approved by Congress, will operate with a budget of 80 billion pesos (US $4.2 billion) and replace the Seguro Popular, offering medical services to people who are not covered by social security.
The federal government’s former super-delegate in Jalisco is at the center of seven investigations by the Secretariat of Public Administration (SFP).
Carlos Lomelí, who resigned on Friday, is being investigated for bribery, conflicts of interest, illegal enrichment and influence peddling.
The businessman and politician was one of 32 people appointed by President López Obrador as super-delegates in each of the states to coordinate and implement federal programs as a corruption-fighting measure.
At the president’s morning press conference on Monday, Public Administration Secretary Irma Eréndira Sandoval said her department has been investigating Lomelí since May 22, two days after the publication of a report by Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) that detailed Lomelí’s links to a network of nine pharmaceutical companies that obtained contracts from state and federal governments.
Four of the investigations are related to business linked to Lomelí, while the three others are related to other allegedly illegal conduct.
“The SFP has not one, but seven investigations open, and we have already found evidence of possible irregular conduct,” said Sandoval. “We were happy to receive Lomelí’s resignation letter, which will allow us to carry out the investigations to their final conclusions.”
As part of the investigations, the SFP collected information from the Finance Secretariat and the Financial Intelligence Unit, as well as from state comptrollers.
According to the MCCI report, Lomelí participated in the creation of a network of nine pharmaceutical companies that received millions of pesos in government contracts since 2012. For part of that time he served as a federal deputy — from 2015 to 2018, and as super-delegate, from December 2018 until last Friday.
One of the companies, Abisalud, received two government contracts in 2019: one for 164 million pesos from the federal government, and one for 36 million pesos from the Morena-led government of Veracruz.
According to SFP documents seen by the newspaper Reforma, the SFP is also investigating links between Lomelí’s network and Ramiro López Elizalde, the medical director of the State Workers’ Social Security Institute (ISSSTE). According to the Reforma report, López is being investigated for conflict of interest, given that he is responsible for administrating part of the ISSSTE budget and that he is a partner of a company that is linked to a Lomelí company.
Sandoval said the SFP investigations could lead to Lomelí being banned from serving in public office for as long as 20 years, and that he could also face criminal penalties.
In May, Lomelí rejected accusations about the pharmaceutical network, claiming they were part of an effort to damage his reputation and the image of the López Obrador administration.
Parents, students and teachers will oversee repairs to schools, such as this one, damaged in an earthquake in 2017.
The government’s decision to disband its educational infrastructure agency and transfer the responsibility for school repairs to school communities poses a safety risk, experts warn.
President López Obrador announced on July 1 that during the 2019-2020 school year, funds for the construction, maintenance and repair of school buildings will be allocated directly to committees made up of teachers, parents and students.
He previously announced that the National Institute of Physical Infrastructure for Education (Inifed) would be dissolved.
Pablo Iván Ángeles Guzmán, a structural engineer and academic at the National Autonomous University, told the newspaper El Universal that the reconstruction of schools – 20,000 of which were damaged in the powerful earthquakes of September 2017 – should be managed by building professionals, not teachers and parents.
“There is a high risk that the rebuilding of schools will be at the discretion of people who are not professionals in construction and restoration,” he said.
Ángeles said that not reinforcing a damaged building enough, as well as attempting to strengthen one too much, both pose safety risks, explaining that it’s not good to have excessive steel rods or concrete “because they can also cause damage.”
“That’s why these jobs should be done by specialists . . . Specialists make mathematical models to simulate movements that could affect schools – earthquakes for example – in which we make load calculations in order to reinforce areas that could be damaged,” he said.
The Oaxaca branch of the Mexican Association of Engineers and Architects also warned of possible serious consequences stemming from the reconstruction of schools by unqualified builders without adequate architectural or engineering planning.
Bernardo Naranjo, a former official at the now-defunct National Institute for Educational Evaluation, acknowledged that Inifed had problems, including a lack of clear criteria about how funding should be distributed, but argued that the regulations it established for the construction and restoration of schools should be maintained.
No lives were lost in public schools in the 2017 earthquakes because they are “very safe,” if not modern or beautiful, he said.
“[Public] schools are designed to serve as refuges or shelters . . . if needed. That’s why they have stricter building regulations,” Naranjo said.
Nevertheless, there are 45,168 schools where students and teachers are at risk due to structural damage or because buildings were built without complying with the law, according to the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP)
The “potential vulnerability” of the schools is a particular risk in parts of the country where natural disasters such as earthquakes are more common, SEP said.
If repairs are not carried out to appropriate standards, the probability of students and teachers losing their lives in an earthquake – as occurred in 2017 with the collapse of a wing of Mexico City’s Enrique Rébsamen school – will only increase.
A Russian citizen and YouTuber who was almost killed by an angry lynch mob in Cancún two years ago has been found guilty of homicide for killing one of his attackers during the incident.
Aleksei Makeev was dubbed #LordRussianNazi by Cancún locals for racist and abusive behavior, which he himself documented in a series of videos that he uploaded to a YouTube channel. The videos show him harassing and insulting residents in Russian, English and broken Spanish.
In May 2017, an angry mob of at least 100 people descended upon the Russian man’s residence, intent on lynching him in retaliation for his aggressive behavior: earlier that day, he had reportedly hit a women and child in a neighborhood store. The mob managed to pull Makeev out of his house and beat him into a coma, but not before the Russian stabbed one of his attackers, killing him.
During the trial, Makeev’s defense argued that he had stabbed the victim in self-defense. But the state used a simulation of the mechanics of the act to demonstrate that the accused had used his physical superiority over the deceased to stab him multiple times.
Makeev had lived in Cancún since at least 2015. He had been employed as a dive instructor but was dismissed for aggressive behavior towards clients. He also had a record of indecently exposing himself.
Following the attempted lynching, during which he sustained a fractured skull, broken arm, blows to his entire body and showed signs of cerebral bleeding, Makeev was treated at the Cancún General Hospital before being transferred to jail to await trial.
In May, Russian human rights lawyer Gennady Makarov posted a 15-minute video on YouTube in which Makeev claimed that Mexican authorities had continually violated his rights during his two-year incarceration. He claimed that authorities denied him consular assistance, medical attention and contact with his family.
He also charged that representation by his government-appointed lawyers had been inadequate and that court interpreters had been incorrectly translating his statements into Spanish.
After the video was uploaded, Makeev was reportedly attacked by fellow prisoners and wounded with a sharp object. Another prisoner who went to his defense was seriously injured and had to be hospitalized.
Makeev’s sentencing is scheduled to take place Tuesday.
Port of Guaymas, where an acid spill occurred last week.
A spill of 3,000 liters of sulfuric acid at the Port of Guaymas, Sonora, into the Gulf of California last week caused significant damage to the gulf ecosystem, according to Reina Castro Longoria, a marine biology researcher at the University of Sonora and a substitute senator.
“The impact is undeniable, it was instant death for everything it touched; flora, fauna, the water, and the whole immediate area,” she told reporters. “And it will also cause damage elsewhere as it disperses. I don’t say this to cause alarm, but this kind of thing has a domino effect, and it will break the ecological balance in that area, because sulfuric acid is a highly corrosive substance.”
Grupo México, Mexico’s largest mining company and owner of the facility responsible for the spill, said the accident was too small to cause serious environmental damage.
Castro added that she thinks the government should suspend Grupo México’s mining concessions because of the spill and several other incidents.
Jaqueline García Hernández, an environmental science researcher at the Food and Development Research Center in Sonora, agrees with Grupo México that the effects of the spill will be limited, but says the situation should be closely monitored.
In an interview with the newspaper La Jornada, García said the acid was quickly diluted by seawater, and that any changes in pH were controlled and neutralized.
“It was a spill that had effects in the moment,” she said. “We took samples to see if there was damage when the acid spilled, and 10 fish died. We will keep monitoring the spill site.”
García added that deaths of more fish or birds in the area is unlikely.
According to the environmentalist group Poder, the Guaymas spill is the 14th accident at a Grupo México facility. In 2014, a company mine spilled 40,000 cubic meters of copper sulfate acid solution into two rivers in Sonora, causing extensive environmental damage.
The president tours hospitals in Michoacán on the weekend.
After visiting a rural hospital in Ario de Rosales, Michoacán on Saturday, President López Obrador said that his principal concerns are health and insecurity, and he is not worried about the economy because Mexico has a strong currency and there is less inflation.
He also said that ending corruption, which he thinks is the country’s most important problem, will be “easy.”
“The other things don’t worry me too much, corruption is easy to deal with,” he said. “The economy is growing, even if they say otherwise. The fact is that the peso has strengthened against the dollar more than any other currency in the world, and there’s less inflation now than before. Another fact is that the minimum wage has gone up for the first time in 36 years.”
With regard to health and insecurity, which he sees as the most troubling issues, López Obrador said the deployment of the National Guard, which started last week, will soon lead to a decline in crime rates, and that more doctors and healthcare personnel will be sent around the country to staff hospitals.
He added that he wants to use Coca-Cola’s distribution model to distribute medicines to the most remote parts of the country.
The president’s visit to the Ario de Rosales hospital was part of an ongoing tour of the seven rural hospitals run by the Mexican Social Security Institute in Michoacán. So far, López Obrador has visited 13 of the 80 rural hospitals across the country, and he plans to visit them all.
In Uruapan on Sunday, after completing his hospital visits, the president refused to comment on statements made by recently-departed finance secretary Carlos Urzúa in an interview with the magazine Proceso.
“I haven’t read [the interview],” the president told Excélsior. “I haven’t had time, because we’re working on reviving not just the medical system, which was in very bad shape, but we’re also lifting up the entire country, which was being ruled by corruption. That’s what we’re worried about.”
Youths at a job fair in San Juan del Río, Querétaro.
A net loss of more than 14,000 jobs made June the worst month for employment data since March 2010, while job growth in the first half of the year was the lowest since 2009.
The Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) reported a net loss of 14,244 jobs last month, the first decline in employment figures since President López Obrador took office in December.
Just under 34,000 permanent jobs were created in June but 48,215 jobs disappeared, according to IMSS data.
A total of 289,301 jobs were created between January and June, the worst first semester result since 2009 when 306,942 jobs were lost.
“The [June] employment data is the continuation of a poor trend for formal employment . . . [It] confirms that the Mexican economy is going through an economic slowdown,” said David Kaplan, a senior labor market specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank.
Carlos López, chief economist at economic forecasting company Tendencias Económicas y Financieras, said “the collapse of employment” as shown in the IMSS data “is a symptom of recession.”
The Bank of México warned last week that there is a possibility that the economy will enter into a “light recession,” while the Bank of America is predicting that data will show that the economy contracted for a second consecutive quarter between April and June, meaning that Mexico is technically in a recession already.
While jobs were lost last month, IMSS highlighted that just under 20.37 million workers are currently enrolled in its social security scheme, 2.4% more than at the end of June 2018.
Job creation in the agricultural and communications and transportation sectors drove the growth. In the former, there are 5.4% more insured workers than a year ago while in the latter there are 5.2% more.
In contrast, the number of insured workers in the construction and mining sectors declined by 2.1% and 3.3% respectively.
Nayarit, where 7.7% more people are engaged in formal employment compared to a year ago, was the best performing state economy in terms of job growth in the first half of 2019, followed by Querétaro, Campeche, Yucatán and Baja California.
Guerrero, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco and Durango, all of which recorded negative employment growth between January and June, were the worst-performing state economies.
IMSS also reported that insured workers earn an average base salary of 376.6 pesos per day (US $20), a 6.6% annual increase, and that at the end of June, there were 991,286 affiliated employers, 2.5% more than a year ago.
At the end of last month, 743,321 people were employed in the government apprenticeship scheme known as Youths Building the Future, IMSS said.
Grads dance the cumbia at a Michoacán elementary school.
A change in tempo from the traditional waltz in favor of the catchy rhythm of cumbia brought smiles to all as students twisted and turned to the beat of a cumbia hit during an elementary school graduation ceremony in Zitácuaro, Michoacán.
The surprise on the faces of parents and younger students was shared by social media users, who expressed astonishment and congratulations on a viral video that captured the dance performed by the graduating sixth-graders of Ignacio López Rayón Elementary School.
In the video, the cumbia by the group Rayito Colombiano plays while students dressed in blue and grey school uniforms execute a well-rehearsed choreography in perfect concert in the middle of the school courtyard.
Meanwhile, a female voice rings out, cheering on the dancers and soliciting the applause of the observing students, teachers and parents.
Social media users applauded the change in music and exclaimed over the work that must have gone into preparing the dance. One Twitter user said the festive music was better suited to the occasion.
“Wow! I want to highlight two important aspects of this: first, in financial terms, this was a good way to take advantage of the uniforms without forcing the parents or teachers to spend extra, and two, the creativity [behind the dance]; a graduation is cause for a celebration, and this was a [good] departure from the traditional waltz.”
Other users praised the students’ planning of the dance routine and the choice of cumbia instead of other genres which might not have been suitable for elementary-aged children.
“It’s much better to see them dancing this than reggaeton,”commented Paola Domínguez.
