The Magical Town of Huasca will get a new highway link to Real del Monte.
Hidalgo Governor Omar Fayyad has announced the construction of a new highway between Real del Monte and Huasca, predicting that it will significantly boost tourism in the region.
State Tourism Secretary Eduardo Baños Gómez said the 15-kilometer highway will improve access to the two Magical Towns, or Pueblos Mágicos.
“This will be an iconic project for our administration . . . and it will help tourism immensely.”
He noted that the highway could increase tourism in the state by as much as 40%.
“I hope that we can start the bidding process before the end of the year, in two or three months,” he said. “This will be a great project, a beautiful highway that will not only help tourism but also various other sectors of the state’s economy.”
The highway will traverse bridges and tunnels through the Pachuca mountains and will reduce travel time between the two towns.
Secretary Baños added that he hopes the federal government will resume funding for the Magical Towns program, which was suspended earlier this year.
Pachuca, the state capital, will host the national Magic Towns fair this month, bringing together representatives from the 121 municipalities across Mexico that have been awarded the distinction.
The country of England will be a special guest at the fair, which is expected to bring 200,000 people to Pachuca, of which 50,000 are expected to visit Real del Monte as well.
Armed forces attacked civilians during a 1968 protest against the Mexico City Olympics.
Mexico City has been gearing up this week for the annual march to commemorate the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre amid worries that violence seen at recent demonstrations will be repeated on Wednesday.
During his morning press conference today, President López Obrador sent a message to people planning to attend the marches scheduled for later on Wednesday, urging them to refrain from covering their faces and committing violent acts or vandalism.
“I’m telling you that’s not the way — no masks. People who fight for justice don’t have to cover their faces, they should identify themselves, and they shouldn’t carry weapons, whether that means rocks, fireworks, metal bars, anything like that,” he said.
The president also suggested that protesters’ families would not be supportive if they knew. “I’m sure that grandparents, parents, mothers and fathers [of these people] do not agree with their acts, or my name is not Andrés Manuel.”
The president’s statement comes after two recent Mexico City protest marches were marked by vandalism. On September 26, during a march to commemorate the anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, masked protesters smashed windows at businesses on Avenida Juárez, causing an estimated 100 million pesos (US $5 million) in damage. On September 28, protesters demanding the legalization of abortion set fire to the door of a chamber of commerce on Avenida Reforma.
The October 2nd march, which commemorates the 51st anniversary of a massacre of at least 300 students in 1968, will start at the Three Cultures Plaza in Tlatelolco at 4:00pm and end at Mexico City’s zócalo.
March organizers joined AMLO in asking participants not to wear masks and to avoid vandalism.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the city made an agreement with march organizers that police presence at the march will be minimal in order to avoid provocations. In lieu of sending a contingent of riot police to prevent vandalism, the city government set up barriers in front of buildings on the march route and will deploy a 12,000-person “peace barrier” of civilian government employees to maintain order.
“There will be no repression, but we can’t allow any kind of aggressive acts,” she said.
Sheinbaum disbanded Mexico City’s riot police as a distinct agency in one of her first acts as mayor, fulfilling a central demand of the 1968 student movement.
In a press conference on Tuesday, march organizers echoed the calls by the president and the mayor to eschew face coverings and acts of vandalism.
“We will be marching with our faces uncovered, and we ask anyone who wants to join us to do so without hoods, with their faces visible,” said Félix Hernandez Gamundi, a leader in the 1968 student movement and a survivor of the Tlatelolco massacre.
“This is a peaceful protest, like all of our actions have been for the last five decades.”
A new digital payment system that allows consumers to make purchases with their mobile phones became operational on Tuesday but getting small business owners and market stallholders to adopt the technology could be a significant challenge and a potential barrier to its success.
For consumers, CoDi – short for Cobro Digital (Digital Charge) – is an app that scans bar codes to pay for purchases and transfer funds between banks.
One aim of the commission-free payment system, developed by the Bank of México, is to provide a convenient, easy-to-use payment method for shoppers.
Another is to encourage businesses that currently only accept cash payments – and may not pay all or any of the taxes they should – to move into the formal economy.
According to consumer insights analyst Carlos Hermosillo, large companies and chains are ready to accept payments via CoDi but small businesses such as mom and pop stores known as tienditas, stallholders at markets and others who operate in the informal sector “will take longer to react,” if at all.
Scan and pay: small businesses might take some time to sign on.
A report in the newspaper El Financiero says that many small business owners fear that if they accept digital payments, their revenue streams will be closely monitored by tax authorities.
It is estimated that only 2% of about a million small, traditional businesses in Mexico such as butcher shops, stationary stores and tienditas currently accept methods of payment other than cash.
Another potential difficulty in getting small business owners to adopt the CoDi system is a lack of familiarity with the technology it uses: a recent poll showed that almost 60% of shopkeepers don’t know what a QR code is.
However, the spokesman for Expo Tendero (Shopkeepers’ Expo), an industry event that will be held in Mexico City in November, said there is interest among small business owners to offer digital payments.
“. . . They’re not closed [to the idea]; 53% said they’re interested in offering this type of service,” Pedro Fernández said.
For his part, the president of the National Association of Small Merchants rejected the claim that business owners’ reluctance to offer non-cash payments is related to their desire to continue to slip under the radar of tax authorities.
“We’re not large [tax] evaders and what can be collected via this channel won’t make a difference to the country’s public accounts . . .” Cuauhtémoc Rivera said.
At least in Mexico’s large and medium-sized cities, where mobile internet service is generally reliable, business owners will likely have to to offer their customers the option of paying via CoDi because they will miss out on sales if they don’t.
Ramiro de Jesús Cavazos, president of Conacca, a national umbrella organization that represents several market vendor associations, said that he expected that customers will demand the “ease of payment” that a service such as CoDi provides.
Their insistence on having access to the service could well come thick and fast.
Citibanamex, one of Mexico’s largest banks, said on Monday that it expects 5 million of its customers to start using CoDi within the next 12 months.
The bank predicted that 500,000 customers will begin using the app in the first two months of the system’s operation alone.
However, Citibanamex CEO Ernesto Torres Cantú said that the pace of the take-up of CoDi will depend on how well it is promoted and whether the federal government moves ahead with a plan to ban the use of cash to purchase gasoline and pay tolls.
In Mexico City, authorities are stepping in to take the decision whether to offer CoDi payments out of the hands of some business owners.
The Secretariat of Economic Development (Sedeco) has stipulated that by November, all stallholders at so-called mercados sobre ruedas (markets on wheels) or tianguis that pop up in different neighborhoods of the capital on different days of the week must offer customers the option of paying both by bank card and the CoDi app.
“The entire mercado sobre ruedas system will have the digital payment system . . . the two options, cards and QR codes,” said Sedeco official Gabriel Leyva.
The Mexico City government hopes that the move will act as an incentive for stallholders at bricks and mortar markets to introduce digital payments as well.
Beyond street markets, Mexico City residents will also have guaranteed access to digital payments in the capital’s historic center, which will become the country’s first designated Zona CoDi, or CoDi Area.
Torres Cantú, who is also the vice president of the Mexican Banking Association, said that some business owners in the downtown are already offering digital payments while others are in the process of opening their CoDi accounts.
“The historic center Zona CoDi has already started but it will be completed in the next two or three weeks . . .” he said.
When Buen Fin, an annual four-day shopping event similar to Black Friday in the United States, takes place in November, CoDi payments will be available at 100,000 or more points of sale across the country, the Citibanamex chief said.
The leader of the ruling Morena party in the lower house of Congress presented a bill on Tuesday that proposes the creation of a state-owned company to control marijuana sales in a regulated market.
The draft General Law for the Control of Cannabis presented by Mario Delgado also proposes the legalization of the cultivation of marijuana for personal use.
Under Delgado’s bill, a state company called Cannsalud (a portmanteau of cannabis and health) would have the exclusive authority to purchase marijuana from legal producers and sell it to both authorized franchisees – who would supply the recreational retail market – and pharmaceutical companies.
“This way the cannabis market wouldn’t be left to the autonomous regulation by individuals but would involve the state as a permanent supervisor and controller of activity involving this substance within a legal framework that would guarantee benefits for all,” the bill says.
The proposal seeks to prevent large companies from dominating a potentially lucrative legal marijuana market.
Deputy Delgado introduces marijuana bill.
A state-owned company would be able to “contain the risks inherent in the establishment of a new market,” the bill states, whereas large companies would “seek to maximize their profits” without regard for the protection of people’s health.
The proposed law also states that adult citizens would be able to grow up to six cannabis plants “without the need for a license or permission as long as they are destined for personal use . . . in the home.”
Morena leads a majority in both houses of Congress, meaning that approval of Delgado’s bill would appear likely but the news agency Bloomberg noted that it is unclear whether President López Obrador would support a state company controlling the legal marijuana trade.
However, the president does generally support greater government presence in the economy.
Street vendors in the historic center of Puebla city are scaring off investment in the restaurant industry.
Ten new restaurant projects worth a combined 150 million pesos (US $7.6 million) were slated to start in the heart of Puebla in the final months of 2019 but according to the local president of the national restaurant association Canirac, the investment is now in doubt.
“Investors are worried about the lack of action to remove the street vendors, who have been taking over space since the change of municipal government in the middle of October last year,” said Olga Méndez Juárez.
She claimed that local authorities allow the vendors, known in Mexico as ambulantes, to operate with impunity, adding that the problem is even worse on weekends. Méndez also said that the invasion of street sellers presents a poor image of the city to tourists.
The Canirac president said the heavy presence of the ambulantes is also having a negative impact on existing restaurants in Puebla’s downtown, explaining that patron numbers were down 30% in the first nine months of the year.
Méndez questioned the logic of authorities’ failure to crack down on unregulated commerce in the city’s streets, plazas and parks given that, unlike formal businesses, street vendors don’t pay tax or generate large numbers of jobs.
“If just 10 projects are going to bring 150 million pesos . . . and dozens of jobs, why not . . . do something to remove the informal sector workers?” she asked.
“. . . We’re worried that the city council isn’t looking at this issue with concern,” Méndez said before calling on Morena party Mayor Claudia Rivera Vivanco to do something.
Removing “unfair competition” from the streets of Puebla would send a positive message to both the 150 existing restaurants in the historic center and entrepreneurs planning to open new establishments, she said.
A dispute between Santiago Juxtlahuaca and San Martín Peras in the Mixteca region has been going on for years.
Territorial disputes in Oaxaca have cost the lives of at least 78 people since 2017, according to the state government.
Another 68 people have suffered injuries during heated conflicts over land ownership, while the disappearance of 12 people is believed to be connected to the same issue.
The Secretariat General of the Oaxaca government says there are currently more than 400 unresolved territorial disputes in the state, mainly in the Central Valleys, Mixteca and Sierra Sur regions.
The main reason for the high number is that 81.3% of all land in Oaxaca belongs to ejidos, or agrarian communities, and is therefore owned communally. Complicating the issue further is that half of the 394,000 registered ejidatarios, or community landowners, in the state, are deceased.
Efraín Solano Alinarez, head of the organization Unidad, Identidad y Raices de Oaxaca (Unity, Identity and Roots of Oaxaca, or Unir), told the newspaper El Universal that the figures explain why there is a state of permanent conflict in Oaxaca.
He said the first step in resolving the disputes, particularly in indigenous communities, is to fix the flaws in the collective land ownership system.
Solano said that it is often unclear who owns a parcel of land, explaining that the disorderly growth of towns has in some cases made historical boundaries difficult to identify.
The most serious conflicts occur when private property owners clash with ejidatarios, he added.
To solve the conflicts, the Unir chief said, the records of state and federal authorities need to be consulted to determine the rightful owners of disputed land.
Solano also said that more resources need to be allocated to mediating disputes. To oversee that process, he recommended the establishment of a dedicated government group.
The Unir chief also said that the presence of foreign companies in parts of Oaxaca, especially the Isthmus of Tehuantepec where several wind farms have been developed, has also raised the ire of landowners and led to conflicts.
Solano added that the federal government’s isthmus trade corridor project, which includes the modernization of the railway between Salina Cruz, Oaxaca and Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, and new mining developments could make existing land conflicts worse or create new ones.
President López Obrador says the trade corridor and other projects such as the Maya Train will bring significant economic and social benefits to the south and southeast.
But Solano warned that “in Oaxaca, the triumph or failure of the president’s social goals will depend on the response he provides to agrarian conflicts.”
The Canton Fair complex, where Querétaro entrepreneurs will be looking for new Chinese partners.
A group of Querétaro businesses is planning a tour of China to look for new partnership opportunities in that country.
Lorena Jiménez Salcedo, Querétaro president of the Mexican Employers’ Federation (Coparmex), said the tour will seek to find new suppliers for Querétaro businesses, as well as other partnerships.
“In China, specifically, we’re mostly looking at suppliers, but we don’t have a specific focus on one area,” she said. “We’re going to look at different contacts that could work as suppliers both for medium and large businesses, or suppliers who can provide specific parts that are necessary for the production chain.”
The delegation will attend the China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair, which will take place from October 15 to November 4, and will be attended by around 20,000 businesses.
Jiménez said it is important for Querétaro business to look for alternative partners outside North America. The organization is also looking to build commercial relationships in Brazil.
Coparmex Querétero is also working with Querétaro’s World Trade Center on planning trade missions to other countries. The first will be a visit to Washington between October 1 and 4 to meet with personnel from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Mexican Embassy.
The announcement comes at a time when Chinese businesses are showing more interest in investing in Querétaro because of the trade war between China and the United States, according to Querétaro Sustainable Development Secretary Antonio del Prete Tercero.
Artist's rendering of new industrial park in Colón.
The Mexican construction firm Construye Industrial announced that it will build a 7-billion-peso (US $354-million) industrial park in Querétaro, its third in the state.
To be located in the municipality of Colón, just 4.5 kilometers from the Querétaro Intercontinental Airport, the Kaizen industrial park will house both industrial and commercial facilities, as well as services such as a gas station and a 150-room hotel.
The investment includes 3 billion pesos for industrial logistics and manufacturing facilities and build-to-suit lots. Another 2.5 billion will go to data and call center offices, general offices and the hotel. And 2 billion pesos will be dedicated to commercial investments.
The Kaizen project will be LEED-certified, making it a green facility through the use of a sustainable transportation network, 100% renewable energy and the inclusion of green spaces.
The gas station will be the first in Mexico to offer not only gasoline and diesel but natural gas and electrical charges.
Construye Industrial says the project will generate around 1,500 jobs both directly and indirectly through the establishment of 150 businesses. It said it hopes to establish better salaries in the area due to the growth and development of different types of commercial services available to local residents.
The satellite will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket.
The first nanosatellite to be completely designed and made in Mexico will be launched from Cape Canaveral in December on a mission operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Approved by NASA last year, the AztecSat-1 was designed by students at the Popular Autonomous University of Puebla (UPAEP), together with the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) and the private space initiative MX Space.
“It is now ready to be launched into space,” said Andrés Martínez, director of special programs in NASA’s Advanced Systems Division. “It will be a historic day.”
The launch will take place on December 4 on Mission SpaceX-19, the Mexican Space Agency (AEM) reported.
“Our youth are making history,” said AEM director Javier Mendieta Jiménez. “It will be the first satellite to be launched during the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It represents an achievement of young Mexican talent in the Fourth Transformation.”
The nanosatellite will be put into orbit by SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket, on which the Mexican development team worked.
“Their performance is now comparable to many NASA engineers,” said Mendieta.
Once in orbit, the AztecSat-1 will be allowed to interconnect and transmit data to the Globalstar satellite constellation.
AEM’s head of the AztecSat-1 project, Carlos Duarte Muñoz, praised the young people’s achievement.
“This launch will demonstrate that the talent of our young people can make history and is literally infinite,” Duarte said.
Taxes haven't stopped consumers from choosing less than healthy options.
President López Obrador acknowledged that taxes on unhealthy food and cigarettes have not been successful in discouraging their consumption, but the government plans on raising them anyway.
“It can’t only be about paying more taxes, there needs to be more information for the people,” he told his morning press conference on Monday.
The president also announced that his government will launch an awareness campaign to promote healthy diets.
“We’re going to carry out a media campaign,” he said. “It will be about how to eat well, eat healthy, and not be influenced by advertising that pushes you to eat junk food that not only affects your health, but also your wallet.”
He added that he hopes to promote traditional Mexican beverages as alternatives to soda, like pinole, pozol and chilate.
The government’s 2020 budget includes a new increase on cigarettes and junk food, which is expected to bring in an additional 62 billion pesos (US $3.12 billion).
