The drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution, now working in the Gulf of California.
Three Mexicans are part of a team of 33 scientists from nine countries currently studying the seabed of the Gulf of California off the coast of Guaymas, Sonora.
For the next two months, scientists onboard the JOIDES Resolution, a research vessel that drills into the ocean floor to collect samples of sediments, will study the tectonics, magmatism, carbon cycling and microbial activity of the Guaymas Basin.
The expedition, which set sail on Saturday, is part of the International Ocean Discovery Program, a marine research initiative.
Ligia Pérez Cruz, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University (UNAM), told the newspaper El Universal that research in the Guaymas Basin is important because the Pacific and North American tectonic plates meet there.
Manet Estefania Peña of the Autonomous University of Baja California said the ocean floor in the basin is breaking up and that the rupturing process is causing magma to shoot into the ocean from within the earth’s crust.
The Cuenca de Guaymas, or Guaymas Basin, where the drilling is taking place.
As soon as the magma reaches the water, it cools and hardens to form a new ocean floor, she said.
“Drilling the subsoil will allows us to obtain geological records, rocks and sediment, that speak to us about the evolution of our planet,” Peña added.
“. . . It’s like getting books from billions of years ago . . . that tell us what happened on Earth.”
The JOIDES Resolution, a 143-meter-long vessel with the capacity to dig 8,235 meters below the seabed, will carry out drilling at six different points in the Guaymas Basin.
Peña said the research will enable greater understanding of the tectonic plates beneath Mexico and that will allow “better planning of our cities in the future,” while Pérez said that the sediments of the Gulf of California are likely to contain a “large quantity of geothermal energy that at some point could be used.”
The UNAM researcher said that data collected by scientists could form the base of knowledge to “solve some of the problems we’re going to face on matters of energy.”
Florian Neumann, a scientist at the Center of Scientific Research in Ensenada, Baja California, and the third Mexican on board the vessel, said the research will benefit the energy industry.
“We’re going to make maps of the heat flows and in that way we’ll be able to estimate the geothermal potential of the area . In addition, we will try to identify the quantity of carbon in the basin . . .” he said.
AMLO went on the attack against what he called a corrupt anti-corruption organization.
President López Obrador blasted a civil society organization for opposing federal projects, chiefly the new airport at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base.
The president declared at his morning press conference on Tuesday that Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) is carrying out a campaign of “sabotage” against his administration.
“They’ve dedicated themselves to legally sabotaging us, by asking for injunctions against projects,” he said. “They don’t want us to do anything, they want the same corrupt regime to continue.”
“Imagine defending the airport in Lake Texcoco, the looting that was being prepared, the biggest robbery ever of the people and the nation,” said the president. “It was going to mean a trillion pesos (US $51.4 billion),” presumably alluding to overruns or other costs of the project, which had been estimated to cost $15 billion.
Claudio González is pro-corruption, according to President López Obrador.
López Obrador also defended himself from criticisms by MCCI president Claudio X. González for the cancellation of the 2013 education reform, calling González and his organization “conservatives,” not a complimentary term as far as the president is concerned.
“They got very upset about this, about something that didn’t benefit education at all,” he said. “On the other hand, it was all part of a privatization plan. They need to understand that we’re not going to keep applying the same neoliberal policies, we’re already in the post-neoliberal period.”
In a tweet last week, González criticized López Obrador’s decision to give more power to the teachers’ unions.
“The president’s decision to give control of public education to the CNTE and the SNTE is, in a historical perspective, enough to declare his administration one of the most damaging administrations in history,” González wrote. “Unfortunately, it’s not the only area where he’s hurting Mexico.”
Education reform was one of the few structural reforms of the previous government that had widespread support, and was generally regarded as a positive step for education. But it was bitterly fought by the CNTE teachers’ union, with which López Obrador has a close relationship.
The Santa Lucía Air Force Base, where a new airport may one day rise.
The defense department was to argue in court Tuesday that injunctions against the construction of the new airport at the Santa Lucia Air Force Base were contrary “to the national interest,” but the hearing has been postponed.
The judge cancelled the hearing without setting a new date.
The collective #NoMásDerroches (No More Waste), which has requested over 100 injunctions to stop construction of the airport, announced yesterday it was aware that the government intended to apply to overturn the injunctions by arguing that the base and its facilities are strategic installations.
The collective argued that the military airport at Santa Lucía continues to operate normally in spite of the orders halting work on the new airport.
“The only thing the court suspended was the construction of the Santa Lucía international airport until the proceedings are over, and that suspension doesn’t affect national security, or the public interest, or public order.”
The collective added that a ruling in the government’s favor would set a “worrying precedent.”
“It would open the door to future appeals to ‘national security’ and public order to deny citizens their right to seek injunctions,” they said.
In conversations with the newspaper El Financiero, legal experts questioned the federal government’s legal strategy.
Rogelio Rodríguez, professor of aerospace law at the National Autonomous University, said the government’s argument was “not exact,” noting that the injunctions only prevent the construction of a civil airport, not the expansion of the military base.
“Neither the president, nor the head of the armed forces, nor the national defense secretary is being prevented from expanding the Santa Lucía military base,” said Rodríguez.
However, the experts agreed that there is a possibility the court will rule in the government’s favor, lifting the suspension on construction. But if that happens, #NoMásDerroches will have a chance to appeal the ruling, according to constitutional lawyer Lot Bautista.
“It’s not an immediate decision,” said Bautista. “After the request to modify the suspension, the judge has to notify the other side in order to guarantee the right to a hearing, and then the judge will make a ruling. It’s like a mini-trial that is part of the injunction proceedings, and it lasts about a month. But after the ruling, there can be an appeal.”
The Santa Lucía airport is part of a federal government plan to relieve pressure on the Mexico City airport and replaces the previous government’s plan for a new airport at Texcoco.
Travelers at the closed Thomas Cook check-in desk in Cancún.
Hundreds of travelers have been stranded at the Cancún airport after the collapse of the British travel agency Thomas Cook.
No other country in Europe sends more tourists to Mexico’s Caribbean coast than the United Kingdom, and it is only surpassed worldwide by the United States and Canada, according to figures from the Secretariat of Tourism.
And Thomas Cook sent the majority of those tourists, said Darío Flota, director of Quintana Roo’s tourism promotion board.
“The impact is going to be very powerful, and it will take some time to recover,” he said in an interview on Radio Fórmula.
In addition to stranded travelers, Flota said the bankruptcy will also leave large amounts of debt in the area and cost many tourism sector jobs.
Cancún’s airport was crowded with over 300 desperate tourists trying to make their way home after the company’s airline canceled its two scheduled flights for Monday, one to London and the other to Manchester.
The British Embassy in Mexico City sent staff to Cancún to help rebook travelers on a different flight to Manchester, but even they weren’t happy with the situation.
“We were supposed to fly to London, but now we’re going to Manchester, so I’m going to miss my connecting flight to Ireland,” a redirected traveler named Jordan told the news agency AFP.
“That’s what they told us in the hotel, but I have no idea. At least I didn’t have to pay anything.”
Another traveler named Matt said he couldn’t believe what was happening.
“We need to get home. It’s a big travel company. They’re everywhere,” he said, though he still could see the bright side.
“But at least we had a holiday. Some people won’t.”
Among the desperate, stranded travelers were families with tired children, students worried about missing classes and employees concerned with getting back to work.
In 2018, the U.K. sent 590,000 tourists to Mexico, and 77% of those visited Cancún, according to the Secretariat of Tourism.
One of the allegedly illegal quarries that supplied building materials to the new airport.
More than half of the quarries that supplied the volcanic rocks tezontle and basalt for the construction of the new Mexico City International Airport (NAIM) operated illegally between 2016 and 2018.
An investigation by the newspaper El Universal determined that 106 of 205 quarries located in 24 México state municipalities near the abandoned airport site in Texcoco violated the law.
Published on Monday and based on a range of evidence including all quarry authorizations that were granted in the state between 2016 and 2018, the report said that 26 quarries operated without ever having authorization from the federal Environment Secretariat, 54 began mining for tezontle and basalt several months before they had permission to do so and 26 extracted rocks from areas beyond where they were authorized to mine.
Tezontle and basalt were used to build the foundations of the X-shaped terminal building and three runways at the site of the airport project, which was cancelled by President López Obrador following a controversial and legally questionable public consultation last October.
The volcanic rock foundations were designed to ensure that the airport didn’t sink on the unstable land of the ancient Texcoco lake.
El Universal also said that the quarries exploited the hills on which they were located to such an extent that they were transformed into deep red craters.
Mining for the volcanic rocks destroyed archaeological sites protected by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, wreaked havoc on ecosystems and denuded land of flora, leaving it as sterile desert, the report said.
In addition, the operation of the quarries led to an increase of crime, caused respiratory illnesses among all sectors of the population from children to the elderly and provoked conflicts among neighbors.
Between December 2015 and the public consultation of October 2018, the federal government awarded six contracts for the construction of the bulk of the airport project including the three runways and several buildings.
In the same period, companies sought a total of 189 permits from the Environment Secretariat to mine volcanic rock deposits in the area surrounding the airport site. Only 14 of the permit requests were denied, El Universal said.
The majority of the mining authorizations were approved within 12 months after September 2016, the month in which contracts for the construction of the runways were awarded.
Illegal quarries provided materials to support the foundation of the new airport’s X-shaped terminal building.
El Universal determined that 75% of the tezontle that passed through one airport entry point in 2018 came from quarries that were operating, or had operated, illegally.
Sources told the newspaper that it was common for small and medium-sized quarries to sell the rocks they extracted to larger companies that took them to the airport site.
Among the owners of the quarries that supplied rocks to the US $13-billion project are local caciques (strongmen) who were allegedly friends of former president – and former México state governor – Enrique Peña Nieto, politicians, unions and even a narco from Tamaulipas, El Universal said. Some of the quarries are registered in the names of prestanombres, or front men.
López Obrador pledged to cancel the airport during last year’s election campaign on the grounds that it was corrupt, too expensive, not needed and geologically unsound.
His four-day consultation in October 2018 found 69.9% support to scrap the project and instead convert the Santa Lucía Air Force Base into a commercial airport and upgrade the existing airport in Mexico City and that in Toluca.
Communications and Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Espriú announced in August that the government had paid out more than 71 billion pesos (US $3.6 billion) to settle contracts for the canceled project.
However, construction at Santa Lucía has been held up by legal challenges filed by the #NoMásDerroches (No More Waste) collective, part of a strategy to revive the Texcoco project, which it believes is still possible.
The government intends to convert the airport site and surrounding areas into a massive ecological park and López Obrador said on Friday that the injunctions against the Santa Lucía project are being dealt with and that there would soon be “no legal obstacle” to its construction.
He also dismissed a claim made in a newspaper column that the government of Singapore was interested in presenting a proposal to complete the abandoned airport.
“I don’t think this proposal is true,” López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference. “I think it’s an opinion like many others. I don’t think it’s a serious proposal.”
Torture victim Camacho, left, and Interior Secretary Sánchez.
The federal government apologized on Monday to a member of an urban guerrilla movement who was tortured for 49 days in 1977 and forced to watch the extrajudicial killing of her husband.
Martha Alicia Camacho Loaiza and José Manuel Alapizco Lizárraga, who in the 1970s belonged to the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (September 23 Communist League), were detained in Culiacán, Sinaloa, on August 19, 1977 by soldiers, state police and members of the Federal Security Directorate, a defunct intelligence agency.
Camacho, eight months’ pregnant at the time, was not only tortured but forced to witness the torture and execution of Alapizco and give birth under inhumane conditions. She was released after her family paid a ransom to authorities.
Camacho filed a criminal complaint in 2002 against her husband’s abduction and murder and her own kidnapping and torture but 11 years later, in February 2013, the federal Attorney General’s Office said it wouldn’t open an investigation because too much time had passed since the crimes were committed.
The former guerrilla fighter challenged the ruling and a judge subsequently determined in 2014 that due to the seriousness of the crimes, they must be investigated.
While the case has still not been resolved, Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero said on Monday that the government is committed to paying compensation to Camacho for the harm she suffered during her 49-day ordeal and in subsequent years.
At an event in Mexico City, Sánchez issued an apology to Camacho, her deceased husband – whose body was never found – and her son, Miguel Alfonso Millán Camacho.
“I offer you a public apology in the name of the Mexican state for the transgression of your rights due to the grave and systematic human rights violations that occurred within the context of political violence . . . in the historical period known as the Dirty War,” she said.
“You were detained and tortured . . . acts perpetrated by the judicial police of Sinaloa, the Federal Security Directorate and the army.”
Human rights undersecretary Alejandro Encinas also issued an apology on behalf of the Mexican state, explaining that it was an “act of justice.”
Camacho responded by saying that the public apology is a starting point but a lot still has to be done to address past injustices.
“What happened to me was hell,” she said, adding that it was “regrettable” that no representative of the Secretariat of National Defense was present to recognize the “atrocities” committed during Mexico’s dirty war of the 1960s and ’70s, a period in which the government tortured and disappeared a large number of students and members of guerrilla groups.
Navy marines and a shipment of the cancer drug Methotrexate.
The Mexican government has purchased enough cancer medication to last through the end of the year, President López Obrador confirmed Sunday.
In making the purchase, he kept a promise made in August that he would buy the medication abroad, and said the government will continue doing so as long as Mexican pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell to the government.
The cancer treatment Methotrexate was purchased in France from Mylan Pharmaceuticals, one of the three biggest generic drug manufacturers in the world, with the coordination of the navy and health and finance officials.
“We bought 38,200 units (29,230 of 50 milligrams and 8,970 of 500 mg), which covers the requirements in the whole sector for the rest of the year,” officials said in a statement.
The total cost for the medicines came to 4,66 million pesos (US $239,457), which included shipping from France. The statement pointed out that the price was slightly less than what the previous administration paid to the only laboratory in Mexico that makes the drug.
At his morning conference on Monday, López Obrador accused the businesses from which the medications had been purchased previously of being greedy, accusing them of raising the price 200-300%.
“They wanted to play the same arm-wrestle game as the huachicoleros [fuel thieves]. They thought they could break our will, but the government won’t let itself be blackmailed,” he said.
“Whoever wants to do business can do so, but with reasonable profits . . . We no longer permit bribery and we will continue buying the medications in Mexico if they offer fair prices and there are reasonable profits,” he said.
The Mexican drug war is an issue as complex as it is violent. Over the past two decades, almost 200,000 Mexicans have been killed, and reporting on it is as dangerous as any conflict – more than 100 journalists have been killed, or disappeared, in the same period.
British-born journalist Ioan Gillo has covered the conflict for Time magazine and The New York Times, and in two critically acclaimed books, El Narco (2011) and Gangster Warlords (2016). I met with him to try to understand the war and began by asking him to outline its main players.
IG: Right now you’ve got a lot of fragmentation. You’ve got the Sinaloa, the oldest and most infamous cartel, run by Chapo Guzmán and his sons (“Los Chapitos”), and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, based out of Guadalajara. Then there’s Los Zetas, the first paramilitary cartel, who have now split into factions; and the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas and Veracruz; the Juárez Cartel; and the Tijuana Cartel.
Then we come to the smaller cartels, the cartelitos: the Guerreros Unidos, Los Rojos, Los Caballeros Templarios and La Familia Michoaana. There are dozens of these.
ME: How wide are their operations?
IG: Oh, worldwide! The largest cartels have envoys everywhere. There’s a big presence in the U.S., the Caribbean and South America, but they are also active in Britain, mainland Europe, China, even Russia.
Grillo’s book Gangster Warlords explores drug gangs in Central and Latin America and the Caribbean.
ME: What launched the cartels as a global force?
IG: There’s no single watershed moment, but the breakdown of the PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] was a big factor as it broke communication between municipal police forces. What was a stable system of top-down, endemic corruption suddenly became an unstable system of bottom-up, endemic corruption.
Another factor was the re-routing of the cocaine as it came into the U.S. After [former U.S. president] Reagan clamped down on the Caribbean route into Miami, cocaine started to steam through central America into Mexico, which became the final strait. After that the cartels began purchasing the cocaine directly from the Colombians at the border and selling it on. With more money came more violence for control of that money.
ME: Is it just about cocaine and other drugs, or are there other significant revenues?
IG: Concerning narcotics, there are five main products. The first is marijuana, a big cash crop. It’s inexpensive to manufacture and fetches a decent profit margin. However, legalization in the U.S. is damaging its reach. The second is cocaine – traditionally most profitable. A kilo of pure cocaine can be bought by cartels at the border for as little as US $2,000 and sold for a huge mark-up.
Then there’s heroin, which is now largely cultivated in Mexico. If you buy a wrap of heroin in Baltimore today, chances are it’s made in Mexico. Fourth, there’s methamphetamine, which ripped through Mexico after the 2005 Combat Methamphetamine Act in the U.S. And recently we’ve been seeing fentanyl being made in Mexico. This is a seriously dangerous opiod, responsible for tens of thousands of overdose deaths.
However, on top of the drugs, there’s anything and everything else. Stealing crude oil is big business for oil racketeers known as huachicoleros and other revenue comes from capturing agricultural plantations – avocados and limes, illegal iron mining, illegal logging. And there are the repugnant practices of people smuggling and people trafficking.
ME: Do you know how much overall revenue comes from all of this? And where it goes?
IG: It’s impossible to know. However, the Rand Center, commissioned by the White House, estimated the U.S. spends $100 billion per year on illegal drugs. Obviously much of that will not get to Mexico as the biggest mark-ups come from the street-selling level. Some of this money goes towards material wealth for the cartels and their lieutenants. But an enormous amount is laundered via U.S. banks, particularly in Texas, and through tax havens like Panama. Money is also laundered through real estate and shell companies all over the world.
ME: Can you describe the process in which people get involved with the cartels?
IG: It starts with an absence of government, an absence of wealth and an absence of family. With these three things, and the pull of easy money from (at first) petty crime, kids get involved. It usually starts with street gangs, then kids will be given a phone, a $50 weekly salary and told to stand guard on the corner as a kind of sentry, a halcón, before they’re moved to higher forms of crime, be it moving drugs or elsicariato (hitmen). And then the police are an active arm of the cartels in many areas.
ME: When you investigate in these dangerous areas, do you tell people you’re a journalist?
IG: Yes, always. I don’t want anyone to think I’m working for a rival cartel, or the DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration]. But reporting on organized crime can offer a strange protection. If I’m interviewing the head of the Red Command in Rio [de Janeiro], no one is going to hold me up because they know I’m with “them.” They also don’t want the trouble of robbing some gringo and having the whole police force roll up, guns blazing.
El Narco takes a look inside Mexico’s criminal insurgency.
ME: But journalists are targeted by the cartels in Mexico?
IG: It’s usually for a specific, terrifyingly petty reason. Sometimes it’s for publishing something they don’t like. A co-worker of mine was killed for publishing an op-ed by a grieving mother which called the cartels cowards. It can also be for not covering a story they want you to cover, such as an example murder. A Juárez newspaper once published a chilling headline, directed towards the cartels, titled ‘¿Qué quiere de nosotros?’ (What do you want from us?)
ME: I’m sure many newspapers back off. Are there any you respect for not doing so?
Yes many. ElRíoDoce in Sinaloa, for example, after my friend Javier Valdez was killed in 2017.
ME: When have you felt most in danger?
IG: There was one time in Michoacán, when cartel members dressed as autodefensas [self-defense forces] thought I was a DEA agent and threatened me with a grenade. Another in Tabasco when the Jalisco cartel told me they were going to raid my hotel for potential ransom victims. Another when I managed to pull over just a few miles before a cartel roadblock in Coahuila. The list goes on . . . .
ME: If you were to offer a child in Sinaloa a “Chapo” or a Che Guevara belt buckle, which would they choose?
Oh, Chapo every time. But the question of ideology is a pertinent one. While many cartels don’t have a political ideology, they do have strange rituals. For instance, Los Zetas take the Marines’ philosophy of “never leave a man behind” to new levels – “never leave the dead behind” – and steal back their fallen brothers from morgues.
Many cartel leaders, such as [former Familia Michoacana boss] Nazario Moreno , are quasi-religious, or suffer from a type of Jerusalem Syndrome in which they think themselves gods. There’s also a Robin Hood angle – standing up for the little man and the poor, which is celebrated by the narcocorridos.
ME: Okay, I’m giving you a magic wand. How would you attempt to solve the narco problem?
IG: First, drug policy reform. We need to accept drug policy is failing. It should be about reducing the tens of billions of dollars that go to criminals. There are two areas of tragedy: the people dying of overdoses, and the criminals being funded to slaughter each other, as well as their fellow citizens.
With drugs that are problematic to legalize, such as heroin, you need rehabilitation, because both the money and the overdose deaths are about addicts. Other drugs, such as cocaine, which are taken more casually, I would consider decriminalizing, or even legalizing. Certainly, I think marijuana should be legalized.
Secondly, you have to fight for the hearts and minds of the young people who are recruited into cartels. Society needs to offer something to these children, with funding for social work. Wealth inequality also breeds crime. It’s only after areas are ghettoized that cartels have room to breathe.
Thirdly, how do you build a police force that’s trusted? It’s very hard to find a blueprint for this. Nicaragua, despite its poverty, is supposed to have a police force that’s resistant to the insurgency of gangs, particularly in areas where they fought the Contras, but trust has been undermined recently. Cuba has a lot less crime than its neighbours but it’s a fairly authoritarian society. Countries like Chile, too, but I’d put that down to per-capita wealth.
ME: Would you halt the flow of guns into Mexico from the USA?
IG: I would try. Most of the guns used by the cartels are purchased in the U.S. I don’t see banning guns in the U.S. as realistic, but there are many other steps you can take. We need to reduce the number of guns coming into Mexico.
ME: What’s your opinion, so far, on López Obrador’s presidency?
IG: When he was elected there was a moment of hope for change. It was the biggest win for a president in years. However, his first eight months have been disappointing. You’ve had an increase in violence and a flat economy. You can’t pin this all on AMLO’s presidency because these things are eternally complex and can’t be solved overnight, but his strategies haven’t been clear, or successful. The new National Guard, for instance, hasn’t avoided corruption in the way López Obrador thought it would.
ME: Finally, are you optimistic for the future?
IG: I really can’t say. It’s not my job to be optimistic.
There were more than 16,000 confirmed cases of dengue fever in 16 states during the first eight and a half months of the year, more than triple the number reported in the same period of 2018.
The epidemiology department of the federal Health Secretariat said there were 100,510 probable cases of the mosquito-borne tropical disease to September 15, of which 16,410 cases are confirmed.
To the same date last year, there were 4,578 confirmed cases of dengue.
With 4,845 cases, Veracruz has seen the biggest outbreak of the disease that is also known as breakbone fever. Only 807 cases were reported between January and September last year.
Higher numbers have also been seen in Jalisco, Chiapas, Oaxaca and Puebla.
ACAPS, a Switzerland-based independent information provider that carried out an analysis of the disease in Mexico this year, said in a September 16 briefing note that “the ongoing rainy season, which lasts until October, could continue to increase caseloads of dengue both within Veracruz and across the country.”
In Veracruz, all four serotypes of dengue have been detected, ACAPS said, adding that “the deadliest strain of dengue, serotype-2 . . . could lead to more severe reactions to the disease.”
There have been more than 900 confirmed cases of “severe” dengue this year and deaths have been reported in both Veracruz and Oaxaca.
In the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of the latter state, a five-year-old boy died of dengue in late July while his sister is believed to have succumbed to the same disease in June although her death was officially attributed to appendicitis.
The federal health secretary said earlier this month that 120 people have died from dengue this year, but the Directorate General of Epidemiology says only 43 have been confirmed.
ACAPS cited a range of factors that could affect the capacity of Mexico, and Veracruz in particular, to respond to the high number of dengue cases.
It noted that 20% of people in Veracruz don’t have either public or private health insurance, adding that “the gap in health care coverage may lead to difficulty in accessing necessary treatment for some of the population.”
The NGO also said that gang violence may pose security risks in that it could prevent access to healthcare.
ACAPS also cited three “aggravating factors” that could make the dengue situation worse in Veracruz: climate, lack of insecticides and other diseases.
Heavy rains could increase the presence of standing water and thus facilitate the breeding of mosquitoes, ACAPS said.
It also said that the lack of insecticides available in Veracruz has been cited as one of the reasons for the higher than average level of cases so far in 2019 and that other viruses and diseases currently present could impact the ability of healthcare facilities to respond to the dengue outbreak.
However, Dr. Ruy López Ridaura, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control Programs, said that mosquito spraying had occurred throughout the whole year in parts of the country susceptible to dengue outbreaks, explaining that state authorities used their own funds to purchase insecticides.
He also said that spike in the number of cases this year was not abnormal or alarming.
The Oaxaca Congress will vote Wednesday on a bill to change the state’s constitution and remove criminal penalties for abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
A woman who procures an abortion can currently be imprisoned for between six months and two years, provided three circumstances are met: the woman does not have a “bad reputation,” that she has been able to hide her pregnancy and that the pregnancy was the fruit of an illegitimate relationship. If one of those circumstances does not apply, a woman can be jailed for between one and five years.
Providing an abortion with a woman’s consent is punishable with one to six years in prison. The only exceptions are in cases of rape, risk to the health or life of the mother and serious genetic disorders.
According to the organization Marie Stopes México, there are around 9,200 abortions in Oaxaca every year, of which only 2,300 are registered.
Between 2013 and 2016, at least 20 women are were sentenced to prison in Oaxaca for procuring abortions, according to the national statistics agency Inegi. Since 2016, Oaxaca prosecutors have opened 56 investigations for abortion.
According to Morena lawmaker Elisa Zepeda, decriminalizing abortion is not only an issue of public health but also of social justice, because it is mostly poor and indigenous women who do not have access to abortion services under good conditions.
