President López Obrador has announced that the government will invite retired doctors to apply for positions in public hospitals plagued by personnel shortages.
“There are vacancies in the social security [healthcare sector] that are not filled . . . There will be a call-out for all doctors, not only so that they have work and earn well but also so that they help us to provide health care for the people,” the president said during a weekend visit to rural regions of México state.
López Obrador said that retired doctors who “still have strength” will have the opportunity to resume their medical careers by signing six-year contracts.
He explained that doctors who take up positions in rural areas will be paid more than those who work in cities.
The president also said that 80,000 healthcare employees currently holding replacement or contract positions will be afforded the opportunity to obtain permanent employment status although he conceded that it wouldn’t happen overnight.
In addition, López Obrador pledged that the government will improve hospital infrastructure and purchase new medical equipment using an additional 40 billion pesos (US $2 billion) that will be allocated to the public healthcare sector in 2020.
Appearing alongside México state Governor Alfredo del Mazo, the president said the government has developed a good working relationship with the leaders of all of Mexico’s 32 states.
“I’m pleased that in the case of México state and in other states, but here in a very prominent way, we have a very good relationship with the governor. We’re working together and that’s the way we’re going to continue.”
The president remains popular despite concerns over security and the economy.
A new poll shows that President López Obrador’s approval rating is holding steady and strong at 66%.
For the third month in a row, the president has found support among two-thirds of respondents to the monthly survey conducted by the newspaper El Financiero.
The percentage of respondents who disapproved of López Obrador’s performance was unchanged between May and July at 32%.
Although the president’s approval rating remains strong, it is 20 points short of the 86% support he garnered in the newspaper’s February poll, which came after the government’s crackdown on fuel theft.
And it is just below the 70% approval rating López Obrador attracted in a poll carried out by the newspaper Reforma last month.
The 66% rating is one point better than that achieved by former National Action Party presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón at the end of the second quarter of their first year in office.
Ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto had a 52% approval rating at the end of July 2013.
In terms of personal qualities, López Obrador scored best for honesty and leadership. Almost six in 10 respondents said that his performance in the former area was very good or good, while 53% said the same about the latter.
Less flattering for the president is that only 47% of respondents said that they mostly or somewhat believe what he says whereas 51% said that they have very limited or no faith in the veracity of López Obrador’s statements.
Despite the strong overall rating for the president, his government’s approach to dealing with key issues failed to impress most poll respondents.
The López Obrador administration fared best on education, with 35% of those polled saying that the government is doing well in the area.
The poll: ‘In general, do you approve or disapprove of the job President López Obrador is doing?’ In blue the approval numbers, in red the opposite and in black, don’t know. el financiero
However, 38% said that the government is doing badly on education issues, while 25% said that the performance was neither good nor bad.
The percentage of respondents who said that the government is doing badly exceeded those who said that the government is doing well on all other issues probed by El Financiero.
One-third of respondents said the government is dealing with public security issues well but 42% said that its performance was bad.
One-third of respondents also said the government’s response to welfare issues was good but 44% said otherwise
The positive/negative assessments of the government’s performance were 28% and 51% respectively for healthcare, 27% and 41% for infrastructure projects and 23% and 51% for the economy.
Hospitals have been plagued by shortages of medications and personnel this year, none of the government’s signature infrastructure projects – the Santa Lucía airport, the Dos Bocas refinery and the Maya Train – have made much progress and the economy only narrowly avoided entering a technical recession by recording 0.1% growth in the second quarter of the year.
Just over half of respondents said that economic growth was more important than the distribution of wealth while 43% said the opposite.
President López Obrador has stressed recently that his government is not aiming for growth for growth’s sake but rather to be in a position to distribute wealth more equitably.
Despite the government putting the fight against corruption at the center of its agenda, only 21% of respondents said that its approach to dealing with the problem was good compared to 62% who said it was bad.
Just one in six poll respondents said the government is responding well to combating poverty whereas almost six in 10 said it is doing badly.
More than seven in 10 said they disagreed with the government’s plan to deliver economic aid to Central American countries while just 27% said they supported it.
The government performed better with regard to the “decisions and actions” it has taken.
Six in 10 respondents said they had a favorable view of the creation and deployment of the National Guard while just 25% said that they had an unfavorable view of the new force.
More than half of respondents supported López Obrador’s daily news conferences while only a quarter were opposed, while similar percentages of people indicated that they were in favor and opposed, respectively, to the government’s implementation of austerity measures.
More than six in 10 respondents said they would vote for López Obrador to continue as president in a revocation of mandate vote, which López Obrador has pledged to hold three years into his six-year term, but 70% said that they were opposed to him being reelected as president, for which an amendment to the constitution would be required.
Asked whether Mexico was on a good or bad path under his leadership, 49% of respondents said the former and 45% the latter.
El Financiero conducted its poll nationally with 820 adults during two three-day periods in July. The newspaper said the survey has a margin of error of +/-3.4%.
Over a span of a decade and a half after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, a high school classmate and I borrowed another schoolmate’s car in Prague and crisscrossed eastern Europe, crowning that series of epic summers with a moonshot to Syria. Yes, that Syria.
The old coot is still traveling with me and is now 77. I am 76. We’re not ready for Golden Pond yet but maybe Copper Pond or Silver Pond.
These days we are retired and restless and bored and unbalanced enough to have driven three different Toyota Camrys, one Corolla and one GEO (Corolla) to my home in Guatemala. (1) Brownsville, Texas, to Guatemala in a 1988 Camry wagon; (2) Laredo TX to Guatemala in a 1993 Camry CE (Toyota’s somewhat rare and much underrated base model); (3) San Diego to Guatemala via Baja in a 2000 Camry CE; (4) San Diego to Guatemala in a 1993 GEO; and (5) Piedras Negras to Guatemala in a 1996 Corolla acquired from a Saudi Arabian SEAL, leaving the very evening of the day I took the keys to, as he put it “take care of an east coast Shiite problem” as in Iran/Yemen.
We learned a lot. Here are some of the things we learned: Toyota, AutoZone and Baja Bound Insurance are the best dish in Mexico.
• Don’t pack the trunk too full, there’s a spare tire in there somewhere and you are going to need it. Keeping the jack handle under the seat is a bad idea.
• It’s true that the fuel pump, however, is underneath the back seat.
• The Robin Hood peasants who have seized control of several toll booths are our friends and allies, even though they don’t take credit cards.
• Mexican cops still unscrew license plates. Bring epoxy for the screw heads to slow them down.
• There are millions of auto mechanics in Mexico. Their advice is free and you’re gonna need it. Every Mexican female’s DNA contains a tamal. Every Mexican man’s DNA contains a mechanic’s set of tools. Open a hood and you are in an instant operating theater, with specialists crowding around.
• Thank God for AutoZone. Their orange and white signs in Mexico are a slice of America, comfort food like Motel 6 in the lodging business north of the border.
• Sanctuary. A Mexican AutoZone on a Sunday is like the cafe in Lake Wobegon or any hardware store in West Texas on a Saturday morning. If Magellan had had AutoZone for backup, all of his ships would have made it around the world and he might still be going.
Thank you, God, for AutoZone.
• If you remember The Pit and the Pendulum from high school you know why at all costs you don’t want to see the inside of a Mexican jail. Thanks to Baja Bound, the San Diego-based agency for Mexico’s super modern and reliable HDI Insurance, we could sleep soundly.
• If you browse the internet you will flinch, stay home and miss out on all the fun but we have 130 million amigos in Mexico and you need not fear. Sixty-five million are mechanics. Well, maybe a few women, too.
• We didn’t see any sign of narcos but stayed one night in the town where uber-drug lord “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzmán was caught at the end of the tunnel leading away from underneath the refrigerator. Worth a repeat visit.
• Mexico doesn’t really want U.S. tourists, at least by car. There’s even a special building in Nuevo Laredo for “Repatriation of Human Remains.” Sometimes it’s better not to read Spanish, but if this scares you, just don’t go.
• There is no pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow on the map called Guatemala. Now that President Trump has finished ironing out the kinks in NAFTA, he should turn his attention to Guatemala’s CAFTA, which can turn a 40% duty into 200%.
• One fuel pump, four shock/strut assemblies, two windshield wipers, one starter motor, one radiator flush, one rewound armature and a hell of a lot of fun are a pretty decent tally for 6,000 or so miles and hundreds of speed bumps. Thank you, God, for AutoZone. Especially the four-for-the-price-of-three shocks/struts. I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, and again.
• Mexican paperwork is a nuisance and the green folded paper with the numbers in the corners doesn’t work anymore.
• Toyota understates the abilities of its intrepid Camrys. And they are Made in Kentucky, USA. MAGA Toyota USA.
Why Camry?
In our eastern European madness, we drove a SEAT Malaga of indeterminate age, learning only belatedly that it was really a VW, which may explain why over 15 years we didn’t even have to change a light bulb. I don’t know where it is now but sealed up and strapped on a rocket it would make an excellent space shuttle although I hate to give Elon Musk any more good ideas.
The Camrys have been equally reliable. Cheap on Craig’s List, gas-thrifty, comfortable, four out of five with AC, who could ask for anything more? Plus, in theory they are readily saleable in Guatemala if touted as “recently brought down from the USA.” Fool’s gold. Auto pyrite, as it turns out.
Who were the drivers?
The old guy took shop in high school and often holds that over my head. I didn’t take shop, since I was college-bound and Mom wouldn’t let me. Actually his early training came into play when on a hot, hot day at reasonably high speed just north of hot, hot Monterrey the engine stalled.
He mumbled “vapor lock,” pulled over for a minute and we were on our way. An impress-your-date trick. Shop-doc went to Stanford and then to medical school. No-shop me went elsewhere. Go figure. I shoulda took shop.
I think he also went to a Montessori kindergarten, since he is obsessively/compulsively neat. This is important in packing a car, which should never be done by two or more people but as many as possible when unpacking to find the spare tire in a hurry or a fuel pump. There, speed is more important.
I’m not so fussy a packer, always figuring that one more something will fit. I haven’t brought the kitchen sink yet on any of our cannonball runs, but I am thinking about a countertop dishwasher. And a refrigerator. And a lawnmower. And a dog.
In spite of his age, the old guy’s a good driver, at least since he got his eyes fixed with laser surgery. Before that he needed a white cane, so in our European capers I did the driving. Now it’s payback time, and he does most of the driving.
This is the first of a two-part series about the author’s cannonball runs through Mexico.
Neighbors were quick to to scoop up what they could carry after a beer truck overturned in Campeche on Saturday morning.
Motorists abandoned their cars on the Mérida-Campeche highway at San Francisco Kobén where men, women and children ran quickly to haul off entire cartons of free booze.
In photos and videos of the incident that surfaced on social media, some especially eager people can be seen arranging and tying down stacks of beer cartons on tricycles.
Police were curiously absent during the looting despite their presence at a checkpoint just a short distance down the road, emboldening residents. One man cried out, “It’s a party in San Francisco Kobén,” while neighbors that had already carried beer cartons back to their homes returned for more.
In all, residents made off with more than 1,000 cartons of beer.
Though authorities have not yet determined what caused the truck to turn over, initial coverage of the incident suggested that the driver may have been speeding and lost control.
Stories of looted beer trucks are not uncommon but in the most recent before Saturday’s incident neighbors took a different approach. They rallied to prevent looting and helped reload the cargo in a replacement truck after an accident in May in Ixtlahuaca, México state.
El Carrete and the Guerrero sierra where he was caught.
Seven hundred community police members were involved in a three-day confrontation in Guerrero that culminated in the arrest of the suspected leader of the Los Rojos crime gang.
Santiago “El Carrete” Mazari Hernández, identified as one of the principal instigators of violence in both Guerrero and Morelos, was detained in the municipality of Leonardo Bravo last Thursday.
Under siege from community police prior to his arrest, Mazari found refuge in a home in the community of Corral de Piedra.
According to a report in the newspaper El Universal, the gang leader entered a house and offered its inhabitants cash in exchange for providing him with a place to hide. They were too afraid to refuse.
Mazari’s whereabouts, however, didn’t remain secret for long.
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Members of the United Front of Guerrero Community Police (FUPCEG) laid siege to Corral de Piedra and for three days engaged in a confrontation with other Los Rojos gangsters in the town.
Juan Castillo Gómez, a gang member known as “El Teniente,” and two other men were killed during one clash near an outdoor basketball court.
“Three people died here,” a resident told the newspaper Milenio.
“The shootout went for 10 hours,” another resident said. “We had to grab the children so they wouldn’t go out.”
Milenio reported that spent bullet casings are littered around Corral de Piedra and that booby traps with active grenades were set and still remain in the town.
Holed up in the local home and with the community police closing in, Mazari decided to make a run for it.
Noticing that the householder owned a dump truck, the capo asked for – or more likely demanded – the keys. The homeowner complied.
Mazari and another gang member identified as Marco “N” – believed to be Los Rojos principal criminal operator – left the home and got into the truck. The former drove while the latter hid in the open bed box.
Trying to leave Corral de Piedra, Mazari came to a community police roadblock where he was ordered to get out of the truck. The officers also located Marco “N.”
El Universal reported that after establishing their identities, community police contacted Guerrero state police.
Federal Police, the army and the navy also responded to the report of the men’s capture and were ultimately responsible for taking them into custody. Mazari was subsequently flown to Mexico City in a navy helicopter.
Community police spokesman Salvador Alanís Trujillo said that with the capture of Mazari and the death of Gómez, the Los Rojos gang is practically “extinct” and that police will now turn their attention to combating the Cartel del Sur.
“. . . We’re going to put an end to the Cartel del Sur, we’re going to fight against them like we did with El Tequilero [the leader of the Tequileros gang] and El Carrete,” he said.
“We’re going after them and hopefully the authorities will also be willing to collaborate so that the work is easier and so there is not too much harm to third parties. The next challenge . . . is to exterminate the Cartel del Sur . . . Isaac Navarrete Celis, the leader, is our main target now.”
The women's rhythmic gymnastics team with their second gold medal.
There were more gold medals for Mexico Sunday at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, putting the country in third place in the medal standings with 20 golds and 71 in total.
Mexican diver Juan Manuel Celaya came in second place in the three-meter dive yesterday, losing gold to Daniel Restrepo from Colombia, but edging out Canadian Philippe Gagné for silver. Yesterday’s medal is Celaya’s third at the games after he won two gold medals in the one-meter platform dive and the three-meter synchronized dive.
The diving duo of Alejandra Orozco and Gabriela Agundez gave Mexico its second silver medal of the day on the 10-meter platform dive, ceding to the Canadians but beating the U.S. team in total points.
The female rhythmic gymnastics team won its second gold medal for Mexico, placing ahead of the U.S. and Brazilian teams.
Meanwhile, Sofía Reinoso navigated her canoe to victory for a bronze medal in canoe slalom, while Lizbeth Salazar and Jessica Bonilla pedaled into third place for track cycling in the Madison relay race.
Overall, the Mexican team won one gold medal, two silver and two bronze medals on Sunday.
As of Monday afternoon, Mexico had won 71 medals, creeping closer to Brazil’s 73 medals and the United States’ 136.
President López Obrador has called on the government of the United States to pass stricter legislation on gun sales after a shooting in El Paso, Texas, killed 21 people, including eight Mexican citizens.
The president said on Monday that permissive gun laws in the United States “have negative effects on many Americans and also on us.”
“We’re making a special effort to address the damage caused by guns in our country,” he said. “According to current legislation, there is more gun control here than in other countries.”
The president also mentioned the “fast and furious” gunwalking scandal in which U.S. government officials allowed weapons to be smuggled into Mexico during the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“If we look at this objectively, we’d have to say that the two main political parties in the United States have not taken gun control seriously,” he said. “For example, in Operation Fast and Furious, where [arms smuggling] was allowed, those who controlled the presidency then are now in the opposition. I’m only saying this to be balanced.”
The president said he will avoid making in-depth statements about U.S. politics because he doesn’t want to interfere in the electoral processes of other countries.
“We don’t want what we say to be used for electoral ends,” he said. “We need to remember that there are elections, and we don’t want to get involved.”
López Obrador added that he has instructed Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard to explore legal actions that Mexico can take in response to the deaths of the Mexicans in the shooting.
“Marcelo has instructions to file the required complaints,” he said. “We’re going to make a complaint about terrorism with the United States government, so that it will take action according to its own laws.”
When people can't wash dishes for lack of water, they need disposables, says Juan Carlos Collazo.
Ben (Dustin Hoffman), the aimless graduate in the 1967 movie of the same name, was given career advice by a neighbor. “One word: plastic.”
But unfortunately, as with so many new technologies, plastic has turned out to be not only a blessing, but an environmental curse.
To help get a handle on plastic pollution, Mexico City’s government will ban plastic bags effective December 2020 and most other single-use plastic products effective January 2021. The ban was approved by the capital’s Congress, 51 in favor, zero against, and one abstention.
Mexico City will be in good company, joining many other major cities and countries in banning bags and other plastic items — Washington, D.C, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Kenya, Chile, the United Kingdom, Australia and China.
Banned items will include plastic cutlery such as forks, knives, spoons, coffee stirrers, trays, plates, cups and straws. Q-Tips, balloons, coffee capsules and tampon applicators made from plastic will also be banned.
The moratorium on single-use plastic takes effect in 2020 to give businesses time to change their production lines to biodegradable materials. “These are gradual processes, as the conversion of technologies requires time to minimize the economic impact,” said National Action Party politician Mauricio Tabe Echartea.
Mexico City currently recycles six out of every 10 plastic bottles, a level on par with European countries. However, even easily recyclable plastic such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) cannot be considered truly sustainable. New bottles must have “virgin” PET introduced along with recycled material.
Additionally, the polymers in PET break down after repeated recycling, meaning that after only two or three cycles they must be dumped in landfills or incinerated. Mexico currently generates around 722,000 tons of PET waste per year.
Glass and aluminum, on the other hand, can be recycled repeatedly. From an environmental perspective, glass bottles are the clear winner. It takes twice as much fossil fuel to produce a plastic bottle and the manufacturing process releases five times the greenhouse gases while requiring 17 times as much water.
The new law makes an exception for biodegradable plastics. These are defined as “material susceptible to a minimum of 90% biodegradation in six months.” But, for biodegradable plastics to break down, they must be in an environment with the right amount of heat, moisture, carbon dioxide and microorganisms. A biodegradable plastic bag thrown into the ocean, for example, will not decompose.
The National Association of Plastic Industries (ANIPAC) issued a statement lamenting the new ban. The industry group claims the economic effect will be too great for citizens of the capital to bear and rejects the value of biodegradable plastics because of the strict conditions needed for them to break down. ANIPAC urges the government to reconsider its time frame.
This bag will be among the products banned.
The ban will affect small family-run businesses as well. Public markets in Mexico City have puestos dedicated to disposable plastic and Styrofoam products. Mexico News Daily spoke to Juan Carlos Collazo, an employee of Materias Primas Charlie located in Mercado Independencia, where plastic cups, Styrofoam trays and dozens of other single-use items are sold.
“Plastic and Styrofoam are what we sell the most. We sell other things too, like napkins and sugar, but what [the city government] is taking away from us is essential to our business. We can buy biodegradable materials, but they cost much more. Containers for hot drinks cost 40 to 50% more,” Collazo said. When asked about the environmental impact of Styrofoam and plastics, Collazo mentioned Mexico City’s water problems.
“Around here, the water cuts off all the time. When people can’t wash their dishes, they need disposables . . . If everyone is using more water to wash plates in homes as well as in businesses, we’re going to run out of water even more frequently.”
Collazo points to labeling on Dart brand Styrofoam cups which he sells: “Dart Cups—The Environmental Option.” The plastic sleeve around the cups states that Dart never manufactures with CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), that the cups are recyclable and that their manufacture uses less energy and a cleaner manufacturing process than paper cups.
But Mexico City currently does not have a recycling program for Styrofoam. The process to recycle is said to be very costly and can only been done at a loss. Unlike paper, Styrofoam can persist in the environment for a million years.
While vendors will continue to sell single-use plastics until the ban takes effect, Collazo says that to stay in business he will have to change his inventory. Even the oxo-biodegradable bags he currently sells will be banned. “We will have to use biodegradable, even if it is more expensive.”
If the graduate’s neighbor were giving him career advice today, it might be: “Plastic, but not single use.”
Mexico is looking into taking legal action against the United States over the murder of eight Mexican citizens in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard told a press conference Sunday that Mexico is considering the mass shooting an act of terrorism against the Mexican-American community and against Mexicans in the United States, and that the attorney general is exploring legal action that would rule the shooting as such.
Designating the attack as an act of anti-Mexican terrorism would give Mexico access to all the evidence that comes out of the investigation into Saturday’s shooting. Ebrard said that such a designation would be the first of its kind.
“There will be legal action against whoever ends up being responsible for the sale of the assault weapons to the person responsible, and whoever pulled the trigger,” said Ebrard. “We are going to request access to the investigation to find out how the weapon was sold and how it got into his hands.”
A total of 22 people were killed in the shooting, which took place at a Walmart in the Cielo Vista shopping center in El Paso. The shooter has been identified as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, of Allen, Texas.
Authorities say Crusius is the author of a 2,300-word “manifesto” posted to the message board 8chan before the attack, which speaks of an “invasion” of Mexican and Latino immigrants into the United States.
Ebrard added that Mexico will send a diplomatic note to the United States asking it to “take a clear position against hate crimes,” and that Mexico will consider requesting that Crusius be extradited to Mexico to face charges for the murders of Mexican citizens.
“Mexico considers this individual to be a terrorist,” he said.
Ebrard was scheduled to travel to El Paso on Monday where he was to meet with Mexican consuls from around the United States.
Herrera and de la Cruz are believed to be close to the Jalisco cartel leader.
Police have captured a man and a woman suspected of being close to the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
Authorities said that both Edgar “El Caimán” (The Alligator) Herrera Pardo and his swimsuit model girlfriend, Maine de la Cruz, have close ties to cartel boss Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes.
Federal Police identified de la Cruz when she boarded a bus in Querétaro City bound for San Luis Potosí. Police detained the bus as it pulled into the terminal, boarded it and found that Pardo was also aboard. They were taken into custody without a struggle.
Both Pardo and De la Cruz were wanted for drug trafficking. Pardo is thought to be one of “El Mencho’s” eight most-trusted henchmen and the cartel’s plaza boss in Tijuana. He is also wanted in the United States.
De la Cruz is a former beauty queen who earned fame in Tijuana when she won a bikini contest hosted by the popular gambling hall Casino Caliente. Authorities said she also has strong ties to the infamous and elusive cartel chief.
