The indigenous Mixtec actress nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Roma has set tongues wagging after she appeared in a photograph with a lighter than usual skin tone.
Yalitza Aparicio posted a photo to her social media accounts Monday in which she is holding a white Lenovo laptop as part of a campaign to promote the Chinese technology company.
But it was Aparicio’s pale skin rather than the laptop that grabbed the attention of many social media users.
Some said the lighting used for the photo had made her complexion appear much lighter than usual, while others argued that, in an act of blatant racism, her skin had been whitened digitally, with makeup, or by both.
“. . . They bleached Yalitza in this photo for Lenovo, the only things we should bleach are clothes and sheets,” one Twitter user wrote.
Nigorette, a fashion photographer and photography teacher, also said the image of Aparicio had been digitally manipulated to make her appear whiter, an act she said “breaks all professional ethics of [image] retouchers.”
The photographer told the newspaper Milenio that it was evident that a front light had been used for the photo but added that it was equally obvious that it had been digitally altered, pointing out that the skin tone on Aparicio’s hand didn’t match that of her face and that her hair had turned “almost gray.”
Nigorette explained: “It’s necessary to understand that skin is a reflective surface, and in that sense, if we want to represent a person as he or she is, we have to manipulate . . . the brightness in a way that [the person’s skin] recovers a little bit of its natural luminosity, tone and texture . . . The last thing we expect is for the media to fall into the typical error of racist ‘beautification.’”
At a Lenovo event yesterday, Aparicio admitted that her image had been retouched but said she wasn’t bothered by her skin tone being altered.
The 25-year-old actress, who before being cast in Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma was a teacher in her home town of Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, has broken new ground for indigenous women by appearing on the cover of Vogue México and being only the second Mexican actress after Salma Hayek to earn a best-actress nomination at the Academy Awards.
In an interview with Milenio, Aparicio described her excitement and disbelief when she found out about the nomination.
“I couldn’t believe it, I simply let myself cry with emotion . . . Thanks to all the critics who considered me to compete in this category because I, at least, hadn’t expected it,” she said.
Aparicio also said that her role as Cleo, a domestic worker, in Roma had helped to highlight that such workers deserve the same labor rights as anyone else.
“I ask for them [to be given] the respect that they deserve, that their work be recognized with dignity because it’s a job that is very important within [people’s] homes,” she said.
Asked whether she would ever go back to being a teacher, Aparicio responded:
“I don’t know what the future has in store, I only know that everything I’m doing now is going to be reflected in that future. If I get the opportunity to make another movie, great. If not, I’ll have the opportunity to return to the classroom and . . . pursue my career [as a teacher], which is something that I’ve always loved.”
A young animator from Iguala, Guerrero, stands to take home an Oscar for his work on the animation team for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which has been nominated for best animated feature.
Cruz Antonio Contreras Mastache, 28, studied studio animation and digital arts at Monterrey Tech in Cuernavaca and continued his studies in dynamic simulation in Argentina before moving to Vancouver, Canada, where he now works for Sony Pictures Animation.
He said that although winning an Academy Award would be “the icing on the cake,” he was most proud that his friends and family in Iguala are able to see his work on the big screen.
“One of things I like best is being able to go to see movies I have been a part of in Iguala with my family. I love that people in Iguala are seeing something I’ve been a part of and I feel proud to be able to represent the people of Iguala from here.”
As part of the film’s animation team Contreras’s job was to animate the motion of characters’ clothes and hair.
“I oversaw the visual effects involving the characters’ physical bodies: the dynamic simulation of hair and clothes. If a character is running against the wind, I had to make his hair and clothes react accordingly. I was in charge of [making it look realistic] if a character’s clothes are wet or burning, if he’s wearing a cape, or if the clothes are light or heavy.”
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has been nominated at 20 film festivals, including the Golden Globe Awards, Critics’ Choice, BAFTA, Anni and the Visual Effects Society. The film has also done well at the box office, despite competition in its opening week with feature films like Aquaman and Mary Poppins.
Of the 40-person animation team, Contreras was one of only four Mexican crew members. He said that during his job interview with Sony the project was kept a secret. The film’s name was only revealed to him after he was hired. He remembered being skeptical upon learning the movie’s title: “Another Spider-Man movie? Really?”
However, Contreras, who had previously worked on animated movies like The Justice League, said that he fell in love with the project upon seeing the film’s preliminary shots and the style the directors had in mind.
“I said that this movie was going to change how we see animation — and that’s how it’s been.”
In Mexico, most of the attention for the Oscars has been directed at Roma, the Alfonso Cuarón film that has been nominated in 10 categories, including best picture.
Cruise ships moored at Cozumel, Mexico's most popular destination.
The number of visitors who arrived in Mexico on cruise ships hit a 10-year high in 2018, the majority of them stopping at Cozumel in Quintana Roo.
Data from the General Coordination of Ports and the Merchant Marine showed that more than 7.84 million passengers arrived at Mexican ports on 2,603 cruise ships last year.
Cozumel was the most popular destination, with more than 4.2 million cruise ship passengers – 54% of the total – disembarking on the island, located off the coast of Playa del Carmen.
“With these results, the leadership of Cozumel in the cruise ship industry in Mexico and Latin America is once again confirmed,” Alicia Ricalde, head of the Quintana Roo Port Administration authority, told the newspaper El Financiero.
“[As a result] the residents of Quintana Roo have more and better opportunities for economic development,” she added.
Mahahual, Quintana Roo, and Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, joined Cozumel to make up the top three most visited destinations by cruise ship passengers. Together they account for 79.1% of all tourists in the sector.
Data from the federal Secretary of Tourism (Sectur) shows that up to November last year, passengers arriving on cruise ships made up 19% of all visitors to Mexico.
While in the country, they spent US $498.5 million, or an average of US $67 per passenger, a figure well below the US $909 spent by tourists who arrive by air.
Francisco Ceballos, a manager at the travel website Despegar, attributed the strong cruise ship arrival numbers to lower prices and the ease with which cruises can be booked online.
“This way of traveling is no longer seen as something exclusive for a high socio-economic segment [of the market], now it’s an accessible option for travel . . .” he said.
“Cozumel has positioned itself at a worldwide level as one of the most important ports for cruise ship tourism ahead of international destinations like Nassau [Bahamas] and San Juan [Puerto Rico],” Ceballos added.
While the sector recorded its best figures in a decade, growth in the number of cruise ship visitors actually declined compared to 2017 from 13% to 8%.
Tour operators attributed the weaker growth to insecurity, saying that it continues to dissuade people from visiting Mexico and that United States government travel warnings are particularly harmful to the tourism industry.
But Pablo Azcárraga, president of the National Tourism Business Council (CNET), said that efforts are being made to change perceptions.
“Insecurity is an issue that continues to concern us, but we’re working with tour operators and the United States government so that they realize that [the violence] is focused [on certain parts of the country],” he said.
Nevertheless, overall international tourism numbers are expected to remain strong in 2019, with the federal government predicting that almost 45 million visitors will arrive.
Tourism contributes to 8.7% of GDP, Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco Marqués said last month, and Mexico is the sixth most visited country in the world.
President López Obrador has slammed the Fitch ratings agency after it downgraded the credit rating of the state oil company yesterday to just above junk status.
Fitch cut Pemex’s Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) for foreign and local currencies to BBB- from BBB+ and national long-term ratings to AA (mex) from AAA (mex), stating that the “downgrades reflect the continued deterioration of Pemex’s standalone credit profile” and that the company “has been technically insolvent since 2009.”
Fitch also changed its outlook for the company to negative from stable.
Pemex has US $106 billion in debt, more than any other state oil company in Latin America, which both Fitch and Moody’s have said is a concern for the company’s investment grade rating.
Fitch said in a statement that its new “ratings are constrained by Pemex’s substantial tax burden, high leverage, significant unfunded pension liabilities, large capital investment requirements, negative equity and exposure to political interference risk.”
At his morning press conference today, López Obrador lambasted Fitch, without citing its name, and other credit ratings for their assessment of the state oil company.
“What these organizations do is very hypocritical . . . They allowed the looting [of Pemex], they endorsed the so-called energy reform, they knew that foreign investment didn’t arrive and investment in Pemex didn’t increase and that was what caused the decline in petroleum production. And they never said anything,” he said.
“They maintained a complicit silence and now that we’re rescuing Pemex, they come out with their recommendations and . . . ratings of the performance of Pemex,” López Obrador added.
Asked a specific question about Fitch’s ratings cuts, the president responded: “Investors with ethics know very well that Pemex is a solid company because now it’s being managed with honesty.”
López Obrador questioned whether Fitch had considered the government’s crackdown on fuel theft before it released its new assessment.
“Did the ratings agency take into account, as the technocrats say, this variable? . . . We’re going to strengthen Pemex; public finances are going to be strengthened. Of course, they don’t like it!” López Obrador said.
The veteran leftist, who took office on December 1, charged that the corruption that has plagued Pemex for more than 30 years has now come to an end.
“It was a company that was looted in the neoliberal period, it was among the most looted, most corrupt companies in the world, and these corrupt technocrats took great pains to destroy Pemex but fortunately . . . the people of Mexico decided to implement a change, to remove the country from crisis and corruption and to rescue Pemex,” López Obrador said.
“And we’re going to achieve it . . . Those greedy people didn’t manage to completely destroy Pemex . . . It’s like when a band of criminals goes into a bank and starts to steal the money from the vaults and an alarm goes off – that was the July 1 election. They take what they can but they flee. But they didn’t manage to take everything. What they left is enough to take Pemex and the country forward.”
But investors are worried that the federal government won’t provide suppor to Pemex through the injection of fresh funds, Bloomberg reported.
“Investors have AMLO’s policy process under a microscope,” said Michael Roche, a strategist at Seaport Global Holdings in New York. “If the expected capital injection is not forthcoming then the market will build a higher political risk premium into the Mexico sovereign spread.”
The downgrade was not unexpected by finance department officials. An undersecretary at the Finance Secretariat said it was worrying but came as no surprise.
The tourism council promoted Mexico at international tourism fairs.
The disbandment of the Tourism Promotion Council (CPTM), a move that was severely criticized by the tourist industry, has revealed that the agency owed 70.6 million pesos (US $3.7 million) when it was shut down.
The council’s latest financial statements, updated with August 2018, figures, indicate that there are several legal proceedings against it.
The biggest single debt owed by the organization that was responsible for international tourism marketing is 27.4 million pesos in salaries and bonuses to employees.
A data storage and computer systems maintenance firm, Compliance Officers, has sued for breach of contract, demanding the payment of 1.5 million pesos owed for services provided.
The CPTM and its 21 offices abroad were liquidated last month by the federal government.
Tourism promotion will now fall under the jurisdiction of Mexico’s embassies around the world.
Monarch butterflies in their Mexican winter habitat.
A huge increase in the number of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexican forests this year is a welcome event but not likely to happen again next year, some scientists warn.
The Natural Protected Areas Commission announced today that the area occupied by the butterflies is up 144% to 6.05 hectares. Last year the area was just 2.48 hectares.
Commission head Andrew Rhodes told a press conference that it was the largest area since 2006-2007, when it measured 6.87 hectares. The smallest area recorded was 0.67 hectares in 2013-2014.
But scientists say that six hectares should be seen as the minimum necessary for the viability of the insect, which migrates annually to Mexico in the fall from the United States and Canada. A Canadian ecology professor said the butterflies are not out of the woods yet, according to a report by The Associated Press.
“It buys us time, but that’s the best it does,” said Ryan Norris of the University of Guelph in Ontario, who sees little connection between the increase and conservation efforts along the butterflies’ route.
Faros de Esperanza: ANP Mariposa Monarca
It is more about weather, he said. “It was a Goldilocks year this year,” he said. “Not too hot, not too cold, it was perfect.”
An ecology professor at the University of Kansas agreed. Chip Taylor said it won’t happen again next year, “not even close,” because above-average temperatures in Texas next year will cause problems for monarch production.
He said cold temperatures in the north of Texas kept the insects there to lay their eggs last spring. When it is warmer they go farther north too soon and the population does not grow as well.
The butterflies in this season’s migration have been found in 14 colonies in the forests of Michoacán and México state. One is a new colony, located in the Nevado de Toluca.
The largest, at 2.46 hectares, is in the Sierra Campanario sanctuary in the ejido El Rosario in Michoacán.
An abandoned treatment plant in San Francisco Telixtlahuaca.
Of 150 wastewater treatment plants constructed in Oaxaca by previous state governments, only 25 function properly, 30 function but with deficiencies and 95 have been completely abandoned, the State Water Commission (CEA) said.
According to government records, between 2011 and 2015 the administration of former governor Gabino Cué invested 215.4 million pesos (US $11 million) in the construction of 23 treatment plants. Despite the investment, 68% of the state’s plants were not operating by the end of the project.
CEA director Benjamín Fernando Hernández Ramírez told reporters that the massive dysfunction was due to previous administrations’ lack of planning and foresight.
He explained that in many cases the state built the plants but left the administrative responsibilities in the hands of local entities that often did not have the financial resources to properly manage them.
Hernández added that many of the communities in Oaxaca that received treatment plants do not have sewer systems or infrastructure essential for transporting wastewater to the plants.
Another major problem was that the previous administration simply did not finish building some of them. In several cases, the current administration has had to begin unfinished projects anew due to the theft of wiring, pipes and copper from the abandoned sites.
The Oaxaca government’s legal department is in the process of creating a decentralized agency to get 100% of the treatment plants running and to relieve local entities of administrative responsibilities.
Benjamín said that in order to lower costs and be more environmentally friendly, the administration plans to use solar energy in any new construction.
Strike action in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, will result in the loss of 15 manufacturers that have decided to leave Mexico, according to a business leader who warned that about 30,000 jobs would be lost.
Luis Aguirre Lang, president of the National Council of the Maquiladora Industry (Index Nacional), said most of the firms are in the automotive sector.
Of 45 employers affected by the stoppage, 27 had agreed by last night to union demands for a 20% increase in workers’ salaries and a 32,000-peso (US $1,700) annual bonus.
However, Aguirre said even though companies are signing new collective agreements with workers, some of them plan to leave Mexico in the next six to nine months anyway.
He described the strikes as illegal and said it was regrettable that the federal government hadn’t intervened given that the Tamaulipas Conciliation and Arbitration Board recused itself from talks between 15 companies and leaders of the Union of Laborers and Industrial Workers of the Maquiladora Industry (SJOIIM).
Aguirre said companies faced stiff penalties for not complying with production contracts and that 21 manufacturing regions could see a reduction in foreign direct investment as a result of the work stoppages.
He said the Matamoros branch of Index Nacional has been negotiating collective agreements with the SJOOIM on behalf of 40 of its member companies for 30 years.
However, Aguirre claimed that after the increase to the minimum wage in the northern border region, the two parties had a different interpretation of one clause in the contracts, precipitating the dispute.
The SJOOIM interpretation resulted in its demand for a radical 20% pay increase, he said.
Kristobal Meléndez Aguilar, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research in Mexico City, said that while the increase to the minimum wage in the region along with reductions to the value-added and income tax rates were “good in theory, in practice it’s not easy because after a few months companies lack liquidity because they have to fund [the pay increase] or turn to credit.”
He added: “What’s happening in Matamoros is worrying because it could discourage the arrival of FDI [foreign direct investment], hence the role of the federal government in mediating between the two parties is essential.”
Burning vehicles during an anti-fuel theft operation in Guanajuato yesterday.
An anti-fuel theft operation in Guanajuato yesterday triggered a hostile response from residents who attempted to repel security forces with fiery blockades.
Around 200 members of the army, navy and Federal Police carried out an operation in the municipality of Villagrán that resulted in the seizure of at least 24 tanker trucks filled with gasoline, seven trailers and 5,000 liters of stolen fuel, all of which were found on a property in the community of San Salvador Torrecillas.
Angry residents responded to the raid by placing barricades at the entrance to the small town of Santa Rosa de Lima to prevent the security forces from reaching an illegal gas station.
The mask-wearing, stick-wielding residents who, according to municipal police, are complicit with fuel thieves, claimed that the authorities didn’t have a search warrant to enter the property where the stolen fuel and vehicles were seized.
Other residents set up a blockade made of burning tires on the Celaya-Juventino Rosas highway and set at least four vehicles on fire on other roads in order to block access to Villagrán.
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In Celaya, which adjoins Villagrán to the east, a group of individuals stopped a bus at around 7:00pm and forced the driver and 10 passengers to get off before they set the vehicle alight.
The same individuals also forced the occupants of a car to get out after which they riddled it with bullets.
Authorities didn’t report any arrests in relation to the anti-fuel theft operation or the response by residents, while local officials said the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, led by José Antonio “El Marro” Yepez, operates in the Villagrán-Celaya area.
Meanwhile, authorities discovered a tunnel beneath an industrial building in Mexico City that was dug by fuel thieves to place illegal taps on five different pipelines.
Pemex CEO Octavio Romero said taps were found on all five pipelines, which varied in size from eight to 14 inches and carried magna and premium gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.
“Within the property there is a tunnel where we can see five pipelines that transport fuel from Tula [Hidalgo] to Mexico City and México state and we can [also] see five illegal taps,” Romero said in a video posted to Twitter.
The Mexico City tunnel that led to five pipeline taps.
Hoses were connected to the taps to transport the fuel to a large parking area where it was presumably loaded into tanker trucks.
The owner of the property, located in the northern borough of Azcapotzalco, said he had rented the building to supposed business people but they abandoned it in recent days after failing to pay rent for two months.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said that safety authorities and Pemex had indicated that there was no risk to the local population from the illegal taps. She said that nearby properties where there might be a “similar situation” are being reviewed.
No arrests have been made and the whereabouts of the building’s recent tenants is unknown.
The discoveries in Guanajuato and Mexico City come amid a crackdown on fuel theft by the federal government, which has deployed the military to protect petroleum infrastructure and closed some major pipelines.
The latter part of the strategy caused widespread and prolonged gasoline shortages that persist in some states.
President López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance.
Reuters/Edgard Garrido
Nearly 34,000 people were murdered in Mexico last year, according to new government statistics — the deadliest year since modern record-keeping began.
Of all the challenges facing Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, curbing violence may be the biggest.
Mexico has seen ever-growing bloodshed since 2006, when president Felipe Calderón deployed the Mexican armed forces to fight drug cartels.
Rather than reduce violence, the government’s crackdown actually increased conflicts between and among cartels, according to my research on criminal violence and numerous other studies. It also led to widespread military abuses of power against civilians.
More than 250,000 people have been murdered and 35,000 have disappeared since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war.
López Obrador said on the campaign trail that Mexico must “consider multiple alternatives to achieve the pacification of the country.”
He pitched several possibilities to reduce crime without using law enforcement, including granting amnesty to low-level criminals, negotiating with crime bosses to dismantle their syndicates and confronting the human rights violations committed by soldiers, police and public officials.
Some of those ideas – particularly the controversial notion of negotiating with organized crime – have faded away since López Obrador took office on December 1.
So far, his administration has put more emphasis on traditional law-and-order policies.
In December, he ordered the creation of a Mexican national guard to fight organized crime. Though human rights advocates and security experts fear this approach will repeat past fatal mistakes of militarizing Mexican law enforcement, the lower house of Congress recently approved the measure. It will likely be approved in the Senate.
López Obrador has followed through on one of his campaign proposals for “pacifying” Mexico, though.
Mexicans have marched every year since 2014 to demand the truth about what happened to the 43 Ayotzinapa college students. AP Photo/Marco Ugarte
Days after being sworn in, the president established a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in the southern Mexican town of Iguala in 2014.
Five years after their disappearance, the truth of this infamous case remains elusive.
According to the government of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, the crime was a local affair. Students en route to a protest march in Mexico City were detained by the Iguala police and, at the mayor’s order, handed over to a local gang, which killed them and burned their bodies.
Investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights could not corroborate this story. In the burn pit identified in 2016, they found no physical evidence of the missing students.
In a scathing final report, investigators said that authorities had ignored crucial evidence that the army and Federal Police were involved in the students’ disappearance.
A truth commission will help Mexicans “understand the truth and do justice to the young people of Ayotzinapa,” López Obrador said on Twitter in announcing its creation.
The Ayotzinapa truth commission will put extraordinary resources and personnel on the case and give the victims’ families and perpetrators a voice in the process – neither of which police investigations in Mexico typically do.
Truth commissions aim to create a collective, participatory narrative of human rights atrocities that not only exposes the perpetrators but also identifies the conditions that facilitated violence. They are a central component of transitional justice, an approach to helping countries recover after civil war or dictatorship.
Countries like Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil and Peru all used truth commissions to reckon with the toll of their bloody dictatorships and wars and give reparations to victims. South Africa famously used a truth commission to document the horrific human rights violations committed under apartheid.
Mexico’s situation is different: it has a criminal violence problem, not a civil war.
But my research indicates this pacification strategy may have some promise.
Recent studies suggest that truth commissions can actually help prevent future violence. Because they identify perpetrators, who then face punishment for their crimes, truth commissions can both take criminals off the street and deter others from committing crime.
Holding public officials responsible for their corruption would be a major achievement in Mexico.
As the United States trial of drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán illustrates, corruption penetrates the highest levels of Mexican government.
Since the beginning of its drug war, in 2006, Mexican citizens have filed 10,000 complaints of abuse against soldiers, including accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture. The government has done little to look into those allegations. Nor has it actively investigated most of the murders of 97 Mexican journalists since then.
If an Ayotzinapa truth commission enjoys the full support of federal authorities – which is not a guarantee given the corruption it will almost certainly uncover – it could restore some faith in Mexico’s justice system. Currently, 97% of all crimes go unpunished.
Focusing on truth may also help the country better understand – and therefore address – the root causes of violence in Mexico.
Truth commissions, however, will not immediately solve an incredibly complex security crisis.
As Amnesty International has said, the Mexican government cannot create a truth commission to investigate every mass atrocity of the drug war. Mexico also needs a functioning justice system.
Another transitional justice tool the López Obrador government has proposed is amnesty to non-violent, low-level drug offenders.
Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero says that pardoning people convicted and jailed for growing, processing, transporting or using drugs – particularly women and offenders from marginalized populations – would stop the cycle of violence in Mexico and encourage petty criminals to disarm.
Mexico’s amnesty proposal is not unlike the First Step Act recently passed in the United States, which will result in the early release of about 2,600 prisoners, many of them drug offenders.
Mexico’s prison population has been steadily rising for years.
Between 2000 and 2016, it increased 40%, from 154,765 inmates to 217,868, according to the Institute of Criminal Policy Research. The number of people jailed in Mexico for drug offenses has also increased markedly.
As in the United States, most prisoners in Mexico come from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the Collective for the Study of Drugs and Law, a nonprofit research group.
Should López Obrador’s amnesty idea become policy, it would surely be controversial.
Victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez were outraged when, in August 2018, president-elect López Obrador said residents must be “willing to forgive.”
Many caught in the crossfire of Mexico’s drug war say justice and punishment should come before forgiveness.
But violence in Mexico is so pervasive that, in my opinion, the country must consider every option that might stanch the bleeding.
Truth commissions and amnesties to low-level crimes will not pacify the country immediately – but they may bring some of the truth and justice Mexicans so desperately need.
