Two dancers perform in a Danzatlán 2022 promotional image. Facebook / Danzatlán
From July 23 to August 1, the event Danzatlán 2022: International Festival of Dance will take place in the cities of Texcoco, Huixquilucan and Toluca in México state, and at the National Center of Arts (Cenart) in Mexico City.
The festival is a project of the Culture and Tourism Ministry of México state in collaboration with the Elisa Carrillo Foundation. Elisa Carillo is one of Mexico’s best known promoters of dance. She has earned many prestigious awards around the world including being the first Mexican to be named prima ballerina in the Berlin State Ballet, one of the most important ballet companies in the world.
The Elisa Carillo Foundation regularly hosts two major events to support and encourage dance in Mexico. Danzatlán, a yearly extravaganza with classes, shows, and round-table discussions, was forced to go virtual in 2020 and partly virtual, partly in-person in 2021.
“After everything that we have been through in the past two years during the pandemic, it’s marvelous for the public to have this opportunity,” said the ballerina in a recent interview.
This year’s festival will include many highlights including a piece called #The_Wall, choreographed by Yeri Anarika and interpreted by Carillo herself on July 23 at 7 p.m.
“This is a contemporary piece and it’s very important for our festival because we are trying something different, something new,” said Carillo.
There will also a presentation of Bolero, a dance choreographed by Maurice Béjart to the music of Bolero, an orchestral piece composed by French composer Maurice Ravel in the 1920s. The dance gala “Elisa and Friends” will include five internationally renowned dancers — Marcelo Gomes, Lucía Lacarra, Herman Cornejo, Kimin Kin and Carrillo — all winners of the Benois de la Danse prize. That event will take place in Toluca on July 31 and in the Elisa Carrillo concert hall at the México state Bicentennial Cultural Center (CCMB) as part of the closing of the festival.
Entrance into events is free to the public. The list of events will be posted on the festival’s official Facebook page and other social media platforms.
A rescue dog that helped save lives after a powerful earthquake toppled buildings in Mexico City in 2017 has retired after eight years’ service.
The Australian shepherd, named Zorro, was honored Saturday in a retirement ceremony in Tequisquiapan, Querétaro, where he was a member of the volunteer fire department. Emergency services personnel and other citizens also paid tribute to the dog’s owner, Mirco Gallina, an Italian native who collaborated with Zorro on countless rescue operations.
One of the most important missions the pair participated in was the response to the September 2017 earthquake, which caused extensive damage in Mexico City and other parts of central Mexico. Zorro is credited with helping to save the lives of nine people who were trapped beneath rubble in the capital.
Gallina told attendees at Saturday’s ceremony that Zorro started work as a rescue dog in Italy, where “we mainly worked in mountains and forests.”
“He didn’t rescue anyone in Italy because the times we went out to work the people [we were attempting to save] unfortunately died,” he said.
Zorro and his master subsequently moved to Mexico where they continued their rescue work. “In the 2017 earthquake he rescued nine people alive,” he said. “Being here is very cool and very emotional,” Gallina said before thanking those present for the affection they have shown Zorro.
Luis De Carvajal's manuscripts featured minute lettering and decorative flourishes like gold leaf. Ronnie Perelis
A Spanish Jew practicing his faith secretly in 16th-century colonial Mexico is jailed by the Inquisition for heresy and for leading Mexico’s underground Jewish community. His prison diaries and other texts on Judaism he writes there are discovered and used to sentence him to death. The texts are the earliest example of Jewish writing in the Americas, held in the National Archives until they’re stolen in 1932. A researcher accuses a rival academic of the theft, but the manuscripts remain missing until 2016, when a U.S. collector spots them for sale in New York City.
The intrigue-filled odyssey of the diaries of Luis de Carvajal el Mozo (the Younger) — from their creation to their disappearance to their return to Mexico City in 2017 — reads like a plot for a Dan Brown novel, but it really happened.
When Baltzar Brito, director of Mexico’s National Library of Anthropology and History, first laid eyes on the manuscripts in New York City in 2016, he says he “knew in his heart they were the originals.”
Brito was on a team of experts from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History and its Culture Ministry sent to authenticate the diaries after collector Leonard L. Milberg alerted Mexico that he had bought them and wanted to return them to Mexico.
Members of the intergovernmental team that went to the U.S. to retrieve de Carvajal’s manuscripts for Mexico. Baltazar Brito is on the right.
Experts on Judaica in Mexico City and around the world were atwitter at the news that a holy grail of early Jewish writings had finally been found — the first known Judaic writings in the Americas.
Luis de Carvajal, el Mozo, a Portuguese poet, calligrapher, merchant and devout Jew was part of a well-to-do and powerful New Spain family. His uncle, Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, was a conquistador who was made governor of Leon for his victories in the New World but made an enemy of the viceroy of New Spain, Lorenzo Suárez, who was determined to destroy the entire family and take their lands.
Suárez denounced the family to the Holy Inquisition for secretly practicing Judaism, punishable by death. Luis de Carvajal el Mozo was arrested by the Inquisition but released and told to convert to Catholicism. De Carvajal instead became a leader in Mexico’s underground Jewish community. Arrested a second time, he would not survive his second round of imprisonment. But during his second incarceration, de Carvajal continued writing his diaries and other musings on his faith.
Before he was eventually executed, says Dr. Alicia Gojman de Backal, a history professor at the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, de Carvajal was tortured so badly, including being pulled on the torture rack, that he revealed the name of 120 fellow Jews, including his mother, sisters and best friend Miguel de Lucena. De Carvajal’s captors forced him to listen as these “heretics” he had named, including his mother, were tortured in the cell next to his, Gojman de Backal says.
An imagining of what de Carvajal looked like while imprisoned by the Inquisition, for a special edition of his works. INAH
Unable to cope with having turned in his family and friends, he tried to commit suicide in jail but failed. His diary details how he fell to his knees in anguish at one point listening to his mother’s screams as she was pulled on the rack.
“His spelling is a bit difficult [to read] because it has two types [of script], one more careful and another [not] because, apparently, he didn’t have proper conditions in which to write,” says Brito.
The diaries were discovered and used against de Carvajal when he testified before the Holy Inquisition. Condemned to death, he was burned at the stake on December 8, 1596, in Mexico City’s public plaza along with his mother, sisters and de Lucena.
De Carvajal’s writings consist of three manuscripts — The Memories of Luis de Carvajal, The Law of God, and The Way of Worshiping God and Devout Exercise of Prayer, which addressed how to pray during Yom Kippur. The diaries are adorned with calligraphy and gold leaf scraped from a Bible. More than 400 years old, they’re in perfect condition. Although they were signed with the pseudonym of “Joseph Lumbroso,” they were verified by handwriting comparison to have been authored by de Carvajal.
The manuscript was digitized in Spanish and English after it was turned over to Mexico. Princeton University
All three became part of the Inquisition’s records and eventually part of the Inquisition Collection at Mexico’s National Archives. For centuries, the diaries were studied by researchers from around the world.
Then, in 1932 the diaries — which consisted of three separate manuscripts — disappeared without a trace. A historian on the National Archives staff who was writing a book on de Carvajal accused a rival, Jacob Nachlin, a visiting Yiddish-speaking professor of Jewish and Polish History, of the theft.
Nachlin spent three months in jail, but since the diaries were not found, he was eventually released for insufficient evidence. Some scholars believe his accuser may actually have been the guilty party. The mystery of how they disappeared and how they ended up in London has never been solved.
In 2015, the manuscripts first appeared in the catalog of Bloomsbury Auctions in London, which listed them as 17th- or 18th-century works by an unknown author. When asked, Bloomsbury said the diaries came from the library of a family in Michigan who had them in their possession for decades. The three manuscripts were being sold as a set for US $1,500.
UNAM historian Alicia Gojman de Backal says de Carvajal was tortured so harshly that he gave up the names of 120 members of the Jewish community, including family and friends.
Purchased by a rare book dealer, they turned up again in New York City in 2016 at an auction house, which listed them as “replicas.” Renowned collector Leonard L. Milberg became suspicious. He felt it would have been nearly impossible for someone to replicate the calligraphy and microscopic text written in Latin and Spanish.
Milberg contacted some scholar acquaintances, and they agreed that the replicas could be the originals stolen from the National Archives in Mexico. He contacted the Mexican consulate in New York City and in his Manhattan office, Milberg made a 40-minute presentation to Consul-General Diego Gómez Pickering and convinced him of the manuscripts’ authenticity and historical significance.
The fact that they were being auctioned gave them both a sense of urgency. Pickering set the diplomatic machinery in motion and had Brito fly to New York to authenticate the diaries.
Brito analyzed the handwriting and the paper, written on beaten cloth with a type of ink used in the 16th century, and confirmed that the diaries were indeed the originals. After their authentication, Milberg agreed to donate the manuscripts to the Mexican government after they were first displayed in a New York Historical Society exhibit entitled The First Jewish Americans.
On March 21, 2017, the 450-year journey of the diaries came to an end. They were returned to Mexico City where, after being digitized in Spanish and English, they were safely stored in a climate-controlled vault.
BNAH Assistant Director José Guadalupe Martínez said that the manuscripts represent “the seed of Jewish literature in America, which makes it a brave document.”
“Luis de Carvajal is not a man of letters as such,” he said, “but he has an impressive memory and he cites Old Testament prayers without error; he was a very erudite man.”
Sheryl Losser is a former public relations executive and professional researcher. She spent 45 years in national politics in the United States. She moved to Mazatlán last year and works part-time doing freelance research and writing.
Porn producer and actor Alex Marín with Yamileth Ramírez, his wife Mía Marín and another actress.
A porn actor and producer has angered the Matamoros business community after filming a sex scene in the border city’s central park.
Alex Marín and Yamileth Ramírez appear in the scene, which is circulating on social media and messaging apps, according to a report by Hoy Tamaulipas. Large letters that together spell out Matamoros are visible in the footage.
Ramírez is one of at least two women currently in a polyamorous relationship with Marín, who was scolded by authorities in late 2020 after filming a sex scene in the Sumidero Canyon in Chiapas.
Hoy Tamaulipas reported that there didn’t appear to be any families in the Matamoros central park when the latest video was made.
The central park features letters spelling out the city’s name, a feature that can be seen in the controversial video.
The vice president of the local branch of the National Chamber of Commerce said that Marín and Ramírez demonstrated a lack of respect and harmed the reputation of Matamoros by filming a sex scene in public. Raúl Quintanilla urged Mayor Mario Alberto López Hernández to initiate legal action against Marín.
He said it was regrettable that the video of the Matamoros romp has gone viral and that those responsible haven’t been sanctioned in any way. “We urge local authorities to take action on the matter,” Quintanilla said.
Marín’s “sex in the sumidero” video also went viral and as a result caught the eye of the federal government’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas, which denounced the improper use of the national park. It said that the filming of pornographic content in the park damaged “the image of an icon that represents the pride of Chiapas” and exceeded “moral limits.”
Walkers and joggers on the walking path along the Pitillal River outside Puerto Vallarta got a surprise Wednesday when a large crocodile meandered across the path from the river to the woods. Captured on social media, the massive reptile, nearly 4 meters long, saunters across the walkway without seeming to even notice his human observers.
Called by onlookers, the “green patrol” of the local government’s Citizens Security Commission located and captured the crocodile, which is believed to have escaped from a reptile sanctuary nearby.
In an attempt to reinforce the municipality’s commitment to preserving the area’s flora and fauna, members of the patrol checked to make sure the crocodile was healthy and unharmed and then proceeded to tag it in order to eventually it him back into the wild.
Citizens that reported the sighting to the newspaper Noticias PV are reported to have asked officials not to demonize the animal for its presence, because the area where the park is located is the natural habitat of this kind of reptile and human beings have to learn to live with it.
Pasea cocodrilo en Marina Vallarta bajo la tromba de hoy | CPS Noticias Puerto Vallarta
A crocodile was filmed crossing a flooded road in Marina Vallarta last year.
According to information from the University of Guadalajara there are approximately 250 crocodiles in the area, mostly around Boca de Tomatlán and Boca Negra, and only 40 of them are adults.
Ever increasing urban sprawl and human settlement in the areas that the crocodiles once called home are making sightings of them more and more common. Several crocodile sanctuaries have been set up along the coast near Puerto Vallarta including the El Salado estuary and La Cora.
Fofo Márquez poses with a luxury sportscar. Facebook / Fofomqz
TikToker Rodolfo “Fofo” Márquez apologized for shutting down a Guadalajara bridge last week after the city’s mayor threatened charges against him for the stunt. Known for his boasts of extreme wealth and a high-end lifestyle of fancy cars, models and champagne, Fofo Márquez has almost 800,000 followers on TikTok.
Márquez appeared in the video posted to the social media platform boasting that he was going to shut down the Matute Remus Bridge by parking luxury cars across the three lanes of traffic “because he can.” As cars started to line up behind his parked cars and horns started to honk, Márquez made faces at the camera and outstretched his arms towards the empty bridge behind him. “This is what money and power can do,” he told his followers.
But following Márquez’s stunt, Guadalajara Mayor Pablo Lemus threatened to bring charges against him for blocking traffic and endangering drivers on the road. After the rebuke, Márquez went back to social media to publicly apologize, this time off TikTok as the company suspended his account after the video of the bridge blockade went viral.
In his apology, Márquez said he was sorry for the people that were offended by his stunt but that he had seen other influencers do similar things for content. He also said that his comments about money and power were perhaps stupid.
Fofo then apologized directly to Guadalajara’s mayor, explaining that he would be willing to pay a fine if necessary to stay in Guadalajara, and that he loves his city. He also said he didn’t expect the video to go so viral with over 10 million views in less than 24 hours.
Both his fans and detractors have reacted strongly to the stunt with some saying he’s a “headless imbecile” and others calling for people to stop following him on TikTok. The mayor responded to the apology by saying Márquez would have to complete community service, cleaning up below the very bridge he shut down.
The concrete blocks have hooks designed to snag fishing nets in the no-fishing zone. Semarnat
A new plan to protect the vaquita marina porpoise could in fact create an additional risk for the critically endangered mammal, according to experts.
The navy announced last week that it would drop concrete blocks onto the bottom of the upper Gulf of California to snag illegal gillnets that entangle and drown vaquitas. The nets are used to catch totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is a delicacy in China and sells for thousands of dollars per kilogram.
The navy said in a statement it planned to start placing the blocks – each of which has a long hook attached to it – on the bottom of a no-fishing zone known as the zero tolerance area (ZTA) on July 8. Authorities have virtually abandoned efforts to keep small fishing boats out of the area, which is located off the coast of San Felipe, Baja California.
A total of 193 blocks were to be sunk in the ZTA, where a group of scientists recently sighted eight mature vaquitas and one or two calves. The Gulf of California is the only place in the world inhabited by the small porpoises, which can’t be bred in captivity.
With so few vaquitas left, spotting one of the elusive porpoises is extremely rare. Semarnat
The navy said that an environmental impact statement confirmed that the concrete block plan wouldn’t have a “significant environmental impact” on the marine ecosystem. “Mitigation measures will be carried out,” it added, one of which is a program to remove nets snagged by the long hooks.
According to an Associated Press report, environmentalists last week expressed concerns that the metal hooks may accumulate remnants of nets that could continue to entangle and kill marine species. Alex Olivera, Mexico representative of the Center for Biological Diversity, told AP that the plan was “a total surprise.”
“The environmental impact statement was approved in record time, in six weeks. It wasn’t opened to public comment,” he said.
“A net can be snagged on these hooks, and … we’re talking about nets that are hundreds of meters long, so we don’t know if a net snagged down there might be a double-edged sword, and trap vaquitas,” Olivera said.
“Ghost nets,” as abandoned nets are colloquially known, can continue trapping and killing marine species for years, AP said.
Another expert who spoke with the news agency said that the presence of large hooks under the water might discourage fisherman from fishing in the ZTA because they would run the risk of losing nets to snags. However, the person – who asked not to be identified due to fear of reprisals – stressed the importance of regularly removing snagged nets. If they remain in the ZTA, “other species could be killed,” he said.
The navy hasn’t said how often it intends to remove snagged nets. According to AP, divers would probably need to cut nets off each of the 193 blocks every few days to mitigate risks to marine life. Olivera said that the navy didn’t have the capacity to check the blocks for nets every day.
AP also said that fishermen might learn to avoid the hooks. “Given the defiance of the fishermen and the lucrative nature of the illegal trade in dried totoaba bladders, there is … no guarantee that fishermen might not mark — either physically or with GPS — the location of the blocks and fish around them,” it said.
Mexico City has the highest per capita rate of active cases in the country.
More coronavirus cases have been recorded during the current fifth wave of the pandemic than during the first or second wave, according to official data analyzed by the Milenio newspaper.
Citing Health Ministry numbers, Milenio reported that 475,293 cases were recorded between May 31 and July 12. An additional 36,334 cases were reported Wednesday, pushing the fifth wave tally above half a million. Milenio used the end of May as the starting point for the fifth wave, although some experts said that it actually started at the beginning of that month.
Without citing specific dates, the newspaper said that 425,981 cases were reported during the first wave in the spring and summer of 2020, and that 463,702 were registered in the second wave in the winter of 2020-21.
The omicron-fueled fourth in late 2021 and early 2022 wave was Mexico’s biggest with over 721,000 cases, according to Milenio‘s report, while last year’s delta-fueled third wave ranks a close second with more than 720,000. Fifth wave infections – many of which are caused by highly contagious omicron sub-variants – could yet exceed those numbers as it is yet to peak.
Students in Colima listen to a nurses instructions as they get ready to receive a COVID vaccine.
Mauricio Rodríguez, spokesman for the National Autonomous University coronavirus commission, recently predicted that the wave would peak in late July or early August with some 70,000 cases per day. Wednesday’s tally of over 36,000 cases was the highest of the current wave.
About 60% of Mexico’s fifth wave cases were detected this month, with 304,389 reported in the first 13 days of July for a daily average of 23,414.
While case numbers during this wave have now exceeded those of the first two, COVID-19 deaths are much lower. Just over 1,400 have been reported since May 30, compared to tens of thousands in previous waves.
Mexico’s accumulated case tally currently stands at just under 6.34 million, of which over 220,000 are considered active, while the official COVID death toll is 326,261 after a fifth wave-high of 92 fatalities was reported Wednesday.
Walmart now sells antigen nasal tests, available in their stores, online and in Bodega Aurrerá.
Mexico City has the highest number of active cases on a per capita basis with over 600 per 100,000 people, followed by Colima and Baja California Sur, each of which has close to 400. Health authorities in Baja California Sur reported that the BA.4 omicron sub-variant has been detected in that state, and attributed the recent rise in case numbers to the strain.
Health official Alfredo Ojeda García said that the BA.5 sub-variant hasn’t been detected but it’s only a matter of time before it begins circulating in the state.
Meanwhile, Walmart announced that it is now selling the COVID-19 rapid antigen nasal test made by Roche, a Swiss healthcare company. Walmart, Mexico’s largest supermarket chain, said in a statement that the tests have been approved by Mexican health authorities. A box containing five tests costs 990 pesos (US $47.50). They are available at Walmart and Bodega Aurrerá supermarkets, and on the Walmart website.
Authorities say they believe henchmen affiliated with Los Chapitos, the sons of jailed Sinaloa Cartel drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, have been operating in Mexico City since 2020.
The Sinaloa Cartel’s Mexico City expansion has not gone as smoothly as it might have hoped: authorities have arrested numerous suspected members of the powerful criminal organization and seized large quantities of drugs and weapons from it.
Cartel henchmen affiliated with Los Chapitos – the sons of convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – are believed to have been operating in the capital since 2020. According to Mexico City Attorney General’s Office sources cited by the El Universal newspaper, the Sinaloa Cartel’s presence has been detected in Tlalpan, Xochimilco and Gustavo A. Madero, among other boroughs.
In September, those three boroughs, along with Álvaro Obregón, Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo and Iztapalapa, were part of a Mexico City police initiative to increase patrol presence in high-crime areas of the city. At the time, officials said that they were trying to combat the activities of various organized crime groups, although the Sinaloa Cartel was not mentioned.
Fourteen suspected Sinaloa Cartel members were arrested Tuesday after a gun battle with police in Tlalpan, located in the capital’s south. It was far from the first time that authorities have conducted an operation against the cartel in Mexico City.
Some suspects arrested in the firefight on Tuesday were wearing badges bearing the intials of the Sinaloa Cartel, left, and the initials of the cartel’s jailed ex-leader, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, left.
One of the biggest prior blows came in February 2021, when Mexico City police and soldiers seized 803 kilograms of cocaine and 15 firearms from a house in Tlalpan. Two suspected Sinaloa Cartel members were detained.
Days later, security forces raided a property in the Benito Juárez borough and seized an additional 60 kilograms of cocaine. A person identified as a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel was arrested during that operation.
A woman known as “La Chamaca” (The Kid), who allegedly had links to the cartel, was arrested in Mexico City in May of this year, while authorities last month seized 300 kilograms of cocaine during raids of 10 properties in the capital.
The El Universal sources said that authorities have established that the Sinaloa Cartel sends drugs from Sinaloa on buses that arrive at Mexico City’s northern bus terminal. They also said the cartel collaborates with local drug dealers to sell their illicit products. The criminals affiliated with Los Chapitos use medium- and high-value homes to stash their drugs, El Universal said.
The Sinaloa Cartel reportedly sends drugs from Sinaloa on buses that arrive at Mexico City’s northern bus terminal.
One part of the capital where the criminal organization has attempted to take control of the drug market is Tlalpan, but Mexico City police detected its presence and were carrying out an operation against it when Tuesday’s confrontation occurred. The 14 people arrested after that clash – in which four police officers were wounded – allegedly belong to the Los Chapitos cell of the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to a report by the Infobae news website, some of the aggressors were wearing badges around their necks that indicated their affiliation. The badges feature an image of a mouse, a reference to Ovidio “El Ratón” Guzmán López, whose brief arrest in Culiacán in 2019 triggered a wave of cartel attacks that terrorized residents of the northern city. They also feature the J.G.L. initials of Joaquín Guzmán Loera. Other presumed cartel henchmen were wearing badges featuring El Chapo’s face.
According to Antonio Nieto, a Mexico City-based journalist who reports on organized crime and is the author of a book on the history of La Unión Tepito, a crime group based in the notoriously violent Tepito neighborhood, cartel members affiliated with Los Chapitos met with Mexico City officials in the borough of Coyoacán in February 2020. The following year they began to speak about a criminal pact, according to an Infobae report that quoted the journalist.
At a meeting last September, Nieto said, Mexico City police were warned not to interfere with the criminal activities of Los Chapitos and advised to instead focus their law enforcement efforts on La Unión Tepito. “In exchange for that, none of the officers would be touched,” Infobae said.
Ironically, in 2019, Mexico City Police Chief Omar García Harfuch conducted a major drug and weapons raid on La Unión Tepito in the Morelos neighborhood, narrowly missing capturing its leader, Oscar “El Lunares” Flores. García claimed at the time that his office had made the raid because it had knowledge that Mexico City authorities had made a pact with La Unión Tepito.
If a pact did exist between Los Chapitos and Mexico City police, it appears that it was broken before Tuesday’s shootout in Tlalpan. According to Nieto, another Sinaloa Cartel faction called Los Mayos – operatives loyal to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada – also operates in Mexico City, but it’s not as violent as Los Chapitos.
Mexía, described as upbeat and professional by friends and coworkers, is survived by her young daughter.
The murder of a doctor in a violence-plagued mountainous region of Chihuahua has not only left the residents on edge, but the heinous shooting also has raised concerns that the remote area has been plunged into a medical crisis.
Massiel Mexía, the bubbly and outgoing mother of a 5-year-old, was shot in her home and later died in the same hospital where she worked, the Rural Welfare Hospital in the community of San Juanito. An IMSS facility, it is located high in the Sierra Tarahumara, a good three-hour journey from the capital of Chihuahua city.
According to the newspaper Milenio, “the hospital staff where [Mexía] worked now live in fear” because there are no municipal or state police, or anyone from the army or National Guard, “that can arrive without taking more than an hour.”
A black bow above the entrance serves as a reminder to doctors, nurses and other hospital staff about an 8 p.m. self-imposed curfew they have established. “From the hospital to the home is the rule,” is their new motto as cited by Milenio.
The hospital is strategically located in the highest part of the mountainous municipality of Bocoyna, and there is no other hospital within 100 kilometers. Pregnant women and people who sustain injuries resulting from crime are among the patients that the hospital treats.
The hospital is already beset by short staffing and union problems, and Mexía’s death has reduced the number of anesthesiologists on staff to only two. Milenio talked to doctors and nurses who are now worried that an anesthesiologist might not always be available.
Moreover, a residency program is ending July 28, meaning a number of helping hands will be leaving to carry out their studies elsewhere; plus, Milenio added, a warning has been issued by the faculty at the medical school of the Autonomous University of Chihuahua to not send any more interns to the dangerous mountain region.
Mexía was remembered as a “true professional” who was “dedicated to her work.”
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According to Milenio, she was killed by an 18-year-old in a gray sweatshirt. He first shot a dog as he was roaming the streets around 5 a.m. Later he entered Mexía’s home and allegedly shot her with the same weapon, an AK-47, also known as a cuerno de chivo (goat’s horn).
Not long thereafter, residents of the area tracked down the alleged killer and severely beat him, then tied his motionless body to a post. Next to him was an AK-47 and a cardboard sign (“in the style of any drug cartel,” Milenio wrote) that read, “This happened to you for having killed the doctor and raped a girl.” The suspect also allegedly committed a rape in the nearby town of Talayotes.
He was arrested and taken to the same hospital where Mexía worked. Reports said he was in a coma, receiving care from the same doctors and nurses who had seen Mexía alive the previous day.
Mexía, who had bought a home in San Juanito just five months ago, was described as irreproachable and a non-drinker by friends and coworkers. They theorized she was not a targeted victim, but rather that she was “collateral damage from the lack of security” in the violent area. She reportedly was shot twice, once in the chest and once in the head at dawn on July 11, but was still able to speak when assistance arrived; she died upon admission to the hospital. Originally from Guasave, Sinaloa, she earned certification as an anesthesiologist 16 months ago. Her daughter, Antonella, is barely 5 years old.
She is the cousin of actor Miguel Martínez, who was on the reality show “Código Fama.”
In a heartfelt message to his cousin, Martínez wrote: “I want to thank you for your little messages and your signs of affection. Thank you for worrying about me and my family … All of us are going to continue to put effort into what we do and make you feel proud, little cousin in heaven.”
The newspaper Terra also quoted Martínez as saying that insecurity “is an issue that a lot of people” have to deal with, but “when we do not experience it in the first person we do not realize it.” He called his cousin “a great woman, a great mother, a great person, always happy, always with the best attitude of making others happy.”
