The summer vacation period hasn’t officially started but tourists are already flocking to Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast.
In fact, the destination is almost full, the director of the Puerto Vallarta Tourism Trust said in an interview with CPS Noticias.
Luis Villaseñor Nolasco noted that hotel occupancy has reached 90% on recent weekends and observed that over 1,000 flights are scheduled to touch down in the city during the first half of July. He said that tourism is expected to be up 10% compared to the same period of 2021.
Domestic and international tourists are contributing to the high demand for flights and tourism services in Puerto Vallarta.
“The connectivity with the United States has been maintained,” Villaseñor said, adding that Puerto Vallarta is also well connected to cities in northern and central Mexico, including the capital.
“We’re now connected to the three airports in the metropolitan area,” he said, referring to the Mexico City, Felipe Ángeles and Toluca airports.
“The expectation is … to exceed the 72% [hotel occupancy] we had [in July] last year. We expect to achieve it because we have the conditions [to do so],” Villaseñor said.
The tourism official said that road links also play an important role in getting tourists to Puerto Vallarta. “Many of the regional [tourism] wholesalers and bus lines increase operations [at this time of year]. … A lot of students start vacations this Friday and that will contribute to a good end to the month,” he said.
Large pieces of glass detached from a 61-meter-high skybridge in Puebla during strong winds and rain Monday afternoon, but no one was injured by the plummeting panes.
Videos show sections of Sky Bridge Popocatépetl falling as the structure swings wildly in the wind. Some of the glass landed in a parking lot below the bridge, which connects two Wyndham Hotel buildings in Angelópolis, a district that is part of the metropolitan area of Puebla city. At least one pane landed near the entrance to one of the hotel buildings.
In one video posted to social media, a woman questions what would happen if a pane of glass landed on someone’s head. “Madre mía,” she exclaimed. “It’s clear that when they built it they didn’t think about wind.”
After witnesses alerted authorities to the damage, emergency services personnel climbed onto the skybridge and removed other loose material that could have detached and potentially caused a fatal accident.
The structure, which opened last December, is the largest glass-bottomed suspension bridge in Latin America. The 300-million-peso (US $14.4 million) bridge is 148 meters long, 1.4 meters wide and weighs 15 tonnes.
San Marcos resident Jaime returns from checking his fields in the hills. He and his wife, Yoya, are one of few families left in San Marcos.
Would my family be better off somewhere else? Will things ever get better? If everyone else leaves, will we be safe here alone? Those are a few of the crushing questions that many internally displaced Mexican families have faced, often due to violence stemming from clashes between criminal groups.
But violence isn’t the only reason families lose their homes. Infrastructure projects like roads, trains and dams can also force unwilling communities to relocate. That’s what happened in the town of San Marcos, Sinaloa, after a dam project for Mazatlán transformed both the town and the lives of its residents.
In San Marcos, the Picachos dam turned a close-knit rural community into a shell of its former self. The town, unexpectedly, never fully flooded when the Picachos reservoir was created, and several families remain. More live nearby in the government-built town of Nuevo San Marcos, but much has been lost: some lost hard-earned financial stability. Many lost community ties, and some people lost their lives.
In the early 2000s, the city of Mazatlán was running out of water. The Presidio river, east of the city, held the obvious answer to the problem, and the state made plans to build the Picachos dam. Construction started in 2006 and, with it, pressure to remove or relocate 800 families in six communities who lived within the projected 3,000-hectare area of the reservoir.
Jaime shows photos of the town’s central plaza before and after the pavilion was relocated to Nuevo San Marcos, Sinaloa.
In 2009, several dozen residents occupied the dam, trying to delay the project’s completion and the subsequent flooding of their communities. But in July of that year, as the rainy season approached, more than 100 state and federal police kicked out the protesters, armed with clubs, riot shields and tear gas. In short order, the dam was completed and the water began to rise.
When the water reached San Marcos, five other communities were already underwater. It flooded the San Marcos cemetery first, and then it was lapping at the doors of the more low-lying homes, the church and a school. Residents took what they could and left.
The state government had begun to build Nuevo San Marcos nearby, but the houses were still under construction, and there were no schools, hospitals or roads between the new town and the areas where many locals worked. So residents found shelter where they could.
Some went to Nuevo San Marcos, using their own resources when necessary to make the small, incomplete houses fit for living. Some moved in with relatives in the city of Mazatlán, an hour away. Others moved further away. A group calling themselves Los Picachos organized to demand better compensation.
A new sign outside the tourist town of La Noria shows the way to nearby attractions, including San Marcos.
Over time, it became clear that the government’s prediction for the reservoir area wasn’t exactly accurate: homes on higher ground had been spared the flooding. But by then, their owners had already taken everything they could with them, then returned to take doors, windows, roof tiles and anything else that had value.
San Marcos’ former residents had new jobs and responsibilities now, and their children were in new schools. But six families did eventually return to live full-time in what was left of the town, and several more families come and go.
Former residents of San Marcos continued to advocate for years for better compensation, with a measure of success. Then the movement suffered a blow when one of its leaders, Atilano Román Tirado, was assassinated during his live radio show, “This is My Land,” on which he shared news and opinions related to the push for fair compensation.
Today, the dam provides much-needed water for the city of Mazatlán, and there have been efforts to promote the reservoir as a tourist destination. It hasn’t attracted crowds yet. Rather, the reservoir is a quiet place. Below the high-water mark, cattle graze among the trunks of drowned trees. Locals and the occasional tourist fish in pangas. On summer afternoons, families come to swim.
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In the town of San Marcos, the remaining families live their lives among empty houses. They take care of their livestock and maintain the church as best they can. In 2015, they were the subject of an award-winning documentary. Enough people still live nearby to support a tortillería, the last standing business in town.
With about nearly half the country in drought as of the end of June, Mexico is thirsty, and more dams will continue to be built for water storage. Seventy kilometers to the southeast of Picachos reservoir, another dam in the municipality of Rosario is under construction, scheduled to be finished in 2023.
But this time, the state government has been more proactive: the 58 families whose homes fall within the projected area of the reservoir have already received their replacement houses. In May, the state governor personally inaugurated the rebuilt town and welcomed the displaced families to their new homes.
Rose Egelhoff is an associate editor at Mexico News Daily and a freelance writer. She’s on Twitter and the internet. Eduardo Esparza is a professor, filmmaker and professional photographer. Some of his work can be seen on Instagram.
Paulita and Pani live across the street from their tortillería. Paulita said she misses seeing her neighbors line up outside in the morning.
Pani and Paulita’s tortillería is the last remaining business in town. Established 50 years ago, it still opens every day until 2 p.m.
The high water mark can be clearly seen on the remains of what was once a large house. By the rainy season’s end, the foundation will likely be submerged yet again.
Residents have worked together to restore the town’s plaza, basketball court and church. The church was damaged during a Guadalajara paintball club event. “They marketed it as an abandoned town, but there are still people,” Paulita said.
Locals use the floodplain created by the reservoir as pasture during the dry season. In the background are tombstones from the San Marcos cemetery.
The cemetery’s tombstones remain, some of them worse for the wear. Most remains were relocated before the reservoir was first filled.
As dams continue to be built for a country in drought, more people displaced by such projects will need compensation and relocation.
Neighbors and people who love to visit the second largest park in the city of Puebla are waging a battle against plans to hold a music festival there in October.
On hiatus for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tecate Comuna has been scheduled to return to Parque Ecológico Revolución Mexicana on October 22-23. Thousands of people are expected to attend and the musicians will perform from a huge stage constructed atop a grass field.
But concerned citizens say they have collected 3,000 signatures in an attempt to stop the festival. They are also preparing to file an injunction against organizers to get the event called off.
“We must emphasize to the authorities that the Parque Ecológico is not the ideal place to carry out this type of act that damages nature,” the newspaper La Jornada de Oriente quoted the group as saying. “This park is for children. It is a lung of the capital. If we don’t fight for recreational and sports spaces, the new generations will suffer.”
Located on the east side of town, Parque Ecológico covers 58 hectares (the equivalent of about 90 square city blocks) and includes lakes, bike trails, an aviary, botanical gardens, jogging areas, a skateboard park and athletic fields.
Those rallying against the festival— which is slated to include the Spanish group Love of Lesbian, the ska and Latin ryhythms band Los Auténticos Decadentes from Argentina, 22-year-old singer Kenia Os from Mazatlán and California rockers Sublime With Rome— are basing their argument on the damage that was caused during the 2019 edition of the festival.
According to the activists, the result of that event was damage to trees, dozens of dead birds, a lot of trash and debris left behind, and damaged lawns caused by the stage and the festival goers. This year’s event might even include three stages, as well as an area for food trucks. They stated that a soccer or baseball stadium would be better options for such an event.
Plus they brought into question the illogical stance of the state’s minister of the environment for granting a permit to hold an event that “flagrantly violates environmental regulations” — and is being held in a space that has “ecological park” as part of its name. They noted that the park was not designed for concerts and massive shows, but for the preservation of flora and fauna, and for recreation.
If they don’t get the response from authorities they are seeking, they said they will file for an amparo, an injunction, in order to protect the park. Marches and other protests might be organized, as well.
“We already had a tragic experience that should not be repeated,” said local resident Guadalupe Medina Velázquez, referring to the Tecate music festival in Puebla in 2019, which was called Catrina Fest. “It left visible damage to the environment with noise and light pollution, some birds died because of the festival, and within just a few hours they caused damage that still has not been rectified. There was a promise to plant trees and compensate for the environmental damage, but to date nothing has been done.”
The activists also reminded people that when former mayor Claudia Rivera Vivanco granted the permits for the 2019 festival, Governor Luis Miguel Barbosa Huerta promised to never allow a musical event in Parque Ecológico again. Barbosa is still the governor, and the activists are demanding a statement from him on the matter.
Cancún's first Bitcoin ATM was installed earlier this year.
A Bitcoin ATM has been installed in Cancún, Quintana Roo, triggering concerns that it could facilitate money laundering, especially given that Mexico lacks cryptocurrency regulations.
Installed in a downtown youth hostel a few months ago, the ATM allows users to buy and sell the cryptocurrency and withdraw cash by tapping into their bitcoin wallets. It was installed by a fintech company despite an absence of a regulatory framework to govern the operation of crypto ATMs in Mexico, where cryptocurrencies are not legal tender.
Financial authorities have warned that their use can facilitate money laundering and advised in a statement last year that “the country’s financial institutions are not authorized to carry out and offer operations to the public using virtual assets.”
The newspaper Por Esto! visited Hostal Venado 8 in central Cancún to learn more about the operation of the Yucatán Peninsula’s only Bitcoin ATM. It discovered that it was installed by an independent company called Crypto Flamingo, which claims to have “the most reliable cryptocurrency ATM network in Mexico.”
Por Esto! contacted the Mexico City-based company and spoke with Pablo, one of its partners. “We’re expanding. We have one [ATM] in Mexico City, one in Cancún, and we’ve just installed another in Guadalajara. … We’re growing quite well,” he said.
Por Esto! questioned Pablo about the source of cash for the ATM, asking whether it was supplied by a bank. He responded that the cash’s source was a confidential matter about which he couldn’t provide any information. The newspaper also asked the Crypto Flamingo partner whether the company had been approached by any financial authority given that bitcoin is not legal tender in Mexico. In addition, Por Esto! inquired as to whether the fintech had obtained a permit to install its ATM in Cancún.
“Send me these questions and I’ll respond to those … [I can]. Of course I’m not going to share [answers] to specific questions such as those you’re asking me, due to matters of confidentiality,” Pablo told a Por Esto! reporter.
The newspaper sent its questions via WhatsApp but didn’t receive a response. Por Esto! also reported that it couldn’t find any evidence that Crypto Flamingo is overseen by the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), a financial sector regulator.
“We looked at the CNBV website to see whether Crypto Flamingo is supervised by that authority, but it doesn’t appear among the companies with a license to operate as an Institution of Electronic Payment Funds or as a collective funding institute or as a ‘new [financial] model,’” the newspaper said.
It noted that bank customers can go to the National Commission for the Protection and Defense of Financial Services Users – Condusef – if they have an ATM-related problem that isn’t resolved by the bank, but in the case of crypto ATMs there is no certainty about which authority, if any, can provide assistance to a person who didn’t get the money they should have received.
“Until now there is no regulation that protects [cryptocurrency users],” Por Esto! said, adding that the installation of a Bitcoin ATM in Cancún is not a minor matter given the high number of international tourists the Caribbean coast city welcomes.
“Let’s remember that Cancún and the Riviera Maya have become areas where different criminal groups operate, [including international ones], and consequently the use of digital assets could be a convenient strategy that allows them to launder money by converting bitcoins into legal tender bills, far from the gaze of tax, financial and monetary authorities,” the newspaper said.
The owner of the hostel where the ATM is located said in March that the service had been well received by foreign visitors.
Governor of Yucatán Mauricio Vila, in carriage, right background, was among the dignitaries who launched Mérida's new electric carriages on Friday.
Six electric carriages began offering tours of Mérida, Yucatán, last Friday, but business started slowly for the drivers of the horse-free, environmentally-friendly vehicles.
Mérida Mayor Renán Barrera and Yucatán Governor Mauricio Vila were on hand for the official launch of the calesas eléctricas, which took place at the entrance to Paseo de Montejo, the stately avenue that connects Mérida’s historic center to northern neighborhoods of the state capital.
The electric buggies, which arrived from China in May, are operating alongside horse-drawn carriages, which have been showing tourists the sights of Mérida for years. Barrera told reporters that environmentally-friendly electric carriages would have been unimaginable 30 years ago.
“This new tourism option promotes innovation and at the same time conserves traditions [while] adapting to new times,” the mayor said.
So far, tourists seem to prefer the traditional horse-drawn buggies to catch Mérida’s sights. File photo
The Mérida government purchased the six electric carriages and has offered loans to operators to help them buy them. The loans cover 41% of the total cost because the other 59% is covered by municipal authorities. Drivers have been given training on how to operate the electric vehicles.
It remains to be seen whether they will be popular among tourists, or whether visitors to la ciudad blanca (the white city) will prefer to admire sights such as las casas gemelas (the twin houses) and el Monumento a la Patria (Monument to the Homeland) from a traditional horse-drawn buggy.
The day after the new carriages began operating, there was scant interest in riding in them, the newspaper Por Esto! reported. It said that only one trip was completed between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday.
“People aren’t used to them yet,” said Manuel Torres Velasco, a driver who hoped that business would pick up on Saturday night.
Only two of the six electric carriages operated during the daytime on Saturday, but Torres predicted that more would come out in the evening, when Mérida’s oppressive heat starts to lose its bite.
During the day, tourists chose to ride in the traditional horse-drawn carriages over the electric ones, Por Esto! reported.
“People have come to ask [about tours], but no one has decided to get in yet,” said Torres, whose family also has two horse-drawn buggies. “We’re going to continue trying the electric ones to see how the response is, but if [demand] stays low, we’ll combine [the use of the electric carriages] with the traditional ones,” he said.
The price of a tour in the new electric buggies is the same as the horse-drawn ones – 400 pesos, or about US $20. Among the potential customers for the former are people who believe that the use of horses to pull carriages is cruel. Tourists can board an electric buggy at the Plaza Grande – Mérida’s central square – or on Paseo de Montejo.
Back in the late 1980s and leading up to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the PYMES (small and medium size companies) did not understand the effects of the opening of the Mexican economy to foreign investment.
My two Mexican partners and I attended a conference where the speaker kept repeating, “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.” We followed the advice and survived, but many in the middle class did not and soon found themselves facing bankruptcy.
Today Mexico is facing the same problem and those most affected are the 47% (AMLO’s latest figures) of those living below the poverty line and are paying no attention. The key word is corn. To summarize: The four largest exporting countries of corn are the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Ukraine. The second largest importer of corn in the world is Mexico, where the product is the most important food staple for the making of tortillas.
They are also not aware that parts of the Midwest of the United States where corn is harvested have been suffering from drought, nor are they aware that President Biden insists that the growers of corn turn this into ethanol as a substitute in light of growing gasoline prices.
The poor may be aware that there is a war going on between Russia and Ukraine but have no idea that globally this has affected the supply of corn in the world.
Those Mexicans living below the poverty line, what the sociologist Oscar Lewis called “The Culture Of Poverty” based on two books titled The Children of Sanchez and Five Families, are totally unaware of these global realities that will inevitably have a serious effect on their well-being. The word partial famine comes to mind.
What does this have to do with the expat community? It behooves every one of us to talk to those Mexicans who work for us and explain these realities by advising them to save as much money as possible for the upcoming crisis. As an example, my gardener and handyman has many part-time jobs so he can invest in building a home for his wife and three-year-old daughter.
I told him, “Stop investing your money in a new home for the time being and concentrate on feeding your family. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
I hope he listens, but I have my doubts. It’s the effort that counts.
Beldon Butterfield is a writer and former publisher and media representative. He is retired and lives in San Miguel de Allende.
Trash at the site hasn't been properly compacted and covered with biological material, as is necessary to prevent foul odors and runoff, the state environment minister said.
A dump site in the tourist of city Acapulco is an environmental hazard which requires urgent action, environmental officials have said.
The Guerrero Environment Ministry, Semaren, has requested that municipal authorities in Acapulco take immediate action: state Environment Minister Ángel Almazán Juárez said that new emergency infrastructure should be built.
The open air solid waste disposal site receives 800 tonnes of trash every day, which increases to 1,000-1,200 tonnes per day in the holiday season.
Almazán said that work was required to prevent the accumulation of waste liquids, which is made worse during rainy season. He added that soil and water studies would be conducted to determine the level of contamination created by the landfill.
However, Almazán assured that the dump site wasn’t full and that problems were due to poor administration. “The personnel working in the landfill do not properly compact the waste and do not cover it with biological product so that bad odors and runoff of waste liquid … are avoided,” he said.
Of the 104 hectares of the landfill, only 40% is being used by the municipality, the news site Amapola reported.
Almazán added that waste liquids had been cleared on a third of the site on Wednesday and accused the previous government of Acapulco of administrating the dump site poorly. He said the ministry had recommended the current Acapulco government contract more staff and buy new machinery for the site.
Environmental officials started to carry out supervision at the site due to complaints on social media, according to Amapola.
“The Acapulco landfill is overflowing. Waste liquids are flooding the place and there are going to be underground streams,” the leader of the Citizens Movement (MC) in Acapulco, Ramiro Solorio Almazán, wrote on Twitter in one complaint.
State authorities declared a health alert in Acapulco in August last year due to the accumulation of garbage dumped on streets and problems at dump sites. That alert was lifted in May.
“Priests deserve special respect," the speaker in the video said, before signing off as "Mencho Oseguera." Screenshot
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has instructed its rivals to leave priests, doctors, nurses and teachers alone.
“I’m communicating with all the cartels to invite you to make the war [just] between us and not interfere with those we shouldn’t interfere with,” a masked and armed man said in a video posted to social media.
Surrounded by a group of armed and masked cartel henchmen, the man told rival cartels they shouldn’t interfere with “any religion or their ministers or followers, especially the Catholics.”
“[We mustn’t] bother the priests, as has been seen recently,” the man said.
Jesuit priests Joaquín Mora, left, and Javier Campos were killed in Chihuahua last month. Social media
Two Jesuit priests were murdered in Chihuahua last month, while an archbishop and a bishop were recently questioned at cartel checkpoints in northern Jalisco. In addition, a priest said he was attacked while getting into his car in the Michoacán municipality of Queréndaro earlier this month. The CJNG spokesman said that “priests deserve special respect.”
“They’re people who are solely dedicated to spreading the word of God and helping those who need help,” he said.
The man said that vehicles in which priests are traveling should be respected and that they shouldn’t be bothered or physically attacked if they are stopped.
“I invite you to not bother doctors, nurses and teachers who go to the villages and towns,” he added. “Let them do their work because [just as] my cartel doesn’t interfere with any religion, we don’t bother doctors or teachers. Yours sincerely Mencho Oseguera.”
“El Mencho” is Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the CJNG and a wanted man in Mexico and the United States. There is some speculation that it was Oseguera who read the message, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
Former president Enrique Peña Nieto has defended the legality of his wealth after the federal government revealed it had asked the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to investigate money transfers and companies from which he allegedly benefited.
At President López Obrador’s press conference last Thursday, the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) said there was evidence that Peña Nieto – who was in office between 2012 and 2018 – received 26 million pesos (US $1.25 million at today’s exchange rate) in transfers between 2019 and 2021.
Pablo Gómez Álvarez said that a sister of the former president transferred the funds from an account in Mexico to Spain, where Peña Nieto now lives. He said that she also sent checks for 29 million pesos to Peña Nieto’s brother.
“The blood relative made withdrawals for 189.85 million pesos and deposits for 74.52 million pesos between 2013 and 2022. … The deposits are relevant given that, as cash operations, the source is unknown,” Gómez said.
Among other questionable dealings, Gómez said the UIF detected that Peña Nieto has links to two companies with “fiscal and financial irregularities.”
The official said that the former president was a shareholder in one company – “company A” – that transferred large amounts of money. “It’s a family company that existed before the former president became president,” Gómez said.
He said that the other company – “company B” – was formed by Peña Nieto and family members prior to 2012. “It has a symbiotic relationship with a multinational company that benefited from federal government contracts during the administration of the then head of the executive,” Gómez said.
The UIF chief added that company B – a manufacturer of plastics and disposable medical materials – has been identified as a government supplier and provider of services, and won contracts worth a total of 10.53 billion pesos (US $508 million at today’s exchange rate) during Peña Nieto’s administration. Between 2015 and 2021, it transferred large quantities of money – over 1.5 billion pesos – to the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom, Gómez said.
Pablo Gómez Álvarez, the UIF chief, speaks at last Thursday’s presidential press conference. Presidencia de la República
“The complete information with all the details has been delivered to the federal Attorney General’s Office and the FGR has opened an investigative file. The FGR will do the investigation and the Financial Intelligence Unit will provide everything it needs,” he said.
“The UIF is never in charge of investigations,” Gómez stressed, distancing the government from the prosecution of the case. “The UIF simply collects information in accordance with the law, analyzes it and delivers it” to other authorities, he said.
Gómez rejected any suggestion that the case was politically motivated. “There is not a policy of persecution for purely political reasons,” he said.
Asked what crimes Peña Nieto was accused of, the UIF chief said that was up to the FGR to determine. “That’s part of its constitutional function at the time of prosecuting a case. … While there’s no prosecution of a case, there’s no crime,” Gómez said.
The UIF chief’s remarks brought Peña Nieto out of a five-month-long social media hibernation, with the ex-president writing on Twitter that he was certain he would be given the opportunity to clear up “any questioning” about his wealth and prove its legality. “I express my confidence in the institutions … of justice,” he added.
José Antonio Crespo, a political scientist, described the case against Peña Nieto as “political,” but predicted nothing will come of it.
“Once again it’s a political use of justice, of the law, that’s why it’s coming out now,” he told the newspaper El Universal.
Crespo said he believed that the government was seeking to pressure Peña Nieto to use his significant influence in his native México state to help the ruling Morena party win the 2023 gubernatorial election. He said it appeared that the government wants the ex-president – a former governor of México state – to ask the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the current México state Governor Alfredo del Mazo Maza (a cousin of Peña Nieto) to help Morena.
“The president will use everything necessary to win the entity due to its political and economic importance,” Crespo said, noting also that the 2023 election is a forerunner to the 2024 presidential election.
He predicted that neither the UIF nor the FGR will investigate Peña Nieto thoroughly, describing the case against him as a “smokescreen.”
Crespo said that the apparent charges the ex-president faces are minor compared to the multi-billion-peso “Master Fraud” embezzlement scheme and Pemex’s 2013 purchase at a vastly inflated price of what has been described as a “junk” fertilizer plant. Former cabinet minister Rosario Robles is in prison in connection with the former case, while ex-Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya is in jail in relation to the latter.
Crespo said the government could enlist Peña Nieto’s support in México state within the framework of an impunity pact the former president allegedly reached with his successor. If Peña Nieto agrees to help Morena, law enforcement institutions could subsequently say that they found nothing against him, the political scientist said.
José Perdomo, a legal academic at the La Salle University, described Gómez’s airing of the Peña Nieto case as an act of an “eminently political nature” and warned that it could become a “media circus.”
He said it was clear there was an impunity pact between López Obrador and his predecessor, and suggested that the former president’s questionable conduct was revealed last Thursday to divert attention from the country’s serious problems, such as violence and inflation.
