In an attempt to develop more inclusive tourism, 134 restaurants in the northern state of Coahuila have signed on to an initiative that will provide Braille menus in their restaurants for the visually impaired.
The new menus are already in use in Saltillo, in the state’s northern region referred to as Carbonífera, and in Torreón. Next up will be Arteaga, Monclova, Parras de la Fuente, Cuatro Ciénegas and Ciudad Acuña.
The initiative is led by Coahuila’s Ministry of Tourism and Development of Magical Towns and the Sustainable Tourism department of the state’s Ministry of Tourism (SECTUR). Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography reported in 2010 that 37,000 residents of Coahuila are either blind or visually impaired.
SECTUR has offered any restaurant that wants to participate the option of sending a version of their menu in a Word document and SECTUR will print and deliver copies in Braille.
The menus are just one facet of a larger project to develop and expand ways to make the state’s restaurants, hotels, and attractions more accessible for everyone. Beyond the moral obligation to cater to all residents, inclusive tourism just makes good business sense, explains Tourism Minister Azucena Ramos.
“It’s to satisfy a demand that exists in the market, to increase competition and the growth of destinations and tourism business where handicapped and special needs people are increasingly demanding their own participation in tourism activities,” said Ramos.
A sensitivity training workshop in March helped identify and take advantage of opportunities to create more inclusive tourism. Other state initiatives include providing wheelchairs for residents who need them, providing handicapped residents with special identification cards, and hosting various public workshops on creating inclusive public spaces.
The Laysan albatross, named for an island in Hawaii, now thrives on Mexico's Isla Guadalupe thanks to the removal of invasive species. GECI
Many of Mexico’s Pacific islands were once home to vast colonies of birds before human beings appeared on the scene … accompanied by rats, cats and goats, just to name a few of the invasive species that soon wiped out the seabirds.
Twenty-four years ago, a group of concerned Mexican biologists decided to do something about it. They formed a nonprofit organization called the Ecology and Island Conservation Group (GECI) and began the long, slow task of restoring the islands, one by one, to a semblance of what they had been before invasive species turned their ecosystems upside down.
Although the task was daunting, they have succeeded admirably.
“We have been able to turn things around on 39 of Mexico’s islands,” I was told by GECI’s executive director, Federico Méndez. “Our organization — which was founded in 1998 — began with a special focus on northwestern Mexico because here we find the biggest concentration of islands and the greatest number of species in trouble … along with, of course, the greatest number of invasive species, the most problematic of which are mammals like feral cats, rats, mice, sheep, goats, wild dogs, wild donkeys and rabbits. These have caused extinctions on islands all around the world and Mexico is no exception. Our country has lost 24 species and of those 24 species that will never come back, 21 of them were island dwellers. Of these, 17 were wiped out by imported animals like cats and rats. So 70% of the extinctions in Mexico were caused by invasive mammals on islands. This is why our organization is doing what it’s doing.”
An intrepid biologist squeezes among the rocks to check a nest. Alejandra Fabila
After nearly 25 years of hard work, GECI was successful in removing 70 populations of invasive species from 39 of Mexico’s Islands. “We started in the islands of the northwest,” continued Méndez, “including well-known sites like Guadalupe Island. Then we began to explore other areas like the Gulf of California and the Mexican Caribbean.”
Méndez gives credit to what he calls the pioneers in eradicating invasive species: countries like Australia and New Zealand, which are islands and depend on their biodiversity for nature tourism. “Here in Mexico,” he said, “we are almost on a par with them in this kind of work. We have seen more than 200 species come back in every category: birds, mammals, reptiles, plants — all thanks to the simple removal of invasive species.”
Once the invaders have been removed from an island, the question arises: will the original inhabitants come back?
I put the question to GECI’s Yuliana Bedolla, who specializes in seabirds.
Yuliana Bedolla, director of GECI’s Seabird Project, is studying for her doctorate in Germany.
“This is our special concern,” she said. “Many species of birds that were killed off by cats or rats ended up with the impression that these islands were no longer safe. In some parts of the world we know that — after the elimination of the cats or rats — the birds have returned, but here in the Pacific this process seemed to be taking an awfully long time, so we began to use ‘social attraction techniques.’
“These were first tried in the USA and now they are being used practically everywhere in the world. They have been wonderfully successful! So we have been promoting their use here in Mexico. The idea is to create artificial colonies, taking advantage of the fact that seabirds like to congregate in large groups. So we create decoys, life-like representations of the birds in positions of repose or courtship. We also use mirrors to create the impression that there are lots more birds around. Along with the decoys and the mirrors, we use sound. These are recordings made in well-established colonies. In the case of those seabirds which nest underground, or in the spaces between rocks, we install small boxes which they like to use for their nests.”
Bedolla said the audio recordings are used during the nesting season, which in many cases is spring. “We have an amplifier and loudspeakers together with solar panels to provide power. Of course we play these sounds by day or by night, depending on when that species is active. So we set up the equipment in spring and turn it off in summer or autumn, once the birds have left the island. The social attraction techniques give the birds the impression that this island they’ve come to is a nice safe place where they can nest every year.”
Bird lovers around the world are amazed at the transformations that have taken place in Mexico’s islands thanks to these techniques.
Pairs of albatross decoys simulating courtship rituals were placed on Isla Guadalupe by GECI. GECI/J.A. Soriano
In Isla Rasa, for example, rats were eliminated and very soon, elegant terns and Heermann’s gulls came back to breed.
Isla Guadalupe, better known in English as Guadalupe Island, was once home to more endemic bird species than any other island off the Pacific coast of North America, before they were decimated by invasives. But recently, something marvelous has happened. Once goats were removed, Guadalupe’s vegetation rebounded and a colony of Laysan albatrosses materialized out of nowhere. Soon, populations of auklets, murrelets, storm petrels, gulls, terns, boobies, pelicans, and cormorants began to reappear as if by magic.
In July 2021, GECI and Hawaii’s Pacific Rim Conservation flew 21 black-footed albatross eggs 6,000 kilometers from Hawaii to Isla Guadalupe on a commercial airline, because their home beaches were flooded. Eighteen eggs hatched and the albatrosses are faring fine. More egg rescues are being planned.
Once invasive species have been removed and seabirds have been lured back, GECI has to make sure the invaders don’t reappear.
Poster showing a few of the creatures now flourishing on Isla Isabel thanks to the removal of invasive species.
“For this,” Federico Méndez said, “we have special biosecurity programs to assure that the fishermen, sailors or tourists are not bringing in something dangerous. For example the boats could be harboring a rat, or shoes could be contaminated with seeds. The success of all this depends on teamwork, of close communication and collaboration with the local people.”
“All this is complicated,” Méndez said. “We have to work with the local people, we have to work with the government and we have to respect the particular character and reality of each island or archipelago. In reality, each one has its own protocol. Meanwhile, reinfection is always a worry. Just one pair of rats could fill an island with 5,000 descendants in only a year.”
A dramatic example of the lengths to which islanders might go to catch just one rat and prevent reinfection occurred on Isla Natividad in 2019.
In the wee hours of the night, a local resident had shone his flashlight in his shrubbery and spotted a lively and healthy Rattus rattus, a black rat. He was shocked. Like all the residents of Natividad, he knew his island was home not only to auklets, cormorants, pelicans, osprey and herons, but also to the planet’s largest colony of black-vented shearwaters, of which every soul on the island was immensely proud.
A biologist monitors a month-old shearwater chick during the great rat chase on Isla Guadalupe. GECI/J.A. Soriano
So began the great rat chase.
Soon, every family on the island was setting rat traps and GECI brought in Merlina, a rat-sniffing dog.
Merlina and a camera trap eventually confirmed it: yes, there truly was a Rattus rattus on the island.
Now the competition was on. Tomahawk cage traps, Sherman metal box traps, camera traps, T-Rex traps, and every sort of trap known to humanity was employed by Natividad residents, along with 13 experts from GECI. They had to work around the clock just to keep all the traps functional.
Fishermen’s homes on Isla Isabel. Small communities like this one can be found on even the most remote islands. John Pint
Every soul on the island wanted to be the one to catch the rat, which had now been named “Chapito” after the wily drug trafficker who had once been so clever at avoiding capture.
This went on for six long months, and then … Well, to find out what happened and to fully appreciate this delightfully written, well-illustrated story, I urge you to read the AudubonMagazine article “How to Catch a Rat,” which is accessible online for no charge.
You may also want to check out the stunning images in GECI’s online photo gallery where you can pay a virtual visit to five of Mexico’s “restored” islands, without getting your feet wet.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
A seabird specialist from GECI installs artificial burrows for Cassin’s auklets on the steep slopes of Isla Coronado. GECI/J.A. Soriano
A masked booby with its chick. GECI
The albatross has the greatest wingspan of any species of seabird. The wings of this Laysan albatross measure over two meters. GECI/J.A. Soriano
There are conflicting reasons as to why large numbers of dead fish have recently washed up on the Nayarit coast: a biologist says that toxic algae is to blame, but a Civil Protection official believes that a lunar eclipse is the culprit.
Dead fish have appeared this week on beaches in municipalities such as Santiago Ixcuintla and San Blas.
Mario Alberto Ortiz Jiménez, an academic at the Technological Institute of Tepic, said on social media that the decomposition of toxic microalgae is causing the fish to die.
“The [U.S.] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported high levels of chlorophyll … off the northern coast of Nayarit since June 28. The high concentration of chlorophyll corresponds to a high proliferation of microalgae. Microalgae are often toxic and upon dying they decrease the concentration of oxygen in the water, causing fish to die, as occurred … on Playa El Colorado,” he wrote, referring to a beach on the Santiago Ixcuintla coast.
Peces muertos tapizan playa #ElColorado en Santiago Ixcuintla, en Nayarit; ninguna autoridad ha informado a qué se deba este fenómeno. Desde enero se han visto peces muertos en playas de Compostela, Bahía de Banderas y Puerto Vallarta, situación que achacan a la #MareaRojapic.twitter.com/qz5p35cEJe
Ortiz said that rain is causing excess fertilizer from agricultural fields to flow into the ocean, “where it fertilizes the microalgae.”
“If that wasn’t enough, discharges of wastewater from Tepic … provide more nutrients for the microalgae, aggravating the problem. Earth is a system that is very sensitive to human activity. Anything we do will end up affecting our Earth’s ecosystem,” he added.
But Santiago Ixcuintla Civil Protection director David Estrada Mariscal reached a different conclusion, saying that the appearance of dead fish on beaches was due to a recent lunar eclipse. He indicated that the eclipse caused the fish to die and to wash up on the beach, an opinion that he formed after discussions with local fishermen.
“Due to the effect of the eclipse … dead fish began to wash up on the beach,” Estrada said.
According to a report by NTV Noticias, he was unable to say exactly when the eclipse occurred. The most recent total lunar eclipse occurred in mid-May.
Estrada conceded that a red tide, or harmful algal bloom, could have caused the fish to die, but said there was no record of such a phenomenon having occurred, indicating that he was oblivious to Ortiz’s explanation.
The president's plane raffle took place two years ago and a Puebla school was one of the winners.
A primary school in the state of Puebla that won 20 million pesos (US $950,000 at the time) in the much-castigated “raffle” of Mexico’s presidential airplane two years ago is now experiencing some major turbulence.
Approximately 40% of the prize money is in danger of going down the drain, having been spent on an ill-fated construction and rehabilitation project, and there has been no public accounting of spending, the newspaper El Sol de Puebla reported this week.
The actions have left many staff and parents affiliated with the Manuel Pozos Primary School in Xochiapulco wondering what has been paid for so far and what’s the status of the rest of the prize money.
Many will remember back in 2020 when President López Obrador, then in the early stages of his term, wanted to raffle off the country’s presidential jet — a luxuriously outfitted Boeing 787 Dreamliner estimated to be worth US $130 million — because it was an “insult to the people” and an “example of the excesses” of the two previous administrations.
But when the raffle of a plane that he said was worth US $200 million turned into more of a joke than a feasible undertaking, AMLO switched gears and turned it into a lottery for the people. Then the lottery turned into something of a joke as well, with a lack of interest prompting the government to step in and buy 1 million cachitos (lottery tickets) for about US $23.7 million.
In the end, there would be 100 prizes of 20 million pesos each, and no one would “win” the airplane.
Three schools in Puebla ended up holding winning tickets, including Manuel Pozos. Everything seemed great. The school began an expansion and improvement project valued at 8 million pesos; classrooms, bathrooms and the cafeteria were to be renovated, and another room was going to be turned into an auditorium.
But now, charges of fraud are flying left and right. The construction company hired to carry out improvements abandoned the project last month, without a reason, and the school committee responsible for the deal is apparently washing its hands of everything. Reportedly, 96% of the cost of the project has already been paid, although parents who are members of the committee haven’t explained in detail what the money was spent on or why the work has stopped.
At a recent assembly, teachers and community members announced they would file a lawsuit against the company in addition to requesting an audit. There will also be an inquiry into a “series of irregularities” among committee members at the school, which is located in the Northeastern Sierra of Puebla.
“Unfortunately, there have been countless inconsistencies with the committee that was formed,” said teacher Erasto Pérez Bedolla. “Pertinent information has not been released.” The construction company, he added, “has left the work thrown away, but it has taken almost 8 million pesos.”
Some at the assembly also charged that the safety of the students is at stake: There are exposed wires, open pits, piles of discarded odds and ends, and other waste and materials on the campus. Also, Pérez Bedolla charged, the first rains of the season exposed leaks, runoff and the pooling of water around campus.
Apparently, administrators and parents did receive a general description of expenses, but it’s an unworthy document, Pérez Bedolla contended, because it didn’t break down the costs or convey what works have been accomplished.
After the bear's big fall on Tuesday, the Coahuila Environment Ministry released video of the young animal resting and eating. SMA / Screenshot
A 2-year-old bear is resting and awaiting medical treatment after it fell over 15 meters from a tree when members of the Coahuila Environment Ministry (SMA) tried to capture it on Tuesday.
The same bear had been seen twice previously near the Lomas de Lourdes neighborhood in southern Saltillo before being captured on June 10 and set free in the Sierra of Zapalinamé, a protected mountain range to the south of the city.
Around midday Tuesday, a local couple living, ironically, on Calle Retorno de los Osos (Street of the Bears), saw a young bear come into their yard and start climbing trees. So they called the SMA to come and rescue it.
Upon arriving at the scene, the state workers discussed letting the animal come down in its own time at night, but one ministry employee instead shot the bear with a sedative dart. The SMA team had not set up a net to catch the animal and within only about three minutes the sedative took effect and the animal fell to the ground, narrowly missing a concrete wall. Team members said they were not expecting the sedative to act so fast in the young bear’s system.
“It fell on the ground, no problem, it’s doing well. In the wild they fall like that, but we’ll check it anyway,” Environment Minister Jorge Guerrero said.
The couple who reported the bear commented that they called the SMA thinking that they had experience in this type of rescue and were dismayed that the government workers allowed the bear to fall from such a height with no safety net below it.
After its fall, the bear was transferred to a state facility where a veterinarian recommended that it rest and that its caregivers keep it hydrated. The SMA released a video Friday morning of the bear moving around on its own and eating inside a cage. The bear is scheduled to receive further medical attention Friday afternoon as well as X-rays to see if it has suffered any internal injuries.
Mexico’s narco-tunnels pioneer has been behind bars since he was captured for a third time in 2016, but his clandestine cross-border construction legacy lives on.
The army has discovered 14 tunnels on Mexico’s northern border since former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was taken into custody in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, in January 2016. The National Defense Ministry told the newspaper Milenio that six of the tunnels were found in Tijuana, Baja California, including one that measured a lengthy 1.3 kilometers.
The two most recently discovered tunnels, both of which are in Tijuana, were built in the “Chapo style,” according to a report by Milenio. One was located on a supposedly abandoned parcel of land in the Nueva Tijuana neighborhood in May, while the other was found just 50 meters away on another property in June.
Both measure about 300 meters and were built at a depth of approximately 25 meters. They were made with steel beams to avoid any possibility of a collapse and have tracks along which carts can run. They also have electrical lighting and ventilation, and authorities believe they were used to move drugs, weapons and people.
The end of the line: packages of drugs are stacked up at the terminus of a narco-tunnel.
Milenio said the construction method used is very similar to that employed to build the tunnel through which Guzmán escaped from the El Altiplano maximum security prison in México state in 2015. As a result, it is believed that the Sinaloa Cartel built the twin cross-border tunnels, and at least some of the others found by the army since 2016.
In the past six years, the army has also discovered three narco-tunnels in Mexicali, two in Nogales and one in each of Tecate, San Luis Río Colorado and Matamoros. That in San Luis Río Colorado is also among those that have similar engineering to Chapo-style tunnels. When it was discovered in 2018, a military source described it as being “perfectly built,” equipped with ventilation and lighting systems, and its walls and ceiling covered with wood. It also had tracks along which small carts could run.
Mexican and United States authorities have identified José Sánchez Villlalobos – known as “the lord of the tunnels” – as the mastermind behind their design, but Guzmán is considered the pioneer of their use to move contraband into the U.S.
Sánchez, who was recently released from prison in the U.S. after serving a 10-year term, admitted to planning, financing and supervising the construction of “multiple” cross-border tunnels from 2010 to 2012, as well as overseeing their operation as smuggling conduits, according to a report by The San Diego Union-Tribune. Milenio said the former Sinaloa Cartel member – who was once considered a close confidante of El Chapo – had admitted to involvement in the construction of over 100 tunnels.
United States Ambassador Ken Salazar said in May that there are over 200 smuggling tunnels in the Tijuana-San Diego area alone. He said U.S. authorities are working with the Mexican government to “eradicate these tunnels that shouldn’t be there.”
The first Mexico-United States narco-tunnel was discovered in 1990. The brainchild of El Chapo – who is serving a life sentence in prison in the United States after being tried on drug trafficking charges in early 2019 – the 60-meter-long tunnel linked Agua Prieta, Sonora, to Douglas, Arizona.
The prices of 17 basic products increased over the past three months despite the federal government’s announcement of a six-month anti-inflation plan in early May.
The plan, formally called the Packet against Inflation and High Prices (PACIC), and successive interest rate hikes have been unable to curb inflation, which reached a 21-year high of 7.99% in June – more than double the central bank’s 3% target. Food prices were up by an even higher 13.4%, according to data from the national statistics agency INEGI.
Of the 17 basic products whose prices increased between April and June, oranges recorded the biggest hike. Their price rose 49.7% in the space of just three months, while potatoes were 44.2% more expensive at the end of June.
The other 15 products whose prices rose were:
Tomatoes +7%
Bread +5.1%
Vegetable oil +4.9%
Eggs +4.3%
Chicken +4.3%
Pork chops +3.6%
Pasta for soup +2.8%
Toilet paper +2.5%
Canned tuna and sardines +2.4%
Soap +2.3%
Milk +2.2%
Corn tortillas +1.7%
Beans +1.2%
Rice +1%
Beefsteak +0.6%
In contrast, prices for limes, onions, fresh chiles, sugar, carrots and apples all decreased over the past three months, although the reductions were minimal in the cases of the last three. Limes, whose price was up more than 150% in annual terms in January, easily recorded the biggest reduction, with their cost dropping 48% between April and June. The price of onions declined 24% while chiles were 2% cheaper at the end of last month.
Luis Adrián Muñiz, deputy director of economic analysis at the brokerage firm Vector, said that PACIC has had almost no impact on prices. One of its key tenets is the promotion of increased production of staple foods, but boosting output will take time.
The only way to reduce prices in the short term is to introduce price controls, Muñiz said, but caps are not desirable due to the distortions they would likely generate in the market.
James Salazar, an economist with CI Banco, agreed that “in terms of curbing inflationary pressures, the reach of PACIC is very limited.”
The only effective inflation-fighting measure has been the gasoline subsidy, “but its cost is very high,” he said. Reducing inflation by boosting supply of consumer products will take a considerable amount of time, Salazar added.
“What could help is a reduction in inflation in the United States or a decrease in the international prices of some supplies, which is seen now in the case of some metals and agricultural products without it yet being a trend. This would bring a greater benefit than [that brought by] any government measure that seeks to suppress inflation,” he said.
The central bank predicted in late June that headline inflation, which doesn’t strip out volatile food and energy prices, will increase to 8.1% in the third quarter before falling to 7.5% in Q4. It forecasts further declines in all four quarters of next year, with an anticipated headline rate of 3.2% at the end of next year and 3.1% in Q1 and Q2 of 2024.
In addition to inflationary shocks stemming from the pandemic, the Bank of México said there were inflationary pressures associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and strict lockdown measures imposed by China to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Widespread drought in Mexico has also affected the availability – and prices – of some fresh food items.
The Vector brokerage house similarly predicts that inflation will peak at 8.2% this quarter before it begins to slowly fall. Citibanamex chief economist Adrián de la Garza also anticipates a peak in the July-September quarter, as well as stubbornly high inflation in the last three months of the year.
“We think that inflation will peak in around August or September and it should remain at levels of about 7.5-8% for the rest of the year,” he said.
Following are products that have recorded the biggest price increases in the 12 months ending June 30.
The vehicle in which the two suspects were traveling when they were arrested.
Two people have been arrested in connection with three murders and two arson attacks in San Carlos, a town in the municipality of Guaymas, Sonora.
Irma Janeth Castro, owner of the restaurant/bar La Catrina, was shot dead in her car Tuesday, while César Octavio Enríquez Cota, a 31-year-old recently-married man with a doctorate, was murdered in his car in the car park of Hammerhead’s restaurant last Friday. Those homicides came after a security guard at the La Bartina bar was murdered on June 19 in an armed attack that wounded one other person. The 17-year-old son of Castro, 45, was wounded in Tuesday’s attack and taken to hospital for treatment.
The same two people accused of the murders are also allegedly responsible for setting fire to La Bartina and a restaurant and beach club called Maukaa, according to the Sonora Attorney General’s Office (FGJE).
The FGJE said in a statement Wednesday that it deployed a special team of investigators to respond to the events, detaining two people in possession of firearms and drugs. The FGJE said the unnamed people possibly participated in the criminal acts.
According to the Tribuna newspaper, San Carlos – a beach town 20 kilometers northwest of the city of Guaymas – is currently amidst a crisis of insecurity. It said that rival criminal groups are fighting for control of the town and that – despite the recent arrests – authorities haven’t acted to solve the crisis.
The recent wave of violence appears related to extortion demands made by criminals in San Carlos. A local businessman told Tribuna that criminal groups are asking many businesses to make regular payments. Other business owners have taken to social media to denounce the crime and highlight authorities’ failure to combat it. One business owner pleaded for people to “pray for San Carlos,” Tribuna said.
Andrés Sumano, an academic who researches violence, said that extortion usually occurs because organized “crime acts as a franchise business.”
“So local groups tend to look for sources of financing by resorting to these actions,” he said.
“The … victims selected by these criminals are usually Mexican business people,” said Rafael López, a risk consultant with the company Kroll.
Criminals target them because “it’s known their families are here” and they have “vulnerable points,” he said. Foreign-owned businesses – of which there are some in San Carlos – are “the least affected by this kind of crime because they don’t have these vulnerable points,” López said.
Following the murder of Enríquez, local businessman Luis Zaragoza questioned the inaction of authorities.
“There was an attack that resulted in the death of a person, … it’s a very serious situation because families with children and tourists were walking around,” he said in a radio interview. “[It happened] at a relatively early hour; it’s an increasingly delicate situation … [but] there’s no reaction [from authorities], there’s no solution. I don’t understand what authorities are thinking and what they’re waiting for to act.”
Tribuna reported that Guaymas Mayor Karla Córdova hasn’t made a public appearance since the latest outbreak of violence began, but noted that isn’t surprising because she has kept a low profile since witnessing an armed attack on the municipal police chief, which claimed the lives of three other people last November.
However, Sonora Security Minister María Dolores del Río has asserted that authorities are concerned about what’s happening in San Carlos and working to combat crime in the town. The recent arrests lend some credence to those words.
Sumano, the academic, said the absence of the mayor creates the impression that the problems in San Carlos are not being addressed by local authorities.
“Mayors are the visible faces of municipal governments, they’re the first responders [to local problems] and if that face isn’t there, if citizens don’t see an interest in resolving problems, … [they believe] they’ve been abandoned by an indolent authority,” he said.
A 24-year-old indigenous trans woman in the coastal region of Oaxaca was teased, harassed and humiliated by members of a local police force, who cut her hair and dressed her as a man while making her do community work filling potholes, outraged activists are contending.
Lizeth, who is of Mixtec origin, was arrested in San Juan Colorado, Jamiltepec, on June 27 and held behind bars for six days, supposedly for a robbery, although media reports are now calling it administrative error because no complaint was ever filed and she was released.
While in custody, “They put me to work, they insulted me, they yelled at me, they made me cry,” Lizeth said.
San Juan Colorado police commander Agustín López and another top municipal official, Agustina Lorenzo, were the ones who ordered the police to cut Lizeth’s hair and dress her in pants and a T-shirt, according to trans activist Humberta Marcelo Vásquez.
Lizeth works as a housekeeper among other jobs.
The news of all this hit social media on Wednesday, sending LGBTQ and trans activists into a fury. “These acts of transphobia and discrimination that they did to Lizeth deserve severe punishment,” said Marcelo, who added that if it was not for her intervention and social pressure, Lizeth would still be imprisoned.
Lizeth is from the municipality of San Pedro Siniyuvi, which is just 155 kilometers from San Juan Colorado though it takes 4½ hours to drive there through the mountains. She works as a housekeeper, a waitress and a cashier to make ends meet. “Her sin is recognizing herself as a trans woman, and this is really unfortunate, because it is our own authorities who discriminate against us when they should be the ones to protect us,” Marcelo said. But enacting sexual diversity policies “does not happen here, in these communities on the Oaxaca coast.”
In a Facebook post,the LGBTQ and trans activist group Colectivo Juntxs X Oaxaca demanded that those responsible are punished, writing that San Juan Colorado officials “behaved in an inhumane and irresponsible way. … In a country where violence against the [LGBTQ] community is on the rise, we can not allow or tolerate justice and elected officials to act in such a way.”
The post also included a letter to President López Obrador, Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa and other public officials. It said the police “completely undressed [Lizeth] and forced her to wear men’s clothing, repeatedly alluding that she was a man, and had to dress as such and behave as such.” It added that the police used obscene words to her face, and that the police chief López “cut her nails and hair in front of the police so that they would make fun of her.”
The National Council to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred) condemned the incident and demanded an investigation, as well as compensation for damages.
Oaxaca’s Ombudsman for Human Rights (DDHPO) said an investigation into the incidents had begun and assured that Lizeth was being looked after and interviewed. DDHPO also stressed that between 2015 and April 2022, it initiated 34 inquiries for various acts of discrimination against people from the LGBTQ community.
Dressed as Psycho Clown, Miguelito gets his COVID shot.
Wearing the mask and suit of his favorite lucha libre wrestler helped an eight-year-old Oaxaca boy overcome the fear of getting a COVID-19 shot.
Dressed as Psycho Clown, Miguel Ángel Carrasco Echeverría was vaccinated Wednesday in Tuxtepec, Oaxaca’s second largest city.
He closed his eyes when a nurse administered the vaccine but didn’t shed a single tear, according to a report by the Milenio newspaper, which described the inoculation as the longest four seconds of Miguel’s short life.
Géminis Echeverría posted a video to social media of her brave son getting his shot and holding cotton wool against the injection site on his upper arm.
Four seconds later, it was all over.
Miguel was one of hundreds of children aged five to 11 who got COVID shots Wednesday in Tuxtepec. Accompanied by their parents or grandparents, many lined up for hours in sweltering heat to get a dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, the only shot authorized for use on children in Mexico.
After long maintaining that vaccinating young children against COVID-19 wasn’t necessary, the federal government announced last month that it would offer shots to minors aged five to 11.
A fifth wave of coronavirus infections is currently spreading across Mexico, where there are more than 185,000 active cases, according to federal Health Ministry estimates. An additional 31,116 new cases were reported Wednesday, the first time since February that the daily count exceeded 30,000.
The Health Ministry also reported 60 COVID fatalities, which lifted the official death toll to 325,928. Accumulated case numbers total 6.15 million.
An official with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) said Wednesday the end of the fifth wave is near, predicting it would be peak during the week of July 17.
