There are more people than ever earning the minimum wage.
The number of Mexicans earning the minimum wage has increased 39% in the space of a single month to 19 million, official data shows.
Data from the national statistics agency INEGI shows that 5.3 million additional people were earning the minimum wage in January compared to December 2021.
The minimum wage increased 22% in January to 173 pesos (US $8.40) per day, or 5,186 pesos (just over US $250) per month, in most of the country. The minimum in the northern border region is 50% higher at 260 pesos per day.
Since records began, there has never been such a high number of minimum wage earners, and for the first time ever they are the largest cohort of workers.
INEGI data also shows that the number of people earning more than the minimum wage but no more than double that amount decreased by 11%, or 2.3 million workers, to just under 18 million between December and January.
Only 2.3 million people earn between three and five minimum wages, down from 3.5 million in December, while just 800,000 earn more than five times the minimum, or over 865 pesos per day or 25,950 (US $1,260) per month. A month earlier in December that figure was 1.3 million.
Héctor Magaña, head of the economy and business research center at the Tec de Monterrey university, told the newspaper El Universal that wages have generally decreased because businesses have not fully recovered from the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
“They tend to offer positions with lower remuneration than … in previous periods,” he said.
Similarly, Raymundo Tenorio, an economist, said that small businesses rehired workers on lower salaries when they reopened after the pandemic shutdown.
“For example, a waiter’s assistant who earned a little more than the minimum wage was put down to just a minimum wage, or even less,” he said.
Magaña said that a glut of workers is suppressing wages, and people are accepting jobs with low salaries because they can’t find anything that pays better.
“For some time we’ve seen that the number of people earning an amount higher than [two or more] minimum wages is trending down,” he added, explaining that the trend began before the pandemic but was exacerbated by the coronavirus-induced contraction.
Magaña also said that underemployment has increased during the pandemic, while the number of people employed in the informal sector remains very high.
There were some 30.5 million informal sector workers in January compared to 25.1 million people in the formal sector. The former cohort, which includes street vendors and most domestic workers among many others, generally don’t pay tax and don’t have access to social security benefits.
A two time state champion chess player in Querétaro city is selling popsicles to cover his expenses for an international chess tournament.
Julio Adrián Ramírez, 28, is trying to make money to reach the capital of El Salvador for the Continental Absolute Chess Championship of the Americas from May 1-11.
Ramírez believes that with a minimum of 20,000 pesos (US $970) he can cover transport, accommodation and food costs. As street popsicles generally go for about 10 pesos each (US $0.48), he will have to sell 2,000 to pay the entire travel bill.
The 15-year chess player stands on a street corner in the city center each day from 1-7:30 p.m. with lemon, cookie, mango and other flavors of popsicle. He also invites customers to play a game of chess and offers private classes to earn extra cash.
If he achieves his goal of attending the contest, he has the chance to be one of four players to qualify for the world championships, but Ramírez said his first aim is to be recognized as an international master by the International Chess Federation (FIDE).
A medal winner at the National Olympiad, Ramírez explained what made him so passionate about the game. “Chess is a beautiful contest. It makes you go up against yourself, because it’s about doing the best you can. Then you have an opponent who is giving everything in the world. It’s a battle of minds. There is a lot of stress. In the games you feel a lot of adrenaline, you enjoy it and you suffer at the same time,” he said.
However, the game didn’t initially excite Ramírez, and it was only by doing a friend a favor that he fell in love with it. “My brother taught me how to use the pieces when I was a kid. The truth is that I didn’t like chess very much. Once I entered high school I started to be more interested. They opened a chess workshop … I was in the guitar workshop, but I asked to change because a friend wanted to be in the guitar workshop. We switched and from there I started playing chess.”
Yucatán is the latest state to fully legalize same-sex marriage after the state’s Congress voted unanimously on the issue on Tuesday.
The Congress approved modifications to three secondary laws in the Civil Registry Law and three in the Family Code meaning citizens can now marry partners of the same sex without making any legal challenge.
Same-sex marriage was first approved in Yucatán on 25 August, but lawmakers were given 180 days to make the necessary modifications. They achieved it in 188 days.
Previously, same-sex couples had only been able to marry after filing for a costly court injunction.
The Citizens’ Movement deputy who presented the initiative in December, Vida Gómez, said there was still a lot of work to be done to advance human rights, but the legalization of same sex marriage was part of that long running battle.
A National Action Party (PAN) deputy, Manuela Cocom Bolio, said the reforms showed the openness and desire for cooperation among the 25 deputies beyond their partisan positions.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that civil codes defining marriage as between a man and a woman or for the sole purpose of procreation were unconstitutional. But some states have still not changed their laws, meaning that in order to get married within their borders same-sex couples must apply for a marriage license with their local civil registry, be rejected and then file for an injunction and wait for their case to move through the system.
Mexico City was the first entity to recognize gay marriage, doing so in 2010. The states where same-sex marriage has not been fully legalized are Durango, México state, Guerrero, Tabasco, Tamaulipas and Veracruz. The practice is legal in 26 states.
In Tijuana's Camino Verde neighborhood, some 100 families saw their homes collapse when cracks opened in the ground. Facebook
At least 257 people were forced to abandon 90 homes in Tijuana, Baja California, due to landslides on Monday.
In the rugged, hilly terrain of the Camino Verde neighborhood, 172 adults and 85 children from some 100 families saw their homes collapse when cracks opened in the ground.
Local Civil Protection officials found visible structural damage to the homes and decided to evacuate residents. A further 50 houses were categorized as being at risk, and at least 40 properties over an area of four blocks were recorded as having non-visible structural damage.
Local authorities cut off the water supply to the area without prior warning, much to the irritation of those who hadn’t abandoned their homes, the newspaper Milenio reported. The electricity supply was also cut, the newspaper Excélsior reported.
A resident of the neighborhood who gave his name as Francisco said water leaks were to blame.
It’s not yet clear what caused the ground to crack open, but a Camino Verde resident said that water leaks in the neighborhood were being investigated. Facebook
“There were various leaks from the upper part that we have just been inspecting,” he said before showing cracks in the walls of houses, the streets and pavement.
Tijuana official Jorge Salazar Miramontes said that a sports center had been turned into a shelter for the affected families.
Tijuana’s College of Civil Engineers (CICTAC) will investigate what caused the incident. “Geotechnical studies report on the properties of the soil and how the layers of subsoil are formed,” CICTAC President Gerardo Tenorio Escárcega explained. “Geophysical studies show you the weaknesses, holes [and] cracks and also determine the moisture content of the soil.”
Housing developments in elevated parts of the city have been built over streams, and the lack of natural drainage makes those areas vulnerable to landslides, but it is not clear if that was the case for the Camino Verde neighborhood. Heavy rains and flooding can provoke shifting earth and landslides, as can earthquakes.
Tijuana is located in the Imperial Fault Zone, which encompasses most of southern California and makes Tijuana vulnerable to quakes.
The problem of landslides and dangerously shifting soil goes back years in the city, with multiple incidents in various neighborhoods that have forced people to evacuate their homes. In 2015, after a landslide provoked by a water leak forced 19 homes to be evacuated in the Anexa Miramar neighborhood and left 21 more buildings at risk, Baja California’s Civil Protection agency called the risk of landslides and shifting earth “an old and serious problem,” blaming, among other factors, Tijuana’s history of irregular and “abusive” construction of developments on uneven land with soil layers that are not well compacted and that vary in their permeability.
President López Obrador said he has no interest in money and admitted that he is ignorant on matters of basic personal finance in his morning news conference on Tuesday.
“I don’t care about money, I’ve never cared about money. I don’t use a wallet. My wife is the one that manages my income …I’m not interested in the material, it doesn’t interest me. I’ve never had a checking account, I don’t know how to make out a check. I don’t know how to use a credit card, none of that,” he said.
López Obrador added that any happiness that comes from money is short lived. “Sometimes [money] produces an ephemeral, transient happiness and then you fall into situations of unhappiness. I always say that only by being good can we be happy and happiness is not in material goods … money … produces greed, it dehumanizes,” he said.
However, despite his disinterest in money, the president accepted that it can still be earned legitimately. “I’ve always maintained that not everything that people have is nefarious. There are people who through effort and work, in accordance with the law, earn wealth and deserve respect, but part of my education is not to get attached to money and the material.”
López Obrador added that he advises loved ones and friends not to fall into the temptation of thinking that money can make them happy.
Based on recent history, his advice could be falling on deaf ears: an investigation in November into his sons’ cacao plantation in Tabasco raised questions about financial links to Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), the federal government’s tree-planting employment program.
A separate investigation in January revealed that another of his sons, José Ramón López Beltrán, and his wife Carolyn Adams had rented a million-dollar home in Houston owned by Keith L. Schilling, a high-ranking executive with Baker Hughes, an oil sector company that has contracts with state oil company Pemex worth over US $150 million.
In August 2020, two videos surfaced of the president’s brother, Pío López Obrador, receiving large amounts of cash from David León, a former Civil Protection chief who had recently been named to run a state company that distributes medical supplies. A year later, another video appeared, showing another brother receiving cash from León.
Without mentioning any of the scandals, the president underlined in the conference that he wasn’t responsible for the actions of his relatives and was concentrated on battling corruption. “Those who are of legal age, my children and relatives, have to behave well and assume their responsibilities because I am here to fulfill a mission, so as not to fail the people, to put an end to corruption, influence, nepotism. All those scourges of politics,” he said.
The federal government has confirmed the termination of a program that extended school hours for students at more than 25,000 schools and thus gave their parents – especially mothers – more time to work to support their families.
Public Education Minister Delfina Gómez said Tuesday that the Full-Time Schools Program (PETC) was coming to an end, explaining that the government wants to prioritize education sector resources for the the improvement of basic school infrastructure such as classrooms and washrooms.
“[The need for infrastructure projects] is sometimes not seen … in the capital … but if we go to the most remote communities of Puebla, Sonora, Yucatán, Chiapas, Oaxaca, the entire republic, we realize how many needs there are in terms of infrastructure,” she said.
Created during the 2006-12 government led by former president Felipe Calderón, the program has already concluded at some schools. From approximately 6,700 schools at its commencement, the PETC grew to include 25,134 basic education schools (pre-schools, primary schools and middle schools), benefiting some 3.6 million children.
Students enrolled in the program attend school for six to eight hours per day, instead of the typical 4 1/2 hours, and are served meals.
Testing showed that students benefited academically from spending more time at school, and the national social development agency, Coneval, concluded in 2018 that the PETC was one of the country’s most important education programs.
Despite that, funding for the schools where the program operates was cut by 50% to 5.1 billion pesos (US $245.6 million) in 2020 from almost 10.2 billion pesos the year before.
The decision to terminate the PETC attracted significant criticism, and the program was defended by its original proponent.
“When creating #FullTimeSchools we sought to improve the education of children, provide comprehensive nutrition to them and allow the incorporation of more women into the labor market,” Calderón tweeted Tuesday.
“Mom could work full time while her child learned, ate better and was safe,” he added in a post that included a tweet from a person who asserted that President López Obrador decided to do away with the PETC partially because it was created during the government led by Calderón, an arch adversary of the president.
Mexicanos Primero, an education-focused nongovernmental organization, is preparing a legal challenge against the government’s decision that it intends to take to the Supreme Court.
Education Minister Delfina Gómez announced the end of the Felipe Calderón-era program on Tuesday.
Fernando Alcázar Ibarra, the organization’s legal director, noted there was a previous court ruling against the elimination of the PETC, but the Ministry of Education successfully challenged it.
Education expert Juan Alfonso Mejía said he wasn’t surprised by the education minister’s announcement given the cut to the PETC budget, but indicated that he was disappointed by the government’s decision.
“The objective of this program was to generate greater opportunities for children in vulnerable situations,” he said.
“The Full-Time Schools Program is probably the only contemporary era Mexican education program that was recognized on several occasions by UNICEF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank,” Mejía said.
He also said that four of 10 children enrolled in the PETC didn’t eat any meals other than those they were served at school.
One person already affected by the termination of the program at the México state school her son attends is Alma Delia, a single mother since the death of her husband.
“It’s always the most screwed who are screwed over more,” she told the newspaper El Universal, referring to the decision to scrap the PECT.
Delia’s son previously attended his Naucalpan primary school from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., which allowed her to work most of the day as a domestic worker and shoe vendor. However, she now has to pick her son up at 12:30 p.m., and as a result her income has declined by 2,000 pesos (US $96) a month.
“This is an area where a lot of poor people live; they brought their children [to this school] precisely because they gave them breakfast and lunch during the whole school year without asking us for a peso for the food,” Delia said.
She noted that she has had to cover all household expenses on her own since her husband’s passing, explaining that her rent alone is 3,000 pesos (US $145) per month. She said that she was previously able to clean three homes a day, earning 250 pesos from each job.
But now she only has enough time to clean one house before she rushes back to the school to pick up Óscar Gustavo, who’s in second grade. “They do things without thinking about those of us who are screwed,” Delia said.
As cartels continue to fight each other for territorial control in various parts of the country, the current president and a former one engaged in a war of words over Mexico’s latest episode of brutal violence.
Former president Felipe Calderón took to Twitter on Monday to comment on the massacre Sunday in San José de Gracia, Michoacán, in which as many as 17 people were killed in a firing squad-style execution.
The cold-blooded murders “should generate a national reaction” starting with the government’s punishment of the perpetrators, he wrote.
“Today the national emergency is to recover the rule of law,” Calderón added. In another tweet, the ex-National Action Party president said it was “incredible” that the authenticity of video footage of the massacre had been called into doubt, a reference to López Obrador’s suggestion that it could have been manipulated.
At his regular news conference on Tuesday, the president described Calderón as a “cinicazo,” or extreme cynic, for having the gumption to offer an opinion on Sunday’s callous carnage.
He charged that new criminal groups emerged as a result of the actions of the government led by the former president, who defeated López Obrador at the 2006 presidential election.
They arose from “the government that prevailed through fraud,” López Obrador said, repeating his claim that he was robbed of victory at the 2006 election.
Criminal organizations that formed during the 2006-12 federal government – including the über-violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel – did so due to Calderón’s militarized war on cartels and his failure to address the root causes of violence, the president claimed.
He also reaffirmed his commitment to continuing his so-called “abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not bullets) security strategy, which seeks to avoid direct confrontation with cartels where possible and steer young people away from a life of crime by offering them education and employment opportunities.
“… What we’re looking for is for young people not to be roped into [joining criminal organizations],” López Obrador said.
“… Young people weren’t attended to but now we’re addressing the causes of violence, but it takes time,” he said before renewing his criticism of the Calderón government for ordering people wounded in confrontations with the military to be “finished off.”
AMLO, as the president is best known, also castigated the ex-president for not explaining his decision to appoint Genaro García Luna – currently imprisoned in the United States as he awaits trial on bribery and drug trafficking charges – as his security minister.
“We’re still waiting for him to explain why he had García Luna as the right-hand man in his government,” he said.
Later on Tuesday, Calderón returned to Twitter to hit back at the president, asserting that the “really cynical thing is to send hugs” to the armed men responsible for Sunday’s massacre, who are allegedly CJNG members.
He also made it clear that he is opposed to the federal government’s decision not to impose sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, retweeting a post on the subject by journalist León Krauze.
“This is an error,” Krauze wrote above a link to a report on the decision. “It places Mexico, in this episode at least, on the wrong side of the history of a brutal and unjustifiable war. The correct position is condemnation and sanctions.”
There is no love lost between López Obrador and Calderón, who have clashed on countless occasions since the latter’s triumph in 2006.
Just another quiet day in pristine Catemaco, Veracruz.
I never thought of much of Mexico’s eastern coast north of Chetumal as a beach destination, but I was surprised on a recent trip to Veracruz at how many undiscovered beaches and tourist-free towns awaited me. If you are the kind of tourist that wants to avoid the crowds, loves great food, and doesn’t mind some basic accommodations, southern Veracruz might just be your next location to explore.
Some towns are undiscovered for good reason: there is little tourism infrastructure, and beaches are wind-swept with black-brown sand, grass-covered dunes and, in a few places, trashy coastlines. However, a few beach spots in this part of the Gulf Coast stand out, and even a few small eateries and isolated hamlet-like towns.
My companions and I started exploring the coast from the south up, staying overnight in Catemaco, known for its witchcraft and stunning location next to gorgeous Lake Catemaco, which sits on an expansive 72 square kilometers surrounded by volcanoes and mountains. You can take a boat out on a 50-minute or 1.5-hour cruise to see an island of wild monkeys, get cleansed by a local shaman, experience the area’s biodiversity and watch the fisherman on Agaltepec island dry tiny topote fish in clay ovens.
Make sure to try the local specialty here, carne de chango, which despite its name is not made with monkey meat, but pork smoked with guava and orange leaves.
We stayed in the Hotel del Lago, which was great in a simple kind of way, with a swimming pool in the central courtyard and a Boca Raton aesthetic, one I found charming after not having stayed in a beach motel for a long time.
This mysterious Olmec statue greets visitors to Catemaco, Veracruz.
The rooms were only US $30 with a good Wi-Fi connection, comfortable linens and a kitchen and bar open until nearly midnight.
Another hotel recommended to us was Hotel La Finca down the road, a slightly more upscale location with a spa, swimming pool and lake views.
The drive from Catemaco eastward to the coast is overflowing with green wildness, with a stretch of the road blanketed in a high mountain mist, which on that day, converted into a full-fledged thunderstorm. September to January is when the nortes blow wind and rain down from the Atlantic, and the best months to visit here are during Mexico’s rainy season, from May to August.
The storm caused us to stop in Montepio, which I think even without a storm would look beat-up, but the woman who served us hot coffee there said that the place is packed during Easter Week vacation and that the two rivers that flow out to ocean at the town’s beach make the area popular with kayakers and swimmers.
Playa Revolution further up the road was much more picturesque, with a stretch of uninhabited beach bordered by dunes with glorious green vegetation. While these beaches are nowhere near the crystal-clear waters of Cancun, they make up for it in wild beauty — like the cactus-dotted dunes at Salinas Roca Partida beach or the breathtaking views at Punta Roca Partida, which requires a boat ride from the town of Roca Partida to get a close look. There are several landmarks and a town all named Roca Partida, so it can get confusing.
There are only a handful of good places to stay along this road, but we did find Cabañas El Muñeco which has an adorable set of yellow cabins that face the beach with a view to the sea blocked but also enhanced by a row of palm trees at the end of the property.
Frolicking at the shore in Anton Lizardo.
The lodging is very basic but cozy, with rooms that cost US $25 a night for a double bed and a terrace to enjoy the sea breeze. The one drawback is that the water is solar heated, so on the rainy day we arrived, we were out of luck for a hot shower.
The food here was some of the best on our trip — delicious local seafood cooked with a real homestyle flair. We had crispy fried tilapia and chipotle shrimp one afternoon with ice-cold beers, and fried cheese and seafood empanadas with hot coffee the next morning.
North of Roca Partida, the best beach was Salinas Roca Partida, which has several beach access points. One leads you past the local football field and takes you to a beach with a river’s mouth, and another has a little more tourism infrastructure and an official place to park. These areas will have plenty of beachgoers during the high season, but nothing compared to the crowded spots further south.
Further north is Toro Prieto, a tiny town with another wild, dune-filled beach and a couple of sea-worn palapas on its shores. We then headed further north, passing Puerto Alvarado, one of the region’s oldest ports and home to many of its original colonizers, then made our way to Anton Lizardo, another popular beach spot with locals. You will find it cheek to jowl during the high season. Its real draw is an island off its coast, Isla Enmedio, with stunning turquoise waters that is now a natural protected area. You can take a boat out to the island for around US $20 per person. Once packed with people, the local government has put restrictions in place about the number of boats and tourists allowed at a time, making the island a much more enjoyable day on the beach.
Further north and closer to the Port of Veracruz are several nice beaches, but most sit in front of gated communities or beach hotels, so access to the public is limited. A day trip to the riverside town of Tlacotalpan — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and charming little colonial town — is worth the trip.
Expect fresh, excellent seafood in this area, especially the shrimp, which are fished on the Papaloapan river and other areas nearby. Also, be sure to try local seafood cocktails even if you aren’t generally a fan of Mexico’s normal stingingly sweet versions. These drinks pare down the sugar and amp up the fresh seafood flavor.
Local boats pull into shore in Anton Lizardo.
Also good are the picadas, a large, thick tortilla topped with salsa, cheese and sliced onion. The spicy sauces that go with it are made with local chilpaya peppers.
If you like beach vacations light on glitz but heavy on pristine beauty, don’t overlook Veracruz’s beaches: the land, the people, and the weather are all spectacular and for the time being, undiscovered by most foreign travelers.
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Total remittances to Mexico hit US $41.46 billion from January to August this year. (Archive)
Remittance payments topped a landmark US $50 billion in 2021 and continued that strong performance in January.
The Bank of México reported that payments totaled US $3.93 billion in the first 31 days of 2022, a 19.6% increase on the figure for January 2021.
There were 10,589 remittances sent in January with an average value of $371. That was 10.4% more payments than in January last year and the average payment was 8.3% higher.
However, the total received for the first month of 2022 was still a fall on the previous month: 17.2% less than in December, when $4.75 billion was received. January also ended a run of eight consecutive months with payments over $4 billion.
It was a record breaking year in 2021 for remittances, which were $10 billion higher than in 2020.
The money is typically sent home by Mexican nationals living in the United States, but some experts speculate that an unknown percentage of remittances are part of money laundering schemes by criminals in Mexico.
President López Obrador has thanked the 38 million Mexicans in the United States for their contribution to the Mexican economy on various occasions. He has described those migrants as heroes and estimated that their payments benefit around 10 million families.
Remittances are Mexico’s second largest source of foreign currency after automotive exports.
A member of the military holds a shoulder-fired rocket launcher, recently provided to soldiers patrolling in Zacatecas.
Soldiers in Zacatecas are now carrying shoulder-fired rocket launchers for use against criminal organizations that operate in the northern state, the scene of a bloody turf war between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel that has displaced thousands of people.
The highly violent tactics of the CJNG were the catalyst for the army to increase its firepower in Zacatecas, according to a report by the newspaper Milenio.
The firepower of the antitank rocket launchers – which are reportedly Belgian- made RL-83 Blindicides – can neutralize heavily armored vehicles such as the so-called monstruos (monsters) used by the CJNG and other criminal groups. The weapons have a maximum range of approximately 900 meters and can blast through thick concrete walls.
The army is also using rocket launchers in other states where the CJNG operates, Milenio reported.
National Guardsmen send home a fallen member who died in a February 19 confrontation in Sarabia. In 2022, at least 16 military personnel have been killed in Zacatecas.
Led by Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the Jalisco cartel is considered one of the two most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico, the other being the Sinaloa Cartel.
In 2015, during an operation in Jalisco aimed at capturing Oseguera, the CJNG fired missiles at a military helicopter and hit it twice in an attack that killed nine occupants of the aircraft.
In addition to high-powered firearms and armored vehicles, the cartel has used drones and improvised explosive devices (land mines) in its fight against rival criminal groups and authorities, as well as tactical equipment such as night-vision goggles and bulletproof vests.
