Alondra de la Parra is the artistic director of the festival, to be held near Playa del Carmen.
A classical music festival conceived by renowned Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra will be held in Quintana Roo over five days in late June and early July.
The GNP Paax Festival, at which over 100 international artists will perform, will take place at the Hotel Xcaret Arte near Playa del Carmen from June 29 to July 3.
“There will be two concerts every night at 7 and 10 as well as presentations of books, chamber music and talks with the creators,” said de la Parra, who has conducted some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras.
The festival will feature the inaugural public performance by The Impossible Orchestra, a group of musicians from 14 different countries brought together by de la Parra in order to raise funds to support Mexican women and children affected by COVID-19.
The musicians separately recorded parts of Danzón No. 2 by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez for the musical project supported by the insurance company GNP, but have never played together. A video of their interpretation of the composition has been viewed over half a million times on YouTube.
The Impossible Orchestra: Danzón No. 2 (Full Video)
At the upcoming festival, The Impossible Orchestra will perform a new arrangement composed by Márquez called sinfonía imposible, or impossible symphony.
The festival will also feature a partial performance of Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet Like Water for Chocolate, a Royal Ballet interpretation of the magical realism novel of the same name by Mexican author Laura Esquivel. De la Parra is a orchestral music consultant for the ballet’s score.
She told a virtual press conference that the festival is named after the Mayan word for music.
“Paax means music in Mayan and phonetically it’s peace in Latin,” de la Parra said. “We liked it a lot because it connects a word that we all know, peace, with what we’re doing – music in the Mayan lands where we’re having our festival.”
The conductor, who will also present her “The Silence of Sound” show in Quintana Roo, said the plan is to hold the festival annually at the Hotel Xcaret Arte.
Leaked photographs that show former Nuevo León governor Jaime Rodríguez in prison after his arrest Tuesday were published by several media outlets, drawing the ire of President López Obrador, who claimed that the publication of the images amounted to an assault on the ex-governor’s dignity.
Rodríguez, governor of the northern border state between 2015 and 2021, was arrested on electoral crimes charges and transferred to a prison in Apodaca, part of the metropolitan area of Monterrey.
The images include mug shots in which “El Bronco” is dressed in prison attire and photos of the former governor and 2018 presidential candidate undergoing a medical test.
Speaking at his regular news conference on Wednesday, López Obrador said that he didn’t agree with the publication of the photos.
“What I didn’t like – and I say it because I believe it affects people’s dignity – were the photos they took,” he said.
“… It’s a matter that has to do with honor and dignity. … I didn’t like the photos and hopefully it won’t happen again,” López Obrador said.
The president also said that the case against Rodríguez has nothing to do with the federal government.
“It’s a matter of the state of Nuevo León, of the authorities of Nuevo León. I found out yesterday when they had already arrested him because it’s in no way linked to the federal government,” he said.
“They have to inform well about the reasons [for his arrest]. I always recommend not to use the law for political revenge. You can’t fabricate crimes but at the same time there mustn’t be impunity,” López Obrador said.
Rodríguez was due to attend a first hearing on Wednesday afternoon. Media reports said the former governor was detained for alleged embezzlement of public funds during his 2018 presidential campaign.
President López Obrador’s plans to spend Sunday night at the hotel at Mexico City’s new airport have been thwarted: like much of the ground transportation infrastructure the new Holiday Inn isn’t ready.
The president had intended to wake up Monday morning at the hotel for its official inauguration.
Instead, he said Wednesday he will travel from the National Palace to Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) on Monday, taking the opportunity to demonstrate that the journey only takes 30-40 minutes from the center of Mexico City. The AIFA, which was constructed by the military, is built on an Air Force base in México state some 50 kilometers north of the capital’s downtown.
The president’s original plan to stay in the hotel, also built by the military, was scuppered after he found out the facility still didn’t have the required permissions and paperwork.
The 270-room hotel is owned by the military, but will be run as a concession by the U.S. hotel chain Holiday Inn.
“I’m definitely not going to stay there now,” López Obrador told Wednesday’s morning press conference. “The hotel is finished, but it isn’t certified … I’m going to sleep [in the National Palace] to show you that I can do the journey in half an hour.”
He told reporters he would see them at 7 a.m. at Monday’s press conference, which will be held at the airport.
He appended that it might take 40 minutes to arrive at the airport, providing himself 10 minutes of extra leeway.
Doubts have been raised about transport times to the airport due to incomplete road infrastructure and the lack of a rail link from central Mexico City.
The president also said that due to the electoral silence in advance of the revocation of mandate vote he wouldn’t make a speech at the inauguration ceremony or even cut the ribbon. However, López Obrador said that other officials would speak at the event.
More than a functional airport, López Obrador claimed that the work is one of aesthetic merit. “It’s a great airport. I even have my concerns, because they’re going to say, where was the austerity? … it really is beautiful, it is a work of the highest order of engineering,” he said.
The AIFA is aiming to serve 5 million passengers in 2024, a goal it needs to attain to break even, but it has so far been unable to lure any major foreign airlines. Only four airlines will initially use it and the only international flight will be to Caracas, Venezuela.
Its use may increase due to a scarcity of options for airlines after the government announced earlier this month that both terminals at the Mexico City International Airport — the biggest airport in Latin America — had reached the saturation point.
As one of the president’s flagship projects, there’s a lot riding on the success of the AIFA: he canceled the partially built airport in Texcoco, México state, after a legally questionable referendum held before he took office in late 2018.
The dead geese after they were gathered by local authorities.
At least 50 dead snow geese were found in a Chihuahua field on Tuesday, the second unexplained mass death of migratory birds in the settlement in just over a month.
The field is located on Mennonite land in the Swift Current settlement in Álvaro Obregón, about 156 kilometers west of Chihuahua city.
Municipal police officers said the geese didn’t bear any signs of injury or any wounds from firearms.
Although local authorities discovered the birds on Tuesday, a man whose property is adjacent to the field said the geese had been scattered on the farmland since Monday morning. Snow geese migrate from Canada to the southern U.S. and Mexico during the winter months.
Five of the fowls’ carcasses were removed for analysis by the federal environment agency Profepa, which also requested the assistance of the National Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research Institute (Inifap), to determine how the geese died.
On February 7, 100 migratory yellow-headed blackbirds were found dead in Swift Current. The cause of the birds’ deaths remains unresolved, but surveillance camera footage shows them fall from the sky while in mid-flight.
Swift Current was settled in 1922 by Mennonite migrants from the Swift Current region of Saskatchewan, Canada. Many of the community in Mexico speak Plautdietsch, an old Germanic language.
Michoacán journalists demonstrated against violence toward their colleagues in Morelia on Wednesday. Many referred to Tuesday's killing of Armando Linares.
A journalist was shot dead in his home in Michoacán on Tuesday night, making him the ninth media worker and seventh practicing journalist to be murdered this year.
Armando Linares was killed in Zitácuaro, a city about 150 kilometers east of Morelia. He was shot eight times in front of his wife and children, the newspaper El Sol de Morelia reported.
He was the director of the news site Monitor Michoacán. His colleague Roberto Toledo was murdered in Zitácuaro in late January.
Linares had been subjected to threats since accusing Michoacán Attorney General Adrián López Solís of corruption and intimidation in 2019. He sought protection under the Federal Mechanism for the Protection of Journalists but withdrew from the program after a few weeks.
“The calls of alarm and for help from Armando were not heard … the authorities were silent,” Linares’ colleagues said in a statement. They also urged the government to “treat the matter with complete seriousness in light of the killings, attacks and rights violations.”
Monitor Michoacán journalists Armando Linares, left, and Roberto Toldeo, right.
“The anger, powerlessness and indignation are without words in the face of the murders of journalists in Mexico and Michoacán,” the statement added.
Michoacán’s government lamented Linares’ killing. “Any form of attack on freedom of expression threatens social coexistence and democratic life, so we reiterate our willingness to collaborate with investigations that help clarify and punish the act,” it said in a tweet.
Michoacán authorities added that journalists have the support of the state government through the Department of Protection for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
In a video posted on January 31, after Toledo’s murder, Linares said the Monitor Michoacán team had been threatened.
“[Toledo] lost his life at the hands of three people who shot him in a vile and cowardly way … The Monitor Michoacán team has been suffering a series of death threats. Finally, these were fulfilled, and today they murdered one of the members of our team,” he said.
However, Linares said at the time that he was undeterred. “Exposing corruption of governments, officials and politicians led us to the death of one of our colleagues … We are not armed, we do not carry weapons. Our only defense is a pen and a notebook … We are going to continue denouncing corruption even if it costs our lives,” he said.
Hay suficientes antecedentes para dar con los culpables y dar justicia.
Pero hay un problema; Fue el Crimen Organizado y AMLO no los toca.
The nonprofit watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that Mexico was the most dangerous country in which to practice journalism for the third consecutive year in 2021. The nation is well set to take that unenviable title for the fourth year running after already reaching — just 74 days into 2022 — RSF’s 2021 count of seven murdered journalists.
One of the many homes that have collapsed in Tijuana.
The number of houses at risk of collapsing in a neighborhood in Tijuana, Baja California, has increased from 90 to 272, affecting more than 1,000 people.
Some 100 families were forced to abandon their homes in late February in the rugged, hilly terrain of the Camino Verde neighborhood after cracks opened in the ground, causing some buildings to collapse.
However, the problem appears to have worsened, forcing many more to evacuate after the area included in a high-risk landslide zone was expanded.
At least 28 disabled people, 365 minors and another 782 adults have been affected, taking the total to 1,175 people.
The deputy director of Civil Protection for Tijuana, Alberto Castro, said that local conditions and the type of construction built in the area were a risky combination. “The presence of moisture in the earth, steep slopes … without protection and very heavy buildings for the type of terrain … and if we add to that … some micro fault or geological faults,” made collapses more likely, he said.
Ya son 274 casas en riesgo de colapsar en Camino Verde
The house of one local woman called Dolores no longer has a roof or walls. She said she missed the home her family was forced to leave. “My husband didn’t want to leave, until he heard heavy things were falling … It makes me want to scream, because I was very accustomed to living here,” she said.
Another local woman, María del Carmen Pérez, said the losses would be suffered by her children. “The feelings of a whole lifetime can all fall apart in just a moment. Assets that we’d already bequeathed to our children are destroyed …” she said.
Baja California Governor Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda said the families would be given financial support. “We are looking at land where we can relocate these families, but in the meantime … they will be given resources so that they can rent a house,” she said.
However, some local people confronted Ávila to say that officials hadn’t fulfilled their promise to provide funds. “They said that support was going to be given, but when we took our papers they turned us back and told us no,” one woman said, before adding that officials told her they could only provide assistance to property owners.
In response, Ávila said that all of the families should receive the same treatment, before handing the task to the state welfare minister.
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.”
It blamed, 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.
The president toured the Dos Bocas refinery site last weekend.
Gasoline prices are lower in Mexico than many other countries, but subsidizing fuel is predicted to cost the government over 550 billion pesos this year, according to one study.
The office of President López Obrador posted an infographic to Twitter Monday that showed that gas prices in Mexico are lower than those in Germany, France, Spain, the United States, Canada, China and Brazil.
“Thanks to the energy policy we have implemented, we are able to have one of the cheapest gasoline prices in the world: 22.42 pesos [US $1.08] per liter,” the president’s office tweeted.
In an earlier post, it said that the government will cover 100% of the IEPS excise tax on regular and premium gasoline and diesel until March 18. It began 100% subsidization of the excise tax on regular gasoline on February 18.
“With this support, the Finance Ministry seeks to control fuel prices in favor of consumers,” the president’s office said.
López Obrador said Sunday that it was a point of pride for Pemex workers and Mexicans in general that the price of gasoline in Mexico is among the lowest in the world.
“Imagine, in the United States it costs 32 pesos a liter and 22 a liter here,” he said. “Why? Because Pemex is being rescued, there’s no corruption [and] there is efficiency.”
In a video message filmed at the construction site of the new US $9 billion Dos Bocas refinery on the Tabasco coast, López Obrador reiterated that Mexico is on the path to achieving self-sufficiency for fuel by the end of next year.
While gas prices are indeed lower here than in many countries, the government’s claim that they are among the lowest in the world doesn’t stack up. According to the latest data published by website Global Petrol Prices, which the government cited, gas prices in Mexico are higher than those in almost 60 countries including 10 in the Americas.
And if the government didn’t subsidize gasoline, its price would be between 28 and 29 pesos per liter, which would be the eighth highest in the Americas, the newspaper El Financiero reported.
The average price in the United States, according to Global Petrol Prices, is US $1.24 per liter, or 25.7 pesos, although the nationwide U.S. average was US $4.30 per gallon, or US $1.14 per liter, on Wednesday, according to AAA Gas Prices.
The ‘rescue’ of Pemex is helping keep gasoline prices down, president says.
Keeping gasoline prices artificially low in Mexico, even as they increase in many other countries due to factors related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, will cost the federal government more than 554 billion pesos (US $26.76 billion) in 2022 if subsidies remain at their current level, according to the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research (CIEP).
In an analysis published Tuesday, the Mexico City-based think tank said the amount represents 2% of GDP. CIEP also said that the government’s excise tax subsidy disproportionately benefits Mexico’s highest wage earners, who are more likely to drive.
Héctor Magaña, head of the economy and business research center at the Tec de Monterrey university, said the government will have to adjust its budget if it wants to maintain its current subsidy level.
Doing so could result in decreased funding for some public programs, he told Tec de Monterrey news site Conecta.
The academic said the war in Ukraine doesn’t directly affect gasoline prices in Mexico, but does have some negative impacts as Mexico imports more gasoline than it produces and is thus affected by higher prices for crude, although the cost of unrefined oil has decreased significantly over the past week, falling below US $100 a barrel on Tuesday.
Mexican crude closed at US $92.26 per barrel on Tuesday, down 23% compared to a week earlier, but its price is still well up compared to January.
Magaña said that some government programs could be suspended “if the authorities believe that the gasoline subsidy must continue until the price of oil normalizes.”
Public resources are limited, the academic noted, making it complicated for the Finance Ministry to continue subsidies indefinitely.
Mayor Cuevas is on leave while she awaits the resolution of criminal charges.
A judge has ordered the suspension of the mayor of the Mexico City borough of Cuauhtémoc while she faces charges of theft, abuse of authority and discrimination.
The case against Sandra Cuevas, who was elected mayor last June on a joint PAN-PRI-PRD ticket, stems from a complaint filed against her by two commanders of the Mexico City auxiliary police.
According to Ulises Lara López, spokesman for the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office (FGJ), the mayor summoned the two police commanders to her office in early February after they were involved in a dispute with informal economy vendors in the historic center of the capital, which is part of the Cuauhtémoc borough.
The meeting between the police commanders and the mayor, who portrays herself as an ally of informal sector workers, quickly grew heated and the latter allegedly attacked the former both verbally and physically.
The police also allege that they were physically attacked by men present at the meeting and that they were stripped of their radios and held against their will for over an hour on the instructions of Cuevas. They also claim that the mayor’s cabinet chief pressured them not to file a legal complaint.
The police commanders rejected that advice and took the case to the FGJ, which pressed charges against Cuevas and three other borough officials.
A Mexico City judge ruled Monday that all four must be removed from their positions until the case against them is resolved. The ruling also prohibits them from leaving the country or approaching their alleged victims. Another hearing will take place Thursday.
Cuevas, who has not yet appeared in court, has denied any wrongdoing and claimed that the allegations are related to her opposition to Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and President López Obrador.
She said on Twitter Monday that she has provided video footage to authorities of the events that took place at the Cuauhtémoc borough offices on February 11. “With this solid proof, I’m calm and confident that everything will work out in my favor,” Cuevas wrote.
The 36-year-old entrepreneur has been controversial since she took office on October 1, an event that was notable for a red carpet laid out for invited guests and the release of hundreds of white butterflies during a fireworks display.
Her worship the mayor during a disagreement with constituents.
Numerous political figures expressed their support for the mayor and criticized her temporary suspension, including Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the Senate, who described the temporary suspension of the mayor in an interview as “a legal coup,” “an excess” and “a political decision,” since, he said, someone who has a popularly elected position cannot be removed by a judge but by the Mexico City Congress and only after an impeachment process.
“The absurd suspension of Sandra Cuevas confirms that the government of Claudia Sheinbaum has embarked on a ferocious hunt against opposition mayors in Mexico City,” tweeted PAN national president Marko Cortés.
“It’s persecution against the opposition and particularly Sandra Cuevas,” said Margarita Zavala, a federal PAN deputy and former first lady.
“A judge can’t suspend anyone without … [a] sentence,” she wrote on Twitter before implying that the independence of the judiciary had been violated.
Mayor Sheinbaum, who represents Mexico’s ruling Morena party, denied any involvement in Cuevas’ case.
“Today it’s in the hands of justice,” she said Tuesday, adding that her government doesn’t determine the actions of judges.
Sheinbaum asserted that the case is a judicial matter and has nothing to do with politics.
“… It’s not a matter that has to do with the city government, with the mayor,” she said, adding that Cuevas “has the right to say what she thinks.”
“It’s a matter that is now in the hands of justice. It was her actions that led the police to present a complaint,” Sheinbaum said.
The borough of Cuauhtémoc includes the capital’s historic center and the zócalo.
A comedian and YouTuber is being investigated for gender-based violence after calling a female politician an idiot, comparing her to a mollusk and referring to her as mamacita, a word that generally means “cute chick.”
The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) opened an investigation into José Manuel Torres Morales, better known as Chumel Torres, after Bertha Alicia Caraveo Camarena, a senator for Chihuahua with the ruling Morena party, made a legal complaint against him in February.
Torres made the comments on his internet show El Pulso de la República (The Pulse of the Republic), reacting to a Senate speech by Caraveo in which she expressed her support for President López Obrador’s son and his wife after they were criticized for their opulent lifestyle: “All my support and solidarity to José Ramón López Beltrán and his family. And also I’ll tell you: it was, is and will always be an honor to stand by [President] Obrador,” Caraveo said.
Torres interpreted the senator’s words as flattery, and made those feelings plain. “This idiot, I mean moron, is Bertha Caraveo from Chihuahua … just crawl a bit more, be a bit slimier and you’ll grow a shell,” he said.
“Just kiss ass a bit more and you’ll burn your tongue on the president. You’re supposed to be from Chihuahua, mamacita. I’m from Chihuahua and your bullshit doesn’t represent me. You don’t love Mexico, you love López Obrador. Can I tell her to fuck off, or is it a bit strong? Fuck off!” Torres said.
Caraveo wrote on Twitter to confirm that the FGR had opened an investigation and claimed that public prosecutors recognize her “as a victim in accordance with the General Law of Victims for his sexist violence.”
“I’ll continue until dignity becomes customary,” the senator added, and also noted an occasion on which a National Action Party deputy used “crude and unacceptable insults” against her.
Torres reacted to the announcement by saying the investigation demonstrated that freedom of expression was non-existent, before adding that his Chihuahua heritage made him battle ready. “I’m neither sad nor worried because I’m from Chihuahua. I’m from the desert … we walk miles for our cattle to graze; we work all day under the hottest bitch of a sun in the country,” he said.
The comedian added that his internet show would be impossible to silence. “The Pulso de la República is a hydra: if you cut off his head he grows seven more,” he said.
There are 99,000 people missing but only 35 convictions for forced disappearance, demonstrating a failure to deliver justice to the victims, says Alejandro Encinas.
A leading government figure in the search for missing people has denounced the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) for failing to help tackle the humanitarian crisis.
Speaking on Monday at a meeting organized by the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), the Deputy Interior Minister, Alejandro Encinas, said that despite the 98,885 missing people in the country, there have been just 35 convictions for forced disappearance, demonstrating a failure to deliver justice to the victims.
The deputy minister said the FGR’s evasive attitude had caused friction with the government. “We have unfortunately had tensions that, in my opinion, were unnecessary … [the FGR] must fulfill its responsibility to carry out searches and investigations in cases where there is an allegation of enforced disappearance … we even went so far as to debate whether or not there was a right for people to be searched for in the event of their disappearance,” he said.
Encinas added that resolving impunity was a duty shared by the three powers of the state with the assistance of volunteer search collectives. “It is a structural problem that requires the consistent and comprehensive action of the state. That involves all levels of government, the three powers of the state … and the participation of the families of the victims, the search collectives,” he said.
For Encinas, the crisis is the result of historical negligence by authorities. “By 1982, we’d already registered more than 883 disappearances that the Mexican state did not recognize … The state tried to minimize and hide this very serious problem and it is largely this abdication, this omission of the Mexican state to face the problem which has led us to this very serious humanitarian crisis.”
However, he said that the failed approach had changed with the new administration. “From the first day of this government we considered the issue of disappearance to be part of a humanitarian crisis and the violation of human rights,” he said, before noting progress through the creation of the National Search Commission (CNB), the National Register of Disappeared and Missing People (RNPDNO) and 2.5 billion pesos (about US $120 million) of investment to tackle the crisis.
Encinas’ criticisms ramp up pressure on Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero, who has been accused of improperly intervening in a court case related to the 2015 death of his brother after leaked recordings came to light which appeared to imply his collusion with the Supreme Court.
Homicide and impunity aren’t the only mountainous challenges thrown up by the missing persons crisis. The identification of the remains of victims is comparably intractable: the federal government acknowledged in December that Mexico is facing what the head of the UN committee called a “forensic crisis,” with an estimated 52,000 unidentified bodies in common graves and the nation’s morgues.
A UN report on Mexico’s missing persons crisis is due later this week.
