Senator Dante Delgado, national leader of the Citizens Movement party.
A new opposition needs to be built in seven months to take on the ruling Morena party at upcoming elections, the national leader of the Citizens Movement (MC) party said Wednesday.
Senator Dante Delgado, a former governor of Veracruz and ambassador to Italy, proposed the creation of an opposition movement that is above political parties, although he indicated that the MC will have a central role in building it.
“We believe that the new opposition has to be built in a maximum of seven months and we’re sure that it will be above parties, and it will have to be … [formed by] actors who are truly representative of society,” he told a press conference in the Senate.
“… I have no doubt that there will be a new opposition in Mexico” by the end of January 2023, Delgado said.
Gubernatorial elections will be held in México state and Coahuila next June, while voters will go to the polls in June 2024 to elect a new president, federal deputies and senators, governors in nine states and many other state and municipal representatives.
Speaking three days after Morena won four of six governorships up for grabs at elections last Sunday, Delgado said the existing opposition movement – a loose electoral alliance between the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) – is inefficient and hasn’t had electoral success.
“We’re building a project for the country, the option Mexico is demanding,” he said. “It’s been seen over and over again that the project that the historic forces have been building is inefficient, it hasn’t had electoral success and we’re going for electoral victory.”
Delgado also said that President López Obrador “knows very well” that MC is building a new opposition to win the presidency in 2024.
PAN, PRI and PRD leaders at a 2021 press conference for their coalition. Delgado criticized both the ruling Morena party and their primary opposition, the Va por México coalition.
He said Mexicans are looking for a political force that can tackle the problems the country faces, such as poverty and insecurity. Delgado also said that citizens want economic development that will generate the kind of jobs new generations of workers want to do. The current government has failed in “practically all areas,” he charged.
He said earlier this week that the MC wouldn’t join the PAN-PRI-PRD alliance – called Va por México – because the leaders of those parties are trying to “revive something that has already failed.”
The senator said Wednesday that his party has made a commitment to contest elections on its own, but left himself some wriggle room, asserting that “we’re not ruling anyone in or out” when pushed to declare whether it would ally itself with any opposition party at the 2024 presidential election.
Senator Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the upper house of Congress, predicted that the MC will ultimately join the Va por México alliance.
“Notwithstanding that the national [MC] leader has said no [to the possibility of joining Va por México], I think that in the end the three-party bloc and Citizens Movement will work together in 2024, not just to be competitive but to survive,” he said Tuesday.
“…They’re going to come together, it’s the only way they can be competitive with Morena,” Monreal said. “… Even with the four [parties] there is no way they can beat Morena,” he added.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro, who won the 2018 election in that state on an MC ticket, could feasibly head up a new opposition built by Citizens Movement, although an obstacle to electoral success could be that he is not well known outside Jalisco, as the El Universal survey found.
He declared late last year that he was “more than prepared” to be a presidential candidate in 2024, but denied being on a personal quest to take the reins of the country and asserted that he doesn’t have “delusions of grandeur.”
"The truth is we reached a weight we didn't imagine," said Juan Manuel Vargas, a member of the record-breaking team.
Mexico’s largest-ever hamburger was made in Mazatlán Sunday at the Pacific coast city’s second annual International Hamburger Festival.
A team of chefs made a 285.5-kilogram burger in just 10 minutes, easily breaking the national record set at last year’s festival, at which a 156-kilo whopper was made.
Luciano Ibarra, the main proponent of the record attempt, said the objective was to promote Mazatlán and provide a meal to needy residents. He said that portions of the massive burger would be provided to local foundations and “a lot of people who need it.”
The chefs said they were happy with their achievement but they’re already thinking about setting a new Mexican and world record in 2023.
“It feels very good, very satisfactory. The truth is we reached a weight we didn’t imagine. We went well over what we had planned, [and] everything turned out well, thanks to God,” said Juan Manuel Vargas, a member of the record-breaking team.
A large crowd was on hand to witness the bulky burger being assembled.
“I’m very excited because it’s just the second time the event has been held and the 100-kilo difference from last year to today is very big,” María Esther Montoya said. “… It’s a very good atmosphere and [making a huge burger] for a noble cause is very interesting and laudable,” she said.
To achieve their goal of making the world’s largest hamburger at next year’s festival, the chefs will have to put together a burger four times bigger than that assembled last weekend. According to Guinness World Records, the world’s largest hamburger – a 1,164-kilogram monster – was made in Germany in 2017.
The civil engineer, who works on section 4 of the tourism train project, said construction is "extremely behind schedule."
The Maya Train railroad won’t open while the current federal government is in office — as President López Obrador has pledged — and may never be finished, according to two people working on the ambitious project.
A civil engineer working on section 4 of the project and an archaeologist working on section 3 spoke with Yucatán Magazine about the construction of the US $10 billion, 1,500-kilometer railroad, which the government says will begin operations in 2023. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions.
The engineer said that work on section 4, which will run between Izamal, Yucatán, and Cancún, Quintana Roo, is “extremely behind schedule.”
“The official delay is five months, but in reality, at this rate, we are more like a year and a half behind where we should be at this point,” the engineer said.
There are seven sections of the railroad, which stretches from the state of Chiapas to Quintana Roo and the state of Yucatán.
“… We have simply taken on too much. We have actually been gaining some ground when it comes to clearing vegetation and setting the stage to lay rail, but even there we are behind. And this is to say nothing of other necessary pieces of infrastructure such as overpasses and underpasses, as well as the train stations.”
Asked how long it will take to make AMLO’s vision a reality, the engineer responded:
“Honestly, we are looking at somewhere between eight and 10 more years. The thing is that this should not come as a surprise as it’s what we have known since the beginning. We had auditors come from Spain, and that’s the timeline they gave us.”
Probed as to whether the project will ultimately be finished or abandoned, the engineer said the election last Sunday of a Morena party governor in Quintana Roo “bodes well for the project” as Yucatán will be the only state among the five through which the railroad will run without a ruling party leader.
“But ultimately it will come down to who the next president will be and if they decide to continue with the project or simply abandon it,” the engineer said.
The archaeologist told Yucatán Magazine that working on section 3, which will run between Calkiní, Campeche, and Izamal, Yucatán, has been a rewarding experience but one filled with many complications.
“… We really have come across some very interesting finds and are quite excited to see what else we come across during construction. There is much criticism of the project with regard to its potential destruction of cultural heritage, but I can tell you that all the parties involved are being extremely careful and conservative in this respect,” the archaeologist said.
“… I love the work, but honestly, there is more than enough work just in … [section] 3 of the project for an entire six years. I very much doubt we will be able to finish … on time.”
The government has enlisted the military to build sections 6 and 7.
The archaeologist claimed that the project is “riddled with bureaucracy and nepotism” and that the people calling the shots “have no idea what is really going on.”
“… Other than that, … it’s … simply an impossible amount of work. I will give you an example: there is a huge amount of rail sitting on the outskirts of Maxcanú [in Yucatán] at the moment. The person in charge of procuring the vehicles to transport them to the worksites had no idea what he was doing and contacted a friend’s fleet of trucks to move them. To make a long story short, the rails proved too heavy, and they are just sitting there.”
In deciding to build the Maya Train and other large-scale infrastructure initiatives, López Obrador committed to “overly ambitious projects, which in the end are likely to be unfinished,” the archaeologist said.
At a public meeting in Tulum on Tuesday that was arranged by the federal Environment Ministry as part of the EIS consultation process, people opposed to the Maya Train claimed that the document isn’t valid as it doesn’t fully consider the environmental impact of the project and lacks key information such as technical studies.
Activists also questioned an official with the National Institute of Ecology (Inecol), which completed the as-yet unapproved EIS, why jungle was cleared for the construction of Tramo 5 Sur before all required studies were completed and approved.
Inecol official Rafael Villegas Patraca referred the question to an official with the National Tourism Promotion Fund, which is managing the Maya Train project, but he repeatedly avoided answering it, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Motorcycle police in the capital came down hard on a visitor last month.
A Canadian visitor to Mexico City has recounted a frightening encounter with police in which he was forced to hand over US $500 shortly after renting a car at the Benito Juárez International Airport.
In emails to Mexico News Daily, Vancouver-based general contractor Amin Jafari said that he traveled to Mexico City with his elderly parents on May 20. He rented a car and approximately 10 minutes after leaving the airport was pulled over by three police officers on motorcycles.
“They told me to pull over … and I was … completely shocked because I didn’t do anything wrong,” Jafari wrote.
“… They were speaking Spanish and I didn’t understand it. A … [police officer] used Google Translate and showed me that I had to pay US $500 so they will release me without any issues,” he wrote.
He said that he asked why he was stopped but the police failed to give him a reason. Using Google Translate on his phone, one officer told Jafari that he would confiscate his driver’s license and remove the plates from his rental car if he didn’t pay the mordida, or bribe.
“[I paid] US $500 cash. We didn’t have any other choice,” he wrote in one of two emails sent to Mexico News Daily.
“As a tourist, we didn’t have a phone to call someone. … One of the cops kept hitting … [the] trunk. … [It was a] very scary situation, especially for my … parents,” Jafari wrote, adding that he took his mother and father on a trip to Costa Rica and Mexico City so they could enjoy themselves after going through a difficult time during the pandemic.
“To be honest … [the police] ruined … our trip. My parents got so scared … [that] they couldn’t trust people around us. I canceled so many activities that I … planned for [Mexico City],” he said.
Jafari said he didn’t report the incident while he was in the Mexican capital because he felt intimidated. “We didn’t have a safe feeling with … the police,” he wrote.
Jafari’s experience is far from unique, although the size of the mordida he paid is much larger than most unofficial payments for traffic infractions, whether they are manufactured by police or not. A recent survey conducted by the national statistics agency INEGI found that Mexicans pay almost 18,500 bribes per day to police officers and public servants.
The Chamber of Deputies monument. The copy of the original building, which burned down in 1872, retained the Masonic symbols found in the original hall. Government of Mexico
Not long ago, as I was walking around the Machado plaza in Mazatlán, where I currently reside, I came across a building, right off the plaza, that stopped me in my tracks: an obscure building prominently displayed a Masonic lodge emblem on the gate and above the door.
Masons in Mexico? How did I not know about this?
It turns out that José María Mateos, a 19th-century politician and a Mason himself, asserted in his 1884 book, The History of Freemasonry of Mexico from 1806 to 1884, that Masons have been in Mexico since the 18th century and were instrumental in bringing about Mexico’s independence since major independence figures were Mexican Freemasons.
Mateos doesn’t offer objective proof of his statements, which might make sense as he was a Freemason writing for other Freemasons, but scholars agree that Mexico has hosted Freemasons for centuries, and many Mexican historians, including those in Mexico’s treasury department (SHCP) — which preserves Mexico’s national historic artifacts — who say that Freemasonry once had a significant influence on members of Mexico’s governments. Freemasonry continues to exist in Mexico today, with lodges belonging to different Freemasonry organizations — known as rites — in several Mexican states.
A Masonic eye looked over Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies for most of the 1800s. This is from the Chamber of Deputies monument in the National Palace.
In a 1969 article for the journal the New Mexico Historical Review, Richard E. Greenleaf, a scholar of the Mexican Inquisition and Latin American colonial history and a former director of the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University, said that Masonic lodges became centers of subversion and active agents in the “conservative revolt” in Mexico that finally consolidated the nation’s independence under the leadership of Augustin de Iturbide in the early 1820s.
National Autonomous University historian Virginia Guegea also asserts that Freemasonry played a key role in the restoration of a constitutional system in Mexico, and that after Mexico achieved its independence, Freemasonry would play a decisive role in the country’s political life. One piece of circumstantial evidence pointing to that influence is the fact that the original Chamber of Deputies, built in 1829, was adorned with several Masonic symbols, including a showpiece image of the well-known all-seeing eye symbol in the chamber’s ceiling that looked over deputies as they met.
According to Freemasonry’s own historians, members of the secret society first arrived in Mexico from Europe in the late 18th century, when the French emigrated to the New World, something Greenleaf corroborates with Catholic Church records kept by the Inquisition in Mexico. He and other historians generally agree that the first documented Masonic meeting place was in Mexico City at the shop of watchmaker Juan Esteban Laroche, whom the Inquisition arrested and deported as a Mason in 1791.
Mateos says that the first official Masonic lodge in Mexico, named Arquitectura Moral, was founded in 1806 by Enrique Muñiz in Mexico City. He also says that influential independence movement leaders like Father Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende and José María Morelos were early members of this lodge and that many lodge members took part in Hidalgo’s plot to overthrow the Spanish government in Mexico. They moved from house to house for their meetings, in fear of the Inquisition, Mateos says.
Masonic sash and apron said to belong to Benito Juárez, kept in his museum in the National Palace.
Although there are historians who believe that Mateos’ version of history is likely, there aren’t primary documents to corroborate this claim; the records from the Arquitectura Moral lodge were apparently lost sometime between 1808 and 1809. Primary documents from Mexico stored in the United States Library of Congress, however, do show circumstantial evidence that Hidalgo may have been a Mason or at least closely associated with them, however.
One document shows that the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in New Spain charged Hidalgo with heresy in 1800, based on reported statements he’d made earlier that year at an Easter gathering with associates. These associates included close friend José Martín García Carrasquedo, who himself was investigated for Masonry activities in 1811. Hidalgo was never convicted, although Greenleaf says that the Inquisition made veiled accusations that Hidalgo was a Mason.
Following Spain’s adoption of the Spanish Constitution of 1812, more troops arrived in Mexico from Spain; Mateos and other historians believe that many of those soldiers were Masons, leading to the establishment of the first Scottish Rite Grand Lodge of Mexico in 1813.
Certainly, Freemasonry grew over time in Mexico. Throughout the 1800s, other branches of Freemasonry — the York Rite and the Mexican National Rite — would establish themselves with lodges throughout the country.
Photo of President Porfirio Díaz wearing Freemasonry regalia, from the 1899 annual bulletin of the Supreme Council for Mexico’s Scottish Rite Masons.
From 1821 until 1982, nearly every political leader of Mexico has been claimed by various sources to have been a Mason, although there isn’t often reliable proof of many of these claims. But interestingly, a history published in 2017 by the Ministry of Culture, The Influence of Freemasonry on the Constitution of 1917, asserts that many of the political leaders who drew up the 1917 Constitution were Masons.
There’s also a fair amount of agreement among historians that President Benito Juárez (1861–1872) was a Mason. A Masonic apron and sash and other Freemasonry regalia believed to have belonged to Juárez reside in the National Palace in a historic museum dedicated to him, under the care of the SHCP.
Carlos Francisco Martínez Moreno, a historian at UNAM, told the newspaper El Universal in 2018 that Juárez was almost certainly initiated into the Independencia No. 2 lodge of the Mexican National Rite in 1847, but that there’s disagreement among historians about how far he could have progressed in the organization, given that Juárez’s revolutionary activities probably didn’t give him the time and stability of location to move up beyond the beginning levels.
Juárez’s political rival President Porfirio Díaz is also frequently said to be a Mason. An intriguing piece of possible evidence is an annual bulletin published in 1899 by Mexico’s Scottish Rite Freemasons, which contains a photograph of Díaz wearing Masonic regalia given to him by Freemasons in France and referring to him as “the Sovereign Grand Commander ad vitam of the Supreme Council of Mexico.”
Masonic Lodge in the historic center of Mazatlán.
The Influence of Freemasonry says that Díaz was the head of Mexico’s Scottish Rite Masons in the late 1800s, although it also says he resigned as leader in 1895 as part of a short-lived attempt to unite all Freemasonry groups in Mexico.
Mexican Revolution scholar Antonio Rius Facius’ book Cristero Mexico says that President Plutarco Calles, whose 1926 presidential decree (“Calles’ law”) curtailed the power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, was a Scottish Rite Mason and received a Masonic medal of merit for his efforts from organization’s leader in Mexico at the time, politician Luis Manuel Rojas.
Jean Meyer, a French historian and author of a seminal history of Mexico’s popular uprising in reaction to Calles’ Law, known as the Cristero War (1926–1929), believes Calles was a Freemason and that it factored into him issuing the decree.
According to Mexican Freemasonry history, as the secret society grew in importance in Mexico, the introduction of the more liberal York Rite brand of Freemasonry into Mexico during the 1820s brought about 50 years of factionalism, with infighting and even assassinations within the two groups. The infighting took its toll, and Freemasonry ultimately lost much of its power and influence in Mexico, although the groups of all three rites still exist today.
There are still many lodges throughout the nation, at least one in 30 of Mexico’s 32 states. I have located two in Mazatlán.
If you live in a major Mexican city, keep your eyes peeled and you may find a Masonic lodge in your community.
Sheryl Losser is a former public relations executive and professional researcher. She spent 45 years in national politics in the United States. She moved to Mazatlán last year and works part-time doing freelance research and writing.
Mayor Maza made the comments in advance of a cultural festival.
The mayor of a municipality in Chiapas has apologized after stating that feminism and homosexuality are not normal.
In a press conference held Monday in advance of a music and cultural festival in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa this week, Mayor Javier Maza Cruz commented on feminism and homosexuality by saying, “All those things, they can be seen as normal, but they are not.”
Local media picked up on the comments and broadcast the portion of his speech in which he also recommended that young people should engage in reading, painting and creating with their hands so “they will be more involved in artistic activities than in trivial things — things that are not going to fill the spirit.”
“Read so that homosexuality or feminism are removed,” he was quoted as saying. “Moral values are being lost with feminism and factors of sexuality.”
Hours later, through his social networks, Maza apologized and assured that his administration will always be inclusive of the LGBTTTIQ+ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transvestite, transsexual, intersex and queer). By that time, video of the press conference had been removed from official channels.
Ocozocoautla, known more informally as Coita, is a town and municipality of 97,000 about 15 miles west of the Chiapas capital city of Tuxla-Gutiérrez.
The Festival Emergente (Emerging Festival) is set for June 9 and 10 in a large park near the zoo. It includes musical acts of many different styles (including ska, hip-hop, rap and surf music), break-dancing, stargazing led by an astronomical club, vendors and creative workshops. In that light, Maza lauded festival organizers for an event that focuses on young audiences interested in urban culture and emerging expressions.
He also said that many young people are engaged in nonproductive activities, and that for society to improve, there is a need to instill in them arts, culture and education. “We are very concerned about these generations that are coming now,” he said, adding that society’s “moral values are being lost” because of the media and misinformation.
“The truth is that we have a post-pandemic generation that was already [addicted] to smartphones,” he said. “Through culture, arts and education we will be able to have a better society.”
In regard to the mayor’s comments about homosexuality and feminism, which came during the month in which gay pride is celebrated, groups such as the feminist collective 50+1 Chiapas issued condemnations on their social networks.
“[We] express our outrage and strongly condemn the statements … [that] feminists and people of sexual diversity are not normal,” 50+1 Chiapas posted in a four-paragraph statement on its Facebook page. “We all have the right to be treated with the same dignity, which is why intolerance, discrimination and gender-based violence are reprehensible. We demand a public apology!”
Maza did just that. “My most sincere apologies to the entire LGBT community and feminist groups for my comment issued today,” he said in a 52-second video message posted to his Facebook account. “To clarify, both this public servant and the government that I represent are respectful of all citizens without any distinction.”
In an additional Facebook post the next day, he said in a video that Ocozocoautla would implement a program addressing gender and gender diversity “in order for us to be a fully inclusive government.” In a written statement accompanying that video, he said Coita “would be one of the first municipalities to have a director in charge of defending plurality and the issues of the LGBTTTIQ+ community … It’s important that they know that our intentions are the best in terms of respecting human rights.”
Some of the sargassum collected from the Caribbean Sea and Quintana Roo beaches is ending up in clandestine dump sites, a practice that poses environmental risks.
The number of such places has increased due to the lack of official landfill sites, the newspaper Milenio reported.
The director of the Puerto Morelos branch of Zofemat, the federal office of maritime land zones, condemned the dumping of sargassum in unauthorized locations. “They can’t just dump it on any property … or beside the highway,” Gerardo Rosas said, referring to people who offer sargassum disposal services to authorities and beachfront businesses such as hotels and restaurants.
He added that Zofemat has also detected the disposal of the seaweed in mangrove areas. “That causes a direct impact on the ecosystem, on the wetlands,” Rosas said.
The latest sargassum map, published by the sargassum monitoring network.
Using specially-designed sargassum-gathering vessels, the navy collects the seaweed from the Caribbean sea off the coast of Quintana Roo and deposits it at the end of each day in containers on docks, Milenio reported. Municipal authorities are then tasked with disposing of the seaweed on land. But they sometimes subcontract the job to people offering disposal services and they dump the sargassum in areas where it shouldn’t be discarded. Such sites don’t have geomembranes – synthetic liners – that prevent toxic liquids called leachates from seeping into the soil.
“Studies tell us that [sargassum] produces leachates [when it decomposes] and it has a high arsenic content,” said navy sargassum strategy coordinator Alejandro López Zenteno. “So how [sargassum] is managed at the time of disposal on land is very important to avoid damage to the water table.”
Managing the seaweed this sargassum season has been a challenge as huge amounts have washed up on Quintana Roo’s coastline. As a result, authorized landfill sites have been overwhelmed by the weed.
The Quintana Roo sargassum monitoring network’s latest map shows eight Quintana Roo beaches with excessive amounts of sargassum, 33 with abundant amounts and 13 with moderate coverage of the smelly brown seaweed. That’s a significant improvement compared to late May when 50 beaches were plagued by excessive amounts.
Two of the beaches that currently have excessive amounts and six of those with abundant quantities are located on the east coast of Cozumel, an island off the coast of Playa del Carmen. Local Zofemat director Marco Antonio Loeza Pacheco acknowledged that the quantity of sargassum that has reached Cozumel this year has exceeded expectations. Over three tonnes of the weed have been removed from beaches in recent days, he said Monday.
A truck was recently seen dumping sargassum on a Cozumel street, confirming that the improper disposal of the weed is not a problem limited to the Quintana Roo mainland. Loeza urged hotels and beach clubs to consult with authorities so that the sargassum they collect can be disposed of in a place where it won’t pose a risk to the environment.
The official reopening of a popular riverside walk in Cuernavaca, Morelos, took a scary turn Tuesday when a short suspension bridge collapsed while two dozen people were crossing it — including the mayor and his wife.
Fortunately, the hanging bridge did not span a huge ravine, and the fall to the stream and rocks below was approximately two meters. But at least 14 people were injured, according to sources.
The situation unfolded in a tourist area in Parque Barranca de Amanalco, one of the most visited parks in Cuernavaca, the state capital. The city is a popular weekend getaway destination about 90 minutes south of Mexico City by car.
Mayor José Luis Urióstegui Salgado suffered minor injuries and was “out of danger,” according to a spokesperson, but his wife, Luz María Zagal Guzmán, was taken to a local hospital, as were four members of the municipal council, a government employee and a reporter for a local newspaper who was on one of her first assignments. Treated at the scene without serious injuries were at least six others, including a councilor, the secretary of the council and four government employees.
The suspension bridge connects two paved pathways on the Paseo Ribereño, a tourist walk in the park that had been closed for about four years. Initial reports said the bridge, made of wooden boards and metal chains, had been renovated as part of a larger rehabilitation project in the park, which is located in the Amanalco canyon.
However, the state government later announced that the suspension bridge had not been included in the project to improve the riverside walk. A non-suspension footbridge on the walk, underneath the Porfirio Díaz vehicular bridge, was replaced due to damage from the 2017 Puebla earthquake and deterioration from natural causes.
The park was being reopened as part of a larger program that was reactivating popular tourist sites throughout Cuernavaca, such as the El Castillito photographic museum and Porfirio Díaz Park. The normally user-friendly Paseo Ribereño allows people to walk through nature in the midst of extensive vegetation and experience unique climate conditions.
Enrique Clemente, the coordinator of Civil Protection of Morelos, said, “The walk is complicated because there are many stairs [and] a very steep slope,” which made it difficult to get some of the injured people out of the park. He said that two people suffered serious injuries, and that most of those who fell landed on sand and stones.
Caen Edil de Cuernavaca y acompañantes de puente colgante
Morelos Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco, 49, a former soccer star considered to be one of Mexico’s greatest players of all time, issued a statement immediately after the accident, saying, “I am very sorry for the accident that the mayor of Cuernavaca José Luis Uriostegui, his wife, work team and media correspondents suffered a few moments ago during the inauguration of Paseo Ribereño. I sincerely hope that there are no serious injuries.”
A report from Uno TV said that “a young man was seen jumping on the suspension bridge” at the outset of the incident, which video confirms.
Mayor Urióstegui said as much in a TV interview after the incident, noting that the bridge collapsed due to “recklessness of whoever started to jump” while adding that all the people on the bridge at the same time made for more weight than the structure was built to support.
The newspaper Milenio identified the person who jumped as a municipal assistant in Amatitlán, a neighborhood in Cuernavaca.
Milenio also spoke with civil engineers who went to the scene to evaluate the collapse of the bridge. “They assured that regardless of the state of the bridge, or whether or not it was maintained, the structure did not have the capacity to support so many people on it at the same time. They ruled out that just the jumping of a person on the bridge was enough to make it collapse; it was, rather, the combined weight of more than 20 people,” Milenio quoted them as saying.
Valeria Díaz Beltrán, a reporter who had been on staff at the newspaper El Sol de Cuernavaca for only a week, reported from her hospital what she experienced during the collapse: “I was approximately half a meter from the mayor … and I just don’t know who, I don’t know the name of the person who said, when we were already in the middle of the bridge, ‘You have to go one by one.’ And that was the last thing I heard. After that, I only remember lying on the ground. I got up immediately because, out of shock and nerves and fright, there were people in front of me who were very hurt.”
Shoppers and vendors wearing face masks at a market in Mexico City in August 2020. deposit photos
The fifth wave of coronavirus infections began in Mexico in early May, according to experts who spoke with the newspaper El Universal, but the government waited until after the June 5 elections to say anything, said one.
Arturo Erdély, a National Autonomous University (UNAM) mathematician who has tracked Mexico’s COVID data throughout the pandemic, said it was clear that the fifth wave started at the beginning of last month. “Since the middle of May I’ve been saying that there were already very clear signs about the fifth COVID-19 wave but the government didn’t want to talk about it, perhaps for electoral reasons,” he said.
“Curiously,” Erdély added, the day after elections were held the government acknowledged that case numbers had increased and announced the return of daily COVID data reports.
Official data published Monday showed that active coronavirus case numbers had increased over 50% in the space of a week and almost 140% in the past two weeks. The Health Ministry reported 8,026 new cases Tuesday, a 377% increase compared to the average number of infections reported daily between May 29 and June 4.
Erdély said that the fifth wave is likely to peak this month and warned against not taking the COVID threat seriously. “We always have to be concerned about a virus that has shown a great capacity for mutation and adaptation. We have to be careful with the messages … that Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell gave in the sense that omicron isn’t so virulent,” he said.
“… Getting sick with COVID isn’t good even if [the illness] is mild, because it leaves consequences that deteriorate the quality of life,” Erdély said.
The mathematician predicted that far fewer people will die from COVID during the fifth wave because the disease has already claimed the lives of many those who were most vulnerable to getting seriously ill, such as the elderly and people with chronic health problems.
“We’re talking about 726,000 Mexicans who were the most susceptible to dying,” he said, referring to an excess death figure over the past two years rather than the official COVID-19 death toll, which is currently just over 325,000.
‘Getting sick with COVID isn’t good even if the illness is mild:’ Arturo Erdély.
The number of COVID-19 deaths since early May is indeed low when compared with fatalities during Mexico’s first four waves. There were 708 deaths between May 3 – about the time the fifth wave started, according to experts – and June 7 for a daily average of just under 20. During the worst month for COVID-19 fatalities – January 2021, when the vast majority of the population was not yet vaccinated – Mexico recorded a daily average of 1,055 deaths.
While the daily death toll won’t return to such a high level, the number of new infections reported on a daily basis could approach the figures seen in the first three waves, if not those recorded in the fourth omicron-fueled wave, during which monthly case numbers peaked at almost 1 million in January 2022.
Infectious disease specialist Alejandro Macías said the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of the omicron strain – which haven’t yet been detected in Mexico – will cause a lot of infections in the fifth wave. “What can we expect? As a lot of people already have immunity because they were already infected or got vaccinated or both, an increase in cases can be expected in Mexico but not a catastrophic situation,” he said.
The former health official – Mexico’s influenza czar during the 2009 swine flu pandemic – also predicted an increase in hospitalizations but asserted that fatality numbers won’t be as high as in previous waves.
Macías said that federal authorities have a responsibility to make it clear to citizens that the pandemic is not over. “The use of face masks indoors has to be promoted, people who haven’t completed their vaccination scheme should do so, enclosed spaces need to be ventilated and those who can work at home should continue to do so,” he said.
“Things like that are necessary to avoid the … [fifth wave] being very intense.”
Héctor Hernández Bringas, an UNAM academic with a doctorate in population studies, described the number of new cases reported in the seven-day period to June 6 – 18,539 – as a “significant quantity.”
“Infections, deaths and hospitalizations decreased in March and April, leading to some assertions that we were …[at the] end of the pandemic, a mistaken message that resulted in a greater relaxation of prevention measures on the part of the public,” he said.
Hernández blamed municipal, state and federal authorities for poor pandemic messaging. “They tell us to forget about face masks. In fact there were orders in that sense,” he said, referring to the termination of mask mandates in some states. “In a nutshell, there have been messages that have caused people to be careless,” the academic added.
“We all want life to return to normal, for children to go to school and for people to return to their workplaces, and this is already occurring. But that might also be part of the reason why we’re seeing a new wave. We have to be more cautious in resuming the activities we considered normal before the pandemic,” Hernández said.
Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie, director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at UNAM and author of a book about the government’s “criminal management” of the pandemic, said that it’s difficult to make predictions about the fifth wave because the risk posed by omicron sub-variants is not yet fully understood.
She warned that infants up to the age of two and the elderly, especially those with chronic diseases, are most vulnerable to dying if they become infected. “But the main risk of death from COVID-19 comes from not being vaccinated,” Ximénez-Fyvie added.
About 70% of Mexicans are vaccinated but the government hasn’t offered shots to children under 12.
A pug owner holds up her dog for everyone to admire.
Hundreds of pug owners and their furry friends flocked to Querétaro city Sunday for the fifth annual encuentro pugmaniaco, or pugmania meeting.
The dog lovers gathered in the central square known as the Plaza de Armas in the late afternoon to proudly show off their pugs and meet with other owners of the distinctive breed, which originally came from China.
Juan Reyes, founder of the pugfest, told the newspaper El Universal that the purpose of the event is to give families an opportunity to spend time together and to make people aware that “we promote adoptions and sterilizations.”
Some 300 pugs and their owners attended this year’s event, with some dogs and people traveling from other states. One first-time participant was Violeta, a two-year-old female pug dressed as a diablita, or little devil. Many other pugs attended the event in costumes, with a Baby Yoda pug and a Batman pug among the pampered pooches panting, peeing and parading in the public plaza.
Pug owners show off their pets in Querétaro.
“I really like the breed,” said Youseth Trejo, a resident of San Juan del Río and owner of Violeta. “There’s an incorrect concept about the breed, that they’re unhealthy and things like that, but the truth is they’re not. … [Pugs are] very noble and even have almost human-like behaviors. Once I scolded [Violeta] and she vomited from anger at being scolded.”
Alejandro Montes traveled from Tequisquiapan with his black pug Tiberio for the event. “I found out on Facebook that it was the fifth meeting and we decided to bring Tiberio … so that he can mix with [other] dogs of his breed,” he told El Universal.
“I’m looking forward to meeting more people,” said Pablo Rodríguez, a pug owner who moved to Querétaro from Durango just before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. “[I’d like] my dog to spend time with … [other pugs]; this is perfect to make more friendships and socialize better,” he said. “… It’s a very relaxed and healthy environment.”
Pug lovers will get another chance to dress up their pets and show them off in public later this year when a Halloween-inspired event called pugween is held in the Bajío region state.
