Migrants sleep under a sign that says 'A Government for Everyone' in Pijijiapan, Chiapas. Ben Wein
The migrant caravan in Chiapas continued advancing north through the state on Tuesday, rested on Wednesday and welcomed a new member to its ranks.
The 2,500-odd migrants left the village of Hermenegildo Galeana at 4 a.m. Tuesday and hiked 28 kilometers to the town of Pijijiapan.
Tensions were high as the convoy approached the town where, just two days earlier, a Cuban migrant was killed and four others wounded —one critically — after National Guard troops opened fire on the pickup truck transporting them. It is not clear if those migrants had been traveling in the caravan.
But there was happier news to come: a Haitian woman gave birth to a baby in a Pijijiapan hospital. The infant was reported in good health.
Migrants rest outside the church in Pijijiapan. Ben Wein
The convoy initially set up in the Pijijiapan sports facility, where a candlelit vigil was held to commemorate Day of the Dead and the killing of the Cuban migrant. The group moved to a park in the evening due to concerns that the National Guard would enter the facility.
In the park, migrants were reminded of the time during the night: Westminster-like chimes issued from a clock in the park which, as in London, England, chimed every 15 minutes.
On Wednesday the caravan rested for the sake of young children, who are suffering from exhaustion and dehydration. However, organizer Irineo Mújica confirmed none was seriously ill.
The road beckoned for the migrants at 6 a.m. on Thursday, when they resumed their northward trek to Mexico City and the U.S. border.
Meanwhile, President Lopez Obrador expressed sympathy for the victims of the shooting at his morning news conference on Wednesday: “Some migrants were shot by the National Guard … there are other ways to detain those that are violating laws … They could have stopped them farther on, blocking their path without shooting,” he said.
Eduardo Ángeles, owner of the Lalocura mezcal distillery in Santa Catarina Minas, Oaxaca. Lalocura
When I first encountered the mezcal brand of Eduardo Javier Ángeles Carreño, I thought that its name, Lalocura, must come from the Spanish la locura (madness).
Actually, it is an amalgamation of Lalo and cura (meaning “Lalo cures” or “Lalo healing”). Angeles is known affectionately as “Lalo.”
There are two reasons for the name.
“I include my name because ours is a mezcal with identity,” he says. “When I make it, I express who I am as an individual and the place from where I come.”
That’s the first reason. The second is that mezcal is used as traditional medicine in the Central Valleys area of Oaxaca, including being used as a disinfectant.
Piñas, or agave hearts, being readied for cooking. Leigh Thelmadatter
Ángeles officially founded the brand in 2014, but his story goes back much further than that. He is a fourth-generation mezcal maker, with his family producing the spirit for over 100 years.
He learned the basics working with his late father, Lorenzo Ángeles, and had no doubt that he would produce mezcal himself. He decided to study agricultural engineering in college, and the result has been the introduction of scientific concepts to the family business but with the aim of keeping traditional mezcal production sustainable and economically viable.
The first indication of his dedication to sustainability is at the homestead itself: located in the small village of Santa Catarina Minas, south of Oaxaca city, Ángeles’ home, distillery and other structures are built with adobe bricks containing bagasso, which is spent agave fiber that is normally the waste from the mezcal fermentation process.
Production at Lalocura remains the same as how Ángeles’ great-grandparents did it: local agave species are used. The plants are cooked in wood-fired pits. The cooked agave mash is fermented with yeasts that fall in naturally from the environment, and batches are always small, no more than 2,000 liters at a time.
But Lalo’s scientific training is evident as well in Lalocura’s practices, especially in its agave cultivation. In the past, makers collected wild plants, and whatever was ready to use was cooked and mashed together. Lalocura takes far more care in agave cultivation and harvest, much the way grape species for wine are handled.
And, yes, different types of agave have rather distinctive tastes.
A Lalocura single agave mezcal, this one made from tobalá chino agave. Lalocura
It is no longer viable to collect wild agave to make mezcal. Nature simply cannot produce enough, especially now that mezcal has attained international popularity. This means that Ángeles and other mezcal producers face two intertwined challenges: producing more agave and doing so sustainably, with minimal harm to the environment.
Agave reproduces in two ways, through seeds and through “pups” — small clones that grow from the mother plant’s root system. In the past, these pups were separated out to allow them to mature.
However, such plants grow nowhere near as large as those from seed, so Ángeles allows selected plants to go to seed, even though that means that they cannot be used for mezcal.
These seeds are genetically monitored for desired characteristics, and the seedlings from them are grown in nurseries, guarded by chickens and peacocks looking for any six-legged creatures that get past the screens protecting the plants. When the seedlings are large enough, they are planted in fields, where more domestic birds continue to tend to them. Fertilizer is provided by sheep and other farm animals fed the byproducts of agave and other crops grown among the massive plants on the more than 40 acres of farmland.
Organic agave farming means that plants take longer to mature — as little as six years and more than 30, depending on the species. But it results in a difference in taste, and organic practices make agave farming more sustainable in the long run.
Despite this, Lalocura is probably the only operation dedicated to this kind of farming in the area.
Distillation pots used to concentrate the mash into spirits. Leigh Thelmadatter
Lalocura is open to visitors, on the land adjacent to Lalo’s house. This area is only a small part of the palenque (a mezcal-producing operation), but it has been designed to educate visitors about all the processes that go into making mezcal, from planting to distillation. Workers here are highly knowledgeable; older ones have worked for the family for decades.
As mentioned earlier, different agave species produce different flavors. Lalocura produces two basic types: those using only one agave type and those that are blends called ensembles. Lalo’s knowledge of flavors and types rivals that of any wine connoisseur. Some bottles are quite expensive, but that is because they come from species that take a long time to mature.
In the end, Ángeles does not consider what he does to be particularly innovative; rather, he believes that he is fighting to preserve traditional mezcal production from “tequilafication.”
His biggest concern is what the popularity of mezcal could lead to: a growing market for mid-range and lower-priced mezcals pushing producers to industrialize — with all the cultural and environmental problems that can go with that.
Instead, Ángeles feels that it is important to educate the market about what real mezcal — “that with soul” — is about, in the hopes that traditional techniques and flavors can survive.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
The third wave of the coronavirus pandemic has been on the wane for 14 weeks but Mexico could face additional large outbreaks, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Wednesday.
“At all times we have to have a clear mind; there could be not just a fourth wave but fifth, sixth and seventh waves,” he told reporters at an event at the National Palace to launch Mexico’s influenza vaccination campaign.
“The United States is going through its seventh [wave],” the deputy minister added.
The federal government’s coronavirus point man said that an increase in case numbers could occur in winter because saliva droplets stay in the air longer when the weather is colder, increasing the risk of transmission.
“So theoretically it could be that the cold season increases the probability of an increase of the virus, of any respiratory virus,” López-Gatell said.
“We have highlighted the joy that having 14 weeks of a reduction in the incidence of COVID-19 cases gives us, but … while there is COVID activity in the rest of the world, in any country of the world including Mexico, there can be a re-emergence [of the virus],” he said.
“… We have to be expectant in that sense. The exact date [of a new outbreak] can’t be known. COVID still has very great variability in time and space, it doesn’t have a predictable pattern.”
In other COVID-19 news:
• López-Gatell said the federal government currently has no intention of withdrawing its recommendation that face masks be used in open spaces. He said the government wouldn’t stop recommending the use of face masks – indoors and outdoors – until there is a global stabilization of the pandemic.
Despite the government’s recommendation, President López Obrador is seldom seen wearing a mask.
• A total of 142,988 new coronavirus cases were reported in October, a 54% decrease compared to September and a 72% decline compared to August, which was the worst month of the entire pandemic for new infections with more than half a million registered.
The Health Ministry reported 10,860 COVID-19 deaths last month, a 40% drop compared to September and a 41% reduction compared to August. January was the worst month of the pandemic for fatalities with 32,729 reported.
• The Health Ministry reported 3,588 new cases and 269 additional COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday. Mexico’s accumulated tallies are currently 3.81 million and 288,733, respectively. Estimated active cases number 23,841.
• Almost 126.5 million vaccine doses have been administered in Mexico, according to the latest official data. More than 74.6 million people have received at least one shot, and almost 60.7 million of that number – 81% of the total – are fully vaccinated.
López-Gatell announced last Friday that all Mexican adults had been offered at least one shot. He said that 83% of adults were vaccinated, but the vaccination rate falls to about 60% if the entire population – adults and children – is considered.
• Only 20% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are occupied and just 16% of those with ventilators are in use, the Health Ministry said Tuesday. There are just under 3,300 hospitalized COVID patients across the country, according to federal data.
Luis Eduardo Cuanal in full regalia for a different sort of Catrina parade this year in Puebla city, one that sought to emphasize participants' Mexica roots. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
Day of the Dead — celebrated in modern times on November 1 and 2 — is based on ancient indigenous ceremonies that, at least in the Mexica or Aztec civilization, may have lasted for as long as two months.
This year, some residents of Puebla city decided that they wanted to put on a Catrina parade that would acknowledge the holiday’s beginnings in those ceremonies.
In one of the Mexicas’ two calendars, a religious calendar called the xiuhpohualli, Miccailhuitontli was the Mexica period of “the little feast of the dead,” which was a preparation for Huey Miccaílhuitl, “the great feast of the dead.”
The celebration of Miccailhuitontli has mostly been lost in Mexico, but a group in the city of Puebla decided to bring it back.
“In pre-Hispanic cultures, Day of the Dead began in what we would consider the month of September,” Esther Cortés Rojas, the co-coordinator of the Puebla event, said.
Women purify the space for the opening Mexica ceremony with incense.
She and José Velázquez Guevara, the other coordinator, decided to celebrate Miccailhuitontli with workshops and a Catrina parade at the Taller Estudio de la Cura, an art school in the city.
“This is the first time we presented it,” Velázquez said. “This marks for us the beginning of Day of the Dead. We want people to understand this.”
The day began with a Mexica ritual.
“We ask for permission to have this ceremony. We perform a ritual to the four points,” Víctor Carreto Cabaños, the ritual’s leader, said.
The four points refer to both the four cardinal directions as well as the four elements that were important to the Mexica: earth, wind, fire and water.
To open the ceremony, Carreto chanted and hit a small drum while three assistants purified the space with incense. He explained that the ritual isn’t to ask permission from a god.
The celebration’s opening ritual faced each of the four cardinal directions.
“In [the indigenous language of] Náhuatl, there is no word for god,” he said. “We believe in energy, the energy that is the universe.”
Organizers held workshops where attendees learned about the cempasúchil (Mexican marigold — the iconic Day of the Dead flower) and the role of cacao in indigenous cultures. They also got to make skulls out of amaranth.
But the highlight of the day was the Catrina parade.
Catrina is the iconic Day of the Dead figure, based on a 1910 etching by José Guadalupe Posada, popularized by a later work of Diego Rivera.
The figure, as intended by Posada, pokes fun at Mexicans who imitated European styles during the era of President Porfirio Díaz, known as the Porfiriato. The Catrina also pokes fun at death.
It takes time and patience to transform a person into a Catrina.
Blanca Anahí Llamas applies makeup to Luis Eduardo Cuanal.
In a small room, Blanca Anahí Llamas Torres painstakingly applied makeup to Luis Eduardo Cuanal’s face.
“We are projecting death using art, music and theater,” Cuanal said. “It is to represent the cult of death. Catrina signifies an expression of death in a feminine figure.” Cuanal’s transition into a Catrina took almost an hour.
Nearby, Alexandra Cazorla and Alexis López, whose faces were painted as skulls, waited for the parade to begin.
“This is a preamble to Day of the Dead,” Cazorla said. “It is to show death as something profound, a transcendence, [to show] that we do not completely end.”
“It is not to show fear,” added López. “It is to have a fiesta.”
Before walking around the patio, each participant was cleansed with incense before Cortés led them down a path made from cempasúchil petals. Finally, they all posed on the studio’s staircase.
Sandra Inzunza helps her daughter Valentina González with final touches.
“Day of the Dead is to remember people who have died,” said Elizabeth Damián Espinosa, who organized the parade. “It is also to say, ‘I am going to die someday, too.’”
Having trouble finding an Oxxo store? Never fear – 10,000 more are on the way.
Although Oxxo is already ubiquitous across Mexico, the chain’s owner plans to open about 10,000 additional stores over the next decade. That would increase the total number of Oxxos to just under 30,000 by 2031.
FEMSA CEO Eduardo Padilla Silva announced the 10-year goal in a telephone call with analysts. He said the coronavirus pandemic had slowed down the pace of new store openings but expressed confidence it would pick up soon.
Eugenio Garza y Garza, FEMSA’s finance director, said that 163 new Oxxos opened in the third quarter of 2021 and a total of 431 have opened this year.
“Our expansion operations slowed down a little due to the third wave of COVID. … As things are we still have the net goal of 800 new stores in Mexico this year, but we might fall a little short,” he said.
Juan Fonseca, FEMSA’s investor relations director, said 1,000 new store openings can be expected in 2022, the minimum annual number required for the company to reach its goal.
FEMSA, the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottling group and the second largest shareholder of multinational brewing company Heineken, also owns Oxxo stores in Colombia, Chile and Brazil. Some 350 new stores are expected to open in those markets next year, Fonseca said.
Joel Rondón shows a video of an attack against him in Chile.
They called him “the journalist.” When I first saw Joel Rondón sitting in a quiet corner of the “21st Century” detention center in Tapachula, Chiapas, he was thinking intensely. It didn’t seem worth asking what was on his mind: getting out was everyone’s priority.
The Venezuelan, 32, didn’t look like the typical refugee. He wore a shirt and glasses, and had piles of documents; Mexican law and human rights law among them. The idealism was hard to ignore: we’d all been imprisoned without any legal process, but his faith wasn’t wavering.
He’d been trapped 27 days, and his patience had worn thin. The last time I saw him in “21st Century” was through the tiny window of the metal door which kept us confined. He was on the other side, being wrestled to the ground by police officers.
That resistance effort took him to a solitary cell. However, the next day word spread that he’d been released.
I met up with Joel in the Pollo Campero fried chicken restaurant in Tapachula later in October. He told me about the 10,000-kilometer road he and his wife had traveled.
“I left because of the political situation, I was pressured by the government. The dictatorship.” Joel had been working as a radio journalist for Bolivar FM, 104.5, in Maracaibo until 2017, when he left the country. His radio show became increasingly critical of the Nicolás Maduro regime, and started taking public legal accusations through an on-air phone-in.
Federal investigators took exception to the reporting. Not so subtle hints came that the broadcaster should keep a low profile, accompanied by demands for dollar bribes. “It brought us problems,” he said, in understated fashion.
“I left Venezuela and I went to Peru. I started doing the same reporting, live, from my cellphone … I was covering the plebiscite of [opposition politician Juan] Guaidó in 2017. That generated more problems for me in Peru. They’re criminals. They get your number … they threaten you … they wrote to me on WhatsApp: ‘We know you’re in Peru. You have family here in Venezuela.’ My whole family had to flee,” he said.
Chile was his next attempt at freedom. After setting up a cellphone repair business in Santiago de Chile, things were going well. Then one day an unwelcome visitor arrived. “We know you fled Peru, we know you fled Venezuela. We don’t want you here; leave this business,” Joel was told.
Back in Pollo Campero, slabs of fried chicken were disappearing when Joel reached for a video on his phone. CCTV footage showed a parking lot, and a thin individual riding a scooter. A car approached from behind, and made straight for the scooter, intentionally hitting the front wheel and knocking the rider off.
Someone was after Joel. Clearly Chile wasn’t safe either.
Rondón with the Venezuelan document certifying him as a human rights defender.
“From Chile I had to go through Bolivia, back through Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, the jungle,” he said referring to the Darién Gap, the inhospitable no man’s land which separates Colombia from Central America.
“I saw 11 bodies [in Darién]. It’s like entering a different dimension.”
After a hellish journey, the couple reached Panama, and were met with some unorthodox border policies: they were given US $40 to head north to the border with Costa Rica. A border officer told a crowd of migrants that he was about to turn his back, and the rest was their prerogative.
In Costa Rica there was no detainment. They crossed Nicaragua unimpeded: Venezuelan passport holders had free transit due to the political alignment of the two governments.
In Honduras, that changed drastically. Bribes were demanded at every police checkpoint. Guatemala, Joel said, was even more expensive: “They stop your taxi and demand $50 each.”
The pair crossed into Mexico in July. They had a meeting with refugee agency COMAR for September 6. That was canceled by the agency. The following day they decided to head north for Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, and were caught.
“The immigration official said I would be there for two days,” he said of the prison-like detention center he was sent to. There the facility overflowed with migrants sleeping in squalid conditions on the floor. Medical attention and phone calls were hard to come by; legal information and representation were inaccessible.
“I arrived at night and in the morning I was organizing a protest,” he explained proudly, before presenting his certificate as a human rights defender, awarded back in Venezuela. “They are violating human rights,” he said with conviction.
The protests continued, and they worked. He secured private meetings with the center’s director, which are not available to other inmates.
However, it didn’t seem to speed up the process. The days and weeks dragged on, and Joel found himself losing track of time. Eventually, from that solitary cell, his name was called and he tasted freedom once more.
Now, free of cells, bad meals and abusive officials, he and his wife feel little affection for Mexico. They hope to find their way to a place where their rights can be protected, and dollars can be earned.
Just one last border remains, before asylum in the U.S.A.
Tulum's new quads will patrol the coastal area and beaches. government of quintana roo
Tulum, Quintana Roo, has beefed up its security with 10 new patrol vehicles and six quad bikes after a string of violent incidents in recent months.
Two tourists were killed in a shooting in the Quintana Roo tourist destination on October 21, provoking the German Foreign Office to advise German citizens in the Riviera May not to leave their hotel complexes.
Governor Carlos Joaquín said the Quintana Roo tourist destination had grown rapidly and needed to continue to do so in an orderly way to prevent crime. He added that the image of the city needed to be improved, for it to be seen as a successful, internationally recognized destination.
Joaquín pointed to investment in technology, CCTV and a focus on lowering violence as the key to overcoming violent crime.
The pickup truck patrol vehicles are destined for the city center, the coastal area and hotel zone. Eight will be put at the disposal of the police and two to municipal transit authorities.
The six quad bikes were donated by local businesses and will patrol the coastal area and the beach.
Mayor Marciano Dzul said coordination on security matters was essential. “Today Tulum needs to feel safe. That is why I thank the governor for his support to make this possible. Today we are launching these units to patrol the streets of the municipality: coordinated work will always give better results,” he said.
However, some of Tulum’s problems with violent crime are caused by the security forces themselves. Police were accused of responsibility for the death of a Salvadoran woman in March when they violently pinned her to the ground, breaking her back during her arrest. A fortnight later, videos circulated on social media of another violent arrest.
The parrot that sold for the equivalent of US $2,265.
Mexico tried but failed to stop the sale of pre-Hispanic artifacts at an auction in Paris, France, on Tuesday.
The Mexican Embassy in France said in a statement last week that it had contacted the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs to convey its concern about two auctions at which items of “our national heritage” were to be sold.
It said it emphasized that the commercialization of archaeological artifacts encourages transnational crime and creates favorable conditions for looting cultural assets with illicit excavations.
The embassy said it mentioned the letter of intent Mexican and French authorities signed earlier this year to strengthen cooperation against the illegal trafficking of cultural assets and asked that French authorities verify that the operators of auctions and sales are complying with national and international legal obligations.
The embassy also said it wrote letters of protest to the presidents of the auction houses Artcurial and Christie’s Paris to request the cancellation of their auctions.
But Artcurial’s auction went ahead in Paris on Tuesday while Christie’s sale remains scheduled to take place in the French capital next Wednesday.
The vast majority of 232 lots on offer at Artcurial’s “Antiquities, Islam & Pre-Columbian Art” auction, which included more than 40 Mexican pieces, were sold, according to results of the sale published on the company’s website.
Among the Mexican items sold were a Mayan “jaguar” vase for 9,100 euros (US $10,550), a Mixtec ceramic plate for 1,560 euros and a ceramic parrot from Colima for 1,950 euros.
Among them are a 1,500-year-old Teotihuacán mask with an estimated value of 20,000 to 40,000 euros and a rare Mayan pendant believed to be worth as much as 100,000 euros.
Culture Minister Alejandro Frausto also wrote to Christie’s Paris to urge it not to go ahead with its auction.
This Mayan vase sold for over US $10,000.
“The Ministry of Culture of the government of Mexico urges Christie’s to stop the auction and reflect on the historic and cultural value of the items,” she wrote.
“… The Mexican government regrets and energetically condemns the sale of such pieces, which constitute inalienable, imprescriptible property of the nation whose extraction from national territory is carried out without authorization and illegally, as it has been prohibited by Mexican laws since 1827.”
The government has also sought the assistance of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to stop the sale of Mexican artifacts abroad.
Frausto said that the timely action of Mexico’s ambassador in Italy, Carlos García de Alba, and the European nation’s chief of police for the protection of cultural heritage, Roberto Riccardi, were crucial to the suspension of the auction.
An advocacy group fighting for new tax rules for U.S. citizens living abroad has gained momentum after two new organizations joined its coalition.
American Citizens Abroad (ACA) argues that U.S. expats should pay residence-based taxation (RBT) rather than citizenship-based taxation (CBT).
Under CBT, U.S. citizens have to pay tax to the U.S. treasury whatever country they live in, due to the fact that they’re passport holders. RBT legislation would disqualify foreign-earned income from U.S. taxation. Internationally, CBT is more the exception than the rule: most countries base taxation on RBT. The ACA said tax reform for Americans abroad had been overlooked in previous tax legislation reforms.
In late October, two new organizations joined the coalition: Democrats Abroad, a group for expats who support the Democratic Party, and American Families United, a organization that lobbies for reform around immigration law for families.
ACA was founded in January 2021, and quickly assembled a wide coalition. The member organizations are The Adrian Leeds Group (Paris, France), AmCham Abu Dhabi, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO), the American International Club of Rome, Americans Overseas, Angloinfo, Bright!Tax, Dunhill Financial, ExpatExchange, National Taxpayers Union (NTU), Swiss American Chamber of Commerce and White Lighthouse Investment Management.
Executive director Marylouise Serrato said ACA’s wide membership proved the value of their cause. “The expanding membership in the RBT Coalition indicates the importance of tax reform for Americans overseas and shows that support covers various sectors and interests; it is not just organizations representing Americans overseas that support tax reform for this community,” she said.
Chairman Jonathon Lachowitz added that interest in reforming CBT went beyond the ACA membership. “Our advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., tell us that congressional offices are hearing from a wide range of individuals, businesses and organizations calling for tax reform for Americans overseas,” he said.
The RBT coalition said it makes information available to the U.S. government, the media and the public, and that organizations are invited to join the coalition.
Pemex’s pipelines are old, damaged and lack maintenance, a situation that increases the risk of a major disaster, state oil company officials have acknowledged.
Pemex has almost 17,000 kilometers of pipelines across Mexico, including stretches that traverse urban areas and rivers.
According to a report by the newspaper El Universal, which obtained sensitive company information, large sections of pipeline have been in operation for more than 30 years and are corroded internally and externally.
The newspaper also said that landslides are exerting pressure on some sections of pipeline they are not designed to withstand.
The deputy director of transport for Pemex’s logistics division (Pemex Logística) told a state oil company board meeting in July that the majority of pipelines have been in service for lengthy periods of time and that resources must be allocated to carry out inspections and repairs. Juan Francisco Rivera Cavazos warned that the old pipelines pose a “major risk” to safety, El Universal said.
The official spoke of a 2010 pipeline explosion in San Martín Texmelucan, Puebla, that claimed the lives of 29 people and said that Pemex must do what it can to avoid a repeat of a major disaster. There have been dozens of explosions on Pemex pipelines since then, including one in Hidalgo in 2019 that killed well over 100 people and one in Puebla last Sunday that claimed one life.
Many of the disasters were caused by illegal taps on pipelines by petroleum and gas thieves. The current government claims to have significantly reduced fuel theft but more than 30,000 illegal taps have been detected since it took office in late 2018, according to Pemex data.
El Universal also reported that Pemex Logística’s pipeline maintenance chief said in an internal document in December 2020 that pipelines in central Mexico were not being properly maintained.
Carlos Iván Mancilla said that if they continue to operate without adequate maintenance, fuel leaks will occur and Pemex infrastructure and the safety of employees could be placed at risk.
However, Pemex Logística didn’t receive any resources for maintenance and repairs in 2020, he said. El Universal said that other Pemex infrastructure, such as pumping stations, also require maintenance and repairs.
The state oil company was carrying out at least 11 projects to improve its pipeline network but their funding was suspended by the current government, the newspaper said, citing information from the Finance Ministry’s transparency website.
