Mexico will likely announce Wednesday that it has reached 100 million vaccination doses given nationwide.
Almost 99.9 million vaccine doses have been administered in Mexico, according to the most recent federal Health Ministry data, after just over 500,000 shots were given Monday, positioning Mexico to have achieved giving 100 million total doses nationwide.
The milestone was in all likelihood passed on Tuesday, but data confirming that won’t be released until Wednesday. About seven in 10 Mexican adults have had at least one shot, receiving one of the seven vaccines — Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, CanSino, Sinovac, Johnson & Johnson and Sputnik V — used here.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry reported 9,792 new coronavirus cases and 700 additional COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday, lifting Mexico’s accumulated tallies to 3.64 million and 276,376, respectively. There are 61,217 estimated active cases, a 5% increase compared to Monday.
Mexico has recorded a daily average of 8,966 new cases over the past seven days, a figure equivalent to 48% of the seven-day pandemic peak, recorded on August 17.
Mexico City easily leads the country for confirmed cases and deaths with almost 950,000 of the former and over 50,000 of the latter.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Those vaccinated with the Sputnik and CanSino shots – millions of Mexicans – could encounter difficulties gaining access to the United States. The Washington Post reported that new U.S. rules requiring foreign travelers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 appear to shut out people who have been fully vaccinated with the Russian-made shot.
Set to take effect in November, the new U.S. plan requires that most non-citizens seeking entry to the United States are vaccinated with shots approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the World Health Organization (WHO), the Post said.
Like the Sputnik vaccine, the single-shot CanSino vaccine has not been approved by either the FDA or the WHO.
The former has a 97% efficacy rate, according to its manufacturer, while the CanSino vaccine has been found to be 75% effective against symptomatic COVID and 100% effective against serious disease.
All three former cartel leaders are serving sentences in the Altiplano prison in México state.
The jailed former leaders of three drug cartels have shown their diplomatic side, coming together to make a joint complaint about their prison conditions.
The three men allege harassment and psychological torture by prison staff at the Altiplano maximum-security prison in México state.
The complainants are Servando Gómez Martínez, the former leader of the Knights Templar cartel in Michoacán; Mario Cárdenas Guillén, who led the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas; and Fernando Sánchez Arellano, the former leader of the Tijuana Cartel in Baja California.
The Attorney General’s Office requested that the judge who accepted the lawsuit dismiss the case but the request was turned down.
Servando Gómez Martínez, former leader of the Knights Templar Cartel in Michoacán.
The three complainants have been provided by a public defense lawyer to argue their case.
The complaint was also signed by a string of other convicted cartel personnel, including former members of the Sinaloa Cartel and the former head of Los Zetas, which previously waged a civil war against the Gulf Cartel.
Cárdenas, recognized by the aliases “M-1” and “El Gordo,” served a first stint in prison from 1995 to 2007 and was released upon finishing his sentence.
He was arrested a second time in 2012 and given 20 years.
Gómez, also known as “La Tuta,” was arrested in 2015 and charged for organized crime, kidnapping, and drug trafficking offenses. In 2019, he was sentenced to 55 years in jail for the kidnapping of a businessman in 2011.
He faked a heart attack to enable Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s second prison escape in 2015.
Mario Cárdenas Guillén, ex-leader of the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas.
Sánchez, also known as “The Engineer,” was arrested in 2014. News website Infobae reported last year that the only standing charge against him was for money laundering.
Investigators search for human remains on Chichiquelite Hill.
DNA tests on six sets of skeletal remains found in Sonora were identified Monday as five of seven Yaqui men who disappeared in July.
The men, aged between 27 and 65, disappeared while transporting cattle in Loma de Bácum, about 30 kilometers from Ciudad Obregón. Three other men from Loma de Bácum were kidnapped alongside the Yaqui men, but are not among those identified, according to news website 24 Horas. Five other men were also kidnapped, but were later released.
The skeletal remains were discovered on nearby Chichiquelite Hill on September 19.
The state Attorney General’s Office said more bone fragments and possessions had been found in the surrounding area, suggesting some of the still missing men may also have died there. It did not suggest a motive for their deaths, but has previously implied the involvement of drug cartels or affiliated gangs.
State Attorney General Claudia Contreras said that investigators searching for the disappeared men came under automatic rifle fire near the skeletons. The investigators returned fire, killing two of the assailants, before discovering the barely buried remains.
There has been a big increase in violence in the last year in southern Sonora.
Yaqui leader and water rights activist Tomás Rojo Valencia was murdered in May. Earlier that month, Abel Murrieta Gutiérrez, a former Sonora attorney general who was running for mayor of Cajeme, was murdered in broad daylight. In June, Yaqui environmental activist Luis Urbano was shot dead in downtown Ciudad Obregón.
Alberto Vizcarra, a leader of the Sonora Citizen’s Movement for Water, said the fight over water may ultimately be behind the killings. “What they did to Tomás [Rojo Valencia] was a political crime,” he said.
At the time of Rojo’s murder, the Attorney General’s Office pointed to tensions and money raised at highway blockades as possible motives. Prosecutors said the Yaqui leader had been trying to install a toll booth on a main highway that runs through their territory.
President López Obrador has consistently made his sympathies for the Yaqui community clear. He led a ceremony in southern Sonora on Tuesday to ask forgiveness for a government campaign to exterminate or exile their ancestors around the turn of the 20th century. He has committed to improving rights over ancestral resources like water — for which there is fierce competition in the state — and providing land concessions and federal investment.
“We came to endorse our commitment to do justice for the Yaqui peoples, first we want to ask them for forgiveness for state crimes against their ancestors during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and we are also here to try to repair as much as possible the damage to the Yaqui peoples,” he said.
The Yaquis stubbornly fought the government’s brutal campaign to eliminate the tribe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were largely defeated by 1900 and Díaz began moving them off their fertile farmland to less valuable territory or to virtual enslavement on haciendas as far away as Yucatán.
The government is investing 11.6 billion pesos in Yaqui communities, including a 158-kilometer aqueduct to deliver potable water to 40,000 people.
Boats shepherd the Black Christ statue to shore, a reenactment of its delivery to Campeche from Veracruz in 1565.
The year is 1565. Juan Cano de Coca Gaitán and his fellow sailors, bound for Campeche on a ship that set sail mere hours ago from Veracruz, are losing control of the vessel in a hurricane.
During the storm, a dark-skinned figure appears on deck and helps the ship navigate through the winds and waves, ensuring the survival of its crew and precious cargo: a large crucifix bearing the image of the Cristo Negro (the Black Christ).
When the ship docks in Campeche, they have been at sea just 24 hours despite the storm — a journey that usually is a two-day sail. It is deemed a miracle.
Over four centuries since this arrival on the coast of Campeche, the Iglesia del Cristo Negro (Church of the Black Christ), also known as the Church of San Román, continues to venerate and celebrate this lauded icon. The church in which the crucifix has been housed since its arrival was built in 1563, though it was later enlarged to accommodate the growing congregation and to house the sizable saint. It sits a little way from Campeche’s historic center, in a neighborhood of the same name. Its imposing façade is otherwise unassuming; it lacks the vibrancy of the exteriors of the churches of Guadalupe and San Francisco elsewhere in the city or the imposing stature of the cathedral on Campeche’s main square.
Nonetheless, multitudes from across Mexico and beyond flock to Barrio de San Román every year to pay homage to the 1.8-meter-high ebony icon.
During a two-week religious celebration in September, the crucifix statue is taken out of the Church of San Román and is paraded through the city.
“The Black Christ is an icon of Campeche, no matter your religion — he is the patron saint of the fishermen and of the state, so his celebration is a tradition here,” says local resident Laura Haw Pacheco. “It’s the only festival for a patron saint celebrated in such a large way in Campeche.”
Every year on August 9, the Descent of the Cristo Negro heralds the beginning of the traditional Fiestas de San Román. A month later, the Black Christ is paraded through the streets and into the waters of the Bay of Campeche on boats to recreate its first arrival to the city.
The festival culminates in a two-week-long celebration between September 14 and September 28. Though restrictions due to COVID-19 have subdued the celebrations this year, the usual festival is a time for the community of San Román to come together through processions, agricultural exhibitions and artisanal fairs. Arguably, these celebrations supplant even Independence Day in importance to residents.
According to popular memory, in the years since the Black Christ arrived in Campeche, a number of other miraculous events have been associated with the Church of San Román, adding to the sculpture’s mystique.
As one tale tells it, a band of looting pirates attempting to steal the venerated crucifix were zapped by an electrical charge emanating from the cross and sent hurrying from the building in fear.
Of course, it is near-miraculous in itself that the statue has withstood the relentless march of time to survive, in near perfect condition, for almost half a millennium.
The Cristo Negro in the Church of San Román, where it has been a fixture for 456 years.
As such, says Neto Cauich, another local who has lived his full 67 years no more than half a block from the Christ, “The Cristo Negro is an integral part of the cultural history of Campeche.”
“Obviously, he is a religious icon,” Cauich continues, “which is immensely important in a city that has such strong affiliation with its Catholic past. But the Festival of San Román also feeds into the history of the campechano people as an emblematic example of the community that has always existed here and continues to exist today.”
The Cristo Negro of San Román is far from the only Black Christ in Latin America; veneration of such statues is widespread. Such figures emulate the development of other dark-skinned idols in Latin America, such as the Black Madonna, whose ritual devotions blend Catholicism, Mesoamerican tradition and popular lore.
Moreover, there is a global folk history of dark-skinned figures coming to hold a variety of connotations, although where these are racial appropriations — such as the Dutch Zwarte Piet, also known as the Black Santa — they have become polemical figures.
What marks out the Black Christ of San Román, however, is that although the symbology was imposed by the Spanish, the local population has taken the symbol as its own.
“We may not be Black as such,” says Haw Pacheco, “but historically, the perception of our skin was that we were darker, poorer, less civilized. Of course, this is far from the truth, but we take this symbol as a badge of honor. This is our land, our history. Our skin is a mix of all our races and all our histories. That is the truth.
Campeche’s Church of San Román is not as impressive as other churches in the city, but its celebrations of the Black Christ annually attract people from across Mexico.
“And this Christ? Well, this Christ is our Christ.”
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Ayotzinapa protesters attack a military barracks in Iguala, Guerrero, three years ago.
Despite a federal government pledge that there would be complete transparency in the new investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Guerrero, the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has heavily redacted a 239-page document containing testimony from soldiers.
The FGR was forced to release the document in order to comply with the federal transparency law but the version it disclosed is so heavily expurgated that it is illegible, according to the newspaper El Universal.
The document censors statements from soldiers who may have information about the whereabouts of the 43 students who disappeared in Iguala on September 26, 2014, or who may have even participated in the young men’s abduction and presumed murder.
The army has long been suspected of involvement in the students’ disappearance, and leaked (non-military) testimony obtained by the newspaper Reforma earlier this year supported that theory. According to a protected witness identified only as Juan, one group of students was taken to a military base in Guerrero and some of them were killed there.
El Universal, which has examined the redacted document, said that some pages contain only two words that haven’t been blacked out.
A page of soldiers’ testimony in the Ayotzinapa case is well redacted.
“… On other pages complete paragraphs can be seen [but] they don’t contain substantive information that helps to know the facts of September 26 and 27, 2014,” the newspaper said.
When he took office in late 2018, President López Obrador committed to finding out what happened to the 43 students without protecting anyone. Forty-four soldiers were consequently summoned by a special unit of the FGR that was tasked with conducting a new investigation into the case. Thirty have provided testimony so far, but what they told prosecutors is a mystery due to the FGR’s redaction of their statements.
The FGR’s position contrasts with that of its predecessor, known as the PGR, which did provide public access to its files without redacting them first after being ordered to do so by the National Transparency Institute.
However, the previous government’s official version of events – the so-called “historical” truth – has been rejected by the López Obrador administration. It was concocted by federal officials and corroborated by suspects who were tortured, according to the FGR’s Special Investigation and Litigation Unit for the Ayotzinapa case.
El Universal said it was the first media outlet to gain access to the previous government’s declassified documents, which helped to identify flaws in the historical truth proffered by the 2012-18 government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
“Unlike then, the current FGR is not prepared to reveal the declarations of the soldiers who might have participated in the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students,” the newspaper said.
The only three of the missing 43 students whose remains have been identified are, from left, Jhosivani Guerrero, Alexander Mora and Christian Rodríguez.
Estafanía Medina, co-director of anti-impunity organization Tojil, said the FGR is seeking to avoid having its work subjected to the scrutiny of citizens.
“There’s no interest in revealing these [evidence-collecting] processes,” she told El Universal.
Medina described the FGR’s decision as a backward step in Mexico’s system of transparency and access to justice.
Santiago Aguirre, director of the Prodh human rights center, said that whether the FGR has an obligation to provide public versions of documents related to ongoing investigations that haven’t been redacted is debatable. However, in a case in which there have been grave violations of human rights authorities should avoid blacking out text to such an extent that witness declarations become unintelligible, he said.
Aguirre said the FGR is failing to fulfill its commitment to shed light on what happened on September 26 and 27, 2014. A new investigation was launched shortly after López Obrador took office but almost three years later the government has not divulged its own definitive version of events.
“The progress has been very poor,” said Aguirre, whose organization has provided assistance to the students’ families over the past seven years.
He also said that the army – which López Obrador has depended on for a wide range of tasks during his government – has not shown that it is truly willing to cooperate in the investigation into what happened to the 43 students, the remains of whom just three have been found.
Next to a Tijuana shantytown surrounded by a creek where human remains have been known to float by, e-commerce behemoth Amazon has opened a new distribution center.
The 32,000-square-meter facility is adjacent to Nueva Esperanza, a neighborhood in Tijuana’s east side where most homes are built with cardboard, wood scraps, sheet metal and tarps. Inhabited mostly by migrants who moved to Tijuana from other parts of Mexico, the informal settlement is a 20-minute drive from the border with the United States.
Photos of Amazon’s new fulfillment center, which will employ 250 people, went viral earlier this month due to the stark contrast between the gleaming facility and the poverty-stricken, trash-strewn neighborhood that is plagued by high levels of crime.
“Pure and hard inequality,” one Twitter user wrote in response to a photograph posted to the social media site by photographer Omar Martínez.
“What is striking is the contrast of realities that can be seen in the photos, but this is nothing new,” said Melina Amao, a doctor in cultural studies and professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California.
The Tijuana shantytown and the new Amazon facility.
Pedro Aranda, a longtime resident of Nueva Esperanza who keeps pigs in a pen that abuts the Amazon facility’s perimeter wall, told the newspaper Milenio that construction workers worked around the clock for a year to prepare the site and build the new center.
He and other residents are concerned they could be evicted from their homes due to the arrival of the United States-based multinational, although no authority has indicated that is about to occur.
“We are here because we need a place to live,” María Mendoza, another long-term resident, told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “We just don’t want this to work against us,” she added.
Gabriel Camarena, secretary of economic development in the Tijuana municipal government, predicted that residents’ living conditions will improve as a result of the construction and opening of the Amazon warehouse.
“Either there is complete transformation, or they will be offered other and more dignified living options,” he said.
It is unclear whether Amazon, owned by the world’s richest person – Jeff Bezos, will provide any resources for the improvement of Nueva Esperanza, whose name translates into English as New Hope.
Nueva Esperanza is the colonia adjacent to Amazon’s center. In English it means “new hope.”
Álvaro Gómez, a Chiapas native who lives in a gloomy windowless dwelling with his wife, called on Tijuana authorities to regularize the neighborhood.
“We want water and electricity, but we’d be more grateful … if they helped us with crime. … The police never come here,” he said. “We’re aware that we live in an irregular settlement but half of us pay property tax,” Gómez said.
While residents are concerned about their future, authorities and business groups have welcomed Amazon’s investment in Tijuana. About US $21 million was invested to build the new distribution center, according to city officials.
“The arrival of Amazon in Tijuana contributes to the ongoing economic recovery in various productive sectors, achieving stability in employment,” the municipal government said in a press release.
“It is always positive that first-world companies continue to set up in our city,” said Francisco Rubio, president of the Tijuana chapter of the Business Coordinating Council, an umbrella organization that represents 12 business groups.
Diego Mendez, general director of operations at Amazon México, said in a June press release that “at Amazon México, we feel great responsibility towards the communities where we operate, and we are pleased to be able to offer hundreds of job opportunities in Tijuana.”
However, whether any Nueva Esperanza residents – some of whom had no idea what Amazon was before its arrival on their doorstep – are able to find work at the facility remains to be seen.
Arlene Herrera, spokeswoman for Amazon México, said the new distribution center will only serve the Mexican market, offering same-day deliveries in Tijuana and next-day deliveries to other cities in Baja California such as Mexicali and Tecate.
Several other companies have large facilities in the area officially called the Real Estate Management and Services Industrial Park but Amazon’s new distribution center is the only one that directly adjoins Nueva Esperanza.
Images are projected on to the walls of the National Palace Monday evening.
Fireworks, theater, the pope and U.S. President Joe Biden all formed parts of celebration of 200 years of independence in Mexico City Monday.
The capital’s central square was taken over for the ceremonies, the same location where the rebel army had marched two centuries earlier before declaring independence the following day. In fact, the best known date for Mexico’s liberation from Spain is September 15, day of “El Grito,” which marks the beginning of the struggle 11 years earlier, but the ceremony to mark the 200th anniversary was larger in scale this year.
Pope Francis sent a message marking the occasion, urging the importance “to recognize the very painful errors committed in the past.” President López Obrador had sent a letter to the pope and the Spanish royal family in 2019 asking for an apology for the wrongs of the conquest. The pope’s contrite message partially responds to the president’s appeal, which was rejected outright by Spain.
The president called Pope Francis a “true Christian, a defender of the poor … who with profound humility recognizes the errors of the past.”
A message from U.S. President Joe Biden was projected after he declined an invitation to attend the event. He said the United States had “no closer friend than Mexico.”
The independence movement was depicted in seven stages, from the pre-Hispanic to the signing of the Independence Act.
“From the earliest days of our nations, the people of Mexico and the United States have shared a strong bond, united by our shared values, and our shared aspirations … throughout our history, we’ve learned that we’re stronger when we come together as neighbors, partners and friends,” he added.
The evening culminated in a more than hour long large scale theatrical piece involving many dozens of soldiers, dancers and actors, telling the story of the independence movement in seven stages.
The first stage depicted the pre-Hispanic period until Spain established political control. The second showed “El Grito” when Miguel Hidalgo, a priest from Guanajuato, inspired a revolt. The third stage portrayed José María Morelos writing his essay “Sentiments of the Nation.”
The fourth represented the Plan of Iguala, a proclamation for Mexico to become a constitutional monarchy with Catholicism as the sole religion. The fifth showed the Treaty of Córdoba in which Spain effectively accepted independence, followed by the entrance of the rebel army into the zócalo. The final scene was the signing of the Independence Act on September 28, 1821.
The celebration concluded with a fireworks display.
President López Obrador presides over Monday’s event in the zócalo.
Aedes aegypti, one of the mosquitoes that can carry the chikungunya virus. Wikimedia Commons
A vaccine to combat chikungunya fever, a viral infection transmitted by mosquitoes, has been successfully trialed on humans.
The ChAdOx1 Chik vaccine, developed by the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in collaboration with Oxford University and the University of Texas, is only the fourth potential defense to be tested on humans since the fever was first isolated and identified almost 70 years ago. Previous attempts to create a vaccine were unsuccessful.
Chikungunya fever, like zika and dengue, is a disease transmitted by mosquitoes and circulates widely in hot and humid areas of Mexico and Central and South America, and in other parts of the developing world. It carries a risk of death of about 0.1% but can leave people with permanent arthritis.
The vaccine injection was given to 24 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 50, a common range for phase I clinical trials. The results indicated that 100% of the volunteers who received the vaccine developed antibodies against chikungunya regardless of the dose, which means that even very low doses could afford high levels of protection. Broadly neutralizing antibodies against four lineages of the virus were found in all participants and as early as two weeks after vaccination, according to the scientists’ report of their findings in the journal Nature.
The volunteers’ defense against the virus remained high for the whole six-month duration of the trial.
Dr. Arturo Reyes Sandoval of the National Polytechnic Institute.
Dr. Arturo Reyes Sandoval of the IPN said the vaccine was developed on a similar foundation as the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19, using the same respiratory virus as its base.
He added that researchers applied genetic engineering to the respiratory virus so that it can express five proteins — rather than one — and thus generate immune responses against much of the virus that causes chikungunya fever.
Chikungunya was first described in 1955, following an outbreak in 1952 in east Africa. The name comes from the Tanzanian Kimakonde language and means “to become contorted.”
'If we catch you stealing you will be lynched!' warns a sign in Pakalna, Chiapas.
Residents of a small town in Chiapas are sending a clear and hostile message to Honduran migrants, whom they accuse of crimes such as rape, robbery and drug trafficking.
“If we catch you stealing you will be lynched! If you’re Honduran you’re no longer welcome in this neighborhood … continue on your way! We’re watching you,” read banners hung by a citizens’ group at various points in Pakalna, a community about five kilometers from Palenque.
According to a local government official people are fed up because Pakalna has been “invaded by violence.”
Leopoldo Contreras told the newspaper Milenio that federal authorities are aware of residents’ concern about the situation in Pakalna but have refused to relocate a shelter that attracts migrants to the town.
However, due to the residents’ threats toward migrants and its own personnel, the Jtactic Samuel Ruiz García shelter recently decided to close its doors. Contreras said residents want the closure to be permanent.
“… We don’t despise [migrants]; on the contrary we’ve helped them with work and food [but] we want [the shelter] to be closed and [the migrants] removed,” he said.
It’s not the first time that residents of Pakalna have shown hostility toward migrants. In March 2020, residents attacked and expelled some 130 Central Americans who had been staying in a local auditorium. They too were accused of committing crimes in the town, including robberies and assaults on women.
However, one Honduran migrant who said he walked through jungle for four days to reach Pakalna said he just wanted to rest.
“One comes with the hope of resting for at least one day or a few days but we arrived to see the migrants’ shelter closed,” said Javier, who was forced to bunk down outside.“It was a critical situation for us last night because it rained,” he said.
Barefooted and wearing wet clothes after sleeping on a park bench, another Honduran said it was a shame that the shelter is closed. Luis said that a small number of migrants who have committed crimes in the town have given all migrants a bad name.
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“In the vineyard of the Lord … there are good people and bad people. Unfortunately those who come with the intention of doing damage ruin the path for those of us who come in peace and with the hope of finding a better course for our lives,” he said.
The director of the Jtactic shelter claimed that “some political leaders,” whom he didn’t name, are behind the threats toward migrants.
“There was a very belligerent group that ordered … people to go to the shelter with sticks and machetes as if we were criminals. I just want to say that [the threats and aggression] are documented before the National Human Rights Commission [CNDH] and also in a preliminary [criminal] investigation,” said Alberto Gómez, who is also a priest.
Fearful of more threats and the possibility that the shelter could be attacked, the Chiapas bishops’ association called on the federal government to provide a security guarantee so that the casa del caminante (wayfarer’s house), as the shelter is officially called, can reopen.
“We’re convinced that joining forces to attend to migrants as best we can with clear and concrete policies and actions that respect their dignity is urgent,” the association said in a missive directed to the federal government and the CNDH.
It said it has evidence of “campaigns of hate and xenophobic intolerance” that were carried out in Pakalna and forced the shelter’s closure.
Gómez rejected Contreras’ call for the shelter to shut permanently, asserting that not only should it reopen but a second facility should be built.
“We need a second shelter because [the Jtactic shelter] is unable to welcome a lot of people. Migration flows will keep growing and it’s not true that the flow will end with the removal of the shelter,” he said.
Record numbers of migrants have arrived in Mexico this year, including large numbers of Hondurans and Haitians. Many have been detained in the country’s south but thousands have reached northern border cities such as Tijuana, Reynosa and Ciudad Acuña.
The president and other officials inaugurate the Grandeur of Mexico exhibition on Monday.
President López Obrador announced the creation of a special team dedicated to recovering stolen archaeological artifacts and historic documents at his morning news conference Monday. He said the order had been made to the National Guard, the security body he established in 2019.
López Obrador said inspiration for the idea had come from Italy, which had recovered and sent artifacts to Mexico for the Grandeur of Mexico exhibition. “What an example: Italy has a special body of carabinieri to recover stolen archaeological pieces. Imagine if all countries had the same organization dedicated to the recovery of stolen pieces that belong to the cultural and artistic heritage of the different countries of the world … We are going to follow the example of Italy, I have given the instruction for the National Guard to constitute a special team for the purpose,” he said.
Later in the conference, the head of the Italian carabinieri department which recovers artifacts, Brigadier General Roberto Riccardi, was decorated with the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest order that can be awarded to a foreigner.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard explained the recognition. “Brigadier General Roberto Riccardi has exercised a very active leadership in support of the safeguarding and return of heritage pieces illicitly stolen from our nation. An example of this is the recent recovery of 17 archaeological pieces that were intended to be auctioned in Italy …. and the restitution of 74 archaeological pieces … since 2013,” he said.
Riccardi took the opportunity to argue for the cultural value of historic artifacts. “We believe in what we do, deeply. Every time we recover an artifact of historical or artistic value, it is a piece of identity, of collective memory … I wish Mexico a brighter future, if possible, than its glorious past,” he said.
The president also showed his appreciation to the governments of the United States, France and the Vatican for lending and returning artifacts to Mexico. “The French government was the government that lent us the most pieces for the exhibition. A special thanks to the Vatican, to Pope Francis, who gave us documents and works, which had never happened in history,” he said.
The governments of Netherlands, Germany and Sweden were also accredited by the president.
The Grandeur of Mexico exhibition will display 1,525 pieces for five months in Mexico City at the National Museum of Anthropology and at the Education Ministry’s headquarters.
In the National Museum of Anthropology the pieces are displayed by theme, and divided into territory, spirituality, the person, symbolism and the paths to freedom. The SEP exhibition presents pieces along geographical lines: the southeast and the Mayan region, the highlands region and northern Mexico.
