Miners challenge statistics that AMLO offered Canadian prime minister

By

-

November 24, 2021

The Canadian prime minister and López Obrador in Washington last week.

President López Obrador has been accused of spreading misinformation after getting his numbers wrong in a conversation about mining with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The president said Monday that he told Trudeau during last week’s North American Leaders Summit that mining concessions covered 60% of Mexico’s territory.

“I spoke to him about what [past governments] did with mining companies, how in the neoliberal period … they gave them 120 million hectares. I told him that our country has 200 million [hectares] and they granted concessions for 60% of the area of the national territory,” he told reporters at his regular news conference.

“There were very few mining companies that were using the concessions to extract minerals; the majority of national and foreign companies were dedicated to financial speculation,” he added.

López Obrador said that Trudeau – leader of a country that is the largest foreign investor in Mexico’s mining sector – was very interested in what he told him.

But data shows that the figures he cited are incorrect. Economy Ministry statistics show there are 24,066 current mining concessions and they are spread across 16.83 million hectares of land. Mexico’s total land area is 197 million hectares, meaning that mining concessions extend across about 8.5% of national territory.

Citing data from a Mexican Chamber of Mines report, the newspaper Reforma said that active mines and their plants and other facilities cover less than 0.1% of Mexico’s territory.

Lawyer Alberto Vásquez, who specializes in mining, said López Obrador’s sharing of his “other information” with a foreign leader showed he has no interest in knowing the reality of the mining industry.

(“Tengo otros datos, or “I have other information” is the president’s favorite catchphrase when confronted with information that portrays him and his government in a negative light.)

Vásquez said López Obrador was “flippant” with the information he conveyed to Trudeau and warned that it would generate uncertainty and affect foreign investment in the mining sector, undermining the North American free trade agreement.

“It’s a message that doesn’t just go directly to Trudeau as prime minister; it’s a message that permeates among Canadian investors, CEOs and businesspeople who can confirm the difficulties there are to obtain mining licenses and permits in the country,” he told Reforma.

López Obrador has proudly trumpeted that his government hasn’t offered any new mining concessions since it took office in late 2018.

Vásquez also said that speculation on mining concessions came to an end 15 years ago.

Patricia Vivar, another lawyer who specializes in mining matters, noted that while Canada is Mexico’s main partner in the mining sector, most concessions have gone to Mexican companies such as Peñoles and Grupo México, the nation’s biggest miner.

Juan Pablo Gudiño Gual, founding partner and general director of mining sector consultancy IGUAL, also said that López Obrador’s remarks to Trudeau and his public dissemination of them will discourage investment.

“His statement is unfair because mining has increased gross domestic product growth,” he said.

With reports from Reforma

President spooks markets with nomination of little-known economist to head bank

By

Christine Murray

-

November 24, 2021

0

López Obrador has revealed little information about the surprise nomination of Victoria Rodríguez.

President López Obrador unnerved financial markets on Wednesday by nominating an obscure public sector economist to head the country’s central bank, causing the peso to slide to its lowest level since March.

The announcement came a day after unexpected news that the president had withdrawn his previous nominee, Arturo Herrera. a former finance minister better known to investors.

At his morning news conference on Wednesday López Obrador gave little explanation for his change of heart but tried to calm fears that he wants to interfere in the bank’s policymaking.

“We’ve demonstrated with the facts that we’re respectful of the autonomy of the Bank of México,” he told reporters. “There hasn’t been any meddling by the government, by the finance ministry in the Bank of México’s decisions.”

The Mexican peso weakened dramatically on the announcement, falling as much as 1.8% against the US dollar to trade as low 21.6 to the reserve currency. The slide made the peso the worst-performing emerging market currency on Friday, according to Bloomberg data.

Victoria Rodríguez Ceja, who has run federal government spending at a time of deep austerity cuts, does not have monetary policy experience but is a longtime public finance official at the state and federal level.

Cutting public spending is a key tenet of López Obrador’s government, and he sees it as closely linked to the fight against corruption.

“The market is very cautious because we don’t know [Rodríguez Ceja’s] position on inflation, especially on her perception of whether it is transitory or not,” said Gabriela Siller, head of financial and economic research at Banco Base. “Hers wasn’t a name being talked about as a possible candidate.”

If confirmed by the Senate as expected, Rodríguez Ceja would be the first woman to run the central bank. Her appointment would also mean that the majority of the bank’s five governors would be women.

The nomination comes at a challenging time for the bank, as inflation in the country surges — a phenomenon testing policymakers across the globe. New figures from Mexico’s statistics agency INEGI on Wednesday showed that inflation in the first half of November had climbed 7.05% from a year previously, the largest increase in 20 years.

In an attempt to tame inflation, the Bank of México has raised rates at the past four consecutive meetings.

Herrera — the previous nominee — had been seen by markets as more dovish than outgoing governor Alejandro Díaz de León. Though Rodríguez Ceja’s views are less well known, the last rate rise was taken with a 4-1 vote, meaning that her vote may not sway policy in a new direction in the short term.

The unexpected change in nominee comes the same week that the president published a directive to fast-track mega projects, a move the opposition — and lawyers — said was unconstitutional, vowing to bring legal challenges.

Government withdraws former finance minister as candidate to head Bank of México

By

Tony Richards

-

November 24, 2021

0

Victoria Rodríguez replaces Arturo Herrera as candidate to head the central bank.

The leadership of Mexico’s central bank was thrown into confusion on Tuesday after Senate majority leader Ricardo Monreal said the leading candidate’s name had been withdrawn, provoking uncertainty over monetary policy at a time of high inflation.

The choice of Arturo Herrera, previously the finance minister, was announced in June. He had been expected to start in January, pending Senate confirmation.

Monreal said the government had withdrawn his nomination in August but that it had not explained why, adding that Herrera could still be renominated.

Herrera himself later confirmed on Twitter that the president had told him he had decided to reconsider his appointment, without giving further details.

President López Obrador said Wednesday morning that Deputy Finance Minister Victoria Rodríguez would be the new candidate, observing that the participation of women was a priority for his government.

The withdrawal of Herrera’s candidacy was not the result of any irregularity on Herrera’s part, nor was it due to loss of confidence in him, the president said.

“… we always have to look for the best and under the circumstances it’s very important that [the candidate] be Victoria.”

Herrera had been seen by investors as close to the president, but analysts said on Tuesday that the news sparked more concern over the economy. “There is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of noise,” said Adrián de la Garza, chief economist for Mexico at Citi.

“This could possibly have an impact on markets in the very short term, but eventually the uncertainty should dissipate.”

In December last year the ruling party sparked an outcry when it tried to pass a bill forcing the Bank of México to buy dollars that banks could not repatriate. Rating agencies said the idea was credit negative for the sovereign and the bank itself pushed back hard. The plan was later shelved.

The news also came hours after the government published a directive to fast-track mega-projects and amid discussions over a radical overhaul of the energy sector. López Obrador’s critics say the moves threaten the rule of law and independent institutions.

With inflation climbing, the central bank raised rates for the fourth consecutive meeting earlier in November in a vote split 4-1 among members. Herrera is seen by markets as more dovish than current governor Alejandro Díaz de León.

Mexico’s economy suddenly contracted in the third quarter, preliminary data showed, with global chip shortages hitting the car sector and labour reform dragging on growth.

With reports from the Financial Times

Levi’s accused of culturally appropriating indigenous designs

By

MND Staff

-

November 23, 2021

0

Levi's plagarized designs — An example of a Levi's pair of jeans, left, and a Mazateca design that Mexico is accusing the company of plagarizing. Ministry of Culture

A large clothing company has once again been accused of appropriating indigenous Mexican designs, but it did collaborate with a collective that employs Mazatec women from Oaxaca.

The Mexican subsidiary of Levi’s released a premium collection of jeans and jackets that incorporate “embroidered elements belonging to the Mazatec culture of the community of San Felipe Jalapa de Díaz,” the federal Ministry of Culture said in a letter to the company.

San Felipe is located in the northeast of Oaxaca near the border with Veracruz and Puebla.

The Culture Ministry wrote to Levi’s México and the Draco Textil collective, which collaborated on the manufacture of the Levi’s Premium Original Trucker Jacket collection, to denounce their use of Mazatec designs without obtaining permission from the community first.

It sought an explanation from both Levi’s and Draco and said that “fair economic reward” must be paid to the rights holders of the designs, which are protected by law.

An example of a Mazateca embroidery design created by the Oaxaca artisan collective that issued the original complaint. Texturas de Oaxaca Twitter

“We invite you to develop respectful work with the indigenous communities within an ethical framework that doesn’t undermine the identity and economy of the [indigenous] peoples,” the Culture Ministry said.

Levi’s México announced its new collection, and the opening of its first store in Oaxaca, in a social media video earlier this month, while a group of female Mazatec and Cuicatec artisans called Texturas de Oaxaca issued a statement last Thursday denouncing its collaboration with Draco Textil as “another exercise of cultural appropriation and concealment of the people and communities behind the embroidered pieces.”

“The companies and visual artists behind the project are named but the names of the artisans that did the embroidery work are omitted,” the women said.

Two days later – the same day the Culture Ministry sent its two letters – Draco said on Facebook that it was “grateful” to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Levi’s and thanked its team of Mazatec embroiders by name.

“We want to take the opportunity to mention that the intervention of these embroideries took place in our workshop in Oaxaca,” the collective said, adding that it was very proud of its all-female workforce.

Levi’s México hasn’t publicly responded to the Culture Ministry letter.

Among the other designers and clothing companies that have been accused of plagiarizing or appropriating indigenous Mexican designs are Zara, Anthropologie, Patowl, Zimmerman, Isabel Marant, Carolina Herrera, Mango and Pippa Holt.

The Culture Ministry held an event in Mexico City last week to support indigenous textile creators and fight cultural appropriation, but Texturas de Oaxaca said its members were not invited to participate.

With reports from El País

COVID roundup: vaccinations under way of adults who missed out earlier

By

MND Staff

-

November 23, 2021

0

New coronavirus cases and COVID-19 deaths remain well below the levels seen in recent months as the third wave of the pandemic tapers off.

The Health Ministry reported 916 new cases and 53 fatalities on Monday. A total of 57,067 new infections were reported in the first 22 days of November for a daily average of 2,594. That’s a 44% decline compared to the daily average in October and an 84% drop compared to August, which was the worst month of the pandemic for new cases.

COVID-19 deaths in the first 22 days of the month totaled 4,159 for a daily average of 189, a 46% decline compared to October and a 68% decrease compared to August.

As of Monday, Mexico’s accumulated case and death tallies stand at 3.86 million and 292,524, respectively. Estimated active cases number 17,729.

The federal government has offered vaccines to the entire adult population and is now inoculating those who chose not to get vaccinated or were unable to do so when shots were first made available. It is also planning to inoculate youths aged 15 to 17.

Over 80% of adults are vaccinated, according to the Health Ministry, and large numbers of Mexicans not included in that figure traveled to the United States to get a shot. All told, almost 131.2 million shots have been administered in Mexico, according to the latest data.

Hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients are also down. There are currently just over 2,700 patients in COVID wards. According to Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, hospital occupancy levels are down almost 90% compared to the peak of the second wave.

“In populations with a high vaccination coverage, the number of serious cases is lower because vaccines reduce hospitalizations and deaths,” he wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

Mexico News Daily

New York City street renamed México-Tenochtitlan Avenue

By

MND Staff

-

November 23, 2021

0

A street in the New York borough of Manhattan has been renamed Mexico-Tenochtitlan in recognition of the large number of Latino residents.

Mariachi music accompanied Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at a ceremony on Monday when they pulled a chord to unveil a freshly minted street sign on the intersection of 116th Street and Second Avenue.

México-Tenochtitlan Avenue is in East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem, an area once known as the Italian Quarter.

In the mid-20th century, the area housed Puerto Ricans and later, increasing numbers of Dominicans. In recent decades, the percentage of Mexicans in East Harlem has also greatly increased, with newcomers taking advantage of the relatively low rents and the area’s proximity to Manhattan’s work opportunities.

Ebrard called the new street name a “recognition of the efforts of the Mexican community.”

Tenochtitlán was the name of the capital of the Mexica empire, and was located where Mexico City now sits.

De Blasio said Mexicans had a central role to play in New York’s future. “It has not been recognized enough [that] … New York is a Mexican city too. It is a growing community, strong and beautiful … The strength of this community will help determine the strength of this city in the future,” he said.

He added that U.S. identity was in a moment of evolution, and that Latinos were set to form the majority. “Americans have to understand that we are changing as a country and that in a few decades this is going to be first and foremost a country of Latinos. That is part of our development and evolution, and it will be led by our Mexican-American community,” he said.

In New York, renaming any street requires a public vote with a 75% margin in favor. The proposal is then sent to the city for a vote.

In Harlem, one street was renamed Malcolm X Boulevard and in other parts of the city pedestrians can stroll down Bob Marley street and Martin Luther King street thanks to name changes.

According to municipal data, some 300,000 Mexicans live in New York. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens have the largest Mexican population in the city, while in Manhattan, most Mexicans live in East Harlem.

The ceremony wasn’t Ebrard’s primary motivation for visiting the Big Apple: on Monday he also spoke to the United Nations Security Council about small arms trafficking, which he said was “a threat to international peace and security.”

With reports from Milenio

More Mexican filmmakers use international reach to seek justice

By

Ann Deslandes

-

November 23, 2021

0

still from documentary Adrenalina — Youths in a juvenile detention center speak of their lives in organized crime in the Mexican documentary Adrenalina.

A 16-year-old boy in a youth detention center reenacts the brutality of gang life and his torture by authorities. A mother whose daughter is kidnapped by a drug cartel launches a one-woman vigilante effort. Actors embedded in the Mexico City police force discover the vicissitudes of police authority. In the Sonora desert, a young journalist tries to reveal the links between corruption, environmental devastation and impunity that enable illegal gold mining and the harassment and murder of landowners.

These four films — Adrenalina (Adrenaline), La Civil, (The Civilian), Una Película de Policías (A Cop Movie) and Tolvanera (Dustcloud) respectively — are examples of a key trend in Mexican filmmaking: they are films about the major calamities facing Mexico today, such as organized crime, state violence, forced disappearances, deadly violence against women, internal displacement, near-total impunity for crime and forced migration, topics that more Mexican writers and directors are taking on in their work.

And these creators are not interested simply in provoking discussion but also action: most of these films have been paired with social impact campaigns, an increasing practice designed to generate political and social pressure and contribute to the achievement of justice in a country where state authorities and formal legal and social processes can rarely be relied on.

The production company for the 2018 Oscar-winning Alfonso Cuarón film Roma, for example, held a campaign to support domestic workers in Mexico after its story of the fictional Cleo, an indigenous maid working for a rich family in the 1970s, raised awareness of ongoing exploitative conditions for domestic workers in Mexico.

For the documentary short Adrenalina, directors Alberto Arnaut and Diego Rabasa teamed up with Documenta, a Mexican nongovernmental organization that supports young people imprisoned within Mexico’s youth justice system. The 30-minute short shows young people talking about being caught up in organized crime, working as sicarios (assassins) and drug runners and then enduring the consequences of being arrested and imprisoned in an equally violent system.

La Civil | Trailer

Watch this video on YouTube

Trailer for the film La Civil by Teodora Mihai.

A 16-year-old in the film describes his experience being arrested and detained, saying, “It’s not like they just capture you. They catch you and they torture you. You see things others don’t see. They make you suffer, and they treat you like a dog.” The film also shows Documenta’s work in the youth detention center, as advocates hold theater workshops and other activities aimed to encourage the young prisoners to take responsibility for their actions, understand the cycles of violence and impunity that blights much of Mexican urban life and start their lives again after prison.

The drama La Civil was not attached directly to an NGO or an impact campaign but sought a more general amplification of its themes by telling the story of Cielo, a mother whose daughter is kidnapped by a drug cartel that fails to return her even after Cielo pays the ransom.

The plot is modeled on the real story of Miriam Rodríguez who, through an extraordinary solo mission of some six years, successfully tracked and captured several members of the drug cartel that kidnapped and murdered her 20-year-old daughter Karen before Rodríguez was killed outside her home on Mother’s Day, 2017.

A high-profile production involving luminaries such as Michel Franco — director of 2020’s class warfare drama New Order — as well as a screening at Cannes this past July, La Civil has many of the major tropes and figures of Mexico’s real-life social drama: clandestine mass graves, community-based searchers and forensics analysts, rogue authorities and steely, grieving mothers, fighting to find their disappeared children.

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Una Película de Policías takes on the ambivalent task of showing the inside world of Mexico City cops who, like their counterparts throughout the country, are well-known for corruption and violence, running enforcement for criminal groups that extort businesses and kidnap and torture civilians. The job itself is also rather deadly — as the NGO Causa en Común reports: just this year some 350 police officers in Mexico have been killed.

The film — which skirts dizzyingly around genres, including docudrama, action film and mockumentary — combines a compelling romantic and professional real-life police partnership and the immersion of two somewhat skeptical actors (Mónica Del Carmen and Raúl Briones) into police training in unexpected ways, in the process revealing the world of the Mexico City police force, where officers have disparate duties, somewhat unclear direction, minimal schooling, exposure to hatred and violence and the kind of brotherly comradeship that law enforcement forces the world over are known for.

Una película de policías | Tráiler oficial | Netflix

Watch this video on YouTube

Trailer for Alonso Ruizpalacios’ genre-bending film A Cop Movie.

The film’s chaotic portrayal of capital law enforcement reflects real-life criticisms: last year, a Human Rights Watch report urged Mexico to overhaul its police forces, noting that they are “infamous for their corruption, their use of torture and violence, and their ties to organized crime.”

Producer Elena Fortes told the media outlet Indiewire that “the project was born both as a work of art but also as an impact campaign to ignite new conversations regarding how Mexican society interacts with the police.”

A.R. Melgoza’s documentary Tolvanera brings together several matters of social justice as the young director and journalist traces the story of communal landowners in the community of El Bajío, located in the Sonora desert, who have been subject to violence on the mining site on their land, including the recent murders of environmental activists José de Jesús Robledo Cruz and María de Jesús Gómez Vega.

The documentary chronicles the landowners’ battle with the Mexican mining company Minera Penmont as well as Melgoza’s own attempts to explain the legal, social, cultural and political forces that have allowed the company to continue mining for gold on communally-owned land without the landowners’ permission. It also documents Melgoza’s efforts to stay alive in the process of making his film.

Tolvanera is produced along with the El Bajío landowners and has also been promoted by the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining, generating widespread awareness and support for the landowners in their fight against the mine.

Films such as this, deliberately aimed at making a social impact, are fast becoming the new normal in Mexican filmmaking. This is perhaps hardly surprising: the scale of social destruction and pain related to the war on drugs (350,000 deaths and 72,000 disappearances over the past 15 years) in Mexico, the domination of repressive foreign policy and the economic wreckage of global neoliberal capitalism all beg the need for social support and accompaniment, the fomentation of collective hope and the building of routes to justice and accountability that leave the rotten structures of the state and organized crime behind.

TOLVANERA | TRAILER

Watch this video on YouTube

Trailer for A.R. Melgoza’s documentary Tolvanera.

Against this scene, storytelling on international screens may well carry the best hope for justice in Mexico, making the growing movement of social impact films one to watch.

Mexico News Daily

Winning the lottery turns into disaster for Chiapas preschool

By

MND Staff

-

November 23, 2021

0

The 2020 lottery awarded 100 prizes of 20 million pesos each.

A preschool in Chiapas might be questioning its luck after a lottery win brought a shooting and death threats to the community, forcing local people to abandon their homes and travel to a nearby town to protest.

The José María Morelos y Pavón preschool in the Tzeltal community of El Nacimiento, Chiapas, won a 20-million-peso (about US $940,000) prize in the presidential airplane lottery on September 15, 2020.

Parents at the preschool, which has just over two dozen students, began planning how to spend the winnings on upgrades to the school.

But the small fortune attracted the unwanted attention of a gang called Los Petules, who demanded that the parents spend the money on guns to attack villagers from the neighboring community of El Carrizal.

They refused and spent part of the money on a new roof for the school. The parents decided to use the remaining 14 million pesos for public works projects in the community.

In response, Los Petules put out death threats against four people connected to the school, and one local resident was shot in the stomach.

The situation escalated further in October when the gang reportedly attacked women and children in the village.

About 28 Tzeltal families traveled to San Cristóbal de las Casas, 80 kilometers west, to complain that they were forced out of the community. A spokesman for the families, Melesio López Gómez, said they were removed by force. “They threw us out of our homes,” he said.

The families demanded that members of Los Petules be disarmed so they could safely return to El Nacimiento to tend to their lands and cattle.

One member of the parents’ association said the community had lost “cattle, our homes, refrigerators, our corn and bean harvests, our chickens.”

A few days ago, Los Petules were accused of attacking the bases of militant groups that control large parts of Chiapas, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS).

With reports from El Universal and BBC

Homicides down 8.2% in October, 3.9% year to date

By

MND Staff

-

November 23, 2021

0

Security Minister Rodríguez at Monday's press conference.

Homicides declined 3.9% in the first 10 months of 2021 compared to the same period of last year, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez reported Monday.

There were 2,714 homicides in October, lifting the accumulated total for 2021 to 28,101. Murders last month declined 2.2% compared to September and 8.2% compared to October last year.

Guanajuato was once again the most violent state in the country last month in terms of total victims, recording 295 homicides.

Michoacán ranked second with 258 followed by México state, Baja California and Jalisco, with 246, 205 and 173 murders, respectively.

Baja California Sur, which was plagued by violent crime up until just a few years ago, didn’t record a single homicide in October, while there was just one in Yucatán, four in Campeche and seven in Coahuila.

On a per capita basis, Zacatecas was the most violent state last month with 8.4 homicides per 100,000 people. The northern state has also been plagued by violence this month.

Morelos, Baja California, Michoacán and Sonora were the second to fifth most violent states on a per capital basis. Each recorded between five and six homicides per 100,000 people.

Rodríguez told President López Obrador’s regular news conference that 50% of homicides this year occurred in just six states: Guanajuato, Michoacán, Baja California, México state, Jalisco and Chihuahua.

She said homicides in the 50 municipalities identified as Mexico’s most violent, across which the federal government bolstered security efforts in late July, recorded a 2.2% decline in homicides between August and October compared to the same period of 2020. Murders went down in 26 municipalities, up in 22 and remained steady in two.

Tijuana remains the most violent city in the country followed by Ciudad Juárez, León, Cajeme (Ciudad Obregón) and Fresnillo.

The security minister also reported that femicides – the murder of women and girls on account of their gender – declined 14.8% in October compared to the same month of last year. There were 69 femicides last month, the second lowest monthly total since the federal government took office in December 2018.

There were 842 femicides in the first 10 months of the year, 133 fewer than in all of 2020, which was the worst year on record for the crime. Mexico is currently on track to record more than 1,000 femicides in a year for the first time ever.

Rodríguez also presented data for a range of other crimes.

Among those that decreased in the first 10 months of the year compared to the same period of 2020 were financial crimes, tax crimes, organized crime offenses, drug trafficking, firearms offenses, cattle theft, business robberies, vehicle theft and burglaries.

Among those that increased were human trafficking, electoral offenses, crimes committed by public officials, theft on public transit, muggings, carjackings, extortion and rape.

Mexico News Daily

Christmastime piracy: half of all Christmas lights sold estimated to be black market

By

MND Staff

-

November 23, 2021

0

christmas lights — There's a 50-50 chance they're not legal.

Half of the lights that will be sold for Christmas decorations this holiday season will be purchased on the black market and do not meet safety standards, says an industry spokesman.

Alberto Larios Segura, president of the Northern Electric and Solar Expo 2021, explained that of the 60 million units estimated to be sold this year, 50% fall short of official standards, or NOM, which he said can cause short circuits and fires, with serious consequences.

Analysts from the electrical sector, quoted by the newspaper El Universal, said buying bootleg lights could cause a number of hazards. “It’s a serious mistake to acquire a Christmas tree and lights on the black market, since normally these types of decorations do not have any certification that guarantees greater safety for the user.

Like any electrical appliance, a failure in the lights, or [a failure through] overloading the home’s electrical system, can generate short circuits, electrocution, burns or fires.”

To reduce the risk, the analysts recommended buying an artificial tree with a “fire resistant” or “non-flammable material” label.

However, the problem isn’t isolated to lights: 50% of sales for extension cords are also made on the black market, which also fall short of safety standards, Larios said.

The black market lights are produced in China and are not exclusively sold in informal market environments, but also in hardware stores and by formal vendors, the newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, the concerns of legitimate sellers go beyond safety. The economic damage is also substantial: the Christmas light market is worth 6 billion pesos (about US $283 million), of which 3 billion will go to the black market.

The economic damage is growing as Christmas lights become an increasingly popular festive decoration: sales of all Christmas lights are expected to increase 10% this year, meaning about 60 million units, according to Conacomee, a business group representing sellers of electronic goods.

With reports from El Universal