Mexico recorded 4,161 new coronavirus cases and 221 COVID-19 deaths on Monday, increasing its cumulative totals to almost 3.52 million and 267,969, respectively.
There are 82,203 estimated active cases across the country, the Health Ministry reported, an 18% reduction compared to Friday.
The estimated active case tally will likely rise in the coming days as reported cases numbers between Tuesday and Saturday are typically much higher than those recorded on Sundays and Mondays.
Tabasco still leads the country for active cases per capita with almost 250 per 100,000 people. Colima ranks second followed by Mexico City, Yucatán and Quintana Roo.
The five states with the lowest number of active cases per capita are Chiapas, Chihuahua, Baja California, Sinaloa and Guerrero.
In other COVID-19 news:
• As of Sunday, 42% of general care hospital beds in COVID wards were occupied and 38% of those with ventilators were in use, according to federal data.
At 62%, Tlaxcala and Puebla have the equal highest occupancy rate for general care beds among the 32 states. Durango is the only other state with a rate above 60%.
Just over seven of every 10 beds with ventilators are occupied in Morelos, which easily has the highest occupancy rate in the country. The only other state with a rate above 50% is Colima, where just under six in 10 of such beds are taken.
• Almost 60.8 million Mexicans aged 18 and over are vaccinated with at least one dose, the Health Ministry said Sunday. The figure is equivalent to 68% of the eligible population.
Almost 39.1 million people – 64% of the vaccinated population – are fully vaccinated after having both doses of a two-shot vaccine or being inoculated with the single-shot CanSino or Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
• The Mexican government is unlikely to offer booster shots anytime soon.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said on Twitter on Monday that the current scientific consensus is that such shots are not needed.
“The government of Mexico will continue to guide its actions based on scientific criteria and recommendations from experts,” he tweeted above a link to an article citing experts from the World Health Organization and the United States Food and Drug Administration.
• The federal government has complied with all 262 injunctions ordering the vaccination of minors, according to the National Association of Circuit Magistrates and District Judges.
The association said that the government has fully complied with the court orders despite having questioned the actions of the judges who granted them.
President López Obrador suggested earlier this month that the pharmaceutical industry was behind the legal action to serve its own interests. He said September 3 that his administration was complying with all injunctions but emphasized that the government’s medical experts believe that the vaccination of children is unnecessary.
Health regulator Cofepris has approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine to inoculate children aged 12 and over.
Tino Contreras in his trademark cap and sunglasses.
The Mexican jazz community is in mourning after one of its most preeminent members passed away in Mexico City last Thursday.
Fortino Contreras González, a composer, pianist, drummer, trumpeter and vocalist known as Mexico’s father of modern jazz, died of a heart attack at home, his manager, Mónica Ramírez, told the Associated Press. He was 97.
“One of the greats is gone: Tino Contreras, a legend of jazz in Mexico who infected many generations of artists with joy and inspiration,” Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto wrote on Twitter. “With his creations, he played the notes of the world. With his music, he explained life itself.”
Born in Chihuahua city in 1924, Contreras moved to Ciudad Juárez at a young age and put together his first band – Los Cadetes del Swing – in the northern border city, located on the doorstep of a dynamic jazz scene in the United States. His younger brother, Efrén, a talented saxophonist, was one of the group’s members.
In the 1950s, Contreras moved to Mexico City and proceeded to “change the rules of the [jazz] game,” according to the newspaper El País.
Contreras in the 1960s.
“Modern jazz arrived with him,” said Carlos Icaza, a musician who collaborated with Contreras during the final 20 years of his life.
“[Jazz musicians] played with sheet music before that, but Tino told them that you have to feel jazz because he brought with him everything that was happening on the border,” he said.
Midway through the ’50s, Contreras founded the capital’s first jazz club, El Rigus, and began recording his own compositions.
In a long and prolific career, Contreras would go on to record more than 50 albums with scores of different musicians. He toured extensively around the world, sharing stages with such luminaries as pianist Dave Brubeck and saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. He also collaborated with legendary Mexican actor Germán Valdés, or Tin Tan, writing music for some of his films.
His best-known recorded work is perhaps Misa en Jazz, released in 1966, one of 59 albums he released.
While his music remained within the realm of modern jazz in Mexico, he wasn’t afraid to borrow elements of other genres to spice up his compositions and even experimented with pre-Hispanic Mexican instruments.
Contreras, who won several awards, kept composing and performing right up until his death.
Yumaré, a 1980s album, featured percussion instruments from the Tarahumara region of his native state.
Contreras, the recipient of numerous awards, kept composing and performing right up until his death, always decked out in his trademark cap and shades.
In April this year he performed a set from the Casa Azul, the Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico City, that was streamed online to a global audience.
“Jazz music always moves not with time but ahead of time,” he told the Associated Press before the concert. “It leaves an impression. That’s what we’re leaving.”
Tino Contreras Nota Dominante de Valeria Estefan Polytropos AC MEXICAN JAZZ EXISTS
Baja 1000 aspirant Rigoberto Castro Cosío, right, and his daughter, Daniela Gisselle Castro Carballo in their race car. Photos courtesy of ViewFinder
Behind the wheel of an imposing Toyotin pickup truck, the father-daughter racing team of Rigo and Dani prepares for the Coyote 300 off-road race in Baja California Sur. The Toyotin is the defending champion in its division.
This year, pilot Rigoberto “Rigo” Castro Cosío and copilot Daniela Gisselle “Dani” Castro Carballo are ready to tackle the desert terrain yet again while chasing a bigger goal: entry into the Baja 1000, or “Baja Mil.”
A nonstop 30-hour drive from the United States border to the tip of the peninsula, the annual event is reportedly the biggest off-road race in the world.
The new documentary film Off the Road or Fuera del Camino, directed by La Paz, Baja California Sur, native José Permar, shines a spotlight — or, rather, a headlight — on the remote, sparsely populated region around the racecourse that once a year sees an influx of visitors for the Baja 1000. In a creative documentary approach, the film chronicles the buildup to a race as well as the event itself.
Although none of the cast are participants in the race, they are not quite spectators either. Rather, they seek to be somewhere in between.
The band Los Inalcanzables de la Baja, which performs corrido songs for the film.
There’s Rigo, looking for a repeat win in the Coyote 300, with an eye toward the Baja 1000. Meanwhile, former pilot Davis dreams of the days when the now-vanished cotton trade made Baja California Sur a region of thriving communities.
Journalist Paco focuses on an upcoming race and how to make it safer for all involved. Mindful of a friend who died in a car accident, Paco urges spectators not to get too close to the cars or vandalize the terrain.
“More or less, all the characters are people who want to be part of the race and can’t,” Permar explained in a Zoom interview from Belgium, where he is pursuing a documentary master’s program. “It’s about being part of something that does not take you into account and all the messages, I think, that can come from that — the desire to be taken into account.”
Earlier this year, Off the Road won an award for best cinematography at the Atlanta Film Festival. Past Mexican screenings include the Los Cabos International Film Festival. Audiences are responding to the film, with many considering it a western.
“I did not realize it was a western,” Permar said. “I’m used to seeing the landscapes. I grew up in the landscapes. I would watch and hear the music. I did not see [the film] as a Western. It’s super-cool that someone from [outside] connected it with some of the [western] films.”
Now he sees the parallels, too — including “the idea that the race is like a big enemy appearing at a small village.”
Director José Permar. Off the Road is his first feature-film project.
Permar is familiar with both the big event and the small villages. He recalls car trips with his father, a baker, who would sell bread to the villages of several hundred people each, all hours away from each other.
“I knew all these villages and how isolated they were,” Permar said. “I think it’s the most isolated part of Mexico.”
While he was growing up, his uncles introduced him to the Baja 1000. Permar describes himself as not exactly a fan of the actual race but fascinated by its atmosphere — the barbecues, the heat and the sense of anticipation among the crowd.
“They were just waiting and waiting and waiting for the race to come,” he recalled. “The cars would pass by in the dust, then my uncles would say, ‘Yeah, that’s it. Let’s go.’ It was a memory from my childhood. It was so funny, waiting for something to happen. It happened just like that.”
It’s been happening since the 1960s — part of an even earlier tradition of off-road racing in the region that draws crowds of visitors, including many Americans.
“There are a lot of legends about it,” Permar said about the Baja 1000. One legend, related in the film, tells of a priest blessing the participants from an airplane.
A still from the documentary Off the Road.
An even older Baja tradition is that of the corridos, the songs once used to spread news from town to town during the Mexican Revolution, according to Permar. The director found a contemporary group, Los Inalcanzables de la Baja, to perform corridos for the film that serve as a kind of narration.
In one particularly memorable performance, they sing a corrido called “La Tormenta” — a recreation of Tropical Storm Lidia, which struck Mexico in 2017. “The idea was to make the guys feel inside the hurricane, the eye of the hurricane,” Permar said.
In Off the Road, clouds swirl around the band, which consists of two guitarists and a tuba player, all wearing cowboy hats and blue leather jackets. As they perform, encircled by cacti, the camera rotates around them to further evoke the storm.
“It was a lot of fun to do this scene,” Permar said.
This is Permar’s first feature film. He previously made two well received short films, Bestia and Aurelia y Pedro, before tackling a longer project in which he revisited his home state.
When beginning the Off the Road, Permar asked around for whom might be a good interview subject. He wasn’t looking to make a film about top race competitors, but a different kind of story.
Poster for Off the Road.
“The idea was always to make the film about the race and people waiting for the race to happen,” he said. “I discovered people working in a mechanic’s shop, for example. Sometimes I would get their phone number. Or one of the pilots would call them.”
One such contact was Rigo, who works as a mechanic in La Paz. He ended up not only speaking with Permar but giving him a ride in the Toyotin.
“He did not allow me to drive,” Permar recalled. “He likes to drive it. Even for Daniela, his daughter, it was difficult for him to let her drive.”
Rigo proved a tough early interview. Doubting his chances to win, Permar asked why he wanted to enter the Baja 1000, noting that the entry fee cost more than the Toyotin itself. Rigo countered by asking Permar why the director was spending so much of his own money to come to his workshop and interview him.
“I said, ‘You’re right. It’s passion. I completely understand,’” Permar recalled. “Whenever you feel [you have to] follow your passion, you do it … It defines who you are. [It] … motivated me to make the film beyond funny anecdotes.”
This extends to the coverage of race day itself, in which the director increased the size of the crew from a handful to 30 people working across the peninsula. The film shows not only the excitement of the Baja 1000 but also a more complex picture — including a race-day tragedy.
Citing the issue of accidents in the race in general, he said, “It’s a mix of something — too many people, drinks, cars, money, emotions.”
He also noted that there are people in Baja who “don’t like the race that much, there’s a lot of pollution — it’s kind of destroying the deserts, for example.”
Yet, he reflected, “People really do sometimes want to be part of the winning team in some way. When a car is stuck, they’ll run after it to help them, to be part of something.”
OFF THE ROAD Q&A
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The airport will be quiet for a few hours on Thursday.
Mexico City airport will suspend all flights for five hours on Thursday for an air show to celebrate the anniversary of Mexican independence.
Latin America’s busiest airport will close from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., as it does every year.
This year marks two centuries of independence from Spain. The anniversary is commemorated with the “El Grito” celebration on September 15, with other events such as the air show on subsequent days.
“As with every year and in accordance with the national aeronautical authority … [the airport] will be closed to both commercial and official air operations, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.,” the Transport Ministry said in a statement.
Immediately after the conclusion of the military air parade, takeoffs and landings will resume.
In 2019 Mexico City was the busiest airport in the region for passenger traffic, transporting more than 50 million passengers. São Paulo-Guarulhos was the second busiest with 43 million and Bogotá’s El Dorado third with 34 million. Cancún was the fourth busiest airport in Latin America with 25 million passengers and Guadalajara 10th with 14 million passengers.
Those figures fell sharply in 2020 due to travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ambassador Salazar at the Tlatelolco archaeological site.
The new U.S. ambassador to Mexico arrived in Mexico City on Saturday evening and toured some sites in the capital the following day.
Ken Salazar, 66, arrived in the country accompanied by his wife, two daughters, his son-in-law and his grandchildren.
The ambassador published photos on Twitter of visits to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the archaeological site at Tlatelolco, the San Fernando Pantheon and the Monument to the Revolution.
The posts, with captions in Spanish, detailed that the visit to the San Fernando Pantheon was to “honor Benito Juárez” and the visit to the Basilica was to “hear Mass and pray for both of our countries.”
A Spanish speaker, the new ambassador said he was proud to have grown up on a ranch, without a telephone, in the San Luis Valley, Colorado, near the western mouth of the Rio Grande. “That’s where I learned Spanish. My parents were proud of our [Hispanic] heritage and that’s where the path that I’ve taken began,” he said.
Salazar has named migration, the coronavirus pandemic, security and climate change as his priorities.
“Mexico beautiful and beloved, I come from the United States to greet the people of Mexico. President Joe Biden has sent me to ensure that our two nations have a prosperous future,” he said.
He added that he would “work to ensure that we have a migration system for the United States and Mexico … together, Mexico and the United States, we are stronger, because skills, lands and the hopes of both peoples come together.”
Salazar is to meet with President López Obrador in the coming days.
A lineup forms at an ATM Sunday while the bank experienced technical problems.
The biggest financial institution in Mexico left 24.1 million account holders without access to ATMs, its mobile app or in-store payments on Sunday.
BBVA México’s operating failures were first reported early in the day and continued for almost 20 hours until the late evening. Users were taken by surprise when they tried to take out cash, deposit money or make transfers and were declined. The newspaper El Universal reported that in-store payments were also affected.
“BBVA México informs all its users that we are seeing irregularities in our services. We are working to solve it as soon as possible and reactivate the operations that our users require. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the bank said at 11:13 a.m. after receiving complaints on social media.
One account holder detailed the issue on the BBVA México Twitter account. “The ATM did not deliver my cash. I checked the app and an incorrect failed connection message came up. I called BBVA and they said that in three hours they would finish with updates.”
On Monday, some customers reported that their unsuccessful withdrawals had shown up on their accounts. The bank requested that they contact its customer service line to report the problems.
BBVA México’s communications head Jorge Terrazas confirmed the service failure was due to an internal error related to software updates. “What happened was a matter that I would call an internal mistake. It has absolutely nothing to do with any exogenous, external factor,” he said.
“We greatly regret what happened, we are truly sorry and committed to customers,” he added.
Meanwhile, the owner of rival Banco Azteca, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, took the opportunity to advertise his company’s services. “Now that @BBVA_Mex’s system is not working, with the sole desire to help its customers I want to share a new @BancoAzteca App that has everything in one place, in addition to being easy to use it is very reliable, unlike Bancomer’s,” he wrote on Twitter.
BBVA México has 1,725 branches, 13,014 ATMs and 517,729 point of sale terminals, according to figures released in May.
A likeness of Tlalli, the statue intended to replace that of Columbus, was published last week by the sculptor.
A petition to restore the Christopher Columbus statue on Reforma Avenue has gained almost 18,000 signatures and political backing.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced this month that a sculpture of an indigenous Olmec woman would take the place of the Columbus statue, and that the Columbus sculpture — removed in October, purportedly for repairs, amid threats it would be knocked down — would be relocated to Parque América, a park in the affluent Polanco district.
The petition on change.org has been signed by federal Deputy Margarita Zavala and her husband ex-president Felipe Calderón, who both belong to the National Action Party (PAN).
“Mexicans and particularly the inhabitants of the capital of the country feel indignant due to the withdrawal of our historical heritage on the pretext of its repair. We consider that it is a decision that is populist in nature,” the petition reads.
It added that Sheinbaum’s actions were illegal and broke the Federal Law of Monuments and Archeological, Artistic and Historic Areas.
“Mexican citizens demand that [Sheinbaum] and the National Institute of Anthropology immediately return the statue of Christopher Columbus to its plinth, and that those responsible be subjected to the requisite punishment,” the petition continued.
It accuses Sheinbaum of a “revisionist vision of history.”
President López Obrador celebrated the replacement of the statue last week. “It is a recognition of the cultural greatness of deep Mexico, of pre-Hispanic Mexico to its cultures,” he said in his morning press conference Wednesday.
The government has also been accused of trying to revise history. This year events are celebrating “500 years of indigenous resistance” to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the fall of Aztec Empire, alongside 200 years since independence. Academics and archaeologists criticized the government for appending another anniversary to the list: events were held this year to celebrate the 700th year anniversary of the foundation of Mexico City’s forbear Tenochtitlán, although experts say it was founded in 1325.
The Columbus statue was created by French sculptor Charles Cordier almost 150 years ago. The statue of the Olmec woman will be called “Tlalli” — meaning Earth, world or land in Náhuatl — and sculptor Pedro Reyes has been commissioned to produce it.
He published a likeness of the woman on social media last week but Mayor Sheinbaum said later it was only a draft.
Agency says it needs nearly double the amount allocated to deal with refugee claims.
As record numbers of migrants stream into the country, a government agency at the forefront of responding to the influx is facing a budget cut, prompting its chief to appeal to Congress for more money.
Almost 80,000 migrants, including large numbers of Haitians, have applied for asylum after crossing into the country via the southern border this year.
More than 110,000 claims are expected to have been filed by the end of the year, a figure more than 40% higher than the existing annual record.
The agency responsible for processing the claims is the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar), but despite the immense pressure it currently faces, the Finance Ministry last week proposed cutting its 2022 budget by more than 2% to 45.67 million pesos (US $2.3 million).
In an interview with media outlet Grupo Imagen, Comar chief Andrés Ramírez Silva said the agency needs at least 42 million additional pesos to meet the high demand for its services. That amount would allow Comar to hire an additional 148 workers to process asylum claims, he said.
Asylum requests in the first eight months of each year since 2019. excélsior
In a separate interview with the newspaper El Universal, Ramírez said the agency faces a difficult situation and called on Congress, which must approve the Finance Ministry’s budget for it to take effect, to be “receptive” to Comar’s plea for additional funding.
He claimed that the resources allocated to the agency are insufficient and that the government’s proposed funding fails to acknowledge the situation it faces.
“… To determine the budget, the [current] operational capacity [of Comar] has to be taken into account because it’s [the agency] that attends to refugees,” Ramírez said before calling on the Congress to be “conscious” of its predicament.
Asked whether he expects the Congress to be understanding and increase Comar’s budget, he responded:
“I always hope [that it will be] but I know that it’s not that easy – it’s complex, but every year we’re always hoping for a better budget.”
Ramírez said funding from the United Nations refugee agency has been significant in recent years and could help Comar mitigate its shortfall but that depends on the number of migrants who arrive on the southern border with Guatemala.
“The number of people arriving is really unusual. We’ve never had anything like it in the history of Mexico,” Ramírez told El Universal.
“[Arrivals in 2021] far exceed what we had in 2019, when we reached 70,400. That figure was surpassed by 10% at the end of August,” he said.
The arrival of 77,559 migrants in the first eight months of the year has placed Comar in “a really overwhelming situation,” Ramírez said, adding that the agency’s office in Tapachula – located just north of the border with Guatemala – is on the brink of collapse.
He attributed the situation to the “enormous pressure” placed on Comar by “a very large avalanche of Haitians,” who have fled the Caribbean country due to poverty and crime exacerbated by natural disasters and political unrest.
Ramírez noted that Haitians have arrived in Mexico after passing through countries such as Brazil and Chile, and claimed that they are not genuine refugees because they didn’t seek asylum in those nations.
Refugee agency chief Ramírez: ‘We’ve never had anything like it in the history of Mexico.’
“… They’re people who are not refugees because they don’t fit within the … [definition] of a refugee to the extent that they are coming from countries where there is not a concrete situation of persecution or violation of their rights,” he said, even though international law doesn’t explicitly require refugees to claim asylum in the first “safe” country they reach.
Although he claimed Haitians in Mexico are not genuine refugees, Ramírez said it’s “absolutely clear to everyone” that they can’t be deported to Haiti because the country’s political system is in ruins, its president was assassinated in July and it suffered a devastating earthquake in August.
“The situation is extremely complicated and what they’re seeking are migratory alternatives [to claiming asylum in the first country they reach]. … Nevertheless, we have to attend to them, that’s what the law establishes. We are attending to them, but people of many other nationalities are also arriving,” Ramírez said, referring to migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela and Cuba.
He said the number of Haitians who have arrived in Mexico this year is already triple the number that arrived in 2020.
“Due to the pandemic there was a significant decrease in migrant numbers [in 2020] for practically all nationalities but one of the important exceptions was Haiti. There was a record of 5,957 [Haitian] asylum seekers in 2020 but … in the first eight months [of 2021] … we had triple that number with 18,883,” Ramírez said.
“The issue is the bottleneck that Tapachula represents, because that’s there where the vast majority of people enter [the country], 70% [of migrants] are concentrated in Tapachula. … We’ve increased our personnel, we’ve had a lot of support from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,” he said, explaining that the agency has provided resources to employ more Comar staff and train them.
However, more personnel are needed, Ramírez added, highlighting that staff members with Haitian Creole language skills are in particularly short supply.
“The lack of translators is an additional complication … that we don’t have with the majority of other asylum seekers who speak Spanish. … The Haitians speak Creole [but] we don’t have many people who speak Creole. We have four interpreters but that doesn’t allow us to keep up. We’re going to have more interpreters, who will arrive in the coming days. We’re going to have a total of seven,” he said.
“… [The lack of interpreters] slows down the [asylum seeking] process. … It’s a very delicate matter, we’re talking about people’s lives. However, the Mexican authorities clearly understand that we can’t deport … these people to their country of origin.”
That leaves Mexico in a difficult position because it is also facing pressure from the United States to stem the flow of migrants to its southern border.
One option is to deport Haitians to another country, as Mexico did on the weekend by sending some 150 back to Guatemala, according to migrant advocacy group Pueblos Sin Fronteras. But those migrants will in all likelihood enter Mexico again.
Another option is to resettle Haitians in Mexico in cities such as Mexico City and Tijuana, where there is already a community of Haitian migrants. But that alternative would not necessarily stop Haitians from seeking asylum in the United States, and if they do so in large numbers, Mexico runs the risk of once again upsetting its powerful northern neighbor (as occurred in 2019), even with a more migrant-friendly president in the White House.
An estimated 15,000 people were affected by the 7.1-magnitude quake.
No major damage was initially reported but it has come to light that last Tuesday’s powerful earthquake damaged almost 8,000 homes in Guerrero.
Governor Héctor Astudillo said Sunday there were reports of 7,800 damaged homes and 15,000 people affected by the 7.1-magnitude quake.
“Without a doubt, it must be said, the earthquake has revealed its reach to us. Up until today, the damage is very different” than we initially thought, he said.
The governor said that 694 of the damaged homes are in Acapulco, located just 14 kilometers from the quake’s epicenter.
Homes, schools, hospitals, hotels, churches and other buildings were also damaged in municipalities such as Chilpancingo, Coyuca de Benítez, Atoyac de Álvarez and Chilapa de Álvarez.
Casas y comunidades abandonadas: los daños que dejó el sismo en Guerrero
Astudillo called on the federal government to help repair the damage and provide assistance to victims.
His remarks came after families from Xaltianguis, a town 40 kilometers inland from Acapulco, blocked the Chilpancingo-Acapulco highway for more than three hours on Saturday to protest the lack of government assistance after their homes were damaged in the earthquake.
The residents only agreed to lift their blockade after Astudillo arrived and pledged to send sleeping mats to the town as well as Civil Protection personnel to inspect the 450 severely damaged homes, among which were 150 that collapsed.
In Chilpancingo, 60 families who live in a government-built residential development were forced to abandon their homes after last week’s quake, the newspaper Reforma reported.
“We’re definitely not going back because the houses have cracks and with another slight quake they’ll come down,” said one resident.
Edith Díaz Gómez said that some families have gone to shelters but most are bunking down with relatives.
Life goes on in a Guerrero home where a wall collapsed.
“We’re going to ask the government to pay the monthly rent for a house because it’s impossible for us to continue living with our relatives,” she said.
In some other Guerrero communities, families have been sleeping outside due to fear their homes could collapse in another quake or aftershock, of which there have been hundreds since the strong temblor struck just before 9:00 p.m. last Tuesday.
Astudillo said the victims’ plight was worsened by rain and stressed the importance of “solidarity” during the trying times.
Some Guerrero residents were also left without power for days after the earthquake but the governor said Sunday that service had been restored across the state with the exception of just a few communities.
Felt in at least 13 states, the quake caused three deaths, including that of a 14-year-old boy in a rural area of the municipality of Acapulco. He and one other person were crushed by walls that fell amid violent shaking while a third person was killed by a lamppost that toppled during the temblor.
Rescue workers in Tlalnepantla after Friday's landslide.
A high probability of another landslide on the Cerro de Chiquihuite (Chiquihuite Hill) on the boundary of Tlalnepantla and the Mexico City borough of Gustavo A. Madero means that 126 homes must be evacuated, government officials said.
One person was killed when 200 tonnes of rock and earth swept through at least 10 homes in a landslide on Friday. A mother and her two children are still missing, according to a report by the newspaper La Jornada. There were originally thought to be 10 people missing, one of whom was rescued with severe injuries, the newspaper Milenio reported. México state Governor Alfredo del Mazo said it was likely that heavy rains and the 7.1-magnitude earthquake last Tuesday had caused the landslide.
Authorities have increased the call for evacuation from 80 homes to 126. Four temporary shelters have been opened to receive evacuees, but so far only around 50%, or 76 people, have responded to the request. The newspaper El Universal reported Sunday that almost 200 people in 92 homes were yet to leave.
More than a thousand sandbags have been laid to create a retaining wall to stabilize the dislodged boulders. Search operations involving rescue dogs to find the three missing people continue.
State official Ricardo de la Cruz Musalem explained at a press conference that topological transformations on the hill made it unsafe. “There are rocks that ended up underneath one another and under some houses. That’s why I reiterate the call for people to evacuate,” he said, and added that a high concentration of water on the hill increased the danger.
Cerca de 200 personas se oponen a evacuar zona de riesgo del Cerro del Chiquihuite
He added that evacuating was the best way to avoid tragedy. “It is very difficult to leave the heritage they have built for a generation or even several, but it is much worse to be searching for a loved one,” he said.
Tlalnepantla Mayor Raciel Pérez said illegal housing, facilitated by corruption, had increased the risk. “In this area there is urban growth based on corruption, a black market for land use. Overnight there were changes in land use, despite the dangers in the area,” he said.
At least one resident of Chiquihuite Hill noticed six waterfalls had formed on the hill during heavy rains prior to the landslide.
Leonel Carrasco, another resident, confirmed that local people had seen warning signs, and alerted authorities beforehand. “Since the rains began we felt a lack of stability in the earth. There have been other landslides, but this one was deadly. We asked the local government for geological studies to determine the stability of some land, but there was no response,” he said.
