Grace's forecast path takes it over the north end of the Yucatán Peninsula. us national hurricane center
Tropical Storm Grace, located Tuesday morning in the Caribbean Sea, has triggered a hurricane watch for the Yucatán Peninsula.
The National Meteorological Service reported at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday that the storm was near Jamaica, about 1,095 kilometers east-southeast of the Quintana Roo coast, with maximum sustained winds of 85 kilometers per hour (kph) and gusts of 100.
The weather service warned that there was a high probability that hurricane effects could be felt Wednesday in the north of Quintana Roo from Cabo Catoche, Holbox Island, to about 250 kilometers south at Punta Allen.
The approach of the storm is likely to generate heavy rain, strong wind and powerful waves.
The service predicted that the storm will come within 50 kilometers of Tulum at 1:00 a.m. Thursday, before moving north within 45 kilometers of Celestún, Yucatán, at 1:00 p.m. and will continue north toward Veracruz. Grace is expected to be 50 kilometers from Cabo Rojo on Saturday, and veer from the coast as it continues northward toward Tamaulipas on Sunday.
Despite tropical storms affecting Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti, the hurricane watch for the Yucatán Peninsula is the only one in the region, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Armed forces personnel load aid supplies onto a plane, in an image shared by the the Foreign Ministry.
Three planes of humanitarian aid sent by the Defense Ministry and the navy weighing 15.4 tonnes arrived in Haiti Monday morning, following the 7.2-magnitude earthquake which hit the Caribbean country on Saturday.
At least 1,419 people have died after the disaster struck the southwest of Latin America’s poorest country, and that figure is expected to climb, according to figures published by the The Washington Post quoting Haiti’s civil protection office. Heavy rains arrived this afternoon, complicating the recovery situation and worsening still the plight of newly homeless and injured, which AP reported at 6,000.
The country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the neighboring Dominican Republic, was already reeling from the political turmoil of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last month amid economic and health crises. The capital Port-au-Prince was devastated by an earthquake 11 years ago.
The first two jets sent by the Defence Ministry arrived in the early morning and delivered 1,500 food packages which included antibacterial gel and garbage bags, medical aid, bottled water and powdered milk.
The third aircraft sent by the navy arrived at around 10:00 a.m. and transported food, and rescue and survival supplies: cots, blankets, hygiene kits, water filters, lamps, forklifts and shovels.
A joint press release by the navy, Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry expressed solidarity with the people of Haiti. “The government of Mexico expresses its solidarity with a fraternal country of Latin America that is currently experiencing an urgent moment … constant communication will be maintained with the Haitian authorities,” it read.
The president addressed the delivery of aid in his morning press conference and said humanism should be put ahead of politics. “We decided to support Haiti and we will continue to do so because nothing human is alien to us … Forget about borders, we need to apply the … principle of universal fraternity: abandon selfishness, individualism,” President López Obrador said.
Marie-Helene L’Esperance, mayor of the harbor town of Pestel in Haiti, described the desperate situation on local radio. “We’re pleading for help … Every house was destroyed, there’s nowhere to live, we need shelters, medical help and especially water. We’ve had nothing for three days and injured victims are starting to die,” she said.
A physician in the seaside city of Baradères, David Geleste, told another local radio station that a medical catastrophe had ensued. “Medical help is urgently needed … It’s critical in the first two to four days. We have many injured with fractured limbs and need to mobilize basic materials like painkillers, bandages, braces. We have to perform urgent operations but don’t have the equipment,” he said.
Large crowds continue to form in Mexico City in spite of a growing third wave.
Federal health authorities said another 7,172 new Covid-19 cases were reported Monday as the third wave of the coronavirus continues to show steady growth.
There were 272 deaths reported Monday and 133,866 active cases.
Total accumulated cases now come to 3.108 million and deaths, 248,652.
Mexico recorded 23,642 new cases on Saturday, the second-largest single-day increase since the pandemic began, along with 753 deaths.
Sunday saw 9,295 new cases and 213 deaths.
Meanwhile, seven states have been particularly affected by increases in new cases in recent days.
In San Luis Potosí, the Ministry of Health declared on Sunday that the state was now red on the coronavirus stoplight map, a decision driven by hospitalization numbers, deaths and new case numbers.
Health Minister Miguel Ángel Lutzow Steiner said the state was currently at the worst stage yet in the third wave of Covid-19. He said the pandemic is now affecting more children and adolescents.
A record 932 new cases in 24 hours were reported on Sunday.
• Health officials in Oaxaca confirmed Sunday that Covid-19 cases have surged in four regions of the state, where hospitals are reporting occupancy of 70%-90%.
Of the 2,750 active cases 90% were concentrated in the Central Valleys, the Papaloapan Basin, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the Coast.
A vaccination center in Colima.
Of the 471 hospital beds available for coronavirus patients, 340 were occupied as of Saturday afternoon.
The average number of patients admitted daily due to complications arising from coronavirus shot up from 140 in April to 326 so far in August, according to state health data.
The number of hospitals at 100% occupancy reached 25 on Friday.
Officials warned that observing preventative health measures and getting vaccinated were a matter of “life and death.”
• The numbers have also shot up in Guanajuato, where 3,088 people have tested positive in the last six days. León is seeing the worst of it with 980 new cases between August 10 and 15. In one week there were 21 deaths while the state-wide total was 65 during the same period.
Other hot spots are Irapuato and Celaya.
Every day an average of 500 new cases are being reported throughout the state.
• In Tamaulipas, a dry law went into effect on Monday and new restrictions were announced for businesses after the state recorded more than 600 new cases in a 24-hour period, the largest one-day increase in new cases since the pandemic began.
As of Sunday evening, there were 4,191 active cases.
A state-wide dry law is now in effect on weekends.
• Hidalgo Health Minister Efraín Benítez Herrera warned that his state is in a critical situation having hit a single-day total of 505 cases.
• New case numbers in Colima set a new daily record Saturday, surpassing 500 for the first time.
The 515 new cases bring the accumulated total to 19,735.
Efforts were under way to convert several hospitals to accommodate Covid patients and make an additional 200 beds available
Colima and Manzanillo are the municipalities with the highest number of new cases, each with 142, and 3,850 active cases.
• Daily case numbers also broke a record in Nayarit at 498. The highest numbers of active cases was reported in Tepic, with 198, and Bahía de Banderas with 156.
Mexican artist Sergio Sánchez Santamaría. photos courtesy of Sergio Sánchez Santamaría and Artist Studio Project Publishing
A catrina holding a scythe hovers over a Mexican municipality. In the background, the stars in the night sky form the shape of a skull. The skeletal figure in the foreground wears 21st-century attire — a backward ballcap, sunglasses and sneakers. And on the catrina’s jersey is a decidedly contemporary phrase: Covid-19.
This black-and-white image is among the many selections from acclaimed Mexican printmaker Sergio Sánchez Santamaría in the new book, Graphic in Transit, launched in March over Zoom.
“The opportunity to look at the work of an artist as prolific as Sergio is a very good problem,” said Miguel Rojas Sotelo, one of the book’s editors, along with Rafael A. Osuba.
Rojas Sotelo, an art scholar, is the program coordinator for the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “In a sense, we tried to do some curatorial renderings of some of the themes that are very present in the work of Sergio,” he said.
The idea for the book was sparked by one of the major collectors of the artist’s work — Duke emeritus professor Robert Healy — who is also based in North Carolina and has known the artist since the late 1990s. About six years ago, Rojas Sotelo and Healy were discussing the Taller de Grafica Popular or TGP, a Mexican art collective first founded in the 1930s concerned with using art to advance revolutionary social causes. The subject of Sánchez Santamaría came up.
“Scratchboard,” by Sergio Sánchez Santamaría.
“Bob said, ‘I do have this impressive art from someone who started very young and [who] is not that well-known,’” Rojas Sotelo recalled. “We started working on a way to bring Sergio to the U.S.”
Sánchez Santamaría has since come to Duke several times, interacting with young American art students and having his work exhibited. Now it is the subject of a book.
He sees connections between his art and the TGP — “probably the second-most well-known and important art movement from Mexico after the muralists,” according to Rojas Sotelo. That’s true not only due to the themes of social justice that resonate in Sánchez Santamaría’s work but also through his possession of the printing press of one of the TGP’s co-founders and best-known artists, Leopoldo Méndez.
A native of Tlayacapan in Morelos, Sánchez Santamaría still makes his home there, where roosters could be heard crowing in the background as he was interviewed over video conferencing software along with Rojas Sotelo from a separate location. Sánchez Santamaría describes himself as growing up in an artistic family with indigenous roots, as well as possible Black slave ancestry.
“My original intention was to become a sculptor, working with stone like Michelangelo,” he said. Yet he became curious upon seeing lithographs at a museum, including ones by artist José Jorge Chávez Morales.
“This style left an impact,” he recalled. Eventually, he got into printmaking after being introduced to the work of masters like Méndez.
Sergio Sánchez Santamaría’s book Graphic in Transit came out in March of this year.
Like the TGP artists in 20th-century Mexico, Sánchez Santamaría’s art reflects a concern with contemporary issues of social justice.
“Discovering his story, we were thinking it was … very powerful …” Rojas Sotelo said. “Not only because he’s an incredible, very talented graphic artist — he is an artist with a capital ‘A’ in all respects — [but] because of [his] lines of connection to history with revolutionary art in Mexico.”
Rojas Sotelo cites a print that Sánchez Santamaría made while a visiting artist at Duke University. It depicts a real-life incident in which ICE agents arrested a young asylum-seeker from Honduras who was eventually deported.
“There’s a very direct link with the history of the TGP” and Sánchez Santamaría’s work, Rojas Sotelo said.
Another image, entitled Viva Mexico, is a complex depiction of the Mexico-U.S. border through such images as that of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a mulatto woman, the Aztec serpent god Quetzalcoatl and the skyscrapers of the United States.
On one side is a Mexico troubled by unemployment and starvation; on the other side is the American Dream, represented by skyscrapers. The two countries are separated by the dangers of the desert and the Río Grande. “It’s very interesting, the kind of work he does,” Rojas Sotelo said. “There’s a documentary journalistic aspect.”
A self-portrait of the artist, circa 2016.
Another way Sánchez Santamaría addresses Mexico-U.S. border issues is by a depiction of an indigenous nahual as a modern-day coyote leading migrants north.
“He does research on indigenous traditions that still play a role in many of the little towns of deep Mexico,” Rojas Sotelo said. “He loves the idea of el coyote as an owl nahua. The magical, mystical garb at the same time represents an animal moving across a territory. It doesn’t have a border. A nahual or spirit man moves across another [territory]. It’s what a coyote does. It’s very powerful, these visual representations of Mexican traditions.”
More recently, Sánchez Santamaría addressed the Covid-19 pandemic with an updated version of the Mexican Revolution-era catrinas of Jorge Guadalupe Posada. This was done on scratchboard in a style that resembles a print.
It depicts “my new catrina, a character from this era,” the artist said, yet he sees many parallels with history, including with Posada’s catrinas. He also finds a connection with the medieval woodcuts of the victims of death by Hans Holbein the Younger.
Sánchez Santamaría cites one such Holbein woodcut of a monk:
“In this example, the dead wears a monk’s habit. The monks are the most impressive people; they speak the word of God.” Yet this cannot stop them from dying, he notes.
An illustration from the new book on Sergio Sánchez Santamaría’s work.
Unlike in Holbein’s work, Sánchez Santamaría’s catrinas are “not monks, they are more like reggaeton [singers],” dressed in Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes.
In addition to his political themes, some of his other prints show images of nature in Mexico, as well as depictions of the Mexican gallo, or rooster, and even of traditional maize.
“I am particularly interested in his work on representing nature,” Rojas Sotelo said. “His work is full of references to Mexico’s geography, to plants, to trees, to locations.”
Sánchez Santamaría also does works related to his interest in tattoos, as well as to his love of music — he wore a Pink Floyd hoodie during the interview.
“His work is multifaceted,” Rojas Sotelo said.
Indeed, he noted, “[Sánchez Santamaría’s] work has a lot to do with reacting to the times. It’s reflective of kind of what we have with issues of identity, what constitutes being a subject in today’s Mexico, identity constraints on Mexicans, a presence of this hybridizing mix of what Mexican culture is. He reflects on that.”
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The idea for the 'covitario' occurred to Martha Alicia Torres last year when she saw that city workers without social security were being turned away from the public hospitals.
In Culiacán, Sinaloa, a makeshift hospital is offering Covid-19 patients oxygen and medical treatment.
Head of municipal health, Martha Alicia Torres, runs the covitario, which still has a dirt floor and no roof.
Torres, who wears three face masks, said the idea was born of necessity. “The idea came up a year ago when local government workers who didn’t have social security were being turned away from public hospitals and didn’t know how to take care of themselves … Months later we started receiving people without any means and that’s when the consultations rose to 90 per day.” she said.
She estimates about 5,000 patients have passed the covitario, arriving as early as 4:00 a.m. to ensure they get an appointment.
However, the hospital is running on lean resources, Torres said. “There are so many patients who attend the covitario that there is not enough medicine. Today is when you need the help of the politicians who were promising everything in the campaign … Where else are people going to go if the hospitals in Culiacán are full?” she said.
Dr. Torres of Culiacán’s community Covid hospital.
The community hospital survives by the support of other medical professionals, like nurse Rocío Gastelum, who helps out on her days off at the General Hospital. Gastelum said she owed a debt to Torres. “Two of my relatives got sick and Dr. Torres saved them, that’s why I’m here,” she said.
Other volunteers that collect Covid-19 medicines in the city center have also been central to the operation. Activist Martha Camacho said she wanted to give back. “I found out about the covitario because a daughter contracted Covid-19 and that’s where she received all the help to recover.”
Gabriel, 27, is a current patient at the covitario after he couldn’t get treatment in a public hospital, and maintains he has been well assisted by Torres and company. “I have been ill for seven days and I have not stopped attending my appointments with Dr. Torres,” he said.
Sinaloa is one of seven states that are red on the coronavirus stoplight map, according to federal data.
It has been the fifth worst state in terms of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants over the course of the pandemic.
President López Obrador at the zócalo, Mexico City's central square.
President López Obrador asked indigenous people for forgiveness for the fall of Tenochtitlán and called the ensuing domination of Spanish conquistadors “a disaster” at events commemorating the 500th anniversary of the collapse of the Aztec — or Mexica — Empire.
Tenochtitlán was the forbear to Mexico City and the capital of the Mexicas, the dominant ethnic group before the Conquest. After the military defeat on August 13, 1521 the city was looted and razed.
AMLO, as the president is commonly known, spoke on Friday in front of a replica of the Templo Mayor, a temple of spiritual importance destroyed in the Conquest, which was erected in Mexico City’s central square, the zócalo, for the event called 500 years of Indigenous Resistance.
“August 13 is a funeral date … we remember the fall of the great Tenochtitlán and we apologize to the victims of the disaster caused by the Spanish military occupation of Mesoamerica and the territory of the current Mexican republic,” he said.
“The Conquest was a resounding fiasco. How can we call it a civilization if the lives of millions of human beings are lost and the nation, the empire, the dominant monarchy does not even manage to recover the population that existed before the military occupation in three centuries of colonization … The Conquest and colonization are signs of backwardness, not of civilization, less of justice,” he said.
AMLO added that conqueror Hernán Cortes had achieved victory by deception. “A soulless soldier, a bold and ambitious politician … who skillfully took advantage of the divisions and weaknesses of the Mexicas to impose himself with … tricks, terror and violence until he succeeded in seizing the longed-for treasure: the gold and silver of Tenochtitlán.”
Without mentioning his name, the president criticized writer Marcelo Gullo for being a “pro-monarchist,” and resisted the idea that other indigenous populations had been enslaved before the Conquest. Gullo had written: “Spain did not conquer America; Spain liberated America. Asking forgiveness for freeing Mexicans from the Aztecs is like asking forgiveness for having defeated the Nazis.”
The crimes of the Conquest have been a frequently revisited theme during AMLO’s time in office.
In 2019, he requested an apology from the Spanish monarchy and the Vatican for human rights abuses committed, a request which the government of Spain “vigorously rejected.”
In 2020, the president’s wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, traveled to Vienna to pressure a museum into lending the country a headdress said to have been worn by the Moctezuma, the Aztec Emperor toppled on August 13, 1521. That request was also rebuffed.
Mexico shone at this year’s World Youth Archery Championship in Wroclaw, Poland, bringing home three gold medals.
Selene Rodríguez claimed first place in the under-18 compound category, attending her first international competition. She beat Priya Gurjar of India 139-136.
“[I’m] very excited, it’s something I’ve never felt before. I’ve never been a world champion,” Rodríguez said.
In the final against Gurjar, each archer scored 28 points before Rodríguez took a three-point lead over her opponent in the second final. All of her arrows except one landed in the yellow bullseye.
Mexico’s under-21 compound women’s team, composed of Dafne Quintero, Mariana Bernal and Astrid Alanis, also took home gold after beating the Russian team.
On the men’s side, Mexico racked up another win thanks to the under-21 men’s team, made up of Rodrigo Olvera, Sebastián García y Luis Lezama, who won 230-229 against Turkey.
Sharks attack a body floating 124 kilometers north of Progreso.
A body was sighted Friday floating in the ocean 124 kilometers north of Progreso, Yucatán, near Isla Pérez. But before officials could recover the cadaver, it was devoured by sharks.
The body, which was in a state of decomposition and missing its legs, was first spotted by fishermen, who reported the finding to the Yucalpetén naval base. The navy informed the state Ministry of Public Security, which dispatched a team to recover the body.
However, before the team could do so, sharks attacked it and pulled it under the water, which SSP officials recorded on video. They were able to recover some body parts, giving them hints to the man’s identity.
From what officials could see, the body was that of a bearded man with tattoos. Though no fishermen have been reported missing in the area, the body was presumed to belong to a fisherman who fell overboard three days ago, according to rumor.
Violators of traffic laws learn about traffic safety.
The Mexico City Ministry of Transportation (Semovi) had a record-setting attendance at its “bikeschool” in July with 1,278 participants, motorists who had been sanctioned for violating traffic laws.
The bicycle education program is part of the city’s system of consequences for drivers who break the rules of the road. It seeks to raise awareness of the needs of cyclists and pedestrians, and provide information regarding the responsibilities of drivers.
Vehicles begin with 10 points (associated with the license plate number) which they can lose by breaking the speed limit, driving the wrong way down one-way streets, venturing into areas designated for bicyclists and motorcycles, or using cellphones while driving, among other infractions. A vehicle owner who loses five points gets two warnings then must take online safety courses.
If they continue to lose points, the driver then has to attend the one-hour “bikeschool” course. There, students learn about transit rules and put themselves in the place of cyclists, learning about the risks of the road, bicycle hand signals, and more.
“They explain to us the importance of driving and how to coexist with cyclists. They really do teach us. You always have to try to respect everyone … It’s time to be more careful with the speed limit and be more observant of the car’s surroundings,” Leonardo Rivera said of his experience in the class.
The class seems to have the desired effect: the course has reduced repeat law-breaking by 24%, according to course director Fernanda Rivera.
“The ‘bikeschool’ seeks to create sensitivity, above all in the people who have committed an infraction. We teach them about the rights that cyclists have but most importantly, about the way they must drive to guarantee our safety,” she said.
However, the school hasn’t yet managed to change a dangerous trend in transit deaths. According to Semovi, there was an 80% increase in the number of cyclists killed on the road in 2020. And in the first trimester of this year, deaths have doubled.
One “bikeschool” participant suggest that drivers should take the class before they commit an infraction, rather than after.
“It’s very useful,” Ricardo Orozco said. “I think the majority of drivers should take it.”
A large crowd was in the zócalo Friday evening to watch the new multimedia show.
Mexico City’s central square was the scene Friday of the first showings of “Luminous Memory,” a multimedia show celebrating the history of Tenochtitlán on the 500th anniversary of its fall, in a ceremony led by President López Obrador and Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Thousands of people attended the opening night and again on Saturday, but few paid any regard to social distancing measures being promoted to curb the third wave of the coronavirus. Mayor Sheinbaum confirmed that there was an overflow crowd but observed it was fortunate that the event was held outdoors where there was a reduced risk of contagion.
The show, which is part of the government-organized commemoration “500 years of indigenous resistance,” will be shown nightly at 8:30, 9 and 9:30 p.m. until September 1.
A replica of the Templo Mayor serves as the backdrop for the 15-minute show, with images projected on the pyramid’s four sides. The show recounts the legend of the founding of Tenochtitlán, capital of the Aztec empire and precursor to Mexico City, including how the god Huitzilopochtli ordered the Aztecs to build a city in the place where they found an eagle eating a serpent atop a cactus. It goes on to depict the cultural and economic development of the war-like Aztecs, the arrival of Hernán Cortés and his Spanish soldiers, and the eventual fall of the Aztec capital.
To see the show, spectators can enter via the avenues 20 de Noviembre, 6 de Septiembre, Francisco I. Madero and 5 de Mayo. The exits are via Pino Suárez, 5 de Febrero and Tacuba.
The spectacle can also be seen on the city’s Capital 21 television station at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., or online.
The city government has also installed dramatic decorative lighting on the buildings of zócalo, as well as displays in Paseo de la Reforma and three screens on the street 16 de Septiembre, the Plaza del Empedradillo and the intersection of Paseo de la Reforma and Insurgentes. The lights show the glowing image of Quetzalcóatl, the feathered serpent god, as well as other figures from Aztec mythology and Mexican history.
The city government asked that spectators wear a face mask covering both the nose and mouth, use hand gel frequently and bring a raincoat rather than an umbrella, so as to not block the view.
