US demand feeds second-quarter economic growth of 1.5%

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July 30, 2021

People walk by a building under construction in Mexico City.

Buoyed by services and exports to the United States, the Mexican economy grew 1.5% in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter and 19.7% compared to the April-June period of 2020, preliminary data from the national statistics agency Inegi showed on Friday.

It was the fourth consecutive quarter of growth but the 1.5% seasonally adjusted expansion was 0.2% below the average forecast of 14 analysts surveyed by the news agency Reuters.

The near 20% annual expansion, the first year-on-year quarterly growth since the start of the pandemic, is the largest on record.

Much of the Mexican economy was shut down for most of the second quarter of last year as the result of a government-mandated suspension of nonessential activities due to the burgeoning coronavirus outbreak. GDP slumped 8.5% in 2020, the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, as Covid-19 ravaged the economy.

Inegi data showed that secondary sector activities, including manufacturing, were up 28.2% in the April-June quarter compared to the same period of last year. Demand for Mexican-made cars and electronics in the United States drove the strong result.

Data also showed that tertiary activities, including trade and financial services, were up 17% annually in the second quarter, while primary activities, including agriculture and fishing, were up a more modest 6.8%. Domestic consumption was buoyed by record remittances sent home by Mexicans working abroad.

Quarter-on-quarter growth was 2.1% in the tertiary sector, 0.6% in the primary sector and 0.4% in the secondary sector, Inegi said.

Despite the second-quarter growth, GDP was still 3.6% below the level it achieved in the July-September quarter of 2019, said Gabriel Casillas, an economist at the bank Banorte. The economy was already contracting when the coronavirus hit Mexico in early 2020.

After last year’s steep recession there is plenty of scope for growth, although the third wave of the pandemic will likely dampen the recovery in the third and fourth quarters.

“We expect real GDP growth to reach 6% in 2021, but the recent deterioration of the Covid backdrop, high inflation and rising rates could slow down the envisaged recovery,” Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos said in a note to clients.

He also said that growth in the second quarter was hampered by supply chain disruptions and a shortage of parts, including computer chips, for key industries.

Growth in the first quarter of 2021 was 0.8% compared to the previous three-month period but GDP declined 2.8% compared to the January-March period of 2020. Mexico announced its first confirmed Covid-19 case on February 28, 2020. The accumulated tally now stands at more than 2.8 million while the official Covid-19 death toll reached almost 240,000 on Thursday.

With reports from El Economista and Reuters

In US, Iguala case closed after gang leaders negotiate deal with prosecutors

By

MND Staff

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July 30, 2021

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A protest against the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from Iguala, Guerrero — A protest against the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero.

The United States is set to close its investigation into crimes allegedly related to the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014.

A leader of the Guerreros Unidos crime gang – which allegedly killed the Ayotzinapa rural teacher’s college students – has confessed to transporting drugs from Iguala to Chicago and reached an agreement with the United States government to provide information to the U.S. about the illegal smuggling.

Pablo Vega, who has been in prison in the United States for the past seven years, pleaded guilty in April to transporting drugs to the U.S. in passenger buses, according to the newspaper Milenio, which reviewed official U.S. documents. The details of the agreement he reached with U.S. authorities is classified but it appears likely he will be released from prison as a result of his agreement to collaborate.

José Rodríguez, an associate of Vega who was also a member of the Guerreros Unidos, is currently in negotiations with U.S. authorities and pending an agreement will officially plead guilty to trafficking charges on September 1, Milenio said.

Once that occurs the Ayotzinapa-Iguala case will be officially closed in the United States.

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) determined several years ago that the Guerreros Unidos had transported heroin to the United States on passenger buses. The gang transported the heroin in hidden panels on the buses that ran from its territory in Iguala to Aurora, a suburb of Chicago, the DEA established.

By intercepting dozens of messages Vega received on his Blackberry phone, the DEA also concluded that Guerreros Unidos members in the United States were aware of the abduction of the 43 students on September 26, 2014.

The students were on a bus they had commandeered to travel to a protest in Mexico City when they were intercepted and came under attack by Iguala municipal police. Independent experts who investigated the students’ disappearance said that one hypothesis is that the bus on which they were traveling was carrying drugs and would have left for the United States had it not been commandeered. It was allegedly one of five buses carrying drugs that was scheduled to depart for the U.S. on the day the students disappeared.

According to the previous federal government’s official version of events, the students were intercepted by corrupt municipal police who handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos. Gang members then killed the students, burned their bodies in a dump in the municipality of Cocula and disposed of their remains in a nearby river, according to the so-called “historical truth” presented in January 2015.

But the “historical truth” was rejected by the current government, which established a truth commission and launched a new investigation. It hasn’t yet presented its own definitive version of events but is expected to do so soon. The remains of just three of the 43 students have been formally identified. The remains of two of those showed no evidence of fire damage, leading Omar Gómez Trejo, the special prosecutor in charge of the reexamination of the case, to declare that the “historical truth is over.”

In order to disprove the previous theory the current government has been relying heavily on the declarations of a protected witness known only as Juan, Milenio reported this week. The man – a suspected leader of the Guerreros Unidos who says he didn’t participate in the events of September 26 – provided testimony to the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) in early 2020 (which was subsequently leaked) that asserted that the army and state police were directly involved in the disappearance of the 43 students.

Protesters carry signs showing the faces of the disappeared Ayotzinapa students

In a court appearance in May, Juan presented information that added to and clarified his earlier testimony.

He said that the army, Federal Police, Guerrero police and Iguala municipal police all collaborated with the Guerreros Unidos on the night of the students’ disappearance. Juan also said that Jesús Pérez Lagunas, a Guerreros Unidos leader known as “El Güero Mugres” (The Filthy Blondie), issued an order for all the students to be killed.

Milenio noted that authorities had not previously linked Pérez to the disappearance of the students. El Güero Mugres was murdered in 2018.

Juan previously said that three groups of students and suspected hitmen from a rival gang were detained on September 26. One group was taken away by the Guerreros Unidos, another was placed in the custody of state police and the third group was transported to an army base in Guerrero, he said.

Juan said the group taken to the army base was interrogated before being handed over to a cell of the Guerreros Unidos. Some of the students and suspected gang members were already dead at that time, he said.

The witness said the Guerreros Unidos killed those who were still alive and dissolved the bodies of the deceased in acid and caustic soda. Liquid remains were then poured down the drain, he said. Other students and suspected gangsters were allegedly butchered with machetes and axes at a cartel hideout in Iguala before some of their remains were cremated at a funeral home on the outskirts of Iguala.

Ashes were allegedly scattered in various locations, including in the municipality of Cocula, which borders Iguala. All told, 70 or 80 people including the 43 students were killed on September 26 and 27, 2014, Juan told the FGR.

In his new testimony, he asserted that state and federal security officials including former Guerrero security minister Leonardo Octavio Vázquez Pérez, ex-attorney general Iñaki Blanco and an army captain were on the Guerreros Unidos’ payroll and in cahoots with El Güero Mugres. He previously accused Omar Harfuch, Mexico City’s police chief, who was previously a Federal Police coordinator in Guerrero, of being on the gang’s payroll but didn’t mention him in his most recent testimony.

Juan received the information he presented to authorities via radio and text messages and at a meeting on September 30, 2014, with Guerreros Unidos members involved in the crimes, Milenio said.

Although 43 students disappeared, the Guerreros Unidos didn’t think that the case would become such big news, Juan told the court during his appearance at the hearing in May. The case triggered mass protests against the federal government less than two years after former president Enrique Peña Nieto took office, and there was some belief – and a lot of hope – at the time that he could be ousted.

“Fue el estado,” or “It was the state” was a constant refrain at those protests and many, if not most, Mexicans remain convinced that federal security forces were involved in the students’ disappearance.

With reports from Milenio

Why I only speak to my Mexican daughter in English

By

Sarah DeVries

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July 30, 2021

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Bilingual child — Making sure your child growing up in Mexico learns both Spanish and your native language isn't hard, but it does require some forethought and consistency.Marta Ortiz/Shutterstock

It wasn’t until my daughter reached kindergarten that she realized that the ability to speak English was something other people thought was cool.

“Bye, Mommy! Have a good day, Mommy! I’ll see you in the afternoon, Mommy!” she’d shout for all to hear as she walked toward her classroom. She seemed to relish the head turns from the parents and the open-mouthed stares of her classmates. I mean, it’s not every day that being different makes you cooler (as opposed to simply weirder).

At home, it has always been natural for her to use one language with me and another language with her father and anyone else who happened to be around. Her “mother tongue” has mostly been exactly that: the language she speaks with her mother. The rest of her world, except when we travel to the United States or have visitors from there, is in Spanish.

Today, we’re going to take some time away from all the sad news of the day and the types of articles that earn me angry comments on Facebook and focus instead on a question I get quite a lot: how did you teach your kid English?

I, of course, haven’t sat down to “teach” her as I would kids in a classroom; that’s not how native language acquisition works.

But before I came to Mexico, I’d always figured that being a foreigner in a foreign country and having kids there would pretty much do it; not so, I’ve found! However, it’s not as complicated as it seems if you just follow a few simple rules:

Only speak to your child in your native language — especially if you’re the foreigner.

This is by far the most important item on the list. In fact, you could do only this and you and your kids would probably be golden.

This seems simple, but I’ve observed many native English-speaking parents in Mexico — mostly fathers, for some reason — speak to their children primarily in (not very good) Spanish. I have some theories on why men especially do this, but that could be an entirely different article. For now, we’ll just stick with the do this, not this instructions.

Anyway! Insisting on this point (and you must insist for this to work) means that if they want to talk to you, they’ll have to do it in your language. All the time. Or at least … 99% of the time?

It’s possible, even likely, that you’ll meet some resistance from your child at some point. After all, speaking in one language with everybody instead of two with different sets of people is easier.

In my daughter’s case, she tried to insist for about two days when she was two years old that I speak in Spanish, since she obviously knew I spoke it. She’d ask me for things in Spanish and get mad when I responded, “You have to speak to Mommy in English, sweetie.”

She eventually did, and all has been well since then. In fact, on the off occasion that I say something in Spanish to her, she looks at me strangely and says, “Why are you speaking Spanish?”

One last note here: don’t feel guilty about insisting your kids speak to you in your language. Being a permanent foreigner and second-language speaker in nearly every aspect of your life is hard. You deserve to have at least one person in your immediate family with whom you can speak in your own language.

Watch movies, listen to music, and read books in the foreign language on a regular basis.

As many a foreign-language course client will tell you, media won’t do the entire job for you. However, just like in one’s native language, hearing different dialects and accents of a language in different formats is enriching and entertaining and can help with grammar, vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, collocations, pronunciation — all those things that people spend years in English-language classes to learn.

When my little one was younger, I would simply turn on shows and movies for her in English and choose books in English to read to her. Now that she’s older, she prefers a mix, and I mostly oblige since it’s simply a matter of preference: Hercules is better in Spanish (apparently), and Sing is best in English.

Most of the children’s books we have are in English, but if she wants one in Spanish, I’ll read it to her and let her marvel at her mother’s foreign accent in a language in which her own pronunciation is flawless.

Visit your native country with your child whenever you can so that they are forced to use the language with people besides you.

My daughter was 1 1/2 the first time we visited the United States. For the first day, she was very shy about speaking English with anyone but me; after all, she’d never really done it before!

In the end, she was motivated by pie; my mom had made one, and my daughter wanted a piece of it. When I refused to ask for some on her behalf, she finally got up the nerve to do it herself. The rest is history!

What if you can’t travel back frequently to your native country with your child — say, if there’s a global pandemic, for instance? The next best thing is having other native speakers of the foreign language speak with your child as much as possible — I mean, if you like them and want to spend time with them, of course.

Don’t be alarmed if your child takes longer than others to start speaking.

When babies realize there is more than one language being spoken by the important people around them, they pay close attention. And in most bilingual households, they pay close attention for a considerably longer time than kids in monolingual homes do.

In my case, my daughter surprised me and started speaking in phrases and sentences in both languages at about the same rate as her Spanish-speaking peers did. I was not expecting it, and aside from the belief, as all parents have, that my child is obviously a genius, I figured that she just really, really, wanted to start communicating.

Is my daughter’s English as good as that of a 7-year-old child who has grown up in the United States? Honestly, I don’t know; I don’t know any other gringo kids, here or at home, to compare her to. Those of you out there with experience raising bilingual kids, what have you noticed? I’d be curious to hear other people’s stories.

She doesn’t have an accent in either language, though, and when she says something in English that’s adorably wrong and that has very obviously been translated from either Spanish grammar or slang vocabulary, I say, “Oh, in English you say [insert English translation here]. Can you say that for me?”

She repeats the phrase, and then it’s learned.

Really, that’s all it takes.

Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com and her Patreon page.

Removing sargassum from beaches proves costly for hotels, says industry group

By

MND Staff

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July 30, 2021

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Beaches in Quintana Roo have been inundated by massive amounts of sargassum seaweed. — Beaches in Quintana Roo have been inundated by large amounts of sargassum.

Beachfront hotels in Quintana Roo are spending US $70,000 to $90,000 each per month on containing sargassum and removing the seaweed from the beach, according to the head of an industry group.

Antonio Chávez, president of the Riviera Maya Hotel Association, said the outlay is as high as it is because hotels have installed their own sargassum barriers in the sea and have to maintain them on a daily basis.

The use of machinery to clear the smelly, unsightly seaweed from beaches and the hiring of workers to manually remove it adds to hotels’ costs.

During the sargassum season, which is expected to last eight months this year, hotels in destinations such as Cancún and Playa del Carmen will spend more than $500,000 each on contention and removal efforts, Chávez said.

He said the navy’s removal of sargassum from the ocean is welcome but pointed out that the quantities it extracts are dwarfed by the amounts that reach Quintana Roo’s famous white sand beaches.

The sargassum situation in Quintana Roo as of Tuesday afternoon. sargassum monitoring network

While the navy has reported removing about 500 tonnes of sargassum from offshore, hotels have cleared more than 5,000 tonnes from beaches, Chávez said. That’s proof that the navy isn’t deploying enough sargassum-gathering vessels, he said.

Chávez also said that navy vessels have nowhere to dock in northern Quintana Roo to offload sargassum they have collected. Instead they get as close to the coast as they can and release the sargassum back into the water where small boats recollect it and take it to shore for disposal. The exercise slows the whole sargassum-gathering process down, Chávez said, adding that taxes municipalities collect from foreign tourists should go to the construction of a wharf where navy vessels can dock.

The most recent map published by the Quintana Roo Sargassum Monitoring Network shows that there are abundant quantities of the seaweed on most of the state’s north coast with excessive amounts on beaches in the Tulum area.

However, the navy said this week that sargassum arrivals are expected to decline in August and September due to changing ocean currents. The first reductions should be seen within the next two weeks, said Lieutenant Reynaldo Varga of the navy’s Gulf and Caribbean Oceanography Institute.

With reports from El Economista and Periódico Viaje

Author Tony Burton seeks out Jalisco’s forgotten histories and mysteries

By

John Pint

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July 30, 2021

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former Chapala, Jalisco, train station — The Chapala train station, designed in 1917, is now the González Gallo Cultural Center. Burton connects the birth of the railroad in Mexico with the beginning of tourism in places like Chapala.Turismo Jalisco

Whenever I’m looking for the story behind some curious Mexican custom or the history of a venerable old hacienda that I’ve stumbled upon in my travels, I find myself reaching for one of several books written by Tony Burton.

Have you ever heard of the Pastry War, which occurred between Mexico and France in the 1800s? Tony Burton tells the story in the book Western Mexico — A Traveler’s Treasury:

The Pastry War began when Mexico refused to pay compensation for damages to a pastry shop owned by a Frenchman in Mexico City. The shop had allegedly been looted during riots in 1828.

Ten years later, the French government used this pretext — and other losses that had occurred at the same time to other French property — to demand US $600,000 in damages from the Mexican government of [Mexican president Antonio] Bustamante. The French also sought a preferential trading agreement with Mexico.

Bustamante considered the claim for looted pastries to be preposterous and refused to pay or to consider the trade agreement. Outraged, the French brought up a fleet from the Caribbean island of Martinique and blockaded Veracruz.

Tony Burton at book launch of Geo-Mexico in Ajijic, Jalisco — British-born geographer and writer Tony Burton, left, at the book launching of Geo-Mexico in Ajijic, Jalisco.

Seven months later, the French added US $200,000 to their demand to cover the costs of the blockade. Bustamante finally gave in and paid in full, whereupon the French fleet sailed off.

Even if you know all about the Pastry War, you may have no idea where to find the world’s deepest water-filled sinkhole. Well, you don’t have far to look if you live south of the United States border.

The book Geo-Mexico, by Richard Rhoda and Tony Burton, tells us that the El Zacatón Cenote on Rancho Azufrosa near Aldama, Tamaulipas, “is the deepest water-filled sinkhole anywhere on the planet. A 2007 NASA-funded study proved that it is a staggering 335 meters (1099 ft) deep.”

Tony Burton is also the author of Mexican Kaleidoscope: Myths, Mysteries and Mystique, as well as If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants. I decided it was time to present Burton and his books to readers of Mexico News Daily, though many of you, no doubt, are already among his fans:

John Pint: Tony Burton, you are a British geographer. How did you become interested in Mexico?

Tony Burton: I first visited Mexico in 1977 when I backpacked solo all across southern Mexico for a summer. When I was offered the opportunity two years later to work in Mexico City [to teach at Greengates School], I jumped at the chance. One thing led to another, and within a few years, I had visited every state in the country (most of them several times), my collection of books related to Mexico was growing and my “must-see” list was becoming quite small!

Zacatón, the world’s deepest cenote. Pioneer cave diver Sheck Exley died here in 1994 trying to reach its bottom. Alex_sc

JP: Can you tell me something about your latest book, If Walls Could Talk?

TB: When researching the history of tourism in Mexico for Geo-Mexico, I realized that most previous accounts began with Acapulco, which first became popular in the 1920s. But where did tourists visit before that? In many ways, the growth of tourism in Mexico began with the railroads. As the nation’s railroad network expanded at the end of the 19th century, it not only made major provincial cities more accessible, it also led to the development of the lakeside town of Chapala as Mexico’s earliest purpose-built resort destination.

Almost overnight, a small fishing village became a resort with several hotels, dozens of fine villas and chalets and a yacht club. It attracted many foreign writers and artists, whose books and paintings helped popularize it. The 1910 revolution put a temporary brake on tourism, but many of these historic buildings still stand. Even today, it is quite easy to walk around Chapala and recognize the many fine examples of early vacation-oriented architecture. The mix of old and new, and the many extraordinary people who have lived there over the years, are what make Chapala such a fascinating town. Hence my book about Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants.

JP: Can you give me an example of one of these houses with a curious history?

TB: If I’m limited to only a single example, I’ll have to go with Mi Pullman, an unusually tall and skinny house just back from the lakefront, designed by local architect Guillermo de Alba as his family home. The proportions of this small building, completed in 1906, resemble a Pullman rail car, hence the name.

De Alba designed numerous private homes and hotels in both Chapala and in Guadalajara and was commissioned in 1917 — by Norwegian entrepreneur Christian Schjetnan, a near neighbor — to design the beautiful Chapala Railroad Station [now the González Gallo Cultural Center]. As for Mi Pullman, by the 1990s, it had fallen into a terrible state of repair, though its ground-floor rooms were still being used for the local tourism office.

Mi Pullman House — Mi Pullman as it looked in 2019. The house was designed by architect Guillermo de Alba and built in 1906. Tony Burton

Fortuitously, in 2004, a visiting Englishwoman, Rosalind Chenery, fell in love with the dilapidated building. She spent several years persuading the owners to sell and then restored this gorgeous art nouveau townhouse to its former glory, inside and out. Chenery tells the full story in Mi Pullman: Remodeling a Mexican Art Nouveau Townhouse.

JP: How about your book Mexican Kaleidoscope? Can you share one of those mysteries with us?

TB: Seriously? Only one? Well, rather than the story of why rubber balls bounce (and don’t simply shatter) or the reasons why ancient astronomers held a conference in Xochicalco in the eighth century to reboot their calendar, I’m opting for the mystery related to the pyramids of Comalcalco in Tabasco.

The pyramids were built by the Chontal Maya, using thousands of flat, rectangular bricks held in place by a mortar made mainly from oyster shells. The workmanship is impressive, but the bricks hide a secret: during restoration, archaeologists realized that many of the bricks bore mysterious symbols or inscriptions, and sometimes even the brickmakers’ fingerprints.

Most of the symbols are thought to be brickmasons’ signs. But the really curious thing is that these marks are virtually identical to the masons’ marks used by the Romans, half a world away in Europe. In Mexican Kaleidoscope, I examine the evidence for the claim that the Romans may have been in the Americas a thousand years before Columbus, or that their influence was introduced to Comalcalco via India.

• If this all-too-brief introduction to the works of Tony Burton has whetted your appetite, you’ll find all of his books listed on his Amazon page.

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.

drawing of ruins of Comalcalco in Tabasco — The ruins of Comalcalco in Tabasco, the only major Maya city built with bricks instead of limestone. Enrique Velázquez

Masons' marks on Roman bricks, left compared with marks at Comalcalco, right — A sampling of the masons’ marks on Roman bricks, left, compared with Maya markings at Comalcalco, right. After Fell and Barry, 1990

Cover of If Walls Could Talk by Tony Burton — Cover of *If Walls Could Talk* by Tony Burton. The art is from a photo by Winfield Scott, published as a postcard in 1905.

Western Mexico, A Traveler's Treasury book — *Western Mexico, A Traveler’s Treasury*, first published in 1993, is the indispensable guide to Jalisco and its surrounding states.

Where is the birthplace of sangritas and the Cholula brand hot sauce? The Widow’s Bar in Chapala: see Chapter 5 of *If Walls Could Talk*. Rimma Bondarenko.

Mexican Kaleidoscope book by Tony Burton — *Mexican Kaleidoscope* is a collection of little-known but well-documented facts that leave a reader with an urge to explore Mexico.

Morena takes aim at electoral authority amid doubts over turnout for referendum

By

MND Staff

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July 30, 2021

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The referendum on whether ex-officials should be investigated for possible crimes is scheduled for this Sunday, August 1. — The referendum on whether ex-officials should be investigated for possible crimes is scheduled for Sunday.

The ruling Morena party has accused the National Electoral Institute (INE) of sabotaging this Sunday’s referendum at which citizens will be asked whether past presidents and other ex-officials should be investigated for crimes they might have committed while in office.

The party’s secretary general said the INE and opposition parties will be to blame if the 40% voter turnout – approximately 37 million Mexicans – required to make the vote binding is not achieved.

“If the consultation doesn’t achieve its objective in terms of participation to be binding, without a doubt the main reason … will be the INE,” Citlalli Hernández said in an interview with the newspaper Milenio.

While many citizens have promoted the referendum, the INE “has placed obstacles” in the way of participation because it has barely publicized it, expressed opinions against it and will only set up one-third the number of voting points it set up at last month’s elections, she said.

“… The job of the electoral authority is to use all its institutional strength to promote citizens’ participation, but we see a systematic process that allows us to affirm that the INE is sabotaging this cons,ultation,” Hernández said.

She claimed that some INE officials have become political activists who are opposed to President López Obrador (who proposed the referendum) Morena, and all the initiatives they put forward.

“… The consultation is legitimate, legal and constitutional and the job of the INE is to guarantee citizens’ participation … but they [INE officials] have discredited it publicly and they’re increasingly driven … by their [political] affinities and phobias,” Hernández said.

“In addition to discouraging [participation], I believe that the electoral authority has shown scant seriousness in attending to such an important process as this referendum is.”

Hernández also took aim at opposition parties, saying that their call for citizens to boycott the vote – in which the Institutional Revolutionary Party and National Action Party presidents are referred to indirectly in the referendum question – is an attack on democracy.

“Any persons who call themselves democrats must promote it [democracy] regardless of the content of the consultation,” she said.

Citlalli Hernández, general secretary of the Morena ruling party — Citlalli Hernández, general secretary of the Morena party.

Morena national president Mario Delgado also accused the INE of sabotage, asserting on Twitter that thousands of Mexicans have been unable to locate their nearest voting station when using the INE website tool designed for that purpose.

“The sabotage of the INE before the referendum is unbelievable, its system doesn’t work; we have thousands of reports of people unable to locate their [voting] table,” he wrote. “… We demand seriousness and respect for the will of the people.”

Delgado also said that Morena will seek to hold past presidents to account even if voter turnout is below 40% and a majority doesn’t vote in favor of investigating Carlos Salinas, Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto for alleged wrongdoings.

“Regardless of the result of the referendum, in Morena we’re going to seek a way for a truth commission to be created and for the ex-presidents to pay for the crimes they committed. We’re not going to rest until justice is served,” he said.

However, ex-presidents and other former officials don’t have immunity from prosecution so there is no reason why they can’t be prosecuted – without the need for a referendum – if there is evidence they committed a crime.

Delgado said the vote is not just about the past but also the future.

“If we never again want to have homicidal and criminal presidents we have to go out and participate. We have to break through the inaction of the electoral authority that is discouraging people’s participation – due to a lack of money, they say, but they haven’t wanted to reduce their exorbitant salaries,” he said.

INE president Lorenzo Córdova defended the electoral body’s management of the referendum and declared that it will be a success no matter how many people turn out to vote.

“Hopefully it will be [all of] the 93.5 million [enrolled voters] who participate but whatever the percentage of participation is, this [referendum] is already a success. This is the first serious referendum at a federal level and the number [of participants] will be unprecedented with respect to those there have been in the past. It will be historic,” he said Thursday.

Córdova said that the question on the referendum will be exactly as the Supreme Court stipulated and rejected Morena’s claim that voters are being asked whether former presidents should face trial.

A flyer encouraging participation in the national referendum.

He indicated that he was unconcerned about the criticism the INE will likely face if turnout is below the 40% threshold, asserting that the institute will only be strengthened by the referendum process.

The vote, which will cost approximately 520 million pesos (US $26.2 million), will take place between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. this Sunday, with the INE to set up almost 57,000 voting “tables.”

The question, described by the newspaper The Economist as Cantinflan, or convoluted, is as follows:

“Are you in agreement or not that appropriate actions in accordance with the constitutional and legal framework be carried out in order to undertake actions of clarification of political decisions taken in the past by political actors, aimed at guaranteeing justice and the rights of the possible victims?”

With reports from Milenio

AMLO to issue decree freeing thousands of prison inmates

By

MND Staff

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July 29, 2021

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Interior Minister Sánchez: more than 90,000 people who have never been sentenced are being held in the country's prisons.

A presidential decree is set to release thousands of prisoners from Mexican jails including those aged 75 and over who didn’t commit a serious crime and victims of torture.

President López Obrador said Thursday he would sign the decree next week ordering the release of federal prisoners who fall into four categories.

They are prisoners accused of non-serious crimes who have been incarcerated for more than 10 years without a sentence; prisoners who were victims of torture regardless of the crime of which they are accused; inmates aged 65 and over with chronic illnesses who didn’t commit a serious crime such as murder; and prisoners aged 75 and over who didn’t commit a serious crime.

The decree to free such prisoners will be drawn up by the Interior Ministry and take effect by September 15, López Obrador told his regular news conference.

Interior Minister Olga Sánchez said there are more than 94,000 people in prison who haven’t received a sentence. Of that number, more than 12,000 are incarcerated in federal prisons.

López Obrador said he hoped state authorities would consider releasing prisoners in the same categories from penitentiaries they operate.

He said the Ministry of Health will carry out assessments of prisoners aged over 65 to determine if they are suffering from a chronic disease.

Prisoners’ claims of torture will be assessed in accordance with the United Nations Istanbul Protocol on the effective investigation and documentation of torture.

The UN said in 2018 that many of the suspects accused of involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in Guerrero in 2014 were tortured. Human rights organizations have denounced Mexico for using torture as a means to obtain confessions from criminal suspects.

The federal Congress passed an amnesty law early last year that allowed the release of some prisoners. Although impunity rates are very high in Mexico, some of its prisons are severely overcrowded, a problem that could be alleviated somewhat by the upcoming mass release.

With reports from Reuters and Milenio

The long Covid nightmare: rashes, nausea, brain fog and rage

By

Bodie Kellogg

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July 29, 2021

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Part 1 of this story of the writer’s memories of his pandemic experiences in 2020 ended with he and his housemate, The Captured Tourist Woman (TCTW), searching for a competent doctor to treat her case of Covid-19. In this conclusion, the couple go down an even more complicated road in search of relief from her months of symptoms afterward.

She got over the initial infection, but then long Covid kicked in with a spontaneous rash.

The first doctor she found prescribed steroids for five days. By the end of the week, she was feeling good and the rash had diminished.

But then, three days later, the rash returned with a vengeance, along with several new symptoms — the worst of which was a smoldering rage.

During this emotional period, I spent much of my time avoiding nonessential interactions with her.

recovered long-Covid patient in Mazatlan — The T-shirt says it all.

One evening, we walked a block to get food when we encountered an older woman not wearing a mask. TCTW’s new fury stepped up: she immediately began berating this senior citizen for her lack of concern for others. When I noticed her hands bunching into fists, I grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her around and quickly escorted her away from the bewildered matron.

It was time to try another doctor.

The second physician put her on a different steroid for three weeks. Both her rage and her rash diminished, but when she started having to shave her face, we decided it was again time to change doctors.

Over weeks, two other doctors gave her medications that we later learned should never have been prescribed. Her condition(s) grew worse.

After wide inquiries, TCTW set up appointments to interview five of the most well-regarded Covid physicians in town. Three wanted to put her back on steroids. One said that her several months of misery was due to something she ate (seriously).

But the last one was a winner.

Her new doctor forbade her from taking any more steroids and immediately had her get an elaborate blood test. After reviewing her results, he put her on a number of different medications.

Since this doctor had his office right next to the full Covid ward at the city’s largest private hospital and spoke to her in terms she thought reflected high competency, we had high hopes. The new medications eliminated her dependence on the steroids, modulated her ugly mood and diminished her rash, but a nagging brain fog remained.

Then the nausea began. The doctor wanted a urine sample, along with more blood tests. When we arrived at the lab and she pulled the urine container from her purse, The Captured Tourist Woman and the receptionist both looked at it in open-mouthed horror: it was no longer full.

The assumption that the container was liquid-tight was a pure expat mistake. We then realized that since we had not specifically asked for a liquid-tight container, this predicament was completely of our own making.

As noses in the room began wrinkling with disgust, I quickly relegated her purse to the trunk of my car.

The medication failed to control her retching. Over the weeks, which turned into months, as things got worse, we tried some natural cures: green apples and ginger were the two most touted on the internet, along with cannabis.

marjiuana joints — Medicinal marijuana helped with the constant nausea, but not for very long. Craig F. Scott/Shutterstock

The centro mercado (central market) had the apples and ginger, but the cannabis required a visit to a neighbor who sported brightly colored dreadlocks. The apples and ginger worked at first, but soon lost their effectivity; time for the cannabis.

I fired up the joint, took a hit just to make sure it wasn’t oregano and handed it to TCTW, who took a couple of good tokes and passed it back. Twenty minutes later, her nausea was gone and she was loudly laughing and smiling for the first time in months. It was short-lived, however.

Her nausea returned, and we realized that we would need to become the Mazatlán incarnation of Cheech and Chong in order to fight her long-term illness with cannabis. And neither of us could have kept up with the cost of the Pringles chips she was driven to devour at the end of each session.

She got a new prescription for anti-nausea medication. We had high hopes that she was finally on the road to recovery. However, the medication would not stay down long enough to be effective.

By this time, she had lost about 15 kilograms and had very little energy. She was becoming seriously dehydrated; it was time for the hospital.

At the admitting desk, her doctor immediately whisked her off to a saline drip while I dealt with the inordinate amount of paperwork.

Whenever I need to deal with any Mexican institution or bureaucracy, I am still always stunned by the volume of paper created for even the most rudimentary of transactions. Complex transactions will require your signature, multiple times, everywhere but on the edge of the paper, and will often be festooned with a colorful assortment of mechanical stamps.

As TCTW was being set up in a room, I soon discovered I was involved in a complex transaction with someone who had the demeanor of a low-rent bill collector. He started by handing me a four-page contract for services, all in 10-point font and, of course, all in Spanish. I began at the top of the first sheet and slowly worked my way down.

After about three minutes, the man carefully removed the contract from my hands, laid it on the counter and handed me a pen while pointing to the signature line at the bottom. I told him I needed to read through the whole document just for a vague understanding as to what I was signing.

TCTW had been an attorney in her life before Mexico, and she would give me a right good thumping for signing something unread. So I asked the man to explain what the four-page contract said. I was told that the hospital would need a 25,000-peso deposit immediately and would need to collect a similar amount, or maybe more, every other day.

This employee had just summed up four pages of single-spaced, small-font, convoluted legalese in less than 15 words. Obfuscation with a smile.

I told him that he needed to speak to my attorney, who was somewhere on the third floor. Even in her diminished state, TCTW would easily sort this guy out, plus she had a complete collection of credit and debit cards in her somewhat smelly purse.

Covid patient leaving hospital in Mazatlán — Months later, the recovered and masked Captured Tourist Woman leaves a Mazatlán hospital.

It took eight days of several types of intravenous medication to bring her back from the brink. With the exception of the pushy bill collector, her hospital stay was as pleasant as something like that could be, especially after they moved her off the bland diet and she discovered the hospital’s tortilla soup was superb.

As we have moved through this global event so far — and we know it’s not over — we both learned new things about ourselves and the people around us: our circle of friends has dwindled while at the same time become more authentic; we discovered, to our delight, that having most of our daily needs assuaged by servicios a domicilio (home delivery) was rather sumptuous, and it’s become a convenient routine.

Also: not all doctors are competent, and not all urine containers are liquid-tight.

Get the vaccinations and wear the mask. This can be some serious shit.

The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half-wild dog. He can be reached at [email protected].

Journalists rally to defend newspaper in face of ongoing attacks by government

By

MND Staff

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July 29, 2021

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lopez obrador — The president displays a graph indicating by news outlet the number of stories that cast his government in a negative light.

More than 100 columnists and other contributors to El Universal have put their names to an open letter to President López Obrador to defend themselves and the newspaper in the face of ongoing attacks by the federal government.

“The president of Mexico has mentioned El Universal and its columnists and contributors on several occasions, sowing the idea that all criticism of his administration has an interest unconnected to journalism,” the letter said.

“This has no foundation at all. Freedom of speech is not the fruit of revenge nor of a conspiracy, it’s a hard won right in this country.”

Endorsed by columnists such as retired Supreme Court judge José Ramón Cossío Díaz, United States-based Mexico expert Duncan Wood, former first lady Margarita Zavala and cartoonists including Ángel Boligán, the letter asserted that El Universal doesn’t impose an editorial line on its contributors, who represent a “variety of positions and political opinions.”

Nor does the newspaper ask its contributors to join “campaigns of any kind,” it said.

“Those of us who write here are the masters of our own voices, pens [and] opinions,” the El Universal contributors said, adding that they they are not motivated by political and economic interests but rather “the quest for independent, rigorous and critical journalism.”

“President: what we do is called journalism, not yearning for supposed lost privileges,” the letter said, referring to López Obrador’s repeated claims that those who are critical of him and his government are angry at the loss of privileges they enjoyed during previous administrations.

The contributors rejected any suggestion that they are motivated by any other interest beyond providing “information and analysis of reality for our readers.”

Several journalists, including some that work for other media outlets, offered personal defenses of El Universal.

“Nobody ever called me to tell me, ‘Don’t go and publish that,’” said well known journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva, referring to years during which he contributed to the publication that describes itself as “The Great Newspaper of Mexico.”

“I had absolute freedom during the years in which, according to López Obrador, we all shut up,” he said in a radio interview.

An opinion piece by the British newspaper The Economist — An opinion piece by the British newspaper *The Economist* got a special mention Wednesday for its ‘deceitful news.’

The president has claimed that media outlets – many of which have depended heavily on government advertising to stay afloat – were in cahoots with previous governments and not critical of them as a result.

Echoing a call from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Manuel Clouthier, an El Universal columnist and brother of Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier, urged the government to scrap its “journalism lessons” – fake news exposé sessions officially called “who’s who in this week’s lies” that recently became a once-a-week feature of López Obrador’s weekday conferences.

The government presents “good journalism” as that in favor of President López Obrador, while journalism that is critical of the government is “bad, self-interested, sensationalist or conservative,” Clouthier charged.

Another “who’s who” of lies session was presented on Wednesday by the government’s fake news debunker-in-chief, Ana Elizabeth García Vilchis.

After explaining that fake news is “all pseudo-journalistic content” that seeks to pass itself off as real news, García asserted that the government’s aim was not to denigrate the media but to merely question it and expose lies and corruption.

An El Universal article asserting that the budget for the new Mexico City airport has been cut by 90% is false and a column by The Economist about this Sunday’s referendum over whether former presidents should be investigated for corruption is an example of “deceitful news,” she said.

“… We want to provide a relevant piece of information,” García said, explaining that there were 73 newspaper, television and radio reports based on The Economist column that portrayed the federal government in a negative light.

In addition, there were countless columns and opinion pieces that echoed criticisms of López Obrador that were first published by the British newspaper, she said. García also presented a study that monitored media coverage of the president.

“… In terms of print media, Reforma, El Universal, El Financiero, El Economista and La Crónica stand out for the most negative mentions about Andrés Manuel López Obrador” she said.

The coverage of the president by Reforma – also a frequent punching bag of the president – and El Universal was overwhelmingly negative, García said, explaining that there were 20 “negative mentions” about López Obrador for each positive one in both newspapers.

She singled out the journalists Joaquín López-Dóriga, Maricarmen Cortés and Mario Maldonado and the cartoonist Pacasso as “leaders” in the negative coverage of the president.

López-Dóriga, a Spanish-Mexican journalist who has his own news site, responded that he wouldn’t be intimidated by the government, while Maldonado said that his inclusion on the list of López Obrador’s chief critics added to his justification for signing the El Universal letter directed to the president.

Julio Hernández appeared Wednesday to defend himself against accusations made last week by the government's Ana Elizabeth García — Julio Hernández appeared Wednesday to defend himself against accusations made last week by the government’s Ana Elizabeth García that he had published lies.

“Today I was mentioned again in the [president’s] morning press conference because I exercise my [right to] freedom of speech,” Cortés, a radio, television and print journalist, wrote on Twitter.

“I will continue doing so, as I have always done, even though the 4T [fourth transformation] believes that journalists should only applaud and not be critical,” she said, referring to the government by its self-anointed nickname.

Another journalist attended yesterday’s presidential press conference to defend his work after he was mentioned in last week’s “who’s who” of fake news.

Julio Hernández, a journalist and columnist for La Jornada and director of the leftist newspaper’s San Luis Potosí edition, rejected claims that he had lied in his work.

“I’ve come here to point out that I haven’t lied,” he said, asserting that he has evidence to back up his claim.

Hernández, who has been a journalist for decades, said he was committed to independent and critical journalism – and “the truth” – and gave a lengthy defense of his work related to environmental issues in San Luis Potosí.

“Very good,” López Obrador responded. “Well, look, the right of reply and the right to dissent is now guaranteed, which is fundamental for democracy,” he added before engaging in a heated to-and-fro with the journalist.

With reports from El Universal

Fishing coops mask narcos’ drug shipments to Mexico

By

Scott Mistler-Ferguson

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July 29, 2021

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Drug smuggling routes from South America: in light blue are refueling areas, in dark blue the delivery zones and in red the arrival points. el universal

Mexico’s largest criminal groups are outsourcing the retrieval of cocaine shipments to smaller groups posing as fishing cooperatives, providing another example of how maritime infrastructure is subverted by the drug trade.

Groups such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) are contracting local gangs in Mexico’s southern states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero to fetch large shipments of cocaine out at sea, according to a report from Mexico’s Navy Ministry (Semar) accessed by the newspaper El Universal.

These local gangs set up fake fishing cooperatives, register vessels and use them to travel up to 350 nautical miles out to sea to receive drugs coming from Colombia and Ecuador. The cooperatives are usually created in marginalized coastal communities with local residents participating in the operations in search of a good payday, according to the SEMAR report.

The gangs receive the drugs, usually cocaine, in shark-fishing vessels rigged with outboard motors or in go-fast boats.

The ship’s crew is usually made up of both gang members and local fishermen, with a security presence maintained for more sensitive outings. A trip to go fetch a shipment of drugs can take between eight and 10 days depending on the type of vessel used.

Further support is provided by a detailed support system where other fishing vessels and lookouts on the shore provide information about where Mexican authorities are operating in order to avoid contact with naval ships.

InSight Crime analysis

Especially during times of economic hardship, it has become increasingly common for Latin American criminal groups to coerce vulnerable fishing communities into the drug trade.

This new scheme along Mexico’s southern coast is one of the more complex seen to date, requiring several parts. First, local gangs are subcontracted to retrieve drugs belonging to larger groups. Second, fake fishing cooperatives are created in rural fishing communities to create a veneer of legality. Third, local fishermen are encouraged to crew the vessels or track the movements of naval ships.

The Semar report detailed how the abundance of fishing communities along the Pacific coasts of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero provide plenty of options for the creation of these cooperatives. The registration of new vessels is also easy to hide among the thousands of new fishboats that were declared to Mexico’s fishing authority between 2017 and 2020.

The use of fishing communities is extensive outside Mexico as well. In Ecuador, fishermen have often been forced to act as drug mules, transporting shipments of cocaine to larger vessels offshore. More broadly, across the Americas, 13% of all drug seizures at sea in 2019 involved fishing vessels, according to a Colombian military report on maritime trafficking.

And whether volunteering or coerced to work as drug mules, fishing crews are often convenient targets. In 2017, 300 fishermen from Ecuador’s western provinces of Manabí and Esmeraldas were in jail across the Americas for transporting drugs at sea. Some of them have even been jailed in federal penitentiaries in the United States.

Reprinted from InSight Crime. Scott Mistler-Ferguson is a writer with InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.