An IMF expert said Mexico's growing vaccination rate will quicken the recovery.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has upped its 2021 growth forecast to 6.3%, a 1.3% rise on its last estimation in April and the agency’s third upward revision. Its growth prediction for 2022 was also bumped — 1.2 percentage points to 4.2%.
However, the figure still lags behind the government’s prediction of 6.5% growth for 2021 but above the 6% forecast by independent economists surveyed by Citibanamex.
In line with the revisions, the IMF expects Mexican debt will stand at 59.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of the year, 0.5 percentage points lower than it predicted in April.
Economic advisor at the IMF, Gita Gopinath, explained the reasons for the improved projection. “In April the effect of the recovery of the export sector was evident and now we see that domestic demand is also growing … [Mexico] is indirectly benefiting from additional U.S. stimulus packages that have somehow increased and strengthened demand,” she said.
The United States’ economy is now expected to grow 7% this year and 4.9% next year, up 0.6 points and 1.4 points respectively.
Another reason for optimism was vaccination, Gopinath added. “The vaccination rate is growing [in Mexico] and will also help accelerate the recovery,” she said.
The economist illustrated the impact the pandemic can have on an economy, using Japan and India as examples. The IMF revised both countries’ 2021 forecasts downwards due to their failures in vaccine administration and containing the spread of Covid-19. For India, where the highly contagious Delta-variant originated, the 2021 forecast was dropped three percentage points to 9.5%.
The IMF’s 2021 predictions for the Latin America and Caribbean region were similarly optimistic: up 1.2 percentage points to 5.8%. Last year, the region contracted 7%, marking the worst performance of any region in the world.
The agency stated that the improved performance was largely down to the region’s two biggest economies. “The forecast upgrade … results mostly from upward revisions in Brazil and Mexico, reflecting better-than-expected first quarter outturns, favorable spillovers to Mexico from the improved outlook for the United States, and booming terms of trade in Brazil,” the report read.
In Mexico, it's not really a party until you break out the brass. deposit photos
I’m gonna get rich. Very rich. Filthy rich, in fact. How, you may ask? Simple. I’m going to open a chain of hearing aid stores in Mexico.
OK, that’s not as sexy as opening a chain of stores selling, say, Gucci handbags or the latest cell phone. And I don’t want to open them because it’s rumored that more retired American expats are moving here; they probably already have hearing aids.
Me, I’m aiming for the local market.
I’ve traveled fairly extensively across Mexico, and I don’t recall seeing any hearing aid stores. I suppose there have to be a few, but if there are, they’ve escaped my detection.
I don’t understand why there aren’t hundreds — thousands, even.
I see dentist offices everywhere, and I’ve read that’s because Mexicans consume huge quantities of soda, especially Coke. This leads to cavities which lead to dentist visits.
But hearing aid stores? Nary a one. But that’s about to change because I’m gonna start a chain that’ll make Starbucks look like some little mom-and-pop operation.
Why do I think that this will make me rich? Because millions of Mexicans, if they aren’t already nearly deaf, will be soon. Very soon.
This is because they’re apparently blissfully unaware that sitting next to huge speakers or walking in front of bands blasting out norteño music — at religious processions, fiestas, quinceñeras and pretty much any event that’s happening in Mexico — may not be a particularly good idea.
I’ve been in processions where bands play at ear-shattering decibels and no one seems to notice. Or care. These are bands that are playing at a volume that would make a 1973 Led Zeppelin concert seem like a quaint string quartet recital.
The bands are almost always at the back of the procession, meaning that dozens of people are walking immediately in front of them, seemingly without a care in the world. Me, I’ve learned to stay as far away from the band as possible — way in front or way, way behind the band. Even a few seconds next to a band leaves my ears ringing for the rest of the day.
And then there are the fiestas where people will sit directly in front of the bandstand, where a dozen or more musicians are blasting out music. Of course, these musicians are surrounded by speakers that I’m sure could have been used by The Who in their prime.
Yet people will think nothing of sitting in front of the percussionists — we’re talking snare drum, bass and crash cymbals — who are beating their instruments as hard as humanly possible.
They are not visibly bothered; in fact, they’ll most likely be carrying on a conversation. In what appears to be a normal voice. No shouting. Lots of smiles. Blissfully unaware of the pounding their eardrums are taking.
But now when I see people exposing themselves to deafening music, I don’t worry. Because now I see my fortune waiting to be made.
Pemex processing center Ku-A in the Gulf of Mexico.
Methane – considered a major driver of global warming – is leaking from Mexican gas and oil operations at “alarming and worrying” levels, according to a scientist who contributed to a new study about emissions of the gas in Mexico.
A group of researchers found that Mexico’s methane leak rate is more than double that of the United States, the world’s largest oil producer. A report on their findings is scheduled to be released on Wednesday.
Daniel Zavala, a senior scientist at the United States-based non-profit Environmental Defense Fund who specializes in methane emissions from oil and gas operations, told the news agency Reuters that satellite data shows that approximately 4.7% of methane produced in Mexico as a byproduct of oil and gas production leaks into the atmosphere. The rate is considered very high by global standards.
The leak rate is 2.3% for the United States as a whole and 3.7% in the Permian Basin, a region in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico that is the largest crude oil producing area in the country.
“It’s a huge gap,” Zavala said. “Cutting these emissions in half would have the same climate benefit over 20 years as removing one third of total passenger cars in the country.”
Reuters said the study on methane emissions in Mexico concentrated on the country’s east where almost all gas and oil production takes place.
“The leak rate is a formula that divides total oil and gas methane emissions by total natural gas production. The calculation includes all sources of methane emissions from the industry: leaks, vents and flaring,” the news agency said.
Zavala was one of 13 climate change scientists who studied 20 months of data gathered between 2018 and 2019 by a sensor on board a European Space Agency satellite.
Reuters said it was unable to establish whether Mexico’s methane leak problem has improved or worsened since President López Obrador took office in late 2018.
The researchers estimated that 1.3 million tonnes of methane worth some US $200 million is wasted annually in Mexico. That figure is equivalent to about one-third of Mexico’s annual natural gas imports.
The report says the main culprit for the high leak rate is the midstream sector, whose facilities gather, compress and process the gas. Venting – the release of gas from oil wells without capturing it – also shoulders some of the blame as does flaring, or the burning of gas at wells.
“While flaring is a big source of methane emissions, and our measurements showed that it’s higher than what the government and industry report, it’s not enough to explain the emissions we measured,” Zavala said.
“The findings point to other key sources of methane emissions: venting from wells and midstream facilities handling the offshore gas.”
Reuters said that neither Pemex nor the Energy Ministry responded to its requests for comments about the issue. But both have previously acknowledged maintenance issues that could exacerbate the leak problem.
The United Nations said recently that “methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas” that has been responsible for around 30% of global warming since the pre-industrial era.
Mexico’s oil and gas methane emissions account for about one-quarter of its total manmade methane emissions. Landfills and the agricultural sector are major emitters of the gas.
President López Obrador has faced extensive criticism for continuing to champion fossil fuels and opposing renewable energy companies at a time when much of the world is shifting toward greater use of environmentally-friendly energy sources.
Proposals he presented at U.S. President Joe Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate earlier this year were not serious, based on ideology more than reality, and harked back to decades past, according to some environmentalists.
The Tlaxcala cathedral was the first in the region to be built in the renaissance architectural style.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has added the Tlaxcala cathedral to its World Heritage list.
The organization’s World Heritage committee announced Tuesday that it had included the Franciscan Ensemble of the Monastery and Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption of Tlaxcala in its existing World Heritage site known as “Earliest 16th-Century Monasteries on the Slopes of Popocatépetl” volcano.
UNESCO noted that the cathedral and monastery were part of a construction program launched by Spanish colonizers in 1524 for the evangelization of Mexico.
“The ensemble is one of the first five monasteries established by Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian friars, and one of three still standing. The other two are already inscribed on the World Heritage List,” UNESCO said.
With the addition of the Tlaxcala cathedral and monastery, the slopes of Popocatépetl World Heritage site, which was established in 1994, now consists of 15 monasteries. Eleven are located in Morelos and three are in Puebla.
The cathedral and monastery were built between 1530 and 1536.
“The Tlaxcala ensemble of buildings provides an example of the architectural model and spatial solutions developed in response to a new cultural context, which integrated local elements to create spaces such as wide atria, and capilla posa chapels,” UNESCO said.
“The edifice presents two other particular features, a free-standing tower and a wooden [Islamic-style] mudéjar [roof] not found in the other monasteries already inscribed on the World Heritage list … It contributes to a better understanding of the development of a new architectural model that influenced both urban development and monastic buildings until the 18th century.”
The colonizing Spaniards’ alliance with the native Tlaxcalans helped them gain permission from indigenous groups to build cathedrals and monasteries in central Mexico during the early days of the colony known as New Spain.
The Tlaxcala cathedral and monastery was largely built with the labor of indigenous people, who learned carpentry, sculpture and goldsmithing skills, among others, from the Spanish.
The Tlaxcala cathedral was the first in the region to be built in the renaissance architectural style, and it is also considered an early example of new-Hispanic, or viceregal, art. Other examples followed, including the church in Huejotzingo, Puebla, which is part of the existing World Heritage listing.
From the beginning of the relationship between Spanish evangelizers and indigenous people in the land now known as Mexico “a very particular” style of art emerged, said Francisco Vidargas, deputy world heritage director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Their collaboration was “fundamental” for the construction of religious buildings in the Puebla-Tlaxcala area, he said.
Mexico’s 16th century monasteries are among “the most original artistic and architectural contributions of Iberian American art,” said INAH world heritage director Luz de Lourdes Herbert.
There are pre-Hispanic elements on the walls of the Tlaxcala cathedral and monastery, Vidargas said.
The religious complex was not built over a ceremonial or sacred pre-Hispanic site, as was the case with some churches built in colonial days, but is located near a water spring that was sacred for the ancient tlaxcatecas.
The Tlaxcala cathedral and monastery were among 14 new additions to UNESCO’s world heritage list this week. The other newly inscribed sites are in India, Iran, Japan, Romania, Jordan, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Chile, Germany and the Netherlands.
Mexico has 35 UNESCO World Heritage sites including the historic center of Mexico City and Xochimilco, the archaeological zone of Paquimé in Chihuahua and the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán and México state.
Vehicles are swept away by a river of water on a Nogales street Tuesday.
Severe flooding left one person dead and caused extensive material damage Tuesday in Nogales, Sonora.
Sharon Denisse Ahumada Salazar, 24, was driving in the center of the border town at around 3 p.m. when her car broke down and the force of the passing current left her trapped. She managed to phone her partner, but communication was lost, and her vehicle rolled over shortly after.
Ahumada had recently graduated from the Technological Institute of Nogales with a degree in civil engineering.
The current carried away a large number of vehicles, flooded houses, and knocked down fences, trees and power lines. Flooding at the pedestrian border crossing forced its closure and prevented United States arrivals from entering the country.
The National Water Commission (Conagua) reported 71 millimeters of rainfall from 7 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. The most damaging downpour only lasted a few minutes, according to reports by ElUniversal.
Videos posted on social media showed the force of the current, comparable to that of a river, sweeping away large vehicles and a fast food stand.
Governor elect Alfonso Durazo shared images of the flooding on Twitter, and urged residents to take precautions, stay under shelter and follow instructions of Civil Protection authorities.
Mayor Jesús Pujol Irastorza said the rain was welcome due to the long drought suffered by Sonora. “The rain is good news for #Nogales,” he said, adding that precautions were necessary. “Prevent accidents by avoiding risk areas, take care of yourself and your family,” he said.
The local government offered their condolences to the victim’s family. “The city government sends sincere condolences to the Ahumada Salazar family for the unfortunate accident that happened this afternoon, in which Sharon Denisse lost her life … all the institutional support that the family requires is available in these terrible moments that they are going through,” read a statement on Facebook.
Conagua’s most recent drought monitoring report, published on July 19, revealed Sonora and neighboring Chihuahua to be the only two states suffering from exceptional drought, the highest grade. Exceptional drought was affecting 13.1% of Sonora’s territory and 1.1% of Chihuahua’s.
In Sonora, 97.2% of municipalities were still affected by drought of some form at the time of the report’s publication.
A crocodile attacked Kiana Hummel, 18, in Puerto Vallarta earlier this month.
A U.S. woman attacked by a crocodile in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, on July 18 was saved after bystanders and a hotel worker ran to her aid and fought off the reptile.
Kiana Hummel, 18, and a friend had gone to the beach for a late-night swim at the Marriott resort when a three-meter crocodile bit her right leg and dragged her screaming into the water.
Hummel’s friend and four brave onlookers fought the reptile. A hotel employee armed with a piece of wood hit the crocodile, which forced it to release its victim.
From her U.S. hospital bed, Hummel described the struggle and thanked those involved. “I’m pretty grateful that people were there to help me … I don’t think I would have gotten out [without them] … It didn’t want to give up. It went for my right leg and pulled me under the water and then went for my left leg and pulled me back into the water again,” she said.
High school teacher Sarah Laney, 34, came to her assistance after hearing screams. “It was really a tug-of-war. It was four or five times. We’d get her a foot out of water, and then it would pull her back in,” she said.
Laney explained that the rescuers had to change tack after the crocodile’s determination became clear. “After about 30 seconds of reevaluating the situation, we all decided we needed to start throwing things at it. It wasn’t letting go … We were throwing shoes. We were throwing rocks. We were throwing anything we could find, but it wasn’t anything big enough,” she added.
Her mother, medical assistant Ariana Martínez, described the injuries, which she said could have been much more severe. “She managed to survive with no missing toes, no missing limbs, no broken bones, just massive muscle and tendon damage … Obviously a big chunk (of skin) has been taken out,” she said.
Marriott spokesperson Kerstin Sachl said the hotel chain was aware of the incident and that protocols had been followed adequately. “The safety and security of our guests and associates are our top priority, and we can confirm that appropriate signage, as well as night patrolling and red flags were and are properly in place … Our staff is trained in how to respond to safety matters appropriately. We encourage all guests to be vigilant for their safety,” she said in a statement.
In a report by NBC News published Tuesday, Martínez confirmed that Hummel was still in hospital, and it hadn’t been confirmed when she would be discharged.
Last month, a similar attack occurred in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. Two sisters from the United Kingdom were on a tour of a lagoon when a crocodile attacked one of them. The other sister sprang to action, punching the animal in the nose until it left.
Members of the El Machete self-defense group took control of the municipal government building at midday on Monday.
A recently-formed self-defense group forced state police, soldiers and members of the National Guard to withdraw from a highlands municipality of Chiapas on Monday after the official security forces refused to raid the homes of suspected criminals.
Members of the “El Machete” self-defense force, which formed in Pantelhó earlier this month, demanded that the state and federal security forces raid the homes of people who allegedly belong to a criminal group called Los Herrera, which has been blamed for a recent wave of homicides and is accused of having links to the municipal government.
Citing the absence of warrants, the security forces refused and were consequently run out of town by the self-defense force members.
El Machete proceeded to carry out the raids themselves. Armed with guns as well as other weapons including crowbars and sledgehammers, the self-defense force went house to house searching for Los Herrera hitmen, the newspaper El Universal reported.
They set at least 12 homes as well as cars, motorcycles, a police vehicle and an ambulance on fire and managed to detain 21 suspected members of Los Herrera.
Among the homes targeted was that of Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) Mayor Delia Janeth Velasco Flores and her husband and mayor-elect Raquel Trujillo Morales. However, they were not among those detained. Dozens of Pantelhó residents fled their homes during the rampage and sought refuge in neighboring municipalities.
The autodefensas also took control of the municipal government building, and issued a statement directed to President López Obrador from its balcony.
“We know that you already have knowledge of all of this,” one self-defense force member read from a statement.
“If you still want to support us, the indigenous people, … that will be up to you. If you don’t, it’s better that you don’t keep intervening [in Pantelhó],” he said.
Residents who don’t support El Machete called for official security forces to return to the municipality, located about 60 kilometers northeast of San Cristóbal de las Casas.
The 21 men detained by the self-defense group appeared in photographs with their hands and feet tied. The newspaper Reforma reported that they were transported on Tuesday to the community of San José Buenavista Tercero, where many El Machete members are based.
The autodefensas said earlier this month that their aim was to expel gunmen, drug traffickers and other members of organized crime from Pantelhó in order to avoid more deaths of indigenous residents.
Thousands of residents from 86 communities in Pantelhó gathered on July 18 to show their support for the group. The Tzotzil Mayan citizens also declared that they didn’t recognize the legitimacy of the current and incoming municipal governments and would choose new authorities.
El Machete’s seizure of the municipality comes just two weeks after Los Ciriles, a criminal group allegedly linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, took control of Pantelhó.
Federal and state security forces had regained control but official authorities now find themselves deposed once again.
The PRD has been in power in Pantelhó during the past 20 years, a period during which residents say almost 200 indigenous people have been killed and countless people have been displaced.
A spokesperson for Pantelhó residents said recently that the “narco-council” has been murdering Tzotzil people for the past two decades, forcing locals to take up arms.
López Obrador and other officials witness the signing of the accord.
Hello and welcome from Mexico City, where we’re looking at how the all-important USMCA trade deal with the U.S. and Canada is faring, just over a year after it replaced NAFTA.
Mexican Economy Secretary Tatiana Clouthier visited Washington last week to discuss progress with top U.S. officials and business leaders and to iron out differences on implementation.
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as it’s officially known, was negotiated on the orders of former U.S. president Donald Trump, who described NAFTA on the campaign trail as the “worst trade deal ever signed” and threatened to pull out. The stakes were high: the U.S. conducts $1.3 trillion worth of trade annually with its two neighbours.
As president, Trump almost torpedoed trade relations completely in 2019 when he threatened to shut the border unless Mexico halted a surge in migration. Trump’s hostility to free trade deals and Mexico’s history of prickly relations with its powerful northern neighbour led many to fear the worst, but the results of the USMCA so far have been surprising, as we explain below.
Almost halfway through his term, President López Obrador has divided Mexicans. Supporters hail his folksy, man-of-the-people image and his emphasis on the poor. Businesspeople and professionals protest about authoritarian tendencies, attacks on wealth creators and a preference for state-led development.
One thing Mexicans do agree on is that the USMCA has proved a success in its first year, albeit not always for the reasons they imagined. Business is happy that the deal’s detailed strictures on regulation and governance provide a layer of protection against López Obrador’s more radical ideas. The president and his supporters like the deal’s role as a job creator, as well as its labor provisions. These help improve wages for Mexicans and have enabled moves against a union closely tied to an opposing political party.
Above all, the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of manufacturing close to home, providing a reason for U.S. businesses already in Mexico to consider expanding operations, even when the overall business climate under López Obrador is far from ideal.
“USMCA has been a lifeline for Mexico,” said Juan Carlos Baker, who was a key negotiator of the deal from the Mexican side. “If it wasn’t for USMCA, Mexico’s economic prospects would look very different. The recovery that we are having is only happening because of the prospects of exports to the U.S.”
Close allies of López Obrador say his conversion from USMCA sceptic to supporter was largely motivated by a wish to create jobs. “The president saw USMCA as something magical,” said one former senior Mexican official. “He thought that the simple fact of having it and signing it meant massive investments would come to Mexico.”
That is not to say the USMCA’s first year has been plain sailing: far from it. The biggest clouds on the horizon are Mexico’s moves to restore state control over the energy sector and U.S. attempts to interpret tighter rules of origin on automotive components in an even stricter way.
In energy policy, López Obrador’s attempts to reverse an opening towards private investment and renewables and return Mexico to a state-dominated, oil-fired energy and power sector run counter to the new trade agreement. The president has already run into court challenges to several of his key initiatives, but he could also face dispute proceedings under the USMCA.
The automotive sector is a key area of trade under the USMCA.
“Either the president is pretending he doesn’t understand or else he really doesn’t understand what Mexico has signed up to in terms of energy commitments,” said Arturo Sarukhán, who served as Mexico’s ambassador to Washington from 2006-13. Overall, though, he feels generally optimistic about how the USMCA has played out so far.
Whatever López Obrador’s understanding of the USMCA’s impact on energy, those who know him well say he will not back down: a nationalist energy policy is a cornerstone of his political thinking.
The Mexican president “is fundamentally for state intervention and for state-controlled companies, which is against USMCA”, says Shannon O’Neil at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
When it comes to vehicle parts, disagreements matter because the automotive sector is a key area of trade under the USMCA and employs more than 1 million people in Mexico. In a move intended to promote the reshoring of vehicle manufacturing jobs, the pact raised to 75% the proportion of automotive content that must be made in North America to qualify as duty-free. How that proportion is defined is now a bone of contention.
Another challenge for Mexico, says Martha Bárcena, López Obrador’s ambassador to the U.S. until February, is the pact’s stipulation of minimum salary levels of US $16 per hour for workers making 40-45% of auto content. “It’s good to raise salaries in Mexico but it will be very hard to meet this,” she said.
Also in the automotive sector, the first labor dispute initiated by the U.S. under the USMCA has so far progressed without serious friction. Mexico agreed that workers at a General Motors plant in Silao should hold a free vote by August 20 on whether to approve a collective bargaining agreement, amid claims they had been denied their rights.
“The union allegedly abusing workers’ rights is an opposition union,” said O’Neil, adding that the dispute was “politically useful to [López Obrador]” for that reason.
Overall, Bárcena, like other Mexican experts, believes the USMCA is proving to be a successful framework for trade. “Differences of interpretation will exist, but USMCA is there to resolve them,” she added. “The important thing is to continue talking.”
One senior U.S. official agreed, saying recent history showed that “the North American free trade deal can withstand any pressure.”
“Trump wanted to end it and didn’t succeed because there was huge private sector pressure [to keep it],” he said. “[López Obrador] was against it, and then he turned around and supported it. That’s a recognition that you can’t break the level of integration achieved without huge cost.”
Or put differently: if North American free trade can survive a rightwing populist U.S. president and a leftwing populist Mexican president, it can survive just about anything.
Rescue workers prepare to extract passengers from one of the Taxco cable cars.
A family of three children and six adults were rescued from a cable car in Taxco, Guerrero, after a cable snapped at around 5 p.m. Tuesday, leaving them trapped in three cabins for almost four hours.
Three of the passengers were taken to hospital to be treated for panic.
The incident occurred when a counterweight cable broke on another part of the line and the whole system was brought to a halt. That left the passengers stranded in their cabins 30 meters above the ground.
Videos posted on social media showed Civil Protection officers and firefighters in the dramatic rescue. A team of dozens of rescuers created a makeshift zipline from the cabins to a nearby building. Dangling high above ground and sometimes obstructed by tall trees, the passengers slowly moved along the line to the building.
Onlookers applauded once the last of the family members had made it to safety.
Rescate en el teleférico de Taxco Guerrero - En Punto
A report released by the head of the Guerrero Civil Protection agency, Marco César Mayares Salvador, stated that none of the passengers was ever in danger. The main steel cable was not damaged and it was a counterweight cable that broke and caused the system to fail.
The cable car’s operation has been suspended pending a maintenance review to replace any mechanical parts in poor condition.
The cable car is used by hundreds of tourists a day. It connects the five-star Montetaxco hotel, located at the top of a hill, with the center of the city.
Matamoros is one of the border cities that have benefited from the closure to nonessential traffic.
Some businesses in northern border cities have seen their sales increase by up to 40% since March 2020 due to the pandemic-induced closure of the Mexico-United States land border to nonessential traffic, according to a business group.
Unable to enter the U.S. for shopping as they did regularly before the pandemic, many residents of border cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros have had to buy food and other essentials at home, providing a boost to local economies.
Between March 2020 and late July of 2021 commerce on the Mexican side grew in some sectors by up to 40%, representing more than 45 billion pesos (US $2.25 billion) in domestic consumption and more than 125 billion pesos ($6.26 billion) in general consumption, according to the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco).
José Manuel López Campos, the organization’s president, said many residents of border cities were accustomed to buying food, clothing, footwear, gasoline and other products and services in the United States before the pandemic.
However, they now make the same purchases in businesses in cities in Mexico’s six northern border states: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.
López said that people who previously shopped in the U.S. have now realized that the quality of products sold in Mexico is just as good and they are competitively priced.
He noted that there are 115,000 United States visa-holders in Matamoros alone and that those who shopped across the border before the pandemic spent an average of US $300 per month there. That money, López said, now stays in the Tamaulipas border city, located adjacent to Brownsville, Texas.
The Concanaco chief said he was confident that the United States would reopen its land border to nonessential traffic after the end of the extension announced last week. Mexico has ramped up Covid-19 vaccination in border cities with a view to expediting the reopening.
It remains to be seen whether Mexicans who previously shopped in the U.S. will return to their previous habits in large numbers once the border reopens or whether many will continue to spend their money locally.
Businesses in United States border cities will be hoping that the former occurs. One study found that the economies of U.S. border communities have suffered losses of US $10 billion since March 2020 due to the inability of many Mexicans to cross the border to go shopping, eat in restaurants and fill up their cars.
Concanaco’s López: residents of border cities were accustomed to buying food, clothing, footwear, gasoline and other products in the US.
López said that hundreds of businesses in U.S. border cities have closed due to the sharp reduction in Mexican shoppers over the past 16 months.
Laredo, Texas, located across the border from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, is one city that has suffered from the lack of Mexican daytrippers.
“Downtown Laredo has been visibly affected by pandemic-era bridge closures, with many businesses closed and ‘for rent’ signs hanging on many buildings,” reported Texas-based news outlet KENS 5.
“People have lost their dreams. People have lost their businesses. People have lost their livelihood,” said Congressman Henry Cuellar, who represents Laredo in the United States House of Representatives.
“That’s not only the small business owners, but think about the thousands of people that were working at those small businesses. What are they doing now? They don’t have jobs. This is why Washington has no clue, and I emphasize no clue of what’s happening to us down here at the border.”
Ester Zúñiga, a resident of Harlingen, Texas, spoke to KENS 5 while shopping in downtown Brownsville. She said she knows people who are barely surviving as a result of the closure of the border.
“I know people that have stores open here and they’re closed now and sometimes they call me and say that they don’t have enough for food or to pay the rent. There’s people that went back to Mexico because there’s no jobs for them,” Zúñiga said.
She explained that the border closure affects her personally because her mother lives in Matamoros but cannot come to visit her and her son despite having a U.S. visa.
“The bridge is closed, but I really don’t understand why they let us cross to Mexican cities like Matamoros, but they don’t let them cross over here when, in reality, the economy depends a lot on the people that live in Matamoros, Reynosa and their surroundings,” Zúñiga said.
Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez also expressed frustration at the closure.
“Our border economy depends quite heavily on these Mexican travelers coming to visit their family, coming to spend money at some of our stores,” he said.
“We know we lost some money [but] as far as how much we’ve lost it’s really difficult to put a number on that.”
