Contests can be held in Oaxaca, but without government funding.
The use of public funds for beauty contests has been declared illegal in Oaxaca, making it the first state to define such events as “symbolic violence.”
State and municipal government institutions face legal sanctions and fines if they allocate resources to events where women and girls are judged by their physical characteristics. However, the law does not ban such events from taking place.
The legal modification bans “the use of public resources for the type of events where the physical characteristics of girls, youths and women are evaluated.”
“This legal action also prevents governing institutions from using such events to promote tourism or for official publicity,” the text continues.
The initiative was promoted by the state’s Permanent Commission for Gender Equality. The president of the commission, Morena Deputy Magaly López, said the modifications sought to dispel the gender based stereotypes upheld by beauty pageants. She said it was necessary to change cultural practices that are damaging to women.
Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies approved a similar measure in February. “Promoting competitions among women based on their physical attributes promotes sexist and ‘macho’ patterns that stigmatize, objectify, and minimize the role women play in our society,” the bill’s text reads.
It defines symbolic violence as “the expression, transmission or broadcasting by any media, whether privately or publicly, discourses, messages, or stereotypical patterns, signs, values, icons, and ideas that transmit, reproduce, justify, or normalize the subordination, inequality, discrimination, and violence against women in society.”
The southern state has been a focal point for feminist politics in recent years. In the 2018 election the state Congress became majority female for the first time in its history; the following year the state became only the second in the country to decriminalize abortion before 12 weeks’ pregnancy for any reason; the first was Mexico City. Some other states allow abortion in cases of rape or to protect the life of the mother.
Globally, beauty competitions are experiencing something of a political revolution, according to the newspaper El País. “At the last Miss World, held in 2019, history was made when the first black woman took the crown … a year earlier, Ángela Ponce, a Spanish transsexual. won the contest in Spain … Swe Zin Htet, the representative of Myanmar in the Miss Universe competition, also broke the molds and was the first competitor to openly declare herself homosexual.”
Healthcare workers protest outside a Oaxaca hospital on Tuesday.
Health workers at a Oaxaca city hospital took to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday to protest against shortages of medications and supplies and overcrowding at the facility.
Doctors, nurses and orderlies from the Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso General Hospital called on state and federal authorities to resolve the problems during a six-hour demonstration in front of the 8 Regions Fountain in the state capital.
They highlighted that it is up to them — not authorities — to have to tell patients and their families that they don’t have the medications they require.
“We see the pain of the patients, and we have to give them prescriptions so that they can go themselves to an external pharmacy and buy their own medication,” one nurse told reporters.
Health workers claimed that government authorities have abandoned the hospital, one of the oldest in the state. It is currently overwhelmed with patients, among whom are people seriously ill with Covid-19.
Outpatient appointments and administrative services were suspended during yesterday’s protest, but inpatients continued to receive treatment, said Alberto Vásquez, the hospital’s union representative.
He said the hospital has even run out of basic items such as rubbing alcohol and bleach, which is needed to disinfect parts of the facility where Covid patients are treated.
“… There is total indolence from those who should be most committed to the health sector, the [state health] minister and Governor Alejandro Murat,” Vásquez said.
“There have been five health ministers in five years of [this] government — turn around and look at us: there’s no health, there’s nothing,” he said.
In light of the situation, state Health Minister Juan Carlos Márquez Heine said he had initiated dialogue with the National Institute of Health for Well-Being, a federal health department also known as Insabi, with a view to regularizing the hospital’s supply of medications and other essentials.
Protests against medication and medical supplies shortages have been held across Mexico since 2019, mainly to denounce the lack of drugs to treat children with cancer. However, there were also numerous protests at the beginning of the pandemic, with health workers saying they lacked the personal protective equipment required to safely treat Covid-19 patients.
A bride-styled alux doll in modern dress. Javier Alba began creating these dolls after moving to Cancún and learning about the Maya legend. Photos of dolls courtesy of Aluxin
I first saw Aluxin dolls — the troll- or elf-like figures created by Mexico City native Javier Alba — at the Doll Museum in Amealco, Querétaro, the closest thing Mexico has to a national doll center. Being so different from the others on display, they caught my attention.
With their small size and features, there is no doubt that these dolls bear influence from the troll dolls popular in the 1970s and the popular Smurfs cartoon characters. But Alba, who began making these dolls in 2012 after he moved to Cancún, combines such modern influences with that of Maya stories of magical little people called aluxes, from which he got his craft business’s name, Aluxin.
In Cancún, Alba became fascinated by the stories of these mythical creatures and their link to ecology.
According to Maya legends, aluxes (pronounced a-LU-shes), are supernatural creatures created by the Mayan god Yum Kaax — a Maya deity of wild vegetation and the animals living in it — to help people who worked hard in the fields.
Although their main role is to protect crops, they also care for local forests and animals. The concept is not unlike those of dwarves and leprechauns.
Pre-Hispanic stone figure with a traditional depiction of an alux.
Some legends state that aluxes were Earth’s first inhabitants, even older than the sun. Perhaps for this reason, traditional depictions, such as those on temples in Yaxchilán, Chiapas, and Cobá, Quintana Roo, depict them as old with facial features designed to be both terrible and friendly since they could go either way depending on the circumstance.
To assure the better natures of aluxes, Mayan farmers would make an alux figure from clay and place it in the field before it was sown. If the farmer respects them, and nature in general, he is rewarded with abundance.
Such beliefs extended over all Mayan territory — southern Mexico into Central America.
Javier Alba and his partner Miriam León forgo the “terrible” aspect of aluxes. The idea of the dolls came out of a need to make a living, not preserve ancient Maya culture. The obvious market is tourists in Cancún, hence the need for the kitsch.
But decisions about how to make the dolls were not pure business ones. After Alba and León designed the series, they were advised to have them mass-produced in China; but this did not seem right to them.
Despite the changes to the traditional image of the alux, the figures are still an idea from an ancient Mexican culture, and many people in the Cancún area still live in poverty, especially the elderly and single mothers.
Alux doll depicting a jaguar warrior.
Despite being a significantly more expensive process, in 2013 Alba began to have the dolls made by locals, using a piecework system. Dolls are made in homes, with training and materials provided to the craftspeople.
Many of the dolls popular in Cancún are made with cotton or mixed-fiber commercial cloth, but there are versions made from hennequin (similar to burlap), a fiber that was the base of much of the Yucatecan economy in the 19th and early 20th century.
A craft like cloth dolls, along with the business model Alba employed, makes Aluxin a bit controversial as a Mexican handcraft. Mexican anthropologists divide handcrafts into two categories — artesanías (those with a significant history and “cultural significance”) and manualidades, those which do not.
Cloth dolls are generally categorized by many museums as manualidades because they mistakenly believe such dolls were not made in the country until very recently. Aluxin’s lack of a classic family workshop business model does not help either.
However, I include them as artesanías because Mexican creativity and ingenuity did not stop with the Mexican Revolution, and what is “authentically” Mexican continues to evolve.
Making Alba and León’s business work has not been easy: the costs of labor bring the price of the dolls above that of “cheap trinkets,” and the story of the aluxes is not well-known among foreign tourists or even those from other parts of Mexico. If you’ve visited Cancún, you may have seen them in Riviera Maya hotels or in upscale Yucatán stores, their best bet before the pandemic.
Aluxin’s social media has a lot of fun with placing its dolls in interesting poses. @Aluxinoficial Twitter page
They have also had some luck getting the dolls into stores in Mexico City.
Unlike most artisans, they have put effort into a good presence online, with both a website and a Facebook page, making the dolls easy to buy. Such online presence has been helpful for a number of artisans, though for Alba, it has not been as helpful as he would like.
However, they are getting by, working with seven or eight artisans, down from 18 in 2016, mostly because of travel restrictions as Quintana Roo is currently at high-risk orange on the national coronavirus stoplight map. Alba and León hope to soon bring more work to their craftspeople.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
Coffee growers clearing land in Amaquil, a tiny and very remote community in Chiapas. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
On my second trip to Amaquil, a tiny, remote pueblo in one of the coffee-growing regions in Chiapas, I was staying with Nicolás and Catarina and their family, photographing what daily life was like for coffee growers. I had no idea what the day had in store for me.
One day I went with Nicolás’ sister Lucia and her parents to photograph them as they cleared a field of weeds. This is done by hacking at them with a machete.
It’s hard work, especially under a hot sun. I noticed that Lucia was chewing on something that looked like a piece of a stalk and figured it was caña — sugar cane. When I asked her if it was, sure enough, I was right and she asked if I wanted some. Being the adventurous type, I said yes.
She handed me a piece, and I bit into it. Before I could even think about taking a second, my heart rate soared.
My heart wasn’t just beating rapidly, it was pounding. I looked down and saw that it was pounding so hard that my shirt was moving.
Women make tortillas in a rustic home in Amaquil.
At the time, I had some sort of heart condition where my heart rate would suddenly increase periodically; I think it’s called tachycardia. So, being familiar with it, I didn’t panic. Yet.
But the beating was stronger and faster than I’d ever experienced, and I wasn’t in the United States. I was in a small, remote pueblo, and if this got to the point where I needed a hospital, I had no idea where the nearest one was — if there even was a nearest one. Which I doubted.
Now, I’m the kind of guy whose approach to medical issues is fairly basic: I ignore them.
I figure they’ll either get better, in which case I’ll be fine and I saved myself some time and money by ignoring them, or they’ll get worse, in which case I may actually have to do something. Which I usually don’t.
I’m not saying this is the most intelligent approach, but it’s worked for me so far. When tachycardia (or whatever it’s called) episodes happened back in the U.S., I’d just wait it out, and it eventually stopped. Sometimes it took 15 or 20 minutes, sometimes even longer, but it always stopped. I figured the same thing would happen here.
I continued photographing, but my attention got pulled more and more toward my pounding heart. Mostly I was curious about what had triggered it, but I was also getting a little concerned at the intensity.
Lucia eventually told me that she and her parents were finished for the day and that they were going to walk to their home. Did I want to come along? We headed off, my heart pounding and sweat pouring off me.
At some point in the walk, my legs started to feel weak and I had to slow down. The trio ahead of me turned off the road, onto a path through some woods. It was a very short, easy path with only a slight incline at one point, but my legs had no strength in them. I finally grabbed onto some tree branches and hauled myself up. Lucia and her parents waited for me at the path’s end. They looked concerned; I’m sure I looked panicked. My Spanish was still pretty basic back then, but I tried to explain the problem.
“It’s my heart,” I said.
“We are accustomed,” Lucia replied, meaning that they were accustomed to the heat and the humidity and the walking and I wasn’t.
“No, no,” I said, panting. “It is my heart. I have a problem.”
I was at a loss for words. What the heck is Spanish for tachycardia anyway? So I said again, “It is my heart.” Fumbling for words, I said, “Boom, boom, boom.”
The writer with a Coke, which may or may not have saved his life.
Lucia looked at me with a blank expression. “We are accustomed,” was all she said before turning and walking away.
I leaned against a tree for a few minutes, completely convinced that this was where I’d learn what awaited me after life ended. As curious as I’ll admit to being about that, I wasn’t anxious to find out at that particular moment. I wanted more time to prepare. In fact, what I really wanted was several more years.
I finally let go of the tree and made my way slowly across the road to the parents’ home, where Lucia was talking with someone.
“Everyone from the village is gone,” she said. “There are no cars. We cannot take you to the city.”
“I’ll be fine,” I managed to get out. “I just need to rest.”
“We are accustomed.”
[wpgmza id=”334″]
I really wished she would stop saying that.
I walked into the yard and sat, my heart still pounding and sweat still pouring down my face. My heart rate was still well over 100 beats per minute and pounding and it had been over an hour.
Lucia said she had to go to another village. Did I want to go with her? I decided I would, figuring that walking might lower my heart rate. I have no idea why I thought that, but I was at a loss.
The road was hard-packed dirt, and once again, there was a very slight incline, but this one went on for some distance. I was lagging behind Lucia when I realized that I couldn’t continue. There was absolutely no strength in my legs, and I found myself bent over, panting.
I called to her, telling her I couldn’t continue. We went back to her parents’ house.
I studied biology, and I remember enough about biochemical pathways to know that every pathway has a feedback mechanism. If the end product of a pathway is, say, sugar, then when at an excessive amount of sugar, the feedback mechanism will slow or stop its production.
I knew that sugar and caffeine can increase a person’s heart rate. I also knew that Coke has a lot of sugar and caffeine, and I reasoned that if I drank one, maybe it could slow down my heart rate. (I’m sure a lot of doctors and biologists are cringing right now, but my options were fairly limited.)
So I bought a Coke and guzzled it down. It worked. I don’t know if it was causational, correlational or the placebo effect, and I couldn’t care less why my heart rate dropped. All I know is that I was grateful it did.
I told Lucia I felt better and that we could continue on to the other village. We walked down the road, and I got up that incline with no trouble. Even though I was confused at what had happened to me, I smiled, thinking how good it felt to be alive.
Seven people were injured when shots were fired and punches thrown in a confrontation between the state Attorney General’s Office and municipal police in Tlalnepantla, state of México, as four suspects were being transported to a justice center.
Five municipal police officers were wounded, three by gunshots and two by punches and two investigators from the state Attorney General’s Office were injured by blows.
The security agencies have offered conflicting accounts.
The Attorney General’s Office said investigators arrested two men and two women who are suspected of kidnapping of a 73-year-old woman who had been rescued two days earlier. It stated that the investigators were attacked by municipal police.
“When the personnel of the office of the Attorney General advanced toward the facilities of the Center of Justice, they were intercepted by the municipal officers, who fired at the personnel. That happened despite the fact that the investigators identified themselves, and therefore had to repel the attack,” the office stated.
However, municipal authorities said that residents called the police when they saw an armed convoy in the area. “The hooded men with heavy weapons claimed to be ministerial police officers, but they never identified themselves or showed any document such as a warrant to justify their presence,” they said.
Both the Attorney General’s Office and municipal authorities have said that they are conducting investigations into the actions of their officers.
The 73-year-old woman had been kidnapped in Tlalnepantla on June 6 and her family had received phone calls demanding a high ransom for her release.
She was freed in nearby Tultitlán by agents from the state Attorney General’s Office specialized in kidnappings, and five people were arrested.
The fossil found near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Kleyton Magno
The National Autonomous University (UNAM) has announced the discovery in Chiapas of a fossil of a previously unknown fish species that lived at a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Paleontologists from the university’s Institute of Geology discovered the approximately 95-million-year-old fossil in 2018 in a quarry in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, located about 30 kilometers from the state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
UNAM’s social communication department said the main characteristic of the fish is its “numerous spines on its dorsal and anal fins.”
UNAM paleontologist Kleyton Magno Cantalice Severiano published a description of the previously unknown fish in the British journal Papers in Palaeontology.
He and other experts named it Choichix alvaradoi, which is derived from two Tzotzil Mayan words and the name of a widely-respected Institute of Geology academic.
Choichix is a portmanteau of the words choy, meaning fish, and ch´ix, meaning spines. Tzotzil Mayan is spoken in the area where the fossil was found.
Alvaradoi refers to Jesús Alvarado Ortega, a fish fossil expert who has helped train many other paleontologists.
Cantalice said the Choichix alvaradoi belongs to a large group of spiny-finned fish known as the Acanthopterygii superorder, which includes species commonly eaten today such as bream, bass and snapper.
“… Ours is one of the oldest [of that group]. We discovered that it’s from a new [sub]group of fish because of the number of spines on its dorsal fin – 13,” he said.
Unlike modern-day spiny-finned fishes, the Choichix alvaradoi didn’t have ventral, or pelvic, fins. That’s because it was a primitive fish, Cantalice said, noting that that particular evolutionary trait emerged later.
The paleontologist said that other fossils of ancient fish as well as others of plants, mollusks and crustaceans from the Cretaceous period have been found in the same area.
“We could say that this [fish] species lived alongside dinosaurs, although that doesn’t mean there are … [dinosaur] fossils in the quarry, but the age in which they lived is the same. It’s a quarry where there are regular collections [of fossils], the specimens are very well preserved and what has been collected the most there are fish fossils,” he said.
Cantalice said similar fossils have been found in other countries, citing Lebanon as one example. However, none match that of the Choichix alvaradoi found in Chiapas, which is now part of UNAM’s national collection of fish fossils.
The species is believed to be the most primitive of the the spiny-finned fishes, he said, which would mean that the Acanthopterygii superorder might have originated in the land now known as Mexico.
It has previously been thought such fish originated in the Tethys Ocean, which existed during much of the Mesozoic Era, a period lasting from about 252 million to 66 million years ago that is also known as the Age of Reptiles.
“It was previously believed that the fish originated there and migrated to this part of America. However, we now see that the oldest, most primitive fish were in this region and subsequently diversified toward the Tethys Sea,” Cantalice said.
Trucks burn on the Uruapan-Cuatro Caminos highway.
A long-running battle between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cárteles Unidos in Aguililla, Michoacán, spilled into other Tierra Caliente municipalities this week.
Residents have reported narco-blockades and/or confrontations in the municipalities of Aguililla, Tepalcatepec, Buenavista and Apatzingán, located in western Michoacán on or near the border with Jalisco.
Photographs and videos posted online show heavily-armed men from both the CJNG and Cárteles Unidos traveling in armored vehicles in the municipalities, where they have clashed in both built-up areas and on lime farms. The latter group is mainly led by members of the Viagras crime gang, the newspaper Reforma reported, and also has links to self-defense groups.
The Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán is coveted by criminal groups due to its proximity to Pacific coast ports, through which illegal drugs are smuggled into the country, as well as its iron mines and forests. CJNG leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes hails from a small town in Aguililla and in late 2019 was reportedly planning to move back there and make the region his “bunker.”
Lengthy clashes between the CJNG and the Cárteles Unidos left two people dead in Buenavista on Monday, according to residents, and there have also been gun battles in Tepalcatepec, where the number of victims is unclear. Authorities haven’t announced official death counts for any of the recent clashes.
An armed vehicle believed to belong to the CJNG patrols in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán.
José Segura, a Catholic priest in Apatzingán, said Tuesday the National Guard failed to intervene in the confrontation between the CJNG and the Cárteles Unidos in Buenavista, which is now in its fourth day.
“The criminal groups are in the center of Buenavista. What these groups do is look for people who they believe are from the opposing side; they threaten them, burn their houses, take them out and they can even murder them. So the downtown area of Buenavista is one of terror,” he said in a video message.
“Sadly, the National Guard is on the outskirts of the town, at the entrance points, making sure that nobody disrupts the witch hunt of the Cárteles Unidos. Instead of helping the population, they’re looking after those who are now tormenting the people. Nobody goes to help them, that’s the way thing are, how they’ve been and how they will [always] be. There’s no human power that can contain these monsters,” Segura said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Communications and Transportation (SCT) reported three highway blockades in Michoacán on Tuesday.
Two were established by a criminal group on the highway between Apatzingán and Tepalcatepec and a third was set up between Uruapan and Nueva Italia by a group known as Pueblos Unidos, which is made up of avocado farmers who decided to take up arms against organized crime. The SCT warned against travel on the affected roads.
Blockades were also reported on Monday and have been frequently set up on the Aguililla-Apatzingán highway by both the CJNG and the Cárteles Unidos, leaving residents of the former city unable to access essential goods for extended periods of time.
Possibly sparking the latest outbreak of violence was the kidnaping of a self-defense group founder on Sunday in Buenavista by presumed CJNG members or people affiliated with them. However, Ángel Gutiérrez Aguilar, known as “El Kiro,” was rescued on Tuesday morning, according to Tepalcatepec self-defense groups.
One self-defense group member said in an interview that Gutiérrez was located after a boy heard him shouting from an abandoned house where he was being held captive. Self-defense force members subsequently rescued him, he said, explaining that “El Kiro” had injuries inflicted by his abductors.
The doctor treating Gutiérrez described his condition as delicate but stable, explaining that he already had high blood pressure and previously underwent heart surgery.
“I have him slightly sedated because he arrived shocked by everything that happened; he didn’t eat or drink water for two days, he’s dehydrated,” he said.
Gutiérrez was a leader of a self-defense group that formed in Michoacán in 2013 to take up the fight to the Caballeros Templarios, or Knights Templar cartel. There is some hope that his rescue will help calm the situation in Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente, a region notorious for violent crime.
Thousands of tonnes of dead sardines as well as other fish and marine life washed up on the northern Pacific coast of Baja California Sur over the weekend in an event described by local environmentalists as the state’s worst ever marine ecological tragedy.
Massive quantities of sardines as well as smaller amounts of other fish such as combers and anchovies along with sea cucumbers and lobsters, some of which were still alive, washed up on beaches on Sebastián Vizcaíno Bay, located off the northwest coast of the municipality of Mulegé.
According to local media reports, about 15 kilometers of coastline were covered with dead sardines that attracted hungry seagulls and even coyotes. Locals told the newspaper El Sudcaliforniano that the event was unprecedented in terms of its magnitude.
Fernando García Romero, an official with the Baja California Sur Ministry of Fisheries, said the die-off was caused by high ocean temperatures. The hotter than usual temperature of the water caused hypoxia – inadequate oxygen supply – in the deceased fish and marine life, he said.
Locals who returned lobsters to the sea noted that the water was much hotter than normal and a cloudy brown color, indicating a lack of oxygen. Local fishing union leader Benito Emeterio López attributed the die-off to climate change and a current of hot water that originated in Japan.
The temperature of the water off the Baja California coast is normally 18-22 C but reached 30 C in the area where the dead sardines washed ashore, according to local fishing cooperatives. The temperature has since returned to normal.
The newspaper Milenio reported that the discovery of the thousands of tonnes of dead fish “was described by several local environmentalists as the biggest ecological tragedy recorded on the coast of Baja California Sur.”
Local fishermen said that there was a possibility that large quantities of other marine species, such as clams, mussels and sea snails, were also killed, even though they didn’t wash up on beaches. There is also concern that abalone stocks – upon which the livelihoods of hundreds of families depend – may have been adversely affected by the high water temperature.
Jesús Camacho, former president of the Mexican Confederation of Fishing Cooperatives, said that a similar hot water phenomenon occurred on the Pacific coast in 1992, causing the deaths of marine creatures – including abalone – and “enormous economic losses.”
Fishermen and environmentalists said that high levels of contamination in the water may have also been a factor in the recent incident.
Aníbal Lucero, leader of a fishing cooperative, said there was concern among fishermen that a similar event could happen on other stretches of the Pacific coast. When a hot water current arrives, history shows that it kills most of the marine creatures in its path, she said.
An armed commando dressed in military uniforms freed a gang leader Tuesday in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, just 24 hours after police arrested him and three other cartel suspects.
José Alfredo Hernández Campos, also known as “Metro 27,” is alleged to be one of the leaders of the Gulf Cartel based in nearby Matamoros. The man thought to be his boss, known as “El Primito,” had offered 1 million pesos (about US $50,000) for anyone able to break him out, according to reports.
Around 30 armed men in six vehicles awaited the arrival of ministerial police yesterday evening and, while firing their weapons into the air, ordered officers to hand over the suspect, who had been detained on Monday. Reports indicate that the convoy of cartel sicarios dropped traffic spikes on the road to prevent security forces from pursuing them.
After Hernández was set free, National Guard and state police officers and soldiers began an operation to rearrest the suspect. He is still thought to be in Reynosa, and security officials have conducted helicopter and road patrols along highways to Monterrey to prevent him traveling.
The state Attorney General’s Office reported that officers were later involved in a confrontation with members of the commando. One was killed and three others were arrested, one of whom was carrying identification from the Ministry of National Defense.
The botched arrest comes shortly after at least 15 innocent civilians were killed in the border city on June 19, when gunmen arrived in vehicles and indiscriminately opened fire.
In an interview with the Mexico Violence Resource Project published in the aftermath, Carlos Manuel Juárez, the co-founder of Elefante Blanco, a new independent media project in Tamaulipas, said the current violence in the state is the product of intense fragmentation of cartels, including a “ferocious schism” between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, which was originally the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel.
Tamaulipas has been one of Mexico’s most violent states for years, and is one of six on the U.S. Department of State’s “do not travel” list.
Think twice before heading to Mexico, travelers warned.
The United States Centers for Disease Control issued a Level 3 travel advisory for Mexico on Monday, warning citizens of high rates of Covid-19 infections and advising that they reconsider travel to Mexico.
Coronavirus cases have spiked in Mexico, with more than 11,000 new cases recorded on Tuesday as the third wave of the pandemic continues to grow. The federal Health Ministry reported 11,137 new infections – the highest single-day tally since early February, although hospitalizations and deaths are down 75% due to vaccination.
The U.S. Department of State’s advisory stated that dangers associated with Covid-19 could be lower for vaccinated travelers. “Your risk of contracting Covid-19 and developing severe symptoms may be lower if you are fully vaccinated with an FDA authorized vaccine,” it read.
Aside from Covid-19, the Department of State also cautions against traveling to some states due to crime. U.S. citizens are instructed not to travel to Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas due to crime and kidnapping.
Authorities also urge people to reconsider visiting a further 11 states and advocate the exercise of increased caution for another 14. Only taking normal precautions is advised for just two states: Yucatán and Campeche.
In April, Mexico was one of about 80% of the world’s countries which was placed on the Department of State’s “Level 4: Do not travel” list. But the status was eased to “Level 3: Reconsider Travel” early last month.
People who do decide to travel to Mexico should keep traveling companions and family back home informed of their travel plans, use toll roads when possible and avoid driving alone or at night, according to the Department of State. It also advises U.S. citizens to exercise increased caution when visiting local bars, nightclubs and casinos and not display signs of wealth such as expensive watches or jewelry. Also, be extra vigilant when visiting banks or ATMs, the advisory says.
