A still from the film Laberinto Yo’eme, a documentary about the Yaqui people that is set to premiere in select theaters across Mexico.
A documentary about the Yaqui people of Sonora and the struggles and injustices they have faced for decades begins screening in cinemas this week.
Laberinto Yo’eme, the debut film of Sergi Pedro Ros, will open Friday in Mexico City cinemas including the Cineteca Nacional and Cine Tonalá. The documentary will also begin screening in the coming days in other cities across Mexico, including Oaxaca, Veracruz, Monterrey and Guadalajara.
“My main interest [in making the film] came from the fact the Yaqui tribe is living through a situation of terrifying injustice,” Ros told the newspaper Milenio.
Members of the community participated in several protests last year to demand the return of expropriated land and the delivery of basic services authorities promised to them. They have also been affected by high levels of violence in Sonora, and two Yaqui activists who collaborated on the documentary, Tomás Rojo and Luis Urbano, were recently murdered.
“As a filmmaker, I was very interested in telling the story of a people who, despite all the extermination attempts they’ve lived through and which they continue suffering, continue to fight for who they are – keeping their culture, language, worldview and universe alive,” he said.
Made in conjunction with the Mexican Institute of Cinematography, the film shows the reality that the Yaqui community of southern Sonora is experiencing today, Ros said.
“Unfortunately, the story we tell in Laberinto Yo’eme is current, it’s what’s happening at the moment,” he said.
Their land rights have been violated for decades despite a 1940 presidential decree that recognized them as the owners of the land on which they live, Ros said.
Although the film explores a range of difficulties and challenges faced by the Yaqui people, it’s not all doom and gloom. It also gives viewers an insight into the traditional customs of the community, a group that is best known to some for inspiring the Carlos Castaneda book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.
Ros said that his documentary might eventually find its way to a streaming service but emphasized that he made it specifically to be shown on the big screen.
“After you see this film you will never forget who the Yaquis are and what they’re living through at the moment,” he said.
The president announces the cabinet change in a video Thursday.
The minister responsible for Mexico’s domestic affairs will return to the Senate and her post will be taken by the governor of Tabasco, President López Obrador announced Thursday afternoon.
Olga Sánchez Cordero, 74, has served as minister of the interior since the López Obrador administration took office on December 1, 2018. She returns to the Senate, to which she was elected in September 2018, prior to which she was a Supreme Court justice for 20 years.
Tabasco Governor Adán Augusto López, 57, will take her place subject to obtaining a leave of absence in Tabasco, where he has been governor since January 2019. His terms ends at the end of this year.
López served as a senator between 2012 and 2018 and prior to that as a Tabasco state deputy between 2009 and 2012.
The president said in a video posted Thursday afternoon on social media that he invited Sánchez to head the Ministry of the Interior to set a precedent indicating a women could hold the post.
He praised her for her support and loyalty before introducing the new minister as his “friend, countryman and close friend.”
A petition filed this month by a coalition of environmental groups is asking that Mexico be investigated for not executing fishing and trading laws in the agreement that could protect the vaquita. Paula Olson/NOAA
A new petition has urged the United States to initiate a consultation with Mexico on its failure to protect the world’s most endangered porpoise, the vaquita marina.
Endemic to the Gulf of California, the vaquita is an estimated 10 individuals away from extinction, a number so critically low that it is considered the most threatened marine mammal on the planet. Yet the national government continues to fail in its regulation and penalization of illegal fishing in the area, leading to mounting international pressure for Mexico to be held to account.
Conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, submitted the petition to the Commission of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (UMSCA) Secretariat requesting enforcement against Mexico for its failure to execute fishing and trading laws on August 11. Further, the petition asks the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC) to investigate and develop a “factual record” on Mexico’s failures, and for the U.S. Trade Representative’s environment committee to initiate a consultation.
This consultation is the first step in the USMCA’s formal enforcement process and could lead to sanctions for the Mexican government.
Historically, the government of Mexico has failed to implement sanctions against illegal fishing in the vaquita’s habitat in the upper Gulf of California, where observers documented more than 1,100 unlawful vessels in November 2020 alone.
The area lies within the Gulf of California, an area of high natural biodiversity that boasts a third of the world’s cetacean species, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises, and includes the remainder of the vaquita population. The small, elusive creatures are often killed as bycatch in gillnet fishing for the totoaba fish, which, like the small porpoise, is also critically endangered and whose swim bladder is illegally traded at prodigiously high prices overseas.
Despite its name, the reality of the ZTA is far from what it purports to be, says Alejandro Olivera, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation organization.
“The Mexican government’s plan is silly,” he said.
Officials will be wasting precious time counting vessels within an area where zero fishing is supposed to be tolerated, he explained. “They won’t even bother fully enforcing the fishing ban until 50 illegal boats are detected in this small area.”
Yvette Griffiths of the environmental nonprofit Ninth Wave Global agrees:
“The bottom line here is that there is no genuine political will to act because there are too many other vested interests at play, by which I mean economic interests. So what we essentially have is the authorities paying lip service to conservation while in fact not taking it remotely seriously.”
Totoaba fishermen.
The petition filed with the USMCA Secretariat this month stresses the urgency of putting real pressure on the government to act. With only 10 vaquitas likely remaining anywhere in the world, the time to take action is fast running out.
Yet, in spite of years of regulations, talks and promises by the Mexican government to protect the small porpoise, officials have consistently turned a blind eye to illegal fishing in the Gulf of California.
An absence of government presence, however, does not equate to an absence of power structures altogether; endemic to Latin America are vacuums of power — caused largely by government weakness or neglect — into which external power blocs can step.
In this instance, the traffickers, specializing in the poaching and distribution of the totoaba swim bladder, are diversifications of the cartels that control huge territories across the Baja Peninsula. Using their existing influence and networks to cash in on the lucrative totoaba maw trade, transnational networks ship what is known as the “cocaine of the sea” to China, where they sell for prohibitively high prices.
And given that groups on operations to try and stop the use of illegal gillnets in the area have received anonymous death threats while patrolling the waters of the gulf, it is little wonder that the already scant government patrols are rarely keen to go up against these entrenched interests who stand to gain from continued illegal fishing.
The Mexican government needs both encouragement — to recognize the importance of enforcing sanctions against the illegal fishing which threatens the vaquita — and support in order to make headway into the entangled power structures currently at play in the gulf.
With this in mind, the conservation groups behind the petition say that the need for the intervention of the international community is more pressing than ever.
“Action must be immediate, and it must be radical,” says Griffiths. “The protection of what little remains of the vaquita population is about conserving the biodiversity of the entire ecosystem of the upper Gulf of California. Government negligence means that the vaquita has little chance of survival, but the actions taken now will set precedent for the future.”
The question now is this: will international policies continue to sleepwalk down the same roads in the future, or can alliances such as the USMCA establish a firm and functioning system of intervention to act as potential mitigation for future species and biodiversity loss?
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Just over 200,000 deaths was the official count as of March 31.
Additional evidence that the coronavirus pandemic has been far deadlier than official numbers indicate was published on Wednesday.
There were almost half a million more deaths than expected in Mexico between January 2020 and March 2021, the national statistics agency Inegi reported.
Based on 2015-19 mortality data, 940,329 deaths were expected in the 15-month period. Instead there were 1,437,805 deaths, a difference of 497,476, or 53%.
Not all such deaths can be attributed to COVID-19 – especially considering that some people have put off seeking treatment for other medical conditions during the pandemic – but most of them likely were.
The federal government acknowledged at the end of March that Mexico’s true COVID-19 death toll was almost 60% higher than the official count of test-confirmed fatalities but the new Inegi data suggests that the real figure could be even higher.
If three-quarters of the excess fatalities were caused by COVID, Mexico’s real death toll at the end of March was 84% higher than the official one.
Excess mortality was more prevalent among men than women between January 2020 and March 2021. Almost 592,000 women died in the period, a figure nearly 179,000, or 43%, higher than that anticipated. Almost 845,500 men died in the same period, almost 318,000, or 60%, more than expected.
The data is consistent with evidence that shows that men are more likely to die from COVID-19 than women.
Mexico City – the country’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic – recorded the highest excess mortality rate with 85.6% more deaths than expected. México state and Tlaxcala both ranked second with mortality 77.1% higher than expected, while Puebla and Morelos rounded out the top five with rates of 55.7% and 54.8%, respectively.
In the first three months of this year – a period that includes Mexico’s worst month of the pandemic in terms of deaths – there were 29 fatalities per 10,000 people, according to Inegi, an 80% increase compared to the same period of 2020.
Mexico City had the highest per capita death rate in the period with 60 fatalities per 10,000 people. Morelos ranked second with 41 followed by Guanajuato (35) and Tlaxcala (35).
Quintana Roo had the lowest rate with 13 fatalities per 10,000 people followed by Chiapas (15) and Campeche (16). The latter two states have the lowest coronavirus case tallies in the country.
The total number of deaths across Mexico in the first three months of 2021 was 368,906, the highest first quarter figure on record.
Supporters of the bill with a rainbow banner outside the legislature on Wednesday.
The Congress of Yucatán approved same-sex marriage on Wednesday with 20 of 25 lawmakers voting in favor of the bill.
Same-sex couples can now legally marry in 22 of Mexico’s 32 states. The approval in Yucatán came two months after the legislatures of Baja California and Sinaloa voted in favor of marriage equality.
The bill, put forward by independent Deputy Milagros Romero, modifies article 94 of the Yucatán constitution that previously stated that marriage was an exclusive institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage is now defined as a “free and voluntary legal union of two people with equal rights, duties and obligations.”
The Congress previously rejected same-sex marriage on two occasions. Those votes were held in secret, triggering legal action. The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of the plaintiffs – activist groups and others – and ordered the Congress to hold a new vote.
“Almost three years of constant struggle went by but the final result is for all Yucatán citizens who were discriminated against,” said Silvia López Escoffié, an independent deputy. “We’re very satisfied.”
Two Institutional Revolutionary Party deputies and three with the conservative National Action Party, which holds power in Yucatán, voted against the bill. Governor Mauricio Vila expressed his support for the decision.
“The decision the Yucatán Congress took today is the fruit of our democracy and that makes us stronger as a society,” he wrote on Twitter. “I call on everyone to respect each other and work together. We are always stronger together.”
The Yucatán Congress also voted unanimously in favor of prison sentences of up to three years for anyone offering sexual orientation conversion therapy treatment. Anyone conducting conversion therapy with minors can be incarcerated for double that length of time.
New streetlights were installed in Mérida in 2011, but the next mayor had them removed.
The bank accounts of the city of Mérida, Yucatán, and real estate it owns were placed under an embargo on Wednesday due to the municipal government’s failure to pay a 10-year-old debt owed to the bank Santander.
A Yucatán court set a deadline of 5:00 p.m. Wednesday for the city to pay the 588.8-million-peso (US $28.9 million) debt or reach a repayment agreement with the bank but neither occurred.
A clerk of the court consequently placed an embargo on the city’s assets.
According to Santander, all of the municipal government’s bank accounts as well as 85 properties and five movable assets it owns and two lines of public funding are subject to the embargo.
Santander said it remains open to finding a solution that would allow the embargo to be lifted in a timely manner so as to avoid the adverse impacts of such a mechanism.
The large debt dates back to March 2011 when the municipal government signed a contract for street lighting with AB & C Leasing that was financed by Santander.
When the municipal government changed in 2012, authorities notified the bank that it wouldn’t make repayments to the loan, arguing that there were irregularities with it. The mayor at the time was Renán Barrera Concha, who is currently serving a second term at the head of the municipal government.
Barrera said the 5,000 Chinese-made streetlights rented by the municipal government led by Angélica Araujo didn’t work and ordered their removal. He took the decision to cease making 8-million-peso monthly repayments to Santander.
Araujo has described that decision as irresponsible and warned that the citizens of Mérida would be adversely affected by it.
The 2012-15 government led by Barrera launched legal action aimed at extricating itself from responsibility to pay back the loan but in 2014 a Mexico City judge ordered it must do so, ruling that the contract and the previous administration’s transfer of responsibility for it to Santander were legal.
During a period of several years, the Mérida council continued to wage a legal battle against its responsibility to service the loan but had no success. Late last month, a Mexico City court once again ruled that it must repay the loan, paving the way for the Yucatán court to set Wednesday’s deadline.
Mayor Barrera has not commented publicly on the matter. He was elected to a third term as mayor at elections held on June 6.
The suspect in the abduction of a baby in Jalisco.
Authorities in Jalisco are searching for a newborn baby who was abducted Wednesday evening at the Zoquipan general hospital in Zapopan.
A woman dressed in surgical clothing approached the infant’s mother and asked to be given the child so she could take it to the nursery area of the hospital.
Shortly after, the mother asked if she could see the baby but was told there was no record that hospital staff had taken it from her.
A search of the hospital revealed no sign of the baby but a woman in surgical dress believed to be the kidnapper was caught on security video.
State officials have issued an amber alert for the child, identified as Mexican, female with short, black hair, white skin, about 50 centimeters in length and weighing 3.68 kilograms.
Her abductor is believed to be aged 35-45 with a light brown complexion.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call 333-030-4949 (local) or 555-346-2516 (national).
Governor Enrique Alfaro said the “full force of the state” was being applied to search efforts. “It’s not possible that such a level of wickedness can exist,” he said on Twitter.
A migrants' camp in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. file photo
Mexico will initiate talks with the United States on migration issues in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that obliges the Biden administration to reinstate the Donald Trump-era “remain in Mexico” policy.
The court refused on Tuesday to overturn a lower court ruling that ordered the U.S. government to restore the controversial Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which forced migrants to remain here while they await the outcome of their asylum claims.
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry (SRE) said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of State had formally presented the Supreme Court resolution to it but noted that it is not obliged to cooperate with it.
“In adherence with the constitutional principles of our foreign policy, the Mexican government does not take a position with respect to the ruling. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasizes that a judicial decision of this type is not binding on Mexico and its immigration policy is designed and executed in a sovereign way,” the SRE said in a statement.
“Consequently, the United States Supreme Court ruling doesn’t have a direct implication on the Mexican government’s immigration management.”
The SRE said the government will initiate technical discussions with the United States “with the objective of evaluating the scenarios in the management of orderly, safe and regular migration flows on the common border.”
Many of the migrants returned to Mexico under the “remain in Mexico” policy were Central Americans. Mexico has no legal obligation to accept non-Mexican citizens but cooperated with the policy, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, even as shelters and other migrant services on the northern border were overwhelmed.
The Associated Press reported that it’s unclear how many people will be affected by the Supreme Court ruling and how quickly.
The Biden administration could try again to terminate the MPP but under the lower court ruling upheld by the Supreme Court it must make a “good faith effort” to restart the policy, which faced criticism because it forced migrants to wait in crime-ridden Mexican border cities as they waited for U.S. courts to rule on their claims.
That left migrants vulnerable to kidnapping, assault, rape and even murder. Some migrants were transported by bus to southern Mexico or “invited” to return to the countries from which they fled.
Although the SRE was at pains to emphasize that the federal government has no obligation to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, a former chief of the National Immigration Institute believes it is unlikely it won’t given Mexico’s history of cooperation with the United States.
Tonatiuh Guillén, who resigned in 2019 a week after the government reached an agreement with the United States to increase enforcement against undocumented migrants, said Mexican authorities will probably agree to the renewal of the MPP even though they, and non-profit organizations, don’t have sufficient resources to manage a large arrival of asylum seekers to the northern border.
Hacienda Viva Margarita Chef Marco Antonio Cayetano Fernández makes sopes.
Hacienda Viva Margarita, an honest-to-goodness Mexican restaurant, has recently opened in Chipilo. Now, I’m imagining that most people reading this are thinking, “So what?” because Chipilo’s located in Puebla which, as everyone knows, is in Mexico, and a Mexican restaurant opening there shouldn’t be all that surprising.
But Chipilo’s a pueblo settled by Italians back in 1882, and its cuisine is heavily influenced by that. Sure, the pueblo has its share of fondas (small Mexican eateries) and taquerías (informal taco joints) serving up typical Mexican staples like quesadillas, tortas, and gorditas, but the town’s restaurants are all Italian, where much of the food combines traditional Italian dishes with Mexican flavors.
Hacienda Viva Margarita’s bringing something different to the area.
The restaurant opened in mid-July and is located on Highway 190 on the outskirts of Chipilo.
“We liked the location,” said Juvenal Martínez who, in addition to being one of three owners, sometimes fills in as chef.
The buffet bar at Hacienda Viva Margarita, one of Chipilo’s newest restaurants, which offers Mexican food Arizona-style.
Martínez was born and raised in Atlixco, a city about a 30-minute ride from Chipilo. He studied at the Instituto Culinario in Puebla before moving to New York, where he lived for 18 years working as a chef in Mexican restaurants. He moved back to Mexico in 2018 because he hadn’t seen his parents in years.
When he and his partners learned about a former restaurant building that had been abandoned for a couple of years, they decided that it was a good area for a restaurant, “good for a big project.”
And a big project it is.
The restaurant has two floors, with outdoor seating on the first and patio seating on the second. A small gallery occupies a front room on the first floor.
In addition to the restaurant, there’s a salón for events; an 18-room boutique hotel is also currently under construction. And tucked into a corner is a small mezcalería, where some special mezcal is made (more about this later).
Although certainly Mexican, Hacienda Viva Margarita isn’t your typical Mexican restaurant.
“The idea for the type of food is Fernando’s, another owner,” explained Martínez. “He lived in Arizona for some years, and Arizona, as you know, was originally part of Mexico. The food there is a mix of what’s found in the United States — specifically in Arizona — and Mexico. The food in Arizona, it is different from Mexican, but it is still Mexican.”
The partners opened five Hacienda Viva Margarita restaurants in New Jersey. The menu and the cuisine that they developed there is what they’ve brought to Mexico.
The restaurant’s offerings and flavors are quite different from what can be found in most Mexican restaurants.
“The difference here is that we use local produce,” said chef Marco Antonio Gayetano Fernández. “It is very fresh. The basics are Mexican, but we use different herbs — for example, pipicha, which is very aromatic and not typically used. We use chile guajillo in about 80% of the food we make.”
They give the food a sweet, smoky flavor.
Another big difference is the number of vegetarian dishes offered.
Piñas, or agave hearts, are prepared for the restaurant’s sideline business — making premium mezcal.
“In 2021, people are taking better care of their health,” said Martínez. “More people are avoiding meat. We have a vegetarian chorizo that is made with soy. We have tacos made with tofu.”
There are four vegetarian burritos on the menu. “The burritos are filled with beans and rice,” said Gayetano, “and we heat them with steam, to make them softer. We serve them with artisanal crema.”
Martha Cabrera had dinner in the restaurant right after it opened, and she was suitably impressed.
“I tried the burrito,” she said, noting several differences from other Mexican restaurants. “The burritos are very large, and are enough for two meals. I never ate a burrito with rice and beans inside, and I liked that.”
“The flavors are different, not traditional but very good,” she added.
Being a vegetarian, she was surprised at the menu. “In most Mexican restaurants, there are usually no vegetarian options, but here there are several.” In addition to the burritos, there are also vegetarian enchiladas, tostadas, alambres and what they call chimichingadas.
Now, about that mezcalaría and the special mezcal produced there.
It produces about 900 liters of mezcal a month from January through the end of August. In addition to a typical, mezcal blanco (white mezcal), they make mezcal negro (black mezcal), something that’s very rare.
“I learned how to make mezcal from my father, who learned from my grandfather,” said Martínez, himself a master mezcal maker. “It goes back 50, 60, 70 years. My father learned how to make mezcal negro from friends who are also maestros mezcaleros. They taught him, and he taught me. Only two, maybe three, people know how to make mezcal negro.”
Martínez buys piñas — the agave hearts used to make mezcal — from a small pueblo close to the border with Oaxaca. He only uses piñas from the papolometl agave, which is considered to be the best for making mezcal.
The agave hearts are first cooked for several days using heated volcanic rocks. They’re then chopped up and mixed with water in large tubs, where they’re left for about a week to allow fermentation to happen. The resulting liquid is then distilled twice.
This is the way artisanal mezcal is usually made. What’s unusual is what Martínez does to make black mezcal.
“When we cook the piñas, we have a tub to collect … the juice that drips from the outside of the piña,” Martínez explained. “This is like honey. It is very sweet. Two liters of that liquid, called agave negro, is then mixed with 10 liters of mezcal to make mezcal negro.”
The result is a mezcal that is surprisingly sweet and much smoother than typical mezcal.
The grounds upon which the restaurant is located are fairly large and a nice place to stroll, especially after a large meal. The hotel is expected to open in September and might be a good place to crash after sampling a little too much mezcal negro.
People living in Cholula will be happy to know that another Hacienda Viva Margarita will open there, near the pyramid, in September.
• The restaurant is open from 1:00 to 10:00 Monday through Friday and 9:00 to midnight Saturday and Sunday. A brunch is served from 9:00 to 2:00 Saturdays and Sundays. Hacienda Viva Margarita is located at Carretera Federal Atlixco #104, Km. 14.5, Chipilo, Puebla. Phone number: 222 283 0788.
An agglomeration of people on Calle Madero in Mexico City.
Mexico recorded 21,250 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and 986 additional COVID-19 deaths, according to Health Ministry data.
The accumulated case tally now stands at 3.27 million while the official death toll is 255,452.
There are an estimated 129,251 active cases across the country with the highest numbers in Mexico City, Nuevo León, México state and Tabasco.
As of Tuesday, almost 19% of all officially reported COVID deaths had occurred in Mexico City, the country’s pandemic epicenter. The capital had recorded almost 48,000 fatalities while México state ranked second with more than 30,000.
Five other states have death tolls above 10,000. They are Jalisco, Puebla, Veracruz, Guanajuato and Nuevo León.
Of the 20 countries currently most affected by COVID-19, Mexico has the highest case fatality rate with 7.8 deaths per 100 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. It ranks third among the same group of countries for mortality with 199.5 deaths per 100,000 people. Among all countries, Mexico has the 19th highest mortality rate. Peru ranks first followed by Hungary and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In other COVID-19 news:
• President López Obrador said Wednesday that the federal government will offer booster shots to teachers, most of whom were vaccinated with the single-shot CanSino vaccine, only if the World Health Organization recommends it.
“All the teachers are already vaccinated, they were given a CanSino vaccine, just one dose and up until now the doctors, the specialists say that’s enough. If the WHO says a booster is needed we’ll do it but until now the doctors don’t recommend it,” he told reporters in Xalapa, Veracruz.
CanSino Biologics itself recommended earlier this month that a second dose of its vaccine be given six months after the first shot to improve recipients’ immune response.
• More than 81.9 million vaccine doses have been administered in Mexico, according to the most recent Health Ministry data. More than six in 10 Mexican adults have now received at least one shot.
• Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday that coronavirus cases numbers were possibly beginning to trend downwards. However, the average number of daily cases during the past seven days was 18,089, a 1% increase compared to the daily average during the seven days prior.
López-Gatell also said that Mexico – which is currently amidst a delta variant-driven third wave of the pandemic – could see a fourth wave sometime in the future.
“While the epidemic exists in the world, all countries have the possibility of having a fourth, fifth or sixth wave. Several countries in Europe are already in their fifth and sixth waves, the United States is in its fourth,” he said.
