Benjamín Morales, a Sonora journalist, was murdered in May. At the time, his killing was the fourth aggression against a journalist in the state in 60 days.
Individuals and companies in the Mexican media were victims of 362 acts of aggression in the first half of 2021, an average of one act every 12 hours, according to a press freedom advocacy organization.
“The violence against the press is generalized in the country, and in practically all states, attacks against journalists and the media were documented,” the organization Article 19 noted in a summary of its new report on press freedom in Mexico.
Aggressive actions against journalists between January and June included intimidation and harassment (113 documented incidents), threats (54), physical attacks (35), illegitimate use of public power (35), abductions (16) and murders (3).
Eighty-three — or 23% of the aggressions — were committed by government officials, according to the organization’s report.
President López Obrador is one elected representative who frequently rails against the press, and he has even gone so far as to incorporate weekly fake news debunking sessions into his morning news conferences. Other perpetrators of aggression against the media included private citizens, political parties, security forces and organized crime groups.
Murdered 25-year-old journalist Saúl Tijerina Rentería, based in Coahuila, worked with various online digital news outlets.
“It mustn’t be forgotten that violence against the press perpetrated by rulers and aspirants to government contravenes freedom of speech standards on the one hand and breaches the obligations of the state to guarantee … the protection of the press on the other,” Article 19 said.
Mexico City was the state with the highest number of aggressive acts during the period, with 64. Tamaulipas and Quintana Roo followed, both with 23. Other states with higher numbers included Puebla (22), Guerrero (21) and Baja California (19).
One in three of the aggressive acts occurred online.
Men were victims on 198 occasions, while women were targeted 118 times, Article 19 said. Media organizations, rather than individual journalists, were identified as victims on 41 occasions.
Article 19 also noted that three journalists were murdered in the first half of 2021, adding that their deaths were possibly linked to their work. The journalists were Benjamín Morales Hernández in Sonora, Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera in Oaxaca and Saúl Tijerina Rentería in Coahuila.
Article 19 also noted that two journalists have been murdered in the second half of the year and 22 have lost their lives to violence since President López Obrador took office in December 2018.
“This scenario indicates that in this third year of the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, violence against the press continues without showing any sign of decline,” it said, adding, “… The Mexican state continues to fail to fulfill its obligations in matters of human rights, freedom of speech and access to information.”
“… In view of the continuation of violence against journalists and media outlets in the first half of 2021, as well as the continual failures and omissions of the Mexican state, Article 19 reiterates to the state [that it must] comply with those obligations,” the organization said.
“… It urges the taking of coordinated actions by the various states and levels of government with the aim of protecting the press in Mexico.”
Alfredo Corchado, a border correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, said that Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism.
The United States’ media’s coverage of Mexico, the Mexican criminal justice system and violence in the Bajío region were among the topics discussed in a lively Q & A session at the tail end of an online talk given Sunday by two U.S-based journalists.
Alfredo Corchado, a border correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, and independent journalist Sam Quinones shared their insights on Mexico in a virtual event organized by the San Miguel Literary Sala. Both have had ample experience south of the U.S. border.
One attendee asked the journalists whether they believed U.S. media coverage of Mexico gave readers, listeners and viewers in the U.S. an accurate picture of what’s happening south of the border.
“Our coverage too often is driven by crisis,” Corchado responded. “Wherever the latest crisis is, that’s what we’re focused on, and that leads to a very uninformed American society.”
Another attendee wanted to know whether Mexico is more dangerous for journalists today than it was 15 years ago.
“Absolutely true, especially for our Mexican colleagues,” Corchado remarked.
“Mexico today is one of the most dangerous countries to practice journalism … especially for Mexican colleagues because they don’t have the privilege of having a U.S. passport or being able to say I’m a U.S. citizen,” he said.
“… I’ve known too many journalists, too many colleagues, who have fought the ultimate fight and died in covering a story,” said Corchado, recalling that it’s been happening since the 1994–2000 administration of Ernesto Zedillo but got much worse under Felipe Calderón in 2006 to 2012, the Peña Nieto administration and now under President López Obrador.
Corchado and Quinones also offered opinions on Mexico’s criminal justice system in response to a question from an attendee who opined that it is not working.
“Impunity is something like 98% in the country, and it’s a number that really hasn’t changed for the last two decades,” Corchado said.
“… Despite that, there are parts of society that remain stronger. The fact that you have alternation in power, in government, that’s a good sign. The fact that you have more independent media companies [and journalists], that’s a good sign. It may make you cynical at times, but I see slow, slow progress,” he said.
About the violent Bajío region, journalist Sam Quinones noted the interesting ‘coexistence’ of major business investment and organized crime forces.
Quinones noted that “Mexico has committed itself to adopting the type of trial system we have in the United States, which is open trial [and] cross-examination of witnesses.”
The implementation of such a system, he said, is “an enormous step forward above what they used to have, which was just a deep chasm of mud — you never know what’s happening there.”
However, Quinones lamented that only a few states have implemented the new justice system in a meaningful way.
He also said the jail system in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, which he has visited on many occasions, is much better today than it was in years gone by.
“The jail used to be run by the inmates, and they used to have little stores and their emblems painted all over, and the gangs would run the jail; and now that’s not the case, everybody is really controlled,” Quinones said.
One attendee, a part-time San Miguel de Allende resident, said he had heard that “bad things” were happening in the Bajío — a region that includes parts of several states including Guanajuato, Querétaro and Jalisco — and wanted to know what the ramifications were for ordinary people.
“It’s very scary when you look at the numbers and suddenly it’s a place like Celaya [Guanajuato] that leads the country in killings and violence. As someone who was so focused on Ciudad Juárez and Nuevo Laredo, I never imagined that these places in the Bajío would become that violent,” Corchado said.
“… There’s been a lot of pushback from the business community, trying to lobby the U.S., trying to lobby Mexico to protect their investments because they’re very much at risk,” he said.
“What’s interesting to me is how you have the coexistence of these two things,” Quinones said. “You have this rampant organized crime and violence on one hand and then on the other hand, you have in that region very … modern, top-of-the-line global economy operations working at the same time — automobiles, primarily, and a variety of other things like that. It’s like a competition to see who … will win, the economic forces or the organized crime forces.”
“These are the kinds of things that AMLO really needs to put his mind to,” he said, referring to President López Obrador by his nickname. “This kind of stuff and the trial system — that a president can push along pretty effectively.”
Discussing violence in Mexico compared to that in the United States, the journalists and attendees agreed that in the former, much of it is between criminal groups while random attacks are more common in the latter.
“…When people ask me, ‘Would you live in Mexico?’ I also take into consideration what’s happening in the United States — the fact that you can just go shopping … and have some crazy guy who comes in and kills you just because you’re Mexican,” Corchado said, referring to the 2019 massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
“I’m not trying to say one [country] is better than the other, but it helps you put things in perspective,” he said.
On a lighter note, Quinones gave advice to a part-time Puerto Vallarta resident who asked how she could integrate better into the local community and make Mexican friends. Learning Spanish is the most important thing, he said before recommending telenovelas and the music of Los Tigres del Norte as learning tools.
Very clear Spanish is spoken in telenovelas, Quinones said, while Los Tigres, a norteño musical group, are the “premium chroniclers of Mexican immigration” with songs “steeped in machismo and melodrama.”
Start conversations with Mexicans by talking about television and music rather than politics, the journalist advised.
Martha Castillo was among searchers earlier this month at a location where human remains have been found in Tamaulipas. She is looking for the remains of her four sons and three grandchildren.
Many of the thousands of disappearances in Mexico are not investigated as crimes, according to a United States-based research and advocacy group that has concluded that justice is failing the country’s missing people.
“Justice is failing Mexico’s disappeared starting from the first step of the process: recognizing and investigating disappearances as crimes,” the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) said in a press release announcing the central findings of a new campaign it launched this week.
It noted that Mexico’s National Registry of Disappeared and Missing Persons lists more than 23,000 people who disappeared between 2018 and 2020. All are presumed to be victims of crime but fewer than a third are listed in the registry as victims of any specific crime currently under investigation, WOLA said.
“This reflects both a failure by authorities to upload information to the registry – preventing it from fulfilling its potential as a search and investigation tool – and a real gap between disappearance victims and criminal investigations.”
WOLA said that in mid-2021, only 811 of the more than 23,000 recently-disappeared persons were registered as victims of disappearance crimes, a figure that accounts for just 3.5% of the total.
“The majority of disappeared children from 2018-2020 were girls, yet not a single person was recognized as a victim of human trafficking,” it added.
WOLA said that prosecutor’s offices in many states are only investigating a small fraction of missing persons’ cases.
“Prosecutors’ offices in a range of states reported opening far fewer investigations for disappearance crimes than the number of people [who] disappeared in their territory from 2018-2020,” the group said.
“In response to WOLA’s information requests, a series of offices reported a dozen or fewer such investigations in a context of hundreds or thousands of disappeared people. Disappearances are not just being investigated as other crimes: many were not initially, or are not now, recognized as crimes at all.”
Stephanie Brewer, WOLA’s director for Mexico and migrant rights, said that effective investigations are “essential to turning the tide” in Mexico’s missing persons crisis.
“Solving cases is crucial to discovering the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared, mapping patterns, and prosecuting networks of perpetrators, all of which are key to preventing future disappearances. That path starts with treating disappearance cases as crimes and forming a theory of the case and an investigation plan, elements frequently lacking right now,” she said.
There are more than 90,000 missing persons in Mexico, most of whom disappeared in the last 15 years.
WOLA’s “Mexico disappearances” campaign calls on authorities to bring missing person investigations into full compliance with the general law against disappearances, which took effect in 2018.
“This landmark legislation created specialized tools and procedures to investigate disappearances, but three and a half years later, the official data analyzed by WOLA show that the law remains under-applied, leaving the majority of Mexico’s disappearances unpunished,” the group said.
“WOLA and counterpart organizations in Mexico have written to the country’s National Prosecutors’ Conference and National Search System to share key findings and call for these bodies to coordinate action plans to close the gaps between law and reality.”
WOLA said it will publish additional findings over the next three weeks on obstacles that must be addressed at each stage of the investigative process: firstly, recognizing disappearance crimes; secondly, investigating disappearances; and thirdly, securing justice.
Skeins of yarn colored traditionally with natural dyes ready for weaving. Leigh Thelmadatter
As cauldrons boil on the open patio, Juana Gutiérrez creates visible magic as fibers, along with her hands, turn all kinds of beautiful colors. She is coloring yarn with dyes made naturally, a skill in danger of disappearing — but not if people like her have anything to say about it.
Until modern chemistry, all dyes came from natural sources. But artificial dyes are cheaper, easier to work with and longer-lasting. Their development is but one of several changes that have threatened or nearly eliminated many of the skills related to home textile production — from preparing fiber to the making of clothes. Even the wearing of traditional dress is waning for both economic reasons and the desire to be modern.
Today, clothing made “from scratch” is almost exclusively for special occasions or for sale.
The art of dyeing has been particularly hard hit by the march of technology because it involves a lot of work, and the effort is not quite as noticeable to the untrained eye as it is with hand weaving or embroidery. It also requires a significant amount of knowledge of both local raw materials and how to use them.
However, in the late 1980s, interest emerged in preserving and reviving natural dyes’ use in Mexico. Renowned anthropologist Marta Turok, Mexico’s leading authority on handcrafts, has fought in particular for the survival of Mexico’s “royal purple,” a color made for centuries by gently milking a type of sea snail that lives on the coast of Oaxaca and is called tishinda by the Mixtec.
Juana Gutiérrez dyeing yarn with naturally made indigo at the family’s home and workshop in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca. Leigh Thelmadatter
Such preservation is no easy task. So much information has already been lost, some of it only a few decades ago.
Clues to the craft remain in Mesoamerican codices, colonial-era documentation, historic garments and, when researchers are lucky, contact with the few (almost always women) who still do this work.
Research into these techniques, as well as their preservation, is a multidisciplinary field requiring everything from chemists to test clothing in archives to anthropologists who understand the cultures behind the dyes.
Most of Mexico’s natural-dye knowledge is located in the country’s south and center because of its abundance of flora and fauna there, as well as its history of complex civilizations. However, just about all of Mexico’s indigenous groups had at least some dyes available to them.
These dyes have come from three sources: wild plants and animals, cultivated and semi-cultivated ones, and earth minerals. Wild sources still provide the greatest variety, in multiple colors.
Fully cultivated sources include indigo — plants introduced by the Spanish — as well as the cochineal scale insect, famous for its ability to produce various shades of red. “Semi-cultivated” refers to the tishinda.
Dried natural dyes on display at the Museo de Artes Populares en Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. Adam Jones/Wikimedia Commons
The snail, cochineal insect and indigo make Mexico’s three “spectacular” dyes, says Turok. All were highly prized both before and after the Conquest — shipped back to Europe along with silver and gold.
Over the centuries, cochineal and indigo became fully cultivated. The tishinda snails that produce the purple dye are now milked seasonally under strict guidelines. All three colors are produced in Oaxaca on the state’s Mixtec coast and can be used in combination there.
Cochineal is the best known — cultivated and used primarily in and around the city of Oaxaca. The insect feeds on the nopal cactus, which grows over most of central and southern Mexico, but cochineal seems to be picky about where it lives; there were attempts to cultivate it in other states but to no avail.
Commercial production has been problematic. Although native to Mexico, the insect has predators here that it does not in places like Peru and Chile, and so it is also cultivated there.
Indigo was already known to the Europeans before the Conquest because other varieties of the plant grow elsewhere in the world. Nonetheless, the Mexican variety became an important colonial commodity, with cultivation extending from what is now Guatemala to far up Mexico’s west coast. Today, it is grown only in a few communities in Oaxaca and is at the point of disappearing even here.
The purple dye produced by the tishinda is exceedingly difficult to produce and keep from fading.
Tishinda snail being milked to apply purple to a skein of yarn on the Oaxaca coast. www.kickstarter.com/projects/tixindaproject/tixinda-the-purple-snail/community
Mexico’s snails produce a liquid that when applied directly onto cloth will self-affix and self-cure; no other process is needed. Unlike in the Mediterranean, the Mexican snail was not killed to extract the liquid but rather pressed onto the cloth then returned back to the tidal zone from which it came.
The best way to get an appreciation for natural dyes is to visit those who have preserved the materials and techniques. Recommended is the Gutiérrez family workshop in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, famous for the weaving of naturally-dyed wool rugs.
Unfortunately, natural does not necessarily mean sustainable.
The main problem is overexploitation, especially of wild plants. Many resource collection practices have developed with sustainability in mind, such as letting plants release their seeds before harvesting.
A combination of leaves and bark creates a brown/beige color at the Gutiérrez workshop. Leigh Thelmadatter
However, it is unknown if such practices are sufficient with rising demand. In addition, says Turok, when there is economic pressure, such practices “can become sloppy.”
The resource in the greatest danger is the tishinda. For centuries, the Mixtec migrated to the Oaxaca coast at a certain time of year to milk the snails, taking care not to kill them or interfere in their reproductive cycles. However, recent developments have put major pressure on the snails.
In the 1980s, a Japanese company, Imperial Purple, Inc., paid local (non-Mixtec) fishermen to gather them indiscriminately for use in dyeing high-end textiles in Japan. To this day, you will not see snails over a certain size because of the damage this did. It triggered laws protecting the tishinda, but their effectiveness is disputable. Encroachment on the snails’ habitat and poaching are the main threats today.
Turok and others have worked to understand the snail’s life cycle with the aim of full cultivation, but this has not yet panned out. They have also filed lawsuits to get current laws better enforced.
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.
The Querétaro group Solovino will close the festival's first day.
September is coming and with it comes Hay Festival Querétaro, a celebration of ideas and culture that brings together scientists, authors, economists, journalists and others to discuss the state of society and the challenges it faces.
The festival will present a mix of free digital and in-person events this year and here are a few notable options, such as the discussions that will be offered in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish. All times are CDT.
Wednesday, Sept. 1
Joseph Stiglitz in conversation with Javier Moreno, 9-10 a.m. A conversation with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the author of a number of books on capitalism and globalization. His most recent book explores the European economic crisis, including problems brought into focus by the pandemic such as cuts to social programs and the growth of far-right political movements.
Is subversive music dead? Ted Gioia with Mariana H, 1:30-2:30 p.m. A conversation with American jazz musician, composer and writer Ted Gioia about the relationship between music, the human experience, socio-political movements and pop culture.
Solovino in concert, 7:30-8:30 p.m. The first night of the Hay Festival closes with the performance of the Querétaro group Solovino, who bring vibrant, danceable afrofunk and Latin rhythm to both the stage and screen. An in-person and online event.
Thursday, Sept. 2
David Grossman in conversation with Guadalupe Nettel, 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. The Israeli writer speaks with Middle Eastern peace activist David Grossman. His most recent book, Life Plays with Me (2021), tells the story of Balkan women confronting Soviet oppression.
Fighting Women: Ken Loach and Isabella Lorusso with Diego Rabasa, 2-3 p.m. A conversation with Isabella Lorusso, author of Fighting Women: Interviews with Veterans of the Spanish Civil War and Ken Loach, the award-winning British director whose many films and documentaries often focus on social issues.
Avi Loeb with Mario Arriagada Cuadriello, 4-5 p.m. Avi Loeb is an Israeli-American astronomer and astrophysicist who has studied black holes, the birth of stars and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
Esther Duflo with Alexandra Haas, 4:30-5:30 p.m. A conversation with French economist and Nobel Prize winner Esther Duflo. Her book Good Economics for Hard Times (2020) looks at how economic theory can help address problems ranging from immigration to inequality to climate change.
Friday, Sept. 3
Democracy in Danger: Anne Applebaum in conversation with Ana Laura Magaloni, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Applebaum will discuss some of her recent work, including her book Twilight of Democracy (2021), which looks at how authoritarianism uses social networks, political polarization and conspiracy theories to push back against democratic values.
Saxodia in concert, 9 p.m. The Querétaro-based saxophone quartet performs a fusion of jazz and popular Mexican music. An in-person and online event.
Saturday, Sept. 4
Elizabeth Kolbert with Carla Santana Torres, 7-9 p.m. A conversation with Nobel Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, whose bestselling book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) looks at the damage humanity is inflicting on the planet, upsetting the balance of nature and threatening species, ecosystems and even humans’ existence. Her most recent book, Under a White Sky (2021) looks at various experts’ conservation and restoration work.
La Delicia de Alicia in concert, 9-10 p.m. To close the day, the festival will host a performance by La Delicia de Alicia, described as a vibrant, modern mix of Latin jazz, funk, rock, hip hop and afrobeat.
Sunday, Sept. 5
Philipp Blomwith Juan Carlos Pérez, 10:30-11:30 a.m. A conversation with German historian, writer and journalist Philipp Blom, whose recent work explores how past climate changes affected society and the natural and socio-political challenges the world faces today.
Armando Servín Quintet and the La Rumorosa Blues Band, 9-10 p.m. The final night of the festival opens with a jazz performance by the Armando Servín Quintet followed by La Rumorosa Blues Band performing in their characteristic “Rocknblues” music style. An online and in-person event.
Online reservations, in-person tickets and information about many more events can be found on the Hay Festival website.
Municipal headquarters in the Yucatán capital, whose bank accounts could be frozen on Wednesday.
The bank accounts of the city of Mérida, Yucatán, could be blocked on Wednesday due to the municipal government’s failure to pay a 10-year-old debt owed to the bank Santander.
A Yucatán court has 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. If it fails to do so, an embargo will be placed on its bank accounts and assets.
The newspaper Milenio reported that municipal authorities and Santander have made approaches to each other to discuss the situation but as of early Wednesday no resolution had been reached. However, there is optimism an agreement will be forthcoming.
“… Our team in the region is seeking to approach the mayor’s office with a view to not having the embargo imposed. We’re confident that reaching an agreement will be possible,” Santander told Milenio.
The bank said it is offering solutions that will avoid an adverse impact on the municipality, its activities, its employees and residents of Mérida.
“We have viable proposals to help that we’re putting within the reach of the municipal authority,” Santander said.
The 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 later in 2011, authorities notified the bank that it wouldn’t make repayments to the loan, arguing that there were irregularities with it.
The government 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 today’s deadline.
Foreign Minister Ebrard with refugees who arrived Tuesday.
A women’s robotics team and journalists were among more than 100 Afghan refugees who arrived in Mexico on Tuesday and Wednesday as the Taliban consolidates control in their homeland.
Four members of a robotics team, one other Afghan woman and one Afghan man arrived in Mexico City on Tuesday after initially fleeing Afghanistan on a flight to Qatar. On Wednesday morning, 124 Afghan journalists, other staff members of media organizations and their family members also arrived in the Mexican capital.
The members of the robotics team, who won acclaim for designing and manufacturing ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients, arrived in Mexico City on a commercial flight. The refugees’ flights were paid for by a range of different organizations, said Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Martha Delgado, adding that one organization in Mexico, which was not named for security reasons, will provide them with accommodation, food and basic services free of charge.
“Following the tradition of solidarity and with the feminist foreign policy of the Mexican government, we have carried out many diplomatic efforts to create a safe passage that would allow us to bring them to Mexico,” Delgado said. “We give you the warmest welcome to Mexico.”
The official said the Afghans will have 180-day humanitarian visas that can be extended at the end of that period.
Some of the journalists and their families who arrived Wednesday in Mexico City.
“We are very happy to be here and it is an honor that the government of Mexico has honored us with being here and having saved our lives,” Fatemah Qaderyan, a member of the robotics team, told a press conference.
“The current situation in Afghanistan, we couldn’t expect that. … In Afghanistan many people have the wrong belief that engineering, robotics and technology is only for boys but we proved them wrong, [we showed that] girls have the power to do everything they want to,” said another team member.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who was also at the press conference, noted that Mexico has a rich history of providing refuge to foreigners fleeing difficult situations in their native countries.
“We took in thousands of refugees after the Spanish Civil War and then Argentines, Chileans and Uruguayans came,” he said, adding that Mexico has given protection to citizens of some African and Asian countries in more recent years.
Ebrard said that Mexico “might be very distant from what is happening in Afghanistan” but providing refuge to the Afghan women was the right thing to do.
“They are carriers of a dream and a reality that they have built with many difficulties, which is to show that we can have an egalitarian, fraternal world – equality between the sexes, so we thought it was important to open up our home to them,” he said.
Ebrard was at the Mexico City airport on Wednesday to welcome the Afghan journalists, who worked for media outlets including The New York Times. A Mexican Air Force plane brought them into the country on a flight from Doha, Qatar.
“I welcomed reporters and local staff members from several media outlets who have asked Mexico for humanitarian visas due to the recent events in Kabul, Afghanistan. They arrived with their families, 124 people in total including minors, after 20 hours of flights,” the foreign minister wrote on Twitter.
The New York Times reported that its former Mexico bureau chief, Azam Ahmed, who has also worked in Afghanistan, contacted Ebrard on August 12 to ask if Mexico was willing to receive Afghan refugees.
“We have people there, good people, who are trying to get out,” Ahmed told Ebrard in a WhatsApp message.
The foreign minister initially said that Mexico wouldn’t be able to able to help in a timely manner but after speaking with President López Obrador, the Mexican government concluded that it could act quickly to accept refugees from the Central Asian country.
“We looked at this request not as foreign policy between Mexico and the U.S.,” Ebrard told the Times. “Instead, it’s a common position between someone who was a New York Times reporter in Kabul several years ago and myself, who was in the position to make some decisions.”
Judges in several states have ruled in favor of children being vaccinated against COVID.
An additional 18,262 confirmed coronavirus cases were added to Mexico’s accumulated case tally on Tuesday, while the COVID-19 death toll rose by 940.
There have now been just under 3.25 million confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, a figure that likely represents just a small fraction of the number of people who have really been infected in a country where the federal government has never prioritized widespread testing as a means to combat the spread of the virus.
Mexico’s COVID-19 death toll – also widely considered to be a vast undercount – now stands at 254,466, the fourth highest total in the world.
There are an estimated 124,835 active cases across Mexico, according to the federal Health Ministry, with the highest numbers in Mexico City, México state, Nuevo León and Tabasco.
Almost 81 million vaccine doses have been administered, according to the most recent data, and about one quarter of all Mexicans, adults and children, are fully vaccinated. About 44% of the population has had at least one shot.
Mexico is currently amid a delta variant-driven third wave of the pandemic with average daily case numbers reaching their highest level yet this month.
In other COVID-19 news:
• Oaxaca is one of several states that is currently recording its highest daily case tallies. The state Health Ministry reported a new high of 749 cases last Thursday and hundreds more new infections were recorded on subsequent days. As of Monday, there were an estimated 2,141 active cases in the southern state, according to the federal Health Ministry.
Among the municipalities that have seen recent spikes in case numbers are Santa María Tonameca, Huautla de Jiménez and San Mateo del Mar.
Oaxaca Health Minister Juan Carlos Márquez Heine said Tuesday that more than 3,500 children have tested positive for COVID-19 this year, 42 of whom died.
Just over 57% of general care beds in COVID-19 wards are currently occupied, while 58% of those with ventilators are in use, according to federal data.
Hospitals in Tlaxcala are currently seeing the highest occupancy rates in the country.
• Tlaxcala has the highest occupancy rate in the country for general care hospital beds with just over 77% currently taken. Five other states have rates above 70%. They are Hidalgo, Veracruz, Colima, San Luis Potosí and Durango.
Colima has the highest occupancy rate for beds with ventilators with more than 82% currently in use. Tabasco ranks second with a rate of 71% followed by Nayarit, Hidalgo, Mexico City, Tlaxcala and Nuevo León, all of which have rates above 60%.
• Students returning to schools in Mexico City next week will be required to wear face masks and practice social distancing but pupil numbers won’t be capped nor will staggered timetables be followed to reduce crowding. Authorities in the capital announced a range of measures on Tuesday to guide the safe reopening of schools on August 30. Among them: students will have their temperatures checked when they enter and will be required to wash their hands regularly.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum ruled out any possibility of shutting down schools if small numbers of students test positive to COVID-19. She also said she expected the vast majority of students to return to in-person classes next week.
Federal Education Minister Delfina Gómez said that 90% of primary and middle schools across Mexico were on track to open next Monday. Schools closed in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic and most haven’t reopened since. A recent survey found that seven out of 10 children want to return to in-person classes.
• The Baja California Sur representative of federal health regulator Cofepris said earlier this month that asking people for proof of vaccination to enter places such as restaurants and shopping centers was illegal.
“It’s prohibited and it’s illegal for owners of shopping centers and/or restaurants in Baja California Sur to ask citizens who want to enter their businesses to show vaccination certificates,” said Blanca Pulido Medrano.
Authorities in two states announced last month that people will be required to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative test result to enter public places such as restaurants, bars and shopping centers.
Pulido said that only the federal government should have the authority to decide where it is necessary for citizens to provide proof of vaccination.
• Federal judges in several states have ruled in favor of children having the right to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The newspaper Reforma reported that in the past two weeks eight judges have ruled that children’s right to health care prevails over the government’s national vaccination rollout, which has not yet offered shots to people aged under 18.
The judges’ rulings came in response to injunction requests filed by parents. Fifteen injunctions ordering the vaccination of children have been issued in Mexico City, México state, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí. More than 30 other requests have been rejected in states including Mexico City, México state, Puebla and Nuevo León.
• The federal government has received a shipment of 1.75 million Moderna vaccine doses donated to Mexico by the United States government. The consignment arrived at the airport in Toluca, México state, on Tuesday morning.
The shipment, which arrived on a flight from Memphis, is part of a donation of 8.5 million vaccine doses the Biden administration has pledged to send to Mexico. The U.S. government has also provided millions of doses to Mexico as part of a loan scheme.
Nanae Watabe shows a participant on her mushroom hunting tour in México state a detail about an edible fungus they found in the forest. Photos by PJ Rountree
“[It’s] part of the teachings of foraging,” says Nanae Watabe as she sits in an outdoor cafe in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood, “realizing how long it takes to forage a kilo, the price you pay for that and the availability. When there’s mushrooms, there’s mushrooms. When there are no mushrooms, there are no mushrooms, no matter how much money you want to pay; it’s learning that this is what nature gave you this year and that’s what it is.”
Watabe has mushrooms on the brain. The rainy season is about to begin, and in a few weeks she will start to wake at dawn, pull on her rain boots and clomp her way through the forest just outside this seething metropolis, collecting one of the country’s most underappreciated culinary jewels.
Watabe is a mushroom hunter by trade, sought after by chefs and enthusiasts alike for her knowledge of the area’s fungi. She has spent close to a decade learning from local foragers in México state about where and how to collect some of the country’s finest mushrooms.
And while the wild fungi have boomed as a delicacy in the city and around the world, the work she does as a distributor to some of the capital’s most high-end restaurants hasn’t always been easy.
“Because of climate change, I had no mushrooms to sell,” she says of 2020. “Every chef was fighting over them, and there were no mushrooms — when at the beginning, when we all started this, I was moving maybe like 20 to 60 kilos per week. Then [the mushrooms] started being less and less [available], and I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna stop. This is a sign that we are overdoing this.’”
After showing Watabe where to find edible wild fungi in the area, México state resident Andrés Contreras became a permanent partner in Watabe’s endeavors.
She recognized that her particular part of the forest was being over-picked and not producing what it had in other years, so she pivoted. She started to take food lovers, chefs and mushroom junkies up to the forest to experience the hunt for themselves.
Watabe hoped it would teach them a deeper appreciation for the origin of their food and the vast fungi biodiversity in Mexico.
“I think your mind has never seen mushrooms in their natural habitat,” she told a recent group on a hunt in Xalatlaco, México state, in the La Mesita forest. “… To see a mushroom in the earth — I think it changes your life. Have you ever collected your own food? Strawberries don’t count. Your brain’s like ‘I’ve literally never seen this in my life.’”
At least that’s how she felt the first time.
Eight years ago, Watabe was working on a permaculture farm near La Mesita when a night watchman from the local community brought in a bucket “of things I had never seen in my life!” she laughs. “I was like ‘What is this?!’”
From that moment forward, she was hooked.
But foragers are secretive folks, and it took Watabe a while to convince that night watchman to take her out to the forest to look for fungi. Eventually, she found a more willing accomplice in Andrés Contreras.
From the same México state community, Contreras has been walking the woods almost from the time he could take a step. He spent the rainy seasons of his youth up on the hills with his father and brothers, grazing their sheep and hunting mushrooms. He’s now deeply involved in the project as Watabe’s local guide.
“All of a sudden, [Contreras’] family wanted to come to meet the group that wanted to meet their father — the official local guide and master, our teacher. For me, that is my favorite part,” Watabe says.
“By no means am I getting rich off this, but for me, it’s just so important to get connected to Andrés and his family up in the forest [and] to the chefs, being that bridge.”
Watabe studied food culture and communications in Italy, the epicenter of the slow food movement, and so her interests in developing a project with mushrooms went well beyond just eating.
“With slow food, you think about the environment, the social aspect and the pleasure aspect too, so I was thinking about that during this whole project.”
Climate change and overpicking pushed Watabe in 2020 to scale back foraging. She now collects for a select few capital establishments.
With that in mind, she is trying to keep the money from her tours inside the community. Local women make the green pork and mushroom tamales that tour participants eat mid-hike. Andrés’ wife makes the delicious quesadillas at the end of each tour under a white tent at the forest’s edge.
She also pays mushroom pickers their asking price and never haggles.
“Never try to lower the price if a lady is selling them to you,” Watabe says. “That lady probably went out to the forest and foraged those mushrooms with maybe two or three of her family members. That takes a whole day, and then they have to come and deliver to the market. So if that’s the price that they want to give to you, respect it because you have to respect the labor — because it’s a lot.”
After months off, Watabe is now slowly distributing again to a small number of select restaurants and is once again buying from a few suppliers in the city. You can find the mushrooms she distributes in restaurants like Felix, Meroma and Pujol, where she works with chefs who she feels value the process.
But her focus remains on the education of people about where their food comes from via the tours.
“[I want] people to really connect with part of Mexico, part of what we’ve had forever, and recognize that we have some of the best products worldwide — and also realize that this is only an hour away from the city, realize that it’s not just from a supermarket,” she said.
“People said to me, ‘Why don’t you have, like, 100 grams [of mushrooms] for people to take as a little gift [at the end of the tour], and I was like ‘No, no, no.’ That is the whole point of a food being seasonal. When it’s there and it’s fresh, that’s when it’s the best, and if you are lucky enough to find one and you’re lucky enough to be foraging, that’s the present that nature gives you,” she said.
If you are lucky enough to be foraging with Watabe, you soon learn that there are dozens of varieties of mushrooms out there, but only a few you can eat. That makes finding something edible and delicious even more exciting.
It also makes your appreciation for the people who do find them that much greater.
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Theft and muggings are common in her Oaxaca city neighborhood of La Noria, says Laura, who heads her community's citizens' committee.
If you see a steely-eyed, machete-wielding woman in the streets of Oaxaca city, don’t be afraid: she’s there to protect you, not hurt you.
A 54-year-old La Noria resident who heads up the community’s citizens’ committee has taken to the streets to clamp down on the crime that she says municipal police are failing to stop.
“I’m the president of the residents’ committee in the neighborhood of La Noria, and we [patrol] the streets because there is a lot of crime and there is no police vigilance. That’s why we’re working,” the woman, who only identified herself as Laura, told the newspaper Milenio.
Machete in hand, she walks through the streets of La Noria, located just outside Oaxaca city’s historic center, every day from early in the morning. Car batteries and water meters are frequently targeted by thieves, and muggings are common, Laura said.
“That is what is bothering us a lot; it makes us very angry,” she said. “… The municipal police don’t patrol despite the complaints we made to Mayor Oswaldo García Jarquín,” she said.
“… There are robberies almost every day,” she added. “… On Saturday, some people on motorcycles grabbed a young woman and took her bag, cell phone and everything she was carrying. They shoved her as well.”
Asked why she decided to arm herself with a machete, Laura responded that it was a matter of coincidence. One day, she went to collect the blade from a person she had lent it to, and from that day on she began carrying the machete with her while patrolling the streets.
She said that carrying some kind of weapon is necessary because criminals are always armed with ice picks, knives or guns.
Due to her courage and concern for the well-being of her fellow residents, citizens have dubbed Laura “La Guerrera” (The Warrior), saying they admire and respect her for the work she does.
