Competitors both young and elderly running in a tortilla-carrying race that's a nearly 30-year tradition in Tehuacán, Puebla. Twitter
A much-awaited tortilla race returned to a Puebla city on Sunday with runners raring to go after two years of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 300 indigenous women of all ages from Santa María Coapan convened at the municipal palace in nearby Tehuacán at 9 a.m. with stacks of tortillas at the ready for the 28th edition of the famous race.
Adorned with aprons, traditional embroidered blouses, leather huarache sandals and woven baskets full of corn tortillas, the runners lined up to tackle the 4.5 kilometer course. Some ran barefoot.
Different races were held for various age categories, which included youth, veteran and an open category. The children’s race kicked off proceedings, and some of the young competitors set off at full pelt, only to quickly hit a wall of dehydration which forced them to slow to a more comfortable pace.
In one video of the races, women are seen at the starting line in traditional dress singing together. They hear the buzzer and speed off, carrying large bags of tortillas on their backs, some weighing 6 kilograms, the newspaper El Universal said.
The race, celebrated every August 7, pays tribute to the journey that the women of Santa María Coapan traditionally have taken for years from their town to Tehuacán, where they sell their tortillas at Tehuacán’s public market. In 2017, the race was officially named part of the cultural heritage of Tehuacán.
Fernando Ríos Rocha, head of the state’s office of plastic arts and cultural development, said that the race was a symbolic one that reinforced Puebla’s traditions.
However, the race was not all that symbolic to many of the competitors. Several took to the contest like ducks to water, saying they were accustomed to carrying a heavy load of tortillas for sale in baskets every morning; some support their entire families with their sales.
📍👥Antes de iniciar la Carrera de la Tortillas, las participantes llevan a cabo un ritual prehispánico en Coapan pic.twitter.com/eiapYcaq1N
Before the race’s start, competitors underwent a pre-Hispanic ritual
One runner, Nayeli Morales de Jesús, said she started making and selling tortillas when she was 10 years old. Morales joined her first race four years ago. She told the news site E-Consulta that her tortillas have reached Colombia, Spain and Germany and urged authorities in Tehuacán to help support food and tortilla sellers in Santa María Coapan.
The victor in the children’s category, Luz Janet de Jesús Muñoz, carried three kilograms in her basket. María de los Ángeles Zamora Leal again took the crown in the free category, having won the last edition in 2019.
Lots of trash, brought partly by tourism are creating scenes like this in Mazatlán: municipal workers pull trash out of a city drainage system that damaged pumps.
Mass tourism is causing pollution problems in Mazatlán, triggering calls for a greater focus on sustainable tourism in the Pacific coast resort city.
Some 677,000 tourists are expected to visit the Sinaloa beach destination during the summer vacation period of July and August, according to the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlán, which also reported that 800,000 visitors flocked to the city in Holy Week, a figure that easily exceeds Mazatlán’s population of approximately 500,000. In addition, Mazatlan is expected to see three times as many cruise ships visit this year than in 2021.
Mayor Luis Guillermo Benítez Torres acknowledged last week that Mazatlán is swamped with tourists, but asserted that is a good thing given the benefits tourism brings to the local economy.
“In Mazatlán there are vacations practically the whole year. … You have to line up for about two hours to enjoy breakfast in a restaurant because fortunately everything is saturated,” he said last Tuesday.
Blanca Roldán, a Mazatlán-based academic who specializes in issues related to the environment and development, agreed that tourism is good for Mazatlán from an economic standpoint, but highlighted that the massive influx of visitors also has negative consequences.
Mayor Luis Guillermo Benítez Torres, seen here speaking at a UN-Habitat forum on sustainable urbanization, says being inundated with tourists is good for the economy. Twitter
“The contamination problem is undoubtedly increasing,” she told El Sol de Mazatlán. Roldán said that the accumulation of waste, as well as noise and visual pollution, are tourism-related problems in the city known as the “Pearl of the Pacific.”
“The most common [form of pollution], or that which citizens notice the most, is that generated by trash, especially on the coast and in public places,” she said.
Roldán said that nightclubs and bars as well as public transport and tourism-related construction projects all contribute to noise pollution in Mazatlán, while construction projects also cause visual pollution.
“The construction of extremely high towers doesn’t just break the harmony of the landscape, but has also blocked … the view to the sea of some residents,” Roldán said. The academic also said that real estate development destroys native vegetation, and causes other damage to the environment.
Continual construction, especially of skyscrapers, is contributing to visual and noise pollution, as well as making higher demands on the city’s resources.
“This type of urban development is not sustainable, not just for the environment but also for residents,” she said.
Roldán told El Sol de Mazatlán that an increased focus on sustainable tourism is urgently needed.
“Sustainable tourism is that which should be maintained, … [tourism that] doesn’t [adversely] affect communities, local citizens and natural resources,” she said.
“The characteristic of this kind of tourism is respect for the environment – [tourism activities] carried out with minimal impact in natural areas while creating environmental awareness among visitors,” Roldán said.
In 2021, Mazatlán partnered with Corona beer in a plastic trash “fishing” competition. The winner collected 319 kilograms off the coast of one beach.
She said that there are very few bona fide sustainable tourism and ecotourism activities on offer, explaining that the number of people participating in excursions in natural areas often exceeds the capacity of the environment in which they take place.
“Sustainable tourism has to be related to the local context, its culture, flora and fauna. [It’s about] having an experience with natural resources in a respectful way,” Roldán said, adding that tour guides have an important role to play because they need to tell tourists what they can and can’t do to avoid harm to the environment.
The current lack of focus on alternative tourism activities – such as tours on nature trails and bird-watching excursions – appears to be related to a lack of demand for them. Roldán said that most tourists come to Mazatlán to spend time at the beach, drink alcohol and listen to banda music.
“Tourism is mainly domestic,” she said, adding that visitors generally don’t have very high levels of education. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have a certain status [due to] their purchasing power,” Roldán said.
Mazatlán is known for its beach resorts, but areas like Deer Island offer possibilities for sustainable tourist activities like hiking and birdwatching. Twitter
In order for sustainable tourism to become more prevalent in Mazatlán, “environmental awareness” among tourists, tourism operators and hoteliers is needed, she said, adding that political and business will is also required.
“But it’s not something that is easy [to achieve]. The business objective in tourism is to have profits,” Roldán said.
Another person who would like to see a broader range of tourism activities in Mazatlán is Juan Jaquez, a seasoned traveler and ecologist from Gómez Palacio, Durango.
“As a visitor, I see very little alternative tourism [activities] on offer, … [things] that aren’t limited to beach, sun and sand,” he told El Sol de Mazatlán. “In other destinations, they bet more on attractions such as hiking, cycling and forest walks, among other things,” Jaquez said.
Like Roldán, the 28-year-old ecologist advocated a greater focus on sustainable tourism to reduce the negative impact visitors have on the local environment. Jaquez, who has traveled to Mazatlán on several occasions, said he has noticed pollution problems in the city, including issues related to the poor management of wastewater and trash. The influx of tourists in certain periods of the year – such as summer – only exacerbates the problems.
But Jaquez believes that offering more sustainable tourism activities could ease the pressure that tourists exert.
“The beaches are the best attraction in Mazatlán, but there are also tourists who … want to do other kinds of activities that are friendlier to the environment. The port [city] has the potential to provide that … because it has important natural areas. It’s time to start taking advantage of them,” he said.
The National Guard, which replaced the federal police in 2019, is the responsibility of the Security Ministry but operates under army leadership on the ground. (File photo)
President López Obrador has announced he will issue a decree to put the National Guard under the control of the army, a move that opposition lawmakers and others described as unconstitutional.
Created by the current federal government and inaugurated in 2019, the National Guard is currently the responsibility of the Security Ministry (SSPC), although it operates under army leadership on the ground.
Speaking at his regular news conference on Monday, López Obrador said he would issue an “agreement” allowing the National Guard to completely depend on the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena), a move that would change the security force’s essential nature from civilian to military.
“I want the Defense Ministry to take charge,” he told reporters. “… If it’s necessary I can modify the internal regulations of the government – it can be by decree.”
The president announced his intention to administratively transfer control of the National Guard at his Monday press conference.
Transferring responsibility for the National Guard to Sedena by decree would bypass Congress – whose members established the security force under civilian command – but López Obrador said he would also send a proposed constitutional reform to the legislature. However, he claimed his decree would be binding even if the proposed reform doesn’t pass.
“We’re going to seek the way [to transfer the National Guard to Sedena] … administratively,” he said, emphasizing that his decree would ensure the army remains in charge of the security force no matter what the nation’s lawmakers decide.
Probed as to why he was bothering to send an initiative to Congress if he can make the desired change himself, López Obrador said he wanted to enshrine it in the constitution so that it’s not reversed later, although it appears unlikely he can get enough support to do that.
Asked whether his proposed decree was the “democratic way” forward, López Obrador responded:
“Yes, because if it isn’t I’m violating the constitution, which I’ll never do. There is no problem, but I have to use the legal margins … to make progress.”
The president – whose six-year term is on track to be the most violent in recent decades – added that his government’s agenda is stifled by an “opposition bloc that doesn’t help at all,” asserting that it rejects “everything that benefits the people.”
In early 2019, then-security minister Alfonso Durazo said that López Obrador had taken on board the different opinions about the leadership of the national guard, and Durazo asked lawmakers to modify the original proposal in order to create a national guard with a civilian command but with the same levels of discipline and training as the armed forces.
The Mexican federal police force was officially dissolved at the end of 2019, after the formation of the National Guard.
The then-minister said in January 2019 that the new force would be the responsibility of the SSPC, not Sedena as previously proposed.
While the National Guard was placed under civilian command, López Obrador has depended on the military for a range of non-traditional tasks, including public security, infrastructure construction and management of the nation’s ports and customs offices.
In May 2020, he published a decree ordering the armed forces to continue carrying out public security tasks for another four years, even though he had promised a gradual withdrawal of the military from the nation’s streets. His proposed National Guard/Sedena decree would take things a step further: it would ensure the government’s public security efforts are under a single command and seemingly guarantee that what is already a quasi-militarized security force will become a fully-militarized one.
Contradicting López Obrador’s claim, non-government lawmakers, analysts and others asserted that the president doesn’t have the authority to reassign responsibility for the National Guard to Sedena. For that to occur, the constitution must be changed, they argued, and such reforms require the support of two-thirds of lawmakers. But the ruling Morena party and its allies don’t have a supermajority in either the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate.
Jorge Álvarez Máynez, leader of the Citizens Movement party in the lower house of Congress, said the decree López Obrador announced on Monday is “a blow to the constitution.”
“There is no space for half measures in the face of constitutional coup plotting,” he wrote on Twitter. “If a public servant is incapable of defending the constitution, he has no business in the public service.”
Damián Zepeda, a National Action Party (PAN) senator, bluntly said that López Obrador’s proposed decree is “unconstitutional and militarizes the country.”
“The constitution says the National Guard is CIVILIAN,” he wrote on Twitter. “[López Obrador] doesn’t have the votes [in Congress] and is imposing an illegal agreement. It will be challenged and left in the hands of the Supreme Court. Do you now see the importance of his [Supreme Court] appointments?”
La Guardia Nacional NO puede depender de @SEDENAmx.
La Constitución establece que la Guardia es una institución de civil que estará adscrita a la @SSPCMexico.
On Twitter, Javier Martín Reyes, a prominent UNAM academic, shared the section of the Constitution that establishes the National Guard as a civil rather than military organization.
Margarita Zavala, a PAN deputy and former first lady, was among numerous other politicians who spoke out against the president’s announcement.
“… Lawmakers of all parliamentary groups should come out in defense of the constitution and Congress,” she wrote on Twitter.
Security analyst Alejandro Hope and political scientist Javier Martín Reyes were among other observers who asserted that López Obrador doesn’t have the authority to transfer the National Guard to Sedena by decree.
“The National Guard cannot depend on Sedena. The constitution establishes that the Guard is a civilian institute assigned to the SSPC. Although López Obrador doesn’t like it, a decree cannot alter what the constitution says with complete clarity,” Martín said.
Catalina Pérez Correa, a researcher at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, said that the president had announced “without subterfuge” that he was going to “continue violating the constitution.”
“If the Supreme Court is going to continue allowing the president to flagrantly violate the constitution, if López Obrador is above the law and not obliged to respect the law, why do [everyday] citizens have to do it?” she asked.
The St. Patrick's Batallion was mostly made up of Irish immigrant soldiers who deserted the U.S. army after experiencing harsh discrimination. Library of Congress.
As Mexican president and general Antonio López de Santa Anna’s army retreats from the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican-American War, an unlikely Mexican hero struggles to keep up the pace: Irish-American officer John Riley.
Riley, an immigrant to the United States who served in his adopted country’s army against Mexico on the Rio Grande, commanded the Batalión San Patricio, a Mexican battalion composed of European, mostly Irish, soldiers who had tired of the discrimination they experienced in the U.S. ranks and deserted to fight for Mexico.
Riley is a main character in a new historical novel by Reyna Grande, A Ballad of Love and Glory, which centers on the real-life character of Riley and his fictional partner, Ximena.
“I became really fascinated with John Riley,” Grande said. “I started to wonder, why did he do it? Who was he? What was driving him? Why did he want to help Mexico? So once I started asking all these questions, the wheels started turning for me.”
A bust of Riley in Mexico CIty.
Grande has extensive experience chronicling life on both sides of the border: born in Iguala, Guerrero, she entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant at age nine. She went on to attend a university — the first in her family to do so — and to join the Macondo Writer’s Workshop, founded by prominent Latina author Sandra Cisneros.
In 2012, Grande wrote a bestselling, acclaimed memoir about her childhood experiences, The Distance Between Us. Since then, she has published a young readers’ version of the book, as well as a sequel, A Dream Called Home. She calls A Ballad of Love and Glory both “different and similar” to her previous books.
“The genre is different — it’s my first historical fiction,” she said. “I had never written about war, about battles.”
Yet, she noted, “I explored the immigrant experience again. This time, I was working with the Irish experience of the 19th century. There were so many similarities between the Irish experience and the Latino experience today. I drew a lot from my own immigrant experience to be able to write about John Riley.”
In the novel, John has left his wife and son back in Ireland to try to improve his life in the U.S. and eventually bring his family over. Yet, the American army treats Irish immigrant soldiers harshly, while the Mexican army covertly sends them offers of better treatment and reminders of their shared Catholic faith. Riley ends up joining those who swim across the Rio Grande to switch sides.
The inspiration for Ximena’s character, meanwhile, came from an 1847 poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Angels of Buena Vista.” The poem features a soldadera named Ximena as its protagonist, and it opens Grande’s book.
“When I found his poem, I decided to make Ximena my female lead in the book,” Grande said. “I did not really know anything about Ximena except the poem — she was on the battlefield, tending to the wounded. I had to create her from scratch.”
On the arduous retreat to San Luis Potosí, for example, the Mexican army faces both hunger and thirst. Ximena Salome, a Mexican widow and army nurse, uses her invaluable skills as a curandera to help Riley: she chops up a nopal to purify water and feeds him cactus pulp, chia seeds and yucca petals.
Reyna Grande, who was born in Guerrero, used some of her experiences as a child immigrant to the U.S. to inspire the story of A Ballad of Love and Glory. Reyna Grande
Grande gave Ximena a backstory with roots in San Antonio de Bexar, back when Texas was part of Mexico. Ximena’s family sided with the Anglos against the Mexicans during the Texas Revolution, yet nevertheless, when the narrative begins, Ximena has lost her home in Texas and has had to relocate south of the Rio Grande. There, she rides horses with her husband and learns about healing from her grandmother, a curandera.
These details are a poignant tribute to the author’s late grandmother, who was also a curandera.
“When I was a little girl, I often watched her doing limpias [cleansing rituals], stuff like that,” Grande said. “I have memories of my grandmother practicing curanderismo.” She added that the scenes between Ximena and her abuela (grandmother) are an imaginary “relationship I might have had with my grandmother.”
After the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, Ximena’s hacienda becomes a target of the Texas Rangers, and her husband dies in the attack. Seeking revenge, she becomes a nurse in the Mexican army, where she meets Riley.
A memorable, passionate love story develops between them, reflected in conversations punctuated with John’s Irish brogue and Ximena’s Mexican accent. One such exchange takes place when John fears that all is lost on the retreat from Buena Vista. “Don’t give up on me, you hear?’ he pleads. “Don’t leave me to the buzzards.”
She replies, “¡Nunca [never]! I will not leave you behind, soldier.”
Ximena’s Texas background also means that she is familiar with Santa Anna. Although the novel presents him as able to inspire the army to go into battle, it also shows an unsavory side.
“Based on everything I read about him, reading his proclamations, I felt he was a very complex and complicated man,” Grande said. “He was charismatic but also a womanizer, a flirt.”
Grande’s book is both a war novel and a love story embedded in a piece of history that for many decades, the U.S. government did not acknowledge happened. Reyna Grande
The book even depicts Santa Anna’s love of cockfighting, which he expresses to both Ximena and John at various points.
“To me, the cockfighting also turns into a metaphor in the book,” Grande said, citing an exchange in the book between John and a fellow San Patricio soldier. “John Riley turns to Patrick Dalton and says there’s a fine line between bravery and foolishness, talking about the cocks and why they fight to the death.”
“I think it’s mostly male readers who are liking the book,” Grande reflected. “They like the battles, they like the politics. They like that the book is a war story with a love story, that the love story doesn’t dominate the narrative, whereas female readers, I think, they wanted more love, less war.”
The war narrative contains a grim chapter. Although the San Patricios performed valiantly, many were captured by the U.S. military after the Battle of Churubusco, a battle which the U.S. general Ulysses S. Grant once said was one of the hardest of the war to win.
In real life, the captured San Patricio soldiers were court-martialed by the U.S. for treason. Fifty were executed. While Riley’s life was spared, he was whipped and branded.
His life after the war is unknown to history, according to the author. “Nobody knows what happened to him,” she said. “Once he was discharged from the Mexican army, he disappeared from the military records. People don’t really know what happened.”
So the author came up with her own ending to the story of John and Ximena. “It was up to me to give him an ending,” she said.
But what of Riley’s unit?
The St. Patrick’s Battalion was honored by the Mexican government for their role in the war in 1959. Around 80 members were eventually captured by U.S. forces in August of 1847.
“For a long time, the U.S. government denied the existence of the St. Patrick’s Battalion. It was not until recent decades when they finally released the records, the official military records, especially of the courts-martial.”
“In Mexico, it’s different. In Mexico, they’re still considered as the Irish heroes.”
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Business owners are left with few options in Zihuatanejo: shut down or pay.
Building supplies outlets in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, have been forced to close after becoming the latest victims of extortion and threats from criminal groups, which have also affected tortillerías and public transport.
A hotel owner from the Guerrero city, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, said that at least five building supplies outlets closed last week after criminal groups demanded extortion money.
“What we know is that they are being charged [extortion] and that payments are being demanded of them. That’s why they closed,” the hotel owner said in interview with the newspaper El Universal. He added that criminal groups demanded extortion payments from hotel owners a few months ago, but hadn’t attempted to do so again more recently.
One building supplies store, Materiales Ixtapa (Ixtapa Materials), wrote on social media to announce its closure. “Dear customers, we thank you for your preference, our installations will remain closed temporarily due to security issues. We apologize for the inconvenience,” it said in a post.
Extortion has become commonplace in Zihuatanejo: more than 50 tortillerías closed temporarily in May due to threats and public transport was also temporarily suspended.
Criminal groups demanded a payment for the right to make tortillas, which tortilla makers rejected, instead closing as a means of security and protest. Around the same time, half the city’s transport services were suspended in protest after three transport vehicles were set alight by armed men.
“If you don’t want them to do anything to you, you pay every day,” a transport provider said at the time.
Transport workers face dangerous conditions to move people from A to B in the state: 24 public transit drivers and two transport association leaders have been murdered in Guerrero during the past four months, according to a count by the Milenio newspaper.
Governor Evelyn Salgado denied rumors that transport workers agreed to a deal with criminals for transport services to resume.
A Zihuatanejo resident previously told El Universal that business owners were left with few options. “Here, that’s how simple it is. If you don’t pay quickly, they’ll want to burn your business down,” the resident said, adding that criminals were attempting to control sales of beer, soft drinks and meat and that almost all service providers were being extorted, including taxi drivers, boat operators, construction workers and hotel owners.
Extortion is a pressing national issue: while the government has claimed some small victories in terms of violent crimes such as homicide, extortion has remained stubbornly high.
A view of the unfinished
Colima-Guadalajara highway. Gobierno de Jalisco
The Colima-Guadalajara highway will be completed and inaugurated this year, shortening travel times between the state capital and Guadalajara, President López Obrador said during a visit to Colima on Sunday.
Colima city and the Jalisco state capital are only some 180 kilometers apart, but travel times remain unpredictable on a road which connects one of Mexico’s most important cities to its biggest Pacific port in Manzanillo.
“The construction began in 2013 and was suspended when we arrived to government. It will be inaugurated in December and it will provide a time saving of at least 30 minutes” between Colima city and Guadalajara, the president said, talking alongside Colima Governor Indira Vizcaíno and Jalisco Governor Alfaro Ramírez.
Vizcaíno thanked the president for focusing on the project which had seen long delays.
President López Obrador with Colima Governor Indira Vizcaíno and Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, at a bridge along the Colima-Guadalajara highway. Gobierno de Jalisco
The president also announced the modernization of the Armería-Manzanillo aqueduct, the expansion of the Colima-Manzanillo highway to six lanes, for which he promised no toll charges, and the rehabilitation of roads connecting the state’s 10 municipalities.
López Obrador’s tour of Colima started on Saturday with a visit to health infrastructure in Villa de Álvarez. He promised 24-hour healthcare and announced 55 Cuban healthcare specialists would come to work in the state.
Vizcaíno said the previous state government had abandoned its duties in healthcare. “We received a system in ruins with grave shortage problems, installations in terrible conditions and broken equipment, among many other horrors,” she said. Vizcaíno, a Morena governor, took office in November after 72 years of uninterrupted Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governance.
The president said that the highway is currently 75% complete, a bit less than the 80% announced in June. Gobierno de Oaxaca
A highway in Oaxaca that will slash travel times between Oaxaca city and the southern state’s Pacific coast is expected to open in December, after 20 years of delays and failed attempts.
President López Obrador announced in his regular morning news conference on Wednesday that he wanted to inaugurate the highway before the end of the year. Once in operation, it will link the state capital to the popular tourist destination of Puerto Escondido, cutting travel times from six to 2 1/2 hours.
The president said 75% of the highway had been completed, a more modest estimate than the 80.2% confirmed by Governor Alejandro Murat in June. López Obrador conceded to “a few problems” in the highway’s construction, something of an understatement for a project which has been delayed by land disputes, seen successive administrations come and go and faces claims of financial mismanagement.
An audit by the Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF) on an 805 million peso (US $39 million) investment in the project last year through the state-owned development bank Banobras revealed a probable 88 million peso ($4.3 million) blow to the Oaxaca state treasury.
The president discusses the completion of the highway at his Monday morning press conference. Presidencia de la República
The ASF report, published on June 14, said the state’s funds had been spent on a 43 kilometer stretch of the highway. It attributed the financial irregularity to “deficient management of work suspensions, the deficient supervision of works and excessive payments.” The ASF highlighted eight cases for which it encouraged some form of punishment of state workers.
The report said two work contracts were activated amid legal complications around construction, which led to delays, meaning nonrefundable sums were spent on machinery and equipment over two periods between April 2020 and September 2021.
Tangentially, in the Wednesday news conference, the president also confirmed that improvement works had been approved on a highway running from Ixtepec, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, some 450 kilometers through Chiapas to the Guatemala border.
López Obrador added that rail cars were being bought for the Isthmus rail line, which he said would have both cargo and passenger trains. The line, which is being rehabilitated between Ixtepec and Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, with some 459 kilometers of tracks as well as 12 stations, is part of the trans-isthmus trade corridor project, touted as a potential rival to the Panama Canal.
After workers at the Puebla VW plant sought a 15.5% salary increase, their employer made a counteroffer of 9%. Volkswagen México
Volkswagen workers in Puebla have voted to reject a 9% pay raise and could strike next week if the German automaker doesn’t put a substantially better offer on the table.
Just over 53% of members of the Independent Union of Volkswagen Workers (SitiaVW) who participated in a vote last Friday rejected the offer of a 9% salary increase and a 2% benefits increase. Over 4,800 workers cast a ballot at VW’s plant near Puebla city, with almost 2,600 opposing the offer. The workers had sought a 15.5% salary increase as well as improved benefits.
Union leaders and Volkswagen representatives were expected to meet Monday to negotiate a new agreement. SitiaVW said in a statement that if an agreement isn’t achieved, it was expected that the Volkswagen plant in Puebla would go on strike on August 18.
According to a recent study by insurance company Aon, VW employees already earn more than other auto plant workers in Mexico. Published in March, the study said the average salary of a VW assembly worker – including benefits – is 1,261 pesos per day (US $62). That’s 30% higher than the average amount made by workers at Nissan’s plant in Morelos, who receive the second highest salaries in the sector at 971 pesos (US $48) per day.
Workers at Audi’s Puebla plant receive the third highest salaries – 928 pesos per day, including benefits – followed by those at Ford’s factory in Hermosillo, Sonora, who make an average of 914 pesos per shift.
Rescue workers gather around the entrance to the mine on Sunday as water is pumped out. Facebook / Coordinación Nacional de Protección Civil
Authorities on Monday will use an underwater drone to try to locate 10 miners who remain trapped in a flooded Coahuila coal mine, while an attempt to rescue the men could begin later this week.
The miners have been trapped in the El Pinabete mine in the municipality of Sabinas since last Wednesday. Authorities haven’t established whether they are still alive.
National Civil Protection chief Laura Velázquez told President López Obrador’s morning morning press conference that the navy has provided an underwater drone that will be used to try to locate the trapped men.
The drone, which will be operated by specialized personnel, is equipped with a light and high resolution camera and can film at depths of up to 250 meters, she said. Its use will avoid putting rescuers’ lives at risk while the mine remains flooded.
Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval describes the rescue operation plans on Monday morning. Presidencia de la República
Authorities are using 25 pumps to remove water from the mine, which flooded when excavation work caused a tunnel wall to collapse. Velázquez said that over 70,000 cubic meters of water have been extracted since last Wednesday. However, three mine wells remain flooded – one with more than 20 meters of water and two with almost that amount, while a relief well is currently filled with over 26 meters of water.
One of five miners who managed to escape the flooded mine said in a radio interview that there was still some hope for the trapped men. “The hope is that there’s a little bubble of air,” Fernando Pompa said.
Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Monday that two boreholes have been drilled to stop more water from entering the part of the mine where the miners are believed to be trapped. A total of 10 boreholes will be drilled, he said. Information presented by the army chief showed that flooding needs to decline to just 1.5 meters before rescuers can safely enter the mine. A rescue attempt via Pozo 3 (Well 3) could commence in the middle of the week, Sandoval indicated.
Over 550 people are involved in the efforts to locate and rescue the trapped miners, including personnel from the army, National Guard, Federal Electricity Commission and National Water Commission. López Obrador on Sunday visited the mine, where he spoke with officials involved in the rescue efforts. He spent just three minutes speaking to the families of the trapped miners, the newspaper Reforma reported, adding that he told them that rescuing the men is the current priority and that action against the owners of the mine will be taken later.
The mine began operations in January 2022 and hadn’t had any incidents before last week, according to the federal Labor Ministry. Sabinas, the municipality where the mine is located, borders San Juan de Sabinas, a Coahuila municipality where 65 miners died in an explosion at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in 2006. Only two bodies were recovered after that disaster.
The government is offering second boosters to all seniors, people with medical conditions and health workers, but availability varies greatly for anyone else. BCS Health Ministry
As Mexico’s fifth wave of coronavirus infections continues, two health experts have criticized the federal government for its slow and limited rollout of fourth shots of COVID-19 vaccines.
The government has offered second booster shots to seniors, people with existing medical conditions that make them vulnerable to serious illness and health workers, but not all younger adults have had access to a fourth dose.
According to The New York Times vaccinations tracker, 72% of Mexicans (adults and children) are vaccinated and 63% are fully vaccinated, but only 44% have had additional shots. Most of the booster shots administered to date have been third doses.
Francisco Moreno, an infectious disease specialist and head of COVID-19 care at the ABC Hospital in Mexico City, said that Mexico is behind where it should be in terms of fourth-dose coverage.
UNAM epidemiologist Gustavo Oláiz expressed concern that those who have been vaccinated in Mexico are losing their lives to COVID in greater numbers. UNAM
“We’re behind due to a government strategy that gives the impression that the government wants to say: ‘We’re giving you this privilege [to get a fourth shot]’ but it’s not a privilege, it’s a right,” he told the newspaper Reforma.
In emphasizing the need for fourth shots to be administered more quickly and widely, Moreno noted that the emergence of new omicron subvariants has made reinfection more likely. He also said that the spread of the highly contagious substrains increases the risk of serious disease and hospitalizations.
Over time, people begin to lose vaccine-stimulated antibodies against COVID-19, and that puts them at greater risk of serious illness, Moreno said.
Gustavo Oláiz, an epidemiologist and National Autonomous University (UNAM) academic, was also critical of the government for not offering fourth shots more widely.
Fourth doses have been offered to younger adults in some parts of the country, including Mexico City, but they have not been available to that sector of the population across the nation, according to Reforma, which also reported that the government is not currently planning to broaden access to all people aged 18 and over.
Oláiz said that additional shots are needed every six to eight months to ensure people have protection against COVID-19, which has claimed over 328,000 lives in Mexico, according to official data. The omicron subvariants are more aggressive and adept at evading people’s immune systems, he told Reforma.
Oláiz noted that COVID-19 deaths have declined, but stressed that fatalities are still occurring. A lot of those dying are unvaccinated, but people who have had shots are losing their lives to the disease in growing numbers, he said.
“That means that immunity is being lost and we have to replenish it,” Oláiz said.
The federal government said last week that the fifth wave has begun to ease, but Oláiz described the decline as slow. There were just under 113,000 estimated active cases on Sunday, the Health Ministry reported, a 33% decline compared to a week earlier.
Accumulated case numbers – considered a vast undercount due to Mexico’s low testing rate – currently total 6.85 million, with about one-quarter of all infections detected in Mexico City. The Health Ministry said Sunday that 12% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients were occupied, while just 4% of those with ventilators were taken.
