Mexico reopening plan resisted at local level Ex-cartel muscle murdered
President at odds with state leaders
MEXICO CITY — Local governments across Mexico pushed back Monday against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s call to reopen the economy in some 300 townships that do not have active cases of coronavirus, with leaders saying they preferred to wait until June before resuming normal activities.
Mexico, which has reported nearly 50,000 total cases and some 5,000 deaths, has seen a steep climb in new infections.
Front-line doctors fear that a premature reopening could lead to a second wave of infections, a scenario that recently played out in Chile and Guatemala, where governments had to roll back reopening plans.
But López Obrador has been pressing to reactivate the economy. In addition to opening virus-free communities, his health advisers have said that the mining, construction and automotive industries could resume operations as early as Monday.
The country’s lockdown, which began in March, will remain in place, but those industries will be allowed to return to production because Mexico’s top advisory body on the pandemic, the General
Health Council, decided to classify them as “essential activities.”
A General Motors plant in the central state of Guanajuato told workers that one shift would return to operations Monday. Workers must wear masks and glasses at all times and be clean-shaven.
But in most approved areas, the president’s words did not result in any changes.
In the southern state of Oaxaca, which has more than 200 of the infection-free townships, Gov. Alejandro Murat said in a video address
Sunday that after consultations with other communities, officials decided to wait until June 1 to begin evaluating whether to resume economic activity.
Murat said students would not return to class Monday even in communities without confirmed cases of the virus.
In neighboring Guerrero, Gov. Hector Astudillo said it remained unclear when students could return to classes.
“We are not going to return to classes on the 18th in any township,
MEXICO CITY — A former top enforcer for Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel who spent time in a U.S. prison was identified as one of three people found murdered in Sinaloa state over the weekend, officials said Monday.
The Sinaloa state prosecutors office identified the dead man as José Rodrigo “A.,” giving only his last initial in line with Mexican law. But officials confirmed it was José Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa, who built an exuberant and deadly reputation under his nickname, “El Chino Antrax.”
The bodies of Arechiga Gamboa, a woman believed to be his sister and another man were found wrapped in blankets in a luxury SUV on the outskirts of Culiacan, the state capital, on Saturday. Relatives later identified the body. and there aren’t conditions to do it June 1 either,” he said.
Guerrero had 12 townships on the federal government’s approved list, but Astudillo said that really it was 10, because two were adjacent to communities in Oaxaca with confirmed cases.
The western state of Jalisco also kept schools closed in its approved communities but allowed work to resume in some sectors of the economy.
The northern state of Chihuahua said none of its townships on the federal government’s list would reopen because they are close to Ciudad Juarez, a sprawling border city that has been hit with the virus.
Gov. Javier Corral cited the tight relationship with El Paso, Texas, and the cross-border activity it entails.