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Tuesday, November 7th

Oaxaca Newscast
Oaxaca Newscast
Tuesday, November 7
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After Hurricane Otis, what can the coastal cities of Oaxaca learn about how to protect themselves from the next big storm? That’s the question the news agency Reuters is asking. After the 1985 earthquake that devastated Mexico City, the country implemented seismic-safer building codes.
A 2019 government map showed that coastal zones of Oaxaca and Guerrero — where Acapulco is located — had no storm-safer construction regulations, Reuters reports, although the city of Acapulco did have some of its own.

A structural engineer from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) told Reuters that new construction should be built to resist wind gusts of up to 329 kph (that’s 204 mph) like those seen during Hurricane Otis. He also pointed out that metal structures can corrode and lose strength faster in coastal areas and suggested avoiding the use of lighter materials like drywall.

Videos circulating on social media show that areas in and around Acapulco are still covered in mud and rubble:

https://twitter.com/chefjoseandres/status/1721556882530431214

Meanwhile, Mexico’s chamber of deputies (the lower house of congress) yesterday approved the 2024 budget yesterday without having included any specific aid for the people and areas devastated by Hurricane Otis… Deputies from the majority Morena party said they’re still working to hammer out an agreement on that.

A Oaxacan state legislator is calling for the release of a woman being held in prison for the felony crime of abortion to be released. María Luisa Matus, a legislator from the PRI party, says the woman is serving a sentence at the Tanivet women’s prison in Tlacolula. The specific details of the woman’s case weren’t made public, but in 2019, Oaxaca became the second state to decriminalize abortion, after Mexico City. Abortion is now legal in Oaxaca up to the twelfth week of gestation, with exceptions after that timeframe for rape, to protect the woman’s health, and certain other circumstances. And for those who break the law, the criminal penalty now is either up to six months in prison or between 100 and 300 days of community service. In light of those changes to the law, the legislator says, the woman’s sentence should be annulled.

The national cement-making company CEMEX has hauled away the first fifteen tons of burnable garbage from Hua-jua-pan de León to Tepeaca, Puebla. In May, the city of Hua-jua-pan signed an agreement to provide flammable garbage — that is, cardboard, textiles, and plastics — to the cement maker to incinerate as part of the cement-making process.

If the quality of the garbage is up to CEMEX’s standards, the company will purchase up to 30 tons of garbage a week to be burned in Tepeaca, which is 35km (about 22 miles) outside the city of Puebla, which already has fairly unhealthful air quality.

In the capital of Oaxaca today we’ll have mostly cloudy skies and a high temperature of 28ºC (that’s 82ºF), with a 60% chance of thundershowers today peaking at around 2pm. On the coast, expect high temperatures of 33ºC (that’s 91ºF) there’s a 70% likelihood of thunderstorms peaking also around 2pm.

By Peter Aronson

I’m an award-winning radio journalist, a former Latin America correspondent, a longtime resident of Mexico and — for the past few years — a resident of Oaxaca. Now I host Oaxaca Newscast!