COVID-19 Vaccines/Priest´s Murder Investigations

COVID-19 vaccination for minors. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that with the arrival of 2 million COVID-19 doses, the vaccination of minors will begin this weekend. “Today at 07:39 am the vaccines we needed have arrived. This week we will start vaccinating minors and the Secretary of Defense and the Navy will be in charge of distributing these vaccines.”

Previously, the Ministry of Health announced that it has a stock of approximately 10.5 million COVID-19 vaccines for the Mexican adult population. However, there were not enough vaccines for those under 12 years of age. Consequently, since last month, the Ministry began negotiations with Pfizer BioNTech for the acquisition of additional vaccines. Previously, for the 12+ age bracket, the government applied AstraZeneca's vaccines.

Murder of two priests. President López Obrador called for an exhaustive investigation regarding José Noriel Portillo Gil, “El Chueco”, who allegedly murdered Jesuit priests Javier Campos Morales and Joaquín Mora Salazar. According to the state prosecutor's report, Portillo Gil sponsored a baseball team. It is not possible that one random day he decided to kill people. His background must be thoroughly investigated."

On Monday, a man running from a hitman sought refuge at the church where the two Jesuit priests were working. When the hitman reached the precincts, he began firing and killed the two priests and the man. The suspect of killing the priests is apparently part of a criminal gang. Jesuit priests condemned the state of violence in the Sierra Tarahumara , where everyday men and women get murdered, mainly by criminal organizations.

The case of the former security minister. López Obrador said that the trial against former Security Minister Genaro García Luna has been going on for a long time, and therefore asked for further investigations. In addition, the president said that Garcia’s case shows that the fight against impunity is a priority for his administration. “Genaro García Luna is the clearest example of corruption between authorities and criminals. These cases are the ones that my government has tried to solve, to avoid impunity.”

Last week, the US Prosecutor's Office presented a document in which García Luna is accused of exercising violence and manipulating witnesses, especially journalists, who spoke out against him. According to the US Attorney's Office, there is a recording of García Luna in which he speaks with Jesús “El Rey” Zambada, former head of the Sinaloa Cartel in 2020 about some of the repressive actions he carried out when he was minister. Since 2019, Garcia Luna has been incarcerated  in the US and is being accused of receiving millions of dollars in bribery so that the Sinaloa cartel could operate freely in Mexico.