Residents of a Mexican border city used their cars to form a blockade to prevent Americans from entering during the July 4 weekend amid fears of the coronavirus.
The move came amid a spike in coronavirus in neighboring Arizona, prompting Sonoyta Mayor José Ramos Arzate to issue a statement Saturday “inviting American tourists not to visit Mexico.”
People in the US should only be allowed to enter “for essential activities, and for that reason, the checkpoint and inspection point a few meters from the Sonoyta-Lukeville AZ crossing will continue to operate,” Ramos Arzate wrote. .
But residents determined to keep Americans out staged a rally on Saturday in which they blocked drivers from crossing into Mexico.
The border crossing is considered the fastest route for Americans to reach the resort of Puerto Peñasco, also known as Rocky Point.
Carlos Eduardo Chávez Jacquez, who helped organize the protest and runs a Facebook page titled “United Sonoyta will never be defeated,” or “United Sonoyta will never be defeated,” he told Newsweek. protesters would block the crossing again on Monday.
“People everywhere die from COVID-19 because we weren’t ready for this,” he said. “Yes, I support tourism, I want people from all over the world to come to Mexico and see how beautiful we are and enjoy the culture, but why during COVID-19 times?”
In Sonoyta, Chávez Jacquez said, limited investments have been made in local health infrastructure, so opening the area to tourists could have deadly consequences.
“And if the United States is not ready, why would Mexico be ready?” he said on the way out. “We are not ready for COVID-19 tourism at this time. I support tourism, it is important for the economy, but why now?
The move comes as Mexico added new health checkpoints along its border with the United States over the weekend as coronavirus cases increase on both sides of the dividing line.
Authorities feared that the crossings over the July 4 weekend could intensify the spread of the contagion, despite a three-month ban on nonessential travel that has been increasingly ignored.
The states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, all bordering Texas, have registered thousands of confirmed cases of coronavirus, as has Baja, California, just south of San Diego.
Arizona reported 3,352 new coronavirus cases and one new death on Monday, for a total of 101,441 cases and 1,810 deaths since the start of the outbreak, state data shows.
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