Some Mexicans fear cartels are tightening their grip on politics

July 15, 2021

Michoacán Governor Aureoles waits patiently for a meeting with the president. He waited in vain.

Silvano Aureoles, outgoing governor of the violence-plagued Mexican state of Michoacán, sat on a plastic stool outside the National Palace for hours last month, waiting in vain for an audience with the president.

In his hand, he held a pile of documents he wanted to hand to Andrés Manuel López Obrador that he said supported his claim of links between the president’s Morena party and organized crime. Those ties, he said, were putting Mexico on course to become “a narcostate.”

Critics dismissed the spectacle as a political stunt by a politician whose leftist Democratic Revolution Party lost the western state in June 6 midterm elections. By contrast, Morena won 11 of 15 state elections, taking control of virtually the entire Pacific coast, which includes drug cartel bastions.

Some media commentators and opposition politicians seized on Morena’s Pacific victories, saying they suggested the ruling party had struck a deal with organized crime groups to win power in an election tainted by violence amid rising concerns about the government’s ability to deliver on promises to curb violent crime.

Experts said it was ludicrous to imagine the bosses of the Sinaloa Cartel or Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, Mexico’s most powerful crime syndicates, ordering people to vote for Morena down the entire Pacific coast.

But they stressed that does not mean organized criminal groups were absent from the election, in which bargains are traditionally struck between powerful local crime, business and political bosses.

“The tide [among organized crime groups] has shifted in favour of Morena,” said Falko Ernst, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, a think tank focused on armed conflict, citing criminal groups in the violent Tierra Caliente area in Michoacán.

“They see them as a better bet for power because popular opinion is still on the side of Morena so for some, Morena is a more pertinent vehicle [to support] … but that doesn’t mean collusion.”

Aureoles was not convinced. “What a coincidence that they won big in … the Pacific corridor. Who let them?” he told the Financial Times a few days after his sit-in.

“It’s terribly dangerous that Morena is becoming a narco party and the president is looking the other way when the most important issue for people is security … Morena has become the instrument of organized crime,” he said.

López Obrador denies such allegations. He refused to meet Aureoles and said the governor should take his claims to the relevant judicial authorities. Aureoles has faced similar charges of links with crime groups, which he denies.

The president shakes hands with an ex-drug lord's mother. — The president shakes hands with an ex-drug lord’s mother.

A recent U.S. estimate, which the Mexican president has rejected, suggested that 30-35% of Mexico is controlled by organized crime groups.

There are frequent reminders of the cartels’ continued power. Presumed CJNG members recently paraded their military firepower in Aguililla, a town in Michoacán that has become a major flashpoint.

Other brutal attacks have included one in the northern state of Tamaulipas last month in which 19 people died after gunmen apparently opened fire at random on civilians, turning up the heat on López Obrador’s strategy as the government struggles to make a dent in record homicide levels.

There were 14,243 homicides in the first five months of this year, virtually unchanged from 14,673 in the same period in 2020. Last year was the second-deadliest on record, with 34,554 murders compared with 34,681 in 2019.

The president says he will not back down on his “hugs not bullets” approach — an attempt to help vulnerable young people study and work in order to avoid joining cartels.

Some of López Obrador’s actions have fueled criticism of a laissez-faire approach to cartels. He released the son of jailed Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán; met and shook the hand of Guzmán’s mother; and publicly apologized for using the drug lord’s nickname. The day after the election, he said organized crime groups had “behaved well.”

“Every president tries to negotiate with the narcos … In politics, you’ve got to deal with these people,” said Benjamin Smith, a professor at the U.K.’s Warwick University in Coventry, who has recently published a history of the Mexican drug trade.

Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, co-ordinator of the Mexico and Central America program at Noria Research, a non-profit, said it was “a stretch” to say Morena was in cahoots with criminal groups “because this goes way beyond Morena,” and alliances were constantly shifting.

“If you want to stay in power, or win power, you have to talk to the local strongman — that could be a narco boss, a businessman or the mayor … You have to make deals to win elections, sometimes with the narco, and violence is at the center of the game,” he added.

Successfully dealing with that has, however, so far eluded López Obrador.

“AMLO to his credit recognizes he has got to change course” from hardline past approaches to organized crime, said Stephanie Brewer, Mexico director at the Washington Office on Latin America, using the president’s nickname.

“But where the Mexican federal government does seem to be giving up is on the strategies — building capable, civilian police forces and strengthening criminal investigations. If criminal groups can continue to operate with impunity, that will continue to be a huge driver of violence.”

Ernst of the ICG was less hopeful: “There seems to be an acceptance that this is a non-solvable problem for now.”

Migrant child found alone in Mexico to return to Honduras on Friday

reuters

July 15, 2021

young migrant — The youngster outside the trailer in which he and other migrants had been traveling.

A Honduran toddler who was found alone in southern Mexico after becoming separated from his father on their journey to the United States will be sent back to his country on Friday, according to officials involved in the case.

Wilder, 2, gained international media attention when he was found alone on a roadside earlier late last month in Mexico’s Veracruz state, half naked and crying, near a truck that carried migrants in suffocating conditions.

“The little one will arrive in San Pedro Sula on Friday morning accompanied by a child protection officer from Mexico,” said Lutgarda Madrigal, attorney for the protection of children in Veracruz, which was in charge of Wilder’s case.

Upon arrival in Honduras, Wilder would be reunited with his mother Lorena García, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.

García, who is from the rural area of Copan, Honduras, told Reuters that Wilder left with her husband Noel Ladino in a bid to migrate to the United States with a human smuggler. It was unclear why the father and son became separated before Wilder was found by Mexican security authorities.

After Mexican immigration authorities circulated photos, García identified herself to Honduran officials as Wilder’s mother using a document that matched the vaccine records the boy carried.

García said she had spoken to her husband by phone but his whereabouts were still unknown.

Reuters

Citizens detain 20 National Guardsmen, 19 other officials in protest

MND Staff

July 15, 2021

Textitlán, Oaxaca, where two communities are in the midst of a dispute.

Residents of a small town in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca detained 20 members of the National Guard, five police officers and at least 14 state government officials on Tuesday in an act of protest against alleged government inaction in the face of violence.

The security force members and officials from the Oaxaca Attorney General’s Office (FGE) remained in citizens’ custody in Santiago Textitlán early on Thursday.

They were detained by residents of Río Santiago, a community in the municipality of Textitlán, located about 130 kilometers southwest of Oaxaca city.

The residents say they were forcibly evicted from their homes on December 20, 2020, by armed citizens from Santiago Xochiltepec, another town in the same municipality.

Residents of Río Santiago and Santiago Xochiltepec are involved in a dispute over the allocation of resources from the municipal government.

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The Río Santiago residents have remained in Santiago Textitlán, the municipal seat, since being driven out of their homes more than six months ago. They say their homes were looted and set on fire on May 12 and that authorities have done nothing to help them or stop the violence, which has claimed at least two lives. However, the people they detained were deployed to investigate the violence they have denounced.

Much of the residents’ anger has been focused on the General Secretariat of the Oaxaca government and its head, Francisco Javier García López. However, they are now calling on Governor Alejandro Murat to personally attend to the situation.

“Whoever comes will be detained, if it is not the governor himself,” wrote FGE officials who are being held in a letter asking for Murat’s intervention.

García said the residents, who have shared videos of the people and vehicles they detained, want the state or the federal government to commit to compensating them for their losses.

He said the security force members and government officials in citizens’ custody slept in vehicles or municipal government offices on Tuesday night under the guard of residents. They are as calm as can be expected “because we’ve been in permanent communication” with them, García said.

He said the state government had offered to sit down with the disgruntled Río Santiago residents to discuss their demands, adding that’s “the only way we’re going to reach an agreement.” It was unclear whether Governor Murat planned to meet with the residents.

The National Guard said on Twitter Thursday morning that it was participating in dialogue between residents and authorities and that it hoped an agreement could be reached with the state.

“We will favor negotiation at all times so that this conflict is resolved favorably,” it said.

With reports from Reforma and Televisa

Mexico gives up on maintaining fishing-free zone to protect vaquita porpoise

MND Staff

July 15, 2021

vaquita porpoise — Fewer than a dozen vaquita are estimated to remain.

A fishing-free zone will no longer apply in the upper Gulf of California to protect the critically endangered vaquita marina porpoise, of which fewer than a dozen are believed to remain.

A fishing-free “zero tolerance” zone where the use of gillnets was prohibited had been in place in the upper reaches of the gulf – the only place vaquitas live – and was even enlarged last September but the federal government on Wednesday officially abandoned the policy of maintaining it.

The “zero tolerance” zone has been replaced with a sliding scale of sanctions if more than 60 boats are repeatedly seen in the area, where totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is a delicacy in China and sells for thousands of dollars per kilogram, coexist with the vaquitas.

Many of the latter, the world’s smallest porpoise species, have died after becoming entangled in nets set to catch the lucrative totoaba.

The deaths continued even after the “zero tolerance” zone was established in 2017 as fishermen frequently encroached on it and authorities were unable to enforce it. Now the situation appears likely to become even worse.

Environmental experts cited by the Associated Press (AP) said the decision to scrap the fishing-free zone effectively abandons the remaining vaquitas to the gillnets responsible for their near extinction.

Alex Olivera, Mexico representative for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the new rules stipulate a sliding scale of punishments for something that shouldn’t be allowed to occur in the first place.

For example, the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Commission said it will only use 60% of its enforcement personnel if 20 or fewer fishing boats are seen in the vaquita’s Upper Gulf of California habitat where the “zero tolerance” zone was established.

“This is stupid. They are waiting to count boats in an area designated as ‘zero tolerance,’ where there shouldn’t be a single boat,” Olivera told AP. “They are letting in dozens of boats. This is the end of the concept of zero tolerance. There is just going to be dissuasion.”

The new rules “imply not protecting the vaquita,” said a conservation expert not named by AP due to a fear of repercussions.

“It appears that fisheries authorities want to drive the vaquita to extinction,” the expert said.

AP said the sliding-scale punishments “seem doomed to irrelevance” given that authorities were unable to effectively enforce the “zero tolerance” zone. The navy has worked with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to remove gillnets from the area but they have often been outnumbered and even attacked by fishermen.

The Sea Shepherd vessel the Farley Mowat has been attacked on repeated occasions, including in January this year when fishermen aboard at least five pangas threw lead weights and molotov cocktails at both the crew and military officials who were on board.

The gillnets used to catch totoaba are expensive and fishermen consequently harass conservation vessels to try to get their crew to return nets they removed. Fishermen say they have not received any compensation from the federal government for income they have lost due to restrictions on where they can fish.

Meanwhile, the vaquita population continued despite successive governments pledging to strengthen the fight against illegal fishing. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and billionaire businessman Carlos Slim even joined the efforts to save the vaquita during Enrique Peña Nieto’s 2012-2018 presidency but in early 2019 scientists estimated that just 10 of the marine mammals remained.

Sightings of the porpoises are now very rare but experts can estimate their numbers by using subaquatic listening devices that graph the high-frequency sounds they make.

With reports from AP

Oaxaca bans use of public funds for beauty contests

MND Staff

July 14, 2021

The use of public funds for beauty contests has been declared illegal in Oaxaca, making it the first state to define such events as “symbolic violence.”

State and municipal government institutions face legal sanctions and fines if they allocate resources to events where women and girls are judged by their physical characteristics. However, the law does not ban such events from taking place.

The legal modification bans “the use of public resources for the type of events where the physical characteristics of girls, youths and women are evaluated.”

“This legal action also prevents governing institutions from using such events to promote tourism or for official publicity,” the text continues.

The initiative was promoted by the state’s Permanent Commission for Gender Equality. The president of the commission, Morena Deputy Magaly López, said the modifications sought to dispel the gender based stereotypes upheld by beauty pageants. She said it was necessary to change cultural practices that are damaging to women.

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies approved a similar measure in February. “Promoting competitions among women based on their physical attributes promotes sexist and ‘macho’ patterns that stigmatize, objectify, and minimize the role women play in our society,” the bill’s text reads.

It defines symbolic violence as “the expression, transmission or broadcasting by any media, whether privately or publicly, discourses, messages, or stereotypical patterns, signs, values, icons, and ideas that transmit, reproduce, justify, or normalize the subordination, inequality, discrimination, and violence against women in society.”

Beauty pageants are popular spectacles in Mexico. The country is home to three Miss Universe winners, most recently Andrea Meza from Chihuahua, who wore a costume based on the artisanal alebrije tradition, which is closely associated with Oaxaca.

The southern state has been a focal point for feminist politics in recent years. In the 2018 election the state Congress became majority female for the first time in its history; the following year the state became only the second in the country to decriminalize abortion before 12 weeks’ pregnancy for any reason; the first was Mexico City. Some other states allow abortion in cases of rape or to protect the life of the mother.

Globally, beauty competitions are experiencing something of a political revolution, according to the newspaper El País. “At the last Miss World, held in 2019, history was made when the first black woman took the crown … a year earlier, Ángela Ponce, a Spanish transsexual. won the contest in Spain … Swe Zin Htet, the representative of Myanmar in the Miss Universe competition, also broke the molds and was the first competitor to openly declare herself homosexual.”

With reports from Milenio and El País

Hospital staff in Oaxaca protest shortages of supplies and medications

MND Staff

July 14, 2021

Healthcare workers protest outside a Oaxaca hospital on Tuesday.

Health workers at a Oaxaca city hospital took to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday to protest against shortages of medications and supplies and overcrowding at the facility.

Doctors, nurses and orderlies from the Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso General Hospital called on state and federal authorities to resolve the problems during a six-hour demonstration in front of the 8 Regions Fountain in the state capital.

They highlighted that it is up to them — not authorities — to have to tell patients and their families that they don’t have the medications they require.

“We see the pain of the patients, and we have to give them prescriptions so that they can go themselves to an external pharmacy and buy their own medication,” one nurse told reporters.

Health workers claimed that government authorities have abandoned the hospital, one of the oldest in the state. It is currently overwhelmed with patients, among whom are people seriously ill with Covid-19.

Outpatient appointments and administrative services were suspended during yesterday’s protest, but inpatients continued to receive treatment, said Alberto Vásquez, the hospital’s union representative.

He said the hospital has even run out of basic items such as rubbing alcohol and bleach, which is needed to disinfect parts of the facility where Covid patients are treated.

“… There is total indolence from those who should be most committed to the health sector, the [state health] minister and Governor Alejandro Murat,” Vásquez said.

“There have been five health ministers in five years of [this] government — turn around and look at us: there’s no health, there’s nothing,” he said.

In light of the situation, state Health Minister Juan Carlos Márquez Heine said he had initiated dialogue with the National Institute of Health for Well-Being, a federal health department also known as Insabi, with a view to regularizing the hospital’s supply of medications and other essentials.

Protests against medication and medical supplies shortages have been held across Mexico since 2019, mainly to denounce the lack of drugs to treat children with cancer. However, there were also numerous protests at the beginning of the pandemic, with health workers saying they lacked the personal protective equipment required to safely treat Covid-19 patients.

At least 2,397 health workers died with Covid-19 in Mexico last year, according to an Amnesty International report.

With reports from Reforma

Artisan dolls based on legendary Maya elves help Cancun’s vulnerable

Leigh Thelmadatter

July 14, 2021

Alux style bride from Aluxin — A bride-styled alux doll in modern dress. Javier Alba began creating these dolls after moving to Cancún and learning about the Maya legend. Photos of dolls courtesy of Aluxin

I first saw Aluxin dolls — the troll- or elf-like figures created by Mexico City native Javier Alba — at the Doll Museum in Amealco, Querétaro, the closest thing Mexico has to a national doll center. Being so different from the others on display, they caught my attention.

With their small size and features, there is no doubt that these dolls bear influence from the troll dolls popular in the 1970s and the popular Smurfs cartoon characters. But Alba, who began making these dolls in 2012 after he moved to Cancún, combines such modern influences with that of Maya stories of magical little people called aluxes, from which he got his craft business’s name, Aluxin.

In Cancún, Alba became fascinated by the stories of these mythical creatures and their link to ecology.

According to Maya legends, aluxes (pronounced a-LU-shes), are supernatural creatures created by the Mayan god Yum Kaax — a Maya deity of wild vegetation and the animals living in it — to help people who worked hard in the fields.

Although their main role is to protect crops, they also care for local forests and animals. The concept is not unlike those of dwarves and leprechauns.

Pre-Hispanic stone figure with alux. — Pre-Hispanic stone figure with a traditional depiction of an alux.

Some legends state that aluxes were Earth’s first inhabitants, even older than the sun. Perhaps for this reason, traditional depictions, such as those on temples in Yaxchilán, Chiapas, and Cobá, Quintana Roo, depict them as old with facial features designed to be both terrible and friendly since they could go either way depending on the circumstance.

To assure the better natures of aluxes, Mayan farmers would make an alux figure from clay and place it in the field before it was sown. If the farmer respects them, and nature in general, he is rewarded with abundance.

Such beliefs extended over all Mayan territory — southern Mexico into Central America.

Javier Alba and his partner Miriam León forgo the “terrible” aspect of aluxes. The idea of the dolls came out of a need to make a living, not preserve ancient Maya culture. The obvious market is tourists in Cancún, hence the need for the kitsch.

But decisions about how to make the dolls were not pure business ones. After Alba and León designed the series, they were advised to have them mass-produced in China; but this did not seem right to them.

Despite the changes to the traditional image of the alux, the figures are still an idea from an ancient Mexican culture, and many people in the Cancún area still live in poverty, especially the elderly and single mothers.

Despite being a significantly more expensive process, in 2013 Alba began to have the dolls made by locals, using a piecework system. Dolls are made in homes, with training and materials provided to the craftspeople.

Many of the dolls popular in Cancún are made with cotton or mixed-fiber commercial cloth, but there are versions made from hennequin (similar to burlap), a fiber that was the base of much of the Yucatecan economy in the 19th and early 20th century.

A craft like cloth dolls, along with the business model Alba employed, makes Aluxin a bit controversial as a Mexican handcraft. Mexican anthropologists divide handcrafts into two categories — artesanías (those with a significant history and “cultural significance”) and manualidades, those which do not.

Cloth dolls are generally categorized by many museums as manualidades because they mistakenly believe such dolls were not made in the country until very recently. Aluxin’s lack of a classic family workshop business model does not help either.

However, I include them as artesanías because Mexican creativity and ingenuity did not stop with the Mexican Revolution, and what is “authentically” Mexican continues to evolve.

Making Alba and León’s business work has not been easy: the costs of labor bring the price of the dolls above that of “cheap trinkets,” and the story of the aluxes is not well-known among foreign tourists or even those from other parts of Mexico. If you’ve visited Cancún, you may have seen them in Riviera Maya hotels or in upscale Yucatán stores, their best bet before the pandemic.

Aluxin’s social media has a lot of fun with placing its dolls in interesting poses. @Aluxinoficial Twitter page

They have also had some luck getting the dolls into stores in Mexico City.

Unlike most artisans, they have put effort into a good presence online, with both a website and a Facebook page, making the dolls easy to buy. Such online presence has been helpful for a number of artisans, though for Alba, it has not been as helpful as he would like.

However, they are getting by, working with seven or eight artisans, down from 18 in 2016, mostly because of travel restrictions as Quintana Roo is currently at high-risk orange on the national coronavirus stoplight map. Alba and León hope to soon bring more work to their craftspeople.

Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.

A heart-thumping brush with death is all the worse in the middle of nowhere

Joseph Sorrentino

July 14, 2021

Coffee growers in Amaquil, Chiapas — Coffee growers clearing land in Amaquil, a tiny and very remote community in Chiapas. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino

On my second trip to Amaquil, a tiny, remote pueblo in one of the coffee-growing regions in Chiapas, I was staying with Nicolás and Catarina and their family, photographing what daily life was like for coffee growers. I had no idea what the day had in store for me.

One day I went with Nicolás’ sister Lucia and her parents to photograph them as they cleared a field of weeds. This is done by hacking at them with a machete.

It’s hard work, especially under a hot sun. I noticed that Lucia was chewing on something that looked like a piece of a stalk and figured it was caña — sugar cane. When I asked her if it was, sure enough, I was right and she asked if I wanted some. Being the adventurous type, I said yes.

She handed me a piece, and I bit into it. Before I could even think about taking a second, my heart rate soared.

My heart wasn’t just beating rapidly, it was pounding. I looked down and saw that it was pounding so hard that my shirt was moving.

Women make tortillas in a rustic home in Amaquil.

At the time, I had some sort of heart condition where my heart rate would suddenly increase periodically; I think it’s called tachycardia. So, being familiar with it, I didn’t panic. Yet.

But the beating was stronger and faster than I’d ever experienced, and I wasn’t in the United States. I was in a small, remote pueblo, and if this got to the point where I needed a hospital, I had no idea where the nearest one was — if there even was a nearest one. Which I doubted.

Now, I’m the kind of guy whose approach to medical issues is fairly basic: I ignore them.

I figure they’ll either get better, in which case I’ll be fine and I saved myself some time and money by ignoring them, or they’ll get worse, in which case I may actually have to do something. Which I usually don’t.

I’m not saying this is the most intelligent approach, but it’s worked for me so far. When tachycardia (or whatever it’s called) episodes happened back in the U.S., I’d just wait it out, and it eventually stopped. Sometimes it took 15 or 20 minutes, sometimes even longer, but it always stopped. I figured the same thing would happen here.

I continued photographing, but my attention got pulled more and more toward my pounding heart. Mostly I was curious about what had triggered it, but I was also getting a little concerned at the intensity.

Lucia eventually told me that she and her parents were finished for the day and that they were going to walk to their home. Did I want to come along? We headed off, my heart pounding and sweat pouring off me.

At some point in the walk, my legs started to feel weak and I had to slow down. The trio ahead of me turned off the road, onto a path through some woods. It was a very short, easy path with only a slight incline at one point, but my legs had no strength in them. I finally grabbed onto some tree branches and hauled myself up. Lucia and her parents waited for me at the path’s end. They looked concerned; I’m sure I looked panicked. My Spanish was still pretty basic back then, but I tried to explain the problem.

“It’s my heart,” I said.

“We are accustomed,” Lucia replied, meaning that they were accustomed to the heat and the humidity and the walking and I wasn’t.

“No, no,” I said, panting. “It is my heart. I have a problem.”

I was at a loss for words. What the heck is Spanish for tachycardia anyway? So I said again, “It is my heart.” Fumbling for words, I said, “Boom, boom, boom.”

The writer with a Coke, which may or may not have saved his life.

Lucia looked at me with a blank expression. “We are accustomed,” was all she said before turning and walking away.

I leaned against a tree for a few minutes, completely convinced that this was where I’d learn what awaited me after life ended. As curious as I’ll admit to being about that, I wasn’t anxious to find out at that particular moment. I wanted more time to prepare. In fact, what I really wanted was several more years.

I finally let go of the tree and made my way slowly across the road to the parents’ home, where Lucia was talking with someone.

“Everyone from the village is gone,” she said. “There are no cars. We cannot take you to the city.”

“I’ll be fine,” I managed to get out. “I just need to rest.”

“We are accustomed.”

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I really wished she would stop saying that.

I walked into the yard and sat, my heart still pounding and sweat still pouring down my face. My heart rate was still well over 100 beats per minute and pounding and it had been over an hour.

Lucia said she had to go to another village. Did I want to go with her? I decided I would, figuring that walking might lower my heart rate. I have no idea why I thought that, but I was at a loss.

The road was hard-packed dirt, and once again, there was a very slight incline, but this one went on for some distance. I was lagging behind Lucia when I realized that I couldn’t continue. There was absolutely no strength in my legs, and I found myself bent over, panting.

I called to her, telling her I couldn’t continue. We went back to her parents’ house.

I studied biology, and I remember enough about biochemical pathways to know that every pathway has a feedback mechanism. If the end product of a pathway is, say, sugar, then when at an excessive amount of sugar, the feedback mechanism will slow or stop its production.

I knew that sugar and caffeine can increase a person’s heart rate. I also knew that Coke has a lot of sugar and caffeine, and I reasoned that if I drank one, maybe it could slow down my heart rate. (I’m sure a lot of doctors and biologists are cringing right now, but my options were fairly limited.)

So I bought a Coke and guzzled it down. It worked. I don’t know if it was causational, correlational or the placebo effect, and I couldn’t care less why my heart rate dropped. All I know is that I was grateful it did.

I told Lucia I felt better and that we could continue on to the other village. We walked down the road, and I got up that incline with no trouble. Even though I was confused at what had happened to me, I smiled, thinking how good it felt to be alive.

Joseph Sorrentino, a writer, photographer and author of the book San Gregorio Atlapulco: Cosmvisiones and of Stinky Island Tales: Some Stories from an Italian-American Childhood, is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily. More examples of his photographs and links to other articles may be found at www.sorrentinophotography.com He currently lives in Chipilo, Puebla.

Justice officials clash with local police in México state

MND Staff

July 14, 2021

Suspects in the kidnapping case in Tlalnepantla.

Seven people were injured when shots were fired and punches thrown in a confrontation between the state Attorney General’s Office and municipal police in Tlalnepantla, state of México, as four suspects were being transported to a justice center.

Five municipal police officers were wounded, three by gunshots and two by punches and two investigators from the state Attorney General’s Office were injured by blows.

The security agencies have offered conflicting accounts.

The Attorney General’s Office said investigators arrested two men and two women who are suspected of kidnapping of a 73-year-old woman who had been rescued two days earlier. It stated that the investigators were attacked by municipal police.

“When the personnel of the office of the Attorney General advanced toward the facilities of the Center of Justice, they were intercepted by the municipal officers, who fired at the personnel. That happened despite the fact that the investigators identified themselves, and therefore had to repel the attack,” the office stated.

However, municipal authorities said that residents called the police when they saw an armed convoy in the area. “The hooded men with heavy weapons claimed to be ministerial police officers, but they never identified themselves or showed any document such as a warrant to justify their presence,” they said.

Both the Attorney General’s Office and municipal authorities have said that they are conducting investigations into the actions of their officers.

The 73-year-old woman had been kidnapped in Tlalnepantla on June 6 and her family had received phone calls demanding a high ransom for her release.

She was freed in nearby Tultitlán by agents from the state Attorney General’s Office specialized in kidnappings, and five people were arrested.

With reports from Reforma and Milenio

Paleontologists discover new species of fish that lived at time of dinosaurs

MND Staff

July 14, 2021

The fossil found in Chiapas has been identified as a new species of fish. — The fossil found near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Kleyton Magno

The National Autonomous University (UNAM) has announced the discovery in Chiapas of a fossil of a previously unknown fish species that lived at a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Paleontologists from the university’s Institute of Geology discovered the approximately 95-million-year-old fossil in 2018 in a quarry in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, located about 30 kilometers from the state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

UNAM’s social communication department said the main characteristic of the fish is its “numerous spines on its dorsal and anal fins.”

UNAM paleontologist Kleyton Magno Cantalice Severiano published a description of the previously unknown fish in the British journal Papers in Palaeontology.

He and other experts named it Choichix alvaradoi, which is derived from two Tzotzil Mayan words and the name of a widely-respected Institute of Geology academic.

Choichix is a portmanteau of the words choy, meaning fish, and ch´ix, meaning spines. Tzotzil Mayan is spoken in the area where the fossil was found.

Alvaradoi refers to Jesús Alvarado Ortega, a fish fossil expert who has helped train many other paleontologists.

Cantalice said the Choichix alvaradoi belongs to a large group of spiny-finned fish known as the Acanthopterygii superorder, which includes species commonly eaten today such as bream, bass and snapper.

“… Ours is one of the oldest [of that group]. We discovered that it’s from a new [sub]group of fish because of the number of spines on its dorsal fin – 13,” he said.

Unlike modern-day spiny-finned fishes, the Choichix alvaradoi didn’t have ventral, or pelvic, fins. That’s because it was a primitive fish, Cantalice said, noting that that particular evolutionary trait emerged later.

The paleontologist said that other fossils of ancient fish as well as others of plants, mollusks and crustaceans from the Cretaceous period have been found in the same area.

“We could say that this [fish] species lived alongside dinosaurs, although that doesn’t mean there are … [dinosaur] fossils in the quarry, but the age in which they lived is the same. It’s a quarry where there are regular collections [of fossils], the specimens are very well preserved and what has been collected the most there are fish fossils,” he said.

Cantalice said similar fossils have been found in other countries, citing Lebanon as one example. However, none match that of the Choichix alvaradoi found in Chiapas, which is now part of UNAM’s national collection of fish fossils.

The species is believed to be the most primitive of the the spiny-finned fishes, he said, which would mean that the Acanthopterygii superorder might have originated in the land now known as Mexico.

It has previously been thought such fish originated in the Tethys Ocean, which existed during much of the Mesozoic Era, a period lasting from about 252 million to 66 million years ago that is also known as the Age of Reptiles.

“It was previously believed that the fish originated there and migrated to this part of America. However, we now see that the oldest, most primitive fish were in this region and subsequently diversified toward the Tethys Sea,” Cantalice said.

Mexico News Daily

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