Musician Marcos Nicolás Sosa was recognized for great talent and excellence.
A 23-year-old classical flautist from Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, México state, has won a scholarship to study in London, England, for four weeks over the summer.
Marcos Nicolás Sosa was awarded the annual Anglo Arts City Music Foundation Scholarship, an initiative of the Anglo Mexican Foundation that recognizes young Mexican instrumentalists of great talent and excellence in the performance of classical music and/or jazz.
He will now have the opportunity to study at the City Music Foundation, an institution in the British capital that provides early career music professionals with expert advice, guidance and support.
“I feel very honored, it’s a large responsibility but also a great opportunity,” said Sosa, a graduate of the National Conservatory of Music who has played in several orchestras and teaches flute at his alma mater.
“I’m really eager to learn in a country such as England, one of the most established places in terms of culture, art and history.”
Sosa, who began playing the flute at 8 and taking formal classes at 11, participated in a virtual selection process before being awarded the scholarship, which will also afford him the opportunity to perform at concert venues in London and make recordings of his music.
The son of two accountants, the flautist is the first professional musician in his family. He decided that he wanted to dedicate his life to music at a young age while attending classes at the Ollin Yolitzli music and dance school in Mexico City.
“The path has obviously not been easy, especially this pandemic period,” Sosa told the newspaper Reforma, adding that his desire to excel in his chosen field has only increased as the result of having limited recent opportunities to perform in front of audiences.
He is the third winner of the Anglo Arts City Music Foundation Scholarship after Eusebio Sánchez, a xylophonist, and Abner Jairo Ortiz, a cellist.
The Teeter Totter Wall art project gave people in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, the chance to play together despite the border wall.
For 40 minutes in July 2019, three seesaws in vivid pink broke through the United States-Mexico border wall, bridging communities on either side.
The work — then and later — became a literal manifestation of what unites rather than divides us, the communities we can generate when we dispense with barriers and instead embrace interacting together.
“The Teeter-Totter Wall encouraged new ways of human connection,” said Tim Marlow, the museum’s director. “It remains an inventive and poignant reminder of how human beings can transcend the forces that seek to divide us.”
The project’s inception came a decade before its physical appearance on a tiny patch of wall between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The architects behind the innovation, Virginia San Fratello, associate professor of design at San Jose State University, and Ronald Rael, professor of architecture at UC Berkeley, came up with the idea to use play as activism and generate the possibility of joy and togetherness at the border wall after the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
A video about the project that can be found on YouTube is playful, peppered with the laughter of adults and children alike, each taking their turn at bobbing up and down on the bright pink seesaws. It is a contrast to images commonly associated with the border wall during president Trump’s administration, the visual metaphor of a seesaw a stark reminder that the actions on either side of the border do not exist in a vacuum.
An attempted coup and two impeachments notwithstanding, the border wall — and the many other conflicts it engendered — was one of the defining issues of the Trump administration. Indeed, since 2017, the U.S. has spent US $9.7 billion on construction of the border barrier, primarily at the southwest border.
It is important to note that other administrations had a hand in border tensions and certainly set the wheels in motion, fomenting tensions and the enduring humanitarian crisis.
Trump’s attitude toward the border wall, however, was not only literally manifested in its construction and the commissioning of contracts. It also perpetuated an entire separatist ideology that will continue to reverberate for a long time to come — not to mention that this very attitude was a significant part of the platform he won the presidency on in the first place, and thus a large part of the significance of the teeter-totter project for the creators.
Both the project itself, and the announcement of the award, are timely reminders of the ongoing question of the border wall and the efforts of U.S. government administrations to curtail the flow of immigrants from the south.
Tens of thousands of migrants a year attempt to make the northern passage between countries in Central and South America and the United States, fleeing poverty, persecution and crime in their home countries, as well as the sweeping negative effects of natural disasters and climate change. The journey is a treacherous one, made significantly more dangerous by the risks of being attacked or enlisted by gangs smuggling drugs and other goods across the border.
The Mexico-U.S. border itself is, like most borders, a fairly arbitrary line in the sand. Territory on either side has been transferred between nations, most frequently in favor of the United States. However, while the boundary may be symbolic, the violence and crime there are definitively not.
Recently in Guatemala, security forces broke up a caravan of about 4,000 — mostly Honduran — migrants who had been camped out near the village of Vado Hondo. The police arrived with shields and tear gas to disperse them. Then, just a week after the Teeter-Totter Wall won the Beazley award, 19 bodies were found in a burned van farther along the border in the state of Tamaulipas. The incident is reminiscent of the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants who refused to work for cartels on the border and is a stark reminder that the transient communities surrounding the border wall are spaces of conflict.
There is burgeoning hope, however, for the reparation of relations between Mexico and the United States now that President López Obrador and the newly inaugurated President Biden have agreed to work together toward ending the “draconian” policies put in place by the Trump administration.
“It’s a question of drawing a very hard line in the sand about what one thing is and what another thing is, but those lines are complete abstractions,” Rael says. “Really, people and animals and water flow across these boundaries, so we just wanted to see if we could change the way this space is occupied for a moment.”
Too often, border walls merely serve as symbols of hitherto unsolved problems rather than as solutions. It is no surprise, then, that the wall has served so often in the recent past as an opportunity for communities, artists and activists to present utopian aspirations of what might be if we recognize our neighbors’ faces in our own.
For 40 minutes on one July pre-pandemic day not that long ago, pink seesaws subverted hegemony and more traditional symbols of the border, showing us how, with a little imagination and innovation, with a sprinkle of love and daring, with a dash of chutzpah, it is possible for us to imagine new and braver worlds into existence.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think-tank. She writes from Campeche.
One of the photos that accompanied a thank-you message to CFE workers.
The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has bungled an attempt to thank its employees for restoring power after a major outage last week by publishing a Facebook post that included photos of workers who are not employed by the state-owned company.
The utility published six photos to its official Facebook page on Saturday as part of a post to acknowledge the work of the “heroes” who restored power last week amid freezing conditions in the north of the country.
One of the images used, that of a man kitted out in a frost-covered uniform, was lifted from a Facebook post made by United States electricity company Evergy.
Two photographs showing workers repairing electricity lines as heavy snow fell previously appeared on the image sharing website Pinterest, the digital news outlet López-Dóriga Digital determined, while another similar image was taken from an advertisement for heavy-duty gloves.
The CFE erased its post after it was heavily criticized on social media and acknowledged later on Saturday that there had been an “error” in its selection of photos.
Photo used by the CFE that was taken from a post by a US energy firm.
In a new Facebook post, which featured four photos including an image of a worker standing in front of icicles at a CFE plant, the utility said that while it accepted it made a mistake it wouldn’t allow the “great effort” of its employees to go unrecognized.
CFE chief Manuel Bartlett and President López Obrador have both praised workers for reestablishing electricity supply after some 4.7 million people were left in the dark last Monday when an interruption to the natural gas supply due to freezing weather in the United States caused a blackout.
Bartlett said last Thursday that workers averted a “total disaster” in quickly reestablishing electricity generation, an achievement he described as a “a great feat.”
The posting of the fake images was the second example this year of the utility’s capacity for playing fast and loose with the truth. In December, the commission forged a document it used to back up its claim that a wildfire in Tamaulipas contributed to as massive power outage.
The CFE later admitted to the forgery but Bartlett dismissed the issue as a minor one.
A new aircraft would increase the company's fleet to six.
The courier and logistics company Estafeta will invest 1.95 billion pesos (US $93.94 million) in Mexico this year as e-commerce continues to grow.
The company will create a new hub in Mexico City and install smaller operating centers at key points in other major cities. The expansion of the network will increase the number of service points and delivery lockers for shipments of online orders.
Estafeta CEO Ingo Babrikowski explained that the company is also contemplating the acquisition of a new airplane, which would increase its fleet to six.
The new hub in Mexico City, which is due to begin operations in April 2022, will cover 10,800 square meters and in its first phase will process 18,000 items per hour, with an ultimate capacity of 50,000 per hour.
In 2020 Estafeta saw a major increase in online shopping deliveries, which led to increasing operational capacity by 50%. It hired 4,000 workers and plans to create 1,300 new jobs in 2021.
Asked whether Estafeta would participate in the delivery of vaccines in Mexico, Babrikowski explained that each vaccine has specific transportation requirements so the company is analyzing whether it can adapt its services to meet them.
“Transporting vaccines is a serious health and logistical issue as the requirements for each vaccine are different. Before making any proposal, we need to review the specifications of each product in order to help with any transportation for the government and the health sector,” said Babrikowski.
Officials at the site of a mass grave in Salvatierra in November.
Collectives dedicated to searching for missing family members have found a large clandestine gravesite containing at least 80 bodies in Celaya, Guanajuato.
While the number of bodies in the gravesite in the Celaya community of Sauz de Villaseñor is yet to be confirmed, a spokeswoman for one of the collectives said they believed there could be even more murder victims than those in the nearby city of Salvatierra, where the remains of 79 people were found in October.
“It’s plagued with graves,” said the spokeswoman, who only identified herself as Bibiana. “We are beginning to verify the area, and there was one grave after the other and after the other.”
An anonymous call led them to the site, members said. According to the newspaper Reforma, the graves mainly contained bones, not decomposing bodies, suggesting they had been there for some time.
Bibiana, whose brother went missing in 2010, accused Guanajuato’s state and local authorities of being uncooperative, hostile, and incompetent in assisting them with processing the site once they reported it on Saturday.
Municipal police, she said, threatened them with arrest at one point while authorities from the Attorney General’s Office came and took away only some remains from the site, leaving others behind and exposed to the elements.
They exhumed the remains in a way that made them “totally inadmissible [as evidence],” she said.
The family members returned at 8 a.m. on Sunday, this time accompanied by officials with the state search commission, at which time they found even more remains.
“They called attorney general officials but they refused to come,” Bibiana said.
According to Reforma, officials arrived at 5 p.m. that day.
“I think that in Guanajuato it’s about time that the governor created a forensic investigation institute that is connected with the Attorney General’s Office,” Bibiana said.
The group planned to return to the site Monday morning to continue searching.
Commercial art galleries and libraries may reopen but by appointment only.
Coronavirus restrictions in Mexico City were eased slightly on Monday although the capital remains orange light high risk on the federal government stoplight map.
Libraries, commercial art galleries and historical archives are now allowed to open but are required to operate under an appointment system.
For the first time in more than two months, restaurants may now seat diners in indoor spaces, albeit only at 20% of normal capacity. However, restaurants are only permitted to open up indoor dining spaces if they have run out of room in open air areas, where a 40% capacity limit applies.
Mexico City on Monday begins its second week at the high risk level after remaining at red light maximum risk for eight weeks between mid-December and mid-February. Outdoor theatrical productions were permitted to resume last week and gyms, public swimming pools and places of worship were allowed to reopen. Restaurants were permitted to reopen to in-house diners at the tail end of the eight-week red light period but only in outdoor areas.
The capital has recorded far more coronavirus cases and Covid-19 deaths than any other state but hospital occupancy levels have recently trended downwards.
Restaurants may offer indoor seating for the first time in two months.
As of Sunday night, 56% of beds set aside for coronavirus patients in Mexico City hospitals were occupied, according to city government data. The occupancy rate peaked at about 90% last month, although many hospitals in the capital reached full capacity.
Mexico City has recorded 539,990 confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic and 33,901 Covid-19 deaths.
The national accumulated case tally rose to 2.04 million on Sunday with 3,104 new cases reported while the official death toll increased to 180,107 with 310 additional fatalities.
In other Covid news:
• Vaccination of seniors with China’s two-shot Sinovac vaccine began Monday in Ecatepec, México state. A shipment of 200,000 doses of the vaccine, which has been shown to be about 50% effective, arrived in Mexico City on Saturday. All of the doses will be administered in Ecatepec, a sprawling, densely populated municipality that borders Mexico City.
As of Sunday night, almost 1.7 million doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines had been administered in Mexico, mainly to frontline health workers and seniors.
• Four of the five municipalities in Baja California Sur shifted Monday from maximum risk to high on the state’s coronavirus risk measurement system. Health officials announced that La Paz, Comondú, Loreto and Mulegé would advance to level 4 from level 5 after a downward trend in key Covid risk indicators in the past few weeks.
Los Cabos remains at level 4.
• Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, who has led the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and appeared at the Health Ministry’s press conferences on a near daily basis for almost a year, announced Saturday that he had tested positive for Covid-19.
“I developed symptoms last night, fortunately they’re mild,” he said on Twitter. “The antigen test came back positive and I’m waiting for the PCR test result. I’ll be working from home, attentive to the vaccination strategy.”
Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval also tested positive for Covid-19 last week. President López Obrador recovered from his Covid-19 illness earlier this month.
The gas is flowing southward after export ban lifted.
The National Gas Control Center (Cenagas) has ended its “critical alert” for the national gas system after Texas lifted its temporary ban on natural gas exports earlier than expected.
Cenagas declared on Saturday an end to the alert, which was issued last Tuesday due to the limited amount of natural gas being sent to Mexico from the United States amid an extreme cold snap in Texas.
The termination came after Texas Governor Greg Abbott lifted the ban on shipping natural gas out of the Lone Star state on Friday. Announced last Wednesday, the suspension was to remain in place until Sunday.
Cenagas said Saturday that the risk to the operation of the national gas system had ended and that restrictions on consumption had been lifted.
The Mexican Natural Gas Association said that gas supply was normalizing but called on industrial, commercial and residential users of the fuel to continue limiting their consumption to help stabilize the distribution system.
Last week’s supply interruption, which the federal government attributed to the freezing of pipes in Texas, caused a blackout last Monday that affected some 4.7 million people in northern Mexico – Mexican power plants are heavily reliant on natural gas for electricity generation – and forced some manufacturers to stop work.
The Nuevo León industry association Caintra said the power outage and gas supply interruption caused manufacturers in that state to lose some 14 billion pesos (US $677.2 million) between Monday and Thursday of last week. Losses in Tamaulipas amounted to $266 million by Thursday, said Humberto Martínez Cantú, president of the Index industry group in Reynosa.
In Chihuahua, a least 120 manufacturing firms had to halt operations, resulting in losses of up to $60 million a day, according to Index.
Manufacturers in several other states, including Durango, Coahuila, Jalisco, Guanajuato and Querétaro, were affected by the natural gas shortages and suffered large losses. Automakers including Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Kia and Mazda were among the manufacturers that temporarily shut down all or part of production due to the lack of gas.
President López Obrador discounted reports that the economic costs would be serious, accusing media outlets of exaggerating the extent of the impact of gas shortages because “they’re angry with us.”
“The anger of the media in this country is notorious … what interests them is attacking the government.”
On Sunday the president said he was “very satisfied” with the government’s response to the gas crisis.
“I’m very satisfied with the result, with the way in which the CFE [Federal Electricity Commission] confronted this crisis,” he said during an event in La Paz, Baja California Sur.
“… How long did it take us to resolve this problem? Five days, five days thanks to the work of … the Federal Electricity Commission technicians,” López Obrador said.
“I very much regret what’s happening in Texas, … they haven’t resolved the problem yet. We confronted it well because we were attentive, we took early decisions. Before the crisis erupted, an emergency meeting of the CFE with the Energy Ministry was held and they asked me if they could use more fuel oil from Pemex … to put all the country’s plants into operation and increase the energy in the entire network,” he said.
CFE chief Manuel Bartlett said last week that reestablishing electricity generation after the gas supply interruption was “a great feat,” asserting that the public utility’s workers averted a “total disaster.”
López Obrador said the lesson to be learned from last week’s events is “not to put all your eggs in one basket” with respect to energy sources for electricity generation.
“In Texas, I say it with complete respect, they don’t have options other than natural gas. This crisis comes along and they have no options, no alternatives. Here, when the natural gas price started going up and when it was decided they weren’t going to supply us, ships with liquified gas were immediately contracted and other actions [were carried out],” the president said.
Chinelos accompany the image of the Niñopa (a baby Jesus statue) in the Mexico City borough of Xochimilco during an annual procession. Alejandro Linares García
The Chinelos, costumed dancers who are a regional Mexican Carnival tradition, began as a way to “diss the man” several hundred years ago.
Unfortunately, the festivities were officially canceled this year due to Covid-19. Any events that did go on were clandestine. This is humorous because Carnival has a long history of allowing participants to skirt both convention and authority.
The Chinelos’ case is one act of defiance that evolved into a year-round tradition.
Mexico is not a noted Carnival country. The celebration was introduced here in the colonial period, but authorities frowned on the disrespect it encouraged among the general populace, especially the indigenous.
They eventually succeeded in stamping it out in most of New Spain. The celebrations seen in some coastal cities such as Mazatlán date only from the 19th century.
Chinelos dancers with highly-ornate garb performing for the opening of the Expo de los Pueblos Indígenas in Mexico City in 2018. Alejandro Linares García
But a few colonial-era annual celebrations survived in a number of small towns in Tlaxcala, Puebla and Morelos. The indigenous in colonial Morelos were forbidden from participating in the celebrations, so they created their own getups using old clothes and faces that were carefully covered to maintain anonymity.
This need to hide their identities was part of the Chinelos’ origin story. Hiding was extremely important to avoid authorities’ reprisals, as the purpose of dressing up was not only to participate but to mock the ruling classes.
The Chinelos of today originated in Tlayacapan, a scenic town in the north of Morelos. The name is derived from Náhuatl, but like so many words with this heritage, etymologies vary. It may be derived from zineloquie which means disguised, or tzinelohua which means hip movement, a reference to the distinctive dancing Chinelos do. Another etymology focuses on the mask and the mocking aspect, using a combination of chichiltec (“blushing” skin) and niele (to mock). Take your pick which is correct.
Chinelos’ outfits have four principal elements: a long, flowing robe, often with a rectangular tunic over it; a mask; a large, plumed hat and a pair of gloves.
The robes are made of thick material, most often velvet. Hats can be up to a meter high with many large plumes. Both robes and hats can be heavily decorated with embroidery, painting and/or sequins depicting images from Catholicism or pre-Hispanic culture. Today’s masks are made of mesh (easier to breathe in) and feature blue eyes and beards. The gloves are mostly for effect, but they also help to hide identity.
The overall effect is androgynous, although the dancers underneath the costumes are almost always men, usually young ones able to withstand dancing in such garb for extended periods.
Examples of Chinelo dress, from left: Tlayacapan, Yautepec and Tepoztlán. Wikimedia Commons
These costumes are expensive to make, ranging anywhere from 4,000 to 100,000 pesos (US $$190 to $4,800) — sometimes even more! — depending on complexity, the type of materials used and sometimes the quantity and quality. For example, one of the most prized materials for costumes is Czech glass beads, each laboriously sewn onto the robe or hat one by one.
The demand for such garments means that there are artisans who make a living creating them. Those with the best reputations live in the town of Yautepec, Morelos. Such costumes are also in high demand with collectors, especially those that “have been danced.”
The Chinelos’ traditional purpose of mocking “one’s betters” was maintained for centuries. The basis of the costume is the Spanish of the early colonial period, but other elements were added over time.
One aspect was the addition of gloves and the upturning of the beards found on the masks. This was taken from French fashion of the late 19th century, which the Mexican elite of the time diligently copied.
An influence more local to Morelos was the area’s large sugar cane farms and processing mills. These places brought their usually absentee owners wealth, but they left workers impoverished until after the Mexican Revolution.
Although participating in a Chinelos group is nowhere near as dangerous as it used to be, maintaining anonymity is still an extremely important part of the tradition. Costumes are hidden carefully when not in use. Dancers will dress up while in different houses and will even change all or part of their costumes periodically to keep from being found out.
A 100-peso commemorative coin with a Chinelo representing the state of Morelos.
Chinelos groups have spread and diversified from northern Morelos to the rest of the state, into southern Mexico City and Guerrero. Migration north also took the tradition to California, New York and other areas where Morelenses have settled.
The spread of the dance to other places led to variations in costume that can be associated with certain communities — and sometimes specific groups. The costume closest to the original is still that found in Tlayacapan.
Its robe and hat are white and blue, generally not ornate, although the tunic can be. In most other places, the robes are made of velvet and are more likely to be decorated.
Perhaps because the costume is most important, the dance is exceedingly simple. The most difficult part is that you are jumping around in hot and heavy garments. Any ambient heat becomes stifling, so head bandanas to control the sweat become important.
Although definitely regional, the Chinelos are an important and still-growing tradition. Their performances are no longer limited to Carnival celebrations but are also seen at local festivals year-round and can be hired for private events.
Chinelos are even in the tourism business. The state of Morelos has made them representative of the state, putting them on all kinds of advertising, which further increases their importance and recognition.
Los 3 estilos de Chinelo en Tepoztlán.
Chinelos dancers in Tepoztlán, Morelos, in 2019.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
An architectural rendering of what was to be the Mexico City airport.
Canceling the new Mexico City international airport project at Texcoco, México state, will cost almost 332 billion pesos (US $16 billion), according to the Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF), an estimate more than three times higher than that of the federal government.
The previous government’s partially built airport was canceled by President López Obrador following a legally questionable public consultation in October 2018 that found almost 70% support for scrapping it in favor of converting the Santa Lucía Air Force base into a commercial airport and upgrading the existing airports in Mexico City and Toluca, México state.
According to the ASF’s estimate, canceling the Texcoco project will be slightly more expensive than building the facility, which had a projected price tag of $15 billion, although the current government says it would have cost more.
In a document submitted to the surveillance committee of the lower house of Congress, the ASF said it had determined that the total cost of canceling construction of the airport will be 331.99 billion pesos.
It noted that its estimated cancellation cost is higher than the 100-billion-peso estimate outlined by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation in a 2019 document.
President López Obrador disputed the auditor’s findings Monday, claiming he has other information.
The ASF said the cost could be even higher than its projection due to higher than anticipated contract liquidation expenses and higher than expected costs related to legal action against the decision to scrap the project, which López Obrador long argued was corrupt, too expensive and being built on land that was sinking.
It explained that 49.3% of the estimated cancellation cost is comprised of non-recoverable investment expenses, advance settlement of contracts, expenses related to terminating the project’s financing scheme and anticipated legal costs.
The remaining 50.7% consists of liquidating airport bonds, settling contracts currently in the process of termination and paying costs related to current legal action against the cancellation decision.
López Obrador unsurprisingly rejected the ASF’s estimated cancellation cost at his news conference on Monday morning, claiming that the figure is “exaggerated.”
“I would like them to explain that piece of information, which is wrong – it’s exaggerated,” he said.
“… I have other information and it will be presented here. … Those from the Federal Auditor’s Office are providing wrong information for our adversaries and I believe that they shouldn’t lend themselves to these [disinformation] campaigns.”
Security Minister Rodríguez presents crime data at Friday morning's press conference.
Homicides decreased 5.5% in January compared to the same month of 2020 but increased 7.7% with respect to December, according to data presented by Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez on Friday.
There were 2,831 victims of homicide last month, 165 fewer than January last year but 204 more than December.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s morning press conference, Rodríguez asserted that the government’s security strategy has been successful in containing homicide levels, although they remain very high.
Guanajuato retained its unenviable title of most violent state in the country with 335 homicide victims in January. Baja California ranked second with 284 victims followed by Jalisco, Michoacán, Chihuahua and México state.
Just under 50% of all homicides in Mexico last month occurred in those six states.
Almost 28% of the homicides were committed in 15 highly violent municipalities where the government is implementing localized security strategies and rolling out social programs to try to combat the violence.
Rodríguez highlighted that there were fewer homicides in 10 of them in January compared to the same month last year. They were Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Celaya, Culiacán, Guadalajara, Acapulco, Cancún, Irapuato, Iztapalapa and Salamanca.
However, homicides increased in Cajeme, León, Morelia, Chihuahua city and Tlaquepaque.
The security minister also presented data that showed that femicides – the killing of women and girls on account of their gender – declined 10.6% in January compared to the same month last year and 14.1% with respect to December. There were 67 victims of the hate crime last month.
