A contraband-sniffing dog checking items at Toluca International Airport.
More than 2,700 customs agents have been dismissed for corruption since the current government took office in late 2018, but none has been formally charged or taken into custody.
Customs chief Horacio Duarte told a press conference at Mexico City airport on Tuesday that 2,712 customs agents have been fired during the past three years and 39 formal criminal complaints have been filed with the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
“[But] as far as I know, there are no detainees,” he said.
Duarte, who became customs chief in April last year, said he was unaware what progress the FGR had made with its investigations into the 39 criminal complaints filed against customs agents.
“… We file the complaints and then it’s up to … the FGR to carry out the procedural activities to determine the responsibility … of the officials,” he said.
Duarte noted that the bank accounts of 12 customs administrators were frozen after the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit detected suspicious transactions but said he didn’t know whether any further action had been taken against them.
He conceded that many customs agents are in cahoots with organized crime, but emphasized that seizures of fentanyl, weapons and cartridges have all increased.
The main reason for Duarte’s appearance at the airport was to announce that Mexico would implement the World Customs Organization’s anti-corruption and integrity promotion program.
He said that corruption has a corrosive effect on entire countries and their institutions, noting that it results in the diversion of public resources that could have otherwise been allocated to development and the provision of basic services.
“Added to this, corruption weakens the public perception of governments, favors the development of organized crime, generates a sentiment of iniquity … and in economic terms discourages foreign investment. In a nutshell, corruption undermines democracy and public life,” Duarte said.
“In this context, the government of Mexico, and customs in particular, have sent a clear message of zero corruption and zero impunity,” he said — even though the punishment of corrupt customs agents doesn’t go beyond the loss of their jobs.
Zapotecs call themselves Binnizá, which in their language means Cloud People. Government of Mexico
Long ago, legend says, a shepherd found a wild lily growing in what today is San Agustín de las Juntas, a settlement near Oaxaca city’s airport. When digging to collect the flower by its root, he discovered the head of Donají, a Zapotec princess. This beautiful, decapitated, royal head is today the city’s official emblem.
This foundational story is exemplary of Oaxaca, a magical land inhabited by magical people, where the geographies of language and biodiversity intertwine, enveloping and nourishing one other over millennia.
These all evolve together while sharing the same spaces and the same challenges — animate and inanimate — that humanity faces today in its efforts to save our blue planet. It’s a human-nature communion so profound that the Zapotecs here — the Cloud People, as they call themselves — believed that they descended from rocks, trees and jaguars.
I have no doubt that was the case.
Oaxaca’s land is the cosmic daughter of a complex geological history. That history has sculpted archetypal symbols on its topography and on the minds of its people, shaping a limitless range of landscapes — from the Pacific coast and through dry tropical forest; through scrublands, temperate pine and oak forests; and into the triumphant ascent into the cloud forests of the Cerro Nube (Cloud Hill) at 3,720 meters above sea level.
An oil rendering by artist Isis Rodriguez of the image of Donají, the beheaded Zapotec princess who is featured on Oaxaca city’s coat of arms. City of Oaxaca
It is the land of the Mixtec princes Tres Pedernal, the incarnation of the values of Mexico’s indigenous women. It is the land in which Los Chimalapas lies — that breathtaking half a million hectare home of Mexico’s last remaining intact tropical forest, which unfurls across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Oaxaca is the exquisite outcome of an assortment of natural blessings that have encouraged adaptive radiation (i.e., rapid evolutionary species diversification), speciation (when nature creates a new offshoot species) and an extraordinary mix of flora and fauna that has blended elegantly with indigenous peoples and languages.
The state’s name comes from huaxyácac (“in the nose of the guaje plants” in the Náhuatl language), a native tree with white flowers and red and green pods (the three colors of the Mexican flag, before that flag even existed) that conceal tasty seeds.
Centuries ago, when the Spaniards arrived, they called this land Guajaca, Segura de la Frontera, Tepeaca and Antequera; but the Náhuatl won over the Spanish, and today it continues to be proudly called Oaxaca.
For over 10,000 years, a wide variety of indigenous peoples have spread and flourished in these diverse environments: the Zapotec, Mixtec, Mazatec, Mixe, Zoque, and many more, as well as Afro-Mexicans, mestizos and Spanish thriving together on this tricolor nose of guajes.
Today, more than 4,000 indigenous communities in Oaxaca speak 157 languages, making up 43% of Mexico’s languages. More than 8,400 species of plants (40% of all the plants in Mexico) and 4,500 species of animals (half of the country’s vertebrates and 19% of its invertebrates), make Oaxaca Mexico’s most bioculturally diverse (meaning both highly biologically and culturally diverse) state.
This is why Oaxaca is a biocultural planetary treasure.
It’s also why there exists no gastronomy like Oaxaca’s: seven multicolored moles, rock broth, Ixtaltepec wedding stew, large and crunchy tlayudas, tamales, the hearty beef and bean soup caldo de gato, chapulines (grasshopers), escamoles (ant larvae), maguey worms, chicatanas (ants), chiles stuffed with sardines, the sweet treat nenguanitos, the ancestral drink pozonque and Oaxaca’s version of the tostada known as memelas.
And, to appease everyone’s alcoholic and nonalcoholic thirst, Oaxaca offers 77 traditional elixirs, including mezcal (such as Amores, my favorite), tepache, aguardiente, popo, pulque, champurrado, bu’pu, and pinole.
Oaxaca is divided into 570 municipalities, of which 418 are ruled by the “uses and customs,” an autochthone form of self-governance. Towns such as Espinal, Santo Domingo Tehuantepec, Juchitán, Puerto Escondido, Huatulco, Mitla, San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec, San Pedro Pochutla, San Bartolo Coyotepec, Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz and Teotitlán (meaning among the houses of God in Náhuatl) de Flores Magón blow the minds of all travelers.
Oaxaca is so desirable that even the souls of those who die, longing for their homeland, choose to hang around after their bodies have long gone. Each November 2, on the Day of the Dead, the souls of all those who were born in Oaxaca and passed away — including its most famous artists, presidents, dictators and anarchist journalists — wander the graveyards and streets and may reveal themselves to the living, but only the living who believe.
If you find yourself in Oaxaca city on that day and you walk the streets at night, you may encounter the souls of Oaxaca’s two most celebrated and loved Zapotec painters: Francisco Toledo (and his magical erotic animals), who succeeded in preventing a McDonald’s from opening on the capital’s zócalo; and Rufino Tamayo, whom you will see carrying his mural Day and Night, which symbolizes the struggle between daytime (the feathered serpent) and nighttime (the tiger).
Or you may find the souls of the writers, José Vasconcelos and Andrés Henestrosa; but they will reveal themselves only if you have read at least one of their books.
Whether you like their music and voices or not, you will certainly encounter the souls of violinist-pianist Macedonio Alcalá performing his waltz and Oaxaca’s de facto anthem, “Dios Nunca Muere” (God never dies), and Álvaro Carrillo, Chuy Rasgado and José López Alavés singing “Sabor a Mí,” “Naela” or “Canción Mixteca,” an ode to all Mexico’s migrants.
And if you care about the rights of indigenous peoples, you may meet the soul of Benito Juárez, Benemérito de las Americas. Born in San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, to Zapotec parents, as president of Mexico he fought for the best causes, including separation between church and state, freedom of the press and the subordination of the army to civil authority — causes for which we Mexicans continue to fight hard even today.
And if you are one of those willing to take risks, you might also wander, preferably at midnight, by Cerro del Fortín. There you may have the opportunity to confront, face to face, the soul of Porfirio Díaz — the politician, soldier and president-turned-dictator. For 30 years and 105 days, he ruled Mexico.
No doubt, however, General Díaz will be in a rush, being chased by his fierce opponents, the souls of the three Flores Magón brothers — fomenters of the Mexican Revolution who would be loudly heralding their anarchist newspaper Regeneration.
But if you chose to only walk near Santo Domingo — that matchless baroque temple built by persevering Dominican priests in the mid-16th century — try hard to listen to the song La Llorona that tells the sad story of the young Zapotec man in love, saying farewell to his wife, who cried despairingly when her beloved husband was swept away to his death by the winds of the Mexican Revolution.
A work of art from Oaxaca city’s annual Night of the Radishes. Alejandro Linares García/Creative Commons
But if you are really lucky, you might also have the chance to listen to Oaxaca’s five living hummingbirds — Lila Downs, Natalia Cruz, Martha Toledo, Alejandra Robles and Susana Harp.
All this is true, although you may choose not to believe it.
And, if you wish to see the universe in motion, come to Oaxaca on July 16 and stay the two Mondays after. Those are Los Lunes del Cerro (Mondays on the Hill) — pre-Hispanic rituals worshiping the goddess and protector of maize.
Centuries ago, these rituals culminated with the sacrifice of a damsel representing the goddess, rituals that many years later turned into the Guelaguetza, a Zapotec festival thanking the agriculture gods for the harvest, and in which all people, rich and poor, participate without any class distinctions.
The Guelaguetza ends with the Dance of the Feather, in which the principal dancer (the sun) moves in circles to talk to other dancers (the celestial bodies) with diagonal movements representing the winter solstice and parallel movements representing the spring equinox. As I have told you, the cosmos is moving.
Thirty-three years ago, on December 23, 1988, I visited Oaxaca for the first time. That night was the Noche de Rábanos (Night of the Radishes), when local artists display figures that they have lovingly carved from leviathan radishes.
Lila Downs - La Llorona
Lila Downs, who is from Oaxaca, has recorded songs in Zapotec and Mixtec.
It seems like yesterday that I wandered through the streets of Oaxaca de Juárez, young and alone while devouring with heart and soul a myriad of colorful animals, humans, houses and countless other exquisite forms carved out of beautiful specimens of Raphanus sativus, offered to me as gifts by artists I did not know.
It seems like yesterday that I found refuge in a cold and somber church, comfortably sitting near a bowl filled with holy water and realizing that I had just arrived in the most magical place on Earth.
• Respectfully dedicated to Josefina and other Zapotec women of white heads and rebellious hearts who initiated me into the magic of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and whose distant relatives lived there 10,000 years ago.
Omar Vidal, a scientist, was a university professor in Mexico, is a former senior officer at the UN Environment Program and the former director-general of the World Wildlife Fund-Mexico.
There have been more than 2,500 homicides in the state this year.
Guerrero got a new federal security plan in October, Zacatecas got one in November, and now Baja California is to become the third state in as many months to qualify for reinforced security efforts.
President López Obrador said Monday that he will travel to Tijuana – Mexico’s most violent city – on Saturday to address security issues in the northern border state, where more than 2,500 homicides were recorded in the first 10 months of the year.
Cells of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) are engaged in a turf war over drug dealing locations in Tijuana and other cities, according to state security officials who spoke with the newspaper Milenio.
They’re fighting for the streets and corners of different neighborhoods, the unnamed officials said, naming Sánchez Taboada – which has been described as the most dangerous neighborhood in Tijuana – as a hotspot.
“It’s an issue of narcomenudeo [small-scale drug trafficking] on [street] corners,” one official said.
The competing cartel cells are mainly selling methamphetamine on the streets, the officials said, although drugs such as cocaine and heroin are also available. They also said that more than 1,000 sicarios, or cartel hitmen, have been arrested in Baja California since 2019.
A man believed to be the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in Tijuana and considered one of the main instigators of violence in the city was arrested in September, but the violence goes on.
The officials told Milenio that different criminal cells dominate different parts of Tijuana. They noted that drug dealers sometimes change allegiances and start working for a different “criminal company.”
“That’s why they kill them,” they said, adding that members of the Arellano-Félix organization, also known as the Tijuana Cartel, work with both the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel.
The federal government deployed additional soldiers and members of the National Guard to Guerrero and Zacatecas to stem violence in those states.
Homicides declined in the first three municipalities in the three months between August and October compared to the same period of 2020, according to official data, but increased in Mexicali. Still, much more needs to be done to pacify the state.
Details about the government’s security plan are expected to be announced at a press conference on Saturday.
“We’re going … to Baja California [to deal with] the security issue and we’ll report [from] there,” López Obrador told his Monday morning press conference.
The port of Coatzacoalcos, from which Corona and other beer could be shipped to the US market.
A United States company that brews Corona and other Mexican beers for sale in the U.S. will build a new brewery in Veracruz, according to Governor Cuitláhuac García.
Constellation Brands, whose $1.4 billion nearly-completed brewery project in Mexicali, Baja California, was halted by the federal government after a referendum in March 2020, is expected to announce the new brewery project with President López Obrador as soon as this week, said a person familiar with the plans.
The plant, estimated to cost $1.3 billion, will probably be built in the trans-isthmus trade corridor, a region in Oaxaca and Veracruz where infrastructure upgrades are under way to encourage industrial development, the Veracruz governor said.
Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier recently told federal lawmakers that Constellation was planning a large investment in Veracruz, where it would be able to access the significant quantities of water required to make beer on an industrial scale.
Governor García said earlier this year that the company was looking at options near the port city of Coatzacoalcos. From there, the United States third largest beer producer could transport beer to U.S. Gulf of Mexico ports by ship.
The unfinished brewery in Mexicali.
The company’s decision to build a new brewery in Mexico is a big win for López Obrador, whose government has not attracted large new investments from foreign companies.
The plan would be especially pleasing for the president, a Tabasco native, given that he has pledged to spur economic development in what he describes as the long-neglected southeast and repeatedly said that the region would be ideal for a brewery, given the availability of water. Three of his signature infrastructure projects – the Maya Train, the Dos Bocas oil refinery and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor – are being built in southern and southeastern states.
Constellation’s decision is the culmination of protracted negotiations between company executives, senior federal officials and local authorities, the Wall Street Journal said.
After last year’s referendum on the Mexicali project, in which just over three-quarters of participants voted against it mainly due to concerns it would threaten the local water supply, Constellation chose to negotiate with federal officials rather than take the case to an international arbitration panel, a government source said.
The unnamed person told the WSJ that locating the brewery in the tropical southeast will ensure that water supply is not a problem and guarantees the support of local residents because of López Obrador’s strong links to the region.
But operating so far from the Mexico-U.S. border will increase Constellation’s costs, the WSJ reported. In addition, Mexico’s southeast lacks sufficient road and transportation infrastructure, gas and energy supplies, the newspaper noted.
Constellation, which also brews beers such as Modelo Especial, Victoria and Pacífico, already operates a large, state-of-the-art brewery in Nava, Coahuila, located across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.
The company bought Grupo Modelo’s U.S. beer business in 2013 and has invested $9 billion in it. Constellation has annual sales of over $8.5 billion, and its Mexican beer portfolio generates a significant portion of its revenue.
Damage from Monday night's blast at an illegal fireworks maker.
An explosion at a home-based, illegal fireworks factory killed six people and injured nine Monday night in Puebla.
It was the second such incident in two days. One person was killed and six people were injured under similar circumstances on Sunday when gunpowder exploded at an illegal fireworks operation in Juan C. Bonilla.
Monday’s blast took place in the community of Santiago Tenango in Felipe Ángeles. Two of the dead were children aged 13 and 15. Only two of those who were injured required hospitalization but one, a 13-year-old girl, was reported in grave condition Tuesday morning with second-degree burns.
At least six homes were also severely damaged in the blast, which took place about 7:30 p.m.
Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa confirmed that the incident took place in an unlicensed fireworks factory and ordered officials to carry out inspections of fireworks makers throughout the state to identify those that are operating without permits from the Ministry of National Defense.
Fireworks is a big business in some parts of Mexico and this is a busy time of year for manufacturers. And explosions are not uncommon.
What was probably the worst incident killed 46 people in Tultepec, México state, in 2016 when several explosions ripped through and destroyed Mexico’s biggest fireworks market.
The market itself was legal but regulations controlling the distance between individual vendors’ stands had been relaxed. Officials concluded at the time that the damage would have been less severe had the regulations been enforced.
People aged 60 and over will be given AstraZeneca COVID-19 booster shots regardless of the vaccine with which they were first inoculated, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s regular news conference, the coronavirus czar said that seniors must have been vaccinated before June to be eligible for a booster shot. The vast majority of seniors were vaccinated before the start of that month, he said.
People aged 60 or over who were vaccinated more recently will have to wait for six months after their second dose before they can receive an additional shot, López-Gatell said.
The rollout of booster shots begins Tuesday in Mexico City, Jalisco, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Sinaloa and Yucatán. In the capital, seniors who live in the southern borough of Tlalpan will be the first to get a third shot.
López Obrador, who had COVID in January, and other federal officials aged 60 and over received their boosters at the president’s news conference, held in Zapopan, Jalisco.
Seniors are not required to register for a third shot, as was the case with their initial vaccination. They simply have to go to a vaccination center and show official identification to prove their age, López-Gatell said.
Authorities will announce the location of the vaccination centers and the dates on which they will be offering booster shots on a state by state basis.
Teachers, who were among the first Mexicans to be vaccinated, will also be offered booster shots after they have been made available to seniors. Most teachers were vaccinated with the single-shot CanSino vaccine.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated coronavirus case tally currently stands at just over 3.9 million after 752 new infections were reported Monday. The country’s first case of the highly mutated omicron variant was detected last Friday but no additional cases have been reported.
The Health Ministry reported 110 additional COVID-19 fatalities on Monday, lifting the official death toll to 295,313.
Calle Morelos clearly marks the boundary between two municipalities.
The urban area formed by the municipalities of Tampico and Ciudad Madero in Tamaulipas has a unique new boundary marker: a half-paved road.
While residents on the Ciudad Madero side of Calle Morelos have a newly paved lane, their neighbors in Tampico are still driving on unpaved dirt, a situation that has been mocked and criticized on social media.
Luis Carlos Leal Contreras, director of public works in Ciudad Madero, said the paving project began cooperatively, but when Tampico ran out of resources, Ciudad Madero decided to go ahead and finish its half of the street as planned.
But the Tampico director of public works, Pedro Pablo Rangel, tells a slightly different tale.
“When it became known that Ciudad Madero was going to pave Calle Morelos, I approached Luis Carlos Leal Contreras and I invited them to work together, half and half, but they didn’t want to … what they did is absurd, they are doing things badly,” Rangel said, adding that paving only half the street will cause future problems with uneven compaction.
A Tampico councilor who sits on the public works commission has called for a meeting to review the project status.
“It is not Madero’s responsibility anymore if it is affecting neighbors on our side,” Mayra Ojeda said.
Ciudad Madero Mayor Adrián Oseguera later explained that his city had no choice but to go ahead with the paving project because the funds had already been approved by the municipal council.
Oseguera said he has a good working relationship with the mayor of Tampico, and the Tampico side of the project will be completed in 2022.
“There is excellent coordination between my friend [Tampico Mayor Jesús Nader] and me and the public works directors,” Oseguera said.
He urged Calle Morelos residents not to lose hope, and assured them that the project would indeed be completed.
“What happened is that we had already approved it and the neighbors insisted we do it, but there is good communication and it is not the only street we will [pave] with Tampico,” Oseguera said.
A bus burns in Veracruz after thieves ordered the passengers off and took their belongings.
A gang of thieves intercepted, robbed and then burned a bus Monday night on federal highway 180 between Coatzacoalcos and Jáltipan in southern Veracruz.
About 10 armed civilians in pickup trucks forced a Sotavento line bus filled with passengers to stop. They took the passengers’ money and cell phones then forced them off the bus at the stop known as El Porvenir.
The thieves proceeded to douse the bus with gasoline and set it on fire. Neighbors alerted the authorities and helped the passengers. No injuries were reported.
The newspaper La Jornada reported that the owner of the bus had previously received extortion calls demanding payment.
The robbery comes less than a week after another incident involving the Sotavento bus line in the same area. On December 1, a 71-year-old Sotavento employee was driving in his own vehicle on the highway between Jáltipan and Oteapan when an armed gang forced him to stop and kidnapped him. He was freed after family and coworkers paid a ransom.
Previous efforts to ban bullfights in the capital have failed.
The Mexico City Congress will vote on a bill that would ban bullfighting after the proposed law was approved by the legislature’s animal welfare committee.
Four members of the committee voted on Monday in favor of modifying Mexico City’s Animal Protection Law in order to prohibit bullfighting while a fifth member abstained.
Jesús Sesma, a Green Party deputy and president of the animal welfare committee, announced the committee’s approval of the initiative on Twitter.
“We’ll continue fighting to achieve its approval in the whole Congress vote. #It’sNotCultureIt’sTorture,” he wrote.
Speaking after the committee vote, Sesma noted that there has long been a push for bullfighting to be banned in the capital but efforts by former lawmakers to prohibit the bloodsport failed.
Bullfighting in Mexico City is currently exempt from a ban on activities that involve cruelty against and mistreatment of animals. The bill would prohibit public spectacles in which “bulls, steers and calves are mistreated, tortured or killed.”
If it becomes law, anyone who stages a bullfight could face fines of 4.9 million pesos (US $231,000).
Lawmakers are expected to vote on the initiative in the coming days. The Morena party is the dominant force in the Mexico City Congress, holding 32 of the 66 seats. Only one of the Morena members of the animal welfare committee attended Monday’s virtual meeting at which the vote was held and she abstained.
The absence of the other Morena members led lawmakers from other parties to question Morena’s support for the proposal. If most Morena lawmakers don’t support the initiative in the Congress vote, it would appear doomed to fail.
The four members of the animal welfare committee who voted in favor of the bill noted that the Mexico City constitution recognizes animals as sentient beings worthy of decent treatment. However, bulls in bullfights suffer mortal wounds inflicted by banderillas, they said.
Bullfighting association Tauromaquia Mexicana rejected the bill, characterizing it as an attack on a “cultural and popular activity established in our society for almost 500 years.”
More than 4 million people from “all strata of our society” attend bullfighting events every year, it said in a statement. The association also said that a ban on bullfighting in Mexico City would undermine an industry that contributed 6.9 billion pesos (US $326.1 million) to the economy in 2019, generates more than 80,000 direct jobs and pays annual taxes of more than 800 million pesos.
Bullfighting has already been prohibited in four states: Sonora, Guerrero, Coahuila and Quintana Roo. In contrast, the states of Aguascalientes, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, Querétaro, Zacatecas, Michoacán and Guanajuato consider bullfighting intangible cultural heritage
The World Cup champion team, Ek ‘Balam of Belize with coach Menalio Novelo holding the trophy. Courtesy of Menalio Novelo
Just outside of the historic center of Merida, Yucatán, an ancient Mayan ball game — pok-ta-pok — saw its fourth World Cup final won by Belizean team Ek’ Balam. But in terms of the teams’ unified ultimate goal — to revive this sport played by the ancient Maya — they were all winners.
Seven teams competed on December 2 and 3 to be the world pok-ta-pok (also known as pelota Maya) champions. The tournament, held at the Yucatán State Institute for Sports, brought teams together from countries across Mesoamerica, including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.
Three of these championships have already been played since the modern-day version of the sport began to be played in Maya communities — in Guatemala in 2017 and in El Salvador in 2019 and the inaugural one in 2015 here in Mexico at the Chichén Itzá ruins in Yucatán. Organizers have revived the game as an engaging way for Maya all over Mesoamerica — but especially youth — to connect with pride in their heritage and to bond with members of their community.
The game rules are relatively straightforward: for every time that a team gets the ball over their opponents’ end zone, five points are awarded. Points are also deducted for foul play.
In the court’s center hangs a hoop that, if players can achieve the impressive feat of passing the ball through it, usually affords 10 points. For the finals, however, if the ball passes through the hoop, the game is won regardless of the points scored by the opposing side.
The panel of judges assigning teams their points for goals and deductions for foul play.
Spectators, however, should take heed: the game commands the full attention of its spectators with its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pace.
The drums beat loud and fast as the games commence. There are no timers; no scoreboards to help keep track of proceedings. Instead, points are designated by a panel of judges courtside, and the winner is announced at the game’s end.
As the game gathers momentum, it becomes clear that there is a veritable artfulness in the way the players throw themselves on the floor; freeze the gameplay and the players would look as if they were reclining with one hand to the floor and one leg extended perpendicular to the action.
Even the floor maneuvers, however, do not quite parallel the grace of the aerial leaps these players take. Seemingly suspended in the air, they thrust their hips, straighten their legs and send the ball in a curving parabola back toward the other team.
As he watches, Menalio Novelo, manager and coach of Ek ‘Balam, possesses a calm reserve: his celebrations when his team scores points are composed, and he coaches the team with a practiced hand. Off the pitch, he is all smiles and enthusiasm, speaking keenly about the fifth pok-ta-pok international cup, which Belize will host in the city of Orange Walk in 2023.
Asked how the sport was initially received in Belize, Novelo recalls that, despite the prominence of Mayan culture in the traditions of the region, the game was not at first received with enthusiasm.
Felicita Cantun, at back, fourth from right, founded the Belizean team from youths trained in the game only two months before their first championship match. File photo
“It has been a challenge to encourage participation,” he says, “because the population of Belize is very small — only 400,000 people. Initially, we did not get much support from the government, though lately, we’ve seen an improvement in that area.”
Such challenges are ongoing in the sport, even as it gains traction across Mesoamerica. There is a clear need for a recognition of the sport as part of national and international heritage and a need for dedicated spaces in which to play. It is a question of reviving a sport that had seemed lost — as well as supporting indigenous culture.
Indeed, Felicita Cantun, founder of the Belizean team, derives her love for the sport from a history that runs blood-deep in the people who play pok-ta-pok. “I have my culture in my DNA,” she says. “It is in my veins.”
She explains that when she was young, she used to read about the ancient Mayan culture, including pok-ta-pok, though she did not watch it played until 2003. “After that, I had a vision of bringing this game to life — we have proof that it was played in Belize, so it is our heritage.”
And her role in the growth of pok-ta-pok in Belize?
“I am the founder of the team; I recruited these boys,” she says with a grin. “When I first spoke to my family about finding players in Yo Creek, they said, ‘Tu estás loca! [You’re crazy!],’ but now they see that my dream has been realized.”
The Belize and Guatemalan teams shake hands prior to their World Cup match. Underhemp Balloo
Novelo and Cantun’s hard work is evident in their team’s impressive track record: it came in third in 2015 after a mere two months of training and took the title of champions in both 2017 and 2019.
“Having the youth on board is essential for the future of pok-ta-pok,” says Cantun. “I think our ancestors would be proud that we are helping to grow this game in Belize once again.”
And proud they certainly would be: at the day’s end, the Ek’ Balam team had won the final game of the tournament against Mexico, 34 to 10, to become the pok-ta-pok world champions.
After the game ended, the opposing sides lined up to shake hands. Despite competing against one another, they were united in their efforts to breathe new life into the sport — and to pass on their cultural heritage to the young people of the Mayan world.
Indeed, before the tournament game commenced, three boys were playing on the court with a smaller version of the pok-ta-pok ball — youths who could be future cup finalists playing Mesoamerica’s oldest ball game beneath the ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail that is part of several ancient cultures, including Mayan). It is an emblem for eternal cyclical renewal.
An apt symbol for a game that has survived millennia of change and is fighting to drag itself out of obscurity through Mesoamerica’s youth.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
