Saturday, August 23, 2025

20 deaths blamed on cold weather in north as another front moves in

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snow
Snow has been falling in the north and more is expected.

The official death toll from the cold snap in northern Mexico has risen to 20 after two states reported six more deaths.

Most of the fatalities occurred in Tamaulipas and were either from exposure or from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by heaters. One death was reported in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where a man died on the street from exposure.

Low temperatures accompanying cold front No. 35 prompted the state of Chihuahua on Thursday and Friday to begin distributing 13 tonnes of basic foodstuffs as well as cash payments to families, senior citizens and people with disabilities in various cities and towns.

According to the state’s Ministry of Social Development, Governor Javier Corral instructed the department to empty completely all its stores of provisions to help those in need.

“… It won’t be easy, but everything we have, we’re going to use immediately,” the ministry’s Ramón Galindo Noriega told the newspaper Milenio.

According to the national weather service, there’s more cold weather on the way.

Cold front No. 36 and Mexico’s 10th winter storm are delivering a new polar air mass that will result in snow or sleet in areas of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Sonora.

Temperatures will drop to lows of -10 to -15 C in parts of Coahuila, while areas of Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas will see lows of -5 to -10 C.

The front currently extends into the Valley of México, where higher altitudes in México state will see temperatures drop to -5 to -10 C. In Mexico City, forecast lows are 0 to -5 C.

The front is forecast to move over the west and southeast of the country and gradually move into the west side of the Yucatán Peninsula.

Sources: El Universal (sp), Milenio (sp)

Analysts see series of self-inflicted problems that contributed to gas crisis

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A pipeline that delivers natural gas from the US to Mexico.
A pipeline that delivers natural gas from the US to Mexico.

The federal government and the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) must shoulder part of the blame for the natural gas shortage that has plagued the country this week and caused a major power outage in northern Mexico on Monday, according to two energy sector analysts.

The government’s decision to halt projects planned by the previous administration along with its ignorance of the need for greater gas storage capacity and its failure to increase electricity transmission capacity contributed to the blackout that left some 4.7 million residents without power on Monday, said two analysts who spoke to the business news website El CEO.

The government and the CFE have attributed the blackout to the extreme cold snap in the United States that froze pipes and caused gas prices to soar but the analysts argue that Mexico should have been better prepared for the possibility of supply interruptions.

“There is a series of self-inflicted problems,” Rosanety Barrios said. “There was a large-scale natural gas storage project and they canceled it. The five-year plan that the National Gas Control Center [Cenagas] presented [in 2018] … was rejected.”

One of the canceled projects was a floating storage regasification unit planned for Pajaritos, Veracruz. Pemex issued an international invitation to tender for the project in 2018 and was due to select a winner in February 2019. But under the current federal government, which took office in December 2018, Cenagas was given responsibility for the project and promptly canceled it.

Had it gone ahead, Mexico would have had additional daily storage capacity of 600 million cubic feet of gas since the start of last year, the newspaper Reforma reported. That capacity could have helped to alleviate the gas shortages Mexico has faced this week.

Another 10-billion-cubic-feet-per-day gas storage project slated for Veracruz was canceled in May 2020.

The government’s cancelation of new rounds of oil and gas block auctions initiated by its predecessor was another of the self-inflicted problems cited by Barrios. The auctions were designed to reduce Mexico’s dependence on natural gas imports by selling off blocks to private companies but the government nevertheless stopped them, she said.

President López Obrador is determined to cut Mexico’s reliance on fuel imports but he wants state-owned companies, not private ones, to take the lead.

Barrios noted that the previous government created conditions that allowed renewable energy companies to make a greater contribution to Mexico’s energy mix but the López Obrador administration has adopted a hostile attitude toward the sector and is seeking to sideline it in favor of the CFE.

“They’ve been blocking the [different] options that Mexico has, especially with this preferential initiative that seeks to block private investment,” the analyst said.

rosanety barrios
Barrios: natural gas auctions were designed to reduce Mexico’s dependence on natural gas imports. But the government scrapped them.

She questioned why the government is blocking such investment when it doesn’t have money of its own to invest in the electricity sector.

“It’s clear that the government doesn’t have resources to invest in the Mexican electricity system. It’s not me saying it, the federal budget says it,” Barrios said.

Víctor Ramírez, another energy analyst, said that greater transmission capacity in the national grid could have provided greater resilience in the electricity system when the gas supply interruption began. He added that a lack of transmission capacity is a longstanding problem.

“There has been a lack of transmission development. Some of the lines that had problems due to overflow in the early hours [of Monday] are lines that should have been reinforced. It’s something that this government neglected to do as well as the previous government,” Ramírez said.

The CFE has largely managed to restore electricity supply after Monday’s blackout by using its own resources including fuel oil and coal to ramp up generation, although it was forced to cut power temporarily in many parts of the country on Tuesday to reduce pressure on the national system.

However, Mexico remains vulnerable to further major outages while it continues to depend heavily on natural gas imports, which are used to generate a large percentage of the country’s energy and supply private manufacturing companies, some of which were forced to halt production this week.

For now, natural gas flows from Texas appear to be normalizing even though Texas Governor Greg Abbott placed a temporary ban on the fuel leaving the state to ensure power generators there have sufficient supplies amid the cold weather the state is experiencing.

The website Natural Gas Intelligence reported that scheduled deliveries of piped gas from Texas to Mexico increased to 1.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) on Thursday from 1.3 Bcf/d on Wednesday and 1.1 Bcf/d on Tuesday. Export volumes from Texas to Mexico typically exceed 2 Bcf/d.

Although shipments have declined this week “there are still significant gas flows into Mexico,” said Matthew Lewis, senior director of research at East Daley Capital Advisors, a Colorado based provider of oil sector data.

Source: El CEO (sp), Reforma (sp), NGI (en) 

Another sentence, this one for life in prison, for ‘Monsters of Ecatepec’

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monsters of ecatepec
Their latest sentence is for the murder of a 13-year-old girl in 2012.

A couple known as the “monsters of Ecatepec” — they admitted to killing at least 20 women in México state — have been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a 13-year-old girl in 2012.

Juan Carlos Hernández Bejar and Patricia Martínez Bernal, arrested in Ecatepec, México state, in October 2018 while wheeling a baby carriage containing human remains, have now been sentenced for 10 crimes including nine femicides.

A district court judge in Ecatepec, a sprawling municipality that is notorious for crime, agreed that evidence presented by the México state Attorney General’s Office was sufficient to prove their guilt in the murder of the girl, a neighbor of the couple.

Hernández and Martínez were also issued with a fine of 311,650 pesos (US $15,250). The victim was lured into the couple’s home on April 12, 2012 and Hernández attacked her with a sharp object, causing her death.

He then mutilated the girl’s body and together with Martínez placed the various parts in plastic bags and a sack that were dumped on a vacant lot.

The couple, who confessed to eating the remains of some of their victims, were first sentenced in April 2019 to 15 years’ imprisonment for the murder of a woman whose baby they sold.

In May 2019, they were given an additional 4 1/2 years in jail for human trafficking, namely the selling of the baby to another couple.

The couple were given several separate prison sentences between June and October 2019 for the murder of seven woman and a child. The sentences added up collectively to more than 300 years in jail.

An additional 40 years were added to the couple’s jail time in March 2020 for another femicide while the latest life imprisonment ruling was handed down on Wednesday.

Investigators found that Hernández, a self-declared misogynist, and Martínez lured women to their apartment on the pretext of selling used clothes and other items. Some of the women were sexually abused before they were killed and Hérnandez maintained a relationship with one of his victims before Martínez grew jealous and ordered her murder.

Prosecutors said in 2018 that both Hernández and Martínez had been subjected to psychiatric testing.

The former was found to have both psychotic and personality disorders while the latter has suffered from mental retardation since birth and also presented signs of delirium. Both, however, know the difference between right and wrong, the testing determined.

Source: El Universal (sp) 

Longtime Pemex union boss linked to corruption remains on company payroll

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carlos romero
Romero is a department chief at the refinery in Tula, Hidalgo.

He resigned as secretary general of the Pemex worker’s union in late 2019 amid accusations of corruption but Carlos Romero Deschamps remains on the state oil company’s payroll.

Romero, a former Institutional Revolutionary Party senator and deputy who was at the helm of the Pemex union for 26 years, earned just over 1.2 million pesos (about US $60,000) last year in salaries and benefits, according to a declaration of assets publicly available on the federal government’s payroll transparency website.

The 77-year-old, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as one of the 10 most corrupt politicians in Mexico, is apparently employed as a department chief at the Pemex refinery in Tula, Hidalgo.

The news website Sin Embargo asked the Public Administration Ministry, which manages the payroll website, about Romero’s employment at Pemex and was told that the online platform “only loads information that [government] departments send.”

Pemex didn’t respond to the news outlet’s request for comment. Sin Embargo said that Romero’s ongoing employment at the company is linked to a favorable collective agreement signed in mid-2019 that remains current and allows him to collect a salary even though he is under criminal investigation and ostensibly left the company. The same agreement stipulates that Pemex must pay the legal costs of any worker accused of committing a crime while on the job.

Federal authorities have opened 12 investigations into the former union boss for crimes including fraud, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, influence peddling and money laundering. But only three investigations remain open, according to a report by the newspaper El País. 

The three ongoing probes were launched by the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit. No warrants for Romero’s arrest have been issued.

Víctor Manuel Jacobo Domínguez, a Pemex employee who is part of a dissident workers’ group that has long accused Romero of corruption, told Sin Embargo that the government reached deals with the longtime union boss that ensure he will never be brought to justice.

Sergio Carlos Morales Quintana, chief of the National Petroleum Front, said in a recent interview that Romero is still involved in corrupt activity at Pemex, even though President López Obrador has pledged to rid the state company – and the entire government – of corruption.

“He continues to manage the threads of corruption within Petróleos Mexicanos,” he said.

Another high-profile Pemex figure, former CEO Emilio Lozoya, is also under investigation by federal authorities for alleged corruption but scant progress has been made in his case more than a year after he was arrested in Spain.

Source: Sin Embargo (sp) 

Fisheries audit: 43 species consumed by Mexicans are threatened

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fishermen
'Fishermen's livelihoods are at risk.'

Almost half of the fish species commonly eaten by Mexicans are in “serious decline” and could disappear completely, according to the ocean conservation organization Oceana.

“The experts have determined that [stocks of] 43% of fished species … are diminished due to overexploitation, damage to ecosystems, contamination and illegal fishing,” said the organization’s fisheries campaign director while presenting the results of a new fisheries audit conducted by Oceana in Mexico.

“The reality is that four of 10 [species] are in serious … decline and there are no actions being undertaken for their recovery,” Esteban García-Peña said.

Among the threatened species are red snapper and grouper. García-Peña placed the bulk of the blame for the situation on the authorities, saying that there is an “absence of management and restoration of species” on their part.

“Recovering them is urgent, if we don’t what are we going to live on?” he said.

García-Peña said that Oceana’s audit found that only one in four fisheries has a management plan and that fisherman have to go farther out to sea due to their depletion.

“They risk their lives,” he said, adding that 2019 was the worst year on record for grouper catches.

The Oceana director said that fishermen’s livelihoods are at risk if the government doesn’t better manage the nation’s fisheries. Stocks are so depleted in some areas that many fishermen choose to stay at home rather than spend money they can’t recoup on fuel, García-Peña said.

“How can [the problem] be solved? With a [fisheries] restoration policy,” he said.

Source: Milenio (sp) 

Due to Covid, foreign investment fell 11.7% last year

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manufacturing in mexico
The manufacturing sector took the lion's share.

Foreign investment in Mexico slumped in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp contraction in money flows around the world.

The Economy Ministry (SE) reported Thursday that preliminary figures show that foreign direct investment (FDI) declined 11.7% last year compared to 2019.

It said that US $39.22 billion in FDI flowed into the country and $10.14 billion flowed out for a net result of +$29.08 billion. That’s $3.84 billion less than 2019 when the net result was +$32.92 billion.

The SE said the 11.7% decrease is “fundamentally explained by the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on global investment flows.”

The ministry cited a United Nations estimate that global FDI flows fell by 42% in 2020 with respect to the previous year.

“This shows that in comparison with the rest of the world, Mexico performed better in the attraction of FDI in the most adverse year of recent economic history,” the SE said.

More than half of the FDI in Mexico last year – 55.4% – was reinvestment of profits by companies that already have a presence here. New investment only represented 22% of the figure while payment of accounts between companies contributed 22.6%.

The manufacturing sector took the lion’s share of investment, raking in 40.6% of total FDI, followed by financial and insurance services (23.2%), transportation (9.8%), retail (7.7%), mining (4.6%) and mass media (4.3%).

The United States remained the biggest source of foreign investment, with 39.1% of total FDI coming from that country. Canada ranked second with 14.5% followed by Spain (13.7%), Japan (4.2%) and Germany (3.5%). The remaining 25% came from numerous other countries, the SE said.

The ministry said that 212 foreign investment projects worth $16.25 billion were announced last year and that $5.83 billion of that amount has already flowed into the country.

The decline in FDI is 3.2 points higher than Mexico’s GDP contraction of 8.5% in 2020, the worst result since the Great Depression.

Mexico News Daily 

Zihuatanejo boutique hotel offers variations on the art of leisure

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At Puerta Paraíso you can lounge all day on the beach and ask to dine there too.
At Puerta Paraíso you can lounge all day on the beach and dine there too.

Just outside of Zihuatanejo, on the road to the airport, is a turnoff that will take you to the area’s longest beach, Playa Larga.

At 12 kilometers, and quieter than most, especially during the week, it is a preferred destination for both nationals and tourists. One reason is the numerous restaurants, offering the absolute best in fresh-caught fish and seafood. Many have swimming pools since the activity can be dangerous here for all but the most experienced. Some restaurants also entertain with local musicians.

The ideal time to visit Playa Larga has long been considered from October to March due to the whale and dolphin sightings common to the area and the turtles that spawn on the beach. You can rent horses from Rancho Risquel to ride along the shore and through a coconut plantation or indulge in a visit to Temazcal Badihuni for a steam bath and ceremony with famed healer Lupita Maldonado.

Over the past few years, a new surge in development has occurred here, with several small hotels and rooms-for-rent places on or across the beach. There are several convenience stores to accommodate basic needs during your stay since some of these rooms come with kitchens, perfect for the budget-conscious.

For the not quite so budget-conscious, there is a small boutique hotel not far off the beaten path with just seven luxurious rooms. Puerta Paraíso, or “Door to Paradise,” was bought initially as a family retreat by owner Raul Esponda 25 years ago, but in the last five years it has morphed into one of Playa Larga’s exclusive stays.

The hotel offers gorgeous views of Playa Larga.
The hotel offers gorgeous views of Playa Larga.

I decided to book a room for one night even though I had been there several times for various events and daytime gatherings.

The first thing that struck me there was how attentive and accommodating everyone was, from the staff who greeted us to general manager Omar Valdovinos, who showed us to our room.

The second was how lovely the rooms were — each perfectly appointed with couches and throw pillows and generously sized beds. Just outside the beautiful wooden bifold doors is a private patio area with a hammock, an oversized lounger plus a smaller one and a table and chairs under a thatch-covered roof. The tiles are terra-cotta, and the color scheme and furniture have a decidedly elegant Mexican flair. Toiletries such as shampoos and coconut soap are top grade, as are the towels and linens.

From every room, you can see the large, pebbled pool to the beach and the surf beyond. The restaurant is a spacious open area, but you can also choose to dine at a table on the beach, complete with your loungers, or, if you prefer, take a seat at the bar. There’s even a standard room with a TV off to one side.

Our food was first-class, beautifully prepared and served by our attentive waiter, Daniel. The menu offered everything from tacos and burgers to innovative seafood offerings and full-course dinners.

“It’s becoming popular to book our hotel for parties, weddings and other special events,” says Valdovinos. “For the last two years, we were one of the hosts of the International Guitar Festival. We have a day pass too, which is 500-peso consumption per person.”

The dining menu excels in innovative fish and seafood dishes.
The dining menu excels in innovative fish and seafood dishes.

Just 10–15 minutes away from Zihuatanejo by taxi, Playa Larga is an easy and safe getaway for anyone looking to escape the busier vibrant community nearby.

The more adventurous can take a combi to the beach’s entrance, then pay a few pesos for another ride onward in the back of a pickup truck with benches. Puerta Paraíso is then a 10-minute walk from there, but for 20 pesos more you can convince them to take you all the way — a perfect solution if you have luggage.

Room prices, which include breakfast, start at 3,500 pesos per night in the low season and rise to 4,000 pesos per night from December 15 until Easter. At Christmas and Easter, the price is 4,500 pesos per night.

• For more information, visit Puerta Paraíso’s website.

The writer divides her time between Canada and Zihuatanejo.

Texas puts temporary ban on gas exports; Mexico asks US for guaranteed supply

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Texas Governor Abbott and Economy Minister Clouthier.
Texas Governor Abbott and Economy Minister Clouthier.

The federal government has asked the United States to guarantee the supply of natural gas after the governor of Texas placed a temporary ban on the fuel leaving the state to ensure power generators there have sufficient supplies amid an extreme cold snap.

Economy Minister Tatiana Clouthier said Wednesday she had contacted the United States’ top representative in Mexico – currently charge d’affaires John Creamer – to ask the U.S. government to guarantee natural gas supply to avoid an adverse impact on Mexican industry.

The state-owned Federal Electricity Commission depends heavily on natural gas imports from the United States to generate energy and supply industry.

In a Twitter post, Clouthier said Mexico is aware of the situation in the United States – millions of Texans were left without power this week as a deep freeze engulfed the Lone Star state – but warned that “if we don’t act together, the results could be more complicated.”

The economy minister took to Twitter again on Thursday to announce she had spoken to the United States government’s southern border coordinator Roberta Jacobson, a former ambassador to Mexico, about the impact the situation in Texas is having on Mexico and the U.S.

“Hand in hand we’re looking for immediate solutions,” Clouthier wrote without offering further details.

Mexico suffered a major power outage in the north of the country on Monday due to an interruption in the natural gas supply from Texas, where pipes froze. While power has largely been restored, gas supply has remained interrupted as Texas continues to face frigid temperatures.

Natural gas supply to major manufacturers has been drastically cut, undermining their capacity to operate if not stifling it completely. Volkswagen, General Motors, Kia Motors and Mazda all announced production suspensions at their Mexican plants due to the reduction.

VW said that production of its Jetta model would halt at its Puebla plant on Thursday and that work on its Taos and Golf models would stop on Friday. GM said that production at its plant in Silao, Guanajuato, stopped on Tuesday due to a lack of gas and wouldn’t restart until supply is fully reestablished. Kia shut down production in Pesquería, Nuevo León, for two days on Thursday while Mazda halted operations at its plant in Salamanca, Guanajuato, on Wednesday and is not scheduled to resume production until Saturday.

The existing supply problem was exacerbated when Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that he was placing a ban on gas leaving the state until February 21 to ensure Texas energy generators had ample supplies.

Citing the governor’s order, the top energy regulator in Texas told gas producers to offer supplies for sale in-state before sending shipments elsewhere.

With pipeline supply interrupted, Mexico has begun importing gas by sea from ports in California and Texas, and one shipload bound for Altamira, Tamaulipas, was leaving Freeport, Texas, on Wednesday, the news agency Reuters reported.

It was unclear whether additional shipments from Texas would be affected by the suspension imposed by Abbott, who said that a disaster declaration he issued on February 12 allowed him to put the ban in place even though it apparently violates the so-called commerce clause in the United States constitution that says that state governments cannot interfere in interstate and international trade.

Luz María de la Mora, Mexico’s deputy minster for foreign trade, said in a Twitter post Wednesday that the federal government doesn’t believe that the resolution announced by the Texas governor is “the only option,” adding that it would “irremediably” affect the Mexican and U.S. economies.

Source: El Economista (sp), Bloomberg (sp), El Universal (sp), Reuters (en)  

‘A great feat:’ CFE chief says utility succeeded in averting ‘total disaster’

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CFE boss Bartlett was proud of his utility's achievement.
CFE boss Bartlett was proud of his utility's achievement.

Reestablishing electricity generation after an interruption to the natural gas supply caused a major outage on Monday was “a great feat,” Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) chief Manuel Bartlett said Thursday, asserting that the utility’s workers averted a “total disaster.”

“It was achieved thanks to the workers; we’ve had the workers [working] with great intensity, they gave it everything they’ve got,” he told reporters at President López Obrador’s morning press conference.

“Now we have 30,000 megawatts [of power generated] from our own resources,” Bartlett said.

Almost 5 million people in northern Mexico were left without power on Monday because a cold snap in Texas froze pipes and interrupted the supply of natural gas to CFE plants. Bartlett said the state-owned company was able to use its own energy sources, including limited gas reserves, to fill the gap left by United States-sourced gas, on which Mexico is heavily reliant for electricity generation.

“We’ve been working intensely to keep the electricity system fueled. We’ve used all the instruments we have and we can say with pride that through the effort of workers across the entire country … we’ve been able to fill the void left by the gas that didn’t arrive,” he said.

“We are really very proud. The president is permanently informed of the situation because maintaining electricity means maintaining the country’s economic, social and home life,” Bartlett added.

López Obrador also praised the CFE workers, saying they have been working tirelessly since the blackout began on Monday morning.

The general director of the National Energy Control Center said that 11 CFE plants had made a “a very big effort” to compensate for the power that was lost.

“These are power plants that came on line to recover the lost load. Despite that we still have a deficit and to conserve the balance and ensure reliability … there was a need to make cuts in several states to protect … the entire [electricity] system,” Carlos Meléndez Román said.

One of the alternative energy sources used by the CFE to offset the reduced flow of natural gas was fuel oil, a byproduct of the oil refining process.

The CFE has ramped up the use of the oil to fire the thermoelectric plant in Salamanca, Guanajuato, exceeding levels agreed to with the state government.

The CFE's plant in Salamanca
The CFE’s plant in Salamanca is burning fuel oil to ramp up output.

In light of the situation, the Guanajuato government issued a statement warning residents of Salamanca and the nearby cities of Celaya and Irapuato to take precautions due to the high levels of contamination that fuel oil produces. The Environment Ministry advised people not to exercise in the open air, keep windows and doors closed and seek medical attention if they develop respiratory or other symptoms that were likely caused by the increased contamination.

The federal government also ordered the CFE to ramp up energy generation at the two coal-fired power plants in Nava, a Coahuila municipality that borders Texas.

However, only one of the plants was operating at partial capacity on Wednesday afternoon due to a lack of coal, the newspaper Reforma reported.

“There’s not enough coal, the coal region [in the northeast of Coahuila] can’t supply it in the quantity or characteristics required,” said a CFE union leader who asked not to be identified.

Arturo Arroyo, director of the mining company Minera del Norte, said that coal extraction had been suspended because the electricity supply and voltage levels required to guarantee miners’ safety were not available.

A catch-22 situation was effectively created: there wasn’t sufficient electricity supply to mine coal in order to have an energy source to generate power.

While the electricity system has almost recovered — the president urged citizens Thursday morning to limit their electricity consumption between 6 and 11 p.m. — the supply of natural gas, used to generate more than 60% of the power generated in Mexico, remains extremely limited due to the ongoing cold weather and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s order that gas deliveries outside the state be temporarily suspended.

In Mexico, natural gas supply to major manufacturers including steelmaker Altos Hornos de México, glass producer Vitro and automaker Volkswagen has been drastically cut, undermining their capacity to operate if not stifling it completely.

For them the “great feat” of the CFE will likely be no more than cold comfort while the “great freeze” on gas supply remains.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp) 

Auto maker gives new wheels to teacher who took her class on the road

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Teacher Nallely Esparza and her classroom on wheels.
Teacher Nallely Esparza and her classroom on wheels.

When Mexico’s public schools went online last April due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Aguascalientes special education teacher Nallely Esparza Flores found, like many teachers across the country, that not all distance learning was equal.

Many of her students in Cavillo were from poor families without internet access. So she used social media networks to keep in touch with such students via cell phones, but even that was not necessarily an available option for all — and not ideal. Finally, she decided to solve the problem by hitting the road in her pickup truck.

Since last year, Esparza has been driving four hours a day to educate students one-on-one at their homes from her truck bed, outfitted with a small table and chairs.

News of her project spread on social media networks, eventually reaching the corporate offices of Nissan México.

This week, the company surprised Esparza with the gift of a new pickup truck specially outfitted with a small open-air mobile classroom built into the truck’s bed.

Esparza inside her new classroom.
Esparza inside her new classroom.

“Today I feel like my labors and the help that we give each day to children and their families is unstoppable,” she said on Twitter Wednesday, sharing photos of her new vehicle. “My students no longer have to take classes in the full heat of the sun,” she said.

Nissan representatives said they decided to give Esparza the adapted NP300 model, 4-cylinder truck after hearing her story because she was “an example of perseverance and empathy.”

“When we learned about the incredible work of this teacher, we got together to discuss in what way we could contribute to this noble work,” said Armando Ávila, a vice president of manufacturing.

Esparza’s new setup has three walls and a ceiling made with translucent panels to protect teacher and student from the elements while letting in natural light.

It also has retractable steps for easy access to the classroom, electrical connections, a whiteboard and an easily disinfected acrylic table and benches that are foldable into the wall to provide space. The table also has a built-in plexiglass barrier to allow social distancing.

The dedicated teacher’s efforts have over time extended beyond educational house calls.

 

Since beginning her traveling classes, she began collecting provisions for her students’ families left without work by Covid-19. So far she has given out 63 care packages and has also raised funds to buy her students tablets.

“People like her make a difference in our society,” said Joan Busquets, another Nissan executive. “She deserves the best.”

Source: Milenio (sp)