The vessel Farley Mowat was attacked by fishermen Thursday.
One fishboat was destroyed Thursday during an attack on vessels operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in an area of the upper Gulf of California designated as a refuge for the endangered vaquita porpoise, the society reported.
Crew aboard the vessel Farley Mowat were retrieving a gillnet from the water when fishermen aboard at least five pangas began throwing lead weights and molotov cocktails at both the crew and military officials who were on board.
As the vessel began to leave the scene, the society said, one of the pangas swerved in front of it and smashed into the hull. The smaller vessel broke in two and its two passengers were thrown into the sea.
A second Sea Shepherd vessel, Sharpie, recovered the two men, who had been rescued from the water by one of the pangas, and took them aboard where they were given emergency first aid. Doctors with the Mexican navy arrived at the scene and treated the two, one of whom wasn’t breathing when he was brought aboard.
While the men were being treated, the society reported, two other fishermen boarded the Sharpie, threatened the crew and officials on board and smashed a camera that was filming the incident.
Collision at Sea as Sea Shepherd Vessels Attacked in Mexico's Vaquita Refuge
Other pangas threw projectiles and fuel, setting the Sharpie’s bow on fire.
The fire was extinguished and the two fishermen removed from the vessel.
The injured men were transferred to two nearby navy vessels and subsequently airlifted to a hospital.
The incident didn’t deter the fishermen, who have been at odds with government policy intended to protect the vaquita, of which an estimated 10 remain.
The society said they continued to attack the Farley Mowat with molotov cocktails, setting fire to a pile of fishing gear that had been collected on the ship’s deck. On shore, meanwhile, a truck belonging to the society was set on fire.
One of the government’s measures is a prohibition on the use of gillnets in the protected area. But conservationists have long criticized the government for lack of enforcement.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is working with Mexican authorities to patrol the area and deter illegal fishing.
Can your morning cup of joe help support hardworking, dedicated Mexican farmers?
An unfortunate truth is that Mexico is not considered a prime producer of coffee, even among Mexicans. Nescafé instant coffee is ubiquitous on supermarket shelves and in restaurants. “Gourmet” coffee is often associated with Starbucks. Even though the country could easily satisfy the demand for all kinds of coffee, Mexico still imports the stuff from places such as Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam for reasons of price and prestige.
But it should not be that way. Mexico has developed its own coffee specialties, such as café de olla – coffee brewed with spices and piloncillo sugar — and regional preparations such as café lechero, an espresso coffee with frothed hot milk popular in Veracruz.
Coffee was introduced to Mexico in the late 18th century. By about 100 years later, the country was exporting it. Mexico has tropical rainforests with the correct humidity, soils and altitude to grow good-to-excellent coffee, especially in Chiapas, Veracruz, and Puebla.
By the 1950s, Mexico had a promising coffee industry, heavily supported by the federal government, which worked internationally to keep prices stable and relatively high. It was good politics, bringing money into Mexico and supporting some of the country’s poorest populations.
But coffee production fell from grace starting in the 1970s.
Roasting beans at Black Dragon Coffee in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
More countries began producing in high quantities, glutting the market by the 1980s. In addition, neoliberal economic policies were taking hold in Mexico, leading the government away from its role as a negotiator. The result was a 71% decline in production by the 1990s as farmers found they could not make any money at all.
Price supports were crucial to Mexican coffee farmers because they worked small plots of land in very isolated regions, lacking infrastructure and access to technology. This makes the production and transport of coffee to market significantly more expensive.
History and politics explain the small farms. Most coffee growing land is in the south, with long histories of community- and family-held land parceled out to members. Haciendas (plantations) were broken up after the Mexican Revolution and distributed among rural populations. Sentiment against large private landholdings remains strong.
Today, Mexico has over 500,000 farmers working just over 700,000 hectares, many doing what they can with less than a hectare. These farmers have traditionally been dependent on unscrupulous middlemen called coyotes for both marketing and financing. Such a system does little or nothing to relieve poverty, but large buyers do not find it economically feasible to negotiate purchases with a myriad of small farmers.
Coffee production in Mexico has very recently started to grow again, not because of government efforts but due to a combination of farmer cooperatives and the rise of specialty, niche-market coffees. After losing government support, farmers in Oaxaca and Chiapas began to organize. The first and primary function of these cooperatives then and now is to sell members’ production for better prices.
Of all the niche-market coffees popular in the world, organic is by far the most important. The first organic coffee in Mexico was grown in Chiapas as early as 1960, but most of the market’s growth came after 1980. Such coffee can command prices that are 15–20% higher. That may not seem like much, but it makes small-scale production feasible. Today, Mexico ranks first or second in the world (depending on the source) in the production of organic coffee.
A coffee farm located in Zihuateutla, Puebla. Jaontiveros (CC)
Other specialty market coffees grown in Mexico include those for the rare bean, fair trade, denomination of origin, and socially or economically conscientious buyers. In these markets, disadvantages can be made advantageous – small-scale production, isolated locales or cultures and practices that preserve the rainforest. These factors are pluses for consumers who wish to buy more than just a dose of caffeine.
Admittedly, specialty coffee production is not a panacea. There are issues with access to technology, with plants that are susceptible to plagues and with finding ways to get the coffee from small producers to faraway niche markets in an economically feasible manner.
But despite the difficulties, niche-market coffee is growing, and exporters such as David Benjamin Briones of the Black Dragon Coffee House in San Cristóbal de las Casas see more opportunities for themselves and the farmers they work with.
The interest in specialty coffee has not escaped the likes of Nestlé and Starbucks: they not only promote coffees based on their states of origin but also have highly publicized programs to help farmers improve their plant stocks and growing techniques.
Not surprisingly, the Mexican government is a latecomer to this, but it is investing once again in the industry. Starting in 2016, coffee production halted its decline and has started to come back slowly.
International nongovernmental organizations, Mexican federal and state governments and even multinational corporations offer ways to buy organic and other niche coffee. There are also many cafes all over Mexico that offer domestic coffees, especially in places such as Mexico City, San Cristóbal de las Casas, San Miguel de Allende and other upscale tourist areas. However, local companies and cooperatives founded by coffee farmers offer the most direct way to let farmers get the maximum benefit from their production.
Café lechero is the specialty of La Parroquia Café in the port of Veracruz. Alejandro Linares Garcia
The money in coffee is not in the green bean but rather in the final roasted product and its marketing. Ambitious farmer cooperatives have taken the plunge into roasting and marketing their own brands of coffee, often taking advantage of their ethnic and regional identities as well as the internet.
The most successful cooperatives are found in Oaxaca, followed by Chiapas. This is notable as these are states with high indigenous populations. But these groups are found everywhere coffee is grown. There are those who sell online, most often through Facebook pages.
One of these is Tojtzotze, which represents farmers of several indigenous ethnicities in the Lacandon Rainforest in Chiapas. MRGrupo Monte Blanco represents a group of growers in Veracruz, and Yuku Café specializes in coffee grown in Oaxaca’s Mixteca region. La Cooperativa de Cafe de Totonacapan is a group of 29 women producers in the state of Puebla that sells through venues such as Starbucks.
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 weekly on Mexico News Daily.
Both rapid testing in Mexico City and vaccinations resumed Saturday.
The federal Heath Ministry updated the coronavirus stoplight map Friday but the only changes were the official addition of Guanajuato and Morelos to the states designated as maximum-risk red.
Both states went red last week, joining Mexico City, México state and Baja California.
Three states — Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Veracruz — remain medium-risk yellow, while Campeche and Chiapas remain low-risk green. The other 27 states continue to be designated high risk on the updated map.
Another 11,091 cases of Covid-19 were registered Friday, bringing the total to 1.43 million. The death toll increased by 700 to 126,507.
States with the highest number of cases are Mexico City, México state, Guanajuato, Nuevo León, Jalisco, Sonora, Coahuila, Puebla, Tabasco and Veracruz. Nearly two-thirds of all cases are located in those entities.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
In other Covid news:
• The vaccination program was reinitiated Saturday after taking a break for New Year’s Day. Spokesman for the armed forces, which are in charge of distributing and administrating the coronavirus vaccine, had said the program wouldn’t resume again until Monday. But vaccination centers were up and running today in Mexico City, though with one significant change.
• Rapid test kiosks in Mexico City were closed for the holiday Friday but reopened Saturday — to some long lineups.
Residents began lining up at 5:00 a.m. for free tests that began at 9:00 and finished at 5 in the afternoon.
At some locations, there weren’t enough test kits to satisfy the demand.
López-Gatell unmasked.
• The government’s coronavirus point man was criticized on social media after he was photographed New Year’s Eve on an airplane bound for the beach destination of Huatulco, Oaxaca.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell, who has sent mixed messages about the use of face masks but has repeatedly urged Mexicans to “stay at home” to avoid spreading the coronavirus, was presumably heading out for a New Year’s vacation.
Despite regulations requiring passengers to wear face masks while aboard aircraft, the minister was maskless.
Loose or stray dogs run free in the Primavera Forest, attacking wildlife or spooking them into oncoming cars, which was the case with this deer. Courtesy of Aura Jaguar
I live in a small community called Pinar De La Venta perched on the edge of Jalisco’s Primavera Forest, a huge flora and fauna reserve adjacent to the city of Guadalajara and of nearly equal size. When I first arrived here, the community consisted of many houses with only 25 families living in them full-time.
Why so few people? Well, in 1985 there were no streetlights here, no telephone service, no TV reception and, of course, no internet. Generation Alpha might find it too hard to imagine: solitude and silence, broken only by occasional tweets — the kind produced by birds, I must clarify. At night you could walk the cobblestone streets in near-total darkness lit by the stars and the moon and serenaded only by chirping crickets, croaking frogs, whispering pines and the occasional flap of a bat’s wing.
Contrast that with the night sounds in this same community in 2020: the barking, growling, yelping, woofing, whining, snarling, yipping and howling of 800 family dogs — not all at once, mind you, but haphazardly waking you all throughout the night, from dusk to dawn … and beyond.
When you have that many dogs, you naturally have plenty of escapees. These roam the streets by day and by night, scaring the bejesus out of anyone undertaking such a foolish proposition as going for a walk. I made that mistake one day when I decided to take our parrot Tatu for a stroll in a big meadow across the street. Tatu rode on my head, perched on a sombrero, alerting me to the presence of anise seeds, one of his favorite treats, in the grass far beneath him.
Suddenly I heard the barking, yelping, woofing etcetera of canines owned by a young woman taking her pack of dogs for a walk, none of them on a leash, of course. Tatu was aware of their presence seconds before I was and, with a squawk of fear, leaped straight up into the air, landing on the ground because his wings were clipped.
Loose dogs in Pinar de la Venta.
During these few seconds, I perceived that all four of those dogs were heading straight for us at high speed. I snatched up Tatu, turned and ran … but I was not quite fast enough. The lead dog not only caught up with me but also succeeded in biting me on the butt.
After the young woman managed to get her dog pack under control, I shouted to her from a distance, “Your dog bit me,” expecting her to offer to pay for rabies shots at the very least. To my surprise, she replied, “You have dogs too; I know you do.”
I couldn’t fathom how my having dogs could possibly exculpate her from what had just happened, but I informed her that I owned no dogs, only one very frightened parrot.
“You give me any trouble,” shouted the woman,” and I will have you deported.”
Sans rabies shots, I — like hundreds of others in my community — survived being bitten by a free-running dog with no untoward consequences. But not all are so lucky. One day, I was once again about to take my parrot onto the cobblestone road in front of my house. I stepped out of the gate. To my left, I saw a mother and child strolling up the street. Turning to my right, I saw a typical neighbor ambling down the road with his dog — not on a leash, of course.
What ensued was a problem of size: the dog, friendly as could be, was very big; the child was very small. The huge dog ran straight up to the little girl and attempted to place its paws on her shoulders. That little girl let out the most terrified scream I have ever heard in my life. The look of utter fear and absolute terror on her face is etched in my mind forever.
A German shepherd in the protected area with a piece of a baby white-tailed deer. Aura Jaguar
While there is hope that the dog owners of my community may reflect on stories like these and change their ways, there is not much any of us can do about that handful of dogs which — in a demonstration of true cleverness and ingenuity — succeed in escaping from their owners in a bid to see the world and live off the land as did their forebears in ages past, before human beings domesticated them: the call of the wild!
Yes, every day, a few dogs in every community hear the call of nature, dig their way out of the yard and become gloriously independent. Well, not quite, because nature also decrees that dogs should live in packs.
So picture this: the Primavera Forest, an officially designated protected area greatly beloved by the people of Jalisco, is surrounded by a dozen towns and housing developments like mine, all of them generating packs of self-liberated dogs.
Guess where those dogs eventually go to make a new home?
A few years ago, the Jalisco research group Aura Jaguar decided to investigate just which animal is most prevalent in Bosque La Primavera. They set up camera traps so that they would be sure not to miss those elusive animals that only come out at night.
The book Mammals of the Primavera Forest lists 58 species roaming about the protected area, including deer, raccoons, possums, foxes and plenty of mice. More surprising, we learn that the woods also house lynxes, armadillos, ringtails, white-nosed coatis, peccaries and even a few pumas.
This lynx was surprised by a dog pack while trying to use Mexico’s first animal overpass. Aura Jaguar
Which of all these animals turned out to be the most common and typical mammal photographed by the camera traps?
None of them, of course. The cameras caught a creature that the guide to mammals never mentioned at all. They suggested that the most representative animal inhabiting many parts of Bosque La Primavera today is Canis domesticus.
This could still be reversed. A warden of Profepa, the federal office for environmental protection, put it succinctly.
“First of all,” he said, “what we really need to do is to forbid the ownership of dogs in those communities directly bordering the Primavera Forest. If that’s not possible, there should be a limit to how many dogs may be kept on one property: a maximum of two dogs per family, both properly vaccinated. These dogs should never be taken into the forest because even the smallest Chihuahua leaves traces alerting the native animals that some dangerous predator is in the neighborhood, forcing them to leave the area.”
“As for dogs running loose in the streets of towns adjacent to the woods, a fine should be imposed if they belong to members of the community,” he continued, “and if they don’t, they should be rounded up and removed from the fraccionamiento [neighborhood].”
Not long ago, a lynx was found dead alongside a highway bordering the forest. Animal tracks showed that the lynx had tried to cross the animal bridge over the highway but had been ambushed by a pack of dogs and, spooked, ran onto the highway, where it was killed by a car.
Camera-trap photo of dog pack inside Bosque la Primavera in Jalisco. Aura Jaguar
Similar dramas take place every day and every night in that sprawling forest, the pride of Jalisco. It is time for communities all over Mexico, especially those located near protected areas, to wake up and make some changes.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years, and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.
The writer prepares to take his parrot for a walk.
Extensive financial losses have been estimated after a sabotaged rail line led to the derailment of at least 11 rail cars carrying new vehicles for export to Europe.
There were no casualties in the derailment, which took place about 3:00 a.m. Wednesday in Acultzingo, Veracruz.
The train was en route from the Volkswagen plant in Puebla to the port of Veracruz.
Thieves removed almost two meters of tracks to halt the train and steal merchandise. It wasn’t clear what they were able to steal, given that the cargo was brand-new vehicles.
A railway union spokesman said six rail cars rolled over completely and some dropped into a ravine. He estimated damages in the millions of pesos.
Mexico registered the second-highest daily tally of new coronavirus cases on Wednesday.
The 12,406 new cases brought the accumulated total to 1.41 million.
Death figures were also high. The 1,052 fatalities represented the second-highest number since June 3 and brought the total to 124,897.
Mexico will close the year in fourth place in the world for Covid deaths, behind the United States, Brazil and India, according to Johns Hopkins University.
However, a federal health official said new case numbers have shown a decline of 9%, meaning it’s possible that the virus is close to reaching a plateau.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
In Mexico City, hospital occupancy has crept up further, reaching 88% on Thursday, according to city health authorities. The capital was followed by México state with 82% and Hidalgo 74%.
Nonessential businesses must remain closed until January 10.
The decision to close all nonessential businesses in Mexico City and México state December 19 means that 50,000 formal-sector small businesses in the Valley of México are at risk of shutting down for good.
Gerardo Cleto López of an organization representing small businesses told the newspaper El Universal that without adequate and better-planned government financial support, businesses with permanent physical locations facing rent, utilities and salary costs won’t be able to survive.
Businesses who try to take their sales online are only managing to make 10% to 15% of their normal earnings, Cleto said.
“This has an impact when you are carrying debt and overdue bills,” he said.
While he acknowledged that government sources are handing out some financial support, in the neighborhood of 10,000–15,000 pesos, that is only enough to help an informal business survive, he said, such as a food truck or vendors in open-air markets, both of which have fewer overhead costs.
He also said that businesses would not be facing another lockdown if the federal government had been more proactive in maintaining a clear and consistent message regarding the use of masks and the practicing of hygienic measures and social distancing.
“The vast majority of formal businesses have complied very responsibly with the sanitary protocols that authorities have put into place [in reaction to the coronavirus],” he said. “However, it seems to us that the government lost time in constructing efficient strategies and using resources to avoid the catastrophic scenario we are now facing … with more than 123,000 Mexicans dead, according to official figures.”
He also accused authorities in the Valley of México of not doing enough to enforce lockdown measures in the informal business sector, saying that many businesses in the formal sector were declared nonessential, while informal-sector ones continued operating.
In the middle of a red stoplight, “mobile businesses carry on without any sanitary controls in parts of Mexico City and México state,” he said. “And established businesses [with permanent physical locations], classified as nonessential, have been closed since December 19 …”
The rapid test for the coronavirus is not as accurate as the PCR test.
Coahuila Social Security officials are on the defensive after a young man who was admitted to a hospital in Monclova with a positive result on a rapid Covd-19 test hung himself in a bathroom while awaiting results of a second confirmation test.
Hospital officials say the results of that second and more accurate test turned out to be negative.
Mario Alberto “M,” 29, arrived at the Monclova General Hospital last Saturday with proof of positive results on the rapid test that had been given elsewhere, as well as symptoms of the disease, including an oxygen saturation level of only 90%. Those factors convinced hospital officials to give him a confirmation Covid test, admitting him into a special area for coronavirus patients as they awaited the results.
On Monday, around noon, hospital officials said, the patient entered a hospital bathroom on his own and 20 minutes had not returned, which prompted a nurse to check on him. The nurse found the man dead, hanging from a sheet he had tied to the bathroom door.
Leopoldo Santillán, a Coahuila social security administrator, expressed regret over the incident but said that there were no plans to sanction the hospital staff in charge of caring for the young man.
“It was an unexpected incident,” he said. “We cannot take measures against staff because this wasn’t a case of homicide; it was a chance occurrence.”
The young man was ambulatory and capable of entering the bathroom by himself, Santillán said, adding that it was not the staff’s responsibility to accompany someone in Mario Alberto’s physical condition into a bathroom.
Regarding the Covid test the hospital administered, Santillán said it is hospital policy to confirm a rapid test with the PCR test saying, “That is the real confirmation, and his [PCR test] was negative.”
PCR, or polymerase chain reaction tests, are considered by the World Health Organization and the United States Food and Drug Administration to be the most accurate tests for detecting Covid-19. Conducted in a laboratory, the test checks for the presence of Covid-19’s genetic material, whereas rapid Covid-19 tests only detect the presence of virus antibodies in the blood.
Santillán would not speculate on specifics about why Mario Alberto took his life, although he said generally that all patients who have been hospitalized are typically under stress, aware of what could happen to them.
Under hospital protocol, Covid-19 patients are offered follow-up psychological counseling after being discharged, he said.
“The protocol states that they receive psychological support after leaving the hospital due to the anxiety that the disease leaves patients with,” he said. “We can’t predict if someone is already coming to us with anxiety. That is something that is attended to at the general practitioner level.”
The coronavirus has been a watershed moment for medical workers, he added, with unprecedented scenarios that have necessitated the perfecting of health care protocols.
Professing humility and taking a few swipes at his “conservative adversaries,” President López Obrador was keen to demonstrate his approval rating in comparison with other world leaders on Wednesday, insisting that Mexican news media would never publish the story and that the public should know.
The international data intelligence company Morning Consult ranked López Obrador in second place among 13 world leaders, second only to India President Narendra Modi, as of December 22.
The Mexican leader’s rating on the Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker was 29, the difference between the number of people who approve of his performance and those who disapprove.
Modi, with a rating of 55, has been the top ranked world leader since the beginning of the year. López Obrador also held second place at the start of the year but by June he had dropped to just 16, ranking sixth place among world leaders.
But he has made a slow but steady comeback since then.
The president’s rating is in green on the global leaders rating tracker. morning consult
His current rating on the Morning Consult survey is the same as that on Oraculus, a “poll of polls” that compiles a monthly average of all the principal opinion polls in Mexico.
The president’s December approval rating stands at 61% and his disapproval rating at 32%.
He expressed gratitude for the public’s support and confidence “in spite of the campaign against” him.
López Obrador has frequently used his morning press conference to claim that he has been attacked in the news media more than any other president.
But he he has spent more time attacking the media and his “conservative adversaries.”
Candidates for Covid vaccination line up at a military hospital in Mexico City.
Some frontline healthcare workers waited for up to 10 hours for a Covid shot Wednesday only to find they weren’t on the list.
Doctors and nurses charged disorder in the vaccination process at the El Vergel military hospital in Mexico City after arriving in the early hours of the morning only to find later in the day they were not on the list of candidates.
Among them was an emergency Covid nurse who said the vaccine was being administered to cooks, dentists and administrators while frontline workers were not eligible due to the organizational problems.
There was a similar situation at a military hospital in Naucalpan, México state, where night-shift workers faced long lines and long waits after going straight from work to the hospital for their vaccination appointments.
When they complained to military personnel they were advised that the federal Ministry of Health was responsible for setting up the appointments.
The armed forces have been put in charge of distributing and administering the Covid vaccine in a national vaccination program that kicked off last week.
The program has designated healthcare workers who are in contact with Covid patients as its first priority, but others have been jumping the line for a shot.
The director of the Adolfo López Mateos medical centre in Toluca, México state, has been temporarily relieved of his duties while he is investigated for having members of his family inoculated.
The case was denounced during Wednesday’s presidential press conference.
President López Obrador said Thursday that thanks to such denouncements there should be no further cases of jumping the vaccination line.
He expects people will not do so for fear of being shamed by a public denouncement.
