The capital goes to medium-risk yellow on the coronavirus stoplight system on Monday, bringing 12 weeks of high-risk orange light restrictions to an end.
For the first time since the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight system was introduced last June, Mexico City will switch to medium-risk yellow as case numbers and hospitalizations continue to fall.
City official Eduardo Clark announced Friday that the risk level will be lowered on Monday, bringing 12 consecutive weeks of high-risk orange light restrictions to an end.
Prior to February 15, when the capital switched to orange, red-light maximum-risk restrictions had been in place for eight weeks.
For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, Mexico City has seen sustained improvements in the different indicators used to determine the stoplight color, said Clark, who is the director of the government’s Digital Agency for Public Innovation.
He said that 16.5% of hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied, the lowest level in over a year. There are 1,404 Covid-19 patients in hospitals in Mexico City, 277 fewer than last Friday.
Estimated active coronavirus cases in the capital have also declined from more than 8,000 a week ago to 6,419.
However, even with the decline, Mexico City — the country’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic — still has far more active cases than the other 31 states, according to Health Ministry estimates. The only other states with more than 1,000 estimated active cases are México state and Tabasco with 1,558 and 1,085, respectively.
Nevertheless, restrictions will be eased in Mexico City due to the downgrade in the official risk level. Stores and movie theaters will be permitted to increase their capacity to 40% of normal levels starting Monday, and restricted opening hours will no longer apply to banks.
Hotels will be able to host events with attendance of up to 50% of normal levels, and restaurants will be allowed to add extra tables in outdoor dining areas. Starting next Wednesday, open-air sporting events will be permitted, while indoor venues such as theaters will be allowed to open at up to 30% capacity from May 17.
Children’s parties at party halls with up to 50 guests will be allowed starting May 27 as long as the risk level in Mexico City doesn’t increase, and public expos will be permitted as of the same date with attendance capped at 30% of normal levels.
The shift to yellow will bring Mexico City in line with the majority of Mexico’s states. On the map currently in force, 20 states are yellow, six are orange and six are low-risk green. The federal Health Ministry will present an updated map at Friday night’s coronavirus press briefing.
The national coronavirus situation has also improved considerably in recent weeks: the number of new cases reported in April was 30% lower than March while Covid-19 deaths were down 22%.
Mexico’s accumulated case tally rose to almost 2.36 million on Thursday with 2,846 new cases reported. The official Covid-19 death toll increased by 166 to 218,173. However, a new analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine puts Mexico’s real death toll at over 600,000.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s national Covid-19 vaccination program continues to make progress in inoculating the adult population, with the first doses given to people aged 50–59 this week. A total of about 20.5 million doses had been administered by Thursday night, including more than 1 million in Mexico City. Most of the doses have gone to people aged 60 and over and frontline health workers.
Mexico had received 26.6 million doses of five different vaccines, meaning that about three-quarters of those delivered had been used by late Thursday.
Shrimp can be exported as long as they are not caught by trawlers.
Wild-caught shrimp exports to the U.S. can resume after Mexican officials came to an agreement with their U.S. counterparts, reactivating a US $300-million industry.
United States officials had suspended Mexico’s shrimp certification due to what they saw as inadequate protection measures for sea turtles.
The agreement allows for shrimp exports which are not caught by deep sea trawlers, and so pose no threat to turtles.
For trade to proceed, Mexico must find a way for the origin of a shrimp catch to be identifiable, and present the strategy before U.S. officials by June 1.
Turtle excluder devices offer a means of escape through fishing nets for turtles caught unintentionally.
Authorities from both countries have committed to solving outstanding problems to remove all barriers on shrimp trade for the fishing season when it opens in September.
Head of the National Aquaculture and Fishing Commission (Conapesca), Octavio Almada Palafox, stressed the importance of compliance and cooperation. “In the next few days there will be an intense exchange of information with the aim of reaching a positive outcome for Mexico. The compromise of all those involved is required so that the product is sent in compliance with transparency and integrity, for which the Mexican government has established strict controls,” he said.
Total shrimp exports to the United States in 2019 were 30,000 tonnes, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
Mainly located in Sinaloa, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Nayarit and Baja California, Mexico’s shrimp fishermen send about 80% of their exports to the United States, with smaller quantities going to countries such as China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and France.
Leydy Pech, right, in a still from the documentary film What Happened to the Bees?
A documentary that explores the deadly effects of agrochemicals on bees premieres in cinemas in several states on Friday.
Made by filmmaker Adriana Otero and photographer Robin Canul, What Happened to the Bees? tells the story of Maya beekeeping communities in Campeche that came together in 2012 to investigate the cause of the deaths of millions of their bees. They subsequently confront authorities and the agrochemical company Monsanto over putting their livelihoods at risk.
Led by beekeepers Gustavo Huchin and Leydy Pech, the communities fight to put an end to the sowing of genetically modified soybeans on or near their land.
The documentary also seeks to educate viewers about the importance of looking after bees, given that they are pollinators of huge numbers of wild and commercially grown plants.
“We show the fight of the Mayan beekeepers like Gustavo Huchin and Leydy Pech, who dedicate their lives to the protection of bees … to look after the life of the planet,” Otero said.
“… The documentary shows the negative effect of agro-industry and the use of agro-toxins on pollinators, our environment and our health. It’s a tribute to the farmers of Mexico,” she said.
Canul said the documentary also explores the impact of public policy on beekeeping and agriculture. The policies are “designed at desks and don’t take the wisdom and knowledge of communities into account,” he said.
What Happened to the Bees?, which has only previously been shown at film festivals, will be screened at cinemas in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Cuernavaca, Mérida and Campeche city starting Friday. More information about the 68-minute documentary and screening times and locations can be found on the website of its production company.
Agave Azul distillery uses environmentally sustainable techniques. The blue barrels contain liquified bat guano from abandoned opal mines.
San Juanito Escobedo is perhaps the archetype of the quiet unassuming, forgotten pueblito located in the middle of nowhere.
That “nowhere” just happens to be within the bounds of what was once Mexico’s third-largest lake, La Laguna de Magdalena, which was drained in 1936 to create great stretches of flat, arable land.
This being the case, I was surprised indeed to receive the following message from my friend Rick Echeverría.
“John, have you visited the big distillery in San Juanito? If you do, don’t miss their tequila-aging cava — it may be the biggest in the world.”
I soon learned that the distillery is called Agave Azul, and I was kindly invited to tour the place by members of the García family, which runs the business.
Tequila Don Anselmo. Some say it has “a touch of vanilla, oak chips and dark chocolate, with a pinch of cinnamon.”
Agave Azul and San Juanito are located 60 kilometers west of Guadalajara. Google Maps took my friends and me right there but via a truly adventurous route, including dirt roads and back streets that tested the mettle of our four-wheel-drive vehicle.
But after bouncing over the last pothole of a rut-ridden back alley, we suddenly arrived in front of a huge, modern industrial complex, and there we met José de Jesús García García, owner of Agave Azul.
“Our aim,” Señor García told me,” is to preserve the traditional way of making tequila, using stonework ovens and stills, the historical approach.” He added that many distilleries buy their agaves from others, but not his.
“Just look out the window and you can see hills covered with our agaves azules [blue agaves], 500 hectares of them, to be exact.”
García then surprised me by announcing that all those agaves are organic.
“We fertilize them with compost made from our own waste products, from our own bagasse [in this case, the shredded fibers of the agave hearts]. So we are returning to the soil what we have taken out of it, and we are not contaminating. Instead of killing the land around us, we are enriching it, we are making it more productive.”
José de Jesús García is following in his great-grandfather’s footsteps.
José García then launched into the story of how this tequilería came into being, and quite a story it is.
” I am the great-grandson of Don Anselmo García. I didn’t know him because I was born in 1957, a few years after he died, but he was a craftsman. He produced and sold all sorts of artesanías made from tule, the reed that used to grow all around the edge of the Laguna de Magdalena.
“He made petates [sleeping mats] and sopladoras [hand fans for stoves and fireplaces] and curious-looking chinas that served as raincoats in bygone times. Don Anselmo would travel all around this area, selling his products of tule along with queso enchilado, which is so called because the outside of this cheese is literally covered with chile for two reasons: first to make sure flies don’t land on it, and second to preserve its correct consistency. This procedure, in fact, preserves the cheese for over a year.
“Now, one day, when my great-grandpa was in Tequila, Don Javier Sauza said to him: ‘Why don’t you plant agaves in your pueblo?’ And it was because of him that agaves were introduced to San Juanito.
“So my bisabuelo [great-grandfather] brought someone here to show people how to plant and cultivate and harvest agaves. Years later, when the first of them were ready for harvest, they set up what we traditionally call a taberna here, with distilling equipment made of copper.
“But all of this was for friends, and they didn’t call it tequila; they called it aguardiente [firewater]. Then my great-grandfather died, and that was the end of the taberna.”
Aldo García in front of Agave Azul’s stills.
José García told me that friends of the family eventually revived the taberna and even got him involved in the project, but he never knew that the distillery had anything to do with his great-grandfather “until one day, I ran into my great-uncle and I said: ‘Uncle, why don’t we have a little drink?’ And he replied, ‘But where can we go?’
“‘To the tequila factory,’ I answered.
“‘What factory? You’re crazy.’
So they got into a truck and headed along a little dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
“… my great-uncle says, ‘Isn’t this Los Reyes?’”
When García replied that it was, the great-uncle said, “Bueno, Los Reyes is the place where my father used to make a really good aguardiente.”
Don Anselmo García sold artesanías made of the reeds which grew all around the Magdalena Lagoon.
“And that is when I put it all together,” García explained. “I understood that this distillery where I was helping out was, in fact, the very same [one] my great-grandfather had set up years ago. That is when I decided to take up what my great-grandfather had been doing and to make it my own. Now, finally, we are completing the obra [life’s work] that he began a long, long time ago.”
After hearing this story, we went on a tour of the distillery, following the process whereby the piñas de agave are cooked in a huge stone oven, crushed and squeezed dry. Then the juice goes into fermenting vats, followed by distillation in huge alambiques, or stills.
All these works are built on a hillside to take advantage of gravity, with the final product ending up in their cava. There it is aged in oak barrels from France and the United States for up to three years.
This cava — which is accessed via a long, spooky passageway right out of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado — is a huge underground room that provides the perfect temperature (10 to 13 C) and conditions for aging.
In other distilleries, over 10% of a barrel of tequila is lost to evaporation every year, but deep underground, this phenomenon is greatly reduced.
After touring the distillery, we went off to the composting facility located five minutes away. Here, in front of row after row of composting beds, we met Luis Ángel Ruvalcaba, who explained how Agave Azul makes its own fertilizer.
Agave Azul’s composting beds.
Most other tequila makers throw away their bagasse and their distillation slops (the top and bottom portions of the fermented must or wort). Not Agave Azul.
It sends all of it to Ruvalcaba, who mixes it with cow, sheep and rabbit manure and bat guano and spreads the mixture on top of the composting beds, where countless California red worms transform it into the very best fertilizer imaginable.
None of Agave Azul’s waste products are dumped into local rivers. The river outside the town of Tequila is badly polluted.
While many tequilerías are concentrating mainly on volume, this one, and a few others I’ve seen, appear to have a genuine concern for quality.
“Yes, you can find something called tequila on the market for US $10 a bottle,” Aldo García told us,” but what is it made of?”
He explains further: “Just do the math: to make one liter of tequila, you need more or less seven kilos of agaves, and each kilo costs 30 pesos, so the mere cost of the raw material is 210 pesos, a little over $10.”
The long tunnel leading to the cava is made entirely of volcanic rock.
Just what the biggest distilleries — most of which are no longer owned by Mexicans — are pouring into those liter bottles, I can’t say, but if you would like to taste what Agave Azul is producing in San Juanito, look for their brands: Don Anselmo, La Tarea, Chulavista and El Pial, all available both in Mexico and in the United States.
¡Salud!
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.
Behind a great heap of compost, visitors learn about the distillery’s methods for fertilizing their agaves.
The cava can hold 1,500 barrels, each containing 220 liters.
San Juanito was famed for its excellent “chinas,” raincoats made of reeds.
Visitors among Agave Azul’s huge fermentation vats.
This 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air was one of the vehicles restored.
An electoral court judge has admitted that he used the court’s repair shop to restore his vintage cars but denies any wrongdoing, saying that he paid for the work out of his own pocket.
According to a report by the newspaper El Universal, Federal Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF) Judge Felipe Alfredo Fuentes Barrera used the court’s Mexico City mechanical workshop for the restoration of at least five classic cars worth a combined 2.35 million pesos (US $117,700). The restorations were completed between 2017 and 2020.
TEPJF sources told El Universal that Fuentes, who became an electoral court judge in 2016 and was its president between 2019 and 2020, is under investigation for his actions and that a request for his resignation has been submitted to the court’s internal control body.
The newspaper reported that the total cost to restore the vehicles – a 1975 Chevrolet Nova hatchback, a 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle, a 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air, a 1967 Ford Galaxie and a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 – was almost 1.8 million pesos but almost a quarter of that amount – 417,500 pesos – is still owed to the TEPJF garage, where a fleet of some 300 court vehicles are maintained.
Asked why his vehicles were restored at his workplace’s repair shop, Fuentes said the decision was taken by the mechanic he hired, who works there. He asserted that no TEPJF resources were used to pay for the restoration of his cars.
“Everything has been paid out of my salary, all of the expenses agreed to were covered in advance. There was no use of public resources … and I have proof, I have everything documented,” Fuentes said.
“I hired the mechanic from that workshop because I trusted him. It was a personal and private contract. I can prove that with the contract,” he said.
“… I made use of my resources and not those of the Electoral Tribunal for the restoration of the vehicles,” Fuentes reiterated.
The car restoration issue is not the only matter tarnishing the judge’s reputation. According to another El Universal report, Fuentes is guilty of nepotism.
The newspaper said the judge has used his position to gain employment for family members in the court, including his brother. It also said that he has found positions for close relatives of people who work for him.
Pemex refinery in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca. The American Petroleum Institute says that President López Obrador's energy policies unfairly favor Pemex and CFE.
The top oil lobby in the United States has once again written to the U.S. government to ask it to urge the Mexican government to uphold its trade agreement commitments to treat American petroleum sector investors and exporters fairly.
In a May 5 letter sent to senior U.S. officials, the president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API) wrote that there have been “continued efforts” by President López Obrador to undermine the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and to “discriminate against U.S. investors in violation of commitments made by Mexico in both [the now-defunct] NAFTA and USMCA,” which took effect last July.
“But recently President López Obrador has increased such actions — in both scope and severity — to change the fundamentals of the energy sector in Mexico,” he wrote in the letter addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
“President Lopez Obrador has spearheaded major amendments to two laws — the Power Industry Law and the Hydrocarbons Law — to change market rules in favor of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and against private companies,” the API chief wrote.
“The common denominator of both laws is to hinder new private investment in the energy sector as well as destroy the value of already operating private assets in violation of Mexico’s commitments under both NAFTA and USMCA,” Sommers said.
“… We encourage you to continue engaging diplomatically with President López Obrador and your cabinet-level counterparts in Mexico’s agencies to urge the Government of Mexico to uphold its USMCA commitments to treat U.S. investors and U.S. exporters fairly,” the letter said. “Additionally, we ask that you include these violations as a top discussion item for the upcoming Free Trade Commission meeting that Ambassador Tai and Mexican Secretary of Economy Tatiana Clouthier agreed to when they spoke in March.”
Gabriela Siller, head of economic and financial research at Mexican financial group Banco Base, said that the complaints shouldn’t be underestimated because the United States could respond by placing tariffs on Mexican products.
“… The sanctions could begin as nontariff barriers that hinder the entry of Mexican products to the United States,” she said.
Siller said that avoiding tariffs or other sanctions is very important because Mexico’s economic recovery from the coronavirus-induced downturn is heavily dependent on exports to the United States. Mexico’s economy slumped 8.5% last year and also shrank in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period of last year, although GDP grew 0.4% compared to the previous quarter, according to preliminary data.
Funding a Mexican anticorruption organization is treason, López Obrador said.
The federal government sent a diplomatic note to its United States counterpart on Thursday to ask it to explain why it has provided funding to Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), a civil society organization that has been critical of President López Obrador and his administration.
In “an act of interventionism that violates our sovereignty,” the United States Embassy in Mexico has financed the anti-graft group since 2018 with funds supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference on Friday morning.
“We have a report that this group of [businessman and outspoken government critic] Claudio X. González has received about 50 million pesos [US $2.5 million] from 2018 until now, these are the invoices,” the president said as an invoice was projected onto a screen behind him.
González is the group’s founder and former president.
According to its website, USAID’s mission focuses on “strengthening and promoting human rights, access to justice, accountable and transparent governance, and an independent and politically active civil society across all our work.”
The funding by a foreign government of an “opposition group” that through applications for injunctions has “dedicated itself to obstructing all the public works that are being carried out” is “reprehensible,” López Obrador said, adding that his administration is asking the U.S. government to consider suspending its funding.
María Amparo Casar, president of Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity with Claudio X. González, the organization’s founder.
“… Yesterday we presented a diplomatic note asking the United States government for an explanation about this case,” López Obrador said, explaining that the instructions for it to be drawn up were given by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
“The financing for [González’s] group from the United States government is an act of interventionism that violates our sovereignty. That’s why we’re asking that they explain, because it’s a foreign government. Money can’t be given to political groups from another country, our constitution prohibits it. Money can’t be received from another country for political purposes, it’s treason,” he said.
“It’s interference, it’s interventionism and it promotes golpismo [a coup mentality],” López Obrador said.
“To define it conceptually, golpismo doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the use of weapons or the army. Golpismo is a movement that develops over time and can be completed by the army … but the conditions to carry out the coup are created with the support of foreign governments and the media,” he said.
Founded in 2015, MCCI was part of a collective that filed more than 100 injunction requests against López Obrador’s cancellation of the former government’s Mexico City airport project and the current government’s construction of the airport at the Santa Lucía Air Force base.
After the president raised his concerns, MCCI defended itself on Twitter.
“… We reiterate the absolute legality of our work [and] energetically reject the use of concepts such as interference, interventionism and golpismo, [insults] hurled from the National Palace to discredit our work,” it said.
“Our commitment with Mexican society and democracy is unwavering,” MCCI said, adding that the government attacks, “which have become a constant in official discourse,” must stop.
It was all smiles in 2012 when then vice president Joe Biden met with AMLO for the first time while the latter was running for president.
“Probably nowhere in the world do two countries as different as Mexico and the United States live side by side.” — Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors, 1985
It is difficult to imagine in the modern history of Mexico and the United States two presidents as dissimilar as Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joseph R. Biden. Their visions of their countries’ present and future could not be more different. This becomes crystal clear when examining their agendas and priorities.
Perhaps one of the few things these two men have in common is their political persistence: three times, both made presidential bids, and both were elected on their third try.
These two heads of state not only differ in substance but also in their ways. Throughout the three decades of his political life, Mr. López Obrador has been a polarizing figure, well-known for being both strident and divisive.
On the other hand, in 50 years of public service as a senator and as vice president to Barack Obama, Mr. Biden has proven to be a sensible and empathic politician, a master of compromise renowned for his soft skills.
Upon taking office in 2018, López Obrador soon informed Conacyt, responsible for many of Mexico’s advances in science in the last 50 years, to expect budget cuts.
Notwithstanding the different strengths and challenges facing Mexico and the U.S., there are substantive issues on which the two presidents differ, completely or in part, and which may largely define the sort of relationship that the two countries will have in the remaining four years of both presidents’ administrations.
Issues around immigration, drug trafficking, trade, the role of the private sector, their nations’ international responsibilities and the role of independent institutions, particularly those in a position to challenge government excesses — such as autonomous bodies, not-for-profit organizations and the media.
Divergences between the two presidents may be most starkly revealed by how they are addressing three prominent issues: the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing economic fallout, science and transparency and the environment and climate change.
Amid the worst pandemic humanity has suffered through in a century, the human lives lost and the impact on financial systems in both the United States and Mexico have been devastating. Of the more than 3.2 million deaths worldwide due to Covid-19, nearly 600,000 have been in the U.S. and nearly 218,000 in Mexico — although the López Obrador administration recently admitted that, as of last March, there were actually 321,000 deaths in Mexico. Some estimates put the total figure closer to a 600,000.
Clearly distancing himself from the incompetent and shameful way his predecessor handled the pandemic, Mr. Biden boosted coronavirus testing, promoted the use of face masks and made decisions based on scientific evidence. In Biden’s first 100 days, his administration delivered 220 million vaccine shots.
As a result, today, 70% of Americans 65 years and older have been vaccinated, over half of all adults have gotten at least one jab and anybody older than 16 can be vaccinated.
The U.S. government also provided financial support to states, municipalities, small businesses and families all over the country — in fact, 85% of American households have already received cash assistance, and small businesses have been offered loans to reopen and avoid losing employees.
In contrast, the situation in Mexico could not be more different, nor more tragic. From the beginning, the government downplayed the pandemic, denied or ignored the scientific evidence of its seriousness and failed to substantially augment the number of tests, while the use of face masks was disincentivized.
And the economic support to those in need and to small businesses suffering from the crisis has been appallingly small. As of May 3, only around 12 million people have been vaccinated (Mexico’s population is 126 million) and 13 million jabs of the vaccine had been delivered, counting both first and second doses.
Mr. Biden reasserted his commitment to listening to science and to ensuring that decisions on public policies dealing with health, environment, climate change, etc. are communicated to people by trusted experts. He further pledged to boost trust, transparency and accountability on government actions and proposed to nearly triple U.S. science spending in the 2022 federal budget, raising it from 0.7% of GDP to close to 2%.
In contrast, during his administration’s first two years, Mr. López Obrador has devoted a good deal of time and energy to discrediting both science and scientists. In 2020, his government and his Morena party, which has a majority in Congress, extinguished 109 trusts, including those for international cooperation on science and technology, technological innovation, natural disasters, climate change and scientific and environmental research for education.
Mexico’s 2021 budget to support science, technology and innovation amounts to the equivalent of US $5.1 billion (just 0.38% of Mexico’s GDP). Of those funds, $1.3 billion were allocated to the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), an institution established 50 years ago that is largely responsible for many of Mexico’s key scientific advances but now has lost the trust of many scientists and is languishing, isolated and politicized.
President López Obrador recently proposed the US adopt his troubled climate change program, Sembrando Vida, as an immigration solution.
On the environment, President Biden has ordered a pause on licensing to exploit oil and gas on public lands and established an office for environmental justice at the White House. He has also pledged to protect 30% of U.S. land and coastal seas by 2030.
On April 22, at the Leaders Summit on Climate Change in Washington, D.C., Mr. Biden committed the U.S. to a reduction in greenhouse gases by at least 50% by 2030 — more than double the U.S. commitment in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Furthermore, Biden proposed to Congress a federal investment of $1.7 trillion for work on climate and environmental justice over the next 10 years and a package of $2 trillion for infrastructure that supports the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy together with the promise to foster thousands of new green jobs.
After two years of his administration, it has become clear that the environment is not a priority for President López Obrador. The main federal environmental agencies (for biodiversity, forest, water and natural protected areas, as well as the climate change institute and the attorney general for environmental protection) have been all but dismantled.
The meager funds allocated to these agencies in 2021 are clear evidence of a lack of interest in environmental and climate change issues.
For example, while the highly distrusted Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) federal program — which has the declared goal of reforesting 1 million hectares — was granted $1.4 billion, the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp), the agency responsible for conserving biodiversity and environmental services on 91 million hectares of land and at sea across the country, received only $43.3 million, despite the fact that the bulk of Mexico’s amazing biodiversity occurs in areas that Conanp must oversee and protect.
Mr. López Obrador has favored his mammoth pet projects, all of which have been criticized by independent scientists for the huge environmental and social damages they could cause. These include the so-called Maya Train, which received $1.5 billion from the 2021 federal budget, and the building of the Dos Bocas oil refinery located in the president’s home state of Tabasco, to which $2.25 billion was allocated.
In fact, 11.6% of Mexico’s total budget passed by Congress in 2021 will go to fossil fuel production, and only 1.1% will be invested in climate change mitigation and adaptation — and 75% of that will go to natural gas transport, an activity that generates the same gases that warm the planet.
If nothing changes, Mexico will certainly miss its commitments as part of the Paris Agreement, which include reducing greenhouse gases by 22% and black carbon by 51%, reaching a peak in emissions in 2026 and reducing emissions thereafter and producing 35% of its energy from clean sources by 2024 and 43% by 2030.
There is still time for the government of Mexico to change course on the way it deals with the environment, but even being the optimists we are, we know that time is not on our side. There is, however, hope.
In the midterm national elections, taking place on June 6, perhaps most Mexicans will decide to vote for those candidates committed to taking care of their country’s immense natural resources — for their own benefit and for the benefit of their children.
We choose to believe that Presidents López Obrador and Biden will somehow succeed in overcoming their differences, at least on the environment, climate change and the pivotal role that science and scientists play in the prosperity of the two countries. At a time when humanity is confronting unprecedented health, economic, social and political challenges, a strong Mexico-U.S. partnership in these crucial areas would be a powerful message to their own citizens and to the world.
Biden has reasserted his commitment to listening to science, taking a leading role on the world stage on issues like climate change.
A message that even neighbors as dissimilar as we are can join forces for the common good.
Omar Vidal, a scientist, was a university professor in Mexico, a former senior officer at the UN Environment Program and a former director-general of the World Wildlife Fund-México.
Richard C. Brusca is a research scientist at the University of Arizona, former executive director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and author of over 200 research articles and 20 books.
Plans for a fourth cruise ship dock on the island of Cozumel, Quintana Roo, have been criticized by residents and environmental groups for the damage they claim it will do to coral reefs.
Before the pandemic Cozumel was ranked as the world’s busiest port of call for cruise ships, but has not welcomed a single passenger since last June.
The US $25-million project is backed by the president.
Residents complain that the plan is antithetical to a coral reef restoration project on the sea floor.
The environmental group Global Coral Reef Alliance agrees. “The new proposal to build the fourth cruise ship dock on Cozumel will destroy the most important project to regenerate coral [on the island],” it said in a statement.
Activists say that volunteer divers have worked for years to transplant small chunks of living coral anchored to seabed structures to grow new reefs. They say that thousands of corals have been transplanted so far, repairing damage from human activity and hurricanes.
A Change.org petition has gained over 40,000 signatures.
The company behind the project tells a different story. Its building proposal says the location for the new dock was chosen “in order not to affect coral reefs … This was backed up by field work on the sea floor, which found no presence of coral reef structures.”
It says the cruise industry, which normally brings in US $480 million a year, is expected to grow.
Tens of thousands of tourist jobs were lost in Quintana Roo in the pandemic, in a sector which accounts for 87% of the state’s economic activity.
Thanks to friendships with a Hollywood producer and the director of the Mazatlán Aquarium, the writer’s fantasy about creating a reality TV show in Mexico about saving innocent bystanders from crocodiles on their streets was not immediately relegated to “that idea we had over a few too many drinks last night.”
In Part 1 of The Crocodile Chronicles, Bodie Kellogg successfully met with the then-mayor of Mazatlán about an adapted dream: using the outskirts of his city as a shooting location for the TV series The Gator Boys. He also convinced Discovery Channel officials that they wanted to know more. The next step was to head to an estuary supposedly full of crocodiles and home to the elusive, monstrously large “Godzilla” croc …
After arriving at the estuary which boasted 800-plus crocodiles throughout the four-square-kilometer area we were standing at the edge of, we set out on our voyage of discovery.
Our group was myself, my photographer friend Alwin and two of the shrimp farmers who utilized the estuary for their harvests. We were looking for a place on dry land where crocodiles could be approached and feasibly be captured without the loss of life or limb.
Our two guides led us along a narrow trail. When we got close to a possible croc location, they would hold up a hand. At that point, we would all pick our way through the tangled jungle as silently as possible until we could see a small beach with one or more crocs sunning themselves on the sand. However, even with the well-practiced stealth of our guides, we could get no closer than 30 or 40 meters before there was a flash of tail and a splash as the crocs hit the water.
After two hours of sneaking through a jungle of vegetation, most of it with thorns and some of it with snakes, we called a halt. As I stood in the shade examining the bloody scratches on my arms and legs as well as my shredded T-shirt, I felt seriously disappointed.
Our guides, sensing my defeat, quickly assured me that there was a really big croc that they could actually call and it would come. This buoyed my spirits that maybe not all was lost.
Even with experienced guides, it was impossible to get closer than 30 or 40 meters to the crocs.
When we all arrived back at the guides’ covered patio, I brought out the ice chest filled with cold Pacíficos and told them to help themselves. Over the years, I have learned that cold beer is an excellent emollient for lively conversations with working-class Mexicans.
After a couple of beers, they began to tell us about the large crocodile that would come when called. They explained that the V8 engine on their causeway ran both a large pump and a generator that powered several long strings of lights, which ran the full length of the causeway.
These lights were used to attract shrimp at night, so they could be easily netted without the need for a boat. The sound of the engine is what would bring in the big croc.
I was told that they started feeding it a bucket of shrimp scraps several years ago, and now it comes and expects to be fed. If it arrives and does not get something immediately, they said it would let out a roar that was terrifying.
With this news, I thought, we were back in business. I had found Godzilla.
One of the men had a cell phone picture, a view straight down at the surly beast with its head partway out of a three-foot culvert. The widest part of the croc’s head had about three inches of clearance at either side of it.
Perhaps a croc took a bite of this warning sign at some point?
Later calculations put this guy at 1,000 to 1,200 pounds and over 16 feet in length. One of the largest apex predators in North America and we were planning to send in a couple of good ‘ol boys from Florida to capture it? This was just getting better each day.
By this time, the people at The Discovery Channel had green-lit the project. We had less than four weeks to put together the rest of the required pieces.
I went to Acuario Mazatlán and told Jorge the game was on, but we were having a difficult time finding catchable crocodiles in the wild. He gave me a phone number for a crocodile farm outside of Culiacán, a few hours away by car.
We promptly named the croc farm Crocs-R-Us. I and The Captured Tourist Woman (TCTW) set off the following morning for Crocs-R-Us.
Having never rented or purchased a crocodile, we had no idea what to expect. We didn’t even know how to transport the damn things.
The facility occupied about 20 acres, with two large ponds and a lot of trees for shade. The very distinctive odor of croc crap was strong.
The crocodile farm outside Culiacán.
We met with the owner, promptly explained our mission and were pleasantly surprised when he said he knew of the TV series and would love to help us any way he could. The fenced enclosure contained several hundred crocodiles, ranging from three to 10 feet in length. We arranged for five of his largest snappers to be collected in a week or so. How that was going to happen was still a bit fuzzy.
When we told the producer of our success with five large crocs and the discovery of the monster, he promised a reptile handler would be sent ahead to Mazatlán to help with the logistics of the rapidly unfolding situation.
My next item on the list was to find suitable locations to stage the “catches.”
Since pictures of alligators on Florida’s golf courses have been going around the internet for years, my first location was the very exclusive golf resort of Estrella Del Mar, a half hour south of Mazatlán. When I approached the manager, I was hoping he would see the positive publicity angle and not the negative aspect of having a 10-foot, carnivorous reptile roaming the fairways of his pristine club.
Actually, he told me that crocodiles are sometimes seen on the back nine, which is adjacent to a major river. He introduced me to the head of maintenance, who could take me around the course to scout out a good spot.
This was going better than I expected, and I was hoping my luck would hold. I was starting to think that the possibility of being on TV was the elixir that promulgated the eager responses to my query for help.
Crocs heading for the water.
I spent a couple of days scouting both sides of the Río Presidio and the handful of villages that lay in the broad valley 10 miles south of Mazatlán. I found a number of suitable locations with sufficient interest from local villagers, all of whom wanted their five minutes of fame.
So far so good, but I still wanted a location with hysterical people, preferably gringos. After all, we would be making “reality” TV.
My next trip was north of town, to a condominium complex, far enough out to keep the mayor happy. It had a swimming pool in the central courtyard. After discussions, the condo owners thought it would be fun to see a croc in the pool and promised to be hysterical.
Ah, but then somebody brought up the possibility of croc crap; this could be a deal killer.
How will we transport five large crocs 140 miles? Can I get a croc in my VW? Where will we house them? How will we deal with the croc crap? Will we still have all our body parts when this is over? Watch for the next chapter of The Crocodile Chronicles.
The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half-wild dog. He can be reached at buscardero@yahoo.com.
