Workers harvest blue agave, the base ingredient of tequila. (Archive)
Tequila production and exports reached their highest level ever in 2021, with almost 500 million liters produced in the first 11 months of the year.
The Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT) reported that 487.5 million liters of Mexico’s most famous tipple were produced between January and November, a 41.2% increase compared to the same period of 2020.
The industry group said that domestic demand for tequila increased 117% this year, while exports grew by a more modest 17.6%.
It said that a record 310.5 million liters of the distilled blue agave beverage – 64% of total production – was exported between January and November, leaving 177 million liters for the shot glasses, margaritas and palomas (cocktails made with tequila and grapefruit soda) of adult Mexicans.
Total production in 2021 is expected to be around 527 million liters, the CRT said, while total exports are predicted to be 336 million liters. More than 2 million tonnes of agave will have been used in tequila production by the end of the year, the council said.
The plant is grown by 25,000 registered agaveros who supply the raw material for 1,913 tequila brands, up from just 516 in 1995.
Five records were set in 2021, the CRT noted, explaining that in addition to the production and export records, agave use by the tequila industry, grower numbers and brand numbers reached new highs.
Tequila is mainly made in Jalisco, specifically the municipality of Tequila, but the spirit can also be legally produced in certain municipalities in four others states: Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit and Tamaulipas.
The train runs between Puebla city and Cholula, a tourist destination and home of the Tlachihualtepetl pyramid.
The tourist train that runs between Puebla City and Cholula – a nearby “magical town” that is home to the world’s largest pyramid – is not economically viable and will not operate in 2022, the state government said.
Transport official Juan Carlos Moreno Valle told a press conference Thursday that the operation and maintenance of the two trains and tracks costs 58.4 million pesos (US $2.8 million) annually.
The cost on a per-passenger basis is 1,542 pesos (US $75) but a ticket costs just 60 pesos (US $3) for tourists and 30 pesos for locals. Moreno said that 1.45 million passengers per year are needed to cover costs but the highest ridership since the 1.57-billion-peso (US $76.1 million) train service began operations in 2017 was just over 161,000 in 2019.
“… We can categorically say that [the train] is not economically viable,” he said, adding that it hasn’t provided a significant boost to tourism and has not been overly popular among locals.
Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa first announced in November that the train wouldn’t operate next year.
The service runs 17 kilometers between central Puebla city and Cholula with no intermediate stops, meaning that it is of no use to people who want to go somewhere between the two locations. Moreno said the federal government authorization under which the train operates doesn’t allow for additional stops.
The official said that Puebla authorities are collaborating with the French Development Agency on a study to identify alternative transport options in the short, medium and long term.
For their part, passengers and vendors at the Cholula station called on the government to reconsider the decision to shut the train down.
María Goreti, a Cholula woman who catches the train to work, told the news website e-consulta she was disappointed the service wouldn’t continue next year.
“… I live in Cholula and [the train] leaves me closer to my home [than the bus]. I believe it’s a good transport [option] for people who want to visit Cholula; it’s faster and less dangerous than buses, it’s cleaner too,” she said.
Verónica Rico, a vendor with a stall next to the Cholula terminal, said her sales will decline without passengers going to and from the station. She blamed a lack of publicity for the low ridership, although she acknowledged that passenger numbers increase on weekends.
The development of the Cholula train station was controversial when it began in 2015, with permit irregularities and accusations that the construction destroyed archaeological sites containing pottery fragments.
Each of the two trains that run between Puebla city and Cholula has the capacity to carry 284 passengers. The trip takes approximately 40 minutes.
FEMSA announced its hiring plans on Twitter this week.
Oxxo convenience stores will hire Haitian migrants, the chain’s parent company announced on Wednesday.
FEMSA, a multinational beverage and retail company and owner of the Oxxo stores, announced the policy on Twitter.
“In FEMSA we are committed to inclusion and diversity, giving employment opportunities to refugee and migrant people,” the multinational wrote. “Through Oxxo stores, we hire displaced people from Haiti, giving them the opportunity to start a new life here.”
The announcement signals the fulfillment of a promise: FEMSA President José Antonio Fernández has said since June that his company would offer jobs to migrants and refugees.
Immigration authorities and federal officials have said that they “have no problem” with welcoming migrants “as long as they respect the laws.”
Over the past year, tens of thousands of asylum applications from Haitian migrants have flooded the Mexican refugee agency, threatening to overwhelm the system. The migrants are fleeing a combination disaster caused by crime, the assination of their president, an earthquake, a hurricane and the pandemic.
Jalisco State Library's Rigoberto Hernández shows his son a book from the library's extensive Chinese collection.
The neighborhood public library occupies a warm spot in the memories of my childhood — a friendly, welcoming place, as well as a seemingly limitless source of information and entertainment.
When I moved to Mexico some decades ago, lending libraries open to the public were few to be seen. Sometimes I would find one in the Casa de Cultura of some pueblito, but most often their book collection would occupy only a couple of shelves.
A friend of mine with the United States Peace Corps noticed the same thing. Unlike me, she did something about it.
Barbara Dye found resources to buy children’s books and started her own traveling library, bringing reading material to kids in remote corners of Jalisco’s Primavera Forest. One day, I tagged along in her truck-turned-bookmobile.
I must confess that I was greatly moved by the joy and enthusiasm of those children as Barbara brought them new boxes of books from which they could choose ones to borrow. What impressed me most, however, was what the kids were doing with those books.
A serious young reader at an outdoor school improvised by local children.
“They’ve started their own school,” Barbara told me, “under this tree. They meet together regularly, and each one tells the others all about the book that he or she is reading.”
The idea of a public library in Mexico, I suspect, may have been influenced by the notion of public libraries in Spain.
Once upon a time, in 1976, I lived in Barcelona. When I discovered that the Biblioteca de Catalunya had a huge collection of books, both in Spanish and in English, I made immediate inquiries about acquiring a library card.
I had wanted to do a comparative English-Spanish study of literary translations. I thought the Barcelona library ideal for this but quickly discovered that I could not accomplish my purpose without a library card.
To get one, I was obliged to amass a thick stack of documents, including a letter from the United States consul swearing that he would take personal responsibility for any books I might fail to return. It took four months till I finally had that precious library card in my hand.
My wife and I walked into the Biblioteca. I was carrying a camera and tripod (knowing that in Spain, flashes are an abomination in all public buildings). I hoped to get pictures of some of the library’s impressive murals.
Children living in Jalisco’s Primavera Forest are often left to fend for themselves by the public school system.
Out of nowhere, a guard popped up. “Señor, we do not permit the use of cameras — or tripods — in the Barcelona library.”
So I checked the tripod and camera and we walked — hand in hand — toward the room housing the English book collection.
Another guard appeared out of nowhere.
“Estimados visitantes,” he said, “I regret to inform you that holding hands between persons of different genders is forbidden in the Barcelona library.”
Blushing, we distanced ourselves from each other, and I found a copy of The Old Man and the Sea. “Now, we’ll just go look at the Spanish version,” I said.
But before I could take two steps, a third guard appeared, as if right out of the woodwork.
The Jalisco State Library’s architect, Federico González, said that its diagonal lines represent Mexico’s five dead and 17 living languages.
“¡Por favor!” he said. “You may not remove any book from any room in —”
I finished the phrase for him: “in the blessed Barcelona Library. But don’t worry, señor. I have a feeling that this is not only my first but also my last visit.”
And, in fact, it was.
By chance, I now live only 29 minutes away from the Jalisco state library. Several visits have proven to me that it is far friendlier than the one I encountered in Barcelona. Perhaps this is due to its whimsical design.
If you get a chance, take a look at it and ask yourself: inside a building like that, would anyone be worried about people holding hands?
La Biblioteca Pública del Estado de Jalisco “Juan José Arreola” is located at the extreme northwest end of Guadalajara, just along the city’s ring road, the Periférico. This location has caused many city residents to be familiar with the building’s unusual and controversial architecture, designed by González Gortázar Architects.
A library inside a library: the Carmen Balcells Center houses the greatest works of Latin American literature.
Counting its newspapers and magazines, this library — administered by the University of Guadalajara (UDG) — holds over two million items, surpassed only by the library of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City.
But can you go there and actually borrow a book?
To find out, I went there and put my question to library representative Rigoberto Hernández Gómez.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Hernández confided. “We tried lending books 20 years ago. To make sure that all the books would be returned, we obliged people to leave their official ID card with us. The result was that we ended up with no books and three huge boxes of ID cards!”
Although you can’t borrow books from this library, you can read them onsite, with many options to choose from. To start with, the Biblioteca is divided into two buildings, one filled with contemporary works and the other dedicated to venerable old historical documents that you must view wearing gloves and a face mask.
The first building, the Edificio Contemporáneo, was full of surprises. For example, on the fifth floor, I discovered the Benjamin Franklin Library, donated by the U.S. Consulate and chock full of great books in English.
Want to read a newspaper? The Jalisco State Library has complete collections of all the popular ones, with issues going back to 1784.
Next to it is another huge collection of 50,000 books, all in French (the Paul Rivet Library). On the same floor, there is a big collection of books in Catalan and another one of books from China.
“This collection,” Hernández told me, “is the result of a book exchange between the Chinese government and the UDG. Each donated 626 books to the other with the idea that in the future they would continue making donations. And both collections have grown considerably.”
I also discovered a big collection of books for children and adults in indigenous languages.
“Mexico’s indigenous population speaks 68 different tongues, and there are 364 varieties,” librarian Nilva Ordón told me. As an example, she showed me a book in Hñähñu (Otomi), a language spoken in several Mexican states. “Hñähñu has 14 vowel sounds, as opposed to five in Spanish,” she mentioned.
Since I am a language teacher, I countered that English has between 19 and 21 vowel sounds — depending on which expert you talk to — and assured her that for most Mexico News Daily readers, Hñähñu would be a snap.
According to Hernández, the newest addition to the Jalisco State Library is the Centro Documental de Literatura Iberoamericana Carmen Balcells (The Carmen Balcells Documentary Center for Ibero-American Literature). This is a complete collection of great works of literature produced in all of Latin America, including Brazil.
The Benjamin Franklin Library was donated by the US Consulate in Guadalajara.
It’s unique because Carmen Balcells, who is from Spain, insisted that proper royalties be paid to all the authors of all these books: a position that stands in sharp contrast to the exploitation of writers frequently practiced in some Latin American countries.
In addition to everything I’ve mentioned above, there is also a very big librería (bookstore) inside the library: the Librería Carlos Fuentes, which boasts 120,000 titles.
So, while the library will not allow you take a book home, the librería will not object at all … as long as you pay for it.
The Jalisco State Library doesn’t quite have the nostalgia of the neighborhood public libraries of my youth, but, of course, they — and I — are from another millennium.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
United States Peace Corps volunteer Barbara Dye, left, brings books to children living in the forest with no public schooling.Want to learn the writing conventions of Hñähñu? This manual — all in Hñähñu, of course — awaits you in the Jalisco State Library.The author’s hard-won membership card for Barcelona’s Biblioteca de Catalunya.
People help themselves to cargo after one of the accidents.
Some Veracruz residents might not have to buy Christmas dinner and presents this year after two semi-trailers overturned and were looted. Their cargo included food, electronics and more than 2,000 live chickens.
The first accident occurred Wednesday afternoon on the Coatzacoalcos-Villahermosa highway in the south of the state. A tractor-trailer carrying poultry to be processed hit a pothole, went out of control and flipped on its side.
It was not long until the word spread and residents of nearby communities, as well as passing motorists, began arriving and making off with the birds. Whether the chickens will survive the holidays remains unknown.
“I yelled at the people not to take the chickens but they didn’t pay attention, and well, it was me against a number of people. Then the police arrived and I asked them for help, but they couldn’t do anything either,” said the truck driver, who escaped unhurt.
The 2,000-plus chickens were gone within the hour to the horror of the driver, who could be held responsible for the loss to poultry producer Bachoco.
On Thursday morning, another semi-trailer crashed just a few kilometers down the road from the chicken incident. The second truck was loaded with a variety of Walmart products, including food and electronics. Like the first trailer, the driver lost control and it rolled over.
Again, the driver was uninjured but in less than 15 minutes the looting began. Police were unable to deter the swarm of drivers and nearby residents from taking the merchandise, but did manage to direct the flow of traffic and call a tow truck.
Forensic service personnel carry out a mass burial of unclaimed and/or unidentified bodies in Ciudad Juárez in 2018.
The federal government has acknowledged that Mexico is facing a “forensic crisis,” with an estimated 52,000 unidentified bodies in common graves and the nation’s morgues.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s morning press conference on Thursday, Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas conceded that the government doesn’t have the capacity to guarantee the identification of bodies and ensure they are returned to their families.
“… According to estimations of both public institutes and non-governmental organizations we have about 52,000 unidentified bodies in common graves and morgues,” he said.
Encinas also acknowledged that there are more than 95,000 missing people in Mexico, most of whom disappeared in the last 15 years.
He said that authorities are discussing the possibility of establishing a national human identification center to attend to the vast backlog of unidentified bodies. Three regional identification centers are already in operation, including one in Saltillo, Coahuila, where hundreds of bodies have recently been exhumed from common graves.
Encinas’ remarks came a month after the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) finished a 12-day visit to Mexico to assess the country’s capacity to respond to the missing persons crisis.
Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas spoke about the forensic crisis at Thursday morning’s presidential press conference.
CED president Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana declared that 52,000 unidentified bodies constituted a “forensic crisis,” while the committee she leads concluded that an inadequate security strategy, poor investigations into missing person cases and impunity were key factors in the persistence of abductions in Mexico.
Data for 2006 to 2019 shows that the number of bodies that entered morgues and remained unidentified increased sharply in the second half of the 2006-12 presidency of Felipe Calderón, who launched a war on cartels shortly after he took office. The numbers remained high – over 2,000 – during the first four years of 2012-18 government led by Enrique Peña Nieto before spiking in 2017 and increasing again in 2018.
The forensic crisis has only worsened since López Obrador took office just over three years ago, with the total number of unidentified bodies increasing from about 34,000 to 52,000, a 53% jump. The majority of unidentified corpses are male but thousands of female bodies also lie anonymous in morgues. They are among more than 350,000 people who have been murdered in Mexico in the past 15 years.
Data for 2006 to 2019 also shows that 56% of unidentified bodies were located in just five states: México state, Mexico City, Baja California, Jalisco and Chihuahua. There were more than 5,000 unidentified corpses in the first two states at the end of 2019.
The high number of unidentified bodies has overwhelmed morgues in numerous states. Meanwhile, members of thousands of families – frustrated and angry with the authorities for their failure to locate or identify thousands of missing persons – continue to search for their missing loved ones, digging up land where hidden graves might be located and seeking access to morgues.
The government has promised to allocate more resources to the search and identification of missing persons, and there is a National Search Commission and local search commissions in every state.
But “most of the burden continues to fall on family members, search groups and other non-governmental organizations, which face bureaucratic barriers, corruption and government negligence,” InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime, said in August.
Because coronavirus testing rates in Mexico are much lower than in other countries, many cases, especially mild ones, have likely gone undetected.
The emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus hasn’t caused a spike in reported case numbers in Mexico, as has occurred in numerous other countries.
The Health Ministry reported 52,528 confirmed cases in the first 22 days of December for a daily average of 2,387. That’s an 11% decline compared to the daily average in November.
Mexico’s first case of the highly contagious omicron strain was detected in early December, but only 22 other cases have since been identified. The low number is likely due to scant genomic sequencing of the virus in Mexico.
In addition, COVID-19 testing rates in Mexico are much lower than in many other countries, meaning that many coronavirus cases, especially mild ones, have gone undetected during the pandemic. Teams of scientists in South Africa, England and Scotland have concluded that omicron infections tend to cause more mild disease than earlier variants.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s official COVID-19 death toll is approaching 300,000. The Health Ministry reported 198 additional fatalities on Wednesday, lifting the accumulated total to 298,359. There are currently just under 2,300 patients in hospital COVID wards across the country, federal data shows.
The current federal coronavirus risk map.
The accumulated case tally stands at 3.94 million after 3,319 cases were reported Thursday. Mexico’s seven-day case average is currently about 2,200 whereas it’s above 168,000 in the United States, where omicron is now the dominant strain.
There are just under 18,000 active cases in Mexico, according to Health Ministry estimates, with the highest numbers in Mexico City, Baja California, Guanajuato and Chihuahua.
All but five of Mexico’s 32 states are currently low risk green on the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight map, while Durango, Aguascalientes, Baja California, Sonora and Chihuahua are medium risk yellow. The current map will remain in effect through Sunday.
More than 7,500 marginalized, mainly rural communities that currently lack internet service are set to be connected thanks to a federal government program.
The Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT) will deliver internet services to some 4.8 million people in 7,537 communities via the 2021-22 Social Coverage Program (PCS).
The communities are among more than 77,000 locations across Mexico where there is no internet coverage, according to the SICT, affecting 8.3 million people.
Of the communities that will benefit from the PCS, 99.3% are in rural areas and almost 60% have large indigenous or Afro-Mexican populations. More than 1,300 of the communities have high or very high rates of marginalization and 376 are the administrative centers of the municipalities in which they are located.
According to the SICT, the installation of internet services in the communities will reduce inequality and help people stay connected to each other.
In Mexico, 77,219 communities lack internet access (shown in red) while 112,269 communities have internet access (in green), according to the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation. SICT
“The health emergency in Mexico generated by [COVID-19] underlined the essential role of telecommunications, in particular internet service,” the ministry said.
“As a tool of public policy, the 2021-22 PCS will contribute to the reduction of the digital divide in Mexico … [and] reduce the negative effects of the pandemic on the most unprotected social and economic sectors.”
Lowest rate for a three-night stay in Cancún was US $228.
Cancún is the most expensive New Year’s destination outside the United States, according to a new survey by the booking website CheapHotels.org.
The survey analyzed hotel rates in 50 cities around the world, comparing the lowest rate available for a three-night stay in a double room. Only centrally located hotels with three or more stars and generally positive reviews were included.
Of all the cities in the survey Cancún was the sixth most expensive, with the cheapest room available costing US $228. Cancún was the only Mexican city to appear on the list.
The five most expensive cities were all in the United States, led by Miami Beach where the cheapest hotel stay went for $365.
The results highlight how the pandemic has reshaped international travel, with some of 2019’s most expensive New Year’s destinations going for much cheaper in 2021. Dubai and Sydney, for example, two of the priciest places to stay in 2019, cost 40 to 50% less this year, the survey reported.
While some countries require visitors to provide negative COVID tests, proof of vaccination and/or complete a mandatory quarantine, Mexico has no such requirements, making it an attractive option for some tourists. Cancún in particular has made a strong economic comeback and its airport neared record numbers of flights last weekend.
Long lines of migrants wait outside the Mexican refugee agency office in Tapachula, Chiapas.
Migration to and through Mexico will continue to increase in 2022, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Josep Herreros, a Mexico City-based UNHCR official, told the newspaper La Razón that social conflict, violence, poverty and pandemic-related factors will continue to spur migration from Central American and South American countries next year.
Migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti have arrived in Mexico in large numbers this year, but people from farther afield, even African countries, have also entered the country to seek asylum here, or more commonly, to travel north to the United States.
Herreros predicted that the number of migrants from Venezuela will increase next year due to the ongoing difficult situation in the once-prosperous South American country.
“The situation in Central and South American will continue to impact Mexico. Due to the growing violence, we will certainly see more exoduses next year,” he said.
Adding to the pressure on migrant services at the northern border are asylum seekers who arrive there after traveling through Mexico from the southern border.
Migration to and through Mexico has surged this year, and while many migrants are intent on reaching the United States, an increasing number are seeking to stay here, at least in the short term. Asylum applications rose by almost 200% to over 123,000 this year, placing enormous pressure on immigration authorities and the Mexican refugee agency COMAR, which admitted in November that it was close to collapsing under the strain.
“What increased asylum requests this year were the constant arrivals from Central America and an unusual movement of the Haitian population from Brazil and Chile,” Herreros said.
He warned that an increase in migration next year will push COMAR, the National Immigration Institute, migrant shelters and organizations that assist migrants to the limit.
Herreros said that processing asylum applications in a timely manner is essential in order to improve migrants’ experience in Mexico.
Many have been forced to wait for months or even longer to regularize their status, which effectively traps them in the cities where they filed their claims – Tapachula is the prime example – and contributes to discontent and distrust in authorities.
Instead of being trapped in the south, migrants could fill industrial sector jobs in states such as Coahuila, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Puebla, San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato, Herreros said, estimating that at least 100,000 such positions were available.
