A garbage truck blocks a road in Oaxaca city on Tuesday.
Thousands of municipal workers took to the streets of Oaxaca city on Tuesday to protest the government’s failure to pay their end-of-year salary supplement.
Members of five unions, among whom are administrative workers, waste collectors and transit police, demanded payment of their aguinaldo, a payment usually equivalent to an employee’s fortnightly wage. By law, it must be paid by December 20.
The workers directed their ire at Morena party Mayor Oswaldo García during a second consecutive day of protests over nonpayment of the legally required benefit.
The newspaper Reforma reported that at least 16 blockades were set up in Oaxaca city, causing traffic chaos. Protestors also blocked entrances to supermarkets.
Union leader Kathia Navarrete said that protests were necessary because dialogue had not yielded a favorable response from the municipal government, which argued that it was waiting for federal money to fulfill its obligations to employees.
Oaxaca city transit police on duty at a blockade point on Tuesday. They are among the city’s workers who have not received this year’s aguinaldos.
One person affected by the road blockades was a bride on the way to her wedding. According to a social media post, the woman had to get out of the vehicle in which she was traveling and proceed on foot to reach her wedding on time.
A photograph showed the bride crossing a street near the Oaxaca Institute of Technology in the company of two other women.
“She’s on her way! Hold on a little bit, father!” said one Twitter user who shared the photo.
A participant plays a conch as part of the opening to a Mexica solstice ceremony on the outskirts of San Gregorio Atlapulco.
In Tuesday’s predawn darkness, as the morning of the winter solstice readied itself to begin with a sunrise, a group of about 100 people gathered in Tenenec, an ancient ceremonial site at the edge of San Gregorio Atlapulco to perform a Mexica (Aztec) ceremony to mark the rebirth of the sun.
San Gregorio Atlapulco, located in Xochimilco, is a pueblo originario (an original town), designated as such because residents have held onto their indigenous ceremonies and rituals dating back to before the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
This solstice ceremony is one of those rituals.
Often considered to be the symbolic death and rebirth of the sun, the winter solstice was, and is, an important time in many indigenous cultures, one that’s often celebrated with festivals and rituals. In Mexica beliefs, the day marks the rebirth of Huitzilopochtli, the lord of the sun and of combat.
Tuesday’s ceremony was held in an area that has likely been used for such events for hundreds of years.
“It is believed that this area was used for solstice ceremonies and to make petitions for rain,” said Javier Márquez Juárez, who has studied and written extensively about indigenous ceremonies and rituals.
With the solstice’s sunrise complete, participants give thanks to the god Huitzilopochtli for the sun’s successful rebirth.
In the ceremony space, boulders formed a circle. One large boulder facing east has small holes — called pocitas, or small pools, on top; on one side of the rock canals and steps have been carved that mimic the soil terraces that the Mexica and other ancient indigenous groups used to plant their crops.
The carvings are at least 800 years old, Márquez said. “Water would be poured into the pocitas and would then flow down over the terraces. This would mimic rain falling on them.” This was done to ensure a bountiful harvest.
The group’s ceremony began with Aztec dancers performing a ritual to the four cardinal directions, something that’s required at the beginning of virtually all Mexica ceremonies. “It is to ask permission to have the ceremony,” explained Márquez.
Smoke billowed from incense pots as people faced toward each direction. When the sky began to lighten, the chanting and drumming began. A conch played.
As drummers beat their rhythms on large drums called huehuetls and on small, hand-held ones called tambores, participants performed a joyful song to give thanks to Huitzilopochtli. As the sun slowly began its ascent over Popocatépetl, one of Mexico’s active volcanoes, the chanting, which had begun softly, gained strength. The drumming intensified.
The fact that the sun rises over “El Popo” — as Mexicans affectionately call the volcano — is significant in Mexica beliefs because to them, it’s more than a volcano. “It is considered to be a god,” Márquez said.
Aztec dancers performed for hours, giving thanks.
During breaks in the chanting, people shouted the name of the Mexica god, Ometéotl. “Ome means ‘two’ and Teotl is ‘god’ or ‘the sacred,’ so it means ‘two gods,’” he said. “In Mexica beliefs, there is a duality: light and dark, male and female, positive and negative. Ometéotl is the Lord of Duality or the God of Duality. His name is shouted to give thanks and to show respect.”
The chanting and drumming continued until the sun had completely risen over Popo; it had been reborn.
Below, bread and atole (a hot drink made from corn) were served. It was time for conviviencia, a time for sharing food and companionship.
“This ceremony is to welcome the rebirth of the sun,” said Juan Carlos Torres Alonso, who traveled from Mexico City’s Iztapalapa borough, about an hour away, to participate in the ceremony.
“It is to capture the history of the Mexican pueblo — to commune with nature, with the land, and with the heavens.”
After the ceremony’s end, the Aztec dancers performed a short distance away to continue to give thanks for the sun’s rebirth. These dances typically go on for hours, and this one was no exception.
There was incense and more drumming on huehuetls, the air filled with the sounds from ayoyetes, an instrument that is tied around a dancer’s ankle, made from shells of the ayoyete tree. Some played sonajas, rattling instruments that look like maracas and are used to keep the time during a dance.
“[The ceremony] is important because it is a way to show respect for our ancestors,” participant José González Sánchez said. “It is a way to respect them and what they have given us. It is to continue our roots.”
But it is more than that.
“Without light, without the sun, nothing lives. We understand how important nature, the environment, is. Sometimes we don’t respect them; we do not give thanks,” González added.
“[This ceremony] is to remember what we receive, to give thanks,” he said, “to have a fiesta.”
A typical taco stand, one of 1.6 million locations where one's craving for a taco can be fulfilled.
The taco is central to Mexican cuisine and a taco stand, or taquería, is never far from a hungry taco lover. Just how ubiquitous the taco restaurants are has been shown by a geographer from the National Autonomous University (UNAM).
Baruch Sanginés mapped all of the taquerías in the country with data from the national statistics agency INEGI via geolocation. His Taco Universe revealed 1.6 million sites and showed the correlation between population density and taco availability, presenting a high concentration of taco shops around urban centers.
“Here in Mexico City I could almost tell you that 95% of people have a taco stand 400 meters from their home. No matter where you live, almost 400 meters away you have a stall nearby. That speaks to the popularity of the taco,” he said.
However, Sanginés added that there was a dearth of sites in Lomas de Chapultepec, an exclusive and hilly neighborhood in the northwestern borough of Miguel Hidalgo.
Two other large cities were found to be taco-rich. In Monterrey, Nuevo León, 75% of residents are a short walk from a source of tacos, while in Guadalajara, Jalisco, 66% of residents can find them within easy reach.
The UNAM researcher’s Taco Universe.
Sanginés said he appreciated the dish for its wide and convenient availability. “They get you out of trouble sometimes. Because of the rhythms of work in the city, we often leave the house very quickly and don’t have time to prepare ourselves something to eat, so we go to a place and eat a taco,” he said.
The humble but beloved treat is central to Mexican cuisine. It is generally a corn tortilla — sometimes wheat — filled with meat, raw onion and cilantro, accompanied by a spicy chile sauce.
The dish predates the Spanish conquistadors’ arrival in Mexico. One suggested etymology for the word “taco” is tlahco, the Náhuatl word meaning “half” or “in the middle,” referring to where the filling would be placed in the tortilla.
Serledios Ph at the top of the antenna on the iconic Mexico City skyscraper.
A YouTuber reached dizzying new heights and posted a video of a phenomenal view by climbing the antenna atop the Torre Latinoamericana (Latin America Tower) skyscraper — without protective equipment — in Mexico City’s historic center earlier this month.
But he outdid himself a week later by scaling the antenna of the 207-meter World Trade Center (WTC).
Serledios Ph started his ascent from the roof of the 166-meter, 44-floor Torre Latinoamericana to climb the 16-meter antenna, where he was left completely exposed to the elements, as seen in an eight-minute viral video posted on December 12.
Once at the top, he filmed himself standing above the city with the Bellas Artes building and its neighboring Alameda Central park far down below, from an angle that few had ever witnessed.
It is not clear how Serledios reached the roof of the tower, which is located in the borough ofCuauhtémoc.
Serledios Ph’s video of his ascent of the Torre Latinoamericana.
However, there was no rest for the daredevil, who posted a video of himself climbing the antenna of the 207-meter WTC in Mexico City’s Benito Juárez borough on Sunday.
“Well, guys, we’re done up here. Everything went well, as you can see. Hopefully going down I don’t get stuck or anything like that,” he said before descending the WTC antenna.
The urban explorer warned viewers against imitating the Torre Latinoamericana feat at the start of the December 12 video, alerting them to the inherent physical danger of the pursuit and the undesired attention it could attract from police.
The iconic tower was Mexico’s first skyscraper and is anarchitectural landmark since it was the world’s first major skyscraper successfully built on a highly active seismic zone. It was the tallest building in Latin America when it was erected in 1956, and is now Mexico’s 17th tallest.
The 50-floor WTC is the country’s 10th tallest building. It first opened as the Hotel de México in 1972 but now largely contains offices.
The tallest building in Mexico is the T.Op Torre 1 in Monterrey, Nuevo León, at 305 meters.
Video footage released by the state indicates that a video published last week was in fact a year old.
Reports that the sons of jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera threw a Christmas party in Culiacán, Sinaloa, last Friday are fake news, according to the state security minister.
“Information that is circulating that points to a recent event in Sinaloa … is false; the images being disseminated correspond to December 17, 2020. … There is no information of a recent event,” he wrote.
The security minister noted that last year’s party was shut down thanks to a security operation carried out by all three levels of government.
He shared photographs of the 2020 posada and compared them with those disseminated this week to support his assertion that no event was held last Friday.
The four Guzmán brothers have been in the spotlight in recent days after the United States government last week announced rewards of up to US $5 million each for information leading to their arrest and/or conviction.
All four are high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel and subject to indictments in the U.S. for their involvement in the illicit drug trade, the Department of State said.
Sectors most affected by closures were finance, retail and manufacturing.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the closure of many businesses but it couldn’t kill off the Mexican entrepreneurial spirit.
Almost 1.6 million businesses closed for good between May 2019 and July 2021, a new study shows, but approximately 1.2 million new businesses were established in the same period.
A study by the national statistics agency INEGI found that just over 1.58 million businesses closed in the 27-month period, mainly due to the pandemic-induced economic downturn.
INEGI said in a press release Tuesday that 32.6% of almost 4.9 million businesses counted in its May 2019 economic census – of which 99.8% were small and medium-sized enterprises – had closed by the end of July 2021. The worst affected sectors were services excluding those offered by the finance industry, retail and manufacturing, INEGI said.
Quintana Roo, which is heavily dependent on tourism, recorded the highest number of business closures as a percentage of total businesses. Over 46% of the businesses operating in the Caribbean coast state two years ago are now closed.
The only other state where more than 40% of businesses closed was Colima, where just under 42% didn’t survive the pandemic.
Nuevo León, Aguascalientes and Tabasco ranked third to fifth, respectively, with business “death” rates above 38%.
More than a quarter of businesses in every one of Mexico’s 32 states shut between May 2019 and July 2021, according to INEGI, but five states had closure rates below 30%. They were Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacán and Jalisco.
The closures caused significant job losses across the country.
With regard to the opening of new businesses, Hidalgo led the way. The number of business openings between May 2019 and July 2021 was equivalent to 36% of all Hidalgo businesses counted in INEGI’s 2019 economic census. Openings almost offset closures in Hidalgo, where the business “death” rate was 38%.
The next best performing states were Puebla, Tlaxcala, Aguascalientes and México state. The number of openings in each of those states was equivalent to more than 30% of total businesses counted in May 2019. On a national level, the number of business openings was equivalent to 24% of all businesses counted in 2019.
The best performing sector for openings was retail, which accounted for 27% of all new businesses created in the 27-month period to July 2021.
United States-based communications company Viasat provides Mexico’s fastest satellite internet service for downloads, a new analysis shows, but speeds are well below the fixed broadband median.
The only other satellite internet service included in the analysis was HughesNet, another U.S.-based company, which had a median download speed of 10.64 Mbps in Q3, an 11% decrease compared to Q2.
By contrast, Mexico’s median download speed for fixed broadband in Q3 was 33.14 Mbps, or more than twice as fast as the service provided by Viasat.
For uploads, HughesNet was 58% faster than Viasat. The former service’s median upload speed in Q3 was 3.21 Mbps while the latter’s was 2.03 Mbps. The median speed for fixed services was much higher at 8.88 Mbps.
Compared to fixed broadband, both satellite services performed poorly for latency, the time it takes for a signal to travel from a computer to a remote server and back.
Viasat and HughesNet had third quarter latency of 675 milliseconds (ms) and 748 ms, respectively. Median latency for fixed broadband services was just 12 ms.
Starlink, the satellite internet service owned by business magnate Elon’s Musk, was given permission to operate in Mexico in May, and the government stipulated that it had to be ready to offer its services within 180 days, or by October 28.
But technology news website Xataka reported that Starlink is not expected to begin operations in Mexico until late 2022 or early 2023. It was reported earlier this year that the service would cost US $99 monthly. Service will also require the purchase of a Starlink hardware kit, which will cost $499 plus shipping.
Operated by Musk’s company SpaceX, Starlink is the fastest satellite internet service in the United States and several other countries, according to Speedtest. Its download speed in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom was faster than the median for fixed services.
In the United States, Starlink’s median download and upload speeds last quarter were 87.25 Mbps and 13.54 Mbps, respectively. Its latency was 44 ms.
Few places love classic cars like Mexico, where retro vehicles are painstakingly restored to near perfect condition.
But Querétaro city has won the classic car competition hands down with a new way for visitors to see the sights of the historic center: in electric replicas of the Model T Ford.
The Model T — generally considered to be the first affordable automobile — revolutionized motor transport in the early 20th century. It was sold from 1908-1927 and held the record for most units sold of any car until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.
Querétaro city has rolled out seven replica Model Ts, which can transport five to eight passengers. Local authorities hope they will take as many as 960 tourists around the city per day and by April next year, the offering could expand to 24 vehicles.
The drivers are trained specifically to drive the Model T and to give a history tour of the city.
There are three tour routes on offer for visitors, each lasting 45-60 minutes: the “For tongues and bells” (Para lenguas y campanas) route focuses on viceregal history; “Goodbye Mama Charlotte” (Adiós mamá Carlota) examines the mid-19th century period of the Second Mexican Empire and “A Treasure turned into water” (Un Tesoro convertido en agua) takes sightseers to the city’s aqueduct.
Querétaro city Tourism Minister Alejandra Iturbe Rosas said the project was devised by a group of local businesspeople who worked together with local authorities. “This novel, attractive and avant-garde tourist product is environmentally responsible and respectful of the image and care of our historic center,” he added.
The service will operate every day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., from September 16 street in front of the Rosalío Solano Cinema.
Básica Studio's all-female team of bike makers: studio owner Eli Acosta at center with Jimena Palomino, left, and Elein Lacy, right. PJ Rountree
Hacksaws, wrenches, metal scissors and the occasional set of forgotten sunglasses are scattered across the workbenches of Básica Studio, Mexico City’s only woman-led bike manufacturing shop. A jig sits center stage in the back of the shop with half a frame attached to it. Not that I would know what it was if I hadn’t asked Eli Acosta, Básica’s owner and principal bike-maker.
Petite and fast-talking, Acosta moves through the shop with the labyrinthine intimacy one gets when they live and breathe a space, her intensity of purpose broken only when a contagious grin occasionally spreads across her face.
Making bikes by hand is not a game for the mild-mannered or weak-willed. The world no longer has patience for the time and skill required of great craftsmanship, and Acosta has encountered a few hurdles on her way to becoming Mexico’s famed female bike builder.
No small amount of the struggle, according to her, is due to her own rebellious nature.
“I never felt like I had a space,” she says recounting her struggles in school while growing up, in particular with authority. “I remember one time my mom said to me, ‘Eli, this is it. I don’t know how else to help you. You are going to have to find your way alone.’”
Acosta invited the other two women on her bike-building team and taught them everything she knew. PJ Rountree
She was 17 then — rebellious, lost. She finished high school but didn’t want to head back into the education system for college. She struggled to figure out her path.
Somewhere in the midst of her search, she bought a bike and began to reconnect to the city on two wheels.
“I remember having these feelings, like hanging out with my friends and thinking, ‘I wish I were riding my bike.’ And it wasn’t like I was going through parks or anything, I rode down Tlapan [Avenue], out to Coyoacán and the Cineteca [Nacional México], that kind of thing.”
Something about the freedom of riding got deep under her skin.
When fellow cyclist Liliana Castillo Reséndiz was hit by a car on her bike and killed, it ignited an activist streak in the young Acosta, and she began to participate in protests for cycling rights and got more deeply involved in the biking community in Mexico City.
But not until she started working with bike sellers in the city to trick out vintage bikes did her long-lasting love affair with the ins and outs of bike construction begin.
One of the studio’s recent custom-built bikes, made with lightweight but strong chromoly steel. Básica Facebook
“I started to understand the mechanics of bikes and how they are made,” she explains. “Above all, [the bikes I was selling] started to have problems with the frames, and that made me ask myself, ‘Why? Bikes are really simple; what’s going on?’”
Acosta sought out one of the only remaining manufacturers of handmade bikes in the city at the time, Manuel Valerio, to see if she could glean something from his years of knowledge. After some insistent pestering, he acceded to having her around, but she found in Valerio a reticent and, at times, belligerent teacher.
He was tight-lipped about his work and not forthcoming with his knowledge — even more so with a woman. She spent almost four years observing him work in the shop he built in Itzapalapa. Only after endlessly patient hours was she able to work on her first bike in fits and starts, and then only when he wasn’t around.
“He wasn’t particularly rude or anything, but I was able to see, by watching him with his family and other people, that he didn’t want a woman [in his shop] and that he didn’t like sharing what he knew because he thought that someone would come along and take his work,” Acosta says. “He [also] lacked a lot of knowledge about certain things like geometry and didn’t want me to see that.”
When things finally came to a head with Valerio, her mother — who while ignorant of the bike business knew the determination of her daughter — offered to loan her the money to buy the equipment she needed to build bikes on her own.
In the Atea arts and architecture collective in the Merced neighborhood, Acosta set up a workshop and production space for other tradespeople and artists, and there she found a community of like-minded souls with whom to share her passion, one of them being Jesús López, now her partner at Básica.
Acosta decided to make her own bikes from scratch after realizing many of her bikes’ frames weren’t that strong. Básica Facebook
While she’s adamant that the support of López and her team of male mechanics are part of why her shop is so successful, it’s obvious that the group of women making bikes with her in the back is her pride and joy.
“From the time I started working on my own … I really had this idea of having an all-women team [in my shop],” she says.
Jimena Palomino and Elein Lacy joined the team just this year, when, as Acosta puts it, she called them into her life by visualizing an awesome team of women working together to build bikes. Lacy trained as a petroleum engineer but rejected her expected career path and was doing deliveries by bicycle at the time. Palomino was a bike messenger, an industrial designer and a bike polo player.
“At first I was just interested in the mechanics part,” says Lacy, “The idea of making bikes seemed impossible to me; it was like something unreachable. I couldn’t imagine there would be an opportunity to learn because there isn’t anyone anymore who makes bikes and nobody to teach bike-making.”
“I was looking at some of [Acosta’s] InstaStories [on the online social media platform Instagram], and in one of them, Elein and Eli were there together,” says Palomino. “[Acosta] wrote something like ‘I hope I can create a team of women builders,’ and I was like, ‘Me! Please!’ Then, when I wrote her, she wrote back and said, ‘Yeah, come on down [to the shop].’”
“Something that has given me a lot of strength is to observe them and know that when there is motivation to learn and motivation to teach, it’s a much faster process than what I experienced,” says Acosta. “For me, it’s really, really awesome to teach something that required so much work for me to learn.”
Lacy and Palomino enjoy a work break in the Básica studio. PJ Rountree
While Acosta has strong feelings about the benefits of cycling and the need for cycling rights to be respected in the city, her true personal passion is one that reflects her perfectionist nature — she wants to build bikes that last forever.
“Bikes have always represented for me a way to use cars less, make my commute more efficient and be much happier, like 100% happier,” she says. “So I imagine that if we were all to start using bikes, we would be able to reduce pollution levels. But I am more focused on the idea that the bikes I make, despite the fact that they do involve dirty processes like making metal, will work for a lifetime.”
On this Thursday afternoon, Básica buzzes with energy. Sounds of spray can be heard from the paint cabin as Lacy solders a bike frame in one corner and Acosta goes over a purchase with a new customer. A dog named Tiggy, the shop mascot, holds court among cyclists that stop by to gossip and ogle the handcrafted frames on the wall, which also has a hodgepodge of cycling memorabilia and bike art.
Palpable in the flurry of all this activity is the contented vibe of Básica’s team. In this tiny corner of the Juárez neighborhood, Acosta has reignited an appreciation for bike craftsmanship in Mexico City, one that is sure to pedal far beyond the crowded entryway of her shop and out into the world.
To get to know Básica’s bike manufacturing studio in Mexico City (and see a portrait of Tiggy, the shop mascot), visit their Instagram page.
Lydia Carey is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily.
President López Obrador expressed satisfaction with Monday's low homicide total.
November was the least violent month since President López Obrador took office in December 2018, federal data shows.
There were 2,593 homicides last month, the lowest monthly figure since February 2018.
Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez reported Monday that homicides declined 3.8% in the first 11 months of 2021 compared to the same period of 2020. Month-over-month declines were recorded in each of the past four months.
There was a total of 30,693 homicides between January and November for an average of 92 per day.
Rodríguez said that homicides in Mexico’s 50 most violent municipalities have declined 1.8% since the government ramped up security efforts in late July. Between August and November, there were 4,555 homicides in those municipalities, among which are Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, León, Acapulco and Guadalajara.
The reduction in homicide numbers also came up at President López Obrador’s morning press conference on Tuesday.
After noting that the murder rate is on the wane, the president declared that Monday wasn’t a bad day because there were only 68 homicides. His boast attracted an avalanche of criticism on social media.
“Mr. [President], there are 300 homicides a year in Spain. Don’t say stupid things. When someday no one in the country is killed, brag then,” said one Twitter user.
“He probably said that because of those 68 homicides none involved [a member of] his ‘distinguished family.’ He’s more removed from reality every day and it’s clear he doesn’t care about the country or its inhabitants,” said another.
