The majority of those who do read say they were encouraged to do so as children.
The percentage of Mexicans who read has declined to a record low, according to a national survey, but those who do read are reading more.
Among literate adults, 71.6% read a book, magazine, newspaper or internet page in the 12 months ending February 2021, according to the results of a survey published this week by the national statistics institute, Inegi.
The percentage of literate adults who read has been declining since 2016, a year in which Inegi found that 80.8% of such people had read something in the previous 12 months. The latest result, a 0.8% decline compared to last year’s survey, is the lowest since the statistics institute began canvassing citizens’ reading habits.
The most recent survey also found that Mexican adults read an average of 3.7 books in the 12-month period, an increase of 12% compared to two years ago and 3% compared to one year ago. The average among women was slightly higher, at 3.9, and slightly lower among men, at 3.5.
Just over four in 10 respondents – 43% – said they had read at least one book during that time, an increase of 1.9% compared to the previous survey. That figure is 2.9% lower than that found by the 2016 survey.
Mexicans who have studied to a university level are much more likely to read than those who didn’t complete their basic school education, Inegi found.
Among the former cohort, nine of 10 said they had read a book, magazine, newspaper or internet page in the previous 12 months while only five in 10 of the latter cohort said the same.
People with a university education read for an average of 50 minutes per reading session while those who didn’t finish their school studies read for only 35 minutes.
About four in 10 respondents – 41.6% – said they mainly read for pleasure while 25.1% said that they read for professional or educational purposes. Just under one in five respondents said they read for “general culture” purposes – to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world or to have topics of conversation with friends – while 11.6% said that the motivation for their reading was religion.
The survey also found that the percentage of people who read e-books has increased from 6.8% in 2016 to 21.5% in February 2021. A similar percentage of respondents – 21.3% – read online newspapers, up from 5.6% in 2016.
However, the printed word is still far more popular than the digital one, Inegi found. More than 70% of respondents prefer physical books, magazines and newspapers over digital ones.
More than three-quarters of adults who read said that they received encouragement to do so at home and/or school, underscoring the importance of promoting reading among children.
“The promotion of reading at school and home is a path for social development,” Inegi said, adding that reading allows people to develop critical thinking skills and brings them closer to “expressions of culture.”
Among the respondents who said they hadn’t read anything in the previous 12 months, the most commonly cited reason was a lack of time. Other reasons for not reading included a lack of interest, a lack of motivation and a dislike for the practice.
"Mujer Pájaro en la selva" (Bird Woman in the Rainforest), from the Mujer Pájaro series by Baja California artist Alejandra Phelts.
The border looms large for all Mexicans who live near it whether or not they cross, says artist Alejandra Phelts, simply because there is a concept of “another side.”
“They say that we in the north are agringado (gringofied) … that we are a mix — a mezcla … We are, but we also have many ‘national’ [Mexican] values that are more strongly seen because we contrast ourselves with ‘the other.’”
Phelts’ work reflects this by being both strongly international and Mexican at the same time.
The movement of peoples nationally and internationally defines the north, especially Baja California. Phelts, born in 1978 in Mexicali, the youngest of five girls, is an example of this: her father migrated to the city when he was very young, eventually founding a university-level school there; her mother came later from Sonora.
Art was in the cards for young Alejandra — her parents met in an art history class and as she grew up the house was filled with books about the subject — but it took time to find her passion. Her first creative endeavor was singing classical music in churches and at events.
“Habana Nights” from the Car Series.
She blames the lack of art education in Mexicali for her not thinking about the visual arts at an earlier age.
When she was 17, she decided she wanted to leave Baja and see something of the world. Her family has European heritage, including an aunt who speaks French and encouraged her to study the language.
Studying in France became the logical choice, and she attended the Institut Privé de Philosophie et Théologie Saint Jean in 1998. Here, she had more exposure to the visual arts, going to museums to see classic works and meeting a sculptor who lived in her building.
Phelts says now that her purpose in going to France was not to see the world but rather to find out something about herself.
Upon returning to Mexicali, she still did not dive right into making art. The city had a new art education program, allowing her to get a credential in teaching all kinds of arts to children. Older and able to travel regularly to Tijuana, she gravitated to the Centro Cultural Universitario de Tijuana (CECUT), the region’s main arts center.
She first went to check out the classical music but wound up in the workshop of artist and teacher Alvaro Blancarde, a major figure in promoting the visual arts in Baja. It was the first time she saw a professional artist’s studio in her home state.
Tijuana artist Alejandra Phelts in her studio.
Both it and the man impressed her. He was also impressed with her, stating unequivocally that while teaching art is noble, she needed to be producing as well.
Since 2001, Phelts has worked in installation, photography, painting, drawing and more. Her first exhibition was in Tijuana, and then came an opportunity to create a mural at the University of California in San Diego, boosting her confidence.
Since then, her work has been exhibited in various parts of Mexico, the United States, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Peru, the Middle East, France and Canada. She was invited to present at TEDx Tijuana in 2013, and in 2016 she represented Mexico as a cultural attaché during a meeting of the G20.
Her creative output focuses on human relationships to the environment and each other. Much is related to her family life — both while growing up and as the mother of two today.
Her work now focuses on the human body (and its accoutrements), but even an early series on automobiles had a family link inspired by vehicles she and her mother owned and how they interacted with others on the road.
Two of her series illustrate Phelts’ worldview best: Costura (Sewing) is a tribute to her upbringing. She calls her mother, Susana Ramos, who taught all her five daughters to sew, “an artist with fabric and a sewing machine.”
“Las Bordadoras” (The Embroiderers), from the Retratos Iluminados (Illuminated Portraits) series.
“I grew up in a world of color and forms without realizing it,” said Phelts. The clothing in the series reflects her heritage and experience in Europe, but the colors reflect the cross-border world of Baja California.
The series Retratos Iluminados (Illuminated Portraits) continues to examine the feminine but with more emphasis on faces and body language than in Costuras.
Both series are deeply personal, nostalgic and interested in the female experience. But they are also a strong reflection of the mixed and ever-changing world in which Phelts lives. Neither series looks “Mexican” at first glance until you look at them as a continuation of the work of Mexican artists like Frida Kahlo, Remedio Varo and María Izquierdo, who in various ways looked at the world around them and their role in it as women.
Phelts’ work continues examining what it means to be a woman in Mexico, but with a cross-cultural twist.
Today, she lives and works in a Tijuana suburb only four blocks from the ocean. It is curious to see an internationally recognized Mexican artist continue in the northwest of the country, but Tijuana offers pros as well as cons.
A benefit is that she has ready access to the U.S. art market, especially that in southern California, and does a lot of her business in English. A downside is that the local art market is weak and that Mexico’s art world is centered almost entirely on Mexico City.
“Confidencias” (Secrets) from the Costuras (Sewing) series.
Although Phelts cannot guarantee that she will always live here, she says that “Tijuana is a very, very interesting place.”
“As an artist, it offers you a kind of movement that an artistic sense needs to create.”
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
After years of complaints of animal abuse by activists, carriage drivers in Mérida, Yucatán, said they are ready to use electric carriages if authorities help pay for the change, according to Eduardo Echeverría, president of the carriage drivers’ union.
However, “we definitely do not have the economic means for this investment,” Echeverría said, noting that each electric vehicle would cost upward of 700,000 pesos (US $35,280).
With regard to animal abuse, Echeverría said there had only been isolated incidents and not a pattern of abuse.
“Animal abuse does not exist, it is the ideology of a group of people who demonize us. Our job is legal and one of the oldest professions in the city. It’s dignified work,” he said. “ The horse doesn’t work all day or every day, only seven or eight hours. We have an agreement with the Autonomous University of Yucatán for professional horse care. They have a good life, good food, good care.”
Echeverría noted that an animal rights group protested last weekend, demanding that the carriages be changed from horse-driven to electric.
“We would be in agreement, but we don’t have the money to invest … the municipal and state authorities would have to help us,” he said.
The first electric carriage began to circulate in Mérida in November 2019. It was a project funded by the local Green Party.
Archbishop Coppola leads a procession Friday through Aguililla, Michoacán.
Organized crime thrives where the state is absent, the Vatican’s ambassador to Mexico said Friday, offering a critical assessment of the federal government’s response to insecurity during a visit to the violence-stricken town of Aguililla, Michoacán.
“In Italy we know that the mafia flourishes where the state isn’t [present]. Private interests appear that try to impose themselves,” Archbishop Franco Coppola, papal nuncio to Mexico, said in Aguililla, where he met with locals, including victims of crime, and celebrated Mass.
Aguililla, a Tierra Caliente municipality 270 kilometers southwest of the state capital Morelia, has been plagued by violence in recent months as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cárteles Unidos vie for control but Coppola, an Italian who has been nuncio to Mexico since 2016, noted that the situation there is not unique.
“Unfortunately violence is not [just] characteristic of Michoacán [but] all of Mexico,” he said.
Indeed, 2020 was the second most violent year on record – despite the pandemic – with more than 34,000 homicides.
Coppola said the state does have the capacity to improve the security situation but must have the will to do so. The security contingent that accompanied him during his journey to Aguililla from Apatzingán on a highway that was impassable until earlier this week due to blockades set up by organized crime was evidence of that capacity, the nuncio said.
“If [the state] wants to, it can,” he declared. Referring to a procession through the streets of Aguililla in which he, other Catholic Church leaders and townsfolk took part on Friday morning, Coppola said: “These streets, overtaken by crime, have been walked on by the people with resurrected Christ.”
“I shared the photos on Facebook because I wanted my friends in Italy to see what happened but Facebook blocked the photos,” he told reporters.
“So I said, we’re going to go there and we’re going to flood the internet with what’s happening in Aguililla. … It’s very important that what’s happening is known. Bad people take advantage of silence.”
At a press conference after Friday’s Mass, Coppola, who has previously represented the Vatican in Burundi and Chad, said that former federal government officials had asked him not to talk about the high levels of cartel violence in Mexico so as to not scare off tourists. The warning came in 2018 during the government of then president Enrique Peña Nieto, he said.
Coppola: ‘We’re going to flood the internet with what’s happening in Aguililla.’
“… They said to me in the Foreign Ministry: ‘Monsignor, please don’t talk so much about the violence in Mexico, which is harmful to tourism, then people don’t come out of fear,’” Coppola said.
The apostolic nuncio also said he was generally surprised at the lack of public discussion about the security situation in Mexico, home of 18 of the 50 most violent cities in the world, according to a study published this week.
He said he wanted to visit Aguililla – where he was greeted by residents holding white balloons symbolic of their desire for peace – to show the Catholic Church’s support for the town.
“The duty of the church is to be on the side of the people, those who suffer, so I want to be here,” Coppola said.
The only other recent official acknowledgement of the troubles facing the community was a tour of the area earlier this month by Governor Silvano Aureoles. But the highlight of the visit proved to be an incident in which he was caught on video shoving a man protesting the violence in Aguililla.
To reach the town, Coppola passed through no fewer than five security checkpoints on the 84-kilometer-long Apatzingán-Aguililla highway, which was blocked for about four months by trenches, stones and vehicles, cutting off residents and interrupting supply chains for basic goods such as food and gasoline. Michoacán police and soldiers manned the various checkpoints to ensure the archbishop’s safe arrival in Aguililla.
Along the way, Coppola – accompanied by Apatzingán Bishop Cristóbal Ascencio, who invited him to visit Aguililla – waved to and blessed the residents of several small towns who lined the highway to welcome him.
The Jalisco cartel, which now has considerable influence in Aguililla – the municipality where its leader, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, was born – and other parts of Michocán as well as numerous other states, is accused of carrying out the drone attack, which injured two officers.
San Simón Zahuatlán, population 3,500, where just 70 seniors agreed to a Covid shot.
Covid vaccination brigades throughout Mexico are vaccinating seniors and in some states, demand is such that seniors have had to line up for hours for their shot.
But that wasn’t the case in two Oaxaca municipalities, where seniors decided en masse not to get the CanSino vaccine.
In San Simón Zahuatlán, seniors decided in a community assembly not to go for the vaccination, despite information provided by authorities about the safety of the shot.
The vaccination brigade administered shots to only 70 people. Only four coronavirus cases have been recorded in Zahuatlán.
Similarly, seniors in Santiago Texcalcingo opted out, with only 15 people deciding to get vaccinated out of 400 who were eligible. The area has had just one case of Covid-19 to date.
As of Friday, 10.52 million seniors had received at least one dose nationwide, according to the Ministry of Health.
Deputy Saúl Huerta is now facing a second accusation.
President López Obrador has spoken out on a sexual abuse case involving a Morena party lawmaker, something he has been reluctant to do in other recent accusations against members of his party.
The president said victims should present their claims for investigation in response to questions about a federal deputy who was accused of drugging and assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Saúl Huerta was arrested for the alleged assault but released through his immunity as a lawmaker. The boy, who worked for Huerta, said the deputy assaulted him this week in a Mexico City hotel room. The Mexico City Attorney General’s Office said it would seek to have the immunity removed if there was sufficient evidence.
Huerta said he is an innocent victim of an extortion attempt.
President López Obrador had previously remained quiet when lawmakers in his party, including two gubernatorial candidates, were accused of sexual assault. When specifically asked about the allegations against Huerta, the president said he condemned sexual abuse and the affected parties should present their complaints to authorities for investigation.
Carolina Beauregard, the opposition candidate for Huerta’s seat in Congress in the June 6 elections, said the full weight of the law should be applied if Huerta is found guilty.
The president’s statement comes after Ignacio Mier Velasco, the legislative leader of Morena in the lower house, said the alleged assault occurred in the lawmaker’s “private life” and was not related to his legislative work, a comment that triggered a public outcry. Mier later stated on Twitter that he rejected any attack on a minor.
As a result of the accusations, Huerta withdrew his candidacy for reelection.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in Mexico City said another accusation was made against Huerta on Friday. A 20-year-old man says he was sexually assaulted by him three years ago in San Francisco Totimehuacan, Puebla.
The HIPGive campaign will support nonprofit organizations in Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán.
Between the pandemic and two powerful tropical storms, it has been a tough year on the Yucatán Peninsula. In response, a crowdfunding platform called HIPGive.org has created a donation matching campaign for nonprofit organizations working on rural development in Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán.
The campaign is providing 1.5 million pesos (US $75,600) to match crowdfunded donations for a variety of small nonprofits. The initiative, known as #TierrasMayas, seeks to make 2021 “year of opportunities … to rebuild and redouble efforts toward more equitable development and shared prosperity in the region,” according to a press release.
Before the #TierrasMayas campaign, HIPGive provided select organizations with online training and guidance in crowdfunding and fundraising practices. The first stage of the campaign took place in November 2020 and matched more than 500,000 pesos in donations made to 15 nonprofits.
This year on May 6 and 27, HIPGive will match 1.2 million pesos, the largest sum of matching donations currently available in Mexico, the organization said.
The campaign will also offer additional funds to the organizations with the highest number of individual donors.
“This reflects the premise of #TierrasMayas: ‘we can all be philanthropists’ and the open invitation for more people to join the campaign through making a donation online. Supporting #TierrasMayas means investing in the reconstruction and resilience of rural communities on the Yucatán Peninsula, improving their living standards and boosting economic development. Through the crowdfunding model a small contribution, made by many people, can make a difference in an entire community.”
HIPGive.org is the digital branch of Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP), a network of donors whose goal is to strengthen Latin communities in the Americas, and calls itself “the first and only crowdfunding platform, focused on promoting Latin social impact projects and promoting generosity in the Americas …”
According to the HIP website, only 6.3% of U.S. foundation funding for international causes went to Latin America in 2014 and 2015. Of that, just 36% went directly to Latin American organizations.
“Traditional philanthropy has left many Latin nonprofits out, and few tools exist to facilitate investment by Latinos in the causes they care about. That leaves a critical gap.”
Since April 2014, over $3.6 million has been channeled to more than 1,000 Latin-focused nonprofits on HIPGive, the organization says.
The number of green light low risk states will fall to six from eight on Monday after the federal Health Ministry presented an updated coronavirus stoplight map on Friday.
There will be 20 yellow light medium risk states during the next two weeks, an increase of one compared to the map currently in effect, and six orange light high risk states, also an increase of one. For the fifth consecutive fortnight there will be no red light maximum risk states.
Each stoplight color, determined by the Health Ministry using 10 different indicators including case numbers and hospital occupancy levels, is accompanied by recommended restrictions to slow the spread of the virus but it is ultimately up to state governments to decide on their own restrictions.
The green light states between April 26 and May 9 will be Chiapas, Campeche, Coahuila, Veracruz, Jalisco and Guanajuato. The first four states are already green while Jalisco and Guanajuato will switch from yellow because their coronavirus situations have improved.
The yellow light states will be Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Durango, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Colima, Michoacán, Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Morelos, Puebla, Querétaro, Oaxaca, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Nayarit, México state and Yucatán.
The first 14 states are already yellow, Oaxaca, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Nayarit will switch from green after the Health Ministry deemed that their risk level has increased and México state and Yucatán will advance from orange due to an improved coronavirus situation.
México state Governor Alfredo del Mazo said Friday that hospital occupancy levels had decreased in the state, which has recorded the second highest number of coronavirus cases and Covid-19 deaths among the 32 states after Mexico City.
Businesses in the state, which includes many municipalities that are part of the Mexico City metropolitan area, will be permitted to extend their opening hours and increase capacity starting Monday.
“It’s important to say that even though we’ve progressed a lot, we are still at risk of infection. The yellow stoplight means that we still have a latent risk,” del Mazo said.
Coronavirus restrictions will also ease in Yucatán on Monday due to that state’s switch to yellow, while Querétaro authorities relaxed rules on Friday after they, contrary to the federal Health Ministry, deemed that the risk level had declined.
Businesses in Querétaro were permitted to extend their opening hours and capacity levels until at least May 9 due to the state’s shift to so-called Scenario A restrictions, while the Corregidora stadium will be allowed to fill to 30% of capacity for this Sunday’s Liga MX soccer match between Querétaro F.C. and F.C. Juárez. Social events of up to 200 people are also now permitted in the state.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
Health authorities warned citizens to not drop their guard and remain alert to the risk of infection during the Scenario A period.
The six orange light states during the next two weeks will be Mexico City, Chihuahua, Baja California Sur, Hidalgo, Tabasco and Quintana Roo. The first three states are already orange while the last three will switch from yellow.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the capital – Mexico’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic – is very close to switching to medium risk yellow. In fact, there is a chance that Mexico City authorities will announce a downgrade to the risk level next Friday, which would take effect the following Monday.
“We’re still on the orange light but we’re calling next week’s stoplight ‘toward yellow,’” said government official Eduard Clark.
There are still more than 9,000 estimated active cases in Mexico City but new infections are on the wane, Clark said.
The capital has recorded almost 635,000 confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic and 41,472 Covid-19 fatalities, figures that respectively account for 27.3% and 19.3% of Mexico’s accumulated case tally and official death toll.
The national case tally currently stands at 2.32 million while the official death toll is 214,504, although the federal government has acknowledged that the real number of Covid-19 fatalities is well above 300,000. There are 27,615 active cases across the country, according to Health Ministry estimates.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell reported at Friday night’s coronavirus press briefing that 397,292 Covid-19 vaccine doses were administered on Friday, pushing the total number of doses given to 15.87 million. Most of the shots have gone to health workers and seniors, although the number of vaccinated teachers is now rising quickly as authorities seek to reopen schools more than a year after they closed.
As of Friday night, Mexico had received 21.61 million doses of five vaccines – Pfizer, AstraZeneca, SinoVac, Sputnik V and CanSino – meaning that about three-quarters of those delivered have been used.
Women protesting gender violence in Cuernavaca, Morelos.
Women in Morelos are now legally permitted to carry a range of nonlethal defensive weapons such as retractable batons, pepper spray and tasers.
The state Congress passed a reform to the criminal code that allows women to carry such weapons last December, but the law wasn’t promulgated until last week.
Morena party Deputy Ariadna Barrera Vázquez presented the bill, arguing that it was necessary because violence against women, including sexual assaults, is on the rise in Morelos, a small state located immediately south of Mexico City.
She presented 2018 data that showed that more than 82% of women felt unsafe in the state, up from 74.7% in 2013. There were 84 femicides in Morelos last year, and at least 10 in the first three months of 2021.
“Violence against women is a reality, … I dare to say that 10 out of 10 women have been victims of some kind of gender violence,” Barrera said in the Congress.
Another indicator of the situation Morelos women face is that a gender alert — which indicates high levels of violence against women — has been active in eight of the state’s 36 municipalities, including Cuernavaca, since 2015.
Allowing women to carry weapons of self-defense gives them a “greater feeling of security,” according to the reform. Access to nonlethal weapons allows women to protect themselves in the face of an attack or act of aggression that threatens their physical integrity or even their lives, it says.
Prior to the reform taking effect, possession of nonlethal weapons such as pepper spray and tasers for self-defense purposes was punishable by imprisonment of up to three years.
Barrera pointed out that the minimum term for a person convicted of sexual assault is two years. Therefore, she said, a woman who used pepper spray on a man assaulting her could theoretically go to prison for longer than her aggressor.
The legalization of women’s right to carry nonlethal weapons in Morelos was not well received by some women’s groups, the newspaper El Universal reported. One such group is Huitzitzilin, which defends the rights of women and children.
President Ana Carina Chumacero said that a better idea would be to provide education aimed at reducing violence to society in general. She also said that women would feel safer if police knew how to respond in cases of gender violence.
“I believe there are a lot of tools that we could use to build peace” instead of arming women, Chumacero said.
Charlie, a guest and trainee at Club Canino, takes a rest after a session on how to be a good boy.
“Birds fly, bears growl and dogs bark. That’s how things are!”
This seems to be the favorite refrain of dog owners in Mexico when neighbors complain about the noise.
I may tend to believe it in regards to birds and bears, but when it comes to dogs my mind immediately goes back to many, many delightful episodes of the TV series The Dog Whisperer, where I sat in open-eyed wonder watching Mexican-born César Millán perform what truly seemed like miracles, over and over. The mild-mannered, unflappable Leader of the Pack would knock on a door, and when it opened we would be introduced to the meanest four-legged monster that ever trampled upon the surface of the earth. Then we would meet the dog’s owners: trembling, distraught and frequently bleeding from their ogre’s latest love bite.
César would simply smile and, explaining that this dog was just “out of balance,” would then make an unexpected little sound like psst! — which had the most extraordinary effect upon the poor creature. By the end of the show, the unbalanced monster had turned into a perfectly normal, well-behaved pet, its owners staring in wide-eyed amazement and gratitude at the wonderful change.
“So why does my community sound like a dog pound every night?” I asked myself. “And why have my friends and I all received dog bites? Haven’t my neighbors learned the power of a psst?”
Guillermo “Memo” Ortiz at his computer, where he keep tabs on his doggy guests in their hotel “suites.” Owners can follow along via smartphone.
When I mentioned all this to my friend Paul, he said, “Don’t you know we have our own dog whisperer right here in the neighborhood? Last year, I was going off to Europe for a few weeks, so I left my dog Charlie — who was very young and undisciplined and overly frisky — at Hacienda La Venta Club Canino, which is a very nice dog hotel. They told me they also did dog training. When I came back, Charlie had been transformed. He would heel, he would sit, he would lie down when he was told to, he would come when he was told to, he would wait for me outside the house — and I like the way the trainer Memo did it: using rewards, not punishments.”
One day, I decided to check out Club Canino, located in the town of La Venta del Astillero, a 10-minute drive west of Guadalajara and just a five-minute walk from the community where I live.
Behind a big gate I found a beautiful, wide, grass-covered patio surrounded by hacienda-like arches. All the dogs’ rooms face the patio, and each room has a window so that the guests can keep an eye on everything that’s going on outside. Besides that, each suite has a closed-circuit camera so that the owner can keep an eye on the dog via smartphone.
The founder and director of this inviting place, Guillermo Ortiz, sat me down in a nice shady spot at the edge of the patio. When Memo, as he calls himself, told me he had been working with dogs all his life, I asked him how canines look at the world.
“Basically, the dog sees the world through his nose. It’s through his sense of smell that a dog knows if you are afraid, if you are sad, if you are happy,” he said. “Each of us is a chemical factory, and we are constantly giving off hormones according to our estado de ánimo, our mood. All of this the dog perceives, so he is able to read us much better than we are able to read him.
“Dogs have been at man’s side for more than 30,000 years, plenty of time for them to figure out exactly what we are expressing, even if we ourselves don’t know. As for us humans, we aren’t nearly as good at reading dogs … but we can learn. We can observe their facial expressions, their vocalizations, the position of their tail, their posture, their body language. And with all this, we can hope to understand their inner state. Are my dog’s ears erect, relaxed, pointing forward, pointing back? All of these things we can learn to read.”
Ortiz takes a moment to greet a couple of of his canine customers.
I asked Memo to tell me something about training dogs.
“Some dogs are aggressive. People have brought us different breeds. For example, pit bulls and bull terriers can have this problem. Here we’ve had very good results, and it’s not unusual to change their behavior 100%. Whatever the case, we’ve always seen an improvement,” he said.
“Every dog is different. We have to look carefully at each particular case before deciding what techniques to use for each dog, but in general, it’s important to give a dog confidence, to let him know that what we want from him is a friendly relation with other dogs, that nothing bad will happen to him if he does what we are asking. In extreme cases, it’s important to draw their attention every single time a situation arises and to reward them whenever they accept the presence of another dog. The corrections we use are always in the language that they understand. We don’t hit dogs or mistreat them. We use the technique that the dog’s mother used when it was a puppy, to touch the dog in certain places, to put it into a position of submission, everything within the language of canine psychology.
“Here’s an example: once we had a dog named Kida with a problem. She was a pit bull, and she fought with every dog she saw until her owner reached the point where she simply couldn’t take Kida outside at all. Kida’s rehabilitation took about one month, and at the end, her owner could take her for a walk anywhere, passing other dogs with no problem. The case of another American Pit Bull Terrier named Bruno — who had been used in dog fights — was much more severe. Bruno needed four months to learn to tolerate other dogs.”
I asked Memo if he also did home visits.
“Yes, we offer classes at people’s homes. The class lasts 45 minutes, but it’s not for the dog, it’s for the owner, so they learn how to manage their dog. Most problems caused by dogs are actually being provoked by their owners.
Ortiz with his dog show trophies.
“We also give classes here at our installation. When it comes to more difficult cases, the dog stays here with us for as long as necessary. Every time the owner comes to visit the dogs, we explain the advances we’ve seen and eventually the dog goes back to its home.”
Finally, I brought up the subject of barking. “Can anything be done about it?”
“Here we offer training for dogs with problems of conduct or with traumas,” he said. “The problem of excessive barking is usually due to excessive energy or boredom, and we can use certain techniques to reduce the noise. We may not always achieve 100% success, but we usually see at least a 50% to 60% improvement.
“I’m thinking, for example, of a German Shepherd named Luna. The owners lived in Villa Real, and the problem was that Luna barked all day long and never stopped. So we worked with her, and the result is that today she barks only occasionally, like any normal dog.”
“What did you do to bring about this change?” I asked.
“It’s simple: exercise, training and the help of a special collar that produces a vibration when the dog barks. The training includes positive reinforcement every time the dog stays quiet for a while. When this happens you reward her, you pet her and you take her out to play, so she relates food and walks with keeping quiet. A lot of dogs bark because they want attention. What we have to do is convince them of the opposite: keeping quiet will get them what they want. As for the electronic collar, you can find it in specialized stores or you can get it from Mercado Libre.”
After meeting Memo the dog trainer and watching several reruns of The Dog Whisperer, I now walk the cobblestone streets of my fraccionamiento (neighborhood) understanding that the cacophony of barking all around me comes from countless dogs who are stressed and unbalanced because their owners have made them that way.
Club Canino has 24 roomy “suites” where you can leave your dog when you’re on vacation. It also features a training path where you can practice heeling, climbing stairs, etc. For more information, see their Facebook page or call Memo Ortiz at 333 140 8268.
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.
