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Puebla town’s artisans keep alive traditions going back nearly 1,000 years

By
Joseph Sorrentino
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The front of Armando Contreras’s workshop is filled with carved marble and onyx figures, including this iguana.
The front of Armando Contreras’ workshop is filled with carved marble and onyx figures, including this iguana. All photos by Joseph Sorrentino

The workshop where blocks of marble and onyx are turned into figures, bowls and lamps is layered with dust. Toward the back, Francisco Camargo carefully guides a saw as it cuts through the edge of a piece of marble he’s been shaping into a bowl.

The saw whines as it spins at 3,700 revolutions per minute. Water pouring down from the saw onto the marble keeps it cool and prevents it from cracking. On the floor around him, water has mixed with the dust to form a slurry. Despite the mess, Álvaro Meza Hernández — Camargo’s boss and the owner of Mezher, a store specializing in all things made from marble and onyx — is happy.

“I like to come here and work still,” he said. “One day, two days. I love it.”

Tecali de Herrera, the pueblo where Mezher and dozens of other stores sell items made from marble and onyx, is about 30 miles southeast of Puebla. The word tecali is from Náhuatl, usually translated as “house of stone.” The pueblo was first settled in the 12th century by the indigenous Chichimecas and became known back then for its marble and onyx figures. Their work was so prized that they had to send pieces as tribute to Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire.

According to a plaque in front of the zócalo, Franciscan friars arrived in 1540 and built the pueblo’s first convent. A second convent — whose construction was begun in 1569, according to the Mexican government — was built on top of the first, and the ruins of that one still stand. Although it’s one of the pueblo’s main tourist attractions, it’s been closed due to the pandemic. It can still be seen from a distance, although the view is through a fence.

Cutting through marble can be dangerous. The saw can slip.
Cutting through marble can be dangerous. The saw can slip.

Mezher was founded by Meza’s father. With two locations, it is one of the largest retailers in Tecali.

“I started working here 50 years ago,” said Meza. His children are the third generation to learn the craft of shaping marble and onyx. “It is complicated to learn,” he said. “It depends on a person’s ability. Out of 10,000 people, maybe 20 have the ability to do good work. Fortunately, the family has this ability.”

Anyone interested in working with marble and onyx must first learn how to polish and sand the stones and then how to clean them with muriatic acid. “One needs to make perfect movements to polish,” said Meza. “All of the work must be detailed.”

With time and practice, if they’re one of the few with talent for this kind of work, a person moves on to making small pieces.

“It takes at least four years of training to start making pieces of medium quality,” Meza said. “It takes at least 10 years to make a good artisan. To make a fine sculpture takes 15 years of training. To become a master, one needs good hands and a good mind and, more than anything, creativity.”

The bowl that Camargo is working on started out as a block of onyx.

Álvaro Meza Hernández, the owner of the Mezher artisan workshop, rinses clean his finished bowl.
Álvaro Meza Hernández, the owner of the Mezher artisan workshop, rinses clean his finished bowl.

“One needs to know the stone beforehand because there are many imperfections,” he explained.

When Camargo, who has worked for Meza for a decade, spots an imperfection, he marks it and then fills it in with epoxy to strengthen the stone. Although the imperfections, when pointed out, are clear, it takes years of training to tell a stone’s quality. “I can tell a good or bad rock with touch,” said Meza, “not with the eyes.”

When the stone is judged to be of high enough quality and the imperfections are adequately prepared, Camargo uses the saw to make the initial cuts and then chips out the thin pieces with a hammer and chisel. “The strokes are made as the craftsman creates something artistically,” Meza said. “He will make deep and gentle cuts, adding creative touches.”

Close attention must be paid when using the saw because the piece can be quickly pulled forward, cutting a person’s arm or hand. “It is very dangerous at first.”

A fine white powder covers the finished pieces, and this is removed by washing them with muriatic acid, a step which brings out the stone’s colors. Meza washed a bowl without using gloves. “It does not hurt,” he assured me.

The acid bubbles as it works, and when it stops bubbling, the bowl is dipped into water. After several washings, it had a lustrous shine.

Alvaro Meza Hernández
Meza applies muriatic acid onto a piece to bring out the stone’s colors.

In addition to the workshop where smaller items are made, Meza has another much larger workshop where huge blocks of marble and onyx — some weighing as much as 30 tonnes — are turned into tables and counters. His is the only shop in Tecali that can cut blocks that large, and he often cuts them for other stores in the pueblo. Tables and countertops are made by first cutting the blocks into slabs using very large, frightening-looking saws. Slabs are then cut to size by another smaller but still frightening-looking saw, then polished to bring out the colors.

Meza’s store sells mostly small to medium-sized figures, but anyone interested in finding a figure large enough to place on a front lawn will find plenty of options along the main road in Tecali. The front of Armando Contreras’s workshop is filled with figures that measure three or four feet. There are figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a Buddha or two and a striking rendition of an iguana.

“That took two weeks to make,” said Contreras, “and at least six to eight years to learn how to make it.”

Mezher and other stores in Tecali sell all sorts of items made from marble and onyx. “There are different types … that are used for sculptures and for decorative figures,” Meza said. The onyx used in Tecali is sometimes referred to as Mexican onyx and can be distinguished from marble by the beautiful bands of color that run through it.

“The colors come from sediments, water, minerals and contaminants,” he said. “Where there are no contaminants, there are no colors, and light can pass through. Onyx is used for lamps because it is translucent.”

For the uninitiated, it can still be difficult at times to tell marble and onyx apart. “I can tell … because of my experience,” Meza said. “Onyx is more crystalline.”

Francisco Camargo works on a marble slab.
Francisco Camargo works on a marble slab.

He paused a moment while he searched for other words.

“It is really impossible to explain.”

Joseph Sorrentino, a writer and photographer, is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily. More examples of his photographs and links to other articles may be found at www.sorrentinophotography.com  He currently lives in Chipilo, Puebla.

Drought conditions now affect 82.9% of Mexican territory; northeast is worst affected

By
MND Staff
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Most critical locations are in Sonora and Chihuahua.
Most critical locations are in Sonora and Chihuahua. conagua

More than four-fifths of Mexico’s territory is currently in drought, according to the National Water Commission (Conagua), a situation that poses a significant threat to farmers’ capacity to produce food.

The percentage of territory experiencing drought conditions increased to 82.9% from 80.4% over the past two weeks, Conagua said in a new report. About 60% of Mexico’s approximately 2,500 municipalities are currently in drought.

National Meteorological Service (SMN) chief Jorge Zavala said that the area of land considered in drought in Durango, Sinaloa, Chiapas and Veracruz has recently increased.

He said that the northeast of Mexico, which includes the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, is the nation’s worst affected area, with 39.3% of its territory in severe drought and 1.7% facing exceptional drought conditions.

Several municipalities in Chihuahua and Sonora are also facing the latter, while the drought in the Cutzamala River basin area, which includes parts of México state and Michoacán, worsened considerably in the second half of February. Two-thirds of the basin is now in severe drought and one-third is in moderate drought, according to the SMN.

drought map
Yellow indicates abnormally dry; other colors indicate, from light to dark, moderate, severe, extreme and exceptional drought. conagua

Zavala said there has been 25.3% less rainfall so far this year compared to the average for the same period between 1981 and 2010.

Conagua official Luis Antonio Aguilar Meza said in late February that 83 of Mexico’s 210 most important dams were less than 50% full and that only three were at 100% capacity.

Martín Jiménez, a member of the Mexican Hydraulic Association, said in an interview that Mexico has endured droughts for centuries but their severity and the area of territory they affect have increased over the past decade.

He said agriculture and industry are both affected by the lack of water and that access to drinking water is also a concern.

“The main thing that should interest us is the reduction of potable water. We have to remember that Mexico is on the same latitude as the Sahara Desert. Because of this geographic condition [Mexico] tends to be barren and has arid areas,” Jiménez said.

María Emilia Beyer, a National Autonomous University (UNAM) biologist, said that drought has made it very difficult for farmers in some regions to maintain their capacity to provide sufficient food for themselves, their families and their local communities. She cited farming areas near Hermosillo, Sonora, and Juchitán, Oaxaca, as examples.

“Large farmers can bring in water from elsewhere and make certain adjustments but campesinos … don’t have the capacity to do that,” Beyer said.

She said that a growing global population and climate change will make drought a more frequent occurrence in many parts of the world, adding that the lack of water could trigger international disputes. Beyer also noted that there are already “climate migrants” who have left their homes to escape oppressive drought conditions.

Adrián Pedrozo, head of the UNAM hydrological observatory, a project that monitors rainfall and water storage in Mexico, said that droughts are not necessarily catastrophic phenomena but acknowledged that they are “stressful.”

He said that the measures to prevent and respond to droughts can be split into two different categories. There has to efficient use of water in homes, agriculture and industry and policies to promote that, while Mexico also needs more infrastructure to store water and transport it effectively to its final destination, Pedrozo said.

The construction of new dams, water storage systems and wastewater treatment plants can help to prevent and alleviate drought, he said.

“… We have to speak with biologists, meteorologists, geophysicists and other scientists [to find solutions to the drought problem]. It won’t be easy because each [profession] has its own view but it’s something that we need to do because if we don’t the future will catch up with us,” Pedrozo said.

Source: Excélsior (sp), Infobae (sp), Milenio (sp)

AMLO defends measures to protect palace, points to possibility of drone attack

By
MND Staff
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soldiers with anti-drone devices.
Snipers on the roof? No, soldiers with anti-drone devices.

President López Obrador has defended the use of anti-drone technology to prevent the unmanned aerial vehicles from flying over the National Palace during Monday’s International Women’s Day protest, claiming that they could have been used to attack the seat of government.

Members of the military were deployed to the roof of the National Palace and used drone defenders to stop any possible aerial incursion during the protest, a deployment that caused panic among some protesters as the devices resemble high-caliber weapons, especially from a distance.

Speaking at his news conference on Wednesday, López Obrador said that drones could have been used to start a fire at the National Palace or even drop a bomb on it.

He said an attack was possible because there are people who want to generate negative publicity for the government, which has been heavily criticized for inaction on women’s rights, and the country.

The president laughed off reports that the government had deployed snipers to the National Palace roof and said that he had information that radical protesters planned to set the main door of the building on fire.

The president attacked foreign media Tuesday
The president attacked foreign media Tuesday, accusing them of participating in the looting of Mexico under past governments.

“I had information, it’s my job, I don’t have espionage groups but there is intelligence – what the people tell me. The intelligence is in the people, … the information I had is that they wanted to burn the palace door, … imagine that. So we had to install the wall,” López Obrador said, referring to the metal barricade erected around the National Palace before Monday’s protest.

The president also said Wednesday that he was not in favor of the prosecution of anyone who committed acts of violence during the event, among whom were men wearing hoods, according to the Mexico City government.

(There were clashes between protesters and police and the former succeeded in pulling down a section of the barricade. More than 60 police and about 20 protesters sustained injuries.)

“My opinion is that nobody should be prosecuted because above all they’ll feel like victims. There shouldn’t be any punishment. I believe that the punishment in this case is the public condemnation for what they did. The people don’t look kindly on the use of violence, besides it’s a contradiction,” López Obrador said.

“I believe that the crudest, most terrible expression of machismo is violence. Machismo is violence. Therefore, how can those against machismo exercise violence?”

The president said there are millions of women in Mexico fighting for equality and justice and asserted that their struggle is valid, legal and legitimate. However, López Obrador – who has been widely condemned for supporting the candidacy of an alleged rapist for governor of Guerrero – rejected the notion that he and his government should be the focus of women’s anger.

“We’ve been listening to the feelings of the people, men and women, for years and we are permanently fighting for [the rights of] women. In all the welfare programs, the majority of the beneficiaries are women and girls,” he said.

“… I’ve always attended to women, it’s a conviction, we don’t have any conscience problems because we’ve always supported women and the poorest women, those who were abandoned [by past governments],” López Obrador said.

At his press conference on Tuesday, the president said that provocateurs and infiltrators were responsible for violence at Monday’s protest. He also accused three foreign newspapers of not being objective in their coverage of it, claiming that they unduly criticized his government for provoking the violence because of its response, or lack thereof, to problems that afflict Mexican women such as gender violence.

The correspondents of The New York Times, The Guardian and Spanish newspaper El País are “representatives of companies that participated in the looting of Mexico in the neoliberal period,” López Obrador charged without providing any evidence to back up his claim. “They’re very annoyed because stealing and looting is not allowed anymore.”

Source: Reforma (sp), El Financiero (sp), El Universal (sp) 

Extending tourist stay under Covid: an opaque, frustrating and sometimes impossible process

By
Michelle Aguilar
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When the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, the chaos it created threw up an unexpected roadblock for people staying in Mexico under the Forma Migratoria Múltiple, commonly referred to as the FMM, a visitor’s permit (not a visa) which allows people from many countries (including the United States, Canada, and the Schengen area nations) to remain in Mexico for 180 days as a tourist.

But with the coronavirus making many think twice about traveling back to their home countries in the middle of a pandemic, some (but not all) of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) offices have been willing since last summer to extend an FMM for another 180 days. The process is by all accounts opaque, frustrating and, in some cases, impossible — but the requirements are fairly simple. You attest that because of Covid-19, you cannot return home.

However, not all offices will extend an FMM, warns Sonia Díaz, author of The Move to Mexico Bible and owner of a business based in Puerto Vallarta, the Riviera Nayarit and San Miguel de Allende that helps English speakers navigate Mexican bureaucracy. Some offices will tell you that with the borders to your country open and flights available, no extensions to FMMs will be granted, period.

So your first step is to do your homework and check first with your local immigration office. Some offices will refuse and advise you to overstay your FMM although that is illegal and you will likely face a fine for doing so when you exit the country.

“Even though INM is federal, each office has some autonomy when it comes to special programs,” Díaz said. “In Mexico, the greatest consistency is inconsistency.”

Your FMM should not yet be expired when you apply, she advised. However, if it has been expired for less than 60 days, some offices will still allow the extension but require you to prove your financial solvency, i.e., that you can afford to stay in Mexico. This can be somewhat onerous. See more about this at the bottom of this article.

Another option that became available last summer in some INM offices is a special one-year humanitarian temporary resident visa. However, this too is not available everywhere because it is an ad hoc adaptation of Mexico’s regular humanitarian visa — which was not meant to address the Covid-19 pandemic.

This new humanitarian visa frequently comes with a requirement for a validated doctor’s letter stating that you have health conditions that would endanger your life if you traveled outside Mexico and caught Covid, Díaz said. Again, check your local immigration office to find out if this type of visa is even offered there and what the requirements are.

This temporary visa does over some advantages over an extension of your FMM, the biggest being that it gives you a temporary CURP number, which is a federal identification number (not unlike a social security number in the U.S.) that allows you to do things an FMM does not, like giving you a card you can present everywhere as ID, getting a Mexican driver’s license and signing up for the Covid-19 vaccine on the nation’s vaccination website.

The humanitarian visa, in most cases, according to Díaz, does not require proof of financial solvency, but your FMM should not be expired when you apply.

Some things to know if you are asked to prove your financial solvency:

  • You must show evidence that you can support yourself and your family while in Mexico. The income requirements apply to each person in your family who is staying, including children.
  • Do a reconnaissance mission regarding financial requirements. According to Díaz, there is supposed to be a standard requirement: at least 35,848 pesos (US $1,715) per person in monthly salary or pension income or 1,792,400 pesos ($85,680) in assets, but your local immigration office staff hold the cards here. Ask beforehand.
  • Printouts of financial statements should be sufficient proof of your income and assets but be prepared to show up to 12 months of statements and know that INM officials may require your financial statements to be translated to Spanish.
  • If your name on financial statements and on your passport don’t match to the letter, immigration will probably give you trouble. “Names on passport and financials must match 10,000%,” said Díaz. “Larry R. Smith is not the same as Larry Robert Smith.”
    If you are caught in this position, one option may be to approach your consular office for a letter attesting to the fact that the two names belong to the same person.

Sonia Díaz’s Facebook page has more information about navigating extended stays in Mexico under Covid and other matters of Mexican bureaucracy.

Mexico News Daily

Auditor defends methodology used to calculate cost of abandoned airport

By
MND Staff
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Agustín Caso has been suspended while the audit is under investigation.
Agustín Caso has been suspended while the audit is under investigation.

A federal auditor has defended the methodology used to calculate the cost of canceling the previous government’s international airport project at Texcoco, México state, saying that it was consistent and internationally recognized.

The Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF) said in late February that canceling the new Mexico City airport project will cost almost 332 billion pesos (US $15.8 billion), an estimate more than three times higher than that of the federal government.

However, after President López Obrador rejected the estimate and called for the auditor’s office to explain how it reached the figure, the ASF said that there were “inconsistencies” in its calculation and that the audit was undergoing “exhaustive revision.”

In an appearance before an audit supervision committee of the lower house of Congress on Tuesday, ASF special performance auditor Agustín Caso – temporarily removed from the role as the revision takes place – denied that there was deceit or political motivation in the airport audit results.

(López Obrador canceled the partially-built US $15-billion project after a legally questionable public consultation held a month before he took office in late 2018.)

“The Federal Auditor’s Office adhered to due process and the [correct] methodology. …. There is no bad faith, there is no error,” Caso said.

The auditor said that if the ASF had acted in bad faith or inflated the cost of canceling the airport for political purposes – to damage the government, in other words – it would be a “serious issue” because the auditor’s office has a responsibility to “contribute to the good performance” of the government.

While denying that there were errors in the audit, Caso told deputies that he hadn’t come before them to defend the ASF figure and the validity of the audit process to such an extent as to completely repudiate other opinions.

“There are different perspectives and legal processes that air differences,” he acknowledged.

Caso pointed out that the Ministry of Communications and Transportation didn’t raise any objections to the audit result. He declined to respond to questions about the “inconsistencies” in the audit to which the ASF admitted because an investigation into them is currently taking place.

The federal government faced numerous legal challenges over its decision to cancel the Texcoco airport project and several injunctions were granted against the Santa Lucía airport, which is currently under construction at an Air Force base north of Mexico City.

The injunctions stalled work on the government’s cheaper alternative but they were ultimately unable to stop it. A new military base at the Santa Lucía facility was officially opened last month and the site’s commercial airport is expected to open in March 2022.

Source: Reforma (sp) 

Oaxaca chef incorporates indigenous Zapotec flavors into her baking

By
MND Staff
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Cupcakes by Nabi Aguilar of Unión Hidalgo.

A chef in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca is tantalizing taste buds with her culinary creations that boast a range of distinctive Zapotec flavors.

Nabila Nichdali Aguilar Bla, a 31-year-old Zapotec woman who studied at the Culinary School of the Southeast in Mérida, Yucatán, uses a variety of Isthmus cheeses and locally-grown fruits in her popular cakes and desserts.

After returning to her home town of Unión Hidalgo in the Juchitán district of the Isthmus region six months ago, Aguilar started experimenting with local ingredients as she put her years of training in traditional baking techniques to use.

She now uses three different types of cheese in her orange cakes and caramel custard flans to strike a perfect flavor balance between sweet and savory. One of the cheeses is known as quesu bidxi by the Zapotec people and is characterized by its saltiness and intense flavor.

The others are queso oreado, which also has a strong flavor but is less salty, and queso fresco de leche, which is made with cow’s milk.

A lime tiramisú is one of Chef Aguilar's creations.
A lime tiramisú is one of Chef Aguilar’s creations.

Locally-grown fruits also caught the eye of Aguilar, who ventured to start her own culinary business despite the difficulties of doing so during the coronavirus pandemic.

The young chef decided to use coyol, a fruit from a palm tree that is cultivated in Unión Hidalgo, in some of her cakes and desserts. She also flavors cold beverages with a whitish liquid known as taberna that is extracted from the same tree.

“The palm tree from which the taberna and coyol come is only cultivated in Unión Hidalgo; they are two gastronomic elements that are only produced and consumed in this area, they belong to us. I buy them directly from the producers and contribute to their economy,” she told the newspaper El Universal.

Aguilar also uses tejocote, or Mexican hawthorn, as the base ingredient for a jam to which she also adds mezcal – Oaxaca’s world famous spirit, basil and other locally-grown herbs. She then uses the jam as an ingredient in some of her baked goods.

“I’ve always believed in recipes that combine [ingredients], … that’s why in our creative cuisine we never stop combining regional and natural flavors,” she said.

Her products have found a loyal following in her home town in the months since she started selling them and Aguilar even sends orders beyond the Isthmus region.

Despite being busy with her new business, the chef has found the time to teach, along with a local artist, a cooking and art workshop for children who have been stuck at home attending virtual classes for the past year.

“We saw that the people most affected [by the pandemic] are children because [they attend] classes on line but don’t have spaces to have fun together … so we started the workshop,” Pedro Hernández, the artist, told El Universal.

Source: El Universal (sp) 

Indigenous town in Hidalgo wants a vote on whether to vaccinate

By
MND Staff
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otomi citizens san ildefonso
Citizens aren't keen on the idea of Covid-19 vaccination.

Residents of an indigenous town in Hidalgo are demanding that the federal government respect their right to decide whether they want to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or not.

The government hasn’t made any announcement that getting a shot is mandatory but Hñähñu, or Otomí, people in San Ildefonso Chantepec have nevertheless made it clear that they will reject any imposition of the vaccine.

If the government doesn’t respect people’s right to choose whether they want to be vaccinated it will violate people’s rights, the San Ildefonso town leader told the newspaper El Universal.

César Cruz said the government’s Covid-19 vaccination program will not make up for the years of abandonment San Ildefonso and other indigenous communities in Hidalgo have suffered in terms of healthcare.

“We need quality care [always], not just sometimes,” he said.

San Ildefonso, located about 10 kilometers south of the city of Tula, and other indigenous communities have extremely limited access to health services and medications are frequently in short supply.

“We can only get sick from nine in the morning to two in the afternoon,” Cruz said, referring to the town clinic’s operating hours.

He said that many of the 10,000 residents, among whom are large numbers of artisans and musicians, don’t trust the Covid-19 vaccines because they’re new and they had bad experiences previously with the influenza vaccine.

“Some people had a negative reaction, … everybody’s body is different. In the community some people say no [to the Covid-19 vaccine], I personally won’t agree [to having it],” Cruz said.

The town governor clarified that he believes that almost the entire population shares his view but some don’t enunciate it out of fear of being stigmatized or stripped of federal welfare payments.

Cruz also said that people resorted to using traditional medicines to treat illnesses during the pandemic because they saw that people who went to hospital were dying.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s vaccination program continues to proceed slowly with just 51,802 doses administered on Monday. That figure is well short of the daily high of about 330,000 shots recorded last month but the highest since Tuesday last week.

A total of 2.85 million Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered in Mexico as of Monday night, a figure that accounts for almost 61% of the approximately 4.7 million doses the country has received.

The Health Ministry also said Monday that the accumulated case tally had increased to 2.13 million with 1,877 new cases registered while the official Covid-19 death toll rose by 319 to 190,923.

Source: El Universal (sp) 

Museum educates on coconut’s value to Zihuatanejo and beyond

By
Elisabeth Ashe
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An example of artisan work made from coconut that's sold at the museum.
An example of artisan work made from coconut that's sold at the museum.

On a beautiful piece of land tucked away among the streets of the Guerrero village of Coacoyul, next to a 70-hectare coconut plantation, sits el Museo del Coco, or The Coconut Museum.

You might wonder whether coconuts warrant a whole museum, but Jesús Espino Marcado, who founded the museum with his family two years ago next to his coconut plantation, knows the fruit’s value to Mexico.

“The coconut is of extreme importance to our economy,” he said. “It’s the first introduction to Mexico from Asia [from the Phillipines] and has risen in importance gastronomically, culturally and economically.”

Espino speaks from vast experience. For generations, since 1940, his family has dedicated itself to the coconut industry. He’s also president of Coco Pacifico Sur, a group of 10 coconut producers from Coacoyul who formed the entity in 2008 in response to their longstanding plantations reaching the end of their productive stage. The group now visualizes the possibilities of taking advantage of their old plantations’ wood and replicating orchards with hybrid palm trees, a move which a state government program subsidized.

Espino is also running for mayor of Zihuatanejo, the municipality which encompasses Coacoyul.

An entrance to the museum, which features a restaurant and a gift shop.
An entrance to the museum, which features a restaurant and a gift shop.

The museum, Museo del Coco, “was a dream of the family” when they opened it just two years ago, says Espino’s wife, Ana Alba Vargas. Their children are also involved in the day-to-day operations of the museum and its restaurant and are also creators of some of the artisan items sold in the gift shop.

Vargas believes the museum to be the only one of its kind in the state, if not all of Mexico.

The museum seeks to educate locals and visitors by way of posters that track the early years of the coconut in the area and progresses to the present day. The aim is to inform about the varied uses of this highly versatile fruit and the importance of coconut cultivation as a means of development for the state of Guerrero.

Its exhibits illustrate the wide range of products derived from a single coconut — everything from virgin coconut oil, coconut milk, yogurt, butter and cottage cheese.  The museum encourages the consumption of the fruit and its ingredients by raising awareness of the health benefits of this fruit. There’s even a bar where you can purchase tequila shots or rum to imbibe with coconut.

Further illuminating the versatile uses of the fruit, a small gift shop at the entrance carries many coconut-based products, such as luxurious soaps, toys, candle holders, bowls and more. In addition to some of the designs being by Espino’s family members, they also sell pieces by various artisans from throughout Guerrero.

Jesús Espino, the Coconut Museum’s founder, with his wife and daughter.
Jesús Espino, the Coconut Museum’s founder, with his wife and daughter.

At the end of last month, the museum opened an onsite restaurant featuring coconut, including many regional dishes. Other developments in the works this year will include a massive double-sided mural on the grounds by well-known local artists Leonel Maciel Sánchez and Carlos Quijano. A smaller model of this planned mural already sits on display in the museum and depicts the coconut’s story, its journey and its impact on the area and beyond.

Although limited now by Covid-19 (mask-wearing and social distancing rules apply), the museum normally welcomes tour buses and private tours and even hosts weddings, birthday parties and other special events seven days a week.

The Museo del Coco is easily accessible by taxi or by contacting your local tour guide or through WhatsApp: 755 55 7 74 05 or at 755 55 7 81 31.

The writer divides her time between Canada and Zihuatanejo.

Massive tree-planting program has contributed to deforestation

By
MND Staff
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A woman in a straw hat plants a tree seedling in a grassy field
Sheinbaum cited the government tree-planting program Sowing Life, which operates in Central America, as an example of Mexico's work to address the root causes of migration. (File photo)

Its raison d’être is to reforest more than a million hectares of land in Mexico but the federal government’s tree-planting employment program is paradoxically encouraging deforestation.

A Bloomberg news agency journalist said in a report he saw evidence of deforestation associated with the US $3.4-billion Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) program during a trip to Yucatán and Campeche in late February.

The federal government’s flagship environmental initiative is designed to help Mexico achieve climate goals while providing jobs and income – currently 4,500 pesos (US $212) per month – for some of Mexico’s most disadvantaged people.

But while the government said the program had planted or prepared 660 million saplings by the end of 2020 and is on track to grow a billion by the end of next year, Sowing Life is also causing environmental destruction.

The Bloomberg report said that forested land in Yucatán has been burned so that saplings can be planted where mature trees formerly stood.

“This is what Sowing Life does,” José, a Yucatán farmer, told the news agency while kicking a blackened tree stump. “[But] what can we do? It’s the only opportunity there is.”

The problem is that in order to participate in the reforestation program and collect a monthly wage from the government, farmers need access to cleared land where they can plant timber-yielding and fruit trees. Sowing Life thus incentivizes farmers to clear forested land.

“In many cases people said, ‘Well, I have my hectare of jungle but the program is coming so I’ll cut down the jungle, use the trees for my house or to sell the wood or whatever, and when the program comes I’ll sow seeds again,’” said Sergio López Mendoza, an ecology and conservation professor at the University of Science and Arts of Chiapas.

According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), a United States-based environmental non-profit organization that has collaborated with the Mexican government to assess the results of the reforestation program, Sowing Life may have inadvertently caused the deforestation of 73,000 hectares of land in 2019, the first year the scheme ran.

The estimate came from a study that used satellite images to measure recent deforestation. In addition to Yucatán and Campeche, land in Veracruz, Tabasco, Quintana Roo and Chiapas has been deforested due to people’s desire to participate in Sowing Life, WRI found. Bloomberg noted that the estimated area of land deforested in 2019 is almost the size of New York City.

Some people in Mexico believe that the extent of the destruction could be even greater. Juan Manuel Herrera, a forestry engineer from Campeche, told Bloomberg that there has potentially been much more deforestation in that state than the WRI estimate suggests.

The president, center, inspects a tree nursery growing saplings for the tree-planting program.
The president, center, inspects a tree nursery growing saplings for the tree-planting program.

In one village, more than two-thirds of Sowing Life beneficiaries felled trees in order to participate, one participant said.

Antonio, who asked for his surname not to be used out of fear of repercussions, showed Bloomberg a parcel of land where he and other family members cleared a thicket of trees including Caribbean walnut and Red Chaca so that they could join Sowing Life.

A representative of the program in the village, which Bloomberg didn’t name, rejected the claim that trees had been cut down so that people could become participants, asserting that land on which cattle was formerly grazed was used.

But Antonio said that he and his relatives didn’t plant saplings on such land because their cows needed it. He said he only wanted to remove some small trees from the forested area and replace them with saplings that are part of Sowing Life but the program representatives were only looking for land that was cleared completely and he couldn’t afford not to participate.

“Sowing Life’s inconsistencies add to [President] Lopez Obrador’s poor track record on climate,” Bloomberg said. The news agency’s revelations come after the newspaper El Universal published a report last June that said the tree-planting program was riddled with operational flaws and corruption.

Despite the problems that have been exposed, López Obrador has described Sowing Life  as a “blessed program” and touts it as the most important reforestation initiative in the world.

For his part, the executive director of the Mexican Climate Initiative, a non-governmental organization, warned that poorly-designed environmental programs can have unintended consequences.

“These types of programs, if not well designed, can give birth to perverse incentives,” Adrián Fernández Bremauntz told Bloomberg.

In the case of Sowing Life, communities that have lived amid jungle for hundreds of years are left with a dilemma, the news agency said: “Cut down your habitat or turn away much-needed income.”

Source: Bloomberg (en) 

Historic church goes up in flames in Paracho, Michoacán

By
Michelle Aguilar
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0
The historic church in flames on Sunday.
The historic church destroyed by Sunday's blaze.

A historic 17th-century church built by Spanish missionaries in one of Michoacán’s original indigenous Purhépecha areas was destroyed by fire Sunday afternoon.

Emergency officials said they don’t yet know what caused the fire at St. James the Apostle Church in the town of Nurio. Residents noticed around 6 p.m. that the church’s wooden roof and its inclined support beams were in flames.

Residents attempted to put out the conflagration but it had already consumed a large part of the roof and by the time firefighters arrived from Paracho and Uruapan the church was severely damaged.

According to the newspaper Monitor Expresso, a lack of available water to fight the fire, as well as fire hoses that did not extend more than 20 meters and were themselves highly flammable hampered firefighters’ efforts.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) is investigating the extent of the damage but media accounts indicate that while the exterior walls are still standing, nothing remains of the roof and the interior.

Federal Culture Secretary Alejandra Frausto described the church, which dates back to 1639, as “one of the most beautiful churches in the world.”

The Archdiocese of Morelia called it “an architectural jewel of incalculable value.”

Constructed of painted stone with an imposing entrance featuring a cut stone porch and Corinthian columns, the church was built in the Mudejar style, a Gothic architectural design with Islamic influences that was prevalent in Spain from the 12th to the 15th century.

Over time, features of the outer construction were replaced with masonry, but much of the church’s inner construction was done by local woodworkers.

The church featured intricate religious paintings and sculpture on its walls and ceilings dating back centuries. Its choir, according to Monitor Expresso, was one of only two with its distinct architectural style in the world; the only other is located in a historic church in South America.

The church was a central feature of Nurio’s religious and public life, with many holy days and Catholic saints’ feast days celebrated there, including that of St. James, the town’s patron.

The church's wooden interior was gutted by the blaze.
The church’s wooden interior was gutted by the blaze.

It had survived at least two previous fires; one in the 1980s took out some of the church nave’s historic painted ceiling panels. Another fire in 2015 damaged its vault.

Sources: El Universal (sp), Monitor Expresso (sp)

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