A vaquita marina trapped in a gillnet. (Omar Vidal)
The federal government said Saturday it is considering reducing the area in the upper Gulf of California where the critically endangered vaquita marina porpoise is protected.
The measure would reduce the area where there is a ban on the use of gillnets, in which the world’s smallest porpoises are prone to becoming entangled and dying.
But there are fears that allowing the nets to be used across a larger area of the gulf would increase the risk of the species going extinct. There are currently as few as 10 vaquitas in the Gulf of California, the only place in the world they live.
The Environment Ministry (Semarnat) said that a decrease in the number of vaquitas and the area where they have been seen in recent years provides justification for reducing the size of the protected area.
The area extends from the Colorado River delta in the north of the Gulf past the fishing town of San Felipe on the west coast and near Puerto Peñasco on the east coast.
“The possibility of modifying the area of gillnet bans is being studied,” Semarnat said in a statement.
“There have been enough technical studies to indicate a possible reduction in the zone, according to the recent distribution of the vaquita marina in the area.”
The ministry said the possibility would be discussed by a group that includes fishermen, academics, members of the general public and government officials. A first report on the outcome of the discussions will be presented on March 26, Semarnat said.
Many fishermen have vehemently opposed the gillnet ban because they use the nets to catch totoaba, another endangered species whose swim bladders are considered a delicacy in China and yield thousands of dollars per kilogram. Mexican drug cartels are said to be involved in the illegal fishing and trafficking of totoaba, a large member of the sciaenidae, or drum, family of fish.
Alex Olivera, Mexico representative for the Center for Biological Diversity, said that reducing the size of the protected area would inevitably increase the likelihood of the small remaining population of vaquitas encountering a gillnet.
“Reducing the zone … means cutting the area available to the vaquita marina, and of course this species doesn’t live in a pen, it lives in the marine environment, so as soon as it leaves the zone, it could face gillnets, which are a threat,” he said.
“De Isla” by América Rodríguez, who studied at UNAM, then stayed on in Mexico City.
With Mexico’s rich art history, why isn’t it a major draw for foreign art students?
Actually, it was. During the colonial period, Mexico was at the forefront of the fine arts in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking New World, with the region’s first major art school, the Academy of San Carlos.
For the modern era, the muralism movement of Diego Rivera and company not only continued Mexico’s “big brother” status in Latin America, it rivaled France globally as a destination for budding artists.
The two periods of Mexico’s art prominence resulted in two major national art schools. The aforementioned San Carlos was integrated into the National Autonomous University (UNAM), itself highly prestigious. After several reorganizations, it is now the Faculty of Art and Design (FAD), headquartered in the south of the city, but it keeps the old San Carlos building for its graduate program.
The other is the La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving. This school was established by the muralist generation in Mexico City and is part of the National Institute of Fine Arts.
Niurka Guzmán Otañez’s Pintura Amalgama (“Amalgam Painting”). Guzmán was one of UNAM’s first Chavón School graduates. The work is inspired by Dominican myths.
Both schools still attract international students, but nothing like the decades after the Mexican Revolution. At that time, the interests of the art world and the Mexican government coincided to create a juggernaut of creativity and, yes, propaganda that is still featured in Mexico’s tourism and cultural campaigns. But avant-garde artists moved on from nationalism by the 1950s, making the government less motivated to promote anything but the old murals, even today.
In the decades after the Revolution, the government did sponsor quite a number of foreign students to San Carlos and La Esmeralda. These efforts produced greats such as Guatemalan Rina Lazo and Chilean Osvaldo Barra Cunningham, who had a great impact on murals produced both in Mexico and their home countries.
Today, however, neither school has well-organized, sustained programs specifically targeting foreign art students.
One attempt to do so happened at FAD in the 2000s. The school signed a number of exchange agreements, including one with the Altos de Chavón Design School, a small technical art institute in the Dominican Republic. This two-year school does not offer a bachelor’s degree, necessary for many teaching jobs, so the arrangement was to have Chavón students transfer, study two years in Mexico and get a FAD/UNAM diploma.
The year 2006 brought six students to Mexico City, with about 20 more the following year. It was not a moneymaker for UNAM as such students paid the nearly free in-country tuition. The goal was to broaden FAD’s reputation outside Mexico. Unfortunately, the university administration changed the following year, and FAD abruptly stopped accepting Chavón students, despite the formal agreement. This is not that unusual as new administrations come in with different priorities (see what is happening with the new Mexico City airport). UNAM agreed to allow Dominican students already registered to finish their degrees, but the program was over.
Former UNAM art program director Luz del Carmen Vilchis says that one highly satisfactory aspect of working with foreigners is seeing the impact they have after returning to their home countries.
Gloves by Farah Jane Cadet – not a photo but a hyperrealistic painting.
But not all graduates go back. Mexico and its culture have much to offer foreign artists. In the case of those from Caribbean countries, the sheer size of the cultural scene here is awe-inspiring. At least three of the 20-plus Chavón students have made Mexico their home, developing careers as artists and teachers.
Carmen América Rodríguez Sánchez came to UNAM, finding visa and language issues easier in Mexico than in the United States. That does not mean that moving to Mexico City was easy. From a small town on a small tropical island, she found herself in one of the world’s biggest metropolises. Although eminently grateful for what it has offered her as an artist, she finds the city cold and gray, which has muted her color schemes.
She still lives near where she studied, in part because the area is the closest in feel to a small town in the chaotic capital. Rodríguez’s work is often in mixed media, using many of the painting, graphics, embroidery, mosaic and ceramic skills she learned in both Mexico and her home country.
Niurka Guzmán Otañez was also part of the first group, but instead of staying on in Mexico City after graduation, she eventually wound up in Cozumel because of a teaching job.
“My work as a printmaker has been enriched in Mexico,” she said. “Here I learned different metal engraving techniques, printing and manipulating ink viscosity. I feel that living in Mexico has helped me communicate and structure my ideas with its artistic and cultural riches. They have been a grand inspiration.”
Another transplant to Cozumel was actually an exchange student twice over. Farah Jane Cadet is from Haiti. She was accepted as an international student at Chavón and then began the process to study at FAD.
Unfortunately, she had not formally registered as a student when the exchange program was terminated. She was allowed to continue taking classes as an observer but could not earn a degree. After ending her studies, she also made her way south to Cozumel, where she now works as an art teacher, able to do so in English as well as Spanish (and, of course, her native French Creole).
You might think that the former Chavón students living in Quintana Roo would feel more at home than those who live in Mexico City. But while the climate is similar and it is closer to their island homes, there are only a few similarities. Guzmán says that it is still a very distinct world because of the lack here of a history of African peoples.
The women’s ethnic backgrounds, especially their African heritage, makes them stand out in Mexico. While they acknowledge that they can be the object of curiosity, none have felt mistreated here — quite the opposite: all indicated that they and their work have been accepted and respected, sometimes even preferred, since they offer a new perspective.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 17 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture. She publishes a blog called Creative Hands of Mexicoand her first book, Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta, was published last year. Her culture blog appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
Biden and López Obrador will meet virtually on Monday.
President López Obrador said Saturday that he will ask his United States counterpart to legalize migratory flows of Mexican and Central American workers into the U.S.
Speaking at an event in Zacatecas, López Obrador said he will make the proposal at a virtual meeting with President Joe Biden on Monday, suggesting a scheme similar to the Bracero Program, under which millions of Mexicans worked legally on farms in the U.S. in the middle of the 20th century.
“I have a meeting with Biden on Monday and we’re going to look at this issue,” the president said, adding that he will tell the United States president that the U.S. needs Mexican and Central American workers to grow the economy and boost production.
“Mexico is the spark plug in North America due to the quality of work of Mexicans, their strength, their youth,” he said.
“… We’re going to put order to the migratory flow, legalize it, in order to provide a guarantee to the workers so that they don’t risk their lives,” López Obrador said, referring to the dangers migrants face when trying to cross into the United States illegally.
Under López Obrador’s plan they could cross legally into the US to work.
“If they don’t have Mexican labor how can a production increase be guaranteed in the United States?” he asked.
López Obrador said that economic development in Mexico so that “Mexicans can work and be happy where they were born, where their families are [and] where their culture is” remains a priority but acknowledged that there are people who want to leave their home towns and work elsewhere, including the United States.
“They should be able to do it, but legally, via an agreement. It’s one of the things that we want to raise with President Biden on Monday,” he said.
The establishment of an agreement allowing large numbers of Mexican and Central American manual workers to enter the United States legally would represent a monumental shift in U.S. immigration policy. During the administration of former president Donald Trump, the United States pressured Mexico to do more to stop the flow of migrants to its northern border and into the U.S. by threatening to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican goods.
Mexico responded by deploying the National Guard to ramp un enforcement against migrants, and cooperated with the United States’ Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), the official name of a policy that forced U.S. asylum seekers to remain in Mexico as they awaited the outcome of their claims.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that Ebrard and Blinken discussed regional development aimed at addressing the structural causes of migration.
Mexico and the United States agreed on a five-year development plan in December 2018 under which the former committed to investing US $25 billion in southern states and the latter pledged to provide $10.6 billion to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The Biden administration is revamping U.S. immigration policies – it is currently winding down the MPP – but it remains to be seen how responsive it will be to López Obrador’s proposal. Actively encouraging migrants to the border by establishing a program that welcomes them into the country to work would leave a new U.S. president — one seeking to bring unity — open to a backlash, especially from Republicans in Congress and other adherents of the “America First” doctrine championed by Trump.
At age 11, Arden Pala is already an author and an actor.
Mexico is full of tales of foreigners who visit and then become writers and artists, but few of them are under the age of 12.
Arden Pala, an 11-year-old sixth-grader from San Diego, has made many trips to Mexico with his family: Mexico City, Cabo San Lucas and, most recently, Cancún. He’s also the author of a new children’s book about exploring Mexico in a unique form of transportation: a flying car.
In The Adventures of Noah’s Flying Car in Mexico, young Noah and two of his friends, Scotty and Kaden, go on a trip to Mexico to complete a class assignment. Their red flying car allows them to travel across the country with the ultimate goal of seeing the monarch butterfly migration in the World Heritage Site forests 100 miles northwest of Mexico City.
“We landed and stepped out of the car and were greeted by millions of butterflies,” narrator Noah writes. “We walked through the forest and were mind-blown by the butterflies swarming above us in the oyamel fir trees.”
Proceeds from the book benefit a Covid-19 relief fund in San Diego that has already received US $1,000 from the book’s sales.
Pala’s book takes young readers everywhere from the Chichén Itzá Mayan ruins in Yucatán to the Guadalupe Basilica in Mexico City.
The story’s voyage, whimsically illustrated by Philippines-based artist Pavel Goldaev, takes readers from the monarch migration to a different kind of migration — gray whales in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur.
“I love the monarch butterfly picture,” Pala said when asked which was his favorite illustration. “It’s beautiful. I like the dolphins and the whale watch. All are really magnificent.”
In one dolphin illustration, Noah and Scotty watch from the flying car as three of the friendly cetaceans leap out of the water. In another, Noah watches as Kaden feeds a fish to Dolly the dolphin in Cabo San Lucas. The illustration of Noah and his friends on the whale watch shows them amazed at the size of a tail rising through the water above them.
“We all gasped when we saw a whale breaching,” Noah writes. “This was an amazing experience, and I was excited to learn more for our project.”
Pala said the book has gotten “a lot of good responses. Sometimes it sells out on Amazon. People really like the fact that the proceeds are donated.”
The book includes visits to multiple natural and cultural wonders of Mexico, from a swim with the dolphins of Cabo San Lucas to landmarks like Chichén Itzá and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Noah and his friends marvel that the nearly 500-year-old basilica can fit 10,000 people and that several million traditionally visit for the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe every year on December 12.
At Chichén Itzá, they visit the main temple of El Castillo, the ballfield once used to settle criminal trials and the marketplace, where Noah buys presents for his friends.
Pala said he has seen most of the attractions in the book from previous trips with his family, although the butterfly migration is still on his to-do list.
“I love Mexico City,” he said. “It’s very beautiful. I love the beaches. Cancún is beautiful. Cabo San Lucas is [too].”
Of his New Year’s trip to Cancún last year, Pala said, “One of the highlights was going to Chichén Itzá … The beaches were beautiful — the waves. We stayed at a resort that was very nice.”
Noah and his friends also enjoy Mexican culinary delights, such as tacos with guacamole and chips in Mexico City, and enchiladas mineras with fried potatoes and carrots in Guanajuato after a trip to the city’s famous tunnels.
“I love the food,” Pala said. “I love tamales and tacos, and especially burritos.”
Arden Pala onstage playing the character of Zalmai in San Diego’s Old Globe theater production of A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Despite his young age, this is Pala’s third book in a series. The previous books are about visits in a flying car to China and to Turkey. Both are also illustrated by Goldaev.
Pala usually takes an entire summer to write his books, researching on websites and other sources. He talks about his project with his mother, Zeynep Ilgaz, and his friends.
Asked if he has any advice for fellow young authors, Pala said, “Definitely construct a storyline. Make sure to take your time writing a book. Make sure whatever type of plot you’re going to do, the whole structure at the end, tie it into the plot.” He then added, “Of course, have fun.”
Pala is also an accomplished actor. He has been acting in stage productions of How the Grinch Stole Christmas since he was 6 and recently won a best child actor award for a short film, Tahz, in which he played the titular character.
“I really enjoy acting,” he said. “It’s the best part of my life.”
As for the Mexican trip depicted in the book, it earns narrator Noah an A-plus from his teacher, and he has some fond words for the journey: “This was definitely our best adventure yet.”
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Map's changing colors reflect decline in hospital occupancy and dropping of the epidemic curve.
There will be no red light maximum risk states in Mexico for the next two weeks after the federal government presented an updated coronavirus stoplight map on which the majority of the states are painted medium risk yellow.
Guanajuato and Guerrero, the only red light states on the map currently in effect, will both switch to yellow on Monday, skipping the orange light high risk designation.
Twenty of Mexico’s 32 states are yellow, an increase of 12.
The other 18 are Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa and Tamaulipas, all of which are already yellow and will remain that color for the next two weeks, and Baja California Sur, Coahuila, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Jalisco, Nayarit, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Colima, Tlaxcala and Quintana Roo, which will switch from orange to yellow on Monday.
There will be 10 orange light states as of Monday, a reduction of 11 compared to the current situation, and two green light low risk states, an increase of one.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio
The orange states for the next two weeks will be Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, México state, Mexico City, Morelos, Puebla, Oaxaca, Yucatán and Tabasco. The first nine states are already orange and will remain that color while the risk level in Tabasco has been raised from yellow to orange.
The two green light states as of Monday will be Chiapas and Campeche. Chiapas is already green while Campeche will return to that color after remaining at the yellow light level for the past month.
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.
In Mexico City, museums and theaters will be permitted to reopen starting Monday but their capacity will be limited to just 20% of normal levels.
Presenting the updated map at Friday night’s coronavirus press briefing, health promotion chief Ricardo Cortés said that hospital occupancy levels are trending downward and that the epidemic curve is on the wane across the whole country.
Only 30% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients are currently occupied while 34% of those with ventilators are in use. Mexico City and Puebla are the only two states where more than half of general care beds are taken, with occupancy rates of 56% and 52%, respectively. With an occupancy rate of 59% for beds with ventilators, Mexico City is the only state where more than half of such beds are in use.
Hospital occupancy rates have declined markedly in the capital over the past month after they reached critical levels in late January.
New case numbers have also dropped significantly this month. The Health Ministry reported a daily average of 8,178 new cases in the first 26 days of February, a 42% decline compared to January, which was the worst month of the pandemic for both cases and Covid-19 deaths.
The accumulated tally rose by 7,512 on Friday to 2.07 million cases, while the official death toll increased to 184,474 with 782 additional fatalities registered.
The average number of daily deaths reported in the first 26 days of the month was 998, a 5% decline compared to January.
Almost 2.3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered since Mexico’s vaccination program began on December 24, according to Health Ministry data presented Friday night. About 57% of those doses have been used to inoculate health workers while 42% have gone to seniors and almost 1% to teachers.
Mexico has administered 1.8 doses per 100 people, according to a New York Times vaccinations tracker, the sixth highest rate in Latin America after Chile, Brazil, Panama, Argentina and Costa Rica. The United States has administered 21.2 doses per 100 people while Israel leads the world with 89.6 doses per 100 inhabitants already given.
Mexico has received about 3.8 million doses of vaccines after a shipment of 800,000 Sinovac shots arrived in Mexico City early Saturday morning. About 852,000 Pfizer doses are expected to arrive on Tuesday.
Morena's controversial candidate for Guerrero governor.
Facing intense pressure to dump an alleged rapist as its candidate for governor in Guerrero, the ruling Morena party announced Friday that it would conduct a new selection process to find a contender for the June 6 election.
The party’s honesty and justice commission said its members had voted unanimously to order a repeat of the selection process.
The decision came after thousands of Mexicans demanded that Félix Salgado Macedonio, a federal senator (currently on leave) accused of sexually assaulting five women, be stripped of his candidacy.
Women have protested in Mexico City and Guerrero state capital Chilpancingo and the hashtag #NingúnVioladorSeráGobernador (No Rapist Will be Governor) has been used countless times on Twitter.
Despite the accusations he faces, the 64-year-old has maintained the support of President López Obrador, who has claimed that the allegations are politically motivated, and other high-ranking Morena officials including national party president Mario Delgado. He was considered the frontrunner in the election for governor.
While the honesty and justice commission has ordered a new candidate selection process, Salgado was not precluded from participating in it. He indicated in a social media post on Friday night that he planned to seek the party’s backing for a second time.
“Cheer up colleagues! There is [still fight in the] bull,” Salgado wrote on Facebook.
The nickname of the former mayor of Acapulco, who has boasted about his sexual exploits but denied the rape allegations, is “El Toro” (The Bull).
Yolitzin Jaimes, a member of the feminist collective Las Revueltas, said the withdrawal of Salgado’s candidacy is a positive first step but urged the authorities to continue investigating the rape allegations.
“… He has to go to jail, … he mustn’t return to the Senate and he mustn’t be nominated [for governor] by any political party because … it’s very probable that he’s seeking to go to the Labor Party [a Morena ally],” she said.
One person who has already indicated that she will contest the new selection process is Morena Senator Nestora Salgado García, a former community police chief in Guerrero who spent 2 1/2 years in jail between 2013 and 2016 on charges of kidnapping, murder and robbery.
“Now is the time for a strong woman, from the social struggle and above all from the common people, to govern Guerrero. With the accompaniment of the people, I raise my hand to lead the fourth transformation [the federal government’s self-anointed nickname] in my state and lay the foundations for a more prosperous, fairer and more egalitarian Guerrero,” she wrote on Twitter.
At Villa Felicidad, the waters of Río de las Ánimas are clean and refreshing.
Tala is a small town located 30 kilometers due west of Guadalajara, best known these days for its large, government-operated sugar refinery. Two thousand years ago, however, Tala was a large metropolis with a population of some 60,000 inhabitants: the people who constructed the famed Guachimontones, or “circular pyramids,” whose ruins dot hilltops all over western Mexico.
Perhaps those pyramid makers decided to settle in Tala because adjacent to it lies a fairyland of pine and oak trees, bizarre volcanic rocks and clean, ice-cold rivers. In recent times, a local entrepreneur was charmed by the strange beauty of this area and decided to create a housing development there, which he named Villa Felicidad, or Happiness Villa.
The rocks of Villa Felicidad come in a wonderful variety of fantastic shapes. This is a place where you can let your imagination run wild. You’ll see rocks that look like long, meandering walls; stairs leading nowhere; elephants; Easter-Island-type giant heads; the Cookie Monster — you name it.
Felicidad, of course, means happiness, and this is indeed a happy place for naturalists but not for the people who bought land here years ago, since a good number of them lost their shirts — along with their money — when the developer of the fraccionamiento (neighborhood) ended up in jail after allegedly misspending the funds he had collected.
One Sunday, as we drove through Villa Felicidad, we came upon the present-day owner of the land, Hugo Castellanos. Sitting on his motorcycle on the side of the road, he would chat with the drivers of each carful of visitors that came along, always ending with, “… and remember not to leave any garbage!”
Crossing the Ghostly River in search of swimming holes.
Castellano’s efforts seem to have paid off because Villa Felicidad is remarkably clean considering its proximity to a town.
The great variety of curiously shaped rocks at Villa Felicidad is probably due to the result of ancient pyroclastic flows blanketing an area of lakes and rivers. Among the variety of rocks here are many that resemble stone columns, which experts say were created when steam bubbled up through the fallen tephra. These particular phenomena are called fossil fumaroles, and you can see them all over Villa Felicidad, where they very much resemble tree stumps made of stone, which for years we referred to as “fairy footstools.”
Never did we suspect that those “stumps” were merely the tips of very long, perfectly straight columns of rock until one day we found a road cut that exposed what was hidden beneath the surface.
The process by which these fossil fumaroles, or pipes, are formed is well-known thanks to an eruption followed by a volcanic ash flow that took place in 1912 in what is now known as The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
The “smokes” were actually steam. Some theorize that the rising bubbles carry away finer particles of ash with the result that — thousands of years later — that column, now compacted into solid rock, is harder than the material surrounding it.
On one of our many visits to this fascinating area, we discovered a hidden-away swimming hole and waterfall after following a river known as El Río Zarco. The word zarco, by the way, means something like cloudy, referring to mineral content in the water of a stream or pool, but in no way suggests that the water is unfit to drink.
Hundreds of “fairy footstools” resembling tree stumps are scattered throughout Villa Felicidad.
During most of its route, the Río Zarco runs along the bottom of steep slopes. We followed it for hours, and all along our route we kept bumping into strange rock formations: “This one resembles the mouth of a snake; that one is a frog … and this looks just like a man-made wall.”
We even found a few perfectly rectangular “stone blocks,” but close examination always revealed that what we were looking at was nature’s handiwork.
After an hour’s walk, we reached a lookout point from which we could see far below us a turquoise pool of water fed by a frothy white waterfall. Hugo’s Heavenly Pool, we named it. We clambered down and soon found ourselves on a little beach.
The mini-lagoon turned out to be a lot bigger and deeper than it appears from above, and the water much colder than I would have guessed. This glowing green pool even comes with a little sandy beach where you can lie back and contemplate the funny-looking rocks looking down on you.
While few people know of El Río Zarco, there is another cool, clean and much bigger river at the east end of Villa Felicidad: El Río de las Ánimas is born deep inside the Primavera Forest, and after it skirts Tala, it flows into nearby Lake La Vega. I used to call it “The River of Souls” until I learned that there are two words for soul in Spanish: alma and ánima.
The former refers to the souls of living persons as well as those who have made it to heaven or that other place. An ánima, however, has not yet reached its final destination. This word covers the souls in Purgatory as well as those said to wander about cemeteries and haunted houses.
A natural formation in a small cave alongside El Río de las Ánimas.
So, I am now calling it The River of Ghosts, a name it might possibly have received long ago by someone who noticed the above-mentioned bizarre rocks and fossil fumaroles found along its banks.
If you head upstream, you’ll quickly come to a spring where clean, warm water gushes out of the hillside and cascades over a small waterfall into the river. Three hundred meters upstream from here, there’s a small, natural bathing pool next to a wide meadow perfect for camping, at the edge of which you’ll find several fossil fumaroles of extraordinary size.
We measured one at 1.2 meters in diameter, surely one of the bigger examples of such formations to be found anywhere in the world.
Nowadays a four-lane highway bisects Villa Felicidad. This is the new bypass around the city of Guadalajara, locally known as the megalibramiento. At first, I feared this toll road would cut off access to Villa Felicidad, but they actually built an overpass just for the rough dirt road leading from Tala to the River of Ghosts.
To get to a parking spot from which you can walk to Río de las Ánimas, you need to follow two steps. First ask Google Maps to take you to “Calle Luis Rojas, Tala, Jalisco.” Once you are there, ask for “M84V+25 Tala, Jalisco.”
Google Maps will show you two routes; one goes straight east, and the other makes a big northerly loop. I have found this loop impossible to follow, so take the other choice: keep going east on Luis Rojas, and you will soon be crossing Villa Felicidad.
Taking a moment of reflection among some mini “stumps.”
The road is rough but you don’t need four-wheel drive. When you reach the parking spot, walk downhill, heading east again, and after 400 meters you will reach the Ghostly River.
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.
Bill Gates: Mexico's educational institutions have a long way to go.
If Bill Gates was in charge in Mexico, he’d bet on its people as its greatest resource, not its oil.
The Microsoft founder told the publication Forbes México in an interview that he would urge President López Obrador to invest in education rather than fossil fuels.
Mexico’s educational institutions have a long way to go to reach the levels that will give Mexicans a better quality of life, he said.
“Undoubtedly, the education system is the primary key to developing a country or the intelligence of its people,” Gates said. “Mexico has places like the Technological Institute of Monterrey, in which they train world-class engineers. But speaking in more general terms, the education system in Mexico is quite weak …”
In addition, Gates said, Mexico isn’t turning out enough teachers.
“Having a good education system is much more important than taking petroleum out of the ground,” he said, adding that more informed citizens are happier ones.
Gates recognized that the world’s nations are still dependent on fossil fuels as a fundamental part of their economies but argued that reducing oil and natural gas consumption for the good of the environment is crucial.
“We only have 30 years to go before we get to 2050 and we still depend on gasoline for people to get to their jobs, to move the economy,” he said. “How quickly can we reduce our consumption of gasoline?”
Ultimately, he said, how much of the world’s dependence on fossil fuels can be reduced by that 2050 deadline is not clear, but nations need to try to “let go of the expectation of making so much money by selling petroleum or natural gas.”
It will be a challenge, he admitted, “for Russia, for Nigeria [and] for Mexico,” he said.
Pemex was hit by a steep fall in fuel consumption.
Pemex on Friday reported a loss of almost half a trillion pesos in 2020 as the state oil company faced what CEO Octavio Romero described as the “worst crisis” in its history.
The company reported a loss of 480.96 billion pesos (US $23 billion), a 38.2% increase compared to its 2019 loss.
Industrial transformation losses contributed to 45.6% of the overall loss and exploration and production losses contributed 41.9%, the company’s annual report said.
Presenting the report, Romero said that Pemex faced the “worst crisis in its history” in 2020 as demand for oil slumped due to the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic restrictions.
“The unprecedented combination of low prices for crude and petroleum products” and a “steep fall in fuel consumption eroded the cash flows of all oil companies,” he said.
Pemex CEO Octavio Romero.
Pemex’s total revenues fell 32% last year to US $42.47 billion. However, the oil company recovered in the second half of 2020, recording net profits in the third and fourth quarters.
The profit in the October-December quarter was 124.21 billion pesos (US $5.9 billion), a vast improvement compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 when the company lost 171.54 billion pesos (US $8.2 billion).
Romero highlighted that it was the first time in more than four years that Pemex recorded net profits in two consecutive quarters.
He said that oil extraction costs declined 20.7% in 2020 to US $11.15 per barrel compared to $14.06 in 2019. Transparency practices and the eradication of corruption generated savings of approximately 40.54 billion pesos (US $1.9 billion), Romero said.
The CEO said that another “fundamental achievement” was that average petroleum production in 2020 increased by 4,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 1.705 million. He said the production increase ends a 15-year period of year-over-year declines.
Romero said that average daily output would have been 1.73 million bpd had Pemex not agreed to cut production last May and June as part of an agreement with the 23 oil-producing OPEC+ nations to reduce supply in order to stabilize prices amid the coronavirus-induced downturn in demand.
He said the production increase can partially be attributed to the incorporation of oil from new fields whose development began in the first half of 2019.
“In record time for the industry, less than two years, Pemex managed to incorporate production from these new developments,” Romero said.
Despite its huge loss, Pemex transferred 598.33 billion pesos (US $28.6 billion) to the federal government last year in “direct and indirect contributions,” he said. In the first two years of the current government, Pemex transferred 1.47 trillion pesos (US $70.3 million) to the government for the social and economic development of the country, Romero said.
The transfers were made despite Pemex being heavily indebted and requiring significant government support to stay afloat. Just last week, President López Obrador announced a new agreement to reduce Pemex’s tax burden and the government has injected large amounts of cash into the firm.
“The Federal Electricity Commission and Pemex will continue to be supported with public financing … In the case of Pemex, another agreement will come into force, a decree to reduce its tax payments to the Finance Ministry,” he said February 18.
Education Minister Gómez: only her ministry can authorize the reopening of schools.
The Ministry of Education (SEP) has pushed back against a recent call by a national private school association to reopen their schools starting March 1.
Education Minister Delfina Gómez, as well as Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, spoke out this week, saying that only the education ministry has the ability to authorize a return to in-person classes.
Sheinbaum asked families and teachers to be patient, predicting, “It won’t be much longer. Now there is a vaccine; there is a vaccination process.”
“All sanitary precautions will be taken, both in homes and in schools,” the association said in a statement on its website last week.
The association said the move was necessary not only for students but also for the schools, many of which are completely closed or at the point of bankruptcy. If those schools were to close permanently, it would leave millions of children without schooling and would overwhelm the public system with new students.
It also accused SEP and the federal government of not working hard enough to get the nation’s children back into classrooms.
SEP officials said this week that they would listen to concerns and proposals from educators, but at the same time Gómez also issued a statement warning that the return to in-person classes is dependent on the nation’s coronavirus stoplight system and on local authorities, not on private schools’ desire to reopen.
“[The return to in-person classes] will be safe, orderly, gradual and careful,” she said, “and only when the coronavirus stoplight is at green …”
The statement was a reiteration of SEP’s policy since the spring, when the nation’s public and private schools closed and students went to distance learning classes at home. At the time, SEP officials said that schools would not be authorized for in-person classes until the entire nation was at green on the stoplight system.
